Robert Rankin - Retromancer

The dray rolled into the Tower of London.

And I, having surreptitiously shinnied on the back, rolled with it.

I covered myself up with horses’ nosebags and maintained the now legendary low profile. If I could sneak down from the dray and sneak past the foul-mouthed eater of beef then I might be able to sneak into the treasure house and see whether the Crown jewels were still secure or whether someone had sneaked them away.

And then something happened that was so utterly wonderful that I could scarce believe it to be true. It was something that schoolboys of my generation, when I was a schoolboy and it was my generation, dreamed above all other things would happen to them. It was a Boy’s Own Adventure thing. An Enid Blyton moment.

The driver brought the dray to a halt in the courtyard. He climbed down from his high seat and spoke in whispered words to the surly beefeater. And he spoke in the fashion that made my dreams come true.

As I heard: ‘Mumble mumble mumble secret plan. Mumble mumble steal the Crown jewels. Mumble international conspiracy. Mumble mumble mumble mumble mumble A Dawn of Gold shines from the darkness. Mumble mumble mumble.’

‘Well, that explains everything,’ I said to myself, but quietly. ‘I will follow these villains and see what is indeed what.’ And I peeped out from my hideaway beneath the nosebags and watched as the drayman and the beefeater sidled off across the courtyard and entered a great stone tower.

I then climbed from my hideaway and did certain things, which seemed appropriate to do. And then I followed the two would-be stealers of the nation’s treasure, in that ducking, diving, skulking, creeping-along fashion that is greatly favoured by the ninja.

And I did it with considerable style.

I crept into the mighty castle keep kind of jobbie and along stone corridors, my heart pounding fiercely and my head all swimming with fear. I did not know quite what would happen if I found myself in confrontation with these criminal types. But I supposed that it would be nothing nice for me.

And then I heard them once again.

‘Mumble mumble mumble,’ they went. ‘Drugged all the real beefeaters mumble mumble. And told the public to **** *** mumble mumble mumble. So let’s get this done and hump the jewels into the fake beer barrels on the dray. Mumble mumble mumble.’

‘They might think that they have all the loose ends tied up,’ I whispered to myself, ‘but they have not reckoned with Rizla.’

And then I felt something cold at the nape of my neck. And then I heard those words that I had no wish to hear.

And that something cold was the mouth of a pistol.

And those words were, ‘Put up your hands.’

At a gun-muzzle’s end I was urged along stone lanes.

The treasure house itself proved to be smaller than I had imagined. A simple circular room with an armoured showcase at its centre. Within this showcase treasure twinkled. And without, the bogus beefeater and the duplicitous drayman worried at the glasswork with big sledgehammers.

‘Comrades,’ called the scoundrel who muzzled me forwards. ‘See what I ’ave ’ere. A young toff who’s wandered far from ’is ’ampshire ’ome.’

The bogus eater of beef did growlings.

As did the dodgy driver of the dray.

‘I sent that young ***** packing!’ growled the beef-eating one. ‘But now as he’s back and smelling strongly of horses, we’d best slit his throat.’

‘No, hold on, hold on there,’ I said, raising my hands even higher than they were already. ‘There is no need for any throat-slitting. No need at all.’

‘And I’ll agree to that,’ said he that drove the dray.

‘Thank you,’ I said. ‘I appreciate you doing so.’

‘And we’ll appreciate you. It’s a long haul to our destination by steamer. You’ll provide us with entertainment.’ And he winked most lewdly and licked at his lips. ‘And then you’ll be meat for our bellies.’

‘What?’ went I, in an outraged manner, and one not lacking for terror. ‘This is not the way things are done in Boy’s Own Adventure books. I recall no mentions of homosexual gang-rape and cannibalism.’

‘Don’t you know there’s a war on?’ said the villain with the gun at my neck. ‘It’s all bestiality and phlebotomy nowadays.’

‘And chezolagnia,’ said the drayman. ‘Not to mention emetophilia and coprolagnia.’

‘And hierophilia and mammagymnophilia,’ said the bad beefeater in a tone that suggested he actually knew what those words meant.

‘Hm,’ I went. And I took another tack. ‘I would not want to be remembered like that,’ I said. ‘Not if I were making history.’

The drayman gave me a bit of a stare. The beefeater just went, ‘Eh?’

‘You are revolutionaries, are you not?’ I said. ‘Your names will go down in history as the brave comrades who liberated the symbols of the monarcho-capitalist tyranny. I would not want my grandchildren to read that I had performed such noble deeds for the people, then rounded them off with a session of bum-banditry followed by a nosh-up of human hamburger.’

There was a pause, then a pause for thought. With each man alone with his own, as it were.

‘There’s truth in what ’e says,’ said the holder of the gun. And his comrades nodded their heads.

‘So we’d best not mention it when we get interviewed by the ’acks from the local newspaper.’

‘What?’ went I. And, ‘But,’ as well. But all to no avail.

‘Pick up an ’ammer,’ said the gun-toting anthrophagus pervert, ‘and get stuck in to the treasure case.’

And so, downcast and shoulders slumped, I slouched over to the treasure case, hauled up a spare sledgehammer and took to the swinging of it.

Which, as it happened, I rather enjoyed. But then, after all, who would not have? For it was also a childhood dream of boys of my generation to be involved in a really big crime. A Great Train Robbery. The snatching of gold from the Bank of England. The Kidnapping of Diana Dors. I was playing a part in the making of history here. If these monsters actually escaped with their booty and I did not wind up feeding their fetishistic fancies or their grumbling guts, then I would go down in the history books as one of the super-criminals.

But then another thought struck me and did so with some force. I had lived up until a month ago in the nineteen sixties. And although I had never been a particular fan of history, I had read about the Crown jewels. And I had not read that they had ever got stolen during the war, especially not by me as one of the robbers. They had not.

But then another thought struck me, which rubbished the former. The history that I had been taught did not record that America had been reduced to a nuclear desert and that Germany had won the war.

But-

And then I received a clip around the ear.

‘Stop standing there staring into space with your mouth open, you *** ****** *,’ shouted the beastly beefeater, ‘and get stuck into that showcase!’

And so I did and they did too and soon the glass was flying. And no alarms went off, for these were the days before pressure-sensitive pads and laser trips and all that kind of hi-tech security caper.

Soon we were all dipping in through the holes we had smashed and pulling out crowns and sceptres and orbs and things of a right royal nature. And the drayman placed Queen Victoria’s diamond crown upon his head and his comrades guffawed, and I found myself holding King Charles the Second’s Sceptre with the dove, which was originally made for his coronation in sixteen sixty-one. Which was rather special and I knew in my heart that this was all very wrong. Whatever one felt about the monarchy, stealing the Crown jewels was wrong. And surely it was heresy or treason, or something, and did they not hang you for that?