Algernon De Beajolais raised a gnarled, tobacco-stained finger and stroked the chin of his particularly handsome face. How, in the name of Aphrodite’s Anus, had it come to this? These were reduced circumstances, even for him.
He was sixty-five years old and the product of a marriage between two of England’s most prestigious families. He was schooled, and routinely buggered, at Eton. He’d had an extraordinary life as England’s most intrepid explorer and had discovered the one-eared floppy-fringed vampire flea of San Diego-Suarez Madagascar. He had taken tea, biscuits and heroin with four American presidents, two kings, numerous heads of state, and an old hunch back with a scalded left testicle who swore blind he was His Holiness The 14th Dali Lama.
He’d deflowered more virgins than one could shake a stick at, but a love of strong liquor and powerful opiates had instigated his decline many decades ago. Indeed, he had to sell most of his internal offal including a lung, a kidney and one of his two hearts, to assuage the violent anger of Columbia’s most feared narcotics trafficker, Juan Cornetto, following a bungled career as a drug mule.
He had endured four failed marriages, including an ill-fated liaison with a marmoset monkey who cheated on him with the RT Hon Tarquin Cattle-Prod (MP). He was friendless, destitute, and years of high-living had left him with the cognitive skills of a pox-riddled chinchilla.
And so, Algernon De Beajolais had reached his nadir. The 25th floor of a tower block in Mile End, London E3. In the capital’s most cosmopolitan borough he now resided, in the fabulously inappropriately named Ku Klux Klan House.
Number 520 was indeed bleak, like the black hole of Calcutta - only in Newham. Two rooms, mould everywhere, and the unmistakable smell of unicorn faeces hung in the fetid air.
As the days and weeks passed, Algernon De Beajolais began to settle into his new life of soul-destroying mediocrity. He spent his time listening to owl pornography on the wireless and tending to his only pet, Bob Marley’s grass snake, Trevor. He began to get to know his neighbours. They saw an old white man dressed in Harris Tweed and built-up shoes, and he saw a motley collection of feral, but oddly likeable teenagers. He was fascinated by their names - Ashkay, Manshukh, Delbert, Kwame, Kojo, Ladyblossom, Jillisha and Marlene. He was enthralled by their love of music - Dancehall, Grime, Trip-Hop, Ragga-Jungle-Hip-House, Hard House and House Clearance. He played them his ’78 record collection including Victor Sylvestor and Joe Loss, but Ladyblossom threatened to cut his head off if he did that again. He taught the loveable scamps the dances of his youth - the Charleston, the Jitterbug, and the timeless Let's String The Black Fella Up, I’m Sure He’s Guilty Although There’s No Evidence.
The teenagers language intrigued him, bereft as it was of adverbs, prepositions and pronouns. It took him an eternity to work out that “Cah man dem West rip bare shit” loosely translates to “Come chaps, let us scurry to the West End where we shall remove merchandise from up-market stores without money exchanging hands.”
The weeks rolled into months and Algernon De Beajolais found that he was actually enjoying life in Ku Klux Klan House. Most evenings, the teenagers and their parents would gather at flat 520 where he would enthral them with his tales of daring do, like the time he circumnavigated the globe on a seahorse. He had stopped drinking, although he did like to mainline Bovril occasionally. He persuaded the teenagers to return to their studies and they all attended evening classes together. He became quite the expert on Malcolm X and Timmy Y. Everyone liked him, they didn’t judge him, and cared not that he was penniless.
In the summer of 2010, Kwame became ill after being bitten by the local newsagent. The only thing that could save his life was a kidney transplant, and bizarrely enough, Algernon De Beajolais was the perfect match. He agreed to help without hesitation, knowing that the operation would kill him. At the Royal London Hospital the night before the transplant, Kwame’s mother hugged Algernon De Beajolais to her ample bosom and cried, “Lord! Look aftah your son Mistra De Beajolais, cah him really is a saint!”
Algernon De Beajolais would have cried, if he didn’t posses two glass eyes.
