The Brightonomicon

by Robert Rankin

  Fange looked at me blankly. And he did it very well.

  ‘They get the name Woodbine wrong,’ I said.

  Fange shrugged. ‘As you please, Mister Humphreys.’

  ‘No,’ I said, and sternly, too. ‘Not like that. They might say “Mister Woodcock”, or “Mister Woodpecker”.’

  ‘Or “Mister Woodlouse”,’ said Fange.

  ‘Well, I suppose they might, but that is not very nice.’

  ‘I’ll let you know if I come up with anything worse. But if you don’t mind, I’ll have to interrupt this toot we’re talking because I want to switch on the TV – the croquet is on at Lourdes.’

  ‘Very good,’ I said. ‘You mean that the cricket is on at Lords.’

  ‘No,’ said Fange, shaking his head and all but dislodging the wig that I had not as yet got around to ridiculing. ‘I mean the croquet at Lourdes – the Benedictine Bears versus the Franciscan Foxes. Who really are foxes, if you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.’

  ‘That is one of my catchphrases.’

  ‘You should have mentioned that earlier.’ And Fange went off and turned the TV on.

  ‘Could I please have a bottle of Bud?’

  ‘Oh, all right!’ huffed Fangio. ‘It’s want want want with you.’

  Fangio served me a bottle of Bud and a bowl of chewing fat. ‘We’re out of hot pastrami,’ he explained. ‘Now please stop talking. I want to watch the match.’

  I had never really considered croquet to be much of a spectator sport. And I certainly never knew that it was televised.

  Nor that it was quite so popular.

  All of a sudden, the bar seemed to be full of supporters, most wearing the distinctive brown of the Benedictine strip. In fact, they wore numbered mini-habits, which I was informed were selling like hot cross buns at the local sports shops. Fangio’s eyes were upon the match and he refused all requests for drinks, referring the requesters to a pair of female bar staff that he had taken on for the day. These bar staff were bikini-clad and wore snazzy papal mitres upon their bonny blonde bonces.

  ‘Now he’s the man!’ cried Fangio, pointing to the TV screen as the camera zoomed in on a monk who was taking a mighty swing with his croquet mallet. ‘Like the Wolf of Kabul wielding Clikki Ba.’

  I shook my fedora. And wondered what the world might look like if you were standing upon your head and viewing it between the straps of a tart’s handbag.

  ‘That’s Father Ernetti,’ said Fangio. ‘Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti.’

  ‘That name rings a bell,’ said I.

  ‘No, you’re thinking of Quasimodo.’

  ‘No, I was not.’ I watched the Benedictine Bear taking his swing.

  ‘Oh and it’s through the hoop!’ cried the commentator.

  And the pub crowd went into a Vatican wave.

  ‘Father Ernetti,’ I mused to myself. ‘I do know that name. Of course I do. According to Mr Rune, he is the creator of the Chronovision – the TV that broadcasts past events.’

  And aloud I said, ‘It is him – he is the one.’

  ‘Damn right,’ said Fangio. ‘He’s a one-man lean, mean grilling machine.’

  I shook my hat for a second time and applied my attentive faculties towards the television screen. Not only had I not realised that croquet was a spectator sport, but I had certainly not considered it to be such a violent spectator sport. It made ice hockey look almost refined. The monks, and indeed the nuns – for this was a mixed sport – went at each other like knives in the water, and water off a dead duck’s back.

  ‘Have you joined the Tadpole of Dyslexia?’ asked Fange.

  ‘No, I was merely thinking out loud.’

  ‘Well, keep it down. We’re trying to watch the match.’

  *

  And I have to say that I quite enjoyed it, what with all the bloodshed and the swearing, which, although in Latin, still made its meaning obvious. And the skill, of course. We all applaud the skill in sport. We do not just enjoy the violence and mayhem. Or watch the Grand Prix hoping for a really spectacular crash.

  Well, not all of us. Do we?

  And when the final whistle blew and the bar crowd erupted into cheers and the singing of the dirty version of ‘Ave Maria’ and Father Ernetti was carried shoulder-high around the pitch by the few of his team-mates who had not been stretchered off injured, I clapped somewhat myself and Hail-Maryed away with the best of them – the best of them being a chap called Kevin and his son, who had come down on the special bus.

  ‘I have tickets to the final tomorrow,’ said Fange. ‘Excuse my failure to employ the Dyslextic dialect there.’

  ‘What?’ said I. ‘Are you flying out to Lourdes?’

  ‘Hardly. The final is to be held here. Tomorrow, at the sports stadium in Woodingdean.’

  ‘The stadium is in Withdean,’ I said.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Fangio. ‘That’s what I said.’

  I took my bottle of Bud and the bowl of chewing fat away to a side table that was not being overturned by joyful Benedictine supporters and pondered on my lot.

  ‘You’ll go blind doing that,’ said a lady in a straw hat, who was passing by en route to the female toilets.

  I obviously had to get to the Withdean Stadium and speak to this Father Ernetti – Mr Rune would surely expect me to do no less than this – although what exactly I would say to the good father, I did not know. Talk croquet and sort of work up to his Time TV, perhaps. And then a truly terrible thought struck me, like a dendrophiliac’s dongler at an autopederast’s arboretum, for I had slipped somewhat from the Woodbine idiom. What if the evil Count Otto Black knew that Father Ernetti was on his way to Brighton? Would he not seek to contact the monk? Count Otto wanted the Chronovision for his own evil ends. Would he not perhaps seek to acquire its creator? Kidnap him, torture him into providing the plans?

  ‘This is deep,’ I said. ‘This is very deep. And very dark, too.’

  ‘And it will give you hairs on the palms of your hands,’ said the lady in the straw hat, who was returning from the toilet.

  ‘I am on the case here,’ I said to myself when she had passed me by. ‘This all makes sense. The Woodingdean Chameleon. Well, Fangio confused Withdean with Woodingdean, but that is near enough. And chameleons are masters of camouflage and Count Otto Black will surely disguise or camouflage himself in order to capture Father Ernetti. I have only been a detective for a couple of hours and I damn near have this case already solved.’

  The bar was all but deserted once again, the croquet fans having returned either to their places of work, or to the mother who bore them. And but for an Oriental and a salesman travelling in tobaccos, there was only me and the fat boy, Fangio.

  I returned to the bar counter, taking with me the chewing-fat bowl, and ordered another bottle of Bud.

  ‘And don’t think that I don’t remember that you never paid me for the first bottle,’ said Fangio, presenting me with same.

  ‘About these tickets you have for tomorrow,’ I said, with more savoir-faire than a salirophiliac at a sperm bank’s summer sale. ‘You did say tickets, did you not?’

  ‘I might have said “rickets”,’ said Fange. ‘Or if I didn’t, I probably should. Or property shed, or pebbly shroud – the permutations are endless.’

  ‘I would like one of those tickets,’ I said, and I cast him the kind of smile that would win you a first prize at Crufts.

  ‘You can’t have one,’ said Fangio. ‘One is for me and the other for my fiancée Norma. For we are soon to be joined in wholly monotony.’

  ‘You do not have a fiancée,’ I informed the befuddled barkeep. ‘You once had a black and white cat called Ginger that deserted you, if I recall correctly, after you shaded in its white parts with felt-tip pen in an attempt to win the blackest cat competition that the Goth Licence sponsored for the Brighton Festival.’

  ‘I do too have a fiancée,’ said Fangio. ‘That’s her over there.’ And he pointed with the stick he used for stirring
.*

  I followed the direction being pointed out to me by the stick that the barman used for driving cattle to market on a winter’s morning.†

  ‘My Norma,’ said Fangio, proudly.

  I shook my hatted head for the third, and hopefully last, time that day. ‘Fangio,’ I said, ‘that is not your fiancée Norma. That is one of the lady-boys of Bangkok, who pitched their tent here during the Festival.’

  ‘Then I have been betrayed by my Dyslexia,’ wailed Fangio, affecting a face of vast distress. ‘One of the lady-boys of Bangkok? I thought he was one of the blousy lays of Babcock.’

  ‘Easy mistake to make,’ I said, ‘if you are stupid. Now, about that ticket.’

  I recollect that Fangio put up a respectable struggle to retain his croquet ticket. I issued silken words of persuasion. And then harsher words when he still failed to comply. And I recollect also that finally I had to strike down the fat boy with the chewing-fat bowl, because sometimes words are simply not enough.

  And it was a long, hard search for those tickets. I went through all his pockets. And the drawer of the cash register.

  It finally came to light when, in a right old sulk, I kicked the unconscious barman in the head and they turned out to be hidden under his wig.

  ‘Mr Rune will be so proud of me,’ I said as I left the bar.

  And I felt certain that he would.

  PART II

  Oh Stadium of Withdean, high perch’d on lofty crag,

  A stony fortress hewn for love of sport

  Where land-bound winds from stormy oceans drag

  At lichen’d walls, where nesting crows consort.

  Yea doth this bastion, this architectual whim,

  When fill’d with acolytes of ath-el-etes

  Rejoice with cries exhalted, from lovers of the gym

  And cost both arm and leg for decent seats.

  I cannot be having with poetry, myself. I mean, what is poetry? Song lyrics without the musical accompaniment, when you come right down to it. I mean, folk singers, on the whole, are pretty rubbish, but at least they have taken the trouble to learn how to play the guitar. And how can you really tell a good poem from a bad poem? I think they are supposed to rhyme, mostly, but even if they do rhyme, does that make them any good?

  But then, what did I know about poetry?

  Not very much, is the answer to that.

  But then, why should I? Because I was a detective.

  I was Lazlo Woodbine, private eye.

  And I can tell you, I was experiencing some difficulties with this. I was having a real job keeping in the idiom. And I was in real trouble being at the Withdean Stadium. Lazlo did not work stadiums. The office, bars, alleyways and rooftops, yes, but not stadiums.

  But I was young and had my health and was up for inspiration. And so I stood in one of the corridors that led down to the pitch. A corridor that was open to the sky at intervals. A corridor that would have passed for an alleyway any day of the week, with the possible exception of Tuesdays.

  I lounged against the wall, sporting my trenchcoat and fedora and occasionally patting at the item that made my poacher’s pocket bulge. The item was my pistol. Naturally, I did not possess the trusty Smith and Wesson favoured by Laz, and even if I had, I would not have dared to carry it. You can get arrested for something like that and I had no Masonic connections.

  What I did have, however, was an air pistol. It did not possess the clout to bring down an arch-villain, but it could make a decent dent in a seagull at more than thirty paces.

  And so I lounged and patted and looked very cool.

  And then a chap in a white groundskeeper’s coat came along and told me to move.

  ‘I am here upon official business,’ I told him. ‘Security.’ And I flashed him one of Fangio’s beer mats. ‘Just act as if you have not seen me.’

  ‘Move along, you twat,’ said he, in a real pea-souper of a Scottish accent.

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘You fail to grasp the subtle nuances of acting as if you have not seen me.’

  ‘If you dinna move, I’ll call fer security.’

  ‘I am security.’ And this time I flashed an origami dog, which I had created through skilful folding of cigarette papers.

  ‘Is that a spaniel?’ the Scottish groundskeeper asked, adding, ‘Hoots mon,’ to fine effect.

  I tapped at my nose. ‘Mum is the word,’ I said.

  ‘I’m away to fetch my knobkerrie,’ said the groundskeeper, ‘and should I return to find y’here, I’ll set about y’ as m’ forefathers set about the Sassenachs at Bannockburn.’

  ‘Then I will have to shoot you dead,’ I replied, patting at my pocket bulge. ‘It is nothing personal. I am not a racist, or anything.’

  The Scottish groundskeeper looked me up and down.

  ‘Do you know anything about croquet?’ I asked him.

  ‘It’s pish,’ he said.

  ‘Not a fan, then?’

  ‘Dinna get me wrong,’ he replied. ‘It’s a Scottish game, after all.’

  ‘It never is,’ I said.

  ‘Och, laddie.’ The groundskeeper threw back his ginger-haired head and laughed a highland ha-ha-ha, exposing a crop of blackened teeth that had clearly never known the joys of Colgate. ‘D’ y’ never read books?’ he asked. ‘The Scots invented everything – the Thermos flask, the television set, the Venetian blind, the Irish jig, the Norwegian wood, the Dutch cap, the French letter—’

  ‘The Jewish New Year?’ I suggested.

  ‘And that. Also the Welsh harp, Kentucky Fried Chicken, New York, New York—’

  ‘It’s a wonderful town.’

  ‘The Greek Tragedy, the Roman Holiday and the Turkish Delight. Not to mention the American Pie.’

  ‘The American Pie?’

  ‘I told y’ not to mention that.’

  And oh, how we laughed. For the old ones are always the best.

  ‘So how does croquet work, exactly?’ I asked. ‘I really do not understand the game.’

  ‘Och, ’tis simple. Listen while I explain.’

  And he went on to do so. And so I shall explain it to you. Croquet apparently originated in the highlands of Scotland, where poor crofters used it as a means of settling disputes. Which generally involved peat, heather, sheep, long-horned cattle, who had been knocking whom about with claymores and someone called Dear Annie, who was the fairest of the isles.

  A croquet team normally consists of four men or women, or some combination thereof, although the American WCF (World Croquet Federation) field six-man sides and allow the underpass rule, which is outlawed in Kilmarnock.

  Each four-man team, and only two teams play at a time (although the natives of Papua New Guinea, who took the world title twice in the nineteen forties, allow three teams to play simultaneously, and they also allow the side-swipe-no-takers offside rule, which is punishable by death in Falkirk) consists of a captain, a flackman, a cream-dealer and a fourth man known only as the Shady. The original name for a croquet mallet was a McGregor, after the legendary Rob Roy McGregor, but was renamed the Mallet (after Lord Timothy Mallet of Marlborough) as part of the Suppression of Annoying Highlanders Act 1736. At which time any person calling a Mallet a McGregor could have his lands confiscated by the crown, himself hanged, drawn and quartered and dug into the king’s rose garden at Kew. The original name for the ball was a bollock. But as to why this was changed, the groundsman admitted ignorance.

  The object of the game is to knock the bollock with the McGregor – or Mallet – through a series of hoops, which are correctly termed the Hoops of McVenus and represent either the female sexual organ or the Great Arch of Heaven from which the Celtic Goddess Danu plucked the star-stuff from which She fashioned the Earth. ‘Or least it’s some pish to do with womenfolk’, to quote the groundskeeper.

  ‘There are thirteen hoops, as there are thirteen months in the year and thirteen spots upon a dice. The—’

  ‘You are making all this up,’ I said to the groundskeeper.


  ‘Damn right,’ said that man, ‘y’ Sassenach twat.’

  ‘What time does the match start?’

  ‘Start?’ said he. ‘It’s almost finished.’

  And I should have guessed, really, what with all the deafening cheers that were coming from the stands. And the broken bodies of injured players being carried past me on stretchers. And the reserves jogging by to replace them, crossing themselves as they did so.

  ‘Who are the Benedictine Bears playing in the final game?’ I asked the groundskeeper, who had fallen into fits of drunken* mirth and seemed on the point of collapse.

  ‘Glasgow Rangers,’ he managed to say.

  I looked up and down the ‘alleyway’, but apart from the grounds-keeper and myself it was otherwise deserted. I drew out my trusty air pistol and did unto the groundskeeper what Mr Rune did unto cabbies with his very own stout stick.

  Two stretcher-bearers appeared from the ground end of the ‘alleyway’, bearing another bloodied body. They stepped carefully over the fallen groundskeeper.

  ‘Is Father Ernetti still on the pitch?’ I asked them.

  ‘He’s responsible for this,’ said one of the stretcher-bearers, nodding to the bloodied body. ‘Now stand aside, please, we have to get this chap into the back of a Royal Mail van.’

  I took myself to the end of the ‘alleyway’ and peered out at the sunlit pitch. And I do have to say that what with all the carnage going on down there, it put me somewhat in mind of the Games of Ancient Rome, the glory days of sport, with lions and gladiators and Caesar giving the old thumbs-down from the royal box while munching lark’s noses and being given a Swedish swallow (which the Scottish probably invented) by a slave girl.

  And there was Father Ernetti, in the thick of it, giving as good as he got and better and bringing his blessing-finger into play before dispatching an opponent.

  Beneath the shade of my fedora’s brim, I surveyed the crowd as best I could. Was he out there somewhere, the evil Count Otto, ready to strike? With the height of him and his long black beard, he would have to be a master of disguise to avoid recognition.