The Abominable Showman

by Robert Rankin

  There was a certain silence in my head.

  ‘Barry,’ I said, ‘are you there?’

  ‘Yes, I’m here, chief. It just got a bit busy and confusing in here for a moment. Might I ask you to make me a promise?’

  ‘I suppose so,’ I said, but I was not too keen.

  ‘Just look upon me as a friend,’ said Barry. ‘Your holy guardian angel if you will. I’ll be with you to offer advice and hopefully keep you out of sticky situations. Trust me and all will be well.’

  ‘Is that a promise?’ I asked.

  ‘No chief, the promise is about time travel. Just promise me that you will not ask me any damn fool questions or come up with any damn fool theories. I have been at this game for a very long time and if I hear one more reference to temporal paradoxes and quantum anomalies or what the you in the future did based on the you in the past, or likeaways round was thinking the you in the future might have done to influence some hop-diddly-doddle about the time lapse maypole, I swear by my chosen deity that I will forget my good manners and do a poo in your cerebral cortex.’

  There was another silence then.

  Before I said, ‘I promise.’

  ‘And now go to bed and get a good night’s sleep,’ said Barry.

  ‘But I’m not even tired.’

  ‘Just do it!’

  And I did it.

  ‘Goodnight, Barry,’ I said to Barry.

  ‘Goodnight, chief,’ said Barry.

  9

  I awoke in nineteen twenty-seven. Rose from my wretched resting place and had a peep out of the window.

  ‘Yes!’ I went and I made fists and waved them in the air.

  ‘Aaagh, oh’ and ‘Squark,’ went Barry the sprout in my head.

  ‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘But yes once again.’ And I waved my fists about.

  ‘Ah,’ said Barry, sorting through my thoughts. ‘You are actually pleased to be here now and to find that yesterday wasn’t a dream.’

  ‘Precisely,’ I said. ‘Although I was perhaps hoping that you were.’

  ‘What was that, chief?’ asked Barry.

  ‘Nothing,’ I replied.

  ‘Fine then, eat up the last of those sandwiches, have a wash and a poo and get dressed.

  ‘And apply for a job on a space yacht?’ I said.

  ‘That is the plan,’ said Barry.

  The water was cold and the bog did not flush, but the sandwiches still tasted fresh.

  ‘Clothes in wardrobe,’ Barry said.

  So I pulled back the curtain that shielded the alcove that served as a wardrobe.

  And I beheld the clothes that hung there for me.

  And ‘Oh no!’ I shouted. ‘I’m not wearing that.’

  ‘For the love of Our Lady of Space,’ said Barry. ‘What is the fuss this time?’

  ‘It’s a sailor suit,’ I said to the sprout. ‘A sissy sailor suit.’

  ‘The height of juvenile fashion,’ said Barry. ‘The very acme of chic. Styled in Savile Row and just the job for the would-be cabin boy.’

  ‘I want a proper naval uniform with epaulets and big brass buttons.’

  ‘There’s brass buttons on the sailor shorts,’ said Barry, and I swear I heard him snigger. ‘And golden buckles on the dear little shoes as well.’

  ‘Dear little shoes?’ I took a very deep breath. ‘You can see out through my eyeballs, can’t you?’ I asked.

  Barry said that he could see out of my eyeballs.

  ‘Then see this monkey boy!’ A pitted mirror hung on a wall, I stared into it and made my fiercest face.

  ‘Don’t do that, the wind might change,’ said Barry.

  ‘I’m not wearing the sailor suit!’ I said.

  Blackfronds was the premier ‘domestics’ agency. When the rich and titled wanted staff, they hired that staff through Blackfronds.

  The agency was located in ‘the gallery of commerce’ upon the twenty-third floor of the Empire Hotel right next door to my lodgings.

  The lift swished up at an ear-popping rate. Although it did not cause sufficient popping to obscure the complimentary remarks about my attire made by a fur-clad lady with whom I shared the lift.

  ‘Told you,’ whispered Barry. ‘You look very nice as a sailor boy. Especially the dear little hat.’

  But I did not reply, as Barry had counselled caution regarding my conversations with him in public places. ‘Boys who are found talking to themselves get carted off to the loony bin’, were the words of wisdom he chose. I also had nothing to say regarding the suit.

  Yes, I was wearing it, but there was a reason for this. And it had nothing to do with Barry’s threats of doing a jobbie in my cerebellum if I refused to don the sailor suit.

  ‘I will do you a deal, chief,’ Barry had said. ‘You have a look at your identification and if you do not like your alias, you don’t have to wear the sailor suit.’

  ‘That is what they call a no-brainer,’ I said, for I also read a lot of American comics.

  And it was a no-brainer, of sorts.

  Which was why I was now wearing the suit.

  I left the lift on the twenty-third floor and approached the door of Blackfronds. A cardboard sign was affixed to this door. It read:

  NO DOGS

  OR OFF-WORLDERS

  ‘Charming,’ I said to myself, as I knocked on the door.

  ‘Come,’ called a rather posh voice.

  So I entered Blackfronds.

  A rather lumpy lady sat behind a busy desk. She seemed to have been literally ladled into her clothes, which were several sizes too small. She had a plump little face, hair like matted string and wore the kind of perfume that they used in the tropics to stun mosquitos. She addressed me in an educated voice by means of an undersized mouth.

  ‘Name?’ she said.

  And I said ‘Lazlo Woodbine.’

  Lazlo Woodbine, yes indeed, which was why I was wearing the sailor suit.

  ‘Ah young Woodburn,’ said the lady. ‘I am Miss Julia Blackfrond.’

  ‘Woodbine,’ I said.

  ‘No, Blackfrond.’

  Please yourself, I thought, but did not say it.

  ‘Identity papers,’ said Miss Julia Blackfrond.

  I presented these with a smile and a nod.

  ‘You do look terribly cute in your sweet little outfit.’ This pleasantry, which only stung me slightly, was issued in such an off-hand manner that I felt it lacked for sincerity. ‘Ah,’ said Miss Julia, pursing her undersized lips. ‘I see you have been in the employ of Lord Brentford for the last year and a half before he chose to replace you with a monkey butler, and before that?’

  Back in our evil lodgings Barry and I had rehearsed what I should say.

  ‘I lived in Russia,’ I said. ‘I was the servant of the old Czarina. Ra-Ra Rasputin, mother of the Russian Queen.’

  ‘So you speak the Russian language?’

  Barry had taught me how to reply. ‘Vladimir Putin,’ I said. ‘Which is to say, like a native, of course.’

  ‘Of course,’ said Miss Julia Blackfrond. ‘Well, as you must know, Count Rostov is a very particular gentleman. He recently hired several staff from somewhere other than here and was forced to let them go.’

  ‘Into space,’ whispered Barry.

  ‘So now he hires exclusively from me and he only hires children. He is forming something that he calls the Rostov Youth Movement. It all sounds terribly uplifting. He has a veritable legion of children aboard The Leviathan.’

  ‘It would be an honour to serve this noble man,’ I said. ‘And I am sure that my knowledge of his native tongue would not go unappreciated.’

  Miss Julia Blackfrond perched a pair of pince-nez astride her stubby nose and then looked over them at me. In a manner I considered rather hard.

  ‘It is a very responsible position,’ she said. ‘Count Rostov would brook no intransigence. Nor indeed any tergiversation.’

  ‘Nor misfeasance, I suppose,’ I said.

  ‘Nor malfeasance,’ said Miss Julia, l
ooking somewhat harder.

  ‘Nor antinomianism,’ I suggested.

  ‘Nor …’ Miss Julia paused, ‘nor antipathy.’

  ‘Nor antidisestablishmentarianism,’ said I.

  Miss Julia’s eyes were piercing, her face grew rather red and then a little smile appeared, which spread and spread and spread.

  ‘Oh yes,’ she said, now grinning as broadly as her mouth would allow. ‘You’ll do well enough. Well enough indeed.’

  And now adding laughter to her words she stamped my identity papers, tore a ticket from a roll, signed several documents and pushed all and sundry between the busyness atop her desk and into my outstretched hand.

  ‘Present yourself at twelve o’clock sharp this day to the departures desk at Terminal One, the Royal London Spaceport, Crystal Palace.’

  ‘Thanks very much,’ I said.

  Out in the corridor I did oh yessings again. I punched the air too and I felt very smug indeed. ‘How well did that go!’ I said to Barry.

  ‘Rather too well for my liking,’ said the sprout.

  ‘I dazzled her with my intellect,’ I said. ‘Antidisestablishmentarianism. I bet you don’t even know that that word means.’

  ‘I am in your brain,’ said Barry. ‘And you don’t know what it means.’

  ‘I know it’s the longest word in the English language.’

  ‘Let’s get a train to the spaceport,’ Barry said.

  The Royal London Spaceport!

  We arrived there in a posh electric train. The spaceport was Victorian, built I was told, in eighteen ninety-one. The arrival and departure halls were triumphs of gothic architecture, constructed in the style of the Palace of Westminster. And above, upon Sydenham Hill, another palace rose. The Crystal Palace this and all a-glitter in the sun.

  There too upon a cobbled landing strip stood spaceships. I viewed them as I walked across the mosaic floor of the departures building.

  Real spaceships.

  They did not resemble the pointy-nosed spaceships that had been conceived as future travel by scientists of the nineteen-fifties. Those pointy-nosed rockets based on the V2 missiles of Wernher von Braun. These were rivetty iron-clad jobbies, back-engineered Martian war craft. Brutal-looking contraptions propelled by some unworldly means that did not involve rocket motors. Barry drew my attention also to the Venusian aether ships, ghostly galleons of space that seemed all wisps and cobwebs.

  ‘Powered by magic’ Barry said.

  Also there were ships from planet Jupiter. Big and bulgy with glazed dome portholes that looked like transparent pimples. The Jovian vessels wallowed on the landing strip like whales that had dropped from the sky.

  ‘Spaceships,’ I whispered. ‘Real spaceships.’

  ‘Space travel makes me queasy,’ Barry said.

  ‘Oh no,’ I cried. ‘You won’t throw up in my head.’

  A lady in a Bakelite hat gave me a rather queer look.

  ‘Rehearsing my part in the Sunday school play,’ I told her.

  There was a great deal of bunting all around and about, many pictures of Queen Victoria and many more banners that read:

  GOD SAVE THE QUEEN ON

  HER 90TH YEAR ON THE THRONE

  A gentleman in a morning suit, sporting a tinted monocle, sat in splendour behind the departures desk. But I had yet to see him as a number of what I can only describe as young toffs were clustered all about this desk talking loudly and making a right old fuss.

  They wore those blazers with the pointy shoulders and metallic stripes, those trousers known as Oxford bags, three-tone brogues and perky plastic boaters. One slightly gaudier and louder than the rest seemed to be doing most of the talking.

  ‘Now see here,’ I heard him say, ‘departure chap, this isn’t tickety-boo. This is all miz and wish-wash too and it won’t cut the mustard.’

  If the man behind the desk replied, I did not hear what he said. But he must have said something for the loud and gaudy chap went on.

  ‘No, it jolly well won’t do,’ he went on. ‘The mater and the pater both chipped in for first class accommodation. Do I look like some hobble-de-hoi as might sit amongst the gor-blimey-guvnors in their smelly socks and rank overcoats?’

  Another pause and then he said some more. ‘No, we don’t want to “rough it for sport” or “treat it as an anthropological study”. My friend Lord Binky Hartington here has a delicate constitution.’

  ‘I do,’ piped a fellow that I assumed correctly to be none other than the young Lord Hartington himself. ‘I can’t mix with low snot-goblins and unkempt bally buskins. Do I look like some merkin-troll?’

  This elicited considerable mirth from the be-blazered brotherhood. The very concept of Lord Binky Hartington in any way resembling a merkin-troll was clearly a cause for the greatest hilarity.

  ‘Or Boy Betjeman here?’ the gaudy one continued. ‘He’s a poet, doncha know? A wordsmith. A fondler of the muse. He won’t take rough handling.’

  ‘I will sometimes,’ said Boy Betjeman. ‘If I’m firstly bought dinner.’

  His comrades loudly guffawed.

  ‘Don’t you know who I am!’ cried the gaudy fellow.

  ‘I know what you are,’ I said beneath my breath. For being a working class boy, I was not above contempt for the upper classes. ‘A stupid spoiled and pampered –’ I continued.

  ‘You don’t do you?’ continued the toff.

  ‘– over-educated, selfish, bullying –’

  ‘I am the son of a peer of the Realm.’

  ‘– snobby, brash, arrogant –’

  ‘I am Sir Jonathan Crawford.’

  10

  Half an hour later I sat inside a spaceship.

  A real spaceship!

  Except now the thrill was not quite as big as it had been. For I sat with the ‘working classes’ and it was not hard to see why Sir Jonathan Crawford had been making such a big fuss about getting first class accommodation.

  The working class were, to say the least, rather smelly. And rather ragged too as well, they were.

  Which had me puzzled for a while, as I assumed, quite correctly, that space travel wouldn’t be cheap and so should mostly be the preserve of the very wealthy.

  ‘Migrant workers,’ Barry whispered to me. ‘Cheap labour for the Martian mining companies and the Earth’s Moon development corporations. Criminals mostly, who have had their long prison sentences cut if they agree to sign on for work off-world.’

  So, a cabin filled with hardened criminal types and here was I in my dear little sailor suit!

  I took myself off to the toilet and displayed to Barry, in the mirror, the fiercest face I could possibly make. ‘What do you think of that?’ I said.

  ‘Not a pretty sight, chief,’ the time sprout replied. ‘But point well taken, and I would stay out of the communal shower if I were you.’

  Presently a well-formed woman, who wore a gasmask, possibly as a fashion accessory, entered the fetid cabin and informed us, mostly through the medium of mime, that the spaceship would shortly be taking off and that we were to extinguish our cigarettes and cigars, fasten our seat belts and recommend ourselves to our chosen deities (just in case things went wrong).

  A ‘fasten seat belts’ sign glowed brightly green.

  The ill-washed brute of a man who sat beside me offered to ‘tuck me in’, but I politely declined this offer and buckled up my seat belt.

  I sat next to a porthole and I looked out of it.

  Planet Earth. Sydenham. Nineteen twenty-seven. Up there the Crystal Palace, yet to burn to the ground in the nineteen-thirties. And below it the marvellous gothic spaceport building and all those spaceships parked around and about. And me, a boy from the future come to play the role of boy-detective-secret-agent-master-spy hero and probably save the world, in my modest opinion.

  I was frankly euphoric.

  This was one very big adventure.

  No rockets roared as we took off. The ship was suddenly lifted skyward as if an invisible hand had re
ached down from above and snatched it from the Earth. My ears did poppings and gravity’s forces pushed me down in my seat. But I managed to peep through the porthole and watched as the planet of my birth seemed first to swell to a mighty blue sphere and then begin to diminish. And then we were up in the vastness of space with more stars than I could have imagined splashed all over the black.

  The ‘seat belt’ sign was still shining green but the brute beside me unclipped his safety belt.

  I took a certain joy in the way that he floated rapidly from his seat and cracked his skull on the ceiling. As most children will tell you, there are few things funnier than the misfortunes of others.

  As my now unconscious fellow passenger floated away down the cabin, to bursts of hilarity equal to my own, an intercom crackled and the captain of the spaceship spoke to us.

  ‘My Lords, Ladies, Gentlemen and working folk, this is your captain and pilot Douglas Bader speaking. You are aboard Her Majesty’s Space Ship, the HMSS Lovely Lovely Owl, named by Queen Victoria’s great great great great granddaughter Maisie. Bless her. And indeed bless Her Majesty –’

  Half-hearted mutters of ‘Gawd bless her’ were to be heard in our cabin. But big cheers echoed from the direction of first class.

  ‘– we are travelling at the improbable speed of five hundred miles a minute and will be arriving in ten minutes time, at our first destination, the luxury liner Leviathan –’

  Some grumbling rumbled in my cabin and I also heard someone spit.

  ‘– those having legitimate tickets to disembark at our first destination present them to a member of the cabin crew. Please be advised that any unauthorised attempts to board The Leviathan will be met by an armed response of extreme prejudice. To whit, you will be shot dead and your body cast into space.’