This dark journey across the flat lands to see the Bonniface. Share some of his misunderstandings. Least one does for a college friend. Like nights so many years ago. Standing under lamp posts, bottles bouncing in the dark. Find a ragged girl to lay up against some cellar wall. In a smell of rats and dead cats. Dream to be a merchant prince. Marble houses round the world. Run through the streets to Her Majesty's high brick house, shutters closed over the windows. Past stone masons chiselling by candle light with the great deal of dying. Rollick royal. Buds in the altogether. All comes to this. Bonniface scurrying by. Lower legs in underwear. Little sheaf of papers clutched in the hand. Makes a sign language to a customer under the blaring loud speaker. Promptly retreats the whole length of the counter. Stooping under at the end and into the gents. For the fifth time. Wants me to witness his kidney control in these jammed conditions. Goodness. He's back again. Some bladder.
Must get my coat back. Or appear at Miss Tomson's without outer accoutrement. Protection from her smart friend's elbows. Merry big Miss Tomson. I put it. All measured and mild. And upon it you slipped a painful ring of teeth. Feel them wherever I go. Even here, faint and foolish by this pillar. Your silken folds of wondrous little beads of caviar. A step into heaven. Hide me. Passengers swarm. Rest in there. Away from switches and wires ringing and binging. Bound to be a mistake. There goes Bonniface again. Under the flap, across the corridor. Into the gents. In view of your peeing history Bonniface, sprinkle the counter, and be done. Give air company little spray of heartbreak. While Herbert tanks up in the bar. Asks me home to eat with him and wife. Has tropical fish who rush to the surface as they hear him walk across the floor. Mrs. does my darning to save Matilda trouble putting my socks down the incinerator. To go essence of feet. Up the chimney.
A record established. Bonniface working for two whole minutes behind the counter. Pulling open a drawer. Another one, rustling in the paper. Just like Miss Martin does to show she's on the job. Whoops. There he goes again. Ah. He stops. Smiles at me. Gives my invitation a wave, as he streaks to the end of the counter. Under. Across the corridor. Into the gents. Must tell him, I go. Hither. Away from wind socks, control towers, loud speakers, and beams scanning skies. And madness on the tarmac.
Smith leaving the pillar. Threading a way through the advancing ceaseless mob. Side stepping a business tycoon standing in his tracks making an assured decision formulating future profits. Makes one homesick for Dynamo. Relive the thrill of that deportment. When they make the counter offer, smile thanks and regret one must repair to the country where it will receive constant thought till one's return to town when the price will be double, sorry gentlemen. Why you. And next week, triple.
Smith blowing nose. Frighten away nervousness. Push through the black swing door of this gents. A narrow long corridor. Neat row of piss basins at the end. No gentleman would take water from a conduit pipe. Please, a porcelain pitcher poured into a wide basin of same on the marble washstand. Joy of rinse, of towel. As Her Majesty washed, nose a symphony of flared nostril held haughtily with a delightful bone to a soft tip she often pressed upon my eager ear.
And here wash bowls, towels automatic out of machines. Do not pull twice in one minute. I beg your pardon. To such impertinence in the gents. And this square tall room where Bonniface does not seem to be standing. With his usual luminosity. By the hair oil squirter. Press. Personal pomade. Two squirts for the more particular. Prevent hair raising at the next business conference. Never to call a board meeting again. Or sadly sit in the chairman's chair. Faces of destiny flanking down the mahogany. Odd cough and sneeze. Gentlemen please don't be too scared to make a suggestion. I'm listening. Pass the water. Has no one something to say. A scribble or gesture at least. Just so Miss Martin can short hand some minutes. I want contribution from your minds. To cheer the single shareholder in his loneliness in carting all the profits away to his bereft, unloved vault, without bravos or hand clap. Gentlemen, sorry, directors' fees this year will be in the form of free tuition at the School Of Higher Graduation, for the diploma of Satisfaction On Lower Income. Bonniface has already graduated, ghosty and gone. To other confusions. Worry kills quickly in a sober crystal mind.
Smith looking at the small holes in the ventilators along the ceiling of the lavatory. Two oblong windows of a variety of glass impossible to float through. As well as bars on the outside. Over there. Nine booths. Three in use. What a pass to be viewing legs engaged in a function which clashes with my spiritual mood of the moment. No shanks of white legged underwear. In one of these he sounded the horn. Lone call back over yester year. As he sat, master, pink white and black amid the horsey calvacade. Baying chiming hounds, high fat tails wagging. Who blames him for sounding loud and clear in some distant cubicle. To call back the splendid country grass down the vale. Garlic lightly in the air. Bonniface leading the mounted contingent. Her Majesty laughing, as he got them, hounds and all, regrettably lost in gorse. All however right later that night at the randy roundup. The memorable farmyard antics at the hunt ball.
Smith standing dumbfounded in this latrine. Two gentlemen giving him the suspicious eye. A squat person winking and leaving his fly unmentionably open. Stay here and be detained maybe for attempted tinkering. Some sneaky reaching for my particulars. This is what I get when I answer a summons of a last twitching. Bonniface, the mirage at the log cabin window, rendering song on comb and paper. Been haunted enough. Saw you come in here. Wearing my warm coat. Miss Tomson will think I rented it just long enough to go with the car to meet her on the street corner. Instead of it disappearing on a spook.
Smith taking one last bewildered look. Feel thin, cold and banshee out this long hall. Eyes deceived. Too many months of irregular correspondence. Tripping into walls. Down open sewers. Last only a few seconds with the rats. Should never have come. Could be near Miss Tomson instead of lurking coatless in a latrine. With youth replaced with cunning. Age replaced by worms. Worms replaced with birds. And they go shitting out of a tree on my white linen suit in the summertime.
At the end of the hall. Set in the grey wall a door. Just inside the entrance of the latrine. Says private. Who knows. For mops. For first feels. Like I got from Miss Martin. Open it. In memory of a foot in past pails. Turn the nice smooth round knob. It will click open if not locked. Tug. My Gawd.
Squeezed and crouched. Former master of hunt, hounds and urinary horror. Bonniface. With coat open, two hands held high above his head. Gripping the gallon basket of wine. Turning with a gasp to Smith letting in the light of the outer world. Wine cascading from the bottle aloft. Shower over his head. Unstoppered by his mouth. Pouring upon his person. Unholy red down the white underwear. Drip drop from the sable. Bonniface attempts to bark. Choking under the flow. Hair flattened, full of wine. Struggling to get the bottle down. But blocked by the long handle of a waxing machine.
Cedric Clementine. One afternoon in autumn proud. Pink upon his pale horse. Boots and saddle gleaming. Waiting for the fox to be roused. No hound shall fault in sheep. One capital day of sport through bottoms and spinney. Across frost, furze and fog. From the gravel apron of Laughington Castle. Instead of here, deluged in wine. Employed and mortified. Full grown foundling. Unpromoted and sad.
Hello
Little someone
Anywhere
Dark and cold
22
THE dreadnaught approaching the web of cables holding the bridge across the water with great black girders and trestles. Ropes of steel all tight and cold. Smith slumped asleep, waking to see the lights ahead. Burning little brains in the buildings. Get to the grave with as many comforts as possible.