Clovenhoof 02 Pigeonwings Read online

  "Scout’s honour," said Ben.

  "As God is our witness," said Clovenhoof. "So, your sister Jayne, does she dress like a cheap Dutch tart and have all the charm of a great white shark?"

  "No, Jeremy!" said Nerys, appalled.

  "Nothing like you then?"

  Ben snorted into the remains of his cider and black. Nerys drained her wine and placed it loudly on the table.

  "I bloody hate you sometimes, Jeremy Clovenhoof."

  "Makes the good times all the sweeter," he grinned. "Whose round is it?"

  "I’ve barely started my drink," said Michael.

  Clovenhoof rolled his eyes.

  "You just need some practice. Tell you what would get the ball-rolling: drinking games."

  By ten o’clock, Michael was feeling quite peculiar.

  He hadn’t understood Clovenhoof’s drinking games. He had listened to all the rules, had tried to avoid pointing, saying any numbers, using anyone’s name or any words with the letter ‘J’ in them and dutifully drank ‘two fingers’ each time he forgot. What he didn’t understand was the purpose of the game. All it seemed to achieve was the increased consumption of alcohol and a rise in the volume of his neighbours’ laughter. Having said that, the lager had inexplicably started to taste better the more of it he drank.

  There was also the pressing and urgent sensation in his bladder.

  He leaned over to Clovenhoof and whispered, "I’ve got to go."

  "Go?" said Clovenhoof. "No, no, no. You cannot go."

  "I’m going to burst, Jeremy."

  "Oh," said Clovenhoof loudly. "You need a piss. Me too. This way."

  Michael followed Clovenhoof across the bar. The floor seemed to have become uneven during the evening and Michael tripped more than once on the carpet. Clovenhoof put a comradely arm over Michael’s shoulder and prodded him through a swing door.

  The brightly lit, tiled room stank. It didn’t just stink; it possessed a whole polychromatic stench that seemed to combine ammonia, marsh gas, harsh detergents and something else, a pungent anatomical whiff that Michael hoped he would never identify.

  "Oh, Lord save me!" he gasped, putting the back of his hand to his mouth. "What is that?"

  "It’s the gents," said Clovenhoof, trotting over to one of the low ceramic bowls on the wall.

  "Has something died in here?"

  Clovenhoof opened his flies and boldly exposed himself to the bowl.

  "Not recently," he said and began to empty his bladder.

  "But why if the rest of the pub is so, well, so reasonable is this room so rank?"

  "Because men piss on the floor," said Clovenhoof and, by way of an example, did just that.

  Michael recoiled and yet the urge in his own bladder was insistent. Emboldening himself, he stood at the urination station next to Clovenhoof, took out his thing and, after a moment’s shyness, released.

  He could not quite comprehend how delightful a sensation it was, shameful though the act was. He looked down.

  "Oh," he said.

  "What?" said Clovenhoof.

  Michael peered over at Clovenhoof and then back at himself.

  "Yours is like mine," he said.

  Clovenhoof made a big pretence at squinting hard to see Michael’s thing.

  "Yours is like a scale model of mine," he said. "Shetland pony to my stallion."

  "And they all look like this?" asked Michael.

  "Pretty much."

  The toilet door swung open and a man walked in. He took one look at the two men comparing genitalia and, with a mumbled apology, walked straight out again.

  "I just thought that… you know, it’s not very attractive, is it?" said Michael.

  "I think God was having an off day when he cobbled this monstrosity together."

  "No, Jeremy," said Michael solemnly. "If this is what God intended then it is beautiful. The Almighty does not have off days."

  "Yeah. Tell that to the duck-billed platypus. Or the naked mole rat."

  Michael looked across at the cubicle at the back of the toilets and the squat round bowl on the ground.

  "Why is there a foot spa in here?" said Michael.

  "Um," said Clovenhoof. "Yeah, that’s not a foot spa, diddy dick. It’s a toilet."

  "Also for urination?"

  "Yeah and you shit in it too."

  "Shit?"

  "Shit."

  "Sorry," said Michael, whose head was a bit woozy. "I don’t understand."

  "Shit. Crap. Poo. Defecate. Turdulise. Lay a brown egg. Evacuate your bowels. Back the brown Volvo out of the garage."

  Comprehension slammed into Michael like the punchline of a sick joke.

  "And that’s normal?" he said.

  "Not the ideal design but what goes in has to go out." Clovenhoof zipped up his flies and washed his hands at the sink. "But you know that, right?"

  "I’ve resisted it. It’s unconscionably foul."

  Clovenhoof’s expression was a mixture of admiration and disbelief.

  "You’ve been on Earth for two weeks now."

  "Twelve days."

  "And you’ve never…?"

  "No."

  "That’s one hell of a backlog, Michael."

  "I’m not going to give in to it. There must be some other way."

  "I think I can help sort you out," said Clovenhoof.

  "You don’t think I dress like a cheap tart, do you?" said Nerys.

  "Cheap Dutch tart," Ben corrected her.

  "Do I?"

  Ben sighed drunkenly into his drink.

  "As I’ve said once already today, I’m not a man of the world and my experiences are limited."

  "Yes, but you must have opinions on women. Think about the women you’ve been out with."

  "Um."

  Nerys leaned in closer.

  "You have been romantically involved with women, haven’t you, Ben?"

  "Sort of."

  "Yes?"

  "There was this Night Elf called Tsunali. We spent a magical weekend questing together."

  "No, Ben, real women. No games avatars."

  "I had a romantic dinner date with a latex love doll."

  "Real women!"

  "You dragged us out to that singles night once."

  "That was a year ago. And you didn’t pull. Has there been anyone else?"

  "Before or since?"

  "Either."

  Ben took a long, long drink from his pint.

  "No."

  Nerys found such a notion incredible, almost obscene. Surely, it was unhealthy to go without for so long. Didn’t people explode or something if they didn’t get a roll in the hay every now and then?

  "Fuck me," she exclaimed. "And that wasn’t an invitation."

  "It’s okay. You’re not my type."

  "Ha!" declared Nerys exultantly. "You do have a type."

  "I suppose there is such a thing as my ideal woman."

  "Just what we were talking about," said Clovenhoof loudly as he and Michael returned to the table.

  "Your ideal woman?" said Nerys.

  "Men and women," said Clovenhoof. "Frankly, we think this whole human body thing could do with an overhaul. Human 2.0 if you like. I think Michael and I have identified the major issues."

  "Have we?" slurred Michael in his now slightly crumpled suit.

  "I think there are some perfect specimens about," said Nerys and gave the new neighbour a lingering pat on the leg.

  "Nah," said Clovenhoof, digging out some paper and a pen from within his smoking jacket. He rifled through the papers, looking for a bit he hadn’t scribbled on and set to work.

  "Way I see it," he said. "We first need to jettison the useless stuff."

  "Male nipples," giggled Ben.

  "I’m talking about everything you’ve got too many of."

  "Nipples," repeated Ben.

  "Kidneys, nostrils, lungs. Let’s keep everything central, everything symmetrical." He began sketching out his ideas. "You know starfish?"

  "Not int
imately," said Michael.

  "Their mouths and their arseholes. Same thing. Everything in and out of one hole. That’s efficiency."

  "Well, we should call you starfish, the amount of crap comes out of your mouth," said Nerys. "So you reckon the perfect human would have only one of everything."

  "Yes, except for the fun stuff. We should have more of them."

  The sketching started to get a bit feverish and Clovenhoof’s ideal woman was starting to look like someone being attacked by a swarm of flying boobs.

  "Hang on!" Nerys said suddenly. "What’s that you’re writing on?"

  "Paper," shrugged Clovenhoof. "I found it. Now-"

  Nerys snatched the sheets of paper from him. There was printed type on both sides and, among the beer and ink stains and juvenile doodles, Nerys saw the words ‘Last Will and Testament.’

  "You took this from my flat."

  "I thought it was the instructions for my new mobile."

  "It’s my Aunt Molly’s will, you numpty! I’ve been looking for that for days."

  "Oh, did she have much to her estate?" said Ben.

  Nerys huffed.

  "Only the flat and everything in it!"

  She hurriedly scanned through the document, trying to guess what words lay behind the stains, trying to ignore the scrawl that Clovenhoof had committed to those pages. And then she found it, the bequest of the flat.

  "Anything interesting?" asked Ben. "Nerys?"

  "Shitting bollocks!" she said eventually and then, just to make the message clearer, added, "Bollocking fuck!" for extra emphasis.

  Immediately following morning prayer, Abbot Ambrose crossed the cloisters to a door set deeply into the stone in one corner of the quadrangle. The door was short, heavily scored and darkened by centuries of exposure to the elements and the passing of human hands. Time had almost completely obscured the fan-shaped pokerwork engraving in the centre of the door. It was a peacock, carved at a time when the abbot, centuries before, had whimsically decided to bring the birds to the island.

  As if in recognition, Barry hooted loudly.

  Abbot Ambrose shooed his pet bird away, glanced around quickly to see if he was being observed, lifted the latch and went inside.

  With the door closed behind him, Abbot Ambrose stood in utter darkness. He knew that two feet in front of him was a downward step and if he walked on he would fall down more than a hundred stone steps until he lay at the bottom, cold and broken and possibly undiscovered for weeks if not months. He found it a strangely attractive thought and savoured the darkness and possibility for a moment or two before taking the electric torch from the alcove to his left and proceeding downwards.

  The abbot of St Cadfan’s, in centuries before, had used a torch of wood and pitch to light his way and although a sturdy electric torch cast a harsher, less evocative light, it was certainly more practical and less likely to gutter and fail at the most unhelpful moment.

  The first thirty-seven steps (the abbot had counted them and recounted them unconsciously hundreds of times) passed through one of the many crypts that existed inside and outside the monastery complex. The island was allegedly the final resting place of twenty thousand saints. There were certainly human remains to be found all over the place and there were over one hundred dusty, linen-wrapped skeletons down here, in tiered, bunk bed alcoves along both sides of the tunnel. Abbot Ambrose never inspected them closely and let them rest undisturbed except by the few questing tree roots that managed to reach down this far.

  Beyond the crypts, the steps became steeper and less even and, as the space opened up into a larger cavern, the abbot was joined by the sound of trickling and dripping water. He always felt at this point that he was truly at the heart of the island and that the monastery, its stones and its history, weighed down on him in more ways than one.

  The torch picked out the nearest of the chests before Abbot Ambrose reached the bottom step. There were twenty seven chests in all, of varying sizes, shapes and origins. The newest were Victorian trunk cases with perished leather straps and steel padlocks. The oldest dated back to beyond the Roman Empire, small and once beautiful works of filigreed brass and silver. Without looking, the abbot knew how much wealth in gold and silver was contained in each. He had read the manifest lists and made his own. He knew every doubloon, Frankish tremissis and Byzantine aureus.

  Besides the chests of coins were the items of jewellery, the precious stones, the carvings in jade and ivory, and the assorted crowns and sceptres that had made their way here. And then, of course, there was the sword. Abbot Ambrose stood looking at the sword for a long time. It was by far the oldest item in the hoard.

  Hoard.

  This was, without a doubt, a hoard and it had accumulated to such size through many centuries of hoarding. Gathering and maintaining a hoard of this size required a certain mindset and it was one that the abbot shared.

  He had come down here for a specific purpose and already knew he would be unable to fulfil it.

  He opened a casket of Greek gold staters and watched his hand hover over them, unable to touch them. He considered a mass of necklaces, a Gordian knot of gold chains from a dozen cultures and would not remove a single necklace. He contemplated a small dish of rings and could not even take the smallest and plainest of them.

  The abbot looked at a secret hoard worth ten times the contents of any palatial treasure house on earth, nodded to himself in understanding, and climbed back up the many steps to the surface.

  He exited the ancient door and was pleased to find his return to the cloister quadrangle was witnessed only by Barry. The abbot went to the locutory to find Brother Sebastian, once again doing something inexplicable with one of the computers. Father Ambrose was not averse to progress but Sebastian’s facility with computers struck him, at best, as suspicious and, at worst, devilry.

  Sebastian looked up.

  "Didn’t see you there, Father Abbot. I was just tweeting some images from our garden webcam feed."

  "Were you?" said the abbot who was not going to ask what any of that even meant.

  "So," said Sebastian, "any luck?"

  The abbot made a polite noise of enquiry.

  "Finding funds?" said Sebastian. "To pay for repairs."

  "Oh," said the abbot. "No. Sorry. I checked but there really are no reserves."

  "Nothing?" said Sebastian, downcast.

  The abbot put a kindly arm on the brother’s shoulder.

  "Sorry," he said. "Not a penny."

  Chapter 2 - In which Jayne arrives in Birmingham and Molly makes her last trip to the supermarket.

  Looking for God - My earthly body

  In this blog, wrote Michael, I hope I might help to ease the burden of fellow travellers. If anyone else should find, as I did, that they are suddenly bereft and Godless in an unfamiliar place then they might learn from, or at least take comfort from, this account of my own personal journey.

  The Adversary was determined to see me flounder in my new life, so that he could gain some perverse pleasure from being the one to rescue me. I believe my swift adaptation to day-to-day life has caused him some frustration. He did have the upper hand in the matter of local customs however, so I allowed him to take the lead on my first foray to the pub. In retrospect, this was a mistake…

  My lack of experience with drinking games was key to some poor decision making later on. The consumption of a large doner kebab seems an unlikely local custom, but the Adversary was very insistent that it traditionally follows a night in the pub. The ceremonial manner of the cooking pleased me. The sedately rotating spindle, so like a Buddhist prayer wheel, and the reverential slicing of the outermost layers combined in my mind with the after-effects of the drinking games into a moment where I felt blissfully close to Our Lord. Even the smell, which made itself known to us while we were walking towards the place, some way down the road, seemed like a heavy incense, drawing me into a state of rapture. The offering was anointed with colourful sauce that could not, apparently b
e omitted. Eating this kebab was an experience that I cannot now recall without the utmost feeling of horror, but I have a very strong recollection that it seemed to be exactly the food I had been searching for since my arrival in this place. Was this ‘donna’ kebab so named because it was food worthy of Our Lady herself? Its sense of correctness was so overwhelming, that I immediately ordered a second one upon finishing the first, which seemed to please the Adversary greatly. For the first time, I experienced the feeling of a full stomach, and it was deeply satisfying.

  It wasn’t until much later in the night when I realised that something was very wrong. In an uncharacteristic moment of forgetfulness, perhaps caused by the drinking games, I had neglected to put on my pyjamas before going to bed. I woke a few hours later with the sure knowledge that some foul imp of hell had taken possession of my digestive tract. I had previously experienced some disquiet, and small escapes of a noxious gas, but they were not accompanied with any painful experience. This new and urgent situation caused me to curl up in order to ease the crippling tension in my stomach. I realised, however, that a seismic shift would soon result from the movement of the demon, which was seeking an exit from my body, and moving swiftly downwards. I reached out for Little G, my bedtime companion. He has given me much comfort since my arrival. Fellow travellers might consider getting their own ‘Little G’ , which can serve as a proxy for God’s love, even when He chooses to remain silent. I clutched Little G to my chest as I ran from the bedroom. I now understood the purpose of a toilet, foul and barbaric as they are, but I had made the unfortunate decision to have mine removed. Indecision gripped me, and I doubled-up again as a strong spasm seized my insides. I remember calling out in my anguish, and using my free hand so try and stem the outpouring of the dreadful effluent. Except that my hand was not free…

  Michael got up from his typing and put the washing machine on for a fourth time. He mulled over the last part of his blog entry as he watched the still soiled Little G begin another soggy cycle.

  Michael had decided that his blog would be anonymous, and so should remain an honest account of his difficulties. Was he going too far with the details? No, he decided. Warts and all. Frankly, if Clovenhoof was the Luddite he had shown himself to be, his public blog would be a far securer outlet for his thoughts and feelings than the diary had been.