The Fandom of the Operator

Young hero or anti-hero Gary Cheese grows up in a warped 1950s Brentford with two main interests: death, and the Lazlo Woodbine private-eye novels (see Waiting for Godalming) by PP Penrose. When this revered author dies, it's only logical that Gary and his bestest friend Dave should plan to crash the wake and reanimate him with voodoo.

Book about death

to celebrate a new life,

the birth of

Summer Dawn Patricia:

may you know love and happiness

It was a Thursday and once again there was rancour in our back parlour.

I never cared for Thursdays, because I cared nothing for rancour. I liked things quiet. Quiet and peaceful. Wednesdays I loved, because my father went out, and Sundays because they were Sundays. But Thursdays, they were noisy and filled with rowdy rancour. Because on Thursdays my Uncle Jon came to visit.

Uncle Jon was lean and long and loud and looked a lot like a lizard. There’s a bit of an animal in each of us. Or a reptile, or a bird, or an insect. Or even a tree or a turnip. None of us are one hundred per cent human; it’s something to do with partial reincarnation, according to a book I once read. But, whether it’s true or not, I’m sure that Uncle Jon had much of the lizard in him. He could, for instance, turn his eyes in different directions at the same time. Chameleons do that. People don’t. Mind you, Uncle Jon’s eyes were made of glass. I never looked too much at his tongue, but I bet it was long and black and pointy at the end.

Uncle Jon was all curled up, all lizard-like, in the visitors’ chair, which stood to the east of the chalky-drawn line that bisected our back parlour. The line was an attempt, upon the part of my father, to maintain some sort of order. Visitors were required to remain to the east of the line, whilst residents kept to the west. On this particular Thursday, Uncle Jon was holding forth from his side of the line about pilgrims and parsons and things of a religious nature, which were mostly unintelligible to my ears. Me being so young and ignorant and all.

My father, or “the Daddy”, as I knew and loved him then, chewed upon sweet cheese and spat the rinds into the fire that lick-lick-licked away in the small, but adequate, hearth.

I perched upon the coal-box, beside the brass companion set that lacked for the tongs, which had been broken in a fight between my father and my Uncle Jon following some long-past piece of rancour. I was attentive. Listening. My pose was that of a Notre Dame gargoyle. It was a studied pose. I had studied it.

“Thousands of them,” rancoured my Uncle Jon, voice all high and hoarse and glass eyes rolling in their fleshy sockets.

“Thousands of parsons, with their lych gates and their pine pews and their cloth-bound hymnals and their pulpits for elbow-leaning and their embroidered mats that you are obliged to put your knees upon whilst praying. And what do any of them really know? I ask you. What?”

The Daddy didn’t reply. I didn’t reply. My mother, who lathered sprouts in the stone pot by the sink in our kitchen, didn’t reply either.

Nobody replied.

There wasn’t time.

“Nothing,” my Uncle Jon rancoured on. “Charlie is gone, and to where?” There was no pause. No space for reply. “I’ll tell you to where. To none knows where. Wherever that is. And none knows.”

My father, the Daddy, glared at Uncle Jon.

“Don’t glare at me,” said the Uncle.

My father opened his mouth to speak. But pushed further cheese into it instead.

“And don’t talk to me with your mouth full. They don’t know. None of them. Clerics, parsons, bishops, archbishops, pilgrims and popes. Pilgrims know nothing anyway, but popes know a lot. But even
they
don’t know. None of them. None. None. None. Do
you
know? Do you?”

I knew that
I
didn’t know. But then the question probably hadn’t been addressed to me. Uncle Jon had been looking at me, sort of, with one of his glass eyes, but that didn’t mean he was actually speaking to me. He’d probably been speaking to the Daddy. I looked towards that man. If anybody knew an answer to the Uncle’s question, it would probably be the Daddy. He knew about all sorts of interesting things. He knew how to defuse a V1 flying bomb. He’d done that for a living in the war. And he knew all about religion and poetry. He hated both. And he knew how to concentrate his will upon the cat while it slept and make it wee-wee itself.

I never quite understood the worth of that particular piece of knowledge. But it always made me laugh when he did it. So, if there were anyone to answer Uncle Jon’s question, that person would, in my limited opinion, be the Daddy.

I looked towards him.

The Daddy looked towards Uncle Jon.

Uncle Jon looked towards the both of us.

I really wanted the Daddy to speak.

But he didn’t. He just chewed upon cheese.

My daddy hated Uncle Jon. I knew that he did. I knew that he knew that I knew that he did. And Uncle Jon knew that he did. And I suppose Uncle Jon knew that I knew that he did and probably knew that I knew that he knew that I did. So to speak.

“You
don’t
know,” said my Uncle Jon.

I looked quite hard at my uncle. As hard as I possibly could look. I was young and I hadn’t learned how to hate properly as yet. But as best as I possibly could hate, I hated Uncle Jon.

It wasn’t just his eyes that I hated. Although they were quite enough. They were horrible, those eyes. They didn’t even match. Not that it was Uncle Jon’s fault. It wasn’t. My daddy had explained the situation to me. He told me all about glass eyes and how opto-something-ists (the fellows who dealt with this sort of thing) matched up eyes. They matched up a glass replacement eye to its living counterpart. Both of Uncle Jon’s eyes had left his head when a bomb from Hitler had blown up in his back yard. My daddy hadn’t had a chance to defuse that one. He’d been down at the pub fighting with American servicemen. These opto-something-ist fellows had bunged my uncle a couple of odd eyes, because they knew he wouldn’t notice. They looked horrible, those odd glass eyes. I hated them.

Being blind didn’t bother Uncle Jon, though. He’d learned how to see with his ears. He could ride his bike without bumping into people and do all the things he’d done before that needed eyes to do them. There was a special name, at that time, for being able to see without having eyes, as my Uncle Jon was able to do. Derma-optical perception, it was. There used to be a lot of it about, back in the days when people believed in that sort of thing. Back then in the nineteen fifties. People don’t believe in that sort of thing nowadays, so blind people have to go without seeing.

Uncle Jon travelled a lot with the circus, where he did a knife-throwing act that involved several midgets and a large stetson hat. The crowds loved him.

The Daddy and I didn’t.

The Daddy worried at the medals on his chest with cheese-free fingers and finally stirred some words from his mouth. “Cease the rancour,” were these words. “You’re frightening wee Gary.”

“I’m brave enough,” said I, for I was. “But who is this Charlie of whom my uncle speaks?”

“Yes,” said my daddy, “who
is
this Charlie? I know not of any dead Charlies.”

“Charlie Penrose, you craven buffoon.” My uncle rolled his mismatched peepers and rapped his white stick – which he carried to get himself first in bus queues – smartly on the floor, raising little chalky clouds from the carpet and frightening me slightly.

“Charlie Penrose is
dead
?” My father stiffened, as if struck between the shoulder blades by a Zulu chieftain’s spear. “Young Charlie dead and never called me mother.”

“And never called
me
sweetheart,” said my Uncle Jon. “And I have written to the Pope regarding the matter.”

My daddy opened his mouth once more to speak. But he didn’t ask “why?” as many would. Uncle Jon was always writing to the Pope about one thing or another.

“I am shocked,” said my father, the Daddy. “I am deeply shocked by this revelation. I was fighting with Charlie only the last week.”

“I was fighting with him only the last yesterday and now he is no more.”

“So!” cried the Daddy. “
You
murdered him! Hand me the poker from the brass companion set that lacks for the tongs, son. And I will set about your uncle something fierce.”

I hastened to comply with this request.

“Hold hard,” said my uncle, raising his blind-man’s stick. “I am innocent of this outlandish charge. Charlie died in a bizarre vacuum-cleaning accident. He was all alone at the time. I was in the Royal Borough of Orton Goldhay, performing with Count Otto Black’s Circus Fantastique. To rapturous applause and a standing ovation, even from those who had to remain sitting, due to lack of legs.”

“Charlie was my closest friend,” said the Daddy. “I loved him like the brother I never had.”

“I never had that brother too,” said my uncle. “I only had yourself, which is no compensation.”

“Do you still require the poker, Daddy?” I asked.

“Not yet, son, but keep it handy.”

“That I will,” said I, keeping it handy.

“I am appalled,” my daddy said. “Appalled, dismayed and distraught.”

“And so you should be.” Uncle Jon turned his glassy eyes to heaven. “And so should we all be. And I have had enough of it. Charlie is dead and there will be a funeral and a burying and words will be spoken over him and what for and why? Nobody knows where he’s bound for. Whether to a sun-kissed realm above, or just to the bellies of the worms beneath. No one, not even the Pope. And I think it’s a disgrace. The Government spends our tax money putting up Belisha beacons and painting telephone boxes the colour of blood, but do they put a penny into things that really matter? Like finding out what happens to people after they die, and if it’s bad, then doing something about it? Do they? I think not!”

“Daddy,” said I. “This Charlie Penrose, who you claim was your closest friend. Why did he never come round here?”

“Too busy,” said my father. “He was a great sporting man. Sportsmanship was everything to him. And when he wasn’t engaged in some piece of sportsmanship, then he was busy writing. He was a very famous writer. A writer of many, many books.”

“Poetry books?” I enquired.

My father smote me in passing. “Not poetry!” he shouted. “Never use that word in this house. He was the writer of great novels. He was the best best-selling author of this century so far. He was the man who wrote the Lazlo Woodbine thrillers. And also the Adam Earth science-fiction novels. Although they were, in my opinion, rubbish, and it’s Woodbine he’ll be remembered for.”

“Surely that is
P.P.
Penrose,” said I with difficulty, clicking my jawbone back into place. “P.P. Penrose. But this is terrible. Mr Penrose is my favourite author. Are you certain that this Charlie is really the same dead fellow?”

“Same chap,” said Daddy. “He changed his name from Charlie to P.P. because it gave him more class.”

“We have more class at my school, when no one’s off sick with diphtheria,” I said.

“Same sort of thing,” said my daddy.

“No it’s not,” said my Uncle. “Don’t just humour the boy, tell him all of the truth.”

My daddy nodded. “It’s nothing like that at all, son,” he said, smiting me once again.

I considered the poker. A boy at our school had done for his daddy with a poker. He’d done for his mummy too. And all because he wanted to go to the orphans’ picnic in Gunnersbury Park. I wouldn’t have dreamed of doing anything as horrid as that. But it did occur to me that if I smote the Daddy just the once, but
hard
, it might put him off smiting me further in the future. It would be the work of a moment, but would take quite a lot of nerve. It was worth thinking about, though.

“There’ll be a wake,” said my Uncle Jon, derailing my train of thought. “There’s always a wake.”

“What’s a wake?” I asked, pretending that I didn’t know, and edging myself beyond my daddy’s smiting range.

“It’s a kind of party,” said my Uncle Jon, lizarding all around and about in the visitors’ chair. “Folk like your daddy drink a very great deal of beer at such functions at the expense of the dead man’s family and rattle on and on about how the dead man was their bestest friend.”

“Is there jelly and balloons?” I asked, because I greatly favoured both.

“Go and play in the yard,” said the Daddy.

“We don’t have a yard,” I informed him.

“Then go and help your mummy lather sprouts.”

“That’s women’s work,” I said. “If I do women’s work I might well grow up to be a homo.”

“True enough,” said my uncle. “I’ve seen that happen time and again. Show me a window-dresser and I’ll show you a boy who lathered sprouts.”

My father made a grunting noise with his trick knee. “Much as I hate your uncle,” he said, “he might well have a point on this occasion. He knows more than most about homos.”

“I’ll take that as a compliment,” said my uncle, “although it wasn’t meant as one. But let the lad stay. He should be told about these things. He’ll never learn to walk upon ceilings, just by standing on his hands.”

“There’s truth in that too,” said my daddy.

“What?” said I.

“What indeed!” said my daddy. “But tell me, young Gary, what do you know about death?”

“Well,” said I, toying with the poker, “I’ve heard that good boys go to heaven and that brutal fathers burn for ever in the fires of hell.”

My uncle laughed. “I’ve heard that too,” said he. “But what do you actually know about death?”

I shook my head in answer to the question. “Nothing,” I said. In truth I knew quite a lot about death. It was a particular interest of mine. But I had learned early on in my childhood that adults responded favourably to ignorance in children. They thrived on it. It made them feel superior.

“What
is
death, Uncle Jonny?” I asked.

Uncle “Jonny” pursed his lizard lips. “Now that
is
a question,” he said. “And it’s one to which no satisfactory answer really exists. You see, it’s all down to definitions. It is generally agreed amongst members of the medical profession that a subject is dead when they have suffered ‘brain-stem death’. Which is to say, when all cerebral activity – that is, brain activity – has ceased. This is referred to as clinical death. Although, I am reliably informed, certain techniques exist that are capable of keeping the body of a dead person ‘alive’ in a hospital by electronically manipulating the heart muscle and pumping air into the lungs.”

“Why would anyone want to do that?” asked my father.

“I don’t know,” said my uncle. “For use in spare-part surgery, I suppose, or possibly for the recreational activities of some deviant doctor.”