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The Anarchist
Tristan Hawkins
A highly amusing and satirical look at what happens when grungeland meets suburbia head-on.There’s probably one lurking on the edge of every city, in every suburban town, on every middle-class close. A man longing to break free. Itching to peel off his pinstripes and put on something more psychedelic. Yearning to swap his G&T for something a touch more transcendental. Hoping to bypass his mid-life crisis and enter the New Age. Desperate for a walk on the wild side.Edingley is such a suburb. Sheridan Entwhistle, balding and bored, is such a man.Following a suspected heart attack, Sheridan outs his inner anarchist and sets off in search of nirvana. His wife, daughter, neighbours and colleagues think he has gone mad and should seek professional advice. His new friends, Jayne and Yantra, travellers en route to Glastonbury, think he needs help of a more illicit kind, one which will take him to a higher plane of consciousness. The hilarious, surreal and outrageous journey on which they embark together proves to be the perfect antidote to his suburban ennui…
Copyright (#ulink_60ecf5b8-fb4e-52ab-af1a-869ce83832cf)
This is entirely a work of fiction. The names, characters and incidents portrayed in it are the work of the author’s imagination. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or localities is entirely coincidental.
Fourth Estate
An imprint of HarperCollinsPublishers Ltd.
1 London Bridge Street
London SE1 9GF
www.harpercollins.co.uk (http://www.harpercollins.co.uk/)
First published in Great Britain by Flamingo 1996
Copyright © Tristan Hawkins 1996
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks
HarperCollinsPublishers has made every reasonable effort to ensure that any picture content and written content in this ebook has been included or removed in accordance with the contractual and technological constraints in operation at the time of publication
Source ISBN: 9780006550112
Ebook Edition © JUNE 2017 ISBN: 9780008200862
Version: 2017-06-28
Dedication (#ulink_cc4bd41a-4698-5a1f-8450-087226d7000f)
To Yuko
Contents
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Title Page (#u54858743-e858-55e6-8bb4-69e7a6941893)
Copyright (#ulink_983becf6-a009-5abb-a70d-42ddca460541)
Dedication (#ulink_b1a9a729-36f9-5df2-9aeb-0f09b8fc2471)
The Anarchist (#ulink_9f559d8f-e1b9-54d7-b500-39e2c4c27840)
Keep Reading (#litres_trial_promo)
About the Author (#litres_trial_promo)
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About the Publisher (#litres_trial_promo)
There was an announcement.
It began, ‘This is an announcement’ … then nothing. Then everything crunched to a halt.
The bald man with the lavish ears peered up from his paper and took in the other passengers.
It was bad news.
Insouciant skirts and brave suits. Youth, handsome looks and wealth.
All of them mocking his bad suit and pie-crust shoes. Smirking at his simmering blood-bag of a face. And was it possible? All of them in full knowledge of the unfortunate episode.
Perhaps there could be no question about the bald man with the lavish ears who sat perspiring on the Victoria Line tube train that afternoon.
No question that he was the genuine article. A bona fide sex offender. Your actual nonce. A moral bankrupt cowering in unpressed pinstripe and noose-fast tie. For why else would his face burn cerise at a stranger’s glance?
A pair of recently holidayed legs lay draped in the walkway. Parted arrogantly and wiped across the thighs with little more than the rumour of a skirt, it seemed she was almost daring him to take a peek. Filch a glance at the unpossessable, then at once experience all the wretchedness of his age; his sex; his off-the-peg, all-weather suit; his Tory broadsheet; his bald head and lavish ears; his everything.
He re-reddened at the inadvertent volume of these peculiar thoughts.
Then he swallowed – but the obstreperous, mucoid gas in his throat stayed put. And it seemed to him that he was now wafting outside his body, as if in some other dimension, and that the stubborn gas had transformed itself into a great liquid and the bald man with the lavish ears was now drowning.
In a single spasm he scrunched up his paper and moaned.
A resonant belch of a moan. The clamour of a randy bullfrog. Or a sluggard mastiff. The exhalation of a new corpse.
‘You all right, mate?’ someone from this dimension asked.
‘Yes, thanks,’ he thought he managed to grunt.
But Sheridan Entwhistle was not all right at all. His entire body was squeezing out sweat and he trembled like a rodent lifted from its cage. His field of vision was fast colliding into itself and his chest felt as if it was being compressed into the mass of ball bearing. And though he was breathing hard, gasping even, the air refused to enter his body. As if deflated, his head dropped and his vision was momentarily sucked along the delicious vale of her thighs.
Then … nothing.
When he came to a second or so later he was somewhat giddy yet in full possession of his faculties and his life. Forsaking decorum, he fiddled the pebblish knot of his tie loose and popped open the button below.
The tube wheezed into motion and coughed on to Victoria. Adeptly Sheridan folded up his paper, slotted it into his briefcase and joined the swarm of summer suits and shirts being sucked away by overground trains. And he thought, with mild and deliberate amusement, that apart from a heart attack it been a rather unremarkable day.
Sheridan flopped down and the cool armchair drank him into it.
‘Three, three, five?’ A momentary smile zipped under her big nose as she unscrewed the bottle cap.
‘Perhaps I’ll refrain tonight,’ he said reflectively. Then, not wanting to arouse premature suspicion in his wife, he laughed. ‘Go on, just a wee-un then.’
‘I,’ Jennifer announced as if heralding something of which she were supremely proud, ‘spent most of this afternoon lounging in our new conservatory.’
‘Good God, woman. I’m surprised you’re not sautéed.’
‘Oh no, darling,’ she seemed to echo as if in another room, ‘there was the divinest of breezes with both doors open.’
‘So now I take it, we’re playing host to every airborne bug in Edingley. Charming.’
He slipped a hand inside his jacket and counted the steady, rhythmic beats of his life. Still he couldn’t be sure of this. Not with things in slo-mo as they were.
His wife smiled and he smiled back and thought: yes, I’m doing well here.
Tinkling out the pleasant refrain of the outer life with one hand.
Mutely thumping out the discordant base of the inner riot with the other.
He swallowed and forced himself to speak in what he considered was a sufficiently melodious manner.
‘Seen much of the Unspeakably Behaved today?’ he asked, tunefully he imagined.
‘What do you think?’
‘Well, it is half term. For some. At Imogen’s is she?’
Jennifer handed him the drink, looked hard at him and dragged a vicious hand back though her grey roots. He knew the gesture and raised an eyebrow. Still she said nothing, glaring at him all the while as if she were employing the sight of his face to seethe her anger up to the point of expression. She refocused on the carpet and spoke in rapid stabs.
‘Imogen, you say. You mean Imogen, whose mother I happened to bump into in the butcher’s today. Who, when I made a polite enquiry about our daughter, took great relish in informing me that they’d just, that very morning as it happened, received a divine postcard from Boston. Not Lincolnshire of course, she simpered over a pound of best mince, the other Boston, you know, the one just west of Ireland.’
‘Jennifer, my dear, I hate to say I told you so. But I did say at the time, do try and work on a boy. A lot less heartache. A lot less bloody …’
‘Well, I’m glad you can take it in your stride.’
‘Go on then. Theories?’
‘Chromosomally deficient, three.’
‘Boy? Man? Men? ERE?’
‘Beg pardon?’
‘Edingley Rugby Eleven?’
‘Yes, of course, Sherry. Flippancy, that’s the ticket. I … I …’ Jennifer rose, sniffed shamelessly and marched through the open doors of the conservatory. She paused to count something on her fingers, turned and said acidly, ‘Indian hemp, nine.’
Sheridan thought for a moment, then moaned, ‘C’mon, Jennifer. Now that is ridiculous.’
He felt his chest constrict.
She strode back in the living room and clutched the wings of his chair. Defiant of the odd gasp and sob, she declared that, sure as she stood here, she had smelled marijuana on Folucia’s clothes and in her room and in the bathroom. And there was no mistaking it. It was marijuana. Besides, was she or was she not, as each day passed, taking on the appearance of – she didn’t know, ‘One of those new age whatever-they’re called-s?’
Sheridan waited for his heartbeat to steady then calmly asked whether Jennifer had any further evidence. She told him that she wasn’t sure but perhaps she had noticed a sort of far away look in Folucia’s face of late. He reached back, rested both his hands on hers and smiled. He spoke slowly and possibly condescendingly.
‘I’ll wager my golf clubs against your aspidistra that the Unspeakably Behaved’s countenance comes courtesy of a chromosomally challenged, unspeakable whatsitsname; that the whatsitsname is in the singular, and that, in your olfactory ignorance, you are failing to appreciate the subtlest of all-the-rage perfumes, again courtesy of the whatsitsname. Opium or something. That’s a perfume, I believe. But, further evidence pending, I shall have a word with the suspect.’
‘Sherry, she lied to us.’
‘She’s fifteen, just done twelve rounds with puberty, she’s allowed the odd prevarication.’
‘Well, in my day the age of dissent was eighteen.’
‘And well worth the wait I dare say. But times change.’
‘Humph. Well, I hope you’re right, Sherry. Well, sort of. But you know how I loathe disturbances. Anyway, how was work today?’
‘Oh, expletive dash faecal matter, four.’
*
Coronary thrombosis, more commonly known as a heart attack is the result of a blood clot (thrombus) which impedes blood flow in one of the coronary arteries … Symptoms range from intense discomfort in the centre of the chest … shortness of breath … giddiness … cold sweat … occasionally loss of consciousness …
He raised a hand, lay it softly on his ribcage and swallowed the panic like a hard-boiled egg.
The book remained half open, suspended temporarily at an uncomfortable right angle. He found it mildly disconcerting – a taunting metaphor for his mortal limbo. He shook his leg and the volume shut with a damp thud.
Sheridan closed his eyes and inhaled several times, attempting to bridle the demented fission of his thoughts. Naturally the notion of the GP substantiating his suspicions was a horrifying one. But, he considered, once passed the forty mark the hoodwinking was quite certainly over. Any man believing he’s still in some way young after the watershed is either a coward or a fool. So, the GP it had to be. And by God, Sheridan Entwhistle would enter and leave that surgery with a smile. Even if a dry throated, thank you, sir, for flogging me, smirk was the limit of it.
He stood cautiously and timidly walked over to the bookcase. Again he raised a hand to his chest.
‘Eleven o’clock and all is well,’ he murmured to himself and slid the family health manual back into its gap. Sheridan smiled to himself. There could be no doubt that he was a brave man and it pleased him. But, as he turned to leave and join his wife upstairs, he was struck by a notion that pleased him even more.
Like hell, would he visit the GP! He’d imagine that it had never happened – and innocently notch up his life assurance. Then he’d think about seeing the bloody doctor. Now, that, Sheridan considered, was brave.
The unfortunate episode surfaced once more. He tucked it beneath the covers of his consciousness and went up to bed.
Yantra jerked open the doors of the Bedford and the clean chill of outside gushed in, rinsing away the curdled stench of sleep.
One of the bodies beneath the blankets moaned. It sounded human so he whispered, ‘Sorry,’ and clambered stiffly out of the van.
Loch Laggan was still black as dye and as yet he couldn’t detect any hills to the West. Perhaps he’d overshot. Or perhaps, as was common here, the Loch would wake a cauldron of steam and he’d miss everything.
He could make out what might have been a bush. But being unsure of the ground he considered it wise to piss where he was standing.
Stepping gingerly away from the puddle, Yantra folded onto the cold ground and waited. He was undecided. Should he submerge into a meditation or smoke his first joint of the day? Ideally, he’d have dropped a trip and come on as the sun went up. But they were down to emergency petrol and food money: there was work to be done. Besides he wasn’t a bloody idiot. If there had to be laws at all, then there should certainly be one about driving on acid. The One trip at a time statute, he quipped to himself.
He detected the rumble of a car perhaps five miles south. It vexed him. The only road around here was the one they’d pulled Biddy over on. It meant the bloody thing would pass directly in front of him, annihilating any sense of isolation. Quite obviously a meditation was out of the question under such circumstances, so he unclipped the flap on his bulky breast pocket and slid out a pre-rolled spliff. So much negativity at this hour in the morning could never be good for a person of his exquisite equilibrium.
The first inhalation barely made his lungs before sending a succession of painful firecrackers back up his larynx. He expelled the phlegm, waited a minute or so for his breath to cease grating and attempted to reload himself. Again, it went down like a ball of wire wool and he coughed it into the darkness.
