Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

2

“And?” said Russell. “And what?” said Morgan.

“And what happened next?”

“Nothing happened next. That’s the end of the story.”

“Neville opened the ark of the covenant, which Norman had dug up on his allotment and The Flying Swan atomized and got sucked into the sky?”

“That’s it.”

“And you were actually there when this happened?”

“Of course I wasn’t actually there. If I’d been actually there, I wouldn’t be here now to tell you about it, would I?”

“I suppose not. But if you weren’t actually there, how can you be sure it really happened?”

“You don’t have to actually be somewhere to know something happened, Russell. I wasn’t actually there when they built Stonehenge. But I know it happened, because Stonehenge is there to prove it.”

“But surely The Flying Swan is not there to prove it.”

“Well, that proves it then, doesn’t it?”

Russell let this percolate a moment or two. “Are you sure?” he asked.

“Of course I’m sure. I can’t see what more conclusive proof you could need. If The Flying Swan was still there, then it couldn’t have happened. It isn’t, so it must have. QED.”

“QED?”

“It’s Latin, it means ‘so there, you bastard’.”

“Incredible,” said Russell. “And when exactly did this happen?”

“A couple of years back.”

“A couple of years back? Then you must have seen The Flying Swan. Did you ever meet Pooley or Omally?”

“Longer ago then. They used old money. Perhaps it was twenty years ago. I’m not sure.”

“I thought you were sure. You said a moment ago you were sure.”

“Sure it happened. I’m not altogether sure of the exact date. But then I’m not altogether sure of the exact date they built Stonehenge. But it’s there and The Flying Swan isn’t and that proves it.”

Russell shrugged. “I suppose it does,” he said. “Although –”

“Although, what?”

“Although, well, I mean I’m not certain I believe all of it. I could believe some of it. Like Neville and Pooley and Omally. But, well, the ark of the covenant, surely that’s just ripped off from the Indiana Jones movie.”

“I think you’ll find it’s ripped off from the Old Testament.”

“Yes, well, I know that, of course.”

“But if you are prepared to believe in Pooley and Omally, you must be prepared to believe in all those adventures they had.”

“Well,” said Russell. “They could just be tall stories, you know. Like urban myths.”

“Urban myths?”

“As in ‘almost true’. Anyone could make the mistake of believing them.”

Morgan took to much head-shaking. “Pooley and Omally are not urban myths. The Flying Swan was not an urban myth. An author called Rankin wrote all about them.”

“Perhaps he was just making it up,” Russell suggested. “To entertain people.”

“Making it up? What, make up a story about The Flying Swan and all its patrons being atomized and sucked into the sky?”

“It’s just possible,” said Russell. “Don’t you think it just possible that this Mr Rankin might have made some of it up? He could have based his characters on real people and set his stories in a real place. But then invented The Flying Swan and all the fantastic stuff. Let’s face it Morgan, no offence meant, but nothing ever happens in Brentford. Nothing ever has happened and nothing ever will happen.”

Morgan rolled his eyes. “Of course things happen, Russell. They happen all the time. It’s just that they never happen to you.”

“You’re right there,” said Russell.

“And do you know why?” Morgan did not wait for a reply. “It’s because you’re too nice, Russell. You’re too polite to the customers. You work too hard. You’re too damn honest and you never go out and get pissed. You never take any risks. How could anything ever happen to someone like you?”

“I could get run over,” said Russell. “Anyone can get run over.”

“Not you, you always look both ways.”

“Well, I don’t want to get run over.”

“Trust me,” said Morgan. “Perhaps things don’t happen the way they used to happen. But all the things I told you happened, happened. They just did. That’s all.”

Russell sighed. “Incredible,” he said. And rather nicely he said it.

The voice of Frank, the manager, entered the tea room through the Tannoy speaker. It said, “Get back to work, Morgan, and stop winding Russell up.”

Morgan put the cups in the sink. He didn’t wash them up, because it wasn’t his turn. It was Bobby Boy’s turn. But Bobby Boy was off sick. Bobby Boy had a stomach bug caused by drinking from a cup that hadn’t been washed up properly. It had been Morgan’s turn on that occasion, but Morgan had been off sick. Since then things had got a little complicated and now there were an awful lot of cups in that sink. Russell had to bring a fresh one from home every morning. His mother was beginning to pine for the lack of cups. But it wasn’t Russell’s turn to wash up, so there wasn’t much he could do about it. Although he really wanted to.

Morgan and Russell emerged from the darkness of the tea room into the light of description. Russell was undoubtedly the taller of the two, due to Morgan’s lack of height. But for what Russell gained in the vertical plane he lost in the horizontal. Morgan was by far the fatter. And the balder. Where Russell had hair to great abundance, dark hair, and thick (and curly), Morgan had his baldness. And his spectacles. And his moustache.

Russell didn’t have a moustache. Russell was cleanly shaven. Although he had cut himself a few times that morning. On his spots. Morgan didn’t have any spots.

Morgan had perspiration stains beneath his armpits. But no spots. He had once owned a dog called Spot though. It had been a spaniel. But it wasn’t a spaniel any more, because it hadn’t looked both ways and a bus had run over it. Perhaps in dog heaven it was still a spaniel, but not here. Here it wasn’t anything. Except a memory, of course. A happy memory.

Russell had no memories of Spot the dog. He had never met Spot the dog. Spot the dog had met his tragic demise years before Russell had ever met Morgan. In fact, Russell was not altogether sure that there had ever been a Spot the dog. It was just possible that Morgan had made up Spot the dog in order to sound interesting. But, of course, Russell was far too polite to suggest such a thing.

So here they were. The two of them. Russell the taller, the hairier and the nicer. But Morgan without the spots. Both were roughly the same age, early twenties, both unmarried, both working as they did, where they did.

And where was that? Exactly?

Where that was, was Fudgepacker’s Emporium, a prop house in Brentford. On the Kew Road it was, in the deconsecrated church that had once housed the piano museum.

And what is a prop house?

Well.

A prop house is a place you hire props from. Theatrical props. Theatrical properties. For the film and television industries mostly. Things. All sorts of things.

You see, when you make a movie you have to hire everything. You begin with nothing. Nothing but money. Then you hire. You hire a scriptwriter and a director and actors and technicians and sound men. And a best boy, naturally. Where would you be without a best boy? But you also have to hire everything that will be put on the film sets.

Everything.

The carpets, the furniture, the cups and saucers, the fixtures and the fittings. And so all over London there are prop houses. They tend to specialize. Some do guns, some do cars. Costumiers do costumes, of course, because you have to hire all those. And some do antiques. Some do pictures. Some do modern furnishings. Fudgepacker’s?

Well.

Fudgepacker’s does the weird stuff. The really weird stuff. The stuff you couldn’t hire anywhere else.

If you need a pickled homunculus, an eight-legged lamb, a hand of glory, a scrying stone, a travelling font, a thundersheet, a shrunken head, the skull of the Marquis de Sade, Napoleon’s mummified willy, a tableau of foetal skeletons re-enacting the battle of Rorke’s Drift …

Then Fudgepacker’s is, as Flann would have it, your man.

The company was founded and still run by Ernest Fudgepacker. And that is the Ernest Fudgepacker, seminal Arthouse B Movie maker of the late Fifties and early Nineteen Sixties. Director of I Bleed in Your Breakfast, Sherlock Holmes Meets the Princess of Pain, Bound to Please, Love Me in Leather, Surf Nazis Must Die[5] and Blonde in a Body Bag.[6]

Hollywood hadn’t been ready for Ernest.

Shepperton hadn’t been ready for Ernest.

The censor had been ready for him though.

Ernest retired from directing. It was Hollywood’s loss. And Shepperton’s. Though the censor didn’t seem too fazed.

Fudgepacker opened his emporium in nineteen sixty-three, to coincide with the assassination of President Kennedy. He reasoned that, should his guests ever be asked at some future time whether they could remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, they would say, “Why yes, we were at Fudgepacker’s opening party.”

Where he got all his mysterious stock from no-one knows, because he’s not telling. But he was right on target back then. Ken Russell was making the good stuff and Hammer films were knocking out the classics. But that was then and times are not so clever now.

Movies change with the times. Movies reflect the times.

And the best of times are always in the past.

Morgan returned to the packing bench and Russell to the office. Once Fudgepacker’s had owned to a staff of twenty, now there was just the four. Morgan and Russell, Frank the manager and Bobby Boy. Although Bobby Boy wasn’t there very often. Stomach trouble, or he was looking for another job. Probably the latter, as Bobby Boy wanted to be an actor.

Morgan was certainly looking for another job. He wanted to be a spy or an explorer. Russell, however, was not looking for another job.

Russell liked working at Fudgepacker’s. Russell liked old Ernie. Ernie was a character. Russell even liked Frank the manager and no-one ever likes a manager.

Russell returned to his desk, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit at it, he paced up and down before the window. Outside the day was dull, the sky gasometer-grey. The waters of the Thames were grey. Grey cars drifted along the grey Kew Road, going nowhere.

Russell put a bit more spring into his pacing.

“Don’t do that,” said Frank. “It reminds me of my first wife.”

Russell sat down. “Frank,” he said, “did you ever drink in The Flying Swan?”

“Don’t think I know the place. I once lit Sophia Loren’s cigarette, though. Did I ever tell you about that?”

“You mentioned it in passing, yes.”

“Beautiful woman,” said Frank. “They don’t make women like her any more. I was prop man at Pinewood then. Happy times.”

“Are we expecting any customers today?”

“Trevor Jung phoned, said he’d be in later. He’s working on a pilot for a new TV sitcom.”

“There’s always room for another sitcom,” said Russell.

“They don’t make sitcoms like they used to. That Wendy Craig was a beautiful woman. I never lit her cigarette though, I think I helped her into her coat once, or perhaps that was Thora Hird.”

Russell clapped his hands together. “I think I’ll rearrange the office,” said he.

“No,” said Frank.

“Then I’ll go and dust the grimoires.”

“No.”

“All right. I’ll polish the funerary urns. They could do with a buff.”

“No.”

“I could wash up the teacups.”

“No!”

“But I want to do something.”

“You are doing something, Russell. You are sitting at your desk awaiting a customer. They also serve who only stand and wait, you know. Or in your case, sit.”

Russell made a sorry face. Things had been much better before Frank became manager. Frank with his love of rosters and paperwork. Russell hated inactivity, he liked to be up and doing, he couldn’t bear to waste time. It was Frank who had instigated tea breaks. He dictated exactly who did what, and when. It was a very inefficient system. But Frank was the manager and there was nothing Russell could do about it.

“So, I’ll just sit here?” Russell said.

“Just sit there, yes.”

And so Russell just sat there, drumming his fingers on the desk.

And absolutely nothing happened.

Nothing whatsoever.

Which was strange really, considering the immutable laws which seem to govern these things. According to these immutable laws, something should definitely have happened right about now. And something big. Big enough to cover all the foregoing dullness and chit chat, or if not actually happened, then at least offered a strong hint of humungous happenings to come.

Possibly something along the lines of … Unknown to Russell, great forces were even now at work. Great forces that would change his world for ever, in fact change everybody’s world for ever. For Russell was about to take the first step on a journey that would lead him into realms where no man had ever set foot before. Or such like.

But nothing did.

So Russell just sat there drumming his fingers. It did occur to him, however, that it might be interesting to find out whether there was any truth to the tale Morgan had told him. He could spend his lunchtimes and evenings asking around Brentford, to see if there really had been a Neville and a Pooley and an Omally and a Flying Swan. And if there had, then whether any of the fabulous tales told of them were actually true. It was something to do. It would be interesting. Yes.

“Can I give the floor a mop?” asked Russell.

“No,” said Frank.