The Witches of Chiswick

by Robert Rankin

  At 8.37am, the 8.02 morning train to Paddington drew into Brentford Central station. Captain Starling, somewhat shaky about the knee regions, but otherwise with his dignity intact, climbed into the first class carriage and sat down heavily.

  The carriage was unoccupied but for a single figure, who appeared to be sleeping. He was a large gentleman in an Amberly topcoat of grey moleskin with a matching top hat and gloves. A swordstick with a silver skull-shaped mount rested across his knees. Captain Starling grunted impatiently and tapped his polished heels upon the carriage floor.

  At length the train left the station and proceeded to Paddington.

  The launching of the Electric Airship Dreadnaught was indeed the event of 1885.

  The Times newspaper recorded the details upon its front page:

  “We live in an age of marvels and we, the British people, are privileged that so many of these marvels should be the products of our own sovereign nation. The triumphs of modern engineering, brought to wondrous fruition by Mr Isambard Kingdom Brunel, are well known to all, and The Electric Airship Dreadnaught must rank as his single greatest achievement. The sheer scale and magnificence of this aerial warship are awesome to behold. Over fifteen hundred feet in length and capable of transporting entire regiments equipped with the very latest ordinance and armoured flying carriages, the airship is powered through the sky by two great electric turbine engines. These are the creation of Mr Nikola Tesla, whose mighty power towers ornament the skyline of the capital and are daily being erected the length and breadth of the country, to supply electrical energy, broadcast on a radio frequency without the need for cables, to every home and place of industry throughout our fair land. Mr Tesla’s electronic marvels could not, of course, have been made possible without the aid of the recently knighted Sir Charles Babbage, inventor of the calculating machine and many other invaluable and innovative inventions, which have advanced the nation and the British Empire.

  “It seemed as if all of London had turned out to witness the launching of the Dreadnaught. In the great stands that had been erected for the occasion were to be seen renowned Music-Hall entertainers such as Little Tich, performer of the ever-popular Big Boot Dance, and Count Otto Black, proprietor of The Circus Fantastique. The playwright Oscar Wilde was in attendance and also the fashionable artist Mr Richard Dadd, whose latest portrait of Her Majesty the Queen (God bless Her) is to be seen on display at the Tate Gallery. Lords and ladies beyond the scope of counting were to be viewed in their finery, but it was the crowds of commoners waving their Union Jacks and singing in raucous tones that presented the most colourful cavalcade of characters. Every working type seemed to have been represented and it is only to be supposed that virtually all trade must have ceased in the great metropolis for this most special of days. Costermongers were much in evidence, as were crossing sweepers, street piemen, coffee-stall keepers, sellers of dolls and sponges, flypapers and beetle wafers, snuff and tobacco boxes, wash leathers and rat poisons. There were draymen and ragmen, tallymen and mudlarks, coal-heavers, lightermen and big bargees. A lady in a straw hat hawked copies of The War Cry and all rejoiced as Her Majesty Queen Victoria (God bless Her) christened the mighty sky vessel.

  “But here a grim incident brought an unwelcome discord to the otherwise harmonious proceedings. An anarchist arose from the crowd, fought his way through the Metropolitan Police cordon and rushed at Her Majesty.

  “His evil intent was however thwarted by the heroic actions of one Captain Ernest Starling of the Queen’s Own Electric Fusiliers, who, as if sensing the imminent attack, had positioned himself to receive it. Captain Starling cut down the assassin with his sabre, but was mortally wounded in the process.

  “He has been posthumously awarded the Victoria Cross for his supreme gallantry.”

  8

  Will Starling awoke from the dead.

  He awoke with a terrible scream and clutched at his heart.

  “Easy,” called the voice of Tim, and firm hands pressed upon Will’s shoulders. “Easy now.” These hands raised Will into the vertical plane.

  “You passed out,” said Tim. “You’re all right now, I think.”

  “I’m not. I’m dead. I’m—” Will clutched some more at himself and slowly opened his eyes. “Tim?” he said. “It’s you. It’s Tim.”

  “It’s Tim,” said Tim. “You don’t look altogether perky.”

  “Nor would you if you’d been stabbed in the chest by an anarchist.”

  “Oh dear,” said Tim. “I knew you shouldn’t have had that third drink.”

  “Drink?” Will blinked his eyes and stared all around and about. “Where am I?” he asked.

  “Chiswick Central,” said Tim. “You said you were feeling ill, then you went to the onboard toilet. You were in there for ages, then you staggered out and fell down in the carriage. We missed our stop. I hauled you off the tram here.”

  “The tram? I’m here. It wasn’t me.”

  “It certainly was you. You made a right exhibition of yourself.”

  “Getting stabbed. That wasn’t me.”

  “I’ve no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “The Retro. It worked, Tim. I can remember everything. Generations and generations of Starlings. It’s all in my head.”

  “You took Retro?” Tim looked genuinely alarmed. “You took Retro? When did you take Retro?”

  Will stared hard at Tim, which wasn’t easy as the world was now going in and out of focus. “You gave it to me. In the Shrunken Head.”

  “We haven’t been to the Shrunken Head for weeks.”

  “We were there tonight. The Slaughterhouse Five were on.”

  “They’re on next week. Next Friday night.” Tim peered into the eyes of Will. “You really are on something aren’t you?”

  “We need a drink,” said Will. “A big drink.”

  “You’ve had enough, come on.”

  “Tim,” said Will. “It’s all right. I’m all right. I’m not going to turn you in to the DOCS or anything for giving me the Retro.”

  “I didn’t give you any Retro! Will you please stop this, Will.”

  “You stop it,” said Will. “I’ve told you it’s all right.”

  “And you’ve told me it’s next Friday night, which it’s not.”

  “So much stuff,” said Will. “So much stuff.”

  “Stuff?” Tim asked.

  “In my head. All those memories. You were right, about the things on that website. The Nautilus. The digital watches. There was a spaceship too.”

  “I really do have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “Yeah, right,” said Will. “And it’s Thursday, not Friday.”

  “Thursday, a week before the Friday you’re talking about,” Tim held out his wristwatch towards Will. “Check the day,” he said. “Check the date.”

  Will checked the day and the date. “Your watch could be wrong,” he said.

  “Now you’re being absurd,” Tim laughed. Heartily. “My watch, like yours, like everybody else’s, is linked to the world timepiece in Greenwich. It can’t be wrong.”

  “Well, yours is.” Will flashed his own wristwatch. “Observe.”

  Tim observed. “I observe,” said Tim. “Thursday.”

  “It’s Friday.” Will took to observing. “It’s Thursday,” he said, and he said it in a voice of considerable surprise – and a great deal of shock too.

  “No,” said Will. “Oh no no no. Then everything really happened. It wasn’t the drug. I really did go back into the past.”

  “Calm down,” Tim clamped his hand over Will’s mouth. “There are people about.”

  Will’s eyes flashed to the left and the right. The station was all but deserted, all but for himself and Tim and a large noble looking gentleman who sat at the end of the platform. Tramcars slowly dragged themselves by, but no one got off and the gentleman didn’t get on.

  “Listen to me,” Tim whispered close at Will’s ear. “I have got a connection who said
he could get me some Retro. But not until next week.”

  Will tore Tim’s hand away. “But you did give it to me. At the Shrunken Head. We were there. The Slaughterhouse Five were playing.”

  “That’s next week, Will. Next Friday night.”

  “Then all of it is true. I really did go back physically.”

  Tim laughed once again. But this time it was a humourless laugh. “Drugs don’t do that,” he said. “Drugs can’t do that. But …”

  “But?” Will was very wobbly now and he leaned upon Tim for support.

  “But if you did take Retro, what can you remember?”

  “All of it, everything. About the things we talked about. They’re all true.”

  “You’ve got me again. We didn’t talk about anything.”

  “About the digital watch in the painting.”

  “I’m shrugging,” said Tim. “Feel me shrug.”

  “The Fairy Feller’s Masterstroke.”

  “Still shrugging,” said Tim. “Never heard of such a painting.”

  “But you saw me on the security scan, hiding it.”

  “Perhaps we should go and have a drink,” said Tim. “And you can tell me all about it. Not that I believe a word, you understand, but because, well, you know in movies and stuff, when something really weird happens to someone and no one believes them. I’ve always wondered what that would be like in real life. You know, if your best friend turned out to be an alien from outer space or something. What would you really feel, if it were really real? And I don’t have the faintest idea what is going on in your head now, and you might just be a stone-bonker. But, and this is the big but, what if it’s not? I’d hate to be the one you confided the truth to, and the one who didn’t believe you. So, what say we give it a go? Have a drink and you tell me the lot and then we try to figure out whether it’s real and if it is, what we should do about it.”

  “Have you quite finished?” Will asked.

  “Not sure,” said Tim. “Did you get the general gist of what I meant?”

  “Vaguely,” said Will. “It’s a kind of, you-might-believe-me-if-you-fancy-the-sound-of-it, kind of jobbie, right?”

  “Something along those lines. A drink?”

  “A drink,” said Will. “And I’ll tell you a story that you really won’t believe is really real, but will really want to believe is really real, if you get my general gist.”

  “Not really,” said Tim. “But let’s go for it.”

  And so they went for it.

  The pub they went for it in was known as the Flying Swan. It was a pub that Tim had never been to before. They reached it after a long and tedious walk from Chiswick. A walk necessitated by the fact that the never-ending tramcar system ran only in a clockwise direction. Which meant that had they taken it, they would have to have travelled throughout the entirety of London Central before reaching Brentford. Which was only one stop up the line.

  Of the Flying Swan itself, what can be said?

  Well, much actually.

  The Flying Swan was a late Victorian public house which stood upon what had once been the Ealing road, but was now a paved walkway to the rear of the housing tower where Tim and Will both lived.

  The Flying Swan had survived not only the “sensitive” interior decorations that twentieth-century brewery owners had meted out to it, but the seemingly inevitable destruction that awaited it in the twenty-first century, when Brentford was all but levelled for redevelopment and the great housing towers erected. The Flying Swan had survived because of an old charter lodged with the Crown Estate and given the Royal seal of approval by Queen Victoria. This charter gave the Swan a thousand years of protection against demolition. Only one other building in Brentford had similarly survived and this was a late Georgian house on what had once been Brentford’s elegant Butts Estate which belonged to a gentleman by the name of Professor Slocombe, who dwelt in it during the twentieth century, with his elderly retainer, Gammon.

  As to the interior of the Swan, what can be said?

  Well, much, but perhaps a little at a time.

  It was now a most elderly pub, sedate, having age to its credit rather than its detriment. It retained the features that make a pub a pub, rather than a theme bar, which give it dignity: a mahogany saloon bar counter, eight hand-drawn ales upon tap, a row of Britannia pub tables, a darts board, a long-disabled jukebox.

  Its windows, of etched glass, were tinted by a million smoke-filled breaths. Its carpet, somewhat bare of thread, had known the footfalls of a thousand heroes. And its walls wore faded paper, patterned in the past.

  A yard of ale glass hung upon the wall behind the bar and below it, upon shelves, were Spanish souvenirs, bottles of rare vintage, and ancient postcards showing rooftop views of Brentford in a past now distant.

  And between these and the counter stood a barman of the part-time persuasion.

  And this part time barman’s name was Neville.

  “Good evening gents,” said this fellow as Tim and Will entered the saloon bar. “And how may I serve you?”

  Will looked at Tim.

  And Tim looked at Will.

  “Well,” said Will, perusing the row of antique beer engines.

  “I have eight hand-drawn ales on pump,” said Neville, with much pride in his voice. “A selection which now exceeds any other pub in the locality by …” Neville paused. “Eight,” he continued.

  Will smiled towards the lord of the bar. “And what would you recommend to a weary traveller?” he asked.

  “A pint of Large,” said Neville. “And for your companion?”

  “Same for me,” said Tim.

  Neville did the business, drawing with the practised hand of the true professional. At length, when he was satisfied that all was, as ever was, and ever should be, he presented his new patrons with their pints.

  Will viewed the pints upon the polished countertop.

  “Supreme,” was what he had to say.

  “Take a taste,” said Neville.

  And Will took a taste.

  “Beyond supreme,” he said, when he had tasted it.

  “Then all is indeed as it should be,” said Neville.

  Tim too took to tasting. “On me,” he said. “Where’s the monitor?”

  “Monitor?” said Neville.

  “The iris-scanner,” said Tim. “So I can credit you for the drinks.”

  “We don’t have one of those, I’m afraid,” said Neville. “This is a cash-only establishment.”

  “What?” went Tim. “But no one’s used cash for the last fifty years.”

  “I had noticed that trade’s been dropping off,” said Neville.

  Tim shook his head and his features vanished beneath his hair.

  “Here,” said Will, delving into his trouser pocket and bringing out a handful of change. “Try this.”

  Tim made a clearing in his hair and peered through it. “Antique money,” he said. “Where did you get that?”

  “It’s a long story; just pay the man.”

  Tim took the coins and handed some to Neville.

  Neville rang up No Sale on the ancient cash register and presented Tim with his change. “I think you must have undercharged me,” said Tim.

  “On the contrary,” said Neville. “Correct to the penny.”

  “Then thank you very much.”

  Tim followed Will towards a corner table, where they seated themselves upon comfy chairs and took further sup from their pints.

  “Unbelievable,” said Tim. “Perfect ale. I never even knew this place existed.”

  Will smiled a knowing smile.

  “You’ve been here before?” Tim asked.

  “Oh yes,” said Will.

  “You never told me about it.”

  “It wasn’t during your lifetime.”

  Tim took a further sup. “This sounds promising,” he said. “I feel wackiness coming on. How come we’re the only people drinking in this wonderful bar?”

  “All will be explained,” sai
d Will, taking further sup. “This really is the best, isn’t it?”

  “Spot on,” Tim raised his pint to Will. “So, just to recap, if I may. You’ve been into the future, to next Friday, where I gave you Retro, which enabled you to recall generations of your past. Then you travelled back into the past physically. And now you’ve brought me to a pub on my very block-step, which I’ve never seen before, to drink the finest beer I have ever tasted, that you apparently have tasted before, but not in my lifetime. Have I got all this right?”

  “There’s a lot more,” said Will. “A whole lot more.”

  “Oh good,” said Tim. “I’m really loving this.”

  “There’s a lot that you’re not going to love.”

  “Well don’t tell me any of that.”

  “I have to tell you all of it. It’s not finished yet. It’s far from finished. In fact it’s only just begun and you have to help me, which is why I’m here.”

  “But you were never away.”

  “I was in the toilet,” said Will. “On the tramcar.”

  “You were,” said Tim, supping more ale. “I remember that.”

  “I went into the toilet, but the me who went into the toilet was not the same me that came out again. The original me, that went in, is still on the tram. I told him to carry on all the way around London Central before going home. I had to be very careful not to touch him. It’s a time-paradox thing. To do with David Warner in the old Time Cop movie. But we won’t go into that yet.”

  “Still loving it,” said Tim. “But already starting to get a tad confused. Do you think you might explain?”

  “It’s a long story,” said Will. “And I do mean a long story. It lasts for about three hundred years.”

  “I’d better get some more beer in then.”

  “It’s my round,” said Will.

  “It’s your money I’ll be paying with,” said Tim. “You tell the tale, I’ll get in the beers.”