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‘Sorry about that. I wasn’t concentrating. Nobody’s perfect, you know. Except for God, of course.’
‘Look,’ I said, still without actually speaking, ‘if this is the case, do you think it would be all right if I had a quick word with God? I’m sure if you were to explain what happened.’
‘I thought you didn’t believe in God.’
‘I’m coming around to the idea. Go on, a quick word, what harm could it do?’
‘It could do me a lot of harm. I was supposed to be on the job. Your Holy Guardian.’
‘He’ll forgive you, you’re one of his angels, after all.’
‘Well.’
‘Well what?’
‘Well, I never said anything about being an angel.’
‘You said you’re my Holy Guardian. That’s an angel, isn’t it?’
‘Well, it can be. For some people. But there’s an awful lot of people on Earth. More people than there are angels, in fact. Look upon me as your little gift from God’s garden.’
‘What?’
‘I’m your Holy Guardian Sprout.’
I groaned another inward groan. A great big one this time.
‘Look, don’t take it so badly. Think of me as a family retainer. I’ve been with your lot for generations. Not that I ever get taken any notice of. What did I say to your great3 granddaddy? “Don’t go bothering the people in the field next-door.” I said, but did he listen? No, he didn’t. And your great2 granddaddy. What did I say to him? “Don’t go on the Titanic,” I said, “that metal-muncher Crombie’s going to be on board.” Same business.’
‘You’ve never said a word to me,’ I said (silently as ever).
‘I damn well have.’
‘You damn well haven’t.’
‘I have you know, I said, “Turn on your private eye tape recorder.” Back in the Gents at Fangio’s Bar when you first met Colon the super-dense proto-hippy.’
‘You made me do that?’
‘I put the idea into your head. I thought you could help mankind if you knew about your gift. I thought it might earn me some big kudos with God, keep me off his Sunday dinner plate.’
‘Well, it’s all screwed now, I’m dead.’
‘No hard feelings,’ said the Holy Guardian Sprout.
‘Oh, none at all. But I do hope—’
‘What?’
‘I hope he boils you for hours and eats you really slowly!’
‘All right, I deserved that. But listen, we have to get you out of here.’
‘You know any voodoo high priestesses?’
‘Not as such. I don’t think that voodoo stuff really works. What we need is something more radical.’
‘More radical than voodoo?’
‘There is one way we might do it, but it is very radical and I don’t think it’s ever been done before.’
‘Go on.’
‘Well, everything so far has been seen from your point of view. You’re in the first person, right? It’s your autobiography.’
‘It is,’ I said, and it was.
‘Well, what if it ceased to be? What if you moved into the third person, became part of someone else’s story for a while?’
‘I don’t think that makes any sense.’
‘Oh it does, you know. After all, you are dead. You can’t write any more about yourself, can you? But someone could write about you.’
‘Who?’
‘I don’t know. A biographer, perhaps.’
‘This all sounds very iffy.’
‘More iffy than being dead and heading for the furnace?’
‘I take your point.’
‘Look, just trust me on this. You have nothing to lose after all and if I can pull it off, we’ll both be out of the hot water. Well, I’ll be out of the hot water and you’ll be out of—’
‘All right, don’t keep on about that.’
‘I’m sorry.’
‘So what do we do?’
‘Well, the first thing we have to do is to get out of this chapter.’
‘I’m very glad to hear it. But just one thing before we do.’
‘What’s that?’
‘I don’t know your name. What is it?’
‘It’s Bartemus,’ said the Holy Guardian Sprout. ‘But don’t be formal, chief, call me Barry.’
COLD ROOM TILE TALK
There was more of that cold room tile talk
(Tony on the slab)
Spoke about crown folk and town folk
Travelling by cab
Saxony days by the dusty road
Bald-headed eagles on silent wings
Coffins for heroes and distant sunrises
More of that cold room tile talk
There was more of that out-and-about talk
(Tony in his towel)
Spoke of the hill folk and still folk
Monks beneath the cowl
Soft-footed beavers with ivory teeth
Wolves that bay at the hunter’s moon
Coal miners’ holidays hard and bleak
More of that out-and-about talk
There was more of that come-as-you-are talk
(Tony in the shower)
Spoke about shandys and mop-headed dandies
Living in the tower
Silver cadavers from moon-drowned lakes
Sad silent centaurs lost on moors
Bland leggy models on satin settees
More of that come-as-you-are talk
I have no idea what this means. But I love the way it sounds.
15
THE EPISODE OF THE GOLDEN TABLET AS TOLD IN THE FLYING SWAN
‘The last thing I expected,’ said Leonard ‘Legless’ Lemon, as he leaned perilously upon The Flying Swan’s highly polished bar top, ‘the very last thing I expected when I opened my gaily painted front door yesterday was an emissary from the planet Venus come to award me the galaxy’s highest accolade.’
John Omally spluttered into his pint of Large. ‘Word get out about your prize marrow then, Len?’
Leonard the legless ignored him. ‘The galaxy’s highest accolade,’ he said once more, lingering upon each word, savouring each syllable.
‘Which is?’ asked Neville, who always enjoyed a good yarn.
‘The Golden Tablet of Tosh m’Hoy, inscribed with the sacred formula for denecrolization.’
Omally nodded and raised his glass. ‘Who would have expected otherwise?’ he said.
‘And what is denecrolization, when it’s at home?’ asked Neville.
‘That’s for me to know, and you to find out.’
‘Stick another half in here please, Neville,’ said John Omally, pushing his glass across the counter.
‘You never believe anything I tell you, do you, Omally?’ Legless Len made a brave attempt at pathos, by putting on a wounded expression, but it, like the point of owning a file-o-fax, was lost upon Omally.
‘To be quite truthful, no,’ said John. ‘However, the doubting Thomas in me might speedily be put to shame, were you to produce this golden tablet for his perusal.’
‘Good idea,’ said Neville. ‘Let’s have a look.’
And others about the bar went, ‘Yes.’
The legless one (and perhaps it should be explained here that this was legless as in drunk. Not legless as in legless) became momentarily flustered. ‘I don’t have it with me,’ he said. ‘I’ve sent it off to the British Museum to have it valued.’
‘Ah,’ said Omally. A meaningful ‘Ah’.
And someone said, ‘Yeah sure,’ and someone else said, ‘Cop out.’
‘But I do have a photograph of it.’
‘Ah,’ said Omally, it was quite another ‘Ah’.
‘Go on,’ said Neville. ‘Whip it out.’
Legless Leonard felt about for his snakeskin wallet. And from this he withdrew a dog-eared photograph with somewhat tattered edges. This he held towards John.
‘So what is that then, might I ask?’
John scrutinized the photograph. ‘Th
at,’ he announced, ‘is the photograph you always show us when demanded to prove the authenticity of your claims. This picture has, in the past, purported to be of you making love to Marilyn Monroe, you shaking hands with J.F.K. before he was famous, you in the SAS saving a child at an embassy siege, you parting the river Thames in the manner of Moses, you, well, need I continue?’
Legless Len made a surly face.
‘For myself,’ said Omally, ‘and going on no more than the evidence provided by my excellent vision, I believe this to be a photograph of you on a donkey at Great Yarmouth.’
Mr Lemon swallowed Scotch and then, excusing himself with talk of ‘a weak bladder brought on by all yesterday’s excitement’, vanished away to the Gents.
Upon his return he looked Omally up and down, declared him to be typical of his class (whatever that meant), and slouched from the bar.
Omally returned to his drinking and peace returned to The Swan, but only for a while because the phone began to ring.
‘Flying Swan,’ said Neville, lifting the receiver. ‘Yes,’ he continued after a short pause. And, ‘Yes, Leonard Lemon, yes, no, he’s not here at the moment. A message, hold on I’ll get a pencil.’ Neville got a pencil. ‘Go on. Yes. British Museum, you say.’
The Swan took to one of its famous pregnant pauses.
‘Golden tablet, not gold, you say. Unknown metal. Being passed on to a secret government research establishment, tell Mr Lemon to report to Mornington Crescent. Well, yes, I’ll tell him—’
‘Hang about, Neville,’ Omally leaned over the counter and snatched the telephone. ‘That horse came in at thirty to one, Len. Do you want me to collect your winnings or shall I stick the lot on Lucky Lady?’
‘Collect my winnings, you Irish mad man.’
Omally replaced the receiver. ‘You know the terrible thing is,’ he said to Neville, ‘that one day he’ll probably turn out to be telling the truth.’
THE EPISODE OF THE GOLDEN TABLET AS LEONARD LEMON SAW IT
The previous day Len returned from his allotment. He smelt strongly of those organic substances, which though loved by rhubarb are so detested by the traveller who steps in them.
‘If my marrow does not win the coveted Silver Spade Award this year, then there is absolutely no justice left in the world,’ he told his lady wife.
‘Yes, dear,’ she said.
‘I think I might take a bit of a bath now.’
‘Yes, dear.’
Legless Len ascended his vilely-carpeted staircase. He had purchased the carpet whilst drunk. He was a happy man, was Len. A broad smile of the Cheshire Cat persuasion bisected his ruddy workman’s face.
As he ran the bath water he whistled ‘Sweet Marrow of My Heart’s Desire’ (one of his own compositions).
Removing his unsavoury undergarments he tested the water with a temperature-toe. ‘Oh yes,’ he giggled. ‘Just right.’
As he sank into the steaming scented water he heard the distinctive chimes of his musical doorbell ringing out the opening bars of ‘The Harry Lime Theme’.
‘Hello, hello, hello,’ said Len, who had once thought of joining the police force. ‘What do we have here then?’
There was some silence, then the sound of voices and then a bit more silence. Then his wife called up the stairs. ‘Len,’ she called. ‘Len, there’s two fellas here from the planet Venus. They’ve come to award you the galaxy’s highest accolade.’
Len sank lower into his foaming bath tub. ‘Tell them to come back later,’ he replied.
Len’s wife passed the message on.
‘They say they can’t wait,’ she called up this time. ‘They say they have to catch the twelve-o’clock tide.’
Len huffed and puffed then rose from his bath. He shrugged on his wife’s quilted nylon dressing-gown and flip-flapped down the stairs leaving a dark damp footprint on each and every vilely-carpeted stair.
At the door stood two enigmatic-looking bodies. Dressed in the ubiquitous one-piece coverall uniforms so beloved of the cosmic traveller and sporting the now-traditional mirror-visored weather-domes. They had a look which was at once familiar but, also, at twice totally alien.
‘Ie-e-oo-ae-u,’ said Rork, the taller of the two.
‘Ao-e-uu-o-i,’ replied his companion, whose name was Gork.
Legless Len, who had only done ‘O’ level Venusian at Horsenden Secondary School, nodded his head.
‘This is most unexpected,’ he said, but so that it came out, ‘Eo-i-u-o-i.’
‘His enunciation of the former “i” lacked for inflection and there was far too little slant on the “o—i” modulation,’ said Gork to Rork, ‘but other than that it wasn’t bad for ‘O’ level Venusian.’
Len overheard this remark. ‘Now just look here,’ he said in a heated tone. ‘I’m a drunken jobbing gardener, not a professor of languages.’
The space travellers made apologetic vowel sounds.
‘I should think so too,’ said Len.
And then the space travellers went on to explain to Len that they had come to bestow upon him the galaxy’s highest accolade.
‘Did word get out about my marrow, then?’ asked Len.
Sadly though, as the atmospheric conditions on Venus preclude the growing of almost any vegetable (save alone the wily and adaptive sprout), Len’s question, ‘Ao-e-ii-o-marrow-ue?’ had the spacemen scratching their helmets.
Rork spoke. ‘We understand that you are the inventor of the Harris Tweed,’ was what he said in translation.
Len stroked a bath-foamed chin. ‘Inventor of the Harris Tweed, eh?’ Obviously the old Venusian spy network was not all it might have been. Len looked the two travellers up and down, they had come a very long way. And it was the galaxy’s highest accolade.
‘Yep, that’s me,’ lied Len. ‘Old Len “the tweed” Lemon, friend of the working man.’
The Venusians passed Len the Golden Tablet of Tosh m’Hoy, made a small vowel-encrusted speech, offered him a stiff salute and departed.
‘Cheers,’ said Len, waving. ‘And thanks a lot.’
THE EPISODE OF THE GOLDEN TABLET AS ARCHROY’S WIFE OVER-THE-ROAD SAW IT
Now all who knew Archroy’s wife, and many did in the biblical sense, knew her to be a woman of diverse sexual appetites. And no small sense of humour. These ranged from the ‘Oh my God I hear my husband coming in the back door’ routine, which had lovers shinning half-naked down the drainpipe to confront Jehovah’s Witnesses on the front doorstep, to the ‘Of course it won’t result in any lasting injury, would I do that to you?’ which had more permutations that Vernon’s Pools.
On the day that Len received his award, and at that very moment, in fact, Archroy’s wife was indulging in one of her personal pleasures, that of leaning, head and shoulders out of her bedroom window, waving to passers-by, whilst being ravished from behind by a boy scout (or at least a man dressed up as one).
As the golden tablet changed hands and Len closed his front door, Archroy’s wife waved down to the Venusians.
One of the Venusians waved back at her. The tall one. He waved in a friendly way, almost, one might say, in an intimate way. In fact, it was in such an intimate way that an observer who could recognize an intimate wave when he saw one might have been forgiven for thinking that here was a case of illicit interplanetary liaison.
Which was not the case.
Archroy’s wife had waved because she did know the larger of the two aliens. And that was know in the biblical sense. But she knew this alien to be no alien at all.
For rather than step into some sort of telekinetic-anti-gravitational beam and levitate up to a waiting scout craft, as one might have expected of an alien, the alien removed his mirror-visored weather dome, stroked down locks of curly black hair and climbed into a Morris Minor.
‘Come up and see me sometime, Omally,’ called Archroy’s wife, as he drove away, ‘and bring the costume.’
THE EPISODE OF THE GOLDEN TABLET AS THE BRITISH MUSEUM SAW IT
The
curator of outré’ antiquities and general weird sh*t looked up from a desk all jumbled high with jars of pickled bats’ wings, plans of ancient flying craft, dust-dry bones and mottled tomes, curious stones and garden gnomes, maps and caps and spats and hats and many other things.
‘Ah, Sir John,’ he said, adjusting his pince-nez upon the bridge of his bulbous nose, ‘I had not expected you so soon.’
‘I set out the moment I put down the telephone.’ Sir John Rimmer, for it was he, tapped his silver-topped cane lightly upon marble floor and removed his wide-brimmed hat. To those who had never met the world-famous psychic investigator before, his appearance had a sobering effect, to those who already had, it still did the same. As it were. Standing nearly seven feet in height, his vast red beard spread nearly to his waist. His gaunt frame, encased in lush green velvet, seemed permanently a-quiver. Steel-grey eyes glittered behind horn-rimmed specs atop his hawkish nose.
‘Yes, yes,’ said the curator, staring up at the phenomena that loomed above him. ‘Well, the item in question turned up this very morning. It was in a shoe-box, would you believe, which had apparently fallen down the back of a radiator. Would you care to examine it now?’
‘I would.’
‘Then follow me.’
The curator led the long stick insect of a man down aisles of files and corridors of drawers, past cases of braces and spaces where faces of concubines and philistines stared from oils that were the spoils of war and the so much more to gaze on them was sure to quite amaze.
‘If we might simply cut the poetic descriptions and get straight to the matter in hand,’ said Sir John who was not to be shilly-shallied, dilly-dallied, taken for a ride or subtly pushed aside, ‘the shoe-box!’
‘It’s here,’ said the curator.
‘Ah, so it is.’
Sir John gave the box a good looking-over. On the lid, a label bore a British Museum catalogue number and the words THE GOLDEN TABLET of Tosh m’Hoy, written on with biro in a crude hand. Sir John blew dust from the lid and the curator, who received it full in the face, took to a fit of coughing.