Sprout Mask Replica (Completely Barking Mad Trilogy Book 1)

by Robert Rankin

Mickey Vez, who, in his mother’s opinion, had the legs of an African tribal warrior, threw the switch and the dazzling rocket that masked the antennae atop the van began to rotate.

  ‘It’s a little like being at mission control,’ observed the romantic Mickey.

  Aaron eyed the screen, ‘A little,’ he replied, ‘but not a lot.’

  Without any warning at all, because it was quite unexpected, the little screen lit up like a piper at the gates of dawn!

  ‘Great steaming bowls of sprouts,’ cried Mickey, whose mother had taught him not to swear. ‘What is it? A nuclear war?’

  ‘It could be an electrical storm or something. Turn it down, it’s blinding me.’

  Mickey adjusted the brightness control. ‘It’s coming from over there,’ he said, consulting his Captain Laser wrist compass and pointing towards the east.

  He checked a map and sinister government-issue directory. ‘Number twenty-three Sprite Street. Name of Mr Raymond Bland.’ And then his face lit up to match the screen. ‘Eureka,’ said Mickey. ‘No TV licence.’

  Below the van a prone and muddy figure with a bruised forehead mumbled, ‘One flipping choc ice, is that so much to ask?’

  ‘Cathode’ Ray was back at home. He sat before, or more accurately within, his pride and joy and glory. Wall-to-wall-to-wall-to-wall television. From his swivel chair in the centre of his front parlour he could sate his senses on the screens of some four hundred televisions lining the four walls (one hundred to a wall).

  ‘It is the dream of a lifetime realized,’ said Ray, who, in his mother’s opinion, had the eyes of Bette Davis.

  Ray had arranged four video cameras, one high upon each wall and angled down towards his chair. The four top rows of television were connected to these and by swivelling the chair, Ray could see himself continuously, whilst keeping an eye on the lower screens, each of which was tuned to an ordinary channel, controlled by a master unit strapped to the arm of his chair.

  The floor was a snake-house of cables, and aerial leads ran up to the hole drilled in the centre of the ceiling, giving the room something of the appearance of a circus tent interior. In Ray’s back garden an eighty-foot ‘commandeered’ electricity board pylon served as the very acme of aerials.

  It was all very exciting.

  And very illegal.

  ‘Good evening and welcome to World of the Weird,’ said the three hundred and sixty faces of Jack Black, a popular TV presenter of the day, who, in his mother’s opinion, had the hair of the dog that bit him.

  The ten left ears, ten right ears, ten faces and ten backs of heads of ‘Cathode’ Ray Bland looked on appreciatively.

  ‘Lovely,’ said the ten mouths. The other bits remained silent.

  Aaron Lemon knocked upon the front door.

  ‘Tonight,’ said the faces of Jack, ‘we visit a man in Norfolk who claims that he can hypnotize fruit and veg in order to increase yield. Discover just why the planet Jupiter got so very fat. Pose the question, order out of chaos, God’s will or just a passing fad? And learn the terrible truth about the Scandinavian garden gnome trade.’

  ‘Jolly good show,’ said the ten mouths of Bland.

  Aaron Lemon put an authorized shoulder to the front door. ‘Come on, Mickey,’ he said, ‘this is THE BIG ONE.’

  On three hundred and sixty screens a small man in a turban stood in a sprout field shouting, ‘Grow, you blighters, grow,’ as Aaron Lemon with the pianist’s hands and Mickey Vez with the legs (of the tribesman, not the piano player), burst into Ray’s front parlour and came to a staggering, stumbling stop.

  Mickey struggled for breath and was the first to find his voice. ‘Mercy me!’ he went, remembering his mother.

  Ten TV screens behind him showed sweat breaking out on his forehead.

  ‘Big, big, big one,’ mumbled Aaron, ‘big, big…big...one,’ as to right and left of him his ears looked on in batches of ten.

  ‘What is the meaning of this?’ roared the ten mouths of Bland. And as he struggled to his feet his waistcoat, high on the TV screens, ruffled magnificently. ‘Get out of here at once!’

  ‘You...you–’ Aaron’s jaw rattled up and down. Never in his long and celebrated career as a TV detector man had he ever seen anything to parallel this. ‘You…you...I–’

  ‘We’ll all be in The News of the World,’ gasped Mickey. ‘I never knew I had a mole behind my left ear,’ he continued, looking up at the screens.

  Ray’s hands began to flap about. Jack Black’s three hundred and sixty faces were saying ‘petrified dwarves.’

  ‘Get out of my sanctum,’ screamed ‘Cathode’ Ray. ‘Get out of here, idolaters!’

  ‘I want my mum,’ blubbered Aaron, assuming the foetal position, thumb thrust firmly into gob.

  ‘I could have that removed by surgery,’ said Mickey examining his on-screens mole.

  And then suddenly a darkness entered the room.

  And with it came the reek of Brimstone.

  And with it the Angel of Death.

  The Angel of Death was dark and foully bespattered. He raised a terrible fist that clutched a terrible paling torn from the front fence outside.

  ‘Give me a choc ice or die!’ he roared.

  Now, reports vary in regard to exactly what happened next. The explosion was heard five miles away, registered on the seismograph at Greenwich and scored a chart position on the Richter scale.

  ‘Cathode’ Ray was out of town for a long while and when he returned he was bearded, wore the habit of a monk and referred to himself as ‘Brother Raymond’.

  Jim Pooley declines to talk of the incident. But I have seen him hurriedly crossing the high Street before he reaches the television repair shop. And the very mention of the words ‘choc ice’ is sufficient to send him ducking beneath the nearest table with his hands clasped over his ears.

  I lay upon Litany’s bed smoking a Senior Service and sucking a Fisherman’s Friend. ‘That was wonderful,’ I told her.

  ‘What, the short story?’

  ‘No, the love-making. It was my first time, I will remember it for ever.’

  ‘Well, you didn’t do too bad for a kid of fifteen, apart from when I was up on your shoulders and you—’

  I put a finger on her lips, ‘That’s our secret. I think I successfully distracted the readers’ attention by slipping in the short story, what do you reckon?’

  Litany smiled. ‘What, as a substitute for a graphic description of two hours’ horny love-making? Oh yeah, I should think so.’

  And then she smiled again and I didn’t mind at all.

  TIM DERBY’S MATCHBOX

  (A foretaste of horrors to come)

  The sad man called Derby walked out in the rain

  From the peak of his hat to the soles of his feet

  He was wet and he murmured again and again

  It’s the curse of the matchbox I found in the street

  The gay Persian matchbox I took to my flat

  To add to the others I keep in my drawer

  Oh who would have thought an old matchbox like that

  Could cause all this sorrow and fretful furore?

  The sea smote the prom and the wind howled with vigour

  And Derby returned to his garret in gloom

  And he looked at the box and he knew it was bigger

  It filled nearly half of his green living-room

  So Derby took fright and he called for a cleric

  To come and say things that a cleric must say

  And a clergyman came with a plumber called Derek

  And made certain signs as he knelt down to pray

  Dear Lord make us free of this monstrous matchbox

  Cause it to vanish away in the night

  But the spells that he spoke were as spots on a patch-box

  No fun at all and a terrible sight

  So Tim in despair took a leap through the casement

  Like Father Merrin had done in the flick

  And he lay very dead down below in the
basement

  The vicar just smiled and said, ‘That’s done the trick.’

  EPILOGUE

  The Rev and the plumber returned to the rectory

  And guzzled away at a bottle of rum

  And Del tore in half an old telephone directory

  While good vicar Norman played taps on a drum.

  Comment: It must be understood that a cleric is under considerable mental and physical stress when performing exorcisms upon devil-possessed matchboxes, tea trolleys, golf carts, etc., and after a successful exorcism it’s always nice to relax with a glass or two of rum, a telephone directory, a pair of bongos and a consenting plumber.

  12

  LUCKY BEGGARS!

  I lay upon the bed, hands behind my head, thinking.

  Litany had gone off to the en-suite to do whatever it is women do there after making love.

  Have a shower, probably.

  As I lay there, glowing warm all over and feeling blessed that I had lost my virginity to such a beautiful woman in such elegant surroundings, a grim thought came to me.

  ‘Now look here,’ said this grim thought, ‘why do you think that beautiful woman has just had sex with you?’

  ‘Because she loves me,’ I replied.

  ‘Bullsh*t!’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘She’s just after something; women are always after something. Men work on impulse but women plot and plan ahead.’

  ‘So what’s she after?’ I asked this cynical and misogynistic thought.

  ‘She’s after your money.’

  ‘I don’t have any money.’

  ‘But you could have. Once you’ve worked out how to do the mystical butterfly routine, you could give her the world. That’s what she’s after, she’s planning ahead. You see if I’m not wrong.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ I said, but the grim thought got me thinking. Now I know there’s been a lot of talk that men and women are not, in fact, members of the same species, that the similarities are purely physical. And it seems to be the case that although no man has ever really been able to understand how a woman thinks, all women understand how all men think only too well.

  Which gives them a natural advantage.

  My Uncle Charles, whose name I can never remember, worked for a while on the railways before he went into light removals. Shifting things from one place to another always fascinated him and he told me that doing this had given him a small insight into the way women functioned.

  He drew an analogy between women and trains. He said that if you consider a woman to be the locomotive and the freight, cargo, passengers she carries to be money, then much will become clear. Men, he said, were the guards and porters on the station, they directed the cargo (money) aboard, but the women (locomotives) went off with it and dictated where it ended up.

  Imagine a beautiful well-dressed ambitious young woman full of fire and passion, she’d be your express-train type. Load her up with carriages heaped with money and whoosh, she’s off into the night.

  Now an average woman, she might be your goods-train type, you put your money on board, but she comes back with a load of goods from the other end in exchange. He suggested a stable home, children and a relationship as an example of this load of goods.

  And so he went on. It made some kind of sense, although not much. I understood when he said that you can’t stick an express in the goods yard and expect it to function as a goods train, nor vice versa. And I think I got the general gist, which was that ultimately the distribution of money in the world (where it ultimately gets spent or goes to) is ultimately down to women (ultimately).

  It’s rubbish, of course. I mean, what about the blokes manning the signal boxes and the trains that break down or crash? And anyway ultimate distribution of money, where money actually goes to, is not down to women at all. Well, it is indirectly. But, well–

  Allow me briefly to explain.

  A short while ago I had a very strange experience. It was one of those experiences that make you re-adjust the way you think about the world. I recount it here for two reasons. The first, that it is an absolutely true story and the second, that it relates to what happens next in this narrative.

  At the time of which I speak, I was seated in the Pizza Express, munching upon a Veniciana (l0p goes to Venice in peril) and staring distractedly out of the window (watching young women go by).

  As I looked on I saw this beggar come around the corner. He wore the basic uniform of the new-age traveller: dreadlocks, studied-raggedness and bare feet. The bare feet marked him out as slightly different, as big boots are usually considered de rigueur. But it was more than this that made me notice him. It was the manner in which he carried himself. He didn’t shuffle, and he wasn’t sitting in a doorway with a dog on a string. This chap was begging on the move and he moved like a man with a mission who was off somewhere important, hated to have to beg on the way, but just did.

  I wondered where it was he was off to and hoped that it was somewhere exciting.

  Not ten minutes later, however, around the same corner he came again and then ten minutes after that, again. Each time begging and each time definitely looking as if he was off somewhere.

  I was quite impressed by this technique.

  I finished my meal, paid up and left the restaurant. As I did so, around the corner came the young beggar again and tried to touch me for my small change.

  I almost put my hand in my pocket.

  Almost.

  ‘Now, hang about,’ I said.

  ‘I can’t stop,’ said he. ‘I have to be off.’

  ‘No you don’t. I’ve been sitting in Pizza Express watching you and you’ve circled this block of buildings four times now.

  ‘So?’ said he.

  ‘Well, so, actually I’m impressed. The way you carry yourself, this impression you convey that you’re off somewhere, it shows imagination, originality of thought, perseverance, all qualities that might lead a man to success. What I want to know is, why someone such as yourself, who obviously possesses these qualities, is spending his time in such a low-paid occupation as begging, when he could no doubt turn his hand to something far more profitable?’

  And he looked at me as if I was quite insane.

  ‘Low-paid occupation?’ he said.

  ‘Well, it’s all small change, isn’t it?’

  ‘Small change is what pounds are made of,’ and he tried to push past me.

  ‘Just hold on,’ I said. ‘Surely you are wasting your talent? Surely you could find an occupation that would enable you to make big bucks rather than small change?’

  He looked me up and down. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ll tell you what I do. How many times did you see me from the restaurant?’

  ‘Three times,’ I said.

  ‘And how many times did you see me beg someone for money?’

  ‘Three times.’

  ‘And how many times did you see them give me money?’

  I thought about this. ‘All three times,’ I said.

  ‘And during the period that I was beyond your range of vision, what do you think I was doing then?’

  ‘You were circling the block.’

  ‘I was begging,’ he said. ‘And I was being given money. If you’d sat in another restaurant anywhere on the block, or in a pub, or in a shop and watched me go by you’d have seen the very same thing. You’d have seen me beg someone for money and them give it to me.’

  ‘They can’t all have given you money,’ I said.

  He raised a pierced eyebrow. ‘That is hardly a conclusion based on the evidence of your own observation, now, is it?’

  I shook my head. ‘Then you’re telling me that all day long people give you money. More and more and more money?’

  ‘More and more and more,’ he said.

  ‘That’s incredible.’

  He shrugged and made to push past once more.

  I stopped him. ‘Hold on,’ I said. ‘What I want to know is, what do you do with all this money? Have you
got a big expensive car or something?’

  ‘Have you ever seen me in a big expensive car?’

  ‘No, I’ve only seen you begging money and being given money.’

  ‘Well, you can ask anyone in Brighton if they’ve seen me in a big expensive car, and each of them will say, no, they’ve only seen me begging and being given money.’

  ‘You put it all in the bank then.’

  ‘Have you ever seen me do that?’

  ‘Well, no. All right. You hoard it then.’

  ‘Seen me do that either?’

  ‘No, but you can’t carry it all on you. You’d end up having to have a Securicor truck driving along behind you.’

  ‘That’s a pretty stupid remark, isn’t it?’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ I agreed. ‘I’m sorry. Ah, hang about,’ I said, ‘you spend it, you spend exactly the amount you earn each day. On really expensive food and wine, perhaps.’

  ‘Have you ever seen me go into a shop?’ he asked.

  ‘No, but my experience of you is based only upon limited observation. Someone must have seen you go into a shop.’

  ‘They haven’t,’ he said. ‘Ask anyone, anyone at all. Ask this bloke here.’ He indicated a gentleman heading out way.

  ‘Excuse me,’ I said to the gentleman, ‘but have you ever seen this chap before?’

  The gentleman looked at me in a most suspicious manner, put his hand into his pocket, produced a fifty-pence piece and handed it to the beggar.

  The beggar said, ‘Thanks,’ grinned and made as to move off once again.

  ‘Hold it!’ I told him. ‘All right. That fifty pence, what are you going to do with it?’

  ‘What fifty pence is that?’

  ‘The one that gentleman just gave you.

  ‘I don’t have no fifty pence,’ he held up his hands. ‘You can search me, if you want.’

  ‘No thanks, but I just saw him give it to you.’

  ‘And I don’t have it any more.’

  ‘So what have you done with it.’

  He opened his mouth and pointed down his throat. ‘It’s gone.’