And thus it came as no surprise whatsoever to me when, almost a year to the day after my experiences in Labacusha, I picked up the newspaper to enjoy a relaxing read after a very pleasant evening meal – (lovely buns!) – prepared for me as usual by the ever-reliable Mrs Miniter, and, once again, felt the blood begin to drain from my face as I discerned before my very eyes – in shimmering black bold type, such once more were the levels of my gathering anxieties – the words Strange Goings-on in County Cork Village, and composed myself as best I could to assimilate the bizarre details of the story as they unfolded before me. By all accounts, the local bank had been robbed no less than eleven times, and it appeared that of late beer and marijuana parties had become a regular occurrence in the town, but not clandestinely hidden away in some seemingly respectable suburb behind discreet Venetian blinds but in full view of the inhabitants as they went about their daily chores – on the village green itself! One youth when interviewed stated baldly that he did not care what the police or the priests said and that he was going to do his ‘own thing’ whether they liked it or not. A beautiful-looking young girl with all her life before her saw absolutely nothing wrong, it would seem, with brashly pronouncing that it was her express intention to earn her living by becoming a common prostitute as soon as she was old enough to take her leave of the village. As if this wasn’t enough, a roughneck who smugly described himself as a ‘Hell’s Angel’ magnanimously shared with the world the edifying information that nothing would give him quite so much pleasure as any occasion, in any public place or private establishment whatsoever (he was not choosy, he informed us), which might provide him with an opportunity to, as he quaintly termed it, ‘bust heads’. Behind this explosion of poorly tended face-fungus and unkempt leather, I gloomily noted the outline of a blazing building, which valiant firemen were doing their level best to quench.
By the time I made for my bed, there was little doubt in my mind as to who was behind this latest manifestation of creeping entropy or whatever label one might care to put on it, and a few well-placed telephone calls the following morning only served to confirm my worst suspicions. It transpired that Cooley had been transferred from a violence-ridden hamlet in the west (where faction-fighting, unknown for generations, had erupted again with a vengeance – 1,300 people being hospitalized over one two-day period) to this unfortunate, selfsame village only weeks before! As I replaced the receiver, my heart beat in my chest like a bellows and the blood coursed through my palpitating veins like some veritable crashing Niagara. Cigarette upon cigarette I smoked, pacing the Axminster and cracking my knuckles until even the mild-mannered Mrs Miniter could take no more and cried: ‘Stop that! Stop that, your grace! Stop it now, I tell you!’
I apologized profusely to her and seated myself in my Chesterfield as at last I felt a cool, refreshing calm descending over me. A cool calm that whispered: ‘This time you’ll have to act. You know that, your grace – don’t you?’
It is not with any pride I report that barely five minutes after my foot touched the surface of the main street of Bunacash, in the county of Cork, I found myself propositioned by a gum-chewing teenager in a blouse or shirt so flimsy that it barely seemed to exist at all, who promised to show me one or two things I would have only read about in books, and it was all – God forgive me! – I could do not to slap her face right there and then to bring her back to her senses as I held her against the wall and cried: ‘What is going on here! Who put you up to this!’ But I could see that she was so high on drugs that I would succeed in prising no information of any worth out of her. I knew there was nothing for it but to make straight for the presbytery to confront my quarry once and for all. Discarding my shrieking, giddy charge, I hastily gathered my skirts about me and stormed uncompromisingly down the main street.
I was heartened by my firm sense of purpose and resolution, or at least I understood myself to be until I flung the front door of the presbytery open and there to my horror beheld what I had long feared and suspected – a sight so repellent that I can scarcely bring myself to describe it here. There, before my very eyes, draped across the chaise longue – like some hideous oriental puzzle of flesh – in a pose which can only be described as ‘grotesque’ and exuding a seductive lotus-eating lassitude, were any number of nubile young women in various states of undress, blearily laughing their heads off and clearly under the influence of some soporific narcotic. Enthusing pathetically as the Devil himself, sporting a clerical collar but bereft of any other form of human garb or clothing of any kind, blasphemed wildly as he sprang wildly about the room in an abominable, mocking gavotte, his smoking manhood lividly erect before him. ‘Say you worship me, my sweet ones!’ I heard him cackle. ‘Worship for ever He Who Destroys!’
The sight of those once innocent eyes as they slid to the floor before him was more than I could bear. ‘NO!’ I cried, leaping into the air and catching him firmly by the horns, falling across the coffee table (upon which were casually discarded any number of glossy magazines happily displaying further preposterously interlocking combinations of pink-hued female flesh). I – from whence I found my strength to this day I do not know – I began to pummel him furiously without restraint about his charcoal-coloured razor-toothed visage, crying hysterically – for it is no lie – I was close to losing my reason – ‘No, Cooley! No more, you hear me! You have destroyed enough lives! This for you is the end of the road! Do you hear me? Do you hear me – Emperor of Hell!’ With all the resources I could humanly muster, I continued to lay forcefully about him, using his horns as a grip whilst I brought his head into contact with the floor. Had he been but human my work would, within minutes have been complete. But Packie Cooley was not human. Indeed, he was so far from that condition that the mortal mind can only begin to imagine it, as I discovered when I looked up from my handiwork only to find, with a gradually growing sickening sensation of hopelessness, that he was standing virtually unscathed adjacent to the drinks cabinet sipping a brightly coloured viscous liquid, as though some deranged lounge-lizard, enquiring with one raised eyebrow as to whether I was finished yet. Such was the feeling of despair – not to mention physical exhaustion – that my head slumped lifelessly to my chest and I could bear no more of his understated taunts, his limp-wristed, degenerate admonitions to the now reassembling pyramid of alabaster-pale flesh, whose laughter accelerated inside my mind as I lay there, prone and red-eyed, ineffectual, empty, for all to see. As in a dream, I perceived them begin to advance upon me, the irregular cracks upon the white ceiling slowly converging as his razor teeth shone, his grey fingers approaching as if to stroke my cheek towards Hades and the eternal boatman, the only recollection remaining to me, consumed as I was now with exhaustion and – to my shame! – naught but a longing for oblivion, being that of my soutane’s forcible removal and the Prince of Blackness standing over me, rubbing his night-dark hands with glee as the transformed figures – for they surely must once have been women – cavorted, shrieking, waving their arms as they gleefully inhaled lungfuls of the purplish smoke that by now had filled the room.
*
When I awoke, all was silent once more, for they had vanished and everything was in its place as if I had somehow wandered into an establishment which, with the absolute minimum of effort on the part of anyone, would somehow always succeed in garnering first prize in any presbytery-of-the year competition. It was absolutely immaculate. As I composed myself, I endeavoured to piece together the series of events which had led to my abandonment in a totally unfamiliar environment, flushed and soutane-less, and was succeeding to some extent in piecing together the many ill-fitting components of the jigsaw when suddenly I became aware of a sealed cream manila envelope at my elbow, which I opened with trembling hands. I had good reason, as I within moments began to realize, to feel apprehensive, for the contents of that envelope fashioned for me a prison which, albeit with invisible bars, would soon prove itself to be as impregnable an Alcatraz or any high-security place of incarceration as those
of a fiercely custodial frame of mind have yet to dream up. For the words which I read upon that fine, unstained stationery informed me – with not the slightest hint of equivocation – that if I ‘made the slightest attempt’ to ‘follow his “Nocturnal Grace” ever again’ – and here I experienced a particular frisson of arctic coldness, for the word ‘ever’ was both italicized and in bold type – he would have no hesitation in activating the diabolic genes which he and his ‘lady friends’ had implanted within me as I slept, the consummate consequence of which would be that, helpless to prevent myself, I would find myself running amok in the streets and villages of Ireland, murdering people, robbing and looting shops, selling drugs and burning down churches and people’s houses. So, his eerie scrawl concluded (even it too seemed redolent of anthracite), if I had any sense, I would know what to do and remain for quite a sizeable portion of the foreseeable future where I belonged – safely within the confines of the Bishop’s Palace, with my mouth securely shut.
*
His career since that awful night has been handsomely productive. Rarely a day goes past but someone is shot or pitchforked and only yesterday £150 million worth of narcotics was discovered in Newtownburkett. Occasionally I will switch on the television to find him confronting me once more, discoursing freely on the topic of ‘young people’ and describing with tented fingers how he considers Jesus to be his ‘special friend’. At times like that it is all I can do not to weep or put my carpet slipper through the screen. For I know that no matter what I do, or what labyrinthine plan of action I formulate, it is clear that I have been trumped. How can I pretend it to be otherwise when he has implanted within me what can only be described as the equivalent of a nuclear time bomb? Even worse, he has, through some form of hypnosis, succeeded in convincing many of my fellow clergymen that I am jealous of him and that it is for this reason and this alone I had been spending my time spreading the wickedest of rumours, and slandering his name at every available opportunity. At various conferences, I have become aware of this innuendo – mutterings of ‘mad because of his popularity’ and ‘because he hasn’t it in him himself, you see’ spring to mind. It is with a heavy heart I acknowledge that such asides and corner-of-the-mouth insinuations persist to this day. Only last week, it was my misfortune to overhear a colleague assert his opinion that ‘having got the bishopric you’d think he’d have enough without bad-mouthing a good priest like Packie Cooley’. There can be little doubt but that he has succeeded in performing his work well. The talk of him succeeding me here in the palace (his sights ultimately being set upon the highest ecclesiastical office in the land, of course!) has already begun and rarely a night goes by but I envisage him leering at me from the corner of the room, waving coyly as he adjusts the red silk cape and rakishly tilts his cardinal’s hat. And thus it is destined to continue – there is an infuriating inevitability about it! – night after night until (to begin with!), he has himself firmly ensconced here by the fireside, with Mrs Miniter innocently providing him with scones and teacake as she once did me.
No, for me there is no option now but to bite my lower lip and pass on. Pass on, my only company on the solitudinous peregrinations that are to be my lot. Heavily – unbearably – burdened within by the sad knowledge that only I possess. The sad knowledge that the most influential clergyman in all of Ireland today is none other than the Devil himself and, even sadder still, knowing in my episcopal heart and soul that, for every drug addict and degenerate sex baron brazenly disporting themselves about streets once a paradigm for all civilized society, there is no one to be deemed responsible but me.
After all, readers – I ordained the fucker.
The Hands of Dingo Deery
For many years I have lived alone, within the four grey walls of this narrow room, the tremulous silence intermittently broken by the tube trains which cut through the tar-black night with their cargo of ghostly, pallid faces, as if in relentless, heartbroken pursuit of something lost a long time ago, just as the peaceful harmony which once pervaded my entire being has been bitterly wrested from me.
How many years have I paced these accursed floorboards, imploring any deity who cares to listen to return to me the bountiful tranquillity which once was mine and end for ever this dread torment which greets me like a rapacious shade each waking day!
And now, as I stand here by the window, watching with leaden, emotion-drained eyes, directly below me, a single line of mocking, waltzing calligraphy; at last they confront me, the jagged ciphers which, all this time, I have feared would one day rise up from my blackest dreams like wicked flares from the pit of hell: THE SECRETS OF LOUIS LESTRANGE: CAN YOU SURVIVE THE 1,137 WHACKS???
*
My nightmare began some thirty years ago in a small town in Ireland, not far from Mullingar and quite near Dundalk. I had come to Barntrosna to spend the summer with my uncle, who was the headmaster in the local school. He had of late acquired some measure of fame as an ornithologist and it gave me great pleasure indeed to accompany him on his regular lectures in various halls and venues throughout the county. It is not my intention to imply that my duties were in any way onerous for, in truth, beyond the simple erection of the screen and the operation of the slide projector, there was little for me to do. I carried the briefcase containing my learned relative’s notes, it is true, but such was his erudition that he made little use of what he termed ‘needless paraphernalia’, and it was of such insignificant weight that it could have been comfortably borne to the Temperance Hall (in which establishment it was his practice to deliver his orations on the habits of our feathered friends) on the back of the average housefly. What a privilege it was for me to turn the metal disc yet another semicircle as, in basso profundo, he would declaim, ‘Slide, please!’ while his neighbours and friends looked on admiringly.
As I look back on those days now, they always seem to me suffused with the colour of burnished copper and within them time does not appear to move at all.
Afterwards I would stroll casually through the cooling streets, making the acquaintance of the elderly gentlemen who whiled away their hours on the Summer Seat discussing the imminent ruin of the country and the hypothetical prowess of assorted thoroughbreds in contests that had yet to be.
I would regularly share a lemonade with them, perhaps on occasion pass around a packet of Player’s. Laughter and an unbending faith in the goodness of our fellow man was a common bond amongst us all, and there was little doubt in my mind that where I had the good fortune to find myself was indeed the most idyllic town on earth. And had you taken it upon yourself to share your intimations that darker times would soon be discerned on the horizon, I would have extrapolated from your spurious, clandestine misanthropy nothing more than a bitter, small-minded and wholly despicable envy. I should have evinced scorn and packed you off about your business. For if ever a truth were spoken, it was that evidence of dissension in that sweet little hamlet there was none. Save perhaps the awesome figure of a well-known layabout by the name of Dingo Deery, who at odd intervals would appear wild-eyed in the doorway of the hall and bellow at the top of his voice: ‘Shut your mouth, Lestrange! What would you know about it! You wouldn’t know a jackdaw if it walked up to you and pecked your auld whiskey nose off!’ Whereupon he would spread his arms and assail the stunned, mute assembly: ‘You think he knows about birds? He knows nothing! Except how to beat up poor unfortunate scholars for not knowing their algebra! Look at these hands! Look at them, damn youse!’
When he had spoken these words, he would break into a sort of strangled weeping and raise his palms aloft, and indeed there were few present who could deny on first viewing those bruised pieces of flesh that they undoubtedly had seen wear and tear beyond reasonable expectation, even for someone of his social standing. ‘Cut to ribbons!’ he would cry hoarsely. ‘Cut to ribbons by Lestrange! Him and his sally rods! Oho yes – you were handy with them all right, Lestrange! But mark my words, you’ll pay for what you did to Dingo Deery – I can tell you that!
’ Then, with a maniacal cackle, his recalcitrant, cumbersome bulk would be forcibly ejected, the distasteful echo of his combative ululations lingering in the air for long afterwards.
But such incidents were indeed rare, and otherwise life proceeded serenely: Yuri Gagarin was in space, Player’s cost one and six and John Fitzgerald Kennedy was undoubtedly the possessor of the cleanest teeth in the Western hemisphere.
It was to be many years before the arrival of colour television and the first drug addicts.
*
The first day I met Mick Macardle, I knew instinctively all was not as it should have been. Deep within me, I heard a timorous voice cry: ‘Withdraw! Withdraw while you still can!’ The languid sunshine, however, and the soothing breeze of the early afternoon conspired in silence to usher away any such uncharitable and unnecessary suspicions.
But now, as I languish here in my one-room prison, forgotten in a city which remembers no names, my heart has crusted over and no such beguiling veils remain to blur my vision, and with staggering clarity I see what ought to have met my eyes in those days of benevolence-blinded myopia, a sight which, had I not been poked in those organs by two large metaphorical thumbs, should surely have swept through my soul like an arctic wind.
The thin cigar hung insolently out of the side of his mouth. A black raven’s wing of Brylcreemed hair fell ominously down over his alabaster forehead. His lips were two ignominious pencil strokes, his moustache not unlike a crooked felt-tipped marker line as it might be drawn by a small child. More than anything, however, what ought to have telegraphed to me the imponderable depth of the man’s reptilian nature was the slow slither of his arm about my shoulder, the hiss of his silky sibilants as he crooned into my ear: ‘Don’t worry about a thing!’ Then, out of nowhere, he would erupt into inexplicable torrents of laughter, the flat of his hand repeatedly falling on the broad of my back as he cried: ‘You leave it to Mick! I’ll take care of it!’