The Lord of the Ring Roads (The Final Brentford Trilogy Book 1)

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Fair enough,’ said Omally and with the confidence of the inebriate, he attempted to make a u-turn in the very narrow lane.

  The Goodwill Giant watched this with no small amusement. But presently the novelty of the performance became subject to the law of diminishing returns and Julian the giant lost much of his good will.

  ‘Turn off the engine,’ he said. Omally hurriedly did so. ‘And hold on to yourselves.’ The giant stooped, grasped the rear of the tow truck, lifted it clear of the lane and swung it around.

  ‘He’s very, very strong,’ said Jim.

  ‘Very,’ said John. ‘And I’m glad he’s on our side.’

  ‘Now get down from the cab and pay out the cable,’ said the giant.

  John and Jim, though wobbly, hastened to oblige.

  The giant took the towing hook and waded out into the water. He splashed about then suddenly went, ‘Aaaaagh!’

  The two friends stiffened in alarm.

  ‘Oh and ow,’ went the giant.

  ‘I don’t like to ask,’ Jim whispered to John. ‘I am afeared.’

  ‘I stubbed my damn toe on the monument,’ boomed the voice of Julian Adams. ‘I’ll fix the cable around it, then I will push and the truck will pull and we’ll soon have it out.’

  ‘See,’ said John to Jim. ‘Simplicity itself. I knew it would be a doddle doing this.’

  Pooley cast a bitter gaze at John. ‘Get back in the cab,’ he said. ‘I’ll say when.’

  John climbed into the cab.

  The giant did industrious things in the water. Then he straightened up and raised a thumb to Jim.

  ‘When,’ said Jim to John.

  John put the truck into gear and eased it forward. The cable grew taut. The truck ceased to move. Its wheels began to spin and rubbery black smoke began to rise.

  ‘I’ll give it a shove,’ called the giant.

  The truck’s engine roared, the tyres screamed, the giant shouted encouragement.

  Jim thrust his fingers into his ears. If there had ever been any thoughts of this being a secret operation, these thoughts were now unconditionally dismissed.

  There was a mighty rush, the tow truck tore forwards, dragging the monument column from the river. John steered the tow truck up the lane, the monument dragging behind it.

  ‘Well done, sir,’ called Jim to the giant.

  ‘Aaaaaagh!’ went Julian Adams.

  ‘Another stubbed toe?’ asked Jim. But this was not the case.

  The mighty Mr Adams suddenly lurched to one side in the water and Jim saw that there was something dark a-circled round his waist.

  ‘What on earth?’ Jim’s mouth fell open. Great black tendrils swirled about the giant. Jim glimpsed a monstrous head resembling that of a squid. A freshwater squid? No such thing as that existed, surely?

  The giant punched the creature on its monstrous snout, the creature wrapped a tentacle about the giant’s throat.

  ‘Go,’ the giant shouted to Jim. ‘I will deal with this.’

  Jim dithered as well Jim might.

  ‘Go. I will follow.’

  Jim’s hands began to flap. He turned and fled after the truck.

  They tried, they really did. With much fearful over- the-shoulder-lookings and much strugglings-with-the-weight and much really-incompetent-drunken-winch-work also. But could they get that monument column back upon its plinth?

  No, they could not.

  ‘What do we do? What do we do?’ Pooley’s hands were on the flap one more.

  ‘You stand aside,’ said Julian Adams, making a dramatic appearance out of what shadows there were.

  ‘Thank goodness you’re okay,’ said Jim. ‘Whatever was that in the water?’

  ‘Something that I must deal with. But firstly this. Disconnect the towing cable.’ John did this and then stood smartly aside.

  The giant stooped, wrapped his hands about the granite column, hefted it skywards and smacked it down onto its plinth.

  John and Jim gave the giant a round of applause.

  ‘You should enter World’s Strongest Man,’ said Jim. ‘You’d wipe the floor with Eddie Hall and Hafthor Bjornsson.’

  Julian Adams managed a breathless chuckle. ‘Go now,’ he said. ‘Return the truck and I will meet you at the professor’s house.’

  Jim Pooley made a desperate face. He’d really hoped to be going home to bed.

  ‘What are you going to do?’ John asked Julian Adams.

  ‘I have work that must be done.’ The giant’s clothes were ringing wet and without any further ado he tore off his shirt and dropped his spacious trousers.

  ‘Oh my God,’ said John and also Jim.

  Because the giant was not naked. No, no, no. He wore against his skin a costume of black leather, sewn with countless shards of broken mirror.

  ‘It is him,’ whispered Pooley. ‘He is him. This man is that—’

  ‘He is the Man of Courage,’ said John. ‘Out of your favourite tale. The one who destroys the mythical creatures.’

  ‘I prefer doing nice things,’ said Julian Adams, the Man of Courage. ‘But, as the Duke so often said, “a man’s gotta do, what a man’s gotta do”. Go on now and I will see you later.’

  And with that he turned upon his heel, crossed the cobbles and strode down Ferry Lane.

  ‘Do you think he’ll be all right?’ Jim asked of John.

  ‘Let’s just do as he says,’ said John. ‘I am really done for the night.’

  They climbed back into the cab of Leo’s tow truck, slightly less drunken, but certainly none the wiser. John keyed the engine. ‘Let’s go,’ said he.

  Jim put his hand upon his best friend’s arm. ‘John,’ he said. ‘John, what is that coming towards us?’

  John looked on and Jim looked on. Look look look.

  From the direction of the town hall and John Omally Square came the queerest of contrivances. It had some of the looks of an old-fashioned stage coach. Some, but very few, when all considered. It was as a giant brown shell upon wheels. Open-topped with a single occupant. And it was drawn by creatures of nightmare. Four gigantic insects all in harness. Not a sound was heard as this dreadful thing swept by.

  But the two men noted well the being that sat in the carriage. For the being was the town clerk Stephen Pocklington. And although he was only glimpsed but for a moment John and Jim knew that this man was not human at all. He seemed more like some dryad. A thing composed of leaves and vines, more part of the weird conveyance than a separate entity.

  With no further words said, John released the handbrake and with a shaking and a shuddering, Leo’s truck took off along the moonlit cobbled way.

  ‘Is it done?’ asked Professor Slocombe?

  Two dishevelled swaying men stood before the scholar in his study.

  ‘The monument has been returned to its plinth,’ said John.

  ‘And the two of you then took many drinks in celebration?’

  ‘We took the drinks before,’ said John.

  The old man tut-tut-tutted. ‘But it is done?’ said he.

  Silence gnawed upon the air.

  ‘Tell me all that happened. Tell me now.’

  ‘The giant,’ said Jim

  ‘Gone to his bed, I assume,’ said the professor.

  Pooley shook his head slowly. ‘There was something in the river,’ he said. ‘Something that attacked the giant. He still managed to drag the monument from the river and it was mostly he that restored it to its plinth.’

  ‘Very good,’ said the professor.

  ‘But he went back,’ said John. ‘To destroy the creature in the river and—’

  ‘He is the Man of Courage,’ blurted Jim. ‘He wears the leather suit of broken mirrors.’

  Professor Slocombe nodded gently. ‘This secret you will guard with your lives,’ said he.

  ‘Indeed we will, sir,’ heads bobbed up and down. Most foolishly.

  ‘And so he did not return with you?’

  ‘No, sir,’ said Jim. ‘But how?’
>
  ‘How came he to become the Man of Courage?’

  The heads bobbed foolishly once more.

  ‘It is his calling. A duty passed from father to son down through the generations. But it is not a role he relishes. Julian is a man of peace, he seeks only to spread good will. It is not his wish to kill. Although, when provoked—’

  John had seen the look upon the giant’s face when he turned to confront the archers who sought to kill the royal prince. It was a look to be feared.

  ‘A man of many parts,’ said the professor. ‘He will deal with whatever there is to be dealt with.’

  ‘There was something more,’ said Jim. ‘Something that John and I saw.’

  ‘Go on,’ Professor Slocombe poured himself a sherry.

  ‘It was the town clerk,’ said Jim. ‘But it wasn’t.’

  Professor Slocombe toasted Jim, ‘go on,’ he said once more.

  ‘He was inside a sort of coach thing that looked like a giant nut, but he seemed to be part of it and there were other things pulling it and I—’ Jim paused.

  ‘You had seen these things before?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Jim. ‘When I was a child.’

  Professor Slocombe finished his sherry and to the further sorrow of his guests, replenished his glass, without offering any around. ‘Please continue,’ he said to Jim.

  ‘The daddy took me to the Tate Gallery,’ said Pooley. ‘Not to show me the modern stuff, he never had time for that. But to show me the work of Richard Dadd.’

  ‘The Fairy Feller’s Master-Stroke,’ said Professor Slocombe. ‘Painted by Dadd in Bethlem Hospital, where he was committed as hopelessly insane after murdering his father.’

  ‘It was the daddy’s favourite painting,’ said Jim, ‘and he had done much research into it. He explained to me about all the characters. At the time I felt very special to know such things. Nowadays you can just google it all up, but back then—’

  ‘In a happier and more innocent age?’

  ‘Precisely. As you will know the fairy feller is awaiting the signal to split a large chestnut which will be used to construct Queen Mab’s new fairy carriage.’

  ‘Queen Mab,’ said Professor Slocombe. ‘Otherwise known as Our Lady Gloriana.’

  ‘It was the coach,’ said Jim. ‘Tonight. The town clerk rode in Queen Mab’s coach and somehow he had become part of it.’

  ‘And what manner of creatures drew this coach?’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jim. ‘In the painting is a dragonfly blowing a long brass horn.’

  ‘And the carriage was drawn by dragonflies?’

  The two men nodded. They really had both seen that.

  ‘All becomes frighteningly clear,’ said Professor Slocombe. ‘Man faces an ancient enemy that can only be destroyed by ancient means. It seeks to draw Brentford back into the past, that history be re-written.’

  ‘Sir,’ said John. ‘Might I dare ask how you have arrived at this conclusion?’

  ‘The invocation that Prince Charles read aloud, do you recall the words?’

  ‘Bits and pieces only,’ said John.

  ‘Then allow me to refresh your memory. And as you did not hear this, Jim, it will come as an education.’

  Jim Pooley made a sorry face.

  Professor Slocombe opened an ancient tome that rested on his desk and read from it in a dark and sombre voice.

  ‘Good People of the marsh and heath

  Ye folk above and folk beneath.’

  ‘This is a calling to the fairy folk, often referred to as the “Good People”, and as for the “folk beneath”, “The People of the Hollow Hill”.’

  ‘Rejoice with me in magick old

  Raise ancient gods with sacred gold

  Oh spirit of the earth and trees

  Come quench the fire and still the seas

  Oh native spirits heed my call

  The circle now encloses all.’

  ‘The circle,’ said Professor Slocombe, ‘being the ring road, magically brought into existence within a single night. And now surrounding Brentford. And its purpose—’

  ‘I offer up my life to thee

  The future now the past must be.’

  ‘That is their aim,’ said the scholar. ‘That the future become the past and that history be rewritten.’

  ‘And Man be written out of history,’ said the suddenly enlightened Jim. ‘But how might this be done?’

  ‘It is already being done and you have played your parts in this.’

  ‘We didn’t know,’ said Jim. ‘We really didn’t know.’

  ‘Cobblestones that have not seen the light of day for two centuries will see it tomorrow. And in the Swan you two sup Quasimodo an ale that has not been tasted since 1796, the year of the final battle when the losers were driven into the Hollow Hill and the monument set up to see that they did not escape from it.’

  ‘It is all a nightmare,’ said John, ‘and it is all our fault.’

  ‘Oh, I think you should take most of the credit,’ said Jim. ‘But what can be done, professor?’

  ‘I do not know. The war was fought and won by men who sought to drive magic and those who practise it and indeed all memory of them from these lands. In part they succeeded. Fairies are now considered to be mythical beings. Few men believe in magic and fewer still believe in the concept of God.’

  ‘There will always be people of faith,’ said John.

  ‘Indeed. But they grow fewer by the year. And are mocked for their faith. One might argue that it is all about power. Once the hierarchy of the church held dominion. They enforced what should or should not be believed. Now, we have the enlightened men of science, who ridicule belief in a divine creator and promote scientific explanations for each and every thing. God does not exist, because they say that God does not exist. If God existed, they say, why would he do this? Why would he allow that? Why would he condone the other? They hold the answers. And they propound concepts, such as the Big Bang Theory to explain the birth of the universe.’

  ‘What do you believe, professor?’ Pooley asked.

  ‘Ah,’ said the old man. ‘I have lived for a very long time and I have seen and experienced many wonderful and inexplicable things. What I believe is this. I believe that the universe is, by nature, divine. I believe that “God” is something beyond all human understanding. Through religion we seek a glimpse of the divine. Perhaps some achieve this. The idea that something is not understandable to Man, does not sit easily with the “enlightened” of today. It is a concept deserving of ridicule. I am not a man of this age. I am an anachronism.’

  ‘But you practise magic,’ said John. ‘And your magic works.’

  ‘Perhaps here,’ said the professor. ‘Within the Brentford Triangle. But outside, in the world of the enlightened men of science. I think not.’

  ‘But—’ went Jim.

  ‘But me no buts,’ the old man finally filled two more sherry glasses. ‘I have spoken enough. It is arguable that all is about power. That power itself is always the ultimate goal. You played your part tonight, the monument has been returned to its plinth and Brentford is afforded a degree of protection once more. How much and for how long I cannot say. We are encircled and we are under attack. We must remain vigilant. And—’

  Professor Slocombe sniffed the air. ‘Now there’s a smell that takes me back,’ said he.

  John sniffed and Jim sniffed. Sniff, sniff, sniff.

  ‘Rotten fish,’ cried Jim taking a hold of his nose.

  ‘Rank as a corpse,’ said John Omally, fanning at his face.

  Deep laughter filled the study and the voice of Julian Adams was to be heard.

  ‘Professor,’ said the Man of Courage. ‘I have brought you the head of a kraken to add to your collection. I thought it might look rather well mounted next to the pickled basilisk my great-great-granddad gave you.’

  20

  The dreariest of dawns

  Brought the motliest of morns

  To behold a Brentford gloomily downca
st.

  The joyous skies of yesterday

  Enshrouded now in ghostly grey

  With sombre clouds of ill portent

  That offered grim repast.

  There would be no dancing in the borough this morning. For there would be no throwing aside of curtains to behold a beautiful day. No drawing in great draughts of healthsome air. No rejoicing at the wonder of it all.

  Because there would be no wonder.

  All wonder had gone from the borough.

  The brightness control had been turned down to one. The beauty setting switched off.

  Those who were not in police custody awaiting a court appearance peered mournfully from their windows and felt — what did they feel — guilt perhaps, and shame.

  Something had happened yesterday, something that had drawn them in and swept them along in its madness. And now the people of Brentford felt empty. Felt as if their vitality had been bled from them, stolen from them.

  With faces grey to match the sky they faced this coming day without a twinkle or a sparkle of the soul.

  The arrival of the borough’s organ upon the doormats of the downcast only added to the sorrow and the gloom.

  For, unprecedented in the history of journalism, the entire front page of The Brentford Mercury was blank.

  The editor, a man who just twenty-four hours before, knew with an assurance worthy of some Old Testament prophet, that a Pulitzer prize would shortly adorn his mantelpiece, had failed to compose the Headline of the Century.

  Failed to compose one at all.

  There had simply been too much. Everything yesterday had been too much. The celebrations of the ring road opening. The assassination attempt upon the Prince of Wales. The Raffle Riots. The lootings, the burnings, the stealth helicopters and Special Forces snatch squads. All that and then still more.

  The editor of a local newspaper relies greatly upon trusted contacts to call in the news while it is being made. And though it might be said that the editor’s trusted contacts had done him proud the previous night, the intelligence they had provided had, when amassed, brought the editor to take solace in whisky and so miss the front-page deadline.