The Japanese Devil Fish Girl and Other Unnatural Attractions

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Yes,’ said Ada, gravely. ‘And, as I am sure you realise, in so doing he has committed the Great Blasphemy. And I do not have to tell you what that is going to cause.’

  ‘So what do we do?’ asked George.

  ‘Well,’ said Ada, ‘I do not know about you, but I intend to get married.’

  ‘What?’ went George. ‘What?’

  ‘If the Martians attack,’ said Ada, lowering her veil, ‘it is to be hoped that they will do so after the service. Do you know how many fittings I had for this dress?’

  George Fox nodded his head slowly. And then he shrugged his shoulders.

  ‘So,’ said Ada Lovelace, poking George in the ribs, ‘are you going to marry me or not?’

  George Fox said, ‘I certainly am,’ and extended his arm to her.

  The service proceeded very much in the manner of the horse that George had so recently ridden. Which is to say, speedily. The cleric employed, a Reverend Schnorer, seemed to be somewhat the worse for drink and in something of a hurry.

  ‘Apparently,’ said Lord Billy Byron to George, as he swayed gently in his direction, ‘he has a ticket to see this Great Attraction around the corner at St Paul’s. The Japanese Codfish Woman, or some such nonsense. Have you booked anywhere nice for your honeymoon? ’

  George Fox ground his teeth meaningfully. The Reverend Schnorer rushed on through the service.

  It was a nice enough coffee house, furnished in that style known as eclectic. Which is to say, ‘a bit of everything, really’. Fine old wood panelling, colonial cane chairs, Turkish coffee tables, some wicker platters of fruit. George could not help thinking how fiercely all of this would burn when it was inevitably struck by a Martian heat ray. He jigged slightly from one foot to the other. He was anxious to do something. Anything. Anything to stop the potential Apocalypse that might well be shortly to occur.

  George’s thoughts all now became confused. A great separation occurred within them. A delineation of priorities. He was getting married here. In fact, in a few short moments from now he would actually be married. And then he could concentrate on what must be done. And here came the great divide.

  Confront Professor Coffin? Demand and force him to return the holy statue?

  Or engage in those sensuous marital joys so beloved of honeymoon couples?

  George was not actually a virgin. After all, he had worked in a number of fairgrounds, where one is inclined to meet the sort of girl you do not take home to mother. And Ada, he suspected, might just have ‘a history’ of her own. Especially if she really was at least seventy-one years old—

  George halted all his thinkings in mid-flow. They were getting out of control. Nuptials first, then consummation of the marriage. Then save the world from a very bitter end.

  Pleased that he had at least got his priorities right in the face of considerable distractions, George, at the Reverend Schnorer’s request, placed the wedding ring upon Ada’s finger and rattled through his vows.

  The ceremony completed, Byronic children threw rose petals. Aunties, uncles and whomsoevers popped the corks from champagne bottles and the gentleman who owned the coffee shop showed up and asked just what everyone thought they were up to on his premises.

  ‘They did not actually book these premises then?’ George asked of his wife. His wife! George grinned very proudly.

  ‘I think that,’ said his wife, ‘to use one of Mr Wilde’s expressions, it was a “cost-cutting exercise”. I see the reverend leaving – I just have to go and have a word with him outside.’

  George Fox shrugged and kissed his wife and smiled and smiled some more.

  ‘How does it feel, young fellow,’ asked Lord Billy Byron, ‘to be married to so lovely a girl as she?’

  ‘It feels wonderful,’ said George. ‘I only hope that—’ Then he paused. What could he say to this fellow? That London would shortly be under threat once more of destruction by Martians? That it was partially his fault? George gave a little shiver. Perhaps the consummation of the marriage would have to be postponed after all.

  A glass of champagne was thrust into George’s hand and George took it gratefully.

  Lady Elsie fluttered her fan at George. ‘Please do not think me prudish,’ said she.

  ‘By no means,’ said George, bewildered by this remark.

  ‘It is only that your best man is apparently copulating with that potted plant.’

  George awaited Ada’s return. The owner of the coffee shop now engaged him in chit-chat.

  ‘Actually, I am sorry that I missed your wedding,’ he said to George. ‘I hear from my manager that it was a positive hoot. What with the drunken vicar and everything.’

  ‘You really had to be there to truly appreciate it,’ said George.

  ‘I know the Byrons well enough,’ the coffee-shop owner continued. ‘Typical toffs. Never put their hands in their pockets if they can possibly avoid it.’

  ‘They have been very generous to me,’ said George.

  ‘I wonder whether any of them are likely to shell out for tickets for the Great Attraction. I’ll wager not. I had to queue all night to get mine. Which is why I arrived here so late.’

  ‘How interesting,’ said George.

  ‘I expect you won’t want to hang about here for too long,’ said the coffee-shop owner, elbowing George in the ribs and winking lewdly at him. ‘You’ve a frisky young filly there that needs breaking in, I’m thinking.’

  ‘Actually,’ said George, ‘there is something I would like to speak to you about in private.’

  Presently Ada Lovelace returned and smiled warm smiles upon George. ‘Any of that champagne left for me?’ she asked a nearby Byron.

  The nearby Byron shook his head. ‘We drank the lot,’ he said.

  ‘I have not touched my glass,’ said George. ‘Here, share it with me.’

  ‘My noble knight upon horseback,’ said Ada. And taking the glass she raised it to George. ‘To my brave and noble husband.’

  George shared the champagne and soon it was gone and then George looked at Ada. ‘What do you think we should do now?’ he asked her.

  ‘What do you think?’ Ada replied. ‘You are the man of the house now, after all.’

  ‘You really mean that?’ asked George in astonishment. ‘Am I now in charge of you?’

  Ada Lovelace shook her head. ‘Did the thought excite you?’ she said.

  The blush that rose to George’s cheeks implied that yes, it had.

  ‘You are thinking that perhaps we should repair to the marital bed?’ said Ada, squeezing George’s arm.

  ‘The thought had crossed my mind.’

  ‘Along with certain others?’

  ‘Regarding the professor, yes.’

  ‘I think, my dear,’ said Ada, ‘that pleasure must wait upon duty. We must confront the professor. We must demand he return the statue.’

  ‘My thoughts exactly,’ said George.

  ‘Which is why we will require this,’ said Ada Lovelace. Flourishing something for George to look at.

  ‘It is a ticket to see the statue,’ said George as he looked at it. ‘But how—’

  ‘I had words outside with the Reverend Schnorer. He did not part with the ticket willingly. I had to punch him very hard and knock him out.’

  ‘You wonderful girl,’ said George. ‘See this.’ And he now flourished something.

  ‘You have a ticket too,’ Ada said.

  ‘Indeed,’ said George, ‘and now I suggest that we say our goodbyes to all before either the reverend or the coffee-shop owner regain consciousness.’

  38

  Kindly, some members of the excited and ever-growing crowd actually did move aside as George and Ada sought to push to the very front. Some even cheered the happy couple and a cockney chimney sweep sang them a verse of ‘The Old Bamboo’ as they squeezed by.

  Politeness, however, was being put to the test as purveyors of souvenirs and pamphleteers waving placards extolling the wonders of what was to be seen competed for
attention with the vendors of sweetmeats, rough lemonade, gutta-percha dolls, candy canes, straw dogs, photographic portraits of Her Majesty the Queen and sundry saucy postcards. Bunting arced between lamp posts, and what George and Ada instantly recognised to be the commandeered Lemurian airship circled overhead, broadcasting stirring anthems, recorded upon wax cylinders, through its brass-horned public address system.

  ‘Bad,’ said George to Ada. ‘All of this, so very bad.’

  Ada’s wedding wreath of flowers had fallen from her head. Her hair was tousled and her silk dress crumpled. To George she had never looked so utterly ravishing before and he prayed, with no small desperation, although with little hope of success, that all matters pertaining to the Japanese Devil Fish Girl’s statue might be reconciled before bedtime this evening.

  ‘Move out of the way, please,’ George shouted. And in a moment of inspiration that should really have reached him sooner, added, ‘We are to be married in the south aisle of the cathedral and we are late. Please move.’

  Nannas in the crowd cooed kindness at them. Young bucks winked their eyes at George. But they were making progress now, so George shouted more such lies and pressed on regardless.

  The cathedral rose before them, Wren’s masterpiece filling up the sky. The great portico with its Corinthian columns, beyond which loomed the striking dome, second only in size to that of Michelangelo’s dome of St Peter’s Basilica in Rome.

  The twin towers that reared up to either side of the portico were inspired by Borromini’s Roman church of Sant’Agnese. The glorious stonework was all over ravaged though by the guano of London’s feral pigeons.

  A massive canvas show banner had been stretched between the twin towers. It covered much of the portico and rippled very softly in the breeze.

  The Greatest Wonder of the World

  The Japanese Devil Fish Girl

  George gazed bitterly up at it.

  ‘How did he get permission to display the statue in St Paul’s?’ he asked Ada. ‘Would not the word “Devil” tend to put off the church hierarchy?’

  ‘I expect he went straight to the top,’ said Ada, elbowing her way forwards as she did so. ‘An audience with Her Majesty. I don’t know how he did it, but he did.’

  ‘We are quite near to the front now,’ said George. ‘Should we just sort of blend into the queue, do you think?’

  Ada had already blended, so George slipped in beside her.

  ‘Oi there, deary,’ said a lady in a straw hat. ‘Are you pushing in front of me?’

  ‘We have special tickets,’ said George. ‘And as you can see from our fine apparel, we are members of the upper class.’

  ‘Well la-di-da,’ said the lady. ‘And there was me thinking that you were nothing but a jumped-up barrow boy with ideas above his station.’

  ‘Nothing could be further from the truth,’ said George, craning his neck to see how far he now was from the door. ‘I am a lord and this is my lady wife.’

  ‘Well, may all the saints preserve us from scrofula, buboes and palsy, syphilis, gangrene and gout. And there was me thinking that you were none other than young George Fox who ran away from home rather than put in a decent day’s work on the fruit and veg barrow as his dad and his granddad had done for years before him.’

  ‘Mum,’ said George.

  ‘You’re a very bad boy,’ said the mother of George. ‘But you seem to have done all right for yourself. Could you lend me half a crown?’

  But then the crowd took a certain surge forwards and George lost sight of his mother.

  ‘Who was that?’ Ada asked.

  ‘I think it was my mother,’ said George. ‘Though it might have been my dad.’

  Ada’s request for an explanation was lost in the push of the crowd. ‘Hold on to me tightly, George,’ she shouted. ‘We cannot be parted now.’

  Inside the cathedral it was cool and calm and almost silent. A reverent hush descended on all as they passed through the great arched portal. The smell of incense hung faintly in the air, mingling with the scents of elderly woodwork, brass polish, tapestried kneelers, candle wax and that certain fragrance only found in churches.

  To George’s amazement he saw that pews had been cleared and stacked to the sides, and that a great ‘inner temple’ had been erected to house the marvellous statue. This, however, was no pious work of holy art. More a crude showman’s booth, constructed of canvas and scaffolding and painted with symbols of numerous religions.

  George saw something else up ahead and touched at Ada’s elbow. A party of Venusians, perhaps numbering a dozen, tall and erect with their ostrich plumes of albino hair rising above their grave-faced heads and their perfumers gently swinging from their long, slender fingers. They had nearly reached the canvas booth and stood like marble statues.

  ‘This is all going to end very poorly,’ said George, ‘if they seek to reclaim the statue for their own people.’

  Ada Lovelace nodded her head. ‘And see up there,’ she said.

  George looked up and noted a group of beings huddled as best they could huddle in the gallery above the choir stalls.

  ‘Burghers of Jupiter,’ said George. ‘And yes – I surely recognise them to be the survivors of the party that accompanied us to the volcano.’

  ‘Move along, please,’ said a verger with a yellowed face and deep cadaverous eyes. ‘There’s thousands queuing to see what must be seen. Hasten along now and do not hold them up.’

  George and Ada took several paces forwards. George called back to the verger. ‘Sir,’ he said, ‘might I take a moment of your time?’

  The verger shuffled up and nodded his jaundiced head.

  ‘The man who brought this great wonder to England—’

  ‘Professor Coffin, the mighty explorer and hero of the Empire.’

  ‘Yes,’ said George. ‘That very fellow. Is he in attendance with the statue?’

  ‘Indeed yes.’ The verger’s head bobbed like a mad canary’s.

  ‘So he sits within that booth?’

  ‘The sacred shrine, yes.’

  ‘Might I ask one more thing?’ said George, and proceeded to ask without waiting for permission. ‘What is your personal opinion of the statue? You are a man of faith. What do you believe it to be?’

  ‘It is Sayito,’ said the verger. ‘All truly devout Christians who have studied the Apocrypha know of Sayito. Moses received the knowledge of Sayito when he received the Ten Commandments from God upon Mount Sinai. The story goes that when he descended from the mount and found the Israelites worshipping a brazen calf, he flung down the tablets of stone, including a great grimoire dictated to him by God. The Book of Sayito, that grimoire was called. And it was pieced together and is said to still exist, written in a universal language that all can understand.’

  ‘So who do you believe Sayito to be?’ George asked.

  ‘The Mother of God. The Grandmother of Christ. We kneel in this great cathedral and we worship God Almighty. But God Almighty, He worships Sayito.’

  A chill ran through George Fox and his teeth gave little chatters. ‘Thank you for your time, sir,’ said George to the verger and he and Ada moved forwards.

  ‘I do not suppose,’ George whispered to Ada, ‘that some kind of plan is now forming within that extraordinarily beautiful head of yours?’

  ‘I was thinking,’ Ada whispered in return, ‘that that is a very large stained-glass window.’

  ‘Very large,’ said George. ‘And noted for it.’

  ‘Large enough to perhaps accommodate the nose of an airship. Say if someone was to crash one, perhaps the one that circles above, through it, connect lines to the statue, tow the statue out into the sky and away at speed to its temple.’

  ‘That is an outstanding plan,’ said George. ‘I foresee a number of difficulties. But then no doubt so do you. And no doubt also you have plans for how they might be surmounted.’

  ‘Not really,’ said Ada. ‘I just made up the first thing that came into my head in the hop
e that it might inspire you. Oh look, it would appear to be our turn.’

  The Venusian party had entered the ‘inner temple’, seen what there was to be seen, made hasty abeyances before the holy statue and then been hustled out by two burly ‘protectors’. They left the ‘inner temple’ as George and Ada entered it. The looks upon their faces lacked for their usual composure.

  Burning censers flanked the beautiful statue. The flames reflected in rainbow hues about the golden Goddess. If anything, She looked even more beautiful than the first time George had seen Her. But there was something about that uplifted face, a sadness, a vulnerability that George had not seen before.