Looking for Mrs Dextrose (28 page)

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!”

“SAVE US!”

“SAVE US!”

“Save us!”

“Save us!”

“NO!”

“WE WILL
NOT
!”

They bowed and left the stage to stunned silence.

Well
, I thought. The old knitting lady had packed up her wool and left halfway through. It had been kind of
a capella
death metal. The best I could think to say
of it was that it had sort of rhymed until the last two lines.

I checked to see that Clemmie hadn’t left and was relieved to see her still seated next to me, if looking a little on edge.

Next came a godawful noise, as if a disorientated bluebottle’s repeated battering against a window-pane had been amplified. Again it came, and again. Then all five Suicide Poets took the
stage, each cradling the same musical instrument.

I couldn’t quite believe it.

“This next poem is dedicated to Charlie, who tuned our bagpipes this morning. Without him, we couldn’t have performed this for you,” said Bish-Bash-Bosh.

I was filled with quiet amusement and horror.

“This is called
Five Open Letters to Paul McCartney Concerning Mull of Kintyre
,” the lead poet went on. “We haven’t performed it since 1994, so we may be a little
rusty. Please forgive us.” He bowed.

Rusty –
on the bagpipes?
I sunk down into my seat.

Each Suicide Poet created a discordant, infernal racket that might have been heard in space. Then they took it in turns to recite – at least reducing the number of bagpipes played from
five to four – at hollering volume.

It went like this:

Bish-Bash-Bosh:

“Paul McCartney.

Please don’t start me.

No, it’s too late now.

I’ve started.”

Esteban:

“Paul McCartney.

‘Mist rolling in from the sea?’

Only waves of nausea

rolled over me.”

Romulus (or Remus):

“Paul McCartney.

It was you, Linda McCartney,

and Denny

Laine. The shame.”

Remus (or Romulus):

“Paul McCartney.

What would John-ny

Lennon have said?

Did your lame song make him dead?”

Happily we never got to hear Nooooooo’s open letter to Paul because the heckler from earlier launched himself onto the stage and started wrestling the bagpipes out of
Esteban’s arms. His mates joined in and a fight broke out.

Turning to Clemmie, I said, “Bet the last verse would have mentioned the Frog Ch…” But she was leaving.

“What did you think?” I asked when I caught her up outside.

“I’m leaving, aren’t I?” she said.

We walked in silence in the direction of the Desert Rose.

“OK, well it was nice to meet you again,” said Clemmie, making for the downstairs hallway, somewhere along which her room must have been.

I had to act fast or I would lose her.

“Erm,” I said in a raised voice, aimed at her retreating form.

She turned. Pursed her lips. Mmm… lovely lips.

“Yes?” she said.

“I could murder a coffee!”

She paused. “I’m sorry. Hot refreshment’s only available nine to five. But there’s a kettle in the communal kitchen upstairs.”

Moment slipping away. “No, you’ve misunderstood me. I was hoping to have a
coffee
.”

“Yes, I heard you the first time. Hot ref…”

“No, I didn’t mean…”

“Orange squash?”

“Sorry?”

“Cold drink? Orange squash?”

“That’s not…”

“Iced tea?”

“Oh dear.”

“Milk?”

“Actually, I’m not feeling that thirsty any more.”

“Oh. Oh well,” she said. “If you change your mind.”

Had to be more direct. “In England, where I come from, ‘coffee’ is a euphemism.”

“Is it?” She frowned. “So what do you ask for when you want a coffee?”

It wasn’t going at all well. “Look, I’ll get to the point,” I said. “Would you…”

Suddenly there came an almighty banging on a nearby wall. A man’s gummy-sounding voice shouted, “Whatf all vat wacket? Get to beb!”

Clemmie looked abashed. “My Dad. Gotta go,” she loud-whispered. “Night.”

And that was that.

How near and yet how far?

The way I saw it, I had three options:

Option 2 stuck out like a sore thumb, and even 1 was preferable to 3.

But then, what price loyalty?

I wasn’t sure what to expect as I pushed on the door of Jimmy’s Topless Bar. My single – vain – hope was that Harrison Dextrose would not be inside.

“Minking marvellous!” were the first words I heard.

He was seated on a stool, elbows on the bar, chin in hands, staring at a 50-something barmaid engrossed in a book, wearing no top. Her breasts were voluminous and she was using them as a rest.
She wore reading glasses and had a chestnut perm (possibly a wig: it didn’t look quite real).

The room was dingy, with plain walls like chalkboards, and whiffed of stale sweat (there was another note in there, which I hoped never to identify). All of its windows had been blacked out. A
dartboard hung in one corner; beside it a jukebox barely audibly played
Stand By Your Man
by Tammy Wynette.

There was only one other customer, seated next to Dextrose, though they were paying each other no attention. He was a wizened little old man with a bent back and trousers that were too big, held
up by braces.

“Heehee! Oi love them dirty pillows!” announced the little old man, apropos of nothing.

The barmaid looked up and tutted.

Dextrose slapped him on the back, spilling his own drink as his elbow slid along the bar surface. The glass rolled off and smashed onto the floor.

“Another one, boys?” sighed the barmaid, putting down her book.

No one had even noticed me in the doorway.

All out of enthusiasm and loyalty, I reverted to option 1.

I lay on the bed and allowed my mood to sink. Drizzle pattered its downbeat rhythm on the window-pane and somewhere a dog howled a forlorn siren song to other lonely, horny
mutts.

I couldn’t sleep.

A glass of milk and a ham sandwich had been left on the bedside table, by the lovely Clemmie I hoped, and were a brief but welcome respite from the overwhelming sense that everything was going
wrong.

I felt so badly let down.

Why had I kidded myself that Dextrose might change? I’d read his book: that was him. The alcoholic skirt-chaser, hedonist, deviant. His world revolved around him.

That I had seen a softer side to him, at least verging on the paternal, only made his return to the dark side worse. We were supposed to be on a mission, to find his abandoned wife. He’d
understood that, I knew. Although I doubted he would ever admit it – immaturity, misdirected pride – he did want to find her.

I had become swept along with the lame-ass plan, based on a childlike drawing made under the influence of hallucinogens, and on the claims of a charlatan, with Dextrose’s memory of places
and times key to our hopes. How stupid had I been?

Chasing shadows.

At least I’d
had
a mother and father. Physical presences. They had even managed to live in the same house as me. For years! They had communicated with me, had acknowledged my
existence, catered to my needs and comforted me when I was ill. They’d shown responsibility. Of parents, that was hardly too much to ask. And they had only been my guardians.

Why on earth had I been so in awe of Dextrose?

It made me wonder whether I had been too hard on Mother and Father? It was all too easy to remember the tougher times, the claustrophobia and the irritation of being brought up. But it
hadn’t been all so bad. It really hadn’t.

When I was a young boy in buttoned-up pyjamas, Father used to tell me bedtime stories. I would lie bound in linen and he would ask me to pick a character and setting, then he would weave a
fantastical tale around those, off the top of his head. He’d been very good at that, and I had always looked forward to his tales, the sense of safety and the escapism.

And every night, before he turned off the light, he would pat me on the head, as tenderly as his own evidently repressed upbringing would allow.

I’d forgotten that.

Another incident sprang to my mind. There had been a boy at boarding school who had bullied me during my early teens. He made me fear break-times, would tease and taunt me, sometimes punched and
kicked. I hated him.

It was his power trip and my pathetic impotence, and the taunts of my classmates riled and upset me. I never dared offer a physical response because the bully was stronger than me. So readily
downtrodden had I been.

Neither would I have told Father, volunteer my weakness, though he noticed one weekend when I had become especially withdrawn and had coaxed the story out of me.

He listened quietly and, when I had finished pouring out my woe, for once he did not recommend a stiff upper lip, his solution to so many of life’s problems.

That Monday, he drove me to school for the week as usual, before heading back to teach at Glibley Secondary. Unusually, when he parked the car he got out too. The boys were kicking balls around
the playground, killing time before assembly.

“You’re going to point this bully out to me,” he said.

I was mortified. Eyes were upon us.

“Come on,” he commanded. “I don’t have long.”

So I did it. I pointed to the boy, feeling like Judas, and the boy saw me doing so.

I could barely watch as Father strode across the playground, stopped at my tormentor and spoke to him, for no more than a few seconds. When he returned to his car he said nothing to me, did not
even look my way. Then he was gone.

The retribution never came. The bullying just stopped. The boy actively avoided me afterwards.

Only a couple of weeks later, once my embarrassment and trepidation had subsided enough for inquisitiveness to kick in, did I steel myself to ask Father what he had said. He tried to brush the
query aside, but I persisted.

Eventually he told me: “I just said to him in a vaguely threatening manner, ‘Remember what happened to Pythagoras’.”

I was bemused. “Why, what did happen to Pythagoras?”

“No one really knows,” he replied. “But I was darned sure that young bully wouldn’t. A maths-based threat!”

Though Father never had much of a sense of humour he laughed that day, and I could not help but join in. It was one of those moments.

Perhaps I had been too hard on him?

I had certainly given Dextrose too generous a ride. So I made up my mind, as a clock outside chimed midnight: I’d get him back for his solipsism, for his disloyalty, for
his wanton ways. Maybe I should just abandon him, as he had me? That’d sure slap my message across his swollen face.