The Exploits of Engelbrecht Page 2
Well, I said to myself that’s the last we shall see of Engelbrecht, the surrealist boxer, and I proceeded to give that unfrocked college chaplain the telling off of his life.
They carried me back to Nightmare Abbey on a hurdle. I had to put up with a good deal of chaff, and Charlie Wapentake kept on asking how much witchie had bribed me to let her make away with Engelbrecht.
But lo and behold, that evening as I lay in bed I heard a great cheer, and a few minutes later who should walk into my room but little Engelbrecht, covered in filth but looking quite chirpy. It seems he’d been too heavy for the witch; he could hear her cursing like one o’clock, complaining of his weight all the time. Apparently if they don’t make their landing field before dawn they get fined. So after a bit she let him drop and he landed soft but smelly in a farmyard fifteen miles away.
Altogether, Engelbrecht said, it was the narrowest squeak he’d ever had, with the possible exception of his famous fight with a Grandfather Clock. But that is another story.
TEN ROUNDS WITH GRANDFATHER CLOCK
This is the story of the greatest fight in the career of Engelbrecht, the surrealist boxer, champion of all Time.
Engelbrecht hasn’t been in the game very long and his rise has been sensationally quick. He’s licked to within an inch of its life the Town Hall Clock at Wolverhampton, a deuced ugly customer whom surrealist sportsmen in the Midlands have backed heavily, and on his South Coast Tour he’s fought all the weighing machines to a standstill, knocked out Try Your Grips and Test Your Strengths by the score, and left the piers from Southend to Bournemouth a shambles of springs and cog-wheels, battered brasswork and twisted remains of What the Butler Saw.
His is quite an impressive record but, as some of the surrealist fancy remark, it’s a short one for a champion, and—as the sagacious Tommy Prenderghast points out—it doesn’t include nearly enough first-class clocks. After all, most of these automatic machines are terribly raw. They stand wide open and sling over haymakers. They’ve no science at all. True the Wolverhampton scrap is something to go by, but there are ugly rumours that Engelbrecht’s manager, Lizard Bayliss, slipped that Clock a couple of hundred hours to lie down.
However, there’s a shortage of chopping blocks this season, and when Engelbrecht applies for a championship fight against a recognized opponent the committee of the Surrealist Sporting Club decide to let him have his fling.
You hear gossip of some fast work behind the scenes. Tommy Prenderghast and some of the boys have got something up their sleeves and plan to rake in a packet laying odds against Engelbrecht. It looks as if they’re on to a good thing, too, because the Grandfather Clock, which the Committee nominates as official Champion and Engelbrecht’s opponent, is something really special. He comes originally, I believe, from a big country house in East Anglia. His case is made of thick black bog-oak and he stands every inch of ten feet high. Everything about him is of the strongest and stoutest. In addition to all the usual organs, hands, weights, pendulum, he’s got various accessories on top of his dial such as a Dance of the Hours and Death with a Scythe—a damned sharp one, too. And when he strikes, well, my God, you think it’s the voice of Doom itself.
You only need to take half a look at him to see he’s as cunning as they come. On top of which he’s been trained to a hair-spring by Tommy Prenderghast and Chippy de Zoete, a former champion, and what those two don’t know about the game wouldn’t fill a watch wheel’s tooth.
Engelbrecht sends Lizard Bayliss down to Grandfather Clock’s training quarters and he comes back very depressed. “Don’t think me defeatist, kiddo,” he says, “but you don’t stand a dog’s dance. They only let me see the old boy do a bit of shadow boxing but that was enough. It’ll be murder.”
“What’d he take to lie down?” Engelbrecht asks.
“Nothing less than a century and we couldn’t raise that between us, not if we was to live in training the rest of our lives. If I was you, kiddo, I’d turn it in. Lay everything you got against yourself and lie down snug before he clocks you to death.”
“I’ll not do that,” says Engelbrecht. “If I can’t frame, I fight. Never let it be said that I quit.”
“You’ll quit all right, kiddo. In a hearse.”
Comes the fight which, like all surrealist championships, is held at the Dreamland Arena round behind the gasworks, a vast desert of cinders and coal dust with an occasional oasis of nettles and burdock between two parallel canals that don’t even meet at infinity.
Engelbrecht as challenger has to be first in the ring and as he and the faithful Lizard Bayliss make their way through the crowd there is a dread chorus of alarm clocks, and a derisive yell of: “You couldn’t even box the compass!” This last is a little piece of psychological warfare on the part of Chippy de Zoete who doesn’t believe in leaving anything to chance and has hired a claque to undermine Engelbrecht’s morale. Lizard Bayliss blows a mournful raspberry back and helps his man up the ladder into the ring, which is the top of an old gasometer. Then they settle down in their corner to wait.
And how they wait. At last Lizard Bayliss complains to the committee of the Surrealist Sporting Club that if they have to wait much longer, Engelbrecht will be too old to fight. But soon after the New Year there’s a stir in the crowd along the canal side and Grandfather Clock and his gang are seen gliding along towards the ring in a barge. There is a roar of cheering from the crowd and the band strikes up The Black Waltz followed by The Clockfighter’s Lament For His Lost Youth.
Grandfather Clock is hoisted into his corner and he stands there during the preliminaries while they pull the gloves on his hands, wearing his dressing gown of cobwebs, looking a regular champion every minute of him. And when they hand him good-luck telegrams from Big Ben, the Greenwich Observatory chronometer and the BBC Time Pips, he strikes thirteen and breaks into the Whittington Chimes.
But over in Engelbrecht’s corner Lizard Bayliss is in despair. “The whole set up is against us, kiddo,” he says. “Every protest is overruled. They won’t even let me look inside his works. And who do you think you’ve got for ref? Dreamy Dan!”
“What! That schizophrenic tramp!” says Engelbrecht. “Why, he’d sell his grandmother for five minutes! Never mind, Lizard. I’ll go down fighting. Fix me my spring heel shoes and I’ll try and land one on his dial as soon as the bell goes.”
Dreamy Dan says “Seconds Out.” Chippy de Zoete whips off the cobweb dressing gown and just as the bell goes Tommy Prenderghast gives Grandfather Clock a shove that sends him gliding out of his corner sideways along the ropes. He’s got a nice classic stance, hour hand well forward, minute hand guarding his face. They’ve mounted him on castors with ball bearings, and his footwork is as neat as a flea’s.
“Time,” says Dreamy Dan, late as usual, and all that huge arena is one vast hush except for the quick breathing of little Engelbrecht, three foot eleven in his spring heel shoes, and the steady tick tock, tick tock, tick tock—with a nasty emphasis on the tock—of his giant opponent, ten feet of black bog-oak and brass, coffin-lead and hangman’s rope.
Engelbrecht gathers himself together, leaps up high in the air, comes down heavily on his spring heels, then bounds like a rubber ball straight for Grandfather Clock’s dial. But Grandfather Clock sidesteps light as a kitten and Engelbrecht sails harmlessly past his dial and falls flat on his face in the middle of the ring.
There’s a roar from Tommy Prenderghast of “First blood to Grandfather Clock,” and an answering yell from Lizard Bayliss, who claims it’s a slip, not a knock-down. They wake up Dreamy Dan and he awards the point to Grandfather Clock who, meanwhile, is standing over the prostrate Engelbrecht trying to drop his weights on him. But Engelbrecht comes to just in time, rolls over to one side and scuttles away to safety.
So ends the first round. Grandfather Clock sidles back to his corner with a self-satisfied smirk on his dial. But Lizard Bayliss is more pessimistic than ever and as he flaps the towel, he says: “I suppose you know you�
�ve started going grey, kiddo?”
Soon after the start of the second round Engelbrecht tries another spring but Grandfather Clock smacks him down in midair with his minute hand. Then the door in his front opens and he lets drive with his pendulum. Wham! It catches Engelbrecht at six o’clock precisely and sends him spinning out of the ring into the canal. He swims ashore and climbs back in time to take the most fearful dose of punishment ever handed out in the annals of the surrealist ring. Grandfather Clock gives him everything he’s got; Hour Hand, Minute Hand, Second Hand, Pendulum, both Weights, the Dance of the Hours and Death’s Scythe. When at last Dreamy Dan falls asleep on the bell, Engelbrecht is in a very poor way indeed. And all over the town clocks start striking and alarms jangling in celebration of their champion’s prowess.
“He ain’t half clockin’ you, kiddo,” says Lizard Bayliss. “Do you know your hair’s gone quite white?”
But in round three Engelbrecht makes a surprise come-back. Putting everything he’s got left into one mighty spring, he lands right on top of Grandfather Clock’s works, bores in close to his dial and tries to put his hands back. Before he knows what time it is Grandfather Clock’s hands are forced back to midnight last Tuesday and he starts to strike. Dreamy Dan, prompted by Chippy de Zoete, invents a new rule and says: “Engelbrecht! You must come down off there and stand back while your opponent strikes the hour.”
By now the gameness of this dwarf on springs has caught the fancy of the fickle surrealist crowd and they are yelling to him to stay up there and never mind the referee, but Engelbrecht loses his hold and drops from the dial.
After that, for the next six rounds, it’s just plain murder all the way. Engelbrecht has shot his bolt and has to fight on the defensive. When he’s not being whammed into the middle of next week by the pendulum he’s back-pedalling to try and escape straight lefts from the minute hand and right hooks from the hour hand. Grandfather Clock goes after him round and round the ring, slap, bang, wham, clang, striking and chiming time out of mind. How Engelbrecht avoids the k.o. nobody will ever know. Perhaps it’s the vivifying effect of all those dips in the canal. Anyway, he just manages to keep on his feet.
At the end of the ninth round the gang are just a tiny bit worried. It’s in the bag, of course. Their Clock is way ahead on points and fresh as the dawn, but they’ve counted on a knockout long before this. Still, the last round in a surrealist championship can last as long as the winning side likes, so they look fairly cheerful as they go into a huddle over some grand strategy.
Not so Lizard Bayliss, who is begging Engelbrecht to turn it in while he’s still got a few days left. “If you could see yourself, kiddo,” he says. “You’re all shrivelled up. You look a hundred.”
Just then one of the oldest of all the old-timers of the Surrealist Sporting Club hobbles over and plucks Lizard by the sleeve. “I’ve got a tip for you,” he says. “It’s a chance in a million but it might come off. Tell your man…” And he whispers into Lizard’s ear. Lizard nods and whispers it to Engelbrecht. And, whatever it is, it seems to filter through the state of dotage that Engelbrecht is now in, for he nods his trembling head.
They come out for the last round and pretty soon Grandfather Clock gets Engelbrecht tied up against the ropes and starts measuring him for the k.o. The door in his front opens and the weights and pendulum come out for the coup de grace when suddenly, Engelbrecht darts forward, dodges between the weights, jumps inside the clock case and slams the door to after him. The next moment a convulsive tremor passes over Grandfather Clock’s giant frame, an expression of anguish crosses his dial, and he starts striking and chiming like fury, but the tone doesn’t sound like his ordinary tone. It sounds much more like hiccoughs.
Engelbrecht isn’t in there long but when he pops out he looks fifty years younger, and damme if he isn’t brandishing Grandfather Clock’s pendulum and weights above his head. This, of course, means that Grandfather Clock’s works are running wild, lost control. His hands chase each other round his dial and he ticks and strikes so fast it’s like a stick being drawn along railings.
Chippy de Zoete and Tommy Prenderghast are afraid he’ll run down and they chase after him, trying to wind him up and fit him with a new pendulum and weights, but Engelbrecht and Lizard Bayliss intercept and they’re all four milling round Grandfather Clock, when suddenly there is a terrible death-rattle, followed by a howl from Lizard Bayliss: “You’ve got him, kiddo! He’s stopped, I tell you! He’s stopped! The fight’s yours!” And Grandfather Clock, shoved this way and that as they mill round him, starts to totter and heel over. Then down he comes with a frightful jangling crash and Engelbrecht squats on his face and wrenches off his hands. The crowd goes wild and the sun turns black and all over the place clocks stop and time stands still.
ROUND THE WORLD IN ONE
It was the morning after St. Vitus’ Dance, and Engelbrecht, the dwarf surrealist boxer, and I had decided to restore our jaded nervous systems with a round on the Surrealist Golf Course at Mooninghill.
I don’t know if you’re au fait with Surrealist Golf. It’s a bit different from the other kind. To start with a surrealist golf course has only one hole. But don’t get the idea that it’s any easier on that account. It’s a devilish long hole, so long it may take you all your time to play. Par is reckoned at 818181, but anything under 1000000 is considered a hot score. The hazards are desperate, so desperate that at the clubhouse bar you always see some pretty ravaged faces and shaky hands turning down an empty glass for the missing members. The pro. says that Bobby Jones’s famous 66 on the Old Course at Sunningdale would be equivalent to a good deal more than a 666666 at Mooninghill, not that Jones would ever be able to get round our course on account of his well-known predilection to nervous dyspepsia.
Engelbrecht and I are both long handicap men; he’s 1113 and I’m 1104; and as we weren’t feeling particularly strenuous that morning we thought we’d hang around the clubhouse and see if we couldn’t pick up a quiet foursome. We hadn’t been waiting long, when who should show up but little Charlie Wapentake and Nodder Fothergill. They had both been to the dance and were still feeling the effects—indeed Charlie Wapentake couldn’t stop flapping up and down as if he was on a clothes line—and a quiet foursome was about all they were fit for. We rounded up two sets of caddies, bearers, and camping equipment, a couple of White Hunters, trackers, snake charmers, and one or two other specialists, including a diver and a psychiatrist, all of whom are necessary to cope with the various hazards. Then we started on the long, long climb up to the tee.
The tee at Mooninghill is a tiny plateau on top of the great height from which the course takes its name. All the wind in the world seems to meet up there and a good deal of the woe as well, some say. The green is way out of sight, of course, thousands of miles away. You drive off into space.
It was our honour, and Charlie Wapentake was flapping about so I was afraid I should miss the globe, so I begged Engelbrecht to take first whang, his nerves being stronger than mine. Engelbrecht, as you may know, is not easily daunted. We chained him up to the tee box so he shouldn’t be carried away by the wind and he wanged off like one o’clock. The deuce of a beat, but there was a nasty hook to it, and soon after the ball left the club-head the wind changed and carried it Way down East.
The Chief Caddy shook his head. “I dinna like the looks of it,” he said. “Tis heading for the Native Reserve.”
There’s no nonsense in Surrealist Golf about putting down another and losing a stroke. We watched Nodder Fothergill top theirs a few yards over the precipice into the Valley of Dry Bones. Then we shook hands all round and wished each other luck.
“See you on the green,” we said cheerfully as they roped themselves together for the descent. But soon after we had started on our eastward trek, we caught, borne on the wind, a scream followed by a harsh cackle of laughter and a loud report. I saw our Chief Caddy wipe away a tear. “Puir Mr. Wapentake,” I heard him mutter, “such a nice wee man.”
Presently we heard those drums again and our trackers came back with a report. They’d found the ball all right, but it had landed in a tribal Ju-Ju House. It was going to be the devil to play out as the Witch Doctor had taken a great fancy to it, thinking it was a god’s egg.
However, our White Hunter bribed the tribe with Trade Goods and they smoked out the Doc and we went in through the hole in the roof which seemed to be the only entrance there was. It took us a couple of days and 2173 strokes whanging away in there with our niblicks before I managed to loft it through the hole. When we got out we found the Doc had rallied the tribe with a powerful curse and the caddies were hard put to it to keep them at bay from behind a zareba. The direct route back to the fairway was cut and there was nothing for it but to play on into the heart of the great bunker. We had to play mighty fast too, sprinting in between shots.
When we camped for the night it was still sand all round as far as the eye could see, and our score was 3673. In the night we heard a monotonous thumping, followed by a whispered string of curses, and counting, way up in the hundred millions. We looked out and saw by the light of the moon a skeleton hacking away at the sand with a niblick. “Tis one of our missing members, puir fella,” said the Chief Caddy who had poked his head through his tent flap. “Name of Bartholomew. I ken him by his crabbed swing.”