The Hippopotamus Read online

  “What I experienced, Ted,” he told me, “was nothing short of ecstasy.”

  “Ecstasy?”

  “I’ve read a lot of Mother Julian and The Cloud of Unknowing since that day. The mystics. Ecstasy means ‘standing outside of yourself.’ From the Greek.”

  “Mm,” I said. “Yes. You are aware, my old darling, that all this would sound pretty wobbly in court?”

  “There is a higher law,” said Peter, with the sententious gush of the well brandied, and we left it at that.

  As I lay there itching, I cursed my own disposition which, when confronted with the hopeless nonsense of things, has al­ways succumbed more to accidie than ecstasy. When push-off comes to shove-off, a man must have a reason to get out of bed in the mornings, something more than the threat of bedsores at any rate.

  I threw off the covers and waddled with bare cracking feet to the drinks tray. I stared at the bottles.

  “God’s cock,” I said to myself. “It’s nearly four in the morn­ing. Surely I haven’t come to this?”

  I stood there staring at those whisky bottles for upwards of an hour. Behind the tall green necks a sliver of light between the curtains whitened and the sound of birds filled the air. Couldn’t stop the tears from falling. Petulant tears, frustrated tears, grieving tears, angry tears, maudlin tears, guilty tears . . . I didn’t know what kind of tears they were. Just tears, idle tears.

  Walkies, I thought to myself, grabbing a full bottle and pushing my feet into a pair of shoes. Best go walkies.

  Choosing not to risk the complexities of the great front door, I let myself out through a french window in the drawing room and lingered on the terrace for a while, sniffing the dawn air and trying to convince myself that it was of a superior qual­ity to our own London vapour.

  In spite of the evidence of life all around me, the birds as mentioned and the spewing vegetable life of borders, shrubs and trees, I was conscious of an absolute deadness all around. London though, London at half past four in the morning, abso­lutely zings with life. The blasts of the newspaper vans thun­dering through empty streets, the hissing micturations of the derelicts, the quick staccato of cheap stilettos clicking down al­leys, the rattle of lonely cabs and, in squares and streets, a louder singing of blackbirds and sparrows than the countryside can ever know, all these sounds are animated and given mean­ing by the quality that all great cities share: an acoustic. Every­thing rings in town. The rural world is absolutely without resonance, reverberation or echo, absolutely without the ring of civilisation. Which makes it fine for an occasional repairing lease or weekend excursion, but debars it wholly from suitabil­ity as a habitat for man. Country people, of course, think other­wise: if they had their way they would carpet Piccadilly and the Strand with moss and set wisteria creeping up the walls of Buckingham Palace, just to stop any sound from being allowed to ricochet. As with sounds, so with ideas. Shout out a thought in the capital one morning and it’s printed in the Londoner’s Diary in the Standard in time for the West End final edition, screeched over in the Harpo Club that same evening and de­rided as old hat in the pages of Time Out the following week. Valueless, beyond question, revolting, certainly, but surely in­dicative of a livelier atmosphere than obtains in arcadia, where ideas bounce like a punctured tennis ball on a peat-bog.

  There is one thing, I concede, that the countryside does very well and that is dew. And the dew it was, as I leant on the terrace balustrade clutching, but not drinking from my whisky bottle, that caught my eye. The wide tract of grass that glides down to a ha-ha, and the rougher grass beyond where the horses sometimes grazed, was, as one might expect and de­mand, soaked in quantities of pretty and appealing dew. It was a track of darker grass running down the centre of the lawn that drew my attention, however, a trail that marked where some­one had recently walked. A gardener, gardener’s assistant, gamekeeper or indoor servant, even in these unmannerly times, would surely keep to pathways, I reasoned, so who—a quick check of the watch—who from the household would be abroad at three minutes shy of five o’clock?

  I followed, drenching a perfectly excellent pair of buckskin brogues as I went. A fig for that, thought I, like a Salvation Army maiden discovering Life in a sixties screenplay, this is Adventure. I pursued the scuffing spoor of whoever had gone before until I reached the end corner of the lawn where it sloped down to the deep ha-ha. The browner, barer ground here, banked against the sun and starved of irrigation, did not take dew, or if it did, soaked it up instantly, and I could see no more tracks to follow.

  Unless my mysterious quarry had springs in his heels powerful enough to enable him or her to carry the ha-ha, they must have struck right, towards a dark, dense area of laurels and rhododendrons. I made my way towards it, feeling, by now, rather an arse.

  The place, one of those margins that gardeners cannot do anything with, was so thickly planted with sinister shrubbery that I could see no way to enter. I stood at the edge, brandish­ing the bottle like a mace, and listened. Not a sound came back. The grass at my feet was lusher again here, but bore no traces of human presence. I turned and made my way back to the cor­ner of the lawn, greatly puzzled. Much against my will, I started to think of your word “miracle.” Don’t think me mad, but tell me, my dear, have you witnessed someone . . . my mind rebels violently against any such thought . . . someone flying? Ludicrous, obviously, yet . . . let me know if this squares with what you want me to discover.

  I was conscious of a sensation not unlike that which over­takes you when investigating a mysterious night-time noise that denies you sleep. You stand on the stairs, heart pounding and mouth open. You proceed to eliminate the obvious: creeper tendrils tapping against the window pane; your dog, wife or child raiding the larder; floorboards creaking as the night-storage heater activates itself. None of those fits the noise, so, fighting a rising panic, you begin to consider less likely causes: a mouse in its death-throes; a bat loose in the kitchen; a child’s toy left running; the cat accidentally (or de­liberately) treading on the remote-control unit and rewinding a video cassette, but none of those quite explains the particular sound either and so . . . if you are anything like me, you trot hastily upstairs, dive back into bed and cover your face with a pillow, preferring not to know.

  I walked back to the edge of the ha-ha and looked over it to the parkland beyond. I could see no sign of footprints there, but perhaps I was at the wrong angle. Feeling like twelve types of dick, I slid down the bank and hauled myself up the steep side of the ha-ha, the full bottle of the ten-year-old my only weapon. Once on the level of the park I walked forward through the thick grass examining it for signs of human pas­sage. Nothing. Not a trace. I looked backwards and saw the clear marks of my own progress. No one could possibly have come this way. I moved forward again and suddenly, with no warning, my toe stubbed into something hard and metallic. Leaping like a Scottish dancer, I let out a muffled yell. A hid­eous pain flew to my cold wet toe and a hideous stream of abuse from my cold wet mouth. It was a bucket, half sub­merged in a large tuft of longer grass, a heavy galvanised bucket.

  I hopped there, wincing; my big-toe nail, which has a tend­ency to grow in, had jammed viciously into the end of the shoe. I uncorked the bottle and raised it to my lips. As the bouquet of the whisky arrived at my nose, I paused.

  There was something inexplicably foolish and bathetic about this incident, yet also something intensely disturbing. A line of footprints leading nowhere: a man following them with a bottle of whisky in his hand: the trail ending with the kicking of a bucket. I am not, as you know, a fanciful man, Jane. I set no store by providential symbols, only symbols devised by man, yet I would be an arse-hole pig-headed bigot of a rationalist indeed if I failed to ponder this dream-like sequence.

  I cursed and pushed the cork back in without tasting a drop, raised my arm high and let the bottle fall into the bucket with a clang and a crack. Just for the moment, I decided, I would allow
myself a little superstition. Why not, while staying here, ease off the sauce a little?

  Having renegotiated the ha-ha, I hobbled back to the house, slapping my thigh with irritation. With every step away from the ha-ha I grew in self-recrimination. What kind of man throws away a full bottle of ten-year-old malt? Perhaps it was not that I had drunk too much, more that I hadn’t drunk enough; certainly I hadn’t slept enough: above all I had failed to finish this first letter to you. The further drinking I decided to leave until later in the day, the sleep could be postponed too. But now I’ve said just about everything there is to be said, most of it inconsequential to a degree, I’m mongrel-bitch tired and my fist cannot form letters any more, so fuck off, my darling, and leave me alone.

  Your devoted godfather

  Ted

  IV

  David stared at the ceiling with something like reproach. The dread­ful thing was upon him once more. No matter down what reeking gutters or up what transcendent steeples he forced his thoughts, still the blood thickened into that aching fibre and still his cheeks burned with that pounding heat.

  “Down!” he panted. “Down, down, down.”

  He knew what was about. He knew full well how his balls were packed and straining with seed, how his tubes and coils forced and swelled with a pressure to unload. For a year at least he had experi­enced the soggy defeat of waking to the knowledge that the dam had burst unbidden during the night. What his body did in his dreams he could not control or be blamed for, but he would not, could not allow his conscious self to fall victim to this vile poking, pressing ugliness.

  Four by the stable clock, fooled into action by the summer light of dawn.

  David stood. He shivered as the shameful head of the monster rubbed with frictive drag against his pyjamas, for a wincing second prising open the slit at its head as it stabbed blindly at the fabric before finding the freedom of the flap and quivering upwards with a stupid prong of victory.

  “Stop it, stop it!” David breathed. “Oh, please . . . please . . .”

  But nothing would stop it; not cold water, not prayer, not threats, not promises.

  David stood by the bed and clutched the beast in fury, choking it.

  “You . . . will . . . behave . . . !” he snarled, shaking it back and forth in anger.

  The bastard thing. It won. Great ropes of semen flew from its tip and dropped to the carpet with a flat triumphant patter.

  David threw himself on to his bed, sore, savaged and despairing. He sobbed into the pillow and swore that this thing must never hap­pen again.

  After a while, feeling better, he got up and began to dress.

  He timed the last five words of his prayer to coincide with the five chimes of the stable clock.

  “Good, sweet, true, strong and PURE!” he breathed.

  He hoped that by adding the word “strong” he would be able to avoid calamities like that of an hour ago. Purity required strength. Where the strength would come from he could not tell. Not from pu­rity, surely? That would be what his father called a catch-22. Strength came from within.

  Well, he must be going. He loved it here, but it would never do to be . . .

  He tightened up in alarm. Footsteps! He could hear them dis­tinctly. Someone shuffling towards him. He heard a cough and a retching noise. Uncle Ted! There couldn’t be the least doubt that it was Uncle Ted. What was he doing up so early? He was the kind of man, surely, who never rose before ten at the very least. David kept very still and, although it was pitch black where he was, closed his eyes tightly. Uncle Ted coughed once more and walked away to­wards, David judged, the laurel bushes.

  Then Uncle Ted came back once more and stood right over him, wheezing and tutting and banging his foot so that dirt fell on to David’s face. David didn’t dare brush the crumbs of soil away. He simply lay in the warm earth and waited. He heard a scrambling and a thudding noise. Was Uncle Ted trying to find his way in? David held his breath. The sound stopped. There was silence. A wood louse crawled over David’s cheek.

  Suddenly there was a loud clang, followed by a great roaring and swearing. Uncle Ted was in the park! What on earth was he doing?

  “Cunting, godding hell-bitch fuck-arse shite . . .” David heard, and then a small pop and silence. The small pop sounded like a cork being drawn from a bottle. David wondered if he was going mad. The next sound was another clang and then came the sound of scrambling close to him again. David held his breath once more.

  At last, grumbling and puffing with annoyance, Uncle Ted turned and stamped away in the direction of the house.

  Ten minutes later, the door of hinged turf neatly shut behind him, David crouched in the ha-ha and scanned the house for signs of life. Lowering his gaze, he saw the marks on the lawn and cursed himself.

  “Of course!” he whispered. “The dew! I really must be more careful.”

  CHAPTER 4

  I

  12a Onslow Terrace

  London SW7

  Tuesday, 21st July 1992

  Dear Uncle Ted,

  Your letter arrived this morning. I have read it over many times. Firstly because your handwriting is so difficult and I have had trouble with some ambiguous phrases. Secondly be­cause there is much in it that puzzles me for other reasons. On the handwriting front, I spent much time wondering, for in­stance, what you meant by David’s “codfish chums.” I know that Davey is very much an animal lover, but I found this idea intensely peculiar until I realised that you meant “coltish charms.” Then again, there is a reference to yourself as a Rotarian which struck me as unlikely. I have now decided that the word is “Bohemian.” When I came upon the phrase “let us be frank, I am aching as your pansy,” I could only imagine that the whisky had got the better of you. I have since, by tracing out the letters and coming to an understanding of your pen-strokes, come to the decision that you actually meant to write “I am acting as your paid spy.”

  This leads me on to my main point. Ted, I do not want you to consider yourself a viper in the Logan bosom or a snake in Swafford grass. You made a reference at the very beginning of your letter to the Trojan horse and that is a bad anallegory too. You are an old friend and now a guest of Michael and Anne Logan. You stand godfather to one of their children. There is nothing so strange in your staying with them for a while, surely? Although it is true that it was I who asked you to stay at the Hall and also true that I am paying you to communicate your impressions to me, I have done so in the certain knowl­edge, certain knowledge that once you have been there for a while you will find that your own instincts as a writer and as a friend of the Logans will keep you there willingly. In fact I am sure that wild horses wouldn’t drag you away from the place. You can no more call yourself a paid spy than a serious photo-journalist could call himself a snoop.

  You may think that by going along in this business you are simply humouring the whim of a dying neurotic who is mad enough to pay you handsomely for it. That may be true. For a month now I have gone over and over it in my mind and asked myself whether or not I am imagining things. I went to see a priest some time ago and he told me that it was common for “visions to attend the dying.” I saw a psychotherapist who said the same thing in a different way: “The hurt mind plays itself realistic images to mediate between its desires and dreaded re­ality. On a larger scale, society does the same thing with its cin­ema and television industries.” Some such stuff. But I know that what I know is what I know and that nothing can ever be the same again. I won’t embarrass you by telling you that I now know that God exists, and that God is perfect and as real as this pen I am holding. Have you ever been in a hot country, a scorchingly uncomfortably hot place, and then walked into a cool cathedral or temple? Or come in from a bitter, cheek-aching winter day to the warmth of a fire? Imagine such a feel­ing of relief and welcome and pleasure to the power of ten, the power of twenty, any power you like, and still you h
aven’t come near the sensation of coming into the presence of God.

  I said I wouldn’t embarrass you, but I probably have. You will say I’ve only embarrassed myself I expect, but that isn’t true. I’ll say no more about this for the moment.

  I am so grateful that your first letter was so full. I didn’t find it “inconsequential to a degree” at all: absolutely everything you tell me is of interest. I don’t even object to your making fun of me in the way that you have been. I suppose you are being rude because you hate me for making you feel like a prostitute or spy. I don’t mind in the least, but I am sorry you have been feeling unhappy and “blue-devilled.” What a charming expres­sion.