My mum used to go hay-wire because the short-wave transmissions interfered with our wireless set and she couldn’t hear The Archers properly. She used to bang on the kitchen wall with the business end of the sprout-masher, but Ian’s dad never took any notice.
I suppose because he lived three doors along.
As my father was a carpenter we had a shed in our back garden. Not a very big one, because our garden wasn’t very big. But a tall one. If you can imagine a two-storey sentry box. Then imagine it. Our shed was not at all like that. Our shed was more like an obelisk.
Ian and I used to sit in that shed for hours at a time, playing with our pet newts, or simply ourselves.
I vividly remember one particular afternoon, early in May in the late nineteen-fifties. My brother had confided a secret to me and I was eager to pass it on to Ian.
‘And so,’ I concluded, ‘Garden gnomes are, in fact, small dwarves who have been turned to stone by the glance of Medusa.’
Ian whistled through the gap in his front teeth. ‘Is Medusa aquatic?’ he enquired.
‘Aquatic? I’m not certain. Why?’
‘Well, many of the garden gnomes, the petrified dwarves as it were, are frozen in the act of fishing. Perhaps Medusa comes up out of the water.’
I nodded thoughtfully. ‘I wonder where it all goes on.’
‘Scandinavia,’ said Ian with authority. ‘We have a gnome in our garden, it has Scandinavia carved onto its bottom.’
‘What, on its arse?’
‘No, underneath, at the bottom, on its base.’
‘Oh.’
‘But there’re an awful lot of stone gnomes, and I’ve never ever seen a dwarf as small, walking about.’
‘Perhaps they’re all captives.’
‘What?’
‘Bred in captivity in Scandinavia. Last remnants of an ancient race. Like the fairy-folk. At a certain time each year a number of them are taken down to this lake and asked to pose for photographs. The photographer ducks his head under the black cloth and hides his face. Says, “Say cheese,” everyone smiles, Medusa comes up out of the lake and wallop, they’re all turned to stone.’
‘What a nightmare scenario,’ said Ian. ‘But as feasible an explanation as there’s likely to be.’
We both sat in silence awhile and played with our newts.
‘A strange thing happened in our back garden the other day,’ said Ian. ‘My father has sworn me to secrecy over it.
‘Tell us what it is then.’
‘All right. My father was doing a bit of digging in the back garden and he came upon this brickwork. Like a wall but lying on its side, if you know what I mean.’
I nodded. ‘A fallen-over wall but under the ground.’
‘That’s it. So my father says it’s probably some old foundations of something, so he fetches his sledgehammer and starts to wallop at it. And every time he hits the brickwork there’s this dull echoing sound like it’s hollow underneath. Well, my father bashes away at it until he knocks a hole through. And do you know what?’
‘What?’
‘There’s light.’
‘Light?’
‘Light, coming up through the hole. So we kneel down and look in and you’ll never believe what we saw.’
‘What did you see?’
‘Well, it’s like looking down into this huge cathedral, really huge, like you’re looking through a hole in the dome. And there’s all these sort of Gothic brick pillars that go down and down and little staircases in the distance below.’
I whistled through the gap in my front teeth.
‘So my dad knocks a really big hole, big enough to climb through and he’s talking about getting this rope and shinning down inside when this bloke comes.’
‘What bloke?’
‘He came along the alley and we could hear him coming, his boots made this metal clicking. He had a monk’s habit on with the hood pulled low over his face and the big clicking boots and he was very tall and thin. And he came clicking up the alley, through our garden gate, pushed my father aside, climbed into the hole and was gone.’
‘Blimey,’ I said. ‘This is incredible. Can we go round to your garden so I can have a look?’
‘No,’ said Ian. ‘We can’t do that.’
‘Oh go on. I’ll only take a little look and I won’t tell anyone.’
Ian shook his head. ‘My dad filled in the hole. He bought bricks and cement and he filled it in.’
‘Why?’
‘He said it was dangerous and that children might fall down it. Come on, I’ll show you.’
Ian led me down the alley to his back gate. His mum wasn’t around, so we crept into his garden. There were new bricks laid outside the back door. Well, not so much bricks, more paving stones. A sort of patio, in fact.
‘Put your ear there,’ said Ian, pointing.
I knelt down and pressed my ear to one of the paving stones. Ian took the yard broom and banged the handle down upon the stone. There was a dull, echoey, hollow sound each time he did so.
‘Blimey,’ I said, straightening up.
‘When I’m eighteen,’ said Ian, ‘I will inherit this house and when I do I am going to get a pneumatic drill and drill down to that place.’
‘And go down on a rope?’
‘Yes.’
‘And I’ll come with you. We’ll go together.’
And we shook hands on the deal.
But we never went. As the years passed by we forgot all about it. And when Ian was eighteen he did not inherit his father’s house. It was a council house, same as ours.
I include the story here because it is true. Well, it’s true that Ian told me and I did hear the echoey hollow sounds.
Oh yes and I include it because of Litany.
Let me tell you all about Litany.
I suppose I must have got drunk. Very drunk, which is why I don’t remember all the details. Prior to that everything is as clear as an author’s conscience.
I stole the rented limo, and with it my uncle’s laptop computer and I returned to Fangio’s Bar. The rented crowd was there, paid off and spending freely. Everyone went very quiet when I walked in.
I addressed them, thusly: ‘I know what you were up to and you are a pack of BASTARDS.’
The crowd cheered wildly.
‘No,’ I said. ‘You can stop all that. I mean it! You’re a pack of BASTARDS.’
More wild cheering and someone shouted, ‘Three cheers for Carlos the Chaos Cockroach.’ I punched that someone.
A woman in a straw hat.
She went down and her companions ceased to cheer. They drank up and left. I placed the uncle’s laptop on the bar and my bum upon a bar stool. ‘Set ‘em up, fat boy,’ I told the fat boy. ‘The drinks are on me.’
Fangio peered over the counter at the unconscious woman.
‘What’s the dame having?’ he asked.
‘Give her an Angel’s Slingback.’ I named the most popular cocktail of the day.
‘Did someone say slingback?’ A drunk at the end of the counter raised his head. His name was Lightweight Jimmy Netley, a footwear fetishist from an earlier chapter.
‘Go back to sleep,’ Fange told him. ‘I’ll wake you up if anything interesting happens.’
I accepted my bottle of Bud, made payment in kind, flipped open the uncle’s laptop and perused the keyboard.
‘What you got there then?’ asked Fangio. ‘Toy typewriter, is it?’
‘Portable computer.’
Fangio whistled through the gap between his eyebrows. ‘What will they think of next?’
‘Fuel cells. They will replace petrol-powered motors. All cars will run on them.’
Fangio fingered his jowls. ‘Your brother told you that, I suppose.’
‘No, I just know it.’ And I did.
I cranked up the laptop and tapped away at the keyboard. I had to know how my uncle had cracked the code. If, as it appeared, I really did possess the power to effect great changes in the world
, by the exercise of small and seemingly arbitrary actions such as rubbing two biros together, how had he discovered the formula?
The computer had printed out the ‘gags’, told me what I had to do (although not, of course for the genuine reasons). So was there some program in the computer designed specifically toward this end? And if so, who had thought it up?
‘That guy was in again asking for you,’ said Fangio.
‘What guy?’
‘Guy from the Ministry of Serendipity. Very nervous he seemed, very edgy.’
‘You genius,’ I told the fat boy. ‘It’s some secret government research program, that’s what it is.’
‘What is?’
‘In this computer. Either my Uncle Brian stole it or he’s working for the Government.’
‘He’s not working for the Government,’ said Fangio. ‘Your Uncle Brian’s a Russian spy. And I should know, I live next door to him. His short-wave radio transmissions always mess up The Archers on a Friday night.’
‘Then he stole it.’ I tapped some more upon the keyboard. The word PASSWORD flashed up on the screen and a little clock that began to tick down from one minute to zero. I switched off the computer. ‘Do you know any hackers?’ I asked the fat boy.
‘Jimmy there has a smoker’s cough, you want I should wake him up?’
I made a face that says, “that’s a really rubbish joke”.
Fangio made the one that says, “I know”.
I ordered another bottle of Bud.
And then I saw Litany entering the bar.
And I knew it was fate.
You all know Litany. By sight. You’ve all seen her, although you’ve never known her name. Until now. Litany is the beautiful blond girl in the bikini top, who is always on some fellow’s shoulders down near the front at an outdoor rock concert. Yes, you see, you have seen her. If you’ve got any big stadium concerts on video, check them out. She’s in all of them, and it’s always her.
Recently she appeared in the audience during the Rolling Stones Voodoo Lounge tour gig at Wembley. I can personally vouch for that, because she was on my shoulders at the time. But if you get a copy of the Woodstock Video, she’s there too, looking exactly the same.
Rumours abound, of course. The most popular being that she is some blond female version of the Wandering Jew. That she first appeared, no doubt cheering wildly, upon the shoulders of a Roman centurion, at the crucifixion of Christ. And that she was doomed to an eternity of such shoulder-sitting until Jesus comes again and she is finally allowed to get down and go to the toilet.
Personally I don’t believe that particular rumour, plausible though it is.
But there she was, in the flesh. Her long blond hair hung over her perfect shoulders and her patterned-bikini-top-contoured breasts, exquisite enough to make a sleeper sigh.
I sighed for them and so did Fangio.
Litany stepped carefully over the woman in the straw hat, walked up to the bar and smiled at the fat boy. ‘Can I use your toilet?’ she asked.
Fangio dropped to his knees. ‘The Second Coming,’ he cried. ‘We’re all doomed.’
‘It’s in the back,’ I told the beautiful blonde. ‘Ignore the barman, he’s from Penge.’
‘Ah, I see.’ And Litany went off towards the toilet. As she passed the end of the bar, Lightweight Jimmy Netley sighed in his sleep.
‘Get up,’ I told Fangio. ‘It’s not really the Second Coming.’
‘Oh good.’ Fangio got to his feet, rooted in the plate and thrust a piece of chewing fat into his mouth.
‘I wonder what her name is,’ I wondered.
‘It’s Litany.’
‘How do you know that?’
‘Because she’s my daughter.’
‘Then you—?’
‘Yes.’
‘And you didn’t really—?’
‘No.’
‘It was all a—?’
‘You got it.’
We laughed together. Such a crazy guy, that Fangio. What a shame about the way he met his end.
‘Met my end?’ asked the fat boy. ‘What is this?’
‘It’s later, don’t worry about it now.’
‘Phew,’ said Fangio. ‘You had me going there.’
We both laughed again, though I can’t remember why. Litany returned from the toilet and settled herself on the bar stool next to mine. I offered her a drink and she took my bottle of Bud.
‘I enjoyed your act,’ she said.
‘My act?’ I did my best to remain calm in the presence of this goddess. ‘I didn’t see you in the audience.’
‘The guy who’s shoulders I usually sit on has a cold. I just stood at the back.’
‘You were part of the rented crowd?’
‘Strictly freelance. I go where the spirit takes me. What’s your name?’
I told her.
‘Mine’s Litany.’
‘So your father just said.’
Litany looked the fat boy up and down. ‘He’s not my father. I’ve never even seen this man before.’
Fangio shrugged. ‘She’s right. I remember now. I don’t have a daughter.’
‘Is that your computer?’
‘It’s my uncle’s. He lent it to me, but I can’t remember the password.’
‘That’s easy, let me have a look at it.’
I passed the computer along the bar. She took it between long slim delicious-looking fingers. ‘This is government issue. An M.o.S. machine. If it’s not yours, then I’d lose it fast. They can track these things.’
‘I have to know how the program works.’
She tossed back her golden hair. ‘This belongs to the guy who was sitting in at your gig, doesn’t it?’
‘Yes, but he is my uncle.’
‘You’re holding back a lot of anger, I can feel it. I don’t want to get involved.’
‘I only want the password. I’ll give you money.’
‘How much money?’
‘There’s the details of a bank account in there. There’s a lot of money in it. You can have it all.’
‘All right.’ Litany’s fingers trod the keyboard. I watched the seconds tick by on the clock above the bar. 3-2-1— ‘There you go,’ she said. ‘The password is DOGBREATH, does that mean anything to you?’
I nodded dismally. ‘How did you work it out?’
‘I was looking over your uncle’s shoulder.’ Her eyes didn’t leave the keyboard. ‘There’s a great deal of money in here, I don’t think I should take it all.’
‘Take half then, I’ll have the rest.’
‘All right, I’ll transfer it to my account. So what is it you want to see? Or is it just the money?’
‘It’s linked to the money. I have to know how the money got into the account, trace back the cause and effect right to its source.’
‘That should be reasonably simple.’ She tapped at the keyboard. ‘Whoa, perhaps not.’
‘What is it?’
‘This is not your everyday computer system. This is bio-tech.’
‘Which is?’
‘Brand new. State of the art. It’s organic. Artificial intelligence, if you like. Replicating DNA strands.’
‘You mean something’s actually alive inside the computer?’
‘Yes, but not human or animal. It’s vegetable. Strands of vegetable DNA bombarded by neurone particles. Very advanced and highly classified.’
‘But how does it work?’
‘According to theory, all plant-life on Earth is inter-dependant and inter-connected. It communicates, but not in human terms, it doesn’t speak or anything. It’s vibratory, on a cellular level. A marigold getting pulled up in Sumatra affects an oak tree in Windsor Great Park.’
‘This all sounds very familiar.’
‘It’s chaos theory,’ said Fangio. ‘A butterfly in Dresden—’
‘Shut up,’ I told him.
‘He’s right,’ said Litany. ‘But then you know that, because you’re the butterfly, aren’t you?’
r /> The explosion wasn’t a large one. But it made its point. The street door was ripped from its hinges and cart-wheeled into the bar. Smoke and flame. Confusion and chaos.
Litany snapped shut the laptop and grabbed at my arm. ‘Quick,’ she shouted. ‘The back door.’
I joined her at the hurry-up. My last memory of Fangio’s Bar is of men in dark uniforms storming forward with guns, and Fangio shouting, ‘Wake up, Jimmy, I think something interesting’s about to happen.’
And then he met his end. Which was a shame, but these things do happen.
DROWNED SAILORS’ HATS
If early some morning
You poo-poo the warning
And head for the grey mud flats
When the tide’s well out
You can search about
And find drowned sailors’ hats
Among the relics of the wrecks
Are plank-walked captains with hairy necks
And tattooed wrists and long frock coats
Who feed the crabs and shrimping boats
Are moth-balled clerics who went astray
Upon some long-forgotten day
Arm in arm with pirate chiefs
With rusted swords in crusted sheaths
Are pewter tankards full of sand
And diamonds big as a gypsy’s hand
Are fancy pistols with silver stocks
And quill-penned parchment in a box
Barnacled boson, corral shot
Rum-filled casks from the captain’s cot
Charts and deeds and treasure maps
Chains and charms and braided caps
If early some morning
You poo-poo the warning
And head for the grey mud flats
You may sink in the mud
When the tide comes flood
And join those sailors’ hats.
11
I LOSE MY VIRGINITY
The last thing I needed at a time like this was a poem about drowned sailors’ hats.
What I really needed was to have some sex.
And I’m not being facile or frivolous here. I really, truly mean it.
A friend of mine who was once in the TA told me that at that exact moment when you think you’re going to die, your whole life does not flash before your eyes. Something quite different occurs. He’d had his experience on Salisbury Plain. He enjoyed the old weekend-soldiering, got a real buzz out of shooting real guns and throwing thunder-flashes at sheep. And he’d been quite looking forward to the war games his part-time regiment were going to have against a unit of full-time regular soldiers. But things didn’t go as well as they might have. He tripped in a rabbit hole and broke his ankle. Considering that the war games were over for him he gave himself up, limped to the enemy camp waving a white handkerchief. It was an ill-considered move. The regulars did not pack him off in a field ambulance, they tortured him instead. They stripped him naked but for his boots, tied him up and put him out in the rain. My friend was in such agony from the broken ankle and the freezing cold and everything that he really truly thought that he was going to die.