The Antipope

10

As Monday turned into Tuesday and Tuesday did what was expected of it the patrons of the Flying Swan grew increasingly uneasy. Strange changes were taking place amid the timeless decor of the saloon bar. A grotesquely moth-eaten bison’s head had materialized above the counter and traces of sawdust had begun to appear about the floor. A large painting of a rotund and pinkly powdered female, clad only in the scantiest of ostrich-feather boas and an enticing if tobacco-stained smile, had been hung lopsidedly over the dartboard. “A temporary inconvenience,” Neville assured the irate dart-players. “Hold on thar pardners.” But the casters of the feathered flight sought their amusements elsewhere at Jack Lane’s or the New Inn.

“Son of a gun,” said Jim Pooley.

It was John Omally, a man who looked upon himself, no matter how ironically, as a guardian of the neighbourhood’s morals, who was the first to notice the new selection which had found its way into the disabled jukebox. “The Wheel of the Wagon is Broken?” he said suddenly, his coarse accent cutting through the part-time barman’s thoughts like a surgeon’s scalpel. “A Four-Legged Friend?”

Neville hung his head in shame. “It is regrettable,” said he, “but the brewery feel it necessary to alter the selection on that thing to keep in pace with what they think to be the vogue.”

“Come on now,” said Omally, “surely it is the brewery who are dictating this particular vogue with their horrendous plans for a Western Barbeque and all its attendant horrors.”

“Don’t forget the extension and the cheap drink,” Neville reminded his Irish customer.

Omally cocked his head thoughtfully to one side. “It is a poor consolation for the ghastly transfiguration currently taking place in this establishment, I am thinking.”

Jim agreed. “To think I’d see the day when three of the Swan’s finest arrowmen defect to Jack Lane’s.”

Neville chewed upon his lip and went back to polishing the glasses.

“I see you are still sporting your official guide’s cap,” said Pooley suddenly.

Omally smiled and reverently removed the thing, turning it between his fingers. “You would not believe the business I am doing along that stretch of dried-up canal.”

Jim shook his head. “Although to the average man the disappearance of a canal must seem an extraordinary thing, I frankly fail to see what pleasure can be derived from paying out good money to wander up and down the bank peering into the mud. By God, I was down that way myself earlier and the smell of it is no pleasant treat to the nostrils.”

“I have devised a most fascinating programme,” the Irishman said, “wherein I inform the visitors as to the many varied and bizarre legends associated with that stretch of canal.”

“Oh yes?” said Jim.

“We visit the very spot where Caesar encamped prior to his march upon Chiswick.”

“Really?”

“The place where the ghost of Little Nellie Tattersall, who cast away her earthly shell into the murky depths one dark and wintry Victorian night, still calls her tragic cry.”

“Calls her tragic cry?”

“And to the site of the famous Ripper murder of 1889. It’s a highly educational tour.”

“And they believe all this drivel?”

“Whether they believe it or not is unimportant. At the current rate of business I may well shortly be having to employ an assistant to deal with the parties that are forced to queue for several hours at a stretch. There are more of them every day. There are many pennies to be made in this game,” the Irishman said, flamboyantly ordering two pints.

Pooley peered round at the crowds which swelled the Swan. Certainly they were a strange breed, with uniformly blank expressions and a kind of colourless aura surrounding them. These were the faces which one saw jammed into a tight crowd surrounding an accident victim or one fallen in a fight. Ambulance men have to force past them and little short of outright violence will budge them an inch.

Old Pete entered the bar, his half terrier close upon his heel. “There’s a coachload of Japs out there asking for the guide,” he told Omally.

“Duty calls,” said John, leaping to his feet and thrusting his official cap on his head, “I shall see you anon.”

Jim bid his companion farewell and with a satisfied smile settled down to tackle the two untouched pints.

“That will be ten and six please,” said Neville the part-time barman.

“Damn and blast,” said Jim Pooley.

Norman threw the door bolt and turned over the sign which informed customers that he was “Closed Even for the Sale of Rubber Bondage Monthly”. Rubbing his hands together he strode across the shop and disappeared through the door behind the counter. The small kitchenette-cum-living-room at the rear had been allowed of late to run somewhat to seed. The sink was filled by a crazy mountain of food-besmirched crockery now in a state long beyond reclamation. Cigarette ends spotted the linoleum like the pock-marks of some tropical disease and great piles of newspapers, fine art publications and scientific journals were stacked into every available corner.

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” he said. Reaching to the back door he lifted down and donned a leather apron, welder’s goggles and a pair of rubber gloves. “And now, the end is near… And so, I face the final curtain.” With a grandiloquent gesture he crossed the room and flung aside a ragged strip of cloth which curtained a corner. There, lit by the kitchenette’s naked light bulb and glowing like a rare pearl torn from its oyster shell, hung what must surely have been one of the most extraordinary suits of clothes ever viewed by mortal man. It was a stunning salmon-pink, and tailored from the best quality PVC. Its body and sleeves glittered with rhinestones and sequins worked into patterns roughly suggestive of Indian headwear and western horsemen. The trousers were similarly ornamented and ended in massive bell-bottoms edged with braid and long golden tassles. Emblazoned across the shoulders of the jacket in letters of gold, marked out with what were obviously at least a dozen sets of christmas-tree fairy lights, were the words: THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD WEST.

It was Norman’s pièce-de-résistance, and it actually worked. In truth of course, no human hand, no matter how skilled, could have wrought the creation of such a costume in the short time given as notice by the Swan of the impending Cowboy Extravaganza. No, this was the work of several long years. Originally intended as THE SPIRIT OF THE JUBILEE, it had been far from completion at the time of that event and Norman had feared that its day would never dawn. It had taken him several long and sleepless nights to alter the coronation coach into a covered wagon and change the Prince of Wales feathers into the war-bonnet of an Indian chieftain. The effect, all in all, was one to bring a tear of pride into the eye of its creator.

The stetson had been a bit of a problem, as his source of PVC, a young woman customer who worked in the rubber factory, had been dismissed for unauthorized removal of the company’s stock. He had persevered, however, and done what he could with an aged trilby and an improvised brim. This he had sprayed gold and sprinkled with glitter from the carnival shop.

The electrification of the fairy lights had been the biggest problem, and Norman’s rudimentary knowledge of the workings of electricity had cost him many a scorched fingertip. He had toyed with the idea of simply running an extension lead to the nearest available wall socket but this was too limiting to his movements. Thus Norman, through his usual system of trial and error, had perfected an efficient though weighty set of precharged solid-cell batteries which were strapped about his waist very much in the nature of Batman’s utility belt. A set of switches upon the buckle enabled him to alter the fluctuation and sequence of the lights in a manner both pleasing and artistic.

Happily the PVC of the suit acted as an excellent insulator and the whole contraption was earthed through leads which ran down the backs of his trouser legs to brass plates nailed to the heels of a pair of rented cowboy boots.

Norman tinkered happily about with screwdriver and soldering iron, here replacing a defunct bulb, here resoldering a faulty socket. Tomorrow all Brentford would salute his creative genius. No longer would they smile indulgently and allude to his previous failed ventures with unconcealed mirth. He’d show ’em.

Norman flicked a switch upon his belt buckle. Sadly he was not wearing the brass-heeled boots on this particular occasion and the crackle of electrical energy which snapped through his fingers crossed his eyes and rattled his upper set.

“Damn and blast,” said Norman.

Archroy sat in the doorway of his allotment shed, elbows upon knees and chin cupped in the palms of his hands. At his feet a cup of cocoa was rapidly growing cold. His wife was up to something back at the marital home; there was a new roll of wire netting standing ominously in the hall and a large stack of red flettons in the back yard. She had muttered something about an aviary on the last occasion he had seen her. Also there was the affair of the beans weighing heavily upon his narrow shoulders.

Archroy sighed tragically. Why couldn’t life be the straightforward affair it had once been?

As he sat in his misery Archroy’s eyes wandered idly in the direction of Omally’s allotment plot. There upon the rugged patch of earth stood the solitary stake which marked out the location of the planted bean. Archroy had diligently watered the spot night after night. Omally had not been down to the site once during the last couple of weeks, and Archroy felt he had lost interest in the whole affair. He rose from his orange box and slouched over to inspect the Irishman’s dark strip of land. The stake appeared slightly crooked so he straightened it, stooping to smooth over the earth. There were no signs of life whatever, no pleasant green stripling or young plantoid raising its head to the sunlight. Nothing but the barren earth. Archroy bent his head near to the ground and squinted. This was, after all, his last bean and if this failed he would have nothing whatever to recompense him for the tragic loss of his Morris Minor.

Perhaps if he just dug it up for a moment to check that it was all right, it couldn’t do any harm. Then if it showed any signs of life he could always replace it. No, it wouldn’t hurt, one quick look. He needn’t mention it to Omally.

The earth was soft and damp from its daily watering. Almost at once his fingers closed about a damp and clammy object which he hastily brought to the surface. Gently laying it upon his palm he smoothed away the dark earth which clung to it, exposing to his horror the familiar outlines of a common seed potato. Archroy’s expression became one of grave concern. He hurled the potato aside and flung himself to his knees. Rooting to and fro across the plot like a demented hog in search of a truffle he delved into the earth. Oblivious to the muddy destruction of his tweeds, Archroy covered every inch of the plot to a depth of some ten inches.

There was nothing; the plot was as barren as a desert, although now it would be ready to yield many varieties of vegetable, having been so thoroughly turned. Archroy rose to his feet, mud clinging to the knees and elbows of his suit; his toupet, which the manufacturers had assured him would stand up to a channel swim, had become strangely detached from its moorings and swung above him like a spinnaker.

Archroy turned his eyes to the potato. So it was treachery, no wonder the Irishman had not troubled to come down and water the plot. Why should he wish to water a seed potato?

“Damn and blast,” said Archroy.

Captain Carson watched the vehicle approach the Mission. He had never seen anything quite like it before. The enormous lorry was absolutely, unutterably black. Not a trace of colour was there upon its deathly sides, but for a single red crest emblazoned in the likeness of a bull. The vehicle moved in total silence and seemed strangely lacking in form, like some half-remembered version of the way a lorry should be. It bore neither headlights nor radiator grille, and the windscreen, if such it were, was of the same night hue as the rest of the vehicle. The doors lacked any sign of handles nor even a crack or line to signify their location. It was a thing to inspire nightmare. Soundlessly it drew up before the Mission door, enveloping the Captain within its cold shadow. Shaking away his feeling of revulsion the Captain squared his shoulders and stalked up the short path to confront the dark vehicle.

Certainly it was a unique and striking thing. The Captain noted with interest that there was not a single sharp corner, edge or angle to it, the surfaces flowed away from one another in curve after curve.

The Captain stretched out an inquisitive finger to touch the lorry but withdrew it at a vastly accelerated rate. It was as if he had thrust it into a vat of liquid oxygen. “By the gods,” he said, examining his frost-bitten digit.

As if in response to the Captain’s oath there was a click near the front of the vehicle and the cab door swung slowly open. The Captain wandered towards it upon hesitant feet. No light showed from within, it was like peering into the black void of space.

Without warning a figure appeared from the darkness as one stepping from behind a velvet curtain. He was as black and featureless as his conveyance. Down from the cab he climbed, bearing in his gloved hand a clipboard to which was attached a sheaf of papers.

“Captain Horatio B. Carson?” he enquired in a voice of indeterminate accent. The Captain nodded slowly and without enthusiasm. “Delivery.”

“I ordered nothing!”

“There is no cause for alarm,” said a soft voice behind and slightly above the Captain.

Turning, the Captain squinted up into the face of the tramp. “What is all this?” he demanded.

“Kindly assist this gentleman with the removal of all the old furniture from the dining-room.”

“Old furniture? You can’t do that, the furniture is the property of the Mission.”

“Kindly do as I request, all will be explained to you later.”

The Captain threw up his arms in a gesture of helplessness and led the dark figure into the Mission, where under the tramp’s direction the two stripped the dining-room of its furnishings. When these had been heaped into an untidy pile in the yard, the tramp said, “And now if you will be so kind, the new furniture is to be brought in. May I beg your caution when handling it as some pieces are of great worth and all irreplaceable.”

The Captain shook his head in bewilderment and mopped the perspiration from his brow with an oversized red gingham handkerchief. For the next half an hour his life was nothing short of a nightmare. The truck’s dark occupant swung open the rear doors of the mighty vehicle, exposing another fathomless void. Working without apparent effort and clearly oblivious to the great weight of some of the more ornate and heavily gilded pieces of furniture he and the Captain unloaded and installed in the Mission an entire suite, table, chairs, sideboard, cabinet, a pair of golden candelabra, velvet wall-hangings and a crested coat of arms. All these items would clearly have been well at home amid the splendours of Fontainebleau. Each was the work of exquisite and painstaking craftsmanship, and each bore etched into the polished woodwork or inlaid in precious metals the motif of the bull.

When all was installed the Captain numbly put his signature to the manifest, which was printed in a language he did not understand. The driver returned to his black cab, the door swinging closed behind him leaving no trace of its presence. The vast black vehicle departed as silently as it had arrived. The Captain leant upon the Mission porch exhausted, breathing heavily and clutching at his heart.

“There is one more thing to be done and you may return to your quarters,” said the tramp looming above him.

“I can do no more,” gasped the Captain, “leave me here to die, I have seen enough of life, too much in fact.”

“Come now,” said the tramp, “no need to be melodramatic, this is but a simple task.” He handed the Captain a gallon can of petrol. “That rubbish in the garden, dispose of it.”

“What?”

“It is offensive, put it to the torch!”

The Captain took the can. Upon giddy legs he stumbled through the Mission and out into the yard to confront the mound of furniture which had served him these thirty long years.

“The torch,” ordered the tramp.

The Captain’s fingers tightened around the petrol cap, he was powerless to resist. “Damn you,” he mumbled beneath his breath. “Damn and blast you to hell.”