Waiting for Godalming

15

“It’s a mullet,” said Fangio the malnourished maitre d’.

“It’s a what?” I asked, in a readiness of response.

“The haircut Peter Stringfellow has. Mullet, the classic 1970s haircut, as favoured by members of the Bay City Rollers and damn near everybody else. Peter Stringfellow is the last man on Earth to favour the mullet, now that Pat Sharp’s done away with his.”

“I’m more of a Ramón Navarro man, myself,” said I. “I can’t be having with hair that sticks out under my fedora.”

“Class,” said the string bean Fangio. “Pure class.”

“So he comes in here, does he, this Colin Godalming?”

“Regular as clockwork,” said the wasted one. “He should be arriving here”, Fangio studied the watch on his twig-like wrist, “in about ten minutes’ flat, or if not flat, then he’ll walk in upright, as usual.”

Oh how we laughed at that one.

“Well,” said I, to the half-starved meagre shrimp of a maitre d’. “That leaves us with ten minutes of prime toot-talking time.”

“You won’t get a word out of me,” said the scrawny wretch, “until you drop all those derogatory references to my slender, yet perfectly proportioned, physique.”

“Do you have to run around in the shower to get wet?” I asked.

“I’m warning you, Laz.”

“I heard that you once took off all your clothes, painted your head red and went to a fancy dress party as a thermometer.”

“One more and you’re out of here!”

“All right, fair enough. So what do you want to talk toot about?”

“Well, actually, Laz, I’m thinking about buying a sofa. Is there anything you’d particularly recommend?”

“Hm,” said I. “A sofa. Well, it all depends on getting one that’s the right size and shape, at the price you can afford.”

“Go on,” said the maitre d’ with the slender, yet perfectly proportioned, physique.

“You see, you have your chesterfield, your G Plan three-seater, also available as a two, your classic chaise-longue, your Le Corbusier chaise-longue and your drop-end Bavarian chaise-longue with the tapestried upholstery and silk vanity tassels.”

“You sure know your sofas,” said Fangio.

“Buddy,” I told him, “in my business, knowing your sofas can mean the difference between buttering scones on a battered settee and licking lard on a love couch. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”

“I know where you’re coming from,” said the Fange. “For I’ve been there myself, on a cheap away-day to Norwich. What else would you suggest?”

“Well, there’s your studio couch, your box ottoman, your oak settle, which with the addition of cushions can easily be converted into a sofa.”

“I had an aunt who converted to Islam once,” said Fangio. “She thought she was converting to North Sea gas, but she ticked the wrong box on the application form.”

“Did she have a sofa, your aunt?”

“No, just an armchair and a pair of pouffes.”

“Ample seating. Did she live on her own?”

“She does now, the pouffes moved out. They’ve opened a candle shop in Kemptown.”

“The air’s very bracing in Kemptown. Someone told me that it was good for rheumatism. So I went there and caught it.”

“You can’t catch rheumatism, can you?”

“It all depends who’s throwing it,” I said. “Boys will be boys.”

And we paused for a moment to take stock and think of the good times.

“My problem regarding the sofa remains unsolved,” said the slim boy. “I’d like the best, but I can only afford the very worst.”

“Ah,” said I. “What you have there is a Couch 22 situation.”

Oh how we laughed once more.

Fangio dried his eyes upon an oversized red gingham handkerchief. “My, I did enjoy that,” said he. “That was top class toot. But look, here comes Mr Godalming.”

“Colin Godalming,” said Johnny Boy. “This would be the third child of God, who inherits the Earth. Mr Woodbine told us all about him.”

“Yes,” said Icarus. “I’m well aware of that.”

“And it makes sense,” said Johnny Boy, “if God’s family have all been forced to move down here to Earth. Colin has his father murdered and falsifies His will. So he now owns the planet.”

“Yes yes,” said Icarus. “I get the picture.”

“And he’s teamed up with the wrong’uns, which is why he came up with this scheme to massage everyone’s heads, so they can’t see what’s really going on. He’s been planning it all for years.”

“Yes,” said Icarus. “I understand what you’re saying.”

“That Mr Woodbine is a genius,” said Johnny Boy. “He knew it was Colin from the start.”

“No,” said Icarus. “Just stop that. It all fits too easily together.”

“Well, it would if it’s correct. Why go looking for a more complicated solution?”

“Because this is my brother we’re talking about. My mad brother. And if we get drawn into his madness we won’t be able to escape from it. It’s infectious. It’s like a disease. I’ve come down here to try to solve this myself. All I have to do is stay away from him for a week. If that’s possible.”

Johnny Boy stared up into the face of Icarus Smith. “Please don’t take offence at this,” he said, “but surely I detect a bit of sibling rivalry here. If Mr Woodbine really is your brother, then you should be proud of him. And if he’s not your brother, then you’ve projected the face of your brother onto him, because your brother is your hero. Which might explain why you are as you are. The lad who seeks to make a name for himself as the relocator who set the world to rights. Either way it means that you really do look up to your brother, but you can’t bring yourself to admit it.”

“No,” said Icarus. “It’s not true. I am what I am because I had a dream. My brother lives in a world of dreams, but I inhabit reality.”

“You’re just digging a deeper pit for yourself,” said Johnny Boy. “This is all dead Freudian.”

“Let’s go,” said Icarus.

“To where?”

“To find Colin Godalming, of course.”

“Mr Godalming?” I said, sticking out my hand for a shake. “Mr Colin Godalming?”

The dude looked me coolly up and down. It was clear that I had the right guy here, I could tell by the way he shone. Streamers of light twinkled prettily about him and a golden glow, which wasn’t just the mullet, drenched his shoulders.

“And who might you be?” asked the third child of God, declining my offer of a hearty handclasp.

“I’m a private investigator,” I replied, in a tone which left no doubt exactly where I stood on the matter. “The name’s Woodbine, Lazlo Woodbine.” And added, “Some call me Laz.”

The guy regarded me as one would a pigeon squit plopped on a pampered pompadour. “Well, Mr Woodless,” he said, in a tone which left no doubt exactly where he stood on the matter. “I don’t need a private investigator.”

“It’s Woodbine,” I said. “And believe me, buddy, you do.”

The guy gave me the kind of look I wouldn’t waste on a whippet. “What is this all about?” he asked. “I don’t have time to stand around here talking toot with a chap dressed up as a handbag.”

“A hand bag?” said I, in my finest Charlie’s Aunt. Or was it The Importance of Being Earnest? I always get the two confused. Or perhaps it was HMS Pinafore. No, I’m sure it was Charlie’s Aunt.

“It might have been my aunt,” said Fangio. “She used to have a handbag.”

“Keep out of this, Jiffy,” I told the emaciated maitre d’. “This is between me and Dolly Parton here.”

“Handbag!” said Colin and he tossed back his hair and primped at his golden shower.

“Fella,” I said, “let me ask you one question. What’s red and white and lies dead in an alleyway?”

“I have no idea,” said Colin.

“A bullet-ridden corpse,” said I. “And that corpse is your dad.”

“That was subtle,” said Fangio. “And who’s this Jiffy, anyway?”

“My dad?” said Colin. “What are you talking about?”

“Your dad bought the big one.”

“My daddy is dead?”

“Deader than a stone gnome in a whore’s window box,” said I. “Colder than an Eskimo’s nipple at an Alaskan alfresco piercing party. More bereft of life than a rerun of the Monty Python parrot sketch.”

“That dead?” said Fangio.

“And then some. Kaput.”

“No,” said Colin, getting a blubber on now. “It can’t be true. Not my poor dear daddy. Tell me that it isn’t true.”

“It’s true,” I said. “Truer than the noble love that wins the heart of a maiden fair. More unvarnished than a dunny door in a pine restorer’s stripping tank. As factual as a …”

“Fat fop in a foolish fedora?” said Fangio. “Only a suggestion, you don’t have to use it.”

“Oh my poor dear daddy.” Colin took to wailing and gnawing his knuckles and carrying on like a silly big girl.

“You’ve upset him,” said the bone-bag of a maitre d’.

“Enough of the thin-boy jibes,” said Fange. “I’m only human too, you know. Cut me and do I not bleed?”

“We can check that out,” I said. “Give us a lend of the knife you use to hack up your chewing fat.”

“No, really, Laz. I’m not kidding. You can be very cruel sometimes. And the guy’s really upset. Look at him, he’s crying.”

“He’s faking it,” I said.

“I’m not,” blubbed Colin.

“You are too,” said I.

“Blubb blubb blubb,” went Colin.

“Give him a hug,” said Fangio. “That sometimes helps.”

“I certainly will not,” I said. “I’m not getting Tears on my Trenchcoat”.[15]

“What’s the trouble?” asked a broad-shouldered dame in a pale pink peplos and Day-Glo dungarees. She had the kind of face that you generally see only on a platter with an apple stuck into its gob.

“Butt out, Miss Piggy,” I told her. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

The porcine dame burst into tears.

“Now look what you’ve done,” said Fangio.

“And you keep out of it too, skeleton boy.”

“Waaah,” went Fangio, breaking down upon the bar.

“Blubb blubb blubb,” went Colin.

“Boo hoo” and “snort” went the pig-faced lady.

“Can I be of assistance?” asked a solitary cyclist who’d just popped in for a Perrier water. He wore one of those figure-hugging Lycra suits that only look good on Lynford Christie, and one of those streamlined bikers’ helmets that don’t look good on anybody.

“Clear off, you Spandexed poseur,” I told him.

“Sob sob sob,” went the cyclist.

Now I don’t know what it is about crying. It must be infectious, I guess. A bit like yawning really, I suppose. Somebody yawns and you want to yawn too. Perhaps that’s a conditioned reflex. Or something atavistic, dating back to our tribal ancestry. When, if the headman yawned, everybody yawned and the tribe all went to bed. Or, if the headman cried, you joined him too, in a good old howling session. I’m not too hot on the history of man, so I couldn’t say for a certainty.

What I could say for certain was this, however.

It wasn’t my fault.

OK, I might have started Colin off, but he was only faking it. And Fangio is a sissy boy and the pig-faced dame had it coming. And as for the solitary cyclist and the three students and the retired colourman and the two young women from Essex and the humpty-backed geezer and the continuity girl from Blue Peter and the lady with the preposterous bosom and that oik with the mobile phone, who said he’d call for an ambulance, well sure, OK, I might have pointed out their shortcomings, when they came muscling in to what clearly was none of their business. But for them all to start bawling their eyes out and saying that it was all my fault, that was laying it thicker than a concrete coat on a Baghdad bombproof bunker.

I mean, blaming me?

I could have wept.

In fact, I nearly did.

“Shut up!” I shouted. “Shut up the lot of you.”

“Waaaaaah,” they went, in chorus.

“Will you stop all this weeping, you bunch of witless wimps?”

“Waaaaaah!” they reiterated, somewhat louder this time.

“He called me Quasimodo,” whined the humpty-backed geezer.

“He said I had a face like a cow’s behind,” squalled a woman with a face like a cow’s behind.

“He impugned my manhood,” snivelled a closet shirtlifter.

“He referred to me as a pretentious ninny,” ululated a thespian.

“He murdered my daddy!” howled Colin.

There was a lot of silence then.

“He did what?” asked the guy with the sore on his lip, which, I’d mentioned in passing, was probably the pox.

“He murdered my poor dear daddy. Shot him down in an alleyway.”

“I did nothing of the kind,” I rightfully protested.

“Assassin!” cried a crying lady, who, let’s face it, did look a lot like Jabba the Hutt.

“Murderer!” shrieked the bloke with the birthmark that I’d drawn attention to.

“String him up,” yelled the woman with the questionable hairdo that I’d well and truly questioned.

“I’ll get a rope,” hollered Fangio.

“Oi, Fange,” said I. “Turn it in.”

“Sorry, Laz, I got carried away.”

“Murdered my poor dear daddy,” went Colin again.

And would you believe it?

Or even if you wouldn’t.

The whole damn lot of them went for me!

“If you ask me,” said Johnny Boy, “we’re lost.”

“I’m not asking you,” said Icarus Smith.

“No need to be shirty,” said Johnny Boy. “Just because I put you straight about the relationship you have with your brother.”

“It isn’t that,” said Icarus Smith, even though it was. “But actually, I think you’re right. We’re lost.”

They had wandered a goodly way amongst the corridors of the Ministry of Serendipity. They had left the barber far behind, strapped into his chair with his Velocette in his mouth. But now, somewhere in the middle of what might have been anywhere, they were well and truly lost, which wasn’t a nice thing to be.

“Perhaps we should retrace our steps.”

“No,” said Icarus. “We’ll go on. We’ll leave this to fate. Which way would you choose?”

“How about turning left here?”

“Right it is then,” said Icarus.

As they walked and wandered, Johnny Boy tried to lighten things up with tales of the music halls. But Icarus darkened things down again with a tale of a film he’d seen about miners who got trapped underground.

“We might be going in circles,” said Johnny Boy. “You do that, you know, if you try to walk in a straight line. One of your legs is always a tiny bit shorter than the other, so eventually you walk round in a big circle.”

“Does that work if both of your legs are short?” asked Icarus.

“Don’t be horrid,” said Johnny Boy. “You’ll make me want to cry.”

The crying howling mob closed in upon me, but I wasn’t going down without a fight. I was prepared to stand my ground and dish out as good as I got. I’d raise my fists and fight a fair fight and devil take the hindparts.

But I was severely outnumbered here.

So I whipped out the trusty Smith and Where’s-this-all-gonna-end and let off a couple of shots at the ceiling.

Which started the sprinkler system.

And set off the fire alarm.

Way down deep in the Ministry of Serendipity, other alarms started ringing.

“I think the barber’s broken free,” said Johnny Boy. “What should we do now?”

“I would say, run,” said Icarus. “But I’m not sure just in which direction we should run.”

“Up might be a good plan,” said Johnny Boy.

“Run up?”

“Head up. Up and out of here.”

Sounds of running footsteps could now be heard.

“There,” said Icarus. “There’s a ladder fastened to the wall. It leads up some kind of shaft.”

“That would be the one then. Let’s get a move on before the guards get us.”

“Get him!” shouted the bloke with the bulldog jowls which I’d said could be cured by surgery. “Get the murderer, batter him good.”

And suddenly I found myself in a maelstrom of flailing fists and battering boots.

“I can hear their boots getting nearer,” said Johnny Boy, halfway up the shaft that led to somewhere. “How are you doing up there, Icarus? Can you see daylight?”

“Er, not exactly,” the lad called back. “Just a sort of manhole cover. And I can’t seem to get it open.”

“They’re getting closer, Icarus, I can hear them. They’re coming from all directions.”

They came at me from all directions, down as well as up and all about. I pride myself that with my daily workout regime[16] I am always in peak condition and can take a blow to the solar plexus without even flinching. However, I’d never quite planned on taking quite so many blows and all at the same time.

“I’ll have to blow it open,” called Icarus.

“You’ll have to what?”

“Blow open the manhole cover.”

“How?”

“I took the liberty of relocating a stick or two of SHITE from the captain’s pocket while we were in my brother’s office. I thought they might come in handy one day. Do you have a box of matches?”

“Sadly no,” called Johnny Boy. “How about you?”

“Er, no.”

“No!” I tried a “no” and I also tried a “have mercy” and also “you’ve got the wrong fellow here” and “I have a heart condition” — but callously aloof to all my pleas, even those regarding the potential damage to my trenchcoat and fedora, the baying mob beat seventeen brass bells of St Trinian’s out of me, then hoisted me into the air, marched me over to the bar’s rear door and flung me out into the alleyway.

Well, at least it was an alleyway.

But boy did it hurt when I hit it.

I was bloody and bruised and chopped up and chaffed, my trenchcoat was in ribbons and my hat had gone missing. And as I lay there in the mud, wondering just how many bones had been broken, I was further saddened to hear the sound of a handgun being cocked.

Especially as I knew the sound of that cocking action all too well. For it was the sound of my trusty Smith and Where’s-all-that-help-when-you-need-it-now?

I looked up through the eye that didn’t have a big brown plum growing out of it, to view the face of my would-be executioner.

“You’re dead meat, Mr Handbag,” he said.

“We’re dead meat,” called Johnny Boy.

“No we’re not,” called Icarus. “I’ll find a way to light this fuse.”

“But we’ll get blown up and melted too.”

“This stuff is directional. It will blow up if you aim it upwards.”

“But we don’t have a match to light it.”

“I’ll think of something.”

A torch lit up Johnny Boy.

“Come down from there,” called the voices, accompanied by the sounds of guns being cocked. “Come down out of there or you’re—”

“Dead meat?” said Icarus Smith.

“Dead meat,” said Colin, third child of God. “There’s just the two of us now, Mr Handbag.”

“Now hold on, fella,” I said. “Don’t do anything foolish that I might regret. I know who you are. What you are. I’m working for your mother.”

“My mother?”

“Eartha Godalming, widow of God. Big fat ugly dame with a face like a bag full of car parts.”

“What has my mother got to do with this?”

“I’ve seen the will,” I said, spitting out a bit of blood, to add a little extra drama. “God’s last will and testament. You’re in the frame for the murder.”

“What do you mean?”

“The will’s a fake. The Earth gets left to you, instead of the meek, who were supposed to inherit it. I know the truth. I worked it out.”

“You know nothing, Mr Handbag. I didn’t fake the will.”

“I know that.” I spat out a wee bit more blood, and what seemed like a couple of teeth. “I know it wasn’t you.”

“I think you know too much, Mr Handbag.”

“I know the truth,” said I. “And I can help you.”

“I don’t need any help. I can take care of everything myself. I’ve got this world under control. Under my control. Do you have any brothers, Mr Handbag?”

“Me?” I said. “No, I’m an only child. They broke the mould before they made me.”

“Well, I have a brother. A very famous brother. Jesus Christ, his name is. And all my life I’ve lived in his shadow. But not any more. Not any more.”

Colin’s finger tightened on the trigger. And I stared into the barrel of my gun.

“No,” I said. “Don’t shoot me. I can help you.”

Colin shook his head. “Just let me ask you one question,” he said.

“Anything,” said I.

“What’s red and white and dressed as a handbag and lies dead in an alleyway?”

And then, believe it.

Or believe it not.

He put my gun against my head and went and pulled the trigger.