‘Yes, that's how you got it, my dear boy,’ replied The Fat Controller.’ And now, if you're quite recovered, I think the three of us ought to get going. We have an appointment at the Barbican.’
‘Oh yes.’ Ian was curious. ‘Who with exactly?’
‘Why, with the Money Critic, of course, I want his opinion on “Yum-Yum”. You'll come with us, Hieronymus?’
‘Naturally,’ said Gyggle, ‘wouldn't miss it for the world.’ He stood and disentangled the beard from his pullover and shirtfront, to which it had become closely attached.
They stacked their tiny chairs with others the same behind a waist-high partition covered with finger paintings that divided the crèche off from the rest of the reception area. Then they walked to the glass doors and exited.
Outside it was daylight and the three Illuminati were instantiated in the Roman Road. ‘Hmm,’ Ian mused. ‘I see we're in the Roman Road.’
‘Yes, well.’ The Fat Controller was fussing around in the pockets of his suit, probably looking for a cigar. ‘While the baths are closed for renovation they're a convenient sort of a place to access the noumenal world, doncha’ know. I have an arrangement with a corrupt local councillor. Another bonus is that it's just around the corner from Vallance Road and I like to pop in on Mumsie from time to time. Not that she's good company or anything but I feel I ought to keep up with her if only for old time's sake.’
A balding overweight Greek Cypriot pulled up at the kerb in an estate car. ‘Sorry I'm late,’ he gasped as he reeled down the window.
‘Sorry isn't good enough, Souvanis,’ said The Fat Controller, ‘never is.’
The three of them got in, The Fat Controller in the front and Ian and Gyggle in the back, and Souvanis pulled back out into the stream of traffic.
For a while no one spoke. Souvanis drove well, breaking with the gears and accelerating smoothly. They crossed the Bethnal Green Road and headed towards Old Street. The Fat Controller smoked, Gyggle seemed to be examining split ends in the further reaches of the beard. Ian was thinking to himself how easy everything was once you began to see the world the way The Fat Controller saw it. ‘It is easier, isn't it?’ observed his mage.
‘Yes, so much less harrowing now that their flesh is as undifferentiated as that of fruit.’
‘Quite, quite — ’
‘But tell me, why didn't you let me realise my full potential earlier? It would have saved me an awful lot of agonising.’
‘My dear Ian, there are different degrees of initiation into these things, you can't simply leapfrog your way over them. And anyway you must remember, I am the very Gandalf of Galimatias conjuring grace out of gammon, how could I allow any aspect of your coming of age to be remotely straightforward?’
‘I see.’
‘But anyway, none of that matters now that you're happy. It amuses you, doesn't it?’
‘I love the utter pointlessness of my outrages, that's what I find so droll. The man killed for his suit; the old woman for her large-print book; the young student eviscerated because I didn't like the fraying of her cuticles — ’
‘Yes, very amusin’, very amusin’, and not forgetting the woman at the Theatre Royal — ’
‘You did set that one up for me, I was just a lad.’
‘I know, but what a lad, you took to the work like a duck to water. I hate to say it but really you're a chip off the old block.’ The Fat Controller struggled round as far as he could in his seat and placed an avuncular hand on Ian's knee. ‘Don't worry if you feel a trifle confused for a while,’ he went on, staring sympathetically into Ian's bloodshot eyes. ‘There are an awful lot of suppressed memories there for you to catch up on, a lot of little outrages for you to retroscend your way through, but in a couple of months you'll feel absolutely tip-top, yes?’
‘I'm sure I will.’
‘Capital, capital!’
No one other than Souvanis had been paying any attention to where they were. Now The Fat Controller noticed that they were hopelessly snarled in a jam that had lodged them in Finsbury Square for the past five minutes. A lot of the cars were honking and the street was overflowing with pedestrian commuters hurrying home, as well as the traffic. ‘What's all this, Souvanis? What's going on?’
‘I'm sorry, Master, there's nothing I can do, it's the sheer weight of traffic.’
‘Mere weight of traffic? Mere weight of traffic? What the hell are you talking about, man, there's nothin’ “mere” about this — we're completely hemmed in and’ — he checked his Rolex — ‘running late.’
‘I don't think you heard me correctly, Master, I said “sheer weight of traffic”.’
There was silence for two or three beats until The Fat Controller managed to take this on board and then, of course, he began to laugh. ‘Ahahaha! Hahahaha! “Mere” for “sheer”, ahahaha! That's very good — very fine, doncha’ think so, Hieronymus?’
‘It is extraordinarily diverting,’ Gyggle effused, ‘and it reminds me that we've yet to introduce our young friend to Mr Souvanis — ’
‘Oh, I know who he is,’ Ian broke in. ‘He does point-of-sale leaflet dispensers for D.F. & L., runs a little outfit in Clacton called Dyeline.’
‘That's right,’ said The Fat Controller. ‘And we're giving him the contract for the “Yum-Yum” standing booths. I do hope he'll be able to fulfil it — he's getting so chubby that I fear for his engorged heart; it may just pack up one of these days, or else he'll get some terrible cancer of the fat, disappear in a great greasy white truffle of sarcoma, yech!’
‘What he really needs,’ said Ian, choosing his words and placing them carefully in the car's close and hilarious atmosphere, ‘is an oinkologist.’
‘Ha-ha-ha-ha!’ The Fat Controller went critical with laughter, his great neck swelling up redly, like Dizzy Gillespie's when he used to hit a high note. ‘Oh my God, don't! Hahahahahaha! It is too, too funny, “an oinkologist”. D'ye like that, Souvanis? You're a porky little bugger, aren't you?’ He grabbed a fold of the dewlap beneath the Greek's chin and started to tug at it, syncopating his tugs with his rap: ‘Piggy, piggy, piggy, oink, oink, oink — oinkology!’ After a while Ian joined in, grabbing a fold of Souvanis's neck, then Gyggle did as well; and that's how the three of them spent the rest of the journey, teasing and hurting the poor man.
The Money Critic squinted down from his window at the three men as they crossed the central courtyard of the Barbican in the late-afternoon sunlight. He knew the fat man who waddled in front as Samuel Northcliffe, banker and financier. The tall thin man with the preposterous ginger beard he knew as Hieronymus Gyggle, a psychiatrist with pretensions to understanding the psychology of the markets. The third man, who was much younger and whose face was rather unpleasantly soft and eroded at the edges, he didn't recognise.
The Money Critic turned from the window and picked his way across the main room of the flat to where the entryphone was clipped on the wall. He waited for it to buzz, his face drawn into a desperate predatory mien. He had made it very clear to Northcliffe on the phone, when he called to make the appointment: ‘Please be sure to give the buzzer the lightest of presses, don't push it right in — there's no need, one very light touch is all that's required. You must understand that the least sound is exquisite torture to me, I insist on silence, reverent silence.’ But despite this he was convinced that Northcliffe would forget his injunction — he wasn't mistaken.
In the nanosecond that had elapsed while he ran through this speech in his mind, the buzzer started to sound and to the Money Critic's ears it was horribly loud and insistent. (Although in actual fact he had had the mechanism adjusted so that the noise it made was no louder than an insect's agitated wing.) He fumbled in agony for the handset and, pressing it to his large, cartilaginous, sensitive ear, breathed, ‘Yes?’