Snuff Fiction

2

The boy Doveston shuffled across the quadrangle. It was a definite shuffle he had, as opposed to, say, a waddle or a totter. There was the hint of a slouch to his gait and more than a little of the plod. There was trudge in it too, as a matter of fact, and a smidgen of amble as well.

But let it be set clear upon the record and right from the very start, there was no trace of sidle in that walk. And had he chosen, for reasons of his own, to increase the speed of his perambulation, there would have been no swagger, strut, or goose-step.

The boy Doveston moved with the honest and unprepossessing shuffle of the poor. Because he was poor, as indeed were we all.

That our school should be called the Grange was not without irony. For although the title conjures up an image of some well-bricked seat of learning, ivy-walled and gravelly drived, this was not the case. The Grange was your bog-standard Edwardian day school, built by the burghers of Brentford to educate the sons of the poor.

Not educate them too much, of course, but just enough. Sufficient that they could spell their names and count their wages and learn to call their betters, sir.

And so it had for fifty years.

And done so rather well.

The boy Doveston had not been taught to shuffle. It came naturally to him. It was in his genes. Generations of Dovestons had shuffled on before him: few to glory and all to a pauper’s grave. And while we did not suffer the wretched privations of our Irish counterparts, who plodded barefoot to school with a clod of turf under each arm and a potato clenched between their bottom cheeks, we were poor enough.

We suffered all the usual maladies of the impoverished: rickets, ringworm, scrofiila and mange. As a typical child, the boy Doveston played host to a wide variety of vermin, from the aforementioned nits, to body lice, gut worm, trouser roach and plimsoll maggot. Blowflies feasted on the juices of his eyes and aphids dined upon his ear wax.

But this was the way of it. We knew no different. We were unconcerned and we were happy. The boy Doveston was happy. He grinned and he whistled — a popular tune of the day, breathed out in unrecognizable fragments, for it is almost impossible to grin and whistle at the same time.

The boy Doveston, having shuffled across the quadrangle, now shuffled under the veranda and into the school building. Our classroom was 4a and within it we were enjoying a history lesson. Mr Vaux stood before the blackboard, a piece of chalk in one hand and a Capstan’s Full Strength in the other, and spoke to us of Damiens’ Bed of Steel.

Robert-François Damiens had in 1757 made an attempt upon the life of Louis XV. As a punishment for this and to discourage any other potential regicides, he had been brutally tortured to death. They had placed him upon an iron bedstead affair that was warmed to red hot. His right hand was roasted on a slow fire. Molten lead and wax were poured into wounds that were infficted upon him by special pincers and he was eventually torn into pieces by four wild horses.

It was all very interesting and Mr Vaux evidently knew his subject well, judging by the graphic descriptions he gave of each particular torment. And it certainly served as an object lesson to any of us who harboured the ambition to become an assassin when we grew up: that we should plan our getaways with the utmost care!

The lesson was almost over by the time the boy Doveston entered the classroom, which was a shame because he had missed all the best bits. I know he would have enjoyed the part when Mr Vaux held his finger over a candle flame to demonstrate just how much pain a man can take before he screams really loud. I know I did. And while most of the soppy girls were quietly weeping and that softy Paul Mason had fainted, the boy Doveston would certainly have been the first to put up his hand when Mr Vaux asked who amongst us would like to sniff the burned flesh of his finger.

But as it was he missed it and as it was he entered without knocking first.

Mr Vaux swung around from the blackboard and pointed his charred digit at the boy. ‘Out!’ cried he, in outrage and in such a raised voice that Paul, awaking from his faint, was caused to faint once more.

The boy went out again and knocked. ‘Come,’ called Mr Vaux. The boy came in.

Our teacher laid his chalk aside and sought instead his slipper. He looked the boy both up and down and shook his head in sadness. And then he glanced up at the classroom clock and made tut-tutting sounds.

‘Two-twenty-three,’ said Mr Vaux. ‘You have excelled yourself this time, Doveston.’

The boy scuffed his unpolished shoes on the floor. ‘I’m truly sorry, sir,’ he said.

‘A laudable sentiment,’ said Mr Vaux. ‘And one which makes the violence I am about to visit upon your backside with my slipper purely symbolic. Kindly bend over the desk.’

‘Ah,’ said the boy. ‘I think not.’

‘Think not?’ Mr Vaux’s moustachios bristled as only moustachios can. ‘Over the desk at once, my lad, and learn the errors of dissent.’

‘The headmistress says that you are not to beat me for being late, sir.

‘Oh,’ said our teacher, making a dramatic flourish with his slipper.

‘You have received a dispensation from on high. Possibly you are to atone for your sins in some other fashion. Or is it a case of venia necessitati datur?’[1]

It was always a pleasure to hear Mr Vaux spout Latin. But as the subject was not taught in our school, we never had the foggiest idea what he was on about.

‘It is the case, sir, that I had to go to the police station.’

‘O joyous day,’ said Mr Vaux. ‘And so at last you are to be taken off to Approved School and I shall be spared the onerous and thankless task of teaching you. Hasten then to clear your desk and take your leave at the hurry-up.’

‘No, sir. I had to go to the police station because I witnessed a crime and helped to bring the criminal to justice.’

‘Doveston,’ said Mr Vaux, ‘do you know the penalty for lying in this school?’

Doveston munched thoughtfully upon his chewing gum. ‘I do, sir, yes,’ he said at length. ‘I do, sir, yes indeed.’

‘That is good,’ said Mr Vaux. ‘For although the punishment falls somewhat short of that inflicted upon Damiens, it has always in the past proved itself to be a powerful deterrent in the fight against mendacity and falsehood.’

‘Yes indeed,’ said Doveston once more.

‘So, with that firmly understood, perhaps you would care to share with us the details of your day?’

‘I would, sir. Yes please.’

‘Then do so.’ Mr Vaux settled himself down at his desk, stubbed out his cigarette and put his hands behind his Brylcreemed head. ‘The floor is yours,’ he said, ‘so say your piece.

‘Thank you, sir, I will.’ The boy Doveston thrust his hands once more into the pockets of his shorts and sniffed away a runner from his nose. ‘You see, sir,’ he began, ‘I left my house early, because I had to do an errand for my mum and I didn’t want to be late for school. My mum had asked me to go to old Mr Hartnell’s corner shop and buy her a packet of Duchess. Those are the new perfumed cigarettes from Carberry’s of Holborn. The tobacco is a light mellow Virginia, flavoured with bergamot and sandalwood. And although I do not condemn the use of essential oils in the preparation of snuff, it is a different matter with cigarettes, tending to adulterate the taste of the tobacco rather than enhance it. I feel that with Duchess, as with Lady Grey’s and Her Favourites, the application has been over-liberal. In my opinion, the perfuming of cigarettes is little more than an exotic blandishment, designed to lure gullible female smokers away from their regular brands.’

‘An argument most eloquently put,’ said Mr Vaux, his eyebrows raised. ‘I had no idea that you were aufait with the subtleties of the tobacco—blender’s craft.’

‘Oh yes, sir. When I grow up I intend to go into the trade. I have certain ideas that I think will revolutionize it.’

‘Do you now? Well, I’m sure that they’re all very interesting. But please confine yourself to the matter in hand.’

‘Yes, sir. So I went into old Mr Hartnell’s to purchase the cigarettes. Which, I might add, cost one and fourpence for ten, an outrageous sum. And there was a chap waiting to be served before me. He was dressed in the garb of a road-sweeper, but I chanced to notice that his shoes were highly polished. My suspicions were further aroused when he asked to buy a packet of cigarettes.’

‘Why?’ asked Mr Vaux.

‘Because he asked for a packet of Carroll’s Golden Glories, a tipped cigarette smoked almost exclusively by the gentry. No road-sweeper would ever smoke a tipped cigarette, let alone a Carroll’s. And then, sir, if this wasn’t enough, he paid with a five-pound note.’

‘Incredible,’ said Mr Vaux.

‘Incredible,’ we all agreed.

And it was incredible. And as we listened and the boy Doveston spoke, the tale that unfolded was more than incredible.

It was exciting too.

He had followed the man from old Mr Hartnell’s corner shop, down Moby Dick Terrace, along Abaddon Street to an empty house on the edge of the bomb site at the Half Acre. We knew all the empty houses in Brentford, but we’d never been able to get into this one because it was so well boarded up.

The man had entered the house through a hidden doorway at the back and the boy had followed him in.

Once inside, the boy had found himself in what looked to be a laboratory, with strange specimens suspended in tall preserving jars and much complicated apparatus of the electrical persuasion. He crouched down behind a work bench and watched as the man made a call on a tiny wireless set, speaking in a language that seemed to consist of squeaks and grunts. His call completed, he swung around, pistol in hand and demanded that Doveston show himself.

Grudgingly the boy complied.

‘So,’ said the man, ‘you are an enterprising youth.’

‘I’m lost, sir,’ said the Doveston. ‘Could you tell me the way to the -railway station?’

‘You are indeed lost,’ said the man, in a voice that the boy described as chilling. ‘But now I have found you.’

‘Goodbye,’ said the Doveston, turning to leave.

‘The door is locked,’ said the man. And it was.

‘Please don’t kill me,’ the Doveston said.

The man smiled and put away his pistol. ‘I have no wish to kill you,’ he replied. ‘On the contrary, when I have finished with you, you will be anything but dead. You will be more alive than you can possibly imagine.’

‘I would rather just leave, if that’s all right with you.’

‘No,’ said the man, ‘it’s not. Now listen carefully while I explain the situation to you and then, when I’ve finished, you can make up your own mind about what you do.’

‘Do you mind if I smoke while I listen?’

‘No, certainly, have one of mine.

The boy Doveston grinned at Mr Vaux. ‘I was hoping he’d say that,’ he said, ‘because I’d never tried a Carroll’s before. I must say, however, that it was something of a let-down. The quality of the tobacco was good, but the watermarked paper has a slightly glossy feel and burns unevenly. I was impressed by the charcoal filter, but there is definite room for improvement there. Possibly the addition of a cork tip such as with Craven A. I—’

But this particular discourse was cut short by the sound of Mr Vaux’s slipper striking his desk. ‘Get on with it!’ cried Mr Vaux.

The boy got on with it.

‘The man told me that he was part of an élite group of scientists working for the government. They had created an electronic brain that was capable of predicting future developments in technology. It couldn’t actually tell the future, because it couldn’t access all the information required to do that. It worked on a mathematical principle. If you are asked to work out what two and two make, you will say: four. Which means that you have predicted the future. You have foretold what will happen when you add two and two. The electronic brain works something like that. He said that it had worked out that by the end of the century we would be almost completely reliant on machines like itself, computers, to run society. They would be linked into almost everything. Food production, military defence, telecommunications, transportation, hospitals, banking, whatever.

‘But, he said, there would be an unavoidable design fault in the programming of these systems. Something to do with the little date-counters inside them. And this would mean that when they reached the year two thousand, many of them would break down. Society would then collapse, he said.’

Mr Vaux stroked at his moustachios. And if I’d had some to stroke, I’d have surely done the same. It was fascinating stuff. Radical stuff Incredible stuff And, curiously, it also seemed as if it were familiar stuff I felt certain that I’d heard all this before. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more absolutely certain I felt that I’d heard all this before. Indeed that I’d read all this before.

In a comic book that the Doveston had recently lent to me.

I don’t think Mr Vaux had read it though. I think he would have stopped the tale-telling sooner if he had. I think he quite enjoyed the bit when the boy refused to submit to the brain-implant operation that would have linked him to the electronic machine and the man pulled the lever that dropped him through the trapdoor into the cage beneath. It was here, of course, that the Doveston met the princess with the silver eyes, who had been kidnapped for use in some similar experiment. I don’t know whether you can actually pick a padlock with a matchstick and whether there really is a maze of subterranean caverns beneath Brentford inhabited by dwarves with tattooed ears. I remain uncertain about the amount of firepower the Brentford constabulary were able to call upon when they surrounded the house. And I’m certain we would have heard the explosion when the man pressed the self—destruct button rather than be taken alive.

But it was a thrilling story and I do feel that it was really decent of Mr Vaux to let the Doveston finish.

Before he bent him over the desk.

Although we were never taught German at the Grange, we all knew the meaning of the word Schadenfreude. And we all enjoyed the beating. It was a suitably epic beating and at the end of it Mr Vaux had four of the injury monitors convey the unconscious Doveston to the school nurse to have his wounds dressed and the smelling bottle applied to his nostrils.

All in all it was a memorable afternoon and I include it here as I feel it offers the reader an insight into just what sort of a boy the Doveston was.

Imaginative. And daring.

At home-time we helped him out through the school gates. We were all for carrying him shoulder high, but his bottom, it seemed, was too tender. However, he was a hero, there was no mistake about that, and so we patted him gently upon what areas of his body remained uninjured and called him a jolly good fellow.

As we left the school our attention was drawn to a large black and shiny motor car, parked in the otherwise deserted street. On the bonnet of this leaned a man in a chauffeur’s uniform and cap. At our rowdy approach he stepped forward. Not, however, to protect the car, but to hand the Doveston a bag of sweets.

We looked on in silence as the chauffeur returned to the car, climbed in and drove away at speed.

I have a lasting impression of that moment. Of the car turning the corner past old Mr Hartnell’s shop. And of the passenger in the back seat, smiling and waving.

The passenger was a beautiful young woman.

A beautiful young woman with astounding silver eyes.