Butterfly's Sneeze

Peter Drake

Description

A comic novel of intrigue, love, sunshine and a sometimes-brilliant young salesman in Spain on his way to limitless riches.And the theory of chaos, which threatens to ruin everything.And the mysterious Mr Quentin, who aims at encouraging it.From the morning clouds huddled above the sea a shaft of sunlight escaped, slicing the top off Mr Quentin's translucent head.Jenkins, the apparition said, ducking, there's nothing to be gained by this surly animosity. You're lumbered with me, frankly. The well-remembered voice, pompous, squeaky, a voice that had assimilated the scraping of chalk.The key, Jenkins, to this lamentable turn of events, is that book in your pocket.The key, the key...

Informations

• Publié par: eBook Versions
• Date de parution: 25 octobre 2018
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781843965206
• Langue: English

Extrait

Published 2018 by
Whistle Island Publications

Copyright © 2018 Peter Drake

All rights reserved

Peter Drake has asserted his right
under the Copyright, Designs and Patents
Act 1988 to be identified as the author
of this work

Author s blog
http://stillwhistle.blogspot.com

ISBN 978-1-84396-520-6

Also available in paperback
ISBN 978-1-72589-322-1

No part of this book may be reproduced
in any material or electronic form without
written permission from the publisher, except for
the quotation of brief passages in criticism.

Ebook production
eBook Versions
27 Old Gloucester Street
London WC1N 3AX
www.ebookversions.com
A
BUTTERFLY S
SNEEZE


Peter Drake

Whistle Island Publications
Contents

Cover
Title Page
Copyright Credits
Dedication
Preface
The key
Chapter 1 : A day for being kind
Chapter 2 : A devastating truth
Chapter 3 : Something looming
Chapter 4 : The party
Chapter 5 : The arrival
Chapter 6 : The end of I
Chapter 7 : Eek!
Chapter 8 : Blackflies and ladybirds
Chapter 9 : The whirlpool whirls
Chapter 10 : Peccadillo
Chapter 11 : In the cauldron
Chapter 12 : Loops
Chapter 13 : On the tideline
Chapter 14 : Love and bunions
Chapter 15 : Nibbling
Chapter 16 :Grim reading
Chapter 17 : A dream of Uxbridge
Chapter 18 : Global crime
Chapter 19 : It s me or you
Chapter 20 : What nobody sees
Chapter 21 : Intertwining
Chapter 22 : Tumbling
Chapter 23 : A bifurcation
Chapter 24 : Exciting times
Chapter 25 : The secret recording
Chapter 26 : Being alive
Chapter 27 : The undoing
Chapter 28 : A rush of air
Chapter 29 : A very special sneeze
Chapter 30 : Aftermath
Chapter 31 : End of story
About the author
For Janine
Preface


During the 1980s the Spanish population watched in dismay as their sunniest coastlines were eaten by concrete. Most of the population, that is: the less scrupulous got agreeably rich.

At around the same time, although completely unconnected with this tragedy (until now), the scientific theory of chaos achieved an unlikely popularity. Butterflies played a small but influential role.
The key


The youth lay uncushioned on the baked surface of the beach cafe s car park. His black-leathered legs and arms were splayed as though freshly crucified, and his unzipped jacket revealed a shirtless, hairless chest abandoned to an invasion of blue and pink dragons, daggers, buttocks, fish, hearts, skulls and in the centre, ME! presented like the BOOM! in a cartoon explosion.
Jerry toed him. Hey.
An eye half-opened. Peace.
Peace to you too, Jerry responded sourly. You ll have to move, I m driving off.
Hurry hurry hurry. Eager for the next catastrophe. Me, I ve been snoozy-poozing around here for three days. Flew in from Luton. I think. To Mall thingy. Agga? Yeah, Malaga. He had not yet stirred, beyond opening one eye. Waiting to meet up with my mate Griff.
Three days? Forget it, Griff s not coming. I ll give you a lift into town. Where are you heading?
The youth sighed a cool draught of peppermint chewing gum, dispersing the midge cloud above his face. He rolled his head slowly from side to side, eyes closed.
Oh bollocks, Jerry snapped. He felt irritatingly wrong-footed. The guy looked - not so much happy, as stunned into a kind of tranquillity. Life would do that to you, no problem, if you lay down and let it. The idea held its attractions. Squirm and fight, like Jerry Jenkins, and life just goes on pounding you until, sooner or later, you ll probably end up anyway sprawled on the ground and murmuring peace .
Stooping, he grabbed an outflung knee and elbow and heaved them upwards. Woo, the young man said, rolling like a sausage.
Move.
You re disturbed. Both eyes opened wide, twin pickled onions. You haven t got this thing worked out. Reaching inside his jacket, the youth extracted a small paperback book and waved it like a Spanish fan. The key to everything. Wanna see? He proffered it to Jerry, who took it, momentarily intrigued.
Above a cover picture of garish swirling colours, the book s title read An Introduction to Chaos .
Take. Have. It s yours.
Why would I want an introduction to chaos? Chaos is what I m best at.
It s the key, the youth insisted. To everything.
So why are you trying to get rid of it? Jerry demanded, shaking the book to see if it rattled.
Don t need it. I don t read, me, I view. Mostly I internalise.
Why d you buy it then?
Buy? the youth sniggered. A straight gift from the cosmos, brother. A guy dropped it at the airport. As they were carting him off on a stretcher. Heart attack. White face, blue lips.
Silenced, Jerry turned the book over, flicked through the pages, paused to examine an inscription inside the front cover carefully calligraphed in green ink: Kindly return this book forthwith to its rightful owner, Arthur Aloysius Quentin .
Feeling his legs weaken, he sank to a squatting position beside the youth. AA Quentin. Mr Quentin.
He stared at the youth, who raised one corner of his mouth in what could have been a smile, but he might just have been sucking a molar.
Quentin. Humpty Dumpty, because of his shape, like an egg perched pointy-end upward on a pair of black shoes. High, wide and impassable, Humpty had blocked all trace of daylight from Jerry s schooldays. He taught maths in the manner of a chain-gang overseer. Triangles of equal height on equal bases, Jenkins J, have equal areas no matter what their angles! Stand on your head until it s learned!
The squeaky voice echoed through his head like a stab of pain, making him wince. Heart attack? he demanded. The owner of this book?
I guess. Looked kaput to me. On his way to the infinite resonance.
Holding on to the bonnet of his car, Jerry pulled himself slowly to his feet, still clutching Humpty s book. For one terrible moment he thought he glimpsed, within the shade of a palm tree cluster near the cafe, a rotund figure in a dusty tweed jacket and grey flannel trousers, pacing purposefully around with head down as though counting fallen dates.
He looked away quickly. The glare of the sun in his eyes, painting memories on his retina to torture him like everyone else.
1
A day for being kind


Bursting thankfully from the lift - a juddering box the size of a coffin which howled spasmodically for lack of grease - Jerry paused to lean against the wall of the foyer, allowing a moment for the world to settle down. His head was throbbing like a diesel engine. Closing his eyes, he raged silently against the Regional Manager (by now untouchable in Barcelona) for causing him such discomfort.
Today, he decided, was a day for being kind to Jerry Jenkins. For placing his own welfare above all else.
This comforting thought encouraged him to push off from the wall, adjusting the angle of his panama straw hat to a more authentically Humphrey Bogart angle. A moment later he found himself clutching the air as he stumbled across an old woman kneeling on the floor.
Oof! Se ora…
Dressed in a formless grey garment that may have been a housecoat, she was holding a pink wafer biscuit in one hand, trying to entice a dishevelled mongrel sniffing its way around the base of a large plant pot. You were drunk again last night, she accused in her rasping Spanish, grasping the plant pot to heave herself upright.
Certainly I was not drunk last night, se ora. I arrived home late, agreed.
Se ora Valenzuela lives in the ground-floor apartment, being what passes for a caretaker in the apartment block El Paraíso, and runs a parallel career as a folk herbalist. The old widow s dog, a mottled genetic soup with a large shaggy head mounted on a short-legged bristly body, leaves its traces throughout the building but especially in the entrance where the odour of dog, detergent and pine disinfectant causes weak eyes to water. This is the smell Jerry now associates with home.
Externally, home is a fourteen-storey edifice of crumbling concrete in which the reinforcement rods peek from fissures and chipped balconies like old brown bones. But his apartment in El Paraíso is remarkably cheap, its living room has a superb view over the beach and sea, and undeniably it s a big advance on his previous cell above a video hire shop.
You were drunk, Se ora Valenzuela told him flatly. You were trying to open the door of the cleaning cupboard, believing it to be the lift. I was tempted to open the cupboard and lock you inside to learn sense, but being a foolish old woman I put you into the lift and pressed the button for floor 14.
The grey bun at the back of her head quivered as if from clockwork vibrations. Her face by contrast was alarmingly still, darkly eroded as a piece of driftwood but with hooded eyes that saw more than Jerry would wish. She was enjoying his discomfort. Her dog sidled over to sniff around his trouser leg. Deftly the old woman hoisted it on a black toecap and lobbed it through the open door of her apartment, where it turned defiantly to bark.
Re-adjusting his hat, Jerry unsuccessfully smoothed his linen jacket - one of these days he would get this thing cleaned, when he could find a moment of peace in his roller-coaster days - and stepped sideways to negotiate the uncertain gap between Se ora Valenzuela and the door.
Se ora– he began, but the old woman propelled him briskly into the daylight, shaking her head in sorrow or despair.

Although only paces from the city s gold-plated main shopping avenue, the side street that accommodates Palm Tree Properties local office is on the fringes of what the guide books evasively label the Old Quarter. Here, tiny front-room shops sell aluminium saucepans with loose handles, rope-soled sandals with loose straps, five-litre drums of coagulated paint. The pockmarked pavements are cluttered with dozing vagrants, decomposing cats and young German backpackers taking photos.
Jerry parked his ageing Renault 5 with a dying cough from its once go-fast