The Garden of Unearthly Delights (6 page)

He
trudged down the promontory, hands deep in trouser pockets, jacket collar
turned up to the chill. Out onto the gorsy waste. But which way? ‘South,’ he
decided and trusting to that in-built sense of direction that all men claim to
possess, struck off towards the west.

The
going wasn’t easy and neither was it pleasant. Small stinging beasties of the
gnat persuasion swarmed up to feast upon his exposed fleshy parts. Something
howled ominously in the distance and the dreariness of the gorsy waste relieved
itself periodically by suddenly giving way to a boggy morass into which Maxwell
stumbled without let or hindrance.

The sun
moved on before him, which puzzled Maxwell who found himself hard put to
calculate which portion of the globe it was, where the sun set in the south.

It was
with no small sense of relief therefore that he finally tripped through a
ragged overgrown hedge and fell onto the side of a road.

Though
it wasn’t much of a road.

More of
a track.

It had
the look of having once been a road and by its width, one much travelled. But
now it was gone to fragmentation, burst through by beggarweed and spark
heather. Maxwell looked up the road and down and consoled himself with the
traveller’s verity that ‘A road always leads to somewhere’.

‘Hm,’
went Maxwell. ‘West or east? West, I think.’ And so saying he began to plod
northward.

He had
plodded for more than an hour, blessing, with almost every step he took, the
substantial nature of his substantial boots, when he saw it.

Away in
the distance.

But
bright as a shilling in a sweep’s behind and beautiful as Bexhill was to
Betjeman.

A
bus-stop.

With a
shelter.

And, by
all the grace of the Goddess herself.

With
people waiting in it!

Maxwell’s
plod became a walk, his walk a stride, his stride a springing, joyous
goose-step prance.

As he
drew nearer, Maxwell became aware that this was not just any old bus-stop with
a shelter. This was the mother of all old bus-stops with shelters. It was
painted in rich hues of orange, green and gold and decked all around and about
with garlands of gazania, olive branch and bulbous reticulata.

Three
persons stood within this colourful bower of a shelter. Next to the stop
itself, which was adorned with yellow ribbons, stood an old dear clutching two
Budgen’s carrier-bags, next to her a grim-looking youth with a six-hair beard
sprouting from a flock of pubic chin-blossoms and next to him a lady of middle
years clutching the remnants of what once had been one of those
impossible-to-foldaway foldaway buggies. All looked sorely down at heel and all
looked towards Maxwell with expressions which could best be described as
doubtful.

Maxwell
made a cheery face and approached with a waving hand. The three persons
acknowledged his waves with troubled twitchings of the shoulders and then
turned down their eyes.

Maxwell
chanced to glance down and noted with no small degree of puzzlement that the
section of road which lay before the stop and shelter had been carefully
weeded, filled, restored, swept clean and painted over in a glossy black.

Maxwell
shrugged. These folk obviously were hoping to gain a first in the Best Kept
Bus-Stop of the Year Competition. Thoughts of competitions and awards suddenly
drew Maxwell up short. He had all but forgotten about his Queen’s Award for
Industry Award (award). He had left it behind in Sir John’s now-vanished
Hidden
Tower
. Maxwell gave his lip a curl. When he got home he would certainly
put things right. Phrases such as ‘his massive piles made his every waking
minute a hell on earth’ would be inserted into the paragraphs referring to the
ungrateful Mr Rimmer. Oh yes indeed!

The
three persons had now returned their gaze to Maxwell, who hastily uncurled his
lip, resumed his cheersome grin and said, as he drew near, ‘I cannot tell you
just how happy it makes me to find this stop and shelter here.

Two of
the three faces lit up like Swan Vestas. The youth, however, remained disposed
to gloom.

‘Then
you are of The Queue?’ asked the old dear.

English
bus-stop, English speech — I’m in
England
! thought Maxwell. ‘Praise be,’ he said aloud.

‘Praise
be indeed,’ said the old dear. ‘Welcome, brother.’

‘Thank
you,’ Maxwell stepped up to take his place behind the lady of middle years, who
clutched the non-foldaway foldaway.

She
looked him up and down. ‘Make the sign then,’ she said.

‘Pardon
me?’ replied Maxwell.

The
lady extended her arm, as one would when hailing a cab, or stopping a bus.

‘Oh I
see. Request stop, yes?’ Maxwell extended his arm in a likewise fashion, then
tucked both his hands into his trouser pockets.

‘Praise
be,’ said the old dear once more.

Maxwell
offered her a smile. ‘Been waiting long?’ he asked.

‘We are
here for the afternoon wait, yes.’

Maxwell
nodded. ‘I confess that I’m a stranger to these parts. Where do we go to from
here?’

The
three persons now cast Maxwell mystified expressions. ‘To Terminus, of
course!’ spat the dour young man. ‘Where else?’

‘Where
else indeed. And in which town would the terminus be?’

‘Town?’
The young man looked long and hard at Maxwell. ‘Are you sure that you are of
The Queue?’

‘Here I
stand,’ said Maxwell, ‘as your eyes will testify.’

‘Then
where is your token of penance?’

‘I am
perplexed,’ said Maxwell. ‘Would you care to explain?’

The
young man glared at Maxwell, then, as if resigning himself to the fact that he
was clearly addressing a simpleton, said, ‘None may travel to Terminus without
their token of penance. See the old woman carries the
get-a-move-on-with-those
shoppering sacks. This lady holds the
I-can’t-let-you-on-with-that-thing
wheel-about, and I …‘ The young man removed a crumpled piece of paper
from his pocket and flourished it before Maxwell’s eyes. ‘I have the
I-don’t-have-change-for-anything-that-big-you‘ll-have-to-get-off
parchment.’

Maxwell
viewed the item being flourished before him. It was
not
a money note. He
looked from one to another of his fellow queuers, then he looked once more up
and down the road. And then a thought entered his head, which really should
have entered it earlier.

There
was no possible way that any bus could ever travel along this ruined track!
Something was very very wrong about these folk.

‘Ahem.’
Maxwell cleared his throat and sought to compose questions which might evoke
clear and unambiguous answers, whilst offering no offence. He addressed his
first one to the old dear.

‘Good
woman,’ he said, ‘I observe that you are at the head of the queue. Might I
enquire as to just how long, overall, you have waited here?’

The old
dear smiled a proud smile. ‘I have observed the morning wait, the afternoon
wait and the “last one cancelled”, three times a week for the past forty years.
When I am finally taken up to Terminus, my son Kevin here will have my place.’

Maxwell’s
throat made a gagging sound.
‘Forty years?’
he said in a harsh whisper.
‘Forty
years?’

‘As my
mother did before me and hers before her, dating back to the Time of
Transition.’

‘The
time of transition?’

‘When
the old aeon ended and the new one began.’

‘But..,
but…‘ Maxwell now had a serious shake on. ‘But that was yesterday, surely?’

‘Yesterday?’
The young man guffawed. ‘You are a buffoon and no mistake. The old aeon ended a
century ago.’

‘No,’
said Maxwell. ‘No, no, no.’

The
lady of middle years stretched out a hand to finger the fabric of Maxwell’s
jacket. ‘This antique costume the buffoon wears is of royal stuff. Such a
jacket would suit you well, Kevin.’

‘Much
so,’ said Kevin, affecting a covetous leer.. ‘Stop!’ Maxwell tore himself away
from the lady’s tightening grip. He was now in a state of confusion and alarm.
A century gone since the earth left the Age of Technology and passed into
whatever it had? A century? Then everyone he knew… everyone he loved his wife… well, he didn’t love
her.
He was glad to see the back of
her.
But
he’d never have wished her
dead.
This was terrible …

‘What
fleeting reason he had, has now deserted him,’ said the lady. ‘Mark well that I
claim his boots.’

‘Stand
aside!’ Maxwell reached forward, grabbed the youth by the ragged collar of his
rustic coat and drew him almost from his feet. ‘Questions,’ said Maxwell, ‘to
which you will furnish answers.’

The
youth’s head bobbed up and down. ‘Yes, sir,’ said he.

‘Firstly,
what year is this?’

The
youth looked hopelessly towards his mum. Maxwell gave him a teeth-rattling
shake. ‘The ninety-eighth year, sir,’ he said.

‘And no
bus has been along this road for ninety-eight years?’ There was much
desperation in Maxwell’s voice. It was not lost upon the youth.

‘It
will come,’ cried the old woman. ‘Varney will come and carry the faithful to
Terminus. We tend the shrine. There will be room for us on top.’

‘It’s a
bloody cargo cult,’ declared Maxwell. ‘And Varney? Who’s Varney?’

‘Varney
is the driver,’ said the old dear — she didn’t look quite so dear now — ‘who is
also known as
Butler
.’

‘Reg
bloody Varney?’ Maxwell let the youth go limp.

‘This
shelter, this stop, is a shrine to Reg bloody Varney?’

‘Blasphemer!’
The old woman threw up her hands, dropping her shopping bags, which spilled out
stones and clods of earth. ‘I declare the afternoon wait at an end. Slay the
heretic!’

‘You’re
all barking.’ Maxwell gave the youth a shove, propelling him onto the section
of blackly painted road where he fell in a heap. ‘Barking mad.’

‘Outrage!’
The old woman covered her face with her hands. ‘Sacrilege! The Highway to
Heaven is despoiled.’

‘Cease
this madness now.’ Maxwell shook his fists in the air. ‘There is
no
bus.
There is
no
Varney. You’re wasting away your lives. Ninety-eight years,
waiting for a bus that. will never come, to carry you off to some terminus in
the sky. How long must you wait to learn the folly of your ways?’

The old
woman crooked a finger at Maxwell. ‘Unbeliever, iconoclast, son of some
faithless harlot.’

‘How
dare you?’ said Maxwell. ‘My mother wasn’t faithless.’ And the cold shiver
passed through him once more for the mother he would never see again. ‘My
mother was a Christian,’ said Maxwell.

‘Oh
yes?’ The old woman gave a mocking laugh. ‘My grandmother told me of that sect.
You scorn a wait of a mere ninety-eight years. Then tell me how long your
mother’s lot waited in vain for their deity to make his second coming?’

Good
point, thought Maxwell. ‘That is neither here nor there,’ he said.

The
youth had now raised himself from the painted section of road. He snatched up a
rock from the selection which had spilled from his mum’s shoppers and
brandished it menacingly. ‘I must bear a mighty penance for soiling the sacred
tary-mac. The-case-of-suits-which-is-not-allowed-on-the-top-deck. Your broken
bones will fill this case.’

Maxwell
took a smart step backwards. ‘This is a theological discussion,’ said he.
‘There is no cause for violence.’

‘The
violence is all of your making. You began it.’ Good point also, thought
Maxwell. ‘Now see here,’ he said, as the two women began to sort amongst the
stones. ‘Now see—’

‘Stone
the heretic!’ cried the old woman. Maxwell weighed up his chances. They weren’t
good. He could strike the surly young man, but hardly the two women. And if he
simply turned tail and ran there was the strong possibility that he might be
brought to book by a well-aimed stone to the skull.

Well,
thought Maxwell, if you’re going down in flames, try to hit something big.
‘Cease this behaviour at once,’ said Maxwell, in no uncertain voice. ‘Do you
not recognize me?’

‘No!’
agreed the three, hefting their missiles. ‘I am The Inspector.’ Maxwell uttered
this with such authority that he almost surprised himself.

‘You
are
who?’
The old woman halted in mid swing. ‘The Inspector,’ said
Maxwell. ‘Surely you have heard of The Inspector.

Heads
nodded. They had
indeed
heard of The Inspector.

The
young man’s head ceased to nod first. ‘Hah,’ said he. ‘If you are The
Inspector, where is your uniform?’

‘This
is
my uniform.’ Maxwell straightened the lapels on his Oxfam zoot suit.