17

Reaching out ahead of me, I picked up the glass of cider, lifted it to my mouth and sipped it while contemplating Beta who was clasping her glass in front of her breasts. I was indeed very fortunate to be with a woman so truly beautiful, I mused, boldly resting my arm over her bare shoulders. I was delighted that she didn’t resist my approach and indeed returned the affection by placing a hand on my thigh. She gazed up at me and smiled: “It’s so nice to be off the City streets. I couldn’t bear to live here. It’s so noisy. So polluted. And ever so busy. I can’t believe we’ll ever find the Truth here. We should leave the City and search elsewhere.”

I nodded, restoring the glass to the table. “We haven’t seen anything here that even resembles the Truth,” I admitted. “The City may have everything else, and it seems to have it in abundance. But you’re right. The Truth must be somewhere else.”

Beta pointed at my nearly empty glass. “Don’t hurry your drink! I like sitting here, high above the City and on these comfortable seats. It’s so much more relaxing.”

The atmosphere was certainly that, as much a result of what we’d consumed as in anything inherent to the environment. A group of baboons excitedly debated politics opposite us. A spider monkey was leaning on the bar and talking to the bar steward: a lion dressed in a tuxedo who was cleaning the inside of a pint glass with a small towel. A group of australopithecines was playing darts in the far corner. And standing at the bar, looming high above everyone, was a very tall figure in a long green overcoat carrying a tri-cornered hat in his enormous paws. His bright button eyes scanned the bar while he waited to be served.

He saw Beta and me, and broke away, still clutching the hundred guinea note he had been gesturing idly towards nobody in particular. He lumbered past the baboons, slightly brushing against an especially aggressive one who might have challenged the teddy bear had he not been so enormous.

“Why hello, young man! And with a young lady. Your wife, perchance?”

“No!” disclaimed Beta, snapping her hand from my lap. “We’re just friends.”

“I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have made such a brash presumption. Well good afternoon, young lady. My name is Hubert. I met your friend a few days ago at the castle of a friend of mine...”

“Do you mean Tudor?” asked Beta, recalling my account of the occasion. “Yes, I’ve known Tudor for a long time. He’s a frequent visitor to my Village. My name is Beta.”

She leaned forward, requiring me to reluctantly withdraw my arm from her shoulders and shook what she could of his columnar paw.

“I was just buying myself a drink. I’ll buy you some too, if you like. What are you having? Cider, isn’t it?”

Then, before either of us could protest that one pint of the potent brew was sufficiently intoxicating, he lumbered back to the bar and this time the bar steward served him quite promptly. Hubert returned followed by the lion carrying a tray of drinks which his paws were ill-equipped to manage. The lion thoughtfully fetched a particularly large sofa in which the teddy bear could sit in relative comfort, and then returned to his conversation with the spider monkey, who was rolling a cigarette on the bar surface.

“So!” remarked Hubert after imbibing a long draught of cider. “Like me, your quest has brought you to the City. Unfortunately, I am having little success in my search for relics of the Great Bard. I trust your endeavour is proceeding more profitably? Is your friend accompanying you?”

“Yes, I am,” Beta affirmed. “We’ve not been any more successful than you. We seem to do nothing but wander the streets and get horribly lost.”

“Isn’t that always the way? The feet get very sore, but if the end is honourable then it must all be worthwhile. As they say, it is the travelling, not the arriving, which makes the journey. Yesterday, I spent many happy hours in the City Library reading the original texts the Great Bard has left. He was greatly influenced by mysticism. He attached great significance to prime numbers, like seventeen, seven and one. He believed them to be symbolic of great truths as they are irreducible but become the basis of all other numbers. Much of his poetry revels in the fundamental properties of number and what it reveals of the world. It should be remembered that in his era there was little thought or knowledge of fractal geometry, curved space or different degrees of infinity. Just imagine what he would do now with concepts like the Gödel Number, the catastrophe theory or the Mandelbrot Set. How that would have inspired him!”

I sipped at the cider and allowed my arm to once again lie unresisted over Beta’s shoulders.

“Was it only numbers which inspired him?” she asked.

“He was also excited by concepts of circularity and cyclical behaviour. He often compared life to the sine wave or the sphere. He claimed that life has neither beginning nor end. One is merely the prelude to the other. He was also fascinated by such concepts as the twelve houses of the heavens and the twelve cycles within twelve of the Chinese calendar. He believed that all patterns revealed the basic meaning of life, and often modelled his poetry on exact rhythms and structures borrowed from numerology, astrology, the I Ching, the Tarot and the harmonic scale. To study the Great Bard is to learn much not normally associated with poetry.”

Hubert was drinking his cider very rapidly which was appropriate for such a large individual. We had barely drunk down an inch of our glasses when his was emptied. He wiped his mouth with the back of his paw.

“Zounds! That was a drink I needed. Much as I enjoy being in the midst of the hustle and bustle of the City, I much prefer the Country where the air is fresh and where people have more time for company.”

He stood up and looked down at the City below where a wisp of smoke was still rising from the site of the recent explosion.

“I shall be leaving the City tomorrow morning, but I have a number of things to do this afternoon. However, it has been charming to meet the two of you. Give my regards to Tudor should you see him.”

With that, the teddy bear lumbered out of the bar and into the lift which was only just large enough to accommodate him and a pair of macaques shadowed by his enormous great coat.

“That was certainly brief!” remarked Beta. “But Hubert’s quest must be inspiration to us.”

“Indeed,” I agreed, squeezing Beta’s shoulder and finding comfort in just sitting so close to her.

We relaxed together for a while, drinking our ciders and watching the company in the bar. Not a great deal was happening. A chimpanzee had joined the spider monkey and the bar steward, and was gesticulating wildly about something that had excited him, his long arms stretched high above his head. A group of ring-tailed lemurs was playing a noisy game of dominoes in a far corner, watched by a pair of tarsiers. A television beamed soundless images of fighting and violence probably taking place in the City. A juke box was playing loud percussive electronic music, punctuated by what sounded very much like religious chants.

The alcohol had a pronounced effect on my bladder as well as on my mind, and I soon felt the need to relieve myself. I drank the last of the cider, and lifted myself up. It was only when I was on my feet, I became aware of just how much I had been affected. Everything was disorientated and I was feeling distinctly unsteady.

“I’ll just go to the loo,” I heard myself say.

“I must go too,” Beta said, drinking most of what she had left and wobbled uncertainly to her feet. I supported her with a hand as she nearly stumbled over a step. We made our way in the direction signposted Toilets across a floor that seemed much more extensive than it did when we’d arrived and through a door that led down an interminable corridor through fire door after fire door, leading to metal plaques adorned by silhouetted figures which made clear which further series of doors was intended for me and which for Beta.

After relieving myself, I studied the reflection in the mirror of someone I barely recognised. It was almost a shock to see myself as others might see me, and I wasn’t sure I particularly liked the sight. I blinked and shook my head in the hope that my reflection might improve, but it remained much the same. I shrugged my shoulders and stumbled out into the corridor where Beta was waiting for me.

“Let’s get going!” she said adamantly, pushing open a fire-door that led into a corridor which looked exactly like the one we’d come from, but I couldn’t be exactly sure through the haze in my mind. Beta however pushed ahead, and I followed her past rows of fire-extinguishers and elegant portraits.

“I’m sure it didn’t take as long as this to get to the lavatory!” I remarked, a little puzzled.

“I think you may be right,” agreed Beta, pushing open a door to the side marked quite clearly PRIVATE, but which she seemed to think for some reason was exactly the right door to venture through. On the other side was a tall escalator leading upwards where a window of sunlight shone brightly on the uppermost steps. “Does that lead to the roof, do you think?”

“It certainly looks like it,” I commented. “A strange place to have an escalator, though.”

“Shall we go up?” giggled Beta adventurously. “I wonder what the view’s like from the very top of this building.”

“I wonder,” I agreed, alcohol-emboldened. “Shall we find out?”

Beta giggled again, and placed her foot on the lowest step of the escalator, which suddenly jerked into life on detecting her presence and began moving upwards. I trod onto the step behind her and boldly held her round the waist as we ascended and the window of sunlight came steadily closer. I could smell Beta’s hair under my nose and felt it dropping down over my arms and to below her waist. I squeezed her waist slightly, and she turned her head round and grinned welcomingly.

The sun flooded down from a sunny blue sky, accompanied by smells of flowers, grass and fresh air. Towards the top, we squinted in a bright beam of light speckled with hovering specks of seed. From above we could hear the chorus of song birds and the occasional squawk of a peacock. There was also the distinct splash of falling water and the rustle of a breeze through the broad leaves of the spreading trees. As we surfaced, we discovered ourselves in a magnificent garden of water-falls, springs, fruit trees and grass. A lion was sipping at a pond-side beside a tiny fawn. A delicate gazelle gambolled joyfully near a large rose bush. A pachybelodon was scooping up weeds from one end of the pond. Several birds of paradise flew across from tree to tree, watched on by colourful howler monkeys and marmosets. We stepped off the top of the escalator - which stopped the moment we were no longer on it - and looked around us with amazement.

“I certainly didn’t expect to find anything like this at the top of the Half Man!” Beta exclaimed, wandering through the long uncut grass, her hands idly pulling off clouds of seed from dandelions.

The top of the escalator from which we had emerged now appeared more like a hole in the ground and the City very distant indeed. Instead of the roar of traffic, the air resounded with the sounds of joyous living. I wondered where the garden might end. It appeared to stretch interminably in all directions, or at least as far as the odd trees and pagodas that were scattered about. None of this disturbed me at all. The effects of drink, I imagined. I glanced around to find Beta, but I couldn’t see her at all.

“Beta! Beta!” I called out, disturbing a toucan that crashed out of a tree. “Where are you?”

“Here! Over here!” she called, hidden behind some trees.

I chased around them only to see her run off towards a gazebo beneath a tall beech. I ran after her as she dodged behind it. When I got there, she immediately started running again, laughing childishly, her long hair flowing behind her and her naked body not at all out of place in the luxuriance of the grass and the heat of the sun. For several minutes we chased after each other between the trees and bushes, around the ornate ponds and the buzz of caddis-flies, past the waterfalls, behind the pillars of curiously neglected ornamental buildings and knee-high through wild grasses. I was much more unfit than Beta who was much more accustomed to the outdoor life, and was soon short of breath and sweating profusely in the bright midday sun.

“It’s beautiful here!” exclaimed Beta, strolling up to me as I panted and wheezed in the shadow of a tall apple tree. “You wouldn’t believe that there was anywhere like this in the City.”

I nodded, slowly recovering from my exertions. “It’s a lovely garden.”

“My! You are hot!” commented Beta, stepping up closer and feeling my forehead with the back of her hand. She started to unbutton my clothes. “You certainly don’t need these things in this heat. I don’t know why you have to wear them all the time.”

Her hands carefully unbuttoned, unclasped and unzipped me, smiling at me in a very inviting and mischievous way. I stretched my arms out, took Beta by the shoulder and pulled her unprotesting body close to my breast and her face up to mine. My chest was bared to the sun and I pushed off my shoes and trousers from about my ankles with clumsy motions of my feet.

“You’re very hot!” repeated Beta with wonder, as I pulled her face towards mine, my tongue entered her mouth, one hand grasped her back beneath her long green hair and the other lower down about her buttocks. I kissed her in a spurt of action and excitement which Beta more than reciprocated. She momentarily pushed me off and examined me with a face illuminated by passion and shrouded by loose strands of her long hair.

“I’m a virgin, you know,” she whispered unnecessarily and plunged her tongue back into my mouth, pulling my underpants down to my knees with a decisive tug and grasping the back of my neck with a free hand.

Beta’s body wholly engulfed my senses: her smell, her taste, the warmth and softness of her skin. Her gasps and my own drowned out the sounds of chorusing doves, chirping frogs and rustling leaves. Only the warm breeze on my naked back and the stab of blades of long grass as we descended to the ground in a close huddle of flesh and motion served to remind me where we were and that the world consisted of other things beside Beta, her unresisting body and her tender caresses.

I don’t know how long we were together, lost in passion and lost to the world, but eventually our senses reawakened. We lay together, naked in the grass, my clothes scattered about widely and loosely, our arms around each other, viscous liquids clinging to the hair of our legs and the top of our thighs, and the sun blazing down on us with supreme indifference. A magpie clucked in the tree above us, a small lizard dashed behind a rock and in the distance we could hear the chortle and chatter of gibbons. I pulled Beta forward and gave her a shy but tender kiss on the lips.

“How do you feel?” I asked.

Beta looked down ruefully at her pubic hair and extracted a long blade of grass.

“I don’t know,” she admitted. “Different, I suppose. Just different!” She leaned over and pulled me towards her. “Why do you people from the Suburbs and Lambdeth wear clothes? It’s not just to keep yourself warm, is it? You look so much more natural as you are.”

I smiled, unable to explain why, even now, I felt a great desire to climb back into the clothes I’d discarded. It somehow seemed inappropriate to remain naked, now that I was steadily sobering and our lovemaking was over. I gazed longingly around me, trying to discover my underpants, when I noticed a sandaled foot in the grass and above it a long tall golden gown. I hurriedly and embarrassedly covered my genitals with my hands and prodded Beta. We raised our heads towards the owner of the sandals.

It was the bearded gentleman we had met earlier that morning serving food to the wretches by the canal. That place seemed so remote here in the garden. What could he be doing here? He still had an infectious welcoming smile, but he spoke to us with a seriousness that belied his apparent joviality.

“What may I ask are you doing here? Are you aware that you are trespassing?”

I jumped to my feet ensuring that my hand covered my crotch. “We didn’t expect there to be a garden here. We got lost on the way back from the toilet and found our way here by mistake. We didn’t mean to do anything wrong.”

Beta stood up as well, far less abashed about her nudity. “It’s very beautiful here. It’s probably the loveliest place I’ve ever been to. Surely you aren’t surprised that we should want to come here and enjoy ourselves.”

“Enjoying yourselves in the delights of nature in more ways than one, I should think. But less of this. You may be trespassers and in my capacity as gardener I may have to advise you to leave by the way you came, but at the same time I must also extend my welcome to you. You must realise, however, that this garden is not meant for the curious tourist.”

“It’s in a very strange place,” Beta remarked. “Right at the top of a skyscraper, a few floors above a pub. How can a garden like this be here?”

“It just is,” the gentleman remarked folding his arms. “I’m glad however that you are so appreciative. I work hard to tend this garden. It’s not as easy as you would think. It has to be both natural and tamed. It has to be beautiful and slightly wild without becoming unmanageable and disorganised. Fortunately, nature does most of the work for me. I merely prod it in the direction I wish it to go. Isn’t nature a wonderful thing?”

“Indeed it is!” agreed Beta, admiring the landscape. “It’s ravishing. It must be wonderful to work here!”

“That I can’t deny,” the gentleman assented nodding at a tree shrew that had leapt onto his shoulder and gazed up at him quizzically. “There can be no other occupation more rewarding.”

“And you also give alms to the poor,” I reminded him.

“Indeed, I do. It is but small duty. It gives me as much joy to give to those in need as it does to tend the growing flowers, the young lamb, the mischievous lion-cub and all the others in the garden.” He looked up at the sky with a wistful expression, a gust slightly lifting up his long hair, and sighed. “If only everything in the world were like this. But it cannot and should not be. All I can do is tend the small corner of it to which I have access.”

“Who owns the garden?” I wondered.

Beta put an arm around my waist while the gentleman answered. “The same person who owns the Half Man and the rest of the building from which you emerged. He’s quite a recluse. Although I’ve worked here many years I don’t think I have had the pleasure of meeting him once, though his memos specify exactly what he wants done. All I know of him is the print of his word processor and the wax seal he attaches to it. But I don’t worry too much about questions like this. Why should I ever need to meet him and what would I do if I did?”

“We’re in the City searching for the Truth,” Beta explained. “If there’s anywhere in the City where the Truth can be found surely it would be here in amongst all this beauty and plenty. If there’s such a place as paradise, this much surely be it. Do you think we’ll be find it here?”

The gardener laughed indulgently. “The Truth? Here! Goodness, no! This may seem like paradise, but you won’t find the Truth here. Or at least if it is here, I’ve never come across it.”

“Do you know what the Truth might be?” I wondered.

“If I knew that, I would tell you. Like many people I have my ideas, but they are mere speculation. I’m sure that the Truth does exist. There must be some fundamental kernel of truth and reality in the Universe, and if it is called the Truth, so be it. Underneath the vicissitudes of perception and prejudice there is a core to being which when found must be incontrovertible and just right. However, what can this Truth be? It has to be something which is true at the very smallest distances, less than the width of a quantum particle where velocity, position and direction are totally uncertain, to the very reaches of infinite time and space where our meagre existence seems so immensely trivial. It has to be something which goes beyond the illusions of the senses and also constitutes the ethics, æsthetics and purposiveness which are so important to all sentient beings. It must contain all that exists and at the same time be a total abstraction of them. Yes, there must be a Truth, but I don’t know what it is. I am indeed flattered that you might imagine that something as beautiful as this garden might be the Truth - but please don’t confuse the pleasant and desirable with the Truth. I fear that it may not be as agreeable as you would like it to be!”

“So the Truth isn’t here!” sighed Beta. “That means that if we want to find it, we’ll have to leave.”

The gardener smiled sternly. “I’m afraid you will have to leave the garden anyway, whether the Truth were here or not. However much you may wish to stay, you are not at liberty to do so. I hope you have success in your endeavour, but it is not one I would wish to pursue.”

“Why not?” I wondered.

“I really don’t believe that knowledge of the Truth is either desirable or necessary. There is no need of a grand scheme for people to know that they should treat each other with justice, fairness and kindness. More is to be gained by acting to change things for the better in whatever humble capacity one can than by searching for something whose discovery will probably cause more conflict than it resolves and disappoint rather more people than it will please. With so many disparate opinions of what the Truth must be, held with such adamant conviction by so many, its discovery is unlikely to be universally acclaimed.”

“Are you advising us to abandon our search?” Beta asked sadly.

“Not at all! I am merely expressing why I would not pursue it. However, I would advise you to leave the City and direct your search towards the Suburbs.”

“The Suburbs?” I asked, flabbergasted. “Is the Truth in the Suburbs ...?”

“...and not in this garden?” echoed Beta.

“I don’t know where the Truth is. That is not the advice I am giving. All I know is that the search for the Truth initiated by President Chairman Rupert and followed now by very many of his supporters, and many others who are not, is directed towards the Suburbs. I don’t know why. It may be that there is a perverseness in the Illicit Party which attributes the Truth to the least likely of places. Or it could be that it is indeed there. That it is for you to find out. And by going to the Suburbs you would at least eliminate one possibility.”

“The Suburbs!” I exclaimed again. This seemed too bizarre to be true. I had left the Suburbs to find the Truth, and now I was told to return. Were my travels of the last few days altogether wasted? And why should I find the Truth in the Suburbs now when it had totally eluded me before? Despite his unchanging smile, the gardener didn’t appear to be joking.

“Well, I must advise you to leave now,” the gardener said. “The exit is where you emerged.” He pointed at the very top of the escalator, just visible past a small pond where a lion was frolicking with a gorilla, and where some monkeys were playing. “I wish you a fruitful quest.”

With that, the gardener strolled off, his golden gown soon lost in the golden expanse of grass, accompanied by several small animals which capered at his feet, circled his head or hopped off and on his shoulders. I waited until I was sure he was out of sight, before I uncovered my groin and hunted for my clothes through the grass. I eventually found them, but not in an order in which to put them back on. Beta assisted me, clearly still finding them unnecessary. She leaned over to kiss me as she handed me the underpants, the very last item we found, which had somehow got caught on the lower branch of a small bush.

“Now we go to the Suburbs!”

“Yes, I suppose we do,” I said. “Or rather, in my case, back to the Suburbs.”

I was disappointed at the prospect of returning to a place of such ordinariness and calm. After my travels, the Suburbs was surely going to be an incredible anticlimax. However, part of me rather welcomed the idea. The Suburbs was my home. I knew my way around. I was safe and secure. And I would no longer have to sleep in smelly alley-ways or dodge fights in night clubs. I also contemplated the very pleasant prospect of introducing Beta to family and friends, and fretted about their inevitable difficulty coping with the presence of someone who dressed as she did and had no understanding of Suburban life.

We wandered back to the escalator, hand in hand, the early afternoon sun beating down on our crowns, the unspeakable beauty of the garden overwhelming our senses and imparting a levity of spirit which we knew would soon be brushed aside once we were back in the busy City streets. We trod on the first step of the escalator which started moving downwards, just as it had earlier moved upwards, and descended down, our spirits correspondingly descending as it did so.