Ozzie Rozzie #9

[CAUTION: THIS STORY DOES MARVELS FOR YOUR WASH]

This is a fiction series. It will make more sense if you read: Part one. Part two. Part three. Part four. Part five. Part six. Part seven. Part eight.

There was a long dark corridor which sloped downwards and to the left. It was narrow and high, and the sides were cold, dry, stone cut perfectly flat and smooth. The scene reminded Thompson of a hospital, but with something else mutated into it, from a childhood memory of playing in undergroud medieval tunnels below a French castle in Rouen; something about the curve and the scale and the inexorable descent.

"Where are my glasses?" he asked.

He had no glasses and yet he could see passably well in the gloom as he stepped down and down and down. Cold lights glowed in token respite every few metres, set into the walls. They were gas, Thompson realised, but there was no evidence of pipes.

"Where is my pipe?" he asked. He had given up smoking, he remembered, but he wanted to rekindle his lost love. A bowlful of St Bruno, a fireside, and a good book.

The corridor ended, leading abruptly to a large, studded door, which seemed to have been constructed from trees rather than wood. He wanted to turn around but he couldn't, and the thought of returning filled him with fear. He couldn't go back. He would have to knock.

Thompson lifted his hand, only slightly suprised to notice that he was wearing a huge, heavy gauntlet, and banged the thick timbers twice. A hollow boom-boom echoed morbidly down the length of the corridor behind him, and within the space beyond. Abruptly the door opened into a bare room within which a fire burned. A tall man in robes and sandals was kneeling before an image of the Virgin, head bowed, hands clasped. He was intoning in a low voice something which sounded like a list of names. Thompson pproached the kneeling figure, and bent forward to catch the words.

"Roger... Eudes de Châtillon... Landuin... "

This was a lament, Thompson realised, for lost friends. At the thought, he filled with unspoken grief. Falling to his knees, he begged the praying holy man in a voice thick with pain,

"Please! Please! Let me have fellowship! Let me serve!"

The old man turned towards him, his eyes were filled with compassion and an elegiac luminence.

From beneath his robes, he pulled a pipe. He thumbed down the tobacco, which hit Thompson's nostrils like elixir, and his eyes became round. Reaching into the small fire for a splint, the holy man puffed carefully at the bowl, breathing in deep, allowing time for the smoke to filter through his beard, before passing it across. Thompson reached for the pipe, but as he did so, the holy man took his fingers and held them firmly.

He looked deep into Thompson's eyes, and even as he accepted the pipe, Thompson knew that he was giving up something in exchange. Wordless, effortless understanding passed between them. Thompson felt the burden of disappointment and pain slip slowly from him as if he were shedding a silk garment. He took the pipe, and acknowledging the gift, drew the smoke into himself.

"Fred," declared the robed figure gravely, "was the best pace bowler of his generation; why then did he demean himself selling pipe tobacco? This famous sporting son of Doncaster could surely have done better than encourage the consumption of this highly toxic, highly addictive substance, which frankly, has not yet even been discovered and taken back to Europe... I pray for the blessing of Our Lady, that she may cause cautionary messages to be placed upon tobacco products and instill a ban on such advertising across the land... "

The holy man's low voice spoke of things from another place and time, but without incongruity or dissonance. As the tobacco hit his brain, Thompson felt slightly sick and dizzy, but it was also a homecoming. Yes, he wanted to smoke, he wanted this very much, he wanted to smoke tobacco in a pipe, and he wanted to bowl fast, and he wanted to make people laugh, he wanted a pipe like Eric Morecambe, and he wanted a cigar like Groucho Marx, and he wanted a Gauloise like Jean Paul Sartre... he thought he was going to vomit, and he doubled up, crouching on the cold floor, but he didn't vomit, and he couldn't straighten again. He could hear things going on in the room behind him, but he couldn't turn to see anything.

He started to panic, crying, "I was only obeying orders!" but as his chin was stuck to his chest, his voice travelled nowhere. He could shout as much as he liked, nobody was going to hear him. The thought plunged him into despair. He was still puffing the pipe, but now it was stuck to his lips, which had dried and cracked and tasted foul. He could feel his eyes closing. Where were his glasses? He was very, very sad, and he started to cry, something which he had not done for years, but the tears had nowhere to go.

"Sir! Sir! Are you alright? Sir!"

It was the voice of Angela Spender.

[End Part Nine]