Tuppe cowered in his seat. ‘Hang on to your mouth,’ he whispered.
‘We have enjoyed your hospitality,’ Cornelius went on, ‘but not your company. You are clearly unscrupulous and prepared to further your own ends, at no matter what cost to others. I swore to reveal the truth about the beings in the Forbidden Zones for the good of all mankind.’
‘And liberate some of the stolen booty for the good of us,’ Tuppe put in.
‘Yes, well, that too. Arthur Kobold owes us plenty.’
‘But, I will not aid you in some bid of your own for world domination. Nor will I be a party to mass murder. If you are my real father, then I disown you. I vowed to release you from the zones and this I did, however unknowingly. But that is an end to it. It ends here. You and I have nothing more to say. Come, Tuppe, we’re leaving.’
Tuppe looked up at his friend. The small fellow’s mouth hung hugely open.
Hugo Rune’s mouth was also open. And, for possibly the first time in all his life, he was speechless.
‘You might have handled that a mite better,’ said Tuppe.
He and Cornelius had now reached the end of the drive and stood in the bright sunlight, facing an open road. ‘Asked him for some bus fares, or something.’
‘The man is a stone bonker.’ Cornelius stuck his hands in his trouser pockets and idly kicked stones about.
Tuppe shrugged. ‘So what are we going to do now?’
‘Thumb a lift?’ Cornelius squinted along the country road.
‘To where?’ Tuppe followed his squint.
‘Who cares?’
‘Who cares? Whatever do you mean?’
‘I mean I’ve had enough. I quit.’
‘But you can’t quit. You’re the Stuff of Epics.’
‘I’m having a bit of a problem with that right now.’
‘Rune really got under your skin, didn’t he?’
‘And then some. Kidnap the Queen. What sort of plan is that?’
‘An epic one?’
‘No.’ Cornelius shuffled his feet. ‘It’s madness.’
‘So what about them?’
‘What about them?’
‘Well, we have to wipe them out, don’t we?’
‘Wipe them out? Think what you’re saying, Tuppe. If they are some parallel race, good, bad or indifferent, do you really think genocide is a healthy option? I’ll agree that Kobold needs wiping out. But what if he’s got a wife and kids? Wipe them out? Get real.’
‘Get real? Oh that’s very good. We’re talking about wiping out wicked fairies, and you tell me to get real.’
Cornelius shrugged.
‘So you’re just going to forget it then? Forget how they screw up mankind’s progress. How they decide what’s good for us to know and what isn’t.’
‘Well there’s always someone doing that. Perhaps they do the job as well as any.’
‘I can’t believe I’m hearing this. “Livestock”, Kobold called us, “Vermin.”’
‘Listen, Tuppe, when Rune was ranting on back there about retribution, it all came to me in the proverbial flash. We can’t expose them. It would be disastrous. Think what they might have in there. Kobold said that mankind would have blown itself up long ago, if it hadn’t been for him and his kind. Maybe they’ve got plans for superbombs? Imagine stuff like that all suddenly falling into government hands. And what about the people? When the people find out that their actions have been governed by some secret society in their very midst, fingers will be pointed. Folk will say, “That’s why so-and-so got so successful, he must have been in league with them.” Society, as we know it, will grind to a halt.’
Tuppe screwed up his face. ‘What you are saying is, when it comes right down to it, they are best left alone.’
‘Something like that.’
‘It all seems to have become very complicated,’ said Tuppe. ‘And not a lot of laughs. All right. Maybe it would be a bad idea to expose Kobold’s mob to society. But they should still be stopped. Think of all the good stuff they must have stolen. What about Rune’s car? A thing like that could make the world a better place.’
‘It could if it really worked.’
‘But it does work. You’ve driven it.’
‘I thought you said you were awake during our journey here from Brentford.’
‘I might have nodded off once or twice.’
‘Me too. But I woke up on two occasions. When he stopped to fill up with Four Star.’
‘The scoundrel. The man is a fraud.’
‘The car is a fraud. That’s for certain.’
‘And what about the magic table? I saw that, with the little us in it.’
‘Yeah. I saw it too. But whether I believe it. That’s another matter.’
‘Well, well, well.’ Tuppe made with the bright and breeziness. ‘That seems to be it all sorted. Rune is a stone bonker intent on genocide. His car is a fraud. We don’t know about the table, but we think James Randi could rubbish it, given a couple of minutes. The lads in the Forbidden Zones are not altogether to be wished, but they’re probably the better of two evils, so leave them to get on with it. It’s all so simple really, I don’t know why I didn’t think of it.’
‘I expect you would have, eventually.’
‘And so we just forget all about it, thumb a lift and seek our fortunes elsewhere?’
‘You have a better idea?’
‘Quite a few, as it happens. We should go back to the house, tell all this to Rune. He may be a stone bonker, but he’s also a powerful magician, you saw what he did to my mouth. You have to reason with him, Cornelius.’
‘It’s not my responsibility.’
‘Oh, responsibilities, is it? Well you drove the car. You set him free. What if he was better penned up in the zones? What if they kept him there because of how dangerous he is? Did you think of that?’
‘Not until now. Did you?’
‘Not until now, no. We’d best go back.’
‘We can’t go back.’
‘Of course we can. You can reason with him. He let us go without changing us into white mice. He likes you.’
‘We can’t go back. See for yourself.’
Cornelius gestured back towards the house. To where the house had been, but wasn’t any more. There was just an overgrown plot of land, with an estate agent’s sign up.
MILCOM MOLOCH ESTATES.
DEVELOPMENT SITE FOR SALE.
Tuppe turned a bitter eye from the site and back to his friend. ‘You knew that was going to happen, didn’t you?’
‘I began to suspect something a couple of minutes ago. When I realized how hungry I still was.’
Tuppe rubbed his stomach. ‘Me too. And after we ate all that—’
‘Did we?’
‘Aw shoot!’ Tuppe turned in a small circle. ‘The car’s gone and everything. This is well beyond me.’
‘And me also. Shall we thumb for a lift?’
‘Any particular direction you favour?’
‘None whatever. You stand this side of the road and I will stand on the other. We’ll let fate decide.’
Tuppe looked at Cornelius.
And Cornelius looked at Tuppe.
‘Let’s do it,’ said the small fellow.
17
The bus was a single-decker British Leyland, circa 1958. To say that it had seen better days would not altogether be telling the whole truth. Unless you considered plying a regular and turgid trade between Hounslow bus station and the Staines depot for twenty-three long and thankless years to be your definition of ‘better days’.
Not so the bus. For it, the better days were now. Because this was a liberated bus. A bus now free of its yoke. Gone were the rows of dreary seats. Gone the dull green paintwork. Gone the sweaty driver’s bum upon its forward throne. And gone, all gone, its number.
I am not a number. I am a free bus!
The free bus was now a bus apart. It had been lovingly repainted in many a rainbow hue. It housed two young families. And
it was driven by a lady with a perfumed posterior. It was a happy bus.
It pulled up without even a squeak, although its brakes had long gone off to kingdom come. A young chap with curly black hair and a smiley face, swung open its doors. ‘Want a lift?’ he asked.
‘Yes please,’ said Cornelius Murphy.
‘And your mate?’
‘Please also.’ Tuppe scampered across the road and clambered after Cornelius.
‘Magic bus,’ said the small one, taking it all in. ‘You’re not Ken Kesey, by any chance?’
‘Bollocks,’ said the young chap.
‘Excuse me. No offence meant.’
‘None taken. That’s my name. Bollocks.’
‘Is that Mr Bollocks, or Bollocks something?’
‘It’s bollocks to everything.’ The young chap smiled hugely. ‘Shut the door and make yourselves at home.’
‘Thanks, we will.’ Cornelius ducked his head, they made buses smaller in those days. And he shut the door. ‘Where are you heading?’
‘To wherever the good times are.’
‘That’s where we’d like to go,’ said Tuppe.
‘Then you’re in good company.’
‘Yes.’ Cornelius gave the interior of the bus a thoughtful sensory scan. Bright-eyed children grinned at him from a hammock strung crossways between the windows. A guitar was being played with skill and a girl was singing. And delicious smells wafted from the cooking area. It was all rather blissful.
‘Very good company indeed,’ said Cornelius Murphy.
The lady at the wheel put the happy bus into gear and it rolled onwards. ‘Want some eats?’ asked Bollocks.
Tuppe looked at Cornelius.
And Cornelius looked at Tuppe.
‘Yes please,’ they said.
* * *
They dined on pulses and brown rice and fresh vegetables and strawberries and cream.
‘OK?’ Bollocks asked.
‘Not half.’ Tuppe loosened a button on his dungarees. ‘Not half, thank you very much.’
‘You guys employed?’
‘Ah now.’ Cornelius took off his cap and stroked his bandages. ‘We were, sort of. But it didn’t work out.’
‘What happened to your head?’
‘We ran into a spot of trouble,’ Tuppe explained. ‘Cornelius got some of his hair pulled out. It wasn’t very nice.’
Bollocks nodded. ‘Cornelius. That’s your name, then?’
‘Oh, I’m sorry,’ said the tall boy. ‘We haven’t introduced ourselves. I’m Cornelius Murphy and this is Tuppe.’
‘Tuppe?’ asked Bollocks.
‘It’s short for Tupperware. Not a lot of people know that.’
‘It comes as a revelation to me,’ said Cornelius.
‘I was going to save it for some special moment. But, sod it.’
‘Bollocks to it,’ said their host.
‘Absolutely.’
‘What about you?’ Cornelius asked. ‘I guess that’s your lady at the wheel. And the two marvellous kids in the hammock are yours. And then there’s the other family. Although the adults aren’t sleeping together at the moment. Something to do with him getting stoned and falling into a slurry pit. I shouldn’t wonder.’
Bollocks viewed Cornelius with alarm. ‘How?’
‘His nose.’ Tuppe tapped the small one of his own. ‘He has a gift. He can smell who’s who. Who belongs to who. Stuff like that.’
‘Can you smell trouble?’ Bollocks asked.
‘Oh yes. I can smell that all right.’
‘Smell it now?’
The tall boy sniffed. ‘No. But I can smell the dope in your left top pocket though. Lebanese Scarlet. Any chance of an after-dinner spliff?’
Bollocks collapsed into a pile of gaily coloured cushions and laughed like the drain of now legend.
The happy bus rolled onward. Spliffs were shared and Bollocks made all the introductions. There was his wife, Louise. Flaxen hair, Pre-Raphaelite features, coffee lace and ankle bracelets. Bone. Big Bone, slurry pit survivor. Tattooed in moments of madness and built like a brick shit-house. His untattooed wife Candy, brown eyes to drown in, a degree in astrophysics and the kindest hands in Christendom.
And then there were the children. Five in all, they seemed like ten. And laughed a lot. Everybody laughed a lot.
Cornelius sat amongst the cushions. ‘How did you get all this together?’ he asked Bollocks.
The smiley fellow smiled. ‘Necessity,’ he said. ‘Which, like Frank Zappa, is the mother of invention. No jobs, no hope and a bus all rusting away in a scrapyard. We found each other and the bus found us. And that’s how it is now. The bus and us.’
‘How do you get by?’
‘There’s the dole cheques and diesel is cheaper than rent. Where are you guys from?’
‘We’re from Brentford,’ said Cornelius.
‘Brentford?’ Bollocks fell into laughter once more. ‘You have to be kidding.’
‘I wouldn’t lie about a thing like that. What’s so funny about Brentford anyway?’
‘Nothing’s funny about it. But that’s where we’re heading. To Brentford!’
Prince Charles sat in his private office at Buckingham Palace. The mid-afternoon sun shone in at his window and the drone of the London traffic went on and on and on.
But the prince didn’t hear it. Because the prince was dreaming about trains.
He spent most of his time nowadays, dreaming about trains. Not that he didn’t have other things to do. There was never any shortage of mail to be opened, read through and answered. And being, as the Press now called him, the People’s Prince, he did it all himself. And he did have a very great deal of this mail piled up on his desk before him right now. But he didn’t feel in the mood to answer it. Most of the envelopes smelt strongly of perfume, and contained, as ever, offers of marriage.
Prince Charles sighed. In his mind’s eye he saw the Duchy of Cornwall. Not as it was, but how it could be. Would be, when he became King. Translated into a great steam network, with a full-size reproduction of the 1920s marshalling yards of Crewe, super-imposed across five hundred acres of ‘set-aside’, he’d personally ‘set-aside’ for the purpose. And he saw himself, all spruced up in a natty black uniform, striped waistcoat and cap, checking his regulation GWR-issue pocket watch up on high in the signal box. Skilfully manipulating the levers, as the mighty King Class locos rolled onto the turntables, took on water and blew their whistles.
The prince had long ago realized that the only way forward was backwards. If mankind was to survive, it must throw off the shackles of technology and return to traditional values. A fair day’s work for a fair day’s pay. A proper class system. And steam trains that ran on time. And a steam train named after himself! The Good King Charles.
He knew exactly the kind he wanted too. The American 1940s Big Boy. Biggest steam locomotives the world had ever seen, the Big Boys. Eight front-driving wheels fixed, another eight swivelled, front and rear bogies. 4-8-8-4 wheel arrangement. They ate up twenty-three tonnes of coal every hour.
Wonderful.
He could really be the People’s Prince in one of those. They could pull over seventy coaches. He could fit out the carriages, load up his art collection and the best of his furniture, get the phone laid on, television, guest sleeping cars, sell up all his palaces and country piles to house the homeless, then travel the country. Royalty on the rails. The monarchy on the move.
‘Toot toot toooooooooooooo,’ went the prince. ‘Woo woo wooooooooooooooo.’
Ring ring ring, went his telephone. Ring ring ring.
The People’s Prince picked up the receiver. ‘One speaking,’ said he.
‘Yo, Babylon,’ came the hearty Rastafarian tones of his new equerry, former Brentford used-car dealer Leo Felix. ‘‘Ow’s it ‘angin’?’
‘Er, yo bro’,’ answered the prince. ‘How is it hanging, yourself?’
‘Like one of your granny’s bloodstock. Blood clot. Dere’s a chick ‘ere, s
ay she come about de job of secret-Harry, or som’tin. You say you doin’ all de interviewin’ yo’sel’. Shall I an’ I send ‘er in?’
‘Ah yes. If you and you would be so kind.’ Prince Charles replaced the telephone, straightened his tie and his double-breaster and stroked a few hairs over his bald spot. A knocking came at his chamber door and the prince rose slightly and said, ‘Come.’
Polly Gotting opened the door and entered the office. Her long golden hair was tied back in a severe bun. She wore a white linen blouse, a calf-length skirt of appropriately royal blue, dark stockings and a pair of sensible shoes she’d borrowed from her mum. ‘Should I curtsey?’ she asked.
‘Umm. No... I...’ Prince Charles gazed upon Polly Gotting. She was very possibly the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen in his life. And he’d seen some. The sunlight played upon her hair and formed a glittering corona all around and about. She veritably radiated.
‘Would you like some tea?’ asked the heir to the throne.
‘Do you want me to put the kettle on?’
‘Oh no. Of course not. Please sit down. Please.’
He indicated a chair and Polly sat down upon it. The prince lifted the telephone to order tea. But then thought better of it. The last time Leo had made him tea, the prince found he couldn’t walk straight after the second cup. ‘Perhaps later.’ Charles folded his fingers before him on the desk and smiled at the stunning seventeen year old. He suddenly felt a bit lost for something to say, which was not really like him, as a rule.
Polly smiled back. She was fascinated. This man was a piece of living history, and she was sitting all alone in a room with him, sharing moments of his time, somehow possessing a fraction of history, just for a few short minutes. But really for ever. It was a curious sensation. And she felt suddenly stuck for words herself. Which was not really like her, as a rule.
‘Do you like steam trains?’ Prince Charles asked.
Polly considered the question and the eager look on the prince’s face. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Very much indeed. Only this morning I was talking to a friend about The Eureka. LNER passenger express. Classic 4-6-2 wheel arrangement. Four-wheel bogie in front, six coupled driving wheels and a pair of trailing wheels. Perhaps you know of it.’
Raiders of the Lost Carpark Page 14