Sour Grapes E-Book

Dan Rhodes

• Herausgeber: Lightning Books
• Kategorie: Lebensstil
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 459

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

'Dan Rhodes is a true original' – Hilary Mantel 'I read this novel right through the day I got my hands on it, laughing like a banshee.' - David Sexton, Sunday Times When the sleepy English village of Green Bottom hosts its first literary festival, the good, the bad and the ugly of the book world descend upon its leafy lanes But the villagers are not prepared for the peculiar habits, petty rivalries and unspeakable desires of the authors. And they are certainly not equipped to deal with Wilberforce Selfram, the ghoul-faced, ageing enfant terriblewho wreaks havoc wherever he goes Sour Grapes is a hilarious satire on the literary world which takes no prisoners as it skewers authors, agents, publishers and reviewers alike

Leseprobe

When the sleepy English village of Green Bottom hosts its first literary festival, the good, the bad and the ugly of the book world descend upon its leafy lanes. But the villagers are not prepared for the peculiar habits, petty rivalries and unspeakable desires of the authors. And they are certainly not equipped to deal with Wilberforce Selfram, the ageing enfant terrible who wreaks havoc wherever he goes.

Sour Grapes is a hilarious satire of the literary world which takes no prisoners as it skewers authors, agents, publishers and reviewers alike.

Published in 2021

by Lightning Books Ltd

Imprint of Eye Books Ltd

29A Barrow Street

Much Wenlock

Shropshire

TF13 6EN

www.lightning-books.com

Copyright © Daniel Rhodes 2021

Cover design by Nell Wood

Original artwork, illustrations and lettering by Andrea Joseph

Typeset in Book Antiqua

The moral right of the author has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent purchaser.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Printed by CPI Group (UK) Ltd, Croydon CR0 4YY

ISBN: 9781785632921

Contents

Preamble

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

Chapter 13

Chapter 14

Chapter 15

Chapter 16

Chapter 17

Chapter 18

Chapter 19

Chapter 20

Chapter 21

Chapter 22

Chapter 23

Chapter 24

Chapter 25

Chapter 26

Chapter 27

Chapter 28

Chapter 29

Chapter 30

Chapter 31

Chapter 32

Chapter 33

Chapter 34

Chapter 35

Chapter 36

Chapter 37

Chapter 38

Chapter 39

Chapter 40

Chapter 41

Chapter 42

A Year Later

Acknowledgements

Preamble

Spare a moment to feel sorry for literary gossip columnists. We writers are, by and large, aggressively dreary, and we don’t give them a great deal to work with. The gruel is so thin that even I have made appearances over the years – once when I revamped my bathroom, and another time when a publicist returned to the office refreshed after a Christmas party and sent out a press release trumpeting how my work had been compared to that of my teenage hero ‘Ivor Cutlet’. In that item I was described as a ‘luckless fabulist’, words which I expect to be carved into my headstone. Another dismal appearance occurred several years ago, shortly after I had won a prize. There had been a grand ceremony, and I was up against some big names so hadn’t expected to win. I’d had a few drinks by that point, and got up to give a short acceptance speech.

It was off the cuff, and I don’t remember much about it apart from telling a story about how I had recently had some warts cauterised, and complaining about how my publisher had invited me out for dinner earlier in the evening, and when the bill arrived had broken with protocol and insisted we split it. The audience roundly booed them for this, which, of course, they deserved. I made some quips, and said my thank yous, and got a friendly response, but all the while I was aware of a pair of glassy eyes boring into me.

At the table directly in front of the lectern sat a mid-profile restaurant critic, radio essayist and occasional novelist. This person seemed determined to remain conspicuously uninterested, right in my eyeline. I didn’t think too much about it at the time; after all, good times are hard to come by in the writing racket and I had just won some money. I was enjoying myself, and you can’t please everybody. I subsequently found out, though, about the dark thoughts that had been going on behind those gimlet eyes – this person was making plans to, as he might put it, micturate upon one’s pommes frites.

After the event, the mid-profile restaurant critic, Evening Standard columnist and occasional novelist had gone on to the Internet and written up his impressions of the evening. All he had to say about it was that while note had been made of my having been the youngest author on the shortlist, my hair was starting to turn grey. ‘Hmmm,’ he cattily concluded. Quite what his point was I couldn’t work out, and I still can’t. There was no question, though, that he was being snarky. I wouldn’t have known about any of this were it not for his sardonic observation being picked up on by a literary gossip columnist, who, desperate to make up their word count, repeated it in a national newspaper.

A week or two had passed by the time this all reached me, so it was too late for a lightning comeback. I wasn’t sure what to do, but I knew I had to do something. Every day when I was growing up my mother would impress upon me that I had Robertson blood, and that our motto is Garg’n uair dhuis gear: Fierce When Raised. One thing was clear – I would be letting my ancestors down if I didn’t get my revenge.

Many years later, here it is.

I have, though, granted the mid-profile restaurant critic, current affairs pundit and occasional novelist a cloak of anonymity, and I will never reveal his true identity. Just as Carly Simon has spent decades being evasive about the subject of her song ‘You’re So Vain’, so shall I discreetly draw a veil over this matter. Please don’t ask.

It is perhaps worth emphasising that what follows is meant as light entertainment. It’s a pantomime. To clarify: none of it really happened*. If you think this is a true story, please seek professional help. It contains coarse language, and due to its content it should not be read by anybody.

*Apart from the bit about piles of money going AWOL at a Scottish publishing house. That really happened.

Thursday

Not very long ago, in the heart of England, some cleaning took place, and an alarming sight was beheld

When viewed from the village green, as it tended to be, the parsonage stood to the right-hand side of St. Peter’s church, a yew tree and a grave-spattered lawn separating the two. A handsome brick building of three storeys, it had been built on the site of a previous, smaller church house and had been accommodating parsons for more than two hundred years. A list of their names could be found engraved on a wooden board inside the church. Its fortunes had declined though, and its latest incumbent had been the first to suffer its new incarnation as a semi-detached dwelling. A few years earlier, for reasons to do with money, the third of the building closest to the church had, with some internal bricking-up, been discreetly separated from the rest. It continued to fulfil its job of sheltering its parson from the elements, while the other two-thirds had been sold off. In spite of its greater size (five bedrooms and two bathrooms, according to the estate agent’s particulars), the part now in private ownership had been given the modest name of Parsonage Cottage.

Though the parson was not at home, his third of the building was neither empty nor quiet. His housekeeper, a Mrs Rosemary Chapman, was going about her business in the guest bedroom on the top floor – wiping surfaces, vacuuming, and humming as she went. This room wasn’t used very often so she didn’t always attend to it, but the parson had made a special request for her to get it looking extra nice, and she had taken to the task with her customary diligence. She had worked in this building for years, the current parson being her fourth, and though she liked to feel that she had always given her best, she couldn’t help but wonder whether she worked a little bit harder for, and took a little more care of, Reverend Jacobs than she had his predecessors. After all, he had been through so much, and needed her more than ever. She had known his wife, with her big earrings and her big laugh, and her cigarette always on the go, and at first she hadn’t known what to make of her, but as the illness moved in and took over she decided that she liked her very much. As she tended to her in that last, long year, those eyes had shone up at her and she had said thank you, dear Rosie, and you are so kind, and When I’m gone, you will look after him, won’t you? And now she was gone, and that was that, and it was down to Mrs Chapman to make sure the parsonage’s surfaces were shiny, and the parson’s clothes – clerical and secular – free of shaming creases.

She had more or less finished the guest bedroom, and was just giving its carpet a lucky final vacuum when the machine lost power. This moment had become a part of her routine. Though her build was powerful, she wasn’t getting any younger, and the parson, shamed by the sight of her lugging a heavy old Henry up and down the stairs, had upgraded to the modern, cordless type of cleaner. This had been a great improvement, but it came with the downside of always needing to be mounted on its charger at some point during a shift, requiring her to get on with other things while she waited for its battery to recharge. It seemed to give up at a different part of the house each week, and it was just bad luck that she now had two flights of stairs between her and the kitchen cupboard, where the charger was. She hummed the tune of a favourite hymn, ‘Praise For The Fountain Opened’, as she went down the first flight, and on the landing she stopped dead. She looked around, and listened. Things seemed different. She couldn’t work out how they were different, but something was not quite as it ought to have been. No longer humming, she carried on. Halfway down the next flight, she felt a draught on her legs. This was odd. She was sure the external doors were closed, and the windows open only a crack. Her sense of unease escalated. Don’t be silly, Rosemary, she told herself.

Still, she walked cautiously through the hall and towards the kitchen. There was now no denying that there was a draught – a breeze even – and from the clear sound of a wren’s song she knew that the back door must be open, the door that led into the garden and to the flagged path to the churchyard. She tried to tell herself that she mustn’t have closed it properly, but it was no use; she always left the kitchen until last, and had only been in there to get the vacuum cleaner. She hadn’t been near the back door all morning. It would have been the parson, that was all. He must have absent-mindedly left it ajar, and it would have opened by itself. Again, she told herself there was nothing to worry about.

She walked through the doorway, gasped, and put a hand to her thumping chest. The door was indeed open, and a man, if such a sight could be called a man, was standing beside the kitchen table, facing her. She had never seen anybody quite like him. His eyes were open, but blank, as if made of glass, or perhaps plastic, seeming to stare at a point far beyond the walls of the house. He was tall and thin, and though he was several feet away he still seemed to loom over her, and she noticed with horror that he appeared to be carrying in his hand a shrunken, severed head that looked as though it was a miniature version of his own. Perhaps even worse than that, she saw that behind him hung a long, thin tail. He began to talk but she couldn’t understand what she was hearing; though the sounds he made were something like words, they were not words she had ever heard. She began to shake, and felt her legs weaken. The new, and quite expensive, vacuum cleaner clattered to the floor, and she steadied herself against the door frame. She knew she ought to be screaming in the hope that help would arrive, but she was frozen in terror. The strange, droning language went on and on, and the world seemed to swim around her. Just as time was losing all meaning, the sounds stopped.

The visitor, now silent, seemed to look not into the distance but straight into her eyes. As she trembled, Mrs Chapman took in some more details. He was wearing black trousers, a dark grey shirt and a black blazer, his face was a greyish white, and he was covered in mud and leaves, as though he had risen from the earth. She wanted to call God to protect her, to bring something holy into this tableau. She tried to sing the hymn she had been humming: There is a fountain filled with blood…but it was no use. Her voice would not cooperate.

The visitor raised a thin hand – the one that was not holding the shrunken head – and slowly ran his long fingers through his hair, where they seemed to find what they had been looking for. Something that was almost a smile, yet at the same time was not a smile at all, passed over his face, and as he withdrew his hand from his hair Mrs Chapman could see that between his forefinger and thumb was a large and brownish-grey slug, curling and uncurling as if desperately trying to get away. With quite some vigour the man rubbed it between his fingers for a while, then took a long look at it, seeming to appraise and appreciate it, then put it, whole, into his mouth. After what seemed like an eternity, he began to chew.

The soft squelches of the chewing knocked her out of her catatonic state, and she thought about how desperately the slug had tried to save itself, right up to the last. Taking inspiration from it, Mrs Chapman raced past the black-clad figure, out of the open door, and toward the laurel hedge that separated The Parsonage from Parsonage Cottage. She had not run a step since her school days, but with all the speed she had within her she thundered into the leaves. There was no pathway, not even a handy gap, but that didn’t stop her. With all her strength she forced her way through the branches, and it was only when she was on the other side, safely in the garden of Parsonage Cottage, that she let out the scream she had been holding back for so long.

Wedding arrangements are made, a mystery is solved, and a spectral face appears at a window

As the battery on Mrs Chapman’s vacuum cleaner had been giving up, Reverend Jacobs hadn’t been far away. He was only next door, in the back garden of Parsonage Cottage, discussing the wedding of the resident family’s daughter that was due to take place at St. Peter’s in a few weeks’ time. This was an unusual event for the parson, as the family, including the bride, were genuine churchgoers. Normally the couples he married only attended in order to secure the venue for their wedding. They wanted the old stone building, with its low tower, its stained-glass windows, its medieval font and its yew tree, and they simpered their way through the bare minimum of services in the run-up to the big day, attempting to convince him that they were God People, and failing completely. Sometimes they were local, and sometimes they came in from the cities. Either way, after the ceremony he rarely saw or heard from them again. Some of the more straight-laced couples would be put off by the church’s full name – The Church of St. Peter in the Bottoms – while others were positively encouraged by it. The idea of being married in a scattering of villages known as The Bottoms, and specifically in a village called Green Bottom, held a certain puerile charm, and there had been a lot of big beards, and tattoos, and brides arriving in Citroën 2CVs or split-screen VW Campervans, as well as two-camera cinéma vérité crews trying to get into the vestry to film him changing into his cassock. He didn’t mind any of this too much. They all seemed to enjoy it, and it made a change.

This family though, the Bells, had been regulars in the pews for as long as they had lived in the house. ‘We really are church Bells,’ Mrs Bell would joke, in her low, soothing voice. Even though their daughter had moved away to university and to work, whenever she came back to the village she joined them on Sunday mornings. Reverend Jacobs liked their daughter a lot, and a few years earlier he had gone through a phase of hoping she and his son would end up together, but both had too much imagination to marry the girl or the boy next door. Still, they were great friends, and his son would be coming home for the big day. For the first time in a long while, Reverend Jacobs found himself really looking forward to a wedding rather than regarding it as a duty to be good-naturedly endured. He had high hopes for the reception too, which was taking place in a marquee on the lawn; the Bells were always good hosts, and he planned to get pleasantly drunk. He would even dance. There had been a time, before he had heard his calling, when he had danced a great deal. Now, when opportunities arose for him to take to the floor, he would embrace them with enthusiasm, to the wonderment of his flock.

While not quite open to charges of being a trendy cleric – there was no earring, for one thing – he was considered to have a youthful demeanour and outlook. His grey hair often grew, more from neglect than by design, into a shaggy mop, and he only wore his dog collar when it was called for. Anybody who had seen him for the first time that day in the Bells’ garden, in his jeans and open-neck shirt, would have been surprised to learn that he was a man of the cloth. Sometimes he even surprised himself at the thought that he was a man of the cloth.

And so they sat at a garden table, the parson and Mr and Mrs Bell, and they talked about the service, and sipped iced lemonade; not the clear, fizzy kind, but the English garden kind – still and yellow. A light breeze kept them cool in the warm mid-morning air, a bumble bee made its way around the buddleia, an elderly chocolate Labrador called Bevis lazed in the shade of a pear tree, and a wren sang as it flew from branch to branch.

‘My mother used to have a rhyme,’ said Mrs Bell, as she refilled Reverend Jacobs’ glass, ‘Lemonade is from lemons m…’

But before Mrs Bell could finish her rhyme, she was startled by the unexpected sound of cracking branches. Her eyes widened as it became clear that something was charging towards them through the laurel. After a little more rustling and snapping, the thing emerged, revealing itself to be Mrs Chapman, her face white with terror and lined with fresh red scratches. When she made it through to the lawn she stopped, opened her mouth, and screamed.

For all the years of their acquaintance, and for all the familiarity that had grown between them, Mrs Chapman had never been able to move beyond the knowledge that Reverend Jacobs was the parson and she was his housekeeper, and the feeling that because of the nature of this relationship she must always be deferential in her manner. Though the parson did all he could to disabuse her of this old-fashioned notion, she was keenly aware of a very clear and historically established hierarchy that it was not her place to question, and so there was always a formality between them. Over the years Reverend Jacobs had softened to simply Reverend, and she had grown accustomed to him calling her Mrs C, but first names were a world away.

Mrs Chapman made sure that when she spoke to the parson, her choice of words was very precise, as though his ear would be offended by any deviation from what she considered to be proper usage. A bus was never a bus, but an omnibus; a fridge not a fridge, but a refrigerator; and a piano was always a pianoforte. And so it was that as Mr and Mrs Bell and Reverend Jacobs dashed over to find out what on earth was going on, she pointed at the gap she had made in the hedge and said, her eyes wild, ‘Personage.’

‘Personage, Mrs C?’ asked the parson. ‘Which personage?’

She pointed again. ‘Parsonage.’

‘I’m sorry, I misheard. I thought you said personage. Tell us, what’s wrong? What’s happened at the parsonage?’

‘Personage,’ she said again, looking from one concerned face to another.

‘What is it, Mrs Chapman?’ asked Mrs Bell. ‘Please tell us.’

Something about Mrs Bell’s kind and restful voice must have had an effect on her, because she was at last able to tell them what she had been trying to say ever since she had burst through the hedge.

‘There is a personage at the parsonage.’

Mrs Chapman had been brought over to the garden table by the parson and Mr Bell, who had lowered her into a chair and plied her with lemonade while Mrs Bell had gone inside for some antiseptic. On her return she gently dabbed the fresh scratches with dampened cotton wool, as Mrs Chapman winced.

‘I wonder whether I imagined it all,’ said Mrs Chapman, as she finished her description of the visitor to the house next door, and told them about what she had seen him do. ‘I must be going potty, imagining monsters that have risen from the grave.’

‘I’m sure you’re not going potty, Mrs C,’ said the parson. ‘Did you catch any of what this person, or thing, said?’

‘No, Reverend. It really was just as I described. It was these strange sounds that weren’t really words at all.’

‘What were the sounds like? Perhaps he was speaking in a foreign language. Could you give us an idea of what you heard?’

She looked very serious as she cast her mind back. ‘Sblongambamnulent,’ she said, in a low monotone. ‘Yes, that was one, or something like it, anyway. Twumplastitude. Lyxbambulationarically. Oh, and there was one sound he made several times. It was almost like a real sentence, but not quite.’ She closed her eyes as she tried to recall it. ‘It was something like… Systematic in a brown cordial mayonnaise.’

Reverend Jacobs tilted his head a little. ‘That sounds familiar. Was it, in fact, Symptomatic of a broad cultural malaise?’

‘That’s it,’ she cried, amazed. ‘Those were the exact sounds. Do you…do you know the creature, Reverend?’

‘Don’t worry, Mrs C. That wasn’t a creature, it was just one of our visiting authors. I’ve been reading up on him, and that’s his catchphrase; he says it all the time. He’s up here for the book festival – it’s starting this evening, you know.’ Mrs Chapman had heard about this festival, and couldn’t have missed the enormous marquee that had swallowed up half the expansive village green across the road. ‘You remember when I asked you to pay special attention to the guest bedroom? That was for him. I’m putting him up while he’s here, but I wasn’t expecting him to arrive until later on. Not to worry, there’s room at the inn.’

‘An author? So…’ she looked relieved as this news sank in, ‘…he’s not a zombie after all. Oh, I do feel silly. I’m ashamed, as well; I should have known that zombies aren’t real, and even if they were, they wouldn’t have tails, would they?’ Her troubled look returned. ‘But people don’t have tails either. And what about the shrunken head?’

‘I’m sure there will be a perfectly reasonable explanation, and we’ll all have a good laugh about it later on. Writers are an eccentric bunch, Mrs C.’

‘Eccentric, yes... Do they all eat slugs, Reverend?’

‘I’m not sure. Perhaps they do. Let’s go and say hello. I’ll introduce you properly this time. His name is Wilberforce Selfram.’

Aided by Mrs Bell, Mrs Chapman rose from her seat. Even though there was now a navigable route through the hedge, they decided not to use it, and to go around the more conventional way instead. As they walked across the lawn and around to the front garden, Mrs Chapman looked at the blue sky, and over to a pair of pied wagtails that had landed nearby. She was being cared for, and she had nothing to worry about. She looked at the house, at its old bricks that shone red in the sunshine, and the wisteria growing up the wall. It was all so reassuring; her world was returning to normal.

Something at one of the top-floor windows caught her eye. From behind leaded panes, a featureless and brilliant white face was staring down at her. She wondered whether it was a tailor’s dummy; maybe they were using it for wedding dress fittings. But the face seemed to move, very slightly, as though it were following them as they walked through the garden.

It was all too much for one day, and down she went – arms out, and flat on her back.

It wasn’t long before she had been revived with smelling salts and lemonade. She was carefully helped to her feet, and the world came back into focus. She looked up at the window.

The face had gone.

We go back in time to the preceding summer. A committee is formed, a meeting is held, and two letters are read out

Within a few hours of moving in to Honeysuckle Nook, a tile-hung house set behind a mature garden on the quiet main street of Broad Bottom, Mrs Angelica Bruschini had established a committee. The idea had come to her as she stood behind her low front gate, poised like an opera singer about to launch into an aria, and watched as village life unfolded before her. A Royal Mail van drove past; a cat jumped up on to a nearby wall, then down the other side and out of view; an elderly couple walked towards the village shop and looked at the notice board for a while before going inside.

She concluded that this was all very well, but that something had to be done. She went back indoors, unpacked a pashmina shawl – a real one – from a cardboard box, threw it artfully over her shoulders and, chin aloft, left Honeysuckle Nook behind her and glided into the streets, like an ocean liner on its maiden voyage.

To her astonishment, her door-knocking recruitment drive for the All Bottoms Cultural Committee was not the triumph she had anticipated. The Bottoms already had its fair share of committees, and nobody could quite see the need for another one. While everybody who came to their door was very polite to her as she explained that she had recently moved to the village and was determined to breathe new life into the area, on every doorstep she failed to strike a chord. Everybody she spoke to was, it seemed, all booked up. It was as if they didn’t want new life breathed into the area, that they were content with the life it already had – vans driving past; cats jumping on to walls; pensioners going, somewhat gradually, into shops.

Since early childhood, she had set up committee after committee, leading each one herself, and by sheer force of personality she had ensured her meetings were well attended and her goals, whatever they had been, were reached. Here, though, instead of a full complement of supporters, she had a handbag full of flyers for local groups that her new neighbours had kindly suggested she try out. Bell ringers. Steam traction enthusiasts. Naturalists. Why don’t you pop along? they had said. We’re a friendly bunch, and we’re always looking for new people to join the committee. Her belief that joining an existing committee was a sign of weakness was so deeply held that popping along to any of these groups was out of the question. This level of resistance was new to her, and she faced it as a challenge. Without knowing it, she very slightly adjusted the set of her jaw, changing her mien from imperious to defiant, and resolved that before nightfall she would have secured the services of, at the very least, a secretary and a treasurer.

On a war footing now, she carried on until her aim was achieved. Broad Bottom wasn’t a large village, and she was close to running out of front doors to knock on when at last she found her two committee members, a young man and a young woman who lived at opposite ends of the same street. Both had just come home from work, and had answered the doors of their parents’ houses where, in their mid-twenties, they still lived. Both had always suffered from a crippling difficulty when it came to saying no to forceful people, and faced with a determined Mrs Bruschini they were quite flattened. The young man she anointed treasurer, telling him in her extraordinarily loud voice that it would have been ridiculous to offer him the other available position because Who has ever heard of a male secretary? The young woman, though, was informed that she was fully qualified to fulfil this role, and that it was her job to arrange the date, time and venue for their inaugural meeting. Each of her recruits, their appointments set in stone, went straight back indoors and on to the Internet, where they looked up books with titles like How to Say NO!,Learn to Say NO!, and Saying NO!.

This sort of thing, they resolved, has to stop.

Her core team in place, Mrs Bruschini returned to Honeysuckle Nook satisfied with her progress, and ready to settle down with a bottle of sherry. She very much enjoyed drinking sherry, and several cases had come up with the removal van. She thought about Mr Bruschini, and soon she had drunk a bit too much. I’ve found you a lovely little place in the country, he had said, very kindly.

She had prepared what she was going to tell people when they asked after him. He’s ever so busy in town. Ever so busy. He is very high up, you know. It wasn’t only other people she was going to say this to; she was going to keep on saying it to herself as well. ‘Very, very busy,’ she said, the sound of her voice dulled a little by the cardboard boxes that surrounded her. ‘Very high up indeed.’

Their third weekly meeting was held, like its predecessors, in the Broad Bottom Village Hall. The committee hadn’t grown at all in that time. Having been entrusted with the key, the secretary arrived first, ten minutes early as per Mrs Bruschini’s instructions. This gave her time to unfold the table and set out the chairs to ensure a punctual start. The treasurer turned up with two minutes to spare. Avoiding eye contact, they had greeted each other with a brief hello, after which they sat in silence as they waited for Mrs Bruschini to arrive.

Unbeknown to one another, in their houses at opposite ends of their street, they had been making their way through the same reading list, and each had decided that this was the evening when they would put everything from the books into practice. Both planned to tell her, politely but with no ambiguity, that while they would see this meeting through they would not be returning. It seemed a little cruel to leave her, to see her already threadbare committee reduced further still, but it was something they had to do. Neither felt any reason to be there. The previous two meetings had been little more than monologues from the chair, and in spite of these they still had no real grasp of what their committee was trying to achieve. They were leaving, and if she asked them why, they would say that they had other commitments. It was none of her business what those commitments were, and they would not be drawn to elucidate. They waited for the right moment, and as Mrs Bruschini swept in at seven o’clock on the dot it was clear to both of them that this wasn’t it.

Some of this hesitancy could be put down to a nervous failure to reach the required pitch of courage expected of them by their books, and some to the way their invocation of other commitments rang hollow; they had no other commitments besides staying in their rooms and wondering when their lives were going to get better. As she rose before them, a mountain in pearls, they sensed she would know this, and see through their exaggerations, and ask them questions that they couldn’t answer. Another difficulty was the structure of the sentence that they needed. It had been hard to pin down, and now the words swam in their minds. Both vaguely recalled it being something along the lines of I can no longer commit to the committee because I am committed to other commitments, but that wasn’t quite right…

Without a word of greeting, Mrs Bruschini started the meeting. She never left the house without a mahogany gavel and sound block, and she withdrew them from her handbag, placed them before her, and gave a solid thump to announce the commencement of business.

Mrs Bruschini’s style as chair was to make no use at all of her actual chair, this one being a generic stackable metal and plastic specimen that had profoundly disappointed her. Even if she wasn’t ever going to use it to sit on, she liked her chair to have some craftsmanship to it. She resolved to deal with this another day, and for now she got on with the urgent business of standing in position and addressing the room without let-up, and at such volume that it was as though she was having to project to be heard by people squashed up against the back wall. Her audience, though, was immediately below her and consisted of just two timid young people who didn’t know quite where to look, and who were only half-listening anyway, so preoccupied were they by plotting their escape.

For the preceding fifty minutes, Mrs Bruschini had outlined her renewed vision for the group. She had decided that the committee’s focus would be on turning The Bottoms into an international epicentre of culture, rather than developing the culture it already had – amateur dramatics, bands playing in beer gardens, folk nights and painting groups; that was the sort of thing that could be found anywhere, and Mrs Bruschini had written it off. She was in pursuit of only the very highest culture. ‘Ballet. Opera. That sort of thing,’ she roared, and she recounted various visits to Glyndebourne, Sadler’s Wells, Vienna and Berlin. When, at last, her monologue was complete she looked to her audience. ‘So, we are all in agreement that what this area needs is a symphony hall.’

Both the secretary and the treasurer thought that this was a ridiculous idea. The Bottoms was a collection of villages and hamlets set in rolling countryside and connected by narrow lanes; there would be nowhere to put a symphony hall, and even if there was there would barely be enough B&Bs to accommodate a percussion section, let alone the strings, and the ballerinas, and whoever else she had in mind. A quiet fell over the room. A moment for rebellion had finally come, and they thought back to their deep-breathing exercises. It was no good. They let their chance slip away. They both decided they would wait until any other business, at the end of the meeting. Previously they had just silently shaken their heads when asked if they had anything to add, but today would be different. They would grasp the opportunity. For now though, she took their silence for assent. ‘At our next meeting we shall address the practicalities of building such a structure. Trap doors and the like.’ Mrs Bruschini now turned to her treasurer. ‘Your summary, treasurer.’

The treasurer noted their outgoings. Stationery had been dealt with after their first meeting, and no pens or paper had been bought since, so he only had to report the cost of renting the room. He then moved on to their income. Six pounds had been collected at the last meeting. And then the moment came, perhaps the worst moment of all. Furious with themselves, the treasurer and the secretary reached into their pockets. Each produced a two-pound coin: their subs. Not only were they putting themselves through all this, they were paying for the experience. At least it was going to be the last time. No way were they coming back here to help a madwoman plan an imaginary auditorium in a field. The treasurer put the coins, along with the one proffered by Mrs Bruschini, into a small metal box, and logged the amount in his ledger.

The chair turned to the secretary. ‘To correspondence,’ she said.

The secretary took out two letters and, shaking a little, read out the first one. It was from the local MP, patiently declining their invitation to attend a meeting of the committee, citing time constraints. She had, though, asked for clarification of their aims, as well as their attendance figures. Mrs Bruschini harrumphed, and told the secretary to reply with the idea about the symphony hall, but to gloss over the attendance figures: ‘Rather well attended should be adequate.’

Then came the second letter, the one that was to lead to Mrs Chapman being startled in the parson’s kitchen.

It was on headed notepaper, from an organisation that had written to them from an address in London’s WC2 postcode. On hearing this, Mrs Bruschini gasped. London! WC2! In a flash she was back in her finery on St Martin’s Lane, with Mr Bruschini by her side, and they were being dropped off outside the Coliseum before going in to find their box. She was jolted back to the Broad Bottom Village Hall by the voice of her secretary. ‘They are called,’ the secretary said, ‘The Literary Festival People.’

Literary! This just got better and better. ‘What do they say?’ she asked, ravenous for news from home.

In her quiet voice, the secretary read the letter.

Dear cultural committee,

I very much hope you will allow me to introduce my organisation. We are a small team devoted to scouring the country in search of homes for new literary festivals. Just this morning we put all the relevant data into our computer, and it came back with the opinion that your area, The Bottoms, is perfectly placed to be the next location for a rather prestigious event of this sort. We felt you would be the best people to approach about taking this idea further. We do so hope to hear from you, and that we might be able to provide you with the support and expertise you will need to make this event the enormous success that we are sure it would be.

If you feel this venture would not be to your taste, I wonder whether you would kindly put us in touch with other local organisations that may be interested.

With literary regards,

Florence Peters

Suddenly everything was clear to Mrs Bruschini. The symphony hall was forgotten, trap doors and all. ‘Other local organisations?’ she bellowed. ‘I think not. This, lady and gentleman, is no longer the All Bottoms Cultural Committee. No, from this moment forward we are the All Bottoms Literary Committee.’ Without bothering to put it to the vote, she turned to the secretary. ‘Make a note of that, and see to all the necessary paperwork.’

The secretary made a note.

‘I shall reply to Ms Peters personally,’ said Mrs Bruschini. ‘There is no further business, so we shall disperse forthwith and prepare for the next chapter of my glorious committee.’ She had begun their meeting with a resonant thud, and she concluded it the same way before putting her gavel and sound block back into her handbag and sweeping away.

As they gathered their bits and pieces, the treasurer and the secretary exchanged a glance. Until now shame had led them to avoid looking directly at one another, but their eyes met for a moment, and it was then that the treasurer knew he would keep returning to these diabolical meetings. It wasn’t the book festival that interested him: he liked books well enough, but didn’t have the faintest interest in listening to authors reading aloud and answering questions about where they get their ideas from. It was something else entirely. Suddenly that two pounds seemed like money very well spent.

The secretary was also resigned to returning the following week as she folded the table and moved it into the side room, while the treasurer stacked the chairs and put them away too. With the lights off and the door locked, they stood outside the hall. The treasurer turned to the secretary in the mellowing late summer light and didn’t know what to say. He wondered whether he should tell her how much he liked her cardigan. He decided against it, but with a courage he didn’t know he had, he spoke. ‘Shall we walk back together?’

All the books she had read crowded to the forefront of her mind. The deep breathing exercises she had worked on so hard suddenly took effect and she said, simply, ‘No.’

He watched her walk away. He knew she lived on the same street as he did, and that their route home was the same, so he leant against the wall of the village hall for a few minutes to make sure he had no chance of catching up with her, or seeming as if he was following her. He had been rejected, and he wondered whether there was anything he could do about it. It was a shame. That cardigan really did suit her. As he thought about what lay beneath it, he knew he wasn’t ready to give up.

We return to the parsonage, where another slug is eaten and a novelty drinking vessel is misnamed

They were in the kitchen – the parson, Mrs Chapman, and Mr and Mrs Bell, as well as Wilberforce Selfram, who displayed no sign of a tail or a shrunken head. His backpack, grubby and damp, was leaning against a kitchen cabinet. Introductions had been made, but hands were not shaken, because the visitor had between his fingers another living slug, a jet-black specimen this time, that he had pulled from beneath his lapel and was rubbing between his fingers. ‘Do excuse one,’ he said, in a low monotone, then he stopped rubbing the animal and put it in his mouth. They looked on, simultaneously repulsed and enthralled, as he slowly chewed it. They wondered what the texture would be like. The longer the chewing went on the more rubbery, perhaps even leathery, they supposed it to be. They tried to tell themselves that it must have been a bit like eating snails, and the French did that all the time, so it wasn’t really all that strange if you looked at it that way.

Having already witnessed a similar display, and become accustomed to it, Mrs Chapman’s mind wandered. She was ill at ease. Because of all the drama of the morning, the parson had insisted on taking over the tea-making duties, which were normally her domain when they had visitors, and as the kettle boiled and mugs clinked in the background she wasn’t sure what to do with herself. The unfortunate circumstances of her first meeting with Mr Selfram had not been mentioned, but she knew she had to say something. She didn’t want the visitor to think she had been rude by screaming and running away from him. She could have said, I’m sorry, but I mistook you for a burglar, but this wouldn’t have been true, and she couldn’t possibly tell a lie, no matter how white, within earshot of a parson. She decided that the best thing would be to stop standing there like a lemon, and get it over with.

‘Mr Selfram,’ she said, clutching her apron in her writhing fists, ‘I’m very sorry about what happened earlier. I’m afraid I rather thought…’ At the sound of her voice the visitor turned to Mrs Chapman, and swallowed the last of his snack. She swallowed too, as she felt those unblinking eyes bore into her. ‘…I rather thought you were a zombie.’ His expression did not change, and in the silence that followed she felt flattened by the gravity of what she had just said. She had admitted that she had thought he was a corpse that had come back to life, risen from its grave, and wandered into the kitchen. She felt she had to go on. ‘It’s just, well, you were all covered in leaves and mud, and you seemed to have a tail, and you were carrying what looked like a shrunken severed head, and I hope you don’t mind me saying, but all those things seem quite zombielike. I feel silly now, because I’m sure you’re a very nice man and not a zombie at all.’

Showing no emotion, his voice a now familiar drone, he replied. ‘One becomes accustomed to such misapprehensions. However, were such a creature in existence, the zonbi – one prefers to employ the Haitian Creole – being the reanimated cadaver of an example of the effectively acaudal species Homo sapiens, would not, Mrs Chapman, be in possession of a tail.’

Mrs Chapman was just about able to unravel the gist of all this. ‘Yes, I had wondered about that. I was a little flustered at the time…but I couldn’t have imagined it, could I?’

‘One suspects you failed to correctly identify one’s portable misericord.’ He withdrew from a side pocket of his blazer something that looked like a truncheon, then he telescopically extended it, flipped the top so it made a sort of seat, and gave a brief demonstration of it holding him upright, before folding it away again. ‘It is bespoke, hand-crafted to reach precisely the optimum point of repose upon one’s posterior; one abhors the mass-produced portable misericords to be found at supermarkets, betwixt J-cloth and sprout. One never leaves one’s home without it – it maintains one’s erectitude.’ He paused, considering for a moment what he had just said. ‘And there is nothing amusing about that.’

‘But the severed head, Mr Selfram…what about the severed head?’ He reached into the other side-pocket of his blazer and placed on the table what she could now see was a porcelain jug that had been cast in the shape of a face. There was an uncanny likeness to its owner, but she was relieved to see, at these close quarters, that it was a piece of pottery.

‘So you’re not going barmy after all, Mrs Chapman,’ said Mr Bell, ‘there was a little head.’

She was lost for words, but the parson came to her rescue, carrying the teapot. ‘I see you’ve got a Toby jug,’ he exclaimed, addressing Wilberforce Selfram.

‘Where?’ asked the visitor.

‘There,’ said the parson, putting down the teapot and pointing to the ceramic head.

‘Where?’

‘Just there.’ This time the parson’s pointing finger almost touched the jug’s nose.

‘One remains incognisant of a Toby jug in the vicinity.’

‘This thing here, that I’m pointing at.’

‘Allow one to correct you. That is not a Toby jug, as it depicts merely the head, rather than a full seated figure. The proper nomenclature is character jug.’

‘I see. Either way, it’s missing its handle.’ There were two clear breaks where the handle had become detached from the body of the jug. The parson put two and two together, and smiled. ‘Did you by any chance meet Margaret Thatcher on your way here?’

On the very edge of the village was an antiques shop run by a tiny and extremely elderly woman of that name. She didn’t have a great aptitude for stocking interesting items, and she sold very little in the usual way, but she was kept in business by a sign on the door that stated, very clearly, that All breakages must be paid for. The shop’s aisles were so narrow, and its shelves and tables so overfilled, that it was hard to navigate it without knocking something delicate on to the flagstoned floor. The locals knew to avoid going in, but there were always passers-by, and through them she made several sales a day and her business ticked over well enough. There was no criminal design behind this – her stock was fairly priced for what it was, and she dealt with all her unfortunate customers with a genuine sympathy that made it impossible to dispute her demand for the full price. She always made sure they got what they paid for, gathering together the shattered ruins of their purchase, and giving an assurance, in the tiny voice that matched her build, that it would fix up nicely with a spot of glue. Whenever a customer had bought something, broken or not, Margaret Thatcher rewarded them by holding open the door as they left, and singing them out of the shop with the opening lines of ‘We’ll Meet Again’. As a quavering soprano emerged from this frail bark, so unexpectedly and at an almost deafening volume, even people who had managed to get their purchases this far without mishap would often drop them in shock.

Wilberforce Selfram removed the broken-off handle from his pocket, and placed it beside the mug. ‘One only entered the premises because of one’s notoriously insatiable curiosity, and before one knew it one’s ganderbag had caught this wretched exhibit with a glancing blow. Duly the monstrosity descended and, seven-pounds-twenty later, one finds oneself encumbered with it. And yet…’ A solution flashed into his mind, and he passed both pieces to Mrs Chapman. ‘A memento of our encounter,’ he said. ‘The monstrosity is yours: one’s severed and shrunken auxiliary head. Place it high upon your mantel. One shall present you with a certificate of provenance in due course.’

She accepted her new encumbrance. ‘Thank you, Mr Selfram,’ she said, quietly. ‘That is very kind of you.’

The parson returned to his tea making, and it was Mrs Bell who, sensitive to Mrs Chapman’s suffering, came to her rescue this time, with an attempt to change the subject. ‘So, Mr Selfram,’ she said, ‘you’re an author. You must be frightfully clever.’

‘Affirmative.’

The conversation faltered. The parson was still sorting out the mugs, and Mrs Bell, her voice as calm as ever, soldiered on. ‘How did you get here? Did you drive?’

‘Negative. One mounted le petit cheval de Shanks, and sallied forth.’ This drew blank looks. ‘One ambulated; indeed perambulated.’ They were still unsure. Wilberforce Selfram sighed through his nose, as he always did when accepting that he would have to simplify his vocabulary for the comprehension of the people around him. ‘One walked.’

‘Walked? From the train station?’ The nearest station was miles away.

‘Negative.’

‘Oh…’

‘Oh indeed. One commenced one’s peregrinations from a settlement in the southeast of this fractured isle; a conurbation known commonly as London. Perhaps you have heard of it, perhaps not.’

‘Oh yes, we’ve heard of it. We’ve even been there quite a few times. We normally take the train, though. It must have taken you an awfully long time to walk.’

‘Very little time. A mere eight nights.’

‘Eight nights? Gosh. Nights, Mr Selfram?’

‘One travelled primarily through the hours of darkness. One made full use of the gloaming to locate foodstuffs, after which one would fade into the forest dim and continue upon one’s odyssey until cockcrow.’

‘Didn’t you keep tripping over things?’

‘Every few paces one stumbled and fell to the ground, but this was to be expected. One merely righted oneself and continued upon one’s way.’

‘What did you do during the day? Did you check into a hotel?’

‘One begs your pardon. Check into what?’

‘A hotel.’

‘What is a hotel?’

‘Oh.’ Mrs Bell was a little stuck for a moment, but soon she had her answer. ‘It’s a big building, and it’s got lots of bedrooms, and you walk in through the front door, and there’s a desk, or counter, and a nice lady behind the counter…’

‘Or man,’ put in Mr Bell. ‘Sometimes it’s a chap.’

‘Yes, you’re absolutely right, darling, sometimes it is a man. So, there’s a nice lady, or man, there, and you say, Do you have a room for the night? and they say…’

Wilberforce Selfram raised a hand, signalling her to stop. ‘You appear,’ he said, ‘to be describing an hôtel.’

‘Oh. Yes. That is what I meant.’

Wilberforce Selfram looked to the side, as though he were gazing into the lens of a film camera, and breaking the fourth wall to communicate with an audience who understood him in a way these people never would. ‘One despairs,’ he sighed. He returned his gaze to Mrs Bell. ‘One’s rejoinder is an unequivocal negative.’

It was the parson’s turn to come to the rescue. He had finally found enough mugs, and filled a jug with milk, and a bowl with sugar lumps. ‘Let’s all sit down and have a cup of tea, and Mr Selfram can tell us about his journey. It sounds fascinating.’

They took their seats around the kitchen table. There was something of a false start as Wilberforce Selfram pointed out that they weren’t having a cup of tea because they were drinking from mugs, but once this was over with, his account began.

‘In all that time you never stayed in a B&B, or ate in a restaurant, or bought food from a shop?’ asked the parson.

‘Affirmative. One left one’s home, ganderbag upon one’s back, and picked whatever sustenance one required from hedgerow and greensward; from cliff face and fosse.’

‘A bit like that nice man on the television,’ put in Mrs Bell. ‘Ray Mears; that’s his name. He’s always going into the woods and eating things he finds.’