The Garden of Unearthly Delights (11 page)

The
crowd was now becoming very restless indeed and through it there came a large
man. He was hauling behind him an even larger young woman. ‘Hold up there,’ he
shouted. ‘Just what is going on?’

Maxwell
blinked at the new arrivals. ‘Excuse me,’ he asked, ‘but who are you?’

‘I am
Rushmear the horse trader and this is my daughter.’

‘Pleased
to meet you,’ said Maxwell.

‘The
pleasure is yours alone. Why have you begun half an hour early?’

‘The
news began sharp at six,’ said Maxwell.

‘Then
we were misinformed.’

‘My
apologies.’

‘Apologies
are not sufficient. What is that woman doing in there with you?’

‘This
is Miss Jenny Tailier, the news crumpet.’

‘The
town strumpet you mean, I know her well enough.’

The
crowd cheered somewhat at this, but, now eager to learn what the fearsome
Rushmear had to say for himself, soon quietened down.

‘Get
that woman out of there and put my daughter in at once,’ was what he had to
say.

‘Impossible,’
said Maxwell. ‘Miss Tailier has been accepted for the post.’

‘Swindler
and cheat,’ bawled Rushmear. ‘I paid your zany two fine white horses on the
understanding that my daughter would be given the job.’

Maxwell
viewed Rushmear’s larger daughter. She was well-knit and muscular. She had a
small black moustache and an interesting line in tattoos. ‘Two fine white
horses?’ Maxwell turned to Miss Tailier. ‘Did your father pay any such, er,
fee?’

‘Certainly
not. I was picked from dozens of other applicants who auditioned on the
“casting couch” at the inn.’

‘Casting
couch?’ Maxwell let out a mighty groan.
‘
Inn
?’

‘My
inn,’ cried another large man, elbowing space beside Rushmear. ‘As
you
know
well enough.’

‘I?’
asked Maxwell.

‘You,’
said the innkeeper. ‘My inn where you and your zany
have been enjoying first-class accommodation for the entire week on the
understanding that you would “sing the praises” of my establishment. So go on,
sing.’

‘There
seems to be some mistake,’ Maxwell chewed upon a thumb nail.

‘Enough
of this,’ shouted yet another large man. ‘What singing there is will be done
for my beef.’

‘Your
beef?’ Maxwell asked.

‘My
beef. I am Bulgarth the butcher and you Bulgarth stared in at Maxwell. ‘You… Who in the name of the deity are you anyway? You’re not Dayglo Hilyte.’

Maxwell
gagged and spluttered. The crowd erupted. ‘What?’ they went. ‘What?’

‘There
is duplicity here,’ yelled Bulgarth. ‘Give back my money whoever you are.

A woman
close at hand peered in at Maxwell. ‘It’s that arrow-nosed scoundrel who calls
himself an imagineer. He pulled my dog Princey from the sewage pipe. I reckon
he stuck him in there too.’

‘Boo!’
went the crowd once more.

‘What
of all this?’ cried Bulgarth and the innkeeper and Rushmear and Rushmear’s
daughter also. And a lot of the crowd too.

‘Mr
Hilyte was taken sick,’ whimpered Maxwell. ‘I am standing in for him.’

‘Hilyte
promised that
he
would recommend my beef. Give me back my money. I paid
out ten pieces of gold for my commercial.’

‘Only
ten?’ This voice came from Leibwitz who, although not quite so large as
Bulgarth, was respected for his hams. ‘Hilyte told me the fee was fifteen, for
the exclusive recommendation of
my
beef alone.’

‘I paid
seventeen,’ shouted Grimshaw’s third butcher.

‘Shut
up, the lot of you!’ Rushmear pushed folk to either side. ‘Get that prosie out
of the box and install my daughter at once.’

‘Do
nothing of the kind,’ ordered Bulgarth. ‘Hilyte’s zany promised that the news
crumpet would be singing the praises of my beef without her top on. No offence to
your daughter, Rushmear, but if she’d lived in old
India
she would have been sacred.’

As
Rushmear’s daughter raised a fist the size of a Leibwitz prize ham, yet another
voice rose to join the others.

‘Where
are my fireworks?’ this one wanted to know. ‘Fireworks?’ gagged the sweating,
shaking Maxwell. A pale thin man had been allowed to push his way forward. ‘I
am
Clovis
the banker. My guards
and staff were all invited here to witness the spectacular firework display
that would emblazon my name across the sky. For the fortune I paid, it had
better be worth it. I—’

But he
said no more. The mighty fist of Rushmear’s daughter caught him by accident and
felled him to the ground. A bit of a rumpus then occurred.

Maxwell
eased himself back in his seat and sought to take his leave. He pressed upon
the rear doors, but they seemed disinclined to open. Maxwell pushed harder. The
doors held fast. With heart now sunken into his substantial boots, Maxwell
recalled that one of the additional features Mr Hilyte had insisted upon the
previous night was a big sturdy bolt that fastened from the outside.

As he
watched the fists beginning to fly, Maxwell viewed yet another large man
forcing his way forward. ‘What is this abomination that bears my name?’ he
barked.

‘Who?’
managed Maxwell.

‘Futtock,
the carpenter,’ came the reply. ‘Who designed this atrocity?’

‘Well… you see—’

‘Outrageous!
I offered to have my finest craftsmen construct a beautiful cabinet at no cost.
But Hilyte told me that he had an imagineer whom he personally wished to take
charge of the project. Now I return from my holiday to find this…’

Maxwell
made further groanings. It all fell so neatly into place, he wondered just how
he had failed to see it coming.

But now
others were coming.

The
first of these was a pale thin man, the dead spit of
Clovis
the banker. He looked somewhat battered and the worse for wear.

‘Robbery,’
he cried, pushing into the circle that was widening about Rushmear’s daughter
who was laying into Bulgarth with a vigour.

‘Help,
help, robbery.’

‘What
has happened, brother?’ shouted
Clovis
, struggling to his feet.

‘Two
masked men entered the bank shortly after you and the guards left. They tied me
up and beat me. They have taken everything.’

‘What?’
wailed
Clovis
. ‘Everything?’

‘And
they rode away on a pair of fine white horses.’ As Maxwell had a further groan
left in him, he used it now.

And it
was well timed for into the growing mêlée came the sound of chanting. Maxwell
could make out robed figures armed with flaming torches, marching through the
crowd. Now who might these be? he asked himself.

‘And
who might you be?’ demanded Rushmear.

The
leader of the advancing legion was an old woman who looked vaguely familiar to
Maxwell. ‘We are the Queuers who wait upon Varney!’ she bellowed. ‘We have paid
our bounty and now we demand the head of the iconoclast in a bucket.’

‘Whose
head is this?’

‘His!’
A young man with a torch, pointed the accusing finger towards Maxwell. ‘Disguised,
though locked in the box, as Mr Hilyte promised when we paid him the bounty.’

‘You
can damn well wait your turn for his head,’ bawled Rushmear buffeting the young
man in the ear.

‘How
dare you hit my Kevin!’ shrieked the old woman, clouting Rushmear with her
flaming torch.

‘Guards.
Arrest the malcontents in the travelling TV,’ ordered
Clovis
the banker.

‘Not
till the tart’s got her kecks off,’ called Zardoz the baker. ‘I paid for an
exotic dance involving a pair of baps and a french stick.’

‘So did
I!’ called one of his rivals.

‘And
me!’ called another.

Maxwell
was now in the foetal position, chewing his nails to the knuckles. ‘For Goddess
sake, whip out your charlies before we’re both killed,’ he told Miss Tailier.

‘How
dare you.’ Miss Tailier kicked Maxwell in the head. ‘I’m a star of the small
screen now and—’

It was
good night from her.

The
crowd surged forward. The followers of Varney set to smiting all about them
with their flaming torches. Butchers, bakers and no doubt the manufacturers of
candlesticks, drew out all manner of concealed weapons and entered into the
fray.

The
arrival of several more large men with equally large and star-struck daughters,
to whom much had been promised in return for large sums received, did nothing
to quiet the riot. Spleens were being vented, old scores settled. Anarchy
prevailed.

The
maelstrom of struggling bodies swept into the glorious
Rock-Ola-style
two-person
wide-screen travelling TV set, overturning it and bursting it asunder. In
pandemonium the mob fell upon Maxwell and Miss Tailier. Many seemed
particularly anxious to fail upon Miss Tailier . .

These
who fell upon Maxwell had a more violent intent. Dragged from the wreckage of
his masterwork, he was yanked this way and that. Maxwell struck out with his
substantial boots, shattering shinbones, knackering kneecaps. The howls of the
wounded were lost in the hullabaloo.

Kevin
rose up before him. ‘So die, idolater,’ said he, raising a mattock.

 ‘Sorry,’
said Maxwell, punching Kevin’s lights out, then diving low to scramble through
the shambles.

Certain
images of mayhem would remain to haunt young Maxwell and disturb his sleep for
many months to come.

There
are few things quite as frightful as the madness of a mob and, as brother beat
on brother and the butcher struck the baker and the Varneyites and carpenters
and traders and their daughters raged and rampaged, fought and forayed, beat
and bludgeoned, mashed and mangled…

Maxwell
quietly quit the scene and slipped away.

He ran
for several miles along the road that led north out of Grimshaw before he dared
to stop, draw breath, drink from a stream and wash the make-up from his face
and scalp.

The sun
was setting now, its bloated red orb wallowing on the horizon to the west.
Sounds of violence and carnage drifted across the barren landscape and looking
back, Maxwell could see that much of Grimshaw was now fiercely ablaze.

With a
rueful shake of his shaven head and a deep and heartfelt sigh of regret,
Maxwell gathered wits and breath together and fled once more.

7

Maxwell marched north.

He
slept in ditches and maintained the communion of body and soul through a
meagre, though nourishing, diet of fruit and berries. Once he snared a rabbit,
but the beast did the dirty and stared at him with big brown reproachful eyes.
Maxwell let it hop upon its way.

His
vegan repasts left him in no need of the apothecary’s laxative that Dayglo had
recommended and hourly bush-squats punctuated each day’s journey.

It was
during one of these, that he viewed riders pounding from the south. Peeping
from the safety of his gorse privy, he glimpsed the face of the turbulent
Rushmear, bruised but determined, as the riders thundered by. Ahead the road
forked and they took the left. His ablutions completed, Maxwell took the right.

He felt
hollow inside, and it wasn’t just for the lack of food. The appalling
devastation wrought upon Grimshaw had been of his making. In his zeal to bring
enlightenment to this new world, he had unleashed horrors from the old upon it.

No news
was good news here, and as for advertising … Maxwell shuddered. Certainly
Hilyte and his zany had brought new meaning to the words treachery and deceit,
but Maxwell still felt wholly to blame. If he hadn’t interfered, none of it
would have happened.

His
vision of being written up in future history books had now acquired a nightmare
aspect. He envisioned generations to come pointing to engravings of a Rock-Ola-style
TV set from which sprang all the evils of the world and speaking not of
Pandora’s infamous casket, but of
Maxwell’s Jukebox.

‘I
shall make amends,’ Maxwell told himself. ‘But through small acts of charity
rather than grandiose gestures.’

And
with this said he pressed on. His wish was to put many miles between himself
and Grimshaw. Let no grass grow beneath his feet, while the hair grew back on
his head.

The
landscape was dull as a duffle-coat, sardine-grey and just went on and on and
on and on and on and on (like that).

Once he
viewed the ruins of a village, which lay shattered beneath what appeared to be
a gigantic golden toothbrush, but other than that, he didn’t see much of
anything.