The Antipope

by Robert Rankin

  Neville watched open-jawed as a parade of supplies sufficient to cater for half the British Army passed before his eyes in a steady and constant stream. There were packets of sausages, beefburgers, baconburgers, beans and bacon-burgers,, sausage beef and baconburgers and something round and dubious called a steakette. There were enormous catering cans of beans which the porters rolled in like beer casks. There were sacks of French rolls, jars of pickled onions, radishes, beetroots, cocktail cucumbers and gherkins. There were hundredweight sacks of charcoal.

  ‘I have been light on the cooking oil,’ Young Master Robert announced as the slack-jawed Neville watched two porters manoeuvring an enormous drum in through the saloon bar door.

  Young Master Robert drew himself another scotch and explained the situation. ‘Now hear this,’ he said, his voice a facetious parody of Aldo Ray in some incomprehensible submarine movie, ‘what we have here is an ongoing situation.’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘We have product, that is to say Old Snakebelly.’ He held up a bottle of the devil brew. ‘We have location’ - he indicated the surroundings - ‘and we have motivation.’ Here he pointed to the banner which hung above the bar, draped over the moth-eaten bison’s head. It read: GRAND COWBOY EXTRAVAGANZA PRIZES PRIZES PRIZES.

  Neville nodded gravely.

  ‘I have given this a lot of thought, brain-wise,’ the youth continued. ‘I ran a few ideas up the flagpole and they got saluted and I mean S-A-L-U-luted!’

  Neville flexed his nostrils, he didn’t like the smell of this. The young man was clearly a monomaniac of the first order. A porter in a soiled leather apron, hand-rolled cigarette dripping from his lower lip, appeared in the doorway. ‘Where do you want this mouthwash then guv?’ he asked, gesturing over his right shoulder.

  ‘Ah, yes, the Product,’ said Young Master Robert, thrusting his way past Neville and following the porter into the street. There were 108 crates of Old Snakebelly, and when stacked they covered exactly half the available space of the newly built patio.

  ‘There is nowhere else we can put it,’ Neville explained. There’s no space in the cellar, and at least if they’re here whoever is cooking at the barbeque can keep an eye on them.’

  Young Master Robert was inspecting the barbeque. ‘Who constructed this?’ he queried.

  ‘Two local builders.’

  The youth strutted about the red brick construction. There is something not altogether A-O-K here designwise.’

  Neville shrugged his shoulders, he knew nothing about barbeques anyway and had never even troubled to look at the plans the brewery had sent. ‘It is identical to the plan and has the Council’s seal of approval, safety-wise!’ Neville lied.

  Young Master Robert, who also knew nothing of barbeques but was a master of gamesmanship, nodded thoughtfully and said, ‘We will see.’

  ‘What time will the extra bar staff be getting here?’ Neville asked.

  ‘18.30,’ said the Young Master, ‘a couple of right bits of crumpet.’ He had obviously not yet totally mastered the subtler points of American terminology.

  By half past six the Young Master had still failed to light the barbeque. The occasional fits of coughing and cries of anguish coming from the patio told the part-time barman that at least the young man was by no means a quitter.

  At six forty-five by the Guinness clock there was still no sign of the extra bar staff. Neville sauntered across the bar and down the short passage to the patio door. Gingerly he edged it open. Nothing was visible of Young Master Robert; a thick black pall of smoke utterly engulfed the yard obscuring all vision. Neville held his nose and squinted into the murk, thinking to detect some movement amid the impenetrable fog. ‘Everything going all right?’ he called gaily.

  ‘Yes, fine, fine,’ came a strangled voice. ‘Think I’ve got the measure of it technique-wise.’

  ‘Good,’ said Neville. Quietly closing the door, he collapsed into a convulsion of laughter. Wiping the tears from his eyes he returned to the saloon bar, where he found himself confronted by two young ladies of the Page Three variety, who stood looking disdainful and ill at ease. They were clad in only the scantiest of costumes and looked like escapees from some gay nineties Chicago brothel.

  ‘You the guvnor?’ said one of these lovelies, giving Neville the old fisheye. ‘Only we’ve been ‘anging about ‘ere, ain’t we?’

  Neville pulled back his shoulders and thrust out his pigeon chest. ‘Good evening,’ said he in his finest Ronald Coleman. ‘You are, I trust, the two young ladies sent by the brewery to assist in the proceedings?’

  ‘You what?’ said one.

  ‘To help behind the bar?’

  ‘Oh, yeah.’

  ‘And may I ask your names?’

  ‘I’m Sandra,’ said Sandra.

  ‘I’m Mandy,’ said her companion.

  ‘Neville,’ said Neville, extending his hand.

  Sandra tittered. Mandy said, ‘It’s a bit of a dump ‘ere, ain’t it?’

  Neville returned his unshaken hand to its pocket. ‘You didn’t come through the streets in those costumes did you?’

  ‘Nah,’ said Mandy, ‘we come in the car, didn’t we?’

  ‘And you are, I trust, acquainted with the running of a bar?’

  Sandra yawned and began to polish her nails. Mandy said, ‘We’ve worked in all the top clubs, we’re ‘ostesses, ain’t we?’

  Neville was fascinated to note that the two beauties seemed unable to form a single sentence which did not terminate in a question mark. ‘Well then, I’ll leave you in charge while I go up and get changed,’ he said.

  ‘We can manage, can’t we?’ said Mandy.

  The cowboy suit hung behind the bedroom door in its plastic covering. With great care Neville lifted it down and laid it upon the bed. Carefully parting the plastic he pressed his nose to the fabric of the suit, savouring the bittersweet smell of the dry cleaner’s craft. Gently he put his thumbs to the pearl buttons and removed the jacket from the hanger. He sighed deeply, and with the reverence a priest accords to his ornamentum he slipped into the jacket. The material was crisp and pure, the sleeves crackled slightly as he eased his arms into them and the starched cuffs clamped about his wrists like loving manacles. Without further hesitation the part-time barman climbed into the trousers, clipped on the gun belt and tilted the hat on to his head at a rakish angle. Pinning the glittering badge of office carefully to his breast he stepped to the pitted glass of the wardrobe mirror to view the total effect.

  It was, to say the least, stunning. The dazzling white of the suit made the naturally anaemic Neville appear almost suntanned. The stetson, covering his bald patch and accentuating his dark sideburns, made his face seem ruggedly handsome, the bulge of the gunbelt gave an added contour to his narrow hips and the cut of the trousers brought certain parts of his anatomy into an unexpected and quite astonishing prominence.

  ‘Mighty fine,’ said Neville, easing his thumbs beneath the belt buckle and adopting a stance not unknown to the late and legendary ‘Duke’ himself. But there was something missing, some final touch. He looked down, and caught sight of his carpet slippers, of course, the cowboy boots. A sudden sick feeling began to take hold of his stomach, he did not remember having seen any boots when the suit arrived. In fact, there were none.

  Neville let out a despairing groan and slumped on to his bed, a broken man. The image in the mirror crumpled away and with it Neville’s dreams; a cowboy in carpet slippers? A tear entered Neville’s good eye and crept down his cheek.

  It was seven thirty. The bar was still deserted. The two hostesses were huddled at a corner of the counter, sipping shandy and discussing the sex lives of their contemporaries in hushed and confidential tones. The gaudily dressed bar had become a gloomy and haunted place. Once in a while a passer-by would cast a brief shadow upon the etched glass of the saloon bar door, conversation would cease and the two beauties would look up in wary

  expectation.

  Neville descended t
he stairs upon tiptoe.

  The Page Three girls saw Neville’s slippers before they saw Neville. They should have laughed, nudged one another, pointed and giggled and possibly on any other occasion they would have done just that, but as the part-time barman reached the foot of the stairs he had about him such an air of desperate tragedy that the two girls were moved beyond words.

  Neville squinted around the empty bar. ‘Hasn’t anybody been in?’ he asked.

  Mandy shook her powdered head. Sandra said, ‘Nah.’ ‘You look dead good,’ said Mandy. ‘Suits you.’

  ‘Like that bloke in them films you look,’ said Sandra.

  Neville smiled weakly. ‘Thanks,’ he said.

  Just then the sound of a muffled explosion issued from the direction of the patio.

  The yard door burst open and down the short corridor staggered the blackened figure of Young Master Robert. He was accompanied by a gust of evil-smelling black smoke which made his entrance not unlike that of the Demon Prince in popular panto.

  As he lurched towards the bar counter Neville stepped nimbly aside to avoid soiling his suit. The two Page Three beauties stood dumb with astonishment. Young Master Robert stumbled behind the bar. Tearing the whisky bottle from its optic he snatched up a half-pint mug and filled it to the brim.

  ‘Two bloody hours,’ he screeched in a tortured voice, ‘two bloody hours puffing and blowing and fanning the bloody thing! Then I see it, then I bloody see it!’

  ‘You do?’ said Neville.

  ‘The vents man, where are the bloody vents?’

  Neville shrugged. He had no idea.

  ‘I’ll tell you where the bloody vents are, I’ll bloody tell you!’ The line of Neville’s mouth was beginning to curl itself into an awful lopsided smirk. With great difficulty he controlled it. ‘On the top, that’s where the bloody vents are!’

  Neville said, ‘Surely that can’t be right.’

  ‘Can’t be right? I’ll say it can’t be bloody right, some bastard has built the barbeque upside down!’

  Neville clamped his hand over his mouth. Young Master Robert raised the half-pint pot in a charred fist and poured the whisky down his throat.

  ‘What shall we do then?’ asked Neville fighting a losing battle against hilarity. ‘Call it off, eh?’

  ‘Call it off? Not on your bloody life, no, I’ve fixed it, fixed it proper I bloody have, gave it what it bloody needed. Proper Molotov cocktail, got vents now it has, I’ll tell you.’

  ‘Oh good,’ said Neville, ‘no damage done then.’

  Young Master Robert turned on the part-time barman a bitter glance. ‘I warn you,’ he stammered, ‘I bloody warn you!’ It was then that he realized the bar was empty. ‘Here!’ he said. ‘Where is everybody?’

  Neville moved uneasily in his chaps. The young master fixed him with a manic stare. Mandy watched his fingers tightening about the handle of the half-pint pot. She stepped between the two men. ‘Come on Bobby,’ she said, ‘let’s ‘ave a look at them burns, can’t ‘ave you getting an infection can we?’ With a comforting but firm hand she led the blackened barbequeist away to the ladies.

  Neville could contain himself no longer. He clutched at his stomach, rolled his eyes and fell into fits of laughter. Sandra was giggling behind her hand but she leant over to the part-time barman and whispered hoarsely,

  ‘You wanna watch that little bastard, he can put the poison in for you.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Neville, and the two of them collapsed into further convulsions. Suddenly there was a sound at the bar door. The smiles froze on their lips for it was at this exact moment that the Lone Ranger chose to make his appearance.

  He was quite a short Ranger as it happened, and somewhat stout. Neville immediately recognized the man in the mask to be none other than Wally Woods, Brentford’s pre-eminent purveyor of wet fish. Wally stood a moment, magnificently framed in the doorway, considering the empty bar with a cold cod-eye of suspicion. For one terrible second Neville thought he was about to change his mind and make off into the sunset in the manner much practised in the Old West. ‘What’ll it be, stranger?’ he said hurriedly.

  Wally squared his rounded shoulders and swaggered to the bar, accompanied by the distinctive smell of halibut oil which never left his person come rain, hail or high water.

  ‘Give me two fingers of Old Snakebelly,’ he said manfully.

  During the half hour that followed, the Flying Swan began slowly to fill. In dribs and drabs they came, some looking sheepish and muffled in heavy overcoats, despite the mildness of the season, others strutting through the doorway as if they had been cowboys all their lives. Three Mavericks had begun an illegal-looking game of poker at a corner table, and no less than six gunfights had already broken out.

  Neville loaded another case of old Snakebelly on to the counter. Young Master Robert returned from the Ladies, a satisfied expression upon his face, which was a battleground of sticking plaster. Mandy was wearing her bustle on back to front. Two more Rangers arrived, swelling their ranks to eight. ‘What is this, a bloody convention?’ asked one. Old Pete arrived wearing a Superman costume. ‘They were right out of Lone Rangers,’ he explained.

  A few stalwart professionals were sticking to their regular beverages, but most were taking advantage of the cut-price liquor and tossing back large measures of Old Snakebelly, which was proving to have the effect generally expected of white man’s firewater.

  The last of the Lone Rangers rounded the corners at either end of the Ealing Road and strode towards the Flying Swan. One was of Irish descent, the other a well-known local personality who had but several hours before come within one horse of winning £250,000. The two caught sight of one another when they were but twenty yards apiece from the saloon bar door. Both stopped. The Lone Pooley blinked in surprise. The Lone Omally’s face took on a look of perplexity. Surely, he thought, this is some trick of the light, some temperature inversion or mirror image. Possibly by the merest of chances he had stepped through a warp in the time-space continuum and was confronting his own doppleganger. A similar thought had entered the Lone Pooley’s mind.

  They strode forward, each in perfect synchronization with his twin. The Lone Pooley made a motion towards his gun belt, his double did likewise. But for these two lone figures, the street was deserted. The sun was setting behind the gasometers and the long and similar shadows of the two masked gunmen stretched out across the pavement and up the side walls of the tiny terraced houses.

  It was a sight to make Zane Grey reach for his ballpoint, or Sergio Leone send out for another fifty foot of standard eight. Closer and closer stalked the Rangers, their jaws set into attitudes of determination and their thumbs wedged into the silver buckles of their respective gun belts.

  They stopped once more.

  The street was silent but for the sounds of western jollity issuing from the saloon bar. A flock of pigeons rippled up from their perch atop one of the flat blocks and came to rest upon the roof of the church hall. A solitary dog loped across the street and vanished into an alleyway.

  The Rangers stared at one another unblinking. ‘This town ain’t big enough for the both of us,’ said the Lone Omally.

  ‘Slap leather, hombre,’ said the Lone Pooley, reaching for his six-guns. It would be a long reach, for they were back in his rooms upon the kitchen table where he had been polishing them. ‘Oh bugger it,’ said the Lone Pooley.

  Guffawing, the Ranger twins entered the Flying Swan.

  ‘Cor look,’ said Mandy, ‘there’s two more of ‘em.’

  ‘My god,’ cried Pooley, ‘ten Lone Rangers and not a Tonto between the lot of us.’

  ‘Two shots of good Old Snakebelly please, Miss,’ said Omally, ogling the extra barstaff. Mandy did the honours, and on accepting Omally’s exact coinage pocketed it away in some impossible place in her scanty costume. ‘A woman after my own heart,’ smiled the man from the Emerald Isle.

  Things were beginning to hot up at the Flying Swan. Old Pete was at
the piano, rattling out ‘I Wish I Was in Dixie’ upon the moribund instrument. Young Chips was howling off-key as usual. A fight had broken out among the Mavericks and Neville was flourishing his knobkerry, yet seeming strangely reluctant to make a move from behind the bar.

  Young Master Robert raised his hands to make an announcement. Being ill-acquainted with the manners and customs of Brentford he was ignored to a man.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ he bawled, the visible areas of his face turning purple, ‘if I might have your attention.’

  Neville brought the knobkerry down on to the polished bar counter with a resounding crash. There was a brief silence.

  ‘Ladies and gentlemen,’ roared the Young Master, his high voice echoing grotesquely about the silent bar, ‘ladies and gentlemen I––’ but it was no good, the temporary silence was over as’ swiftly as it had begun and the rumblings of half-drunken converse, the jingling chords of the complaining piano and the general rowdiness resumed with a vengeance.

  ‘Time gentlemen PLEASE,’ cried Neville, which silenced them once and for all.

  Young Master Robert made his announcement. ‘Ladies and gentlemen, as I was saying, as a representative of the brewery’ – at this point young Chips made a rude noise which was received with general applause – ‘as a representative of the brewery, may I say how impressed I am by this turnout, enthusiasm-wise.’

  ‘Enthusiasm-wise?’ queried Omally.

  ‘As you may know, this evening has been arranged at the brewery’s expense to launch a new concept in drinking pleasure.’ He held up a bottle of Old Snakebelly. ‘Which I am glad to see you are all enjoying. There will shortly be held a barbeque where delicacies of a western nature will be served, also at the brewery’s expense. There will be a free raffle, prizes for the best dressed cowboy––’ As he spoke, Young Master Robert became slowly aware that the assembled company of cowboys was no longer listening; heads were beginning to turn, whispers were breaking out, elbows were nudging. The Spirit of the Old West had entered the bar.