The Book of Ultimate Truths

  ‘I have a Molly on my list.’ Cornelius handed the photograph to Tuppe. ‘Pity she’s not in the picture.’

  ‘Who’s that fat fellow in the tweeds?’ Tuppe asked.

  ‘The lad himself, Mr Hugo Rune.’ Cornelius took back the picture and tucked it into his top pocket. ‘Anything else?’

  Tuppe climbed into the portmanteau and dug about. ‘Some letters. No lost manuscripts though.’

  ‘Check to see if the trunk has a false bottom.’

  Tuppe stuck his head up. ‘That’s what I am doing.’

  Cornelius examined the letters. They were all from Rune, addressed to Victor Zenobia, requesting funds for some mysterious project. Maps. The purchase of a London taxi. Ropes and climbing tackle. Gunpowder.

  ‘I think we have the measure of Mr Rune.’ Cornelius tucked the letters into his pocket. ‘Barking mad and always on the make.’

  ‘He didn’t seem to care what he spent, as long as he didn’t have to pay for it. I wonder what your Mr Kobold sees in him.’

  ‘Or the rival publishers. The Campbell must surely be in their pay.’

  ‘You think that?’

  ‘What other explanation can there be? The Campbell was waiting for me when I arrived. He knew I was coming. He planned to get me out of the way so he could bid for the portmanteau. Nab the papers.’

  ‘All seems a bit drastic. But it’s epic stuff right enough. Ah, what’s this? Oh, nothing, just an old paper bag.’ Tuppe screwed it up and flung it on to the carpet.

  ‘Oh good,’ said Cornelius. ‘The vital clue.’

  ‘The vital what?’

  ‘Clue. Whenever a piece of paper gets screwed up and thrown away like that in a movie it always proves to be the vital clue.’

  ‘Oh yes, so it does. Quick, give it the once over.’

  Cornelius picked up the old paper bag and carefully uncreased it. ‘Molly’s Wholefoods.’ Cornelius read aloud. ‘Number one, Marduk Parade, High Street, Milcom Moloch.’

  ‘Well, how about that?’

  ‘How indeed.’

  They had a bottle of the best port sent up. And they sat and they plotted what they should do next. Presently the port was gone and the fire gone too and Tuppe had gone to sleep in the portmanteau. So Cornelius crept off to the bathroom, performed fastidious ablutions, togged up in the vile pyjamas and returned to the bedroom.

  He tucked the chintzy bed cover over his sleeping friend and switched off the light. In the unfamiliar darkness he wondered over the peculiarities of the day. But being able to make nothing of them he finally drifted off to sleep.

  In the far corner of the room, the duffle-coat stirred. A black rat crept out of the left sleeve and scuttled away in search of cheese.

  11

  THE MYSTERIES OF TIME

  Most of us like to celebrate our birthdays.

  My own, for example, is a national holiday in Tibet, a ‘Day of Gladness and Rejoicing’ in Upper Sumatra, and, no doubt, many other parts of the world.

  But how many have ever stopped to consider this particular riddle?

  If you are born on a Monday, then the next year your birthday will fall on a Tuesday. The next on a Wednesday and so on and so forth. Therefore, by the time you are seven, although your birthdate remains the same, you must actually be celebrating your birthday one week later in the year.

  By the time you are thirty, an entire lunar month later. Therefore, a man born in the spring must surely celebrate his ninetieth birthday in the middle of the summer.

  This is what you call a Cosmic Mystery. And I will return to it.

  There is a great deal more to time than meets the eye, or has, in fact, ever been ‘explained’ by that unprincipled scoundrel, A. Einstein, Esq.

  For instance, who amongst us has not said at one time or another:

  Doesn’t time fly when you’re enjoying yourself?

  Time really drags in this job.

  Not bloody Christmas again already!

  My wife says I’m a bad lover. How can any woman tell that in thirty seconds?

  Isn’t that window-cleaner coming more often than he did last year?

  Now, I am the last man on Earth to cry, CONSPIRACY! But I think to detect the acrid stench of its breath in this one.

  Allow me to explain.

  Time, as you will agree, is the most valuable commodity that we possess. And, as we know only too well, every really valuable commodity falls, sooner or later, into the hands of some unscrupulous individual, who then exploits it for their own ends. It is my contention that ‘time’ is now under the control of such an individual, who manipulates it in order to do down the working man.

  Allow me to explain further.

  The average working man spends roughly half of his life working. This involves a lot of clock watching. The working part of the working man’s life seems to last ‘for ever’. Then, if he survives this and retires, one of two things happens. Either, he finds ‘time dragging terribly’ and returns to work, or, he resists this urge, takes off to the seaside, wakes up one morning, says ‘Twenty years retired, it seems like only five minutes,’ and drops dead.

  There is no escape for the working man!

  His ‘time’ is being controlled!

  Let me cite the example of Shakespeare. How could he have completed so many plays, as well as formulating the beer which bears his name and opening so many tea rooms? Remember, there were no typewriters or photocopier machines in those days.

  If Shakespeare wrote a play with a cast of twenty-five, then he must have had to write a separate copy for each of the cast. I estimate that he must therefore have penned no less than five thousand words per minute, ten hours a day, for twenty years. No mean feat!

  There are two possibilities here. Either, that time was substantially different in those days, let us say that a minute then, would be equivalent to an hour and a half now; or that somehow Shakespeare had ‘time on his side’. Under his control, in fact. Oh yes! I contend that it was all down to Shakespeare’s employer. He had control of Shakespeare’s ‘time’ and was determined to milk it for every ounce of potential profit.

  So, I hear you cry, tell us how it’s done, Hugo. And tell us who is doing it.

  And so I shall.

  THE POPE CONTROLS ‘TIME’ ON THIS PLANET!

  Come come, I hear you cry. Surely this is sour grapes, Hugo. Because your application to become Pope has been turned down yet again. Not so, my friends, not so.

  I will now explain everything.

  A BRIEF HISTORY OF TIME

  by HUGO RUNE

  No-one knows exactly who originally discovered the existence of time. But it was certainly the Romans who first thought of splitting it up into units of measurement.

  The Roman senate started off with seconds and decided that sixty of them should equal one minute. Being extremely fond of naming things, especially after themselves, the sixty-man senate arrived at this particular figure without much in the way of heated debate. And each had a second named after themselves.

  They did not, however, agree upon a uniform length for the second. And since some senators had much longer names than others, jealousies soon arose. In no time senators were renaming themselves with longer and longer titles so that their seconds should be bigger than everyone else’s.

  We have the sixty-first senator to thank for the length of the second. Arriving back, as he did from his holidays, to discover that his honourable companions hadn’t given him a second to call his own, he took umbrage. (A small town near Troy (humour)). And being a conniving little toady with an eye for the main chance, he proclaimed that the second should equal exactly the time it took to say ‘praise Caesar’. And that they shouldn’t have names at all, but simply be numbered from one to sixty.

  This didn’t go down very well with the rest of the senate, but found great favour with Caesar, who allowed the sixty-first senator to keep umbrage.

  The Caesar in question was the almost forgotten Flavius the Noseless. And it was he who
originally decreed that all Roman sculptures should be fashioned without noses. A fact which seems to have slipped by the greybeards of the art world. The same greybeards, in fact, who still refer to Henry Moore as an ‘abstract’ sculptor. I knew Moore for many years and can testify that he was a master of lifelike representation. He just knocked around with some very funny-looking women. But I digress.

  Now, the senate, having got time divided up, named and tamed, were not happy. They had already invented The Class System (we have much to thank the Romans for). And they were saying to themselves, ‘Why should time be the same for everyone? Surely we, as the ruling intelligentsia, should have posher time than the slaves and plebs?’

  A whole lot of serious debating went on about this.

  Many suggestions were put forward. That the plebs should have less seconds in their minutes. That they should have the same number of seconds but be taxed for using them.

  That somehow their seconds should be made longer, so that they could do more work in a day.

  It was the latter suggestion, and how it was put into practice, that has enslaved the working man to this day.

  Now, there was this Greek fellow called Archimedes, who had built up quite a reputation for himself. He had invented this word called EUREKA! which, if shouted under certain conditions in the bathroom, enabled him to solve any manner of obtuse conundrums.

  Flavius the Noseless had booked two weeks in Greece for his holidays, so whilst there he dropped in on Archimedes and asked if he could come up with anything.

  Archimedes stroked his beard and retired to cogitate.

  Eventually he emerged from his bath, somewhat prune-like about the toe regions, but with the E-word once more on his lips.

  ‘The answer lies in the soap,’ he told Caesar.

  ‘Kaendly eggsplene,’ said the noseless one.

  ‘Certainly. Now the way I see it, you want a more upmarket variety of time than the plebs. Now, I must make this quite clear to you, you can’t actually mess around with time. But, you can mess around with the perception of time. What you need is a special drug, which, when administered to the plebs, will alter the way they perceive time. It will make time appear to travel slower. Thus, whilst in this state, they will get much more work done than they would normally. Do you know anything about chemistry?’

  Caesar nodded sagely.

  Thought not, thought Archimedes. ‘Well, I happen to know of such a drug. It has a very complicated chemical formula (C11H17NO3). And I alone can manufacture it. All you have to do is introduce it into the plebs’ soap. They wash with the soap and ingest the drug. And away they go.’

  ‘Bet whet abeet the great unwashed?’ Caesar asked.

  ‘Stick it in their tea. Agreed the working masses may not bath as regularly as might be wished, but they all drink tea. Listen, I’ll distil you a batch. You take it back to Rome. If you’re happy with the results, put in a regular order and we’re in business.’

  Palms were spat upon and smacked together. And the rest, as they say, is history.

  Caesar returned to Rome. Tested the drug. Found that it worked magically. Rome thrived. Caesar, being an astute businessman, if not a terribly nice person, attacked Greece, arrested Archimedes and tortured the formula out of him.

  The Caesars eventually turned to Christianity and became Popes. And the Vatican has held the secret to this very day.

  Hang about, I hear you cry, doubting Toms that you are. This doesn’t ring true. Surely we all use soap and drink tea. We can’t all be permanently drugged.

  No, say I. Not all.

  Because not all tea and soap is infected. And, if only the Vatican were in on the conspiracy, it could never operate. The manufacturers of tea and soap are in collusion. The distributors are in collusion. Higher management is in collusion. All those who drink exotic tea and smell differently from the rest of us are probably in collusion.

  It is an international conspiracy. Huge and insidious and the Pope is behind it all.

  I detect that some doubts still remain. That you really believe that you could not possibly be a victim of this terrible conspiracy.

  But consider this, ‘Time really flies when you’re enjoying yourself.’ This is because alcohol negates the effects of the drug. Ever found time flying when you’re taking a bath or drinking a cup of tea? Aha!

  And let me mention this. The drug is addictive. Ever found yourself ‘dying for a cuppa’? Aha!

  Ever wondered why the Catholic Church was so keen to convert the natives of South America? You know South America. Where all that coffee comes from. Aha!

  Ever wondered why the formula for Coca-Cola is such a closely guarded secret? Aha!

  I could continue at great length. But I will not. I opened this piece by stating that your birthday falls upon a different day each year. But that logically, it could not.

  Ever heard the expression, ‘He’s so stoned he doesn’t know what day of the week it is’?

  Aha!

  In concluding, I would just like to say that it has been a very great honour to be invited here tonight to The William of Orange Memorial Hall, Belfast, as guest speaker at The Protestant Shopkeeper of the Year Awards.

  To find myself in the company of so many eminent, discerning and open-minded independent shopkeepers, affords me pleasure beyond expression.

  I trust that my revelations have amused you. I know that they will draw considerable interest from the buying public when they are revealed upon the front pages of certain newspapers this coming Sunday. Considerable interest.

  You will notice that I have before me a selection of RUNE BRAND products. For instance, EARL RUNE. Now, this particular tea is guaranteed one hundred per cent C11H17NO3 free. Organically grown, packed in an ozone-friendly biodegradable carton and marketed at a price to please both shopkeeper and purchaser alike. As with CAFE RUNE GOLDEN BLEND, HUGO-COLA and RUNELIGHT SOAP. Now, I have to knock these out by the case, so who’ll be the first one up? You, sir? The tall distinguished gentleman. Twelve cases of EARL RUNE? Certainly. Rizla, fetch twelve down from the back of the van…

  Offered as exhibit A for the prosecution

  in the case of

  Nearly Everyone versus Hugo Rune.

  The smell of frying bacon awoke Cornelius Murphy from an erotic dream about a barmaid with violet eyes. He climbed from the bed and shambled over to the dressing-table mirror. There were no signs of a five-o’clock shadow. His hair had formed itself into an interesting anthill kind of a shape though.

  Cornelius drew the curtains and gazed out upon the day. The village below looked pretty charming. If you liked that sort of thing. Cornelius wondered whether he did.

  ‘No I don’t,’ he decided.

  Tuppe awoke with a shout and leapt from the portmanteau.

  ‘Something wrong, Tuppe?’

  Tuppe shook his head. ‘Bad dream, that’s all, get it now and then, dream there’s this big black bag full of horrible squirming things and it’s tied to my heels, like a shadow and I can’t get away. Horrible.’

  ‘Sounds it.’

  ‘No, horrible. Really horrible.’

  ‘Horrible, yes.’

  ‘Your pyjamas,’ said Tuppe. ‘Really horrible.’

  In the back kitchen of The Hangman’s Arms, Milcom Moloch, a young man’s dream stood over the frying pan.

  ‘Hello,’ she said, making eyes at Cornelius. ‘I thought you might have stopped by my room last night. I were real lonely.’

  Cornelius groaned and bit his lip.

  ‘You win some, you lose some,’ whispered Tuppe.

  ‘You missed all the excitement.’

  ‘Evidently.’ Cornelius hung his head. His head hung its hair.

  ‘No. Down in the bar. We had a spontaneous human combustion.’

  ‘Oh bother,’ said Tuppe. ‘I’ve always wanted to see one of those.’

  ‘Third one this week.’ The barmaid broke eggs into the pan.

  ‘Do you have any mushrooms?’ Tuppe asked.

/>   ‘Surely do, little manny. I’ll stir them in. Charred to a crisp he were. Had to scrape him off the flag stones with this here spatula.’ She raised the utensil in question from the frying pan.

  ‘Toast and marmalade for myself, I think,’ said Cornelius. ‘A light eater, me.’

  An ancient black Volkswagen, covered with vicious spikes and fitted with all-black windows, slipped out from a back street lock-up in Sheila na gigh. At the wheel sat Hamish. In the back seats, Angus and Sawney. In the front passenger seat, the Campbell.

  The Campbell’s all-black window swished down and evil Jim stuck out his head. He sniffed the air.

  ‘South,’ he said.

  Cornelius chewed upon cold dry toast and watched in disgust as Tuppe tucked into a fry-up of suitably epic proportions.

  ‘Have you got muesli?’ Cornelius asked the barmaid.

  ‘How dare you.’ The barmaid took a swing at him with the dreaded spatula.

  ‘It’s a breakfast cereal,’ the tall and ducking boy explained. ‘It’s full of nuts and bran and raisins and healthy things like that.’

  ‘Well no.’ The barmaid returned to her cooking. ‘No call for stuff like that round here.’

  ‘Surely there must be somewhere I could buy some. A present for my mum.’

  ‘Well, there’d be Molly’s. She sells healthy things.’

  ‘Local family business?’ Cornelius chewed upon his toast.

  ‘No. She’s from the south. No-one ever goes into her shop. That fancy food. For the swells, that is. Tourists.’

  ‘And you get a lot of those?’

  ‘No. None.’ The barmaid raised the spatula and brought it down upon a bluebottle. Tuppe flinched, but continued to fill his face.

  ‘Is Molly’s far from here?’ Cornelius watched as the barmaid scooped up the bluebottle with the spatula, flipped it into the air and batted it through the open window.

  ‘Out the front. Turn left and first on your left. More bacon, little manny?’

  ‘Yes please,’ said Tuppe.

  ‘Out the front. Turn left and first on the left.’ Cornelius gazed in through the front window of Molly’s Wholefoods.