Sprout Mask Replica (17 page)

As I
finished my routine he too was cheering wildly and even joined in with the
shoulder-high carrying from the stage. ‘You’re a star,’ he kept saying. ‘A
real
star.’

Outside,
by the limo, I signed autographs for a woman in a straw hat and a fat boy in a Motorhead
T-shirt. I’d have happily signed one for the village girl with the little green
bottles but she wasn’t around. Eventually the crowd drifted off towards a
minibus and I was left all alone to ponder.

I was
clearly on the road to stardom. What did I think about
that?
Well, it
felt pretty good. I’d have hoped for a groupie or two. But it was early days
yet and I
had
been a raging success. I felt good.

I felt
really
good.

And I also felt that I
needed to take a pee.

I
wandered back to the venue and spotted a large box van owned by my brother. I
thought I’d piddle on the back wheel, I didn’t want to piddle on the limo. I
quietly unzipped and stood awaiting the blessed relief. Then I heard whispered
voices coming from within. I zipped up and put my ear against the van’s rear
door, not wishing to be nosy, but
just interested.

‘Absolute
success,’ came the voice of my Uncle Brian. ‘The lad is worth his weight in
gold.’

I
smiled inwardly, and probably outwardly also.

‘The
sky’s the limit,’ came the voice of my brother. ‘The world is our oyster.’

Our
oyster? I ceased both smiles.

‘As
long as he never finds out what we’re really up to,’ said my uncle. ‘As long as
your rented crowd keeps cheering wildly and he thinks they love him.’

I scowled
doubly. What was all
this?

‘Young
Dog’s Breath is easily led,’ said my brother. ‘He won’t catch on that the real
reason you had him doing all those things with bits of string and matchsticks
and stuff was to cause fluctuations on the stock market and steer millions of
pounds into your bank account. He doesn’t know that
he is
the mythical
mystical butterfly and can make huge things happen by making tiny little
actions.’

I began
to grate my teeth.

‘I
still don’t have the tiny actions down to an absolute science,’ said my Uncle
Brian. ‘It’s a bit hit and miss. Some of the things he did at the first few
gigs have caused a few disasters around the world.’

‘But
nothing
we
give a monkey’s about.’

‘No,’
said Uncle Brian. ‘What are a few earthquakes and typhoons to us? We have the
goose who can lay the golden egg.’

‘The
dog with the golden breath, more like.’ And my brother laughed. And my uncle
laughed with him.

B
ut
I
wasn’t
laughing.

A
few earthquakes and
typhoons?

S
o I had been had! In
order

T
o make money for my
uncle

A
nd my brother. Maybe

R
uined the lives of
thousands,

D
estroyed villages

S
o they could grow
rich!

If you don’t know the
meaning of the word
acrostic,
you can look it up. I’m sure you know the
meaning of the word BASTARDS and also REVENGE.

I went and
pissed all over the limo.

NEWTS
THAT I HAD WHEN A LAD

Blue-fingered mornings and bright church bazaars

Notebooks for logging the numbers of cars

Girls in their gymslips

Mouthfuls of gum

Ink on my shirtcuff

Ink on my thumb

Checking the stamps when the weather was bad

Remembering newts that I had when a lad.

Brand-new protractors from Kays in The Mall

Afternoon fag-cards in cloakroom with pal

Slipperbags dangling

Down from a string

Jamboree bags

That you felt for the ring

All of those magical times that we had

Remembering newts that I had when a lad.

Cream-coloured corridors

Green-coloured classroom doors

Chalk-squeaks and dusters

Beanos and Busters

Conkers and marbles and firestones and fights

Remembering newts that escaped in the nights.

Aaaaaah …

10

LITANY

WHEN I WAS YOUNG AND
FOOLISH AND ALL, I HAD A FRIEND CALLED
Ian. He was my
best friend and he lived three doors along, in the very last house on the
terrace. The one that backed on to the bit of waste ground where Martin Beacon
got bitten by the dog.

Ian’s
father was a Russian spy. There were a lot of Russian spies about in those
days, one in every street, as far as I can recall. They all had short-wave
radios and they all used to ‘report in’ at precisely the same time each week:
6.45 Friday evenings.

My mum
used to go hay-wire because the short-wave transmissions interfered with our
wireless set and she couldn’t hear
The Archers
properly. She used to
bang on the kitchen wall with the business end of the sprout-masher, but Ian’s
dad never took any notice.

I
suppose because he lived three doors along.

As my
father was a carpenter we had a shed in our back garden. Not a very big one,
because our garden wasn’t very big. But a tall one. If you can imagine a
two-storey sentry box. Then imagine it. Our shed was not at all like that. Our
shed was more like an obelisk.

Ian and
I used to sit in that shed for hours at a time, playing with our pet newts, or
simply ourselves.

I
vividly remember one particular afternoon, early May it might have been, or
another month entirely. My brother had confided a secret to me and I was eager
to pass it on to Ian.

‘And
so,’ I concluded, ‘Garden gnomes are, in fact, small dwarves who have been
turned to stone by the glance of Medusa.’

Ian
whistled through the gap in his front teeth. ‘Is Medusa aquatic?’ he enquired.

‘Aquatic?
I’m not certain. Why?’

‘Well,
many of the garden gnomes, the petrified dwarves as it were, are frozen in the
act of fishing. Perhaps Medusa comes up out of the water.’

I
nodded thoughtfully. ‘I wonder where it all goes on.’

‘Scandinavia,’
said Ian with authority. ‘We have a gnome in our garden, it has Scandinavia
carved onto its bottom.’

‘What,
on its
arse?’

‘No,
underneath, at the bottom, on its base.’

‘Oh.’

‘But
there’re an awful lot of stone gnomes, and I’ve never ever seen a dwarf as
small, walking about.’

‘Perhaps
they’re all captives.’

‘What?’

‘Bred
in captivity in Scandinavia. Last remnants of an ancient race. Like the
fairy-folk. At a certain time each year a number of them are taken down to this
lake and asked to pose for photographs. The photographer ducks his head under
the black cloth and hides his face. Says, “Say cheese,” everyone smiles, Medusa
comes up out of the lake and
wallop,
they’re all turned to stone.’

‘What a
nightmare scenario,’ said Ian. ‘But as feasible an explanation as there’s
likely to be.’

We both
sat in silence awhile and played with our newts.

‘A
strange thing happened in our back garden the other day,’ said Ian. ‘My father
has sworn me to secrecy over it.

‘Tell us
what it is then.’

‘All
right. My father was doing a bit of digging in the back garden and he came upon
this brickwork. Like a wall but lying on its side, if you know what I mean.’

I
nodded. ‘A fallen-over wall but under the ground.’

‘That’s
it. So my father says it’s probably some old foundations of something, so he
fetches his sledgehammer and starts to wallop at it. And every time he hits the
brickwork there’s this dull echoing sound like it’s hollow underneath. Well, my
father bashes away at it until he knocks a hole through. And do you know what?’

‘What?’

‘There’s
light.’

‘Light?’

‘Light,
coming up through the hole. So we kneel down and look in and you’ll never
believe what we saw.

‘What
did you see?’

‘Well,
it’s like looking down into this huge cathedral, really huge, like you’re
looking through a hole in the dome. And there’s all these sort of Gothic brick
pillars that go down and down and little staircases in the distance below.

I
whistled through the gap in
my
front teeth.

‘So my
dad knocks a really big hole, big enough to climb through and he’s talking
about getting this rope and shinning down inside when this bloke comes.’

‘What
bloke?’

‘He
came along the alley and we could hear him coming, his boots made this metal
clicking. He had a monk’s habit on with the hood pulled low over his face and
the big clicking boots and he was very tall and thin. And he came clicking up
the alley, through our garden gate, pushed my father aside, climbed into the
hole and was gone.’

‘Blimey,’
I said. ‘This is incredible. Can we go round to your garden so I can have a
look?’

‘No,’
said Ian.. ‘We can’t do that.’

‘Oh go
on. I’ll only take a little look and I won’t tell anyone.’ Ian shook his head. ‘My
dad filled the hole in. He bought bricks and cement and he filled it in.’

‘Why?’

‘He
said it was dangerous and that children might fall down it. Come on, I’ll show
you.’

Ian led
me down the alley to his back gate. His mum wasn’t around, so we crept into his
garden. There were new bricks laid outside the back door. Well, not so much
bricks, more paving stones. A sort of patio, in fact.

‘Put
your ear there,’ said Ian, pointing.

I knelt
down and pressed my ear to one of the paving stones. Ian took the yard broom
and banged the handle down upon the stone. There was a dull, echoey, hollow
sound each time he did so.

‘Blimey,’
I said, straightening up.

‘When I’m
eighteen,’ said Ian, ‘I will inherit this house and when I do I am going to get
a pneumatic drill and drill down to that place.’

‘And go
down on a rope?’

‘Yes.’

‘And I’ll
come with you. We’ll go together.’ And we shook hands on the deal.

But we
never went. As the years passed by we forgot all about it. And when Ian was
eighteen he did
not
inherit his father’s house. It was a council house,
same as ours. I include the story here because it is true. Well, it’s true that
Ian told me and I
did
hear the echoey hollow sounds.

Oh yes
and I include it because of Litany.

Let me
tell you all about Litany.

I suppose I must have got
drunk. Very drunk, which is why I don’t remember all the details. Prior to that
everything is as clear as an author’s conscience.

I stole
the rented limo, and with it my uncle’s laptop computer and I returned to Fangio’s
Bar. The rented crowd was there, paid off and spending freely. Everyone went
very quiet when I walked in.

I
addressed them, thusly: ‘I know what you were up to and you are a pack of
BASTARDS.’

The
crowd cheered wildly.

‘No,’ I
said. ‘You can stop all that.
I mean it!
You’re a pack of BASTARDS.’

More
wild cheering and someone shouted, ‘Three cheers for
Carlos the Chaos
Cockroach.’
I punched that someone.

A woman
in a straw hat.

She
went down and her companions ceased to cheer. They drank up and left. I placed
the uncle’s laptop on the bar and my bum upon a bar stool. ‘Set ‘em up, fat
boy,’ I told the fat boy. ‘The drinks are on me.’

Fangio
peered over the counter at the unconscious woman.

‘What’s
the dame having?’ he asked.

‘Give
her an Angel’s Slingback.’ I named the most popular cocktail of the day.

‘Did
someone say
slingback?’
A drunk at the end of the counter raised his
head. His name was Lightweight Jimmy Netley, a footwear fetishist from the very
first chapter.