Read by Will Goodhand
It was the night before Christmas, and I was drinking alone, in front of the television. On the menu for the evening were a selection of wines, a bag of heinous chemicals and Nigella Lawson's Festive Feasts.
This isn't quite as sad as it sounds. I had thought, earlier, about maybe going for a beer, in one of the fash media bars up the road in Shoreditch, but for one thing, the weather outside truly was frightful, so much so that Ladbrokes had stopped taking bets on a white Christmas days earlier, in the face of conditions that had apparently sent the South East's transport network, never the most robust of systems, screaming, finally, over the edge, and for another, if I had gone out, there was always the chance that I might have been recognised. Or, maybe more to the point, not recognised.
So the telly it was. The telly, and a toast to absent friends.
It had been eighteen months since I'd last seen Lavender Bunny. When, after the end of our week on Celebrity Come Dine With Me, he'd left for Stringfellows on the arm of Jodie Marsh, the stunnah, and raconteur. Jodie Marsh, the writer. She'd been supposed to bring him back the next morning, but hadn't, and, in a way, I'd figured, as the days turned into weeks, and then months, and Jodie still wasn't returning my phone calls, perhaps he was more contented now? And if LB was happy to be once again partying with the lovelies du jour, like he had been in the afterglow of our Big Brother victory, (which was why we'd been famous in the first place, hence Celebrity Come Dine With Me) then who was I to stand in his way?
On the other hand though, where had this left me? Well, 'buggered', I think, pretty much covers it. After LB's departure, I'd started another novel, the sequel, that was, to my debut Beer, Football And Shagging, but without LB around to act as my muse, the old magic, to the extent that it had ever been there, so not much really, according to Will Self, Lord Prescott and the rest of my critics, appeared to have deserted me. What had made this doubly difficult to bear was the, to my mind anyway, not-uncoincidental flowering of La Marsh's literary career. She'd been talking about writing a book for ages, without much success, but since she'd taken possession of Lavender Bunny, she'd published The Ugly Duckling: A Memoir, and was now wrestling with Jordan at the top of the Christmas best-seller lists. As opposed to in the mud, which is where, if you think about it … but I refrain from making the obvious point.
So, adding all that up, the collapse of my star, the ascent of Jodie's and LB's desertion (though I wasn't inclined to think of it as a betrayal; as a small bunny, he couldn't have been expected to master a mobile phone) can I be really be blamed for getting stuck into the old pharmaceuticals? I must have thought not.
So I'd been drifting a little, only half paying attention. But everything swam into sharper focus when Nigella decamped to rural Essex, to give a vision in tattoos and shining red leather tips on alternatives to the festive bird.
'So,' said Nigella, as usual displaying an epic rack, of lamb, 'you've got to rub in the oil … Really get your hands sticky … God, I'm getting quite hot, doing this … Anyway, it's been a great year for you, right?'
'Yeah,' said La Marsh, 'I have to pinch myself sometimes, y'know?'
'I bet,' said Nigella. 'So what does winning the Orange Prize mean to you?'
The … what? I thought. What fresh hell was this?
'Well, I hope it means I'll be taken seriously!' Jodie continued 'Watch out boys! It's the Booker next!'
But in the corner of the screen, on the desk, by the laptop, did I catch sight of a rampant rabbit?
I think I probably did. So I finished my drink, I finished the coke, and then I got into the bath with the toaster, basically. Goodbye, cruel world! Let this torment end!
The problem is that it doesn't really work like that.
Perhaps to some, the Christian after-life comes as no surprise.
But I can't think who. If the New Testament's to be believed (and on balance I'd say it's a mistake to ignore it) even Jesus, at the end, had a couple of doubts. Perhaps even Tony Blair occasionally wonders, and maybe, on bad nights, even actively hopes, that at the close of play there will be no white light, and no black tunnel, and no bearded figure waiting at the end, with a staff and a ledger. But it's a mistake if he does. Because that's what I was confronted by, Saint Peter, the fisher of men, looking, in this aspect, like a cosmic version of Lord Alan Sugar, in what suddenly felt uncomfortably like a boardroom situation.
'Listen,' I said 'I think there might have been some kind of mistake.'
'Do you?' said Saint Peter, or Alan. 'Well, for your information, mistakes are the business of mortal man. I run a tight ship here. And I don't like being questioned. And I don't like bullshitters neither.'
I said something about the pressures of modern society.
'Don't you “secular world” me. You drank a bottle of Frascati, and a bottle of Cava, and a bottle of Merlot, and then you got into the bath with a bloody toaster! What did you think was going to happen? '
'Well, nothing, really.'
'Everybody says that. You have no idea how often I have to listen to that rubbish! But Jean-Paul Sartre, Nietzsche and the rest of your lot … they wept like bloody amateurs, right, when they were told where they were going. Which is where you're going, too.'
'But I've got a lot more to offer ...'
'That about sums you up, don't it? That's the bloody problem. You thought you could coast through, didn't you? You thought you could sit on the bloody fence, and let everyone else pick up the do-do? Well I'm sorry, my friend, but that ain't what I'm looking for. Michael ...'
'Don't say it …'
'Enough. Michael ... you're fired!'
After a long, long fall, I landed on waste ground, by the banks of a river, in a thick, grey mist. There's a moment of confusion, but it doesn't last long, Hell being largely as advertised in the books, in the films, and in Dante's Inferno; it does what it says on the tin. Flames, towers and the screams of lost souls, stretching off endlessly into the distance, as you join the queue for processing, or judgement. It's like being stuck in bank holiday traffic, the people nearby wailing, mumbling incoherently, or shouting into their mobiles as the gates get closer. 'Abandon All Hope, Ye Who Enter', looming up by the dock in bold reds, sickly yellows, as if spruced up recently by an infernal brand consultancy.
Standing in line on the shore, though, I couldn't help but reflect on how well Hell's transport system seemed to be working, compared to London's. The ferryman, wild of hair and eye, may have called to mind an angry Bob Geldof, demanding everyone's 'fucking money' as a toll, but you couldn't say that he wasn't efficient.
And it was the same with the next thing, which, I was informed by a small voice, off to my left, was the judge of all sins.
'You,' bellowed the Great Beast, in a granite Scots accent, his tie stained and crooked, his suit-clad tentacles multi-tasking heavily, as a stockbroker type, who'd been standing right by me, was picked up, shaken, then slung into the abyss, 'are a cunt. And you,' he went on, spiking another, 'are a fucking cunt. And you' he continued, 'are next!'
'No, he isn't,' said the voice, 'you're to let Mike pass.'
'Am I indeed?' chortled the Satanic Presbyterian. 'I don't believe I got that memo.'
'Are you going to make this difficult, Gordon?'
'Oh, it's like that, is it?'
'Yes,' said the voice, as I was led away, quickly, by the cuff of my trousers. 'It is. Mike, we really should go.'
'Right,' I said. 'But what are you doing here, Lavender Bunny?'
'Well Mike, I'm a psychopomp.'
'What's a psychopomp, LB?'
'It's a soul guide, Mike. I have connections.'
He said he was there on a rescue mission, but that it might not be easy, because the only way out was through the basement. Mainly, he said, I had to have faith.
Because while what we'd just seen may have acted a lot like Gordon Brown, it was something quite different. That while Hell conformed to certain expectations, and the major landmarks remained the same, the city, the river, the department store structure, (menswear, murder, leather goods, treachery;) the place had nevertheless been modernised, since Dante's time. That the damned, these days, weren't so much sentenced according to their sins; it was more a question of what they'd done for a living.
'But I was only a writer.'
LB said that was debatable, but it might have been fine. That I could have got off with about a hundred years in purgatory …
'Oh come on, the book wasn't that bad ...'
LB gave me a hard stare, and pointed out that regardless of the strengths, or otherwise, of Beer, Football And Shagging, suicide was still considered a big, fat, mortal no-no.
'You're not to look back, Mike, or we're really in trouble.'
And so down we went, through the vaults of damnation, on Hell's main escalator. As if via the gut of a burning Grace Brothers, as re-imagined by Damien Hirst. Perhaps it's enough to say that law, accountancy and investment banking aren't quite the desirable careers that they possibly seem. And that by floor minus seven we were being chased, it seemed, by select leading members of Britain's business community, an engorged Fred Goodwin, a howling Geoff Hoon, so much so that by the time we arrived in the ninth circle, in what really did seem like the depths of the pit, there was a large crowd behind us, and the same thing in front.
'Mike, I told you not to look.'
'I thought you said you were connected, LB.'
'I am, Mike, but ...'
'Wazzup, Beelzebub,' observed Tony Blair, or Lucifer actually, as LB described him, in ball-crushing cords and a burgundy tent shirt, apparently heading damnation's front bench, there was blood and dandruff everywhere, 'Let's sort this out.'
'I just didn't say how.'
'Right.'
'But I don't really like being a Lord of Hell, Mike. There's a lot of pressure, it's too hot, and the office politics are terrible. You should make a run for it.'
'Are you going to be all right though?'
'Don't worry, Mike,' LB replied, a small figure framed in the lights by the exit, against the advancing horde of unholy bean counters, 'I'll be okay.'
So I woke, freezing, an unplugged toaster in the water next to me. There was a lump on my skull from where I must have slipped over, getting into the bath, and on the TV, Songs Of Praise was ringing out for Christmas morning. Strange dream, I thought. Walking next door to start clearing up though, wondering about starting a couple of charity standing orders, just to be on the safe side, I was ... taken aback to see a familiar face on the living room sofa, looking fairly roughed-up. He was going to have to stay out of there for a while, he said.
'Right. This does raise questions about my sanity, LB.'
'But Mike, it's hardly the first time, is it?'
And besides, he continued, he could help with the writing again, feeling as he did like a bit of an expert, when it came to not having a hope in hell. And looking at it that way, as I poured us out a couple of cocktails, shaken, of necessity, and not stirred, it was hard to disagree.
'Merry Christmas Mike!'
'Yeah. Merry Christmas, Lavender Bunny.'
Lavender Bunny and the Ninth Circle by Quintin Forrest was read by Will Goodhand at the Liars' League Faith & Hope event on 14 December 2010 at Upstairs at The Fellow, London.
Comments
You can follow this conversation by subscribing to the comment feed for this post.