The Book of Ultimate Truths (The Cornelius Murphy Trilogy 1)

by Robert Rankin

  THE BOOK OF ULTIMATE TRUTHS

  ROBERT RANKIN

  The Book of Ultimate Truths

  Originally published by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers

  Doubleday Edition published 1993

  Corgi Edition published 1994

  Kindle Edition published 2012 by Far Fetched Books

  Diddled about with and proof-read by the author, who apologises for any typos or grammatical errors that somehow slipped past him.

  He did his best, honest.

  Copyright Robert Rankin 1993

  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.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Follow Robert on Facebook

  Dedicated to my son Robert

  “THE STUFF OF EPICS”

  For his love and kindness.

  You make your old Dad proud.

  Introduction

  Peace Day Celebrations

  1

  2

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  16

  17

  19

  20

  21

  22

  23

  Introduction

  He had known many previous incarnations. And then some.

  He had walked the Earth as Nostradamus, Uther Pendragon, Count Cagliostro and Rodrigo Borgia. Although probably not in that order.

  He spoke seventeen languages, played darts with the Dalai Lama and shared his sleeping-bag with Rasputin, Albert Einstein, Lawrence of Arabia and George Formby.

  He was worshipped as a god by an East Acton cargo cult and once scaled Everest in a smoking-jacket and plus-fours to win a bet with Oscar Wilde.

  He travelled to Venus in the company of George Adamski, reinvented the ocarina and was burned in effigy by The Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild.

  He was an expert swordsman, a gourmet chef, a world traveller, poet, painter, stigmatist, guru to gurus and hater of Bud Abbott.

  He could open a tin of sardines with his teeth, strike a Swan Vestas on his chin, rope steers, drive a steam locomotive and hum all the works of Gilbert and Sullivan without becoming confused or breaking down in tears.

  He won a first at Oxford, squandered three fortunes, made love to a thousand women, imbibed strange drugs, sold his soul for Rock ‘n’ Roll, almost pipped Einstein for the Nobel Prize, was barred from every Chinese noodle parlour in West London and died penniless, at a Hastings boarding-house in his ninetieth year.

  His name was Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune.

  And he was never bored.

  He penned more than eight million words. His autohagiography, The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived, chronicles the life of an individual who shunned the everyday, scorned the laws of ordinary man, laughed in the face of convention, reinvented the ocarina and hated Bud Abbott.

  He was a character in an age of characters. An exaggerated shadow cast in the fashionable places of his day. The confidant of kings and criminals, popes and prize-fighters, lighthouse keepers and lingerie salesmen, boffins and bikers.

  Strangely enough, hardly anyone remembers him today.

  His greatest work, The Book Of Ultimate Truths, has long ago vanished from the bookshelves. The British Library denies all knowledge of it. Smith’s can’t get it in and a recent privately printed edition turned out to be an elaborate hoax, perpetrated by a certain Sir John Rimmer, a bogus biographer of Rune, now living as a tax exile in California.

  The Book Of Ultimate Truths was Rune’s magnum opus. An encyclopaedia of his accumulated wisdom. Within it, the Master explains, in terms understandable to the layman, exactly what life is really all about.

  Why there are always two small screws left over when you reassemble that broken toaster. Where all the yellow-handled screwdrivers go to. Why supermarket trolleys congregate beneath canal bridges. How the thermos flask knows what to keep hot and what to keep cold. Why the aspirin is only guessing. Where all the road cones come from and where they go to afterwards and why it’s always right where you’re driving. The myth of ‘dry’ cleaning. Dog-turd geomancy. The truth about the Forbidden Zones and the London A-Z and much much more.

  Throughout his colourful life the Forces of Darkness sought constantly to prevent Rune from revealing his Ultimate Truths. Satanic agencies plagued him in many human forms. Cuckolded husbands, the original inventor of the ocarina, The Chiswick Townswomen’s Guild and The Bud Abbott Appreciation Society, to mention but a few.

  Added to these were landlords and lodging-house keepers, the proprietors of West London Chinese noodle parlours, milkmen, tailors, shoemakers, manufacturers of magical accoutrements, travel agents and vintners. All labouring under what Rune referred to as, ‘the curious misconception that a Master should pay his bills as do the humble folk’.

  But, although under constant threat of assassination or litigation, Hugo Rune was never afraid to speak out, name names and point the finger of accusation. His modest aim was to increase mankind’s knowledge and single-handedly bring about World Peace.

  THE BOOK OF ULTIMATE TRUTHS MUST BE REPUBLISHED FOR ALL OUR SAKES

  Peace Day Celebrations

  Being too young to remember Peace Day, Cornelius Murphy asked his Uncle Brian to tell him all about it.

  ‘Well, son,’ said the uncle, settling himself on the box ottoman and sucking life into his pipe. ‘What would you like to know?’

  ‘Were there flags?’ Cornelius asked.

  ‘Flags?’ The uncle puffed upon his ancient meerschaum. ‘Flags there were, son. Flags of every shape and hue. The whole of Sprite Street was decked out, like a stamp album. There were Union Jacks galore and your aunt and me made bunting from lengths of toilet roll and hung it out of the windows.’

  ‘And were there cakes?’ Cornelius asked.

  ‘Cakes? I’ll say there were cakes. Old Ma Riley made a cake like Buckingham Palace and the girls from the steam laundry baked buns like victory signs and battleships and lions and tigers. I even recall an unsliced brown, fashioned after the manner of Winston Churchill’s cigar.’

  ‘Gosh.’ Cornelius hugged his knees. ‘And dancing, Uncle Brian. Did people dance?’

  ‘Dance?’ The uncle waved his pipe in the air. ‘Dance we did, son. We danced all night. Two brass bands came down from the colliery. Bands with horns and trumpets and big bass drums. We danced until our feet were sore and then we danced again.’

  He sat back as if even the memory exhausted him.

  ‘And were there toads, Uncle Brian?’ For Cornelius had run out of questions and interest at exactly the same moment.

  ‘Toads?’ asked the uncle. ‘I’ll sa
y there were toads. Toads as big as dogs. Dancing and singing and playing the bagpipes.’

  It was the first time Cornelius had met with insanity and being only a small child he was favourably impressed.

  1

  The changing room smelled of stale plimsolls, young armpits and unwashed bottoms. Even now, when the boys responsible had become young men and gone off to make their ways in the world.

  The August sunlight filtered through high panes with no particular enthusiasm. It touched upon empty lockers, unemployed clothes pegs and peely paintwork. It didn’t make much of the singular individual draped upon the low bench beneath the window. But then why should it? The sun had far better things to be doing and far better places to be.

  As did the sitter on the bench.

  His name was Cornelius Murphy.

  And he was the stuff of epics.

  Cornelius was a tall boy who had not as yet grown into his body. His limbs dangled and seemed forever uncertain what they should be doing with themselves.

  His dark hair, however, had made up its mind. It chose to defy all discipline, and form precarious waves. These broke in whatever direction the mood took them.

  Cornelius had a noble brow in the making. A fine aquiline nose, sharp grey eyes and a wide mouth, which was, like as not, to be found smiling.

  It wasn’t smiling now.

  Cornelius turned up his wristwatch and viewed the hour. A little after ten of the morning clock. The world awaited him.

  The tall boy rose awkwardly, stretched and put his best foot forward. He opened the door and prepared to make good his escape.

  The burly figure of the games master barred his way and shouted the words ‘Science Room!’ into his left ear.

  The science-room windows were within easy reach of the school-keeper’s shammy. They were clean. The August sun entered them with gusto.

  The mahogany work tables, mottled by youthful misexperiment, shone with a rich dark patina. The Edwardian display cases containing apparatus whereby Boyle’s Law could be proven beyond all reasonable doubt, veritably twinkled. Bunsen burners, Petri dishes, retorts and test tube holders winked enticingly. In a drawer the litmus paper mused upon which way to turn.

  At a desk before the window sat a pale man in a dark suit.

  He was a man ‘driven’.

  His name was Mr Yarrow and he was the youth employment officer.

  To this pale and hollow man fell the enormous responsibility of placing every school-leaving boy in full-time employment before the end of his final term. And Mr Yarrow went about this task as one possessed. For indeed he was.

  Under Mr Yarrow’s guiding hand, the reputation of the school was untarnished, these five long years. He had seen to it that each and every boy found his way into a suitable occupation. And he did it through a method that was little less than divinely inspired.

  It had come to him as a blinding revelation when he was but a small child. He had been playing Happy Families at the time and wondering why it was that the families depicted on the cards should be so happy and his wasn’t. And then it struck him. Bang! Right out of the blue. It was their names and the jobs they did. The two were magically linked! Mr Bun was a baker and Mr Thread a tailor. That was it. It was so obvious that he marvelled that none should have seen it before him. If you wanted to be happy in life, then you had to find an occupation that began with the same letter as your surname. It was that simple! At first it made him somewhat sad, because he dearly wished to become a train robber. And then it made him somewhat fearful, the thought that he alone should possess this knowledge. But possess it he did and there was no turning back. His future was mapped out for him. He would become Mr Yarrow the youth employment officer and bring happiness to thousands.

  And for the last five years he had been doing just that.

  Certainly many parents seemed genuinely bewildered upon learning the nature of the job he had lined up for their offspring. A few had even become downright hostile. These spoke openly of ropes being thrown over high beams and tar and feathers brought into play.

  But he had skilfully pacified even the most vociferous of dissenters.

  To those who did not respond to his sad soliloquies on the terrible social stigma which must naturally fall upon the parents who forbade their own child the opportunity of gainful employment and condemned him instead to a living purgatory of dole-queue misery, there was always the wall of shame, upon which their names must be forever writ in letters big, for destroying the glorious reputation of the school.

  For the most part, however, parents seemed pathetically grateful that their wretched boys had any job to go to.

  Mr Yarrow turned papers upon his desk. The papers came from a big fat file. Upon this the name of Cornelius Murphy was writ in letters big.

  Big and red.

  Murphy’s final year had come to an end and the loathsome boy remained without employment. It was the now legendary Nightmare Scenario.

  With the final minutes of the term ticking away Mr Yarrow had contacted Murphy Senior and frantic talks had taken place. An agreement had hastily been arrived at, to the effect that Cornelius would be kept on at school for an indefinite period until matters could be expedited.

  During this eleventh-hour telephonic summit, Murphy Senior had proved himself to be a tower of strength and a fortress of moral rectitude. He could not countenance, he said, the thought that his only son should besmirch the good name of his own old Alma Mater. But neither could his conscience allow him to enter into duplicity. He suggested an inspired compromise.

  Cornelius would remain on at school until real work could be found for him. But during this period, in order that the school’s reputation remain intact, he should be taken on in some capacity and paid a salary, that of a youth employment officer’s assistant, for example. Mr Yarrow willingly agreed.

  But a month had passed since then. A month which had seen less and less of Cornelius Murphy. Today, however, was Murphy’s fourth payday. Mr Yarrow was determined that it should be his last.

  The door opened and Cornelius Murphy was propelled into the science room.

  ‘Sit down.’ Mr Yarrow did not look up from his papers.

  Cornelius chose a seat by the door.

  ‘Over here.’ A nicotined finger indicated the chair before the desk.

  Cornelius shambled over and sat down noisily. He smiled at Mr Yarrow. Mr Yarrow did not smile back. Three feet of desk top separated them. And about twelve million miles.

  Mr Yarrow made a purposeful face and turned fools-cap pages before him. It was a slow and deliberate process. There was no sense of urgency about it.

  Cornelius studied the youth employment officer. He observed that his ears, made almost transparent by the sunlight, closely resembled a pair of human embryos. That the dandruff flecks on his left shoulder formed the configuration of Ursa Major. That the rich orange hue of the nicotined finger matched that obtained by the French painter Saint-Martin, who used ground fragments from the heart of Louis XIV to achieve the effect. That a bead of perspiration above Mr Yarrow’s left eyebrow contained a microcosm of the visible universe.

  Mr Yarrow continued to turn papers. At intervals he looked up at Cornelius and shook his head doubtfully. Cornelius found the habit mildly annoying, but as he prided himself that he could get through any interview with Mr Yarrow without uttering a single word, he refrained from comment.

  At very great length Mr Yarrow leaned back in his chair, sighed deeply and gazed upon Cornelius Murphy.

  ‘This is a fine pickle,’ he said.

  Cornelius nodded thoughtfully. A fine pickle and no mistake, he supposed.

  ‘Do you know what I think when I see a lad like you?’

  Cornelius shook his head. He didn’t know. Neither did he care.

  ‘I think, There but for the grace of God go I.’

  Cornelius smiled warmly and rose to go with God’s grace.

  ‘Sit down!’ Cornelius sat down. ‘I think,’ Mr Yarrow continued,
squeezing his left earlobe and inflicting brain damage upon a metaphysical foetus, ‘I think, What can I do for this graceless lad?’

  Cornelius yawned.

  ‘Sit up straight, lad.’

  Cornelius made a vain attempt to do so. His hair made an unscheduled portside call. He forced it back to the starboard bow.

  ‘Your school reports.’ Mr Yarrow prodded the offenders. ‘A tale of woe. Constant absenteeism. No team activities. Poor exam results. Chances thrown away. Advice ignored. No attempts made to knuckle down and smarten up. Have you filled in the application form I gave you?’

  Cornelius recalled the form. It had become a paper dart. There had been mention of ‘machine minding’ on that form. And machine minding’s star did not burn brightly in the Murphy firmament.

  ‘You’ve lost it, I suppose.’

  Cornelius nodded.

  ‘Speak up.’

  Cornelius nodded louder.

  ‘How many interviews have I sent you to?’

  Cornelius counted silently upon his fingers.

  ‘Seven, that’s how many.’

  Cornelius thought seven seemed about right. He wasn’t going to quibble.

  Mr Yarrow read the list to himself. Mechanic, Merchant Seaman, Minicab Driver, Monumental Mason, Motor Cycle Messenger, Marriage Counsellor, Male Model. Any one of these was surely right up Murphy’s street. What was the matter with the boy? Didn’t he want to be helped? Mr Yarrow shook his head. He’d never known a boy to fail seven interviews.

  But curiously, as he perused once more the reasons given for Murphy’s rejection, they hardly seemed to be the tall boy’s fault.

  He had been considered ‘too well spoken’ to be a minicab driver. ‘Too sophisticated’ to be a marriage counsellor. ‘Too rugged’ to be a male model, yet ‘too delicate’ to be a mechanic. And so on and so forth.

  ‘I don’t get it.’ Mr Yarrow shook his head once more. ‘I send you along to seven interviews. Clearly you do your best, the interviewers call me, praising you as an excellent chap. But then they abjectly apologize that due to some ludicrous technicality, they cannot employ you. How can anyone be ‘too tall’ to be a monumental mason?’