River Boy leaves the Cult

River Boy leaves the Cult and walks off into the wide wild world

Chapter 3 - A new dawn

Godfrey's patience paid off. Exactly three weeks after Cloud Berry and River Boy had left the Cult, the Small Pixie Woman disappeared.

She left no note. Instead, she left a symbolic sign - a shoe pointing north on the kitchen floor. Draped over the sink was a single sock. And balanced on the hot tap was an apple.

Godfrey did a little jig as he hurled the apple out through the window, kicked the shoe under the table and threw the sock into the bin. Peace was his at last.

Although it was now early July, he lit a roaring fire in the study. He banged on the barometer and noted approvingly that the barometric pressure was falling. He thumped on the thermometer and registered that the digital display showed that the outside temperature stood at sixty-four degrees Fahrenheit. But he didn’t believe it, of course. More than likely, a blizzard of unusual ferocity was on its way and the thermometer had been corrupted. Why else was the barometer falling so rapidly? It was dropping like a stone!

Contentedly, he dug his ancient radio out from its hiding place at the bottom of a cupboard and tuned it into Radio 4. It was ten o'clock and the news was on. Godfrey sat back in his armchair and nodded approvingly at the various disasters that were going on in the world. Yes, the end of the world was approaching much more rapidly than people had anticipated! Soon people would have no choice but to sign up to the only option left to them...the Godfrey Simmons Cult. All was going very nicely. Suddenly, he leapt up.

“What am I thinkin’ of?” he roared. “A smoke! This very minute!”

It was only a matter of minutes for him to dash out to his old pick-up truck, roar off to the nearby village of Millsford and buy three packets of Marlboro Reds. It wasn’t so fast returning home again though. Godfrey was not what might be called a courteous driver. He was Godfrey Simmons – and that meant that everyone else on the road should give way to him. Unfortunately for Godfrey, while hurtling along one of the narrow country lanes, he met a farmer driving a big tractor coming the other way who did not share this view. The farmer had a wide trailer loaded with hay and Godfrey could not pass. The farmer refused to join the Godfrey Simmons Cult and give up alcohol and television. He also refused to reverse his hay into a field.

In vain, Godfrey raged and threatened and even hinted darkly about a plague falling suddenly upon the farmer’s cattle. The farmer sat there calmly, ignoring the blasts of Godfrey’s horn and then got out a pasty and proceeded to chew solidly on it.

Time was on the farmer’s side – Godfrey was dying for a cigarette and he had no matches on him. It would have been impossible to smoke in public anyway. The farmer might report it to the old Cult members!

His face burning with humiliation, Godfrey reversed his old pick-up truck into the hedge. He refused to acknowledge the farmer’s laconic wave as he drove his tractor and trailer past. Red with fury, he raced home and skidded to a halt on the dusty concrete of his farmyard.

He flung open his front door and ran into his study. He grabbed a box of matches off the mantlepiece, tore open a packet of cigarettes with fumbling fingers and began to smoke furiously.

For perhaps half an hour he was in bliss. For about fifteen minutes after that, he wasn’t so sure. Ten minutes after that, he was certain. His mouth was dry, his throat parched and his lungs painful. He hated smoking.

“Damn it!” he roared, flinging the remaining offending cigarettes into the open fire. “They ought to be banned! Bad for your health – and bad for your pocket! I shall ban it! I, Godfrey Simmons, of the Godfrey Simmons Cult, hereby ban tobacco! It shall be prohibited!”

He glared around the study. His eye fell on the clock on the far wall. He stared unbelievingly for a moment and then let out a bellow of rage.

“Quarter past two!” he roared. “Lunch is almost an hour late! I’m starving!”

He limped out into the hall. “Fiona!” he shouted up at the carpetless stairs. “It’s nearly three o’clock!”

There was no reply. Godfrey’s face twisted with fury as he inserted his middle finger into his right ear and twirled it furiously. He sniffed vigorously at a fingerful of old earwax and then stared angrily at it for a moment.

“Where the hell is she?” he demanded furiously. Then he remembered that there was no Fiona. He wiped his finger on his holey jumper and shuffled towards the kitchen.

“Where’s that stupid Irish Woman?” he grumbled. “Damn it! I’m hungry!”

He tripped over a shoe that had been left lying in the kitchen doorway and staggered, cursing, against the counter.

“Who left that shoe there? Who was so unmindful…? Oh, yes… yes… of course…”

He paused and held a heated debate with himself, his bearded face contorted. Perhaps… well… perhaps… no… well, yes. Perhaps being alone wasn’t so good after all. Besides, he didn’t like smoking now.

His face cleared. I need followers, he decided. I need followers to lead along the difficult path. I think I’ll go out and get some. Yes, I’ll get some disciples!

Once he had made up his mind, Godfrey was a man of action. He banged on his barometer (“Steady – don’t believe it!”), ignored the thermometer and then ate a meagre lunch of some cold leftovers from the night before. He returned to his study and set to work.

First, he wrote out some leaflets.

Fed up with your Job?

Ever wonder what It’s All About?

The Godfrey Simmons Cult is the fastest growing Cult in Europe!

Join us and discover your True Potential!

He added his address at the bottom and then nodded approvingly.

“That’ll bring ‘em in!” he told the barometer happily as he rapped sharply on the glass. “Still steady – don’t believe it!”

He drove to the town of Falmouth, where his long black cloak and shaggy grey beard drew many curious glances. His sister lived in Falmouth but he did not call upon her. Right from the start, she had been openly hostile and contemptuous about his Cult. She was a particularly bigoted kind of strict Catholic and regarded him as a devil worshiper.

Godfrey went to a copy shop and got five hundred leaflets printed. Then he drove back to Millsford, which was the closest village to his farm, and started distributing.

“Get the whole village to join!” he muttered as he pushed leaflets through letterboxes. “This’ll wake ‘em up a bit! Take their minds off shagging sheep for a while, this will! Get off me, you horrible little dog! How dare you bite my cosmic cloak!”

South east Cornwall near where this book was based

Chapter 2 – Cigarettes and rebellion

Contrary to Godfrey’s expectations, however, the Small Pixie Woman did not leave the following day. In fact, she was still there at the end of the week and showed no signs of leaving. The friendly little voice at the back of Godfrey’s mind grew impatient. It no longer sounded so pleasant. In fact, its constant reminders of tobacco started to taunt him. Godfrey began to feel murderous.

“Go – just go!” he hissed at the Small Pixie Woman after a smokeless fortnight had passed.

She stared up at him, her big green eyes slowly growing wider and wider.

Godfrey felt slightly embarrassed. Perhaps this was not the correct way for a Cult Leader to address his disciples. He drew himself up, stared impressively at the ceiling and added:

“The Cult has diminished in its power and glory. I feel it in the earth, I smell it in the air. Things that should have been tended to have been cast aside and forgotten. The members have deserted the Cause. There is no going back. This is the End. You must go forth and multiply – there is nothing for you here. The Godfrey Simmons Cult is no more.”

The Small Pixie Woman’s face cleared. She beamed and nodded vigorously. “Mmmm!” she said. “Yes, that’s what came to This One’s mind! Only this morning, One found Oneself thinking to Oneself. And then, you know, One heard One saying to Oneself. You know, Godfrey, the being River Boy that thinks of itself as a male has left and Cloud Berry who is a girl has left and all the other bodies that were here have left. And only a fortnight ago, Fiona left and it came to mind, Godfrey, that mebbe...” Her smile became broader than ever. “Mebbe – it came to mind – One thought that perhaps the Cult was breaking up, Godfrey! Do you think this might be so, Godfrey?”

She stared earnestly up at him, her small, round face shining like a moon.

He clenched his jaw, baring yellow nicotine stained teeth. “I just told you!” he hissed down at her. “The Cult is no more!”

She nodded fervently. “Mmmm! Yes, that’s what came to This One’s mind! One thought that perhaps destiny... that, you know, it was preordained that This One should become leader of the Cult! One thought it over, Godfrey and, you know, One heard Oneself saying to Oneself that it seemed – it seemed far more appropriate that, you know, that a Woman should be leader of the Group. In fact, One said to Oneself...”

Godfrey’s heart began to beat very fast and a vein flickered dangerously beneath the yellowish skin on his forehead.

“Look!” he said and his voice shook slightly with suppressed apoplexy. “Look, I – I don’t-want-to-talk-about-it! I’m the Leader of the Cult and I say it’s no more! I have spoken!”

“Mmmm! But when a being that thinks of itself as a man shirks his duty – then a Woman must take its place! One thinks that mebbe it was preordained that this should be, Godfrey!” She drew her small frame up gravely. “This One will be Leader of the Group! This One accepts the responsibility. It has been preordained that This One should be Leader. One thinks that mebbe…you should go forth and multiply, Godfrey! After all, this is what beings that think of themselves as male usually do in the natural world, Godfrey. Mmmm! This One has spoken.”

Godfrey's pale blue eyes began to flicker dangerously from side to side. His gnarled fists clenched at his side. Hatred surged through his veins. But he went into his study and slammed the door. The Irish massacre could wait...for now.

Chapter 1 continued...

The next morning, River Boy and Cloud Berry left the Cult.  A note pinned to the study wall next to the barometer informed Godfrey that they were fed up and wanted to lead a normal life.

“A normal life!” snorted Godfrey as he limped into the kitchen to show his wife the offending note.  “You see that, Fiona?  Your children want to lead a normal life! Ha!”

 He grabbed a couple of plates from the kitchen table and hurled them violently against the wall.

“A normal life indeed!” he repeated as he picked up and threw the shattered pieces into the fireplace.  “The only normal life is here – you ungrateful, immature, retarded idiots!  Well, who would have thought it?  The way young people throw away Paradise these days!  It’s obviously symbolic of the wretched times we live in!”

Fiona sat at the kitchen table and said nothing.  She seemed unusually quiet and thoughtful this morning but the Small Pixie Woman jumped up from her chair and started beaming and nodding vigorously.

“Mmmm!” she said.  “Yes, that’s what came to This One’s mind!  Only this morning, One found Oneself thinking to Oneself.  And One heard Oneself say to Oneself, One wonders what might happen today, Godfrey.  And then, you know, River Boy and Cloud Berry leave the Group and One thought to Oneself, this must be symbolic – the fact that Cloud Berry, who is a girl and River Boy, who thinks of itself as a boy, should choose to leave the same day and it came to mind, Godfrey, that perhaps there was something symbolic...”

“Oh, it was symbolic all right!” snarled Godfrey as he poked the broken crockery in the fire viciously with a poker.  “Why can’t you just shut up, you retarded idiot! he added under his breath.  “Be quiet, you undersized, weaker sexed, inbred female... Grrrr!”

 How he hated this Small Pixie Woman – with her constant nodding and smiling… A sudden thought struck him and he paused to tug at his beard.

There were now only three members of the Cult left.  If this undersized foreign specimen of the retarded sex should leave… then there would only be two members…. hmmmm.

The following morning, Fiona left.  There was no note – but all her belongings had gone.  Godfrey threw a brick through his bedroom window for appearances' sake – but it was only a half-hearted effort.  As a matter of fact, he wasn’t upset at all.  A little voice that had arrived only yesterday had now unpacked, got itself quite comfortably settled and had started to murmur pleasantly in the back of his mind.  A friendly little voice that repeated over and over again one magic word. 

Tobacco.

For the past few weeks, despite his fiercest struggles, a craving to smoke had been clutching at Godfrey’s lungs.  But tobacco was top of the Cult’s banned list.  It was impossible for him as leader to smoke.  But now, things were different.  Fiona had left, the children had left – there was nobody around to see!

Then he remembered the Small Pixie Woman.  Well, tomorrow she would go.  Tomorrow she could go and nod her stupid head elsewhere.  And tomorrow, he promised himself, he would buy twenty Marlboro reds.

Nowhere Children Inc.

Chapter 1 - The Beginning of the Cult
Polygamy. Bizarre sexual rituals in remote forest clearings. The leader of the Cult almost Godlike in his power over the other members. People rushing to cater to his slightest whim. His permission needed for the simplest of tasks. More and more members joining up every week. FBI now estimate the Cult several thousand strong – with centres springing up all over the world. Worrying reports of lethal weapons being amassed at Cult HQ.

Godfrey Simmons tugged at his straggly grey beard and nodded with grim satisfaction. Yes, that was how it should be. Himself at the head of the fastest growing and most powerful Cult in history! The only problem was, he wasn’t.

The Godfrey Simmons Cult, which twenty years ago he had believed would encompass the entire globe, consisted of only one member. Himself.

“It’s the bloody Irish!” he told the bedroom wallpaper gloomily. “They’ve taken all my followers. It’s a pity the Germans didn’t finish the job properly and wipe ‘em all out!”

Godfrey Simmons had attended a good school in his time but his history was somewhat patchy.

“Twenty years ago, things were different!” he told the bedroom doorknob sternly.

And so they had been. Then, Godfrey’s beard had been long, black and luxuriant and the Godfrey Simmons Cult had had at least nine members – himself, Fiona and their seven children. Also, people outside the family had been showing an interest. It had seemed only a matter of time before the rest of the world saw the light and joined up.

Godfrey had drawn up Seven Commandments by which the Cult must abide and had written them on a blackboard placed in the hall.

1. No Tobacco.

2. No Television or Radio.

3. No Alcohol.

4. No Violence.

5. No Stealing.

6. No Newspapers.

7. No Disagreeing with Godfrey Simmons.

These Seven Commandments were not a success. Everyone who expressed an interest in the Cult decided they could not do without at least one of the first three banned items on the list. Godfrey tried to sweeten it by changing ‘No Disagreeing with Godfrey Simmons’ to ‘No Disagreeing with the Godfrey Simmons Cult’. This was a smart move and many changed their mind about joining until he explained to them that they would still have to keep the first three Commandments. One woman told him that, as there was to be No Disagreeing with the Godfrey Simmons Cult, no-one in the Cult would disagree with her breaking any of the Seven Commandments once she became a member! Godfrey was so angry at her perversity, he smashed his entire set of crockery. He and his family spent the following week eating from paper plates until he bought replacements from the local car boot sale.

So no one outside his family ever joined. Then the children grew up and, one by one, they left the rambling farmhouse that was the Cult’s headquarters. Some came back to visit – but none of them ever wanted to stay.

Years passed. Godfrey’s beard started to go greyer; his face grew thinner and more lined. The membership of the Cult stood at only four – himself, Fiona, Cloud Berry and River Boy. Then finally, a new disciple arrived.

She was a small pixie-like woman from Ireland and Godfrey was glad because, although he distrusted the Irish, he preferred women to men.

“They’re easier to teach,” he told himself. “And they don’t argue like men do!”

The Small Pixie Woman had big, round, green eyes and nodded and smiled respectfully at everything Godfrey said. For the first two days, he was ecstatic. After four days, he hated her.

“She doesn’t take in a word I say!” he grumbled to his thermometer. “She doesn’t argue like a sane person – she just smiles and blocks it all out!”

He limped heavily across to his barometer, rapped sharply on the glass and peered angrily at the dial. “Twenty-nine point seven – it’s falling! Oh no, we’ve got heavy weather coming!”

In Godfrey’s study, he kept a barometer and a digital thermometer that showed the outside temperature. The two instruments were placed on opposite sides of the room. Ever since he had stopped smoking, he had got into the habit of checking them several times an hour. If the temperature or barometric pressure dropped significantly, he would go into a state of agitated excitement.

“It’s gettin’ cold!” he mumbled as he shuffled back towards the thermometer. “Aha! It’s down to forty-nine! There’s gonna be a blizzard! I’d better light a fire!”

He lit the fire in his study and in a short time the place was roasting hot. He nodded contentedly. “That’ll show ‘em!” he told the barometer. He patted his pockets for his tobacco – then remembered that he didn’t smoke.

“Damn ‘em!” he snarled at the flaming logs in the fireplace. “Damn ‘em all to…to live in small, sad Cults where nobody listens to 'em! Yep! Interfering – that’s what they are! Why can't they just let people be?”

Nursery rhymes revisited

“Rock a bye baby on a tree top

When the wind blows the cradle will rock.

When the bough breaks the baby will fall,

Down will come cradle, baby and all”

“Sleep little baby,

The baby birds are sleeping in their nests.

Sleep you also.”

(Japanese version of the above).

“Go to sleep oh baby,

Or the wolf will come and eat you!”

(Spanish version of the above)

The Turkish boys come up with a business idea.

A pleasant morning spent teaching. Baked beans on homemade toast with fresh coffee for lunch. A pleasant hour teaching in the afternoon. The Turkish boys came up with a business idea.

“We will start up a company selling fireworks. We will make a lot of money because the people here in Plymouth are always getting married so we will sell fireworks for the wedding.”

“How about divorce? Will you sell fireworks for them too?”

“Yes, we will make special black fireworks for the divorce. Give us £10,000. That’s all we need. Most of the money we will spend on raw materials. Powder is what we need…and rope.”

The Beauty of Cornwall

Sea, clouds and sky...things Cornwall is very good at.

Back to England

My holiday over, I went back to working for the other language school in Plymouth. News of my hand reading skills soon spread and R, a large, black girl from the Caribbean wanted me to read her hand. Studying her figure, I had anticipated a thick sensual hand with a prominent fleshy mount of Venus and possibly with lesbian tendencies but it was not at all like I had expected

“This is strange,” I said. “I’ve never seen a hand like this before. You’ve loved two people at the same time – there’s quite a crossover period here. But both lines are entirely separate which means you must not have had physical contact with both at the same time. How strange!”

Her mouth fell open. “How did you know?! It’s true! I had this really intense relationship with this one guy, then it kinda fizzled out then when I was still seeing him I met this other guy online. That was pretty intense too but it’s just finished. I never met him in the end.”

My students wanted me to read the hands of one of their teachers. She was a stout, pleasant lady in her fifties with short grey hair and a devout air about her. She didn’t speak any English so my students had to translate what I said to her. She had a single, very deep line on her love life.

“You have one very big love in your life,” I told her.

My students giggled. “She is a Sister,” they told me. “She has been a nun all her life.”

“Maybe the big love is Jesus Christ,” said Angela and the nun nodded happily.