Robert Rankin - Retromancer

I could swear I heard Mr Rune’s teeth grind at this, but he remained most calm.

‘Care for a cocktail?’ asked Mr McMurdo. ‘I can knock us up a rather nifty Tokio Express. I have purchased one of these new electric cocktail shakers. Japanese built, perhaps a tad unpatriotic, but it certainly gets the job jobbed. Double for you with a little umbrella?’

But Hugo Rune shook his head.

‘No?’ said Mr McMurdo.

‘No?’ said I. Amazed.

‘Given it up,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘Strictly teetotal from now on.’

And I held my breath.

‘Well, never mind, never mind, sit yourself down, do.’

Mr McMurdo returned to his desk and sat himself behind it. We dropped into the visitors’ chairs and Mr Rune cradled his stick.

‘Been meaning to give you a call, actually,’ said Mr McMurdo.

‘A case?’ said Hugo Rune.

‘Not as such, dear fellow. In fact quite the opposite.’

Hugo Rune went, ‘Mmmm?’

‘Change in the air,’ said Mr McMurdo. ‘The wind of change, you might say. The Ministry is going through changes. Words from above regarding efficiency and suchlike. Bigwigs upstairs and all that kind of carry on.’

I wondered where this was leading. I did not have to wonder for long.

‘Retirement,’ said Mr McMurdo.

‘You are going to retire?’ said Hugo Rune. ‘How splendid.’

‘No, not me, my goodness no. So much paperwork, although less actual paperwork, what with all these new computers going “on line” as the boffins will have it.’

‘I fail to understand,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘If not you-’

‘You, dear fellow, retirement for you.’

‘For me!’ And Hugo Rune rose to his feet.

‘Lucky old you, eh?’ said Mr McMurdo, fiddling with papers on his desk. ‘Time to put up those old feet of yours and let younger men do the hard work.’

I wondered perhaps whether I should excuse myself and slip quietly from the room. I dreaded to think as to where and to what this conversation would inevitably lead.

‘Don’t think of it so much as being put out to pasture,’ said Mr McMurdo brightly. ‘See it more as a just reward for services rendered.’

Mr Rune’s face momentarily brightened. ‘Ah,’ said he. ‘I see, a retirement, but on a pension equal to my present retainer, of course.’

‘Ah, no,’ said Mr McMurdo. ‘Regrettably not. I tried to push that through with the bigwigs upstairs, but they said, sorry, no can do. All belts have to be tightened with a war on, you see. Your retainer constituted a considerable amount of our yearly budget. Had to stop your latest cheque to the bank, I regret to say.’

‘I really think I should be leaving now,’ I said.

‘Please wait outside,’ said Mr Hugo Rune.

I waved goodbye to Mr McMurdo and fled the room. And paced up and down outside. I did not wish to press my ear to the brassy door, for fear of what I might hear. Instead I whistled loudly as I paced and la-la-la’d and fol-de-roll’d and made a lot of noise.

Presently the door to Mr McMurdo’s office opened and Hugo Rune emerged, wiping down the pommel of his stick. Under his arm he carried a briefcase.

‘You did not-’ I said. ‘Please tell me you did not. Please.’

‘I did not, Rizla, truthfully. We, how shall I put this? Haggled. And came to an agreement regarding a financial settlement. A golden handshake, I believe is the term.’

‘Is that briefcase full of money?’ I asked.

‘Regrettably, no, Rizla. I have agreed to perform one final service for Mr McMurdo, in return for which he will furnish me with a sum of money sufficient to cover two first-class tickets aboard a luxury liner to America.’

‘There is a certain symmetry to that,’ I said. ‘You seem to be taking this ever so well.’

‘All good things must come to an end, Rizla. Even as the plumed peacock paradiddles plaintive parodies, the cackling crow doth hold no hallowed noodle. North nor South!’

‘I cannot argue with that,’ I said. ‘So what is in the briefcase, if not money?’

‘Secrets, dear Rizla, secrets. Which must be placed into the hands of the prime minister, by myself, at precisely three o’ clock this afternoon.’

‘Winston Churchill?’ I said. ‘Can I meet him, please?’

‘I have told you that you will not like him.’

‘Yes, but he is Winston Churchill. But why at precisely three o’ clock this afternoon?’

‘He is to make an important speech at three-fifteen on the wireless. This is that very speech.’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘How exciting. Can we have a read of it now?’

‘Absolutely not! I have given my word to Mr McMurdo that I will not open the briefcase. He swore me to it, in fact. Upon a stack of actual Bibles.’

‘All very hush-hush and top secret,’ I said. ‘It must be very important. ’

‘Naturally, Rizla. Or else the delivery would not have been entrusted to me.’

If I had any remarks to make about that, I kept them to myself.

‘And so,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘might I suggest that we repair to an upper-class eatery and take a light lunch?’

‘A light one?’ I said. ‘Now that I would like to see.’

The meal went far beyond my expectations. Which, I must say, were great. We dined at the Savoy Grill, but my initial difficulty was actually in gaining admittance.

We arrived in our commandeered cab and I held wide the door for Hugo Rune. But when I tried to enter the restaurant, I was informed it was not for my kind.

‘You just wait until the nineteen sixties,’ I told the commissionaire, who had me by the collar of my nice pale linen suit and was hauling me back down towards the cab.

Mr Rune set matters straight, explaining that I was his son, an eccentric millionaire in my own right who had taken to the driving of a cab as part of the War Effort, me being too sickly and weak to uniform-up and stick bayonets in the enemy.

The Savoy Grill quite took my fancy and, as I was certain that it survived the war, I thought that when (or perhaps if) I returned to my own time, I would visit it again to see how much it had changed.

On stage was a band called Liam Proven’s Lords-a-Leaping Jazz Cats. The band leader Liam was an imposing figure in white tie, tailcoat and khaki shorts. There seemed to be a novelty element to the performance, with constant humorous interjections of the, ‘I say, I say, I say, my wife once went to Hartlepool on a charabanc.’

‘Zulus?’

‘Yes, thousands of them.’

Followed by a drum-roll and a cymbal-crash.

‘It is hard to believe, I know,’ said Hugo Rune, taking out a pre-lunch cigar and slotting it into his mouth, ‘but fifty years from now no one will remember Liam Proven.’

‘I will remember him,’ I said to Hugo Rune. And I do remember him well.

The band launched into a number called ‘When Common Sense Walks on a Single Leg, I’ll Wear My Viable Trousers’, and we launched into our soup.

‘I do have to say,’ I said, between polite spoonings, ‘that I do not really think that delivering a speech to Winston Churchill qualifies as a case.’

‘It’s a brief case,’ said Hugo Rune, tapping at the very one that rested in his lap. ‘And there is a war on, you know.’

‘I remain unconvinced,’ I said. ‘Although perhaps a real case has yet to present itself in some subtle furtive fashion.’

And then there came an explosion that drowned out everything else.

And then there came that commissionaire, who hurried to Hugo Rune. Urgent words entered Himself’s ear; Himself nodded to these. The commissionaire departed and Hugo Rune pressed on with his soup.

‘Well go on, then,’ I said to him. ‘Tell me what he whispered.’

‘Oh, it was nothing, Rizla,’ said the Magus. ‘Our taxi was hit by a bomb, nothing more.’