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a target, but if the target was a big tank, a double six was
needed as a rule. Tort seemed to think he exercised some
influence over the score and Alexander often blamed him for
losing with, 'Look, the old fool can't even throw the dice.'
This made Tort redouble his efforts to strive to win
Alexander's approval. He rattled the dice frenziedly in the
greasy, palm-stained tumbler for far longer than was
necessary. In the extreme, he grew too nervous to even roll
them out properly and one would stick in the tumbler,
aggravating Alexander even further. When he did score, he
would point, wide-eyed, at the board, shouting, 'Look, look, I
got it!' like a small child until Alexander congratulated him.
When Tort got confused and thought he had thrown well but
hadn't, his enthusiasm was checked by Alexander.
When the game was adjourned, Carl busied himself with
sitting in the corner next to the television, stupefied by
Valium. He would sit through any old rubbish: if a quiz show
was on, he would blurt out the answer a split second after it
had been announced, or if he was too slow to sound
convincing, he would say, 'I knew that!' Alexander was
gulping more on his food than concentrating on the television.
Carl was sticking to his diet. Whenever during the war game
Carl was losing badly he would clutch his chest, breathe
rapidly and insist on fetching his bottle of tablets from his
coat. He said he kept a bottle of nitro-glycerine tablets by him
for such a contingency.
Alexander sat on his bed. He used his bedroom at the back
of the house as a living-room, spending most of his time in it
with Tort and Carl. It was not unusual for a visitor to find
them all huddled into it like mice, with the two-bar electric
fire on full and the curtains fully drawn even on a sweltering
summer's day. As if one pair of curtains wasn't enough, he
had seven pairs between his small window pane and the
inside of his bedroom, one over the other, excluding all
daylight and in the cold weather making it a trap for
condensation and damp. He had put newspapers on the sill
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between the outermost layers but they had become soggy and
speckled with mildew.
He had finished his meal and stacked up the plates for Carl
to wash later. He looked at the television. 'There's another red
tie! I hate yuppies!' He got to his feet, bottle in hand and stood
louring over the television screen. 'Why have they all got to
wear red ties and braces?'
Alexander was just calming down when the
advertisements came on. He hated the inane singing and
dancing in most of them. This was typified in one cant which
went: 'We like seafish, mama....' When this came on, it was
sure to send him up the wall.
'Why do they have to sing all the time?' Alexander whined
as he sat through the fifth one in a row that conveyed no
reason for buying a product other than the assassination of
intellect with raucous, vulgar pop music and acts of crass
naivete.
'Well fuck 'em! Fuck 'em all,' he shouted at the screen from
the middle of the room, his lack of teeth unimpeding the
mixture of spit and kaolin and morphine that exploded from
his mouth at every fricative.
They resumed the game. Alexander sat on his bed as
usual. Carl sat in his chair in the corner next to the television.
Tort sat in the armchair between them. Alexander drifted into
a daze for a few minutes, bottle in hand, while Carl was
taking his throws of the dice. He looked at his father and said
for the umpteenth time that day, 'Are you all right, father? Do
you want to throw for me? Clear your chest, now.' Tort began
coughing up all colours of phlegm. Alexander shouted, 'Clear
it! Come on, cough it up,' until he nearly coughed his lungs
up. Tort would sit annoying Alexander till bedtime. The
phlegm that had accumulated overnight would make him
growl like an ogre. Alexander would pester him to clear his
chest. He would bark to Carl, 'How am I supposed to put up
with this...thing sitting over me all day? I can't handle it. I
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wish it were dead!' and then he would sneer, 'Why don't you
die and leave me in peace?'
One morning had found Alexander particularly evil. He
threatened to put Tort in a home. Tort replied he would first
drive Alexander to suicide.
That was the final straw for him.
He glared in disbelief and asked slowly, 'What did you
say?'
His father looked down at his slippers and offered no
reply.
'What did you say?' he emphasized.
'Nothing.'
'Yes you did--what did he say, Carl?'
'He said he'd make you kill yourself before you put him in
a home,' Carl replied reluctantly.
A pause. 'Yes. I thought that's what he said.' With a curling
lip and a simmering tone, he added, 'Get out of my sight.
Now! Go on.'
His father staggered to his feet. His arms arched like
caterpillars in exertion on the arms of the chair. Carl had to
assist him.
'Thank you,' he managed to say to Carl as he farted in
Alexander's face. As he lurched towards the door, Alexander
bent his foot round and kicked him up the arse.
For a moment, Alexander sat in a daze. His old man had
reached his bedroom next door. Carl had come back into the
room, having left him there.
Alexander jumped up and went to see him. Carl assumed
he had changed his mind and had gone to offer his friendship.
Often he would wish his father dead and call him
everything under the sun. Then, after putting him to bed, he
would add, 'You know, I love that old man. I don't know what
I would do if anything happened to him.' He usually followed
this by pumping Tort full of sleeping pills. He didn't want him
wandering about in the night, disturbing him. Alexander
needed his sleep.
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They agreed to take him into care for a fortnight. After that it
was up to Alexander whether or not to have him back. If he
decided to leave him in, his Attendance Allowance would
cease. Apart from that, it was all cut and dried. The house was
already signed over to Alexander. It was one of the first
things he had made sure of when his mother had left. This, in
Tort's case was tantamount to signing away what little say he
had left.
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Chapter Two
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Chapter Three
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His friend, Frankie, who had been with him when they
were taken prisoner by Morgan, had a bulbous nose and a
head which looked two sizes too big for his small body. He
was ten years Norman's senior. A quiet man, his eyes were
continually flitting about for cans of lager, for which he had a
nose like a bloodhound. He spent all his waking hours
looking for them and all his sleeping hours dreaming about
them: cans, cans and more cans.
On Giro days, Frankie would stir at five o' clock in the
morning and call round for Norman. They would go round
and wake Jimmy (who referred to them as the Dawn Patrol),
to see if he had any cans, or go round to the paper shop for
the cans while waiting for the Post Office to open, if they
could afford it.
Although Frankie was capable of some unorthodox
reasoning when drunk, such as vomiting over his gas fire and
then pissing over it to hose it down, he couldn't hold a candle
up to Jimmy, the third prisoner. Jimmy's vice was whisky and
whenever he touched the stuff, he could guarantee serious
consequences. Not long ago, he had been a sleek man with a
baritone voice, but now all that was left of him was the
baritone voice, grown hoarse by the years of strenuous
service to hard and steady drinking. He was able to do perfect
Louis Armstrong impressions. He was reduced to a skin-
shrouded skeleton, with the bones practically sticking out of
his face and jaundiced, staring eyes. His hair, unkempt,
brown, thin and straggly, looked like pond-weed when it was
long; Giro days if he had enough money for a haircut, his ears
stuck out like wing-nuts. Being slouched into a chair with
legs crossed, he would try to blow smoke rings. In this
position he would sit quite easily and sail away into oblivion,
often sitting so still for so long that it looked doubtful whether
he were still alive.
He turned up at a friend's house drunk at four o' clock in
the morning and knocked him out of bed, giving him a can as
a peace offering. Then he broke the terrible news. The doctors
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had given him only six weeks to live. That was two years'
ago. He had done the same thing several times since when in
the middle of the night he felt like somebody to talk to.
He seemed to have an affinity for arm-chairs, fitting into
them like a snail in its shell and becoming part of the
furniture. On his last legs after (according to him) five bottles
of whisky one morning, he saw a blurred vision of a
comfortable arm-chair in the window of a TV rental shop. He
staggered in and flopped into it. He was asked to leave
several times. His mouth, which had been a ring of encrusted
dirt and saliva, mumbled indistinct obscenities. At last they
called the police, who tipped him out of the chair. But when
the policeman tried to lead him away, he clung to him
salivating over him and craving his pardon so that the
additional charge of besmirching his uniform was brought.
After charging him, they threw him into a cell for eleven
hours until he sobered up. He was bewildered when he woke
up and found himself lying in that stark, strange little room,
covered only by a horsehair blanket and even more
confounded when he couldn't find his way out.
Not that this was unusual, except for him getting a fifty
pound fine. Behind with the payments, he approached a
policeman in the street and asked how long he had before
they would come for him and lock him up. The policeman
cordially offered to arrest him on the spot, but Jimmy politely
turned down his offer and was told he had another month in
which to pay.
He had always been a bit of a buccaneer with the law,
often escaping justice by the skin of his teeth. He began to
think that he was too witty and glib ever to be caught and
charged. Early one morning he had woken up hugging a
lamp-post on a traffic island. The traffic was whizzing by him
perilously close on either side. On another morning, he had
opened his eyes to the sky and found it whirling round. He
was lying on a merry-go-round like a starfish. Someone must
have given him a push.
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heavy drinking had turned his black hair and eyebrows hoary.
His sleek face, with its once demure, handsome looks, was
turned old, gaunt and melancholic. Brain damage had
disposed him to spar with an invisible opponent, like when he
was a boxer, and to prattle on to no one in particular for most
of the time. Jimmy felt sympathetic towards him because he
could remember the time when, long ago, he could talk
coherently. He had put the pink blanket over him. For Jimmy
knew the root cause of this deterioration. One night Billy had
spilled his heart out to him about his separation from his wife,
about how she had moved over the road to him, and how they
couldn't live together and couldn't live apart--and then about
her fatal overdose.
Billy used to visit Jimmy when Jimmy's mother was alive.
It was she who had first found him the name of Billy Pluck,
which after her death became corrupted to Billy Buck. They
had met while drying out at the same hospital. They had all
done a spell in there and it was their own local university.
'You haven't been nowhere if you haven't been in there,'
Jimmy would rant. 'I was in there nine weeks drying out.'
When Jimmy had dried out he'd been given some tablets to
take to overcome his addiction. On these he had sailed down
the stairs without touching any of them, while watching the
floor hurtling towards him, until it hit him. He was working at
the time and had been going in for weeks with a fractured
skull, in a permanent daze, sometimes not even having
remembered having been in. When they had tried to stitch
him up in hospital, he had run out screaming, with the needle
still on the thread that was attached to his head and a half-
bottle of vodka in his pocket. He had chosen vodka instead of
whisky because he knew that it was less likely to linger on his
breath.
Billy Buck hadn't been to see Jimmy since shortly after his
mother's death. He then had a completely different set of
friends; who had a margin of respectability, but they had long
since forsaken him when they realized how fast he was
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Chapter Four
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junior and Mr Fleuret also had to sit, back to back. While they
were recovering, they heard more shuffling noises.
'Who's that?' Mr Fleuret cried our, horrified.
'Jim McGory,' came the brief, baritone reply.
'We could still try the door,' Tileshed junior suggested.
'What's the point? We might as well just sit here and wait
to die. What difference does it make? We're all going to die
sooner or later,' said Mr Fleuret in his usual, cynical way.
'"Memento Mori," my boss with the sandals used to say. Even
if we reached the door, we couldn't break it down like this,
could we?'
'My hands are tied in front of me. I saw him tie yours
behind you. Come over here and I'll try to untie you,' Jimmy
said, having to raise his voice over the grunts of his reviving
colleagues beside him; most of whom were recovering from a
cosh of only a liquid kind.
'Up, everybody!' Tileshed junior shouted. They struggled
to their feet with difficulty. They had to commend Jimmy for
his efforts with the ropes but it was no good. The ropes were
beginning to burn their wrists. Just as Mr Fleuret was telling
them of the pain involved in starving to death and dying of
thirst, Tileshed senior had an idea.
'You go blind and all your hair falls out,' Alexander was
telling them.
Tileshed senior asked if anyone could remember what was
underneath the stairs. According to him, Morgan had said
there was a secret passage running from the cellar to the
coast, which was not far away. He had mentioned it at the
Barrel Inn during the fracas, when Tileshed senior had asked
him if there was any chance of the crew running away, but in
the noise nobody else had heard. 'None at all. I've locked the
cellar door and there's only an old tunnel under the stairs that
the smugglers used to use, but it's blocked up now,' Morgan
had replied. The pile of barrels in the corner had probably
also been used by them, which seeing had reminded Tileshed
senior of the secret passage.
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Tilesheds had gone, but his hands were still tied behind his
back. He called out for them but received for his reply only
his own voice echoing back. He had a notion that it would
have been possible to work out how long the tunnel was,
judging by the time it took for his echo to come winging back
to him, but he wasn't a bat and he certainly wasn't a
mathematician, he told himself.
He got to his feet as best he could in the confinement and
began walking, with a pain like ten morphine hangovers in
his head. Walking wasn't easy, particularly with his hands
behind him, because he had a tendency to slip and twist his
ankles on bits of rubble that in normal light wouldn't have
bothered him but in the darkness were like boulders.
He had been walking for a couple of minutes when he
began to notice a chink of daylight to one side. He walked
with renewed vigour as the light intensified like a dawn, until
he could see the curvature of the tunnel wall with its
irregularities, which had prevented him from seeing the
openings before. As he rounded the bend, the broad daylight
illuminated a rock-strewn, upward-sloping floor. At the
opening he could make out grass and the hiss of the tide. He
clambered out as best he could and stood squinting, covered
with mire.
He had come out on a gorse-strewn hillside, halfway up a
ravine that went down to the beach. There was no sign of the
Tilesheds. He staggered around looking for them. Caught in a
gorse-bush at the mouth of the tunnel was a piece of grey
cloth, which he thought might have been ripped from
Tileshed's suit on the way out. Since his hands were still tied,
he stooped over and picked it off the branch with his teeth. As
he did so, he saw that there was an old man in rags sitting on
the hill above him watching him surreptitiously. Mr Fleuret
decide to approach him for help.
The sight of him against the oceanic background, grass
and shrubbery with his hands tied behind him, in his 'sodium'-
orange, quilted coat, hair sticking out, begrimed and biting on
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The two he had seen being chased were surely the Tilesheds,
Alexander reasoned as he strolled away from the farmer, who
was still reminiscing about his youth. He had caught a
glimpse of two men in camouflage in the cellar before the
candle went out.
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The sun had just set behind the distant, shady trees and
was turning red the vast, shimmering wheat-fields outspread
before him, like a rippling red bedspread. A breeze was
blowing across it and the sky was nearly flawless. He was
undecided, whether to look for them. It was dusk and he was
on unfamiliar ground. He was almost surprised to discover
that he had been walking for some time while he thought.
He stopped and turned abruptly. The overgrown footpath
along which he had fought his way trailed off between the
fields. Beyond this, on the horizon, he could depict the scrub
where he had left the farmer and beyond that, the dark blue
sea as it rolled towards night. Right on the horizon, a necklace
of orange, twinkling of lights was all he could see of a ferry
out at sea on its way to Norway. To his right was a copse of
majestic trees that extended like a giant cordon of police to
the coast. These trees and the ones he was heading for framed
the gap where the sun had set; where there were many miles
of rolling hills. Occasionally the only sign of human life,--the
Intercity train--could be heard roaring through the hills on its
way south. He was taken aback, for in those brief moments he
had spent examining his surroundings, both the sea and the
sky above it seemed to have darkened, he noticed when he
looked at them after turning full circle. Panicky, he glanced
round him again, concentrating more on the immediate area:
nothing but fields, a row of hawthorn bushes to the right and
an old fence to his left lined the path that faded into obscurity
ahead of him.
He decided to press on a little further: not only was it a
long way back, but his conscience was beginning to nag him:
he felt that if he had not knocked himself senseless, the
Tilesheds wouldn't have been in this mess. Further on the
terrain became even more hostile and slowed him down to
about half his normal pace. The grass and weeds closed
completely over the footpath, forcing him to hack and
untangle his way through it. The trees seemed to loom larger
and nearer that before. Overhead, the swifts engaged
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ground with Fleuret; the marks were in the same place. It was
cold so he approached and jerked open the door, looking for
shelter.
'Wondered where you'd got to. Did you know where I
live?' the farmer said.
'I left you ages ago. How did you get here?'
'Walked, up yonder,' said the figure, now in the chair,
pointing vaguely. The lamp cast a shadow of his arm,
exaggerating the gesture wildly. With straight brown hair and
smock, he was smoking a pipe. His thoughts seemed to be
wrapped in the haze of smoke around him. Casually he said:
'Come in and close the door.'
Alexander learned in the subsequent conversation that the
farmer he left behind him at the coast had outstripped him by
a shorter route. Going to the door, the farmer pointed down
the embankment on which the carriage was resting, where
there was a disused railway route. It appeared that Mr Fleuret
had described an arc about the hut, only closing in on it like a
moth when he saw the light. He had made his journey
unnecessarily long. Could the Tilesheds have taken this road?
In the morning he would advance up it to look for them.
The farmer was more at ease than at their first meeting, but
introspective. Alexander asked him if he could sleep there but
received no answer. Mr Fleuret removed his long, pointed
shoes and orange coat, sinking into a heap in the corner where
there was a comfortable pile of straw. The farmer returned
with a flagon of wine which he had hidden in a bush outside.
The interior of the carriage bore a touch of intimacy, maybe
because of its curved roof, white with spare cowshed paint.
The phenol base left a lingering smell of disinfectant, though
it had discoloured. The floor was bare except for straw in the
corners. The wine had affected the farmer, causing him to
reminisce again. Mr Fleuret was asleep. His body was spread-
eagled, his head was thrown back rakishly revealing the hole
through which he was snoring, whistling loudly. His stomach
was heaving in and out and the belt of his black, baggy shiny
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own cross. Now, run to the top of the hill and back, and if you
stop this time, I'll kick you the rest of the way. You've got to
get it into your head that you do as you're told. Go!'
Mr Fleuret staggered off again. He didn't know how he
kept going with his two lungs about to burst and he was
staggering so much on the way back that just before he
reached Onion he fell over and rolled down the slope, causing
Yellowman to laugh vulgarly.
'All right, you can rest for a few minutes.'
Alexander flopped down beside the Tilesheds while Onion
went to have a word with Yellowman in private. During the
break, the rigours of discipline were relaxed and Onion came
over and talked to them, as he would to his own UCTC
members.
'How are you feeling?' he asked Mr Fleuret, squatting
down beside him.
'Fucked,' Mr Fleuret spat out sourly.
'Good. Don't worry about it. You'll get used to it,' he said,
as if considering him for membership.
Tileshed junior finished smoking his cigarette and sent the
butt of it cartwheeling away, with the last lungful of smoke.
'Okay, get into line. We're going for a run.'
He led them over a few hills without stopping, until Mr
lemon's hair was drenched with sweat. On the way, he told
them how he had acquired his name. When he was in the
'Special Services', the CO had said he knew his onions.
Yellowman was his second-in-command, being content to
wallow in Onion's glory as such: but the way Mr Fleuret had
frightened him, sending him scampering out of the valley had
proved that he was 'yellow' in more than name. Without his
instructor in self-defence, he had fled like a whipped mongrel.
Group Captain Onion already decided what his punishment
would be. He was to be reduced to the ranks and ordered to
complete an assault course. Onion walked up to him and
rudely pulled off his stripe, at which Yellowman showed no
emotion.
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Chapter Five
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disperse, the actors would mingle with the audience and they
would confront each other with a bow. They reply was a
reciprocal bow. The person who bowed first would be
allowed to leave. Then it would be up to the other person to
beat somebody else to the bow, so that it could be allowed to
leave. The slowest bower throughout was declared the
winner.
As Neili was among the first to bow out, it stalked over to
Alexander and the Tilesheds, intrigued by the bloom of
colour amid a sea of green, where they stood out like poppies
in a cornfield.
A crowd which had retired from the audience stood
nearby, so Neili said: 'Peers, let me introduce you to the three
persons who have honoured us with their visit. We hope that
they will be active participants in our society.'
At this, Tileshed junior became restless and whispered in
his father's ear. Neili had asked Mr Fleuret to come forward.
'Do not be afraid to show yourself in front of your equal.
Come forward.
'Me can tell you are a person of great intellect and
sensitivity. Tell me, have you ever used this power in any
way for the furtherance of personkind?'
Mr Fleuret told them that he was a BA in History and
Politics, and that he had had books published.
While Alexander was overjoyed at being given the chance
of rambling on egotistically to an audience, Tileshed senior
was quickly gaining inside information about the society from
a neighbour.
The group had been formed at the time of the Sex
Discrimination Act, which had inspired its principles and
workings which aimed at an existence in which there was no
discrimination of any kind, with particular regard to sex, but
they found that they could not achieve totality of success
without removing the main physical differences between a
man and a woman. The result was a community of
androgynes that wore men's and women's clothes. To convey
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and emphasize their sexless meaning they used the word 'hir'
as a neutral pronoun, to avoid the use of 'him' or 'her' and 'me'
rather than 'I' to play down self-importance. Leaders were
discouraged and heroes discredited. The Greeting of Equality
signified equality by the levelling of the hands between its
perpetrators. The males were eunuchs.
Mr Fleuret had become so engrossed with the crowd that
he seemed heedless to leave. Members of the company had
been departing casually and at random. Neili led him away by
the arm and took him into a caravan. The Tilesheds followed
at a discreet distance. They hid behind another caravan but
could not hear much through the door, but occasionally
creaking floorboards and murmurs.
After half an hour the door was flung open and Mr Fleuret,
clad only in navy blue underpants, emerged with Neili. The
stony ground appeared to be hurting his feet. Neili now
looked almost normal in comparison with Alexander.
Between the caravan the Tilesheds were hiding behind and
the caravan Neili and Alexander had emerged from was a dirt
track. Neili and Alexander turned off and cut down between
two caravans.
'What's the fool up to now? Can't he make a big enough
spectacle of himself without taking his clothes off?' said
Tileshed junior.
'We'll have to do something. We heard that they were up
to no good. Let's see where his clothes are.'
They crossed the clearing and knocked on the door of the
caravan he came out of. Tileshed junior tried it and it swung
open.
Strewn all over the bed were his clothes, his cheque-book,
wallet and a few other belongings. These they gathered into a
heap and they took hold of the corners of the single blanket
beneath. While Tileshed senior stood at the door and looked
up and down the road, Tileshed junior slung the folded
blanket over his shoulder. A shoe dropped out of the blanket
and Tileshed senior retrieved it, glancing under the caravan as
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Chapter Six
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'Oh, he lets us slip away to the soup kitchen now and then,
if we leave him a bond.'
'The soup kitchen? Where's that?'
'It's a caravan run by nuns. They turn up every day in the
park, and give out cups of soup and rolls of bread. It's better
than what we get in here.'
'I've seen what you get in here. It's a disgrace. What do you
do with the money he gives you? Do you buy food with it?'
Tileshed senior asked.
The hag seemed to find this funny. 'Save it? You couldn't
have been here long, could you? No, we plonk it up.'
'Pardon?'
'Buy plonk with it. He does most of our shopping. I'll have
to go, or I'll have my head slapped if he sees me standing here
talking to you.'
As they approached the office, the other two could tell that
Tileshed senior was seething. They waited outside the office
while he went in after a single knock. At last they heard
shouting. Tileshed senior emerged, waving a piece of pink
paper, which he said would get them past the bouncer on the
door.
'What did he say?' they both demanded.
'He told me that the system operated for their own benefit.
Everyone who went there was looking for peace, security and
a room of his own. He said that there were few other places
that could offer all that on the dole. The reason for the green
light system was purely for their own convenience: a lot of
them led such "straightforward" lives watching their fantasies
being acted out on their tellies all the time that they had
forgotten how to "communicate" with one another and feared
bumping into their neighbours for lack of anything to say. He
said that before the tellies were installed, it had really been
bad because at least if the worst comes to the worst now and
they do accidentally meet on the stairs, they can discuss what
they watched on their tellies. He says the system's optional in
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any case--you don't have to wait for a "green" before you can
come out.'
'What, according to him, happens if you walk out and
there is no green?' Alexander inquired.
'Nothing, according to him. Just that if you do, you run the
risk of bumping into somebody.'
'I bumped into somebody all right--or rather he bumped
into me.'
'He's got infra-red sensors scattered all over. With them, he
can tell if there's anybody where they shouldn't be. He says he
put them in because people were walking out of the fire
escape with his tellies. With them, he knows when to throw
another green for somebody else awaiting clearance to come
out. When you press the button on the door-post, you go into
a stacking system. It's all computerised. All clever stuff.'
'You surely don't believe him, do you?' asked Mr Fleuret.
'Whether I do or not, there's little that can be done. We're
out of it now.'
'Couldn't you persecute--er, I mean prosecute (Carl's got
me at it now) him for assault and battery and grievous bodily
harm?'
'How to prove it is the thing,' said Tileshed senior.
They continued to discuss it as they passed along rows of
council houses and flats until they reached the top of a hill,
where the road split into three; the way ahead was no more
than a country road. The morning mist did not prevent them
from seeing the hostel from where they had just come,
looking ordinary in the valley below. Behind it, still shrouded
in mist, was the house they had brought Alexander to and
further back still, on the horizon, the caravan site of the
Sunny People.
They carried straight on and after a difficult, upward trek,
made it to a farmhouse standing on its own. A flock of
seagulls circled in the sky above it making loud cries. At the
side of the road was a crudely painted sign saying: 'Potatoes.
Eggs. Seagulls. Kittiwake.'
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'Any what?'
'Any eggs.'
'Oh, you'd better see the chauffeur about that. He'll most
likely be round the back. Tell him I sent you.'
They went round the back and could see nobody until they
peered into the grubby window of the shed, which was filthier
than Morgan's.
Inside the shed was a glowing red square coming from a
Calor gas fire that was full on. The light from it was just
enough to illuminate a body lying on an old mattress, covered
with a blanket. They hammered on the door and window.
They were beginning to think it was a corpse until it stirred. It
propped itself up with its elbow and was obviously startled to
see three dark figures louring at it through the window. In a
moment it sprang up and opened the door.
It was Norman.
'We were looking for food,' said Tileshed junior.
'Come in,' he answered. 'How did you all get on?'
'Not too well,' Alexander replied. Aided by Tileshed
junior, he explained to Norman, who would occasionally
throw back at them an outburst of his hyena laugh, what
befell them at the hospital and the hostel.
'It wasn't as bad as that when I was there,' said Norman,
with reference to the hostel, which was in what he called
'Giro City'. He did say that it was well known there that every
week the cook used to order a hundred pounds' worth of food
out of the £40 he was allocated, the rest going in his pocket.
At that moment a voice pierced the air.
'Butler! Butler! Come!'
'Is your name Butler?' asked Tileshed junior.
'No, it's not,' Norman replied sourly.
'Then who's she shouting for?' Mr Fleuret asked.
'Me.'
'Why?'
'Never mind--I'll tell you later,' he said as he got to his feet
and went out.
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Chapter Seven
The next morning they were all back where they belonged,
having found their bearings again. After a good night's sleep,
Mr Fleuret was sent to the library to read up on ships, while
Tileshed junior went to look for more crew.
Creame's suspicion had been aroused by the way in which
Alexander's mother had left. He knew that Tort had become
intolerable to live with: but what he did not understand was
why she should want to exacerbate it. He had visited
Alexander on the week she left and had caught her stuffing a
toilet-roll into the lavatory bowl. When she saw him watching
her, she reddened and explained that she was trying to fish it
out after Tort had thrown him in; which, she said, was a habit
of his. He was curious as to why she had purposefully stuffed
it in--he had no doubt of this--and then had lied to him. He
wondered how many other things that she had done and
which Tort was blamed for. Was it that she felt guilty before
leaving and was trying to justify it by demonstrating just how
trying Tort could be? But she knew that if she was not there,
the burden would fall on Alexander. Why didn't she put him
in a home, instead of leaving it all to Alexander? Had she run
off with somebody and if so, why just when this money was
coming to Alexander?
Finding it impossible to fathom the way she thought, he
decided that the next stop was to see Tort himself, instead of
going with the Tilesheds to see the crew, which Patsy would
be able to tell him about. Besides, his suspicion might
become evident and so he excused himself, pleading a visit to
Chilly with the tattooed ears to ask him to plaster Patsy's wall,
which Alexander had blown a hole in with Patsy's gun.
Creame knew that Tort was keeping something secret. The
notion arose upon their first meeting. The old dotard, upon
being left alone with him and fearing that his wits were going
fast and observing that Creame was one of the few sober,
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upright men who visited the house, took him by the arm and
charged him with Alexander's care, saying that he would
leave Alexander a secret in his will, the inklings of which he
imparted to Creame. He was too incoherent at the time to be
wholly understood, and they were disturbed before Creame
could question him further.
At the old folks' home, Tort was very reticent, in spite of
the bottle of rum that Creame had smuggled in for him. He
wheeled him into the grounds where they were out of earshot
of everyone and plied him with as much rum as possible.
Details came very sparsely. They were these:-
While he was in the Navy he had once saved the life of a
very important man under whom he had been serving and
who later became a 'Big Cheese' in the DSS. In return, he let
Tort into a secret, which Tort would not reveal until after his
death; beyond implying that it was of critical constitutional
importance. Creame had tried pandering further to the old
goat but he couldn't learn more.
His next task was to get into the DSS to learn more. After
several unsuccessful attempts, it was hinted that he would
stand a better chance if he were disabled. As he didn't much
care for the idea of intentionally disabling himself, he decided
to feign disability. He went to the doctor, who was about
eighty and half-blind, and informed him that he was suffering
from palpitations of the heart, dizzy spells, hay fever and the
recurrence of a strained groin injury he had sustained several
years' ago while cycling. His records showed that he was a
schizophrenic and granted him a sick note pronouncing him
unfit for work. This was his passport into the DSS. The
interview went swimmingly, as he pretended to
misunderstand even the most straightforward questions and
for the rest of the time, limited his answers to 'yes' or 'no'.
He got the job and found out that surprising procedures
were carried on in there. The guidelines for the daily routine
are given in the Appendix.
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‘Filthy Rich
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week, loading stuff onto the wagons and if they had to, they
would put him through his test with a minimum of training
and not care whether he passed or failed. Even so, which
company would be daft enough to let a newly-qualified
driver with no experience loose on its £30,000 rig?
When it was Tileshed’s turn in the queue, he sat before
another desk and began by asking why there were so many
desks.
‘Because we don’t have enough staff to fill them,’ was
the curt reply.
He saw the irony of this, in a JobCentre.
‘I want to hand these in,’ he said, casually throwing over
the five forms.
‘What are they?’ she asked.
‘Why don’t you look at them and find out,’ he replied in
a severe, mocking tone.
‘There’s no need to be like that about it,’ she snapped
back.
He was reminded of Andrea, the secretary in his father’s
office, whom he was sure his father had hired for her looks
above efficiency. She would come and go whenever she
pleased and she even had the audacity to receive private
calls at work from her boyfriend. Whenever her boyfriend
telephoned her at the office and Tileshed senior answered,
he would patiently hold out the handset and cant, ‘It’s for
you’; to which she would reply, ‘Who is it?’, instead of just
taking the call and finding out.
The woman in front of him was flicking apprehensively
through the forms he had beset her with.
‘I’m sorry,’ she said at last, looking up. ‘These are for
five different people.’
‘Yes, they would be different--the people--if there are
five of them. Or could they be clones, perhaps?’
‘Why have you brought me forms for five different
people?’ she persisted.
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Chapter Eight
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‘Expedition to Egypt.
An expedition is to be arranged in a war ship in the
style of the seventeenth century Anno
Domini. All those interested in joining
should follow the procession for an ad hoc
meeting.’
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‘Tell him that it’s not important to him to know, but that
it’s a matter of life and death.’
Tileshed relayed this.
‘He told me to hold on,’ he said with a bleak shrug of
the shoulders. At last another, firm voice came on and told
him to be more precise. At this, the civil servant lost
patience and snatching the handset from Tileshed, said:
‘Hello? I want to speak to Newton and to no one else. Just
tell him that I’m holding someone hostage and he’s got
precisely two hours to live if I can’t get no satisfaction.’ He
laughed and hung up.
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Chapter Nine
They went to see the ship next day, with Tileshed senior
driving. Tileshed junior was in the passenger seat and Mr
Fleuret was in the back. They did not say much, as Tileshed
senior was reluctant to discuss the terror of the previous
evening, so had to content themselves with gazing at the
cows or thinking of their journey on the ship. Tileshed
junior was surprised that his father had not expressed
disapproval at his attempt to buy a crew and as far as he
understood it, the deal was still on. They were still short of
experienced seaman, which may have swayed his
judgement.
They eventually drew within sight of the makeshift
shipyard, which grew from the size of a matchbox on the
industrial horizon, to a shoebox size at the foot of the hill
and finally into a large shed, unpainted of late and very
shabby.
‘It’s a grim old place,’ commented Tileshed junior.
They clambered outside and could smell the river. The
seagulls dived over the grey, choppy water, causing them
some unease, especially since one had shit within feet of
Mr Fleuret when they had been with Norman at the
farmhouse. They stopped in front of a weather-beaten door.
‘Are you her owners?’ a husky voice barked out. They
turned to see an old man in a flat cap and big navy blue
overalls sidling towards them.
‘We are the commissioners,’ said Tileshed senior.
‘Can we take a look inside?’ asked Mr Fleuret.
They were all delighted with what they saw. When they
entered the shed by a postern gate, they found themselves
looking at the smooth, as yet untreated beechwood stem.
Mr Fleuret was especially impressed with the pageant of
gilt figures along it. Directly above them was some kind of
fabulous sea-monster clutching a sailor by the leg, who in
turn had hold of a sea-serpent. All seemed to be racing
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‘It’s just that we think the tide will be in our favour then.
Also, we operate a shift system and it’s the only time we
can slot you in. We’ll have to launch her in secret, as well,
to avoid unwanted publicity.’
Some gave out that they were not happy at this, but
Tileshed senior silenced them with a gesture.
Next to him and the JS Navy man was Tileshed junior,
saying nothing but looking deep in thought. On the
opposite side of the table were five young men in dark
suits, white shirts and red ties. All had short hair, except
one, who was wearing a ‘Status Quo’ type waistcoat and
had long red hair. The five were fixed on Mr Tileshed to
gauge his reaction to Mr Fleuret’s belatedness.
‘You are aware of the time, Mr Fleuret,’ he said
woodenly at last.
‘Yes...well...what happened was that a fellow started an
argument with me and I had to punch him to get rid of him-
-’
‘--I’m not interested in why you’re late, Mr Fleuret. Sit
down, please,’ he said to the accompaniment of sniggering.
He sat down, scowling, while Tileshed continued:
‘As I was saying, gentlemen, unless Mr Mortimer here
is completely satisfied that we comply with the Rule of the
Road at Sea, we cannot sail. We are therefore going to have
to “bend” the terms of the will a little...’ Mr Fleuret was
becoming bored until pulled from his reverie by everyone
bustling and ‘spreading themselves out’ as directed by
Tileshed. This done, the John Smith’s navy man and
Tileshed senior went over to a small table stacked with
parcels at the front of the room. Tileshed senior picked up
the first one and grasped at the flap, but glanced at the JS
man for approval, which he gave. He tore open the parcel,
extracting a wad of green booklets, which he began to
distribute on each of the desks, while the JS man followed
him round with blank sheets of paper. With one hole in the
top left corner, ‘Question Number Only’ at the top of the
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‘Oh?’
‘Yes--it’s obvious I shall be captain.’
Amazed at this effrontery, Tileshed explained. ‘The
testator was quite specific on this subject, Mr Fleuret.
Morgan was to be captain, but since he’s...he’s no longer
with us...it remains for us as the executors to appoint a new
captain.’
‘Half of those questions were loaded against me. You
know I can’t do maths to save my life.'
‘The sums weren’t very hard,’ one of the civil servants
interjected tritely, probably to curry favour with Tileshed
senior and thereby obtain a higher position, Alexander
thought.
‘Where are we to meet up, sir?’ asked another civil
servant.
‘Yes, everyone,’ said Tileshed senior, allowing his voice
to rise. ‘Be back here in a couple of hours. Is that okay with
everyone?’
‘I won’t be here,’ spat out Alexander.
‘Why’s that?’
‘I won’t be treated like a dog. I want to command.
Goodbye, Mr Tileshed!’ With that he stormed out of the
building and disappeared down the street.
‘Somebody go after him and make him see sense,’ said
Tileshed senior.
‘It’s no joke, son,’ Tileshed junior reprimanded a civil
servant who was laughing.
‘It’s too late to pull out now,’ added Tileshed senior.
The sycophantic civil servants took to their heels like a
pack of hounds after Alexander, who was loping off down
the street. He began to sweat as he exerted himself almost
as hard as when forced to do so by Onion. He ran round the
back of a church with the idea of hiding in it but found
himself back on the street again, covered in mud and slime.
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Tileshed was about to read out the marks to the exam they
had sat to Alexander and the civil servants. Tileshed senior
had compromised by offering to make Alexander an
honorary captain when they got out to sea.
‘But in the meantime, I’m sure you can stick it out until
we get organized. Now, I have your results here. I’ll read
them out.’ He cleared his throat and began:
‘Fleuret, eleven. Roberts, fifty-three. Robertson, fifty-
three. Robins, fifty-three. Robinson, fifty-four. Robson,
forty-three. Tileshed, fifty-six.
‘I shall now read out the positions you will occupy
whilst at sea. I’m not familiar with naval rank, so I’ve only
drawn from those positions I know. To decide this, I’ve
taken your examination performances into account but I’ve
also weighed up your personal aptitudes. Are there any
questions you want to ask me before I start?’ There was
none and he said, ‘Very well’, cleared his throat and began:
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Chapter Ten
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one of the boat’s crew could be heard spewing his guts up.
Several on the ship had been sick too.
‘Quick, heave-ho till we see who it is,’ called Mortimer.
‘Permission to come aboard, Sah!’ a voice called out
from below the foretopsail.
Creame had arrived.
They were helped up the battens with rope-ladders while
the boat’s sternfast and painter were secured to the kevels.
Even so, it was a miracle how they all managed to get as
far as they had without losing oars, for they had been
rowing like a bunch of drunken smugglers. One of them
had already narrowly escaped death. The hair-raising
incident had happened when one of them had parked the
bus by the side of the road for those who wanted to relieve
themselves. A disorientated and befuddled figure had been
spotted crawling in a sub-human manner across the road in
the spaces between the cars. When it reached the other side,
it had turned about and come back, as vulnerable as a
cockroach on a busy footpath.
‘Where did you get that boat from?’ asked Tileshed
senior sharply.
‘We found it lying on the beach,’ was Creame’s
explanation. He was wearing a drab olive army jumper,
navy trousers and a huge pair of boots like Onion’s.
Alexander remarked on how splendid he thought Creame’s
uniform was.
‘I suppose you found them on the beach as well,’ said
Tileshed senior sarcastically pointing to his incongruous
attire. ‘Your luggage?’
‘Had to jettison it, sah.’
‘Robinson, take this man below and find him something
decent to wear,’ Tileshed senior said. ‘The rest of you in
your spare moments can unsling the hammocks from the
fo’c’sle nets and find yourselves berths.’
When they got underway again and tacked, Jimmy
happened to be standing in front of the foresail so that
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when the yards were braced round and the canvas bellied
out, it covered his face and he began blindly and ignorantly
punching into it, thinking he was being attacked or press-
ganged again.
The rabble dispersed, making for the forecastle with
Jimmy at their head shouting, ‘Ar, Jim lad!’ Several
minutes’ later, a purge occurred in the forecastle and a
stream of Mr Fleuret’s suitcases, blankets and shirts
accompanied by the sound of vulgarities came pouring
forth. Mr Fleuret came thumping along the deck to
complain.
‘Really, Mr Tileshed, I must insist--’
‘Please, I’m trying to sort everything out here. Come
and see me later in my cabin, if you must. Meanwhile,
would you be so good as to light the galley-fire and make
us something to eat?’
Mr Fleuret, who had been so disagreeably displaced
from his berth along with his belongings by the ruffians,
decided to say nothing more for the time being.
Tileshed senior walked up to the foremast where
Robson, the painter and decorator with the long hair had
taken it upon himself to daub ‘No Swearing’ in bright red.
The notices had been mysteriously appearing all over the
ship and people had been getting the wet paint on their
hands. Now he knew who was doing it, he asked Robson
by whose authority he was doing this. Robson replied
coolly that it came under his contract as painter and
decorator. But Tileshed replied that it didn’t and ordered
them to be rubbed off at once.
Robson went below, gloomy and sulking, to find a rag.
There he found Creame changing into civilian uniform
under protest. They both enjoyed calling Tileshed senior
behind his back: something Creame did extremely well in
general. Robinson had found him a white fisherman’s
jumper that had been in the boat they found on the beach
and a grey pair of polyester strides which he tucked into his
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junior swam over and attached the rope to Creame and they
hauled him up while Robson was kept afloat by Tileshed
junior. Robson was recovered by the same method, with
Tileshed junior pushing from below. A drunken cheering
arose from the ship’s belly, where a mob led by Jimmy was
ranged along the bulwarks, trying to help out. Jimmy
shouted crudely: ‘Ar, Jim lad, who be puttin’ sand in the
Vaseline? I be feelin’ rather sore!’
JS Inspector Cavendish said: ‘I think we should lie him
on his back and squeeze the water out of him.’
‘This is not a flippin’ Tom and Jerry cartoon,’ officer
Roberts replied indignantly. Behind him, Stone appeared to
be trying to feed the other end of the rope through the
tackle-block. While Roberts and Mr Fleuret dragged
Robson into the captain’s cabin, the inspectors agreed to
attend to Creame. They laid him out on the couch and Mr
Fleuret began admiring the furniture.
‘What are you doing?’ Roberts demanded. 'Come over
here and give me a hand.’ Officer Roberts took control and
told Mr Fleuret what to do. Mr Fleuret looked on in disgust
as Roberts gave Robson the kiss of life. He checked his
pulse.
‘I can’t feel anything!’ Mr Fleuret exclaimed.
‘It’s: “I can’t feel anything, sir".’
Even though a man’s life was at stake, etiquette still had
to be adhered to. He checked it for himself and then
announced: ‘He’s dead. We’re going to have to try to
revive him.’
‘Oh, I’m not touching a dead man!’
‘You’ll do as I say, or you’ll be a dead man. Now, put
both hands over his chest and when I give him five
inflations, you push down, but not too hard--and remember
to check his pulse every minute.’
If he ever was dead, Robson revived after a struggle and
Mr Fleuret announced that he could see his neck throbbing.
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Had not a full mutiny occurred while they were away, this
toady letter might have worked, but when Yellowman came
to deliver it, he found a strange captain being ministered to
by henchmen, with the Tilesheds and the other JS men
having been relegated to menial duties. The new captain
read the letter, laughed and tore it up.
After this, they took Alexander for dead, despite the
Tilesheds’ pleading to save him.
Creame, who was nearly recovered, was the first to
notice the blinking lights and hear the fire-cracker burst of
gunfire that signalled the start of the assault that evening.
He took the fork and plate he had been using and crawled
outside, banging them together furiously.
Robins came running down behind him. It was just dark
when the assault began and shots were being directed at the
ship’s main poop lantern. He had been coming to report a
strange boat closing in. Creame told him to crawl along the
deck to warn the crew whilst he searched below for any
weapons. Creame began to crawl along the deck as though
he were stuck to it, until he reached the safety of the
bulkhead, when he burrowed below, tripping over the
stairs, falling over fire-buckets and banging clumsily into
things in the dark. He retraced the way he had come, to find
a noisy rabble assembling amidships, while he did more
crawling and knocked their legs from under them so that
they hit the deck like a pack of cards. He realized that the
main lantern had gone out when he could not make out
their faces clearly; in which case, he thought, it would only
be a matter of time before the assailants attempted to board.
‘Our best bet is to stop them from boarding,’ he told
them squarely. He further added that Norman and Frankie
should patrol the outskirts of the ship.
Norman and Frankie had not been gone for long when
they came rushing down from abaft, clearly startled,
shouting that there was an attempt being made to board.
There was a flash and then another as the thunderflashes
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Chapter Eleven
'Do you think I did the right thing?' Creame asked the civil
servants, but none bothered to answer him and he could tell
by their faces that they hadn't, by bargaining with a pirate.
He hit on a way to cheer them up and ingratiate himself
with Mr Fleuret in one.
'I've just thought of something,' he announced. Mr
Fleuret's been through it, you know. Let's give him a
rousing reception when he comes on board.'
'How?' one of them asked.
'Well, it's usual to pipe a captain on board, isn't it?'
'Er, how do we go about that?'
'We'll all line up and salute him. That should make him
laugh. And we'll all make a noise like a kazoo.'
That seemed to suit civil service mentality, as they all
found it very funny. When Mr Fleuret, bedraggled and
downcast, was escorted on board, they all cheered him
three times and saluted him. Immediately his spirits revived
and he began nodding solemnly to each in turn and
muttering, 'Thank you...thank you so much,' like some
royal dignitary on a walk-about.
When Mr Fleuret took up his position as honorary
captain, he invited Creame into his cabin to thank him
formally. Outside, Yellowman was busying himself trying
to lower the Union Jack from the top of the upper
mainmast. It ended with Onion having to clamber up the
shrouds to untangle the mess left by Yellowman. 130 ft
above deck, the ship small and narrow-beamed below him,
the men tiny, he clung as the ship lurched. Onion looked
like a gorilla clumsily swaying in the upper branches of a
high tree. The Union Jack fluttered down like a crippled
butterfly as Onion ripped it unceremoniously from the
masthead. As the black pirate flag was hauled up in its
place, Carl discreetly folded the Union Jack and put it in
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his pocket, hoping for the day when the shadow of piracy
would be lifted.
'I say, Creame, I can't thank you enough for what you've
done for me. When we've seen this voyage out and I inherit
my uncle's estate, I'll make you a baron,' Alexander told
him in his cabin.
Creame laughed spuriously.
'Why not have a drink with me as a celebration?'
'No, I really shouldn't,' Creame replied, thinking of the
bottle of whisky he had two weeks before leaving shore.
They discussed uniforms. Creame brought Alexander to
the edge of his seat at the thought of being dressed up as a
seventeenth century sea captain. Creame imagined himself
as 'Larry', he said.
'You mean Larry Olivier?' asked Mr Fleuret.
'No, I mean Larry Holmes, actually. He lives next door
to me. At the mention of 'Larry', Alexander prompted
Creame to orate to him, which is what he was there for. He
told Creame he was looking for an epithet that would
elevate him to the heights of the Roman emperors.
'Try this one for size,' Creame began to beat his breast
and saw his arms:
"And it came to pass that a clarion call went out, and out
from the mists of time itself there came a hero unlike any
before, and all who beheld him were sore afraid, and he
was called--Alexander".'
'Oh, goody! That's very good, but it burlesques the Bible
just a little, don't you think? But let's have more!' he
shouted, clapping his hands and reminding Creame of a
toothless seal.
'Hem...try this one: "Friends, Romans, generals, lend me
your spears"'.
Mr Fleuret laughed. 'It's good, but it sounds a bit
contrived, if you don't mind me saying so.'
Creame knew where the jam was: the installation of Mr
Fleuret as captain, as well as having him piped on board,
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Chapter Twelve
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‘We can’t. The only thing I can suggest is that you try
the Little Sisters of the Poor. They sometimes put homeless
people up. They own the convent that overlooks the town.’
‘Right-ho,’ said Mike, dragging his dog across the floor.
‘But I’ll be back if I don’t get satisfaction.’
‘You’d better not,’ warned the policeman.
Mike walked until he was at the foot of the highest hill
in the area. He climbed the path breathlessly, until he was
at the top, looking over the whole town.
The convent, which was surrounded by a wall, looked
like an old infirmary. A porter’s lodge was by the main iron
gates, which were locked. Seeing a bell, Mike rang it. It
was not a bell as such, but pushing the button generated an
eerie organ sound somewhere within. He was greeted by a
very decrepit, red-faced old man.
‘I need somewhere to stay for the night; the police sent
me here,’ he told the porter, who seemed a trifle deaf.
‘You can’t come in here with that cat.’
‘I can’t leave Duke--and he’s not a cat. He’s a dog.
Aren’t you, Duke?’
‘Ruff!’
‘Well, all the same, get rid of it, and then we’ll talk
about it. Good-night,’ and he closed the door of the lodge.
It was not too cold, so he decided to sleep at the foot of
the hill, where he jotted down a poem on some toilet roll he
had stolen from the hospital.
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Snarl now? Does your new master feed you with means?
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such force as to have burst it down had not its hinges been
hale.
Upon receiving permission to enter, a robust man in
fatigues, but wearing a nun's veil and wimple came
marching in, saluted and said: 'Permission to speak, Doctor
Hoffman, sir.'
Hoffman nodded, then, noticing his hesitation because
of the stranger's presence, added: 'It's okay, Nun-captain
Onion. Go ahead.'
'There's a man sleeping at the foot of the mountain, sir.
The porter reported him.'
'Describe him.'
'Flabby posture. Balding. Baggy jeans. Appears to have
a dog with him.'
'Have you any idea what he's doing there?'
'The porter says he was here looking for a place to stay,
but he wouldn't let him in because of the animal.'
'He might be a snoop.'
'Should I mobilize the Nun Police, sir?'
The doctor scratched his chin thoughtfully before
answering: 'Later'.
Patsy agreed to dig the garden in return for a meal and a
bed for the night.
Creame had grown impatient hiding in the bushes and
he decided to go over the wall.
'Can I go forward when my heart is here?' he said before
coming to grips with the bricks and afterwards with the
nettles in the same manner as Mr Patsy.
He pushed back the obdurate boughs of the horse
chestnuts and embarked on the same path as Mr Patsy had
done several hours' before.
Creame felt as though he were ploughing his way
through a jungle rather than just a couple of acres of a
nunnery's grounds. When he found the shed, he fell asleep
in it for the night, there being no alternative.
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Chapter Thirteen
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Chapter Fourteen
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‘Er, no. Some other time. Look, the bludy AOs have got
away with one of the special bricks that Hoffman was
looking for.’
‘We’ll forget about the fight for the time being then, but
I’m not finished with you. I’ll get the nun wagon started.
And you as well, Yellowman. Get up! How dare you lie
there in that state!’
Yellowman’s consciousness returned with each kick
administered by Onion’s huge, steel-capped boot. He was
being ordered to follow his captain into the vehicle.
Onion, Yellowman and Creame, with Onion driving,
capered down the stony bank, being thrown from side to
side. They could see the army wagon in the distance.
They had completely lost the other wagon when Onion
pulled into the side of the road and announced it was time
for Creame to get out. He was to look on foot.
Further on, he saw some people dressed like the Ku-
Klux-Klan milling about an Ordnance Survey stone on a
hill. There seemed to be someone sitting on the stone. He
was bedecked in regalia and seemed to be the focus of their
attention. The army wagon had stopped at the foot of the
hill.
The man with the crown looked like some
Shakespearean king in a native setting as he sat in the late
evening sun, scintillating and iridescent, surrounded by
attendants and green hills.
Standing below in a dejected-looking group were nine
people. They seemed to be a fair cross-section of society:
one was a wizened old lady, but there were middle-aged
and younger people amongst them. All were shouting and
arguing amongst themselves and occasionally directing
abuse at the gathering on the hill.
It was getting dark by the time Creame staggered up the
hill, holding out a small crucifix.
‘What’s that for?’ one of them demanded.
‘Where’s the “JS Men”?’ he retorted.
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Chapter Fifteen
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Chapter Sixteen
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'Which is what?'
'At the moment, our rules, which are that we make the
rules and take the decisions whilst you and she concern
yourselves only with appeal and petitory matters that do
not interfere in the general course of things.'
'Would you be prepared to listen to us in an advisory
capacity, then?' asked Hoffman.
'Yes, we agree to that. Now, if you'd like to take your
places at the foot of the throne, we can begin to make the
constitution.'
'Where are we to sit?' asked Yellowman.
'On the ground, of course--who are you?'
'I'm his brother.'
'Well, I'm sorry, but there's no place for you here,
brother.'
'Hey, just a minute: we work for him,' Onion interjected,
pointing at Hoffman.
'Is that so?'
'Yes, we're his bodyguards.'
'Okay, in that case, you can sit beside him, but no one
more,' the AO said.
'I can't sit on hard ground; I want a seat,' the old woman
objected.
'There aren't any seats here, Granny,' the AO replied
patronizingly.
'The lady deserves a seat. Someone find her a seat,' the
UAO said, hoping to redeem her from Hoffman.
A spectator chirped in, 'I've got a portable workbench in
my car boot, if that's any good.'
'Yes, fetch it. It'll have to do. Give him a chitty for it,
someone,' the UAO said.
'We've got no forms, Your Civil Highness,' an AO said.
'Oh, well, she'll have to wait until we send for some
forms, in that case,' said the UAO, who had quite readily
grasped civil service mentality.
'This is absolutely farcical. I resign,' said the old woman.
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caught him. They asked him to wait until Norman got his
voucher so that Yellowman could give them all a lift back
to the nunnery.
Yellowman, pirate and self-defence expert, did not dare
refuse.
When Yellowman returned, he was sorry that he had
missed out on the chance of gaining the title of Lord
Keeper of the Bricks, which they had been playing quoits
for in his absence.
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Chapter Seventeen
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'What are you going to do? Where are you off to?'
Alexander asked nervously. 'You're not going to leave me
here alone, are you?'
'You'll see: just wait for me, okay?' he said a little
tetchily.
Alexander was left clutching his brick against the scenic
background of Roman bricks, being warmed by the evening
sun, watching the blue sky and scudding clouds being
tinged from white to red by the sun setting.
'I don't know what's so important all of a sudden,'
Alexander muttered to himself when Creame had gone,
then he began poking idly round the hole in the middle of
the brick he was carrying before finally setting it down on
the ground and turning to admire the long, undulating line
of the wall. He flared out his nostrils like a valiant
warhorse, pursed his lips, scowled down his nose,
trumpeted air down it several times and struck his breast
melodramatically. Feeling his nose partially blocked, he
pulled out a nasal spray and squirted it up both nostrils of
his hooked, blackhead-infested nose . He uncorked the
spray-bottle from his nostril, put it away and stooped to
pick up a handful of soil, saying: 'I am a son of Rome. Here
is where the noble empire ends,' as he crumbled it
symbolically in his hand.
When Creame returned, Alexander was strolling up and
down on top of the wall, with his hand thrust in the front of
his shirt.
'That'll do, Scipio. Come and give me a hand.'
'What is it?'
Creame, who had been unwrapping something on the
ground, straightened up a little and said through clenched
teeth and rolling eyes, in his best Kirk Douglas voice: 'It's a
Roman device, a present to the emperor Scipio, from
Spartacus.'
'Ho! Very good!' Alexander guffawed, making full use
of the size of his Adam's apple.
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'Look, we've had peace for over forty years, but it's only
a temporary measure. It's like borrowing money and not
paying it back. The interest just accrues until it becomes
impossible to even keep up the interest payments.
'At the end of the last war, we made a pact with some
nasty sorcerers. Through his devils, Satan granted us a
certain period of peace in return for allowing greater
injustice to proliferate at an everyday level. Now it's
catching up with us, though and soon we'll be unable to
keep up in repaying even the interest. Once that happens,
we'll have a catastrophe on our hands.'
'But why did they allow it to happen in the first place, if
they knew what it would be like?'
'Because it was a group of unscrupulous profiteers who
didn't want their businesses hit by war that sold us out. It
didn't bother them what would happen in forty or fifty
years' time: most of them are dead now, anyway. Social
injustice didn't bother them either, as long as it wasn't
against them or their interests. If the poor got poorer, so be
it. Vandalism and the occasional riot even provided them
with good business, at the expense of the councils and
therefore of the people who lived in the affected areas. So
long as big businesses weren't affected, it was all right.
'Now the price is becoming too high and the situation is
reaching crisis point. Like an uncontrolled fire, the longer it
burns, the bigger it gets and the more it consumes and is
still never satisfied. Apparently there has not been enough
social injustice and we've got some catching-up to do.
They're working at it night and day now, to try to avert a
crisis. Every day they come up with something new to
increase the amount of social injustice, because we're liable
to go under otherwise.'
'What will happen then?'
'The interest will become too high for us to keep them at
bay.'
'And then?'
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They let out the wire along the wall in both directions
from the black box, which he connected somehow to the
brick and buried both in the soil at the foot of the wall.
When the task was done, he stood erect and said: 'I appoint
you custodian. Guard that brick with your life. The
password is "Scipio".'
'Ha! Ha!' Alexander guffawed.
Creame's face became solemn, with self-importance
rather than because the situation called for it and he said:
'I'm not laughing. We'll take turns to watch over it all night,
so watch it closely. If the phantoms don't try to get at it,
then the JS men might. Now, we'll have a dummy run. I'll
just make sure that it's working first, though.'
With these words he stooped down and did something to
the top of it which was still sticking out of the ground and
had a button and a few lights on it. Soon, a klaxon nearly
deafened them. Alexander put his hands over his ears and
staggered away.
Creame laughed throatily. 'That should scare 'em. It's an
American system. It would make you throw up if I left it on
for long enough. The frequency of 10Hz corresponds to our
brainwaves and causes resonance.'
'It makes a hideous racket,' admitted Alexander, who
had been melodramatizing the thing, as he did when he ate,
as much as Creame had exercised his tendency to overstate
matters, especially when they redounded to his credit.
Neither was he content to let it rest at that, for he said:
'Now I'll try it out. You stand beside the brick and the box
and I'll be the intruder. I'll walk down and accidentally
tread on the wire. Are you ready?'
'Right. Here we go.' Creame walked along the top of the
wall and set the klaxon off again.
'Well, come on,' he shouted above the din.
'Come on what?'
'You've got to challenge me.'
Alexander ran towards him shouting, 'Who goes there?'
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'Scipio.'
'Who?'
'Scipio. Scipio Africanus's the password.' He seemed
satisfied at last in having played his little game and then he
climbed off the wall and turned off the blare, almost
painfully slowly, much to Alexander's discomfort.
'Right. Now it's nearly dark. We'll take shifts. I'll sleep
in the guest house here until four o' clock while you stand
guard, and then I'll come and relieve you and watch over it
till dawn. Got it?'
Alexander appeared to cogitate for a while and then
reported suddenly, 'But it gets light at about four o' clock.
You won't have a very long shift, will you?'
'Don't worry, old chap. I'll let you have a little lie-in in
the morning.'
'I'm not at all sure about this, Creame. I mean, when I
was up here before, I got attacked by Satanists.'
'If you do, you know all you have to do is to activate the
alarm. That'll scare them. I don't think they'll bother you
this time, though, not with me around. Well, cheerio for
now. I'll bring you out some soup and cucumber
sandwiches if they have any, later on,' Creame said
flippantly.
'But what--' Alexander began to say, but Creame was
already out of earshot, treading towards the guest house. He
was looking forward to staying there at Alexander's
expense.
'No, please--' he called out mournfully to the shady,
retreating figure.
Creame stopped, turned around and walked back a little
way, called out, 'Oh, and don't leave your post until I come
for you. Good luck, Tribune!'
Alexander, feeling totally wretched and forsaken,
slumped shivering against the cold face of the wall. He was
remembering the time when Creame left him in a similar
lurch, cold and starving while he slept in a warm bed.
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the hill. There were about six of them crowded round the
OS stone, but nobody was on it anymore. Suddenly they
began waving and shouting at him. They didn't look like a
threatening bunch. Climbing the hill made him aware that
in the group was Jimmy, Norman, Frankie and Yellowman.
Yellowman was in charge of the Plastic Pig.
'What's the score? Jimmy told me that you're trying to
rip off the DSS,' Norman quizzed him.
'It's just what I heard off Yellowman,' Jimmy defended
himself with.
'I heard it from Onion,' Yellowman was quick to point
out.
'Let me get one thing straight: I'm not trying to rip off
anybody. What I'm doing is perfectly well-founded and I've
come on behalf of Alexander Fleuret, whose lord Protector
I am, to make room for him. He's going to be our new
Ultimate Adjudication Officer,' said Creame.
'Hoffman won't like that,' said Yellowman, shaking his
head ruefully.
'Shake not thy gory locks at me,' Creame retorted.
'Hoffman and the others can go suck. I've got the true
Brick4 and they haven't. They can't argue. If it comes to the
crunch, I can oust the lot of them.'
'You're going to put that arsehole in office and you
haven't even paid us for the journey,' said Norman.
'What journey?' asked Creame.
'The journey on the ship. What journey do you think I
mean?'
'Oh, that journey--yes, well, things didn't work out quite
as planned. But I'm still looking into it. For the nonce,
however, when I crown Alexander UAO, I'll tell him that
the first thing he's got to do is to make you lot happy.'
'How are you going to do that?' Jimmy asked
suspiciously.
'As UAO, he'll be able to use his power of discretion
over existing laws, some of which have not seen the light
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'He can piss off if that's his attitude, but he still owes us
money for the journey. He gave us a lift when he needed
us, didn't he?'
Creame went to visit the AOs at the UBO that was their
base and inside, he rang the bell at the counter, but soon
found that it didn't work and even if it had, he was aware
that nobody could have heard it because of the sound of
merry-making that was proceeding from behind the
partition that would have screened off the rear office from
the public view, had there been any public there.
'Oi!' he shouted testily.
The noise dwindled and he heard somebody saying,
'Who was that?'; to which somebody else replied, 'I didn't
hear anything. It was probably just one of us.' As the
revelry started up again, Creame bellowed again; this time
they all fell silent and somebody remarked, 'I'm sure I heard
somebody shouting. It seemed to come from the other side
of the glass.' 'Go and look,' somebody else urged. 'If it's that
Mr Goose again wanting to sign on, tell him we're closed.'
The glass door slid open purposefully and one of the AOs
slipped through.
'It's Damien Creame, isn't it?' he said in a surprised tone.
'That's right. Tell that bunch of ne'er-do-wells in the
back that I want to see them out here.'
'I can't tell them,' he sighed. 'They're far too busy.' He
went through and Creame heard him say, 'It's Damien
Creame. He says he wants to see you all out there.'
'Tell him to bugger off. We're busy,' said another voice.
'Can you bludy well hear me in there, you lot?' Creame
screeched. 'I want a word with you, so if you don't come
out, I'm coming in.'
'I'm afraid you can't do that. The area behind the counter
is not open to the public.'
'I'm not bludy public!' Creame retorted, snorting like
Kenneth Williams. 'How do I get in there?'
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'It's too late now, son. It's gone down in the minutes--
where are the minutes?'
'They're in a filing cabinet somewhere,' someone else
replied. 'Either that or we've lost them again.'
'Then I want nothing more to do with this little fiasco.
You're all heading for a lot of trouble and I wouldn't like to
be in your shoes when it comes, comrades. Anybody who
wishes to do so can come with me and swear allegiance to
the rightful UAO, Alexander Fleuret. As for the rest of you
renegades, I'll have the DSS excommunicate the lot of you
for this,' he said, edging his way round the room to the fire
exit as he did so, taking care to step over the drunken body
lying sprawled across the threshold.
'You just try!' he heard one of them challenge him amid
the jeering as he was leaving. He was disheartened to see
that nobody had thrown his lot in with him, not even
Tileshed junior.
He went from there to pick up Mr Patsy, whom he
thought it advisable to have in with him in case of any
trouble.
Alexander was patiently guarding the brick when the
alarm went off. He instinctively ran along the wall like an
agile, eager spider, to discover that it was Creame and Mr
Patsy who had triggered it.
'What are you doing? What's the meaning of bringing
him along? And why are you late?' Alexander fretted.
'If you must know, I've had to make an important phone
call to London on your behalf. I've spilt the beans on the
Rogue AOs, as a matter of fact. Mr Patsy's come along to
help you be crowned UAO,' Creame stated.
'What...now?'
'Yes, come on. We've got no time left.'
'Shouldn't I clean myself up first?'
'You can powder your nose later,' Creame remarked,
more for Mr Patsy's amusement.
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'Er, no, I've got to tell you that the laws say that it has to
be here,' Cavendish answered.
'And just how did you deduce that?'
'Because this is the location given by the Map.'
'Eh?'
'The Map. We once had someone working for us known
as the Map.'
'Do I read you right?' Creame asked, digging his hands
into his pockets in the manner of a private eye.
'Yes, you got me man. We once had an AO working for
us known as the Map. He was a very splendid AO--the best
we ever had, in fact. His name was Chris, I believe.
Unfortunately he turned a bit funny in the end. He set up
his own monastery, or something, I believe. It's a shame--
he was a bright boy--Women's Lib and all that palaver got
to him. He had to go, of course, when he started turning up
for work in women's clothes.'
'What of it?' asked Creame, who normally would have
been interested in such scandal, had he not been more
concerned with the Map.
'His responsibility was to memorize the DSS map,
which, incidentally, is nothing like any map available to the
general public. The Regs state that the UAO must be
crowned upon the same location as is given by the UAO's
National Insurance number, working to the DSS map. This
is location NA788154C, where we are now.'
'Ah, there we draw a blank. We want location...I'd better
not say, until we establish you're not a spy.'
'I can tell you candidly I'm not, but I respect your
caution, all the same. Only the Map can tell you where all
the locations are. I don't have it all. The original Map was
destroyed for security's sake,' said Cavendish.
Creame ran his fingers through his gingery hair that was
squared off like a policeman's. In fact he could have passed
for a priest or a policeman equally easily.
The Sunny People, he thought.
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They asked there and were told that there had been a
group of gypsies camped there. They had recently moved
on, but nobody was sure where. They tried asking at the
police station and were told the gypsies had been given a
stately home by the council, who had evicted them from the
original site after complaints.
Just before the Sunny People took over it, it had been
used as a hall of residence by some Poly students and a lot
of them had decided to join the group and stay there when
they found out about the take-over, since which all
weapons and suits of armour in the old hall had been
removed and even weapons that featured in portraits had
been masked with sackcloth until they also could be found
a home.
As they were standing in the entrance hall, the sight of
these abjections was sufficient to dispel what idea Creame
was considering of accompanying Alexander further.
'This is weird,' Creame gave out at last.
'You see now that I wasn't lying or exaggerating, don't
you?'
'Why is there nobody about?'
'They might be watching a play.'
'Right, I'll leave you to it. I'll meet you at the gates this
time tomorrow. Good luck.'
'Wait, I thought we were going in this together.'
'Huh! That would be some good, wouldn't it? They
would probably drug us both and then who would rescue
us? Besides, some of them might recognize me, being from
the DSS.'
In a moment, Alexander was alone; it was like his first
day at school.
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'So, you've decided to come back and join the flock,' Neili
said to Alexander good-naturedly when the bowing out was
finished and he was introduced again.
'Er, yes: I never really wanted to leave in the first place,
actually. I was abducted by some men...but where's Neili?'
'Why...me's Neili.'
'You all look the same. Please forgive me.'
'That's all right, but tell me about these evil, violent men
who abducted you. Me's interested. Also, you'll have to
renounce your possessions all over again. Do you still have
your cheque book on you?'
'Yes. It's here somewhere, in my jacket pocket,'
Alexander said, feeling for it.
'A cheque book is one of the most noxious evils ever to
be inflicted on a person. Let me tell you how you can be rid
of it,' Neili said encouragingly, leading him genteelly away.
They stopped at a flower island on the lawn where the
play had been staged.
'You see the blooms here have all been cut away, don't
you?' it said to Alexander as it pointed out the rose bushes
that had been pruned back to extremity.
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'Me sees that he's not yet in weeds,' the other person
commented suspiciously.
'We haven't found him a uniform yet,' Neili replied
unhappily, referring to the unusually striking combination
of emerald green trousers and skirt that they always wore.
'Anyway, me'll leave hir with you for a while and you can
show him round, okay? Me'll come back for you in half an
hour or so, Alexander. Hir'll take good care of you--won't
you Terry?'
'Of course.'
Neili left and Terry, who was Neili's assistant and could
have been mistaken for its twin, asked Alexander how he
had come to hear of the Sunny People.
I just bumped into them on my travels one day,'
Alexander replied fatuously because of the stupefying
effect of the morphine.
'Oh, all the better for you. You know, you're very lucky
to have an insight into our society. Usually we don't admit
strangers.'
'No?'
'No. We had to put a stop to it after so many people were
just turning up to laugh at us.'
'Yes, they would do, the Bulletheads. My next door
neighbour's a Bullethead. Do you know what he did? We
got one warm day in February and he was out there in his
garden stripped to the waist sunbathing.' Alexander shook
his head reprovingly as he said this. There followed an
uneasy silence while Alexander watched Terry getting on
with watering the plants. So unusual was the situation in
which Alexander found himself that he found it difficult to
manufacture conversation without the risk of sounding
flippant.
'Neili seems like a friendly enough chap,' Alexander
ventured at last.
'Oh, hir's that,' Terry replied flatly, as though the
statement did not need qualifying.
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But when he tried to rise out of the water, Neili let out a
shrill whistle, the result of which was that four people
rushed upon him from behind a door and pinioned his arms
and legs which were flailing about.
'Now calm down,' Neili advised him sternly, standing at
the head of the bath and looking down at him. 'We've all
had to go through it. You've been cleansed.'
'Where's my hair and clothes?'
Departed, along with your moral filth. You're one of us,
now.'
'No, I won't have it. Damn you! Let me out!' Alexander
screamed, writhing and splashing about like a dog being
bathed before tiring himself out and falling back helplessly.
Neili sighed. 'Do you really want to leave us,
Alexander?'
'Yes! Yes! Yes!' he spat, nodding like a pigeon.
'You may leave us, by all means, providing that you pay
us for the cost of your inauguration. We must be
recompensed for cleansing you of all moral filth.'
'I didn't have any moral filth in the first place, but what
do you want from me?'
'The usual fee is to make over to us all your worldly
goods.'
'Yes, all right. Just let me go and I'll do it.'
'All right. Let him go and bring his cheque book and a
pen,' Neili ordered, adding quietly, 'I don't think he'll be
going far like this.'
'What happened to the "me" you were so fond of using
before?' Alexander asked querulously.
'Sod that! That's only for mugs like you. Get over to this
chair and sign me a cheque, or you'll never get out of here,'
Neili spoke harshly now.
'You crook! I'll tell the police once I get out,' Alexander
threatened as he was hoisted from the bath, dripping wet,
over to the chair by the four assistants, one of whom was
the Map.
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taking out an arch lever file marked with 'DSS Regs', which
he opened, fingering through the first few pages.
'Yes, there it is. Regs 8(b)(i) state that the Ultimate
Adjudication Officer's “... throne shall be in a location
given by making reference to his National Insurance
number in conjunction with the DSS Map”." It goes on
somewhere else about all the correct procedures and
everything: about how many bishops to use and all.'
'Bishops? Nobody mentioned bishops before now.
Where do they fit in?'
Hoffman gazed at him. Yes, I believe you're quite right.
That's another good reason why the UAO they've appointed
over there is invalid: they didn't have any bishops.'
'What does it say about bishops?'
'It says here: "The Ultimate Adjudication Officer shall
be conveyed in procession to the appointed place, there to
be crowned by a Regional Adjudication Officer in the
presence of no less than six attendant Adjudication
Officers".'
'Does it say what to crown him with?' asked Creame.
'Surely not a party hat and plastic sword, like they had over
there. Even Alexander would turn his nose up at that.'
'It says the crown is to be recognized as being made of
cast iron, adorned with three tiers of seven stars, being a
tiara. The signs of the zodiac are imprinted around its base,
signifying the twelve ministers, excluding the prime
minister. A technical drawing follows, detailing its
construction.'
'You mean that we have to make it ourselves?'
'That would appear to be so.'
'We need to find a competent fitter, then.'
'Indeed,' Hoffman agreed. 'Let's do this together, then.'
Creame accepted the extended hand. 'Just a minute. I
might know one. If he's not competent, he's cheap. Jimmy
said he used to be a fitter. I'll check him out in the morning.
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Finally the UAO's crown was made. It was made from mild
steel, that being malleable and therefore easier to work with
than cast iron. He could always contend that there was iron
in steel and that he could 'cast' it to the ground; which he
did when Charlie was trying to use the phone, just to annoy
him. He told Charlie that it was to give whomever was on
the other end the impression that somebody was working.
It was a rustic affair, being a band of steel bent into a
ring with jagged edges and the signs of the zodiac engraved
on it with a shaky hand. Brazed onto the base were narrow
strips of steel subtending another two layers. The stars were
cut out irregularly with secateurs. The job finished, he told
Charlie he was leaving because of a nervous breakdown.
Charlie said he wasn't interested in why he was leaving
and told him that if he wanted to leave, he should just go as
soon as possible.
Not long after this, Jimmy heard that Charlie's wife had
thrown him out and that he was on crutches and sleeping
rough.
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'Why don't you wear only the toga until you receive the
crown, and then you can go back to your suit?'
'I was thinking of that actually, but it might be a bit
chilly wearing just that and nothing else.'
'Nonsense. You could do it the other way round, if you
liked. Come here. Take your shirt off and your suit,'
Creame patronized, stepping forward.
Alexander complied sheepishly and stood there
shivering in his underpants like a dipped skeleton with only
his belly prominent as if suffering from inanition while
Creame deftly and nimbly re-arranged the sheet round him,
fastening it neatly and firmly on with a safety-pin.
'There. Turn round...splendid! You look just like Marcus
Crappus,' he said facetiously.
'I hope this won't take too long. I'm cold already.'
'No. It shouldn't do. Are you ready, or would you like
some privets on your head?'
'I'm as ready as I can be,' Alexander conceded.
He was taken to Hoffman's 'Plastic Pig' and bundled in
the back, Creame getting in the front with Hoffman. The
other processionists had already set off in their cars for the
start.
Alexander sat back in his seat and crossed his arms and
legs, looking out of the window for the rest of the journey.
When they got there, the processionists were milling
round the OS stone waiting for them to begin. The Reliant
Robin stopped and Alexander got out, much to the delight
of the others, who cheered him, laughed at him and even
wolf-whistled at him.
'I think they're after you making a little speech,' Creame
whispered to him.
'Couldn't you give one for me? I'm hopeless at making
speeches.'
'No. Just stand up there and tell them that you'd like to
thank them for their support and say that when you speak to
them again, you'll be on your throne.'
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cardboard tubes over his arms and legs and stay in there for
days, just trying to forget that he existed until next payday.'
They were interrupted by the sound of an argument
coming from just outside the fire door. Hoffman, who was
nervous of being overheard, jumped up and banged it open.
Outside, de Patsy had been blocking the way in for
Yellowman and was now thrown against the railing by the
sudden force of the door.
'What's going on here?' Hoffman demanded of his half-
brother.
'He won't let me in.'
'What do you want? I thought I told you that we were
not to be disturbed.'
'It's urgent, or I wouldn't have bothered you.'
'Well, what is it?'
'It's Tileshed junior. He's gained the nuns' sympathy and
they're revolting. First they were bringing him food, but
when Onion put a stop to it, they demanded to see him.
Now they're nearly besieging Onion, who's trying to hold
them back and one of them has even brought a placard
saying, "Free Tileshed Junior".'
'Do you mean to say that a bunch of silly nuns has got
Onion terrified. Tell them to disperse immediately, and tell
Tileshed junior if he wants anything, we'll get it for him,
providing he pays us for it.'
As Yellowman was turning to go, Patsy had just
recovered from his gasping attack which was the result of
him being hit by the door and nearly plummeting to his
death and was turning round to say something when
Hoffman slammed the door shut on him.
Hoffman resumed his seat coolly.
'I've just about finished this transcript. What now?' said
Creame.
'I think it might be wise to scrap the first session.'
'It could make us look rather ridiculous in the light of
this revolt.'
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Chapter Twenty
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'We don't handle that sort of thing. You'll have to see the
Social Security office about it.'
'Do you think I stand a chance?'
'I couldn't say. It all depends on your circumstances.'
'Would you have me walk all the way there just to be
told I'm not getting anything?'
'You could try phoning them.'
'Do you think I've got the money just to be kept hanging
on all day, while they piss me about I`m not Alan King yer
nar?'
'Well, I'm sorry.'
'Up yours, then,' Cockney Frank said as he stormed out.
'Like taking candy from a baby,' the Claimant Advisor
muttered as he left the cubicle and strutted past an
Executive Officer who smiled his approval.
There was a bustling queue shuffling up to Box 1. Carl
joined it.
Had it not been at the behest of Alexander, Carl would
never have dreamed of going into such a place. He had
only been in such a place once in a blue moon, since he
was not required to sign regularly whilst on Invalidity
Benefit.
As the queue shortened, he became more concerned as
to what he should say. Big men, little men, clean men and
dirty men, surly men and burly men, young men and old
men and women stood in front of him still did not make
him feel any less of a misfit, which he felt like most of the
time. He wondered how Alexander would have fitted in.
When Alexander's father signed over to him all his hard-
earned money and the house, Alexander had raised his head
proudly and told everybody that he would never sign the
dole again in his life and would even set fire to their office
when they telephoned him to ask if he was looking for
work and then told them that he would prosecute them for
harassment. Then he bombarded them with threatening
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'I'll let you into a secret, shall I? When the news gets out
that there's been a conflict between two UAOs, they might
send up a team of investigators to find out what the hell's
been going on. It might have already happened. If the
situation looks threatening to the centralists, they might
instruct each county to become autonomous--in which case
your UAO policy is up the spout.'
'How's that?'
'There's a regulation that caters for it. You'd better ask
Hoffman if you don't believe me. I'm surprised he hasn't
told you. It goes something like this: "It the Ultimate
Adjudication Officer acts irresponsibly, or if there is an
insurrection in his officers the Secretary of State shall be
empowered at any time and without prior notice to
withdraw the Ultimate Adjudication Officer's powers and
also to punish him accordingly".'
'If they try to remove me from power, I'll sell my story
to the gutter press. They'll know all about what's been
going on, including the deal that was made with Hecate
forty years' ago.'
'The press wouldn't touch it. They're not that stupid.'
'As well as that, they'll have a blood bath on their hands.'
'The only blood that would be spilt would be yours.
Apart from anything else, there'll be nobody else's blood to
be spilt. They're deserting you in droves for the other side.'
'I've still got Hoffman and Onion and Yellowman--and
probably Creame--on my side.'
'Yellowman's as much good as a chocolate fireguard--
you saw him on the ship. He's a born coward. Onion will
go wherever he thinks there's money when the chips are
down, and so will Creame for that matter. They know
they'll get nowhere with you as UAO: even Carl will tell
you that.'
'In that case, why did you take the trouble to throw mud
at me?'
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'It...er...defies description.'
'Try me.'
'It was only a fleeting glimpse I had of it. It was of a
pale, grim face. It had a shock of fire-red hair and burning
sea-green eyes. It had no body,' Alexander lied, giving
Creame a superabundant description of Creame himself.
'You'll have to appease it,' was Creame's verdict.
'You mean a sacrifice?'
'Right on, sister. Now, take your clothes off so that I
don't have to undress you before I sacrifice you.'
Alexander started back and said almost incredulously:
'You wouldn't, would you? Please tell me you're joking.'
'Maybe it won't be necessary after all. There's a big
slimy monster slithering out of the water behind you.'
Alexander glanced round but, seeing nothing, looked
back at Creame and said scornfully: 'You would stab me in
the back, is that it?'
'Don't be stupid. Get out of the water, before a spirit gets
you.' Creame kneeled down and appeared to be examining
something on the ground. 'It'll do,' he finally pronounced
after feeling it.
'What is it, may I ask?'
'It's polystyrene. I'm going to make a fire boat with it.'
'I beg your pardon? I want nothing to do with it if that's
what you're up to. I happen to think they're despicable and
abhorrent weapons of war--ooh! don't scrape it like that! It
goes right through me.'
'I've got to, okay? I must pare bits off it and hollow bits
out for a mast,' he was working at it vigorously with a small
pen-knife.
'What's it for, if you don't mind me asking?'
'It's a sacrifice to the spirit of the waterhole. We must
play it their way and sacrifice fire to water, see?'
Creame had managed to stick a branch into the middle
of the polystyrene and had turned a paper bag he had found
lying into a sail, thereby making it into a raft.
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'That's the Night Boat dealt with; next comes the Day
Boat,' Creame said, standing up and rubbing the soil from
his hands.
'Ra and Osiris?'
'Ug!'
'Eh?'
'The water, quick! Pass the water!'
Alexander rummaged through the haversack he was
carrying for Creame and handed him the plastic pop bottle,
hoping that it wasn't the one with the petrol in it, as it was
too dark to see what was in it and Creame seemed to be too
impatient to wait while he examined it more properly. That
was confirmed when Creame snatched it from him and
unscrewed the top with all the desperation of Jimmy
grabbing a bottle of plonk. He took a long, loose swig at it;
finally his wet drawing lips left the rim of the bottle and he
gulped in a draught of air like a drowning man. He stood,
poised with the half-empty bottle in his hand.
'Undulu!' he yelled as he swung it through the air and let
it go. Alexander was too bewildered by this to say
anything.
'I've cast a spell.'
'How?'
'I drunk as much as I could manage in one go and waited
for the word.'
'You waited for the word?'
'Yes, the word that comes up through the ground. I had
to wait until just the right moment, until I could feel it
travelling through my legs. That was the word I shouted
straight out while making the sacrifice.'
'Creame, I do wish you wouldn't prevaricate such. I just
don't know what to make of it all.'
'Shh!' Creame cupped his hand to his ear.
'Did you hear anything?' he asked after an interval of
silence, now cupping his ear to the wind.
'No--should I?'
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'It didn't have another leg. But its seven hundred times
more deadly than the normal, eight-legged ones, and ten
times bigger.'
'What will we do if we meet it?'
'Oh,' Creame shuddered. 'If we meet it, it will be a
terrible thing. Our only hope would be to charm it.'
'How?'
'By dancing with it.'
'Dancing with it! Are you serious?'
'Never more serious. I told you we're not dealing in
normal spheres, didn't I?'
'What happens if you succeed?'
'It goes back into the water and it means we're through
to the next round. We live to fight again.'
'What's the next stage?'
'The second stage is the Chinese dragon.'
'Good grief! What do you have to do with that?'
'Get where it can't reach you.'
'You mean like up a tree, or something?'
'Oh no! It can get you there just as easily as it can get
you on the ground. It can fly.'
'Can it? So how do you conquer it?' asked Alexander, by
this time sure that Creame was demented. He responded by
humouring him and preparing to make a run for it if things
got too bad. He was unaware that Creame was just trying to
scare him whilst making himself look brave and wise.
'You have to go where it can't get you.'
'And where's that?' Alexander said.
'On its back. It's rumoured that it can't bend back on
itself. You have to ride it until it wears itself out.'
'Then what?'
'Did I say two or three things? Oh, yes, I remember
now! Yes, the third one is the Blue Tits.'
'Oh?'
'Yes. If the Blue Tits come for you, whatever you do,
resist the temptation to fly away with them. Their song is
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Chapter Twenty-one
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boats, we'll have to sail the Day Boat and then get the hell
out of here while we still have the chance.'
For the Day Boat, the Night Boat was re-used, having
been only scorched, but this time Creame turned it upside
down, rigged up another sail and poured the petrol over it.
He asked Alexander to light it. Thinking it would burn as
before, Alexander put a match to it and was immediately
engulfed in a ball of flame. Even though it was too small
and brief to have serious consequence, Alexander insisted
in letting out wild and torturous screams as he rolled about
in the water, yelling for Creame to put him out. When he
was sure that he was no longer alight, he stood up, a
soaking, muddy mess.
'Something must have gone wrong. It didn't do that
before. All I can think of is that it's been bewitched by that
sorcerer. I've heard strange tales of evil spirits turning food
into maggots. I doubt he'll have time to work on you to that
extent, though. It would be me if it was going to be either
of us. After all, I went right up to his lair. Well, let's get
going.'
Alexander had begun to shiver in a flimsy manner
normally reserved for his father. He was sullen and quiet in
the van as they were driving back to Hoffman's to fetch Mr
Patsy. Creame had managed to pick the Ford Transit's lock
with Alexander's tie-pin.
The exterior of the nunnery was desolate. The crowds
had gone home, the nuns had returned to their supernal
activities and Hoffman and Yellowman had been out since
the early morning and the civil servants had all defected.
Only a solitary, stolid builder was carrying out his work.
The builder was Mr Patsy, still dressed in the habit of a nun
but without head-dress. He was trying to repair his toilet,
which had caved in because of the extra bricks he had
heaped on top. When he saw Creame and Alexander
approaching, he approached them and appeared to be
smiling, but Alexander soon realized that it was a grimace,
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Chapter Twenty-two
The sight of his front street, of his house with the uncut
lawn was a welcome to Alexander. Creame dropped him
off and drove off when he saw Carl was at the door. Carl
stood stupidly blocking the doorway, blinking dumbly at
Alexander from behind his dark glasses, until Alexander
was wondering whether he was going to let him into his
own house.
'Have there been any calls?'
'Yes. Quite a few, actually,' Carl said, following it with a
long pause.
'Well, are you going to tell me who they were, or do I
have to guess?' Alexander asked irritably as he was
hanging up his coat.
'I don't know who. Whoever it was kept hanging up
before I could answer. It lasted all day yesterday. I didn't
want to leave it off the hook in case you called.'
'Yes, all right. As a matter of fact I did try to get through
once, but couldn't. It must have been on the blink again.'
Alexander's telephone had been dodgy ever since he had
knocked it to the ground in a fit of temper, causing its
casing to come loose. He had been too scared to report it to
British Telecom, as he thought he could be jailed for
criminal damage to their equipment. In addition the dial
had become very stiff, which often led to wrong numbers
being dialled. This did nothing for his temper when he
woke up in the mornings shivering from withdrawal
symptoms and had tried to obtain more Diazepam from the
doctor 'for his father'; nor did it help when he did manage
to find the right number only to find the line engaged, when
he would wail, 'Oh God!' and slam the handset back with a
clatter. When his father heard this, he would begin chewing
his trembling fingers that were continually passing
anxiously over his pallid, quivering face.
'Is there anything to eat?' Alexander asked Carl.
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'No, I'm afraid there isn't. The fridge door wasn't shut
properly and it all got ruined, so I gave most of it to Psi and
I tried to use as much up as I could by eating it,' Carl said
as though in doing so, he had done Alexander a service.
'Oh, my God! What's all this? Where's all this mess
come from?' Alexander was standing in the kitchen as he
said this. It looked as though someone had taken a dustbin
and scattered its contents maliciously over the entire area.
Containers of every description and of various vintages
were festering and mouldering in even the most dank and
mouldy corners; spoons were left stuck in empty tins of
tomato soup that were lying one on top of the other, like the
bayoneted corpses of soldiers. He had even the deepest
recesses of his cupboards turned out and had sifted nosily
through long-interred paraphernalia, such as mouldering
bottles of cod liver oil and quinine and rusty old tins of
curry powder and spices, as well as all manner of odd tools
and utensils, including a hob-iron, a sextant, an old
astronomy book and parts of a coffee percolator.
'What's been happening? Were the tins in danger of
going bad too? I want all this cleaned up, but before you do
that, you'll have to go to the shop for me.'
'Sure.'
Alexander went up to his bedroom and found that this,
at least, was much as he had left it. It seemed that when
Carl had called to feed the cat over the previous few days
when Alexander was busy, he had concentrated on the
kitchen. He could hear the clatter of the empty tins already
being thrown into the dustbin while he sat upstairs writing
out his shopping list on his vellum notepad. Marcus
Aurelius must have looked similar when writing his
Meditations.
Alexander went down and gave him the list, saying: 'I
want you to go to the grocer's and the butcher's.'
Carl studied the list, stroking his beard, with all the
gravity of reading a summons. Finally he seemed satisfied.
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'Oh, and will you stop off on the way and get me a bottle
of kaolin and morphine?'
Carl scratched his beard again and murmured: 'Mmm...it
might be tricky, Alexander. I was in there only last week,
but I'll do my best.'
'I'll write you out a prescription, in that case.'
'What do I do if I can't get what you want, Alexander?'
'Oh, just get whatever you see fit.' The same applied
here as it did when Alexander shopped carelessly in Marks
& Spencer.
'Right, I'll be as quick as I can.'
'Splendid.'
Carl returned about an hour later, having performed
these tasks with the usual sluggishness. Alexander
hurriedly relieved him of the kaolin and morphine bottle
and took a swig at it, which made his lips white with
kaolin. 'Did you get everything?'
'Well, there was one little thing, Alexander. I was just
going to mention it. When I was in the butcher's and I gave
him the list, he said that he didn't have what I wanted, so I
asked him to give me whatever he thought best in its place.'
'Yes, well?'
'And so he gave me some kind of meat which he said
was very good value. Then he asked me what else I wanted.
After this, he just kept on saying, Anything else, sir?'
'So you bought half the shop, in other words?'
'Er, well I did have to dip into my own resources.'
'How much did it come to?'
'Er, £21.'
'Eh? You're kidding! Just at the butcher's?'
'Well, yes.'
Alexander was on his feet and glowering over Carl by
this time, bottle in hand.
'You're going to take the whole lot back and get a
refund....Either that, or you can pay me for it all yourself.'
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sole burden of which was that the JS men had usurped the
UAO's authority and had even created their own UAO,
which contravened what was contained in the purview of
the bricks.
When the RAOs' representatives heard this, they
produced a document which they said was a 'purple paper'.
This was, they said, similar to a House of Commons Bill, or
green paper, except that it did not require to be passed by
both houses before becoming law. They said that the JS
men had already given it civil assent, thereby making it
law.
The tribunal studied the paper, which began with an
introduction and stated that:
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Chapter Twenty-three
The next session was due to take place at the same time a
week later. The arrangements were the same as the week
before, except that Mr Patsy had been found and was
present; though it was decided to retain Carl as
Representative of the Union and to put Patsy on guard
outside.
'Well, I've got good news,' the younger RAOs'
representative beamed at him: 'The Bill's been accepted in
its present form. I had envisaged terrible amendments to
get it through. I have the purple paper here.'
Their enthusiasm was checked by the sudden crackle of
a two-way radio which the older representative pulled out
of his pocket and spoke into:
'2A290...384E1F...5296A.'
'Just a minute--who's he talking to?' Creame asked
suspiciously.
'It's a record of what's being said. It's a kind of verbal
shorthand, but in hexadecimal machine code. We at the
DSS have been trained to understand it so that it can go
straight into the computer. There's someone sitting in the
van at the bottom of the street keying it straight onto disk,'
the younger RAOs' 'representative' explained.
'Yes, some of the boys have moved exclusively in DSS
circles for so long that they can scarcely speak a word of
English. It's all DSS jargon with them now,' the older
RAOs' representative adjoined.
'10-4,' the reply fizzled back over the radio.
At that moment all hell broke loose. From somewhere
upstairs came a sound of shattering glass, followed by
shouting, scuffles and footsteps.
'What's happening?' asked Sir Glans Surpig.
'Come on, sir--come on! We're getting out!' said his
assistant, dragging him to his feet. Several bangs followed
by the sound of shattering glass coming from the front door
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'It could have been the JS men. What did they look like?'
'One of them had a gun, you said, Patsy?' said Creame.
'Yes.'
'It couldn't have been them, then. They don't usually
carry hardware.'
'Ministers?'
'--or PAOs sent by them. God help us if there's a posse
of PAOs up here.'
'What are PAOs?' Alexander asked Tileshed's friend.
'The Principal Adjudication Officers. The PAOs are a
ruthless band of cut-throats trained in 'anti'-terrorist
techniques who work in London for the Chief Adjudication
Officer. The CAO's staunchly loyal to the ministers, by
tradition. He's done us no favours.
'If the PAOs are up here, it spells trouble. Either he'll
have sent them, or, worse still, he'll be with them. We could
have a civil war on our hands. He won't like being usurped
by the RAOs or UAO alike.'
'What does this CAO chap look like?' asked Alexander.
'Hard to say, there's been that many conflicting reports
about him, but the general consensus of opinion is that he's
got a long, bright red beard and is nick-named Redbeard.'
'So what do we do?' Creame asked anxiously.
'Give me a minute to work it out.' The RAO thought and
then sprang for the telephone. He got through to Tileshed
senior and asked him to come straight round on an urgent
matter, but warned him to take care, because he suspected
that the PAOs would be after him. He said that he didn't
want to go into any detail over the phone.
When Tileshed senior did arrive, he was admitted after
giving a secret knock and explained the fact that there were
two other old men accompanying him who, like himself,
were all attired in short green 'Peter Pan' cloaks, by saying
that he had had to cut short an initiation ceremony for
RAOs he had been in the middle of when the call came
through.
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'I'm sorry, but I had to ring; the PAOs are up,' his friend
explained.
'Oh my God!' Tileshed muttered, running a shaky old
hand over his feverish face.
'Exactly,' his friend rejoined.
'We'll have to stop them.'
'Yes, certainly. What do you have in mind?'
'I was thinking of a blockade by the Commissioners.'
The Commissioners were affiliated to the RAOs, many
having once been RAOs themselves. Their job is to decide
difficult appeal cases that are thought to rest upon a point
of law, having been first referred to them through the
appeal tribunal by the appellant, by and with the leave and
consent of the chairman.
'So what went wrong?' Hoffman asked.
'By and large, I would imagine the PAO or the Oracle
has pulled a coup d'état. You see, what I was thinking was
that it was strange that the Oracle should tell you to form a
tribunal,' said Tileshed.
'Why's that?' asked Creame.
'Because of this: one man had to represent the rich and
another man had to represent the poor. Yet a third had to
represent a union between the two. Yet, I argue, that a
union between the two would cancel each other.'
'He said that we would never vanquished be until the
tribunal consisted of less than three,' Creame said.
'But it had to consist of less than three, because the third
man cannot take office until the Day of Judgement, not
until then will the rich be joined with the poor,' Tileshed
put forward.
'Ah, but just a minute,' Creame said, perking up slightly.
'The third man was Carl, but as usual, he said nothing. He
couldn't make his mind up about anything.'
'Then how on earth can you reach a decision? The
interests of the rich in social security matters must always
run contrary to the interests of the poor, since it is the rich
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who have to give to the poor. Properly run, one man would
say 'yes'; the other 'no'; and the third would not be allowed
to sit: so no majority decision could be reached,' Tileshed
contested.
'Ah, yes, but Carl, although he sat, didn't actually say
anything,' Alexander threw in eagerly.
'It doesn't matter. Even if the rich and the poor could
agree about, say what you agreed about on in the presence
of Sir Glans, you're still at loggerheads. According to
section 19, subsection 3 of the Tribunal and Injuries Act
1971 (Chapter 62):
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'What the hell does all that shit mean?' Creame shouted.
'It means that they can do what the hell they like.'
'You might be covering up for the JS men, of course.
Your son was involved with them,' Creame pursued.
'It was he, once he found out about the will from your
mother, Alexander, who defected to them with his strong
ideals and told them where to find you. He precipitated the
storming of the ship masquerading as JS Inspectors. We
were both on different sides of the fence. The JS men split
us up,' Tileshed said sadly.
At that moment the phone rang. It was one of Tileshed's
informers on the line to say that the ministers had decided
to declare UDI if the Oracle's ring was returned to them.
'What does that mean?' Alexander said, crestfallen.
'It means that the ministers have conceded defeat.
They've given us RAOs complete control over our regions.
For the time being, at least, we are once again strong, free
from the scourge of the Chief Adjudication Officer and
other centralists.'
'--if you give them the ring,' Creame put in.
'Yes, if we give them the ring.'
'What's so special about this bludy ring anyway?'
'You don't know?'
'It has magical properties, or something,' Alexander said.
'Oh, it has magical properties all right. It's been used to
blackmail the entire Cabinet for years, since it was stolen
off the ministers a long time ago,' Tileshed said. 'It's their
wedding-ring from their marriage to Satan. Once the
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door, taking the ring with him. The rest poured out after
him, but he flung the ring into the night, after a last,
appreciative look at it.
END.
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Appendix
DSS Schedule
394