Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

8

“Grease,” says the old song, “is the word,” but this is not altogether true. In fact, it isn’t true at all. “Stress” is the word. Stress. Stress. Stress.

In movies, the hero or heroine is put under stress. Hollywood scriptwriters understand this. They understand this because this is what Hollywood producers demand of them.

“Is the hero being put under stress?”

The reason for this is because a movie must not be “plot-led”. The hero or heroine must take the initiative. Forces are up against them, but they must do all the doing. They have a goal that must be reached. You may argue that all movies aren’t like that. But they are, you know. Pick any movie you like and think about the plot and the hero (or heroine). It’s all to do with stress.

Hollywood thrives on stress.

Russell didn’t thrive on stress. Russell hated stress. Stress was not Russell’s thing. But stress he had and stress he was going to get lots more of.

He didn’t get sacked the next week. Morgan didn’t get sacked the next week, nor did Frank. Although Frank really deserved it.

The reason none of them got sacked was because something rather unexpected happened. And what this rather unexpected something was, was a rather unexpected upturn in the fortunes of Fudgepacker’s Emporium. And how this rather unexpected something came about was all down to Russell.

Who was under stress at the time.

“Under stress” and “at the time”.

We’ve done a bit about stress, so now let’s do a bit about time.

James Campbell once said (last week, in fact, at The George), “The future and the past have a lot in common. This being that neither of them actually exists. Which leaves us with the present, whose round is it?”

“Yours,” I told him.

“It was mine last time,” he said.

“But that was in the past,” I told him, “and the past does not exist.”

“Fair enough,” said James and went off to the bar.

Presently he returned, with just the one drink. For himself.

“Where is mine?” I asked him.

“Good question,” he replied, “I believe, at the present, we’re buying our own.”

An evening out with James is always instructive. Though rarely profitable.

But, time. Time is a bit of a bugger, isn’t it? It doesn’t really exist at all. It appears to be a series of presents, perhaps a never-ending state of presentness. But something must happen, because you definitely get older. Which is strange if you spend all your time in the present and never in the past or the future. Mind you, you have spent some time in the past, which used to be the present. But you’ve never spent any time at all in the future. Because when you get to the future, it turns out to be the present and by the time you’ve thought about it, it’s already the past.

Russell never thought that much about the future, he was always happy with the present. Especially the birthday present, especially if it was a bicycle. Which it once had been, but that was in the past now.

It’s all so confusing, isn’t it?

Russell certainly didn’t know that he was going to be instrumental in future events which would affect the present yet to come. As it were.

He wasn’t happy when he got back to the sales office. He was mournful.

“Why are you mournful?” Morgan asked.

“I am mournful,” said Russell, “because I do not want to be sacked.”

“You won’t be sacked,” said Morgan. “If anybody’s going to be sacked, then that somebody will be Frank.”

“It bloody won’t,” said Frank. “I’m the manager.”

“I wasn’t going to bring my wild card into play just yet,” said Morgan, “but I think I will anyway.”

“Oh yes?” said Frank.

“Oh yes,” said Morgan. “You may be the manager, but Ernest Fudgepacker is my uncle.”

“Shit,” said Frank.

“I should go,” said Russell. “Last in, first out.”

“Will you shut up about that.”

“No, he’s right,” said Frank. “Don’t stand in his way, he’s doing the right thing. Forestall the ignominy of a sacking, Russell, go and hand your notice in.”

“All right,” said Russell. “I will.”

Now, this is all wrong, you see. In Hollywood they wouldn’t have this. In Hollywood they would say, “The hero is under stress and now the hero must fight back. And win.” That’s what they’d say. In Hollywood.

“I’ll hand my notice in,” said Russell. “It’s only fair.”

“Quite right,” said Frank.

“Quite wrong,” said Morgan.

“You know what though,” said Russell, “if we could do something to bring in some business, none of us would have to be sacked.”

“Good point,” said Morgan.

“You can’t run a company without a manager,” said Frank.

“There must be something we could do,” said Russell. “Something I could do.”

“What?” Morgan asked.

“Hand in your notice,” said Frank. “Save the rest of us.”

“That wouldn’t be fair to you,” said Russell. “Putting you through all the misery, waiting for the axe to fall. No, handing in my notice won’t help. I must do something positive, something that will help us all.”

“Are you taking the piss?” Frank asked.

“No, I’m dead straight. I’m going to think hard about this. Find a way to save Fudgepacker’s. That’s what I’m going to do.”

“It’s five-thirty,” said Morgan. “Knocking-off time. What would you say to a pint of beer?”

“Not in The Bricklayer’s?”

“Not in The Bricklayer’s.”

“I would say thank you, let’s do it.”

The Ape of Thoth was a popular pub. A music pub. All kinds of bands had played there. Some had become quite famous since. The Who once played there, and Manfred Mann. Of course that is going back a bit. The Lost T-Shirts of Atlantis never played there, nor did Sonic Energy Authority, but you can’t have everything. The landlord of The Ape was a Spaniard by the name of Luis Zornoza. Tall, dark and handsome, he was, and a bit of a ladies’ man[20].

Russell had never been into The Ape before. Morgan drew his attention to a sign above the bar. “The Ape of Thoth, formerly The Flying Swan, welcomes you.”

A blond barmaid came up to serve them.

“I’ll have a Perrier water,” said Russell.

“You’ll have a pint,” said Morgan.

“Yes, you’re right, I will.”

“Two pints of Special,” said Morgan.

The barmaid looked at Russell with wistful eyes. “Pity,” she said.

“Look,” said Morgan, as the drinks were delivered. “I know you’d like to help, Russell, but it really isn’t your thing, is it? I mean you’re a helpful felllow, but when it comes to big helpfulness, like making a big move, you just don’t do that sort of stuff, do you?”

Russell sniffed suspiciously at his pint, then took a small sip. “I’m not an idiot, you know,” he said. “I am quite capable. I could do things.”

“Yes, but you know you won’t. Chaps like you never do. No offence meant, but you just don’t.”

“But I could, if the opportunity presented itself.”

“I think you have to make your own opportunities.”

“So you just said.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You did, and you said that too.”

“What?”

“Oh no.” Russell glanced about the place. Luis the landlord had gone off to the cellar with the blond barmaid and but for himself and for Morgan the bar was deserted. “Quick,” cried Russell. “Jump over the counter. Quick.”

“You’re not going to rob the place? Russell, no!”

“Something’s going to happen. Quickly, quickly.” Russell shinned up from the barstool and scrambled onto the counter.

“Have you lost all reason, Russell?”

“Quick, it’s going to happen, I know it is.” Russell grabbed Morgan’s arm and began to haul at him.

“What is? Oh shit.”

A vibration ran through the bar. A shudder. Optics rattled, ashtrays shook. The dartsboard fell off the wall.

“Earthquake!” cried Morgan.

“Not an earthquake, quickly.” Russell dropped down behind the bar, dragging Morgan after him.

“Oh my God!”

An icy wind sprang up from nowhere, became a mini-hurricane, snatched chairs from the floor and hurled them about the place.

“Keep your head down,” Russell shouted, but Morgan didn’t need the telling. Tables whirled and twisted, splintered against the walls, beer mats and ashtrays, glasses and bottles filled the air, rained down from every direction.

And a blinding light.

It shot up before the counter, became a sheet of blue-white, expanding to extend from wall to wall, from floor to ceiling. Then it folded in upon itself with a sound like water vanishing down the plughole and was gone.

A tinkling of glass, a final thud of a falling chair and all became silent.

Very silent.

Unnaturally silent.

Russell got to his knees, brushing glass and beer mats from his shoulders. He peeped over the counter and gawped at the devastation.

“Is it over?” called Morgan, from the foetal position.

“I think it’s just about to start.”

The sound was like an express train coming out of a tunnel, or a jet plane taking off, or a rocket being launched (which is a bit like a jet plane, though less like an express). Sort of “Whoooooooosh!” it went. Really loudly.

The wall at the far end of the bar seemed to go out of focus and then to open, much in the fashion of a camera lens. As Russell gawped on he saw the light reform, blaze out, and a figure, a distant moving dot of a figure, running. Closer and closer. Though two dimensionally. It’s a bit hard to explain really. Imagine it looking like a movie projected onto the wall. That’s what it looked like. The figure running towards the camera. With a further much-intensified whoosh, the figure burst out of two dimensions into the third.

It was a woman. A beautiful woman. She wore an elegant contour-hugging frock of golden scales. Cut above the knee, her stockings were of gold, as were her shoes.

And her hair.

She flashed frightened eyes about the bar. “Russell,” she called, “where are you?”

“I’m here.” Russell’s gawp had achieved the status of a mega-gawp. But he said, “I’m here,” none the less.

“I knew you wouldn’t let me down. I knew it.”

“It’s you. It’s you.”

And it was her. It was the barmaid from The Bricklayer’s Arms.

“Take it quickly, there’s no time.”

“Take what? What?”

The beautiful barmaid thrust a golden package into Russell’s hand. “The programmer, keep down, don’t let them see you, and, Russell …”

“What? What?”

“I love you,” she leaned across the counter and she kissed him. Full on the lips. Russell felt his toes begin to curl and his hair becoming straight.

“Oh,” said Russell, as she pulled away. “I don’t …”

“Understand? You will. And thank you, for everything.”

“I … er.”

Metallic clangs and crashes. She glanced back towards the way she had come, clicked something on her belt. Another white disc sprang up upon the far wall. “Keep down,” and with that she ran towards the disc.

Russell watched her dash across the bar, leap at the disc on the wall, which swallowed her up. And she was gone.

“Oh,” said Russell once more, and then he turned his head, saw something rather fearful and took a dive for cover. From two dimensions into the third they came, clashing and clanking. They were like knights in dead black armour.

Two of them, both tall and wide, of terrible bulk, the floor shook to their footfalls. The helmets were spherical, featureless, without visors or eyeholes. The metal gauntlets had but the three fingers. These clasped enormous black guns of an advanced design. Little red lights ran up and down the barrels.

They came clanking to a standstill before the bar.

Morgan raised his head but Russell forced it down again, rammed a hand over his mouth.

Above, the mighty figures stood immobile as statues, and then their heads began to revolve. Whirring, clicking sounds, the heads turned. Round and round they went.

“The woman is not here,” said one, in a voice like a long-distance telephone call.

“Readjust the coordinates. Search mode. And delayed correct, two minutes.”

Lights flickered upon the carapace breast plates. The white spot grew once more upon the far wall.

Crashing and banging they ran towards it. Terrible creaks and groans of grating metal. Into the disc of light, then zap. Gone. Kaput. Vanished.

Russell peeped out once more. The walls of the bar were as before, no trace of anything remained. Morgan struggled up. “What the bloody Hell …?” he mumbled.

“I think we’re in some kind of trouble,” Russell said.

“Trouble?”

“Trouble?” The voice was that of Luis Z the Spanish landlord. “Trouble? You bastards, what have you done to my pub?”

“It wasn’t us.” Morgan took to backing away. Luis had his big peace-keeping stick in his hand. Russell took to backing away also.

“You bloody mad men! I step out for a moment and you smash my pub to pieces. You’re dead. You’re frigging dead.”

“Run,” Morgan said.

“Run,” agreed Russell.

Luis put up a spirited chase, but Morgan and Russell had youth to their account and they finally out-ran him down near the Butts Estate. Bent double in an alleyway, hands upon knees, they gasped and gagged for breath.

“What bloody happened?” Morgan managed. “What went on back there?”

“I don’t know.” Russell had a bit more breath left in him than Morgan. “I just don’t know.”

“Earthquakes,” croaked Morgan. “And bright lights and flashes and crashes and bangs and voices and –”

“I still don’t know.”

“What did you see? Tell me what you saw.”

“I don’t know, I –”

“A woman, I heard a woman.”

“A woman, yes.”

“You knew, Russell. Whatever it was, you knew it was going to happen.”

Russell nodded slowly. He had known something was about to happen. Though he hadn’t known what and he didn’t know how he’d known. So to speak.

“We’re in deep shit,” puffed Morgan. “That Luis will call the police for sure. We’re wanted men. We could go to prison.”

“It wasn’t our fault, we didn’t do anything.”

“So who did, Russell?”

“I don’t know. The walls sort of opened, she came out, then these things came out. Great black things in armour. I don’t think they were people.”

“Will that stand up in court, do you suppose?”

“We’ve got to go back.”

“What?”

“Go back, try to explain, apologize, offer to make good.”

“What?”

“We must take the blame,” said Russell. “I know we must. We’ll say we were drunk and fighting. We’ll tell him we’ll pay for the damage.”

“Have you gone stark raving mad?”

“It’s the best way. If he’s called the police, I don’t want them bashing down my mum’s door at six in the morning.”

“But the bar’s wrecked, it could be thousands of pounds.”

“We could lie,” said Russell.

“What did you say?”

“I said we could lie.”

“You don’t know how to lie, Russell.”

“But you do, Morgan. You lie all the time.”

“That’s not true, I never lie. It’s Bobby Boy who tells all the lies, not me.”

“What about those mushrooms you say you’ve got growing in your shed, the ones that are the size of dustbin lids?”

“A slight exaggeration perhaps.”

“What about when you were late for work and you told Frank that terrorists had hijacked the bus?”

“Now that was true.”

“No it wasn’t.”

“No, you’re right.”

“So you should do the lying.”

“What am I going to say?”

“You’ll say that armed men burst into the bar to raid the place and that we fought them off.”

“Oh,” said Morgan. “Actually that’s quite a good lie, isn’t it?”

“Better than most of yours.”

“Paramilitaries,” said Morgan, warming to the idea. “With their faces blacked out, carrying General Electric mini-guns, and I fought them off single handed using certain martial arts techniques I learned from the lamas in Tibet.”

“Two big blokes in balaclava helmets,” said Russell. “With coshes and we both waded in, together.”

“We could come out of this as heroes.” Morgan rubbed his hands together. “Get in the newspapers and everything.”

“If we can stay out of court it will do for me.”

“Quite so.”

They trudged back. Trudging had become the order of the day really. Back they trudged.

There were no police cars outside The Ape of Thoth. All was very quiet. A young couple were just going in.

Russell and Morgan exchanged glances, steeled themselves, took deep breaths and entered the bar.

And then they just stared. They didn’t speak. They didn’t breathe. They just stared.

The bar was normal. All completely normal. No broken furniture. No smashed glasses, no shattered ashtrays. Chairs and tables just as they had been, the dartsboard on the wall, everything normal. Utterly, utterly normal.

Morgan let his breath out first. “What the fu –”

“You!” Luis the landlord vaulted over the bar. “How did you …? What did you …?”

“What?” went Morgan.

“I come back and all is well. Nothing is broken. How did you do that? How … how?”

“I …” went Morgan.

“What are you talking about?” Russell asked.

“What?” went Morgan.

“What?” went Luis.

“What are you talking about?”

“This place, all smashed up, I chased you.”

“You never chased us,” Russell said. “We’ve only just come in. This is the first time we’ve been in this evening.”

“What?” went Morgan.

“You bloody have, you bloody –”

“This man is clearly drunk,” said Russell. “Come, Morgan, we will drink elsewhere. Good night to you, landlord.”

“What … what?”

Russell hustled Morgan from the bar.

Outside Morgan went “What?” once more.

“Something’s happened,” Russell said. “Something big, somehow I knew the bar would be OK. Don’t ask me how, but I knew it.”

“When did you know it?”

“Just before we went back in. Something big is happening, Morgan, and we’re in it.”

“You can be in it, Russell, I don’t want to be. I’m just an ordinary bloke. I don’t want anything to do with this.”

“But you always said –”

“Don’t worry about what I always said, I was probably lying. I don’t want any adventures, I want to go home for my tea.”

“You’re in it, Morgan, whatever it is.”

“No, no, no. Hurricanes in the bar, things appearing and disappearing. Wreckage becoming unwrecked. This isn’t my thing, I don’t get involved in that sort of stuff.”

“That sort of stuff?” Russell made a thoughtful face. “Like an adventure, do you mean? Like a real adventure?”

“There was nothing real about any of that.”

“She knew me. She knew my name, she called me Russell and she kissed me and she said, I love you.”

“I’m going home.”

“I’m not, I’m going to find out.”

“Look, call it quits. Whatever has happened, has now unhappened, maybe it was a black hole or something, but it’s over. We got away with it. Let’s go home.”

“It’s not over. It’s far from over. It’s only just beginning.”

“Well, you do it on your own.”

“Morgan, come on.”

“No.” Morgan put up his hands. “I don’t want to know about it, I’m going home. Goodbye, Russell.”

“Goodbye, Morgan.”

Morgan didn’t trudge this time, he stalked. Russell watched him as he shrank into the distance, presently to be lost in the shadow of the gasometer.

Russell stood a while. The sun was going down now beyond the great oaks on the Kew side of the Thames, shadows lengthened on the flowing waters. A heron circled in the rose-painted sky.

Russell reached into his poacher’s pocket and brought out the golden package. “We shall see,” he said, and, turning on his heel (for heroes always turn upon their heels and Russell might, just might, yet prove himself to be the stuff of which a hero is composed), he strode off (for heroes also stride), to seek whatever great things fate might hold in store for him.

Oh yes.