Роберт Рэнкин - The Dance of the Voodoo Handbag

I was truly rattled. How could it be that yesterday nearly everyone had heard of him, and today nobody had?

I decided to retrace my footsteps. I went back to Waterstone's. The chap behind the counter remembered me from the day before. But when I told him that I had drawn a complete blank on Johnny Quinn. he told me that he wasn't in the least surprised.

'˜What?' I said.

Well,' he said, '˜after you'd gone I got to thinking, and the more I thought about Johnny Quinn the less I seemed to remember. And eventually I got to thinking that probably I didn't remember Johnny Quinn at all, I only thought I did.'

'˜Absurd!' I said.

'˜Not really,' he said. '˜You see, it happens all the time in this business. Someone will come into the shop asking for a book that doesn't exist, saying that a friend of a friend of theirs read it and thought it was wonderful. They know, or think they know, all kinds of details about the book and its author. But the book doesn't exist. Even though it seems as if it should. It's like an urban myth, someone starts it off in a bar or something and it takes on a life of its own. I've developed a mystical theory about it. I think that the book exists in some kind of parallel universe and it's trying to exist in this one too. Like your Johnny Quinn, perhaps he's trying to exist here. And if enough people believed in him, maybe he would. Maybe if enough people believe in anything strongly enough, it will actually happen. And perhaps Johnny Quinn did exist here yesterday, sort of. But he won't exist today. He had his moment, when your belief spread to others, but that moment's passed. Not enough people believed hard enough. Johnny didn't make it into this reality. Sorry.'

'˜What a load of old toot!' I said.

But he might have been right. About some of it anyway. Because all the other chaps in all the other shops I went back to said pretty much the same thing. They'd all thought they'd remembered Johnny Quinn yesterday, but the more they thought about it'¦

The chap who'd had the girlfriend with the cat called Toothbrush was not at all pleased to see me. He said I'd stirred up a lot of unhappy memories and he'd probably have to go back into therapy. And, for my information, his girlfriend's cat had actually been called Steerpike and I should bugger off.

So I buggered off.

I didn't see Sean again for a couple of weeks, and when I did bump into him at the Jolly Gardeners I thought I'd wait until he asked' me about the Johnny Quinn books before I told him about what had happened. But Sean never did ask me. Sean seemed to have forgotten all about Johnny Quinn. In fact Sean never mentioned the name of Johnny Quinn ever again.

'˜Do you remember a painter called Karl Bok?' Sean asked me.

And that might well have been it for old Johnny Quinn, the author who never was, had it not been for something decidedly odd that happened to me the next month.

It happened in the Jolly Gardeners on a Tuesday evening. Andy, the landlord, goes off somewhere on Tuesday evenings, and Paul the part-timer takes over. Tuesday .evenings are always slow and Paul is good at slow. He generally spends the evening doing the Times crossword or reading a book. On this particular Tuesday evening he was reading a book.

I went in, hung up my hat and cloak and placed my silver-topped cane upon the counter. '˜A pint of Death by Cider, please, Paul,' I said.

Paul hastened without haste to oblige me.

What are you reading?' I asked, spying the open book on the counter.

'˜Book,' said Paul, viewing the rows of identical pint glasses upon the shelf and waiting for one to take his fancy.

'˜Does it have a title?' I asked.

'˜Yes,' said Paul, still waiting.

'˜Might I ask what it is?'

'˜You might.'

I turned the book towards me and closed it. It was a publisher's proof copy. It had a white card cover. The title of the book was Snuff Fiction, the author was Johnny Quinn.

'˜Bugger me,' I said.

'˜No thanks,' said Paul.

'˜But it's a Johnny Quinn novel. You've got a Johnny Quinn novel.'

'˜No I haven't,' said Paul.

'˜Yes you have, I'm holding it in my hands.'

'˜I haven't,' said Paul. '˜It's not mine. It belongs to a friend. A friend of a friend, actually.'

'˜But you've got it. It exists. Johnny Quinn exists.'

'˜He doesn't,' said Paul, who had finally found a glass he liked the look of.

'˜He bloody does,' I said. '˜This book proves it.'

'˜He doesn't,' said Paul, slowly filling the glass from the wrong pump. '˜Because he's dead. Committed suicide.'

'˜Blimey,' I said. '˜Poor old Johnny. He really did exist and now he's topped himself. He probably got fed up with people not believing in him.'

What?' asked Paul, presenting me with my pint.

'˜Nothing,' I said. What's this supposed to be?'

'˜Search me,' said Paul.

I held the book very tightly. '˜I want to buy this book,' I said. '˜I'll give you ten quid for it.'

'˜It's not mine. I can't sell it.'

'˜Twenty quid, then, and that's my final offer.'

'˜It will be out in the shops next week for a flyer.'

What?'

'˜They're republishing all his stuff. The Million Dollar Dream, Sailing to Babylon. There's been a big revival since he croaked. And Snuff Fiction is the last one he wrote before he blew his brains out. It's never been published before. It'll probably go straight into the bestseller list. You'll be able to buy it at a discount.'

'˜I don't get this,' I said. When I asked at the bookshops a while back, they couldn't trace any of his books.'

'˜That's because they were all private editions, printed in the States. His books were never published in this country. People used to say they'd read him in order to seem hip and well informed.'

'˜Hm!' I said, giving my chin a scratch.

'˜But that's what you blokes from the Sixties were all about, wasn't it?' said Paul. '˜Always saying you'd done the Hippy Trail and been to Woodstock and watched the Stones in the Park and gone to college with Freddie Mercury and taken every drug there was to take and all the rest of it. A bunch of bull-shitters, the lot of you. Did you ever read any Johnny Quinn novels, then?'

'˜Not me,' I said, and paid for whatever it was I'd just bought, and sat down in a corner and drank it.

And what Paul said made a lot of sense, really. I'd obviously heard of Johnny Quinn, but I'd never actually read him. But I must have told people that I'd read him in order to seem hip and well informed. And as the years had gone by, I'd come to believe that I'd really read him. That had to be it. And it was probably it with all the other people who'd told me they'd read Johnny Quinn. They were all just a bunch of Sixties bull-shitters, like me. A lot of tail-story-tellers.

Tall-story-tellers!

That made me think. That made me think about my dad. I swallowed hard upon my ale. What if my dad hadn't considered himself a tall-story-teller at all? What if he'd actually believed all those tales he'd told to the vicar? Thought he'd really done all those things? It was all too much to think about. I finished up whatever it was I was drinking and went home.

I went back to the Jolly Gardeners the following Tuesday evening. I wanted Paul to lend me that copy of Snuff Fiction. All right, it would be out in the shops the next day. But I wanted his copy. Because I wanted to be able to say to people, '˜Snuff Fiction? Oh yes, I read that before it came out.'

But Paul wasn't there.

Andy was behind the pump.

Where's Paul?' I asked Andy.

'˜Not turned in,' Andy said. '˜I've telephoned, but there's no answer. I can't think what's happened. This isn't like Paul at all.'

'˜Damn!' I said. '˜Do you have Paul's address?'

'˜No,' said Andy. '˜Do you?'

Wednesday morning found me back at Water-stone's, and there behind the counter was the chap I'd spoken to before.