Robert Rankin: The Antipope

“You did.”

“Oh.”

“Then let me put you straight on this, Norman.” Norman did not recall telling the tramp his name, and this added to his growing unease. “Let it be known to you that this story, which although brief was in its way informative and morally satisfying, was a true and authentic tale involving a personal acquaintance of mine and let no other man, be he living, dead or whatever say otherwise!”

Norman fingered his collar, which had grown suddenly tight. “I wouldn’t,” he said in a voice of tortured conviction. “Not me.”

“Good,” said the tramp. Leaning forward across the table he stared hard into Norman’s eyes much in the manner of a cobra mesmerizing a rabbit. Norman prepared his nostrils to receive the ghastly reek of dereliction and wretchedness generally associated with the ill-washed brotherhood of the highway. Strangely no such stench assailed his delicate nasal apparatus, rather a soft yet strangely haunting odour, one that Norman could not quite put a name or place to. The scent touched a nerve of recollection somewhere in his past, and he felt a cold shudder creeping up his backbone.

Norman became transfixed. The tramp’s eyes, two red dots, seemed to swell and expand, filling all the Plume Café, engulfing even Lily’s giant breasts. Two huge red suns glittering and glowing, gleaming with strange and hideous fires. Awesome and horrendous, they devoured Norman, scorching him and shrivelling him to a blackened crisp. He could feel his clothes crackling in the heat, the skin blistering from his hands and the nails peeling back to reveal blackening stumps of bone. The glass melted from his wristwatch and Mickey’s face puckered and vanished in the all-consuming furnace. Norman knew that he was dead, that his wife had slipped from his grasp and that he was far, far away watching this destruction of his human form from some place of safety. Yet he was also there, there in that blazing skeleton, there inside the warped and shrinking skull watching and watching.

“Are you going to drink these coffees or shall I pour them down the sink?” said Lily Marlene.

Norman shook himself awake with a start. The tramp had gone and the two coffees were cold and undrunk. He looked at his watch; Mickey’s head nodded to and fro as it always had. It was nearing five-thirty p.m. An hour had passed since he had entered the Plume.

“Where did the tramp go?” asked Norman.

“I don’t know anything about any tramp,” said Lily. “All I know is you buy two cups of coffee then fall asleep and let them go cold. Reckon if you want to sleep it off you can do it as well in your own bed as here, so bugger off home, will you Norman?”

Norman rose shakily from his seat. “I think I shall go round to the Flying Swan instead,” he said. “For still waters run deep, you know.”

“And it never rains but it bloody buckets down,” Lily called facetiously after the receding figure.

Neville the part-time barman drew the bolts upon the saloon bar door and swung it open. Nervously he stuck his head out and sniffed the early evening air; it smelt pretty much as it always did. He sniffed it a few more times for good measure. Neville believed strongly that a lot more went on in the air than was generally understood by man. “Dogs have the way of it,” he had often said. “Dogs and a few gifted men. It is more than just pee on a post,” he had told Omally. “Dogs sense with their noses rather than simply smell with them.”

This line of conversation was a bit out of Omally’s range, but he thought he recalled a joke about a dog with no nose. “A dog is a wise animal, that much I know,” said the Irishman. “Back in the old country few men would venture out of doors of a night without a dog at their heels. The faithful fellow would sit at his master’s elbow the evening, and if in the course of conversation the master felt the need for a bit of support he would nudge his dog and the animal, who would have been following every word, would assist him.”

It was always remarkable to Neville that at times when Omally was stuck for something to say he would simply resort to the first thing that came into his head no matter how thoroughly absurd it might be. “You are saying that the dog would advise his master, then?” said the long-suffering part-time barman.

“Heavens no,” said Omally. “The dear creature would simply go for the other fellow’s throat thus cutting short any chance of his master losing the argument.”

As Neville stood in the pub doorway, sniffing the air and thinking to discern the possibility of snow, his eyes were treated to a spectacle which spelt dread.

Norman was stumbling towards the Flying Swan crossing himself wildly and reciting the rosary.

“Oh no,” groaned the part-time barman. He dropped the notice that he had painted that very afternoon, fled behind the counter and lunged at the whisky optic. Norman entered the Flying Swan at a trot and tripped immediately upon a newly painted notice which read NO TRAMPS. Picking this up in the trembling fingers he too said, “Oh no!”

Neville anticipated the shopman’s request and thrust another glass beneath the optic. “Evening Norman,” he said in a restrained voice, “how are things with you?”

“Did you paint this sign, Neville!” Norman demanded. Neville nodded. “Give me a…” Neville pushed the glass across the counter. “Oh yes, that’s the one.”

Norman drained the glass with one gulp. Pausing to feel the life-giving liquid flowing down and about his insides Norman said slowly, “You know, don’t you?”

“Know?” said Neville with some degree of hesitation.

“About the tramp, you’ve seen him too, haven’t you?” Neville nodded again. “Thank God,” Norman said, “I thought I was going mad.”

The part-time barman drew off two more scotches and the two men drank in silence, one either side of the bar. “I was up on the canal bridge,” said Norman and began to relate his story. Neville listened carefully as the tale unfolded, only nodding thoughtfully here and there and making the occasional remark such as “The King’s Shilling, eh?” and “Strange and pungent odour eh?” by way of punctuation.

Norman paused to take another gulp of whisky. Neville was taking careful stock of how many were being drunk and would shortly call the shopkeeper to account. “And the next thing, you looked up and he was gone,” prompted the part-time barman.

Norman nodded. “Gone without a by your leave or kiss my ankle. I wonder who on earth he might be?”

“Who who might be?” The voice belonged to James Pooley, whose carefully calculated betting system had until five minutes previous been putting the wind up the local bookie.

“How did the afternoon go for you, Jim?” asked Neville. Pooley shook his head dismally. “I was doing another six-horse special and was up to £150,000 by the fifth and what do you know?”

Neville said, “Your sixth horse chose to go the pretty way round?”

“’Tis true,” said the blighted Knight of the Turf.

Neville pulled a pint of Large and Jim pushed the exact amount in odd pennies and halfpennies across the bar top. Neville scooped this up and tossed it without counting into the till. This was an error on his part, for the exact amount this time included three metal tokens from the New Inn’s fruit machine and an old washer Jim had been trying to pass for the last six months.

Jim watched his money vanish into the till with some degree of surprise – things must be pretty bad with Neville, he thought. Suddenly he caught sight of the NO TRAMPS sign lying upon the bar top. “Don’t tell me,” he said, “Your tramp has returned.”

Neville threw an alarmed and involuntary glance from the sign to the open door. “He has not,” said the barman, “but Norman has also had an encounter with the wretch.”