Robert Rankin - Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

At this precise moment I would like to relate to you a tale told to me by a close friend of mine. He told me this tale in response to me telling him the one my Uncle John told to me, about the man who wasn’t really a man at all.

The reason for the telling of this tale is that it plays a large part in what will shortly occur to Russell. And even if it didn’t, it’s a real raging stonker of a story.

My close friend’s name is Mr Sean O’Reilly and I know what you’re going to say, “Oh yeah right, Bob. Sean O’Reilly !” But he is a real person and it is his real name and being a Sean O’Reilly is not without its problems.

For instance, a couple of weeks back he was having a night out in Brighton. The final bell had gone and no more orders were being taken at the bar. Sean, for whom the night was yet young, set off in search of a club with more civilized licensing hours, where music played and ladies of negotiable affections might be found. And he came across the Shamrock Club.

Now being of Irish descent, and being a Mr Sean O’Reilly, he reasoned that a welcome would lie within for him and proceeded to engage in friendly chit chat with the bouncer (or “door-supervisor” as he preferred to be called). This able-bodied fellow agreed to waive the usual formalities, accept a five pound gratuity for so doing and sign Sean in as a member.

“Phwat is yer nam?” enquired the door-supervisor.

“My name is Sean O’Reilly,” said Sean O’Reilly, and was promptly booted from the premises on the grounds that he was “taking the piss”.

It’s not much of a story, I know. But it’s a true one and the trouble with true ones is that they never usually amount to very much. The one Sean told me, however, in response to the one I told him, is a different kettle of carp altogether. It is a strange and sinister story and again the warning is issued to those of a nervous disposition, those wimpy individuals who get squeamish about watching a snuff movie or a live execution (hard to believe, I know), that now would be the time to flick on forward to the next chapter.

Right, well now we’ve got rid of that lot, on with the gory stuff.

At the time Sean heard all the gory stuff of which this tale is composed, he was sitting in the casualty department at Brighton General. Sean had been working as a roofer, and, as anyone who has ever worked as a roofer will tell you, roofers periodically fall off roofs. It’s a sort of perk of the job. Sean had been working on a garage roof and Sean had fallen off and sprained his ankle.

Now, as those who have never worked on, or fallen off roofs, but have sat waiting in a casualty department will tell you, about fifty per cent of the other folk sitting there have got sprained ankles. This is not because they are all roofers, you understand, it is because most injuries occur to your extremities. Your hands and feet. A nurse once told this to me, as I sat waiting to have my sprained ankle looked at. (I hadn’t fallen off a roof, but I’d tripped up in one of the potholes that no-one wants to take responsibility for, in the-lane-that-dare-not-speak-its-name, where I live.)

“It’s hands and feet mostly,” she told me. “And hands and feet are low priority , so you’ll just have to wait.” Adding, “Would you care for a copy of Hello! magazine to read? It’s the one with James Herbert in it.”

Sean did not have to wait to have his sprained ankle looked at. Because Sean had been tipped off by a friend of his who was a male nurse about how to get seen at once in a casualty department, even if you only have a sprained ankle. Sean passed this tip on to me, and I, in turn, pass it on to you.

The tip is SCREAM!

Scream as loudly as you can and scream continuously. Doctors and nurses can’t abide screaming in their waiting-rooms, it upsets them and it makes the other patients uneasy. That’s the tip, but keep it to yourself.

So Sean had screamed like a maniac and Sean had been wheeled away to a cubicle and given an injection of something quite nice. And while he lay there, awaiting the results of the X-rays, he overheard a conversation going on in the next cubicle between an old man and a priest. And the substance of this conversation is the substance of Sean’s tale, which has a later bearing on Russell.

And what Sean overheard was this.

The old man was groaning a lot and Sean recognized The Last Rites being read. Then the old man spoke.

“I must tell you, father,” said the old man. “Tell it all to you.”

“As you wish, my son.”

“It all began for me some years ago. I was living up North at the time, in the town of H –”

“The town of H –?”

“As in Hamster.”

“Oh, that one, go on then.”

“I was chief wick-dipper at the candle works, a position of considerable responsibility and prestige. Many doors were open to me then, even some with the closed-sign up. But fate being fickle and man ever weak to desires of the flesh, I fell in with a bad crowd and engaged in acts of drunkenness and debauchery.”

“Would you care to enlarge upon these, my son?”

“No, father, I would not”

“A pity, but go on.”

“My employer was a goodly man who greatly feared God and was rarely to be seen without his hat on. He was the very soul of forgiveness, but even he, for all his God-fearing ways and the wearing of his hat, could not find it in his Christian heart to pardon my wickedness.”

“Was this fellow a Protestant?”

“That he was, father.”

“Shameful, go on with your story.”

“After the episode with the pig he –”

“A pig, did you say?”

“And a modified power tool.”

“Was that a Black and Decker?”

“No, just a pig on this occasion.”

“Sure it happens to the best of us, go on.”

“I was stripped of my trappings, my badge of office torn from my bosom, my woggle trampled underfoot.”

“And all for a pig and a modified power tool?”

“Father, would you let me just tell my story? I’m dying here.”

“Go on then, I won’t interrupt.”

“Thank you. I was cast out, expelled from The Guild of Candlemakers, a social pariah. Ostracized, a proscribed person. Boycotted, blackballed –”

“ Blackballed ? But I thought you said –”

“Father, will you shut the fuck up?”

“I’m sorry, my son. Go on now, just tell me what happened.”

“I was an outcast, all doors that had previously been open to me were now closed. Even the closed ones were closed. I walked the streets as a man alone, none would offer me ingress.”

“Not even the pig?”

“ Father!”

“ Sorry, go on.”

“I was alone. Alone and unwanted. I would sit for days at a time in the library, poring over the papers in the hope that I might find some gainful employment, no matter how humble. But so foul was the stigma attached to my person that all turned their backs upon me. I was low, father, so low that I even considered returning to the occupation I’d had before I entered candlemaking.”

“And what occupation was that? If you’ll forgive me asking.”

“Priest,” said the old man.

“Right,” said the priest.

“But it never came to that, although now I wish that it had. Rather would I have thrown away the last vestiges of my dignity and rejoined the priesthood than –”

“Don’t lay it on too thick,” said the priest. “You might be a dying man, but you’ll still get a smack in the gob.”

“I saw this advert, father. In the paper. It said, SELL YOUR SPINE AND LIVE FOR EVER.”

“Would that not be a misprint? Would it not be sell your soul ?”