Snuff Fiction

  He also spoke of his plans for the future. That it was his intention to open shops all over the world. I enquired as to whether each of these shops would be kitted out with a Hartnell Home Happyfier, turned up to full blast.

  I did not receive an answer to this question.

  Before the meal began, the Doveston had asked me to get out my Filofax and Mont Blanc pen so that I could take down all he said for the biography. I explained to him that it really wasn’t necessary, what with me having total recall and everything. But he still made me get it out and stick it on the table.

  I did make a few jottings and I did draw a really good picture of a big-bosomed lady riding a bike. But sadly, as this is not an illustrated book, it can’t be printed here. But then neither can anything the Doveston said.

  I suppose it could have been. If I’d taken the trouble to write it all up. But frankly, I couldn’t be bothered.

  The meal was splendid though. A five-course Crad supper with afters. Served by the cook who had come with the house.

  Afterwards, over brandy and cigars, the Doveston spoke a lot more. We were all rather drunk now and feeling very mellow. Rapscallion snoozed in an armchair by the fire. Jackie hiccuped and blew out the candelabrum at the far end of the room. And I wondered just how I might persuade her to come up to my room and enjoy the Yaa-hoo-it’s-Party-Time setting of the Hartnell Home Happyfier.

  As I watched the Doveston standing there beside the great fire-place, holding forth about his plans for this thing, that thing and the other, my thoughts travelled back, as thoughts will do, to times long gone and done with.

  I wrote in the very first chapter about how this was to be no ordinary biography, but rather a series of personal recollections. And I have stayed true to this. Our childhood days were happy ones and I knew that there would be good times ahead.

  But I also knew, for I had glimpsed the future, that there would be evil times and that the Doveston would meet a terrible end. But seeing him there, in his very prime, full of plans and full of life, it all seemed so unlikely. This was the grubby boy who had become the rich successful man. This was my bestest friend.

  Whenever I am asked about the times I spent with the Doveston, it is always the period between 1985 and the year two thousand that people want to know about. The Castle Doveston years and the Great Millennial Ball.

  Did all that incredible stuff really happen? Was what people read in the tabloids true? Well, yes and yes. It did happen and it was all true.

  But there was so much more.

  And I will tell it here.

  17

  The King’s condition worsened, there were terrible seizures which caused him to roll his eyes in a hideous fashion and beat upon his breast.

  When the madness came upon him, he would cry out in a vulgar tongue, using phases unchristian. Only his pipe brought comfort to him then.

  Silas Camp (1742-1828)

  ‘He's Richard, you know,’ said Norman.

  I looked up from my pint of Death-by-Cider. We sat together in the Jolly Gardeners, Bramfield’s only decent drinking house. It was the summer of ‘eighty-five, the hottest ever on record. Outside tarmac bubbled on the road and the death toll from heat-stroke in London was topping off at a thousand a week. There was talk of revolution in the air. But only inside in the shade.

  ‘Richard?’ I asked.

  ‘Richard,’ said Norman. ‘As in barking mad.’

  ‘Ah,’ said I. ‘This would be that fifth generation Brentford rhyming slang that I find neither clever nor amusing.’

  ‘No, it’s straightforward one on one. Richard Dadd, mad.’

  ‘Richard Dadd (born sometime, died later) painted pictures of fairies, butchered his old man and ended his days in the nut house.’

  ‘Touché.’ I smiled a bit at Norman. The shopkeeper had grown somewhat plump with middle years. He had a good face though, an honest face, which he had hedged to the east and west with a pair of ludicrous mutton-chop side-whiskers. As to his hair, this was all but gone and the little that remained had been tortured into one of those greased-down Arthur Scargill comb-over jobs that put sane women to flight.

  For the most part, he had grown older with grace and with little recourse to artifice. His belly spilled over the front of his trews and his bum stuck out at the back. His shop-coat was spotless, his shoes brightly buffed and his manner was merry, if measured.

  He had married, but divorced, his wife having run off with the editor of the Brentford Mercury. But he had taken this philosophically. ‘If you marry a good-looking woman,’ he said to me, ‘she’ll probably run off with another man and break your heart. But if, like me, you marry an ugly woman, and she runs off with another bloke, who gives a toss?’

  Norman had been brought down to Castle Doveston to do some work on ‘security’. He was as anxious to get back to his shop as I was to get back to my conservatory. But the Doveston kept finding us more things to do.

  ‘So,’ I said, ‘he’s Richard. And who are you talking about?’

  ‘The Doveston, of course. Don’t tell me it’s slipped by you that the man’s a raving loon.’

  ‘He does have some eccentricities.’

  ‘So did Richard Dadd. Here, let me show you this.’ Norman rummaged about in his shop-coat pockets and drew out a crumpled set of plans. ‘Move your woosie address book off the table and let me spread this out.’

  I elbowed my Filofax onto the floor. ‘What have you got there?’ I asked.

  ‘Plans for the gardens of Castle Doveston.’ Norman smoothed out creases and flicked away cake crumbs. ‘Highly top secret and confidential, of course.’

  ‘Of course.

  ‘Now, you see all this?’ Norman pointed. ‘That is the estate surrounding the house. About a mile square. A lot of land. All these are the existing gardens, the Victorian maze, the ornamental ponds, the tree-lined walks.’

  ‘It’s all very nice,’ I said. ‘I’ve walked around most of it.’

  ‘Well, it’s all coming up, the lot of it. The diggers are moving in next week.’

  ‘But that’s criminal.’

  ‘They’re his gardens. He can do what he likes with them.’

  ‘You mean he can behave as badly as he likes with them.’

  ‘Whatever. Now see this.’ Norman fished a crumpled sheet of transparent acetate from another pocket and held it up. ‘Recognize this?’

  Printed in black upon the acetate was the distinctive Doveston logo, the logo that had so upset the late Vicar Berry. The three tadpoles chasing each other’s tails.

  ‘The Mark of the Beast,’ I said with a grin.

  ‘Don’t be a prat,’ said Norman. ‘It’s the alchemical symbol for Gaia.’

  ‘Who?’

  ‘Gaia, Goddess of the Earth. She bore Uranus and by him Cronus and Oceanus and the Titans. In alchemy she is often represented by the three serpents. These symbolize sulphur, salt and mercury. The union of these three elements within the cosmic furnace symbolize the conjunction of the male and female principles, which create the philosopher’s stone.’

  ‘There’s no need to take the piss,’ I said.

  ‘I’m not. The symbol ultimately represents the union between the animal kingdom and the plant kingdom. Man and nature, that kind of thing. I should bloody know, I designed the logo for him.’

  ‘Oh,’ said I. ‘Then pardon me.’

  Norman placed the sheet of acetate over the map. ‘Now what do you see?’ he asked.

  ‘A bloody big logo superimposed over the gardens of the estate.

  ‘And that’s what you’ll see from an aeroplane, once the ground has been levelled and the trees planted. The logo picked out in green trees upon brown earth.’

  ‘He’s Richard, you know,’ said I.

  ‘He worries me,’ said Norman. ‘And he keeps on about this invisible ink thing. I wish I’d never mentioned it to him.’

  ‘I don’t think you’ve mentioned it to me.’

  ‘Top secret,’ said Norman
, tapping his nose.

  ‘So?’

  ‘So it’s like this. He was talking to me about the colour he wanted for the package of his new brand of cigarettes. Said he wanted something really eye-catching, that would stand out from all the rest. And I said that you can’t go wrong with red. All the most successful products have red packaging. It’s something to do with blood and sex, I believe. But then I made the mistake of telling him about this new paint I was working on. It’s ultraviolet.’

  ‘But you can’t see ultraviolet.’ I sipped at my pint. ‘It’s invisible to the human eye.’

  ‘That’s the whole point. If you could create an opaque ultraviolet paint, then whatever you painted with it would become invisible.’

  ‘That’s bollocks,’ I said. ‘That can’t be true.’

  ‘Why not? If you paint anything with opaque paint, you can’t see the thing itself, only the layer of paint.’

  ‘Yes, but you can’t see ultraviolet.’

  ‘Exactly. So if you can’t see through the paint, you can’t see the thing underneath it, can you?’

  ‘There has to be a flaw in this logic,’ I said. ‘If the paint is invisible to the human eye, then you must be able to see the object you’ve painted with it.’

  ‘Not if you can’t see through the paint.’

  ‘So, have you actually made any of this paint?’

  Norman shrugged. ‘I might have.’

  ‘Well, have you?’

  ‘Dunno. I thought I had, but now I can’t seem to find the jam jar I poured it into.’

  I made the face that says ‘you’re winding me up’.

  ‘And the Doveston would like to buy a pot or two of your miracle paint, I suppose?’

  ‘As much as I can produce. For aesthetic reasons, he says. He wants to paint all the razor wire on the perimeter fences with it.’

  I got up to get in the pints. At the bar the landlord kindly drew my attention to the fact that I had dropped my woosie address book. ‘You still working up at the big house?’ he asked.

  ‘Would I still be drinking in this dump if I wasn’t?’

  He topped up my newly drawn pint from the drips tray. ‘I suppose not. Is it true what they say about the new laird?’

  ‘Probably.’

  The landlord whistled. ‘I tried that once. Had to soak my pecker in iodine for a week to wash the smell off.’

  I paid for my pints and returned to my table.

  ‘And another thing,’ said Norman. ‘He has become utterly convinced that the world as we know it will come to an end at the stroke of midnight on the final day of this century. Says he’s known it for years and years and that he’s going to be prepared.’

  ‘Tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.’

  ‘I thought up that phrase,’ said Norman. ‘He nicked it off me.’

  ‘Don’t you ever get fed up with him nicking your ideas?’

  ‘Not really. After all, he is my bestest friend.’

  ‘But he’s Richard.’

  ‘Oh yeah, he’s Richard all right. But I don’t let that interfere with our friendship.’

  We drank down our pints and then Norman got a couple in. ‘The landlord said to tell you not to forget your woosie address book, it’s still on the floor.’ Norman placed the pints upon the table.

  ‘We’d better drink these up quickly,’ I said, ‘and get back to work.’

  ‘Not today. The Doveston said we are to take the afternoon off. Another of his secret meetings.’

  ‘Damn. I want to get finished.’

  ‘Me too, but we’re not allowed back this afternoon.’

  I swallowed Death-by-Cider. ‘I’d love to know what he gets up to at those secret meetings, wouldn’t you?’

  Norman shrugged. ‘We could always sneak back and watch him on the closed-circuit TV.’

  ‘What closed—circuit TV?’

  ‘The one I fitted last month. There’re secret cameras in every room.

  ‘What? Even in my bedroom?’

  ‘Of course.

  ‘Then he’s been watching me having sex.

  ‘Well, if he has, then he hasn’t shown me the tapes. The only footage I’ve seen of you involved a mucky mag and a box of Kleenex.’

  I made gagging croaking sounds.

  ‘Yeah, those were the noises you were making too.’

  ‘The bastard,’ I said. ‘The bastard!’

  ‘You think that’s bad. You should see the tapes of me.’

  ‘Of you?’

  ‘Oh yeah. In my bedroom. The landlord has recommended iodine.’

  ‘You mean there’s a hidden camera in your bedroom too?’

  ‘Of course there is. I installed it there myself.’

  ‘But . . . , I said. ‘If you . . . I mean . . .Why . . . I mean . . .’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Norman. ‘It’s a right liberty, isn’t it?’

  We finished our pints and sneaked back to Castle Doveston.

  Norman let us into the grounds through a hole he’d made in the perimeter fence. ‘I can’t be having with all that fuss at the main gates,’ he said. ‘So I always come in this way.’

  We skirted the great big horrible house and Norman unlocked a cellar door. ‘I got this key cut for myself,’ he said. ‘Just for convenience.’

  Once inside, Norman led me along numerous corridors, opening numerous locked doors with numerous keys he’d had cut for convenience. At last we found ourselves in an underground room, low-ceilinged and whitely-painted, one wall lined with TV screens, before which stood a pair of comfy chairs. We settled into them and Norman took up a remote controller.

  ‘Here we go,’ he said, pushing buttons. ‘Look, there’s your bedroom and that’s mine. And there’s the great kitchen — and what’s Rapscallion doing with that chicken?’

  ‘It beggars belief. But there’s a hidden camera in the boardroom, is there?’

  ‘There is. Mind you, the Doveston doesn’t know it’s there. I just put one in for—’

  ‘Convenience?’

  ‘Bloody-mindedness, actually. Wanna see what’s going on?’

  Damn right.’

  Norman pushed a sequence of buttons and a bird’s-eye view of the boardroom table appeared on the screens. I recognized the top of the Doveston’s head; the other five heads were a mystery to me. ‘I wonder who those fellows are,’ I wondered.

  ‘They’re not all fellows. The bald one’s a woman. I know who they all are.’

  ‘How come?’

  ‘I can recognize them from their photographs in the Doveston’s files.’

  ‘Those would be the ones he keeps in his locked filing cabinet?’

  ‘And a very secure filing cabinet it is too. I built it myself. It opens at the back, in case you forget where you’ve put your key.’

  I shook my head. ‘Can you turn the sound up, so we can hear what they’re saying?’

  ‘Of course and I’ll explain to you who’s who.’

  Now history can boast to many a notable meeting. In fact, if it hadn’t been for notable meetings, there probably wouldn’t have been much in the way of history at all. In fact, perhaps history consists of nothing but notable meetings, when you get right down to it. In fact, perhaps that’s all that history is.

  Well, perhaps.

  And perhaps it was sheer chance that Norman and I happened to be looking in on this particular notable meeting on this particular day.

  Well.

  Perhaps.

  ‘That’s what’s-his-face, the Foreign Secretary,’ said Norman, pointing. ‘And that’s old silly-bollocks the Deputy Prime Minister. Those two on the end are the leaders of the Colombian drugs cartel, I forget their names, but you know the ones I’m on about. That bloke there, he’s the fellow runs that big company, you know the one, the adverts are always on the telly, that actor’s in them. He was in that series with the woman who does that thing with her hair. The tall woman, not the other one. The other one used to be on Blue Peter. The bald woman, well, yo
u know who she is, don’t you? Although she usually wears a wig in public. In fact most people don’t even know it’s a wig. I never did. And that bloke, the one there, where I’m pointing, that’s only you-know-who, isn’t it?’

  ‘It never is!’ I said.

  ‘It is and do you know who that is, sitting beside him?’

  ‘Not . . .’

  ‘It certainly is.’

  ‘Incredible.’

  ‘He’s having an affair with the woman who used to be on that programme. You know the one.’

  ‘The other one?’

  ‘Not the other one, the tall woman.’

  ‘The one on the adverts?’

  ‘No, she was in the series. The bloke in the adverts was with her in the series.’

  ‘But she’s not the same woman that the bloke sitting next to you-know-who is having the affair with?’

  ‘No, that’s the other one.’

  ‘Oh yeah, that’s the other one. And who’s that?’

  ‘The bloke sitting opposite you-know-who?’

  ‘No, sitting to the right of the fellow who runs that big company.’

  ‘His right, or our right?’

  ‘Does it matter?’

  ‘Of course it matters. You have to be exact about these things.’

  ‘So who is it?’

  ‘Search me.’

  ‘I’ll tell you what,’ I said to Norman.

  ‘What?’

  ‘That thing the tall woman used to do with her hair. I never thought that was very funny.’

  ‘I don’t think it was supposed to be funny. Are you sure you’re talking about the same woman?’

  But whether I was, or whether I wasn’t, I never got to find out. Because just then the Doveston began to talk and we began to listen.

  ‘Thank you,’ said the Doveston. ‘Thank you all for coming. Now you all know why this meeting has been called. The harsh winter, followed by the sweltering summer has led to an economic crisis. Everywhere there is talk of revolution and there have recently been several more bombings of cabinet ministers’ homes by the terrorist organization known only as the Black Crad Movement. We all want these senseless dynamitings to stop and none of us want the government overthrown, do we?’