Robert Rankin - Retromancer

‘Sound thinking, Rizla,’ said Hugo Rune.

‘And… and…’ I said, because I had now thought of something else. ‘Ghosts do not just pop up out of nowhere and start haunting places. Ghosts are established, they have a history. There was not even the tiniest hint last week that this bar had ever been haunted. I rest my case and I detest this shandy. Order a beer for me, please.’

And frankly I did not feel that there was anything else that needed saying. But that this entire fiasco would be better brought at once to a speedy end. With a confession from Fangio that he and Mr Rune were simply playing a harmless prank and no more should be thought, or said, about the matter.

‘And that is what you think?’ said Hugo Rune.

To which I nodded. Because it was what I thought. Although I had not actually said the last bit out loud.

‘Then how do you account for that?’

And I looked.

And I saw.

And I could not.

‘Eeek!’ I shouted. ‘It is a ghost!’ Which was not too professional.

But then I shouted, ‘Hold on a minute. That is not a ghost but a clown!’

For a clown stood there, as large as life, larger regarding the footwear.

He was your standard-issue clown as it happened. Slightly below average height. Burly and redolent of somewhere in central Europe.

He wore the red nose and ginger wig that separate clown from accountant. The humorous trousers, whose humour is lost upon anyone over ten years of age. The garishly checked jacket with comedy squirting flower. Unique facial painting work of the type that has to be painted upon an egg and registered with Clown Central Office. Somewhere in Funland.

‘Clown,’ I said. ‘Not ghost.’

‘Ghostly clown,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘See how his big shoes scarcely reach the floor.’

And sadly this was true. The big shoes were just scraping the floor. The clown grinned wickedly.

I became aware that the patrons of The Purple Princess did not appear to be cognisant of the ghost clown’s presence. They were carrying on as ever they had, with the clown right there in their midst.

I shrank back behind my shandy. ‘Can no one see him but us?’ I asked Hugo Rune.

‘This would appear to be the case. And what do you say to that?’

Old Pete, whose bladder was not what it had once been, having once been punctured through by a Jezail bullet in the Afghan Campaign of eighteen ninety-four, was plodding off to the Gents. And Mr Rune and I watched as he plodded right through the clown.

‘That is oh so wrong,’ I said to Mr Rune. ‘There is something somehow altogether indecent about walking through a clown.’

The clown now waved at me, pulled out an item which proved to be a balloon, inflated this and tied the end and then proceeded to do one of those terrible things that clowns do. Create a balloon animal.

‘There should be a law against clowns,’ I said, shrinking low now in my chair. ‘Especially ghostly ones. Please deal with it, Mr Rune.’

‘Ah,’ said the Magus. ‘You have changed your tune.’

‘Yes, well, call me a doubting Thomas but I can see him there in all his circus horror and I would like to be rid of him. Shall I fish out the Zo Zo gun so you can blast him in his silly red nose with it?’

‘Let us not run before we can walk, Rizla. Nor skip before we have learned to perambulate upon a unicycle. The darling buds of May won’t yodel up the canyon, if God is in His Heaven and there isn’t an R in the month.’

‘Not one of your best,’ I told the Perfect Master. ‘But I really would like you to get rid of that clown now. I do not fancy having to squeeze through him myself to get to the Gents. And the way things are going for me, I will need the Gents sooner rather than later.’

‘Okey-dokey then.’ Hugo Rune rose from his specially reserved chair and drew himself to his full impressive height. ‘Robes, Rizla,’ he said. And I hastened to oblige.

I fished Mr Rune’s papal robes and matching mitre from the pigskin valise and helped with his togging-up. This togging-up now drew the attention of a punter or two. Who passed on this attention to others through the medium of elbow-rib-nudgings and into-ear-whisperings.

All these finally reached the landlord, who cried out for order. ‘Are you about to perform the exorcism, Mr Rune?’ called Fangio.

‘I am,’ said the guru’s guru.

‘Then get your drinks in quick, gentlemen, if you please.’

And there was a rush at the bar.

Hugo Rune fussed at his trappings. Adjusting a glittering amulet of the Doctor Strange persuasion at his throat. And, whilst I held up a hand mirror for him, slanting his mitre to the ever-popular ‘rakish angle’.

The clown, for all this while, perused Himself and wore an unreadable expression beneath his painted smile. I observed that the balloon animal he had fashioned was not so much a balloon animal, but rather something crudely obscene. And this he waggled at me.

Mr Rune began to pull seemingly random items from the pigskin valise. A plastic plate, a bamboo cane. A set of Indian clubs. The patrons, now served to their satisfaction, had formed themselves into a half-circle behind the ethereal clown. And although it still appeared that only Mr Rune and I could actually see this apparition, the patrons made encouraging faces and toasted Mr Rune.

‘What exactly is going to happen?’ I whispered over my shandy.

‘Queer things, Rizla,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And I will require your assistance. So do you need to go to the toilet before we get started?’

‘Actually I do.’

‘Then do so.’

‘Not if I have to squeeze through the clown.’

‘Oh me, oh my.’ And Hugo Rune called out to the clown. ‘Friend Gusset,’ he called, for that was the name as mentioned in the newspaper. ‘Friend Gusset, kindly step aside and allow my servant to visit the gentlemen’s excuse me.’

The clown held up his obscene balloon thing as one might hold an umbrella. And then he rose into the air and hovered near the ceiling.

‘I am now getting very scared,’ I said. ‘And I truly, madly, deeply need the toilet.’

And with that made clear, I scurried away, slamming the door behind me. And I took myself into the nearest cubicle, slamming that door also.

And locking it.

I would have taken great steadying breaths, but that is not wise in a toilet. Instead I just got on with my business. Which was pressing now. And if I had not actually been doing my business when what happened next happened, I would certainly have done my business when it did. So to speak.

‘Rizla,’ came a voice from somewhere. Somewhere near at hand.

‘Oh,’ I went. And, ‘Oooh.’ And, ‘Who?’ And I got all in a lather.

‘It is me, my boy. You know me as The Hermit.’

‘The Hermit?’ I said. Finishing my business and buttoning myself back into respectability. ‘The vision I had on the tram, when Mr Rune and I were engaged upon our first case? That Hermit?’

‘How many hermits a day do you generally meet on average?’

‘Sorry,’ I said. ‘I am somewhat upset. There is a clown ghost out there and although I have been involved in some pretty terrifying adventures with Mr Rune, I am still most afeared of ghosts.’

‘And not without good cause, Rizla. The one out there is a bad’n.

More demon than ghost. A foul and foetid fiend. And I, Diogenes, know fiends.’

‘Are you really my guardian angel?’ I asked.

‘You might say I’m a friend indeed. As you are in need.’

‘So are you here to help me?’

‘That is what I do. Although up until now I haven’t really had cause to. You seem to be getting on fine without my help.’

‘If you have any help to offer now I will gladly take it,’ I said.