The Brentford Triangle

by Robert Rankin

  At length the china Alsatian mantel clock struck the witching hour and Small Dave ceased his manic pacing. Striking one diminutive fist into the palm of its opposite number, he lurched from the room as if suddenly dragged forward by the ethereal cord which binds body and soul together. Up the staircase he went at a goodly pace, across a lino-covered landing, and to the doorway of what estate agents laughingly refer to as the Master Bedroom.

  Here he halted, breathing heavily, further hasty progress rendered impossible by the nature of the room’s contents. It was literally filled with books. How the floor of the room was capable of supporting such a load was a matter for debate, but that the room contained what surely would have been sufficient to overstock an average public library was beyond doubt. The books cramming the open doorway formed a seemingly impenetrable barrier.

  Small Dave looked furtively around, then withdrew a long key which he wore on a leather thong about his neck. Stooping, he found the hidden keyhole and swung open a tiny concealed door, formed from dummy book-backs. With a curious vole-like snuffling, he dropped to all fours and scampered into the opening. The door of book-backs swung silently shut behind him, leaving no trace of its presence.

  Inside the room of books, Small Dave penetrated a tortuous labyrinth of tiny tunnels which were of his own creating. Deeper and deeper into the books he went, to the room’s very core, where he finally emerged into a central chamber. It was a chamber wrought with exact precision into the interior of a perfect pyramid, aligned to the four cardinal points and fashioned from the choicest leather-bound volumes of the entire collection.

  Within this extraordinary bower, illuminated by the room’s original naked fly-specked bulb, were ranged an array of anomalous objects. A low dais surmounted by a single velvet cushion, a crystal, a milk bottle containing joss sticks, a framed picture of Edgar Allan Poe and a lone sprout under a glass dome.

  Small Dave scrambled on to the velvet cushion and closed his eyes. The spines of the books stared down upon him, a multi-coloured leathern brickwork. He knew that he could never remove a single volume, for fear of premature burial, but as he had read every book in the room several times over and had memorized all by heart he had little need ever to consult them. His knowledge of the books transcended mere perusal and absorption of their printed words. He sought the deeper truths, and to do so it was necessary for him to consort with their very author. For if it was strange that such a chamber should exist and that such a collection of books should exist, then it was stranger still that all were the work of one single author: Edgar Allan Poe.

  It was certain that if any of the Swan’s patrons, who knew only Dave the postman while remaining totally unaware of Dave the mystic, had viewed this outre sanctum, they would have been forced to re-evaluate their views regarding his character. If they had witnessed the man who even now sat upon the dais, hands locked into the lamaic posture of meditation and legs bent painfully into a one-quarter lotus, they would have overwhelmingly agreed that the term vindictive, grudge-bearing wee bastard hardly applied here. Here it was more the case of vindictive, grudge-bearing wee lunatic bastard being a bit nearer the mark.

  Small Dave began to whistle a wordless mantra of his own invention. His eyes were tightly closed and he swayed gently back and forth upon his cushion.

  He had come to a decision regarding this camel business. He would ask help from the master himself, from the one man who had all the answers, old EAP. After all, had he not invented Dupin, the original consulting detective, and hadn’t that original consulting detective been a dwarf like himself? Certainly Poe, who Dave had always noted with satisfaction, was a man of less than average height, hadn’t actually put it down in black and white, but all the implications were there. Dupin could never have noticed that body stuffed up the chimney in Murders of the Rue Morgue, if he hadn’t been a little short-changed in the leg department.

  Small Dave screwed up his eyes and thought ‘Sprout’. It was no easy matter. Ever since he had first become a practising member of the Sacred Order of the Golden Sprout he had experienced quite a problem in coming to terms with the full potential power of that wily veg. His guru, one Reg Fulcanelli, a greengrocer from Chiswick, had spent a great deal of valuable time instructing Dave in the way of the sprout, but the wee lad simply did not seem to be grasping it. ‘Know the sprout and know thyself,’ Reg had told him, selecting a prime specimen from his window display and holding it up to the light. ‘The sprout is all things to all men. And a law unto itself. Blessings be upon it.’

  Small Dave had peered around the crowded greengrocery, wondering at the mountain of sprout sacks, the case-loads and cartons cramming every corner. ‘You have an awful lot here,’ he observed.

  ‘You can’t have too much of a good thing,’ the perfect master had snapped. ‘Do you want two pound of self-enlightenment or do you not?’

  Small Dave hadn’t actually reached the point of self-enlightenment as yet, but Reg had assured him that these things took a good deal of time and a great many sprouts.

  Dave contorted his face and rocked ever harder. Ahead of him in the blackness beneath his eyelids the mental image of the sprout became clearer, growing and growing until it appeared the size of the room. Reg had explained that to ascend to the astral, one had to enter the sprout and become at one with it. When one had reached this state of cosmic consciousness all things were possible.

  A bead of perspiration rolled down to the end of Dave’s upturned nose. He could almost smell the sprout, it was so real, but he did not seem to be getting anywhere with the astral travelling side of it. He took a deep breath and prepared himself for one really hard try.

  Downstairs in Small Dave’s ancient enamel oven the now unfrozen filet mignon amoureuse was beginning to blacken about the edges. Soon the plastic packets of sauce which he had carelessly neglected to remove from the foil container would ignite causing an explosion, not loud, but of sufficient force to spring the worn lock upon the oven’s door and spill the burning contents on to the carpet. The flames would take hold upon a pile of Psychic News and spread to the length of net curtain which Small Dave had been meaning to put up properly for some weeks.

  Small Dave, however, would remain unconscious of this until the conflagration had reached the point which sets schoolboys dancing and causes neighbours from a safe distance to bring out chairs and cheerfully await the arrival of the appliances.

  It is interesting to note that, although these things had not as yet actually come to pass, it could be stated with absolute accuracy that they would most certainly occur. That such could be so accurately predicted might in a way, it is to be supposed, argue greatly in favour of such things as precognition and astral projection.

  Small Dave would argue in favour of the latter, because by some strange freak of chance, while his physical self sat in a state of complete ignorance regarding its imminent cremation, his astral body now stood upon a mysterious cloudy plane confronting the slightly transparent figure of a man in a Victorian garb with an

  oversized head and narrow bow tie.

  ‘Mr Poe?’ the foggy postman enquired. ‘Mr Edgar Allan Poe?’

  ‘Small Dave?’ said that famous author. ‘You took your time getting here.’ He indicated something the ethereal dwarf clutched in his right hand. ‘Why the sprout?’ he asked.

  11

  Norman had returned to his kitchenette, leaving his camel snoring peacefully in the eaves of his lock-up garage, its head in a Fair Isle snood. He surveyed the wreckage of his precious equipment and wondered what was to be done. He was going to need a goodly few replacement parts if he ever hoped to restore it. It was going to be another quid or two’s worth of postcard ads in all the local newsagents: ‘Enthusiast requires old wireless sets/parts, etc., for charity work. Will collect, distance no object.’ That had served him pretty well so far. And if the worst came to the worst then he would have to put in a bit more midnight alleyway skulking about the rear of Murray’s Electrical in the High St
reet.

  Norman picked his way amongst the tangled wreckage and pondered his lot; it didn’t seem to be much of a lot at the present time. It was bound to cost him big bucks no matter how it went, but at least he had the satisfaction of knowing that his theory was at least partially correct. The evil-smelling ship of the desert lodged in his garage testified amply to that. But there was certainly something amiss about his calculations. They would need a bit of rechecking; it was all a matter of weight, all very much a matter of weight.

  Norman unearthed his chair and slumped into it. It had been an exhausting day all in all. As he sat, his chin cupped in his hand, his mind wandered slowly back to the moment which had been the source of inspiration for this great and wonderful project. Strange to recount, it had all begun one lunchtime in the saloon-bar of the Flying Swan.

  Norman had been listening with little interest to a discussion between Jim Pooley and John Omally, regarding a book Jim had but recently borrowed from the Memorial Library upon the Great Mysteries of the Ancient Past.

  The conversation had wandered variously about, with Pooley stating that in his opinion Stonehenge was nothing more than scaffolding and that the builders, some megalithic forerunners to Geo. Wimpey and Co., had never actually got around to erecting the building. Doubtless a pub, he considered.

  Omally, nodding sagely, added that this was the case with many ancient structures, that their original purposes were sorely misinterpreted by the uninspired scholars of today. The Colosseum, he said, had very much the look of a multi-storey car park to him, and the Parthenon a cinema. ‘Look at the Odeon in Northfields Avenue,’ he said, ‘the facade is damn near identical.’

  Norman was about to make a very obvious remark when Pooley suddenly said, ‘It definitely wasn’t built as a tomb.’

  ‘What, the Odeon Northfields? No, I don’t think so.’

  ‘Not the Odeon, the Great Pyramid at Giza.’

  ‘Oh, that body.’ Omally nodded his head. ‘Surely I have read somewhere that it was the work of them extraterrestrial lads who used to carry a lot of weight back in those times.’

  Pooley shook his head. ‘That I doubt.’

  ‘What then?’ Omally asked, draining his glass and replacing it noisily upon the bar counter.

  Pooley, who could recognize a captive audience when he saw one queuing up for a one-pint ticket, ordered two more of whatever it was they were drinking at the time and continued. ‘It was the ticking of the old Guinness clock up there which solved the thing for me.’

  ‘Oh, you consider the Great Pyramid to have been a pub also?’

  ‘Hardly that.’

  ‘Then might I make so bold as to inquire how such a humble thing as the Guinness clock leads you to solve a riddle which has baffled students of Egyptology for several thousands of years?’

  ‘It is simplicity itself,’ said Jim, but of course it was nothing of the sort.. ‘The ticking of the Guinness clock put me in mind, naturally enough, of Big Ben.’

  ‘Naturally enough.’

  ‘Now as you may have noticed, Big Ben is a very large clock with a pendulum so great that it would easily reach from here, right down the passage and into the gents.’

  Omally whistled. ‘As big as that, eh?’

  ‘As big, and this huge clock is kept accurately ticking away by the piles of pennies placed upon that pendulum by the builders of the thing. Am I right?’

  ‘You are,’ said Omally agreeably, ‘you are indeed.’

  ‘Well then!’ said Pooley triumphantly.

  ‘Well then what?’

  Pooley sighed; he was clearly speaking to an idiot. ‘The Great Pyramid is to the planet Earth what the penny piles are to Big Ben’s pendulum. Shall I explain fully?’

  ‘Perhaps you should, Jim, but make it a quick one, eh?’

  ‘Well then, as we are all aware, these ancient Egyptians were a pretty canny bunch. Greatly skilled at plotting the heavens and working things out on the old slide rule. Well, it is my belief that sometime back then some sort of catastrophe, no doubt of a cosmic nature, occurred and pushed the Earth a little off its axis. There is a great deal of evidence to support this, the sudden extinction of the mammoths, the shifting of the Polar caps, all this kind of thing.’

  Omally yawned. ‘Sorry,’ he said.

  ‘Now these Egyptian lads were not to be caught napping and when they realized that impending doom was heading their way they did the only logical thing and took corrective measures.’

  ‘Corrective measures?’ The bottom of Omally’s glass was already in sight and he could feel the dartboard calling.

  ‘Corrective measures they took,’ said Jim, ‘by building a kind of counterbalance upon the Earth’s surface to keep the planet running on trim. They selected the exact spot which precisely bisects the continents and oceans. They aligned their construction to the four cardinal points and then whammo, or not whammo, as the case may be. There you are, you see, case proven, we have a great deal to thank those ancient sunburned builders for.’

  Omally seemed strangely doubtful. ‘There has been a lot of building work done about the world since that time,’ he said, ‘some of which I can personally vouch for. With all that weight being unevenly distributed about the place, I have the feeling that your old pyramid would become somewhat overwhelmed.’

  Pooley shook his head. ‘The pyramid is a unique structure, it has an exact weight, mass, and density ratio to the planet itself. It is the one construction which will fill the bill completely. The stones quarried for it were cut to carefully calculated sizes and shapes, each is an integral part interlocking like a Chinese puzzle. The inner chambers are aligned in such a way as to channel certain earth currents to maximum effect. It is much more than simply a big lump of rock. No matter how many other buildings go up all over the world, the pyramid will still maintain its function. To alter the Earth’s axis one would have to actually move the Great Pyramid.’

  ‘I’ll chalk up then,’ said Omally, but the remark was apparently not directed to Jim Pooley.

  Norman, however, was entranced. Could there possibly be any conceivable truth behind Pooley’s ramblings? It all seemed impossibly far-fetched. But what if it were so? The implications were staggering! If one could actually alter the tilt of the Earth by moving the Great Pyramid about, then one could wield quite a lot of weight, in more than one sense only. A bit of a tilt northwards and Brentford would enjoy tropical summers, a mite more later in the year and there would be tropical winters too. It was all in the wrist action.

  It would be quite a task, though, the Great Pyramid was estimated to weigh upwards of five million, nine hundred and twenty-three thousand, four hundred tons. It would take more than a builder’s lorry and a bunch of willing lads on double bubble. Possibly he could bribe coachloads of tourists into each bringing back a bit with them. That would be a lengthy business though.

  Norman’s gigantic intellect went into overdrive. He had been experimenting for years with a concept based upon Einstein’s unified field theory, which was concerned primarily with the invisibilizing and teleportation of solid objects. It was rumoured that the US Navy had made a successful attempt at this during the war, in something that came to be known as The Philadelphia Experiment. Creating some kind of magnetic camouflage which to all intents and purposes made an entire battle cruiser vanish and reappear in a shipyard many miles away. Einstein himself, it was said, had forbidden any further experimentation, due to the disastrous effects visited upon the crew.

  Norman had recalled thinking on more than one occasion that Einstein, although an individual given to the rare flash of inspiration, had for the most part been a little too windy by half. Now if the Great Pyramid could be teleported from one site to another it might be very instructive to observe the results . . .

  Norman scuffed his feet amongst the wreckage. It had all been so long ago, a lot of peanuts had lodged under the old dental bridge since then. But he had proved that at least some of it was possible. In fact, the more
he thought about it the more he realized that to teleport a live camel from the Nile Delta to the St Mary’s allotment, in a matter of seconds, wasn’t a bad day’s work after all. He was definitely well on his way.

  Norman smiled contentedly, picked his way over to the corner sink and, drawing back the under-curtain, took out a bottle of Small Dave’s home-made cabbage beer, a crate of which he had taken in payment for an unpaid yearly subscription to Psychic News. It was a little on the earthy side and had more than a hint of the wily sprout about it, but it did creep up on you and was always of use if your lighter had run low.

  ‘The ultimate quest,’ said Norman, raising the bottle towards the charred ceiling of the war-torn kitchenette.

  It had long been a habit of his, one born it is to be believed at a Cowboy Night he had attended some years previously, for Norman to wrench the hard-edged cap from the bottle’s neck with his teeth before draining deeply from its glassy throat.

  In his enthusiasm he quite forgot the matter of his wayward dentures.

  The ensuing scream rattled chimney pots several streets away and caused many of the ‘sleeping just’ to stir in their slumber and cross themselves fitfully.

  12

  Elsewhere other early recumbents were stirring to the sound of fire-engine bells and the cheers of an assembled throng of spectators. There was a fair amount of noise and chaos, smoke and flame, when the front bedroom floor at twenty-seven Silver Birch Terrace collapsed, bringing with it a hundred-thousand volumes of Poe and an apparently comatose postman of below average height.

  When the firemen, who had been amusing themselves by flooding neighbouring front rooms and washing out carefully-laid gardens, finally finished their work upon Small Dave’s house, the ambulance men, who had been grudgingly aroused from their dominoes, moved in to claim the corpse in the interests of medical science. They were more than surprised to find the postman sitting virtually uncharred in the ruins of his living room, legs crossed and bearing a baked sprout in his right hand. He wore a smiling and benign expression upon his elfin face and seemed to be humming something. Shrugging helplessly, they wrapped him up in a red blanket and bundled him into the ambulance.