The Antipope
Pooley’s stomach made an unmentionable sound. ‘Professor,’ said he, ‘I would be exceedingly grateful for some breakfast, I have not eaten for twenty-four hours. I am feeling a trifle peckish.’
‘Of course.’ The Professor rang the bell which summoned his musty servant. Presently a fine breakfast of heated rolls, eggs, bacon, tomatoes, coffee and toast appeared and Pooley set about it with ravenous zeal.
For the next hour thereafter Jim spoke of all he had heard regarding the mystery tramp, from Neville’s first encounter to Norman’s terrifying experiences in the Plume Cafe, and of the welter of theories, conjectures and speculations which had been rife in the Swan. He spoke of Soap Distant’s talk of the Hollow Earth, omitting his own experiences within the mysterious subterranean world, and of Omally’s faerie ramblings and of those folk who held the belief that the tramp was the Wandering Jew.
The old Professor listened intently, occasionally raising his snowy eyebrow or shaking his head until finally Jim’s tale had run its course. ‘Fascinating,’ he said at length, ‘quite fascinating. And you say that all those who had any personal dealings with this tramp felt an uncanny need to cross themselves?’
‘As far as I can make out, but you must understand that a lot of what I have told you was heard second-hand as it were, nobody around here gives away much if they can possibly help it.’
‘So much I know.’
‘And so, what is to be done?’
‘I think at present there is little we can do. We must be constantly on watch. Report to me with any intelligence, no matter how vague, which comes to hand. I will prepare myself as best I can, both mentally and physically. Our man is close, that is certain. You have seen him. I can sense his nearness and it is likewise with the creatures in the case. Soon he will come for them and when he does so, we must be ready.’ Pooley reached out a hand towards the humidor. ‘Why don’t you have one of the ones in your top pocket?’ asked the old Professor, smiling broadly.
15
Pooley sat that lunchtime alone in a corner seat at the Flying Swan, a half of pale ale growing warm before him. He sighed deeply. All that the Professor had said weighed heavily on his soul, and he wondered what should be done for the best. He thought he should go around to the Mission and confront Captain Carson regarding what Holmes would have referred to as ‘the singular affair of the purloined wheelbarrow’, which was something he and Omally should really have done the very next day. But the Captain’s animosity towards visitors was well known to all thereabouts, especially to Jim who had once been round there to scrounge a bed for the night and had been run off with a gaff hook. Anyway, it was Omally’s wheelbarrow and if he chose to forget the matter then that was up to him. Maybe, he thought, it would be better for the Professor simply to hand over the bean things to this Dark One, whoever he might be, in the hope that he would depart with them, never to return. But that was no good, Pooley had felt the evil and he knew that the Professor was right. It would not go away by being ignored. Pooley sighed anew. A bead of perspiration rolled down the end of his nose and dropped into his ale.
Archroy entered the Flying Swan. Pooley had not seen him for some weeks; he had been strangely absent from the Cowboy Night fiasco. Jim wondered in which direction his suspicions pointed in the matter of the stolen beans. ‘He doesn’t know how lucky he is,’ he thought.
Archroy, however, looked far from lucky upon this particular occasion. His shoulders drooped and his lopsided hairpiece clung perilously to his shining pate. Pooley watched him from the corner of his eye. He could not recall ever having seen anybody looking so depressed, and wondered whether the sorry specimen might appreciate a few kind words. For the life of him Jim couldn’t think of any. Archroy looked up from the pouring of his ale and sighted Pooley, nodded in half-hearted greeting and sank back into his misery.
Pooley looked up through the pub windows. The flat-blocks quivered mirage-like in the heat and a bedraggled pigeon or two fluttered away into the shimmering haze. The heat strangled the bar-room air, everything moved in slow motion except Father Moity, resident priest to St Joan’s, Brentford, who unexpectedly entered the bar at this moment. He strode towards the bar, oblivious to the battering heat, and ordered a small sherry. Neville poured this and noted that the priest made no motions towards his pocket upon accepting same. ‘You are far from your cool confessional upon such a hot day,’ said Neville cynically.
‘Now, now, Neville,’ said the priest, raising his blessing finger in admonishment. ‘I have come to seek out two members of my flock who seem to have fallen upon stony ground.’ Pooley much enjoyed listening to the young priest, whose endless supply of inaccurate quotation was a joy to the ear. ‘Two prodigal sons who have sold their birth-rights for a mess of porridge.’ Pooley chuckled. ‘You know them as Hairy Dave and Jungle John.’
‘They’re barred!’ said Neville with a voice like thunder.
‘Barred is it, and what pestilence have they visited upon you on this occasion?’
‘They blew my bloody pub up.’
‘Anarchists is it?’
‘Bloody maniacs!’ said Neville bitterly.
‘Raise not thine hand in anger,’ said the priest, bringing his blessing finger once more into play. ‘How many times shall I forgive my brother, seven isn’t it? I say unto you seven hundred times seven, or some such figure.’
‘Well, they are barred and they stay barred!’
‘Tsk, tsk!’ said the priest. ‘It is because of bars that I find myself here, a lamb amongst wolves.’
‘And how is the bar of your Catholic Club?’ asked Neville sarcastically. ‘Still doing a roaring trade with its cut-price drinks and taking the bread of life from the mouths of hardworking publicans?’
‘Judge not, lest thyself be judged,’ said the priest. The bars I refer to are of the gymnastical variety.’
Keeping fit was an obsession with Father Moity which verged at times upon the manic. He was forever jogging to and fro about the parish; as Pooley watched the young priest he noted the giveaway track-suit bottoms and striped running shoes peeping from beneath his robes of office. He did chin-ups in the vestry, calisthenics in the pulpit and had developed a system of Tai-Chi exercises to correspond with the ritual movements of the mass.
Even as Pooley observed him at the bar, the young priest was flexing his biceps and doing the occasional knees-bend.
None of these things went unnoticed, and the handsome, tanned and manly figure of the priest raised extraordinary feelings within the breasts of both matronly females and young housewives alike. He had become a focus for their erotic desires. Confession became a nightmare. Even women of well-known and obvious virginity confided to the handsome young priest their nights of passion in the satyric embraces of demonic succubi. Father Moity marvelled at their invention, but more often he covered his ears and allowed his mind to wander.
Consequently his penances were likely to be ‘three Hail Marys and a hundred press-ups’ or ‘an our father and a work out on the heavy bag.’
‘Gymnasium bars,’ the young priest continued, ‘for the church hall. I was promised that they would be constructed before the Olympic trials came on the television. I wish to take a few pointers.’
‘Well I haven’t seen them,’ sneered Neville, ‘and I have no wish to.’
Father Moity said nothing but peered into his empty sherry glass and then about the bar. ‘Jim Pooley,’ he said, his eyes alighting upon that very man.
‘Father?’
‘Jim, my lad.’ The priest bounced across the bar and joined Pooley at his table. ‘Would you by any chance have seen those two local builders upon your travels?’
‘I have not,’ said Jim, ‘but Father, I would have a few words with you if I may.’
‘Certainly.’ The priest seated himself, placing the empty sherry glass noisily upon the table. It vastly amused Pooley that even a priest of such Olympian leanings was not averse to a couple of free sherries. Pooley obliged and the young prie
st thanked him graciously.
‘Firstly,’ said Jim in a confidential tone, ‘I have been given to understand that Hairy Dave and Jungle John were doing a great deal more construction work for you than a set of gymnasium bars. I heard mention of an entire chapel or the like being built.’
‘Did you now?’ The young priest seemed genuinely baffled. ‘Well I know nothing of that, chapel is it?’
‘I took it to be R.C., because the plans were in Latin.’
The priest laughed heartily. ‘Sure you are taking the rise out of me Jim Pooley, although the joke is well appreciated. The Church has not drawn up its plans in Latin since the fifteenth century.’
Jim shrugged and sniffed at his steaming beer. ‘Stranger and stranger,’ said he.
‘Strange, is it?’ said the priest. ‘It is indeed strange that those lads downed tools last Thursday night and never returned to be paid for what they had so far accomplished, for those fellows that I would call strange.’
Jim sighed once more. Something was going on in Brentford and it seemed not only he was involved. ‘Father,’ said Jim with a terrible suddenness, ‘what do you know of evil?’
The priest raised his fine dark eyebrows and stared at Pooley in wonder. ‘That my son, is a most unexpected question.’
‘I mean real evil,’ said Pooley, ‘not petty getting off the bus without paying evil, or the sin of pride or anger or minor trivial forms of evil, I mean real pure dark evil, the creeping sinister evil which lurks at the corners of men’s minds, the low horrible––’
The priest broke in upon him. ‘Come now,’ said he, ‘these are not fine things to talk of on a hot summer’s day, all things bright and beautiful as they are.’
Pooley studied the honest face of the young priest. What could he know of real evil? Nothing whatever Jim concluded.
‘My son,’ said Father Moity, noting well Pooley’s disturbed expression, ‘what is troubling you?’
Pooley smiled unconvincingly. ‘Nothing,’ he said, ‘just musing I suppose. Of Dave and John, I have seen nothing. Possibly they drink now at the New Inn or Jack Lane’s, I should try there if I were you.’
The priest thanked Jim, wished him all of God’s blessing for the balance of the day and jogged from the bar.
Pooley returned to his melancholic reverie. When Neville called time at three he left the bar, his half of light ale still steaming in its glass, and shambled out into the glare. He wandered off down Sprite Street and crossed beside his beloved memorial bench to enter the sweeping tree-lined drive which curved in a graceful arc towards the Butts Estate.
He passed within a few yards of the Professor’s front door and crunched over the gravel footway before the Seamen’s Mission to emerge through the tiny passageway into the lower end of the High Street near the canal bridge.
As he leant upon the parapet, squinting along the dried-up stretch of ex-waterway into the shimmering distance, Pooley’s thoughts were as parched and lifeless as the blistered canal bed. He wondered what had become of Soap Distant. Had he been blasted to dark and timeless oblivion by the floor tide which engulfed him, or had the rank waters carried him deep into the inner earth where even now he swapped drinking stories with old Rigdenjyepo and the denizens of that sunless domain? He wondered at Archroy’s misery and at what urgent business might have lured Hairy Dave and his hirsute twin from their Friday payment at St Joan’s.
Pooley tried to marshal his thoughts into some plan of campaign, but the sun thrashed down relentlessly upon his curly head and made him feel all the more dizzy and desperate. He would repair to the Plume Cafe for a cup of char, that would invigorate and refresh, that was the thing, the old cup that cheers. Pooley dragged his leathern elbows from the red-hot parapet and plodded off up the High Street.
The door of the Plume was wedged back and a ghastly multi-coloured slash curtain hung across the opening.
Pooley thrust the gaudy plastic strips apart and entered the cafe. The sudden transition from dazzling sunlight to shadowy gloom left him momentarily blind and he clung to a cheap vinyl chair for support. Lily Marlene lurked within, fanning her abundant mammaries with a menu card and cooling her feet in a washbowl of iced water. She noted Pooley’s entrance without enthusiasm. ‘We still give no credit, Jim Pooley.’
Pooley’s eyes adjusted themselves, and he replied cheerfully, if unconvincingly, ‘I return from foreign parts, my pockets abulge with golden largesse of great value.’
‘It’s still sixpence a cup,’ the dulcet voice returned, ‘or eight pence for a coffee.’
‘Tea will be fine,’ said Pooley producing two three-penny bits from his waistcoat pocket.
The grey liquid flowed from the ever-bubbling urn into the chipped white cup and Pooley bore his steaming prize to a window table. Other than Jim the cafe contained but a single customer. His back was turned and his shoulders hunched low over his chosen beverage, but the outline of the closely cropped head was familiar. Jim realized that he was in close proximity to the semi-mythical entity known as the Other Sam.
Strange rumours abounded regarding this bizarre personage, who was reputed to live the life of a recluse somewhere within an uncharted region of the Royal Botanical Garden at Kew. Exactly who he was or where he came from was uncertain. It was said that he rowed nightly across the Thames in a coracle of ancient design to consort with Vile Tony Watkins, who ran the yellow street-cleaning cart, a grim conveyance which moved mysteriously through the lamp-lit byways.
Vile Tony was an uncommunicative vindictive, with an ingrained distrust of all humanity and a dispassionate hatred for anything that walked upon two legs and held its head aloft during the hours of sunlight. Being a deaf mute he kept his own counsel no matter what should occur.
Pooley had never spoken with the Other Sam, but felt a certain strange comfort in the knowledge of his being. The stories which surrounded him were uniformly weird and fantastical. He was the last of a forgotten race, some said; daylight would kill him, some said, for his eyes had never seen it. Others said that during her pregnancy his mother had observed something which had gravely affected her and that the midwife upon seeing the child had dropped it in horror, whereupon the tiny creature had scampered from the room and disappeared into the night.
Pooley the realist pooh-poohed such notions, but Pooley the mystic, dreamer and romantic sensed the aura of pagan mystery which surrounded the crop-headed man.
‘Will you not join me at table, James Pooley,’ said a voice which weakened Jim’s bladder in a manner that formerly only large libations of ale had been able to do. ‘I would have words with you.’
Pooley rose from his chair and slowly crossed the mottled linoleum floor of the Plume, wondering whether a leg-job might be preferable to a confrontation that most of Brentford’s population would have taken great lengths to avoid.
‘Be seated, James.’ The face which met Jim’s guarded glance was hardly one to inspire horror; it was pale, such was to be expected of one who dwelt in darkness, but it was a face which held an indefinable grandeur, an ancient nobility. ‘Your thoughts press heavily upon me, James Pooley,’ said the Other Sam.
‘I do not know which way to turn,’ said Jim, ‘such responsibilities are beyond my scope.’
The Other Sam nodded sagely and Jim knew that he had nothing to fear from the pale blue eyes and the haunting thoughts which dwelt behind them. ‘The evil is among us,’ said the Other Sam. ‘I will help you as best I may, but my powers are limited and I am no match for such an adversary.’
‘Tell me what I should do.’
‘The Professor is a man who may be trusted,’ said the Other Sam. ‘Act upon his instructions to the letter, accept no other advice, although much will be offered, follow your own feelings. The Dark One is vulnerable, he lives a life of fear, even Satan himself can never rest, truth will be for ever the final victor.’
‘But who is he?’ said Jim. ‘I have been plunged into all this. Outside the sun shines, in offices clerks toil away at the
ir mundane duties, buses rumble towards Ealing Broadway and I am expected to do battle with the powers of darkness. It all seems a little unfair.’
‘You are not alone, James.’
‘I feel rather alone.’
The Other Sam smiled wanly; wisdom shone in his ageless blue eyes. Professor Slocombe was a wise and learned man, but here was knowledge not distilled from musty tomes, but born of natural lore. Pooley felt at peace, he was no longer alone, he would cope with whatever lay ahead.
‘I have stayed too long already,’ said the Other Sam, ‘and I must take my leave. I will not be far when you need me again. Take heart, James Pooley, you have more allies than you might imagine.’
With this he rose, a pale ghost who did not belong to the hours of daylight, and drifted out into the sunlit street where he was presently lost from view behind the gasometers.
Pooley took his teacup to his mouth, but the insipid grey liquid had grown cold. ‘Cold tea and warm beer,’ said Jim, ‘and they say an army marches on its stomach.’
16
As August turned into September the residents of Brentford stared from their open windows and marvelled at the endless sunshine. Norman tapped at his thermometer and noted to his despair that it was up another two degrees. ‘It’s the end of the world for certain,’ he said for the umpteenth time. ‘I am working at present on an escape ship,’ he told Omally, ‘I am not going to be caught napping when the continents begin to break up.’
‘I wish you luck,’ replied Omally. ‘I notice that there are no new Fine Arts Publications in your racks.’
‘Business has fallen off of late.’
‘Oh,’ said John, ‘must be the heat.’
‘I hear,’ said Norman, ‘that the rising temperatures have started something of a religious revival hereabouts.’
‘Oh?’ said Omally, thumbing through a dog-eared copy of Latex Babes.
‘The Church of the Second Coming, or suchlike, seems to be taking the ladies’ fancy, although’ – and here Norman’s thoughts drifted back to his own bitter experiences as a married man – ‘one can never expect much common sense from women.’