Read Bigot Hall for Free Online Page B

Leap sat still as a pillar of salt. I turned to Adrienne - she looked at me sideways like a turbot, and I knew we were undergoing similar torture.
    On stage it seemed that for half an hour a man with a beard had been deciding what to order in a restaurant, and was yelling every twang of prevarication at the top of his lungs. I was twitching like a convict in the hotseat - all my restraint turned to fog. ‘The steak, you bastard,’ I yelled, ‘have the steak and get on with it!’ Professor Leap parped like a punctured gas-line, trembling with pressurised rage as all eyes turned our way. I suppose the bearded man was used to this sort of outburst as he barely reacted, and perhaps welcomed any distraction from his embarrassing exhibition. He was now sat at the table sobbing at his weakness and lack of will. I rolled something from the corner of my eye which resembled a fragment of toast. ‘What about this?’ I bellowed, standing, and hurled it so that it bounced across the table. ‘Eat this if you can! It’s better than you deserve for boring the shit out of every bastard here!’ In a genuine attempt to contain laughter, Adrienne pursed her lips tight and let out what sounded like a florid raspberry. The bearded man was stood looking up at us in anger, fists balled on hips. The audience, which had previously glared as though holding my doom in reserve, now regarded me with a farmer’s loathing, and began to rise. ‘Go ahead, you spoon-fed idiots!’ I roared. ‘Cluttering the world with your inanities!’
    ‘The boy doesn’t mean it,’ squeaked Leap, standing in fright to assure them. ‘He’s just very, very bored.’
    It was a full four months before our bandages were removed, and for a full year Professor Leap shrieked when he saw me, which was many times a day. He began going around belligerently untrousered and was discovered one night crouching naked on the porch roof, torn by rain.
    God help those who sit through the whole of the Ring . When I desire a spectacle I look to my own conscience. Glancing back I see that my reaction to opera was reserved, considering what it has cost me in trauma and grief. We have truth in order not to die of art.

LIAR
     
     
    My mother was an insane and matronly lady with two sky-blue eyes which she claimed were interchangeable. And she sat at my bedside formulating tales which I now understand were meant to fire my imagination and slam me into nightmares so inescapable as to make The Trial look like The Clangers . She had my undivided attention as she described a spectral, nocturnal intruder, garlanded with entrails, beaked, fishfaced and wearing a turban. When I asked in undisguised wonderment why it wore a turban she said ‘To hide its glowing brain.’ Apparently this impetuous ghoul biffed its way into kids’ bedrooms and took the occupants free of charge to some farcical underworld, where even the most compliant brat was submitted to baleful tortures. Mother stated with absolute conviction that the brute was brimming over with lubrication and unnecessary thoracic legs. She said hide under the covers when you hear the frilling of its gills, watch out for its utensil hands, don’t even try to locate its arse, and so on.
    It was clear we couldn’t have a thing like that running around and I resolved to trap and kill the beast using every ruse at my command. One of the things Mother always emphasised was that the creature only sprang into view when a child had been misbehaving. In order to lure the beast I would have to provoke some kind of ruck and I decided to belt Uncle Snapper in the eye to kick off the campaign. Clutching at his face and bellowing for assistance, Snapper flushed like a blood orange. Everyone piled in to spectate his flailing distress. ‘This flaunting idiot claims the right to ignore every moral code which inconveniences him!’ he yelled. ‘He’s just this second belted me in the face!’
    At this Father swelled with pride and pleasure. ‘Good