Soul Cakes (Part the Second)

 

"What's a syllablub?" asked 2-D, peering over Murdoc's shoulder at a pop-up strewn, kit-built website seemingly devoted to strange culinary practices throughout the centuries. "There's them cakes I said, look. What's a sybellub?"

 

"Syllabub," said Murdoc, clicking the link. He sneered vaguely at the recipe displayed. "Ugh. The crap they used to eat back then. No wonder they were all dead by thirty. That looks disgusting."

 

"It'd curdle, surely?" Russel wondered.

 

"Err, errr, this one's worse, look! This one's that, but hot and with porridge and lard and whisky in! 'Ave some for breakfast, Russel? Lovely!" Murdoc grinned evilly whilst Russel looked somewhat queasy. "Bloody hell, not even you'd eat that, would you, Russ? I'm wondering if these cake things are going to be entirely safe, young Stu Pot..."

 

2-D pouted, barging Murdoc out of the way and clicking back to the site's main index, and thence to the Soul Cakes link. "They're fine, look," he protested. "Barley flour, yeast, warm water, all them spiceses, honey, and currants, and an egg to glaze 'em. That don't do nuffink or taste weird."

 

"Cinnamon, nutmeg, star anise, cloves, ginger... he's right, Muds; that sounds, y'know, normal," said Russel, reading. "Sounds nice, actually."

"You think any food sounds nice..." Murdoc commented slyly.

"I don't! I thought that syllabub thing sounded..." Russel searched his vocabulary for a suitable word. Finding American idiom lacking in the revulsion he wanted to convey, he settled instead for British- "Mank. And the other one, the hot one, that sounded... don't even go there. I don't wanna think about that."

"Nutmeg can make you go twirly, if you eat enough of it," said 2-D, quietly.

"You'd be dead before you could eat enough of it, lackwit; I remember trying it in the fourth form; I was sick for days..." Murdoc shuddered, briefly. "Who told you that, anyway?"

 

2-D shrugged. In a sudden, decisive motion, Murdoc snatched up his car keys. "Come on, Russ. Let's go buy the stuff for these cakes and numbnuts can bake 'em tomorrow morning."

 

"Why now?" grumbled Russel, at the same moment as 2-D whined "why can't I come?"

 

"Now, because we're going to go and buy Hallowe'en costumes tomorrow, unless of course you two don't want to come, in which case me and Noodle will go and do it on our own, I suppose..." there was a duologue of "no!" from 2-D and Russel- "And you, you're not coming because someone's got to stay here with Noodle and you're going to sit there googling until you've found that song you were rabbiting on about. Right?"

 

2-D made a couple of dark, petulant, muttering noises.

 

 

The false, neon brightness of a twenty-four-hour supermarket in the watches of the night. Murdoc clamped his arms to either side of their shopping trolley and took a long run up at the bakery aisle, skidding the final twenty feet on the soles of his shoes.

 

"He's not with me," said Russel, quietly, to no-one in particular. He chucked a packet of currants and a sachet of yeast into the trolley on Murdoc's next high-speed pass. "What else?" Russel asked, grabbing the front of the trolley suddenly and inserting a jar of honey and half a dozen eggs inside it with a little more care. "Knock it off. People are looking at us funny."

 

"Spices and that, the rest of the stuff for the cakes; and a bottle of scrumpy," replied Murdoc. Russel raised his eyebrows. Murdoc glared. "If you think I'm traipsing around in the bastard cold on Hallowe'en night, done up like a goth's dinner and getting piss-wet in the inevitable rain without a bottle of scrumpy to nourish and entertain me, you've got another think coming mate. Besides, it's traditional. You're supposed to dip the last dreg in toast and give it to the dog, or something."

 

Russel looked confused. "Alright, but... what the Sam Hell is 'scrumpy'...? And what does a dog got to do with it?"

 

Murdoc merely grinned, and set off towards the alcohol aisle.

 

 

They forgot the flour, of course. They didn't realise until halfway home, shivering in the Geep. By then, 2-D had already found the song he was looking for, a slightly-wailing 4/4 roundel. He had gazed at the score and even tootled it on his melodica a couple of times. It had a strange, off-kilter lilt to it, like Greensleeves or The Wassailing Song.

 

He had also got bored, and hungry.

 

"...Why you had to get rid of the damn Pontiac..." Russel was moaning, huddled into the depths of his jacket against autumn night and the wind of Murdoc's driving. "That had a roof. There, open corner store. On the left. Why it has to be barley flour anyway is beyond me."

 

"Eleusinian Mysteries, Russ," said Murdoc, as he pulled the Geep over beside a small, dilapidated shop. A terse, hand-printed notice on the door, affixed with yellowing sellotape; informed customers that 'Only one schoolchildren permitted on premises at all times, please'. There was a greying arrangement of postcards in the window advertising antiquated products and services, variously rat-catching, home hairdressing and a Datsun Cherry. Within was a pocket-sized world of chipped linoleum and stuttering flourescent tubes. The past gazed out from the walls in dusty boxes of Vesta curry, the muted jewels of jam jars looking like they had been freshly excavated from an archaeological dig, wiped to a vague semblence of clean and then placed onto the shelves. Murdoc continued.

 

"Greek. Dianistic cult. They used to get shown two sheaves of barley when they were initiated; a good one and a blighted one. The people who picked the good ones went on to be the priests and priestesses people saw out in the world, like..."

 

"And the other ones got kicked out?" asked Russel, finding a small brown and red paper bag on one of the lower shelves. "Barley flour. There."

 

"One-pound-twenty-nine?! You're having a giggle, mate... No, they became, sort of, like... prophets, or something. We don't quite know. It's a Mystery. Ba-boom. Come on, let's get home before brainache does something inspired like sticking his tongue on the electric meter and saying ah."

 

Russel picked up the flour. "And that little story was relevant to us needing barley flour for these cakes, because...?"

"I don't know! Because it was vaguely witchy and had barley in it?! Bloody hell! They were probably made with barley flour because barley failed less often than wheat, or kept longer or was cheaper or something, happy now?! What am I, the all-knowing all powerful Murdoc? ...Don't answer that."

 

 

Dimly, from far away, 2-D could hear the noise of the TV. It made him giggle. The TV said "was first synthesized from ergot in the 1920's", which 2-D found obscurely funny. He was back in the winnebago, having made somewhat of a mess in the kitchen. "Spoing!" remarked 2-D to the television, and it replied "a fungus affecting badly-stored or damp rye". 2-D giggled again. "Rye-eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee," he said, poking the spoon in his hand around the pint mug he'd brought in from the kitchen. It was definitely all gone. Beyond the sad, deprived clinking of cutlery on empty glass he could hear a diesel engine coming closer. Using the (now licked clean) spoon, 2-D prodded indistinctly at the eight-track on which he'd been recording sparse, bossa-nova laden melodica demos of what he'd found out was called the Souling Song. "Pling!" said 2-D. "Exponents such as Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary in the 1960s," the TV informed him. "Bah," 2-D said to it, uncaring. There was the thump of a car door in the still night outside, an answering thud a minute later. 2-D hit playback on the eight-track and sprawled on the floor, arms akimbo; letting the sound seep into him. The TV said "produces hallucinations," and 2-D threw the remote at it, stunning it into silence.

 

Night cold pounced through the door as Murdoc and Russel stepped up into the winnebago. It rocked a moment, and then settled. Murdoc put down two bags of shopping and gazed at his lead singer. "What...?" he began.

 

2-D looked up, still making little giggling noises to himself. "I'se found it. A soul a soul a soul cake, please missis a soul cake, an apple a pear a plum or a cherry, anyfink good to make us merry, one for... someone, and another for... him... and three for the little boy who lives down the... is called... Jim... or something... and I found out what sillybob was, and I ate it. D'you wanna know wha' sillybob ish, guys?"

 

"One for Peter, one for Paul, three for him that made us all," Murdoc read from the computer screen. "Do I want to know what else you've been doing? Probably not. Go on, what is it? There'd better not be any left that you'll try to feed to us."

 

"There isn't," 2-D told him, firmly. "It was alkyholic Angel Delight," he continued; and then passed out, smiling.