‘All of that.’ Tuppe nodded vigorously. ‘And so here we are.’
Bollocks stared into the face of Cornelius Murphy. ‘You bastard,’ he said.
‘You what?’
‘I said, you bastard. You know that you’re the Stuff of Epics. You get involved in something as incredible as all that, you go through all that you’ve gone through, and then you quit? You just quit? You bastard.’
‘It’s far more complicated than you think—’
‘Oh no it isn’t,’ said Bollocks.
‘Oh yes it is,’ replied Cornelius.
‘Oh no it isn’t,’ chorused everyone on board the happy bus. For they had all been listening to the tall boy as he told his tale.
‘I’m sorry,’ said Cornelius. ‘But I quit.’
‘Bastard.’ Bollocks threw up his hands. ‘You bastard. Get off our bus.’
‘No, Bollocks, wait.’ Candy dropped down on to the cushions beside Cornelius. ‘You know you can’t quit really,’ she said. ‘You can’t quit being who you are. Being what you are. And knowing what you know.’
‘I can,’ said Cornelius. ‘And I have.’
‘Off,’ said Bollocks.
‘No,’ said Candy. ‘Cornelius, listen. You have to go on. See it through to the end. You have to. Not just for yourself. But for all of us. For the children.’
Cornelius looked up at the children. They sat before him in a wide-eyed row. A small one with curly hair blinked back a tear. ‘Are you going to save us from the bad fairies?’ she asked.
The tall boy groaned. He really didn’t need this.
The small child scrambled away and Candy said, ‘You have to, Cornelius. You just have to.’
‘I can’t. I just can’t.’
The small child returned. Sunlight angling down through the windows caught her golden hair to perfection. She had large tears in her eyes now and she held in her hands... an ocarina.
‘This is my daddy’s,’ she said. ‘Will you take it and stop the bad fairies?’
Cornelius Murphy buried his face in his hands. ‘All right! All right! I give up.’
The king was pissed again. It was late afternoon after all, and he was the king.
‘You do have everything under control now, don’t you, Arthur?’ was the question that he asked.
‘Certainly do.’ Arthur availed himself of the royal cakes without being asked. ‘I have just had a call from a chief inspector of police that we have on our payroll. He informs me that Hugo Rune is no longer a threat to security.’
‘You mean he’s—’
‘Very,’ said Arthur.
‘Shame,’ said the king.
‘Oh, don’t start all that again.’
‘Do you know,’ the king poured himself another drink, ‘sometimes I wonder if it’s all really worthwhile? This mucking up of mankind that we do. Holding them back. Messing them all about.’
‘They would thank you for it if they knew,’ Arthur unreliably informed his king.
‘Would they really thank me?’
‘Of course they would. They love you, don’t they?’
‘Do they still love me, really?’
‘They adore you. You still have an enormous following.’
‘Tell me about my following,’ said the king. ‘Tell me, Arthur.’
‘They still perform The Ceremony of the Sacred Sock.’
‘Do they?’ asked the king. ‘What is that by the way?’
Arthur sighed. ‘The sacred ceremony, where they pray for you to bestow gifts upon them.’
‘And do they still call me by my name?’ asked the king.
‘Oh yes,’ said Arthur Kobold. ‘They still call you good old Father Christmas.’
The crowd closed in around Cornelius Murphy.
There were tears of joy and kisses and smiles and cuddlings. And things of that nature generally. Touching? Heart-warming? Sentimental overkill? Steven Spielberg could not have directed it better. Tuppe, who had in fact directed it, paid off the small golden child with a fifty-pence piece. ‘You done good, kid,’ said he.
‘We agreed a pound,’ the child replied. ‘And two for the ocarina.’
‘Just call me good old Father Christmas,’ said Tuppe.
‘Good old Father Christmas,’ said the king.
‘Good old you,’ said Arthur Kobold.
‘And they still hang up their socks?’
‘Yes, as I said. They still hang them up, but you don’t put anything in them any more.’
‘No,’ said the king, ‘I don’t. Why don’t I?’
‘Because’, said Arthur, ‘you got fed up with it and you said, “Stuff the lot of them, it’s my birthday and it’s my magic birthday spell. And I’m going to use it having a good time and the parents can fill up their kids’ stockings themselves.”’
‘I said that?’
‘You did. And at the end you said, “So there!” And you stuck out your tongue. I remember that quite well.’
‘Stuck out my tongue?’
‘And said, “So there!”.’
‘I did that?’
‘You know you did. The special birthday spell was formulated so you could travel all around the world on the eve of your birthday, dispensing joy and goodwill and presents, before one second of real time had passed.’
‘So that’s how I did it. I always wondered.’
‘That’s how you did it. But you don’t do itany more.’
‘Because that other bloke stole my birthday,’ said the king in a sulky voice.
‘That other bloke? Jesus, you mean! You can’t even bring yourself to say his name.’
‘He ripped me off,’ Father Christmas complained. ‘Just because he was born on my birthday. He even named himself after me. Jesus Christmas! It doesn’t sound right anyway.’
‘I have tried to explain to you about him before,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t know why you get so worked up. You’re both gods, aren’t you? In as many words, and as near as makes no odds. But you’re a far more popular god than him really.’
‘Am I?’ asked King Christmas.
‘Of course you are. I keep telling you. Christmas Day. Which god would you choose, if you were a kiddie? The squalling brat in the manger, who’s getting all the presents, or the jolly red-faced man, with the nice white beard, who’s bringing you presents?’
‘I know which one I’d choose,’ said the king.
‘And me,’ said Arthur.
‘So do you think I should use my special spell to bring joy and goodwill and presents once more to the world of men?’
‘Nah,’ said Arthur. ‘Stuff the bastards is what I say.’
‘My opinion entirely,’ the king agreed. ‘I’m the guvnor. I’m in charge. And I’ll run the world my way.’
‘Quite so,’ said Arthur. ‘You do it your way.’
‘I will,’ said the king. ‘And, Arthur, as you have done so well, I am going to promote you. From now on you are my chief of security.’
‘Oh goody goody gumdrops,’ said Arthur Kobold through gritted teeth.
‘And I want a bit of peace and quiet, Arthur. No more horrible humans stealing my cars. No-one trying to bring down my kingdom. You take care of that for me and we shall all live happily ever after. Is this Murphy creature going to be a problem?’
Arthur shook his head. ‘Not unless he manages to raise an army against us. And I can’t see where he’d get one of those from, can you?’
22
‘Twenty-three thousand travellers are expected to attend the free festival at Gunnersbury Park tomorrow. Lord Crawford, interviewed this afternoon at Heathrow, shortly before his departure for a long weekend in Antigua, said that he deeply regretted that he would not be able to attend the festival in person, but hoped that everyone would have a jolly fine time. And make their own toilet arrangements.
‘A police spokesman said that the area surrounding the park would be closed off and that no travellers would be allowed through. He did not expect any trouble, although
there was always, what he described as ‘a hard core’, who turned nasty. The regular policy of meeting violence with violence would be adopted. On-the-spot film of the skirmishes will be shown tomorrow on News at Six.’
Bollocks turned off the radio. ‘Uncanny,’ said he.
The happy bus was rolling merrily along. Tuppe stood on the back seat and watched the world that passed behind. ‘It looks like we’ve got us a convoy,’ he said.
Cornelius sat beside him. He whistled while he worked. He had the ocarina in one hand and a skewer in the other.
Tuppe dropped down beside him. ‘How’s it coming?’ he asked. ‘And careful with that skewer,’ he went on. ‘You nearly had my eye out.’
‘Do these new holes look in the right places to you?’ Cornelius handed Tuppe the ocarina.
Tuppe gave it a looking over. ‘They do to me. Can you remember the order to play them in?’
‘No need,’ said Cornelius. ‘As you will be doing the playing.’
‘Oh yes? And when will I be doing this?’
‘Tomorrow evening. At the festival. On Star Hill. We know there’s a portal there, don’t we?’
‘We don’t know exactly whereabouts though. It’s a big hill. It could take a lot of blowing.’
‘Oh I think we can get the hill to meet us halfway.’
‘You have a serious plan in mind, then?’
‘Certainly do.’ Cornelius tapped his nose with the skewer and nearly put his own eye out.
Tuppe was certainly right about the convoy. As the happy bus bowled along, other buses fell into line behind it. Not all of these looked particularly happy though. Most looked dark and dire and altogether intimidating. And, it had to be said, their occupants didn’t look a bundle of laughs either. Morose was probably the word. Down right evil were three more.
But they weren’t, of course. Anything but. These were middle-class university graduates, with first-class honours degrees in sociology and psychology and philosophy and ‘the humanities’ (whatever they are). All those qualifications which aren’t worth that afore-mentioned bogeyman’s bottom burp in the economic climate of today.
Not that it was the failure to secure work in their chosen fields of endeavour that drove these people into a life on the road. Oh no, it was a shared wish to make the world a happier place to live in.
Now at first glance, or even at second or third, shaving lumps out of your hair, dressing in evil-smelling rags, dragging small dogs around on strings and generally carrying on in the vilest imaginable manner, might not seem the way to go about making the world a happier place.
But not so. Throughout history, society has forever looked to find a scapegoat in times of crisis. When trouble looms, there’s nothing people like better than to find some minority to blame. It’s a tradition, or an old charmless piece of biggotry, or something.
It leads to pogroms and ethnic cleansing. It is most unpleasant. And this is where the travellers come in.
At a secret congress in the early 1980s, a group of socially aware unemployed young graduates sat down and set out a manifesto. They would form themselves, they said, into a band so despicable, so foul and unspeakable, that they would become the universal scapegoat.
It worked like a dream, and does to this day. When the travellers appear in town, old scores are forgotten, the community bands together in perfect harmony against the common foe.
It unites. And it remains united. And bit by bit the world becomes a happier place. Or so it says in The Book of Ultimate Truths.
Arthur Kobold tucked the king into bed. Good old Father Christmas, the Guvnor, Secret Ruler of the Whole Wide World, snored soundly.
Arthur stood over the sleeper and made a gun with the fingers of his right hand. ‘Bitow bitow bitow,’ he went as he mimed the assassination.
‘The King is dead. Long live King Arthur the First.’ He blew imaginary smoke from his gun barrel fore-finger. ‘King Arthur, d’you hear that, punk?’
The king stirred in his slumbers, mumbled something about chimney pots and lapsed into loud snorings.
Arthur Kobold slunk from the room.
Prince Charles returned to Buckingham Palace. He returned in the company of Polly Gotting. There was no way he was going to let her out of his sight. They were made for each other. He just knew it. There was the age difference, of course. And the class barrier. But one of the best things about being a member of the royal family was that you could pretty much do anything you wanted. That was the whole point of being ‘a royal’, wasn’t it?
Charles could never understand why the Press made such a fuss when one of his family went off the rails (an expression which was something of a favourite with him). Surely it was a ‘royal’s’ duty to do just that. In private, naturally. Not where it might frighten the horses.
Polly followed the prince through the palace corridors. She gazed up at the historic walls, with their historic paintings hanging above the historic furniture. Although there could obviously be no moral justification for so very much wealth being in the hands of so very few people, there was something almost comforting about it. Its permanence, perhaps? She certainly wasn’t a royalist, teenage royalists are not exactly an endangered species (they’re much rarer than that), she was simply a person.
And as a person, and being here, it was quite clear that there was more to the monarchy than just the sum of its parts.
Prince Charles led her up a sweeping flight of steps, which might well have been the very one on which Cinderella dropped her slipper. He opened the door of his private apartment and smiled her inside. A telephone was ringing and he went off to answer it.
Polly sat down on an enormous bed and took in the room. There was another opportunity here for a pretentious and not particularly amusing architectural description, but as a running gag, it, like the constant and annoying references to the number twenty-three, hadn’t really proved its worth.
So Polly looked all around, wasn’t all that keen on what she saw and waited for the prince to return. When he did he said, ‘That was my equerry, Leo Felix. Charming chap, in my class at Eton. You met him when you came for the interview.’
Polly nodded.
‘Leo says that I’ve been invited to host the concert that Gandhi’s Loincloth are giving tomorrow.’
‘Hairdryer,’ said Polly.
‘I don’t think I have one,’ said the prince.
‘Gandhi’s Hairdryer. You said Loincloth.’
‘Did I?’ asked the prince. ‘That’s funny, because Colin, that’s the lead singer, he’s an old Etonian chum of mine too. Loincloth? I wonder why I said that.’
‘You were looking at my legs when you said it.’
‘Ah,’ said the prince. ‘One was, was one?’
‘One was, I’m afraid. Are you going to host the gig, then?’
‘I really don’t know. What do you think? Would it be the done thing?’
‘Would you like me to be the done thing again?’ Polly asked the prince, which was pretty excruciating, but people do say things like that when the relationship is still at the hot-and-horny stage. And at least they hadn’t started giving each other nauseating little pet names yet.
‘Toot toot,’ went the prince. ‘Big Boy is coming into the tunnel—’
‘Don’t be a prat,’ said Polly.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Tuppe, when Cornelius had finished outlining his serious plan, ‘that is a serious plan you have just finished outlining there.’
‘So, what do you think?’
‘Well, let me get it straight. What you are suggesting is, that, as Bone knows the Gandhi’s drummer, he swings it for me to get up on stage in the middle of the gig and play the magic notes through the megawatt sound system. Then, when the portal opens, you do a sort of Pied Piper routine and lead a twenty-three-thousand-strong peace convoy through the portal and into the Forbidden Zones.’
‘Exactly. Overwhelm the fairy stinkers with a single unexpected and peaceful invasion. I don’t want to w
ipe them out, Tuppe, I just want them to leave mankind alone to get on with its own business.’
‘And you really think Kobold’s bunch will agree to that?’
‘Well, if I suddenly found twenty-three thousand travellers in my front room, I’d agree to pretty much anything in order to get them out. Wouldn’t you?’
Tuppe grinned a wicked grin. ‘And I’d be prepared to reward, most handsomely, the enterprising young man who could get them out.’
Cornelius winked. ‘My thoughts entirely. Arthur Kobold owes us substantial damages. We won’t be taking a cheque this time. So, what do you think, a blinder of a plan, or what?’
‘Well.’ Tuppe screwed up his face. ‘I think it’s a real blinder. But, I do have to say, that if Anna were here, I have the feeling that she just might say that it was a very sad plan and possibly that it sucked. No offence meant.’
‘None taken, I assure you. So, do we, as they say, give it a whirl?’
‘As they say, we do.’
The sun went down upon Gunnersbury Park and no lights showed from the big house, home of the Antigua-bound Lord Crawford. There were plenty of lights beyond the walls though. These were of the revolving variety and adorned police car roofs. Roofs that had those big numbers on them for helicopter recognition during riot situations.
Not that there were any riot situations on the go at present. Oh no. The police cordon that ringed the park around and about, and blocked off lots of vital roads, showed not the vaguest hint of riot.
The officers of the law lounged upon bonnets, smoking cigarettes, filling in their expense chitties and discussing the sort of thing that policemen discuss when in the company of their own kind.
The TV news teams had all departed several hours before, having got all their required footage. And the anarchic travellers, who had put up such a violent struggle trying to break through the police cordon, now sat in cells, smoking cigarettes, filling in their expense chitties and discussing the sort of things that actors discuss when in the company of their own kind.
Of the twenty-three thousand genuine travellers, there wasn’t a one.