Tom Sharpe - Riotous Assembly

He was just speculating on the matter when his thoughts were drowned by the roar of a gun just above his head and a cloud of feathers suddenly obscured his view of the garden. 'Chicken,' he yelled as the Sergeant disappeared round the corner of the house, and he was still screaming abuse some minutes later when the Sergeant followed by several Konstabels reappeared. It seemed that his voice issuing through the hole he had managed to chew in the rubber hood carried less than its normal quota of authority. The little group of policemen gathered below him seemed more amused by his orders than likely to obey them.

'Let me down,' yelled the Kommandant. 'Let me down.' Against this background of ignored instructions, Sergeant de Kock was explaining the nastier facts of life to the young konstabels.

'What you see before you,' he said portentously, 'is a transvestite.'

'What's that mean, Sergeant,' inquired a konstabel.

'It means a man who likes dressing up in women's clothes. This transvestite is also a pervert.'

'Let me down, you sod,' yelled the Kommandant.

'It's a pervert,' continued the Sergeant, 'because it is a homosexual and it's a pervert twice over because it's a rubber fetishist.'

'I'll have you stripped of your stripes if you don't get me down.'

'What's a rubber fetishist, Sergeant?'

'It's someone who dresses up in rubber nighties and hangs out of other people's bedroom windows soliciting people below,' continued the Sergeant plucking feathers and lights off his uniform. 'It's also a product of the permissive society and as you all know South Africa is not a permissive society. What this swine is doing is against the law here, and what I suggest is that we shove a bullet or two up his arse and give him the thrill to end all thrills.'

The suggestion was greeted with nods of approval from the konstabels and a crescendo of screams from the hooded dangling figure. Only one naive konstabel objected.

'But wouldn't that be murder, Sergeant?' he inquired.

Sergeant de Kock looked at him sternly. 'Are you telling me,' he asked, 'that you think that blokes should be allowed to run around the country dressed in women's nighties?'

'No, Sergeant. It's against the law.'

'That's what I just said, so we'd be doing our duty if we put a bullet in him.'

'Couldn't we just arrest him?' the konstabel asked.

'This is your commanding officer, and I order you to let me down.'

'It's guilty of another crime now, Sergeant,' said another konstabel. 'It's impersonating a police officer.'

'You young konstabels know the procedure or you bloody well ought to,' continued the Sergeant. 'In the case of a criminal apprehended in the commission of a crime, what do you do?'

'Arrest him,' chorused the konstabels.

'And if you can't arrest him? If he tries to escape?'

'You give him a warning.'

'And what if he doesn't stop trying to escape?'

'You shoot him. Sergeant.'

'Right,' said the Sergeant. 'Now are you trying to tell me that that bastard isn't a criminal caught in the commission of a crime, and that he isn't trying to escape?'

The konstabels had to agree that the Sergeant was right, and they had just reached this point in their deliberations when Konstabel Els came limping triumphantly round the corner dragging the Dobermann after him.

'Look what I've got,' he said proudly.

Sergeant de Kock's little group were not impressed. 'Look what we've got,' they said, and Konstabel Els had to admit that what was hanging squirming from the window made his own trophy look pretty tame.

'Just doing a queer in,' said Sergeant de Kock. 'Want to join in, Els, should be just up your street?'

'Not my street,' said Els peering up at the figure. 'That's Kommandant van Heerden's street, that's what that is. I'd know it anywhere.'

As the firing party broke up in confusion at the news that it was the Kommandant who was hanging there, the woman largely responsible for his predicament was debating what to do next. She thought that she must have at last got it into the thick head of the Kommandant that she was capable of killing Fivepence and while she realized that Kommandant van Heerden's opinion no longer mattered, she hoped that his successor would have enough sense to arrest her promptly.

She went downstairs to look for a policeman to escort her to her cell in Piemburg Police Station, but the house appeared to be deserted.

'I must have scared them off,' she said to herself and went to fetch her car. Halfway to the garage she realized that Fivepence had the keys with him and instead she climbed into one of the police Land Rovers and started the engine.

As the konstabels on the other side of Jacaranda House assisted the Kommandant down the ladder, they gave no thought to the Land Rover that sailed unsteadily up the drive. At the gate the sentry signalled it out and the car disappeared round the corner and down the road into Piemburg.

Most of the events of the day had passed clean over the head of the Bishop of Barotseland. Manacled and naked, he lay in the cellar and tried to concentrate on spiritual questions as being less painful than the affairs of the flesh. He wasn't particularly successful in this effort; hunger and pain competed with fear to occupy his attention, and over them all there hung the awful dread that he was going mad. It was less in fact fear at the thought that he was going than that he had already gone. In twenty-four hours he had seen the accepted tenets of his world abused in a way which had, he had to admit, all the hallmarks of insanity.

'I am a bishop and my sister is a murderess,' he said to himself reassuringly. 'If my sister is not a murderess, it is possible that I am not a bishop.' This line of logic didn't seem very helpful and he gave it up as likely to disturb what little balance of mind he had left. 'Someone is mad,' he concluded, and began to wonder if the voices he had heard in the depths of the swimming-bath were not after all symptoms of the insanity he seemed to be suffering from.

On the other hand his firm belief in the intervention of the Lord in the affairs of the world led him to wonder how he had transgressed so gravely as to warrant the punishment that had fallen on him. He came to the conclusion that he had been guilty of _hubris._ 'Pride comes before a fall,' he said, but he couldn't imagine what height of pride could justify the depths to which he had fallen. Certainly the little bit of self-congratulation he had allowed himself on his appointment to Barotseland hardly called for the appalling punishment he was now undergoing. He preferred to believe that his present sufferings were a preparation for better things to come, and a test of his faith. He consoled himself with the thought that there must be some people in the world in even worse plights, though he couldn't think who they were or what they were suffering.

'I shall bear my tribulations gladly and my soul will be renewed,' he said smugly and gave himself up to meditation.

Kommandant van Heerden had come to quite different conclusions. He had borne enough tribulations in the past twenty-four hours to last him a lifetime. He knew now that there were three things he never wanted to see again. Rubber nightdresses, Sergeant de Kock and Jacaranda House. All three had lost whatever charm they had once held for him, and in the case of the first two that was nil.

As for Jacaranda House, he had to admit he had once liked the place, but he could see now that his feelings were not reciprocated. The house evidently reserved its favours for those of impeccable social standing and British descent. For lesser mortals it held terrors. In decreasing order of social standing he placed himself, Els, the Dobermann, Fivepence and the vulture. He himself had been trussed, terrified and threatened with death. Els had been savaged on two separate occasions. The Dobermann had been bitten to death. Fivepence had been deposited all over the garden and the vulture all over Sergeant de Kock. All in all, these indignities had been too closely related to the class of the recipients for there to be any doubt that the reputation for snobbery the Hazelstones enjoyed was not without foundation in fact. On the whole he thought Els had come off pretty lightly, considering his origins and social standing.