Robert Rankin - Retromancer

Behind the bar counter were more colourful drinks than I had ever imagined existed. They covered the spectrum and went beyond and I looked on in awe. Behind the counter, before these bottles, stood a noble barman. A modish figure in a rapscallion jacket and feta-cheese-style pantaloons, he wore a jaunty little sailor’s cap and a flower in his buttonhole. And he greeted our approach to his counter with a, ‘Welcome aboard.’

‘Pleased to be here,’ I said with a smile. And then I said, ‘Hold on.’ And I gazed hard at that barman and I said, ‘Fangio?’

‘None other,’ said he. ‘But we’ll keep that just between the three of us, if you don’t mind. Or four, if you want to count my pet monkey Clarence here in his natty waistcoat and fez.’

I tipped a wink at Clarence and he raised his fez to me.

‘What a joy to see you both here,’ said Fangio. ‘I had to, how shall I put this, make myself scarce, as it were. The customs men and the rozzers were hard at my heels. And although I hated like Satan’s saucepan-full of collywobbles to have to run off before entering the Inter-Pub Lookalike Competition, I felt it best to sign on for a one-way passage to the home of the brave and the land of the free rather than stay behind and face the music. As it were.’

‘Well, that makes everything clear,’ I said. ‘Except for Satan’s saucepan.’

‘Ah,’ said Fangio. ‘I’m experimenting with new terms of expression. Lord Cardigan welt me with a kipper if I’m telling you a lie.’

‘I think it might need working on,’ I said. ‘But there is running-gag potential for sure, so work at it.’

‘And what are you and Mr Rune doing here?’ said Fangio. ‘Having a bit of a holiday, is it now?’

‘On the contrary,’ said Hugo Rune, pointing to this bottle and that in the hope that Fangio might combine their contents into an interesting cocktail. ‘We are here strictly on business. Undercover, as it were.’

‘Well, it’s my good fortune to run into you again. I have your bill for your outstanding account at The Purple Princess in my cabin.’

Mr Rune pointed with greater urgency and the matter of the outstanding account was never mentioned again.

‘Tell you what though,’ said Fangio in a confidential kind of a way, ‘they’re an odd old bunch, aren’t they, the rich?’

He shook Hugo Rune’s concoction and then poured it into a glass. The Magus downed this in one and swiftly ordered another.

And then he said, ‘Odd? In what way?’

‘They just look odd,’ said Fangio. ‘Especially the old ones – and there are some really old ones on board. Ancient dowagers and countesses. Eastern European nannas with unpronounceable names.’

‘I fail to see what is so odd about that,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘And while you’re at it, please pop in two of those olives and a squirt of mescaline.’

‘Well, perhaps it’s just me, then,’ said Fangio. ‘I can be all step-and-fetch-it-Barney-on-me-way-to-the-local-zoo at times, and don’t go flattering me by telling me otherwise.’

‘Forget what I said earlier,’ I said. ‘And how about serving me a drink?’

We spent the time until dawn in cocktail experimentation and succeeded in creating a number of drinks of such extreme unlikeliness as to baffle even ourselves. But then the dawn came up like thunder, as it sometimes does from Rangoon across the bay, and Mr Rune and I tottered topside to enjoy the leaving of port.

And it was a sight to remember, the lowering of the gangways, the belaying in and heaving to, some late and complicated pipings aboard, followed by lines being slipped and forecastles trimmed and things of that nature nautically.

And off slid the liner out into the sea and we were off on our way.

And I did yawnings and Hugo Rune did too and then we went off to our bunks.

I arose at three the following afternoon, bathed, dressed and went for a stroll on the promenade deck. It was late September now [12]and the sun was low in the sky, throwing long shadows and making the grandeur seem somehow even more grand. I tipped the brim of my panama to passing ladies and wished that I had a dandy cane to twirl between my fingers. This was the life, there was no mistake about it. And though it was all so terribly wrong, it still felt marvellous.

I had wandered about a half a mile along the portside deck when I spied the first of them. And with this spying I realised why Fangio had used the word odd to describe them. The first of the Eastern European nannas.

She was a tiny wrinkled thing with a face like a pickled prune and she was all swaddled up in numerous furs and seated in an old-fashioned wicker bath chair. A gentleman of military appearance with spectacular mustachios steered this chair along. Several children fussed about the prunish nanna, offering her sweeties and dabbing at her mouth with dainty handkerchiefs. Their costumes put me in mind of a photograph I had seen of the Czar and his family, shortly before they came to their terrible end in that cellar at Yekaterinburg in nineteen eighteen.

I offered that nanna a brim-tip and smile, but she returned this pleasantry with such a bitter-eyed look of pure loathing that it quite put the wind up me.

I decided to cease my stroll and find myself some breakfast.

There was seating in the First Class Diner for eighteen hundred people. The tablecloths were of Irish linen, the knives and forks of silver. The head waiter asked for my stateroom number and then led me to my table. Where, sitting squarely, his napkin tucked beneath his chin, Himself was already tucking in to kedgeree and pickled peacock eggs [13]and lapsang souchong tea.

‘Good afternoon to you, Rizla,’ he called. ‘The same again for my young companion, if you will,’ he said to the head waiter, who departed after clickings of the heels.

I sat myself in a comfy chair and accepted a cup of tea.

‘How goes it, Rizla?’ asked Hugo Rune. ‘No seasickness setting in? All shipshape and Bristol fashion?’

‘Never better,’ I said, sipping tea. ‘Although I saw one of those odd old women that Fangio mentioned. And I can confirm that they are very odd and really rather scary.’

‘I think Bavarian beldames are the least of our concerns. But there are certainly some notable personages about this vessel. From the vantage point of this dining chair alone, I can see six high-ranking SS officers, who hopefully will be gracing Mr Pierrepoint’s noose at Nuremberg come the war’s conclusion. Two spies, two of America’s Most Wanteds, three Mafia dons, a defrocked bishop and a shady lady with a crazy baby and a taste for tights and chicken bites and stalactites and troglodytes.’

‘Right,’ I said, nodding. ‘And you must point out the last one to me.’

So Mr Rune pointed.

And I said, ‘Oh yes.’

And presently my breakfast arrived.

Because one of the joys of being rich, and there are many, is that you can take your breakfast at any time of the day or night. And no one will call you a slob.

I got involved with my pickled eggs and said nothing more for a while.

‘We will fall into a torpor on this voyage,’ said Mr Rune, with a sudden sadness. ‘We will need something to occupy our minds or we shall surely succumb to boredom and ennui.’

‘I think we can afford to give it a couple of days,’ I said, dipping a toast soldier into some kind of dip. ‘There are many more combinations of cocktails that need trying and I have yet to know the joys of dinnertime.’

‘Nevertheless, you have the remaining tarot cards?’

‘There’s only four left now,’ I said. And I named them: ‘THE MOON, THE WHEEL OF FORTUNE, THE TOWER and DEATH itself.’

‘Ah yes, DEATH,’ said the Magus. ‘That would be the card onto which you pasted a bit of sticking plaster, so as to distinguish it from the rest when I ask you to pick one out face down at random.’