Chapter III.3

The gate crashed open with a screech of rusting metal, but as he hurled himself between the stone posts and dived onto the grass beside the path.

His heart was hammering in his ears, loud enough to wake the dead and almost drowning out the throaty murmur from the other side of the wall. The throb of the engine got louder and louder, paused for an infinity between heart beats—and then faded away. They obviously hadn't seen him; washed with relief, Loofah breathed again and smiled up at the friendly sky, enjoying the cool caress of the damp grass on his outstretched palms.

It had definitely been her; he had glimpsed her behind the sun-splashed windscreen just as the car—the black Company limousine—had been turning into the road. Half a nanosecond it had taken, no more than that, but there'd been no mistaking those pudgy features. And, he thought not without pride, his muscles hadn't needed telling—before the image had even reached his grey matter, his legs had hurled him through the gate and into the churchyard.

'A seven!' cackled a reedy voice, close by, 'Double three to win!' This was followed by a peel of laughter, dry and hollow, like pebbles rattling in a cracked bowl.

Recovering from his surprise—for he had though he was alone among the graves—Loofah clambered to his feet, only to receive a far more substantial shock when he got a clear sight of the speaker and his companions.

They were four of them sitting around a tombstone slab under the cadaverous branches of an ancient yew—and they were playing dice. The youngest of the quartet hadn't been dead for more than six months. The flesh, though blackened in places, still clung to her bones, and her hair—formally styled for her final public appearance—was near perfect. Her face, though, was a disgrace; already starting to slip off her cheek bones, it was a mottled green and black mask, with one eye missing from its empty cave socket and the other resembling a half-decayed hard-boiled egg.

Two of the older ones, both male, were also still covered in flesh, though this was now completely desiccated, and the parchment skin stretched between their bones was like untanned leather, stiff and dry. Though stained and moth eaten, their clothes were basically intact, as was their hair. Indeed, if it weren't for the empty eye sockets and the rictus, lipless grins, these two could have passed for anorexics, certainly terminal but nevertheless alive. The fourth—the senior citizen of the group—was definitely not alive; a few tattered rags were draped over its otherwise bare bones, its face was a grinning skull and its coiffure little more than scattered strands clinging desperately to the gleaming, porcelain dome.

It was this one who played next, rattling the dice in its bird-claw hand and rolling them across the stone. Then all four peered forward and burst into cackles.

'A five and a two! You lose!'

'Ha! Ha! Ha!'

'My throw—fourteen to beat,' cried the once-woman, and swept up the dice into a rotting palm.

'So—here you are.' A wave of cold prickles swept up Loofah's neck as he watched the game—was that a voice or just the wind curling through the gravestones? 'The much vaunted new visitor.'

His bones felt suddenly cold and he turned. Gravestones swayed and oscillated, flowing in and out of focus. There was a blur behind one of them; he blinked, but it remained. And then he saw it: like a heat mirage bending the light, a shape without substance.

'They're playing dice,' whispered the air at his ear.

'Yes, so I see,' said Loofah.

The shape was human and, as his eyes got used to focussing on a blur of bent light, he saw it was male. It moved, coming out from behind the stone, refracting everything behind it as it passed as if made of molten glass. The air cackled with another bout of merriment from the grim gamblers behind him.

'It's how they decide who's next,' whispered the grass.

As the mirage came towards him, Loofah could make out its clothes: a Victorian frock coat with a wing collar and cravat, a top hat clutched to its chest.

'What do you mean: "Who's next"?' he asked.

'In here—who's next in here.'

'Who dies next?' exclaimed Loofah, 'I thought that would be down to, well, a higher authority.'

'Delegation,' whispered the sky, 'The cornerstone of any system of enlightened management.'

'I see,' said Loofah, rather dubiously, 'But is it fair?'

'Much fairer—after all, it's them who must live with the new ones, isn't it?'

The shape moved closer and a chill went through him, as if wet seaweed were being draped across his soul. Behind him, knuckle bones rattled across old stone as another soul's fate was decided.

'They're my only friends now,' hissed the breeze, 'Although I'm not really one of them, you know.'

'You're not?'

'The rest ignore me now—the others, the ones who were once my friends.'

'That's—unfortunate.'

'They didn't used to, though, not back then. Oh no, no-one ignored me then, they didn't dare. I was a force to be reckoned with in those days, I can tell you, I was a somebody then. And I will be again—they haven't seen the last of me, you mark my words.'

The whispering words wafted through Loofah like the cold, sour miasma from a newly opened tomb.

'Just look at you young ones, so full of yourselves—you think you've got it made, don't you? You think the whole world's at your feet, don't you? Well, there was a time when I could have given you a run for your money any day of the week—any day of the week, do you hear? And let me just—.'

'This is really all very interesting,' interrupted Loofah, 'But I'm afraid I must be getting going.'

The mirage bristled briefly, shimmering like the August sun on hot tarmac. 'They tell me you've been seen with the hermaphrodite,' hissed the breeze at Loofah's departing back, 'Be careful, be very careful indeed—that's all I'm saying.'

The fête was a veritable sea of people, in which Loofah immersed himself with delight, hugely relieved to be once again among the quick. Lacking any clear idea of what he was looking for, he let himself be carried by the current, drifting through the crowd like a comb jelly. Around him swam stately shoals of middle-aged ladies in tweed skirts and cotton blouses, their hair permed into post-modernist sculptures of the most challenging abstraction, and gentlemen in navy blazers and paisley cravats, each resplendent in pseudo-military mustachios and golf club committee assurance. A scattering of neat little tiddlers darted about his feet: boys with combed hair and school ties, and girls in frocks and sandals, with ribbons in their hair.

Seaweed-frond bunting hung in the liquid air, draped between candy-coloured tents and awnings, the coral outcrops around which the dazzling denizens of this marine world gathered in their search for sustenance and entertainment. Polite laughter and horsey voices, amplified in the dense water, echoed about him in a muffled throb, while strange rainbow faces loomed out of the sparkling light before drifting past in an endless stream.

Loofah's first port of call, chosen almost at random, was the Pet Show tent—his visit, however, was brief and he re-emerged just as the judging began. It had certainly been nice to see Elspeth and Cissy again, all done up in their best summer frocks with pink ribbons and spring flowers woven into their ears, but he had decided on a swift exit when, to a chorus of cat-calls and wolf whistles, that hussy of a Weimaraner had stalked across the stage in her high heels and stockings, with a painted harlot's face and the grey stub of her docked tail jutting suggestively from the under the hem of her ludicrously tight leather mini-skirt. He'd remembered her from the police photographs, of course, and he had no intention of risking any sort of compromising situation with that fast little strumpet.

'I say, old chap!' called a voice from behind and an elderly gentleman with a handlebar moustache hurried up to him and seized his hand, pumping it hard. 'Haven't seen you in ages, old boy. How are things with you?'

'Fine—I think,' replied Loofah, forcing a smile. Apparently an acquaintance of the other one—he didn't know quite how to react.

'Marvellous, marvellous! And what about dear old Cicely? She keeping fit as ever?'

'Cicely?'

'Do give her my fondest, won't you?' said his new friend, 'And tell me, how's the old swing coming along? We hardly ever see you up at the club these days. Busy at work, I expect—what?'

'Um, I wonder if you could help me,' began Loofah, 'I'm looking for something—it's called a "heart of darkness". Do you have any idea where—?'

'I'd be delighted, old man. Look, why not join us on Sunday? I'm playing a round with Bill and George. Teeing off at ten.'

'A round? I think there's been a misunder—.'

'You know old George Prendergast, don't you? Red haired chap, from over Synge Green way.'

'George—Prendergast?'

'Of course you do. Putts like an angel—but couldn't drive the skin off a rice pudding. Ha! Ha! Ha!'

A ginger haired man in a green polo neck and yellow golf shoes poked ineffectually with a five iron at a bowl of dessert at his feet, unbalanced by the ungainly white wings that flapped from his shoulders.

'Yes, I do remember,' said Loofah uncertainly and then laughed, carried along by the other's mirth.

'Probably best if you partner Bill, though. Make things a bit more even. What's your handicap now? Still down in the lower teens, putting us all to shame?'

His own hands now gripped the club with relaxed assurance, and the swing was easy and elastic, a balletic arc encompassing his whole body. There was a satisfying thwack as the ball leapt from the tee and flew into the far distance, a tiny white Exocet dwindling to a dot in the china blue sky.

'Or are you creeping up a bit, now you're not getting out as much?'

The ball stopped abruptly, then tumbled out of the air, landing on the fairway a few yards in front of the tee. Loofah winced with shame and fumbled with his club.

'Never mind,' said his friend, with a consoling pat on the shoulder, 'Happens to us all, you know. None of us is as young as we were.'

With no more than a few tufts of white hair over his ears and wearing half-moon spectacles and an institutional grey dressing gown, Loofah steadied himself on a Zimmer frame, feebly clutching a putter in a trembling, arthritic hand.

'Until Sunday, then,' said his new friend, 'Oh, I nearly forgot. You're a chap for the nags, aren't you? Kiss My Aunt in the three-thirty at Newmarket. Nine to two. A lovely little filly—she'll walk it.'

'You reckon? I actually fancied the favourite for the three-thirty.'

'A dead cert—I know a chap who drinks with the trainer.'

'Really? Well, in that case I'll certainly chance a tenner on her,' said Loofah, 'Cheers for the tip.'

'Don't mention it, old boy—you can buy me a drink sometime. Anyway, must be off. See you up at the club—oh and do remember me to Cicely, won't you?'

'I will, um, old boy.'

He balanced the hard white ball in his right hand, focussed on the middle of the five coconuts, and then threw with all his might. The ball sailed down the tent and, with a satisfying hollow crack, made contact with the hirsute sphere, which leapt from its cup with a cry and tumbled to the grass.

'Well done, lad!' shouted the stall-holder, a portly man with a red face, 'I can see those hours in the nets haven't been wasted, eh?'

Loofah grinned, flushing with quiet pride.

'Here you are, my boy, and very well deserved.'

Loofah took the coconut between both hands, its stiff bristles scratching against his palms.

'Thank you,' he said, 'I wonder if you can help me. I'm looking for—.'

'Who's it you're playing Saturday?' asked the stall-holder, 'It'll be the Synge Green under sixteens, won't it?'

'Yes, I think so,' began Loofah, 'but I just wondered if—.'

He stopped suddenly—something was oozing between his fingers, sticky and warm.

'With an over-arm like that you'll cream their openers, you mark my words.'

Loofah stared at the coconut, which was bleeding over his hand. Stiff hair was crushed into a compressed fracture, with gleaming fragments of shattered skull jutting from the wound. A glob of brain tissue, like pink blancmange, clung to his forefinger.

'There you are, you naughty boy!' A blowsy woman in a floral cotton frock separated herself from a small crowd gathered round the tombola stall and strode purposefully towards him, dragging with her a red-headed little girl with a tear-puffy face.

'Where have you been?' asked the woman, 'We've been looking everywhere for you.'

'Just—around,' said Loofah lamely, still wiping his hand against his jeans, Lady Macbeth-style, 'You see, I've been looking for a—.'

'Oh you have, have you? Well, I won't have you off gallivanting with your little friends without telling me. Do you hear?'

'But it's very import…' His voice trailed away as he gazed up at the towering figure of the woman.

'And your poor sister's been in tears for twenty minutes. You know she hates missing out on anything.'

Loofah blinked guiltily and his cheeks reddened with shame. The little girl stared at him with tearful reproach.

'Now, you just say you're sorry and don't you ever dare run off again without asking. Do you hear?'

'Sorry,' he muttered.

'Now I'm just off to have a quick word with the vicar. You stay here and look after your little sister.' Her massive face loomed down at him and she wagged a plump finger in his face. 'And don't you budge an inch, do you hear?'

'No, mummy,' he said, looking studiously at his feet, kicking at the turf.

'I'll be back in two minutes,' she said, and she was away, waddling off towards the tea tent.

Loofah watched her go and then looked uncertainly at his sister.

'You're horrid, you big smelly!' cried the little girl, screwing up her face into a twisted grimace and sticking out her tongue. Then she scampered away in the opposite direction to her mother.

'Wait!' He started after her, but stopped, remembering that he wasn't supposed to move, not even an inch. The girl disappeared into the crowd and his heart fell. What was he going to do now? Mummy would be cross with him again and he might get a smack and he wouldn't get an ice-cream and he wanted a wee-wee and—.

Something touched his left buttock: a caressing hand.

'Aw-right, darlin'?' said the young man, sidling round him, standing much too close.

Loofah smiled shyly and blushed.

'And what's a crackin' bit o' gear like you doin' on 'er own, then?' said the youth, with a wink.

'I'm waitin' for me boyfriend, innit,' said Loofah, with a coy flutter of his eyelids and a quick wiggle of his hips.

She teetered uneasily on the edge of middle age. A silver hoop the size of a bicycle wheel dangled from each ear lobe and her hair spilled over her shoulders in a hennaed cascade. She wore a tasselled black shawl and an ankle-length dress in purple cheesecloth. Her stall was an array of coloured glass bottles: herbal body lotions, organic hair conditioners and essential oils, a perfect fusion of the cosmetic, the therapeutic, and the spiritual. It was nature's own pharmacy, she explained, nothing tested on any animal, plant or mineral, with Yin and Yang in perfect balance.

'You must try the orange water, darling, it's just unbelievably marvellous for the hair,' she gushed, uncorking a fluted bottle and passing it to Loofah.

He sniffed the bottle—and was instantly staring down infinite ranks of glossy leaved trees, heavy with waxy orange fruit, kissed by the Californian sun.

'Or perhaps sandalwood oil. My reflexologist swears by it—helps to open up the chakras, you see.'

As he was enveloped in the gossamer blanket of the balm's oriental aroma, a string of lotus blossoms burst open in his spinal cord in an ascending series of floral incendiary bombs that gently blasted his atman from here to Nirvana.

'Of course it would be a crime to spoil skin like yours with chemical make-up,' said the stall-holder, confidentially, 'But what about a little bit of nature's own moisturiser?'

Loofah smiled and stroked his peach-smooth cheeks; not a wrinkle, which was amazing considering his age. The stall-holder passed him a glass jar of green slime which looked and smelled like puréed cow dung.

'It's from the Amazon,' she said, 'The tribeswomen there have been using it for hundreds of years. You should see some of them—women of ninety with the skins of teenagers.'

A withered crone zipped herself into the flayed hide of a young girl—a bizarre reversal of the old people's home.

'It's marvellous for the breasts too—stops sagging and wrinkling,' said the stall-holder in ringing tones—Loofah blushed and glanced quickly around.

'Of course I don't believe in pandering to male-imposed sexual stereotypes,' she went on, just as loudly, 'But no-one wants to be going around with a couple of bags of old suet stuck on her chest, does she?'

Loofah winced and folded his arms over his bust, hiding any potential disgrace.

'Or perhaps this—' she handed him another tub of slime, this time fluorescent orange '—it's for feminine itching. Tell me, darling, do you ever have any trouble with your vag—?'

'Oh, look at this!' exclaimed Loofah, reaching quickly into the sea of bottles and snatching one up at random.

'You wouldn't want that, my dear,' said the stall-holder, dismissively, 'Now, I used to get thrush the whole time. You know what I mean, don't you?—all that white goo pouring out of—.'

'What is it?' He held up the little green bottle and peered into its turbid contents.

'Oh, something for them,' she sneered, 'Aftershave I think.'

'Aftershave?'

'An old Celtic formula, designed to make the wearer more alluring.'

The bottle sat comfortably in Loofah's palm as if it belonged there. He touched the green glass tentatively, then unscrewed the plastic cap and sniffed.

'Geranium,' he muttered, while strange images tumbled unbidden across his mind in a poignant, jumbled cascade: of a small girl with yellow hair, of a rabbit, and of a roaring river of white and red lights.

'It's not for sale,' said the stall-holder, 'I use it for educational purposes—an example of woman-oppression in primitive phallocentric religious ritual. Little better than rape, if you ask me, using earth powers to gain sexual attraction.'

While she was speaking Loofah absently tipped the bottle onto his fore-finger, dabbed delicately behind each ear, and replaced the cap.

'It is safe for you, of course. Just as long it's kept away from all—.' She stopped suddenly and stared at him, a weird glint in her narrowing eyes. Then she leaned over the table, sniffing the air like a hound.

'Men,' she whispered.

For a long moment she stared at him, her eyes widening slowly, breathing hard and fast. A strange tingle ascended Loofah's spine like slow electricity and he sensed something was about to—. With a puma scream she leapt over the stall, sending a bow-wave of coloured glass splashing to the grass. But as her hands grabbed for him, he sprang back, spun on one foot and was away.

An old man in a tweed cap loomed towards him, his face a caricature of alarm, then swerved away as Loofah banked to avoid him. A clutch of small children shrieked and scattered like scared chickens. She was close behind, he could sense her: a lustful Fury with eyes blazing desire, purple fabric flapping around pumping thighs, her flying hair a halo of fire.

A young mother snatched a toddler from under his thundering feet. But then she too caught the scent in his wake, dropped the squealing child and with an animal howl joined the chase.

To a chorus of disapproval and slopped beverages, he twisted through a throng in front of the tea stall, seeing nothing but a veering sequence of summer frocks and sports blazers. When he burst out of the other side, he took part of the crowd with him: three portly ladies who hitched up their dresses and charged after him on over-ample legs.

Tents, people, grass, and stalls whirled past in a blur of colour and sound. Shouts from outraged gentlemen were followed by shrieks of desire from their deranged womenfolk as they leapt after him, joining the growing phalanx of tweed suits, Laura Ashley print dresses and dishevelled perms that was now close at his heels, the flame-haired demoness at its head. His heart hammered against his ribcage as the screaming maenads got closer and closer, their howls fusing into a continuous wave of sound that crashed about his ears.

Two fat men loomed out of the blur, drifting towards each other. Loofah aimed between, but as he got closer the gap narrowed, squeezed by the two hemispheres of their approaching bellies. Aiming for the diminishing slat of clear light, he dived forward in desperation—straight into the over-sized cleavage of their meeting. For a moment he was trapped, pinioned in a vice of billowing softness, then his captors parted and he tumbled onto the damp grass, gasping for air under a barrage of angry protest.

But as his tortured lungs dragged in oxygen and he hauled himself to his feet, he saw his fate. For the howling phalanx of Furies was now a circle, a circle with him at the centre, a circle that was quickly contracting.

Again his body saved him, acting without reference to his panic-numbed mind; his leg muscles pumped violently and fired him horizontally across the grass at the closing circle. He crashed into two screeching middle-aged ladies, cannoning them sideways into the frenzied mass which collapsed in on itself in its blind delirium. But as Loofah scrambled quickly away from the tumbling scrum of womanhood he saw that his escape was blocked—by a wall of red and white canvass. There was an enraged roar of frustration from behind as his pursuers regrouped—turning back was not an option.

Groping frantically along the side of the tent, he searched for a way in, but found nothing but acres of unbroken candy stripes. He gritted his teeth and closed his eyes, but—just as the mass of talonned claws reached to drag him back into the lust-mad mêlée—something seized the collar of his jacket and hauled him forward through a hidden slit in the canvass.

Children's faces, squealing with delight, blur past as he flies into the tent towards a lake of red spheres that expands rapidly until it fills his vision. A shock of abrupt coldness: water fills his mouth and blurred blueness rushes into his eyes and ears. He is pulled back—cascades tumble over his face and neck as he drags dripping air into waterlogged lungs—then strong hands on his neck plunge him back among the bobbing red balls.

After the third ducking the hands released him and Loofah collapsed beside the vat, with water flowing over his jacket and tee-shirt and his desperate attempts to breath impeded by the apple that had somehow wedged itself between his incisors. Then, as he lay gasping ineptly, the wall of laughing children suddenly parted and the fire-haired witch loomed over him, glaring down with arms spread wide. Behind her, the other Furies crowded among the children, their eyes blazing with a desperate hunger.

But as they closed in the fire died, doused by the rivulets of water that carried the last traces of the lethal scent into the sodden turf. Within seconds masks of controlled respectability had been hurriedly replaced over deranged faces, while rampaging desires were muzzled and locked in their kennels. Displaced perms were patted into place, blouses tucked in, and expressions of suitable affront adopted.

'Phallocrat rapist!' sneered the demoness. Then she spun of her heel in a whirl of purple, black and orange, and was gone, with her outraged storm-troopers following in her wake.

'By 'eck, it's got some poke has that stuff!' said Loofah's saviour, a Michelin man with a genial red face and very little hair who stood beside the vat shaking water from his burly forearms.

'Aaaah—ng—gah,' said Loofah. And then took the apple out of his mouth.

Once the excitement was over, the children were soon back crowded round the vat, plunging laughing faces into the water as terrified apples bobbed desperately out of way of their snapping white teeth.

'Grand, just grand,' mused the Michelin man, casting an avuncular eye over the happy gathering. For his part, Loofah crunched smugly into his own prize, enjoying the sweet flavour of his inadvertent success at the game.

'I'm very grateful to you,' he said, swallowing, 'Getting me out of that little bit of difficulty.'

'Don't mention it, lad.'

'It was, well, rather embarrassing. To be frank with you, I'm not used to that sort of thing.'

'Of course you're not, and why should you be? You don't know our ways, do you? Being a visitor, like.'

Another crunch of sweetness burst across Loofah's tongue.

'A visitor?' he asked.

'Not from round these parts.'

'You mean someone from…'

'Aye, lad—somewhere else,' said his friend, portentously.

One of the apples bounced out the vat and rolled towards the edge of the tent in a desperate bid to escape. But—with remarkable agility for one of his bulk—his friend stepped forward, blocking it with his foot, then picked it up and tossed it back into the water.

'Do you get many round here?' asked Loofah, 'Visitors, I mean.'

'No, not now. Used to, mind you, way back. The old lot, that was—dozens of 'em, there were. Or at least it seemed that way.'

'But they've all gone now, have they—the old lot?'

'Aye. Just that foreigner left. Oh, and there's that chap Stobart—but then he's back over there now, if I'm not mistaken.'

'What about new ones? Are there many of them?'

'Only you, lad.'

'And the one who looks like me,' said Loofah, 'He's a new visitor as well, isn't he?'

'Like I said, only you.'

With a slight squirm of discomfort, Loofah crunched hard into his apple, oblivious to the last feeble death-twitches in the white flesh. Then he remembered the bottle, still in his other hand.

'I'd better get rid of this stuff before it gets me into any more trouble. Have you got a litter bin?'

'If I were you, lad, I'd keep it—you never know when it might come in 'andy,' said his friend, with a genial wink. Loofah shrugged and, somewhat dubiously, slipped the little bottle into his jacket pocket.

'I'd best be off now,' he said, 'I still haven't found what I'm looking for.'

'Oh aye, and what would that be?'

'I don't really know what it is, but it's called a heart of—.'

'Cave of Sorrows,' interrupted the other, 'That's where you'll find what you're after.'