The Brightonomicon

by Robert Rankin

  ‘Fine-looking women,’ said Mr Rune.

  Now, I have to say that I rather took to the décor of Eat Your Food Nude. It had that comfortable, lived-in feeling to it.

  The walls were painted all-over mauve, which I knew to be this year’s black.

  Upon them hung many silk-screened prints of the Andy Warhol persuasion.

  There were sofas and chairs of a velvet ilk and many a beanbag sack.

  And tables of oak of every shape, which answered every occasion.

  ‘Most poetic,’ said Mr Rune, ‘but that was the last chapter, surely.’

  ‘It is a very nice place,’ said I. ‘And we appear to be the first arrivals.’

  ‘First in, last out,’ said Mr Rune. ‘I have no pretensions.’

  ‘If the sirs will proceed to the disrobing area,’ said the maître d’, who had approached us silently upon his bare feet and now loomed before us, as naked as the day was long. Mr Rune explained to him that we were from the brewery.

  ‘Indeed, sir, yes,’ said the maître d’, with exaggerated politeness. ‘But as you will observe from your tickets—’ and he turned them over ‘—“NO KIT OFF – NO SERVICE”. It’s in big black capital letters here. I’d overlook your dinner suits if I could, but it’s more than my job’s worth.’

  I looked at Mr Rune.

  And Mr Rune looked at me.

  And our stomachs growled in unison.

  Now, I really do not wish to go into this in detail. Mr Rune and I were guided to the disrobing area, where we divested ourselves of our garments and received cloakroom tickets for same. When Mr Rune asked where exactly we might be expected to put our cloakroom tickets for safekeeping, as we no longer possessed pockets, he received a reply from the cloakroom attendant (who looked very much like a bog troll to me) that might either be described as ‘cheeky’ or ‘downright insolent’, depending upon your point of view.

  Mr Rune and I, then in the buff, were escorted to our table. And I do have to confess that as to whether Mr Rune’s claims regarding God’s generosity to him in the matter of wedding tackle were genuine, I could not say.

  Because I really, truly did not want to look.

  We sat ourselves down and took up our napkins.

  And I laid mine over my lap.

  Well, you never can be too careful regarding the soup course.

  The tablecloths were of crisp white linen and the cutlery was none too shabby, either. There was a selection of glasses, rising from little tiny shot jobbies to great big brandy balloons. A bit like a set of Russian dolls. Or dogs, perhaps. And there was salt and pepper. And only ketchup, no HP. Proper posh.

  Mr Rune called for the wine list and made his choice guided, as far as I could see, by price alone.

  ‘The Mulholland eighteen fifty-one,’ said he. ‘And bring two pint pots.’

  And then, as we sat guzzling wine, the other diners began to appear. And much to my utter amazement, many of these were famous. And I do have to say that, much to my utter amazement, once they had visited the disrobing room and returned to the restaurant as naked as jaybirds, I was hard put to identify them. It is really difficult to recognise the famous when they have their clothes off. They all look alarmingly similar.

  ‘Is that Jimi Hendrix?’ I asked Mr Rune.

  ‘No, that’s Janis Joplin.’

  ‘But that is Brian Jones, surely?’

  ‘No, I think you will find that it’s Jim Morrison.’

  ‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I know that is Johnny Kidd – he still has his eye patch on.’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Rune. ‘That’s David Bowie. Oh, good, they’re throwing him out. He always tries to sneak into events like this.’*

  Mr Rune pointed out Gram Parsons from the Byrds, Pigpen from the Grateful Dead and somebody called Kurt Cobain, who was not even born yet.

  ‘Tell me,’ I said to Mr Rune, ‘who is that black fella over there?’

  ‘That’s Robert Johnson,’ said Mr Rune.

  I gave my head another scratching and considered the possibility of getting myself a haircut. ‘Now hang on a moment,’ I said, ‘I recall having a conversation with your confederate Hubert, and he told me that all these rock stars had died at the age of twenty-seven.’

  ‘That hardly surprises me,’ said Mr Rune, finishing off the last of the Mulholland ’51 and calling out to the waiter for more. ‘Hubert claims to be a descendant of Nostradamus. But surely you’re missing the point here, young Rizla. Everything we deal with is to do with time – my search for the Chronovision, anomalies of time, holes in time.’

  ‘But these rock stars are dead,’ I said.

  ‘They don’t look very dead to me,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Would you care for me to introduce you to any of them? Most are personal friends.’

  ‘I do not really fancy getting up,’ I said, steadying my serviette. ‘I am comfy here.’

  ‘We’ve extra chairs at our table and we haven’t ordered the nosebag yet. Who would you care to speak with?’

  ‘Him,’ I said. And I pointed.

  ‘Robert Johnson,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Why does this not surprise me at all?’

  ‘Because you are the All-Knowing One?’ I suggested.

  ‘Bobby boy,’ called Mr Rune to the great blues legend. ‘Would you care to join us over here?’

  All right, I confess it, I had trouble with this.

  Perhaps all of these nineteen-sixties rock stars had not yet died at age twenty-seven. Maybe one or two of them had, but possibly their deaths had not been featured in the Argus or the Leader, concerned as those organs were with local events.

  But I was damn sure that Robert Johnson had died in nineteen thirty-eight.

  But there was Robert Johnson, naked as the day that he was born, approaching our table.

  ‘Lower yourself into a chair,’ said Mr Rune.

  And Robert Johnson did so.

  ‘This is my companion, Rizla,’ said Mr Rune. ‘He is anxious to meet you.’

  Robert Johnson smiled upon me and I smiled back at him.

  And through my smile I also stared in awe.

  Could this really be the Robert Johnson?

  The man who started it all – rock music, soul music, all that now we had and loved?

  The man who had supposedly gone down to the crossroads at midnight with a black-cat bone and sold his soul to the Devil, who then tuned his guitar?

  The man who always after this played with his back to the audience, for fear that they might see a magical something?

  That magical something that Keith Richards discerned when he first heard Johnson’s recordings?

  That you would need an extra finger upon your left hand to play the way he did?

  Robert Johnson put out his hand for me to shake it.

  It was his left hand.

  As it extended in my direction, I took to counting the fingers.

  And as it reached me, I exclaimed, ‘Oh my God!’

  PART II

  ‘Well, that was very rude,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘refusing to shake his hand. I think you quite offended him. He stormed off in a huff.’

  ‘But his hand,’ I said and I was shaking as I said it. ‘He has six fingers on his left hand. He sold his soul to the Devil. It is all his fault that these rock stars will die aged twenty-seven. What are we going to do?’

  ‘Well, I am going to order a starter. I don’t know quite what you have in mind.’

  ‘This is no time for food!’ I raised my voice to Hugo Rune.

  ‘On the contrary, this is exactly the time for food. It is eight o’clock and this is a restaurant.’

  ‘But we have to do something.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Rune, ‘you think there is a case or something, do you?’

  ‘A case,’ I said. ‘Yes, that is it, a case.’

  ‘Please calm yourself, Rizla, you’re getting most upset.’

  ‘Well, of course I am getting upset. Look at them – Jimi and Janis and Brian, and Jim and Pigpen and Gram, and Johnny Kidd—’
<
br />   ‘And Kurt Cobain,’ said Mr Rune.

  ‘Forget him,’ I said. ‘But look at the rest of them, all sitting here, naked, in Hove, enjoying their grub. And they are all doomed to die. And all because of Robert Johnson. We have to stop it.’

  ‘We can’t,’ said Mr Rune.

  I looked at Hugo Rune and I looked at him sternly, which even surprised myself. ‘“Can’t”?’ said I. ‘That is not a word I have ever heard you use before. Are you telling me that there is something that Mr Hugo Rune cannot do?’

  ‘In a word, yes,’ said the Hokus Bloke.

  ‘I am appalled,’ I said. And I was.

  ‘They have to die,’ said Mr Rune. ‘It is preordained that they will do so. They will live fast and die young, and they will leave an exceeding legacy. Would you care to see what would happen if this did not come to pass?’

  ‘I do not understand,’ I said. And I did not.

  ‘Pick one,’ said Mr Rune, ‘any one you like, and I will grant you a glimpse of how things would be if they were to cheat their fate and continue to live.’

  ‘This is not funny,’ I said. ‘You should not say such things to me.’

  ‘Any one,’ said Mr Rune. ‘The experience will be shocking and real, but in real time it will last but for a moment. Do you dare?’

  ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘That you will glimpse an alternative future, a future that will exist if any one of these rock stars were to live beyond the age of twenty-seven.’

  I did not really know quite what to say. So I said, ‘Go on, then.’

  And I suddenly found myself no longer unclothed in a restaurant in Hove, but somewhere else entirely.

  ‘Are you going to sit there dreaming, or do some work for me?’

  I rose to consciousness and stared.

  At Jimi Hendrix.

  He was fat and bald and did not look too well.

  ‘What year is this?’ I cried. ‘And who is the president?’

  ‘I wish you would stop doing that,’ said Jimi. ‘It isn’t big and it isn’t clever. It’s nineteen eighty-four and I am the president.’

  ‘You?’

  ‘Don’t do this to me again, please. Since Elvis was voted out of office five years back, I have been the man at the controls.’

  ‘The controls?’ I said.

  ‘My hand is on the nuclear button.’

  I tried to get a grip of myself and take in my surroundings. We appeared to be in one of those big boardrooms that you see in movies, the ones that are below ground level, deep in a top-secret bunker. They always have dramatic down-lighting and a lot of faceless fellows in black suits who nod a great deal and look like Gary Busey.

  ‘You are the president?’ I said to Jimi.

  Several Gary Busey lookalikes nodded at this.

  ‘And your hand is on the nuclear button?’

  ‘My left hand,’ said Jimi. ‘I always played left-handed, as you know.’

  ‘I am uncomfortable with this now,’ I said. ‘I think I want to go back to Hove.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Jimi, lowering his big fat self into the big fat chair at the head of the table. ‘Hove, how well I remember Hove, where you saved my life. I am eternally grateful, of course – if it hadn’t been for that night, I would never have given up the life of sex and drugs and rock and roll, taken to protesting and risen through government to the position that I hold today.’

  ‘I did not want you to die,’ I said.

  ‘And you did the right thing. We’ll best those Commie b*st*rds.’

  ‘Was that rock ’n’ roll patois?’ I asked.

  ‘No, I meant bastards!’

  ‘Oh,’ said I.

  ‘It’s an odd thing, isn’t it,’ said Jimi. ‘How when you are young you have all these ideas, all these things that really matter to you that you are prepared to protest about, to shout out about. Then as the years pass and you get older, they don’t seem to matter any more. Other things matter, that you’d never even thought about before. More mature things, responsible things. And so you choose. You never notice it happening – it happens bit by bit. And somehow, suddenly you’re there, as if you’ve just woken up in your fifties, saying, “Where did my life go?” And, “How fast was that?” And you’re not the same person you were when you were young. In fact, you have contempt for that foolish, frivolous person you once were, who did all those irresponsible things. So you sort of go into denial, saying “Well, what I did was okay, it didn’t matter, I was just having a good time.” And then you wake up and find that it’s now. Do you know what I mean?’

  ‘No,’ I said. ‘I do not.’

  ‘Well, it doesn’t matter,’ said Jimi. ‘I woke up, as one does at the age of twenty-eight. Up until that age, you have dreams, you are irresponsible. You rebel, you protest. But when you reach twenty-eight, you realise where you have been going wrong. I realised that all that guitar stuff I was doing was rubbish.’

  ‘No, it was not,’ I said. ‘It was wonderful. Innovative. Incredible.’

  ‘Trivial,’ said Jimi. ‘Nothing at all.’

  ‘No – it was something.’

  ‘That rock ’n’ roll,’ said Jimi, ‘that’s the Devil’s music. I hate myself for having played it. But now I’m born again in the Lord. Now I am responsible. And that’s why those Commie bastards are going to get what’s coming to them.’

  ‘Which is?’

  ‘Nukes,’ said Jimi. ‘Lots of nukes.’

  ‘No!’ I shouted. ‘Do not do that. You do not know what you are doing. You were the greatest rock guitarist ever. You were The Man.’

  ‘I’m still The Man. The Man. I was voted into power by middle-aged fan boys who still believe in me. I used to believe in fans when I played. Now I know them for what they are – cattle.’

  ‘No!’ I cried again. And I had a right sweat on now. ‘You do not know what you are saying, or what you are doing.’

  ‘Wake up,’ said Jimi. ‘I woke up. Why don’t you?’

  ‘This is not right!’ I screamed. ‘You cannot have become this. This is all wrong.’

  ‘We have to grow up,’ said Jimi. ‘We have to wake up. That’s how it is. And I’d just love to go on talking to you, but I have a button to press.’

  And his left hand came down upon that button. And I cried out for him to stop.

  ‘You cannot be this!’ I shouted. ‘It would have been better if you had died at twenty-seven …’

  And then things seemed to blink and change and I was back in Hove in the company of Hugo Rune, without either clothes or composure.

  ‘Aaagh!’ I went. ‘Oh!’ and, ‘Eeek!’ also.

  ‘Nice trip?’ asked the All-Knowing One, raising his glass to me – a glass filled with Mulholland champagne of the vintage persuasion.

  ‘I …’ I went. ‘I mean …’ I went. ‘I saw …’ I went. ‘I mean …’

  ‘Not such a nice future, was it, then?’

  I spied a glass that was filled with wine and poured it down my throat. ‘That cannot be,’ I said. ‘That cannot happen, surely?’

  ‘It is one possible future. Who can say for certain what will come to pass?’

  ‘And so …’ I glanced about all around me. ‘And so they all have to die?’

  ‘Robert Johnson did not sell his soul to the Devil,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Quite the contrary, in fact. You could say that he was an angel of the Lord, if you are inclined to such beliefs. Those who fell under his influence changed the world of music. Such was their gift. But had they lived longer, they would not have been remembered lovingly as rock legends; rather they would have grown in power to become something altogether else.’

  ‘So I could have chosen any of them?’ I said. ‘And the future would have been the same?’

  ‘With subtle variations. But not that subtle.’

  I mopped the sweat from my brow with an oversized green gingham serviette. ‘I am not well at all,’ I said.

  ‘You’ll feel a whole lot better when you have some food inside
you. I took the liberty of ordering for you whilst you were otherwise engaged in future possibilities.’

  And so I dined with Mr Hugo Rune at Eat Your Food Nude, and I have to say that I enjoyed all that I dined upon.

  Whether I actually met Robert Johnson, or any of the dead rock stars, I am not entirely sure. Their photographs did not turn up on the front page of the Leader the following day.

  Although mine did, and Mr Rune’s. And it was such an unnecessary fuss. Because we did have free tickets, after all. Mr Rune took to a bout of coughing during the pudding course, and there was this rat bone involved, although where that materialised from, I have no idea. And there was a demand for compensation, which surprisingly was met in full and paid in cash, which did pay off our owings to Mr Hansord the landlord But then there was the unfortunate business of our clothes having been stolen from the disrobing area. Which required further and heavy financial compensation from the management – sufficient, in fact, to put that particular theme venue out of business. But which nevertheless did involve Mr Rune and me having to leave the restaurant in the buff. Which did attract the attention of the paparazzi.

  We took a final late-night drink at Fangio’s. Still in the buff, but I no longer cared.

  ‘Did you enjoy the Scintillating Story of the Sackville Scavenger?’ asked Mr Rune, as he drained a pint of Shell to its dregs.

  ‘Not in the least,’ I replied, ‘but I am looking forward to breakfast tomorrow, what with you persuading the cook from Eat Your Food Nude to come and work for us.’

  ‘Part of the compensation for the pilfering of our clothes,’ said Mr Rune, ‘although I found that somewhat amusing, and nothing to protest about. A good night out, I consider. We must do it again, some time in the future.’

  And then Mr Rune offered me something. It was a badge with Robert Johnson’s face upon it. ‘I thought you might care to keep this as a souvenir,’ said he. ‘A pictorial representation of the Scavenger himself. The benign Scavenger, of course.’

  ‘That is very kind of you,’ I said, ‘but as you can see, I have nowhere to pin it.’ And then I paused for a moment, and said, ‘And for that matter, where exactly have you been keeping it?’