Bigot Hall

ONCE UPON A TIME

Near the end I became more fractious about the family, and thought Mr Mandible would understand. ‘Most youngsters are provided with memories of fun and alienation, and what do I get — nuns drilling sheetmetal, a dead old woman, a squad of interchangeable uncles and a synthetic Verger. What will I be like when I reach my prime?’

‘A master chef?’

‘What? I’d rather be glimpsed in a wood now and again, running the other way.’

‘A feral enigma, you mean? Really laughing boy I’m surprised at you. This place seems to me a child’s garden of terror and experience, full of sinister flowers and gobbets of pulsating gas.’

‘Precisely.’

Mandible began to describe his own life in polychrome terms. ‘Certain lack of family,’ he said. ‘Died all at once early on. At the theatre.’

‘How many were involved?’

‘Five in all. Large chandelier flattened them, ridden down upon the audience by an unclothed gentleman. I’m told they never knew a thing — though anyone who met them in life could hardly have failed to notice that.’

‘They felt no pain?’

‘Apparently not. In fact from what I hear of the play I suspect all five of them were dead before the incident occurred. So from then on I had to get by on charm alone, a course of action which culminated in my wrestling an enraged chimp on a rattling bobsled. My endeavours to enlist in the armed forces having been thwarted by my inability to be found, I took a series of blithely unsecured loans until my very eyelids were seized for nonpayment. I had always had a fondness for brains and offal — but particularly brains. Look at that,’ he said, gesturing at a murky fishtank and its bubbling cargo. ‘A mere four pounder but able to recall the Brandenburg Concertos before you can say Jack Robinson. And all this I owe to my upbringing. The point is, laughing boy, we all draw something from our environment, like soft flesh from bone.’

I gazed around his room. On the mantel was a 22-calibre pocket gun which he claimed reminded him of ‘younger and happier days’. A variety of hen jaws were hung on a pegboard on the wall — I was momentarily disconcerted to see that some possessed incisors. ‘Do you mean to say this distorted household could serve as a nutrient-rich support matrix for my prowess in every worthy area?’

‘I mean simply that you shouldn’t blame the slobbering miscreants of this place for behaviour they were exhibiting when you were still bloodshot and unborn. Forgiveness, child, not exploitation.’

There was a thought — and not before time. The Hall was a sanctuary from the fatal banality of a world unable to discern between a boy who’s boring and a boy who’s bored. My cup was overflowing — but with what?

‘So didn’t you and your family ever have disagreements, Mr Mandible?’

‘Certainly we did.’ He picked up a black and white portrait of his parents and peers, smiling fondly. ‘My father.’ He chuckled in remembrance. ‘I once picked him up by the ears and told him to stick his scholarly incomprehension up his arse. God I was unpleasant. Couldn’t have been more than three years old. He was angry as hell ofcourse, tied me to a metal cutting lathe. Escaped and snuck up behind him, announcing my liberty with a hydraulic jack.’ Mandible had begun to shudder, flecks of foam hailing from his mouth. ‘And I told him plainly, “Ha, ha, ha — I don’t give a damn!” And I struck him, and struck him — until he knew!’

He grabbed an egg timer off a shelf and said it contained his parents’ ashes, turning it this way and that to watch the flow amid belting laughter. I became bored and left, but was thoughtful amid a germinating insight. That which must be grown out of may rarely be a way of life, and that which is a way of life may rarely be grown out of — both rarities are infinitely precious. Back there was a man with an appreciation of the finer things. I too would have a family portrait — it would be a way of confirming that I was grateful, that their memory was not to be discarded, that I knew there was more to my family than the use I could make of them and that we were sophisticated enough to hang other things on our wall besides haunted cow heads encrusted with cement.

So I got everyone together near the hothouse, grouping them like normal people. Even the Verger threw back his hood. I ducked under the cloth of an old tripod box camera and hit the button. In the developing room, it all grew clear. Pointed skyward were the gormless gape, brittle sockets and marbled cartilage the careful philosopher would have expected. I recognised nobody — only the stance and clothing marked them out. On top of every neck was a cartoonish fish head, sucked of flesh and jelly as though in a single gulp.