‘The sins of the spirit,’ he said reproachfully to his fourth glass of whisky before consulting the oracle once more. POSHELLS was followed by HEPOLP to be succeeded by SHHLPSPO which was even worse. The Rev St John Froude thrust his binoculars and the bottle of whisky aside and went down on his knees to pray for deliverance or at least for some guidance in interpreting the message. But every time he got up to see if his wish had been granted the combination of letters was as meaningless as ever or downright threatening. What, for instance, did HELLSPO signify? Or SLOSHHEEL? Finally, determined to discover for himself the true nature of the occurrence, he put on his cassock and wove off down the garden path to the boathouse.
‘They shall rue the day,’ he muttered as he climbed into the rowing boat and took the oars. The Rev St John Froude held firm views on contraception. It was one of the tenets of his Anglo-Catholicism.
In the cabin cruiser Gaskell slept soundly. Around him Sally made her preparations. She undressed and changed into the plastic bikini. She took a silk square from her bag and put it on the table and she fetched a jug from the kitchen and leaning over the side filled it with water. Finally she went into the toilet and made her face up in the mirror. When she emerged she was wearing false eyelashes, her lips were heavily red and pancake make-up obscured her pale complexion. She was carrying a bathing-cap. She crossed the door of the galley and put an arm up and stuck her hip out.
‘Gaskell baby,’ she called.
Gaskell opened his eyes and looked at her. ‘What the bell gives?’
‘Like it, baby?’
Gaskell put on his glasses. In spite of himself he did like it. ‘You think you’re going to, wheedle round me, you’re wrong…’
Sally smiled. ‘Conserve the verbiage. You turn me on, bio-degradable baby.’ She moved forward and sat on the bunk beside him.
‘What are you trying to do?’
‘Make it up, babykink. You deserve a cure.’ She fondled him gently. ‘Like the old days. Remember?’
Gaskell remembered and felt weak. Sally leant forward and pressed him down on to the bunk.
‘Surrogate Sally,’ she said and unbuttoned his shirt.
Gaskell squirmed. ‘If you think…’
‘Don’t think, kink,’ said Sally and undid his jeans. ‘Only erect.’
‘Oh God,’ said Gaskell. The perfume, the plastic, the mask of a face and her hands were awakening ancient fantasies. He lay supine on the bunk staring at her while Sally undressed him. Even when she rolled him over on his face and pulled his hands behind his back he made no resistance.
‘Bondage baby,’ she said softly and reached for the silk square.
‘No, Sally, no,’ he said weakly. Sally smiled grimly and tied his hands together, winding the silk between his wrists carefully before tightening it. When she had finished Gaskell whimpered. ‘You’re hurting me.’
Sally rolled him over. ‘You love it,’ she said and kissed him. She sat back and stroked him gently. ‘Harder, baby, real hard. Lift me lover sky high.’
‘Oh Sally.’
‘That’s my baby and now the waterproof.’
‘There’s no need. I like it better without.’
‘But I do, G. I need it to prove you loved me till death did us part.’ She bent over and rolled it down.
Gaskell stared up at her. Something was wrong.
‘And now the cap.’ She reached over and picked up the bathing-cap.
‘The cap?’ said Gaskell. ‘Why the cap? I don’t want that thing on.’
‘Oh but you do, sweetheart It makes you look girlwise.’ She fitted the cap over his head. ‘Now into Sallia inter alia.’ She undid the bikini and lowered herself on to him. Gaskell moaned and stared up at her. She was lovely. It was a long time since she had been so good. But he was still frightened. There was a look in her eyes he hadn’t seen before. ‘Untie me,’ he pleaded, ‘you’re hurting my arm.’
But Sally merely smiled and gyrated. ‘When you’ve come and gone, G baby. When you’ve been.’ She moved her hips. ‘Come, bum, come quick.’
Gaskell shuddered.
‘Finished?’
He nodded. ‘Finished,’ he sighed.
‘For good, baby, for good,’ said Sally. ‘That was it. You’re past the last.’
‘Past the last?’
‘You’ve come and gone, G, come and gone. It’s Styxside for you now.
‘Stickside?’
‘S for Sally, T for Terminal, Y for You and X for Fast. All that’s left is this.’ She reached over and picked up the jug of muddy water. Gaskell turned his head and looked at it.
‘What’s that for?’
‘For you, baby. Mudders milk.’ She moved up his body and sat on his chest. ‘Open your mouth.’
Gaskell Pringsheim stared up at her frantically. He began to writhe ‘You’re mad. You’re crazy.’
‘Now just lie quietly and it won’t hurt. It will soon be over, lover. Natural death by drowning. In bed. You’re making’ history.’
‘You bitch, you murderous bitch.’
‘Cerberuswise,’ said Sally, and poured the water into his mouth. She put the jug down and pulled the cap down over his face.
The Rev St John Froude rowed surprisingly steadily for a man with half a bottle of whisky inside him and a wrath in his heart, and the nearer he got to the contraceptives the greater his wrath became. It wasn’t simply that he had been given a quite unnecessary fright about the state of his liver by the sight of the things (he could see now that he was close to them that they were real), it was rather that he adhered the doctrine of sexual non-intervention. God, in his view had created a perfect world if the book of Genesis was to be believed and it had been going downhill ever since. And the book of Genesis was to be believed or the rest of the Bible made no sense at all. Starting from this fundamentalist premise the Rev St John Froude had progressed erratically by way of Blake, Hawker, Leavis and a number of obscurantist theologians to the conviction that the miracles of modern science were the works of the devil, that salvation lay in eschewing every material advance since the Renaissance, and one or two before, and that nature was infinitely less red in tooth and claw than modern mechanized man. In short he was convinced that the end of the world was at hand in the shape of a nuclear holocaust and that it was his duty as a Christian to announce the fact. His sermons on the subject had been of such a vividly horrendous fervour as to lead to his exile in Waterswick. Now as he rowed up the channel into Eel Stretch he fulminated silently against contraception, abortion and the evils of sexual promiscuity. They were all symptoms and causes and causative symptoms of the moral chaos which life on earth had become. And finally there were trippers. The Rev St John Froude loathed trippers. They fouled the little Eden of his parish with their boats, their transistors and their unabashed enjoyment of the present. And trippers who desecrated the prospect from his study window with inflated contraceptives and meaningless messages were an abomination. By the time he came in sight of the cabin cruiser he was in no mood to be trifled with. He rowed furiously across to the boat, tied up to the rail and, lifting his cassock over his knees, stepped aboard.