Robert Rankin - The Antipope

It was, to say the least, stunning. The dazzling white of the suit made the naturally anaemic Neville appear almost suntanned. The stetson, covering his bald patch and accentuating his dark sideburns, made his face seem ruggedly handsome, the bulge of the gunbelt gave an added contour to his narrow hips and the cut of the trousers brought certain parts of his anatomy into an unexpected and quite astonishing prominence.

“Mighty fine,” said Neville, easing his thumbs beneath the belt buckle and adopting a stance not unknown to the late and legendary “Duke” himself. But there was something missing, some final touch. He looked down, and caught sight of his carpet slippers, of course, the cowboy boots. A sudden sick feeling began to take hold of his stomach, he did not remember having seen any boots when the suit arrived. In fact, there were none.

Neville let out a despairing groan and slumped on to his bed, a broken man. The image in the mirror crumpled away and with it Neville’s dreams; a cowboy in carpet slippers? A tear entered Neville’s good eye and crept down his cheek.

It was seven thirty. The bar was still deserted. The two hostesses were huddled at a corner of the counter, sipping shandy and discussing the sex lives of their contemporaries in hushed and confidential tones. The gaudily dressed bar had become a gloomy and haunted place. Once in a while a passer-by would cast a brief shadow upon the etched glass of the saloon bar door, conversation would cease and the two beauties would look up in wary expectation.

Neville descended the stairs upon tiptoe. The Page Three girls saw Neville’s slippers before they saw Neville. They should have laughed, nudged one another, pointed and giggled and possibly on any other occasion they would have done just that, but as the part-time barman reached the foot of the stairs he had about him such an air of desperate tragedy that the two girls were moved beyond words.

Neville squinted around the empty bar. “Hasn’t anybody been in?” he asked.

Mandy shook her powdered head. Sandra said, “Nah.”

“You look dead good,” said Mandy. “Suits you.”

“Like that bloke in them films you look,” said Sandra.

Neville smiled weakly. “Thanks,” he said. Just then the sound of a muffled explosion issued from the direction of the patio. The yard door burst open and down the short corridor staggered the blackened figure of Young Master Robert. He was accompanied by a gust of evil-smelling black smoke which made his entrance not unlike that of the Demon Prince in popular panto.

As he lurched towards the bar counter Neville stepped nimbly aside to avoid soiling his suit. The two Page Three beauties stood dumb with astonishment. Young Master Robert stumbled behind the bar. Tearing the whisky bottle from its optic he snatched up a half-pint mug and filled it to the brim.

“Two bloody hours,” he screeched in a tortured voice, “two bloody hours puffing and blowing and fanning the bloody thing! Then I see it, then I bloody see it!”

“You do?” said Neville.

“The vents man, where are the bloody vents?”

Neville shrugged. He had no idea.

“I’ll tell you where the bloody vents are, I’ll bloody tell you!” The line of Neville’s mouth was beginning to curl itself into an awful lopsided smirk. With great difficulty he controlled it. “On the top, that’s where the bloody vents are!”

Neville said, “Surely that can’t be right.”

“Can’t be right? I’ll say it can’t be bloody right, some bastard has built the barbeque upside down!”

Neville clamped his hand over his mouth. Young Master Robert raised the half-pint pot in a charred fist and poured the whisky down his throat.

“What shall we do then?” asked Neville fighting a losing battle against hilarity. “Call it off, eh?”

“Call it off? Not on your bloody life, no, I’ve fixed it, fixed it proper I bloody have, gave it what it bloody needed. Proper Molotov cocktail, got vents now it has, I’ll tell you.”

“Oh good,” said Neville, “no damage done then.”

Young Master Robert turned on the part-time barman a bitter glance. “I warn you,” he stammered, “I bloody warn you!” It was then that he realized the bar was empty. “Here!” he said. “Where is everybody?”

Neville moved uneasily in his chaps. The young master fixed him with a manic stare. Mandy watched his fingers tightening about the handle of the half-pint pot. She stepped between the two men. “Come on Bobby,” she said, “let’s ’ave a look at them burns, can’t ’ave you getting an infection can we?” With a comforting but firm hand she led the blackened barbequeist away to the ladies.

Neville could contain himself no longer. He clutched at his stomach, rolled his eyes and fell into fits of laughter. Sandra was giggling behind her hand but she leant over to the part-time barman and whispered hoarsely, “You wanna watch that little bastard, he can put the poison in for you.”

“Thank you,” said Neville, and the two of them collapsed into further convulsions. Suddenly there was a sound at the bar door. The smiles froze on their lips for it was at this exact moment that the Lone Ranger chose to make his appearance.

He was quite a short Ranger as it happened, and somewhat stout. Neville immediately recognized the man in the mask to be none other than Wally Woods, Brentford’s pre-eminent purveyor of wet fish. Wally stood a moment, magnificently framed in the doorway, considering the empty bar with a cold cod-eye of suspicion. For one terrible second Neville thought he was about to change his mind and make off into the sunset in the manner much practised in the Old West. “What’ll it be, stranger?” he said hurriedly.

Wally squared his rounded shoulders and swaggered to the bar, accompanied by the distinctive smell of halibut oil which never left his person come rain, hail or high water. “Give me two fingers of Old Snakebelly,” he said manfully.

During the half hour that followed, the Flying Swan began slowly to fill. In dribs and drabs they came, some looking sheepish and muffled in heavy overcoats, despite the mildness of the season, others strutting through the doorway as if they had been cowboys all their lives. Three Mavericks had begun an illegal-looking game of poker at a corner table, and no less than six gunfights had already broken out.

Neville loaded another case of old Snakebelly on to the counter. Young Master Robert returned from the Ladies, a satisfied expression upon his face, which was a battleground of sticking plaster. Mandy was wearing her bustle on back to front. Two more Rangers arrived, swelling their ranks to eight. “What is this, a bloody convention?” asked one. Old Pete arrived wearing a Superman costume. “They were right out of Lone Rangers,” he explained.

A few stalwart professionals were sticking to their regular beverages, but most were taking advantage of the cut-price liquor and tossing back large measures of Old Snakebelly, which was proving to have the effect generally expected of white man’s firewater.

The last of the Lone Rangers rounded the corners at either end of the Ealing Road and strode towards the Flying Swan. One was of Irish descent, the other a well-known local personality who had but several hours before come within one horse of winning £250,000. The two caught sight of one another when they were but twenty yards apiece from the saloon bar door. Both stopped. The Lone Pooley blinked in surprise. The Lone Omally’s face took on a look of perplexity. Surely, he thought, this is some trick of the light, some temperature inversion or mirror image. Possibly by the merest of chances he had stepped through a warp in the time-space continuum and was confronting his own doppleganger. A similar thought had entered the Lone Pooley’s mind.