John Barlow - Eating Mammals

On this occasion the fellow in question was a tall, grim-looking thug in his mid-fifties, not unlike Mulligan in build, but a degree or two smaller in all departments. A scowl had adorned his face all evening and now, just as Mulligan made to return to the stage, this man stood up, to a variety of rumblings, mutterings, and not a few sit down! s. But he stood firm, a pudding spoon at the ready, held down at his thigh, inadvertently, I believe, although it looked for all the world like a deholstered pistol. He stared straight at the platter.

Mulligan was not one for humiliating people, no matter how disagreeable they were, but this chap had certainly set himself up for a rather large slice of humble pie, although in this case of a rather unusual recipe. Mulligan had no desire to crush the poor man’s infamy, yet what could be done? He marched over with the golden plate and, rather obviously half filling his spoon, offered it to the new challenger. Not to be put off with insults, the man brushed Mulligan’s spoon aside and grabbed the platter, spilling a good deal of dust down his suit in the process. He dug his own spoon into the pile and brought it up to his mouth, spilling about half its load. Having tipped what remained into his mouth, he repeated the operation two more times, both times resulting in significant spillage, although at least proving beyond doubt that his mouth was indeed full. After returning the gold plate to Mulligan, he strode over to the stage, slowly and with his chest out in front, and took a long draught from the Egyptian jug. The liquid ran down his chin, staining his collar a salmon pink. When he could absorb no more liquid, he returned to his table, stood face to face with Mulligan and swallowed. Three times. After a period in which his hard face turned red, and then white, he took up his glass of port and drank that too.

Mulligan led the tumultuous applause. With the platter held out in front of him, he shook the man’s hand vigorously, managing to spill a good cupful more dust down the front of the chap’s jacket without anyone noticing. Then, more as a joke than anything, he offered the plate again. Somewhat gingerly, Tough then helped himself to a more modest spoonful. To cheers all around, he slugged down someone else’s wine greedily and, after another long and protracted swallowing, sat down, bringing his diverting cameo to a close. However, his contribution to the evening’s entertainment really only ended some twenty minutes later as he was dragged out of the hall, groaning the word mother.

Then we were down to the seat. Somehow I didn’t expect him to eat it, horsehair, brass tacks and all. But in it went, Mulligan tearing bits of cloth and stuffing from the main structure and dropping them into the funnel. The grinding became easier, and even the brass tacks, which were the very final items to go in, seemed to cause no problems.

As soon as the last remains of the seat had disappeared down the funnel, Mulligan made a furtive adjustment to The Machine and whispered: ‘Carry on turning!’

He had cut off the supply, with a good deal of the chair still inside the grinder. Within seconds no more of the fine, wispy grounds of horsehair and velvet accumulated on the gold plate. Nevertheless, I continued cranking, and he made an elaborate pretence of ensuring that everything had been minced up, and that the last crumbs of chair were ready to eat.

Whilst munching them down he delivered some amusing observations on the nature of horsehair, it being but inches away from real meat etc., and once or twice, in great pain, removed a mangled brass tack from his mouth, holding his jaw in agony, and then offering it to a nearby member of the audience. Of course, the tacks from the chair were all by now ground down to a fine powder, or, indeed, were still inside The Machine. The mangled ones were from a supply of such items secreted in his jacket.

As the last spoonfuls of chair went in and, with much apparent effort, went down, I became alarmed at the great man’s obvious discomfort; he walked ponderously, and held very still whilst, with a slow, tense concentration, he attempted to swallow. One felt that he was bunged up solid with sodden dust, and that each new mouthful found its way no further down than the back of the throat, where it lodged itself, tickling the uvula and impeding the flow of his breath. By this point his stomach was so distended that he appeared to be in constant danger of toppling forward; I am convinced that, for one horrific moment, every person watching believed that Mulligan was about to perish there on the stage, as his huge bulk ground to a final halt. The sawdust, it seemed, had set firm inside him.

And there he remained, utterly still, his eyelids drooping heavily like those of a man passing quietly from drunkenness to unconsciousness. Finally, his head turning painfully slowly towards the silent ranks of dinner suits, he said, in a quite unconcerned manner: ‘I think I need a drink.’

After innumerable pats on the back, and calls of Bravo! and Good show! he finally opted for a place next to the small, tubby man, who grinned like a delighted child. He accepted a glass of brandy, and nibbled at the few petits fours which were left, in evident high spirits and answering the questions thrown at him with the best humour he could: Have you ever eaten a horse? (‘ Yes, but I made sure it was a filly!’) What about an umbrella? (‘The spokes get in one’s teeth!’) Snakes? (‘By the sackful, my man! Nothing better!’) A window? (‘Let’s draw the curtains on that question …’) The complete works of Dickens? (‘Not to my literary taste, but I did sample the pulped score of The Pirates of Penzance, and found it rather toothsome!’). Et cetera, et cetera.

Thus, my introduction to the art of eating had been, by preposterous good fortune, the very best possible. Mulligan stayed at the table with the Freemasons just as long as it took for everyone to realise, with incredulity still framing their thoughts, that this man really had ingested, had dined on a chair. Just long enough also to confound the widespread suspicion that he would dash straight off and expel the contents of his stomach down the lavatory. Indeed, he was eating again, and accepted at least three glasses of port from the excited company around him.

At last, with beaming, happy faces bidding him goodnight, and several dozen earnest handshakes and garbled declarations of his damned brilliance duly acknowledged, we began to dismantle The Machine. The process was over almost as soon as it was begun, since (as I subsequently discovered, to my eternal gratitude) the contraption was designed not so much for its compactness in transit as for the speed with which it could be returned to its crates. We were packed up and ready to go even before the last, drunken stragglers in their crumpled jackets and cock-eyed bow ties had staggered from the premises. The low-growling Rolls-Royce carried us away from the Masonic hall and into the darkened streets and lanes of northern England.

And it never occurred to me to wonder where we had been, east, west, city, town, village. The single point of reference I can offer is that, a good many miles from the place in question, behind a hedge on a secluded country lane, someone deposited a curious mound of damp, orange-coloured sawdust.

‘Did you think I was going to sleep with that lot inside me?’ he said, rather superciliously as he climbed back into the car and we headed off into the night.

For the next seven years I accompanied Mulligan around the world, although by this time his world had reduced in splendour and opportunity considerably. He never replaced the car, or the suit for that matter. But he kept going. And with the maestro’s approval I undertook some freelance appearances of my own, during the increasingly long breaks between his own performances. Having neither the reputation nor the contacts which Mulligan could rely on, my own career began not in the homes of crown princes and cinema actresses, of shy millionaires with glamorous Riviera villas, but in obscure towns, unheard of village fairs, mostly in dark, faceless corners of Europe, and at the odd German festival where a hushed-up sideshow of bizarre and illegal acts would be organised for those of perverser mind than the sausage munchers and beer swillers.