Bigot Hall Read Online Free PDF Page A

causing distress and would yield more money than war as a circus attraction. So while the others were elsewhere accosting the manager, me and my friend Billy Verlag were watching caged freaks circle the ring and I knew something was very wrong. Bernard the Living Merchant. Terry the Human Constable. And the clowns - here they were to remind us life was quaint and temporary. Thanks.
    Billy was the only village kid who ever ventured onto the Hall grounds, being the only boy small and spherical enough for the other kids to boot over the perimeter wall. I think he looked up to me because I had told him about Hume’s principle of unverified causality - that B follows A does not prove that A caused B. He had actually used this to get away with tripping an old woman. Now he regarded the book I was holding. ‘What’s that?’
    ‘Dostoevsky.’
    ‘Can I have a go?’
    I handed him the book, my eyes on the cavorting clowns. They were looking horribly familiar - because they were the same ones as before. It was the same circus. And at that instant, they saw me. Miniature cars squealed to a halt. Painted faces stared out of a madman’s universe. The ringmaster’s whip wrapped around my neck and, in an explosion of popcorn, I was dragged like a cur into the ring. Elephants were circling and I had to roll to avoid being trampled as the ringmaster ordered the clowns to ‘terminate’ me - that was the word he used. I pushed a clown out of its miniature car and led the others a merry dance until I crashed into a barrel and they pounced, two clowns holding me by the arms while a third beat the bejesus out of me. The audience loved this. Maybe they thought I was a midget. The applause was deafening as I was loaded into the cannon, which stank of gunpowder. I don’t remember anything between then and the moment I awoke in an adjoining field. Everything was totally unreal - I felt like a statistic.
    When the others got home with Nelson in tow they asked me where I’d disappeared to. It turns out Billy Verlag had been so absorbed in The Idiot he hadn’t noticed my ordeal - thought I’d gone for a slash or something. Even Adrienne was sceptical. What about the bruises?
    A wound heals slower than a kiss. When I’m advised to cheer up because it may never happen I’m reminded that it has and may again. The most amusing thing about a pantomime horse is the necessity of having to shoot it twice. That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

ISLAND
     
     
    I told Billy Verlag I intended to explore the island at the centre of the lake and that I’d need him for ballast. Of all the territory bought with my Father’s forged money the lake was the strangest. It was rumoured to contain jet-propelled herring and trout which could imitate your facial expressions. But the island was a mystery.
    ‘Don’t ask me to take you there,’ said Father. ‘You’ll only start looking at the sky in a funny way and beg to go for a drive.’
    Mutinous with curiosity, I peered through the telescope in Adrienne’s attic but could make out only a few shrubs. ‘You don’t want to go there,’ said Adrienne, lazily swinging one long leg from her sleeping-hammock. ‘Especially with little Verlag. I went, and may never understand what I saw.’
    That was enough for me. One afternoon when everyone was off burying Nan, Billy hurtled over the perimeter wall and we went immediately to the lake, pushing out on a wooden palette. ‘Charon the ferryman did this,’ I said, pushing at the raft-pole. ‘Demanded hard cash though he was clearly nothing more than a skeleton. Must have been some tissue clung in that skull of his.’
    There was a scraping sound under the raft, which Billy instantly attributed to a sawfish dragging its nose across the hull. ‘Nonsense,’ I said, and peered into the water. The lake was infested with boss-eyed cartoon characters which ghosted up, stared like lost souls and dipped away again. Inbetween were swirling volume levels and