6

jagged smiles and deranged limbs

It is the sound of Drunk Len’s retching rather than gunfire in the streets that wakes up the people’s advocate, Dilly Lily; the wall against which her pillow rests is hard up against his puke stand. The first thing she sees when she opens her eyes is Bella Jane, a soft toy with a blue pleated denim skirt and a yellow jacket, hanging from the jaws of Cerebus, the hound from hell, whose teeth and gums are made of plastic, but are none the less strong for that. Cerebus himself is nailed by the neck to a chessboard, in turn jammed into the tight packed strata of junk that fills her rooms. Even the ceiling is covered, except for the cord from which hangs a dim yellow bulb limned with dust.

Bella Jane is softly turning one way, then the other, as if there were some breeze or someone had just been by and brushed her lightly. The movement is caused by the faintest quivering of the string which loops under her armpits at one end and attaches her to Cerebus at the other, and Lily has decided that the hound, and hence the junk canyons, and the steel and concrete that holds them, is rooted in some deeper vibration, an insecurity in the bones of the rathouse or the larger world in which the building itself is embedded.

The work perhaps, of some subterranean terrorists. The Wood-chucks, perhaps, detonating Travesty’s ancient sewerage system which some claim dates back to the Romans. The Empire never ended. It perpetuated itself through the Law. And sewerage systems. As yet, not even Universal Products could abolish history or sewerage systems. That was their weak link. The truth will always out, that was the People’s Advocate’s motto. A simple truth, too obvious to be stated, might overthrow an empire. One day Aladdin would stroke his lamp and no genie would gush forth.

Then the Empire might end. But after the Reign of Fantasy, what was there? After the oooh and aaaah and the great Day of Delight, the bubble bath of history, what was there?

She rolls out of her sleeping space and crawls down Highway One, connecting her sleeping space to her water heater and sink. Highway One, the first of her canyons, is mainly lined with newspapers, but here and there the leg or arm of a doll or some other toy sticks out. She passes over lumpy regions hinting of solid shapes locked below in the junk; long forgotten items of furniture perhaps. Or appliances. Somewhere beneath, near the junction with Highway Three, which leads off into the library, there is a Victorian dolls house complete with trimmings. In the master bedroom a Barbie doll lies on a four poster bed and stares unwinking at a stucco ceiling. She has been lying like that for eternity.

Lilly presses on, passes Highway Seven, leading down to the cemetery, and Highway Nine leading to her office and computer room where the People’s Advocate works. On straight down Highway One to the piece of bench and water heater at which she eats and performs her ablutions. The area around the bench resembles that of a cave of junk, mostly children’s toys and subversive cartoon caricatures; a stoned Daniel Boon, a lascivious Jesse James, a sodomising Daffy Duck. When these toys reached the ceiling she nailed them there, tying others to those she’d already nailed, creating stalagmites of plastic torsos and spare teddy legs. Eventually she’d had to nail the dangling ends of these stalagmites back up against the ceiling, since they got in her way, creating a solid, humpy ceiling mat of incarcerated dolls and soft toys, an unseemly press of stitched bodies and blanked, trapped eyes.

By some miracle the water heater, a small rusting cylinder, works, and will drip scalding water into the teapot that sits under it. The pipes shudder as she turns on the taps and somewhere not too far off – for her junk piles are marvellous insulators – tortured plumbing gives a deep groan. The water in the gauge at the side of the cylinder trembles, and lurches upward. All this activity dislodges a small Raggedy Ann with flexible limbs, being made with intertwined pipe cleaners, who falls on the cleared section of bench which extends only a few inches past the sink. Absently she picks up the doll and replaces her in the toy pile, jamming her in between a Pooh Bear and the rump of a giant panda.

The sight of the Goofy reminds her, with a little start of guilt, of her current, in fact her only case. The indignant Mr Rathbone’s attempt to stop the Cartoon Carnival on the Day of Delight. To put a spanner in the works of the Day of Delight, in fact. The problem is, and she has seen it many times before, that indignation will only carry you so far; eventually it has to be backed up by something a little stronger, like courage or faith or hate. Or a bomb.

Does he really believe she can change anything, and pay her to do it; pay Lily to change the world? Yes, there are courts. Alice in Wonderland courts in which people are condemned before they commit their crime. Where the likes of Mr Rathbone, however quaint, are swiftly set aside when the Lion King roars.

Mr Rathbone is still writing letters to an Editor who has long since abdicated. But he is paying her – her computer tells her she has credits flowing in from Rathbone’s account – making her the only denizen of the rathouse to be gainfully employed, with the possible exception of the psycho-therapist on the bottom floor. She isn’t too sure about him. He looks too much like a spy.

When the cylinder is half filled, she turns off the tap and flips the switch on the wall. This last action is always accompanied by a touch of superstitious dread since she has never, in the many years she has lived in the rathouse, paid a bill for it, and can only assume that electricity continues to be delivered to her from some ancient predisposition of the wiring, dating, perhaps, to the time before the rathouse became the rathouse and aspired to some grander function. Times she’s sure she could remember if she tried hard enough, times when Mother was still alive and a series of carefully placed mirrors carried daylight directly into the heart of the building.

Since the cylinder will take ages to heat up, she climbs back into Highway One and crawls down to the junction of One and Nine, heading for her office. Before she arrives however, there is a soft sound, softer than snow falling off a branch, and a pile of teddies with jagged smiles and deranged limbs fall in front of her, blocking her way. Some of the Highways have developed loops, dips and rises to get around these falls, but mostly she just pushes them aside, jemmying them into the pile. The teddies are of the old fashioned, tawny variety, and most have their brown hair worn down to the fabric; many are missing eyes and some are coming unstitched at the mouth.

Impatiently she clears the fall and presses on into her office which is a small cave cleared around her desk and computer. She powers it up, not to get information but to provide her with enough light to comfortably ring up the dyspeptic Mr Rathbone on her old landline phone.

Once she has got Mr Rathbone out of the way she can attend to the real business of the day.

Going to Mother’s funeral.

Mr Rathbone is gracious, as he always is, but Lily is alert to the distance in his voice. If there is enough distance in his voice he does not send a cheque and, God alone knows, she cannot afford to lose this last tenuous trickle of income.

Mother’s funeral has taken every penny she has.

“I wondered if you’d ring this morning, Mrs Lily,” he says.

In an important voice, she says, “I have received confirmation that your submission has been received by the Committee. The Committee Secretary herself sent me an acknowledgement.” As she speaks she becomes aware of a low rumbling sound in the background, just audible but intrusive since her hearing has become a little prickly, especially on the telephone.

“I don’t expect it will get very far.”

Neither does Lily, but his thin, bloodless voice is no cause for comfort; she has been holding the Secretary’s acknowledgement for some days now for when she’d most need it.

“Still, it’s something, Mr Rathbone. These Secretaries are very
busy people. I expect they’re hearing your submission today or tomorrow.” She pulls open the drawer of her desk and pulls out several figurines and a plastic cypress tree recently rediscovered and just the right size for her cemetery.

“That’s always been your hope, Mrs Lily.”

She set the cypress tree upright on her desk. “Take heart, Mr Rathbone. You have a lot of support out there, among ordinary people, you know, Joe and Josephine Bloat, living in Lotto Hopeful Crescent; or old Mr Work Socks who’s worked his work socks off all his life contributing to his retirement scheme and who deserves a bit of respect, a bit of peace and quiet in the piracy, I mean privacy, of his own home. In this respect you are a representative voice, Mr Rathbone. Think of that. A representative voice.”

The rumbling is getting louder, and she identifies it as the cylinder. She puts her palm up to her free ear and presses hard. The bloody thing would switch itself off when it was ready.

“So you have said, but now I’m asking myself: if I’m such a representative voice, how come I’m alone in this, how come others aren’t rallying around?”

Lily hoped he wouldn’t ask that question. “It’s always that way, Mr Rathbone; the few speak on behalf of the many.”

“Few! I do not think that one retired gentleman of meagre means and one little old lady can stand against the tide of history, Mrs Lily.”

Lily has heard about the tide of history before. It is something that looms large in Mr Rathbone’s mind; more like a tidal wave than a tide. “I am not a little old lady, Mr Rathbone. I’m a woman of mature years and my stature has nothing to do with it.”

“Of course, I didn’t mean …”

His sentence is lost in the growing rumble of the cylinder. The plastic cypress tree falls over.

“Take heart, Mr Rathbone. You have a letter of appeal sitting on the Secretary’s desk, and a motion before the Committee to outlaw the use of all outlandish and intimidating headgear. You have …”

Mr Rathbone gives a dissatisfied grunt. There is a peevish, querulous note in his voice. “But Mrs Lily, no one finds Donald Duck or Hiawatha or even the Kray Gang for that matter, very intimidating.”

Mr Rathbone seems to have forgotten that this was the very basis of his petition. That one night, returning home, he’d been given his first, unlucky heart attack by the sudden apparition of a Gladstone Gander – not of the law enforcement variety.

Lily replaces the tree, which falls over again immediately. “We can overcome objections, if you’re worried about them.”

“It’s not that.”

Lilly speaks, a little too fast. “The opposition of the Muslim League? Religious sensitivities with regard to headgear can be dealt with, exceptions made for veils and chadors; it’s all a matter of the wording. The Tin Hat Club can be likewise reassured.” She presses her hand harder into her ear, wondering when the cylinder will put itself out of its agony. Out of the corner of her eye there’s a movement at the turn off to Nine. Another falling teddy, or something more sinister, like a rat.

“It’s not the opposition; it’s my own family, I’ve just realized what a wet blanket I was being. My daughter Alice thinks I’m making a fool of myself.”

“By standing up for what you believe in?” This week’s cheque is receding into the blur of next week, and she wonders how you put a bit of backbone in a man who has a daughter like Alice whose opinion in all things is supreme. It is hard work trying to put some backbone into Rathbone.

“It’s not just Alice. It’s my granddaughter. You know they have these bonnets for children. My granddaughter, Serenity, is six. I ask-ed her what she wanted for her seventh birthday, which is coming up soon – ah, she was born the same year that Aunty Marge died, the same month even.”

“You have my condolences.” Lily herself is no stranger to bereavement.

“It was a long time ago, Mrs Lily.”

There is a sudden surge of sound as the cylinder makes a rumble for the top. Mr Rathbone is talking but in a garble of words. All she can hear is his tight voice constantly twisting around the core of a single idea.

“This is not a very good line, Mr Rathbone, will you please speak up.”

She can hear it now, a tiny scratching sound that might have come from another planet. “… the little schemer already has her Aunty Jeanne, who can ill afford it, lined up to buy a Minnie Mouse bonnet. They’re going to have a special parade at the school and here’s me standing over them like Mount Doom. Little Serendipity told me in no uncertain terms that I was being a spoilsport with my silly submission, and my silly lawsuit. I felt pretty stupid I can tell you, getting ticked off like that by a six year old, who had just got her first, very own hairy hobbit-feet.”

The rumble of the cylinder turns into a wail, and then a scream, echoing down through the Highways. Lily takes the plastic cypress and squeezes it in her hand until she can feel its bottom edge cutting into her. She gets up, her ear hurting from the pressure she’d been putting on it. The two figurines she pulled out before get stuffed into the pocket of her dressing grown. She needs more mourners for the funeral. Mr Rathbone’s voice fades into the background of the erupting cylinder.

From the other side of the air a few words arrive, thin and whispery, “So Jeanne, that’s my other daughter, Serendipity’s Aunty, … buy the Minnie Mouse if I would buy the Gollum … her mother, that’s my daughter Venus … Clarabella Cow for Christmas …”

His voice is finally lost in the hoarse, mechanical scream.