The Garden of Unearthly Delights

  ‘Right. OK. Well, it’s all quite simple really. You see, under normal circumstances, a reader can’t change the ending of the book he’s reading. Even if he could, it wouldn’t make any difference, because there’d be thousands of other copies around, being read by thousands of other people.

  ‘But you see, this is different. As Sir John explained to me earlier, I’m the last reader. So I can do whatever I want. I read the book right through to the end. And I didn’t like it, not with you winning and everything. So I flicked back a few pages, got a bottle of Tippex and made some changes. I wrote myself in. That’s how I came to be here, you see. I wrote myself in as Sir John’s new apprentice. I already knew of Danbury’s treachery, so I took a few precautions. Like equipping Sir John and the doctor with bullet-proof vests and switching the poison Danbury put in my coffee for harmless sugar.’

  ‘But who’s the bastard in the simply splendid leather coat?’ The count made feeble gestures towards Max Carrion.

  Maxwell’s grin was still on full. ‘He’s a figment of my imagination. Your powers were greater than Sir John’s, so I had to have you use them all up. Then I could simply shoot you. Which I did.’

  ‘Oh,’ said the count. ‘Well, fair enough. I suppose in the long run, it really doesn’t matter which one of us wins. When you close the book we’ll all cease to exist anyway.’

  ‘True. But as the last reader, I felt it fitting that the book should end the way I wanted it to end.’

  ‘Then I suppose I’m dead.’

  ‘I suppose you are.’

  And he was.

  ‘Bravo,’ said Sir John, adjusting his beard. ‘You have certainly proved yourself an imagineer of the first order, Maxwell. What do you plan to do now?’

  Maxwell scratched his head without shame. ‘Close the book, then venture out into this strange new world, I suppose.’

  ‘A sound idea. Our thoughts go with you.’

  ‘So I trust will whatever books of magic spells you possess. Along with any powerful talismans and protective amulets. If magic works in this new age, then I shall be the one to work it.’

  Sir John pursed his lips and shivered his beard. ‘I regret to disappoint you there,’ he said. ‘Such items are beyond price and could never be considered as largess to propitiate a total stranger who just happened by through fortuitous circumstance.’

  ‘What gratitude is this?’ cried Maxwell. ‘I am appalled by what I hear.’

  ‘I promised you knowledge,’ said Sir John. ‘And knowledge I impart. It is the knowledge that you now possess a creative imagination sufficient to perform remarkable deeds. The knowledge that, should you choose to apply yourself to just causes, you will ultimately triumph over all who would prevail against you.’

  ‘Such knowledge is no doubt profound,’ said Maxwell uncheerily. ‘But your propositions I believe to be somewhat quixotic. Perhaps you might spare me some minor spell from one of your great tomes to aid me on my way. One to instantly disable a potential enemy, multiply gold or indefinitely postpone the ravages of old age would not go unappreciated.’

  ‘Cast such frivolous notions from your mind,’ said Sir John. ‘You are now Max Carrion, Imagineer. Think only of noble deeds and high moral standards. Dr Harney will show you to the door.’

  ‘I won’t stand for this,’ declared Maxwell. ‘I will rewrite it all. Where is my Tippex? Where’s my Biro?’

  ‘Many leagues away from here.’

  ‘I have been shabbily used,’ protested Maxwell. ‘Don’t think you can simply cast me out in such a churlish fashion. Am I not Max Carrion, Imagineer?’

  ‘You certainly are,’ said Sir John. ‘Now Dr Harney, please, the door.’

  3

  Although Maxwell put up a respectable resistance, he was no match for Sir John and Dr Harney, who, at length, with the aid of sword stick and cricket bat, drove him from the premises.

  Outside, with the great tower door now firmly slammed upon him, Maxwell fumed and cursed his erstwhile hosts, reserving especial tirades of condemnation for the infamy of his imaginized double. He of the simply splendid coat who had, throughout the uneven struggle, stood passively by, smoking a Wild Woodbine and showing not the least concern for the welfare of his creator.

  When finally he had run himself dry of invective and bruised many toes through futile door-kicking, Maxwell marshalled his thoughts. It was time to go home.

  Now the first of Maxwell’s marshalled thoughts was that, as he was now no longer in the book he had apparently been reading, he should therefore be back in his own front room, sitting in his armchair, the very book upon his knees and Bic and Tippex close to hand. A glance about at his alien surroundings, however, assured him that this was not, in fact, the case.

  Maxwell stood upon a promontory of tended grass that rose from picturesque foundations. Story-book meadows and cultivated pasture lands spread from near to far away.

  Above, Sir John’s Hidden Tower reared in Gothic splendour, a babble of carved pink stone, helmeted by turrets and cupolas that blinked in the golden sunlight. All very nice if you like that kind of thing. But Maxwell did not.

  ‘I must imagine that I’m home,’ Maxwell told himself. ‘And then I will be. Imagine that I have closed the book and that I am home. And then I will awaken from this daydream or nightmare or whatever.’ Maxwell closed his eyes, screwed his face into an expression of deep concentration and thought himself back home.

  ‘There,’ said Maxwell, opening his eyes. Then, ‘By the Goddess!’ he continued.

  He was still where he had been a moment before. But now the vista had drastically changed. The grass about him rose in course blades almost to his waist, the story-book meadows and cultivated pasture lands had become gorse-grown moorlands, the Hidden Tower was nothing but a jumble of fallen stone.

  Maxwell made a rueful face and hugged his arms. There was a definite chill in the air, and the reason for it was all too plain to see. Above the barren landscape, in a clear and cloudless sky, the sun hung nearly at its zenith. But the sun was strange: swollen, bloated, ruby red, as if about to set. A thin black line was evident about the solar disc.

  Maxwell made a sullen sound to go with his rueful face. ‘That is not my fault,’ he murmured. ‘I did not do that.’

  Maxwell gazed about the cheerless panorama. Where was he? Still in England? Perhaps not. Was there somewhere in the world where the sun looked like that? Greenland? Iceland? Tierra del Fuego? Patagonia?

  Maxwell sniffed the air. Did it smell like England? What did England smell like anyway? An American he’d once met had told him that France smelled of garlic and Gauloise and England smelled of stale beer and boiled cabbage. Maxwell recalled that the American smelled of cheese, but couldn’t remember why, although it had been explained to him at the time.

  ‘Wherever I am, I have no wish to be here.’ Maxwell took half a step forward and fell on his face. Tied boot laces again? It was far from amusing. Maxwell struggled with his feet. They were literally grown over, knotted with ground weed and stinkweed. He kicked and thrashed and fought himself free. Two dark dead patches of soil remained to mark the spot where he had been standing. ‘I’m out of here,’ said Maxwell.

  He trudged down the promontory, hands deep in trouser pockets, jacket collar turned up to the chill. Out onto the gorsy waste. But which way? ‘South,’ he decided and trusting to that in-built sense of direction that all men claim to possess, struck off towards the west.

  The going wasn’t easy and neither was it pleasant. Small stinging beasties of the gnat persuasion swarmed up to feast upon his exposed fleshy parts. Something howled ominously in the distance and the dreariness of the gorsy waste relieved itself periodically by suddenly giving way to a boggy morass into which Maxwell stumbled without let or hindrance.

  The sun moved on before him, which puzzled Maxwell who found himself hard put to calculate which portion of the globe it was, where the sun set in the south.

  It was with no small sense of relief theref
ore that he finally tripped through a ragged overgrown hedge and fell onto the side of a road.

  Though it wasn’t much of a road.

  More of a track.

  It had the look of having once been a road and by its width, one much travelled. But now it was gone to fragmentation, burst through by beggarweed and spark heather. Maxwell looked up the road and down and consoled himself with the traveller’s verity that ‘A road always leads to somewhere’.

  ‘Hm,’ went Maxwell. ‘West or east? West, I think.’ And so saying he began to plod northward.

  He had plodded for more than an hour, blessing, with almost every step he took, the substantial nature of his substantial boots, when he saw it.

  Away in the distance.

  But bright as a shilling in a sweep’s behind and beautiful as Bexhill was to Betjeman.

  A bus-stop.

  With a shelter.

  And, by all the grace of the Goddess herself.

  With people waiting in it!

  Maxwell’s plod became a walk, his walk a stride, his stride a springing, joyous goose-step prance.

  As he drew nearer, Maxwell became aware that this was not just any old bus-stop with a shelter. This was the mother of all old bus-stops with shelters. It was painted in rich hues of orange, green and gold and decked all around and about with garlands of gazania, olive branch and bulbous reticulata.

  Three persons stood within this colourful bower of a shelter. Next to the stop itself, which was adorned with yellow ribbons, stood an old dear clutching two Budgen’s carrier-bags, next to her a grim-looking youth with a six-hair beard sprouting from a flock of pubic chin-blossoms and next to him a lady of middle years clutching the remnants of what once had been one of those impossible-to-foldaway foldaway buggies. All looked sorely down at heel and all looked towards Maxwell with expressions which could best be described as doubtful.

  Maxwell made a cheery face and approached with a waving hand. The three persons acknowledged his waves with troubled twitchings of the shoulders and then turned down their eyes.

  Maxwell chanced to glance down and noted with no small degree of puzzlement that the section of road which lay before the stop and shelter had been carefully weeded, filled, restored, swept clean and painted over in a glossy black.

  Maxwell shrugged. These folk obviously were hoping to gain a first in the Best Kept Bus-Stop of the Year Competition. Thoughts of competitions and awards suddenly drew Maxwell up short. He had all but forgotten about his Queen’s Award for Industry Award (award). He had left it behind in Sir John’s now-gone-to-ruination Hidden Tower. Maxwell gave his lip a curl. When he got home he would certainly put things right. Phrases such as ‘his massive piles made his every waking minute a hell on earth’ would be inserted into the paragraphs referring to the ungrateful Mr Rimmer. Oh yes indeed!

  The three persons had now returned their gaze to Maxwell, who hastily uncurled his lip, resumed his cheersome grin and said, as he drew near, ‘I cannot tell you just how happy it makes me to find this stop and shelter here.

  Two of the three faces lit up like Swan Vestas. The youth, however, remained disposed to gloom.

  ‘Then you are of The Queue?’ asked the old dear.

  English bus-stop, English speech — I’m in England! thought Maxwell. ‘Praise be,’ he said aloud.

  ‘Praise be indeed,’ said the old dear. ‘Welcome, brother.’

  ‘Thank you,’ Maxwell stepped up to take his place behind the lady of middle years, who clutched the non-foldaway foldaway.

  She looked him up and down. ‘Make the sign then,’ she said.

  ‘Pardon me?’ replied Maxwell.

  The lady extended her arm, as one would when hailing a cab, or stopping a bus.

  ‘Oh I see. Request stop, yes?’ Maxwell extended his arm in a likewise fashion, then tucked both his hands into his trouser pockets.

  ‘Praise be,’ said the old dear once more.

  Maxwell offered her a smile. ‘Been waiting long?’ he asked.

  ‘We are here for the afternoon wait, yes.’

  Maxwell nodded. ‘I confess that I’m a stranger to these parts. Where do we go to from here?’

  The three persons now cast Maxwell mystified expressions. ‘To Terminus, of course!’ spat the dour young man. ‘Where else?’

  ‘Where else indeed. And in which town would the terminus be?’

  ‘Town?’ The young man looked long and hard at Maxwell. ‘Are you sure that you are of The Queue?’

  ‘Here I stand,’ said Maxwell, ‘as your eyes will testify.’

  ‘Then where is your token of penance?’

  ‘I am perplexed,’ said Maxwell. ‘Would you care to explain?’

  The young man glared at Maxwell, then, as if resigning himself to the fact that he was clearly addressing a simpleton, said, ‘None may travel to Terminus without their token of penance. See the old woman carries the get-a-move-on-with-those shoppering sacks. This lady holds the I-can’t-let-you-on-with-that-thing wheel-about, and I . . .’

  The young man removed a crumpled piece of paper from his pocket and flourished it before Maxwell’s eyes. ‘I have the I-don’t-have-change-for-anything-that-big-you‘ll-have-to-get-off parchment.’

  Maxwell viewed the item being flourished before him. It was not a money note. He looked from one to another of his fellow queuers, then he looked once more up and down the road. And then a thought entered his head, which really should have entered it earlier.

  There was no possible way that any bus could ever travel along this ruined track! Something was very very wrong about these folk.

  ‘Ahem.’ Maxwell cleared his throat and sought to compose questions which might evoke clear and unambiguous answers, whilst offering no offence. He addressed his first one to the old dear.

  ‘Good woman,’ he said, ‘I observe that you are at the head of the queue. Might I enquire as to just how long, overall, you have waited here?’

  The old dear smiled a proud smile. ‘I have observed the morning wait, the afternoon wait and the “last one cancelled”, three times a week for the past forty years. When I am finally taken up to Terminus, my son Kevin here will have my place.’

  Maxwell’s throat made a gagging sound. ‘Forty years?’ he said in a harsh whisper. ‘Forty years?’

  ‘As my mother did before me and hers before her, dating back to the Time of Transition.’

  ‘The time of transition?’

  ‘When the old aeon ended and the new one began.’

  ‘But . . . but. . .’ Maxwell now had a serious shake on. ‘But that was yesterday, surely?’

  ‘Yesterday?’ The young man guffawed. ‘You are a buffoon and no mistake. The old aeon ended a century ago.’

  ‘No,’ said Maxwell. ‘No, no, no.’

  The lady of middle years stretched out a hand to finger the fabric of Maxwell’s jacket. ‘This antique costume the buffoon wears is of royal stuff. Such a jacket would suit you well, Kevin.’

  ‘Much so,’ said Kevin, affecting a covetous leer.

  ‘Stop!’ Maxwell tore himself away from the lady’s tightening grip. He was now in a state of confusion and alarm. A century gone since the Earth left the Age of Technology and passed into whatever it had? A century? Then everyone he knew . . . everyone he loved his wife . . . well, he didn’t love her. He was glad to see the back of her. But he’d never have wished her dead. This was terrible . . .

  ‘What fleeting reason he had, has now deserted him,’ said the lady. ‘Mark well that I claim his boots.’

  ‘Stand aside!’ Maxwell reached forward, grabbed the youth by the ragged collar of his rustic coat and drew him almost from his feet. ‘Questions,’ said Maxwell, ‘to which you will furnish answers.’

  The youth’s head bobbed up and down. ‘Yes, sir,’ said he.

  ‘Firstly, what year is this?’

  The youth looked hopelessly towards his mum. Maxwell gave him a teeth-rattling shake. ‘The ninety-eighth year, sir,’ he said.

 
‘And no bus has been along this road for ninety-eight years?’ There was much desperation in Maxwell’s voice. It was not lost upon the youth.

  ‘It will come,’ cried the old woman. ‘Varney will come and carry the faithful to Terminus. We tend the shrine. There will be room for us on top.’

  ‘It’s a bloody cargo cult,’ declared Maxwell. ‘And Varney? Who’s Varney?’

  ‘Varney is the driver,’ said the old dear — she didn’t look quite so dear now — ‘who is also known as Butler.’

  ‘Reg bloody Varney?’ Maxwell let the youth go limp. ‘This shelter, this stop, is a shrine to Reg bloody Varney?’

  ‘Blasphemer!’ The old woman threw up her hands, dropping her shopping bags, which spilled out stones and clods of earth. ‘I declare the afternoon wait at an end. Slay the heretic!’

  ‘You’re all barking mad.’ Maxwell gave the youth a shove, propelling him onto the section of blackly painted road where he fell in a heap. ‘Barking mad.’

  ‘Outrage!’ The old woman covered her face with her hands. ‘Sacrilege! The Highway to Heaven is despoiled.’

  ‘Cease this madness now.’ Maxwell shook his fists in the air. ‘There is no bus. There is no Varney. You’re wasting away your lives. Ninety-eight years, waiting for a bus that will never come, to carry you off to some terminus in the sky. How long must you wait to learn the folly of your ways?’

  The old woman crooked a finger at Maxwell. ‘Unbeliever, iconoclast, son of some faithless harlot.’

  ‘How dare you?’ said Maxwell. ‘My mother wasn’t faithless.’ And the cold shiver passed through him once more for the mother he would never see again. ‘My mother was a Christian,’ said Maxwell.

  ‘Oh yes?’ The old woman gave a mocking laugh. ‘My grandmother told me of that sect. You scorn a wait of a mere ninety-eight years. Then tell me how long your mother’s lot waited in vain for their deity to make his second coming?’

  Good point, thought Maxwell. ‘That is neither here nor there,’ he said.

  The youth had now raised himself from the painted section of road. He snatched up a rock from the selection which had spilled from his mum’s shoppers and brandished it menacingly. ‘I must bear a mighty penance for soiling the sacred tary-mac. The-case-of-suits-which-is-not-allowed-on-the-top-deck. Your broken bones will fill this case.’