Robert Rankin - The Brentford Chainstore Massacre

“I tried to, you know, the kiss of life, but he…” The secretary sank once more into tears. Jim put a kind arm about her shoulder. It was a pretty shoulder. Well formed. Actually, all of her was well formed. The secretary was a fine-looking young woman, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by Jim. “Come inside and sit down,” he told her.

The paramedics, now aided by several members of the crowd who were eager to get in on the action, were forcing the lifeless sheet-shrouded corpse of Mr Compton-Cummings into the back of the ambulance.

Jim led the secretary up the steps and through the front door. In the outer office Jim sat the secretary down in her chair. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I came here to thank him for sending me a copy of his book, and for leaving the bit about me out of it.” Jim placed the book upon the secretary’s desk. Unsigned it would always remain.

“He felt bad about that,” sniffed the secretary. “And about beating you up. It played on his mind. He was a good man, I liked him a lot.”

“I’m sorry. Can I get you a cup of tea, or something?”

“Thanks.” The secretary blew her nose. “The machine’s over there.”

Pooley applied himself to the task of dispensing tea. He’d never been very good with machines. There was a knack to technology which Jim did not possess. He held a paper cup beneath a little spout and pressed a button. Boiling water struck him at trouser-fly-level.

“It does that sometimes,” sniffed the secretary.

Eyes starting from his head and mouth wide in silent scream, Jim hobbled about the office, fanning at himself with one hand while holding his steaming trousers away from his seared groin region with the other.

“I’ll make my own then,” said the secretary. “How do you like yours? Two lumps?”

Jim hobbled, flapped and held out his trousers.

“It was horrible,” said the secretary, handing Jim a paper cup.

“It still is,” croaked Jim.

“No, Mr Compton-Cummings, dropping down dead like that.”

“Oh yes. It must have been.”

“One moment, big jolly bear of a man with his trousers round his ankles, the next…”

“Hang about,” said Jim. “You don’t mean that you and he were…”

“Well, of course we were. It’s Tuesday, isn’t it?”

“Yes, but…”

“We always do it on Tuesdays.”

“What? You and him? I mean, well, you’re so… and he was… well, I mean.”

“A Mason,” said the secretary.

“Eh?”

“A Freemason. I always helped him dress for the lodge meeting on Tuesdays. Here, you weren’t suggesting…”

“Perish the thought,” said Jim, crossing his heart with his cup-holding hand and sending tea all over his shirt. “Oh, damn.”

“You’re very clumsy, aren’t you?”

“I try not to be.” Jim plucked at his shirt and shook his head. “So he died while he was putting on his Masonic regalia.”

“It was the way he would have wanted to go.”

“Was it?”

“Well, no, I suppose not really. But you can’t choose how you die, can you? It’s like you can’t choose your parents. No offence meant.”

“None taken,” said Jim. “So he just dropped down dead while you were helping him on with his apron and whatnots.”

“I never touched his whatnots.”

Jim looked the secretary up and down. She was a beautiful young woman, but she was clearly not for him. Jim had never harboured a love for the toilet gag or the double entendre. The entire Carry On canon left him cold. Imagine having a relationship with a woman who could turn anything you said into a willy reference. Nightmare.

“So,” said Jim, once more and slowly. “You think that the exertion of putting on his Masonic vestments caused him to have a heart attack?”

“Well, it was either that or the blow job.”

“She said that?” Omally spluttered into his pint of Large. “You’re jesting.”

“I am not.” Jim crossed his heart once more, careful to use the hand that was not holding the drink. “Of course, she then went on to explain that she meant the job of blowing into the spout of the tea dispenser to clear a blockage. I’d had enough by then, so I made my excuses and left.”

“And quite right too,” agreed Omally. “That’s not the way we do business in Brentford. A woman like that is quite out of place.”

Jim Pooley raised an eyebrow to this remark, coming as it did from John Omally, whose reputation as a womanizer was legend hereabouts. But he knew what his best friend meant. There was something very special about the little town of Brentford, something that singled it out from the surrounding territories, that could not be quantified and catalogued and tamed by definition. It was subtle and elusive; it was precious. It was magic. And the folk who lived there felt it and were glad.

Jim sighed and drained his glass and placed it on the counter.

The two stood in the saloon bar of the Flying Swan, that Victorian jewel in the battered crown of Brentford pubbery. Raking shores of sunlight venturing through the etched glass windows sparkled in the ashtrays and the optics, on the polished mahogany counter top and from the burnished brass. There was magic here all right.

“One of similar, Neville, please,” said Jim as he pushed his glass across the bar.

“And one for me,” said John.

Neville the part-time barman pulled the pints and smiled upon his patrons. “You know, Jim,” said he, when the pints were drawn and paid for, “that book you have there might prove to be worth a few bob.”

“This book?” asked Jim, turning the item which lay before him on the counter. “How so?”

Neville took up Mr Compton-Cummings’s posthumous publication and idly turned the pages. “Well, I was talking just yesterday with that chap Gary. You know the fellow, tall, good-looking, posh suit, always carries the…” Neville paused and made a face.

“Mobile phone,” said Omally, crossing himself.

“The very same, and those abominations remain as ever barred from this establishment. Well, Gary works for Transglobe, the outfit responsible for the publication of this book. It came up in conversation.”

“Oh, did it?” said Jim. “Just came up in conversation. You weren’t perhaps hoping to get a free copy?”

Neville made the innocent face of the guilty man. “As I was saying, it came up in conversation and Gary told me that it was scheduled for publication this very week, this very day in fact. But at the eleventh hour all copies were withdrawn and pulped.”

“Blow me!” said Jim.

“Language,” said Omally.

“All pulped,” said Neville. “Even the original manuscript had to be destroyed.”

“But why?”

“Gary wasn’t altogether sure. But he was mightily peeved. The book was destined for the world market. It was expected to sell millions.”

Jim glowered into his ale. “So much for the ‘elite minority’.”

“Gary was cursing because he hadn’t actually got round to reading a copy himself. But he said the talk was that the book contained certain ‘sensational disclosures’ and that the order to pulp it had come down ‘from above’.”

Jim’s eyes rolled towards the Swan’s nicotined ceiling and stared unfocused, as if viewing through it the infinity that lay beyond. “From God?” he whispered.

“From the board of directors,” said Neville.

Omally plucked the book from the part-time barman’s fingers. “You pair of buffoons,” said he. “That Gary was winding you up, Neville. It would all be a publicity stunt.”

“You really think so?”

“I do. And to prove I’m right I will take this lad home with me now and read it from cover to cover. If there’s anything in it worth talking about, I’ll let you know.”