Bigot Hall by Steve Aylett Page A

them I heard classical music throbbing through the water and thought maybe it wasn’t such a malignant ceremony. Above all, I was curious to see an authentic gentleman.
    As my mask went under the surface everything became luminous. I saw the others floating like haunts around the two headlights. Debussy’s Rondes de printemps was playing as Mother laid a metal wreath on the bonnet. I couldn’t help but marvel at the condition of the wooden panelling.
    ‘There’s Blute,’ said Father, touching his mask to mine. ‘Absolutely mint.’
    The driver, whose white balloon head became visible through the windshield, was certainly in good repair. He was staring like a madman, his chalky hands still on the wheel. His nose was squashed against the glass like the sucker of a snail, nostrils flared. Light and shadow shifted like commune ideologies, giving the illusion of life. But there was no reaction when I laid the wreath - nothing there atall. This was either a dead, abandoned body or a wax mannequin. Neither was of interest to me.
    As I stared, the music faded and an announcer began to describe the royal celebrations. It was Jubilee year.

ITCHES IN THE SKY
     
     
    Snapper missed his medication and started seeing itches in the sky. ‘Truth is as small as an itch,’ he had said that morning and we should have been alarmed. Now he was utterly incoherent, springing over hedges yelling gibberish which two years later he patiently explained as meaning ‘I’d give my weight in snails to know what’s going on around here.’ He entered the sitting room covered in ferns and wearing a chrome helmet. He was laughing like Lamb at Hazlitt’s wedding as he described the web-like constellations of truth and the inevitable collapse and infernal damnation of the universe.
    ‘Informal did he say?’ asked Leap.
    ‘Infernal,’ said Father, reading the paper.
    ‘I thought he said informal too,’ I said cheerfully, stroking a South European wolf spider.
    ‘Ofcourse it’ll be in formal !’ bellowed Snapper, transfigured with rage. He swiped up a chestnut pan and slammed it down on the spider, which now resembled a discarded glove.
    ‘You utter bastard,’ I said, staring. I had been training the spider to form part of an alarm-clock mechanism and everything had been just fine. ‘You did that deliberately.’
    Snap was hooting with laughter.
    ‘I hope you’re proud of yourself,’ said Leap. ‘After all the boy’s work. Those of us who give a damn are of the opinion that you’re put together with glue. Ribcage like a mantrap. This resentful malice of yours. Perhaps I shouldn’t mention it at this point but when viewed through an obverse gravitational lens you appear to have the face of a king prawn.’
    ‘I know it but what about the droog?’ shouted Snapper, pointing at me. ‘His pockets are full of tiny bones!’
    ‘Nonsense,’ I said quickly.
    ‘Oh yes, brother,’ shouted Snap. ‘It’s incredibly obvious. And I’m disappointed you found it necessary to produce such truculent and abrasive offspring.’
    ‘Oh I don’t know,’ said Father with an air of judicious consideration. ‘Sheets stretch in transformation, a new creature brims a little amid its claws – doesn’t matter in the long run.’
    ‘Are you quite sure it doesn’t?’ asked Leap, tortuously aghast, and turned to look at me with a new and appalled understanding.
    ‘I’m completely informed about everything,’ Snapper was saying imperatively, ‘and the beauty of it is I’m reluctant to share.’ He went on at length about badgers and hope, concluding with the statement that he’d scribble down certain metaphysical truths and gloat over them privately till the cows came home. ‘Meanwhile the lot of you will fade and die,’ he said and, hollering with laughter, bounded from the room.
    Two days later he sat up in bed and clutched his temples. ‘Have I been stroked with a bone saw?’ he asked.
    ‘Snap?’ said Father, looking in. ‘Up at