Link Arms with Toads! (17 page)

*

Her name was Belinda Bourbon and even her underwear was red. It was her favourite colour. She liked to have her ears nibbled and her own teeth were charmingly crooked. She broke off with her fiancé the moment he discovered our affair, to prevent him taking the initiative. She thought she knew a lot about me but it was mostly society gossip and conjecture. I excited her because I was a rogue, no other reason. She always generalised her own beliefs and urges. She told me that all women were biologically programmed to find villains attractive. She craved a wild life and seemed to think this consisted of ingesting illegal drugs and performing standard acts of exhibitionism.

There was no danger I would allow romance to divert me from my career. We walked hand in hand, watched the stars together, drove above the speed limit on country roads. I agreed with her that our behaviour was risky and cutting edge. I even nurtured her illusion that cycling topless through the city streets was an act guaranteed to shock and distress pedestrians and motorists. I sometimes found it difficult to stifle a yawn in her company but she suspected nothing. When I judged she was genuinely in love with me, I told her that we needed to talk. I had something to confess. We sat on a bench in the park and I lowered my eyes as I spoke.

“
Belinda, you know I love you, and it’s for this reason I must come clean. I can’t deceive you a moment longer. I’m not really a rogue at all. I’m a sweet, kind man, a gentle soul full of tenderness with a yearning for world peace. I have a social conscience! Please forgive me. Please find it in your heart to continue loving me. I don’t think I could live without you.”

She broke off our relationship the following day. She could no longer trust me. I had betrayed her, tricked her into thinking I was a complete bounder whereas in fact I was a mature and reasonable individual. Not only was the relationship ruined but all her memories of our outrageous antics had been soiled. She wished me the very worst luck for the future. This result was delicious. Some men fake their own deaths, others fake their own lives, but I had gone much further. I had pretended to fake my own fakery! In some ways I consider this to be my finest piece of mischief.

*

I was so satisfied by the outcome of this affair that I neglected my correspondence with the writer of the suicide note. Indeed I paid only infrequent visits to the offices of
The Suicide Review
. My other mischief-making activities also dwindled in number and intensity. I had been suffering headaches and muscle cramps prior to my relationship with Belinda and these were gradually growing worse. I finally arranged to see a doctor. He examined me carefully, studied the tips of my fingers with a magnifying glass and clicked his tongue thoughtfully. Then he consulted a large textbook on one of his shelves. The word ‘Poisons’ was embossed on the spine of this volume and I shivered.

“
Do you have many enemies?” he asked me casually.

It soon emerged I had absorbed a large amount of arsenic through the ink of the letters sent to me by the hopeful contributor to my magazine. His rewritten suicide notes were really an attempt at assassination! I was impressed as well as horrified by this subterfuge. It served as a timely reminder I was not the only scoundrel in the world, that some others were naturally vicious rather than simply fulfilling a vow never to be good. I had accidentally saved my own life by breaking off the correspondence. My system was weakened but not fatally. I would fully recover in time, but it was essential I give up work and take a complete rest. Those were the doctor’s orders.

Taking time off work was easy enough, for I never needed to report to my employers. I felt sure they had other ways of monitoring my progress. I had enough money to last me many years when the wage packets stopped. My mind was peaceful on that score. But another thought began to obsess me. Without my constant mischief-making, the quality of life in the city must improve. While I was recuperating and not spreading chaos, life had to get better for everyone else. With one less ‘Scamp of Disorder’ to make existence miserable, a tangible rise of standards had to be observable in the coming weeks. I entertained myself by imagining some of the positive things that might happen.

I had various images in my head, involving people helping other people, little acts of empathy and support. One of my favourites involved the daily traffic jam in the complicated circuit of roads in the city centre. I visualised a perfect gridlock with all the vehicles stuck behind each other unable to move even the smallest distance. Suddenly the doors of the cars opened and all the passengers got out and walked forward to the next car ahead. They entered these other cars and closed the doors. In this manner they shifted themselves one position forward. A few minutes later they repeated this action. Continuing this process, all the commuters would find their way out of the monumental jam.

This was a bizarre fantasy, of course, and it relied on people not caring who sat in their vehicles provided they could sit in somebody else’s. It was an elaborate metaphor for the concept of sharing, I suppose. As my health returned I decided to talk long walks. To my bewilderment, life in the city had not improved at all during my absence. If anything, it had got
worse
. Everybody wore sour faces and walked with aggressive but also somehow dejected strides. I remained flabbergasted. Had all my previous wickedness been in vain? Had I wasted my life, betrayed my father and lost Belinda for nothing? The world without Scurrility was more scurrilous!

How could such a thing be? An answer was provided by a chance encounter with one of the men who originally recruited me. I was standing on a bridge gazing at the river when he came up and stood behind me. He knew what my trouble was and spoke first.

“
Don’t feel too gloomy,” he said. “The reason why life has got worse rather than better since you took time off work is because you have stopped causing mischief to other mischief-makers. Do you understand now? You were a villain to everyone around you. But some of those people were also mischief-makers. You aren’t the only rogue in this city, Mr Forepaws, nor are you the worst, not by a long way. But your acts of mischief, which were always directed at random members of the population, frequently sabotaged or interfered with the plans of other scoundrels, hampering them and accidentally helping to make the world a finer place.”

The irony was unbearable. I digested it slowly and muttered, “You mean to say that if I hadn’t dedicated my life to mischief there would be more mischief in life?”

He clapped me on the shoulder. “It’s all part of the rich pageant of disorder.”

He moved away and I wept a few tears before embarrassment dried them in their ducts. I looked at the people who passed me on the bridge and I wondered which of them were rogues like me, or rogues even more dastardly. Possibly every single inhabitant of the city was a member of the same secret society. I’d never learned how many scoundrels it employed. Or perhaps they were members of different secret societies devoted to the same purpose? Who could tell? It now seemed very likely there was no such thing as an innocent person. It was much more plausible that we were all mischief-makers of varying degrees of skill, hindering each other and chaos in the name of chaos.

*

A few weeks later there was another knock on the door of my apartment. I opened it and found myself facing two men but not the two men who visited me before. They didn’t try to push their way inside. I asked them directly if they represented ‘The Scamps of Disorder’ or some other organisation committed to strife and badness. They shook their heads. On the contrary, they were agents of a secret society devoted to regularity and order, the exact opposite of my former employers. I invited them in and made them cups of coffee while they explained the reason for their visit. It was unexpectedly connected with my father.

“
We knew him quite well,” one of them revealed, “but he was a very private individual. He liked to conceal his activities from everyone.”

“
We were in business together,” the other man clarified.

I remembered the long sailing voyages my father had been apt to take. The first man said, “We came into possession of one of his journals. He misplaced it and it remained jammed in a dark corner of a ship’s cabin for many years. Anyway, when we finally got hold of it, we read it carefully. It turns out that on one of his travels he discovered a land where everyone is happy and peaceful and nothing is ever a disappointment. That’s where he’s living now.”

“
So he lied about the universal misery of the world!” I cried.

“
Well his name should have given you a clue — Fibber Forepaws.”

I sulked. “My mother told me that the word ‘Fibber’ meant golden haired and noble chinned. You just can’t trust anyone at all, can you?”

The men smiled gently. “Except in that land your father discovered.”

I sighed. “What do you want of me?”

“
Nothing much. It’s just that as his son we thought you should be kept informed. But we do intend to make a proposal to you. We are fitting out a ship at this very moment on behalf of our organisation. We plan to sail to that perfect land. Our own world could learn a lot from them, don’t you think? We intend to bring back their ideas, their way of life, their peacefulness and happiness. Do you want to come with us? Such a voyage might well be a victory blow for our organisation, for regularity and order. It could destroy chaos. We are offering you a chance to join the winning side, to become part of history. What do you say? It could be magnificent!”

I considered deeply. “Very well. But don’t you think it would be a good idea to take some gifts with us? Something to demonstrate our good intentions?”

The men were ecstatic. “What do you suggest?”

“
Something simple but effective. I know for a fact that Gulliver’s Jam Factory has just gone bust and closed down. They will be selling off their remaining stock very cheaply. A thousand pots of jam should do the trick.”

We shook hands on the deal. After they left I performed a little dance.

Scurrility, you sly rascal!

(2005)

Ye Olde Resignation

When Celia Radical saw the size of the nostalgia storm in Betjeman Gardens, she was astonished that nobody had reported it sooner. The typical suburban setting had been profoundly affected by the winds of yearning. Couples stood on tidy lawns chatting and smoking cigarettes. There were even some bicycles on the streets.

“
Living in the past!” she muttered ruefully as she checked the readings on her retrospectometer. Under the rose tinted glass the dials had stopped spinning. The eye of the storm was located in the kitchen of one of the dwellings. She wove her way between the figures and rang the bell of the house in question.

The door opened and Mrs Diode peered out tentatively. She wore several strings of beads looped about her neck. “At last! It’s getting worse, you know. My husband has been wearing a cravat all morning and I’ve had this terrible impulse to dance a Charleston. Is there anything you can do?”

Celia sighed. “Show me the eye,” she said. She followed Mrs Diode through the hallway into the kitchen. As she passed the open door of the lounge, she glimpsed a man with a dark kiss-curl pasted to his forehead winding up a clockwork gramophone. “Mr Diode?”

Mrs Diode nodded. “Best not to disturb him. I think he has absorbed more nostalgia than I have. He hardly talks to me anymore. Prefers to read newspapers and tune the wireless.”

Celia placed her retrospectometer on the floor and felt under the sink. The eye of the storm blinked at her apprehensively. “Why didn’t you blindfold it earlier?” she demanded.

Mrs Diode cleared her throat and shrugged her shoulders. She fitted a cigarette into a long holder, raised it to her lips and then changed her mind. She started polishing the leaves of an aspidistra that had forced its way through the floor.

Celia fixed the blinking eye with a cold stare. “It looks to me as if someone has been batting their lashes at it. You should bear in mind that’s not only highly illegal but also rather reckless.”

Mrs Diode blushed and became restless. Ignoring her, Celia quickly hypnotised the eye and sent it into a deep sleep. Then she carefully extracted it with tweezers and dropped it in a black bag. “That will be 350,000 credits,” she said.

“
What’s that in old money, dear?”

“
Seven pounds, four shillings, two pence,” replied Celia.

She picked up her retrospectometer and made her way out of the kitchen back through the house. In the lounge, the clockwork gramophone had been replaced by a slightly later valve model. “You’re lucky this time,” she told Mrs Diode, who was following her. “The effects seem to be wearing off already. Be more careful in future.”

Mrs Diode nodded. She pressed something into Celia’s hand. Celia looked down and saw food coupons. “Get yourself some butter and powdered eggs,” came the whisper. “I know you’ll keep quiet about this. Go on, take them, love.”

Celia frowned and returned the coupons. “I want you to understand that it is a criminal offence to attempt to bribe an employee of the Style Council. I may have to suggest you contact a solicitor if you persist in this blatant disregard of fashion ethics.”

“
Let me tell you about my nephew,” Mrs Diode began.

“
No thanks, I’m busy,” said Celia.

“
Ah, you sneak!” Mrs Diode turned away in disgust, removing the bubblegum from her mouth and adjusting her beehive hairdo. The decades were falling back into place rapidly. Celia reached the front door and rubbed her eyes. The winds of yearning were dying down. The environment was shimmering and changing even as she looked.