Waiting for Godalming

by Robert Rankin

  But, as relocating had to be instinctive, rather than premeditated, there was always a margin of error. And the possibility of capture and internment was never far away.

  On this particular day, being the one on which our epic tale begins, Icarus sat in Stravino’s shop in the cinema seat nearest the door. Sunlight, of the early morning spring variety, peeped down at Icarus through the upper window glass and grinned upon his hairy head.

  The seat that Icarus occupied was number twenty-three and had once been number twenty-three in the three and nine-penny stalls of the Walpole Cinema in Ealing Broadway.

  But the Walpole Cinema had been demolished and, during the course of that demolition, the rows of seats numbered from twenty-three to thirty-two had been relocated.

  By Icarus Smith.

  In fact there were a great many items to be found amongst the fixtures and fittings of Stravino’s shop that owed their presence to the science of relocation. An understanding existed between the barber and the relocator and Icarus Smith was assured of free haircuts for life.

  Today he thought he’d have a Tony Curtis.

  There were three other clients in the shop of Stravino. One sat in the barber’s chair, the other two upon the relocated seats. The one in the chair was Count Otto Black, a legendary figure in the neighbourhood. Count Otto possessed a genuine duelling scar, a Ford Fiesta called Jonathan and a bungalow with roses round the door. Count Otto was having his mustachios curled.

  Two seats along from Icarus sat a soldier home on leave. His name was Captain Ian Drayton and he was a hero in his own right, having endured sufficient horrors to qualify for a medal. Between Captain Ian and Icarus Smith sat the third man. He was not Michael Rennie.

  The third man’s name was Cormerant and Cormerant worked for a mysterious organization known as the Ministry of Serendipity. Cormerant wore the apparel of the city gent, pinstriped suit and pocket watch and bowler hat and all. Cormerant muttered nervously beneath his breath and shuffled his highly polished brogues amongst the carpet of clippings. On his lap was a black leather briefcase, containing, amongst other things, a pair of black leather briefs.

  Icarus Smith was aware of this briefcase.

  Cormerant was unaware of his awareness.

  At the business end of the barber’s shop, Stravino went about his business. He teased the tip of a mustachio with a heated curling tong and made mouth music between his rarely polished teeth.

  ‘Living la vida loca in a gagga da vida,’ sang the Greek.

  ‘Cha cha cha,’ sang Count Otto, in ready response.

  It might well be considered fitting at this point to offer the reader some description of Stravino. But let this only be said: Stravino looked exactly the way that a Greek barber should look. Exactly. Even down to that complicated cookery thing they always wear above their left eyebrow and the shaded area on the right cheek that looks a bit like a map of Indo-China.

  So a description here is hardly necessary.

  ‘Hey ho hoopla,’ said the Greek, breaking song in mid-flow to examine his handiwork. ‘Now does that not curl like a maiden’s muff and spring like the darling buds of May?’

  ‘It does too,’ agreed the count. ‘You are ze man, Stan. You are ze man.’

  ‘I am, I truly am.’ Stravino plucked a soft brush from the breast pocket of his barbering coat and dusted snippings from the gingham cloth that cloaked the count’s broad shoulders. The professional name for such a cloth is a Velocette, named after its inventor Cyrano Velocette, the original barber of Seville.

  Stravino whisked away the Velocette with a conjurer’s flourish and fan-dancer’s fandango. ‘All done,’ said he.

  ‘Your servant, sir.’ The count rose to an improbable height and clicked his heels together. ‘It is, as ever, ze pleasure doing business with you.’

  ‘One and three-pence,’ said the Greek. ‘We call it one and six, the tip included.’

  ‘Scandalous,’ said the Bohemian count. But he said it with a smile and settled his account.

  ‘Captain,’ said the Greek, bidding the count a fond farewell and addressing his next client. ‘Captain, please to be stepping up to the chair and parking the bum thereupon.’

  Captain Ian rose from his seat and made his way slowly to the barber’s chair. It had to be said that the captain did not look a well man. His face was deathly pale. His eyes had a haunted hunted look and his mouth was a bitter thin red line.

  Stravino tucked the Velocette about the captain’s collar.

  ‘What is it for you today?’ he asked.

  ‘For me today?’ The captain gazed at his ghostly reflection in the tarnished mirror. The mirror was draped about with Spanish souvenir windmill necklaces and votive offerings placed there to honour St Christopher, the patron saint of barbers. On the glass shelf beneath were jars of brilliantine, shaving mugs and porcelain figures, statuettes of Priapus, carved soapstone marmosets and Stravino’s spare truss.

  ‘Do what thou wilt,’ said the blanched soldier, who had studied the works of Crowley.

  ‘Then today I think I will give you a Ramón Navarro.’

  Outside a number sixty-five bus passed by.

  The driver’s name was Ramón.

  Stravino took up his electric clippers, held them close by his ear, thumbed the power and savoured the purr.

  Icarus snaked his hand around behind his seat and sought out the brown envelope. There are many traditions and old charters and somethings attached to the barbering trade. The brown envelope is one of these, but one which few men know.

  In the days before the Internet and the invention of the video, the days in fact in which this tale is set, there was little to be found in the way of real pornography. There was Tit Bits and Parade and the first incarnation of Playboy magazine, which was far too expensive to buy and always kept on the top shelf of the newsagent’s. But there was only one place where you could view real pornography. Real genuine down-to-business smut. And that was in the barber’s shop.

  And that was in the brown envelope.

  Today things are different, of course. Today the discerning buyer can purchase a specialist magazine dedicated to his (or her) particular whimsy in almost any supermarket.

  But way back when, in the then which is the now of our telling (so to speak), there was only the brown envelope.

  Icarus peeled back the flap and emptied the contents of the brown envelope onto his lap. There were four new photographs this week. The first was of two Egyptian women and a Shetland pony. The second was of two blokes from Tottenham (who can tie a knot’n’em). The third showed a midget with a tattooed dong and the fourth a loving couple ‘taking tea with the parson’.

  A musician by the name of Cox would one day write a song about the first three. He would sadly die in a freak accident whilst trying to engage in the fourth.

  Icarus perused the photographs, but found little in them to interest him. Cormerant glimpsed the photographs and turned his face away. Icarus became aware of Cormerant’s most distinctive watch fob.

  ‘Babies,’ said Stravino, his clippers purring towards the crown of the captain’s head. ‘What do you think about babies, then?’

  ‘I don’t,’ said the captain. ‘Why should I?’

  ‘You can’t trust them,’ said Stravino. ‘They pee in your eye when you’re changing their nappies. And do you know why that is?’

  ‘I don’t,’ the captain said.

  ‘Ancestral voices,’ said Stravino. ‘All that gurgling they do. That’s not gurgling. That’s an ancestral tongue. You have to keep babies apart, you can’t let them chat, there’s no telling what they might plot amongst themselves.’

  ‘Twins plot,’ said the captain.

  ‘Exactly,’ said Stravino. ‘Because they were together as babies. Twins are all weirdies, deny that if you can.’

  ‘I can’t,’ said the captain. ‘I have a twin sister.’

  ‘And she’s a weirdie?’

  ‘No, she’s a unisex hair stylist.’


  ‘I spit on those, whatever they are,’ said Stravino. ‘And also I spit upon architects. They will be the death of us all.’

  ‘Because they design blocks of flats? Ouch!’

  ‘Sorry,’ said Stravino. ‘I just took a little off your ear then. But not enough to affect the hearing. But blocks of flats, did you say? Well, that’s right, but it’s not for why you think.’

  ‘How do you know what I think?’ the captain asked.

  ‘I interpret,’ said the Greek. ‘But answer me this. Why do you think the world has all gone potty mad today? Why are people all stony bonker and devil take their hindparts? Answer this.’

  ‘A lack of discipline,’ the soldier in the captain said. ‘Or a lack of hope,’ the man inside the soldier added.

  ‘No no no.’ Stravino hung his electric clippers on their hook, took up a cut-throat and gave it a strop. ‘It’s the houses,’ said he. ‘And I am a Greek, so I know what I say. The Greeks were famous throughout the old world for their classical architecture. Am I right or am I barking up a gum tree?’

  ‘The Greeks were famous for many things,’ said the captain, peering ruefully at the reflection of his ruined right ear.

  ‘I put the styptic pencil on that,’ said the Greek. ‘But many things, you’re right as ten-pence there.’

  ‘Notable shirt-lifters,’ said the captain. ‘Their armies had platoons of them. No offence meant, of course.’

  ‘And none taken, I assure you. But when they weren’t lifting each other’s shirts, they were building great temples and amphitheatres and harbours and hippodromes,’

  ‘Hippodromes?’ said the captain. ‘The Greeks built music halls?’

  ‘Race courses,’ said Stravino, now taking up a shaving brush and lathering the captain’s head. ‘Hippos means horse in Greek. Dromos means race. Did they teach you nothing at Sandringham?’

  ‘Sandhurst,’ said the captain. ‘But where is all this leading?’

  ‘Architecture, like I say. It is all in the proportions of the buildings. The size and shape of the rooms. You go in some houses, you feel good. Others and you feel bad. Why is that? Don’t tell me why, because I tell you. The proportions of the rooms. The rooms are wrong, the people in them go wrong. People need the right sized spaces around them where they live.’

  ‘There might be something in what you say,’ said the captain.

  ‘More than you know,’ said Stravino, now applying his cut-throat. ‘And babies are little, so to them all rooms are big. Deny that if you please.’

  Cormerant opened his mouth and spoke. ‘I have an urgent appointment,’ said he. ‘Will I be kept much longer?’

  ‘Do you eat out?’ the barber enquired.

  Cormerant made the face that says, “Pardon me?”

  ‘Do you insult the chef before your soup is served? The chef he spit in your soup, I’ll wager. I not care to dine with you.’

  ‘Pardon me?’ said Cormerant.

  ‘Look at this poor soul,’ said Stravino, pointing to the captain in the chair. ‘This man is my friend, but by the caprice of fate, he has all but lost an ear. Think what might befall the man who hurries up his barber.’

  ‘I think perhaps I’ll come back another day.’

  ‘No no,’ said the Greek. ‘I’m all done now.’ And he wiped away the shaving foam and dusted down the Velocette and hummed a tune and smacked his lips and then said, ‘What do you think?’

  Captain Drayton gazed at his reflection. His gaze became a gawp and his gawp became a slack-jawed horror-struck stare. Of his hair little remained but for an unruly topknot.

  ‘But,’ went the captain, ‘but…’

  ‘But?’ asked Stravino.

  ‘But,’ the captain went once more, ‘you said a Ramón Navarro. Ramón Navarro doesn’t have his hair cut like that.’

  ‘He does if he comes in here,’ said Stravino. ‘Two and six-pence please.’

  Cormerant declined the offer to become the next in the barber’s chair. He left the establishment in a fluster and a hurry. He dropped his bowler hat and he tripped upon the outstretched feet of Icarus Smith and fell down on the floor amongst the clippings and the fluff. Icarus helped him up and dusted him off and opened the door and all. Cormerant hailed a passing cab and Cormerant was gone.

  Icarus Smith did not have a Tony Curtis that day. He left Stravino’s only moments after the departure of Cormerant. Some might say, when the coast was clear. But then some might say anything.

  Some might for instance say that it was yet another caprice of fate that Mr Cormerant tripped. And some might say that his watch and his wallet fell into the hands of Icarus Smith by accident. And some might say that Icarus took up the black briefcase that Mr Cormerant had inadvertently left behind in the confusion, in order to run after him and return it. Along with the wallet and the watch of course. And the most distinctive watch fob.

  Some might say any or all of these things.

  But then some might say anything.

  2

  Icarus Smith took an early lunch at the Station Hotel. It is popularly agreed that there is no such thing as a free lunch. But Icarus did not pay for his. The barman, who now wore a most distinctive watch fob, gave Icarus a double helping of mashed potatoes and told him that everything was ‘on the house’.

  An understanding existed between Icarus and the barman. The bar and grill of the Station Hotel was a study in scarlet. The rooms were high-ceilinged and broadly proportioned and would have found favour with Stravino. Long, net-curtained windows looked to the station, where the great steam engines came and went, the mighty King’s Class locomotives with their burnished bits and bobs. Icarus sat down at a window table, recently vacated by a stockbroker’s clerk, and stared wistfully out through the net curtaining to view a passing train.

  There were few men alive who were not stirred by steam and Icarus had long harboured a secret ambition to relocate an engine. Exactly to where, and for why, he did not as yet know. And though the thought of it thrilled him, it terrorized him too. His grandfather had been an engineer on the Great Northern Railway and had lost a thumb beneath the wheels of The City of Truro. Icarus prized his digits, but a man must dream his dreams. And if this man be the chosen one, these dreams are no small matter.

  Having concluded his early repast and washed it down with a pint of Large and a brandy on the house, Icarus placed the black briefcase upon the table before him and applied his thumbs to the locks. The locks were locked.

  Having assured himself that he was unobserved, Icarus removed from his pocket a small roll of tools and from this the appropriate item. It was but the work of a moment or two. Which is one moment more than one less.

  The locks snapped open and Icarus returned the item to the roll, and the roll to his pocket.

  He was just on the point of opening the briefcase when a hand slammed down upon it.

  ‘I wouldn’t do that, if I were you,’ said the owner of the hand.

  Icarus looked up and made the face that horror brings.

  ‘Chief Inspector Charlie Milverton,’ said he, in a wavery quavery voice. ‘My old Nemesis.’

  ‘I have you bang to rights this time, laddo.’

  Icarus held up his hands in surrender. ‘It’s a fair cop, guv’nor,’ he said. ‘Slap the bracelets on and bung me in the Black Maria.’

  ‘One day it will come to that, you know.’ The chief inspector grinned and winked and sat himself down at the table next to Icarus. For he was in truth no policeman at all, but the bestest friend Icarus had.

  Friend Bob.

  Friend Bob was a tall and angular fellow, all cheekbones and pointy knees and elbows. In fact, he looked exactly the way a bestest friend should look. Even down to that curious thing that fits through the lobe of the left ear and that business with the teeth. So no further description is necessary here.

  ‘Watchamate, Icky-boy,’ said Friend Bob.

  ‘All right, Bob-m’-son,’ said Icarus Smith.

  ‘You’re losing y
our touch, you know. Opening up a stolen briefcase in a bar.’

  ‘The briefcase is mine,’ said Icarus Smith.

  ‘With the corner up, it is.’

  ‘Temporarily mine, then.’

  ‘That’s a bit more like it.’

  Icarus smiled upon Friend Bob, and Friend Bob smiled back at him, doing that business with the teeth. Although they had known each other since their schooldays at the Abbey Grange and were as close as best friends could be, it had to be said that Friend Bob did not wholly approve of Icarus Smith. He knew well enough that Icarus did not consider himself to be a thief. But he also knew that Icarus was alone in this particular consideration and that it was only a matter of time before the law’s long arm reached out and took him in its horny hand. Friend Bob hoped that by subtle means he might one day persuade Icarus as to the error of his ways.

  Icarus Smith, in his turn, hoped that one day he might convert Friend Bob to the holy crusade of relocation. And, after all, if you wish to relocate a steam engine, it takes two. One to drive the blighter and the other to shovel the coal. And Friend Bob, felt Icarus, was a natural shoveller.

  ‘What are you doing here?’ asked Icarus Smith.

  ‘Working,’ said Friend Bob. ‘I am the new washroom attendant. My official title is: bog troll.’

  ‘Well, you are a natural shoveller.’

  ‘It’s an honest living.’

  ‘And the pay?’

  ‘There’s room for some improvement there.’ Friend Bob fingered his left earlobe.

  ‘You could always work with me.’

  ‘I think not.’ Friend Bob smiled. ‘So how are things with you?’ he asked. ‘How’s the family? How’s your brother?’

  ‘Still barking mad. He thinks he’s a detective.’

  ‘You’d better watch out that he doesn’t arrest you, then.’

  Icarus drummed his fingers on the briefcase. ‘Tell me, Friend Bob,’ said he. ‘If you could be anything you wanted to be in this world, what would that thing be?’

  ‘You know perfectly well what it would be. I would become a successful artist. Famous throughout the land.’