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.He had a surgical torch in his mouth so that every time he spoke the room strobed like a foundry.‘Blood was up,’ he said, explaining his forgotten behaviour.‘So was the sun but it has never entered this courtroom,’ said the judge, attempting a kind of pre-emptive control over the docile Cannon.‘How did you become such a lethal asset to the forces of slobbering deviance?’‘Not overnight,’ said Cannon without guile.The lifelike brevity of his reply sent the judge scrabbling for paperwork.‘According to this your hobbies are prowling, weeping, casting a sudden reflection upon placid water and exhibiting a cool, calculated cheek.And you once saw fit to drop a snake upon a passing shepherd.’‘A subdued-looking fish, m’ud.’Resilient in the face of honesty, the judge answered with a laconic snort.‘I’m not one to blow my own trumpet, but –’ Cannon began parping expertly on a small trumpet which the usher swiped immediately away from him.As a fallback measure Cannon was wearing a rubber mask of his own face beneath which was a rubber mask of Father - both of these came away with the trumpet, flapping like dishgloves.Cannon grabbed his shirt and tore it with a convulsive shriek.‘Why have you rent your clothes?’ asked the judge wearily.‘Because I didn’t want to rip my own.’The judge embarked upon such a grim and lengthy stare that several people thought him dead and began to scream.During this diversion Father snatched Cannon’s masks from the floor and put them on, resembling Cannon for a split second before standing and ripping off the outer one with a yell which caught everyone’s attention.Wearing a mask of his own face, he was simply standing there like a ringmaster in rehearsal.Realising his mistake, he tore off the second mask to reveal his own face beneath.‘What is this fathomless horseplay?’ the judge demanded.‘I can’t tell what this mazurka of connivance and evasion tempts me to feel.’ He looked coldly at Cannon.There was anxiety among the Hall residents as it seemed on the cards that Cannon would cheerfully tear off his own face to show he had nothing to hide.‘Guilty,’ the judge sneered at last.Cannon did not react immediately, thinking that he himself had said it.But upon realising that he had been condemned and that his ordeal was over, he let flow tears of laughter and relief.The judge became indignant, raising the sentence to his tumbleweed heart’s content.At this point Uncle Burst happened to stick his finger into an electrical socket, draining the local grid into the inland sea of his ego.The room became a darkness in which the multiphonic screams of the startled were the only entertainment.A single high-frequency shriek rang out as the lights went up.The judge’s mask had been removed to reveal a tense mess of bone and meat like red melted wax - it was a royal portrait of bitterness and misspent hatred.His pain seemed honest.Poor Mr Cannon stood as innocent as you or I, leaning on the dock ledge and gazing skyward like a rococo cherub.ENVY OF THE WORLDBesides formation belching the main activity which constituted quality time at the Hall was the pretence at being dead.Of course there was Harbinger Night, during which the entire household rushed up to the reading room and rolled strangely along the walls, a tradition I always took for granted.But that was only once a year - we pretended to be dead all the time.We were experts at vacant immobility.Whole days were passed tilted dummy-like at the table, cod-eyed and agape.I’ve recently unearthed a family portrait in which we are grouped staring past the camera, slack and departed.When visiting the seaside we would collar a brisk passerby to snap the family, and drop abruptly dead as we were brought into focus, provoking a kind of anguished scream from the traumatized bystander.We spent entire afternoons laying dead in the surf, rolled by the waves, our limbs flaccid as the ocean raised us and put us gently down.In England death is a way of being left alone.Even clowns or barbers will reserve respect for the departed.I have known meddlesome priests to run snivelling the moment I collapse.Executives roar off in open-top cars.Street-mimes shuffle awkwardly, ducking into taxis and peering white-faced from the rear window.Horses look away in bored disdain.Policemen fail to notice.In other lands the flight of the spirit is an end to privacy - here it’s a start.Adrienne once played dead as far as the morgue.She opened her eyes and swung off the slab, padding through the chill chamber.There were several other bodies in the vault, and these too opened their eyes expecting a time alone and free.There was some embarassed laughter at the realisation, and then a heavy, imploding silence.Lie back and think of England.THE PICTURE OF UNCLE SNAPAdrienne had painted a portrait of Uncle Snap sitting bolt upright next to a gremlin in a strange, drab room.Though small, the picture was incredibly compelling.Its high resolution had so much hold on the hallway we found ourselves gathering in front of it to fight.After a couple of years it became a centre of gravity for every punch-up we had.More than once I was caught trying to peer past the frame to see more of the room inside.Adrienne wouldn’t say how she’d done it and Snapper himself pretended not to care.Strangest of all was the slow transformation which Snapper’s painted image seemed to be undergoing [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]