The Antipope (5 page)

Pooley was silent. The Professor’s voice had induced in him a state of semi-hypnosis. What it all meant was still unclear but that there was a distinctly unsavoury taint to the beans was certain.

“Where are the other four?” said the Professor.

“Archroy has them,” said Pooley promptly.

“I do not fully understand the implications myself,” said the Professor. “These beans, it would seem, are objects of grim omen – their appearance at various intervals in history always precede times of great ill, plague, war, famine and the like. On each occasion a dark figure to whom in some inexplicable way these five beans appear to owe some allegiance is always mentioned – what his ultimate purpose may be I shudder to think.” The Professor crossed himself.

Upon the verandah, shielded by the trellis work of honeysuckle, a tramp of hideous aspect and sorry footwear watched the Professor with eyes that glowed faintly in the late twilight. He ran a nicotine-stained finger across a cultivated rose and watched in silence as the petals withered beneath his touch. Mouthing something in a long-dead tongue he slipped away down the garden path and melted into the gathering darkness.

Jim Pooley sat upon his favourite seat before the Memorial Library, deep in thought. It was nearing midnight and growing decidedly cold. Above him a proud full moon swam amongst shredded clouds and the stars came and went, wormholes in the wooden floor of heaven. Jim turned up the collar of his tweed jacket and sat, shoulders hunched and hands lost in his bottomless trouser pockets.

All this bean business had become a little too much for him. After all, he’d only gone around to the Professor to get the damn thing identified. This was Brentford in the twentieth century, not some superstitious medieval village in the grip of witch mania. Pandora’s Box indeed! Jim searched about for his tobacco tin, and the clock struck twelve. The search proved fruitless and Pooley recalled placing the tin upon the Professor’s mantelpiece while he was asking the old man for a refill of the sherry decanter.

Jim sighed dismally. It had not been a very successful night, all things considered. His tobacco growing dry on the fireplace whilst his bean lay valueless in its glass prison. Pooley thought back over all that the Professor had said. Could the old boy be pulling a fast one? Jim had left the bean there after all, and no money had changed hands. Possibly the Professor had instantly recognized the bean as an object of great value and dragged up all this Phaseolus Satanicus stuff simply to put the wind up him. Jim scratched the stubble upon his chin.

No, that couldn’t be it, the Professor had been genuinely shocked when he saw the bean and it was most certainly the same as the illustration in the ancient book. No-one could make up stories like that on the spur of the moment could they? And he had known of the existence of the four others. All this intense thinking coupled with the intake of two pints of fine sherry was beginning to give Jim a headache. Better to forget the bean then, let the Professor do what he pleased with it.

Pooley rose and stretched his arms. Another thought suddenly crossed his mind. “If these beans are dangerous,” the thought said, “then it would be best to inform Archroy of this fact as the four he carries with him may possibly do him harm.”

Jim sat down again upon the bench.

“But if you tell him,” said another thought, “then he will ask how you know all this and you will have to confess to the abduction of the bean from Omally’s allotment.”

This thought did not please Pooley whatsoever.

“But he is your friend,” said the first thought in an angelic voice, “and you would feel very guilty should any ill befall him that you are empowered to prevent.” Pooley nodded and rose once more to his feet.

“Better not to get involved,” said the second thought. “Who is to say that the Professor’s suppositions are correct?” Pooley bit his lip. It was all a terrible dilemma. He let the angelic thought have the final word upon the matter.

“If the Professor had told you that the bean was that of a plant which bears gold doubloons upon its boughs each spring you would have believed him. You went there to take advantage of his boundless knowledge, did you not?” Pooley nodded meekly. “So if the Professor says that the beans are evil and must be destroyed you would do well to follow his advice.” Pooley seemed satisfied by this and took some steps into the direction of home. Then as if jerked to a standstill by a rope he stopped.

“But then I must somehow get those four other beans from Archroy,” he said. “And in some way that I will not implicate myself in any duplicity.” Jim Pooley wished with all his might that he had never set eyes upon any beans whatever, be they baked, curried, buttered, soya or magic to the slightest degree.

A new thought came to Pooley, one whose voice he did not recognize but one which was so sound in logic that Pooley felt very grateful that it had chosen his head to come into. “Why don’t you go around to Archroy’s now, while he is away on the night shift, gain entrance to his house and remove the four magic beans?” The angelic thought had some doubts about this but was finally cowed into submission.

“I do this deed for Archroy,” said Jim Pooley. “A noble venture for which I expect to receive no thanks, as by its very nature the perpetrator of the deed must remain anonymous.”

Jim girded up his loins and strode purposefully into the direction of Archroy’s house. It was seldom indeed that a noble thought entered his head and the entry of this one filled Jim with reckless confidence. He would climb on to Archroy’s garage and pull down the aluminium ladder, then go round and try all the upper windows, one of which must surely have been left open. Once inside, if the beans were there, he would most certainly find them.

Having checked that there were no late night revellers returning to their haunts, or policemen out upon their lonely beats, Pooley slid away down the side alley beside Archroy’s garage. His stealth and silence were there sadly impaired however, by a noisy collision with Omally’s bicycle Marchant which was resting against the garage wall lost in the shadows. Jim and Marchant crashed noisily to the ground, Marchant ringing his bell in protest at his rude awakening and Jim swearing great oaths upon every form of two-wheeled conveyance known to mankind.

With much shooshing and hand flapping, Jim rose to his feet, flat cap cocked over one eye and trouser turnup firmly in the grip of Marchant’s back brake. Amid more cursing and the distinctive sound of tearing tweed, Jim fought his way free of the bicycle’s evil grasp and limped on up the alley.

He stopped suddenly in his tracks and gazed up in amazement, for there propped up against the side wall and leading directly to an open upstairs window was Archroy’s extendable aluminium ladder. “Luck indeed,” said Jim Pooley, gripping it delightedly and testing its footings for safety.

He was all of five rungs up when a small clear voice in his head said, “Pooley, why do you think that there would be a ladder resting so conveniently against Archroy’s wall and leading directly to an open upstairs window?”

Pooley arrested his ascent and thought for a moment or two. Perhaps Archroy was cleaning his windows and forgot to remove the ladder? The small voice said, “Come now, Pooley.”

“I’ll just shin up and have a quick shufty in through the window,” Pooley told the voice. He accomplished the ascent with admirable dexterity, considering that the effects of the Professor’s sherry seemed to be increasing by the minute. The full moon shone down through the bedroom window, flooding the room with its septic light. Pooley’s head rose cautiously above the window sill and came to rest, his nose hooked over it in the manner of the legendary Chad. As his eyes took in the situation the words that escaped his lips in an amazed whisper were generally of a sort totally unprintable.

There upon continental quilt, bouncing and gyrating in a frenzy of sexual abandonment, was Archroy’s wife. Locked in passionate congress with this insatiable female was none other than John Vincent Omally, bachelor of this parish.

“Bastard,” mouthed Jim Pooley, which was at least in the Oxford Dictionary. “The conniving treacherous…” his mind sought about for an adjective suitable to the expression of his displeasure. It was during the search that Pooley’s eyes alighted upon the very objects which had led him to the unexpected viewing of this lewd and certainly x-certificate performance.

There they lay, glowing with a faint luminescence, upon the dressing-table inches away from the window. Pooley spied them with great satisfaction, feeling that his noble quest had been justly rewarded by instantaneous success achieved with only the minimum of physical exertion and with next to no danger to life or limb. This feeling of well-being was, however, almost immediately succeeded by one of disgust. For although the beans lay in attitudes suggestive of lifelessness, it was obvious to Jim from where he clung to his airy perch that they were very much on the alert. They were quite definitely watching and apparently thoroughly enjoying the erotic spectacle. They exuded such a sense of dark evil and inhuman nastiness that Jim was hard put to it to subdue the disgust which rose within him like an out-of-season vindaloo.

Taking a deep yet silent breath, he thrust his hand through the window and snatched up the sinister beans from their grandstand seats on the dressing-table. Omally’s bum, glowing ivory in the moonlight, rose and fell undeterred. Pooley thrust the beans into his coat pocket and made haste down the ladder.

Here he transferred the beans into a drawstring bag sanctified by the Professor for the purpose. “Another job jobbed,” said Pooley with some relief. The operations had been a remarkable success, handled with alacrity, diligence, dexterity and skill. High upon Olympus hosts of ancient Pooleys opened a bottle of champagne and toasted their descendant.

Pooley strode down the alley with a jaunty spring to his step. He had not gone but three yards, however, when the vengeful left pedal of Marchant caught him by the sound trouser-cuff and upended him into the muddy gloom.

“You swine,” growled Pooley, lashing out with his boots in as many directions as possible.

“Who’s there?” said a voice from an upper window.

Jim edged along the side wall of the house, gained the street and took to his heels. In the darkened alleyway Omally’s bike chuckled mechanically to its iron self and rang its bell in delight. On High Olympus the Pooleys sought other amusements.

Captain Carson stood upon the porch of the Seamen’s Mission taking in the fresh morning air. The Mission was situated on the Butts Estate not a stone’s throw from Professor Slocombe’s house. It was a fine Victorian building, built in an era when craftsmen took a pride in their work and knew nothing of time and a half and guaranteed Sunday working. Now the once-proud structure had fallen into bitter disrepair; its chimney pots leaned at crazy angles, its roof lacked many essential tiles, paint peeled from the carved gables. That which the tireless assault of wind and weather had not achieved without, had been amply accomplished within by woodworm and a multifarious variety of fungi, dry rot and deathwatch beetle.

The Captain stood framed in the doorway, master of his land-bound ship. Thirty years he had been at the helm. The Mission, bequeathed to the borough by a long dead Victorian benefactor and maintained by a substantial foundation, was the Captain’s pride. A fine figure of a man, still erect and dignified although now the graveyard side of seventy, the Captain took a pull upon his cherrywood pipe and let escape a blue swirl of seaman’s smoke. His white hair and tabby beard, the faded blue of his rollneck sweater, the bellbottom trousers and yachting sandals all bespoke in him a man who lived and breathed for nothing but the salt winds of the briny deep and the roar of the shorebound breakers.

Sad to say the Captain had never seen the sea. He had taken the job at the Mission at a time when jobs were few and far between and one took what one could. The only stipulation given had been that the applicant must be a man of nautical bent with a love of the sea who would maintain the Mission to the highest ideals and qualities of his Majesty’s Fleet.

Togging up at a theatrical outfitter’s with his last few pennies Horatio B. Carson applied for the post. His characterization must have been as convincing as that of Charles Laughton in
Mutiny on the Bounty
, because “Captain” Carson was immediately accepted for the job.

His duties were not arduous. Few if any sailors had ever honoured the Mission with their visits. However, a proliferation of down and outs, ne’er-do-wells, roguish knights of the road, shoelace pedlars and grimy individuals smelling strongly of meths and cheap sherry had soon appeared upon the doorstep. The Captain welcomed each in turn, extending to them the utmost courtesy, carrying their sorry bundles and opening doors before them.

“Here is your room, sir,” he would say, drawing their attention to the luxuriance of the pillows and the fine quality of the bedcoverings. “Our last lodger had to leave in something of a hurry,” he would explain. “He, like your good self, was a seafaring man and the doctors at the isolation hospital said that there would have been some hope of saving his life had they been able to identify the crippling and particularly virulent form of disease to which he so sadly succumbed. I haven’t had a chance to fumigate the room yet, but I am sure that your travels must by now have made you immune to most sicknesses, even of the horrendously disfiguring and painful variety which so sorrowfully took him from us.”

At this point the Captain would remove his hat, place it over his heart and look skyward. The tramp to which he was addressing this tragic monologue would follow the direction of his eyes then make his exit, often at astonishing speed, with talk of “pressing engagements” and “business elsewhere”.

In the thirty long years of the Captain’s residence, no visitor, no matter how apparent his need or dire his circumstance, be his tale one to raise a tear in a glass eyeball, no visitor had ever spent a single night within the Seamen’s Mission.

On this particular morning as the Captain stood upon the porch his thoughts dwelt mainly upon money, the strange ways of fate and the scourge of homosexuality. He knew that he could not expect many more years within the Mission and that his days were most definitely numbered. The job supplied no pension, and with the swelling list of forged signatures speaking of the enormous physical effort required of one man to maintain the Mission there had been talk of employing a younger person. The yearly meeting between himself and the Foundation’s trustees had been but a week before and he, the Captain, had handed over his tailored accounts and spoken modestly of his good works. But a new face had appeared upon the Committee this year, a young and eager face. During the previous twelve months one of the Trustees had died and the lot had fallen to his nephew to succeed him.

Young Brian Crowley had no love for elderly sea captains. His distaste for such patriarchs was only exceeded by his out-and-out hatred for tramps, loafers, down-and-outs, gypsies, foreigners and women. The limp-wristed Brian cared little for anybody other than an Italian waiter who worked at the Adelaide Tea Rooms. He had promised to set Mario up in his own restaurant, the dago waiter being a veritable “wizard-de-cuisine” and exceptionally well hung into the bargain.

The fates, which had conspired to arrange the sad demise of his dear uncle and Brian’s succession to the Foundation committee, had also decreed that this year the Council would raise their annual offer for the purchase of the Mission to a more than adequate sum.

The Captain sucked again upon his pipe. He could read faces well enough, and young Brian’s had been an open book. It might well be the time to shape up and ship out. His nest-egg was by now pretty substantial, enough for a small cottage somewhere, possibly by the sea. It might be nice to actually see the waves breaking on a beach. “I wonder if they make a lot of noise?” he said to himself.

Suddenly far up the road a flicker of movement caught his eye. He watched with passing interest as a ragged figure turned the corner beside the Memorial Library and shambled towards him with an odd yet purposeful gait.

It was the figure of a tramp. The Captain raised his nautical glass to view the apparition. A swift glance was enough. “Ugh!” said the Captain.

The tramp plodded nearer and nearer, and the Captain rummaged about in his vast mental storehouse for a tale of woe suitable to the occasion. Strangely none seemed readily available. The tramp trod closer, his big floppy boots stomping down into the ground. The Captain began to whistle an uneasy version of the famous shanty “Orange Claw Hammer”.

The tramp was crossing the road towards the Mission. He stopped. The Captain ceased his whistling. The birds were silent and the Captain could no longer smell the fragrant scent of honeysuckle. He felt cold, and even though the early summer sun breathed down upon him a shiver arose at the base of his spine. The Captain held his breath. Of a sudden the wretch turned upon his heel and stalked away down a side turning. As if at a signal the birds burst forth again into a cascade of song and the Captain regained the use of his nostrils. He let free a sigh of utmost relief and reached into his sleeve for his matches.

“Could I trouble you for a glass of water, please?” said a voice at his elbow.

The Captain turned in horror, spilling his matches to the ground. Beside him stood a tramp of hideous aspect. “Sorry, did I startle you?” said the creature with what seemed to be a voice of genuine concern. “It is a bad habit of mine, I really most control it.”

“Damn you, sir,” swore the Captain, “creepin’ up on a fella.”

“My apologies,” said the tramp, removing the battered relic which served him as hat, and bowing to the ground. “But if you would be so kind, a glass of water would serve well at this time.”

The Captain muttered a terse “Come in then” and led his unspeakable visitor into the Mission. “You caught me at a bad moment,” he said.

The tramp found no cause to reply.

“I was just having a moment or two’s fresh air before I continue my search.” The Captain drew the tramp a glass of water. The tramp received it with a great show of gratitude. “My thanks,” said he.

“Yes,” the Captain continued, “my search.”

The tramp seemed uninterested in the Captain’s search but he nodded politely.

“Yes, carelessly I have upset my case of deadly scorpions; I fear that they have gone to earth in the sleeping quarters.”

“Scorpions indeed?” said the tramp. “I have some experience in such matters, I will help you search.”

The Captain eyed his visitor with suspicion. “That will not be necessary, I should not like there to be an unfortunate accident, these fellows are wantonly vicious in their attitude towards any but myself.”

“If you are on such good terms, possibly you should just put out some milk and give them a call,” said the tramp helpfully.

The Captain sucked strongly upon his pipe. “I fear that that would prove futile,” he said. “Devious fellows scorpions, and mine I believe to be deaf.”

“Devious indeed,” said the tramp. “Have you seen this trick?” He held the glass of water out at arm’s length and stared into it with a fixed and steady gaze. The Captain watched in puzzlement, his eyes flickering between the glass and the tramp’s glaring red pupils, which now began to glitter with a strange and sinister light.

Bubbles began to appear in the glass; one by one they popped to the surface, growing in force one upon another they burst upwards; steam began to rise.

The Captain said, “It’s boiling, be damned!”

The tramp handed the churning glass to the Captain, who gingerly received it. “I should like a room for the night,” said the tramp.

“The water is cold,” said the Captain, dumbfounded.

“A trick, no more. About the room?”

“The scorpions!”

The tramp said, “I don’t think we need worry about the scorpions. I have here in my pocket a trained cobra that will easily seek out any scorpions lounging about.”

“Hold there,” said the Captain. “That surely will not be necessary. I think that the warm sun may well have drawn any errant insects beyond the bounds of the Mission.”

“That is good to hear,” said the tramp. “Now, about the room?”

“This room is vacant.” The Captain swung open a door to reveal a neatly dressed cubicle. “It is sad that it carries such a dreadful reputation.”

“Indeed?” The tramp prodded the bed and turned back the woollen coverlet.

“Yes, no soul has ever stayed a full night in it, none reveal what horrors take hold of them, but of those who attempted to remain, one committed suicide and three more are even now residents at St Bernard’s Asylum, hopeless lunatics.”

“Indeed?” The tramp sat down upon the bed and bounced soundlessly upon the steady springs.

“Gibbering they were,” said the Captain. “I have sailed the seven seas and seen sights that would blast the sanity from a lesser man but I can tell you I was shaken when I saw the looks upon the faces of those unlucky fellows.”

The tramp shook his head slowly. “My word,” was all he would say. The Captain had an uneasy feeling that Brian Crowley had a hand in this. “The hospitality of the Mission is well known,” said the tramp. “Only last week I bumped into Alfredo Beranti and Roger Kilharric both joyfully extolling the virtues of your beneficient establishment.”

The Captain scratched at his head. The names seemed strangely familiar. “And Dennis Cunningham,” the tramp continued, “forever praising the haute-cuisine.” The Captain became suddenly weak about the knees. He knew those names well enough, they were three of the cast of imaginary tramps with which he peopled the pages of his yearly accounts.

“And Old Wainwright McCarthy,” the tramp said, “and…”

“No, no,” screamed the Captain in an unnatural voice, “enough, enough!”

“What time is dinner to be served?”

“Dinner?”

“Knobby Giltrap spoke highly of the shepherd’s pie.”

“Six o’clock,” said the Captain.

“A little early, perhaps?”

“Seven then,” said the Captain, “or eight if you please.”

“Seven will be fine,” smiled the tramp. “Now I think I shall take a brief nap. Pray awaken me at six thirty.”

With that the Captain was ushered from the cubicle and out into the corridor, where he stood in the semi-darkness chewing upon the stem of his pipe, his breath coming and going in rapid grunts.

“And don’t over-season my veg,” came a voice through the panelled cubicle door.

The tramp sat back in the Captain’s chair and eased open the lower buttons of his waistcoat. “Very palatable,” said he.

The Captain had watched with set features whilst the tramp devoured two bowls of soup, all the shepherd’s pie, a plate of potatoes, two double helpings of peas, a bowl of custard and a large slice of chocolate gateau.

“Is there anything to follow?” asked the tramp politely.

“To follow?”

“Well, brandy, a cigar, or even a fill for my pipe?”

The Captain rose to his feet pulling away the napkin from his roll neck. “Now see here!” he roared.

“Gaffer Tim Garney was telling me of your generosity with the navy plug?”

The Captain flung the tramp his tobacco pouch. “Shag,” said he, slumping into a chair.

“Shag then, my thanks again.” The tramp took to filling his pipe, his glittering eyes wandering towards the Captain’s brandy bottle.

“I expect you’ll be wanting to make an early start tomorrow?” said the Captain.

The tramp said, “Excuse me?”

“Well,” the Captain replied, “I know you fellows, can’t keep you cooped up under a roof for very long. Life of freedom eh, knights of the road, the sky above, the earth below?”

The tramp scratched his head, raising small clouds of blue dust. “There I am afraid you are mistaken. Please do not construe from my appearance that I incline towards the life of the casual wanderer. On the contrary, my every movement is guided towards inevitable consequence. I follow my kharma as all must.”

“Indeed?” said the Captain. “Well, far be it from me to hinder you in your search for the ultimate truth.”

“I feel that our paths have not crossed out of idle chance,” said the tramp, “in fact, I will go so far as to say that destiny has pointed me to your door with a straight and unwavering digit.”

“Possibly this same destiny will point you in yet another direction tomorrow?”

“I doubt that,” said the tramp with a note of finality. “Now, about this brandy?”