Waiting for Godalming (15 page)

“Oh?” said Icarus.

“Oh, it’s you, boy, back again. I thought they …”

“Murdered me?” said Icarus.

“Not murdered surely. Took you off to have a nice sleep.”

“No,” said Icarus, approaching the barber.

“I not like the look of you, boy. You kindly leave by the door where you came.”

Icarus grasped the chair’s back and swung the barber around. The barber gripped the arms of the chair and the steel bands swished and clamped his wrists.

“Now look what you make me do, boy. Press the button on the back and set me free at once.”

“I think not,” said Icarus Smith. “I have questions to ask and you have answers to supply.”

“I tell you nothing,” said the barber. “I sign the Official Secrets Act. Say nothing to you about nothing.”

Icarus patted the barber on the head.

“Help!” screamed the barber.
“Help me!”

Icarus took the Velocette and rammed it into the barber’s mouth. “Now,” said he. “I am going to give your head a little massage. I think I can remember exactly where Ms O’Connor applied the pressure. Let’s hope I don’t get it wrong. It would really be a shame if you were to suffer some permanent damage.”

“Mmph!” went the barber, shaking his head violently from side to side. “Mmph!”

“What was that?” asked Icarus. “Did I hear you saying that you would answer all my questions, clearly and precisely, without any need for painful measures being taken?”

The barber’s head nodded up and down.

Icarus removed the Velocette.

“Please don’t think of calling out for help again,” he said. “Or I will put my thumbs in your eyes and twist them inside out.”

Johnny Boy turned his face away. “I don’t want to watch
that
,” he said.

“You’ve finished watching TV now, then, have you, chief?”

“That’s why I woke you, Barry, yes.”

“And so, are we off on our way?”

“We are, Barry, we are off on our way to Black Peter’s Tavern.”

“Black Peter’s Tavern, chief? Please don’t tell me we’re going to Black Peter’s Tavern. Oh no no. Not Black Peter’s Tavern.”

“You know it, then, Barry?”

“Never heard of it, chief.”

I’d always fancied a night at Black Peter’s Tavern. It was the kind of joint where all the big knobs hang out. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do. This joint was swanky. It had class. If you were here, you were someone.

The decor was stylish to a point where it transcended style and entered the realms of perspicuous harmony, shunning grandiloquent ornamentation in favour of a visual concinnity, garnered from aesthetic principles, which combined the austerity of Bauhaus and ebullience of Burges
[14]
into an eclectic mix before stripping them down to their fundamental essentials, to create an effect which was almost aphoristic, in that it could be experienced but never completely expressed.

So there is no need to bother with a description.

But trust me, it was sheer poetry.

I breezed in, like a breath of spring

And wafted my way to the bar

The hour was the hour known as happy

Which is happy, wherever you are.

I took in the decor, the dudes and dames

And all found favour with me

They had class written through them, like words in a rock

That you buy in Blackpool on sea.

In the time I’ve spent as a private dick

I’ve drunk in all manner of bars

From doss house dives with pools of sick

To the haunts of movie stars.

I’ve cast my fashionable shadow

In many a wayside inn

And raised my glass to beaus and belles

And sailors and Sanhedrin.

But you know you are home

When you’re in amongst your own

And this was home to me

So I leaned my elbow on the bar

And summoned the maitre d’.

“Set ’em up, fat boy,” said I. “A pint of pig’s ear and a packet of pork scratchings.”

The maitre d’ raised a manicured eyebrow and viewed me down a narrow length of nose. “Would sir care to rephrase that?” he asked.

“Certainly,” I said, with more savoir-faire than a Sophoclean sophist at a sadhus’ seminar. “A pig’s ear scratching packet and a pint of pork, please.”

“Sir has the wit of Oscar Wilde, which combined with the droll delivery of Noel Coward creates a veritable tour de force of rib-tickling ribaldry.”

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” said I.

“Kindly sling your hook,” said the maitre d’. “We don’t serve your kind in here.”

“Just make mine a Guinness, then, and forget the pork scratchings.”

“Coming right up, sir.”

The maitre d’ drew off the pint of black gold, and I waited the now legendary one hundred and nineteen seconds for it to fill to perfection.

“On the house,” said the maitre d’. “And help yourself to the chewing fat.”

“Why thank you very much,” said I. “And what brings on this generosity?”

“Look at this place,” said the maitre d’, whose name, if you hadn’t guessed, was Fangio. “This is one classy number. Top-notch clientele, thirty-two brands of whisky, carpet on the floor and even paper in the gents’ bog. This is my kind of bar, Laz. Do you think you might keep coming back to this one throughout the rest of your case? I didn’t take much to the Lion’s Mane, a wildebeest trod on my toe.”

I gave the place a once-over glance about. With my new sense of Super-vision, given to me by the Red Head tablet I’d taken in mistake for an aspirin, I could see the men within the men and the women within the women. They all looked pretty damn fab gear and groovy and not a wrong’un amongst them. This place had everything that a place that had everything had. So to speak.

“It’s definitely
us
, isn’t it?” I said.

“Too true. And look at this uniform. The waistcoat favours my wasp-waist and the fitted slacks show off my snake hips to perfection. You look pretty dapper in the new trenchcoat and fedora, by the way.”

“We’re a regular pair of dandies, ain’t we?”

Fangio tipped me the wink. “So,” said he. “What brings you here?”

“A cab,” I said. “But I left it outside.”

Oh how we laughed.

And laughed.

The barber at the Ministry of Serendipity wasn’t laughing at all. The hands of Icarus Smith gripped the barber’s head.

“Tell me”, said Icarus, “all about this barber’s shop. Tell me
exactly
why it’s here.”

The barber’s lips were all a-quiver. Icarus kneaded his skull.

“It’s for training purposes,” whimpered the barber.

“Go on,” said Icarus. “Tell me.”

“To train up operatives in the art of exo-cranial massage. We’ve trained thousands. Thousands and thousands.”

“To what purpose?” Icarus asked.

“World peace,” blurted the barber.

Icarus squeezed his head.

“It’s true. Everybody goes to a barber’s or hairdresser’s at some time. By using exo-cranial massage on them, the Ministry’s operatives keep them in a passive state.”

“Keep them under control,” said Icarus.

“I wouldn’t put it like that,” said the barber, hunching down his head.

“I would,” said Icarus, yanking up the barber’s head. “So the Ministry has infiltrated thousands of these trained operatives into barbers and hairdressers up and down the country, so that they can use their techniques to keep the population pacified and under control.”

“I prefer the term world peace,” said the barber.

“I prefer the term world control,” said Icarus.

“Well, at least we know where all the workers in the orange jumpsuits and hard hats are,” said Johnny Boy. “They’re squeezing heads in barber’s shops.”

Icarus released the barber’s head. “There’s more to this,” he said.

“What?” said Johnny Boy. “More than world control?”

Icarus addressed the barber. “Are there operatives all over the world doing this?” he asked. “Or only here in England?”

“Only here, as far as I know,” said the barber.

“I thought as much,” said Icarus.

Johnny Boy looked up at the lad. “There are all kinds of colours whirling around you,” he said. “Just what’s going on in your mind?”

“Only this. What if all this angel and demon carry-on is a localized phenomenon? Centred right here in London. And what if it’s natural for people to be able to see demons and angels? Without needing the Red Head drug?”

“Then they’d see them, wouldn’t they?”

“And some do. But they’re considered mad. But the rest don’t. And why? Because they’re having their heads subtly massaged every time they go to the barber’s or the hairdresser’s. From when they’re children onwards.”

“And the massages affect the brain so people can’t see the truth?”

“That’s what I think,” said Icarus.

“Angels and demons?” said the barber. “You talking the jobbies from the bull’s behind parts, that’s what I’m thinking in
my
head.”

“Just a couple more questions,” said Icarus, “and then I’ll be done with you.”

“I plead the Fifth Amendment,” said the barber. “Also the Geneva Convention and the Waldorf salad. I tell you nothing more.”

“How many people work here?” asked Icarus.

“I tell you
that
,” said the barber. “About half a dozen. Me, Philomena the masseuse, Mr Cormerant the wages clerk, some guards that walk up and down. The chauffeur, no, he got stabbed in the corridor. The
new
chauffeur, the women in the canteen where nobody goes to eat, because the food tastes like pigeon poops. And the guv’nor, of course.”

“The guv’nor runs the Ministry?”

“That’s what guv’nors do, ain’t it?”

“And what is the guv’nor’s name?”

“Mr Godalming,” said the barber.

“Mr
Godalming
?” said Johnny Boy.

And so did Icarus Smith.

“Mr Godalming,” said the barber once again.

Icarus looked at Johnny Boy.

And Johnny Boy looked back at him.

“This Mr Godalming,” said Icarus to the barber. “What does he look like? Does he by any chance look like Richard E. Grant?”

“Ha ha ha,” the barber laughed. “No, he look nothing like Richard E. Grant. His father look like Richard E. Grant. But he don’t. He look more like Peter Stringfellow. He’s young Mr Godalming.

“Mr
Colin
Godalming.”

“Still waiting for Mr Godalming, Laz?” said the maitre d’ with a grin.

“In a manner of speaking,” said I. “I’m right, I assume, that this is the bar where all the media types come after they’ve been interviewed by daytime TV.”

“You’re right there, my friend.”

“Perfect,” said I. “Because I saw this guy on TV today and I’d really like to meet him.”

“Yeah?” said Fange. “Who’s that?”

“Celebrity hairdresser,” said I. “Looks a bit like Peter Stringfellow. The name’s Godalming.

“Mr
Colin
Godalming.”

“It’s a mullet,” said Fangio the malnourished maitre d’.

“It’s a what?” I asked, in a readiness of response.

“The haircut Peter Stringfellow has. Mullet, the classic 1970s haircut, as favoured by members of the Bay City Rollers and damn near everybody else. Peter Stringfellow is the last man on Earth to favour the mullet, now that Pat Sharp’s done away with his.”

“I’m more of a Ramón Navarro man, myself,” said I. “I can’t be having with hair that sticks out under my fedora.”

“Class,” said the string bean Fangio. “Pure class.”

“So he comes in here, does he, this Colin Godalming?”

“Regular as clockwork,” said the wasted one. “He should be arriving here”, Fangio studied the watch on his twig-like wrist, “in about ten minutes’ flat, or if not flat, then he’ll walk in upright, as usual.”

Oh how we laughed at that one.

“Well,” said I, to the half-starved meagre shrimp of a maitre d’. “That leaves us with ten minutes of prime toot-talking time.”

“You won’t get a word out of me,” said the scrawny wretch, “until you drop all those derogatory references to my slender, yet perfectly proportioned, physique.”

“Do you have to run around in the shower to get wet?” I asked.

“I’m warning you, Laz.”

“I heard that you once took off all your clothes, painted your head red and went to a fancy dress party as a thermometer.”

“One more and you’re out of here!”

“All right, fair enough. So what do you want to talk toot about?”

“Well, actually, Laz, I’m thinking about buying a sofa. Is there anything you’d particularly recommend?”

“Hm,” said I. “A sofa. Well, it all depends on getting one that’s the right size and shape, at the price you can afford.”

“Go on,” said the maitre d’ with the slender, yet perfectly proportioned, physique.

“You see, you have your chesterfield, your G Plan three-seater, also available as a two, your classic chaise-longue, your Le Corbusier chaise-longue and your drop-end Bavarian chaise-longue with the tapestried upholstery and silk vanity tassels.”

“You sure know your sofas,” said Fangio.

“Buddy,” I told him, “in my business, knowing your sofas can mean the difference between buttering scones on a battered settee and licking lard on a love couch. If you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.”

“I know where you’re coming from,” said the Fange. “For I’ve been there myself, on a cheap away-day to Norwich. What else would you suggest?”

“Well, there’s your studio couch, your box ottoman, your oak settle, which with the addition of cushions can easily be converted into a sofa.”

“I had an aunt who converted to Islam once,” said Fangio. “She thought she was converting to North Sea gas, but she ticked the wrong box on the application form.”

“Did she have a sofa, your aunt?”

“No, just an armchair and a pair of pouffes.”

“Ample seating. Did she live on her own?”

“She does now, the pouffes moved out. They’ve opened a candle shop in Kemptown.”

“The air’s very bracing in Kemptown. Someone told me that it was good for rheumatism. So I went there and caught it.”

“You can’t
catch
rheumatism, can you?”

“It all depends who’s throwing it,” I said. “Boys will be boys.”

And we paused for a moment to take stock and think of the good times.

“My problem regarding the sofa remains unsolved,” said the slim boy. “I’d like the best, but I can only afford the very worst.”

“Ah,” said I. “What you have there is a Couch 22 situation.”

Oh how we laughed once more.

Fangio dried his eyes upon an oversized red gingham handkerchief. “My, I did enjoy that,” said he. “That was top class toot. But look, here comes Mr Godalming.”

“Colin Godalming,” said Johnny Boy. “This would be the third child of God, who inherits the Earth. Mr Woodbine told us all about him.”

“Yes,” said Icarus. “I’m well aware of that.”

“And it makes sense,” said Johnny Boy, “if God’s family have all been forced to move down here to Earth. Colin has his father murdered and falsifies His will. So he now owns the planet.”

“Yes yes,” said Icarus. “I get the picture.”

“And he’s teamed up with the wrong’uns, which is why he came up with this scheme to massage everyone’s heads, so they can’t see what’s really going on. He’s been planning it all for years.”

“Yes,” said Icarus. “I understand what you’re saying.”

“That Mr Woodbine is a genius,” said Johnny Boy. “He knew it was Colin from the start.”

“No,” said Icarus. “Just stop that. It all fits too easily together.”

“Well, it would if it’s correct. Why go looking for a more complicated solution?”

“Because this is my brother we’re talking about. My mad brother. And if we get drawn into his madness we won’t be able to escape from it. It’s infectious. It’s like a disease. I’ve come down here to try to solve this myself. All I have to do is stay away from him for a week. If that’s possible.”

Johnny Boy stared up into the face of Icarus Smith. “Please don’t take offence at this,” he said, “but surely I detect a bit of sibling rivalry here. If Mr Woodbine really is your brother, then you should be proud of him. And if he’s not your brother, then you’ve projected the face of your brother onto him, because your brother is your hero. Which might explain why you are as you are. The lad who seeks to make a name for himself as the relocator who set the world to rights. Either way it means that you really do look up to your brother, but you can’t bring yourself to admit it.”

“No,” said Icarus. “It’s not true. I am what I am because I had a dream. My brother lives in a world of dreams, but I inhabit reality.”

“You’re just digging a deeper pit for yourself,” said Johnny Boy. “This is all dead Freudian.”

“Let’s go,” said Icarus.

“To where?”

“To find Colin Godalming, of course.”

“Mr Godalming?” I said, sticking out my hand for a shake. “Mr Colin Godalming?”

The dude looked me coolly up and down. It was clear that I had the right guy here, I could tell by the way he shone. Streamers of light twinkled prettily about him and a golden glow, which wasn’t just the mullet, drenched his shoulders.

“And who might you be?” asked the third child of God, declining my offer of a hearty handclasp.

“I’m a private investigator,” I replied, in a tone which left no doubt exactly where I stood on the matter. “The name’s Woodbine, Lazlo Woodbine.” And added, “Some call me Laz.”

The guy regarded me as one would a pigeon squit plopped on a pampered pompadour. “Well, Mr Woodless,” he said, in a tone which left no doubt exactly where
he
stood on the matter. “I don’t need a private investigator.”

“It’s Wood
bine
,” I said. “And believe me, buddy, you do.”

The guy gave me the kind of look I wouldn’t waste on a whippet. “What is this all about?” he asked. “I don’t have time to stand around here talking toot with a chap dressed up as a handbag.”

“
A hand bag
?” said I, in my finest
Charlie’s Aunt
. Or was it
The Importance of Being Earnest
? I always get the two confused. Or perhaps it was
HMS Pinafore
. No, I’m sure it was
Charlie’s Aunt
.

“It might have been
my
aunt,” said Fangio. “She used to have a handbag.”

“Keep out of this, Jiffy,” I told the emaciated maitre d’. “This is between me and Dolly Parton here.”

“Handbag!” said Colin and he tossed back his hair and primped at his golden shower.

“Fella,” I said, “let me ask you one question. What’s red and white and lies dead in an alleyway?”

“I have no idea,” said Colin.

“A bullet-ridden corpse,” said I. “And that corpse is your dad.”

“That was subtle,” said Fangio. “And who’s this Jiffy, anyway?”

“My dad?” said Colin. “What are you talking about?”

“Your dad bought the big one.”

“My daddy is dead?”

“Deader than a stone gnome in a whore’s window box,” said I. “Colder than an Eskimo’s nipple at an Alaskan alfresco piercing party. More bereft of life than a rerun of the
Monty Python
parrot sketch.”

“
That
dead?” said Fangio.

“And then some. Kaput.”

“No,” said Colin, getting a blubber on now. “It can’t be true. Not my poor dear daddy. Tell me that it isn’t true.”

“It’s true,” I said. “Truer than the noble love that wins the heart of a maiden fair. More unvarnished than a dunny door in a pine restorer’s stripping tank. As factual as a …”

“Fat fop in a foolish fedora?” said Fangio. “Only a suggestion, you don’t have to use it.”

“Oh my poor dear daddy.” Colin took to wailing and gnawing his knuckles and carrying on like a silly big girl.

“You’ve upset him,” said the bone-bag of a maitre d’.

“Enough of the thin-boy jibes,” said Fange. “I’m only human too, you know. Cut me and do I not bleed?”

“We can check that out,” I said. “Give us a lend of the knife you use to hack up your chewing fat.”

“No, really, Laz. I’m not kidding. You can be very cruel sometimes. And the guy’s really upset. Look at him, he’s crying.”

“He’s faking it,” I said.

“I’m not,” blubbed Colin.

“You are too,” said I.

“Blubb blubb blubb,” went Colin.

“Give him a hug,” said Fangio. “That sometimes helps.”

“I certainly will not,” I said. “I’m not getting
Tears on my Trenchcoat
”.
[15]

“What’s the trouble?” asked a broad-shouldered dame in a pale pink peplos and Day-Glo dungarees. She had the kind of face that you generally see only on a platter with an apple stuck into its gob.

“Butt out, Miss Piggy,” I told her. “It’s nothing to do with you.”

The porcine dame burst into tears.

“Now look what you’ve done,” said Fangio.

“And you keep out of it too, skeleton boy.”

“Waaah,” went Fangio, breaking down upon the bar.

“Blubb blubb blubb,” went Colin.

“Boo hoo” and “snort” went the pig-faced lady.

“Can I be of assistance?” asked a solitary cyclist who’d just popped in for a Perrier water. He wore one of those figure-hugging Lycra suits that only look good on Lynford Christie, and one of those streamlined bikers’ helmets that don’t look good on anybody.

“Clear off, you Spandexed poseur,” I told him.

“Sob sob sob,” went the cyclist.

Now I don’t know what it is about crying. It must be infectious, I guess. A bit like yawning really, I suppose. Somebody yawns and you want to yawn too. Perhaps that’s a conditioned reflex. Or something atavistic, dating back to our tribal ancestry. When, if the headman yawned, everybody yawned and the tribe all went to bed. Or, if the headman cried, you joined him too, in a good old howling session. I’m not too hot on the history of man, so I couldn’t say for a certainty.

What I could say for certain was this, however.

It wasn’t my fault.

OK, I might have started Colin off, but he was only faking it. And Fangio is a sissy boy and the pig-faced dame had it coming. And as for the solitary cyclist and the three students and the retired colourman and the two young women from Essex and the humpty-backed geezer and the continuity girl from
Blue Peter
and the lady with the preposterous bosom and that oik with the mobile phone, who said he’d call for an ambulance, well sure, OK, I might have pointed out their shortcomings, when they came muscling in to what clearly was none of their business. But for them all to start bawling their eyes out and saying that it was all
my
fault, that was laying it thicker than a concrete coat on a Baghdad bombproof bunker.

I mean, blaming me?

I could have wept.

In fact, I nearly did.

“Shut up!” I shouted. “Shut up the lot of you.”

“Waaaaaah,” they went, in chorus.

“Will you stop all this weeping, you bunch of witless wimps?”

“Waaaaaah!” they reiterated, somewhat louder this time.

“He called me Quasimodo,” whined the humpty-backed geezer.

“He said I had a face like a cow’s behind,” squalled a woman with a face like a cow’s behind.

“He impugned my manhood,” snivelled a closet shirtlifter.

“He referred to me as a pretentious ninny,” ululated a thespian.

“He murdered my daddy!” howled Colin.

There was a lot of silence then.

“He did
what
?” asked the guy with the sore on his lip, which, I’d mentioned in passing, was probably the pox.

“He murdered my poor dear daddy. Shot him down in an alleyway.”

“I did nothing of the kind,” I rightfully protested.

“Assassin!” cried a crying lady, who, let’s face it,
did
look a lot like Jabba the Hutt.

“Murderer!” shrieked the bloke with the birthmark that I’d drawn attention to.

“String him up,” yelled the woman with the questionable hairdo that I’d well and truly questioned.

“I’ll get a rope,” hollered Fangio.

“Oi, Fange,” said I. “Turn it in.”

“Sorry, Laz, I got carried away.”

“Murdered my poor dear daddy,” went Colin again.

And would you believe it?

Or even if you wouldn’t.

The whole damn lot of them went for
me
!

“If you ask me,” said Johnny Boy, “we’re lost.”

“I’m not asking you,” said Icarus Smith.

“No need to be shirty,” said Johnny Boy. “Just because I put you straight about the relationship you have with your brother.”

“It isn’t
that
,” said Icarus Smith, even though it was. “But actually, I think you’re right. We’re lost.”

They had wandered a goodly way amongst the corridors of the Ministry of Serendipity. They had left the barber far behind, strapped into his chair with his Velocette in his mouth. But now, somewhere in the middle of what might have been anywhere, they were well and truly lost, which wasn’t a nice thing to be.

“Perhaps we should retrace our steps.”

“No,” said Icarus. “We’ll go on. We’ll leave this to fate. Which way would you choose?”