The Sprouts of Wrath bs-4

by Robert Rankin

  Meek peered at the Inspectre’s fingertip. “Gold paint, sir, or gold leaf.”

  “Or gold dust. Full marks for observation, Constable. Well done.”

  Meek puffed out his chest. “Thank you, sir.”

  “Now get on to forensic, get the photos and get them on to my desk by lunchtime and no later.”

  Meek’s chest sank away. You bastard, he thought. “Yes, sir,” he said.

  Jennifer Naylor tilted the cafetiere towards the exquisite china coffee cup and poured a measure of decaffeinated.

  She freighted the delicate cup into the living room, where an occasional table rose to meet almost any occasion upon legs of faux-grained maple. Its sun-golden top bore the weight of several Sunday newspapers which lay in a casual composition. Jennifer perused a random headline and sipped her coffee. The project thus far had certainly met with the least line of resistance. Things were moving on apace. The public imagination, that fickle beast whose existence is only denied by those who seek to capture it, had been hunted down, snared and thrust into a cage of its own construction. And now she was one of its keepers and her duties were to keep it cosy and warm and above all safe. And upon this point she knew, as did all others directly concerned with the project, exactly what she was dealing with. The humanization of technology. Technology, friend and servant of man, rather than technology, fearsome tyrant to the uninformed. Maintaining government and “vox-pop” approval for the project was top priority. Every aspect of every aspect had to be handled with the utmost delicacy. The construction was to be the eighth wonder of the world, a technocratic monument to an unknown genius, but for all its awesomeness it had to be human. Above all human, that was the brief.

  Jennifer scanned a newspaper column or two and nodded in complete approval. Fleet Street was already in a hot flush of patriotic fervour. The disasters of Birmingham were already forgotten. Tomorrow belonged to Brentford.

  Amongst the papers lay a large metallic foil envelope which had arrived by special delivery that very morning. Jennifer placed her coffee cup amongst the Sundays and opened it. It contained a sheaf of computer print-outs and a cheque raised in her name to a sum amply sufficient to her current needs. Jennifer examined the signature with keen interest but she could make nothing of it; it was more like a runic symbol. The designer of the great stadium, inventor of Gravitite and financier of the Brentford Olympics was still as much a mystery to her as to everyone else.

  Hers not to reason why. Jennifer consulted the print-out. It was a schedule of her duties for the coming week, listing meetings to be arranged, statements to be given, to whom and at when. The names of certain luminaries in the fields of art, literature, the sciences and the media appeared. Their support, considered essential to the overall success of the project, was to be enlisted. And the wherewithal by which this might be achieved was all there, printed in slim computer-type.

  Anticipating possible difficulties with local ecologists, traditionalists, reactionaries and other spoilsports, it was considered prudent to bring forward the schedule of works by a day. Work on the five sites would begin at once.

  Jennifer shook her beautiful head, lost in admiration for the mysterious organizer. The insight and perception displayed held her in fascination. Ever since her first involvement with the project she had felt a dull pain gnawing away at her insides, a hunger pang which could only be satisfied by one thing. Somehow, someway, she had to meet this person whose genius obsessed her. Somehow, someway, their paths must be made to cross. And then we should see what we should see.

  Reverently she turned the page of the print-out and noted to her further wonder a list entitled: DISSENTERS: CLASS A SECURITY RISKS. Below this encircled in red, were only two names, yet two she knew almost as surely as she knew her own: James Arbuthnot Pooley and John Vincent Omally.

  The two dissenters were enjoying a hearty breakfast. They had bathed, slept soundly and now sat in their newly laundered clothes enjoying a magnificent spread in the Professor’s dining room.

  Gammon, the Professor’s elderly retainer, removed the silver dome from the crumpet dish and asked, “Is everything to your satisfaction, gentlemen?”

  “Oh, indeed yes.” Pooley wiped a napkin across his mouth and prepared himself for an assault upon the crumpets.

  Omally sipped coffee and watched the Professor from the corner of his eye. Something was coming, that was for sure. All this ill-deserved hospitality, what was the old man up to?

  “And now,” said the Professor, as if in answer to John’s unasked question, “I am going to tell you both exactly how you can repay my hospitality.” Omally turned his coffee cup between his fingers, Jim kept right on eating. “You are both going to change your ways,” said the Professor. “Dishonesty and duplicity are now but regretful chapters in your dual history. Altruism is now your watchword. Good works will be the standard by which others shall judge you. Honest toil your daily lot.”

  “Your colloquy is as ever eloquent,” replied John. “The points are both well made and well taken, we shall watch our ps and qs from now on.”

  “You will,” said the Professor. “Your behaviour will be exemplary.”

  “Be sure of that,” said Jim, “you betcha.”

  “Good. This knowledge affords me a basic security which I place in high esteem. Thus the act I am about to perform becomes nothing more than a symbolic gesture.”

  “Oh, yes?” said John, doubtfully.

  “Yes.” Professor Slocombe took from his dressing-gown pocket Pooley’s tobacco tin.

  “Ah, thanks,” said Jim, rising to his feet.

  “No, Jim, I shall mind this.” Pooley’s pained expression was not lost upon Omally.

  “Am I to take it that the tin contains something more than just baccy and papers?”

  Jim slumped in his chair. “Baccy, papers and a betting slip.”

  “Exactly.” Professor Slocombe passed the tin several times between his hands. Neither of his breakfast guests saw it vanish, but it did so nevertheless. “A symbolic gesture, nothing more,” said the magician. “The slip will remain in my custody the few short weeks until the games begin. During this period I shall watch with interest the manner in which you conduct yourselves.”

  “You want us to… work?” The full horror of this proposition had not quite hit Pooley, hence he was still able to form the sentence.

  “Indeed I do, Jim.”

  “Such rectitude is laudable,” said Omally, “and I applaud your principles. However, it is not often the case that what might appear to be a good idea in principle is inevitably a bad one in practice. Professor, the pursuance of virtue and the turning of the now legendary honest buck are all well and good, but…”

  “But me no buts, John.”

  “Come now,” said Omally, “you will have your little joke and the humour is not lost upon us.” Pooley groaned in sickly agreement. “Return the betting slip, put your trust in us, we will not disappoint you.”

  “But I do trust you, John. The slip will be safe with me.”

  Pooley bit his lip, “But what, sir, if, and perish the thought, some ill were to befall you?”

  “Happily I am in the best of health, Jim.”

  “You are not a young man, Professor,” said John.

  “You are as young as you think,” declared the ancient, “which is also a happy circumstance, because my affairs, being somewhat complicated, may well take several years to put in order, should some tragedy befall me. But let us not dwell upon such dismal matters. If one is to believe only half of what one is told, then Brentford stands poised upon the threshold of a veritable Golden Age. If, surrounded by such rich and fertile pastures, two stalwarts such as yourselves are unable to gain honest employment, then one can only lament your lack of enterprise. Backs to the plough, noses to the grindstone, shoulders to the wheel.”

  “Professor.” Pooley raised his hand to speak.

  “No more,” said the elder. “The conversation is at an end. I am confident that all
aspects have now been covered. Repetition does not enforce a point, it merely belabours it.”

  “I wished merely to enquire whether you still require the services of a gardener?”

  “You are hired, Jim.”

  Pooley smiled broadly. “My thanks, Professor. What of you, John?”

  Omally buttered his crumpet. “I am cogitating,” he said in a sullen tone.

  At a little after nine a.m. a helicopter swooped across Brentford. It circled the borough several times before departing towards the west. Those who saw it remarked upon two things, the advanced design of the thing, which resembled a slim silver fish, and the unusual fact that it made absolutely no sound whatsoever.

  At a little after ten a.m. work began on the five Olympic sites. No-one observed the arrival of the engineers, technicians, construction supervisors, operatives and navigators. But at the time no-one thought much about it. There was a charity match on at the football ground between Brentford’s First Division glory boys and the Lords Taverners Eleven. Those who weren’t at the match were either still in bed, brewing tea in their allotment sheds or sticking the Sunday joint in. And there was little enough of interest to be seen at the sites anyway. For within half an hour, tall impenetrable screens had been erected to shield the operations in progress. And these operations, whatever they might have been, were taking place in absolute silence.

  21

  Neville drew the bolts upon the saloon bar door but did not bother to take the air. Drizzle depressed him. His carpet-slippered feet flip-flopped across the knackered Axminster and carried him over to the whisky optic and the large buff-coloured envelope that had arrived by hand this very morning.

  Neville drew a double and tossed it down his throat. His right forefinger traced the parameters of the envelope and came to rest upon the brewery’s coat of arms. A cockatrice rampant above the motto “Ecce Cerevisia” — “Behold the Beer”. Neville chewed upon his bottom lip and made nervous sniffing sounds with his sensitive nostrils. Those possessed of the “third eye” would have noticed that the part-time barman’s aura was surmounted by a small black cloud on which the words “Gloom and Desolation” were written in Gothic type. Neville lived in dread of these missives which were inevitably the work of the brewery owner’s beloved son, whose entire being seemed solely dedicated to making life miserable for the part-time barman.

  Those envelopes which arrived through the post, Neville instantly destroyed and denied all knowledge of, but young Master Robert, as the little parvenu described himself, had got wise to this and now they came by hand, to be signed for. Neville tapped at the envelope; he was going to have to open it, no matter what. With a dismal resignation he took up the wicked messenger and tore it apart. He emptied the contents on to the bar counter and prodded them disdainfully. There were a set of plans, a number of crude felt-tip drawings (or visualizations as the Young Master called them), several pages of typing, some samples of material and a beer mat.

  “Oh dear,” said Neville the part-time barman. This had the look of what the legendary Busby Berkeley would have referred to as “A Big Production Number”. He picked up the beer mat and turned it on his palm. On the one side was the ubiquitous brewery coat of arms and on the other the Olympic rings etched in gold above the words … THE PENTATHLON BAR (formerly the Flying Swan). “Oh no,” said Neville, “oh no, no, no!”

  He was still oh-noing a full half-hour later when a rain-sodden Pooley and Omally entered the bar.

  “Watchamate, Neville,” said Jim.

  “God save all here,” said John.

  Neville nodded a thin greeting and drew off two pints of Large.

  “Problems, Neville?” Omally enquired as he accepted his pint.

  “The brewery.”

  “Oh, those lads. And what is it this time, another cowboy night or more video-games machines?”

  Neville laughed. It was a ghastly hollow sound and it quite put the wind up the soggy pair. He displayed the beer mat.

  “Blessed be,” said Jim.

  “Holy Mother,” said John.

  “Exactly,” said the part-time barman. “The little bastard wants to do a full conversion on the whole pub. Do it up like a bloody gymnasium or somesuch.”

  “Iconoclast,” Omally declared. “We shall storm the brewery.”

  “Burn him at the stake,” Pooley said.

  “An auto-da-fé,” Omally suggested.

  “Yes,” agreed Jim. “We’ll burn his car too.”

  “That’s the stuff,” said Neville, “we’ll show him, eh?”

  “We will,” said Omally, “although not right at this moment as Jim and I have a rather pressing bit of business to discuss.”

  “A man of words and not of deeds,” said the part-time barman, “is like a garden full of weeds.”

  “As to that I have no doubt,” said Omally, steering Jim away towards a side table, “no doubt at all.”

  “And so?” said Pooley, once the two were seated. “And so?”

  “And so, Jim, I have been giving this matter some careful thought and it is my considered opinion that if you alone perform these few short weeks of labour then the Professor will be under a moral obligation to return your betting slip. It is in your name alone after all.”

  Jim shook his head. “Such has already occurred to him, he mentioned to me upon leaving that he considers the betting slip, as in fact you do, joint property. If needs be, he said, he would return my half alone.”

  Omally glowered into his beer. “Bob will not pay out on a torn ticket, this much is well known. I can see nothing for it, there is only one solution.”

  “You will take honest work then?”

  Omally crossed himself. “How can I be expected to work if I am incapacitated?”

  “You are ill then, John?”

  “Not yet, but suppose I had an accident. Say I tripped over a garden fork that you had carelessly discarded during the course of an enjoyable day in the Professor’s garden. Why, I might be laid up for weeks, months even. Remember The Man Who Came to Dinner?”

  “A bit before my time, John, but you would be bound to be discovered. The Professor would know.”

  “How would he?”

  “Because I would tell him, John, that is how.”

  “A fine friend you are,” sighed Omally, “it was only a thought.”

  “And not one of your better ones. But see, John, a few weeks of hard work is not going to kill us. Considering the life of luxury and ease we are going to enjoy once we pick up our winnings, a bit of exercise will probably do us the world of good.”

  Omally pulled at his pint. “Perhaps,” said he. “But I feel that there is a lot more to all this than meets the eye.”

  “How so?”

  “Well, as you know I greatly admire the old man. His whole being is dedicated to the higher truths. Lesser truths and the lack of them generally trouble him but little. Do you not therefore find his present attitude puzzling?”

  “The work ethic, you mean?”

  “More so the business of what we saw on the barge.”

  “Hm.” Pooley had said little about that, it was something he wished only to forget. “It certainly wasn’t an ape and that’s for sure.”

  “Indeed it was not. Now you and I know that and I think the Professor does too. And I think he knows a good deal more than he’s letting on to.”

  “He generally does.” A lace garter of ale-foam slid seductively down Jim’s glass.

  “He knows our transactions have never been one hundred per cent honest, but it’s never bothered him before. Something’s going on, Jim.”

  “I have no doubt of that, but if you will take my advice. John, stay out of it, find yourself a job, nose to the cartwheel, elbow to the sprocket-set, things of that nature.”

  “I’ll give the matter some thought,” said John, “I’ll give it some close thought.”

  Jim Pooley shook his head. “Whose round is it?” he asked.

  The Swan was filling with post
-match celebrants, out to toast the charity of the home team in letting the Lords Taverners off with a mere sixteen-nil walloping. Neville was going great guns behind the pump but the grim expression had not left his face.

  Omally elbowed his way to the bar. “Two of similar,” he said. Neville took the glasses. He drew off a pint of the very best and passed it to Omally. John took a thoughtful sip. “I shall miss this,” he said.

  “Why, are you going away then?”

  “No, I mean that with all the coming changes, the beer will be the first thing to suffer.”

  “It will not,” said Neville whose pride was his beer.

  “Come now.” Omally held up his glass and examined its contents. “We’ll be seeing some strange faces behind this bar counter I shouldn’t wonder.”

  “You what?” exclaimed Neville.

  “Well, if the brewery are in for changes, then they’ll be supplying new bar personnel I would have thought.”

  Neville halted in mid-pull of Pooley’s pint. “By the gods,” said he, “do you think so?”

  “Well, you haven’t had a full complement since Croughton left.”

  “Left?” said Neville. “He’s now serving eighteen months, his hand was in my till up to the elbow!”

  “Young Master Bobsmuck will want one or two of his lady friends in here I shouldn’t wonder.” Neville’s face contorted into a mask of horror, his good eye started in its socket. He was not by nature a misogynist, but he did not believe there was a woman alive who could pull a decent pint. “I’d cover yourself now,” continued Omally, “just to be on the safe side.”

  “Yes… yes.” Neville dragged at the pump handle, filling Jim’s glass with foam. “Yes, I must.”

  “There must be someone locally who knows the trade,” said John, “someone who understands good ale, respects the brewer’s art, someone who would uphold the high standards of this noble edifice, someone trustworthy, someone…”

  “Someone like yourself perhaps?” said Neville.

  “Me?” Omally made deprecating gestures. “Why, I’ve never…”