The Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code

  Jonny Hooker shook his head and gave a whistle, too. ‘You really were floating in the air, weren’t you?’ he said. ‘I mean, that was really real.’

  ‘Really real,’ said Charlie’s identical twin. ‘But I suppose you could say that it’s a bit of a cheat.’

  ‘So it is smoke and mirrors.’

  ‘No, I simply found that the only way I could float in the air – fly, in fact – was to do it the same way you do.’

  ‘I don’t do it at all,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Oh, I think you do. Nearly all of us do.’

  ‘In our dreams,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Precisely.’

  Jonny Hooker shook his head again. ‘But I’m not dreaming now,’ he said.

  ‘Which is why you can’t fly. You are awake and so you cannot dream that you are flying. I, however, am asleep, and so I can.’

  ‘That doesn’t make any sense,’ said Jonny. ‘I’m awake.’

  ‘And I’m asleep. Somewhere away from here, all tucked up in my cosy little cot.’

  ‘He’s a stone bonker,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘Good levitation stunt, though.’

  ‘You are in your cosy little cot?’ said Jonny.

  ‘And I’m five years old. What a queer dream this is.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jonny.

  ‘And please don’t “Ah” me,’ said Hari. ‘I am not a stone bonker. You saw me hovering in the air, did you not?’

  ‘I think I did,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Oh, it’s “think you did” now, is it? You know you did, so don’t go trying to fool yourself that you didn’t. And if the only way a man can fly, if that man is not Superman, is when he’s dreaming, then one of us is now dreaming the other. I think you must agree.’

  ‘Well,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Don’t take any guff from this swine,’ said Mr Giggles, which rang a bell somewhere. ‘He’s trying to tie you up in knots. As you’re presently into violence, kick him in the nuts – that will prove which one of you is awake.’

  ‘So,’ said Hari, ‘am I dreaming you, or are you dreaming me?’

  ‘Nuts,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘One in the nuts, then off on our way.’

  ‘I am perplexed,’ said Jonny.

  ‘As are we all. Come sit yourself down; let us talk the toot and see which way the blighter goes.’

  ‘Thank you.’ And Jonny sat down.

  ‘Not there,’ said Hari.

  And so Jonny moved.

  ‘Nor there, either.’

  ‘Here?’

  ‘Not there.’

  ‘How about here?’

  ‘There’s good,’ said Hari. ‘But the other places weren’t.’

  Jonny gave the other places glancings. They all looked good to him.

  ‘Areas of ill omen and bad portent,’ said Hari, ‘where evil has been done and sorrow felt. I see them, you see, like smears upon a spectacle lens. Where you’re sitting now is a good place. It suits you.’

  ‘I’m sitting on the seat of your lavatory,’ said Jonny.

  ‘I’m beginning to warm to this clown,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘But I still feel you should kick him in the nuts.’

  ‘And you’re really comfortable there,’ said Hari, and he made enigmatic hand wavings.

  ‘Actually, I’m not,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Yes, you are, you’re really comfortable.’ Hari waved his hands about some more, but Jonny shook his head.

  ‘Dammit,’ said Hari. ‘The constable on the door, who is skilled in the Vulcan Death Grip, sold me a wrong’n there.’

  ‘Wrong’n?’ Jonny enquired.

  ‘A course in Jedi Mind Control. He said he’d downloaded it off the Interweb.’

  Jonny smiled painfully. ‘That wasn’t very funny,’ he said.

  ‘No.’ Hari cosied himself upon his bunk. He stretched out his legs and waggled his big toes, for as with most loonys he went barefoot. And as there was now nowhere, but for the floor, for Charlie to sit, Charlie stood.

  ‘Jonny’s been involved in all kinds of exciting adventures,’ said Charlie to his brother. ‘And he wanted to meet you.’

  ‘And about time, too,’ said Hari. ‘I have been awaiting his arrival.’

  ‘You have?’ said Jonny.

  ‘He hasn’t,’ said Mr Giggles.

  ‘I might have been,’ said Hari. ‘I await the arrival of so many people – Members of Parliament, members of the royal household. Are you a member of anything?’

  ‘I’m in a band,’ said Jonny. ‘I’m a musician.’

  Ah,’ said Hari. ‘A musician, that must be it. So who sent you – Project Beta, the Ministry of Serendipity, the Sons of the Silent Age, MJ Twelve, MJ Thirteen, the Minge Tree Appreciation Society?’

  ‘There isn’t really a Minge Tree Appreciation Society, is there?’ Jonny asked.

  ‘No, but there should be. So why are you here?’

  ‘I’m caught up in something,’ said Jonny. ‘I don’t know exactly what, but it does somehow have something to do with music, of this I’m sure. And people are apparently dying because I have got caught up in it, or so it seems to me. And I am determined to find out what it is and solve what it is, and if there’s a prize at the end of it, then so much the better.’

  ‘All sounds terribly vague,’ said Charlie’s brother.

  ‘Well, when put like that I suppose it does. But I know what I mean. And whatever it is I’m involved in is terribly exciting and is making me feel alive for possibly the first time in my life.’

  Hari Hawtrey rolled onto his side and fixed his gaze upon Jonny. ‘You’ve got demons, haven’t you, Jonny? Demons and imps, is that it?’

  ‘One in particular,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Easy now, please, Jonny boy,’ said Mr Giggles.

  ‘Your brother was telling me about the voices you hear,’ Jonny said. ‘And he does take them seriously – he wears tinfoil inside his cap.’

  ‘Wearing it now,’ said Charlie, tapping at his cap.

  ‘But you’re not wearing any tinfoil,’ said Jonny to Charlie’s brother.

  ‘I wear it when I’m awake. But what is it you want to know? What is it that you think I know?’

  ‘Anything,’ said Jonny. ‘Anything and everything. Anything that you know or believe.’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie’s brother. ‘You’re not ready for that, not yet.’

  ‘I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.’

  ‘I’ll tell you some,’ said Hari. ‘I’ll tell you some if you promise to do me a favour in return.’

  ‘It’s a deal,’ said Jonny.

  ‘No, it’s not a deal,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘Ask him what he wants in return first. He might be hoping to give you one up the chocolate speedway. Drop anchor in Poo Bay, as it were.’

  Jonny Hooker gritted his teeth.

  ‘It’s nothing sexual,’ said Hari. ‘In case that’s what you’re thinking.’

  Jonny Hooker shook his head.

  ‘Then I’ll tell you something. As you are a musician, I will tell you something of a musical nature. Have you ever heard of a musician by the name of Robert Johnson?’

  Jonny nodded. ‘Many times,’ said he.

  ‘And so you’ve heard about his final recording?’

  ‘His thirtieth,’ said Jonny. ‘The one with the Devil’s laughter at the end. Allegedly. “Apocalypse Blues” it was called.’

  ‘You know that. I am impressed.’

  ‘I only found out today,’ said Jonny, ‘but I think it’s part of the something I’m caught up in.’

  ‘And so you must have heard the urban legend that all those rock stars who died aged twenty-seven did so because they were played the recording of the Devil’s laughter.’

  Jonny nodded once more.

  ‘And so did you hear the other legend – the one that balances it, so to speak?’

  Jonny Hooker shook his head. ‘Go on, please,’ he said.

  ‘About the angel,’ said Hari. ‘The angel and the castrato.’

  Jonny Hooker raised an eyebrow.
‘Is this about your brother?’

  ‘It seems to be something of an open secret,’ said Charlie, shrugging away like a good’n.

  ‘Well, it’s not him,’ said Hari. ‘Although there is a connection. The name of this castrato was Alessandro Moreschi. He was born in Montecompatrio in eighteen fifty-eight and died in nineteen twenty-two. He was reckoned to be the very last castrato. During his professional life as a soloist with the Vatican choir, he was known as the Angel of Rome, because his voice was the very epitomy of polyphonic purity. He was the only castrato ever to make recordings and these were made just after the turn of the twentieth century.’

  ‘I’ve never really understood about castrati,’ said Jonny. ‘What was the point?’

  ‘Purity of tone. During the golden age of castrati, between sixteen fifty and seventeen fifty, it was reckoned that as many as four thousand boys a year were being castrated in Italy, their impoverished parents hoping that these unhappy lads would find fame and fortune – and there was much fortune to be had for the few who made it to the top. The idea was to preserve the high-pitched voice of the child, and when the voice was projected by adult-sized lungs it produced a sound so beautiful that audiences were known to collapse in tears.

  ‘Moreschi was the last of his kind, and fate it must surely have been that he lived into the twentieth century, into a time when his extraordinary voice could be recorded upon wax cylinders. There were eighteen recordings made at the Vatican and you can even buy a cleaned-up digitally enhanced version on CD.* But there’s one recording that isn’t on that CD: Moreschi singing Handel’s “Ombra mai fu”. It is said that his voice was so beautiful, so pure, so heavenly, that folk weep when they hear that recording. But they do more than weep, because so sweet was the voice of Moreschi, so heavenly, in fact, that as he sang, his voice reached up to Heaven and an angel descended to Earth and joined him in the final chorus. And that is on the recording.’

  Jonny Hooker shook his head, slowly and with thought. ‘And do you think that’s true?’ he asked.

  ‘True?’ Hari Hawtrey smiled. ‘Yes. I think it’s true. But then I would, because I have heard that recording.’

  ‘Really?’ Jonny Hooker said. ‘Really, truly truly?’

  ‘And I soared,’ said Hari. ‘I soared and I glowed and I was filled with the spirit.’ And as Jonny looked on and Charlie looked on, Hari became transfigured. He glowed as if lit from within and he drifted up from the floor.

  ‘And with this,’ he said, and his voice came as a wind from his mouth, ‘and with this, with the hearing of this, the hearing of an angel’s voice, I heard a sound that no man may hear until he is called up into the choirs invisible upon his death. So the gifts were given unto me, that I should hear their voices, the voices of the angels, but also the voices of the evil ones. That I should hear them here in my head. And thus I became an outcast, ridiculed by men, a social pariah, a loony, doomed to live as a prisoner. Thus and so.’ And Hari made the sign of the cross and drifted back to the floor.

  And the candle glow dimmed all away and things turned somewhat quiet.

  Jonny Hooker suddenly gasped for air, aware that he had somehow forgotten to breathe.

  ‘And relax,’ said Hari, and he settled back down on his bunk.

  ‘Wow,’ said Jonny. ‘I mean, wow, well, wow.’ And so well wowed was Jonny that he ignored the contradictory nature of what Hari had previously said, that he was in the Special Wing because he flouted the law of gravity, yet wasn’t in the Special Wing at all, because he was really five years old and asleep in his bed somewhere. And Jonny just concentrated on the WOW factor. Because a recording of an angel’s voice would have something of a wow factor.

  Charlie Hawtrey wiped away a tear. ‘I always get a bit of a crinkly mouth when he tells that story,’ he said. ‘Although I’ve heard it lots of times before.’

  ‘I give a moving account,’ said Hari. ‘And so that is that and now you must do me the favour you promised me.’

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Jonny. ‘Yes indeed, anything you want.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Hari. ‘It’s not a big thing. I doubt if a young man such as yourself, bound upon a mission that may turn out to be sacred (well, you never know), would have much of a problem carrying it out.’

  ‘Name it,’ said Jonny.

  ‘Bust me out of this prison cell,’ said Charlie’s brother, Hari.

  19

  ‘No,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘No, no, no.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jonny Hooker. ‘It’s a deal.’

  ‘No, Jonny, listen, please.’ Mr Giggles was once more agitated, once more animated. ‘This joker is one hundred per cent fruitcake, a fruit-loop, a fruit and nut, a nutty fruit-nut-loopy-cake, a—’

  ‘A loop-nut-fruit-cake-cakey-nut-fruity-fruit-job?’ whispered Jonny, without moving his lips.

  ‘And the rest. Get out while you can. Make a run for it now.’

  ‘Pack your bag, then,’ said Jonny to Hari, ‘and we’re out of here.’

  Charlie looked at Jonny. Very hard. ‘Are you sure about this?’ he asked. ‘I mean, well, I mean … ‘

  Jonny Hooker did some shrugging. ‘It’s fair,’ he said. ‘I agreed to do him a favour and he told a good tale. I don’t know if it’s pertinent or not, but it was a good tale. I don’t think he should be banged up in here, so I’m setting him free.’

  ‘Top man,’ said Hari.

  ‘But you can’t just bust him out, just like that.’ Charlie put conviction into his voice. ‘These things take planning, lots of planning – you can’t just spring someone from incarceration on the spur of the moment.’

  ‘Of course I can,’ said Jonny. ‘It’s a piece of cake. A piece of fruity-loop nutty-nut cake.’

  ‘No,’ said Charlie. ‘It’s not. It’s really not.’

  ‘Listen to this man,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘He’s a bit of a geek, but he knows what he’s talking about on this occasion.’

  ‘Please leave it to me,’ said Jonny.

  ‘But you haven’t any weapons,’ said Charlie.

  Jonny shrugged some more. ‘Do you still have that print out of the Jedi Mind Control techniques?’ he asked Hari.

  ‘No,’ said Hari, who was packing his toothbrush. ‘I wiped my bum on them and threw them at the constable. He gave me quite a hiding, I can tell you. But I deserved it, so that was okay.’

  ‘Run,’ said Mr Giggles. ‘Run now and fast.’

  ‘Right,’ said Jonny. ‘So this is the plan.’

  The constable who was skilled in the Vulcan Death Grip, amongst so many other things, released the bolt and let Jonny and Charlie return to the corridor.

  ‘Enjoy the visit to your brother?’ he asked Charlie.

  ‘Not much,’ said Charlie. ‘And it was jolly unsporting of you to sell him sheets of nonsense about Jedi Mind Control.’

  ‘He was very happy with them and you’re so happy that he’s happy,’ said the constable. And he waved his hands a bit. Enigmatically.

  ‘He is very happy with them and I am so happy that he’s happy,’ said Charlie.

  The constable winked at Jonny.

  ‘No way,’ said Jonny.

  But the constable grinned.

  ‘Well,’ said Jonny. ‘Most impressive.’

  ‘What?’ said Charlie. ‘What?’

  ‘Nothing,’ said Jonny, and he winked at the constable.

  ‘Did I ask whether you’d cut yourself shaving?’ asked the constable.

  ‘No,’ said Jonny. ‘I don’t think you did. Charlie’s brother is having a little meditate now, but he’d like you to awaken him, possibly with a tap to the skull with your truncheon, in ten minutes – would that be all right?’

  ‘I’ll do my best,’ said the constable. ‘We policemen are the servants of the public, after all. It is our duty to do our best for the community at large and the public as a whole.’

  Jonny paused.

  But the constable didn’t crack a smile.

  But the setting sun went behind a cl
oud and that dog howled again in the distance.

  ‘Most impressive once more,’ said Jonny, and he bade the constable farewell, and he and Charlie plodded away up the corridor.

  ‘Could we elevate this plod to a bit of a march, or a least a stalk?’ asked Charlie. ‘I’d like to be out of this horrible place as quickly as possible.’

  ‘Ever anxious to oblige,’ said Jonny, gathering speed.

  They left the Cottage Hospital, passed beneath the ‘DO NOT CROSS’ tape and nudged their way back through the crowd, stopping only to exchange pleasantries with the lady in the straw hat, who might or might not have been Joan’s mum. They set off over the Great West Road and via a somewhat crooked route they made for The Middle Man.

  The Middle Man wasn’t doing much when it came to the way of business. But O’Fagin, who stood as ever behind the bar counter, although upon this night with a bandaged head and an eyepatch, was grateful that the pub was open for business at all, considering the pounding it had taken shortly after Jonny had left it earlier that day.

  ‘Bopped me on the head, he did,’ said O’Fagin to Charlie, pointing to his wounded head as he did so. ‘Robbed the till,’ ( Jonny raised his eyebrows to this) ‘and had it away on his toes, by some route still unknown. But while I’m out for the count, the police outside start bawling through a loud hailer: “Give yourself up, Jonny Hooker, or we come in all guns blazing.” But of course he’s gone and I’m out like a dead-dog’s eye at a Balinese barbecue.’ (Jonny raised his eyebrows once again.) ‘So the next thing is they’re having at this pub with weapons of mass destruction and the Lord Gary Glitter knows what else. I had to shore up the bog wall with some railway ties I was saving to make a feature of in my back garden. I’ve had to cancel Quiz Night, which didn’t please Ranger Connor. He went off in a right huff.’

  O’Fagin presented Charlie and Jonny with the pints of King Billy that Charlie had ordered. ‘But that’s enough about me for now,’ he continued. ‘You’ll probably be reading about it in the papers tomorrow – “LOCAL PUBLICAN’S HEROISM”, I did some interviews with the press, sold them the real story.’

  ‘Sold them?’ mouthed Jonny, and up went his eyebrows again.