'I am moving. Look, I am more.' As I clench my teeth in an effort to control them and my mind, which feels as if it's finally about to overload, Mark says 'Oh, you mean the car. Simon wants to speak to you.'
'Simon,' Natalie says with patience so dramatic I hope it's directed at Mark. 'You're in the university, yes? Whenever you're ready we're outside.'
'I'm not insside, nno.' My jaws are playing at castanets again. 'I'm outtside the mmain enttrance.'
She's silent, and I'm afraid she has given up on me until she says 'I know you need to catch up on yourself after your travels. Do you think you might not be in Manchester?'
'That's riddiccullous.' The words aren't worth the struggle, because I'm no longer addressing the phone but flourishing it at a taxi on the far side of the road. I almost topple over my luggage in a slapstick bid to ensure that the driver notices me. The taxi executes a screeching turn surely too fast for the icy road. I retreat for fear it may mount the kerb, but it halts alongside. 'Want me after all?' the driver shouts.
It's the same man. My entire body quakes with my struggles to control my voice. 'I'm ssorry to ttroubble you,' I call. 'Would you mmind telling me exacttly where I am?'
'In a bad way, aren't you, chum? Been having too much fun? Didn't know who you are and now you don't know where.'
'I know both. It's someone else that doesn't.' I brandish the phone and jab a finger at it, almost cutting Natalie off. 'My partner says she's waiting in front of the university. I don't see her, do you?'
'Which one?'
He can't mean which partner, but the question still disorients me. Could Mark's directions from the Internet have done the same to his mother? 'Natalie,' I say and take an apprehensive breath. 'Are you certain you're in Manchester?'
'I'm looking straight at the name on the front of the building. There isn't much wrong with my driving or Mark's navigation either. Now, Simon, if you've finished whatever you're doing...'
I wave the phone as I call 'She's insisting she's at Manchester University.'
'Which one?'
I feel as if the conversation has backed up, and his unintelligible grin doesn't help. 'Manchester, England,' I say through whatever rictus is baring my teeth. 'The world. Space. The ccosmos.'
'There's two.'
The throbbing of my brittle head makes my vision gutter. 'Two Manchesters in England?' I ask, if I'm not pleading.
'Two universities. This and the Met up the road.'
I lower the mobile, which I've been holding aloft like a feeble torch. 'You'll laugh. Turns out – '
'I heard. Which way are you?'
While Natalie hasn't accepted my offer of amusement, the taxi driver seems to have. His face is wobbling with silent jollity, which spreads pallor around his mouth and up his cheeks. I try to ignore this while I ask 'Which way does she need to come?'
As he points ahead, I refuse to believe that his gloved fingertip squashes more than twice the width of the finger against the windscreen. 'Drive out of town,' I advise Natalie and pocket the mobile as my teeth start chattering again. 'Thanks for your assassistance.'
The taxi performs a turn so violent that the driver seems in danger of leaving his face behind. The light from a streetlamp catches the number plate, which appears to be blank, more like a rectangular display of teeth. As the taxi speeds into the distance I grip the handle of my case with all my strength. I feel as if I'm holding onto the sight of the road while I battle to regain control of my thoughts. I'm afraid that when I greet Natalie and Mark my words may spurt forth as nonsense, the kind I've been reading too much of, not to mention the sort to which I was reduced in the deconsecrated chapel. Neither my jaw nor the rest of me has finished shivering when the Punto draws up on the far side of the road.
All too soon a gap in the traffic lets me drag my suitcase to the car. 'Well, that was an adventure,' Natalie says. 'Let's hope it's our last for a while.'
'I sick on that.'
Is this how it sounds? She gives me an uncertain blink as she opens the boot. 'Do you want to sit in front with mum?' Mark calls.
'Whoever's navigating should,' says Natalie.
'I'll spay in the back with nobody's mind. I made those.'
Presumably she hears me proposing to doze in the back if nobody minds. Mark can scarcely wait for me to buckle up before he asks 'What did you find out about him?'
'Een ugh.' I don't mean this as a rebuke, but the mirror shows me how his eyes flicker. 'Tall crater,' I mumble and let my eyelids droop, and feel as if I'm being carried into blankness. The prospect isn't blank for long; I might almost be watching some form of creation. I can see the notes Lane made on the way to becoming Tubby Thackeray, but now they're inscribed on a single scroll. However many of them are little more than nonsense, there's no question that they were in the handwriting I saw in the margins of Surréalistes Malgré Eux, a connection that strikes me as so meaningless I can only laugh. 'What's funny?' someone says, and then they're gone.
FORTY-ONE - RITES
As the celebrant approaches the altar he lifts his robes high, exposing his naked posterior. The congregation responds with emissions of wind, simulated or actual. The priest fills the chalice as he pleases and sprinkles all those present with his blessing. He (whose sex may be obscured if he is rouged and costumed as a woman) then leads them in confession. The more outrageous the offences, the more they are greeted with laughter and applause. 'Kyrie eleleleison,' he prompts, speaking not in tongues but as a sheep. Once all have brayed Glaury-a the readings are given in no known lingo, and the greatest senselessness is hailed with Allelallelulila. 'Credo in nihil,' the priest may then improvise, unless he chooses to utter less sense. His gabblings will be designed to confound the responses of the faithful, leaving them in mirthful disarray. 'Dominus go, piss come,' he may supplicate, while in place of the Sanctus he may intone 'Thank us, Dominus Deus Azathoth.' Hard on the heels of the Pater Jester comes the Agnus Daaay-eee, during which he may pretend, if only that, to sodomise a lamb. The excesses of the Communion, however, have been stricken from the record and from the common consciousness, except for the final cry of 'Mumpsimus'. To release the congregation the priest hisses 'Eassy misssa esst,' and the worshippers respond 'Deo gratiarse' as they join him in prancing around the altar and through the aisles. Further less restrained activities may ensue before all escape from the church or cathedral.
I'm even more unsure what Lane meant to do with all this. It reads as if he was preparing it for publication or as the text of a lecture, but how could he have imagined he would get away with either? I don't like to think that his research would have affected his mind. The conclusion seems unavoidable, however, as his notes progress.
The Black Mass at its most blasphemous? A saturnalian attempt to deride the Christian ritual? Neither, yet all is connected. This is simply an account of the Feast of Fools, that celebration which was held for centuries at the darkest time of the year, when the skies are emptiest and the world feels closest to the void. No less than Saturnalia or Yuletide, this feast sought to occupy and drive back that darkness. Or may its purpose have been forgotten like the nature and identity of its instigator? What if its intention was to reach back to a state which preceded any rite?
What indeed? I'm losing my grasp of the argument, such as it is. Does the last sentence refer to the ritual or to its creator? Surely there must have been more than one of the latter, even if Lane speculates that the tradition might have simply taken shape from chaos. Perhaps his archive doesn't consist entirely of fanciful nonsense, but the notes end up full of it or worse.