Over the ensuing weeks, I came to understand, by a curious process of cognitive osmosis – mostly a matter of sifting between Peggy’s blundering hints and the witless evasions of her colleagues and/or fellow shareholders – that something terrible had befallen the Operational Manager. —
Peggy
I asked them what his name was, and they told me that it was Herod. —
Herod
- Just loyk the King in ’at there Good Book, said Billy, favouring me with one of her looks of imbecile significance. —
Billy
Concerning whom, there were numerous conflicting reports. And indeed, meta-reports. Sometimes it was said to be being said, although it was never quite clear by whom that he was convalescing in a private room at the Frenchay; or that he had been discharged and was at home in low spirits, even that he was subsiding into persistent vegetarianism and that a priest had been sent for; or that his accident had necessitated a circumcision and that he was receiving instruction from a rabbi or an imam in order to tidy up the loose end. Some blackguard had the temerity to suggest that he was the Phantom Crapper. Gradually however, rumour painted full of tongues coalesced around the hypothesis that he was IN THE BUILDING, the latter phrase spoken in the reverential or portentous tone normally reserved for the naked and famous. In the building, that is to say, although his indisposition continued to determine his being yet held aloof from intercourse in foro publico. I fancied that he was behind the panelling somewhere, lurking and muttering and gnawing at his nails, shielded from the vulgar gaze by the Argos-eyed Cerberidae. But in my unkinder moments it seemed to me that there was a slight stink of something about the way the whole business was conducted. —
The Frenchay
* Costa had hired Mr Luvvertory, a bearded white Tolstoyan-looking baby daddy with pretensions to beatification as some kind of sapient elder-stateshippy, although if you looked him in the eyes there was about Mr Luvvertory a je ne sais quoi of pathology. Mr Luvvertory very comfortably inhabited the nexus of Montpelier, Stokes Croft and St Pauls. Now, Mr Luvvertory made something of a model of Harold Skimpole before him. for like that luminary Mr Luvvertory did not trouble to shift for himself. Therefore it fell to Costa as the Maecenas in the caper to supply Mr Luvvertory with the necessities of his trade, viz. a diesel-belching converted ambulance furnished with racks of prepared quaint Edwardian homoeopathic remedies, each labelled in immaculate handwritten copperplate. Also one less than entirely quaint Edwardian enema syringe, several packets of baby wipes, and a generous quantity of disposable disturbingly pink tubing. —
Mr Luvvertory, Costa
* For his part, Nero Cesare had taken on Stig O'Dump, who came with the recommendation of a genuinely dreadful past in St Werbuggers, and was perhaps the Bacchus to Mr Luvvertory’s greasy beatitude. A very shuffling and self-effacing Bacchus too; silent on certain topics; avoiding pedagogy at all events. Stig O'Dump was gorgeously caparisoned with a Landreaughver, in which were as with Mr Luvvertory’s ambulance racks of pretended medicines, all likewise labelled in immaculate handwritten copperplate, and much the same enema kit & intubation. Many if not most of Stig O'Dump’s remedies were as quaint as Mr Luvvertory’s. Some were Edwardian to boot. However, the range was markedly more eclectic – albeit the preference was for anything described as ancient, or oriental, or tribal or wotnot. Above all, nothing was homoeopathic – no truck with dilution beyond Avogadro’s Constant. And nothing was chemical. Everything was natural and organic. Mr Luvvertory appeared to be slightly envious of the liberality of Stig O'Dump’s regime, and Stig O'Dump appeared somewhat inclined to reciprocate Mr Luvvertory’s envy, coveting the proven ineffectiveness of Mr Luvvertory’s homoeopathic remedies. —
Stig O’Dump
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