Until Snapper entered the hothouse to tell me the circus was in town. I had no desire to get back on the horse and re-endure this particular trauma. If lightning doesn’t strike twice we can dance in a storm in iron underwear. But Adrienne said it would be therapeutic and I allowed her to influence me. Off we all went to the circus.
Part of the reason was to get rid of our dog, Nelson, whose peculiarities were causing distress and would yield more money than war as a circus attraction. So while the others were elsewhere accosting the manager, me and my friend Billy Verlag were watching caged freaks circle the ring and I knew something was very wrong. Bernard the Living Merchant. Terry the Human Constable. And the clowns — here they were to remind us life was quaint and temporary. Thanks.
Billy was the only village kid who ever ventured onto the Hall grounds, being the only boy small and spherical enough for the other kids to boot over the perimeter wall. I think he looked up to me because I had told him about Hume’s principle of unverified causality — that B follows A does not prove that A caused B. He had actually used this to get away with tripping an old woman. Now he regarded the book I was holding. ‘What’s that?’
‘Dostoevsky.’
‘Can I have a go?’
I handed him the book, my eyes on the cavorting clowns. They were looking horribly familiar — because they were the same ones as before. It was the same circus. And at that instant, they saw me. Miniature cars squealed to a halt. Painted faces stared out of a madman’s universe. The ringmaster’s whip wrapped around my neck and, in an explosion of popcorn, I was dragged like a cur into the ring. Elephants were circling and I had to roll to avoid being trampled as the ringmaster ordered the clowns to ‘terminate’ me — that was the word he used. I pushed a clown out of its miniature car and led the others a merry dance until I crashed into a barrel and they pounced, two clowns holding me by the arms while a third beat the bejesus out of me. The audience loved this. Maybe they thought I was a midget. The applause was deafening as I was loaded into the cannon, which stank of gunpowder. I don’t remember anything between then and the moment I awoke in an adjoining field. Everything was totally unreal — I felt like a statistic.
When the others got home with Nelson in tow they asked me where I’d disappeared to. It turns out Billy Verlag had been so absorbed in The Idiot he hadn’t noticed my ordeal — thought I’d gone for a slash or something. Even Adrienne was sceptical. What about the bruises?
A wound heals slower than a kiss. When I’m advised to cheer up because it may never happen I’m reminded that it has and may again. The most amusing thing about a pantomime horse is the necessity of having to shoot it twice. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.
ISLAND
I told Billy Verlag I intended to explore the island at the centre of the lake and that I’d need him for ballast. Of all the territory bought with my Father’s forged money the lake was the strangest. It was rumoured to contain jet-propelled herring and trout which could imitate your facial expressions. But the island was a mystery.
‘Don’t ask me to take you there,’ said Father. ‘You’ll only start looking at the sky in a funny way and beg to go for a drive.’
Mutinous with curiosity, I peered through the telescope in Adrienne’s attic but could make out only a few shrubs. ‘You don’t want to go there,’ said Adrienne, lazily swinging one long leg from her sleeping-hammock. ‘Especially with little Verlag. I went, and may never understand what I saw.’
That was enough for me. One afternoon when everyone was off burying Nan, Billy hurtled over the perimeter wall and we went immediately to the lake, pushing out on a wooden palette. ‘Charon the ferryman did this,’ I said, pushing at the raft-pole. ‘Demanded hard cash though he was clearly nothing more than a skeleton. Must have been some tissue clung in that skull of his.’
There was a scraping sound under the raft, which Billy instantly attributed to a sawfish dragging its nose across the hull. ‘Nonsense,’ I said, and peered into the water. The lake was infested with boss-eyed cartoon characters which ghosted up, stared like lost souls and dipped away again. Inbetween were swirling volume levels and swarms of seahorses with tiny training wheels.
‘What is it then?’ asked Billy fearfully.
‘You’re right,’ I said, punting again. ‘It is a sawfish.’
Our dodgy vessel was tipping alarmingly and we were only halfway across. ‘Slow down,’ sobbed Billy.
‘Don’t worry,’ I said. ‘There’s no prejudice against fat little blighters out here. I reckon these strange fish will take to you like pigs to garbage.’
Billy released acoustically garish screams and I was soon vaulting through hoops to comfort him.
‘Think of the pirates,’ I said, kicking an errant moray into the depths. ‘They used to drag out eachother’s innards and set them alight.’
Billy calmed down, wiping his eyes. ‘Why?’ he croaked, sniffing.
I shrugged. ‘To make everyone’s existence a living hell.’
Billy bawled in horror and misery as we pitched through a frothing maelstrom of disquieting critters. The water was now too deep for the staff and we had to paddle our hands in the water. I had begun to wish I had gone with the others to sling some turf over Nanny Jack — then the water shallowed out and Billy’s screams began to echo from the bank of the island. Reaching shore, we dragged the raft onto the mud and gazed around.
The island was about sixty foot square and covered in the dullest bushes I had ever seen. ‘So what?’ said Billy, breaking a branch and tossing it away impatiently.
I tripped over and swore in a temple language known only to Adrienne and myself — I had scattered pieces of a kid’s fort built from lollipop sticks. Looking closer I realised it was a tiny wooden fence, extending parallel with the shore. ‘Is this yours, Verlag?’ I demanded, pointing. Billy looked at the little broken wall, waiting for a thought as for the second coming. We followed the structure a way — it seemed to encircle the island — and Billy started gibbering with an unaccountable fear. I tried to calm him by talking about the great explorers but he saw only the danger in the enterprise. ‘Verlag,’ I said, ‘yours is a narrow range of experience and in the age of exploration that’s the spice. The American Indians discovered America every time they glanced up. The Chinese found the environment too abrasive for homes of gum and wafer, which as you know were the farcical materials they favoured at the time. The Icelanders liked the place so much they never told anyone about it. But somehow everyone stumbled into it at one time or another. When Columbus finally got there he was mistaken for a god because he was the only person on Earth the natives hadn’t met. No wonder he became obsessed with spuds and —’
‘Sh-sh-shut up, laughing boy,’ stammered Billy plaintively, and pointed at the undergrowth.
In the centre of the island, hidden amid greenery, was a miniature house.
It was the Hall, surrounded by bonsai trees, next to an inland pool representing the lake. Billy and me spent ages exploring this tiny landscape, which seemed perfect in every detail — the little structure I had kicked through was the perimeter wall.
The pool even had an imitation island in the middle. Splashing over and crouching down, I was not a little amazed to see that this small island, too, bore a model reproduction of the Hall and grounds. This Hall was the size of a matchbox, next to a lake the size of a plate. At this lake’s centre was an even smaller island.