The mist thinned quickly and soon only a few tendrils remained, curling around the tree trunks like ghosts. Although he was now clear of the dangerous and delightful harem, Loofah knew he wasn't safe; he might so easily stumble back into the honeyed hands of the beautiful Frenchman—or even back into the distinctly unhoneyed hands of the much less beautiful Under Manager. He must follow his lovely nymph, as she had instructed.
There was, of course, a small hitch—she was not around to be followed. A slender tapeworm began to creep up through his intestines and he walked with nervous rapidity, anxiously scanning the open woods for some sign of his beautiful protectrix.
After about ten minutes, he came across a path winding boldly through the trees. Its thrusting self-confidence was reassuring and he started to relax a little. Unfortunately, however, he then noticed that the path—true to the manner of its kind—ran in two directions; even at best, only one of these could be right.
The mist was now nearly gone. Indeed, just one last wisp remained, which was curling slowly around the thin trunk of a silver birch. As Loofah absently watched, pondering his predicament, it unwrapped itself and started to slide towards him, an aerial protoplasm swimming over the moss. When it reached him, it curled around his calves like an affectionate cat, and then swam away along the path. After a few yards, it stopped and waited, curling around itself in the damp air. Loofah looked around one last time, shrugged to himself, and then followed.
Gliding gently along the path, he was soon enjoying the cool sunlight through the leaves. The trees greeted him as he passed, with friendly patterns swirling in their bark and their low branches undulating in the dappled light like the arms of oriental dancers. The wisp of mist led the way, mostly sliding along a few feet ahead of him, although from time to time falling back to wind around his body, to refresh him with its soft damp sweetness.
After some time they reached the edge of the wood at the top of the ridge and were enveloped in sunshine. The path now swept away down a gentle slope through a cornfield, which shimmered in the sun like a lake of molten bronze. On the low hill opposite was a toy town village, a jumbled hotchpotch of little plastic houses and trimmed trees clustered about a stone church tower. Loofah smiled at its childish innocence and reached out to touch it, his hand leaving a ghostly trail of itself in the empty air.
His wisp of mist was now rapidly losing substance. It coiled around his ankles for the last time, then swam along the path towards the village and evaporated into nothingness under the burnished glare of the sun.
At the bottom of the field he crossed a sluggish river of tarmac that wound peacefully between its hedges, then started up the long hill into the village. He knew even before reading the sign beside the first house that this was Synge Green; it seemed that his arrival here had always been inevitable.
All around were pleasant signs of normal life—a distant radio playing cheery pop music into the liquid air, a child's tricycle standing in a driveway, two housewives chatting at a front door—and yet there was something else, a slight silkiness in the viscous atmosphere, warm and dangerous. A car passed, heading down the hill; as it wobbled across the flowing tarmac like a plastic bubble, the paint-work quivered unsteadily and the engine noise echoed through Loofah's flesh in diminishing descants.
A middle-aged woman with two dachshunds on leads was coming down the pavement towards him. There seemed to be something unusual about the animals, though Loofah could not quite place what it was.
'Good afternoon,' said their owner, with a friendly smile, 'Lovely day, isn't it?'
'Marvellous for the time of year,' Loofah replied, 'I wonder if you can help me. You see I'm new in the village and—.'
'New in the village? Then you must visit our Garden of Remembrance. The herbaceous borders are a delight.'
'So I've heard. But actually I have to find something—an emergent propensity. Apparently there's one here in the village.'
'Oh, but there's no point in looking for something like that,' she said with little laugh, 'You must wait for it to emerge—it's the only way, you know.'
He was about to start on his next question but stopped, with his mouth left hanging open as it waited in vain for the aborted sentence. For Loofah had finally noticed what was odd about the dogs—neither had a head. Instead, growing out of each neck was an oversized set of male genitals, with wrinkled testicles hanging at the sides in place of ears and a circumcised penis dangling in front, sniffing at the pavement with its pale moist glans. How did they eat? he wondered, somewhat irrelevantly.
'Please don't stare,' said the dogs' owner, 'It does upset them so.'
On the other side of the road squatted a row of bungalows; with red roofs and painted walls, each was ringed by a tall and immaculate hedge of privet or leylandii as if to seal in the fragile respectability. Loofah waited for a car to wobble past, its soft-shelled body-work quivering unsteadily, then crossed quickly. As he past the front of one of the houses, he heard a voice calling to him.
'Coo-ee!'
He looked around quickly, but could see nobody. Then the voice called again, high pitched and squeaky: 'Down here, mate!'
It seemed to be coming from the bottom of a drainpipe which ran down the corner of the house to flow out onto a small terracotta grating. And indeed, as Loofah watched, two little brown ears popped out of the end of the pipe, followed by a small round head with a shortish snout, decked out with a fine set of whiskers. It resembled a miniature Burmese cat, or possibly a weasel, though the ears were a little too large for either.
'Hi-ya,' squeaked the little head, 'How'ya diddling?'
'I'm fine, thank you,' said a rather surprised Loofah, 'But what about you? Are you alright?'
'Never been better, me old china.'
'You're not stuck, are you?'
'Me? Stuck? No way, mate, not me. I never get stuck, me—never.'
'But what are you doing in a drainpipe?'
'What does it look I'm doing?'
'I don't know—sort of popping out, I suppose.'
'Spot on, mate: "popping out". I like popping out, me. Popping out of this, popping out of that. If a thing can be popped out of, then I'm the chap to do the popping.' And with a conspiratorial twitch of its whikers, it was gone.
Fifty yards or so up the street, Loofah was passing the tall privet hedge in front of another bungalow, when out of the foliage popped the little brown head.
'It's my little hobby, you see,' said the animal, 'My favourite pastime.'
'What is?'
'Popping out,' it replied, and was gone.
After another two bungalows, Loofah reached a side street. As he was crossing, he noticed something coming along the pavement towards him. About waist height, it moved on its four legs in a slow, rotating motion, like spinning starfish. At first he thought it was some sort of machine, possibly a child's toy, but as the thing got closer, he saw that the legs were human—four bare human legs, each facing outwards, joined at the hip to a sort of four-way pelvis, though a pelvis which was not surmounted by a torso, a pelvis with a flat top—like a skin-covered coffee table—with a dimple at the centre that could have been a navel. When it reached him, it rotated a couple of times—sadly, the strange object was not graced by a pair of four-way underpants and in each of the four crotches dangled a set of male genitalia, which jiggled around like greasy cow-bells as it moved—and then spun away down the pavement.
'Pop!' squeaked a voice at Loofah's left shoulder.
On the pavement beside him was a bright red pillar box; the little head was poking out of the letter slot, watching him expectantly.
'Oh, hello,' said Loofah, 'You again.'
'You don't get it, do you?'
'I don't understand. Get what?' But it was already gone.
At the next side street another of the mutant coffee tables nearly collided with him. After orbiting him twice, it scuttled across the road, waltzing gently around a wobbling green bubble-car which was heading down the hill.
Loofah soon arrived in what appeared to be the centre of the village. Set back from the road, behind a patch of dog-toilet grass and a concrete parking area, was a prosaic fifties-built shopping arcade—'A Cut Above' hair care, an all-purpose grocer, and 'Slim Girl—Health and Beauty'—and beyond this he could see a low red pub and the small, flint-swathed church. As he approached the shops, a man emerged from the health salon, his grossly obese body swaddled into a tight greasy suit and his quivering purple jowls spilling over a striped tie that threatened to garrotte the bulging neck.
'Excuse me,' said Loofah, 'I wonder if you could help me. I'm looking for something—an "emergent propensity" I believe it's called.'
For a moment the man stared at him blankly. Then, as he opened his mouth to speak, his eyes widened and his massive cheeks bulged and from between his chubby lips popped the little brown animal, its velvet fur glistening with a sheet of slug-slime saliva.
'At your service!' it chirped, with a cheeky twitch of its whiskers.
'You?' exclaimed Loofah.
'Of course me! Don't you get it now?'
Still nonplussed, Loofah shook his head.
'Always popping out, always emerging. A tendency to emerge, you could say—a propensity for it, in fact.'
'Oh—I see,' said Loofah at last, although somewhat dubiously, 'But I was expecting something a little more—um—abstract.'
'Not abstract enough?' squeaked the creature, with an edge of indignance.
'I didn't mean to rude. It's just that to me an "emergent propensity" sounds like a concept, not a thing.'
'But I am a concept.'
'Are you?' said Loofah, dubiously, 'I don't think you can be, can you?'
'I was born, wasn't I?—same as the next chap. By my dear old mum—bless her sainted heart—in my particular case. And if I was born, then I must have been conceived—you can't have one without the other, though do correct me if my grasp of the biolog-ojical sciences is off the mark.'
Loofah shrugged, acknowledging his own lack of biological expertise.
'And of course if I was conceived then I'm a concept—QED!' And with this the little head slipped back between the quivering pink lips.
'Wait!' But it was too late—the fat man closed his mouth and pushed past with a rumbling belch.
Watching the rotund figure wobble away down the pavement, Loofah struggled to come to terms with his disappointment. This then was the much vaunted Emergent Propensity, the reason—as far as he could make out—why he had been brought to this strange little village. More than anything, he felt cheated.
As he stood pondering the futility of his predicament, something bumped against his buttocks from behind; it was another of the leg-tables, although this one was female, the four legs smooth and slim, each of the twenty toes painted a dazzling scarlet. He moved to let it past, but it stuck to him, rolling itself affectionately against his legs. A damp coldness slithered over his skin; again he tried to step away, but again it came with him, his repeated efforts at escape resulting in a rather elegant step-for-step waltz across the pavement that ended when Loofah backed into a shop window. With the object of its desire effectively trapped the thing then opened two of its legs and started rubbing one of its unclothed crotches against his thigh—just as a youngish woman in a blue skirt emerged from the grocers, carrying two heavy plastic bags in each hand. Loofah's bowels shrivelled with embarrassment and he reached down to push the thing away—the skin was silky and warm, and the leg shuddered slightly when he touched it—but it only pressed itself more firmly against him. He winced and pulled his hand away, glancing awkwardly at the lady shopper as she passed.
'Is it bothering you?' she asked, with a pleasant smile.
'It is, actually,' stammered Loofah, as the leg-table thrust against him with unashamed lust.
The shopper put down her bags and slapped it hard on one its four thighs.
'Go on, get away!' she said sternly, as to a miscreant child.
At first the thing cowered hesitantly, still pressing itself against him, but when she raised her hand for another slap it scuttled off, spinning with frustration.
'They are a nuisance, aren't they?' said his saviouress, 'The Parish Council keep saying they're going to provide somewhere for them to go—a day centre or something—but they never seem to get round to it. You're not local, are you?'
'No, I'm new in the village.'
'A visitor—how marvellous! Do you like it here? It's very pretty, don't you think? And ever so friendly.'
'Yes,' he said, 'It's—er—very nice.'
'Although some of the people do take a bit of getting used to,' she added, with another smile.
Loofah laughed politely.
'Oh well, I can't stand around all day chatting. Better get this lot round to Mr Wilson—he'll be wondering where I've got to.'
'Mr Wilson?'
'Silly me, I should have explained. Mr Wilson's an elderly gentleman. He doesn't get around much any more, so I do his shopping for him. Just once a week—it's really no trouble.' She looked down at the bags with frown. 'Only it's so heavy this week—all tins of cat food and potatoes.' She paused and smiled diffidently at Loofah. 'I know it's a bit cheeky, but I don't suppose you could spare a minute or two, could you? If you're not too busy, that is.'
'Actually I am a little pressed.'
'No matter. I'll manage,' she said cheerfully, 'It's only round the corner.'
But as she reached down for the bags, he felt the strain in her slim shoulders and the thin plastic handles, pulled into piano wires, cutting into her hands.
'On second thoughts, perhaps it isn't quite as late as I thought.'