Robert Rankin: Retromancer

© 2009

He named me Rizla, and for one extraordinary year I was his acolyte, his assistant and his amanuensis.

And also too, I would like to think, his friend.

His name was Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune and I have no qualms in stating that he was without a doubt the most remarkable personage I have ever encountered.

An adventurer and world traveller – ‘of this and many others’, he assured me. One-time circus strongman, prizefighter, expert swords-man and Master of Dimac. Gourmet, connoisseur of fine wines and finer women, mystic, guru to gurus, reinventor of the ocarina, private detective and Best-Dressed Man of Nineteen Thirty-Three. Mr Rune had been there, done that and invented the T-shirt.

Many and marvellous were the claims of this singular individual. That he had once jogged alone to the South Pole, clad in naught but his brogues and shooting-tweeds and sporting upon his head a copy of The Times newspaper that he had fashioned into a hat. This perilous journey he had undertaken to ‘tickle the fancy of a most bewitching lady’ – Scott of the Antarctic’s less famous sister, Dot. [1]

Everest too – ‘a walk in the park’ – he had conquered, again in his tweeds, although this time with the encumbrance of George Bernard Shaw, to whom he gave a piggyback.

‘I asked Shaw whether he might care to come along for the ride as it were and the buffoon literally took me at my word.’

I confess that it felt natural to me to doubt such extravagant and outlandish claims. But each time I did, some independent piece of corroborative evidence would appear to confer legitimacy upon all that Mr Rune averred.

His was the extravagant shadow, cast in the fashionable places of his day. He was the Man of the Moment, prepared to give his all in the Fight for Right. And his knack for always being in the right place at the right time when history was being made was nothing less than uncanny.

But as is often the case with those whose lives transcend the everyday, Mr Rune was not without his foibles and eccentricities. An inveterate diner-out at swank eateries, he harboured an all but pathological aversion to actually paying for the inordinate quantities of gourmet food and vintage wine that he consumed.

‘I offer the world my genius,’ he often said. ‘All I ask in return is that the world cover my expenses.’

And the brutality he meted out to cabbies, who he would smite with his stout stick upon the flimsiest of pretexts and with next to no provocation, is well recorded.

‘I have no comment to make at this time, your honour.’

Such matters as these might well be viewed as smudges upon his otherwise besmirchless record of public service, but considering the scale of his achievements, they should best be forgiven and forgotten.

During the twelve months that I spent in his exalted company, I aided him in the solution of twelve Cosmic Conundra. The very fabric of human existence hung upon the success of our adventures together and Mr Rune being Mr Rune came through and saved the day.

I chronicled these adventures in a book entitled The Brightonomicon, which later became an award-winning radio series starring that distinguished Shakespearian actor David Warner in the part of Mr Rune.

The Brightonomicon, or Brighton Zodiac as it was also called, consisted of twelve new zodiac signs discovered by Mr Rune. Carriageway constellations, formed from the layout of roads and streets in Brighton.

Each zodiac sign represented one of the Cosmic Conundra that we had to solve in order that the fabric of human existence should remain unfrayed. And each in turn led us closer to our ultimate Mankind-saving goal of acquiring the Chronovision.

The Chronovision was a ‘window upon time’, a fantastic device created by a Benedictine monk named Father Ernetti. It resembled a nineteen-fifties-style Bakelite television set, but there all connection with normalcy ended. Because upon its screen could be viewed events that had occurred in the past. Events that had taken place long before the invention of television.

I myself can vouch for its authenticity because I had the chilling experience of watching the actual crucifixion of Christ on the Chronovision. Something that moved me beyond words and which I will never forget.

Twelve Cosmic Conundra, each a case to be solved, we solved together, and at last secured the Chronovision.

At times I felt that the route we took was somewhat circuitous and availed Mr Rune of my opinions regarding this. But he always put me straight upon the matter.

‘There are always twelve cases,’ he told me, ‘and all are always to do with time. It is what I do and what I am. This is how it has always been and how it must always be. Twelve Cosmic Conundra, twelve cases to be solved, all leading as one to a final solution.’

And who was I to doubt him? Because in the end we succeeded and I felt that I played my part. And what times we had. Fraught with peril and danger, but filled with excitement. What thrills.

The cases were outré and their outcome unpredictable (although Mr Rune would perhaps argue otherwise regarding the unpredictability). Peopled with extraordinary personalities. Bartholomew the Bog Troll Buccaneer, Chief Whitehawk, Fangio the ever-present barlord. Not to mention Norris Styver, the demonic driver of a phantom Morris Minor that circumnavigates the one-way system of Lewes for ever and ever. And indeed Mr Rune’s arch-enemy, the Moriarty to his Holmes. The most evil man who ever lived, Count Otto Black.

How vividly I recall these cases, involving as they did an atomic-powered subterranean ark, space crabs from another galaxy, a statue of Queen Victoria that wept tears of Earl Grey, a killer robot from the past, numerous pirates, sundry supernatural entities, witches, weirdos and countless tiny spaniels. And, I must add, it was with considerable awe that I came to meet Lord Tobes, the many-times great-grandson of Jesus Christ.

It was indeed a very big adventure.

And when it was all over, I returned to the world of the everyday. Conveyed back into it by Mr Rune in such a fashion that although a year had passed for me, but a single day had passed for those in that everyday world.

And I returned to my life, my everyday life, as an unemployed teenager in a West London suburb called Brentford. And I must confess that in doing so I came to feel a certain lack. For after the wonders I had seen and the dangers and thrills I had encountered, this everyday world now held little charm for me. And I wondered whether I would ever see Mr Hugo Rune again. And indeed whether Mr Hugo Rune had actually existed, and whether my adventures in the company of that astonishing individual were nothing more than Far-Fetched Fiction. And had it not been for certain tangible items that remained in my possession to assure me of the reality of my adventures, these conclusions may well have been drawn by me, as they were by others to whom I revealed them.

Ah, yes, for a single year I had inhabited a world of wonder. But I now knew that it was over and so I must apply myself to that terrible something which inspires horror and disgust within the minds of all right-thinking teenagers.

That the awful blight that must inevitably fall upon them must also fall upon me.

That I must embrace and engage with the real and the everyday and take on the… Regular Employment.

But before that, let me record but briefly. Regarding myself, my name is James Arbuthnot Pooley and I was born, educated and live in Brentford, which is acknowledged by many to be London ’s most beautiful borough. It lies to the west of the capital, lovingly cradled in an aqueous elbow of old Mother Thames. It is home.