52
Lord of the flies
The Animal Liberation Front’s answer to Osama Bin Laden swaggered out of the shadows with the cocky air of a pre-bath Jim Morrison about to flash his penis to a stadium crowd.
‘What are you doing here, Marcus?’ I said with audible unease, as he rounded the table counter-clockwise, black mane merging into black duffle coat like an unruly hood around his pasty, puffy face.
‘Oh?’ he said with an affected air, running a finger provocatively (camply) along the table as he walked and I hoped he got a splinter. ‘I had some business in the area.’ His mouth pursed into an effeminate smirk Eddie Izzard would have been proud of. ‘Thought I’d pop by.’
‘Yes,’ I said matching each of his forward steps with a backward one, keeping the table between us. ‘I admired your handiwork in this morning’s paper. You must be very proud considering you could have killed someone.’
‘We didn’t kill someone though, did we?’ he said from three o’clock to my nine o’clock. ‘We are not in the business of killing.’
‘Oh, it’s a business now, is it? I thought mindless violence was just a hobby.’
He chuckled at about five to twelve. Then, momentarily framed by gathering gloom through the Great Arch, amused stalker and wary prey at opposite ends of the long wooden table, he stopped, gazed out and said: ‘May I ask if you had anything to do with the rather entertaining little intervention just witnessed?’
‘I made a phone call, yes.’ This said with little pride and, dare I say it, more than a little guilt.
‘And?’ He smiled across at me. ‘Describe the feeling, articulate the euphoria having now masterminded your debut militant act!’
‘There is no euphoria,’ I said flatly.
‘Oh?’ He seemed disappointed. ‘You may well have saved an animal’s life.’
‘Maybe,’ I said. Fact was I’d merely facilitated a stay of execution. Fact was I’d played God and all I’d created was an unholy mess; a plethora of disgruntled locals who would now view Hartley Castle House and its occupants with grave suspicion. Fact was my debut militant act would be my swansong militant act. A fact I had not the slightest inclination to impart to Marcus Friend; the unhinged, unsettling and, currently, rather menacing Marcus Friend.
‘Someone could have got hurt. Or worse, killed,’ was all I said.
He scoffed at this. ‘One of us, maybe.’ He said ‘us’ as though activists were one big, happy family. ‘They were the ones with guns, my dear Bailey. We are not violent as a rule. We do not kill as a fact. Ours is the business of casualty-free coercion.’ He resumed the stalk. ‘Were you to take a blind bit of interest in our history,’ he said placing hands in coat pockets as he walked, ‘you would find this to be a well documented and, as far as our detractors are concerned, reluctantly acknowledged fact.’
At nine o’clock he suddenly turned and went the other way, as did I, pace for pace, counter-clockwise to his clockwise, our little game of slow motion cat and mouse already decidedly unsettling for me, clearly a source of barely suppressed amusement for him. ‘We are terrorists in the misty eyes of the law, lumped in with the rest of the Ts for ease of filing – Al Qaeda, HAMAS, the Army for the Liberation of Rwanda, the somewhat redundant IRA…et cetera, et cetera. We so called militant animal rights groups – the ALF, ELF, SHAC, et cetera, et cetera – are all tarred with the same sweeping brush. It seems not to matter a jot that the aforementioned groups of self-confessed terrorists have murdered upwards of six hundred thousand innocent people between them, while we supposed terrorists are yet to murder a single guilty one.’ He stopped again at twelve o’clock and gazed out through the blackening arch. ‘Sadly, to those who stoke the fires of propaganda and keep the masses burning with indignation, anyone who uses intimidation as a tool is now a suicide bomber to be rooted out and shot.’
‘You made your bed, Marcus,’ I said from six o’clock, the option of running for the house now waning the more we circuited the table without the introduction of weapons.
‘Yes, I made my bed and you made yours.’ He began to walk the other way again, counter-clockwise, as did I, clockwise.
‘I know which I’d rather sleep in,’ I said.
He offered a pained smile. ‘Do all admen deal in such trite clichés? Am I now to say that my bed is only messy to those who iron their sheets?’
I thought about this. ‘Lost me I’m afraid.’
‘Only the anally retentive pigeon hole, my blinkered little adversary. Are you by nature an anally retentive person, Bailey?’
I told him nature had rendered me fairly regular and he found this mildly droll. Amidst the murk on the lane below, cars tooted and arms were extended out windows as the seven available members of the Pickering and District Hunt Saboteurs Association rather surprisingly took their leave without so much as a post-sabotage beer. Perhaps they’d had one down there. Pity, I could have used them to thrash one more wily old fox out of my undergrowth.
Marcus Friend watched in silence from eleven o’clock as red taillights disappeared into the blackness of the woods below, as did I from the considerably less satisfactory vantage point of three o’clock. Panorama now largely reduced to a milky grey void, he dithered, then, either satisfied his little power trip dosey do had run its course, or just plain bored, he sat nonchalantly where Attie Joubert had sat the night of the winter barbecue and grinned.
I sat opposite with an exaggerated sigh. ‘Why are you here, Marcus?’
‘I told you,’ he said eyes up and around the walls of the Great Hall, before settling on one of the sombrero-capped heaters, which received the sort of once over normally reserved for tall, sexy woman ‘Thought I’d pop by and see how your delightful fiancé was.’
I considered lying. I considered telling him to mind his own business. I considered many and varied forms of abuse. ‘You’ll be pleased to know she left me,’ was what I actually said. ‘Unless you already know.’
He seemed genuinely surprised and not necessarily pleased. ‘Me? No. I didn’t. As for whether this news fills me with morbid delight?’ He stared into space a moment; snapped to. ‘No. Nothing’s leaping out. I’ll have to let it sink in a while. Does this however mean I’m back in the equation?’
‘Apparently not. She hates you, Marcus.’
‘Awfully strong word, hate. One prefers “despise”. One sees a hint of hope in despise. Still. You? Coping all right in your newfound land of pain, longing and regret?’
I twitched a smile. ‘As it happens, yes. I’m fine.’
‘Good. Mind if I ask why she left?’
‘Yes.’
‘As you will. Asok?’
‘Asok’s fine.’
‘Did you watch the video?’ He sat forward.
‘I watched the video.’
‘And?’
‘I won’t be sharing my opinion.’
Friend sat back again with a great exhalation of air. ‘Bailey, tell me something.’ He picked intently at fluff on a coat sleeve, a patently pretentious gesture of indifference considering the failing light. ‘Do you kill flies?’
‘What sort of question is that?’
‘A straightforward one. Do you kill flies?’
‘Of course. Do you?’
‘This isn’t about me. Do you swat them? Spray them with insecticide?’
‘Spray them.’
‘Do you feel for those flies as they writhe on your window sill?’
‘Oh God. This isn’t your new crusade, is it?’
‘Again, this isn’t about me, but no, for the record, as regards flies I share your attitude and weaponry. Nerve gas, as I understand it. Do you believe flies feel pain?’
‘I have no idea. When they’re spinning on their backs, they don’t look happy.’
He laughed. ‘Indeed.’
‘What’s your point?’
‘My point is about belief systems and your interpretation of the worth of flies. If I was to ensconce myself outside your house chanting “Flies have feelings too!” at all hours of the day and night; if I was to torment you on a daily basis as you came and went, extol to you in enraged tones the virtues of flies and minute details as to the suffering of a Morteined fly, thrust graphic placards in your face depicting advanced states of fly anguish…how long do you think it would take you to stop killing flies?’
‘I wouldn’t. I’d consider you insane.’
‘Precisely. That is your belief system towards flies. Beliefs and behaviour inherent across many generations; your family, their family and their family before that. Hundreds of years of deeply entrenched reactionary behaviour towards flies; indeed, a culturally decent, laudable attitude any western housewife would share. It would indeed be impossible for me to stop you killing flies by merely trying to educate you, would it not?’
I nodded.
‘On the other hand, if I threatened you, your livelihood, your home, your community, the safety of your family, your dogs and your friends? If all you loved and needed to perpetuate your tawdry lifestyle depended on your decision to stop killing flies?’
‘I’d stop killing flies. Point taken. That doesn’t make it right.’
‘No. But, if no one actually got hurt, who’s the winner?’
‘The flies.’
‘The flies! Exactly! Hundreds of years of ingrained attitudes and response mechanisms towards flies good old fashioned re-education couldn’t hope to change in a million years, changed,’ – he clicked his fingers – ‘just like that, in a few short weeks of intimidation.’
I nodded a slow, thoughtful nod accompanied by what I hoped was a sardonic grin. ‘Well, I have to say Marcus, for a man who despises religion, you do a pretty decent sermon.’
He bowed reverentially from his seated position. ‘Well, thank you, my dear Bailey.’
‘But you can’t steamroll change like that.’
‘We can, and we do. As proof, animals otherwise doomed are alive today.’
‘Apparently so. But do you and your little band of Dad’s Army terrorists actually change anything? I don’t think so. Not long term. Case in point, you may well have run a battery hen farm out of business and ruined a few lives; you may even have ruined mine if that makes you feel better. But what’s really been achieved here, Marcus? Are there any less caged hen eggs on supermarket shelves? Are there any less people buying them?’
‘I’d like to think so.’
‘You’d like to think so.’
‘I think you’re underestimating the power of the media, my dear Bailey. Strange, given your occupation and predilection for bamboozling an unsuspecting public.’
‘I’m not in denial, Marcus.’
‘Yes, you are.’
‘No, I’m not. I admit I’m a fucking charlatan! I live a blissful life of culturally acceptable hyperbole and lies! The public know that. I know that. I could hide in a cloud of oblivion like you do imagining that relationship was symbiotic, but it’s not! I’m a parasite in the eyes of the public! And so are you! Difference is you think you’re doing us all a favour! You can’t even admit you’re nothing but a two bit terrorist!’
‘We can’t pick and choose our correspondents like you can, Bailey. We can’t manufacture our messages to the masses.’
‘You fucking can and you do! You send very clear messages, you anarchic bastard! And all you achieve is fear and the occasional begrudging truce devoid of any understanding as to the why! Well done, you! It’s like…’ I searched the castle walls for an appropriate analogy. ‘…It’s like a teacher telling school kids not to smoke behind the bike shed because they’ll get caned! Don’t smoke because you’ll get caned won’t stop a kid smoking til he’s sixty! Don’t smoke because you’ll get cancer and die will! Don’t kill flies or we’ll murder your children? I mean, spot the glaring double standards! And I’d like to see you police that one. What are you going to do? Rifle through my vacuum cleaner bag once a week?’
‘It’s an analogy, Bailey.’
‘Well, it’s a fucking stupid analogy, Marcus! And it still represents what you stand for! I’m sorry. I’m all for your underlying principle – to make the world a better place for animals – I love that and support you whole-heartedly in your quest. But there’s ways and means! Intimidation? Vandalism? Arson? Fire bombs? I mean you’re sending pretty mixed messages here. It’s not okay for people to mistreat animals, but it’s fine for you to mistreat them if they do!’
‘I don’t ask you to agree with our methods,’ he said aloofly. ‘Merely to understand them.’
‘Well, I don’t. And I think there’s a bit of a timing issue as well.’
‘How so?’
‘Oh, let’s see. Nine eleven? The London bombings? The reality that anyone, anywhere could be about to sit down next to you on a train, plane or in a café and blow themselves up? The reality that no one is really safe anymore? I just don’t think we can see the funny side of threats anymore, Marcus. If you’d sent those letters out ten years ago, fantastic! You’d have made people’s days! Their own personal episode of Murder She Wrote right there in their village! They’d have fucking loved it! Oohing and ahing on the village green, playing Sherlock Holmes in the Pig in Muck. It would have been the best thing that had happened to them in years! It’s just not like that now. There’s no thrill in threats anymore, and if you threaten people in any organised fashion under any recognised banner, you can be as incapable as you like of carrying those threats through, but people are going to believe you can. That’s the world we live in now.’
He reached into a duffle coat pocket, withdrew a paperback book and peered around at the gloomy Great Hall. ‘Is there any light out here? I have a little bedtime reading to share. It might just change your attitude.’
Fully aware any bedtime reading Marcus Friend was likely to share would scar a small child for life, I offered an apologetic shrug. ‘I seriously doubt it.’
Astute madman that he was, he took this in with a slow nod. ‘May I at least try?’
‘You may. But I think it’s more important I try and change you.’ I stood. ‘Come on. It’s fucking freezing out here.’
As we made our way across the forecourt, two things happened in quick succession. First, we heard a small, souped up car approach down the top road at speed. Then we were lit up like possums in the headlights of the small, souped up car as it careered down the Hartley Castle House driveway at similar speed. It skidded to a halt in a shower of mud and gravel and out stepped Fergus Blaine. I groaned.
‘Hi Bailey. Not interrupting anything, am I?’
I sighed. ‘Just the pursuit of a peaceful, melancholic life. How can I help you, Fergus?’
The arrival of Fergus Blaine for the second time that day was an additional irritation I could have done without. I desperately wanted to be alone with my post-fox-hunt-sabotage thoughts, assimilating them, dissecting them, assessing their fit in the new Harland psyche. I also craved more maudlin musings over Gabriel. Yet here I was the unwitting host of two maniacs from opposite ends of the lunatic ladder. Blaine, it transpired, had been thinking about his idea and wanted to make one or two amendments, amendments he didn’t feel could be sufficiently conveyed down a phone line; amendments that, once seen, clearly could have been conveyed down a phone line; amendments I sadly surmised which said more about his sorry search for companionship than his quest for perfection.
Fergus Blaine’s beady eyes darted to the long haired, black duffle-coated man lurking in the shadows. ‘Who’s that?’
‘That is Marcus Friend.’
‘Marcus who?’
‘Friend.’
Blaine snorted. ‘Hello, Marcus Friend.’ He extended a scrawny hand. ‘Fergus Foe.’
‘How clever,’ said Friend accepting the scrawny hand, neither he nor me as yet aware just how apt Blaine’s trite attempt at humour would turn out to be.
