The Anarchist

By Tristan Hawkins

A highly amusing and satirical look at what happens when grungeland meets suburbia head-on.

There’s probably one lurking on the edge of every city, in every suburban town, on every middle-class close. A man longing to break free. Itching to peel off his pinstripes and put on something more psychedelic. Yearning to swap his G&T for something a touch more transcendental. Hoping to bypass his mid-life crisis and enter the New Age. Desperate for a walk on the wild side.

Edingley is such a suburb. Sheridan Entwhistle, balding and bored, is such a man.

Following a suspected heart attack, Sheridan outs his inner anarchist and sets off in search of nirvana. His wife, daughter, neighbours and colleagues think he has gone mad and should seek professional advice. His new friends, Jayne and Yantra, travellers en route to Glastonbury, think he needs help of a more illicit kind, one which will take him to a higher plane of consciousness. The hilarious, surreal and outrageous journey on which they embark together proves to be the perfect antidote to his suburban ennui…

• Language: English
• Publisher: HarperCollins UK
• Release date: Aug 24, 2017
• ISBN: 9780008200862

Tristan Hawkins

Tristan Hawkins died suddenly from an acute asthma attack in January 1997.

Book preview

There was an announcement.

It began, ‘This is an announcement’ … then nothing. Then everything crunched to a halt.

The bald man with the lavish ears peered up from his paper and took in the other passengers.

It was bad news.

Insouciant skirts and brave suits. Youth, handsome looks and wealth.

All of them mocking his bad suit and pie-crust shoes. Smirking at his simmering blood-bag of a face. And was it possible? All of them in full knowledge of the unfortunate episode.

Perhaps there could be no question about the bald man with the lavish ears who sat perspiring on the Victoria Line tube train that afternoon.

No question that he was the genuine article. A bona fide sex offender. Your actual nonce. A moral bankrupt cowering in unpressed pinstripe and noose-fast tie. For why else would his face burn cerise at a stranger’s glance?

A pair of recently holidayed legs lay draped in the walkway. Parted arrogantly and wiped across the thighs with little more than the rumour of a skirt, it seemed she was almost daring him to take a peek. Filch a glance at the unpossessable, then at once experience all the wretchedness of his age; his sex; his off-the-peg, all-weather suit; his Tory broadsheet; his bald head and lavish ears; his everything.

He re-reddened at the inadvertent volume of these peculiar thoughts.

Then he swallowed – but the obstreperous, mucoid gas in his throat stayed put. And it seemed to him that he was now wafting outside his body, as if in some other dimension, and that the stubborn gas had transformed itself into a great liquid and the bald man with the lavish ears was now drowning.

In a single spasm he scrunched up his paper and moaned.

A resonant belch of a moan. The clamour of a randy bullfrog. Or a sluggard mastiff. The exhalation of a new corpse.

‘You all right, mate?’ someone from this dimension asked.

‘Yes, thanks,’ he thought he managed to grunt.

But Sheridan Entwhistle was not all right at all. His entire body was squeezing out sweat and he trembled like a rodent lifted from its cage. His field of vision was fast colliding into itself and his chest felt as if it was being compressed into the mass of ball bearing. And though he was breathing hard, gasping even, the air refused to enter his body. As if deflated, his head dropped and his vision was momentarily sucked along the delicious vale of her thighs.

Then … nothing.

When he came to a second or so later he was somewhat giddy yet in full possession of his faculties and his life. Forsaking decorum, he fiddled the pebblish knot of his tie loose and popped open the button below.

The tube wheezed into motion and coughed on to Victoria. Adeptly Sheridan folded up his paper, slotted it into his briefcase and joined the swarm of summer suits and shirts being sucked away by overground trains. And he thought, with mild and deliberate amusement, that apart from a heart attack it been a rather unremarkable day.

Sheridan flopped down and the cool armchair drank him into it.

‘Three, three, five?’ A momentary smile zipped under her big nose as she unscrewed the bottle cap.

‘Perhaps I’ll refrain tonight,’ he said reflectively. Then, not wanting to arouse premature suspicion in his wife, he laughed. ‘Go on, just a wee-un then.’

‘I,’ Jennifer announced as if heralding something of which she were supremely proud, ‘spent most of this afternoon lounging in our new conservatory.’

‘Good God, woman. I’m surprised you’re not sautéed.’

‘Oh no, darling,’ she seemed to echo as if in another room, ‘there was the divinest of breezes with both doors open.’

‘So now I take it, we’re playing host to every airborne bug in Edingley. Charming.’

He slipped a hand inside his jacket and counted the steady, rhythmic beats of his life. Still he couldn’t be sure of this. Not with things in slo-mo as they were.

His wife smiled and he smiled back and thought: yes, I’m doing well here.

Tinkling out the pleasant refrain of the outer life with one hand.

Mutely thumping out the discordant base of the inner riot with the other.

He swallowed and forced himself to speak in what he considered was a sufficiently melodious manner.

‘Seen much of the Unspeakably Behaved today?’ he asked, tunefully he imagined.

‘What do you think?’

‘Well, it is half term. For some. At Imogen’s is she?’

Jennifer handed him the drink, looked hard at him and dragged a vicious hand back though her grey roots. He knew the gesture and raised an eyebrow. Still she said nothing, glaring at him all the while as if she were employing the sight of his face to seethe her anger up to the point of expression. She refocused on the carpet and spoke in rapid stabs.

‘Imogen, you say. You mean Imogen, whose mother I happened to bump into in the butcher’s today. Who, when I made a polite enquiry about our daughter, took great relish in informing me that they’d just, that very morning as it happened, received a divine postcard from Boston. Not Lincolnshire of course, she simpered over a pound of best mince, the other Boston, you know, the one just west of Ireland.’

‘Jennifer, my dear, I hate to say I told you so. But I did say at the time, do try and work on a boy. A lot less heartache. A lot less bloody …’

‘Well, I’m glad you can take it in your stride.’

‘Go on then. Theories?’

‘Chromosomally deficient, three.’

‘Boy? Man? Men? ERE?’

‘Beg pardon?’

‘Edingley Rugby Eleven?’

‘Yes, of course, Sherry. Flippancy, that’s the ticket. I … I …’ Jennifer rose, sniffed shamelessly and marched through the open doors of the conservatory. She paused to count something on her fingers, turned and said acidly, ‘Indian hemp, nine.’

Sheridan thought for a moment, then moaned, ‘C’mon, Jennifer. Now that is ridiculous.’

He felt his chest constrict.

She strode back in the living room and clutched the wings of his chair. Defiant of the odd gasp and sob, she declared that, sure as she stood here, she had smelled marijuana on Folucia’s clothes and in her room and in the bathroom. And there was no mistaking it. It was marijuana. Besides, was she or was she not, as each day passed, taking on the appearance of – she didn’t know, ‘One of those new age whatever-they’re called-s?’

Sheridan waited for his heartbeat to steady then calmly asked whether Jennifer had any further evidence. She told him that she wasn’t sure but perhaps she had noticed a sort of far away look in Folucia’s face of late. He reached back, rested both his hands on hers and smiled. He spoke slowly and possibly condescendingly.

‘I’ll wager my golf clubs against your aspidistra that the Unspeakably Behaved’s countenance comes courtesy of a chromosomally challenged, unspeakable whatsitsname; that the whatsitsname is in the singular, and that, in your olfactory ignorance, you are failing to appreciate the subtlest of all-the-rage perfumes, again courtesy of the whatsitsname. Opium or something. That’s a perfume, I believe. But, further evidence pending, I shall have a word with the suspect.’

‘Sherry, she lied to us.’

‘She’s fifteen, just done twelve rounds with puberty, she’s allowed the odd prevarication.’

‘Well, in my day the age of dissent was eighteen.’

‘And well worth the wait I dare say. But times change.’

‘Humph. Well, I hope you’re right, Sherry. Well, sort of. But you know how I loathe disturbances. Anyway, how was work today?’

‘Oh, expletive dash faecal matter, four.’

*

Coronary thrombosis, more commonly known as a heart attack is the result of a blood clot (thrombus) which impedes blood flow in one of the coronary arteries … Symptoms range from intense discomfort in the centre of the chest … shortness of breath … giddiness … cold sweat … occasionally loss of consciousness …

He raised a hand, lay it softly on his ribcage and swallowed the panic like a hard-boiled egg.

The book remained half open, suspended temporarily at an uncomfortable right angle. He found it mildly disconcerting – a taunting metaphor for his mortal limbo. He shook his leg and the volume shut with a damp thud.

Sheridan closed his eyes and inhaled several times, attempting to bridle the demented fission of his thoughts. Naturally the notion of the GP substantiating his suspicions was a horrifying one. But, he considered, once passed the forty mark the hoodwinking was quite certainly over. Any man believing he’s still in some way young after the watershed is either a coward or a fool. So, the GP it had to be. And by God, Sheridan Entwhistle would enter and leave that surgery with a smile. Even if a dry throated, thank you, sir, for flogging me, smirk was the limit of it.

He stood cautiously and timidly walked over to the bookcase. Again he raised a hand to his chest.

‘Eleven o’clock and all is well,’ he murmured to himself and slid the family health manual back into its gap. Sheridan smiled to himself. There could be no doubt that he was a brave man and it pleased him. But, as he turned to leave and join his wife upstairs, he was struck by a notion that pleased him even more.

Like hell, would he visit the GP! He’d imagine that it had never happened – and innocently notch up his life assurance. Then he’d think about seeing the bloody doctor. Now, that, Sheridan considered, was brave.

The unfortunate episode surfaced once more. He tucked it beneath the covers of his consciousness and went up to bed.

Yantra jerked open the doors of the Bedford and the clean chill of outside gushed in, rinsing away the curdled stench of sleep.

One of the bodies beneath the blankets moaned. It sounded human so he whispered, ‘Sorry,’ and clambered stiffly out of the van.

Loch Laggan was still black as dye and as yet he couldn’t detect any hills to the West. Perhaps he’d overshot. Or perhaps, as was common here, the Loch would wake a cauldron of steam and he’d miss everything.

He could make out what might have been a bush. But being unsure of the ground he considered it wise to piss where he was standing.

Stepping gingerly away from the puddle, Yantra folded onto the cold ground and waited. He was undecided. Should he submerge into a meditation or smoke his first joint of the day? Ideally, he’d have dropped a trip and come on as the sun went up. But they were down to emergency petrol and food money: there was work to be done. Besides he wasn’t a bloody idiot. If there had to be laws at all, then there should certainly be one about driving on acid. The One trip at a time statute, he quipped to himself.

He detected the rumble of a car perhaps five miles south. It vexed him. The only road around here was the one they’d pulled Biddy over on. It meant the bloody thing would pass directly in front of him, annihilating any sense of isolation. Quite obviously a meditation was out of the question under such circumstances, so he unclipped the flap on his bulky breast pocket and slid out a pre-rolled spliff. So much negativity at this hour in the morning could never be good for a person of his exquisite equilibrium.

The first inhalation barely made his lungs before sending a succession of painful firecrackers back up his larynx. He expelled the phlegm, waited a minute or so for his breath to cease grating and attempted to reload himself. Again, it went down like a ball of wire wool and he coughed it into the darkness.

‘The ways to enlightenment are many, mate,’ he gurgled acrimoniously at the car as it passed and instantly felt guilt at taking the words in vain and his lack of positivity in general. And perhaps it was because the vague high was distorting his vexation, or perhaps it was the other way round, but he thought: though mother nature is unquestionably beautiful, sometimes one has to try fucking hard to be in a good mood about it at this time in the morning.

As he’d feared, dawn was an indiscernible penumbra of cold and drizzle.

He heard the whimperings of Endometrium inside the van and rose shakily to liberate him. Then he felt the need to fertilize the land himself and stepped in to grab the bog roll and trowel.

Admittedly, the man had certain ideological objections to toilet paper. Indeed, a few years back he’d flirted with leaves and brush but, truly, that was an unspeakable martyrdom. Even so, he wished someone had the good sense to make the stuff more biodegradable or even a credible shade of natural green. He’d read somewhere that the steep face of Everest was little more than a morass of human excrement and sheets of toilet paper. All of it suburban pink, he’d bet. Still, pub bogs only ever stocked white rolls or that medicated grease-proof stuff, so he guessed he was stuck with it.

Yantra opened the van up and leaned inside waving what was left of the spliff.

‘Oy, Jayne. You want some?’

‘Save it me, darling,’ she murmured and nuzzled further into the blankets.

‘Can’t do that, Jayne. This is a dawn doobie. A vampire smoke. A mayfly that expires with first light.’

‘Did you see it then, Yan?’

‘Mu.’

‘Call again.’

‘Yeah and no. I experienced the experience, but the experience wasn’t what you might call an experience.’ She laughed half-heartedly.

‘But it goes on the map, yeah?’

‘The corporeal map, certainly, the map of my incarnation, no change.’

‘Right. Well do us a favour then, Yan. Take your incarnation out for a stroll with Endy and let me get a bit more dreaming done.’

As yet, not much of the morning’s colour had been filled in and Yantra could feel the mu-rain (the cold highland steam which though not rain is equally competent at drenching a person) begin to descend. Even Endometrium who was usually a lesson in life appreciation seemed pissed off. He prized Biddy back open and Jayne made a little grizzling sound.

‘Sorry to drag you up from the underworld, babe, but how do we stand in the dog food stakes?’

‘Well it won’t be in here, will it?’ she said with restrained irritation.

‘No, right. You’re right Jayne. Yeah.’

Yantra moved round the vehicle and awkwardly opened one of the front doors. It reeked of dog food which was a good sign. Then again the whole van did – amongst other things. Endometrium jumped in.

‘Lend us a nose, Endy.’

Within moments the dog located it and dug his wiry body under the Babylon bibs. Yantra leaned over and retrieved the half-full tin. He moved out and Endometrium bounced after him. Yantra dug out a couple of clumps of the cat food with his hand and managed to scrape out the remaining collops with a screwdriver. He wiped his palms vigorously up, down and along the dog’s coarse sides and skipped back round to join Jayne.

She made no noise as he entered the van. He smiled at the lump bedecked with patchwork blankets, only a pair of boots and a hint of suedey head poking out. Kneeling, he began to caress her fuzzy scalp, then comb his fingers through the thin blue fringe at the front. He drew the blankets down a little way and saw that her face smiled drowsily. Lazily, he traced a finger along the arête of her nose.

‘Dog food,’ she mumbled.

‘Cat actually,’ he told her, bowing and kissing the small knob of shoulder that escaped from her shapeless black jumper.

Jayne rolled around to meet him and opened her arms slightly. He manoeuvred in and ran his tongue up along her coil of earrings. She took one of his ginger dreadlocks in her mouth and sucked at it like liquorice, then she pulled gently at his sparse beard and gave his nose ring an affectionate flick. Clawing tenderly at the shaven sides of his scalp, she jerked him down and rammed her rheumy tongue into his polluted mouth.

They glutted on each other’s face for several seconds, rapidly working their hands under layers of greasy fabric. Abruptly Yantra broke away.

‘What is it, baby?’ she drawled.

‘Time.’

‘An a priori synthetic concept, an illusion of mortality. Fuck time, Yan. Just fuck me.’

‘Jayne, we’re out of provisions. We gotta do a milk round.’

‘Just a quickie. A wam-bam-thank-you-Yan. Time can take a breather for ten minutes for us immortals.’

‘Near immortals. I mean we’re good.’ He kissed her briskly. ‘But not …’

‘We are good though, aren’t we?’

‘The fucking best.’ He dived down and kissed her more definitively. ‘But, babe,’ he said drawing himself up, ‘hunter-gatherers must do their stuff.’

He kicked open the doors and flew out with a whoop. Jayne followed him with the trowel and paper.

‘Roll one for the road,’ she shouted and disappeared behind a tree.

Still intoxicated by the strange charm of his morning dream, Sheridan Entwhistle propelled himself from the bed.

Then he remembered and padded across the room with the supreme care his condition warranted.

He opened the bathroom door and was greeted by the sweet coconutty scent of his daughter. He smiled. It smelled good. Unlike Jennifer’s Alpic fusion of spices, there was something touchingly honest about Folucia’s coconut.

Sheridan stared at his face in the mirror. The greying occipital strip of his hair was fluffed out on one side and pressed flat on the other. It looked daft. So he ruffled out the flat bits to match and thought with a grin that if he was ever invited to a fancy dress party he’d style his hair in this way and go as Saturn.

He wiped his hair back down into its rightful place and sneered at his officious appearance. If he was being honest, which he rarely was about his hair, he bloody detested it. Of course, he’d taken his father’s baldness for granted. It had never occurred to him that it might mean that each of his hairs also possessed the genetic instructions of a lemming. Initially it began to go at the front. Then a circle, that seemed to expand by the month, developed in the middle. And throughout his late teens his hair continued this patterned exeunt with all the precision of a syncopated swimming troupe. When Jennifer had met him, she’d said that he was twenty-one going on fifty. His suicidal hair doubtlessly contributed to this impression.

1969, Sheridan figured, was not a good year to be bald. Indeed he held this to be largely responsible for his denial of free love and virtually everything else that was on offer at the time. Too young to bop and too hairless to turn on, tune in and drop out, he wondered whether he hadn’t perhaps inadvertently traded his youth for a head start in business. Indeed at twenty-one he was the advertisement manager for a successful pharmaceutical weekly in one of the fastest growing publishing firms in London.

His procurement of a wife was also a rather unglamorous, inadvertent, and he supposed, businesslike affair.

At the time he was living at home with his mother in Edingley. This however was not through choice. It was a matter of obligation. And sharing a flat in Pimlico or Bayswater with other young business lights would have to wait until his mother’s concatenation of motley ailments finally reached some sort of consensus. To this day, the guilt of half wishing his poor mother dead could deal Sheridan an upper-cut.

Each evening the dread of entering the oppressive, rancorous house would virtually push him to tears. Of course, he loved his mother comprehensively and would never have suggested a home – still, walking through the doorway and merely bidding her good evening was doing something terrible to him. Something that he didn’t, and still couldn’t, understand. Something physical. Something that he had no say over. Yet it was something indubitably wrong and selfish. Something, he was in no doubt, that had much to do with his father who, at times, seemed able to defy the grave and take up disdainful residence on Sheridan’s shoulders.

‘I must say, I was expecting someone somewhat older.’ These were the first words Sheridan Entwhistle spoke to his future bride.

Jennifer did not mince her words. She said that she considered twenty-six quite old enough, thank you. Moreover, she told him with evident antipathy, if she was to spend her days in this house nursing Mrs Entwhistle then there would have to be some changes. She had a point. The furniture was millimetre thick in dust, the kitchen floor was adhesive with grime and the washing-up was done on a need-to-use basis. Indeed, even Mrs Entwhistle herself would have profited from a good old-fashioned scrub.

She asked Sheridan how often he bathed his mother and he looked horrified. Bath his own mother! It was beyond contemplation. Removing her coat and getting to work in the kitchen, she informed Sheridan that if his mother was going to remain here, he’d need to face a few home truths. The woman was a virtual cripple and should have had a wheelchair long ago. Sheridan would have to arrange for the door frames to be widened. He would also need to invest in some nappies and plastic undergarments.

In fact, Jennifer did everything short of accuse Sheridan of criminal neglect. Why weren’t there hand rails on the bath and grip mats in the bathroom? Why didn’t she have access to the central heating controls? Did he really think she was capable of using the telephone dial in an emergency? The kettle was far too heavy. Why hadn’t the gas cooker been fitted with an automatic ignition? What if she dropped a match? Indeed, Jennifer had to wonder about Mrs Entwhistle’s GP. Why hadn’t he mentioned any of this? As she lived and breathed, the man needed reporting.

Sheridan Entwhistle was not impressed with Jennifer. And when she left later that afternoon, he suggested to his mother that they look for someone else. Someone with a little more experience, someone less bossy by half. But his mother disagreed. She liked Jennifer and considered her ideal for the job. Besides it would be her not him who would be in Jennifer’s company for the better part of the day. Sheridan wondered what could have possibly passed between them in the bathroom to give his mother such a distorted view of the virago nurse.

The changes Jennifer bought to the Entwhistle household were shocking and immediate. Inside a week, she had not only altered the look and fetor of the place, she seemed to have succeeded in dissipating its burdensome ambience. The