The magic pink cloud drifted slowly, ever so slowly, across the china blue sky. Any minute now the jolly green dragon would appear, popping out from behind it, and would—most probably anyway—eat the sun.
A blobby yellow balloon bobbed past, dragging a laughing child.
Loofah grinned happily. He liked the magic pink cloud. And he liked the jolly green dragon as well, although he hadn't actually seen him yet. He liked everything in fact, the whole world, and especially that frothy, bubbly feeling that was floating inside him, that feeling that had come when he'd finally realised that he'd found what he was looking for.
Well, nearly found it. He certainly knew where it was—after all, he did trust his chubby chum—and that was the most important thing, wasn't it? All he had to do now was go to the cave his friend had mentioned and there it would be, the heart of…
Darkness, a tiny cloud of it, scudded across his brow. Because he remembered—he had neglected to ask the whereabouts of the all-important cave.
The magic pink cloud became a stick of candyfloss that he was holding against the sky. His bubbles burst and the froth went as flat as warm mild. His whole turgid body slumped down onto the damp, heavy earth like a stranded jellyfish. Blast! He snatched the ethereal pillow of confectionary out of the sky and jammed it to his mouth, hoping to take comfort in a wave of lurid sweetness.
But something held his wrist, gripping like iron, and a shadow fell across his face. He looked up—there were two of them, huge monoliths towering black against the bright sky.
'It would seem the gentleman is desirous of a little sustenance, Reverend,' said the one who held him.
They wore black clerical shirts with white dog-collars and sunglasses as dark as hell itself.
'Indeed it would, Reverend. And so sustenance 'e shall 'ave.'
Mile End voices, lethal as a switchblade. Their pale unsmiling faces were identical, held together by zigzagging traceries of white scar tissue.
'Though I fink somefing of a more spiritual nature might be more sootable'—the grip tightened brutally around Loofah's wrist and the stick slipped from his numbed fingers—'don't chew, Reverend?'
Loofah watched sadly as, like a stricken pink Zeppelin, the candyfloss drifted slowly towards the damp grass far below.
The massive wooden door swung open with a tortured creaking of medieval hinges. They frogmarched him into the nave and then, without even a vestige of ceremony, launched him, a human glider, down the aisle. For a time he just drifted through the dark, still air, a weightless spirit, an disembodied soul—until, that was, the ancient stone slabs came up to meet him, an old friend greeting him a kiss. It was, however, a firm fond kiss that rattled his bones and grazed his palms, and jolted his brain into a star-burst of pyrotechnic colour.
The first thing he noticed was the cool, still silence and the sweet, musty scent of ancient incense. Then, gradually, he became aware of the affectionate caress of cold stone against his warm cheek and also, as the firework lights faded slowly away into the distance, a gentle spray of stained-glass beams that played across his face. He was sprawled, spread-eagled, in the aisle facing the altar, a worshipper of truly Oriental self-abasement.
Loofah now heard murmuring of solemn voices that blended easily with the hallowed silence—he lifted his head. At the altar knelt a priest, his dazzling white cassock billowing out over his ample form, and beside him stood an altar boy holding a golden cup. The boy passed the chalice to the priest who lifted it first to the altar, muttering the sacraments, and then to his lips, sipping at the holy liquid. Then he pressed it to his forehead and placed it carefully on the white linen between two towering brass candlesticks. As the priest bowed in quiet prayer, his dark hair caught the golden light that streamed through the leaded window behind the altar, enhaloing his head. Finally, when he had finished his devotions, he raised his hands in supplication to the altar-piece, a huge letter 'S' fashioned out of burnished brass, cupped in twin laurel branches in gold leaf.
Loofah, of course, recognised the logo—and it had nothing to do with the sufferings of the Son of Man.
'This is blasphemy!' he muttered, pulling himself to his feet.
The priest spun round, lasers of fury blazing from her little eyes. The altar boy also turned; multi-coloured light glinted playfully across his glazed eye sockets and an empty grin hovered uncertainly under his moustache.
'The Under Manager and her smarmy henchman,' sneered Loofah, 'I might have known.'
'Be silent!' hissed Miss Leggett, 'Have you no respect?'
'Plenty. But not for the likes of you and Mr Stobart. Now if you'll excuse me, I have business to attend to.'
He turned to go—and came face to face with the hit-man curates, who were standing in the aisle, arms folded across barrel chests, scarred faces like death-masks in the eerie light.
'The sermon is abart to begin, Reverend,' said one of them.
'Indeed it is, Reverend,' said his twin, 'and it would be such a shame for the gentleman to miss the words of succour and enlightenment, don'tcha fink?'
'I do indeed, Reverend, I do indeed. But I don't fink the gentleman was actually leavin'. As a matter of fact, I fink the gentleman was about to take a pew.'
'You know, I fink you might be right, Reverend.'
Loofah looked from one to the other. 'Er—I'll just sit down then, shall I?' he said, with a sheepish grin.
The Under Manager climbed into the pulpit and stood scowling over her congregation (of one) as the final notes of the marketing executive's soprano plainsong wafted up into the ancient rafters.
'Dearly beloved,' she began, 'we are gathered here today in the eyes of the Lord Our Chief Executive for the purpose of instructing a lost sheep in the Hallowed Way, the Way of the Sacred Company.'
She paused to glare down at Loofah in what he took to be a meaningful way.
'Since I first became aware of the depth this sinner's moral turpitude,' she went on, 'I have spent many a long hour in the silent vigil of prayer. And behold, the Lord Our Chief Executive hath spake unto me with words of great wisdom. And it is these words of great wisdom that I now impart unto thee, my flock. And this I do say unto thee—and I say it not once, not twice, but many times over—that thou shouldst heed these words of great wisdom, for they shall be thine salvation for now and for all time to come.'
Another pause and another meaningful glare.
'Now hear ye that the Lord Our Chief Executive hath spoken thus: that there are two great Realms where Our Lord's writ runs mighty, the Realm of Here and the Realm of There. And lo, hear ye also that, for the peace and happiness of all that reside in these two great Realms, Our Lord hath decreed that those who dwelleth Here shall remaineth Here, and that those who dwelleth There shall remaineth There, and that only Our Lord shall stand astride the twain, a mighty colossus of loving strength, preserving the peace and harmony of both great Realms.'
The Under Manager's face now darkened and she lowered her voice ominously.
'But though it be the sacred Will of Our Lord that the two great Realms shall ever be apart, know ye that there be two that wouldst defy Our Lord, a being of such corruption that it befouls the Lord's house to mention their name within these hallowed walls. And know ye also that this foul creature wouldst go from Here to There, where it would commit acts of great wickedness and thereby shaketh the foundations of the Lord's house and bring torment and affliction unto all mankind. I speak of course of the Prince of Darkness, the Master of Unreason, the Foul Foreigner—the Changeling.'
These last words rolled through the still air like dark thunder.
'And by what means will the Evil One defy the Lord's Will? What is the vehicle by which this cataclysm would be brought down upon the sorrowing head of mankind?'
As Miss Leggett paused, her chubby face contorted with passion, she raised a surpliced arm into the air, and then brought it down, her finger a gun-barrel of accusation aimed at straight at Loofah.
'This miserable sinner!' she snarled, to which Loofah risked a heaven-ward roll of his eyes, a suitable expression of contempt that he was confident would not be noticed by either of the two grim curates.
'And wherefore they, I ask thee?' the corporate priestess continued, 'I shall tell thee wherefore they—for it is only they who can findeth the Two-Faced Witch, the She-Demon, the abomination in female form, the blasphemous linkage betwixt the two great Realms. And so it has come to pass that the Evil One has brought this sinner from There, where in righteousness he should have remained, to Here, where in sin they do now abide. And being Here, they do now abet the Evil One—in its many depraved forms—in their search for the She-Demon, so that the Evil One may—in its diabolic profanity—move from one Realm to the other and thereby bring grief and calamity to all the Lord's creatures.'
For a long time she just stared at Loofah, allowing the knowledge of his iniquity to infiltrate every corner of his wretched being.
'And what of this miserable sinner,' she began, eventually, 'this hand-maiden of Hell's Hermaphrodite, what shall be their reward for violating thus the Will of Our Lord? Shall they dwell once again in bliss and joy, restored to his own happy Realm?'
The Under Manager drew in a huge breath, puffing out her empurpled cheeks like an angry bullfrog.
'They shall not!' she bellowed, 'For Our Lord is a jealous Master and bitter shall be the reward of those that giveth succour unto His enemies. And so I say unto thee, they are forever to be damned and shall languish for eternity in a state of terrible perdition. And there shall be a wailing and a gnashing of teeth, and the fire and the brimstone shall roast their sinner's flesh as tasty morsels for all the demons of hell.'
Miss Leggett was now half collapsed over the pulpit, panting hard with exertion. She recovered quickly, though, pushing herself to her full height.
'But—' the single word echoed through the ancient silence '—I do say unto thee that Our Lord is also a merciful Master. And in my vigil of prayer, He hath come unto me and hath spoken words of redemption, redemption for this miserable sinner.'
Again she pointed at Loofah.
'And how shall the sinner be redeemed? How shall the great burden of evil be lifted from their wretched shoulders? I shall tell thee how, for this be the Will of the Lord.'
At this point the celebrant bowed her head briefly, while reverently tracing a large letter 'S' across her chest.
'In the first part,' she then continued, enumerating on plump fingers, 'the sinner shall have no further intercourse with the Evil One, for I sayeth unto thee that the Children of the Lord shall eschew those that would lead them into darkness. In the second part, the sinner shall repenteth of their past trespasses against the Lord and shall vow to do nought but the Lord's Will from henceforth onwards. And in the third part, the sinner shall come unto the Servants of the Lord in a spirit of true repentance and obedience, and shall showeth unto them the whereabouts of the Two-Faced One. And whyfor thus? I shall tell thee whyfor thus—so that the sinner may be removed from their profane presence in this Realm and be restored to his own Realm, and so that the She-Demon can be blessed by the Lord's benevolence and kept from the foul clutches of the Evil One.'
She paused for one last meaningful glare, and then concluded, wagging her three raised fingers in Loofah's direction: 'And in this way, and in this way alone, canst the sinner be redeemed. Blessèd be the Word of the Lord Our Chief Executive.'
'Hallelujah!' shouted Sutton, leaping to his feet and clapping his hands, 'Praise be the Lord!'
For a moment the enthused marketing executive seemed about to break into a gospel chorus, but a withering stare from the Under Manager sank him back, suitably deflated, into his choir stall. She then swung round like a lighthouse beam, fixing her baleful gaze on her one-man congregation.
'And so, miserable sinner, hast thou heard the Word? Wilt thou now repent? Wilt thou come unto the Lord to receive His forgiveness? Wilt thou vow henceforth to do the Will of the Lord and nothing but the Will of the Lord?'
Loofah sighed to himself; it would seem that Stobart was trying another strategy, the first having failed so miserably. It was so transparent—did they really expect him to swallow all this hogwash?
'Well?' she bellowed from the pulpit.
'Miss Leggett, never in my whole life have I heard such a load of—' Loofah began, but was suddenly aware of two menacing presences, one at each end of the pew '—inspirational words,' he finished, flashing an appeasing smile to each of the twin curates.
Swinging a smouldering incense salver and chanting praise to the Chief Executive, Sutton led the egress processional. Loofah was next, emerging from the dark womb of the church with a curate at each shoulder, the meat in a clerical sandwich. His forehead was wet with baptismal water (personally blessed by Mr Stobart himself, according to Miss Leggett) and clutched in his novice's hands was his own Confirmation copy of the Company Prayer Book.
The Under Manager was standing outside the porch, her surplice ruffled by the gentle breeze, dazzling white in the brilliant sunshine. She shook their hands in turn, smiling benevolence and thanking each for his attendance.
'Our new believer!' she beamed, pumping Loofah's arm, 'I do hope you'll be a regular at our services.'
He glanced from one towering curate to the other.
'I won't be able to stay away,' he said, with a forced a grin.
'Ah, the zeal of the convert! So refreshing—' her smile vanished suddenly '—after previous disappointments. Now—where is she?'
Her little eyes narrowed and pierced his flesh like twin meat skewers. Behind her, he noticed another cortège filing slowly through the lych-gate and into churchyard: a priest leading six dark figures carrying a coffin, black silk flowing from the bands of their tall hats.
'She? Who do you—?' stammered Loofah.
'You know damned well who,' snarled the Under Manager. The curates edged closer at his sides.
'Oh, her. You see, Miss Leggett, it's like this, I'm not entirely certain where she is.'
Her eyes blazed suddenly and her ample cheeks quivered with fury—the curates were now the twin jaws of a human vice, crushing him. In the churchyard beyond, the solemn cortège slid quietly through the gravestones; it was a funeral party, although seemingly without mourners.
'What?' she exploded, 'You're lying! I know you're lying! And I thought you had finally seen the light, a lost sheep returned the fold. I should have known better, I should never have…'
But suddenly her words fell away to the edge of awareness, where they rattled unheeded, like gravel down a drainpipe. For, as the funeral cortège passed across a junction in the path he saw that indeed there were mourners: two of them, West Highland terriers, who trotted desolately behind the pallbearers with heads bowed and tails drooping along the path, each wearing a black collar and a band of black silk around his right foreleg. Loofah's heart lurched, stopped, then melted to ice-water and flooded down over his bowels—for he knew who must be in the coffin.
'…such ingratitude, such barefaced treachery…'
For a moment he stared blankly at the Under Manager's raging features, his brain stunned into complete inaction. Then a single urgent thought burst through the numbness: he had to be sure.
'…I should have known not to expect anything better from the likes of—.'
'As I was saying, Miss Leggett,' interrupted Loofah, 'I'm not absolutely certain of her whereabouts—but I do think it'll come to me. I just need a little time, that's all.'
'Time?' she exclaimed, as if rejecting the very existence of such a concept.
'A quick stroll around the churchyard to stretch my legs and clear my thoughts a bit.'
She eyed him closely, dark with suspicion. Loofah forced an innocent smile, belying the tearing angst within.
'I'm going to change out of my vestments,' she said quietly, 'And when I get back I want answers—do I make myself understood?'
It was then that she noticed the funeral procession for the first time.
'Bloody left-footers,' she muttered and stormed back into the church in a whirl of flapping surplice, dragging Sutton in her terrible wake.
Loofah took a tortuous route to give the impression to his minders—who never strayed more than six inches from his sides—of an aimless meander. But he was hardly aware of the black-clad giants, nor of the sunlight playing across the plastic chrysanthemums on the recent graves, nor of the dark yews, nor of the ravens perching on the gravestones and cawing quietly to each other, avian undertakers discretely overseeing the pageant of death. No, he saw only the light oak coffin that bobbed among the graves—and he had thoughts only of its beloved occupant.
The funeral party was now at its destination. While the priest chanted quietly in Latin, the two mourners whimpered and the undertakers stood silently, hats off and heads bowed. The coffin had been laid on a carpet of purple velvet beside a gaping hole: the dark, damp grave that would soon swallow her, the final earthy resting place for a spirit of the air, of the light.
Loofah's heart hammered with dread, pumping death-cold blood through fear-tight arteries. As he came forward, in a haze of angst and grief, one of the undertakers lifted the oaken lid. And indeed it was her, in a white full-length gown and with the same maiden lilies that she had brought for him in the hospital laid across her breast under folded hands. One of his fellow mourners pawed sadly at Loofah's jeans in silent commiseration. He gagged on a sob and stumbled, held from falling into the grave only by the firm hands of his minders.
'Deff,' mused one of the curates, 'Chokes you up, dunnit Reverend?'
'It most certainly does, Reverend,' said the other, 'Though we do see a lot of it in our line of work.'
She was as beautiful in death as in life: alabaster skin, face filled with infinite peace, black-lashed eyes closed forever on this vale of tears. Grief tore at Loofah's soul with tiger claws and his own eyes filled with tears, blurring the vision of tragic loveliness. With a strangled cry, he slumped forward, weeping.
'An acquaintance of the gentleman's, or so it would seem.'
'Indeed it would, Reverend. 'E's well cut up and no mistake.'
'My—my—mother,' lied Loofah through his sobs. In a pantomime of incredulity, his twin minders turned from the youthful corpse to the significantly older Loofah, then to each other.
'She died young, you see,' explained Loofah, 'Cruelly cut down in the first flush of womanhood.'
'Died young—cut down,' parroted one of the curates, ''Is muvva, 'is own dear muvva!'
'No wonder 'e's upset,' gasped the other.
'An' in't she lovely?'—the towering cleric choked back a sob of his own—'Just like our muvva.'
'Our muvva, our own dear muvva,' wept his twin, 'Bless 'er sainted soul.'
'I have to say goodbye,' mumbled Loofah, turning to each of the blubbing curates, 'Just a few moments, that's all.'
''E wants to say goodbye.'
'To his muvva, to 'is dear departed muvva.'
'Like we 'ad to say goodbye to our muvva…'
'Our own dear departed muvva.'
As the giant curates collapsed into each other's arms, tears flowing freely from under their sunglasses to be channelled across their cheeks by the network guttering of scars, Loofah stepped towards the open coffin and, flanked by the sad little dogs, knelt at its side.
'The sacrament, my son,' murmured the priest, 'then you may kiss the body.'
He held out the holy wafer, folded in white linen. Obediently, Loofah bit and chewed, in his grief hardly noticing the generous chocolate coating, the sweet stickiness of the soft toffee topping, or the crumbly shortbread base. He swallowed and then, leaning over the coffin with closed eyes, pressed his warm lips onto—he shuddered with sudden shock—her equally warm lips.
His eyes snapped open and he pulled back—but, snaking her white arms around his neck, she held him. Then with a smile she leaned up for another kiss, sucking him gently down into the coffin with her lips. A tingling, a warm happiness spread across Loofah's face, down his neck and then out over his entire body, soothing away the last pangs of his now irrelevant grief—within the encircling marble battlements of her arms he was safe, shielded against the harsh realities of the world.
Strangely, though, as he sank into the sweet safe warmth, it seemed as if these arms were getting bigger—once so delicate and slender, now each the size of a weightlifter's thigh—and he was sure felt her lips swelling under his, inflating like a pair of delectable inner tubes. The coffin too seemed to be growing and was now pushing up against his chest, the wood thickening in his grip. Loofah pulled back from the kiss and opened his eyes—the undertakers towered over him like black granite obelisks and the two little terriers, both now wagging with unmitigated joy, had grown to the size of mastiffs. A few yards away in the tower-block gravestones, the two skyscraper curates still sobbed obliviously in each other's arms.
By now the coffin side had become a wall of polished wood, head height in his kneeling position and getting higher. He scrambled to his feet—his giant nymph, her face a vast beautiful planet, smiled with a strangely entrancing sweetness and cast her lilies out of the coffin and into the vast black pit of the grave. Then she untied her belt and, still fixing him with her smile, pulled open the front of her gown.
Loofah's insides turned to warm syrup and he slumped weakly against the side of the coffin, gazing in stunned awe at the unveiled landscape of unendurable loveliness. From her face, he followed the elegant isthmus of her neck to the pale hills of her breasts, then out over the curved plain of her belly before climbing gently towards the twin ridges of her thighs. At the depression where thighs and belly met, he faltered, caught in the delicate heart-shaped thicket that nestled there, dark and enticing.
'Oi, wot's goin' on 'ere, then.'
Jolted from his reverie, Loofah saw that his minder-curates were now gawping at him with tear-puffy amazement.
'Quickly, inside,' whispered the nymph.
As he hauled himself up the growing wall, she seized him like a scrabbling puppy. Two of the gantry crane undertakers had picked up the vast oaken slab of the coffin lid and he saw the priest step towards the curates, pulling a machine-pistol from under his surplice. Then the lid loomed over them and the nymph held him to her planet face.
'The cave of sorrows,' said Loofah, in a mouse's squeak, 'I'm looking for the cave of sorrows.'
'You're a man,' she murmured, 'You'll find it.'