Waiting for Godalming

  ‘Ah,’ said Icarus. ‘We share in that particular worry.’

  ‘He seems to think he’s a detective,’ said the doctor, buffing his stethoscope up on his sleeve. ‘He is clearly delusional. Claims that he’s on the biggest case that ever there was. Something to do with the murder of God. Can you imagine that?’

  Icarus shook his head.

  ‘And he talks to himself. When he thinks that he can’t be overheard. He seems to suffer from multiple personality disorder. I’ve heard him arguing with an imaginary character called Barry. He blames this Barry for everything that’s happened to him.’

  Icarus nodded once again.

  ‘I’m wondering perhaps whether he’s tormented by some childhood trauma,’ said the doctor. ‘I know he’s got a drink problem and a broken marriage and I feel that he’s trying to reach out to his feminine side.’

  Icarus nodded, then shook his head, and then he nodded again.

  ‘So I think it would be for the best,’ said the doctor, ‘if you signed this form, committing him to a course of psychiatric treatment.’

  Icarus nodded and Icarus grinned.

  ‘Lend me your biro,’ he said.

  ‘Now that was just plain mean,’ said Johnny Boy, looking up from his drink. ‘Getting your brother banged up in a loony bin.’

  They were sitting once more in the Station Hotel and Icarus hadn’t stopped grinning since they got there.

  ‘It’s not a loony bin,’ he told Johnny Boy. ‘It’s a psychiatric hospital. It will be for the best. He really does need the treatment.’

  ‘You realize’, said Johnny Boy, ‘that you might just have signed his death warrant.’

  ‘It wasn’t a death warrant. Just a form to commit him to care.’

  ‘And he’s been in that hospital for five days already, which means that his week is nearly up. And if he doesn’t solve his case, by tomorrow, God’s wife is going to punish him big time.’

  ‘But the case is solved. Colin was the culprit and Colin died in an accident.’

  ‘Nothing is solved,’ said Johnny Boy. ‘Take a look over at the barman.’

  Icarus glanced over at the barman. The barman wasn’t Fangio, but Icarus hadn’t expected him to be. The barman was the usual barman, the one who wore Mr Cormerant’s relocated watch fob.

  But the barman’s true form could now be seen by Icarus. The barman had quills that rose high above his green reptilian head.

  ‘Nothing is solved,’ said Johnny Boy once again.

  ‘I’m working on it,’ said Icarus. ‘I haven’t been idle. The men at the Ministry don’t know that Colin is dead. I’ve forged memos using letter headings from Cormerant’s briefcase. I’ve sent them to all departments at the Ministry, closing down the exo-cranial programme. And dismissing all the operatives in hairdresser’s and barber’s shops. And desisting from any further harassment of our good selves. I don’t see what more I can do than that.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Johnny Boy. ‘But the demons and angels are still among us and only we know that they’re here.’

  ‘Perhaps there’s nothing we can do but wait.’

  ‘Wait for what?’

  ‘Wait for a new generation to grow up. A generation that doesn’t have its head massaged. That generation will see the truth.’

  ‘That’s a cop-out ending, if ever there was one,’ said Johnny Boy. ‘Have you given up on being a relocator now? Perhaps now your brother is in the loony bin, you don’t have to try any more. You don’t have anything to prove. Is that it?’

  ‘No, that’s not it.’ Icarus sighed. Perhaps that was it. Perhaps now, with his brother safely locked up, perhaps he no longer did have to prove anything.

  ‘And something I haven’t asked you,’ said Johnny Boy. ‘Whatever happened to your mum? Did Cormerant do something horrible to her when he went to your house to get the left luggage locker key you’d mailed to yourself?’

  ‘No, she was out at the time. Apparently he smashed open the front door and simply snatched the envelope from the floor.’

  ‘Well isn’t that hunky-dory? So you don’t even have any revenge to take. Let’s just have another drink and wait for the next generation.’

  ‘Give it a rest,’ said Icarus. ‘I’ve done all I can. I don’t know what else I can do.’

  ‘No,’ said Johnny Boy, finishing his drink. ‘You don’t. But I bet your brother does. I’ll bet if he was out of that loony bin and back on the case, he’d sort everything out.’

  ‘He’s too sick,’ said Icarus. ‘He’s a regular dying detective. He’s got broken bones and everything.’

  ‘Has he hell,’ said Johnny Boy. ‘I’ve visited him. He’s just got a couple of teeth missing and a few bruises. He could have been out of there and back on the case, if you hadn’t signed his death warrant.’

  Icarus went up to the bar to get in another round of drinks. The barman with the watch fob leered at him. Icarus stared into the evil face. The long reptilian head, the eyes with their vertical pupils, the quivering quills, the hideous insect mouthparts.

  ‘You haven’t put any little treats in my direction lately,’ said the barman, fingering the watch fob with a terrible talon. ‘You’ll just have to pay for this round of drinks. Nothing comes for free in this world, you know.’

  Icarus paid and returned with the drinks to his table.

  ‘We’re going to the hospital,’ he said. ‘We’re going to get my brother.’

  ‘I’m an only child,’ I said. ‘I don’t know why you keep going on about me having a brother.’

  ‘I do have your case notes here,’ said the doctor. ‘I do know who you really are.’

  ‘I’m Woodbine,’ I said. ‘Lazlo Woodbine,’ adding, just for the hell of it, ‘Some call me Laz.’

  ‘Woodbine,’ and the doctor nodded. At least he’d got my name right. ‘The world famous private eye. Everybody knows his name, but no-one can put a face to it.’

  ‘That’s the way that I do business.’

  ‘Are you sleeping well?’ the doctor asked.

  ‘I haven’t slept for five days. I daren’t sleep, I’ll give away the ending if I sleep.’

  ‘Barry will give the ending away, will he?’

  ‘I don’t want to talk about Barry,’ I said. ‘Forget about Barry.’

  ‘All right, let’s forget about Barry. Let’s talk about you. Mr Lazlo Woodbine, private eye.’

  ‘Good choice of topic,’ I said. ‘Could I have another wide-awake pill?’

  ‘Now according to my notes…’ The doctor was at those goddamn case notes once again. ‘According to my notes, Lazlo Woodbine works in only four locations.’

  ‘You got it,’ I said. ‘The office, the bar, the alleyway and the rooftop. No good detective ever needs more.’

  ‘Not even a bedroom, for all that gratuitous sex you genre detectives are so noted for?’

  ‘There are some promises that even a detective can’t keep.’

  ‘So you stick to the four locations.’

  ‘I do,’ said I. And I did.

  The doctor stretched out his arms and put his hands behind his head. ‘So how do you explain your present location?’ he asked.

  ‘Name any location,’ said the taxi driver. ‘Anywhere in Inner or Greater London and I’ll tell you how to get to it from here.’

  It wasn’t the same taxi driver. But you’d have been hard pressed to tell the difference. He had that same curious thing with hair on the left hand side and that same odd business with the tongue when he used the word “plinth”.

  ‘I’m not really in the mood,’ said Johnny Boy.

  ‘Oh go on,’ said the cabbie. ‘It will make me go faster.’

  ‘All right,’ said Johnny Boy. ‘How do you get to the Flying Swan?’

  ‘That’s easy,’ said the cabbie. ‘You go up Abbadon Street, along Moby Dick Terrace, turn left into Sprite Street, right into…’

  ‘He’s making it up,’ said Johnny Boy.

  ‘I think they always do,?
?? said Icarus Smith.

  ‘You make all this up,’ said the doctor. ‘It’s all a fantasy. If you were the real Lazlo Woodbine, you couldn’t be sitting here now.’

  ‘Hm,’ said I. ‘Well.’

  ‘Over the last five days you have told me a story that is a complete fantasy. About a voice in your head that put in a word with the widow of God. About a drug which enables people to see angels and demons. And if I’m not mistaken, you’ve been under the impression that I’m one of these demons. One of these ‘wrong’uns’, am I correct?’

  ‘Well,’ said I. ‘Hm.’

  ‘And there are these bars that you go to, where the barman is always your friend Fangio. Who was a fat boy and now is a thin boy, because he bopped you on the head, so that you could stay within the rules of your genre. The nineteen-fifties American detective genre. One that only truly existed in fiction. You live your life in fiction, my friend. You have no hold on reality.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I do, I really do.’

  ‘You don’t,’ said the doctor. ‘Just think about this. Every time you are in what you call a ‘tricky situation’, you are rescued.’

  I shrugged.

  ‘And who rescues you?’

  I shrugged again.

  ‘Your brother rescues you,’ said the doctor. ‘And the evil men who have you in the sticky situation, the doctor and the third child of God, another brother, you note, who was telling you about living in the shadow of his brother, these evil men vanish away to melted goo the moment your brother arrives to save you.’

  ‘Coincidence,’ I said.

  ‘Tell me about your brother,’ said the doctor.

  ‘I like to think of myself as a relocator,’ said the cabbie. ‘I relocate people. Take them from one location to another. In my small way I help to put the world to rights. If people weren’t in the wrong places at the wrong times, there’d be no need for cabbies. We put people where they want to be. Where they should be. You could learn a lot from cabbies.’

  Icarus looked at Johnny Boy.

  And Johnny Boy looked back at him.

  ‘If I asked you how to get to Shangri La, do you think you might drive a little faster?’ said Johnny Boy.

  ‘Perhaps quite fast,’ said Icarus, glancing into the driver’s mirror. ‘There’s a long dark automobile following us.’

  ‘Are you following me?’ asked the doctor. ‘Do you see where my reasoning is taking us?’

  ‘We’re here,’ said Icarus, paying off the cabbie. ‘Please wait, we’ll be back in just a minute, we have to pick up my brother.’

  ‘Sibling rivalry,’ said the doctor. ‘You admire your brother, but you can’t bring yourself to admit it. He is your hero. He always arrives in the nick of time to get you out of your sticky situation.’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘It’s not like that at all.’

  ‘I don’t like this at all,’ puffed Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus ran towards the entrance of the hospital. ‘That horrid dark automobile again. Why is it following us?’

  ‘Perhaps my forged memos didn’t convince them. Come on, try to keep up.’

  ‘The pretence you’re keeping up is nothing more than that,’ said the doctor. ‘If you could come to terms with your relationship with your brother, you would be well on the way to recovery.’

  ‘Which way to Mr Woodbine’s room?’ asked Icarus.

  The male nurse looked up from the reception desk. He had on a little badge that said, ‘Hi, my name is Cecil.’

  ‘Mr Who?’ asked male nurse Cecil.

  ‘Mr Woodbine,’ said the breathless Icarus. ‘He’s being held in the psychiatric wing. I’ve come here to sign his release form.’

  Nurse Cecil made little lip-smacking sounds. ‘There’s a lot of paperwork involved in that kind of thing,’ he said. ‘Perhaps you should make an appointment. Next week some time.’

  ‘Next week will be too late. I have to see him now and take him out of here.’

  ‘Are you a relative?’

  ‘I’m his brother. I’m Icarus Smith. I signed the form to commit him.’

  ‘How come your name’s Smith and his is Woodstock?’

  ‘It’s Woodbine,’ said Icarus. ‘Lazlo Woodbine. Some call him Laz. Not that I ever have.’

  ‘Oh no!’ said Johnny Boy. ‘They’re coming in the door, Icarus. Two of them and they’re wrong’uns.’

  Icarus made fists at male nurse Cecil. ‘Which room is my brother in?’ he demanded to be told.

  ‘I shall have to ask you to leave,’ said Cecil. ‘Leave of your own free will, or I’ll get out the big stick that I punish the naughty loons with and ram it right up your…’

  ‘Tunnel of love,’ said the doctor. ‘We call it our tunnel of love therapy. We will bring together you and your brother. Take you slowly through the darkness of despair and out into the light of love. At the other end of the tunnel.’

  ‘I don’t belong here in the psychiatric wing,’ I told the doctor. ‘You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not a loon.’

  ‘We never use the word loon here,’ said the doctor. ‘All our staff are highly trained psychiatric carers. You’ll be treated well here. Here where it’s quiet and peaceful.’

  ‘That’s SHITE!’ said Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus ran along. ‘Another stick of SHITE. What are you going to do with that?’

  ‘What do you think I’m going to do with it?’

  ‘Blow the door off your brother’s room?’

  ‘Or wherever he’s being held.’

  ‘I never did ask how you managed to light the fuse last time without any matches.’

  ‘Then don’t ask this time either.’

  ‘Time,’ said the doctor, rising from his desk and taking himself over to the door. ‘Time is all you really need, Mr Woodbine. Time to put all the pieces back into the right places. Time to understand the true relationship that you have with your brother. That you do admire him, which is why you have created this fantasy life for yourself. Why you always believe that he can ultimately get you out of any sticky situation, although you remain in denial of this.’

  The doctor took down his jacket from the back of the door.

  ‘This door,’ said Icarus.

  ‘Why?’ asked Johnny Boy.

  ‘Fate,’ said Icarus. ‘Let’s leave it to fate.’

  And Icarus lit up the SHITE.

  I looked dumbly at the doctor. I’m rarely lost for words, especially wise ones. But I was lost for words now.

  I mean, hey. This was Woodbine he was dealing with. Lazlo Woodbine, private eye. The greatest dick that ever there was. I wasn’t some wimp with a brother fixation. I could handle myself. I’m the best in the business and I didn’t need this creep trying to make out that I was some kind of a loon.

  ‘ !!!’ went the silent explosive.

  ‘That silence doesn’t get any less loud,’ said Johnny Boy.

  The doctor was there, putting on his coat.

  And then the doctor was gone.

  Gone.

  Just gone!

  Melted to a steamy pool of goo upon the floor.

  Icarus burst into the office.

  ‘Come on, Laz,’ he said. ‘I need your help. I’m busting you out of here.’

  I stared at the guy as he stood in the doorway.

  And friends, I got all choked up with tears.

  ‘Brother,’ I said, breaking down in a blubber. ‘Brother Icarus, it’s you. I’m not Lazlo Woodbine any more. I’m cured. I’m your brother Edwin. Come and give me a hug.’

  17

  ‘Come on, Laz, we have to go,’ said Icarus breathing hard. ‘There’s wrong’uns after us. Come on.’ The resident patient had his arms out for a hug. Icarus shook him by the shoulders. ‘There’s no time. Hurry.’

  ‘Come on, Mr Woodbine,’ Johnny Boy tugged at the patient’s leg. ‘We need you, we do. Come on.’

  ‘I want to give my brother a hug,’ blubbed the man who once was Woodbine.

  Johnny Boy’s mouth became a perfect O and th
en an inverted U. ‘He’s lost it,’ he gasped. ‘He’s not working in the first person any more.’

  Icarus grasped the weeper’s hand. ‘They’ve done something to him. They’ve drugged him up.’ He gave the hand a squeeze. ‘Come with me and hurry now,’ he said.

  Johnny Boy scampered over to the doctor’s desk.

  ‘What are you doing?’ Icarus glanced to the door. Marching footstep noises were coming from the corridor.

  ‘We can’t go out without his trusty Smith and Wassaname.’ Johnny Boy rooted around in the desk drawers. ‘Got it,’ he said. ‘Oh, and this.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  ‘The spectremeter.’

  ‘Bring that!’ said Icarus. ‘And come on.’

  They didn’t leave through the melted door hole, they left via the window. Windows are always good in movies, good for busting through. All that splintering glass in slow motion. It never fails to excite.

  ‘You could have leapt right through that window,’ puffed Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus dragged the bewildered brotherly type across the hospital lawn.

  ‘It was easier just to open it.’ Icarus yanked and pulled. ‘Come on, Laz, you can go faster than that.’

  ‘I need my bed,’ blubbered the stumbler. ‘I haven’t slept for a week. I can’t keep my eyes open. Take me home to Mum, Icarus. Tuck me into my cosy bed and send me off to the land of sleepy-byes.’

  ‘What a wimpy little voice.’ Johnny Boy pushed as Icarus pulled. ‘Do you think he’s trying to reach out to his feminine side?’

  SMASH and CRASH went the window behind them as two demons burst through. Splintering glass in slow motion, in a manner which failed to excite Icarus.

  ‘To the taxi,’ cried the lad. ‘Keep up, Mr Woodbine, please.’

  The cabbie was chatting with a passer-by. ‘You go along the Road to Morocco,’ he said, ‘turn left at the Road to Rio, right at the Road to Mandalay, straight along the Road to…’

  Icarus came puffing up.