Robert Rankin - Nostradamus Ate My Hamster

Russell breathed it all in. It felt right .

There were folk all about. Casting darts, discoursing at the bar, quaffing ale and smiling. They looked right . No stiffness of the limbs, no vacant eyes. Real they seemed, and right.

Behind the bar the barman stood, for such is where he does. Tall and angular, slightly scholar-stooped, pale of complexion with a slick-back Brylcreme job about the head. He wore a dicky bow and crisp white shirt and he looked nothing at all like David Niven. He looked noble, though.

“Good-afternoon, madam, sir,” the barman said as they approached him.

Russell looked up at the battered Guinness clock above the bar. It was afternoon. It was one o’clock. It was lunch-time. Russell’s stomach rumbled. He was hungry. He was penniless.

How best to approach this problem?

“First drinks are on the house,” said the barman. “Always are to new patrons. And do help yourself to sandwiches. There’s a plate on the counter there. Ham they are and very fresh.”

“Right,” said Russell. “Thank you very much. What will you have, Julie?”

“A Perrier water please.”

“And for you, sir?”

Russell looked at Julie.

“Have anything you want,” she said.

Russell cast his eye along the row of gleaming pump handles. The barman poured Perrier and added ice and a slice. He placed it on the counter before Julie and then followed the direction of Russell’s gaze.

“We have eight real ales on pump,” he said, and a tone of pride entered his voice. “A selection which exceeds Jack Lane’s by four and the New Inn by three. You’ll find it hard to out-rival The Swan in this regard.”

“Which would you personally recommend?” Russell asked.

“Large,” said the barman. “Without hesitation.”

“Then a pint of Large it will be.” Russell watched the barman pull the pint. He had seen beer pulled before, but somehow not like this. There was something in the way this fellow did it, that elevated the thing into an art-form. It was hard to say quite how, but it was there. The angle of the glass? The speed of the pull? Something. Everything.

The barman presented Russell with the perfect pint.

Russell sipped the perfect pint.

“This is the perfect pint,” he said.

The barman inclined his noble head. “I am pleased that you find it so. Might I ask you, sir, are you Mr Russell Nice?”

Russell coughed into the perfect pint, sending some of the finest froth up his nose.

“Sorry to startle you, sir. But there are two gentlemen over there, though I hesitate to use the word gentlemen, two fellows , who said that you might drop in, and if you did then I was to steer you in their direction.”

Russell steered his eyes in the fellows’ direction and thought worried thoughts. Secret police? Time cops? Terminators, perhaps.

“You’ve nothing to fear,” said the barman. “They’re quite harmless. Shiftless, but harmless.”

Russell viewed the two fellows. Two young fellows, quaffing ale at a table by the window. One had an Irish set to his features. The other did not. But it was hard to tell which one.

The one it wasn’t waggled his fingers in greeting.

“What do you think?” Russell asked Julie.

“I think you should make the decisions.”

“Right.”

They approached the two fellows and as they did so, the two fellows rose and moved out chairs. And then extended hands for shaking.

“Good day,” said the one with the Irish set. “My name is John Omally and this is my friend and companion, James the-next-round’s-on-me Pooley.”

“The-next-round’s-on-me?” asked Pooley.

“That’s very civil of you, Jim.”

“Omally? Pooley?” Russell looked from one of them to the other and then back again, as the hand-shaking got underway. John shook Russell’s hand and Jim shook Julie’s then Jim shook John’s hand and Julie shook Russell’s, and an old boy who was passing by and didn’t want to miss out on anything, shook all their hands, and started everything off again.

Throughout all this, Russell’s mouth was opening and closing and phrases such as, “you’re them,” and “you’re those two,” and “Pooley and Omally, it’s you,” kept coming from it.

“Sit down, sit down,” said John Omally, helping Julie onto a chair, whilst once again shaking her hand.

“You too,” Jim told Russell. “I’d help you, but as you can see …”

Russell stared at Pooley, who was now shaking himself by the hand.

“Stop that, Jim,” John told him. “It’s impossible.”

“Sorry,” and Pooley sat down.

And when all were seated, the barman came over and placed a plate of ham sandwiches on the table.

“Cheers, Neville,” said Omally.

“Neville?” Russell looked up at the chap in the dicky bow. “Neville the part-time barman?”

Neville winked his good eye and returned to the bar.

“I’m confused,” said Russell. “I’m very confused.”

Omally grinned. “And you have every right to be. But tell me, sir, is this the pre-showdown pint you’re taking, or the post-showdown one?”

“I don’t think that’s helped,” said Pooley.

“Have you bested the villain?” Omally asked. “Or have you yet to best him?”

“I’ve yet to best him,” Russell said. “But what are you two doing here? How is this …? I mean, you’re real, and this place … I don’t understand.”

Jim raised his glass. “We generally take a pint or two at lunch-times,” he said.

“That isn’t what I meant.”

Omally took a sup from his pint and dabbed a knuckle at his lips. “I think, Jim, that what your man is asking, is, why are we here.”

“I’ve often asked myself that question,” said Jim. “But I rarely get any sense for a reply.”

“Allow me to explain,” said John Omally. “Now correct me if I’m wrong, but the last anyone heard of us, we were being atomised and sucked into space. And all on a Christmas Eve in some unrecorded year.”

Russell nodded.

“God rest ye merry gentlemen and then goodnight.”

Russell nodded again.

“Crash bang wallop. A bit of a shock for all concerned.”

“I did ask what happened next,” said Russell. “But Morgan said that nothing did.”

“Well, he would say that, wouldn’t he?”

“He did,” said Russell. “I was there when he said it.”

Omally took a further sup and drained his glass. He handed it to Mr James the-next-round’s-on-me Pooley. “Would it surprise you to know,” Omally asked, “that it was all part of a diabolical plot, hatched by a fiendish entity with a red insect face?”

“Probably not,” said Russell.

“I’m heartened to hear it. You see, Jim and I have, in episodes past, been called upon to protect Brentford from all manner of beastliness. We rise to the occasion, although Jim here always makes a fuss about it, but we get the job done. In the natural scheme of things we would be doing it now. But your man with the insect face is not part of the natural scheme of things and he doesn’t play by the rules. He put us right out of the picture.”

“But he couldn’t put Brentford out of the picture,” said Jim, tucking Omally’s empty glass under the table and taking a sip from his own. “When horror bowls a googly in Brentford, someone will always step into the crease and knock it for six.”

“Most lyrically put, Jim. And a clean glass would be fine, the same again if you will.”

Jim Pooley left the table.

“Now, let me get a grip of this,” said Russell. “Obviously you’re real, I can see you’re real, and what you’re saying is, that this creature flung you and The Flying Swan and everything into the future to stop you interfering with its plans.”