The Witches of Chiswick

by Robert Rankin

  Once inside he passed through decontamination – a hose-down, followed by a big blow-dry – then he raised his weather dome to admit an iris scan of his eyeballs, which confirmed his identity and present credit status, and allowed him access to the covered platform.

  The never-ending shuttle train of trams, thirty-two miles of linked carriages, followed a circular route through London Central, The Great High Rise and surrounding conurbation areas. It moved with painful slowness and was dreary to behold. Will awaited the arrival of a carriage that did not look altogether full, pressed a large entry button and, as the door slid aside, stepped aboard the moving carriage.

  Large folk sat upon large seats, heavily and sombrely. None raised their eyes towards young Will, nor offered him a “good morning”. Their heads were down, their masssive shoulders slumped; all were going off to work and few were going gladly. The morning tram had never been a transport of delight.

  The in-car entertainment was, upon this particular day, of the corporate morale-boosting persuasion: plump, jolly holograms, fresh-faced guys and gals, cavorted up and down the carriage, extolling the virtues of a job well done for an employer who more than just cared. At intervals they flickered and slurred, ran into reverse, or stopped altogether. The system was long overdue for an overhaul – as was most everything else.

  Will settled himself into a seat and ignored the colourful chaos. He took off his rubberised mittens, fished into the pocket of his grossly oversized chem-proof and brought out his personal palm-top.

  This item was something of a treasure to Will, and would be another collectible should that bygone age of collecting ever return. In this particular time there should have been marvels of technology to be had, like plasma gel eye-screens, hardwired to cranial implants, which, when worn behind the eyelids, would offer three-dimensional virtual reality with all-around-sensasound and things of that futuristic nature generally. And there were, to a degree, but they just didn’t work very well. Technology had got itself just so far before it ground to a halt and started falling to pieces. Will’s palm-top was almost fifty years old, built in a time when folk really knew how to build palm-tops. It was indeed his treasure.

  But what Will really wanted, of course, was a book, a real book, a book of his very own. But as books no longer existed, what with there no longer being any rainforests to denude for their manufacture, he had settled for second best. Will had been downloading the contents of the British Library into his ancient palm-top. He did not consider this to be a crime, although crime indeed it was. He considered it to be an educational supplement. Certainly he had been taught things at learning classes, when a child, all those things that the state considered it necessary for him – or any other child of the citizenry – to know. But Will craved knowledge, more knowledge, more knowledge of the past.

  Somewhere in him, somewhere deep, was A Need to Know, about what the past really was, about the folk who had inhabited it, about things that they had done, the adventures they’d had. What they’d known, what they’d seen, what they’d achieved. There was excitement in the past, and romance, and adventure.

  Exactly why these yearnings were inside him, Will didn’t know. Nor did he understand why he was so driven by them. But he did understand that it mattered (for some reason that he did not fully understand, so to speak).

  But he would understand. He felt certain that he would.

  Will had recently downloaded a number of restricted files from the British Library’s mainframe, part of the British Library’s collection of Victorian erotica, and installed them into his palm-top. Will was currently reading Aubrey Beardsley’s novel, Under the Hill[1].

  Although Will did not understand much of what Beardsley had written, the words and phraseology being of such antiquity, he was aware that he was onto something rather special. Will had researched Mr Beardsley, the 1890s being Will’s favourite period: the gay nineties, they’d been called, a time of exuberance, of decadence, a time of enormous creativity.

  Will almost missed his station, London Central Three. He had been engrossed in the chapter where Venus masturbates the Unicorn, and had got a bit of a stiffy on.

  (Well, it is an extremely good chapter.)

  Will switched off the palm-top, slipped it back into his chem-proof, redonned his mittens, rose, tapped the door button and departed from the eternally moving tram. He took the belowground to the Tate Terminal, passed through the retinal scan, checked in his weather wear and made his way via lifts and walkways to his place of employment.

  The workroom was circular, about half an old mile in diameter and many new metres in height, with row upon row of huge, somewhat outdated and unreliable computer workstations, mounted upon IKEA terminal tops, and manned and womanned by many, many folk, all of whom exceeded Will in both years and girth.

  “Morning, stick-boy,” said Jarvis Santos, a fine hunk of flesh in a triple-breasted morning suit. Jarvis was Will’s superior.

  “Good morning, Mr Santos,” said Will, seating himself in the big chair before his big workstation. “Rotten old weather, eh?”

  “The weather is hardly your concern. You’re here to do a job. Do you think your frail little fingers can deal with it?”

  “Undoubtedly,” said Will, smiling broadly.

  “And get that grin off your scrawny face. Your tasking for the day is on the screen; see to it.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Will.

  Jarvis Santos shook his head, rippling considerable jowls. He turned and waddled away, leaving Will smiling broadly at his terminal screen. Will read the words upon it: The works of Richard Dadd, and there followed a brief history of this Victorian artist.

  Will read these words, and then he whistled. This really couldn’t be much better: Richard Dadd was one of Will’s all-time favourites; a genuine Victorian genius (although, it had to be said, a complete stone-bonker too). Like many rich Victorians, Dadd had taken the Grand Tour. He had travelled through distant lands, visited and painted Egypt, moved through Africa and India and at the end of it all, had returned to England, quite mad. His father, worrying for the mental health of his son had taken Richard under his wing and was escorting him to hospital when a singular tragedy occurred. They had booked into a hotel in Cobham, in Surrey, for the night. Richard and his father had gone out for an evening walk. But Richard returned alone and hastily made away from the hotel. He had murdered his father in the woods and, according to legend, feasted on his brain.

  Dadd had murdered his dad. He made it as far as France before he’d been arrested. At his trial it became apparent to all that he was hopelessly insane. He was committed to St Mary of Bethlehem’s asylum, where he spent twenty years before being transferred to Broadmoor for the final twenty-two years of his life. It was at Broadmoor that he painted his acclaimed masterwork, The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke[2].

  Although the picture is only fifty-four centimetres by thirty-nine, it took Dadd nine years to paint, and it remains incomplete. It is a remarkably complex piece of work which has been interpreted in many ways. Some scholars believe it to be allegorical, a satire on the times. Others consider it to be metaphysical, embodying some great and undiscovered truth.

  Its composition is this. In the foreground stands the fairy feller of the title. He holds aloft an axe and is awaiting the precise moment to swing it and cleave a large nut, which will then be fashioned into a new coach for Queen Mab. Behind the feller, the fairies look on in expectation: many fairies, beaux and ladies, strange dwarves and satyr-like creatures. And nursery-book characters too: tinker, tailor, soldier, sailor, rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief.

  There is no perspective to the painting; the numerous figures, set amidst swaying grasses and voluptuous daisies, peer from the canvas as if vying for attention.

  It is a very, very strange painting.

  Will knew his job well enough by now. He had to visually check the digital photoscan of the painting, to ensure that the colours and textures were all in focus. It was tediou
s work, or certainly would have been to anyone other than Will, but Will revelled in the hugely magnified images upon the screen, viewing every brushstroke, and brushstrokes there were aplenty upon The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke. Dadd had obsessively repainted the faces of the characters again and again and again in his insane desperation to “get them right”. Some stood out from the canvas by almost half a centimetre.

  For the Tate to print accurate reproductions for public display, all had to be exact and correct. Will would have to check not only every centimetre, but every millimetre also. He had many automatic checking systems to aid him, of course, but as these regularly broke down, the human touch was still required.

  And Will, it had to be said, possessed the human touch.

  “Oh bliss,” said Will Starling. “This is going to be very enjoyable.”

  A big flippery-floppery sound caused Will some momentary distraction. Gladys Nanken lowered her prodigious bulk into the terminal chair next to Will. “Morning, lovely boy,” she said, breathlessly and breathily.

  “Ah.” Will turned his gaze on Gladys. It was one of those rabbit-caught-in-car-headlights kind of gazes.

  “And how’s my little boy, this morning?” Gladys asked.

  “Intent upon a day of dedicated labour,” said Will. “Up against a deadline. Fearing any distraction that might result in a loss of concentration and lead inevitably to an employment termination situation. As it were.”

  “You’re all words,” said Gladys, winking lewdly at Will. “And such pretty words too. I wonder what they all mean.”

  “They mean that I must work hard or get sacked,” said Will, applying himself to the keyboard. (It was a big keyboard, with big keypads, designed for fingers that were far bigger than Will’s slender digits.)

  “But you’ll join me for lunch?” asked Gladys, making what she considered to be a comely face. “I have extra vouchers, just for you. My job is to build you up, you know.”

  “I do know.” Will sank low over his keyboard and wondered, as he had done upon many previous, similar, occasions, what exactly life was all about.

  The fat men in Will’s world held him in nothing but contempt, but the fat women loved him. They couldn’t get enough of him. If only he could love them, he would be enjoying the sex life of the gods.

  But he didn’t love them. He didn’t, on the whole, even like them. Which was a bummer, because Will would have dearly loved some sex.

  “You press on then, dearest,” said Gladys. “Lunchtime, then?”

  “Lunchtime, then,” said Will, applying himself to his keypads. Charles Fort, the twentieth-century phenomenologist (of whom Will knew nothing at all) had once written words to the effect that when drawing a circle, one can begin at any point. Exactly what this means is anyone’s guess, but it’s probably something deep and meaningful.

  Will went about his work in this self-same manner: he began anywhere, at random, examining the image of the artwork on the screen, beginning anywhere at all. Will flipped his computer rat (a larger version of a mouse), brought a tiny portion of the overall image to the screen and perused it.

  He found himself perusing the Tinker. He wore a red cap and a waistcoat, a puff-sleeved shirt and a pair of woollen breeches. Will peered at the face of the Tinker. The detail was remarkable. Will expanded the image until it all but filled his terminal screen. The detail was more than remarkable, even at this scale; you couldn’t actually see the brushstrokes. Mr Dadd must have had the most amazing eyesight. Will shook his head and whistled in admiration. It was almost photographic. It was incredible.

  Will twitched the rat backwards and forwards and scrolled up and down. There was certainly nothing faulty about the digitalisation of this portion of the image. You could see every button on the Tinker’s shirt, every fibre of the cloth.

  Will sat back in his chair and did a bit more whistling. They really knew their trade, those Victorian lads. Even the mad ones. They really knew how to paint a picture. No one could do stuff like this any more; it was a dead art. Art was a dead art. It was all computers these days, and computers that didn’t even work very well.

  Will twitched the rat once more, down to the Tinker’s hand. Look at that: the fingernails, the veins; the detail. The sheer, amazing, wonderful detail. The fingernails, the veins, the tiny hairs, the skin of the wrist. The maker’s name on the wristwatch. Will twiddled the mouse and moved on towards the Tailor. The detail of the hat, the texture of the fabric. The—

  Hold on.

  Will nicked back to the Tinker.

  The wristwatch?

  Will twiddled some more, tapped the keypads, enlarged the image.

  The wristwatch?

  This was a Victorian painting. They didn’t have wristwatches in those days. And certainly not … digital wristwatches.

  Will’s jaw dropped hugely open. There was no doubt about it at all. The Tinker in the painting, the Victorian painting, painted between eighteen fifty-five and eighteen sixty-four, was wearing a digital wristwatch. Will could clearly read the maker’s name engraved upon it, painted in minute detail: Charles Babbage and Company. Digital watchmakers to Her Majesty Queen Victoria.

  “Mr Santos,” called Will, in a strangled kind of a voice. “Mr Santos, I think we have a problem here.”

  2

  Mr Santos huffed and puffed and wobbled as he waddled. “What is all this fuss and the raising of your voice?” he enquired of Will as he reached the lad’s desk and leaned heavily upon it.

  “Something’s very wrong here,” said the lad.

  “A focusing problem? You know the procedures, you’ve passed your grades.”

  “Not a focusing problem.” Will beckoned his corpulent superior to view the screen. “I fear the painting has been tampered with. Or possibly that it is a twentieth-century forgery.”

  “Hush and hush, such nonsense.” Mr Santos leaned low and loomed over Will. “Show me,” said he.

  “It’s here.” Will enlarged the area of the Tinker’s wrist. The digital watch was displayed in all its wondrous detail.

  “Is this some kind of joke?” Mr Santos’s breath was hot upon Will’s neck. The smell of his breakfast entered Will’s nostrils.

  “A joke?” Will shook his blondy head. “Not on my part, I assure you. To tamper with such a work of genius would be nothing less than iconoclasm, in my humble opinion.”

  “Quite so.” Mr Santos peered at the image again. Will knew well enough that Mr Santos was possessed of considerable knowledge regarding the art of the Victorian age. Will wasted a great deal of Mr Santos’s time each day asking him questions. He also exerted such a degree of flattery during the asking of these questions that Mr Santos was never aware of quite how much time was being wasted.

  “What sort of brush could produce such fine detail?” Will asked. “Would it have been specially made for the artist by Winsor and Newton’s? I recall you telling me a fascinating story about—”

  “Be silent, lad; give me a minute.” Mr Santos gestured Will up from his chair and seated himself. He scanned the painting up and down, this way and that. Mr Santos made a puzzled face, and then a worried one, and then he said, “We’ll get you onto something else. I’ll call up another artist for you.”

  “But I want Dadd,” Will said, his voice raised in protest. “I’ve been really looking forward to doing Dadd. He’s one of my favourites.”

  “There’s no room for favourites. I’ll fetch you a new disc from my office. Remove this one and bring it to me there.”

  “But,” said Will, “I want Dadd. I want Dadd.”

  “Oh, isn’t that sweet,” said Gladys. “Will wants his dad.”

  “Silence, Ms Nanken,” bawled Mr Santos. “But me no buts, Starling. You just do what you’re told.”

  “Yes, but—”

  “No buts at all, if you want to keep your job.”

  Will looked down into the face of Mr Santos. The fat man’s forehead was beaded with perspiration. “As you say, sir,” said Will.r />
  “Good lad.” Mr Santos eased his bulk from Will’s chair and took to waddling away. Will watched him go, and Will noted well those beads of perspiration: although a fat and wobbling waddler, Will had never before seen Mr Santos raise a sweat.

  Will tapped keypads, closed the programme, pushed buttons on the drive unit and withdrew the disc that contained the works of Richard Dadd. Will turned it upon his palm. There was a mystery here, and clearly one that was beyond his remit to investigate. Will considered the disc. Once it left his possession, he was unlikely ever to see it again. He glanced furtively about. How long would it take to make himself a copy of the disc? There were one hundred and eighty-four paintings encrypted upon it, so a few minutes at most. But if he only copied The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke, it would be a matter of seconds.

  Of course, if he were caught doing it, he could lose his job. There was a risk here.

  Will weighed up the pros and cons and then decided upon his course of action.

  Mr Santos took the disc from Will. He was replacing a telephone receiver as Will entered his office.

  “Thank you,” said Mr Santos. “The situation is being dealt with.”

  “So is the painting a forgery?” Will asked.

  “That is for the experts to decide. I suspect later tampering. The painting was on public display for more than a hundred years. Someone with a perverse sense of humour and total lack of respect must have added the watch. Such things have happened before.”

  “Have they?” Will asked. “When and to which paintings?”

  “I’m moving you on to twentieth-century art,” said Mr Santos, ignoring Will’s question. “The works of Mark Rothko.”

  “Oh no,” said Will. “Please, the twentieth century is of no interest to me.”