Imagined Slights Page 5

  And when she was gone, I went around the house spraying pine-fragrance air-freshener into every corner of every room. But the smell only grew stronger. It clung to me, to my skin, to my clothes. They began to notice it at work. Carver from the Legal Department asked me one day in the corridor if I'd trodden in something I shouldn't have trodden in, and old Horace who runs the stationery cupboard couldn't help wrinkling his nose when I went in for a ream of A4 and a ballpoint.

  But what could I do? I wasn't prepared to ditch Nora. Our love was meant to be, and I would do anything to keep that love alive. (Isn't it funny how the bland clichés from pop songs suddenly burst out vibrant and true when you're in love, really in love?)

  The smell permeated everything about me and everything I did, and no amount of soap or aftershave could shift it. My colleagues at work began shunning me in the canteen, and my secretary found every excuse to spend as little time as she could in my office, and I knew that the temps in the typing pool were whispering about me behind my back. The smell, in fact, was making me so unpopular that in the end I did the only thing I could: I handed in my notice. I quit. And when Mrs Haldane in Personnel asked me why I was quitting, I said it was because I wanted to spend more time with my loved one.

  My loved one who was not so lovely any more, who was not at all the woman I had fallen in love with.

  "Nora," I told her, exactly a fortnight after we first met, "I love you, I care for you, I want to be with you. But..." I drew a fresh breath through my handkerchief, lowered it and continued: "There is something between us, something standing in our way, and I think it better that we clear the air now - spill our guts, so to speak - rather than bottle our feelings up, which only means that one or other of us will explode at a later date."

  I covered my mouth and nose quickly again, and raised the kitchen knife I had brought upstairs with me, tightening my rubber-gloved grip on the handle. I glanced at the copy of Gray's Anatomy which I had propped open on the pillow beside Nora's head and, using this as my guide, set about disembowelling her.

  The illustrations in Gray's, with their fine lines and delicate cross-hatching, did nothing to prepare me for the clotted, reeking mess that was Nora's innards. Choking, I hacked and slashed and chopped with a singular lack of surgical precision, then plunged my hands in and sloshed fistful after fistful of intestine and inner organ into a bin-liner.

  Finally, when Nora was empty and the bag was full, I carried the bundle of viscera downstairs and dumped it in the dustbin out in the back yard. Immediately three interested cats appeared and began sniffing around the base of the bin, but I shooed them away and, just to be on the safe side, secured the bin lid down with a length of washing line.

  Then I returned to the spare room to inspect my handiwork. The sag of Nora's belly and the jagged slit running up her belly from mons veneris to solar plexus were - let's be frank here - unattractive. And as I looked more closely at her, I saw now that her whole skin was a chromatograph of spreading bruises, not the smooth expanse of milky white I remembered at all. And even though I knew that the worst of her was sitting outside in the dustbin waiting for Tuesday's collection, I realised that she wasn't the same any more and would never be the same again. She had changed. The one remaining constant in our relationship was the one thing about her that I couldn't stand: the smell.

  I wondered what to do. How could I bring back the old Nora, the Nora who had only days ago thrown herself at me so openly, so blithely, so freely? How could I restore her to perfection?

  I could not. But I could improvise. I started by filling in the cavity in her belly with a tangled length of garden hose and giving her back her heart in the shape of my alarm clock, which I tucked inside her ribcage. It sat there snugly, ticking away the semi-seconds, beating perhaps a little too quickly for a healthy heart, but then that's love for you.

  Once I'd done this, once I'd begun making improvements to Nora, it seemed unchivalrous to stop, so straight away I set to hollowing out her throat and inserting in it a portable transistor radio. If I wanted her to talk to me, all I had to do was flip a switch and she would give me Radio 4 (her conversation was wide-ranging and knowledgeable, but not notably feminine, except during Woman's Hour). If, on the other hand, I wanted her to sing, then she was only too happy to (and her repertoire was vast and the range of her voice was as broad as can be, from Classic FM to hardcore dance music). And if I grew tired of the sound of her, I always had the option of shutting her up at the touch of a button.

  Her eyelids had peeled back to reveal milky-white orbs like ping-pong balls, so I substituted them with a pair of large paste diamonds. I would have given her the genuine article but, since I no longer had a job, money was tight. She didn't seem to mind. Paste diamonds are a girl's second-best friend.

  Her left arm had to go. Stuck stiffly out over the edge of the bed, the hand would often butt against my crotch in an extremely crude and suggestive manner - perhaps this was deliberate on her part, I don't know. I replaced it with a broomstick, anyway, to the end of which I taped five table-knives for fingers. I was careful to position her new arm alongside her torso so that there would be no risk to my private parts. Soon after, I replaced her right arm with the hose and nozzle of a vacuum cleaner, for reasons of symmetry and aesthetics.

  I bought a device from one of the aforementioned blank-fronted shops as a substitute for Nora's most intimate organ. I never did use it, although it was good to know that it was there; that I could make love with Nora any time I wanted to, if I wanted to.

  Eventually her legs became so misshapen that it was a kindness when I replaced the left with a carpet sweeper and the right with a mop. I entertained fantasies of hoisting Nora upright and trundling her back and forth across the floor, her throat playing the theme tune from The Archers while she cleaned the carpet and the kitchen tiles. But I never dared. I never dared presume. The drying rack from the sink drainer became her new ribcage. Unfortunately her breasts then sank in on themselves like badly-set jellies. My solution to the problem was - if I say so myself - a stroke of genius. I wrung the gel from a freezer bag into a pair of pink polythene plastic sacks, topped each with the teat from a baby's dummy, and stuck these on top of the drying rack. Hey presto, a Hollywood starlet's dream come true: a bosom that would never sag.

  But I think the pièce de résistance was Nora's brain. I scooped her cranial cavity clean, sawed off the top of her skull and fitted an electric blender there. With her hair glued around the blender's perspex cylinder, it seemed to me that I had come up with the perfect symbol for the mind of Woman: nimble, utilitarian, deceptively easy to use, lethally sharp if you aren't careful.

  And all the offcuts and left-over fleshy pieces I dutifully bagged and binned for collection.

  Come Tuesday morning, when I heard the dustbin lorry rumble round, I felt profoundly sad to be losing so much of the old Nora, but drew comfort from the thought that the new Nora I had created would last for ever and would never need to be thrown away.

  I heard the dustmen shouting agitatedly to one another. I didn't hear what they said. I was lying beside my Nora and had no thought but for my Nora - Nora whom I had restored to beauty, whom I had returned to her rightful place in my affections, as was meant to be. I was still lying beside her when, half an hour later, there came a knocking at the front door and a loud officious voice asked me to open up. Even when the knocking turned to hammering, and then to splintering, I didn't so much as stir. There were footfalls on the stairs, but all I could think about was Nora and myself and our future together. I would want nothing from her and she would ask nothing from me (except, perhaps, a fresh bottle of perfume a week), and the longer we stayed together, the stronger our love would grow. We would stay together while our looks faded and our eyesight failed, and we would still be together long past the point when other couples lose interest in each other, when their love settles into complacency, when nothing the one does can satisfy the other. We would stay together until long past the e
xpiration date of love's warranty.

  Britworld TM

  Hi! Welcome to Britworld'. My name is Wanda May June and I will be your guide, hostess and compère for the duration of the tour. If you have any questions about anything you see here today, I will be more than happy to answer them.

  Thank you for coming prepared with warm clothing. The temperature in Britworld' is kept at a refreshing forty-five degrees Fahrenheit all year round. USACorp Entertainments have gone to great lengths to enhance the authenticity of your experience by reproducing the exact climate of the original. This also means a regulation four and a half hours of rain per day. If there is anyone here who suffers from respiratory ailments or is in any way inconvenienced by the Britworld' environment, they should not hesitate to leave by one of the emergency exits, one of which you will see over there, marked "EXIT".

  Now, has everyone got their umbrellas, or "bumbershoots" as we call them in Britworld'?

  Good. Then why don't you follow me to the first sector? Thank you!

  Here we find ourselves in a typical urban situation. This is in fact London, which was the capital of Britworld' and home to the famous Beatles.

  The wind is a little gusty today. Look how it speeds the clouds along! There is a ninety-seven per cent chance of rain later.

  A brief technical note. The sky you are now seeing is, of course, projected on to the underside of the geodesic dome. Now, whereas other theme parks use simple loop-sequences of an hour or so in length, the clouds here are generated using the latest in Chaos Model programs. Thus no two are ever alike. Some are large, some are small. That one looks just like a duck, doesn't it? We at USACorp Entertainments are justly proud of innovations such as these which keep us one step ahead of the competition.

  As you cross the street, mind your step on the piles of garbage - or "rubbish" as it is known here.

  Yes, it does smell kind of bad, doesn't it? But you must remember that in the real Britworld' they had never heard of efficient disposal or recycling.

  Whoops-a-daisy! Are we all right, ma'am? Good. I can see that you haven't sustained any serious injury, but I should take this opportunity to mention to you all that in the eventuality of an accident situation, USACorp Entertainments will accept zero liability. You all signed the waiver forms at the entrance.

  Please try to keep up!

  Let's wait here for a few minutes at this bus stop. If we are lucky, we may see a genuine double-decker bus. The word "bus" is short for "omnibus". A double-decker bus is a bus with two decks. Hence the name. It is red and will have a number on the front, signifying its route, and a destination - perhaps the Houses of Parliament, where Guy Fawkes lived, or Hyde Park, named after the alter-ego of the famous scientist Dr Jekyll, or maybe the Globe Theater, which was built by Sir William Shakespeare.

  Any minute now, there may be an omnibus. There may even be two. Or three!

  Double-decker buses have a seating capacity of sixty-eight, forty-four on top, twenty-four below - not forgetting, of course, standing room for another twenty passengers.

  Any ... minute ... now.

  It doesn't look like one's coming. What a disappointment. Well, we can't hang around all day. Let's proceed along this road to the market.

  Many historians consider the market to be an early precursor of our shopping mall. Notice how each stall sells a different product, what we now call franchising. Here is the fruit and vegetable stall, selling fruit and vegetables. It is tended by a cheerful man known as a greengrocer. The name is derived from the fact that a large proportion of his groceries are green in colour.

  Listen.

  "Apples and pears! Apples and pears! Getcha apples and pears!"

  Isn't that clever? USACorp Entertainments have taken every effort to reduplicate the Britworld' dialect, incomprehensible now to the great majority of the English-speaking world.

  Little boy, the automata are extremely delicate. Please don't touch.

  I would just like to show you this. A strawberry. Everybody! Look at this strawberry. This is the fruit from which we derive strawberry flavour.

  Yes, sir, I suppose it does bear a slight resemblance to a wino's nose.

  On the street corner we see the newsvendor, vending newspapers. Let's listen to his distinctive cry.

  "Paperrrr! Getcha paper heeeere!"

  The cloth cap and raincoat he is wearing are the real thing, the genuine article, as is all the clothing you will see today, purchased at great cost by USACorp Entertainments from museums all over the world.

  Beyond the newsvendor you may already have spotted the street musicians, or "buskers", so called because they used to play on buses until the law banned them. The tune they are playing is a traditional folk ballad, "Strawberry Fields Forever". Remember that strawberry I showed you earlier on? Well, this song was written, so they say, about fields of strawberries stretching so far into the distance they seemed to go on for ever.

  Don't the buskers sing well?

  We are standing outside a pub, the Britworld' equivalent of a bar. "Pub" is short for public house, a house into which the public may enter whenever they wish. This one has a name. The King's Head. On the sign up there we see a picture of the head of the King. Notice his crown. Shall we go in?

  Here we see the inhabitants of Britworld' relaxing in the friendly, intimate atmosphere of the pub. At the bar we see the landlord and the landlady, so called because they rent out the house to the public.

  This is Charly, a cheerful local. Cheerful locals in London were known as Cockneys because - so legend goes - they were born within the sound of the bells of Cockney Cathedral. Tell us, Charly, do you enjoy drinking here?

  "God blimey, luvaduck, I should say. Crikey, strike me blind if I jolly bloomin' well don't! Lor Lumme! Eh, guvnor?"

  I think he does! And chim-chim-cheroo to you, too, Charly!

  Now, follow me, everyone. Don't try that, sir. It's not safe to drink. It's a substitute for the popular pub drink, bitter ale, designed to maintain its colour and consistency and that distinctive frothy head for approximately eighteen years.

  Let's hurry on to the next sector. But I must warn you, be prepared to be thrilled, chilled and spilled! Those with heart conditions or nervous complaints may wish to consider leaving by the nearest convenient emergency exit over there, marked "EXIT".

  Where are we? Fog swirls along darkened streets and the gas lamps flicker, casting strange shadows on the sidewalk. Villains surely lurk in this fog-enshrouded place.

  But look at that road sign! Baker's Street. How many of you know which well-known historical personality lived on Baker's Street?

  No.

  No.

  No, not Chet Baker.

  No.

  No, it was Sherlock Holmes! And if we are lucky, we may just catch a glimpse...

  Ah! There! The deerstalker, the cape, the pipe. It can only be... And yes, there is his friend and faithful companion, Dr Watson.

  "The game's afoot."

  "Good heavens, Holmes! How on earth did you deduce that?"

  "Elementary, my dear Watson. When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth."

  And so the great detective sweeps past us on his way to solving another baffling, mystifying, perplexing mystery. So close, so realistic, you could reach out and touch him.

  But who is that? A woman, wandering the night streets, vulnerable and alone. She must be careful. There's murder in the air.

  Oh, look out! That man in the top hat and cloak! He has a knife! He is Jack the Ripper, that terrible fiend of the night and depraver of women. Who will save her? Who will save her?

  Hooray! Here comes a friendly policeman, whose name is Bobby. He blows his whistle. That's seen that dreadful Ripper off! Look how Bobby is comforting that poor woman. How safe she must feel.

  Well, I'm quite breathless with excitement. Everybody follow me to the next sector.

  Oh dear. Bumbershoots up, everyone! As the saying in Britworl
d' goes, "It's raining buckets of cats."

  If you can't hear me over the rain, say so and I will speak up. OK?

  Good.

  This grand edifice is none other than the Buckingham Palace itself, the home of the King and Queen of Britworld'. USACorp Entertainments, sparing no expense, had the original building transported brick by brick and reconstructed here. See how the Union Jack, royal flag of Britworld', flutters proudly from the mast on the palace roof.

  The palace has a small number of large rooms and a larger number of small rooms. All the interiors have been recreated down to the finest detail. However, as we're running a little behind, we'll have to skip that part of the tour.

  If you do want a refund, ma'am, I'd advise you to take the matter up with USACorp's Central Office and not with me.

  Trust me, they are bee-yootiful rooms.

  Notice the beefeaters standing guard at the palace gates with their fierce pikes and their mustaches. They get their name from their traditional beef-only diet. Yes, amazing as it may sound, they used to eat nothing but beef! Naturally, beefeaters had a disproportionately high rate of death from colonic cancer and Creutzfeld Jacob disease.

  Twice a day the guards change their positions to avoid cramp. This is known as the Changing of the Guard.

  Wait! Look! Up there! On the balcony! Why, the King and Queen have come out to wave at us! Wave back, everybody.

  The King is wearing his crown. Remember the sign at the pub? The Queen, meanwhile, is wearing an elegant mid-length gown in taffeta, cut on the bias, with a lace hem and gold braid trim along the sleeves. To complete the ensemble, she wears a diamond tiara and earrings and matching accessories. Ladies, don't you wish you could dress as elegantly as that?

  Oh, they're going in again. Goodbye, your majesties! Goodbye! Goodbye!

  We are now entering the Shakespeare sector. You can put down your bumbershoots now, as the rain has been switched off. I know several of you have heard about the little difficulty we had in this sector some months back, but I am pleased to be able to tell you that the fire damage has been repaired and the tour can proceed as normal. However, please remember to observe the No Smoking rule at all times.