Without quite knowing why Ian found himself applauding. His cold hands banged flatly against one another and the split-second echo bounced off the metal walls with a tuning fork's whine. The thing in the corner shifted again, resolving itself into a shape that then took on extension and colour, until it finally became the figure of a man. The man stepped forward — he was in the middle of his middle years and conventionally dressed in a worn but still serviceable single-breasted pin-stripe suit. He was taller than average and slim with sandy hair cut en brosse, his features were symmetrical and fine, his countenance pleasing. Ian found him instantly reassuring.
‘I'm Doug,’ said the man, still standing in the shadows. ‘I've come to give you a look-see around the Land of Children's Jokes, if that's all right with you?’
‘Um, well, err — absolutely.’ Ian struggled to find the words.
‘Good, good, but before we set out I need to — how can I put it, let me think — ’ There was a long and considered pause, clearly Doug wasn't the sort of man to rush into anything. Ian felt relaxed just being in his presence, it was such a contrast to Pinky. So much so that he wasn't surprised when he looked round and saw that Pinky had gone, taking his sherbert fountain with him.
‘I need to familiarise you with my condition,’ Doug said at last.
‘What exactly do you mean?’ Ian was bemused. Doug stepped back further into the shadows and Ian could make out one arm going up to fidget in the sandy hair.
‘You heard what my colleague said?’
‘Oh, you mean about the spade in your head.’
‘Exactly. It's not pretty but there it is and we have to get on with things. It's just that one's first sight of it can be a little disturbing.’ With this he stepped right forward into the wash of light from the high sash windows.
He really did have a spade in his head, a large garden spade. It was the kind with a blond-wood varnished shaft, a two-tone metal blade and a galvanised rubber handle. This was the part of the spade that was furthest from the ground, for the thing had obviously been plunged into the top of Doug's head vertically, as if some sadistic gardener had stood on his shoulders and started digging. The spade's blade ran perpendicular to Doug's forehead like a surreal coxcomb or hair-parting device. Surrounding the point of entry there was about an inch of corrupted flesh, a ditch and dyke of purpled pus, garnished with matted hair and what might have been brain.
Ian gagged and then, sprawling over the side of the great bed, vomited on to the carpet.
‘I am sorry,’ said Doug, who had by now moved right up to the foot of the bed, where he stood playing with his watch chain, ‘but there's very little that I can do to lessen the impact of the thing. It's useless trying to warn people or explain to them what they're about to see.’
Ian couldn't look at him, he looked at the carpet instead and said, ‘Impact would have to be the operative word.’
‘Quite so,’ said Doug. And suddenly Ian found that he could look at the man with the spade in his head, that it hardly bothered him at all.
‘Are you feeling a little better now?’ Doug was solicitous. He had the old-world charm Ian associated with British civil servants of the pre-war period. His mien was compounded of concern, probity and duty, more or less in equal parts. There was also something peculiarly affecting about the waxy patina of his sticky-out ears. ‘You're so right to remark on my use of the word “impact”. You know, I hope I may speak frankly to you, Mr Wharton, for without a certain frankness what is the point of conversation? You see I find this image — ’ he gestured towards the implement buried in his cranium — ‘to be almost integral to any understanding of the modern world. Metal into flesh — the impact of metal on flesh. Isn't that the whole of progress in a nutshell — a spade in the head? I only have to contemplate the world to feel it entering into me as steelily and as surely as this spade bisects my skull. Do you follow me?’
‘Why yes,’ said Ian. ‘I suppose I do.’
‘I'm dreadfully sorry to bang on about it like this — you must think me a frightful bore but it's so rare that I get the opportunity to talk to anyone.’
‘What about Pinky?’ said Ian with a creeping sense of déjà entendu.
‘Oh my dear boy, he's far too tied up in his own problems to have any concern for mine. Somehow that's the way that things tend to be here. Come now, get up and I'll take you for a bit of a tour — you'd like that, wouldn't you?’
Doug gave Ian his smooth hand and assisted him to stand. Throwing off the covers, swinging his legs sideways and then standing up, these actions brought Ian still further into the reality of the Land of Children's Jokes. He found himself upright, fully dressed, next to the man with the spade in his head, within the bounds of the fan of light that spread out from the windows across the lumpy floor. Still holding him by the hand, Doug led him away into the dark.
Doug wouldn't let go of Ian's hand. He pulled him gently but firmly into the crepuscular hinterland of the giant shed, if that's what it was. From somewhere in the distance Ian could hear faint noises that might have been cries but they were too indistinct to make out.
‘I ought to warn you,’ Doug threw over his shoulder, ‘we're going to see some things that may disturb you.’ Ian grinned to himself, he was beginning to get the hang of the Land of Children's Jokes.
At that moment there was a squeal in a dark corner some twenty yards off to their right. Ian jumped. ‘What's that!’
‘The first of them, I suppose, come on, we'd better take a look.’ The man with the spade in his head pulled a torch from his pocket and, using its pencil beam tentatively, guided them through the maze of rubbish that littered the floor.
They rounded a low bank, which as far as Ian could make out was composed of tumbleweeds of swarf, dripping with oil and frosted with sawdust. Behind it there was a bloody baby. Doug's torch gave the baby's head a weak yellow halo. It was around nine months old, wearing a terry-towelling Babygro and sitting solidly on its broad-nappied base. Its chin, its hands, its Babygro, even the beaten floor beneath it, were all covered in blood. Something glinted in the baby's tender pink paw, something bright which travelled towards its budding mouth.
‘Jesus!’ cried Ian. ‘That baby's got a razor blade!’ But immediately he saw the stupidity of saying it, for scattered at the baby's feet were ten or fifteen more razor blades, all within easy reach. While they watched the baby raised the blade to its mouth, opened wide and inserted it vertically. The baby's blue eyes twinkled merrily at Ian as it bit down on the blade, which straight away sliced through lip and gum at top and bottom. Ian could see the layers of flesh and tissue all the way to the bone; he screamed weakly and Doug squeezed his hand as if to reassure. Thick plashes of blood gave the baby a red bib, but it continued to sit upright and was even happily burbling.
‘What's red,’ Doug asked, ‘and sits in the corner?’
Up above them some sort of dawn had begun to break. In the vaulting of the high ceiling Ian could descry rhubarb girders bursting from a piecrust of concrete. ‘Come on.’ Doug tugged at his hand. ‘There's someone else who wants to meet you.’
They walked for what seemed like hours through the echoing space, sometimes crossing wide expanses of concrete, other times crouching to make their way through twisting tunnels lined with chipboard, or Formica. Everywhere there was evidence of failed industry. Defunct machinery lay about, dusty and rusty. Bolts, brackets, angle irons and other unidentifiable hunks of metal were scattered on the floor; a floor that changed from concrete to beaten earth and in places disappeared altogether underneath a foot or more of water.