Sex and Drugs and Sausage Rolls

by Robert Rankin

  Which, in his opinion, proved his point.

  So Norman did not waste his precious time sending off details of his latest revolutionary invention to the big-seat-sitters of Whitehall. He applied himself to solving local problems. To improving the lives of those who lived around him.

  Idealist, shopkeeper, single man, inventor and very nice fellow was he.

  This week Norman was building a horse.

  It was to be a surprise present for Jim Pooley, who was a good friend of Norman’s. Jim was the only man that Norman knew of, other than himself, who actually lived his life in little movies. True, Jim’s little movies were always repeats. In fact they were always the very same movie. The one about the bloke who spends all his time trying to win on the horses but always fails to do so. It was a very dull little movie and it didn’t have a happy ending.

  But Norman meant to change all that for Jim. He was doing what inventors do. Which is to identify the problem and provide the simple solution.

  Over the previous weekend Norman had identified the problem. Jim never won much money on the horses, because they were not his horses, and so he could never know for certain whether they would win or not. Therefore the solution was to provide Jim with a horse that could be guaranteed to win.

  The answer was therefore to build Jim a horse.

  It might well have been suggested to Norman that the answer would be to buy Jim a horse. But Norman would certainly have pooh-pooed this suggestion.

  Racehorses cost a fortune to buy. It was simpler all round just to build one.

  Norman had recently come into possession of a scientific magazine, ordered in error by a customer. In this there had been a long and involved article about a sheep called Dolly, which had supposedly been cloned. This had set Norman thinking.

  Like all manly men, all truly manly men, Norman had a love of science fiction. Not just a liking, but a love. And there was no shortage of novels dedicated to this particular subject. Norman had rootled about in his collection and come up with a couple of Johnny Quinn classics. Crab Cheese and The Man Who Put his Head on Backwards.

  In Crab Cheese the eponymous detective (Crab Cheese) finds himself on the trail of a serial killer of the vampire persuasion, who turns out to be a human clone. The cunning twist at the end is that the man does not have a soul. The theory being that you might be able to clone the man, but you cannot clone the soul.

  This gave Norman pause for thought. Did animals have souls? No one really knew for certain. But then if they did, and the one you cloned didn’t, would it really matter? Norman wondered about Dolly. Had she shown any leanings towards vampirism? If she had, the scientific journal failed to mention them.

  The Man Who Put his Head on Backwards was a different kettle of genetics altogether. It involved rich people in the future who were cloned by their parents at birth. The clones were then carefully reared on special farms to provide spare parts and replacement organs for the originals. As and when required.

  This led Norman into wondering whether he should perhaps clone half a dozen horses in case the first one broke a fetlock or something.

  But he decided to scrub around that. He only had space in his back yard to graze one horse and he didn’t want the neighbours complaining again.

  What a fuss they’d made about his outside toilet. It had seemed such a good idea at the time, catering as it did to customers who were suddenly caught short in his shop. The world had clearly not been ready for the open-air female urinal.

  So, over the aforementioned previous weekend Norman had set himself to planning how he might clone the greatest Derby winner of them all. It would need to have all the best features of all the best horses all rolled into one. But how to go about the task? How to acquire the necessary genetic material? You couldn’t just knock at the door of some stud farm and ask to borrow a few skin scrapings. Well, you could, but…

  Well, you could in a manner of speaking. You could certainly ask for something.

  On the Sunday Norman drove off to Epsom in his Morris Minor. He set out early and sought the grandest-looking stables. Here he leaned upon the fence and watched the horses being groomed. He had brought with him two essential items. A breeder’s guide and a bucket. These were all he needed to gain the something he required.

  His technique proved to be faultless. Having selected from the breeder’s guide a horse suitable for cloning, Norman shouted abuse at the stable lad grooming it. The stable lad replied to Norman’s abuse in the manner which has been favoured by stable lads since the very dawning of time.

  He hurled horse dung at Norman.

  Norman gathered up the horse dung and put it in his bucket.

  Having visited five stables, Norman had a full bucket, containing all the genetic material he needed.

  He was even home in time for Sunday lunch.

  On the Monday, Norman used whatever time he could between serving customers to slip away to his back kitchen workshop and extract the DNA from the horse dung. This was a rather tricky task, requiring, as it did, a very large magnifying glass, a very small pair of tweezers and a very steady hand …

  By shop-close, however, he’d filled up a test tube. Now, there is, apparently, something of a knack to gene-splicing. It calls for some pretty high-tech state-of-the-art equipment, which is only to be found in government research establishments. Norman did not have access to these, so instead he gave the test tube a really good shake. Which was bound to splice something.

  On the Tuesday, which was today, things had not gone well for Norman. He’d been hoping to at least knock out a test horse, but there had been too many interruptions.

  People kept bothering him for things. Could he get them this? Could he get them that? Norman told them all that he certainly could not. And then there had been all the fuss about the videos.

  He should never have started hiring out videos. It was a very bad idea. Norman couldn’t think for the life of him why he’d started doing it in the first place. But then, for the life of him, he remembered that he could.

  It was all the fault of John Omally.

  Omally had come into Norman’s shop a couple of months before, complaining bitterly that there was nowhere in Brentford where you could hire out a videotape.

  Norman had shrugged in his shop-coat.

  ‘There’s a fortune waiting for the first man who opens a video shop around here,’ said Omally.

  Norman nodded as he shrugged.

  ‘A fortune,’ said John. ‘I’d open one myself, but the problem is finding the premises.’

  ‘Why is that the problem?’ Norman asked.

  ‘Because there aren’t any shops to rent around here.’

  ‘Which must be why no one has opened a video shop.’

  ‘Exactly,’ said Omally. ‘And it’s not as if you’d need a particularly large shop. In fact, when you come to think about it, all you’d really need would be a bit of shelf space in an existing shop.’

  ‘I see,’ said Norman.

  Omally glanced around at Norman’s shop. ‘I mean, take this place, for instance,’ he said. ‘Those shelves over there. The ones with all the empty sweetie jars. Those shelves there could be earning you a thousand pounds a week.’

  ‘How much?’ said Norman.

  ‘A thousand pounds a week.’

  ‘Those shelves there?’

  ‘Those shelves there.’

  ‘Bless my soul,’ said Norman.

  Omally did a bit of shrugging. ‘Makes you think,’ said he.

  ‘It certainly does,’ Norman agreed. ‘Of course, there would be the enormous capital outlay of buying all the videos.’

  ‘Not if you had the right connections.’

  ‘I don’t,’ said Norman.

  ‘I do,’ said John.

  And it had seemed a good idea at the time. What with Omally knowing where he could lay his hands on five hundred videotapes for a pound each. It was only after Norman had parted with the money and Omally had loaded the tapes onto the s
helves that Norman thought to ask a question.

  ‘What are on these tapes?’ Norman asked. ‘None of them are labelled.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ Omally said.

  ‘But haven’t you tried any out?’

  ‘How could I try any out? I don’t own a VCR.’

  Norman’s face came over all blank. ‘But I thought you were bitterly complaining that—’

  ‘There was nowhere in Brentford you could hire a videotape from. Yes, I was. But I was speaking generally. I didn’t mean me personally.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Norman. ‘I see.’

  ‘Well, I’m all done now,’ said John. ‘So I’ll be off.’

  And with that said, he was.

  It took Norman more than a week to go through the tapes. He had some very late nights. To his great disappointment, none of them turned out to be Hollywood blockbusters. All contained documentary footage. Of Chilean secret police interrogating prisoners.

  Norman marvelled at the methods of torture employed, although he did think that some of the electrical apparatus used could have been improved upon.

  ‘Although I won’t waste my time writing to tell them,’ Norman said to himself. ‘Because they probably won’t answer my letter.’

  But now Norman realized that he had a very real problem on his hands. What was he to do with these videos? I mean, he could hardly hire them out.

  Not without titles.

  And when it came to little movies, these ones all had the same plot.

  Norman put his mighty brain in gear. Snappy titles, that’s what they needed. Norman at once came up with OUCH!: THE MOVIE. This was good because it allowed for OUCH! II: THE SEQUEL. And also OUCH! III. In no time at all Norman was into his stride.

  He followed up the OUCH collection with the NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL TORMENT series and he even managed to cut together a blooper tape of humorous out-takes. Torturers slipping over in the blood and accidentally electrocuting themselves and so on.

  Norman toyed with the idea of calling this one CARRY ON UP MY BOTTOM WITH THE ELECTRIC CATTLE PROD.

  But that was a bit too long.

  Norman earned his money back on the videos and he made a bit extra besides. They didn’t prove popular as family viewing, but they attracted a certain following amongst a certain type of male.

  The police raid at lunchtime had come as a bit of a shock. He’d noticed the police presence, just up the road outside the Flying Swan, and when a couple of coppers came into his shop to buy sweets, Norman had asked them, in all innocence, whether they’d like to join his video club.

  And now here he was in a police interrogation room at the Brentford nick. An interrogation room that looked strangely familiar. Norman sighed and shifted uncomfortably. The metal chair was cold on his naked bum. The electrodes were pinching his nipples.

  Norman hoped that they’d soon let him go. After all, he’d answered all their questions. Several times over. He’d said all the things they’d expected him to say. That he was an innocent victim of circumstance. That he’d bought the videos from a stranger he’d met in a pub. The policemen wouldn’t keep him tied up around here much longer, would they? Sitting on cold chairs gave you the piles and Norman didn’t want those.

  And he had too much to do. He had to get back to his workshop and see how his horse was coming along. He’d left the DNA gently cooking in a nutrient solution on the stove, and although it was only on a low light, it might all end up stuck to the bottom of the saucepan if he didn’t get back soon to give it a stir.

  Norman sighed again and made a wistful face. If only there weren’t so many complications, he thought. If only we could live our lives in little movies.

  As chance would have it (or if not chance then fate, and if not fate then who knows what?), there was something closely resembling a little movie going on in Norman’s kitchen workshop even as he thought and said these things.

  It was a little B-movie, although the special effects were superb.

  If there had actually been a script for this movie, it might well have begun something like this.

  SCENE ONE

  Interior: Norman’s kitchen workshop.

  Camera pans slowly across small and shabby room. We see bundles of newspapers and magazines. Cigarette boxes, cartons of soft drinks, all the usual stock of a modest corner shop. We see also a sink piled high with unwashed dishes and a work table. Here we find evidence of scientific endeavour, test tubes, retorts, a scientific journal open at a page about cloning, a box of Meccano.

  Camera pans towards a filthy stove (1950s grey enamel), where we see an old saucepan. Its contents are boiling over, a thick green liquid is bubbling out. We follow the course of this liquid as it drips slowly down to the floor (ancient lino). Here there is movement, as of things forming and moving.

  Camera pulls back rapidly, rising to view the room from above.

  And we see them. Dozens of them. Racing round and round the kitchen floor. Leaping over discarded cans and flotsam. Tiny horses, no bigger than mice. Galloping around and around and around.

  Music over: the Osmonds, ‘Crazy Horses’.

  Of course if it was a little B-movie it would need a title. It would have to be one of those The Thing from Planet Z or The Beast from the Bottomless Hole, or even The Scotsman Who Lives on the Moon sort of jobbies.

  Norman could no doubt have thought of one. Invasion of the Tiny Horses, perhaps, or Night of the Stunted Stallions. That sounded better.

  But as Norman wasn’t in his kitchen, he wasn’t going to get the chance.

  So knowing not the wonder of it all, Norman sat in the steel chair in the interrogation room in the Brentford nick and fretted and fretted and fretted.

  And in his kitchen workshop, the tiny horses galloped around and around and around and around.

  And around.

  7

  Elvis should have called it quits way back in ‘77 when he had his first heart attack. He was never quite the same man after that. He wandered around Gracelands, clutching at his head and talking to himself and telling those who would listen that he was having revelations. Clearly the King was two strings short of a Strat.

  His latest offering, a stream of semi-consciousness rambling over beefy drum and bass, pumped now out of Sandy’s behind-the-bar sound system, making any form of conversation in the Shrunken Head just that little bit more stressful.

  It was now almost nine of the night-time clock and Jim Pooley took another elbow to the ear.

  ‘Ouch,’ went Jim and, ‘Mind out there.’

  ‘Stop making such a fuss,’ Omally told him.

  ‘It’s all right for you.’ Jim shifted in his chair as another music-lover squeezed by him. ‘You have the seat against the wall.’

  ‘I have to keep watch on the door for the band. The place is filling up nicely, though, isn’t it?’

  Jim ducked another elbow. ‘I hate it!’ he shouted. ‘It’s horrid and stinks. Don’t any of these blighters ever wash under their arms?’

  ‘Men who wear black T-shirts rarely wash under their arms. It’s a tradition, or an old charter or something.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ wailed Jim.

  ‘Hold on,’ said John. ‘Big-hair alert.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Men with big hair. It must be the band.’

  Jim turned and caught an elbow in the gob. ‘Ouch,’ he went again and, ‘Where?’

  ‘There.’ Omally pointed and there indeed they were. Above the motley mob and moving through the fog of fag smoke, big-haired boys were entering the bar.

  ‘Big hair,’ muttered Jim. ‘What an old cliché that is.’

  Omally was now on his feet and waving. ‘Chaps,’ he called. ‘I say, chaps, over here.’

  ‘I say, chaps?’

  Omally hushed at him. ‘It’s an image thing,’ he told Jim. ‘Think class. Think Brian Epstein.’

  ‘Ye gods,’ Jim raised his beer can to his lips, thought better of it and set it down again.

&nbs
p; ‘Chaps, I say.’ Omally coo-eed and waved a bit more. ‘I say, chaps. Hold on, come back.’

  But the big-haired chaps were paying no heed, they were humping their gear towards the entrance to the Cellar.

  ‘I’ll give them a hand with their guitars,’ said Omally. ‘You hang onto this table.’ He leaned low and spoke firm words into the ear of Pooley. ‘And don’t even think about slipping away,’ he said.

  ‘I might have to go to the toilet.’

  ‘Hold it in.’

  ‘But it might be number twos.’

  Omally made fists. He showed one to Pooley. ‘I am not by nature a violent man,’ he said, ‘but if you let me down on this—’

  ‘All right.’ Pooley raised the palms of peace. ‘I’ll hold the table for you. But I’m not going downstairs to hear them play. Absolutely no way. No siree, by golly.’

  ‘All right, all right.’ John struggled out of his chair and into the crowd. ‘Just don’t let me down, Jim. This really matters.’

  Pooley shrugged and Pooley sighed and Pooley wanted out.

  ‘Is anyone sitting there?’ asked a voice at his ear.

  ‘Yes,’ grumbled Jim and, looking up, ‘No. My friend’s gone home. You can sit in his chair if you want to.’

  ‘Thank you, I will,’ she said and she did.

  Jim watched her as she settled onto Omally’s chair.

  She was beautiful. Simply beautiful.

  In fact it would be true to say that she was the most beautiful woman Jim had ever seen in his life. And considering that Brentford is noted for the beauty of its womenfolk, that is really going some.

  And then some more.

  She was the size known as petite. Which isn’t the size known as little or small. And there was a symmetry about her features and a delicacy about her entire being that made Jim do a double double-take. To Pooley she seemed perfect, and perfect can be just a little fearsome.

  With his jaw now hanging slack and his eyes glazing over, Jim took in the poetic wonder of her face.

  Her eyes were large and green and fringed with long dark lashes.