S I X

Don Bishop’s town house had the stylistic features of a former age. The property was fully modern due to costly restoration. An August evening enhanced its pseudo Georgian elegance making it look ageless and almost eternal.

Percy Fenton received a frisson of pleasure seeing figures and faces at the upstairs windows. Jenny let him in and the sight of haversacks ropes and ice picks reminded him of his canvas bag. He kissed her on both cheeks. He laughed and hugged her and she tugged at his beard.

Welcome you great bear, Jenny held one of his hands for longer.

You look fantastic. Come on do a twirl, he laughed at his own suggestion.

You silver-tongued old devil trying to charm a girl into submission, she poked his stomach and took away her other hand from his. How much? she asked with an open palm a swagger of the hips and pushing out one cheek with her tongue.

O you’re frisky as ever Jenny, he laughed.

I’m not in bad shape for forty, she put a finger to lips silencing the additional number. How’s Imelda and your beautiful daughters in far off Carlinwood? Why dont you ever get Imelda to come with you?

Well, he looked down, I think Imelda likes a break from me. She encourages me to go on my sorties more than I want to.

Don’s voice called from upstairs where the shuffling of feet and talking got louder.

Send Fenton up here!

Did you have dinner? she asked quietly as he put a hand on the stair railing.

I did, he lied.

Anyway we’re going to look after you, she smiled at his lie of convenience.

Upstairs he recognised DB Poboyler and of course Don who introduced DB’s partner and another friend dressed in fashion gear conspicuous among the casualness of the other two women present. Doris Gerrard manageress of a chain of bookshops talked with Ivor and DB about a printing company.

DB had a finger in several pies. He was a perfectionist copy editor occasional book reviewer. He had written advertising copy and was a successful literary agent for Sci Fi and Fantasy fiction. He and Dorris Gerrard were known to be more than longstanding friends. The others were from the lucrative professions and were preparing an assault on the Himalayas to coincide with the millennium only months away. Some had climbed Snowdonia Mount Blanc and one chap had got no higher than the Cairngorms. There was an agreed in-joke that Don would join the expedition. He had prop forward experience, Ivor said. It would toughen him up for the new century, someone else laughed. The climbers had gone through an exercise not far from the city during the morning and afternoon which gave added reality to their proposed Himalayan adventure.

Everyone present knew about Don’s previous marriages especially the first from his twenties which ended in a particularly disharmonious break-up. Jenny understood his extrovert personality. He ordered people around playfully, they laughed and agreed that he and Jenny made a great partnership under one roof. She listened to his loudness and long speeches with an understanding look and laughed with a placid face at the under Graduate jokes, few of them were new and all of them anti-feminist. He had once put an Ad in the Personal column of an evening newspaper: Lady golfer to go the full round including a hole in one must be good in the rough for man with nine iron and his own balls. She only endured his hangovers because he drank festively at most. He might binge for two days including eating and then remain as sober as a hermit for a month. His drinking was part of nostalgia for lost wild and often dangerous weekends of youth. He’d survived without major tragedy and latterly getting loaded under controlled conditions made him feel young with the advantage of age and the consequences were a morning after thumbing a copy of Hundred Best Cures For A Hangover. Having read Patrick Hamilton’s Hangover Square drink issues were clear, sober and only slightly drunk; whereas for the hero of that book clarity of mind was exacerbated by drink leading to doom. Don often used a line from Hamilton having filled out a form scribbled a cheque or signed his signature: ‘It may turn out to be the best thing I’ve written and it’s certainly the best thing I’ve read’.

Percy was ordered to cancel his Bed & Breakfast booking at the Railway Hotel by Don and Jenny. He asked about his canvas bag. He wasnt concerned about the newspaper, he added laughing. Don expected him to call for his luggage after the seminar but when he didnt return to the bookshop Don the good ole soul had brought the bag home. It was downstairs. They had a quick word about Julian Bone’s shedfilled library and then Percy went downstairs to phone the hotel.

An offhand reference to Percy’s piece of luggage shed supreme importance on the subject – as is often the case in conversations over a few drinks – and every piece of equipment belonging to the climbers was brought upstairs for inspection. This included ropes which had ornamental beauty and ice picks which had sculptural presence. The music changed from Nigel Kennedy to Duke Ellington and Ivor and Susan in her haute couture put on a floor show. There were cheers and whistles at her pirouettes showing a scant red undergarment above tanned thighs since she was fresh off a flight from Antibes. Ivor shadowed her dance shouting about their pooled expenses for three sweltering weeks away.

Susan’s party piece went out of vogue and Don started up a train around the room. The train somehow changed into a climbing expedition which gained in reality with the use of climbing harness and ropes. Eventually five survivors remained tied to Don performing a bizarre ballet of mountaineering.

This may well become twenty first century dance, Susan prophesied from in front of the fireplace to those who rested on chairs and the sofa watching the display.

Don’s ensemble used the floor as if scaling a precipitous peak. After many orbits Don unhooked himself from the rope and collected an ice pick for added realism. This caught on with the others giving increased spectacle to the performance. Five ice pick wielding dancers scaling the north-west face of the floor to a Duke Ellington soundtrack. The drunken dancers miraculously avoided injuring each other. The double dagger look of the ice picks was menacing and the more sober spectators would have preferred the ice picks were made of plastic instead of steel. As one ice pick clanged off another Don added a more daring edge crawling along the floor. As a coup de grace he raised his pick and stabbed the floor with a dull thud. The point stuck in the polished pine precisely as it had been fashioned to do. It wasnt enough that the floor shook with the vibrations of this primitive dance but the others imitated him and ice pick after ice pick pierced the floor without cracking a board. Each incision only made a nail size hole no greater than if they had hopped around wearing golf shoes with new Slazenger studs.

Jenny watched with relative ease. There wasnt a spare ice pick in the house left at that stage in any event. So the dance of the ice picks took its course. No one was skewered or cut. No avalanche of snow or in this case bottles and glasses fell. No tempers flared up as would have with Don’s first wife who might have fantasised about being high in the Himalayas with him dangling below her on a strained rope as she gripped an ice pick choosing a lean section of his back for a fast deep incision.

The dancers won cracking applause and wiped perspiration from their faces. Ivor was well stewed by then and while a young man chatted to Susan the malapropism or more accurately the ivorism of the evening was created. He asked one of the mountaineers: Say if you are trying to estimate the fungability of a Himalayan value? What Ivor had attempted to ask included something about a Himalayan valley not value. Threatened by a lack of rock climbing ability he pursued a lengthy interview with the climber and had posed a question of ultimate gobbledygook content.

What did ‘fungability’ mean? Jenny asked Don and Percy and DB who tried to discover if the word was a word. Several dictionaries had no listing of the word. Percy defined fungability as the art or action of being able to funge. But what did ‘funge’ mean? Don said Ivor could have meant ‘fudge’ as in fudging dodging avoiding. Did he mean what was the possibility of avoiding a dangerous Himalayan valley? Ivor wasnt much help saying he didnt mean that at all. Ivor stuck to his guns. Not his ‘gums’ as perhaps one would have expected from someone totally drunk.

Is an inkoholic a prolific novelist who writes on foolscap with an ink pen? DB Poboyler asked his image in the mirror over the fireplace and broke into hysterical laughing. The party was becoming nonsensical under the influence of alcohol. This was a minor confufflement compared to a scene outside in the street. A young man picked litter from a bin and scattered it around kicking the bigger pieces. The young man shouted opened and closed gates along the street, drummed on parked cars with his fists and most dangerous of all was his lunging (lungability?) across the street bringing cars to a sudden stop. Then Jenny recognised the freak in the street as Don’s nephew Todd Yorke.

Percy and DB briskly followed Don downstairs and they eventually led Todd pinioned into the room. First off there was a shouting match between Don and Todd. Fairly strong language was used by the Bookseller and the Medical student. Todd bragged that his hopes had been to connect with a speeding car because he didnt fancy living any longer. His drunken rant articulated with strangled pauses ended the festive gathering. Susan held his hand and he hectored her about Carmel an expert Prescriptions pharmacist. Carmel and he were finished kaput finito terminal. He had refused to sit through a movie which was a milky cup of tea in his view and Carmel found this attitude mean spirited. They left the others watching the movie and outside the cinema failed to achieve a settlement of their differences over a pizza of peace. Todd drank the most wine in Leaning Tower of Pizza almost two bottles red as blood, he insisted. He waved away questions and guests made their goodbyes to Don and Jenny.

Percy broke the silence which lay heavily on Todd Don and Jenny. He believed that the cause of Todd’s distemper was the result of excessive wine consumption. Jenny volunteered to brew up her best coffee. The talk was slow repetitious and restricted which would have rendered Ivor’s earlier piece of drinkspeak almost rational. They were sozzled befuddled tired and bewildered. Todd got one of Don’s prize cigars and lit it up as if it were a cheap cigarette.

He agreed that excessive wine consumption had combusted inside of him into a fit of splenetic angst and frenzy. The wine had boiled his liver mixed with the passions of the blood and erupted among the debris of the initial dispute with his paramour consequently leading to a strong desire to jump off a bridge or blow his brains out or inflict gaseous inhalation under insulated conditions ensuring a comatose demise from asphyxiation and further down the road rigor mortis.

Percy submitted the humanly acceptable thesis about what was wrong with a fellow cursing the day he was born as well as this vale of tears this valley (not value!) of life within shouting distance of the valley of the shadow of death. Wasn’t the Good Book filled with people who tore their hair and garments and poured ashes on their heads. Jeremiah Job Noah King David Solomon even Moses in his youth.

Don demanded to know the cause of his distress. Was it College? Life didnt depend on his becoming a doctor. Yet his recent exam results were everything a student could wish for. While he lived in the city whether he became a busker or a brat he was still under his uncle’s guardianship even though he was over twenty one. Jenny offered Todd coffee. Realising they now had another guest she went to phone Mrs Fuller and at this late hour. Still it had to be done.

Todd began a choppy monologue about his recent horror of discovering that the human body seemed highly corruptible combustible and perishable so where within the tottering structure could any knowledge claim an imperishable death defying substance or transcendental element or elements?

Over to you Percy, Don said sipping the coffee.

Well, Percy inhaled loudly, I can’t discourse on the finer points of medicine philosophy theology and science at this late hour. However while I defend your right to free will we havent heard any logical reason from you, except some views on anatomy of a savagely reductive nature.

Who are you to lecture me, Todd said nastily. For all I know you could be hiding behind a false beard talking about the Good Book and other goofology.

Don was quick to reprimand his nephew and demand assurances that he would not inflict any harm upon himself. Todd apologised to Percy but declined the guarantee about personal safety whereon Don intended to phone for medical services while Todd merely drew a finger across his own throat and convulsed into laughter. Jenny pressed him to drink some coffee and Todd this time was willing and asked for three lumps of cyanide in it. Another silence descended on the room or whatever way a silence falls it fell. Don paced the floor feeling depressed as he trod on the holes made by the ice picks. Percy drank his coffee like a trouper and mentioned the visit to Julian Bone in Moanbane View.

How many in total? asked Don in a stupor.

Let’s see it comes to a few thousand, was the answer after a long delay. I’m taking a few hundred myself, Percy added.

Are you opening a shop beyond in Carlinwood? Jenny inquired. It’s first come first served, Don said to her without looking. Todd?

What? the nephew grunted.

What about Carmel?

What about her, he stretched.

Could you Carmel and a few friends do a job for me?

When?

Actually to-morrow because you promised to tend the stall at the bookfair on Sunday. Remember? Well what about Monday then.

I suppose so, Todd shuffled in the chair. To-morrow is Saturday, he informed them superiorly, and I have to do the afternoon shift at the Garden Centre.

Jenny will you open at ten or when you can? A peevish faced Don was already booking a late sleep in for himself. Last day of the seminars we might do more good festival business? he looked at Percy hollowly.

Let’s call it a night I’d sleep on that floor I’m so tired now, Jenny said and Don looked down at the ice pick marks wiped his mouth and was glad Todd hadnt noticed them.

KEVIN KIELY
Special to the Arbiter

Related posts:

1. Journey East, Part 3
2. Journey East, Cont.
3. ‘Journey East,’ part five