Robert Rankin - The Sprouts of Wrath

Brentford was enjoying another tropical summer.

Although torrents of rain fell unceasingly upon Hounslow, Ealing and Chiswick, and the gardeners of Kew had taken to the wearing of sou’westers and fisherman’s waders, the good people of Brentford lazed in their deckchairs and sipped cooling drinks or strolled the historic thoroughfares in shorts and sunhats. Brentford was like that.

To commuters passing daily across the flyover, bound for the great metropolis somewhat east of Ealing, all seemed mundane enough. Lines of slate rooftops sheltering late Victorian houses, a gasometer, a watertower, a row of flatblocks. Nothing unusual here, one might have thought, nothing to inspire wonder, just another West London suburb. A few more acres of urban sprawl. But no. There was something more to Brentford than that. And though it was difficult to put a finger on just what that might be, it was definitely there all right. A very very special something.

Upon a May morning, shortly before the dawn, a long black automobile of advanced design and foreign extraction turned off the Great West Road, crested the railway bridge beside the Mowlems building and cruised soundlessly down towards the streets of Brentford.

Upon reaching the London Road, where the Arts Centre thrust its jagged shadow up towards the night sky, the car halted and a curiously stunted figure, clad in chauffeur’s livery, emerged from it map in hand.

Having examined this carefully, by the light of a pen-torch, he tapped with caution upon a blackly tinted rear window. The panel of glass slid away with a hiss and the chauffeur momentarily stiffened as an exhalation of stale and stagnant air filled his nostrils. Coughing politely into a scented handkerchief, he proffered the map to the unseen occupant of the rear compartment and said, “The site lies just beyond the building, sir, upon the island. It is the last of the five. You now possess them all.”

A sigh issued from the rear compartment, a plaintive, yet unearthly sound, followed by an agitated wheezing, as of lungs far gone in chronic decay.

“Then all is as it should be,” hissed a voice, scarcely more than a choked whisper. “And today the plan will be put into operation.”

The chauffeur dabbed at the cold sweat which had risen to his brow and accepted the return of his map with a trembling hand. Even through his white kid driving gloves he could feel that the paper was now cold and damp. He bowed stiffly, returned to his seat and put the curious vehicle once more in motion.

As the thin line of dawn broadened along the rooftops of Brentford, the car swung away towards Kew Bridge and was presently lost to view within the shadow of the great gasometer.

The dawn choristers completed their rowdy ovation to the new day as the Brentford Mercury ’s driver tossed his first Friday bundle in the general direction of a cornershop doorstep. On high Olympus, the Fates, nodding in agreement across their breakfast ambrosia, declared the day officially begun.

Norman hoisted the bundle of weekly locals on to the worm-eaten countertop, where it struck with an appropriately dull thud and raised a glorious cloud of dust. The shopkeeper sighed with pleasure. Since the departure of his wife with a former editor of the borough’s organ he had allowed the business to run magnificently to seed. His dust was the envy of every married man in the neighbourhood and Norman, revelling in each new pleasure afforded to him by his unexpected return to bachelorhood, was living, as he considered it, “life to the full”. Upstairs last week’s underpants lorded it upon the bedside rug; today’s sartorial excesses stretched to a pair of odd and undarned socks and the garish Hawaiian shirt his wife had particularly hated. Norman had also recently cultivated a pair of ludicrous mutton-chop whiskers which he considered to be rather dashing.

“It’s not a bad old life if you don’t weaken,” he constantly informed his customers, adding guardedly that this was of course dependent upon not letting the bastards (whoever they were) grind you down.

Whistling tunelessly, between teeth of his own design and construction, Norman slid the blade of his reproduction Sword of Boda paperknife through the twine bindings and spread away the pink covering to expose the FRONT PAGE NEWS. There was always more than the merest hint of ceremony about this weekly routine. Something vaguely akin to the mystical, although performed subconsciously and without the solemnity generally accorded to ritual. But such was often the way of it in Brentford. Certain customs appeared to have acquired almost magical significance. Professor Slocombe’s dawn perambulation of the borough boundaries, for example, or Neville the part-time barman’s daily check of the Swan’s beer engines. Such things were part of the Vital stuff of Brentford and a contributing factor towards the town’s separateness from its neighbours. Brentford lacked the cosmopolitanism of Hounslow, the upward mobility of Ealing, the young professionalism of Chiswick and the aloof urbanity of Kew. It should not be surprising therefore to note that the initials of these surrounding territories spell out the word HECK, the nineteenth-century euphemism for hell.

Norman flung the length of knotted twine into an overflowing rubbish box beneath the counter, leant upon the threadbare elbows of his ragged shopcoat and took stock of the week’s doings. The headline was not slow to engage his attention: INVISIBLE MYSTIC IN CHURCH HALL RUMPUS ran the generously inked banner headline filling a third of the front page. “Guru Vanishes With The Takings As Fists Fly!”

Norman chuckled to himself as he read the account of how local warlock and self-styled miracle worker Hugo Rune, having failed to make good his promise to dematerialize before a capacity crowd, had performed an entirely different variety of vanishing act when the dissatisfied punters turned ugly and demanded the return of their money. Fearing possible damage to the Jacobean timbers of the newly restored church hall, Father Moity had telephoned for the police. During the ensuing punch-up there had been twelve arrests and the local constabulary were currently seeking the whereabouts of the perfect master.

Norman shook his head and turned the page.

BIRMINGHAM’S OLYMPIC HOPES GO UP IN SMOKE: “Stadium Fire Ends Brum’s Olympic Dreams”. Of course Norman had heard all this on the wireless set. The grim catalogue of mismanagement, bungling, inefficiency and chaos had been daily news for months. As David Coleman had said, “The final kiss goodbye has long been on the cards.”

“Shame,” said Norman to no-one but himself, “I thought I’d have a crack at the javelin.”

On a lower portion of the same page was an item that any other editor might well have considered to be front-page news: GOLD BULLION ROBBERY: “Thieves Net Largest Ever Haul In Crime Of The Century”. Norman whistled once more through his home-made railings as he read the figure. Even allowing for the exaggeration of the Mercury ’s cub reporter, Scoop Molloy, there seemed little doubt that this was, as the Sweeney’s now legendary “Guv” would have put it, “One big blag, George.”

Exactly how the robbery had been carried out was still something of a mystery and Norman marvelled at the ingenuity of the light-fingered gentry who had slipped unseen through the high security cordon to abscond with the many tons of golden booty. Norman counted up the rows of noughts and tried to reconcile them into hundreds, thousands and millions. It didn’t bear thinking about.