Knees Up Mother Earth bs-7

by Robert Rankin

  “Those stands don’t look very safe,” observed Jim in a mournful tone.

  “They just need a lick of paint,” said John, taking a notebook from his pocket and making notes in it with a pencil.

  “The toilets really pong,” observed Jim in a nasal tone.

  “They just need a scrub down with Harpic,” said John, making further notes.

  “The shop is wretched,” observed Jim in a hopeless tone.

  “Not for much longer.” John made further notes.

  “The bar is really dank,” observed Jim in the tone of a soul that is forever lost.

  “It’s opening time,” said John, tucking away his notebook.

  The Stripes Bar was long and low and loathsome and seemed to lack for everything that made a pub a pub. Behind the jump stood Mr Rumpelstiltskin the barman, a grave and sad-looking fellow who did not ooze bonhomie.

  “The beer’s not very good,” observed Jim a few scant minutes later. “It’s funny how it always tasted better when we’d slip in here for a late-nighter.” Jim’s shoulders sank. He was doomed. All doomed.

  “I’ll sort it,” said John, making further notes. “You wait until tomorrow.”

  “It seems,” said Jim, “that you will be working much harder than I will. But then, as I am contemplating suicide, you may well have to go it alone.”

  “Perk up, my friend. We’re in this together. We’ll succeed.” John raised his glass to Jim and the two men drank in silence.

  They drank in silence for some considerable time. This silence was not disturbed by further patrons entering The Stripes Bar.

  “Doesn’t anyone ever come in here on weekdays?” Jim asked the barman.

  “You’re the first I’ve seen in years,” the barman replied. “I only open up at lunchtimes out of a sense of tradition. Personally, I’d rather be golfing.”

  “Doomed, doomed, doomed,” intoned Jim.

  “Jim,” said John, and suddenly a very big grin appeared upon his face. “Jim, do you realise what this means?”

  Jim Pooley shook his head. “That I am doomed?” said he. “I know.”

  John steered Jim away from the dire bar counter to an equally dire yet out-of-ear-shot-of-the-barman corner. “Jim, you are the manager of Brentford United Football Club.”

  “Please don’t rub it in,” said Jim. “I’m suffering enough.”

  “But Jim, as the manager of Brentford Football Club, you are therefore also the manager of this bar.”

  Jim glanced about it in all directions. And Jim did mighty shudderings. “Doom and gloom and more doom,” said he.

  “No.” John shook his head. “You don’t realise it, but you’ve really fallen on your feet here. Jim, this is your pub. Neville might have barred us from The Swan, but it doesn’t matter now.”

  “It doesn’t?” said Jim, who was certain that it did.

  “It doesn’t because you now have a pub of your very own.”

  It took Jim a moment or two to digest this intelligence. But when this moment or two had passed, he stared into the face of his bestest friend.

  “A pub of my very own?” mouthed Jim at the enormity of this proposition.

  “Perk of the job,” said John. “And we’ll have one over on Neville here.”

  “A pub of my very own?”

  “To manage as you see fit.”

  “No,” said Jim. “No.”

  “No?” said John.

  “Oh no, John, this is not a pub of my very own. This is pub of our very own. This is our pub.”

  John smiled upon his bestest friend. “I’ll get the drinks in, then,” said he.

  “On me,” said Jim.

  “No, on me.”

  “I insist,” said Jim.

  “No,” said John, “I do. Although …” John paused.

  “What prompts this pausing?” Jim enquired.

  “I’m just wondering why either of us should pay. After all, this is our pub.”

  “Barman,” called Jim, “two more of same over here, and have one yourself, if you will.”

  “Having another?” Neville asked Old Pete. The elder sat upon his usual stool before The Swan’s bar counter.

  “No,” said Pete. “I’m all right for now.”

  Neville cast a wary eye at Old Pete. “Not feeling yourself?” he enquired. “They’re still on the house, as if you’d forgotten.”

  “I don’t want to take advantage.”

  Chips looked up at his ancient master and cocked his furry head upon one side.

  “Change of heart?” asked Neville. “I thought you had determined to bankrupt me.”

  “I’m sorry,” said Old Pete. “About yesterday. About taking advantage like that.”

  “You are ill.” Neville made a face of genuine concern. Certainly Old Pete was a rogue, but Neville would never have wished any harm to come to him. “Do you want me to call you a cab, or a medic or something?”

  “Don’t be an arse, Neville. You’re a decent bloke. I wasn’t going to ponce free drinks off you for ever.”

  “There’s something not right.” Neville drew off another rum for Old Pete and placed it before him. “Do you want to tell me about it?”

  “If I did, you’d think I was mad. And you’d never believe me anyway.”

  “Try me,” said Neville. “I’m a publican, after all. I’ve heard pretty much everything there is to hear during my long years in the trade.”

  “You’ve never heard anything like this, I assure you.”

  Neville was intrigued. “Go on,” he said, “tell me.”

  Old Pete glanced about the bar. It wasn’t busy. A salesman travelling in tobaccos and ready-rolled cigarettes chatted with a pimply youth who referred to himself as “Scoop” Molloy and worked for the Brentford Mercury. Office types drank halves of cider and munched on their Lighterman’s lunches.

  “If I tell you,” said Old Pete, “you have to promise me that you will never tell another living soul. Can you promise me that, Neville?”

  “I can.” Neville licked his finger. “See this wet,” he said, and then wiped it upon his jacket. “See this dry. Cut my throat if I tell a lie.”

  Old Pete sighed. “You’re a Freemason, aren’t you, Neville?” he said.

  Neville made a wary face. That was not a question that any Freemason cared to be asked. And it is a tricky one, because if you are, you’re not supposed to lie – simply to evade.

  “How are your crops at present?” Neville asked. “How’s the Mandragora coming along?”

  Old Pete put his hand across the bar counter for a shake. “Have you travelled far?” he asked.

  Neville shook the elder’s hand. It was a significant handshake. Both men knew the significance of it. Words were exchanged and these words also were significant.

  “I never knew,” said Neville, “in all these years, that you—”

  “I keep my own business to myself, Neville, whereas your Masonic cufflinks are something of a giveaway. But I can trust you. Brothers upon the square, as it were.”

  “And under the arch.”

  “Quite so.”

  “So what is it that you wish to tell me? In complete confidence, of course.”

  “How old do you think I am, Neville?”

  Neville shrugged.

  “I was born in eighteen eighty-five, right here in Brentford.”

  “Eighteen eighty-five?” Neville counted on his fingers. “Why, that makes you—”

  “Old enough. Now, you might not believe what I’m going to tell you, but I swear to you it’s true. I’ve spent most of my life trying to convince myself otherwise, but I know what I know. I saw it all with my own two eyes.”

  “Go on, then,” said Neville.

  “Victorian society,” said Old Pete. “It wasn’t how it’s written up in the history books. It was nothing like it’s written up in the history books, it was completely different.”

  “How?” Neville asked. “Smellier, more violent? What?”

  “Techn
ology,” said Old Pete. “There was technology back then that nobody knows about now, technology that simply ceased to exist and of which no record survives today.”

  “What kind of technology?” Neville asked.

  “Electric technology. Have you ever heard of Nikola Tesla?”

  Neville shook his head.

  “He invented alternating current,” said Old Pete. “It wasn’t Edison who invented that – that’s false history. Tesla worked with Charles Babbage, inventor of the computer.”

  “I’ve heard of him,” said Neville. “He invented the computer but it was never taken up in Victorian society. He died in poverty. There was a programme about him on the television a while back.”

  “He never died in poverty – he was knighted by Her Majesty Queen Victoria in eighteen sixty for his services to the British Empire. With the help of Babbage’s computer, Nikola Tesla created a system of towers across the country that broadcast electricity on a radio frequency, no wires. There were flying hansom cabs, electric airships, a space programme. A rocket was going to the moon, but it was sabotaged.”

  “You’re making this up,” said Neville.

  Old Pete glared at him. “It’s true, it’s all true. Most houses had electric lighting long before nineteen hundred. And computers. And there were robots, too, powered by broadcast electricity, working as doormen and cabbies, and soldiers as well. The British Empire had conquered almost all of the globe by the eighteen nineties. America had been won back and was a British colony again.”

  “This can’t be true,” said Neville. “It would be in history books.”

  “It isn’t,” said Old Pete, “because everything changed at the stroke of midnight with the coming of the year nineteen hundred, as far as I can make out. I owned a digital watch, Neville – my father gave it to me when I was ten.”

  Neville the part-time barman shook his doubtful head. “But if this were true, then there’d be some trace of it, surely. What happened to all this amazing Victorian technology?”

  “Vanished,” said Old Pete, “as if it had never existed, at the stroke of midnight with the coming of the year nineteen hundred.”

  “But how?” Neville asked.

  “Through witchcraft,” said Old Pete, “as far as I can figure it out. There were rumours that a cabal of witches sought to destroy all Victorian technology. I don’t know how, or why, but they wiped it all out.”

  “Witches,” said Neville, who was not unacquainted with several local practitioners of the Craft. “Witches wouldn’t do that.”

  “It’s what I heard, I can’t prove it. I can’t prove anything. But I’ll tell you this: all that stuff in Victorian science fiction books, H.G. Wells and Jules Verne and so on – it’s all true, it was all real. All of it.”

  “What?” said Neville. “Like the invisible man?”

  “That was H.G. Wells himself. He was a scientist, not a fiction writer, and I know that for a fact.”

  “But this stuff would have been in the newspapers. And newspaper offices have archives.”

  “All records vanished with the technology, as if none of it had ever happened, at twelve midnight, coming of the year nineteen hundred. And Norman is in great danger.”

  “Norman?” said Neville. “How does he fit into this?”

  “He’s come into possession of Victorian computer parts. Babbage Nineteen-Hundred Series computer parts.”

  “Then surely these computer parts prove your story. You should be pleased that he’s found them. Will you be writing a book? A rewrite of history?”

  “Neville, you’re a fool. You don’t understand.”

  “I can’t understand if you don’t tell me. What’s the problem with these computer parts?”

  “The computers were part of it. The magic was in the computers, programmed into them. It’s evil stuff, Neville.”

  “I really don’t understand,” said the part-time barman, “but this is a most extraordinary story. And it’s clearly troubling you.”

  “It is,” said Old Pete. “To be frank, it’s scaring the very life out of me.”

  Neville made a thoughtful face. “Just one thing,” he said. “How come only you know about this? If history changed on the stroke of midnight with the coming of the year nineteen hundred, how come no one else who was alive during that period has ever mentioned it?”

  “Because all their memories of it were erased. History was changed and it was as if it never ever happened. All the electric technology, all of it, just disappeared and all memory of it, too.”

  “So how come you remember it?”

  “Because I wasn’t there when the change came, Neville. I came back afterwards, an hour later, a boy of fifteen, to find my entire world changed – as if everything that had happened had never happened.”

  “So where were you?” Neville asked.

  “I was right here,” said Old Pete. “Right here, but not right here right now. I was right here several months from now, in Mr H.G. Wells’ time machine. I—”

  “Have to stop you there,” said Neville. “Kindly leave my pub, Old Pete, and consider yourself barred for a week.”

  “What?” said Old Pete.

  And Neville reached for his knobkerrie.

  11

  Norman hadn’t slept at all the previous night. He couldn’t – he was far too excited. He just had to put the computer together. Peg had stomped off to the marital bed and she hadn’t called down for Norman to join her for a bit of rumpy-pumpy. Which had gladdened Norman, as he’d gone off all that messy stuff many years before.

  Norman had been left to his own devices, which were devices of a constructional nature. And the construction details contained within the Babbage 1900 Series Computer Assembly Manual were most explicit and exact. They weren’t written in pidgin English, as were most of their ilk nowadays. These were written in good old Victorian down-to-Earth straightforwardness. They informed the constructor exactly where to stick each valve and screw on each big fat wire and locate every machined brass bolt, and how to glue and joint each section of the mahogany cabinet that housed the computer screen.

  Just so.

  And when dawn came up and the bundled newspapers were flung on to his doorstep, Norman was all but finished.

  “It’s all in the numbers,” said the scientific shopkeeper, who knew what he was all about and what his quest was all about. “And if the numbers can be found through this, then I’ll find them.”

  “And if you don’t number-up those newspapers, I’ll give you the smacking of your life,” said Peg, filling the kitchenette and bringing woe unto Norman.

  And then of course there’d been the morning. And Norman had been weary. He’d wondered why Jim and John had not called in to purchase papers and cigarettes. And then he’d recalled how they had both been hospitalised. And he’d sold a box of chocolates to Bob the Bookie, who, at the mention of Jim’s incapacitation, had burst into paroxysms of laughter and purchased several cigars.

  And he’d served this chap and the other and he’d really been dying to get back to his computer.

  And then at last it was lunchtime.

  And Norman turned once more the “open” sign to its “closed” side and took himself off to his kitchenette.

  And plugged in his Babbage Nineteen-Hundred Series computer.

  Then yawned and fell fast asleep.

  And as Peg was out, he slept right through the afternoon.

  “Ya canna sleep,” said Mahatma Campbell. “Ya haf ta up an’ awa’ wi’ th’ lads.”

  “Ooh, ah, wah!” said Jim Pooley. “What time is it?”

  “Seven o’clock in the evening. Ya drank ya sel’ to oblivion an’ on the firs’ day on the job. Y’ haf the makins of a firs’-class football manager.”

  “I was resting my eyes,” said Jim, a-blinking them.

  “Me too,” said John, a-rubbing at his.

  “Ya drunken bastards.”

  “That’s no way to speak to your employer.” Jim rose unstea
dily from his seat. Before him, the table spoke of many beers. It spoke in the manner of many empty glasses.

  “Did we get through all these?” Jim asked John.

  “The barman helped, if I recall,” said John.

  “Where is he?” the Campbell asked.

  “Gone a-golfing,” said John.

  Mahatma Campbell shook his turbaned head. “You tak’ yer shoes off when ya walk on m’ pitch,” he told Jim.

  “I have no wish to walk upon your pitch,” said Jim.

  “You’d better – it’s training night. The lads are oot there waiting fer instructions from their new manager.”

  “Tell them to take the evening off,” said Jim. “In fact, tell them to join us in here for a drink.”

  “I dinna think so.” Mahatma Campbell handed Jim an envelope.

  “What’s this?” Jim asked.

  “It’s for ya, yer name’s upon it.”

  “It’s been opened,” said Jim, observing this fact.

  “Correct. I opened it.”

  “Why?” asked Jim.

  “Because I’m nosy. It’s instructions from Professor Slocombe. You’d best be following them, I’m thinking.”[9]

  “Ah,” said Jim. And, “Yes.”

  “Let’s have a look.” Omally acquainted himself with the envelope, drew out a missive penned upon parchment and read it aloud.

  And when he had finished with his reading, Jim said, “My golly.”

  “Your golly?” asked the Campbell.

  “Everybody’s golly,” said Jim. “How can I be expected to ask the team to do that?”

  “I know not,” said the Campbell, “but for the love of myself, I’m really looking forward to seeing you try.”

  The floodlights were on in Griffin Park. The Campbell had switched them on. And it does have to be said that there is a certain magic about a floodlit football pitch. In fact, more than just a certain magic. A floodlit football pitch is BIG MAGIC. Even if you have no liking for the beautiful game.