Hardly Badinage

I managed to find Bill under 'Feltch' in the phone book. He had an ad. The address was for a big tenement in south London. I'd called up earlier on the pretence that I was looking to book kooky clowns for a London Boroughs-sponsored clown-fest. I just hoped he wouldn't recognise me from the rabid shoeing. It had seemed like a hideous crimson veil of clown-rage had descended upon him at the time, like something inside had snapped, and I clung to the thesis that he had undergone a psychotic personality switch at the time, insufficiently possessed of his critical faculties to remember in detail those around him.

It was windy up on the walkway of the fourth floor at the entrance to his flat. The estate had a menacing air. From below, I could hear a dog continually barking and kids screaming foul obscenities in falsetto tones. My hand was actually shaking with fear as I pressed the doorbell. It didn't work. Through the frosted glass, I could see the distorted silhouette of a large man at the end of the corridor. He was standing, looking straight at me, his shoulders hunched and his arms held tensely in tight fists at his waist. I tried gently knocking on the frame of the door. It wasn't properly closed and it swung open when I tapped it. I could see Bill clearly. His face was downcast but his eyes were swivelled upwards under his heavy brow and looking straight at me.

"Hellooo," he said, "can I get you some tea?"

His voice was incongruous to his appearance. It was a mellow, refined drawl - very posh and softly languid. The flat was squalid. We stepped into the kitchen where he made two mugs of tea by running water straight from the hot tap instead of boiling it in a kettle. I declined his offer of milk and then followed him to his lounge. The curtains were drawn closed and it was dark inside. The room was bare save for a large wooden sideboard and about a dozen chairs set up in a big circle. Most of the chairs were occupied by shop-window mannequins, dressed in shabby clothes and with their faces clumsily decorated with thick layers of colourful make-up. In the centre of the ring of chairs was a television on a table. Next to the table, on the floor, were three more televisions - they were smashed up and covered in dust. We both sat opposite each other across the pile of TVs in the middle of the ring. I held my tea in both hands, unwilling to take a sip even though the mug was full right to the brim. He sipped his drink, a pinky finger held at a kink, evincing his pedigree.

"I thought you might be delivering my new television," Bill said in a slight whisper, "I think I'll be happy when my new television arrives. Happy then. Waiting for delivery."

"No, I'm here to discuss Clownrush '09" I said.

"Yes, I know," Bill countered with just the merest hint of snappiness that still made me jump slightly, spilling a little of the tea on my hands. He showed no evidence of recognising me but the atmosphere was extremely unpleasant. Beneath the smooth, refined voice, it felt as though there was a barely-restrained violence, like he could erupt at any moment. I'd forgotten what a huge man he was - big and square-shouldered with that small bald head on top. He was still wearing most of his clown make-up, or, at least, it appeared as though he never bothered washing it off. Some of the white paint had dripped off from one side of his face, revealing the sweaty pallid skin beneath. His head looked like a pink and white mottled slab of off-cut beef, raw and fatty, ready for the mincer. Where the paint had seeped into one eye, it was red and swollen. The other eye was still that vivid, light-blue hue I remembered. We talked. His smooth, posh voice delivered preternaturally quietly, undulating slightly as though he was struggling to maintain control of himself. Each sentence he spoke seemed to end in the barest of angry hisses as he breathed in noisily through his clogged nostrils. And all the time he listened to me, he gnawed. He gnawed on the rim of his mug, he gnawed on the corner of a cushion, he gnawed on his knuckles which were red and raw from continued gnawing.

After a couple of minutes, Bill asked me if I wanted some toast with my tea. He placed his own tea on the sideboard and went to the kitchen. Immediately, I took the opportunity to furtively search for Sandy's plot book. The sideboard was the only furniture in the room, so I rummaged through its drawers. They were full of reams of paper, every inch covered in dense, handwritten notes. Under one pile, I found an old black and white photograph, curled at the edges with age. It was a younger Bill, still with hair - a mass of dark hair, his big frame clothed in a black polo-necked jumper. It was slightly blurred from the movement but you could still see clearly the semi-mangled Swiss roll and Bill's face contorted in an unwholesome mixture of climactic release and vague incomprehension.

I continued to rummage in one of the upper cupboards but it was filled only with a heap of green-tinged used verruca plasters which spilled out as I opened the door. I recoiled from the foetid aroma, picking up the errant plasters with the tips of my fingers and throwing them back in to close the door again. I tried the other cupboard and drawers but found nothing. Finally, too nervous to search elsewhere, I went to sit down again but noticed, with horror, that one of the plasters, some traces of yellow skin still attached, had fallen into Bill's mug of tea. I turned to look for something to fish it out and found myself staring straight at Bill who was silently standing behind me.

"Looking for this?" he asked, holding up a small black notebook.

One of his long arms shot forward, my stomach dropped in cold fear, but the arm continued around me and picked up his mug of tea.

"I know who you are," he said, "I've got an IQ of 183." His red and blue eyes stared intently at me over the rim of his mug as he took a long, deep draught of his tea.