High John the Conqueror by Tariq Goddard

Author:Tariq Goddard
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781914420313
Publisher: Watkins Media
Published: 2022-12-15T00:00:00+00:00

*

We leave in a respectfully observed silence with funereal faces. Once in the car, we crack up with laughter and relief.

‘I tell you what,’ says Christopherson, burying his head on the steering wheel, ‘that will always have been worth it. Whatever happens next, that will always be worth it. Did you see his face? What was that about? I thought he was going to turn into the bloody Ribena Man he was going so purple.’

‘We definitely touched a raw nerve there. You shouldn’t have called him “sir” — he didn’t think you meant it.’

‘He is completely and utterly barmy: a-b-s-o-l-u-t-e-l-y nuts, for Christ’s sake.’

‘I’ve never seen anyone that angry that hasn’t resorted to violence,’ I say. ‘I don’t know how he stopped himself.’

‘No, that isn’t his style, he has his driver do his dirty work, and watches from behind a silk screen with his legs crossed.’

‘Not a man you meet every day, thankfully. But such style, such class, such elegance… we better get out of here while the going is still good.’

Christopherson lifts his head off the steering wheel, tears of pleasure in his eyes, and starts the engine. ‘Let’s get out of here before he covers us in gold.’

Weirdness as intense and parodiable as Masters’, appreciated from the point of view of a healthy mind, looks stranger than it does to me. Madness is easier to accept as completely unfathomable and simpler to take at face value if you do not have any of it in you yourself. I am too close to Masters’ concerns, and susceptible to his weaknesses, for comfort.

‘I mean, what was he on? It’s a different show, isn’t it, before and after he loses control. Like he goes from being this self-loving headmaster completely impressed with himself to something out of a madhouse. Microdosing all day? I hear some of these creative lunatics do that. Appearance and disappearance, living and dying — okay, I followed that, but the rest of it? I mean what the actual fuck was any of it about once he started to go on about “the people” and all that? It was like the Daleks had taken over the Open University.’

‘You’re forgetting to show due reverence to a captain of industry and pillar of the community. This area’s Bill Gates or whoever you described him as.’ Predictably, the drive feels shorter now that we are on the way back and the grounds seem slightly less dazzling and worthy of our awe.

‘I know that’s what I said, but I’d never actually met the bloke before, boss!’ Christopherson says, slowing to allow a mob of deer to stroll across our path, ‘I mean he’s basically paid for everything in that village from a new roof for the church to a sports hall for the local primary school. But, God, I don’t know what to think about him now. I’d heard he was eccentric, you know, a bit aloof and sarcastic, but not anything like this. How could anyone that batshit deranged actually be in a position to have a career, far less derail ours? It’s impossible, or at least it should be.

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