Robert Rankin - Necrophenia

‘You signed me up to something with a maniac,’ said Rob. ‘While I was out cold. And what was that about? What happened to me last night?’

‘You came over a little queer,’ I said, hoping to lighten the situation with a cheeky little double entendre.

‘Outside,’ said Rob, rising from his chair.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. My dessert will melt. Or Neil will eat it.’

‘Are you having a go at me now?’ asked Neil, rising also.

‘No,’ I said. ‘No. I’m not having a go at anyone. And I’m not fighting anyone. We’re friends. Aren’t we?’

‘Something weird happened last night,’ said Rob, who was showing no signs of sitting down again. ‘It was before ten, then suddenly it was midnight.’

‘I noticed that,’ I said.

‘Shut up!’ said Rob.

‘But I-’

‘There was something weird,’ said Neil. ‘My watch stopped at midnight and my watch never stops. It’s an Ingersoll and I wind it religiously.’

‘What, in church?’ I asked.

‘I will hit you,’ Neil said in ready reply.

‘Oh, come on, lads,’ I said and I raised calming open hands to them. ‘We’re friends – we shouldn’t be behaving like this. And we’ll get thrown out of here. And that won’t be cool.’

Rob made serious fists. And he shook them at me. And then he sat down.

‘That’s better,’ I said. And I sat down. ‘And you, Neil,’ I said. And Neil sat down and I felt better.

Though they both now glared at me.

‘I don’t understand this,’ I said. ‘Why are you so angry? And why are you so angry at me? We all signed Mr Ishmael’s contract.’

‘You moved my hand,’ growled Rob.

‘We all moved it,’ I said. ‘Not just me.’

Rob made a more than furious face. ‘And you didn’t know anything about this madman. He turns up unannounced, a total stranger, and you sign us all away, to what?’

‘To fame and fortune,’ I said. ‘It was the chance of a lifetime. We would have been stupid to have passed it up.’

‘And do you have a copy of this contract onto which you forged my signature?’

‘Not as such,’ I said. Carefully.

‘Not at all,’ said Neil.

‘And do you have this Mr Ishmael’s address?’

‘I think he said he’d contact us,’ I said. ‘That was what he said, wasn’t it, Neil?’

Neil shrugged, and ate as he shrugged.

‘It will all be okay,’ I said to Rob. ‘We will all be famous. We will all be millionaires.’

‘We’ll never see him again,’ said Rob. ‘You have signed away our very souls. I just know it. I can feel it. In my water, like my mum says.’

‘Don’t be so melodramatic,’ I said. ‘Signed away our very souls. Don’t be so silly.’

And then Toby entered the Wimpy Bar. And he looked most chipper, did Toby.

‘Morning, chaps,’ said Toby, seating himself next to me and drawing my chocolate-nut sundae in his direction. ‘All tickety-boo, as it were?’

‘No,’ said Rob. ‘Anything but.’

‘Sorry to hear that,’ said Toby. ‘I’ve just been with Mr Ishmael. He dropped me here in his limo.’

We all said, ‘What?’ As one.

‘We’ve been at Jim Marshall’s shop in Hanwell, checking out guitars and amps and speakers.’

‘There,’ I said to Rob. ‘I told you there was nothing to worry about.’

‘Well, there is for Rob,’ said Toby.

‘What?’ said Rob. On his own this time.

‘Mr Ishmael doesn’t want you in the band. He says that you are a disruptive influence. And as you clearly suffer from stage fright, what with you fainting last night and everything, you’d never be able to handle the strain of a forty-day transcontinental tour. So you’re sacked.’

‘I’m what?’

‘So all’s well that ends well, eh?’ I said to Rob, raising my sundae glass as if in toast.

And Rob punched me hard.

Right in the face.

And we didn’t see too much of Rob for a while after that. He kept to himself at school and didn’t come to any band practices.

But then he wouldn’t have done, would he, because he was not in the band any more.

But then we didn’t attend any band practices either. Mr Jenner had gone missing and with him the school ukuleles.

And Mr Ishmael seemed to have gone missing also, because we didn’t see anything of him, or our promised instruments.

Which was a bit of a shame.

And time passed by.

And then one Monday morning, the first of the summer holidays, there was a tap-tap-tapping at our front door. And my mother went off to answer it. I was eating my breakfast like a good boy and ignoring Andy, my brother, who was under the table pretending to be a tiger (for reasons of his own that I have no wish to go into here). And as my father was off on tour with The Rolling Stones, it was my mum who had to answer the door.

Which explains that.

And she hadn’t been gone for more than a moment before she returned and said, ‘It’s for you, Tyler – the postman, and he has a parcel for you.’

‘A parcel for me?’ And my mind did somersaults. I had over the years, and unbeknown to my parents, or my brother, saved up my pocket money and then sent it off. A bit at a time. Many times, for many things.

Things that I’d read about in American comics. Things that I coveted.

Wonderful things. Such as huge collections of toy soldiers that came complete with a foot-locker. Whatever that was. And the bike that you got free (an American bike with a sort of humpbacked crossbar) when you sold ‘Grit’. And a course in Dimac, the deadliest martial art of them all, sent to you personally by Count Dante, the deadliest man on Earth. And there were X-ray spectacles, which enabled you to see beneath girls’ clothes. And latex-rubber masks of Famous Monsters of Filmland. And a body-building course taught by a man named Charles Atlas.

I’d sent off for each and every one of these.

And had never received a single one.

And to this day I do not know why.

Perhaps it was because I never filled in my zip code on the order form that you cut from the comic-book page.

But here was the postman.

And he had a package for me!

Beneath the table I crossed my fingers and I hope, hope, hoped that it was the Dimac course. Because I so wished to brutally mutilate and disfigure with little more than a fingertip’s application. I withdrew my crossing fingers rapidly as my brother snapped at them with his tigery teeth.

‘Well, hurry up,’ said my mother. ‘The postman won’t wait. He’ll get behind schedule. And postmen would rather die than do that.’ [8]

I hastened from the table, down the greenly carpeted hall and to the front doorway, where stood the postman.

‘You have a package,’ I told him. ‘For me.’

‘Do indeed, squire,’ said the postman. ‘Sign here, if you please.’

And he proffered a paper upon a clipboard and I put his pen to this paper.

‘So where do you want it?’ the postman asked.

‘In my hand,’ I said in reply.

‘In his hand. He’s a caution, isn’t he, missus?’ These words were addressed to my mother, who was peering over my shoulder.

And not to my brother, who was peering between my legs and growling.

‘I don’t think I can fit it all in your hand,’ said the postman. And now he read from the paper on his clipboard.

‘Two Fender Stratocasters, in flight cases.

‘One Gibson EB-Three bass in flight case.

‘One set of Premier drums, consisting of twenty-inch bass drum, three graduated toms, snare, hi-hat cymbal, a sixteen-inch crash and a twenty-inch ride.

‘In flight cases.

‘Three Marshall two-hundred-and-fifty-watt amps.

‘Twelve Marshall AUT150HX speakers.

‘Five Marshall AUT160HX mega speakers…’