Robert Rankin - Retromancer

‘The door next to the shop entrance,’ said the Magus. ‘See the brass plates here?’

I saw the brass plates there and read from them aloud.

‘ “Naughty Boys Get Bottom Marks, Third Floor”,’ I read from one. ‘ “The Sorority Stable of Pony Girls, Second Floor”,’ I read from another. ‘ “Hilda Baker’s Love Dungeon, Basement Floor”,’ I read from a third.

‘You’re not really reading from the brass plates, are you?’ asked Hugo Rune.

‘No,’ I said. ‘I am reading from these postcards that are stuck all over the wall above them. ‘What is “goldfish nipple training”, do you think?’

‘Not something to engage in lightly, without the aid of spats. Or perhaps that should be sprats. But read from this brass plate now, or feel the weight of my stick.’

‘ “Roberta Newman’s Academy of Music”,’ I read. ‘Could we not visit the pony girls first?’

Hugo Rune shook his head and sighed. Then pressed a brass bell push.

Roberta Newman was not your average music teacher. She had a certain burliness. A certain broadness across the shoulders. A certain stubbliness about the chin. She wore a heavily corseted Edwardianstyle black and lacy evening gown and much in the way of jet jewellery, and favoured wellington boots and long rubber gauntlets.

And I felt sure she was wearing a wig.

And owned to an Adam’s apple.

And when she spoke she did it gruffly, and with a German accent. I was about to whisper to Hugo Rune that I had solved the case immediately. And that this was a German spy who had done away with the real Roberta Newman and dressed himself up in her clothes. But Mr Rune and the bogus music teacher were now having a bit of a hug and saying how good it was to meet once more and how the other did not look a day older and had the years not been kind.

‘But it is a bloke,’ I began. But I did not get to the ‘a bloke’ bit because Mr Rune put his hand over my mouth and told me to be polite.

‘Roberta and I have known each other for many years,’ he said. ‘She once actually came close to beating me in a game of chess.’

‘And I would have too,’ said Roberta, ‘if you hadn’t poked one of your Gentlemen up my nose and “accidentally” kicked the board over.’

‘Hm,’ I said. ‘Well, hello, Miss Newman, or is it Mrs Newman?’

‘It’s Miss, dear,’ said Roberta. ‘And you’d be the latest Rizla, I suppose. Hugo goes through them like pocket hankies at a Vera Lynn concert.’

‘What?’ I said.

‘She jests,’ said Hugo Rune.

‘I don’t,’ mouthed Roberta, shaking her head. ‘But welcome to my Academy.’

And I looked all around and about at the Academy. It appeared to be a single room, small and dingy, lit by a tiny window and heavily cluttered with instruments and instrument cases and piles and piles of sheet music.

‘This is it?’ I enquired.

‘Faith, no.’ And Roberta Newman put a big hand to her chest and gave a little giggle of a laugh. ‘Follow me.’

And she opened up a cello case that stood against a wall. And climbed into it. And then Hugo Rune climbed into it also, beckoning with his vanishing hand for me to follow.

And though it seemed impossible that three people could actually fit into a cello case, or even two or one, I followed on.

And I was grateful that I did.

For what I saw next was amazing.

‘By Crom!’ said I, which made for a change, but quite expressed my surprise. ‘Are we in one of the Forbidden Zones, or is this Narnia TM?’

I had emerged from the other side of the cello case into a weird world of whiteness. Mr Rune stood adjusting his tweeds while Miss Newman tinkered with her jet.

‘You’re in between,’ explained Himself. ‘This place is neither one thing nor the other, neither in one place nor elsewhere. It is a singularity. And as far as is known, the only one of its kind in the London area.’

‘How big is it, then?’ I asked, because even though all I could see was whiteness, which might have been white-painted walls, I had no way of knowing whether indeed these were walls and if they were, then just how close they were.

It was an odd place to be sure and I took not to it.

‘I feel all uncomfortable,’ I said to Hugo Rune. ‘I do not think that people are supposed to be in a place such as this is. Or is not, as the case might be.’

‘Or might not be,’ said the guru’s guru. ‘But let us face it, Rizla. It is only the man who knows where he is who knows where he should be.’

‘We work here because of its perfect acoustic,’ said Miss Newman. ‘Shout as loudly as you can. Go on – see what happens.’

I did shruggings of the shoulders and then I shouted. Not perhaps quite as loudly as I could have shouted. But loudly enough, I felt.

But to my great surprise, my shouts sounded no louder than my previous spoken words. And, having made further attempts at creating a racket with louder and louder shoutings, I was forced to give up as each showed no increase in volume.

‘That is very odd,’ I said.

‘Pardon?’ said Mr Rune.

‘I said, no, well, never mind. So how does it do that? Or not do that, if that is the case?’

‘Nobody knows,’ said Miss Newman. ‘Come with me now and I’ll show you the labs and where the evil was done.’

She led us through whiteness and further whitenesses, passing fellows in coats of white who carried white clipboards and pens, to a room with definite walls but no windows. Here, on a number of stands, hung what looked to be some cut-off oil drum end sections. These were all burnished steel and the tops had indentations neatly pressed into them.

‘Behold the future of music,’ said Miss Newman, proudly.

‘Steel pans,’ I said. ‘Like Trinidadians play in the Notting Hill Carnival. I learned to play the tenor pan at school – would you like to hear “Yellow Bird”?’

Mr Rune now glared me daggers.

‘Oh,’ I said and fell silent. ‘Sorry.’

‘Steel pans?’ said Miss Newman. ‘Trinidadians?’ said Miss Newman. ‘Notting Hill Carnival?’ said Miss Newman also.

‘He daydreams, poor half-witted boy,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘The strangest things come out of his mouth. I feel it best to ignore them.’

‘Quite,’ said Miss Newman. ‘Well, although these instruments are made of steel and could be described as pans, we call them the Mark Seven fully chromatic/acoustic metallic idiophones.’

‘But of course,’ I said, ‘that makes it all so straightforward. Then tell me, were these instruments invented right here?’

‘Right here and by myself. They are, as you see, constructed from the end sections of oil drums, with an approximately eight-inch skirt. This department runs on a shoestring. In order to create new instruments we have to improvise. We reinvented the ocarina here. Hugo has our prototype and we’d really like it back.’

‘Soon, soon.’ And Hugo Rune did wavings-away with his hand. ‘But for now speak to us of the Mark Seven. How is it an improvement on the Mark Six, for instance?’

‘The Mark Seven doesn’t give you spots,’ said Miss Newman.

Which brought confusion unto me.

‘Allow me to explain,’ said Miss Newman. ‘As Hugo has probably told you, we here in the music labs are seeking to create instruments that can bring about emotional and psychological change in the persons who hear them played. We have so far created a penny whistle that puts you off cornflakes, a pair of maracas that bring on an irresistible urge to run for a tram and an entirely new form of harmonica that only works when you suck it.’

I looked at Hugo Rune.

Hugo Rune, at me.

‘Right,’ I said. ‘Well, this is a very interesting line of research. What exactly does the Mark Seven steel pan do?’