Robert Rankin - The Brightonomicon

The Wiseman of Withdean The Wiseman of Withdean

It was January and it was cold and it was not fun any more.

Mr Rune had acquired rooms for us in a street in Hove called St Aubyns. The rooms were those of a basement flat. An unfurnished basement flat. Exactly how Mr Rune acquired these rooms I am not certain. He had me take down the 'To Let' sign outside and 'dispose of it discreetly'. He also had me gain entry by means of a crowbar through the kitchen window at the rear, there being some talk of 'keys being lost' and 'locks that would have to be changed'.

I really hated those rooms in Hove. They were dark, dire and dank, and I tell you they stank, and the central heating was broken. I was all for us taking our chances back at forty-nine Grand Parade, but Mr Rune would have none of that. And one night, as by the light of a stuttering candle I stuffed crushed newspapers up my trousers for insulation, I chanced to discover the reason why: forty-nine Grand Parade had been burned to the ground.

It was arson, the police claimed, probably an attempt at insurance fraud. And there was an Identikit picture of the likely suspect. And the likely suspect was me.

I curled up in that position favoured by the soon-to-be-born, stuck my thumb into my mouth and fretted.

I was a wanted man. And I was hiding out in this ghastly basement. My spiffing coat with the Astrakhan collar was severely scuffed from all the sleeping on the floor and I was very hungry indeed. I began to wonder whether things might be better for me if I simply walked into Brighton nick and handed myself over to Inspector Hector.

'Don't even think about such an option,' came the voice of Mr Rune from the darkened corner nearest to the door. 'We must face such vicissitudes with stoicism. Matters will shortly adjust themselves.'

'To our favour?' I asked. 'For they surely cannot get any worse.' 'And it's rude to talk with your thumb in your mouth.' I huddled down and made bitter grumblings.

Moonlight shone in through the uncurtained windows and lit upon the Chronovision standing by the fireplace, propped up on a beer crate and plugged into the wall.

I so dearly wanted to smash that thing to pieces. But of course, before I did so, tune it to myself. I had asked Mr Rune again and again concerning this, but his refusals had been absolute. He had, however, allowed me to view certain images on the screen. At first, when I saw the crackling black and white pictures, I felt certain that he had tuned to some television station that I had never heard of, which showed old news-reel footage all day, perhaps being beamed to us from the future, where there might be all manner of TV channels like that. In fact, there might even be channels that showed nudie films and Japanese game shows where contestants were tortured in the name of entertainment. Although such things as those were probably too much to hope for. But, I felt certain, I was not really viewing the past.

I watched footage of Hider making speeches at Nuremberg, and I swear that as the camera panned across his cronies in the background, I spied Mr Rune chatting up Goebbels's wife.

And I watched the coronation of Edward VII in 1901. And there was Mr Rune also, in a front seat in Westminster Abbey, accompanying the organ on his reinvented ocarina.

But then, as the images became more distant in time, I knew that this Chronovision was the real McCoy.

And when I watched the opening of the Great Exhibition of 1851 with Mr Rune leading her Majesty Queen Victoria (Gawd bless Her) through the exhibits and introducing her to Charles Babbage, 'the Father of Computers', I was amazed beyond all reasonable amazement.

Mr Rune fiddled with the dials and I viewed Victorian London. And it was not how we were told it was in the history books. There was technology then that we do not possess now. Slim metal towers topped by spheres of steel rose to all points of the great metropolis, transmitting electricity upon radio waves. Electricity without wires. And there were flying hansom cabs and gentlemen's landaus. And great turbine-driven airships that carried thousands of British troops. And the British Empire ruled almost all of the world.

We watched the abortive launch of the 1891 Moonship, sabotaged, said Mr Rune, by Joseph Merrick, the Elephant Man, who was really a human/alien hybrid, the alien part being Martian. I have to say that when I watched it all, I said to Mr Rune that if someone put it all together, they would have the makings of a half-decent novel, possibly in a genre called 'far-fetched fiction'. Mr Rune replied that such a book would one day be written, but that I would not be its author.

And backwards through time Mr Rune tuned that Chronovision, that window on past events. And I watched Victorian music-hall performances, battles and coronations, the Great Fire of London, Shakespeare directing his plays, with a little help from Mr Rune. Columbus setting sail.

And upon the first Sunday in December, Mr Rune allowed me to watch the crucifixion of Christ.

I have never in my life seen anything so brutal. It made me weep to watch it, I can tell you, and the nobility of the man being tortured to death on that cross will stay in my mind for ever. Whether he was really the Son of God, I could not have said then. I had never given religion too much thought, apart from the Eastern Schools, that is, because I had always fancied becoming a lama and doing all that magical stuff – levitation and leaving your body and seeing folks' auras and suchlike.

I read a lot of Doctor Strange comics back in those days. When I was not reading Lazlo Woodbine.

I do not want to dwell much on the Crucifixion. It makes the hairs stand up on my arms just to think about it. And it makes my arms start to flap somewhat, too. Which is a habit I have long been trying to curtail.

And so I lay there in the light of the moon and the stuttering candle and hated and feared and was in awe of that Chronovision. And curled up in my soiled coat, my trousers stuffed with newssheets, I spent another uncomfortable night on the floor in our rooms in Hove. And when daytime appeared, offering us sunlight but naught in the way of warmth, Mr Rune stretched and rose and straightened his cravat and said, 'Let us go and take breakfast.' We took our breakfast, as ever we did of late, in Georgjo's Bistro in George Street. It was an ex-Wimpy bar, now in private hands, run by a family of Italians who were straight from Central Casting.

There was Mama and Papa and Mario and Luigi. And they all worked together in their Hellish kitchen, but unlike chefs of a future time they did not swear at all. They sang. Songs about pasta and Peroni beer, Ferraris and football, lino and loft insulation.

Now, it has to be said that I did not care at all for going out for breakfast. Do not get me wrong here – Georgio's put on a decent spread at a price that was fair and bunged in an extra cuppa for free. The reason I did not like going there was the reason I did not like going anywhere. And that reason, I regret to say, was because of my disguise.

Well, I could not just walk abroad upon the streets of Brighton, could I? There were 'wanted' posters up everywhere and my face was upon them. I had suggested to Mr Rune that I don a tweed jacket and a trilby hat, as Laz had done when he sought to disguise himself. With the trilby and tweeds, he always managed to pass for a newspaper reporter. In Headless Dames Don't Give Any (A Lazlo Woodbine Thriller), even his own mother failed to recognise him.

Mr Rune, however, pooh-poohed my suggestion. He had a better idea. And so I was dragged-up. And by this, I do not mean that I had a bad childhood. Make-up was applied to my face and, what with my 'girlie hair', Mr Rune felt convinced that I could pass for his daughter any day of the week. With the possible exception of Tuesday, of course.