Robert Rankin - The Antipope

Black Tie

R.S.V.P.

7.30 p.m. for 8.00 p.m.

Admission by this card only

Brian sighed deeply and pressed the scented card to his lips. Things could not have been better, the Captain to announce his retirement! He had not realized that it was the Mission’s Centenary Year, but it was clear that for the sake of appearances he must attend. The rest of the Committee would be there and his absence would not go unnoticed.

He would R.S.V.P. this very morning. At last the wheels of fortune were beginning to turn to his advantage. He could almost smell the delicious odours of Mario’s cooking.

As Monday turned into Tuesday and Tuesday did what was expected of it the patrons of the Flying Swan grew increasingly uneasy. Strange changes were taking place amid the timeless decor of the saloon bar. A grotesquely moth-eaten bison’s head had materialized above the counter and traces of sawdust had begun to appear about the floor. A large painting of a rotund and pinkly powdered female, clad only in the scantiest of ostrich-feather boas and an enticing if tobacco-stained smile, had been hung lopsidedly over the dartboard. “A temporary inconvenience,” Neville assured the irate dart-players. “Hold on thar pardners.” But the casters of the feathered flight sought their amusements elsewhere at Jack Lane’s or the New Inn.

“Son of a gun,” said Jim Pooley.

It was John Omally, a man who looked upon himself, no matter how ironically, as a guardian of the neighbourhood’s morals, who was the first to notice the new selection which had found its way into the disabled jukebox. “The Wheel of the Wagon is Broken?” he said suddenly, his coarse accent cutting through the part-time barman’s thoughts like a surgeon’s scalpel. “A Four-Legged Friend?”

Neville hung his head in shame. “It is regrettable,” said he, “but the brewery feel it necessary to alter the selection on that thing to keep in pace with what they think to be the vogue.”

“Come on now,” said Omally, “surely it is the brewery who are dictating this particular vogue with their horrendous plans for a Western Barbeque and all its attendant horrors.”

“Don’t forget the extension and the cheap drink,” Neville reminded his Irish customer.

Omally cocked his head thoughtfully to one side. “It is a poor consolation for the ghastly transfiguration currently taking place in this establishment, I am thinking.”

Jim agreed. “To think I’d see the day when three of the Swan’s finest arrowmen defect to Jack Lane’s.”

Neville chewed upon his lip and went back to polishing the glasses.

“I see you are still sporting your official guide’s cap,” said Pooley suddenly.

Omally smiled and reverently removed the thing, turning it between his fingers. “You would not believe the business I am doing along that stretch of dried-up canal.”

Jim shook his head. “Although to the average man the disappearance of a canal must seem an extraordinary thing, I frankly fail to see what pleasure can be derived from paying out good money to wander up and down the bank peering into the mud. By God, I was down that way myself earlier and the smell of it is no pleasant treat to the nostrils.”

“I have devised a most fascinating programme,” the Irishman said, “wherein I inform the visitors as to the many varied and bizarre legends associated with that stretch of canal.”

“Oh yes?” said Jim.

“We visit the very spot where Caesar encamped prior to his march upon Chiswick.”

“Really?”

“The place where the ghost of Little Nellie Tattersall, who cast away her earthly shell into the murky depths one dark and wintry Victorian night, still calls her tragic cry.”

“Calls her tragic cry?”

“And to the site of the famous Ripper murder of 1889. It’s a highly educational tour.”

“And they believe all this drivel?”

“Whether they believe it or not is unimportant. At the current rate of business I may well shortly be having to employ an assistant to deal with the parties that are forced to queue for several hours at a stretch. There are more of them every day. There are many pennies to be made in this game,” the Irishman said, flamboyantly ordering two pints.

Pooley peered round at the crowds which swelled the Swan. Certainly they were a strange breed, with uniformly blank expressions and a kind of colourless aura surrounding them. These were the faces which one saw jammed into a tight crowd surrounding an accident victim or one fallen in a fight. Ambulance men have to force past them and little short of outright violence will budge them an inch.

Old Pete entered the bar, his half terrier close upon his heel. “There’s a coachload of Japs out there asking for the guide,” he told Omally.

“Duty calls,” said John, leaping to his feet and thrusting his official cap on his head, “I shall see you anon.”

Jim bid his companion farewell and with a satisfied smile settled down to tackle the two untouched pints.

“That will be ten and six please,” said Neville the part-time barman.

“Damn and blast,” said Jim Pooley.

Norman threw the door bolt and turned over the sign which informed customers that he was “Closed Even for the Sale of Rubber Bondage Monthly”. Rubbing his hands together he strode across the shop and disappeared through the door behind the counter. The small kitchenette-cum-living-room at the rear had been allowed of late to run somewhat to seed. The sink was filled by a crazy mountain of food-besmirched crockery now in a state long beyond reclamation. Cigarette ends spotted the linoleum like the pock-marks of some tropical disease and great piles of newspapers, fine art publications and scientific journals were stacked into every available corner.

“Every cloud has a silver lining,” he said. Reaching to the back door he lifted down and donned a leather apron, welder’s goggles and a pair of rubber gloves. “And now, the end is near… And so, I face the final curtain.” With a grandiloquent gesture he crossed the room and flung aside a ragged strip of cloth which curtained a corner. There, lit by the kitchenette’s naked light bulb and glowing like a rare pearl torn from its oyster shell, hung what must surely have been one of the most extraordinary suits of clothes ever viewed by mortal man. It was a stunning salmon-pink, and tailored from the best quality PVC. Its body and sleeves glittered with rhinestones and sequins worked into patterns roughly suggestive of Indian headwear and western horsemen. The trousers were similarly ornamented and ended in massive bell-bottoms edged with braid and long golden tassles. Emblazoned across the shoulders of the jacket in letters of gold, marked out with what were obviously at least a dozen sets of christmas-tree fairy lights, were the words: THE SPIRIT OF THE OLD WEST.

It was Norman’s pièce-de-résistance , and it actually worked. In truth of course, no human hand, no matter how skilled, could have wrought the creation of such a costume in the short time given as notice by the Swan of the impending Cowboy Extravaganza. No, this was the work of several long years. Originally intended as THE SPIRIT OF THE JUBILEE, it had been far from completion at the time of that event and Norman had feared that its day would never dawn. It had taken him several long and sleepless nights to alter the coronation coach into a covered wagon and change the Prince of Wales feathers into the war-bonnet of an Indian chieftain. The effect, all in all, was one to bring a tear of pride into the eye of its creator.

The stetson had been a bit of a problem, as his source of PVC, a young woman customer who worked in the rubber factory, had been dismissed for unauthorized removal of the company’s stock. He had persevered, however, and done what he could with an aged trilby and an improvised brim. This he had sprayed gold and sprinkled with glitter from the carnival shop.