The Abominable Showman
First published by Far Fetched Books
2015
Copyright Robert Rankin 2015
The right of Robert Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
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Cover photo by Gail D'Almaine
Cover artwork by Robert Rankin
Art direction by Rachel ‘Raygun’ Rankin-Hayward
THE ABOMINABLE
SHOWMAN
ROBERT RANKIN
Dedicated to
the cast.
Jonathan Crawford, Ian Crichton,
Atters and the Count.
And a very Happy Birthday Wendy.
Table of Contents
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‘Religion is excellent stuff
for keeping common people quiet.’
Napoleon
‘Give a guy a big nose and weird
hair and he’s capable of anything.’
Frank Zappa
1
It all began with talk of the vegetable lamb.
I was ten years of age at the time and lived with my family, mother, the daddy and younger brother Andy, in Moby Dick Terrace, Brentford. The terrace no longer exists, demolished as it was in the nineteen-sixties, to make way for those six tower blocks that now scar the Brentford skyline. My brother and I recall the terrace, as well we might for the memories mostly are joyous. But strange to tell, a recent study of pre-war Brentford maps, discovered by my brother at a car boot sale, disclosed no street by the name of Moby Dick Terrace.
I have pondered long and hard, but I cannot explain that.
My brother’s suggestion is that the daddy might have had something to do with it. He was a renowned practical joker and although a carpenter by trade he did have this obsession with whaling. Even as I write these words I have before me upon my desk the whale’s tooth the daddy gave me when I was five years old. It came to me in company of a fabulous tale of adventure, involving the daddy prising it from the jaw of the slaughtered beast, during one of his many (and now clearly mythical) whaling voyages. My father’s tall stories inspired me to write and I am grateful to him.
So then, regarding that vegetable lamb. Let me tell you the tale as it came.
The year was nineteen sixty-one and the daddy had taken me to an exhibition at the British Museum.
AN EXHIBITION OF
FORGERIES AND DECEPTIVE COPIES
HELD IN THE DEPARTMENT OF PRINTS AND DRAWINGS.
I still have the catalogue of the exhibition and the photographs of the exhibits that the daddy took (I tend to hang onto things, me). There were oriental manuscripts on display, coins and medals, an ‘Etruscan’ sarcophagus of dubious provenance and a ‘cabinet of rarities’.
It was the cabinet of rarities that drew our greatest attention. Contained within was a unicorn’s horn (lent by Sir Kenneth Clark), a mandrake root, a mummified mermaid (from the collection of Professor Sir Alister Hardy) and the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary, which had been displayed by Sir Hans Sloane before the Royal Society in sixteen ninety-eight.
Considering its age, it looked very fresh and lifelike.
It also looked like just what it was, a four ‘legged’ root that vaguely resembled a lamb.
According to the daddy, this vegetative prodigy was introduced to the Western World through the published memoirs of Sir John Mandeville. Sir John, a noble and retired knight of the realm, wrote of his travels. And it did have to be said that he had certainly ‘been there’ and ‘done that’.
He had rubbed shoulders with centaurs, cyclopeans and cynocephalics. Men that had tails and men without heads. He had viewed Noah’s Ark upon the peak of Mount Ararat and visited a lake in Ceylon which was filled with the tears of Adam and Eve after they had been cast out of Eden. Curiously one of the few things that he hadn’t actually seen was a vegetable lamb. Although he did eat some and did touch a fleece. And he heard tell all about it from a man who had seen a lamb grow.
It was the spawn of a long-stemmed plant that grew in the wilds of Tartary. A great pod developed upon this stem, eventually opening to reveal the lamb within. The tiny creature resembled its animal counterpart in all but its hooves, which appeared to be stiff hairs that clustered to form hoof-like shapes. The vegetable lamb lived a short and dismal life. Tethered to the plant’s stem as if it were an umbilicus (although one that provided no nutrition whatsoever, instead only fateful captivity), the creature grazed upon the grass within its limited circle of movement. Once it had eaten all the grass it simply starved to death.
Very sad.
Or indeed, and this was more likely, the lamb was eaten by predators that found its flesh delicious. So, starved to death, or devoured by wolves, not a life to be envied.
I looked hard at the lamb in the cabinet of rarities. It did have those little hairy hooves and it did seem to have a tiny mouth. And it would be all withered and root-like if it had starved to death.
I looked up at the daddy and asked, ‘Do you think that it might have been real?’
The daddy smiled and nodded too. ‘I believe it so.’
‘And what of that mermaid?’ I asked.
And the daddy shrugged. ‘I have seen many such things,’ he said. ‘Especially during my travels in the Orient.’
‘I don’t think you’ve told me of those,’ I said.
‘But I will.’
‘So do you think that the mermaid might be real?’
The daddy smiled again and said, ‘Opinions vary widely. It is most commonly believed that specimens such as the one you see there are cunningly constructed from the body of a monkey and tail of a fish.’
‘It does look very convincing,’ I said.
‘And so it should. Because I hold to the unique conviction that its upper parts are those of the monkey and its lower parts the fish. It is an otherwise undiscovered species of ocean-dwelling ape.’
I had read of that theory somewhere before, but being the polite little boy that I was, I did not say so to the daddy.
‘You believe that?’ said I.
‘I do. And I also believe in the vegetable lamb. Because I myself have seen one.’
Now this did come as something of a revelation. And, as at that time I could not distinguish fact from fancy when it came to the tales my father told, I enjoined him to, ‘Go on.’
‘When I was young,’ the daddy said, ‘I was a farmer’s boy. Your grandfather held lands to the south of Brentford where the Rank Xerox building now stands. We had a complement of chickens and a brace of porker pigs. Our chickens’ eggs found favour with the gentry and I delivered them to many of the fine houses that still stand proudly in the Butts Estate.’
I sighed just a little, as I loved to hear the daddy talk.
‘Six eggs a week to Professor Slocombe,’ said the daddy. ‘And only speckled, not brown. A most particular man, the Professor. And four eggs, brown, to her ladyship each Saturday. Lady Agnes Rutherford, as fine a lady as was ever nobly born. It was in her kitchen garden that I saw the Borametz.’
‘The Borametz?’ I queried. For I was without understanding.
‘That is the true name of the vegetable lamb. Otherwise Cibotium barometz as Sir Hans Sloane categorised it.’
‘And you saw one alive?’ I said.
‘Two,’ said the daddy. ‘Her ladyship was trying to breed them to present at the Chelsea Flower Show. I think they would have caused quite a sensation, don’t you?’
I nodded, in thought, and agreed.
‘Cat got ‘em,’ said the daddy, all of a sudden. ‘A giant feral tom cat. Whose offspring they say still roams the allotments at night.’
I gave a shudder. We Brentford children all knew of the Giant Feral Tom. A ferocious beasty that prowled the St Mary’s allotments during the hours of darkness. No right-thinking Christian boy took a short cut through the allotments after the sun went down.
‘Eaten by a tom cat,’ I said. ‘What a pity.’
‘A very great pity,’ the daddy said. ‘Her ladyship had told me that when they bred, I might have one for a pet.’
‘I need to go for a wee wee now,’ I told the daddy, as all the excitement of his tale had made me want to go.
After I’d been, and washed my hands, the daddy and I left the British Museum. We crossed the road and entered the Atlantis Bookshop, where the daddy introduced me to the proprietor, a gentleman who still possessed the bouncing cheques of Mr Aleister Crowley.
‘The boy has an interest in the Vegetable Lamb of Tartary,’ said the daddy.
The proprietor, old and grey and tall and pale and possessed of a wonderful velvet smoking cap and a calabash pipe that puffed delicious smoke, nodded gravely and brought down from a high shelf a large and leather-bound volume which he opened before us on his desk.
‘De Varietate Rerum by Girolamo Cardano,’ he said, leafing carefully through the vellum pages. ‘Ah, here and so,’ and he pointed.
It was a beautiful illustration, executed in pen and colour wash. A perfect little lamby creature growing from a stem. A chap with a sword stood guard beside it. Or perhaps he did not stand guard, perhaps he was simply waiting until the artist had completed his life study, before swinging his sword to end the creature’s pitiable existence, before carting it home for the pot.
‘Do you think that there are any still living?’ I asked.
The proprietor sadly shook his head. ‘They are fripperies of a more magical time,’ he told me. ‘When such things were accepted to be true, because they were true. But there came an Age of Enlightenment, which I am assured by those who claim to speak with authority, we still enjoy. Mandrakes and mermen and vegetable lambs can have no life in an age such as ours, I regret.’
‘But, my daddy –’ I said, but the daddy stopped me dead.
‘We must go,’ said he, ‘or we will miss our bus.’
I shook the hand of the tall pale man.
And never saw him again.
My mother was flattening lard with her red enamelled rolling pin, when we got home (God bless you, Don Van Vliet) and we settled down to a tea of baked sprout pie. After tea my father went off to dig on his allotment patch. Something he did almost nightly, which to me spoke loudly of his fearlessness for tom cats. I think my father worked hard upon his allotment patch, although but for the sprouts we never saw the fruits of his labour. The hard work clearly went to his legs though, for often he returned home walking crookedly and sometimes fell down and even slept in the hall.
Mother went out to gather washing from the line, leaving my brother and me to play with our lead soldiers under the kitchen table.
I have written before of my brother Andy, of his penchant for animal impersonation and the curious ways he had about him. But at the time I write of here he was but six years old and seemed to me the same as any other infant lad.
‘We saw a vegetable lamb today at the British Museum,’ I told my brother Andy.
‘I was a fish today,’ said Andy. ‘A flounder and I spent all day in the bath.’
‘Didn’t you get very cold?’ I asked my brother.
‘Mum poured hot water from the kettle over me.’ Andy displayed his scaldings and let me pick at the skin.
‘What is a vegetable lamb?’ he asked at last.
‘It’s a lamb that grows on a plant,’ I informed him. ‘Its technical name is Shy-bottom Barry Mex.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Andy, picking too. ‘I’ve seen one of those.’
‘I don’t think you have,’ I told him. ‘Not in this Age of Enfrightenment.’
‘I have seen one too,’ said Andy. ‘It grows on a long stalk and walks about in a circle bleating softly.’
I was somewhat shocked by Andy’s words.
‘You really saw it?’ I said. ‘But where?’
‘In an old lady’s garden,’ said Andy. ‘I kicked my ball over her wall by accident and climbed after to get it. The garden was very overgrown, but I saw the little lamb on the stalk.’
‘And when did this happen? And where?’
‘The lady’s called Rutherford,’ said my brother. ‘She lives on the Butts Estate.’
2
There was nothing for it, of course, I had to see that lamb!
‘Let’s go now,’ I said to my brother.
‘We’re not allowed,’ said he. ‘Mummy won’t let us out after tea. And the lady said if I ever came back she’d cut off my little winky.’
‘Oh,’ said I.
‘What is a winky?’ asked Andy.
‘Never you mind about that.’
‘We can go tomorrow,’ said Andy. ‘I am going to be a fish in the canal tomorrow.’
‘That’s not a good idea,’ I said and I patted my brother’s head. ‘You could drown in the canal, the water is very deep.’
‘Don’t be silly. Fish can’t drown.’ My brother sucked a lead soldier. ‘These taste very nice indeed,’ he added.
‘You show me the lady’s house tomorrow,’ I said. ‘And I will climb over her wall.’
‘What if she cuts off your winky?’
‘She won’t.’
‘What is a winky anyway?’
‘It doesn’t matter,’ I said.
‘Do you know what one is?’
‘Of course I do.’
‘Then tell me what, or I won’t show you which house is the lady’s.’
‘Hm,’ I went. ‘Then it’s your littlest finger.’
‘Thank goodness for that,’ said my brother. ‘I thought she meant my penis.’
I confess that I did not sleep well. And it was not for fear of emasculation. It was all too good to be true, you see, too much of a happenstance. Such a coincidence was unlikely at best, and ludicrous at worst. A vegetable lamb? Here in Brentford? In nineteen sixty-one? And my brother had actually seen it? Should I tell the daddy?
Downstairs I heard the front door open and the sounds of the daddy falling
into the hall.
There were sprouts again for breakfast in our little house. They were shredded and fried and served to us as bacon. But we saw through this deception.
‘Will you be off to your sawing of wood today, Sauce?’ asked my mum of the daddy. She called him Sauce and he called her Mac and they stayed forever in love.
‘I will,’ said the daddy, finishing his ‘bacon’ and having a lick at his plate. ‘We are on the upper deck now, but there is still a long way to go.’
I mentioned earlier that Sir John Mandeville had claimed to have seen Noah’s Ark. The daddy too was working on an ark. A gentleman in Ealing who possessed the gift of prophecy, and also a large inheritance from an aunt, had commissioned the daddy to help him construct a vessel of truly biblical proportions, in which he intended to house ‘two of every kind’. The gentleman had grown a large beard and had become something of a celebrity, doing interviews with the local press and even one with the BBC, which we looked forward to seeing. Many onlookers gathered each day with deckchairs and packed lunches and cheered on the work in progress.
I asked the daddy regarding the ‘two of every kind’. The daddy said that ‘the two’ so far consisted of two gerbils and one tom cat. Later there were no gerbils at all, as the tom cat had eaten them up. It was, explained the daddy, a long term and on-going project which would hopefully see him employed for a number of years to come.
‘And what of you two?’ asked my mother, gazing at Andy and I.
‘We are going down to the Seaman’s Mission,’ I said. ‘To help out the poor and needy.’
‘Then take your scarves,’ my mother said. ‘For it can get bitter down there.’
My mother was one of the last true believers in the Brentford Microclimate. That all the climates and all the world’s weather were to be found somewhere in Brentford at any given time. This particular belief system left me baffled, for I felt that it was one that could be disproved simply by taking a walk through the borough, with or without your scarf.