The Lord of the Ring Roads (The Final Brentford Trilogy Book 1)

by Robert Rankin

  The Lord Of The Ring Roads

  First published by Far Fetched Books

  2017

  Copyright Robert Rankin 2017

  The right of Robert Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.

  All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.

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  Cover artwork by Robert Rankin

  Art direction by Rachel ‘Raygun’ Rankin-Hayward

  THE LORD OF

  THE RING ROADS

  ROBERT RANKIN

  Dedicated to my oldest

  and dearest friend.

  The man who started it all.

  Nick Reekie.

  Thank you so much for getting

  me out of regular employment, Nick.

  Welcome to Britain’s best-loved borough. Praised by the poet Betjeman as “that single piece of Heaven toss’d unto the Earth”, Brentford rises from the north shore of the River Thames, a proud and stately town and one that, if not exactly steeped in history, has been, like unto a digestive biscuit, occasionally dunked.

  The pink granite monument which adorns the High Street bears testament to battles of historical significance which have taken place within the boundaries of the borough.

  Four are given prominence.

  B.C 54

  When British tribesmen under the command of Cassivellaunus bravely opposed Julius Caesar on his march to Verulamium.

  1016

  When Edmund Ironside defeated King Canute and the Danes in the area now known as The Butts Estate.

  1642

  When the town was sacked by the forces of King Charles I, in celebration for having defeated five regiments of parliamentarians.

  1796

  When “townsmen loyal and courageous did in the service of Christendom engage in battle and drive forth diverse forces diabolic unto a place from which they were forbidden ever to return”

  Today the borough is best known for the beauty of its womenfolk and window boxes. And the quality of its hand-drawn ales.

  Introduction to A Rough Guide to Brentford.

  1

  Norman Hartnell, a man who for three long decades and more had never been confused with the other Norman Hartnell, stood in the open doorway of his corner-shop, breathing in the healthy West London air and gazing upon the early morning streets of Brentford town.

  Although a chap well known — and indeed loved — for his cheersome disposition, Norman wore this day upon his face a look of wounded pride.

  Wounded pride and something that appeared to be a Victoria plum lodged where his left eye was normally to be found. Norman had what aficionados of the noble art refer to as “a shiner”.

  It was all Jim Pooley’s fault. But, to Norman’s mind, so many things were. Not that Jim was some violent maniac prone to the blacking of shopkeepers’ eyes. Not a bit of it. Jim Pooley was a man of peace and he was Norman’s friend. It was just. Just. Well. Jim was a fellow who offered advice. Out of the kindness of his heart no doubt. But advice none the less, that a prudent man would do well to consider carefully before acting upon.

  Norman recalled only too well the recent piece of advice that Jim had offered to him. The piece that had led to the shiner. Norman had been standing in the saloon bar of the Flying Swan, enjoying a Wednesday lunchtime livener and discussing potatoes with Old Pete.

  The conversation had been dull at best and made even more so by the fact that Old Pete’s hearing aid, an antiquated contrivance of the National Health persuasion, had all but given up its ghost. Norman was being forced to shout at the top of his voice and shouting was a thing most frowned upon within the Flying Swan.

  ‘YOU NEED A NEW HEARING AID!’ shouted Norman.

  ‘Pardon?’ Old Pete replied.

  ‘He needs a new hearing aid,’ said Norman to Jim Pooley, who sat upon his favourite stool a-sipping his favourite ale.

  ‘Then you should build him one,’ said Jim. ‘You’re good with your hands, Norman and I’ll wager you still have your Meccano set. You could knock him one up in next to no time.’

  Norman nodded thoughtfully, then, ‘microchips,’ he said.

  Folk who heard him say this nodded their heads. Some to signify their understanding of the subject, others out of the profound knowledge that Norman knew absolutely nothing whatsoever about microchipped technology.

  ‘If you would be thinking to manufacture your own,’ said John Omally, best friend unto Jim and well known Man-about-Brentford, ‘be prepared to invest several millions of money notes in the development thereof.’

  Noman gave his head a shake. ‘I have a transistor radio that I might strip down,’ he said. ‘A microchip is a microchip as far as I’m concerned.’

  Jim Pooley whistled.

  ‘For why do you whistle?’ asked Norman.

  ‘Just practising,’ said Pooley. ‘For the upcoming competition.’

  Norman glanced towards Neville the part-time barman.

  ‘Not in my bar,’ said this man.

  ‘You could get a kick-starter going,’ Jim suggested. ‘A crowd-funder. They are all the rage these days. The internet is awash with the lads.’

  ‘Internet?’ queried John Omally. ‘You do not even possess a computer, Jim.’

  ‘They have one in the library,’ said Pooley. ‘Did you know you can actually bet upon the horses online? I haven’t been in Bob the Bookies for more than a month. Each day I pretend I’m going in, then I turn around and come out again. It doesn’t half get his rag up.’ Pooley chuckled.

  ‘And do you actually win online?’ Omally asked of Jim.

  Jim’s face took on a certain expression.

  ‘Thought not,’ said Omally.

  ‘Microchips,’ said Norman, rightfully of the opinion that the conversation was slipping beyond his reach. ‘For Old Pete’s new hearing aid.’

  ‘Kick-starter,’ said Jim. ‘Crowd-funder or—’ and here Jim paused and it was a meaningful pause.’ You could go on Dragons’ Den.’

  ‘The who’s what?’ asked Norman.

  ‘It is a television show,’ Omally explained. ‘I’ve heard of it. Greedy millionaires exploit hopeful inventors in the name of entertainment.’ Omally, it must be noted, had never owned a television set.

  Jim made that certain face once more. ‘My thoughts are,’ said he to Norman. ‘That you have plenty of inventions gathering dust in your kitchenette cupboards. You could pick out something, sell it to the millionaires and use the money to finance the creation of Old Pete’s hearing aid.’

  ‘Pardon?’ said Old Pete.

  ‘It’s your round,’ said Omally.

  ‘It bloody isn’t,’ said Old Pete.

  ‘I don’t want to be diddled,’ said Norman.

  ‘They give you cash,’ said Jim. ‘They have wads
of it, in great big bundles, piled upon their tables.’

  A smile appeared upon the face of John Omally. ‘You would need a manager,’ he told Norman. ‘To handle the business side of things and see that you don’t get diddled.’

  ‘I have no pressing engagements at present,’ said Jim. ‘I might be persuaded to apply my business acumen to such a noble cause.’

  Omally raised his eyebrows. ‘Jim, you have all the business acumen of Young Chips here,’ he indicated Old Pete’s half terrier. ‘No offense, Chips,’ he added.

  Young Chips nodded his hairy head. Although he had studied for two years at the London School of Economics he had chosen to drop out and take the hippy trail to Kathmandu, rather than stay on and gain his degree.

  ‘It was my idea,’ said Jim. ‘So I have the responsibility to Norman.’

  ‘Having a manager was my idea,’ said John.

  ‘The money is for my hearing aid,’ said Old Pete. ‘So I should be the one to profit by the buffoon.’

  John and Jim did tut-tut-tuttings.

  ‘Shame on you,’ said Jim.

  Neville, the part-time barman peered through the glass he’d been polishing. He listened to the reasoned arguments, the justifications and representations, the fors and againsts, the so ons and so forths and such likes and when he had tired of all and sundry, he spoke.

  ‘Norman has actually left the bar,’ spoke Neville.

  Norman stood in his kitchenette-cum-workshop to the rear of his corner-shop. And here he rummaged in his cupboard, bringing to the uncertain light some fruits of his former labourings.

  It must be said of Norman that he was a decent fellow. Although many and various were his inventions, he never made any grandiose claims as to their efficacy, nor indeed that he was the father of their invention. It was of Norman’s nature to improve upon existing inventions or to create things that seemed to him so obvious that he found it hard to believe that no-one had previously created them.

  Norman rummaged and drew out this and that. A tiny shotgun for exterminating bluebottles. The Improver which transmuted base metal into gold. Or would, if Norman could just iron out a few wrinkles. The perpetual motion bicycle (well a model thereof). Norman offered this a wistful look. Big wheel on the back, small wheel on the front, thus always running downhill there was no need to pedal it.

  Norman’s wistful face became a quizzical face. He definitely hadn’t thought that one up himself.

  And then.

  Norman’s fingers touched upon something. Something soft. Something that he now drew out from the depths of the cupboard. Something that, had he been able to see it, he would have recognised immediately. But something whose very unseeability made it the thing that it was.

  The cagoule of concealment.

  All right, this one was certainly not his idea. Mr H.G. Wells took the credit. And the creation of what amounted to a cloak of invisibility had seemed to Norman a matter so simple that he marvelled that no-one had beaten him to it.

  It was, of course, all down to ultraviolet paint. As ultraviolet is invisible to the naked eye, it follows that anything covered by an opaque coat of ultraviolet paint must therefore become invisible.

  Even Mr Spock could not have argued against such pure logic.

  ‘Now this should tickle a millionaire’s fancy,’ said the scientific shopkeeper as he struggled into the invisible knee-length garment.

  Norman tittered and turned to face the mirror that hung above the sink. There was his head and there were his hands and stepping back there too his trousered shins. But the rest of Norman was gone to the world and nowhere else to be seen.

  ‘Perhaps I won’t actually tell them how it’s done,’ grinned Norman, sticking out his tongue and waggling his fingers. ‘For a trick is best as a secret held and the bird of truth pecks warily at all tomorrow’s parties.’

  Norman now sought out his phonebook and ‘D’ for Dragons’ Den.

  The lady he spoke to on the telephone made free with girlish laughter. She enquired of Norman whether he was under the misapprehension that it was April Fool’s Day. Norman found her levity unencouraging.

  At length, the lady spoke to someone other than Norman and the shopkeeper overhead the term “comedy relief” being employed. She then spoke once more to Norman and, in a voice of forced sobriety, offered him a welcome to the show.

  The Den of the Dragons was, it turned out, only a short 65 bus ride away on a sound stage at Ealing Studios.

  Ealing Studios!

  They had shot the Carry On films here.

  This was hallowed ground.

  Norman felt honoured just to be standing here. He also felt somewhat alone. Perhaps he should have taken up one of the many offers of management he had received from well-intentioned drinkers at the Flying Swan since he had mentioned his invite onto the show.

  A uniformed gatekeeper printed out a special pass and clipped it onto the lapel of Norman’s best Sunday suit then directed him to sound stage number three.

  Norman grinned. ‘I do not do this for any kind of profit,’ he said to no-one but himself. ‘I do it for Old Pete.’

  At the entrance to sound stage number three Norman was met by a gentleman of simian aspect, who informed the hopeful inventor of the way things were done.

  ‘You will enter the lift,’ said this fellow, ‘and press the “up” button. Then just sort of mime that you are going up. After a time the doors opposite you will open. Go through them and stand upon the taped cross on the floor.’

  Norman nodded thoughtfully.

  ‘State briefly what it is that you have to offer and be very, very polite to the dragons. They are all very, very rich and as such expect to be treated with exaggerated respect which borders upon reverence. Do you understand?’

  Norman shook his head. ‘Not altogether,’ he said.

  ‘And which bit do you not understand?’

  ‘The lift bit,’ Norman said. ‘I mean, if the lift doesn’t actually go up, wouldn’t it be easier for me to use the stairs?’

  The monkey man proffered a clipboard with a sheath of papers a-clipped. ‘Sign at the bottom,’ said he.

  ‘I’m not being diddled, am I?’ Norman asked.

  ‘Not in the slightest: it is a document of deceptive simplicity which states that you willingly cast away all vestiges of your human dignity. A standard reality show contract, that’s all it is.’

  ‘Not a problem,’ said Norman. ‘I signed one of these years ago when I tried to claim social security.’

  Norman signed and was ushered into the bogus lift.

  Norman had often wondered why it was that the folk you saw upon the television set always turned out to look smaller when you saw them in real life. Not that he had actually ever seen any of them in real life, but he had wondered none the less.

  The Dragons however looked big. They looked formidable. The male ones wore very expensive and well-cut suits and sported designer wristlet watches. And they all had those soft pink scrubbed and shiny faces that one associates with Tory politicians. Norman offered the Dragons a cheery wave.

  The Dragons did not wave back.

  One made notes on a pad with his Parker pen.

  ‘Good afternoon all,’ said Norman. ‘My name is Norman Hartnell, not to be confused with the other Norman Hartnell, of course.’

  One Dragon scratched at his head.

  An odd-looking lady one rubbed her fingers together.

  ‘I am here to ask for one million pounds for a one per cent share in my invention,’ said Norman.

  A Dragon who had been sipping Perrier water snorted it out of a nostril.

  ‘For this modest investment,’ Norman continued, ‘I will share with you a secret that has been kept from Man for as long as Man has been, so to speak. The secret of invisibility, I present to you, the cagoule of concealment.’

  Now a problem common to all things invisible is that if you put them down somewhere you will like as not have trouble finding them again.

&
nbsp; Norman, as he patted away at himself, considered it a strong possibility that the cagoule of concealment had been left on the 65 bus.

  With gails of laughter buffeting his ears he made his retreat to the bogus lift. And there tripped over something unseeable and fell heavily to the floor.

  To dwell upon the unpleasantness that followed would be nothing less than gratuitous. A detailed description of Norman’s return to the Dragons’ den clad in the cagoule of concealment would serve no purpose here. To speak of how he tweaked the ears and noses of those that had mocked him, before finally being brought down by the monkey man, who was clearly either possessed of simian super-sensitivities, or had noticed Norman’s disembodied legs prancing around the den; of the arrival of the police; or Norman’s night in the cell of the Brentford nick. No, it is better that we dismiss such matters from our minds.

  Far better that indeed.

  The morning sun shone softly upon Norman Hartnell, as he stood in the open doorway of his corner-shop gazing out upon Brentford. His shiner still throbbed like a good’n’ but the look of wounded pride was wearing off.

  For this was Brentford, after all. And only a man who lacked for a soul could find no joy in the dawn of a new Brentford day.

  ‘I will build Old Pete that hearing aid,’ said Norman. ‘For love is a stranger in an open car and every clown doth have a silver lining.’

  2

  Jim Pooley sat before the single serviceable computer in Brentford’s Memorial Library. Once, in a time not too far distant, a time revered of memory, there had been four serviceable computers. Four nice, smart, new, serviceable computers, installed through the auspices of the library’s educational committee, with a view to bringing all the world’s wisdom to Brentford’s hoi polloi.

  But now there was just the one.