The time was now upon us for the award of the second of the penthouse prize memberships. According to the formula agreed with management by myself in the presence of independent arbitration, the recipient of this benefice was to be an individual, baptised as Eartha Mather-Steiner, since renamed in accordance with our system as 6. —
Eartha Mather-Steiner
Mrs Mather-Steiner did not readily fit into any of the categories described at the beginning of this opus. Any kind of Alph the Unsacred she most certainly was not; although the suggestion is not entirely unreasonable that some of the properties of a Psorietes and an Hermaphrodites were united in her person: a plump, moustached, and altogether hairy lady of middling years, with dry grey hair hanging in undifferentiated clumps – more a thicket, really – and a trawlerman’s weather-beaten hide, which she cheerfully attributed to the hours she put in on her allotment on the hillside leading down to St Werbuggers, but which those of us with a more cynical cast and unfounded pretensions to medical expertise blamed on polycystic ovarian syndrome. Mrs Mather-Steiner was a staunch, and at times almost fanatic, advocate of a natural, organic lifestyle. Before retiring to her allotment, she had spent her working life toiling with her hen-pecked, pussy-whipped, and altogether long-suffering spouse Rodolfo in the administrative bowels of a number of aid agencies. Indeed, it must be said that she did not always let the exigencies peculiar to that profession interfere with her natural, organic scruples. On one particularly notorious occasion, when charged with the administration of funds raised for the purpose of emergency famine relief, she had blarted the lot on natural, organic, gm-free, gluten-free grass-fed lamb, natural, organic, gm-free, gluten-free lactose-substitute soy, natural, organic, gm-free, gluten-free locally-grown seasonal fruits, ditto berries, ditto nuts, ditto pulses, ditto mange-touts, etc etc etc and wotnot. Whilst Waitrose and any number of local, independent food retailers had greatly profited from her largesse with the emergency famine-relief funds with which she had been entrusted, and whilst doubtless any number of benighted natives had no doubt by this means been brought into some sort of spiritual light, one had to wonder whether these undoubted moral and spiritual benefits really justified the 90% child mortality which was the inevitable concomitant of Mrs Mather-Steiner’s chosen modus operandi. —
St Werbuggers
The machinations between Costa, Nero Cesare, Petra Mountjoy and their respective factota and fainéants had by now to some extent resolved themselves, and even if it would have been utterly wide of the mark to have said that concord and amity obtained between the factions, there was at any rate a serviceable if somewhat brittle détente. In other words, the penthouse prize-membership rota had become sufficiently entrenched. Thus, following the poisoning of the nudist 3 by Colloid’s fell chemicals, it was now Ertha’s privilege to be subjected to the inefficacious homoeopathic whimsies of Costa and Mr Luvvertory. —
Mr Luvvertory
Thus it was that the appointed hour found an audience, corralled by John Virgil’s three-line whip, assembling round the whirlpool. Together with the standard detritus of Psorietes, Hermaphrodites, Alphs and cockwashers, all the usual luminaries danced attendance: the mountebanks Costa, Nero Cesare and Petra Mountjoy; Mr Luvvertory who increasingly resembled Charles Manson; Stig O'Dump shifty of visage and Colloid grim; John Virgil, the like being of like nothingness; Peggy and Billy, the Miss Nice and Miss Nasty of fattitude; even the treatment therapists, Svetlana from Tashkent and Supavadi of Mueang Chiang Rai deigned to put in an appearance - unlike their lazy English colleague Kylie the Southmead Jezebel, who was taking the latest in a seemingly endless succession of sickies. —
John Virgil
Lastly, of course, Herod was there in his role of ringmaster, dark suit and gabardine, the White Willy jutting obscenely from his groyne; it being he who had inaugurated the formalities. —
Herod
He paused, for the sake of the dialectic. There was a generalised rustling, a clearing of throats, some burps, and not a few farts. Billy scowled, Peggy sniggered and attempted one of her armpit farts, but somehow contrived to jab herself with her own elbows. Mr Luvvertory, apropos of nothing, muttered —
Mr Luvvertory
Herod seemed to wince at all this vulgarity, and then evidently decided not to extend the pause, but rather to complete his oration over the eructation and the petomania. —
Herod
- Dear lady, you might very well think that, of all the wretched sinners slithering across the surface of this benighted globe, I would be uniquely placed to endorse these Sybilline pronouncements you have made. Nevertheless, it behoves me to allay your fears. Thanks to the rota instituted by our friend Titus Andronicus (once again indicating my person), you are not to be exposed to the rigours of one of Colloid’s decoctions, nor even to any of the penitent sinner Stig O'Dump’s natural, organic preparations howsoever efficacious these may turn out to be. Instead, your destiny is to submit yourself to Mr Luvvertory’s tender ministrations, and this luminary only has at his disposal an array of quaint Edwardian compounds diluted beyond Avogadro’s Constant; in short: homoeopathy. Hence I can assure you that, whatever anyone has told you (here glaring at Costa, who stared costively back at him), no evil will befall your maidenly epidermis because of one of our solutions. —
Homoeopathy
With which words she lowered herself dainty as a narwhal into the turbid waters, whereupon Mr Luvvertory stepped forwards, unscrewed the quaint Edwardian vial he had been gripping in his dirty paw, and decanted its contents into the pool. —
The quaint Edwardian vial
- Lady, he shouted over the foaming roar by way of propitiation, this is like fuckin’ homoeopathy. Like I int no like fuckin’ capitalist fuckin’ like businessman like. —
Homoeopathy
The spell was finally broken by the second most unlikely individual to assume the mantle of action hero, namely Strapon my accountant. This august personage mounted the steps and floundered headlong into the pool where, grabbing handfuls of that seaweed rug, he endeavoured to raise Ertha’s huge head above the placid surface of the water. But his strength was feeble notwithstanding his bulk, and he and Ertha fell back into the pool, displacing a vast volume of water, which rose like Poseidon angered and drenched the gathering in a Hokusai wave. The confusion was not helped by Mr Luvvertory, who mistook Strapon’s hapless cries for an exhortation to prolong the festivities, and sprang forward and hit the jet-activation button, whereupon the cacophony of bubbling once more deranged the senses. Eventually, however, Strapon with the assistance of one or two of the marginally less challenged Alphs succeeded in hoisting the matron out of the pool and onto the tiled floor. There, the management pumped the water out of her by the simple expedient of jumping up and down upon her back, by dint of which they summoned forth Emetus the Roman shower god. Once a sufficient quantity of liquid was adjudged to have by this means been expelled, they heaved her over onto her back, and in a most touching scene Mr Rodolfo Mather-Steiner was prevailed upon to administer the kiss of life to his dear lady. —
Rodolfo Mather-Steiner, Strapon
Mr Rodolfo Mather-Steiner’s endeavours to succour his lady were in some measure successful, for that personage was heard to vent a series of grunts and gasps. Quite suddenly, her eyes opened, and fixed an unblinking stare upon her husband’s head as it hovered over her. —
Rodolfo Mather-Steiner
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