Anyway it all came to a head one afternoon when Snapper bounded up on both legs claiming that Nelson, who was sat nearby like a loaf of bread, had accused him of being a royalist.
‘This has gone far enough,’ shouted Professor Leap, and pointed at Nelson. ‘The number of delusions you’ve projected onto that poor hound it’s a wonder he hasn’t ignited like kindling under a laser. I’ll tell you how to prove whether this tormented animal speaks or not.’
Leap came up with the notion of attaching a voice-activated dictaphone to Nelson’s collar. If the mammal made a remark we would have proof positive of this phenomenon. Leap went ahead with the procedure and after a while the machine was removed and the results replayed as the household gathered to listen in sharp-eared and anxious silence. The recording began mundanely enough:
SNAPPER (shouting): Didn’t I tell you at fantastic expense I don’t care a straw for your opinions?
THE VERGER (shouting): And I know you’re a cocky, arrogant liar!
SNAPPER (shouting): You dare say that to my face?
THE VERGER (shouting): That’s where your ears and brain are housed unless I’m sadly mistaken!
FATHER (shouting): Not the drill, brother!
SNAPPER (shouting): I’ll kill him!
FATHER (shouting): Grab him, Cannon!
POOR MR CANNON (shouting): I’ll be dragged apart by lions before I’ll offer help [incoherent] obliterate all reason and kill [possibly ‘everyone’] each and every chance I get! All matter is localised in [sobs, a shriek]
SNAPPER (shouting): Get that bloody dog out of here!
FATHER (shouting): Snapper’s gone berserk, Cannon — put the dog out!
Amid further domesticities the back door was heard to slam, and here the tape took an unexpected turn. An unfamiliar voice was speaking, with only the peaceful hiss of trees as a background. The voice was almost inaudible, like a tiny child whispering into someone else’s ear. We strained to discern the words:
‘Once again I sit like an exhausted pimp at the doors of a Tangier whorehouse. How can these fools be used or forgiven. They laugh as everything of value is blasted beyond repair. Flinging objects and wasting my precious time. The so-called master and mistress — what a sham of a marriage. He at his drawingboard, dreading the hour she will slam out a meal from which all distinguishing marks have been removed. A chewed gauntlet, a challenge — identify this if you can. And he, an apparently sophisticated man, secretly eats wood to assuage his hunger. So ofcourse reason becomes a guilt-laced and occasional luxury. Leap has his skeleton professionally sharpened. Weeps with the aid of a stencil. Squeezes the world’s heart through his fingers like a flan. Knows as well as I do history’s a balloon-folder provoking jeers from the peanut gallery. Money’s elsewhere. Eye to the main chance. Eagerness personified. Rat up a drainpipe. Even when he thinks, he’s lying. Poor Mr Cannon — reckless dolt. Dares show his face in the village. Helix of social obligations. Bellows in the bar. Salty anecdotes concerning past embarrassments. Gored by a bull while standing aloof. Caught carmine-faced at bizarre crimes. Drinks like a king. Says he’s had enough when he crunches glass. Faces dawn like the Turin Shroud. Zinc-eyed in a ditch. Meek as a clubbed seal. Snapper though — there’s a fierce one. Man on a mission. Shaves with a blowlamp. Name’s a rash across the dynamite records. Ignorance run like a well-drilled army. Masturbates eleven times a day.’
Snapper went berserk and was wrestled immediately into a headlock. Adrienne was being discussed:
‘… playing Ophelia but on the quiet she manacles laughing boy to the bed and rides on his blank face — these so-called children are a mutant anomaly. There’s never been anything to stop laughing boy. It’s a tragedy he was ever allowed to take in the worldly snorkel of his thumb. His only speck of hope for salvation is embedded in the missing and hopelessly untraceable nose-tip of the Nile Sphinx. Nanny Jack — malevolently unresponsive. Paralysed on one side, boring on the other. No ambiguity there. The Verger. No more human than I am. Smoke inhabits his trousers. Very occasionally he opens his rolltop desk and releases a creature for exercise — a live trilobite the size of a telephone. Fiddles its legs in the dim light. The only thing capable of making the Verger laugh — think about that. Burst — total dementia. Miracle he’s upright. Only man I know who can strut and whimper at the same time. Danger to himself and others. Corners children. Sinister and panting. Toothful grimace. Reads Wordsworth. Say no more. This place — a triumph over logic and syntax, funded by fraud and the threat of violence. Gargoyles screaming obscenities. God have mercy on us all.’
There was a brief pause, the sound of a door, and we were back in the kitchen:
THE VERGER (shouting): — wraps his gun in cashmere!
SNAPPER (shouting): I’ll kill you!
FATHER (shouting): Grab his legs, Cannon!
POOR MR CANNON (shouting): Minister for trade [inaudible] face like a trout [crashing noises] retribution –
Father pressed the off-button calmly. ‘Well there you have it, gentlemen — food for thought.’
‘Food for thought you bastard?’ said Snapper, incredulous. ‘It was the dog — talking. D’you propose to stand there pretending otherwise?’
‘All I heard was an unfamiliar voice giving the game away. Could have been any one of us, playing the fool.’
‘I recall that conversation,’ stated the Verger, ‘regarding Snap’s garbage-ridden existence. Poor Mr Cannon shoved the dog out but did not close the door correctly. Moments later Nelson re-entered and began staring again. These are the facts.’
‘Laughing boy’s window,’ Leap announced, looking me in the eye, ‘is directly above the kitchen door.’
‘Laughing boy!’ bellowed Snapper, grabbing me.
After five hours of futile denial, I was left tied to a tree near the lake. ‘Think on the anguish and trouble your childish trick has caused,’ ordered Leap as they departed. Standing there alone, all I could think of was how much I needed Adrienne to sit on my face. I had indeed been at my window when Nelson was standing below. I had whispered nothing, but had heard it all.
Now Nelson skittered over and took up a post a short distance away, watching my struggles and smiling in resolute silence.
It was the longest afternoon of my life.
HOSPITALITY
Colour in reverse, Lord Brakes and Lady Marjoram were like something grown in an ashtray. Next to them Roger Lang resembled a fascinating individual. Algernon Brakes pressed his eyebrows nightly in a copy of The Pickwick Papers. Even his aura was made of tweed. Lady Marjoram seemed unaware that her gloves were removable, and appeared to be wearing a marquee. As welcome as a vase on a butcher’s slab, their very shadow inspired in us all a valiant disgust.
They insisted on visiting us as though they were neighbours and perhaps they were. With admirable restraint we responded to their knock by ducking under the windows and if they entered we hid as best we could. Brakes and Marjoram would wait for hours in the kitchen under the deep ticking of the clock, or staring blankly up at Ramone the moose-head, over whom we had long since pushed a bucket of cement which had dried to form a permanent nosebag. Trudging subdued through the silent house, the pair would peer through doorways and then give eachother vacant looks. A visit to the storage attic was spent tearing through giant webs, crashing into disconcertingly lifelike marionettes and so on.