Looking for Mrs Dextrose (5 page)

I stared back. “There is a place where the cattle play football?”

The Shaman laughed, a deep, rumbling, laugh – “Hrr-hrr-hrr-hrr-hrr” – while his son’s mouth clattered woodenly up and down, red tongue flashing on and off.

The Shaman reached forward and patted me on the shoulder, now wheezing at his own wit.

“Shanan idea oth joke,” said the dummy. “Gut he does know neaning oth your riddle. Thirst oo-ee nake deal. Yes?”

We had cut a deal, the Shaman and I.

He needed to travel deep into the jungle to pick up some “nagic sucklies” – “magic supplies” – from a “lost tribe”, as the Shaman called them. I
happened to be in possession of a motorbike and sidecar.

The Shaman claimed to understand Dextrose’s sketch, and would explain it to me once I had chauffeured him into the interior of the jungle. Though I was convinced he had by far the better
end of the deal, I was too polite to say so.

Then we were back out in the sunshine, among the non-talking heads. Immediately, a wooziness hit me.

“Wow!” I said, as sky became orange and purple. “I feel unusual.”

“Me too,” said Quench. “Did you notice the smell in there?”

I nodded, which only made me feel dizzier.

“Psychoactives. The Shaman brews ’em. From roots an’ leaves an’ suchlike. ’E uses ’em to visit uver spiritual planes. Least that’s what ’e says. I
reckon ’e jus’ loves gettin’ wasted! But dahn’t you worry, son, you’ve only breaved in a few fumes. ’E drinks the stuff!”

I began choking, feeling nauseous.

Quench went on: “So. I reckon that went pretty well.”

I regarded him from my bent-double position. “Did it?”

“Sure!”

“Really?”

“Well. Last time I visited the Shaman ’e give me some soap, an’ after I used it me face turned black!”

As I followed Livingstone Quench into the bar, knackered and drenched after the walk back, I fully expected to find Dextrose in his usual spot. He did not disappoint.

Already his table was covered in empty bottles and he looked half-cut, staring morosely into the latest glass neck. I felt a pang of self-pity take shape in my gut. What chance did I have of
getting through to such a sorry mess?

“Alright, ’Arry!” called Quench, quite jovial, no doubt used to the sight.

Dextrose noticed him. “More beer!” he called back.

He didn’t even look at me.

“Brought your boy, Pilsbury,” said Quench. “Maybe it’s time you two got to know each uver, yeah?”

“No, it’s OK, Livingstone. But thanks for trying,” I mumbled. “I think I’ll go and lie down.”

“Bollocks!” said the barman, manhandling me towards Dextrose’s table. “You take a seat and we’ll all ’ave a nice chat. Beer?”

I wasn’t convinced. “I might have something soft, thanks.” I’d seen what alcohol could do to people.

“’Ave a beer,” he persisted. “I might ’ave a few meself tonight.”

It struck me that Quench had not yet taken any money from me, which led to me recalling my financial situation: £175 in travellers’ cheques. Enough for bed and board, I imagined,
though hardly sufficient to get me home.

Home: England. Familiarity, stability and sweet ennui. What was I even doing in Mlwlw, I wondered, sitting opposite this propped-up dolt?

I dropped my head into my hands and rubbed my eyeballs so hard that shades of crimson and purple lolled around inside my eyelids.

A voice broke into my self-absorption. “Cheer up,” it slurred. “Might never minking happen.”

Dextrose, of all the cheek! He was staring at me, elbows on table, half-sneer on his chops.

“It already is happening!” I snapped back. “And you’re causing it!”

“Is I?” He looked baffled. “How?”

By being revealed as my father – and a useless drunk – frankly. Yet what should I have expected? I’d read his book. I knew what he was like. Had I never picked up the thing,
become so drawn into it, I would never have met him. Then again I’d still be a sofa-sloth back in Glibley. His book had opened my eyes; was it his fault I now wished I could close them? Cause
and effect.

In the end, the best I could reply was: “You’re supposed to be my father.”

“Is I?” He blinked. Or tried to; the right eyelid refused to open and he prised it apart with filthy fingers. He peered at me, as if through specs. “Yer know, that rings a
minking bell.”

Rings a bell!
And so it all spewed out: the confusion, the fear, the righteous indignation. “Mr Dextrose, I have spent the last month following in your footsteps. I’ve been
trussed up and imprisoned, I’ve been hung over the edge of a volcano, I’ve been drugged, I’ve been shot at. I feared for my life. But I made it. Which amazed me. Believe me, it
did. And when I arrived here I met you. Out of the blue.
My hero
. And just to put the icing on the cake, you turn out to be my father! And you know what?” It was obvious from his
expression that he didn’t. “I’m gutted. You don’t remember me, do you? What’s my name, Mr Dextrose? What’s the name of your son?”

He licked his lips, rested a hand on my forearm, spoke slowly and soothingly. “Would yer like us to sign a book for yer?”

“You smug bastard, I…”

“Now-now,” cut in Quench, banging three bottles down on the table. “That’s no way to start, is it? ’Ere, ’Arry, tell us abaht that time you met them fat
lasses in that place… Enzo Island? Elmo Island?”

“It’s not Elmo. It’s Emo,” I huffed. “Emo Island.” That place with that bloody dung beetle.

Dextrose took a few swigs of beer and wiped a forearm across his mouth. “So. Yer wants a few stories, does yer?”

My rage vanished like a bloodstain bleached at the prospect of hearing Dextrose’s adventures from the author’s own mouth. How well I knew his own tales of Emo Island. And those
‘fat lasses’ Quench referred to, so indelicately – surely they couldn’t be the lusty Frihedhags, those aged sisters uneasy on the eye, who had helped to save me from
Borhed?

I’d slept with Piggy Frihedhag, by accident – being rather drunken following the celebrations of Borhed’s demise – and had woken up with an arm trapped in the terrible
vacuum between her voluminous buttocks.

But of course, it was I who had vanquished the malevolent Borhed, no one else, and it was I who should take the credit. This, I realised, was an opportunity for a little showboating of my own;
Dextrose’s braggadocio could wait a moment.

This’d floor them. Earn me a little respect.

“Livingstone,” I said, “have you ever killed a man with a dead penguin?” Because I had.

I’d expected him to regard me with manly pride, shaking his head in mute disbelief. But no – he actually stopped and thought for a while, as if he had often considered employing an
arsenal of viciously pointy taxidermy.

By the time he replied, “Nah, son, I don’t believe I ’ave,” my moment had passed. “Why? ’Ave you?”

“Yes. But don’t worry about it,” I replied sulkily.

Dextrose butted in. “Good. Cos I were gonna tell yer…”

“No, ’old on, ’Arry, let the lad speak,” said Quench.

That appeased my pride. Alright, I would tell my tale, after all. But where to begin? With the salty skipper, ‘Mad Dog’ Mahaffey, who was supposed to have taken me from England to
Emo Island aboard his patchwork vessel, the Unsmoked Haddock, but who had let his dog steer the boat one night and, amazingly, we had ended up miles off course?

Or with my journey through the Unknown Tunnel, from Frartsi to Emo Island, by pony and cart, at the end of which I had stumbled upon Borhed and the dwarf, Detritos?

Which tale captured best my bravado and derring-do?

“Give me a second, I can’t decide where to start,” I told my audience.

They were becoming restless. Quench was drumming his gold-laden fingers on the table, while Dextrose was attaching crown caps to his forehead using saliva, and had begun to resemble some sort of
homeless Roy Wood.

Remembering Detritos had started the pangs of guilt. I had tried to put him out of my mind since his untimely death, concerning which I felt – wrongly, I hoped to convince myself –
at least some degree of culpability.

The frustrating, lascivious, daring, delusional, fiercely loyal little fellow had popped up at the beginning of my adventures and, whether I had encouraged his company or not, he was there at
the end. He had saved my bacon on more than one occasion. Indeed, had Detritos not appeared from nowhere – or rather, from inside a hobby horse – toting an Uzi at the end of the Insect
Race to Death, I might not have survived long enough to perform the
coup de grâce
with that deceased penguin.

That’s where I would start my tale, I decided: just after Detritos and his Uzi, grab a little limelight for myself.

“Right, mink this!” declared Dextrose, the instant I opened my mouth. “Here’s the one about I and Paloma Slaver!”

Quench actually had to stop himself from clapping like a delighted child.

“I thought I…” I began.

But no one was listening.

“…then I turned her over and the minking smell disappeared!”

Twin streams of frothed ale shot from Quench’s nostrils, his face the colour of a boil forming. He roared with laughter, clutching the table for support though he was seated. My stomach
muscles ached, such had been the night’s hilarity, while my brain drained and the hours evaporated.

Dextrose, in his element, had come alive. Raconteur, adventurer,
bon viveur
, egotist, dirty, arrogant bastard.

Tale after tale, some I had known off by heart – though the author’s live intonations and new embellishments (gross exaggerations, some might have contended) added so much –
others plucked from expeditions he was yet, probably ever, to bequeath to the history books. I prayed I would remember them all come daybreak. Or was it already daybreak?

Inside Gossips, time stumbled around in circles looking for the exit and odours thrived. Whenever one of us opened the back door to visit the outside loo, foul vapours visibly escaped the place,
and we briefly breathed in deeply the sweetness of the jungle. One other potential customer had entered the bar, however Dextrose had instantly bellowed, “Mink off!” and he had done
so.

As we three lost ourselves in communal alcoholic reverie, I learned to love the infamous lapsed explorer all over again. And I wondered how different my life would have been, had he and Mrs
Dextrose raised me as nature had intended. One time I pushed my luck, referred to him as “Dad” – and he did not correct me.

Every one of his stories was a gem. The Flatulent Ghost of Framingham (actually Dextrose, somehow stuck inside his bedsheet, driven out of town by locals once his unintentional deceit was
discovered); The Fetid Milkmaid of Nozvodrogost (the conclusion of which can be found above); The Repeated Defiling of Crewman Skink (Dextrose and crewman Shark, vastly inebriated, dressing a
comatose Skink as the back end of a pantomime horse, at the Shah of Arovia’s stud farm)… nor was he yet finished.

“I’ve another!” he announced. “Me dubious relationship with the well-bottomed socialite Nadia of Bujina!”

I chanced pointing out the obvious. “Weren’t you married to Mrs D…”