N ~ Toes, in two parts. Part two.

I went back the very next day, all rolled up again, cushioned
against the assaults of bent spears and nettle spines. I climbed up on
fingers and heels, through the mud and the thin tree trunks toward the
brow high above the arch. There was another wall there, rising to a
foot or so above my head, so I hauled myself over it as one portly
bundle and landed on all fours in the garden beyond. I remained
crouched there for some time, stuck with fright. I don't usually go
exploring on my own - I like to have someone along, someone
fractionally more fearful than me who will follow behind and voice
doubt now and then.

"Holy!" he'd go, all wide-eyed with terror when he saw the petrified
zoo - rows of creatures caught springing from tussocks, stalks like
arteries battalioned against our entry, chiselled talons and snouts,
and the colours - since feather and fur were obscured beneath a bright
dusting of chalk. Every statue had drawn on its surface a woman, a
different woman on each, all naked but for their footwear. They were
drawn with a practiced hand - the proportions well judged. More
upsetting to me was that I recognised a few all the way down from the
mist of their hair to their ankles. More I knew only by their faces and
white necks, though most, admittedly, I had never seen before in any
form. But still there were these familiar ones.

When curiosity overcame me, I uncurled myself and walked up to the
nearest and tallest and blondest, an unfamiliar chalked over the belly
and head of a bird of prey, her arms spread out into its wings, her
trainers perched on its crag. She was lightly browned and had a long
mouth. The concave of the wings made her arms look limp and skinny. I
examined every inch of her with my eyes, but nothing stirred the memory
- not a crop of hair or a calf.

"Ha!" said a shrill voice. "There's a jackal at work."

I was more embarrassed than startled, and made a face of dignified
scrutiny before looking round for the owner of the voice. Once he was
located - a small boy in grey coat and black &; white wellies - I
observed him with strained tolerance. He sneezed and clutched his
scarlet grape of a nose.

"You like my master's drawins then?" he asked, snuffling.

"Remarkable," I replied. "Would you take me to your master, young
snuffler?"

The boy pointed toward the back of the garden.

"He's just down there, old tinker."

"Thank you, young?dog," I said, saluting him, and strode off to find
the artist. I don't know why I asked in the first place - perhaps to
give my visit some purpose. I worried, as I walked past hound, lion,
bull and bear, that I had forced myself into an encounter with some
amateur pornographer. I slowed and peered at the chalk women again,
disbelievingly my earlier sentiments. No one I know, no one I know, no
one I know, but then - unmistakably - a young friend of mine, followed
by some very familiar waist - I don't want to say who - but then back
to no one I know and no one I know. I came down upon the back wall and
looked about me.

"Over here, over here," and I saw that the artist was almost hidden
behind a vulture. He was kneeling on a puckered stone slab, I saw as I
drew near, and blunt chips of chalk pastel were scattered around him.
His fingertips were mud-brown, the rest of him utterly impregnable
under silk scarves, throws, veils, rags, tassles and pointed parrot
feathers, in red, green and gold tang, embroided rivulets of black and
white running at the edges, over and below each other. The layers
rippled as his hands worked vigorously and intricately over the slab,
leaving their deposits of bright dust.

"Going well? What do you think? She's a difficult one to capture - I
kept having to brush away the nose and start again on it. Does it look
right to you?"

I leant forward and put my hands on my knees so as to appreciate the
unfolding field of snowy lady. Some of the dust went up my nose.

"She's lovely," I said.

He turned to me in wild surprise, and I saw the bowls of his eyes
twitching through the veils.

"You do recognise her, don't you?"

"Oh!" I said. "Oh! Yes, of course. Yes, I do."

Yes, I did, better than any other in the garden. I couldn't lie to
him. It was better than any picture I'd ever drawn of her, and I think
I might have offered all my wealth for it if it hadn't been fixed to a
dirty great slab.

"Well, I think I'll finish it shortly around the cervix - because I
don't want to ruin her by getting all the way to the feet and having to
draw socks."

I sat back on my backside heavily, getting a purchase on my own socks,
and I tried to empathise with him; life-drawing amateur to sensei, and
I said, "The toes, eh?"

"The toes, the toes?!?" he cried. "Well, yes, I suppose. I never was
one to ah?toe the line, ay? Ay?"

I had no right to groan. So I smiled in acknowledgement, and rocked
silently as he scrubbed in more of the woman, pausing now and then to
suspend himself over the piece like the vulture, then quicken his
strokes to a frantic whoosh in order to fill in the larger areas - the
midriff, the pelvis. Another thing occurs to me about the artist - he
had pointed wizard boots. His feet looked like strips of tangerine
peel.

"Don't just watch," he said. "Tell me a story."

"I don't know any stories," I replied. "Not off the top of my
head."

He dotted a mole and scrabbled for the white - "It doesn't have to be
a tour de force. Just tell me something anecdotal."

"Oh!" I said, for I had become very good at my 'oh's. "Well," I said.
"Alright."

I clapped my hands and racked up my brains, then I told him about the
Science Museum in London, and the bronze statue of Atlas. It suddenly
occurred to me, staring up at him in all his ringlet-fringed,
boulder-muscled glowery - it occurred to me that he was balancing a
globe on his back. And though I was familiar with that image, I had
never really thought it through. The Greeks knew the world was round,
however many thousands of years before the Columbus affair. We forgot.
We actually forgot something as important as the shape of the
world.

"Lots of things to remember," the artist agreed. "That's why people
are so pleased with themselves when they remember what went wrong with
the frustrated German painter, or something George Orwell said - and
those two went for slogans and catchphrases through and through. What
do you think would be a good slogan to be remembered by?"

"Harmony is tedium - let's bicker and still be friends," I said, very
keenly. "Or?if we're on a sinking ship, then it's our own sorry fault
and we might as well try to savour the experience. Um. The only
lowpoint of war is the suffering. And something for the real losers -
don't worry! There is a hell, and us rich, righteous men are going
there under our own steam. You'll find us at the front of the engine,
shovelling coal into the furnace to put out the fire. Good luck next
time round! Well?maybe not that - they'd say I was ashamed."

"And are you?" the artist asked.

"Not at all. More embarrassed. Either embarrassed or exhilarated. Two
wonderful sensations, I might add."

I must admit he'd loosened my tongue very well, and I was disappointed
to hear the mark of completion strike the stone, and to see him stand
up, his joints cracking all over. He was a little shorter than me, and
wider.

"Well, I'm very pleased with that!" he said. "Boy! Where's the
boy?"

I rose to my feet as the boy came tottering up in his black and white
wellies, and stood next to me. We gawked at the finished product with
our hands behind our backs.

"You're pretty old, aren't you?" I asked the artist.

"Yup," he said.

"Fought in many wars?"

"I had a think about it - but I've always taken notice of other
people's subject reports, and it sounded very unappealing to me, so I
spent a few years learning various musical instruments instead. It had
a marked effect on my eye-hand coordination, so well-played I
think."

I decided to join him in his dance of cynicism. I sneered, "What about
duty to your country?"

"Some things just have to wait. I did my bit for the country when I
broke a chair on an enemy's face. All the shame of the soldier with
every limb intact."

"Tell him what enemy it was!" cheered the boy.

The artist told me his enemy was one of the worst kinds - not a
foreigner, but a masquerading insider, one of those that attacks
society from within, like a cavity. I asked him bluntly if he meant one
of the Sons of Churchill, and he said yes, that's about the size of it.
I began to feel embarrassed, and concentrated more thoroughly on his
completed piece, so as to Savour the Experience in female company. I
think that my state of embarrassment arose from being on top of a hill
in a magical garden, on a deeply beautiful winter afternoon, beside a
brilliant draughtsman in a gypsy wizard's costume who drew naked women,
and still having come round to the business of current affairs. We
weren't even arguing! Here am I, beginning my account with derogatory
references to the Sons of Churchill, and here he who had fought them
for his country. We should have formed a club.

So it was a grunting, flush-faced orgasm of embarrassment, a very pure
and vulnerable moment in the nude. I moaned softly. The artist said he
needed to see it from a better viewpoint, and climbed up onto the back
wall. Upon standing up straight there, he immediately lost his balance
and fell off - backward, onto the hillside. "Yeargh!" Thoomp - "Gruh!"
Thoomp - "Ayep!" The whoosh-rattle of a body tearing through a thicket.
Me and the boy pulled ourselves up onto the wall by our hands and
looked over. Radoomp, he went on the footpath, a whirling ball of
festival flags, and glomp into the river which wound round the hill on
three sides. I kept my eyes trained there urgently, but he didn't
surface. At last, the boy said, "I think he meant to do that. He always
said he wanted to go in a demeaning fashion. He said it'd be
delightful."

"Oh?" I said, but the boy only shook his head sadly. He hopped down
and scurried off. Fearing I might be charged with manslaughter by any
old canny lawyer who knew anyone else, and fearing I would be promised
money by another canny lawyer and end up in possession of the Sons of
Churchill, I fled, and ran all the way through the frozen bogs and
sheep-turds to my grandparent's house, where it was warm on the
hearth.

The institutions were right after all! I should of never gone Out of
Bounds. Alas for all flying deviants?how embarrassing.

I should let loose one more secret before I leave you to draw your
lessons from these events, and that is this - I am, in fact, a member
of the ghost army of the Liberal Elite, the sworn enemies of the Sons
of Churchill - that's why I unmasked them as taxidermists, but to be
equal in my unmasking, I will tell you one of the clever tactics of the
Liberal Elite, and that is this: we don't actually brainwash your
children. Quite the opposite. We slap Derbyshire mud on their naked
baked brains like there's no tomorrow. We're the pigs of politics. Note
I am using mud as a symbol for ideas and imagination, as well as
knowledge, and other matters that pollute the innocent. I am an agent
of the confusion caused, the embarrassing state of being filthy with
intelligent reports, of having heard and thought too much to ever hose
it down. It is the embarrassment of not being able to name your tribe
and beat drums for them. For we believe, here at the HQ of the ghost
army of the Liberal Elite, that ignorance is a dull kind of bliss. So
we do you favour. And I have said too much.