Waiting for Godalming (17 page)

“We’re here,” said Icarus, paying off the cabbie. “Please wait, we’ll be back in just a minute, we have to pick up my brother.”

“Sibling rivalry,” said the doctor. “You admire your brother, but you can’t bring yourself to admit it. He is your hero. He always arrives in the nick of time to get you out of your sticky situation.”

“No,” I said. “It’s not like that at all.”

“I don’t like this at all,” puffed Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus ran towards the entrance of the hospital. “That horrid dark automobile again. Why is it following us?”

“Perhaps my forged memos didn’t convince them. Come on, try to keep up.”

“The pretence you’re keeping up is nothing more than that,” said the doctor. “If you could come to terms with your relationship with your brother, you would be well on the way to recovery.”

“Which way to Mr Woodbine’s room?” asked Icarus.

The male nurse looked up from the reception desk. He had on a little badge that said, “Hi, my name is Cecil.”

“Mr Who?” asked male nurse Cecil.

“Mr Woodbine,” said the breathless Icarus. “He’s being held in the psychiatric wing. I’ve come here to sign his release form.”

Nurse Cecil made little lip-smacking sounds. “There’s a lot of paperwork involved in that kind of thing,” he said. “Perhaps you should make an appointment. Next week some time.”

“Next week will be too late. I have to see him now and take him out of here.”

“Are you a relative?”

“I’m his brother. I’m Icarus Smith. I signed the form to commit him.”

“How come your name’s Smith and his is Woodstock?”

“It’s Wood
bine
,” said Icarus. “Lazlo Woodbine. Some call him Laz. Not that I ever have.”

“Shit!” said Johnny Boy. “They’re coming in the door, Icarus. Two of them and they’re wrong’uns.”

Icarus made fists at male nurse Cecil. “Which room is my brother in?” he demanded to be told.

“I shall have to ask you to leave,” said Cecil. “Leave of your own free will, or I’ll get out the big stick that I punish the naughty loons with and ram it right up your …”

“Tunnel of love,” said the doctor. “We call it our tunnel of love therapy. We will bring together you and your brother. Take you slowly through the darkness of despair and out into the light of love. At the other end of the tunnel.”

“I don’t belong here in the psychiatric wing,” I told the doctor. “You’ve got it all wrong. I’m not a loon.”

“We never use the word loon here,” said the doctor. “All our staff are highly trained psychiatric carers. You’ll be treated well here. Here where it’s quiet and peaceful.”

“That’s SHITE!” said Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus ran along. “Another stick of SHITE. What are you going to do with that?”

“What do you think I’m going to do with it?”

“Blow the door off your brother’s room?”

“Or wherever he’s being held.”

“I never did ask how you managed to light the fuse last time without any matches.”

“Then don’t ask this time either.”

“Time,” said the doctor, rising from his desk and taking himself over to the door. “Time is all you really need, Mr Woodbine. Time to put all the pieces back into the right places. Time to understand the true relationship that you have with your brother. That you do admire him, which is why you have created this fantasy life for yourself. Why you always believe that he can ultimately get you out of any sticky situation, although you remain in denial of this.”

The doctor took down his jacket from the back of the door.

“This door,” said Icarus.

“Why?” asked Johnny Boy.

“Fate,” said Icarus. “Let’s leave it to fate.”

And Icarus lit up the SHITE.

I looked dumbly at the doctor. I’m rarely lost for words, especially wise ones. But I was lost for words now.

I mean, hey. This was Woodbine he was dealing with. Lazlo Woodbine, private eye. The greatest dick that ever there was. I wasn’t some wimp with a brother fixation. I could handle
myself
. I’m the best in the business and I didn’t need this creep trying to make out that I was some kind of a loon.

“!!!”
went the silent explosive.

“That silence doesn’t get any less loud,” said Johnny Boy.

The doctor was there, putting on his coat.

And then the doctor was gone.

Gone.

Just gone!

Melted to a steamy pool of goo upon the floor.

Icarus burst into the office.

“Come on, Laz,” he said. “I need your help. I’m busting you out of here.”

I stared at the guy as he stood in the doorway.

And friends, I got all choked up with tears.

“Brother,” I said, breaking down in a blubber. “Brother Icarus, it’s you. I’m not Lazlo Woodbine any more. I’m cured. I’m your brother Edwin. Come and give me a hug.”

“Come on, Laz, we have to go,” said Icarus breathing hard. “There’s wrong’uns after us. Come on.” The resident patient had his arms out for a hug. Icarus shook him by the shoulders. “There’s no time. Hurry.”

“Come on, Mr Woodbine,” Johnny Boy tugged at the patient’s leg. “We need you, we do. Come on.”

“I want to give my brother a hug,” blubbed the man who once was Woodbine.

Johnny Boy’s mouth became a perfect O and then an inverted U. “He’s lost it,” he gasped. “He’s not working in the first person any more.”

Icarus grasped the weeper’s hand. “They’ve done something to him. They’ve drugged him up.” He gave the hand a squeeze. “Come with me and hurry now,” he said.

Johnny Boy scampered over to the doctor’s desk.

“What are you doing?” Icarus glanced to the door. Marching footstep noises were coming from the corridor.

“We can’t go out without his trusty Smith and Wassaname.” Johnny Boy rooted around in the desk drawers. “Got it,” he said. “Oh, and
this
.”

“What’s that?”

“The spectremeter.”

“Bring
that
!” said Icarus. “And come on.”

They didn’t leave through the melted door hole, they left via the window. Windows are always good in movies, good for busting through. All that splintering glass in slow motion. It never fails to excite.

“You could have leapt right through that window,” puffed Johnny Boy, as he and Icarus dragged the bewildered brotherly type across the hospital lawn.

“It was easier just to open it.” Icarus yanked and pulled. “Come on, Laz, you can go faster than that.”

“I need my bed,” blubbered the stumbler. “I haven’t slept for a week. I can’t keep my eyes open. Take me home to Mum, Icarus. Tuck me into my cosy bed and send me off to the land of sleepy-byes.”

“What a wimpy little voice.” Johnny Boy pushed as Icarus pulled. “Do you think he’s trying to reach out to his feminine side?”

SMASH and CRASH went the window behind them as two demons burst through. Splintering glass in slow motion, in a manner which failed to excite Icarus.

“To the taxi,” cried the lad. “Keep up, Mr Woodbine, please.”

The cabbie was chatting with a passer-by. “You go along the Road to Morocco,” he said, “turn left at the Road to Rio, right at the Road to Mandalay, straight along the Road to …”

Icarus came puffing up.

“Ah,” said the cabbie. “You’re back. I was just telling this gentleman how you—”

Icarus gave the cabbie a head-butt.

The cabbie fell down in a flustering heap.

Icarus dragged open the rear door of the taxi and thrust the blubbering stumbler inside. “I’m relocating your taxi,” he told the groaning moaning cabbie, who was lying on the ground. “I won’t do any harm to it. You can have it back a little later.”

Icarus swung open the driver’s door and keyed the cab’s ignition.

Johnny Boy hastened into the taxi, slamming the door behind him.

The cabbie staggered to his feet. “Stop, you bastard!” he managed to shout, as the tyres of his cab burned rubber and Icarus swerved away.

“You bloody bastard,” roared the cabbie. “I’ll …”

But then two demons knocked him once more from his feet.

“Bloody, bleeding …”

Doors slammed shut on the long dark automobile.

“My taxi, my taxi.” The cabbie dragged himself once more into the vertical plane.

And was promptly run down by the long dark automobile.

The passer-by looked on, as the two cars roared away into the distance.

“I suppose I’ll never know how you get to Xanadu now,” said he.

“Put your foot down, Icarus,” shouted Johnny Boy. “They’re coming after us fast.”

Icarus put his foot down. “Keep Laz awake!” he shouted back. “Don’t let him fall asleep.”

“Zzzzzz,” went the sleeper.

SMACK! went the hand of Johnny Boy. “Wake up call for Mr Woodbine.”

The new evil chauffeur looked much like the old one, as may well have been mentioned before. But if not it will be now. He had the same evil-looking face, with that same business with the chin and the unusual birthmark above the right eyebrow which resembles the Penang peninsula. He even wore the same cufflinks.

So no further description is necessary.

“Faster,” cried a voice behind him. It was the voice of Cormerant, and it was an angry voice. Cormerant sat in the car’s rear seat, flanked by a deuce of demons. Hideous monsters the pair of them were, but not quite so hideous as Cormerant. There was something even worse about him now. A fearsome energy. Sparkling oil-beads of colour ran up and down his quills. His cruel reptilian eyes appeared lit from within. His scaly features glistened and the horrible insect mouthparts chewed and sucked.

Icarus chewed upon his bottom lip. “Where to, Johnny Boy? Where should we go?”

“You’re the relocator, relocate us.”

“Somehow I thought you might say that. Do you fancy a left at the top of the road here, or a right?”

“Definitely a left.”

“Right it is, then,” said Icarus.

They’d done the Chiswick High Road and the Chiswick Roundabout and now they were hurtling along the Kew Road at the bottom end of Brentford.

“Surprisingly little traffic for this time of day,” said Johnny Boy. “Keep awake now, Mr Woodbine.” SMACK!

Icarus spun the taxi right, through red lights and up into the Ealing Road. The long dark automobile was definitely gaining. It swerved right after them, mounting the safety island, shattering one of those little jobbie lights that drunks so love to sit upon and scattering several pedestrians into the bargain.

“What is all
that
about?” asked a scattered pedestrian called Pooley.

“Nothing to do with us, my friend,” his friend called Omally replied.

SMACK SMACK SMACK went the hand of Johnny Boy. “I can’t keep Mr Woodbine awake,” he shouted to Icarus.

Icarus leaned over and opened the glove compartment. It was full of gloves (they always are) but nothing else. Strapped to the floor was the medical kit that cabbies always carry. It’s a tradition, or an old charter or a City of London Commercial Vehicle Regulation number 432, or something. Icarus ripped the kit from its mount and the box fell open, showering him with hundreds of small plastic sachets filled with glistening white powder.

“I always wondered how cabbies managed to work such long hours under such stressful conditions and still remain so unfailingly cheerful,” said Icarus. “Here, give him some of this.” And he flung several handfuls of plastic sachets over his shoulder.

“But surely this is …”

“Just pour a bag or two up his nose. That should keep him awake.”

BASH went the bumper of the long dark automobile into the taxi’s rear end.

“Oh!” went Johnny Boy, lost in a sudden snowstorm.

Icarus swerved the taxi off the road and up onto the pavement.

Shoppers and strollers and dog-walking debutantes screamed and dived for cover.

The long dark automobile mounted the pavement, bringing down a lamppost.

Johnny Boy knelt on the slumberer’s chest and emptied sachets of white stuff into his nose.

“I’m going to try to lose them in the back streets,” Icarus shouted. “Do your thing with the spectremeter again when we’re out of sight.”

“He’s still not waking up,” Johnny Boy shouted back. “And I’ve poured at least a quarter-pound of this stuff up his hooter.”

“Then give him the missing three-quarters. In for a penny, in for a pound.” Icarus signalled right and then turned left at the football ground.

Brentford football ground is rightly famous. Not only because Brentford normally contributes at least four of its players to every England World Cup squad, but because it is the only football ground in the country which has a pub at each of its four corners.

The four pubs in question are the Copper Beeches, the Golden Prince-nez, the Sussex Vampire and the Mazarin Stone.

Out of these, the Mazarin Stone is undoubtedly the best for a pub lunch. Run by one Reginald Musgrave, inheritor of certain West Sussex estates and a manor house at Hurlstone, it serves many an illustrious client and it was here that the famous Brentford naval treaty was signed, which officially ended Britain’s war against Spain. Built on the site of the original Priory School, it boasts two ghosts, a veiled lodger and a creeping man, and its upper rooms are available for parties and wedding receptions. There’s karaoke every Tuesday night and a raffle on Sunday lunchtimes.

“Get ready to use the spectremeter,” shouted Icarus.

“Aye aye, captain. Oooh, I feel really odd. It’s good odd though, not bad.”

Johnny Boy tugged the spectremeter from his pocket and smiled stupidly at it. “This is a really nice spectremeter,” he said. “This is the nicest spectremeter in all the world.”

“Turn it on then, please.” Icarus glanced into his mirror. Johnny Boy now resembled a miniature snowman, but at least the sleeper was starting to stir.

“Whoa!” he went, jerking upright. “Oh yeah! Wow! God do I feel great. Wow! I mean, hey!”

“I love you, man,” said Johnny Boy.

“I love you too,” the other replied.

“We’ve lost them, boss. Which way did they go?” The evil chauffeur peered through his tinted windscreen.

“I hate them!” Cormerant rocked in his seat. “Find them! Kill them!”

One of the demons peered through a tinted rear window.

“There.” He pointed. “There they go, down there.”

The chauffeur tried to reverse the car, but there was a dustcart coming up from behind and the back roads of Brentford are narrow.

“Get to the top end of the road!” bawled Cormerant. “Cut them off. Get to it.”

“You got it, sir.” The evil chauffeur put his foot down.

“
Drive!”
roared Cormerant.
“Drive!”

“That’s my brother driving,” said a foolishly grinning individual with a lot of white stuff round his hooter. “He’s my hero, my brother, I love that man.”

“I love him too,” said Johnny Boy.

“When we were kids,” said the foolish grinner, “he used to lock me in a suitcase and push it under our mum’s bed.”

“I never did,” shouted Icarus.

The taxi scraped along a row of parked cars, sending up a glorious shower of sparks.

“You did too. And you used to hide my teddy and leave clues around the house that I’d have to follow so I could find him again.”

“Lies, every bit of it.” Icarus knocked an old boy off his bike. “Sorry,” he called through the window.

“There, he’s said sorry,” said Johnny Boy. “He wants you to forgive him.”

“Oh, it’s all right,” said the foolish grinner, putting his arm around Johnny Boy’s shoulder. “I love him. I forgive him. It really got to me though, that suitcase. Gave me a real terror of cases. Suitcases, briefcases, handbags, shoulder bags, duffel bags, pormanteaus, dressing cases, pigskin valises, steamer trunks, sea chests, Gladstone bags, overnight bags …”

“You sure know your luggage,” said Johnny Boy.

“Buddy, in my business, knowing your luggage can mean the difference between …”

“Go on.”

“I don’t know. Could we stop off for some lunch, do you think? I’m getting really hungry. We could have a walk in Kew Gardens afterwards. It’s really beautiful there. Watch out for that lady with the pram.”

“Sorry,” called Icarus, out of the window.

“And there’s a long dark automobile blocking the street ahead.”

Icarus put his foot on the brake and swerved the taxi around.

The woman, who was picking up her baby from the road, fled screaming as Icarus performed a remarkable U-turn.

You can do that, you know, in a taxi. They have virtually the smallest turning circle of any wheeled vehicle; cabbies are always proud of telling people that. But then cabbies have so many things to be proud of. They’re wonderful people, are cabbies.

And of course, they
never
use drugs. Especially whatever weirded-out mixture it was that Icarus had found.

Icarus put his foot once more to the floor and the taxi took off at the hurry-up, through the maze of roads that was back street Brentford.

It rushed up Abbadon Street, along Moby Dick terrace, turned left into Sprite Street and right into the Ealing Road once more and passed the Flying Swan again.

“That cabbie you head-butted was quite right about his directions to the Flying Swan,” said Johnny Boy. “They
do
have the knowledge, those boys.”

“I love taxi drivers,” said the grinner, giving Johnny Boy a hug. “And I love you and I love my brother Icarus.”

“Nice,” said Johnny Boy, licking his snow-covered fingers.

Icarus turned left at the Mazarin Stone and they passed the football ground once more.

“After them! Faster, Faster!” Cormerant made taloned fists.

“I’m doing my best, sir,” the chauffeur said. “But it’s a bloody labyrinth round here and those taxis have virtually the smallest turning circle of any wheeled vehicle. And they are, of course, driven by highly skilled professionals who have the knowledge and never use drugs.”

Cormerant smote the chauffeur on the back of his smartly capped head. “Drive after them. Faster, you buffoon.”

“They’re going down
there
!” A demon pointed as the taxi came momentarily into view.

“No,” said the other demon. “
There
. They’re going down there.”

“No, they’re coming
up
there,” said the chauffeur. “No, hang about, you might be right.” The long dark automobile raked along a row of cars on the other side of Mafeking Avenue.

“I think we’ve lost them,” said Icarus. “Switch off the spectremeter.”

“
Off?”
said Johnny Boy.

“Yes, switch it
off
.”

“Oh,” said Johnny Boy. “I hadn’t got around to switching it
on
yet. Mind out for that wheelchair.”

“Sorry,” called Icarus, out of the window.

“I don’t think he’s ever
really
sorry,” said the grinner. “Our dad was in the removal business, you know.”

“I didn’t,” said Johnny Boy. “Go on.”