Sprout Mask Replica (10 page)

Apparently
what happened was this: the number of proto-hippies crammed into the back
eventually became so great that it reached critical mass. There was then a
mighty implosion which sucked the van’s sides into the shape of the great
pyramid and resulted in the creation of one single super-dense proto-hippy, who
was left sitting cross-legged on the floor.

And
this cosmic event spelt the end for Club 300.

The end
was as mundane as could be imagined. While my brother regained his senses in
hospital, the uncle whose name I never can remember, returned to his old
profession of light removals. And the very first job he took was to transport
some record decks and lighting equipment from a private house to the local
church hall. My uncle recognized his employer at once (although he couldn’t
recall his name) as a Club 300 regular.

This
fellow had come up with an idea based upon my brother’s, but one that could be
turned to even greater profit. Forget about holding your disco in a van, hold
it in a hall where you can get more people in. Use the van to transport your
own sound equipment.

And
such was the birth of the mobile discothèque. And the death of its travelling
progenitor.

But it must have been
fate. For if it had not happened then I would never have met the super-dense
proto-hippy and received my great
REVELATION.

It came about in this
fashion. The year was 1966. England had just pulled off the double by winning
the World Cup and putting the first man on the moon. Sonic Energy Authority
were celebrating their tenth number-one hit single and the summer of love had
arrived a year early.

The
truth that I was partially responsible for all this had yet to dawn.

Allow
me now to set the scene and explain how it all came about. The Ealing Club had
changed hands and was now called Fangio’s Bar. Getting there on the bus was no
longer a problem as, since the October Revolution of the previous year, all
public transport was now free.

Things
have changed a lot since then.

But
that’s the way I like it.

With
jobs for all and any job you fancy, I had become a private eye. And, with the
national drinking age lowered to fifteen, a semi-alcoholic. On the evening of the
great REVELATION I was sitting in Fangio’s Bar, sipping from a bottle of Bud
and chewing the fat with the fat boy.

The fat
boy’s name was Fangio but I hadn’t decided yet upon mine.

In
those days I had a lot of time for Fangio, although thinking back I can’t
recall why. Certainly the guy was fair, he never spoke well of anyone. And when
it came to clothes, he had the most impeccable bad taste I’ve ever encountered.
He suffered from delusions of adequacy and his conversation was enlivened by
the occasional brilliant flash of silence.

Once
seen, never remembered, that was Fangio. Many put this down to his shortness of
stature, for as Noel Coward observed, ‘Never trust a man with short legs, brain’s
too near their bottoms.’

But he
did have obesity on his side. And on his back. And on his front and Fangio was
ever a great man when it came to the Zen Question. The one he posed for me upon
this fateful evening was the ever popular, ‘Why
is cheese?’
Of course I
knew the answer to this, every good private eye did, but I wasn’t going to let
on.

The way
I saw it, if you’ve got a small green ball in each hand, you may not win the
snooker, but you’ll have the undivided attention of a leprechaun.

Fangio
pushed a plate across the bar top. ‘More fat?’ he asked.

‘No
thanks, I’m still chewing this piece.’

‘Might
I ask you a personal question?’

‘I’m
easy.

‘That
wasn’t the one I was going to ask.’

We
laughed together, what was friendship for after all?

‘It’s a
dress code thing,’ said the fat boy.

‘Go on
then.’

Fangio
fingered his goitre. The guy had more chins than a Chinese telephone directory.
‘You cut a dashing figure,’ said he. ‘And I speak as I find, as you know.’

‘I do
know that,’ I said, and I did.

‘I’m
thinking of buying a hat,’ said Fangio. ‘But the question is, brim or no brim?’

‘No
brim,’ said I. ‘Peak at a pinch, but no brim.’

‘So, a
fez, you think?’

‘Fez,
pill box, brimless fedora, beret if you’re travelling the continent, balaclava
for mountain wear, cloche for cross-dressing parties—’

‘But a
cloche has a brim.’

‘But
nothing to write home about.’

‘Ah I
get your point.’ And I saw that he did.

‘Busby,
turban, puggaree, tarboosh, tam-o’-shanter, coonskin Davy Crocket—’

‘You
sure know your hats,’ said Fangio.

‘You
have to in my business,’ I told him. ‘In my business wearing the right hat for
the job can mean the difference between cocking the snook or kicking the can,
if you catch my drift, and I’m sure that you do.’

‘So
tell me,’ said the fat boy, ‘how come you always go hatless?’

‘Why is
cheese?’ I replied.

We
chewed some more upon the fat and I saw that gleam come into Fangio’s good eye.
I’ve seen that gleam before, plenty of times in plenty of places. And here it
was again, right here.

‘Why
the gleam?’ I enquired and we both laughed again. ‘To be serious,’ said Fangio,
when at last we had done with the mirth, ‘there’s something else I’ve been
meaning to ask.’

‘Ask
away.’

The
barman sucked air up his nostrils, causing ears to pop about the bar, and blew
it out of his mouth. ‘I was just wondering why it is that you have five
matchsticks Sellotaped across your forehead.’

I
stiffened inwardly but maintained my composure. In my business maintaining your
composure can mean the difference between laughing like a drain or howling up a
gum tree. As for stiffening inwardly, I just don’t know. ‘I have to use the
lavvy,’ I said and made away from the bar.

I
crossed the dance floor at the trot. It was a fox trot but I was in no mood to
tango. This was the week of The Brentford Bee Festival and most of the dancers
wore insect costumes. I felt for those guys, if only they’d known that the
posters were supposed to read BEER instead of BEE.

Such is
life.

I felt
odd as I moved between the dancers, curiously out of place. A stranger in my
own back passage, you might say. I entered the Gents and found my way to the
wash-hand basin. Above it the mirror. I peered into the mirror.

I
did
have five matchsticks Sellotaped to my forehead.

And
that wasn’t all.

My left
eyebrow had been dyed lime green and I had two paperclips attached to the lobe
of my right ear. Looking down I spied for the first time the blue nail varnish
on my left thumbnail and the purple on my right. About my neck I wore two
school ties. A number of watch springs had been sewn to the lapels of my riding
jacket. My shoes were odd and I wasn’t wearing any socks.

A
dress code thing?
What had happened to me? Was I
hallucinating or just seeing things? Had I passed out at a party and fallen
prey to merry pranksters? That seemed the most probable.

Embarrassment!
Oh, the shame.

I
rooted about in my pockets for a hankie to wipe off the eyebrow dye, but turned
up an assortment of incongruous objects instead. Chicken bones, glass marbles,
bottle tops, several biros bound together with pink ribbon. A half-pack of
playing cards. A dead mouse.

Someone
was definitely having a pop.

‘Who
did this to me?’ I asked the mirror.

The
mirror had nothing to say.

‘Come
on, speak up!’ I told it.

‘You
did it to yourself.’

I all
but soiled my underlinen. But the voice came not from the looking-glass, but a
chap at the cubicle door.

He just
stood there looking, and very well he did it too. He was tall and lean and
frocked out in kaftan and sandals. It was hard to say just how, but he exuded
charisma as others might aftershave. One of those people who can strut while
still sitting down. As I didn’t want to waste time later, I hated him at once.

‘Did
you do this to me?’ I asked, reaching for the gun that I might have carried if
I did carry one. Which I didn’t.

‘No.
Not me.’ He shook a head-load of golden hair and flashed me a pair of ice-blue
eyes. He had the kind of voice that could talk the knickers off a nun, but I
wasn’t buying the baby oil.

‘Who
are you?’ I asked, just to keep things pally.

‘My
name is Colon,’ he said, ‘the super-dense proto-hippy.’ If there was a gag in
that it passed me by. ‘You stuck the matchsticks on yourself. If you’d care to
step outside, I’ll explain everything to you.’

I wasn’t
keen, I can tell you. But there was something so compelling about this fellow,
I thought I might give it a try. I reached up to tear the Sellotape from my
forehead.

‘No.
Don’t do that.’

‘Why
not?’

‘You
put it there for a purpose.

‘What
purpose?’

‘I’m
not entirely sure.’

‘Well,
if I put it there for one purpose, I’m taking it off for another. In order not
to look absurd.’

I
ripped off the Sellotape.

Somewhere
over the Andes a pilot lost control and his aeroplane fell towards a
mountainside.

I shook
my head. ‘Something just happened,’ I said. ‘Something bad.’

‘Did
you cause it?’

‘No, I
don’t think I did.’

‘Let’s
go outside.’

And
outside we went.

We
stood together in the alleyway. It was a
real
alleyway, one of those
with the trash cans and the fire escape with the retractable bottom section.
From an open window somewhere near came the sound of a lonely saxophone, beneath
our feet was terra firma, high over all the sky.

‘What
do you see up there?’ he asked.

‘Only
stars,’ I said.

‘Only
stars?’

‘That’s
all.’

‘That’s
far from all, my friend.’

‘If
this is to be an esoteric conversation, is it OK if I smoke?’

‘I
really couldn’t say.

The
night was nippy, hands-in-pockets weather. I slotted a Woodbine into my
cigarette harness.

‘You’re
smoking Woodbine tonight,’ he said. ‘Is that significant?’

‘An
earthquake in Honduras.’

‘What
did you say?’

‘I didn’t
say anything.’ But I was sure that I had, I couldn’t remember just what it was.

‘You
don’t know you’re doing it,’ he said. ‘You have no idea at all. Perhaps it
would be better if I didn’t tell you.’

I lit
my cigarette, took two extra matchsticks from the box and placed one behind each
ear.

‘Why
two?’ he asked.

‘Bulb
sales are down again in Holland.’

‘Ah
yes, I see.’

‘What
do you see?’ Something was happening here. Something that made me feel
uncomfortable.

‘Tell
me about the stars,’ he said. ‘What
do
they mean?’

‘The
stars are the simplest of all,’ I explained. ‘But also the most difficult. When
you look up at the night sky, you see stars, white dots on black. All you have
to do is join the dots and see what they spell out. The answer’s up there, but
everyone knows that.’

‘No-one
but you knows that.’

‘Knows
what?’

‘About
the stars.’

He
smiled, it was the kind of smile that could make a lighthouse out of a dead man’s
willy and a sailor come home from sea. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I’ve broken your
train of thought. Forget I said anything. Go on about the stars.’

‘The
truth is really out there,’ I said. ‘The message is written in the heavens. The
problem is in knowing
how
to join up the dots. Which star is dot number
one and which is dot number two and so on. It all depends on where you’re standing
on the planet and how good your eyesight is.’

‘So
there’s a different message for each of us.’

‘What
are you talking about?’ I tapped cigarette ash into the palm of my hand,
divided it into three small piles, discarded two and devoured the third.

‘Why
only eat one?’

‘Red is
this year’s colour, everyone’s wearing it.’

‘Yes,’
said he, ‘it all adds up.

‘Listen,
Mr Colon,’ said I, ‘there’s something funny happening around here and you’re at
the back of it. Spill the beans pronto or I’ll never forgive myself for the
hiding I’m going to give you.