Robert Rankin - Web Site Story

Kelly gagged and coughed. Her throat was dry. Ahead was a Coca-Cola machine. No. And Kelly shook her golden head. She didn't dare touch that.

She'd go mad. Was she going mad already?

'I have to get back,' said Kelly to no-one but herself. 'Back to Brentford. It's safer than anywhere else. There's less computer technology there than anywhere else. Except perhaps Mute Corp Keynes and there's no way I'm going there at the moment. I have to get back.'

A cab drew up alongside of her. 'Looking for a ride beautiful lady?' called the cabbie.

Kelly looked at him. And at the cab. Computerized satellite tracking system. Computerized fare system. Computerized radio system. The cabbie waved his hand. On his wrist was a computerized watch, one of those chunky Mute Corp retro jobs.

'No,' said Kelly, shaking her head. Tm walking. Go away.'

'Please yourself,' said the cabbie, driving off.

And so Kelly walked. She walked for nearly ten miles. From the West End of London to Brentford. It was five of the glorious evening clock by the time she crossed over the bridge that used to cross over the railway, turned several corners and put her passkey into Mrs Gormenghast's front door.

'Hello,' called Kelly. But the house was empty.

Kelly opened the door reserved for tradesmen and others of a bygone lower order and let herself out into the back garden. She limped up the garden path, for her holistic shoes hurt more than a little, and she passed behind the trellis and opened the pucely painted shed door.

'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'I meant to be back much earlier. You must be starving. It's only that I've learned so much. And I've done something terrible and I need someone to talk to and I hope that somehow, impossible though it might be, you have managed to get through this thing and cure yourself. Because if not I don't know what I'm going to do. I might have to kill you to prevent you passing on the infection to somebody else. And I couldn't bear that, I really couldn't.'

And Kelly drew away the coal sacks.

To find the floor beneath them empty.

Big Bob Charker had vanished once again.

Derek was a little drunk.

He'd left the Shrunken Head and wandered up to the Flying Swan. From there he'd wandered across to the Four Horsemen and from there to the Hands of Orlac. From there his wanderings became a tad confused. He'd wandered into the coin-operated laundry at the top of Abbadon Street, thinking it to be one of those postmodern cocktail bar kind of jobbies that the toffs up West seem so taken with.

Vileda Wilcox (daughter of the embarrassing Harkly 'Here's another good'n' Wilcox and sister to Studs, the Mississippi riverboat gambler, and named, incidentally, after the kitchen cloth of legend) had thrown Derek out on his ear, calling him a filthy drunken pig of a person.

'I only asked for a sex on the beach,' said the baffled Derek, and received a drop kick to the groin that sent him sprawling.

'That's all you men ever think about,' said Vileda, which was basically correct.

'The thing about love,' slurred Derek to himself as he wandered uncertainly and not a tad unpainfully towards the Tudor Tearooms in the High Street, which in his particular state of mind did bear an uncanny resemblance to an Alpine apres-ski kind of bar. 'The thing about love is, that it scans the social bandicoots. No, that's, spans the social boundaries. Kelly is definitely posh. Anyone can see that. You can see that. Can't you?' he asked.

Mad John was shouting at Volvos today. 'What?' he shouted at Derek. 'Speak up. What?'

'Mad John,' said Derek, putting his arm about the loony's ragged shoulder. 'You're my friend aren't you?'

'I'm no friend of Volvos,' shouted Mad John. 'Hatchback or the estate, they're both the same to me. I hate 'em.'

'Yes,' said Derek, or 'yesh', because it's 'yesh' that you say at such times. 'Yesh, you're right old friend of mine. But I love the woman. And I'm a bit posh.'

'You're a bit pissed,' Mad John shouted. And 'You'll get yours, come the revolution,' to a passing Volvo fast-back, with the cross-body spoiler and the legendary cage of steel.

'But money can make you posh, can't it?' said Derek. 'It made Posh Spice posh. Or did it just make her rich? Same thing anyway. Posh is just rich with good manners, everyone knows that, although the posh ones won't admit it. And having a posh voice, that helps, doesn't it? Would you say that I had a posh voice?'

'Listen,' said Mad John softly, removing Derek's hand from his shoulder. Tmjust doing my job, mate. I'm paid to shout at shoes on Sundays and Volvos on Thursdays. The rest of the week, my time is my own. Mostly I spend it watching old Richard and Judy reruns on UK Gold. I'm not a philosopher, or an agony uncle. Why don't you just go home to your mum, Derek, and sleep it off?'

'But if I had money,' said Derek. 'Say I had lots of money. Then a chap with lots of money can get himself a posh woman, can't he?'

'A man with lots of money can get himself pretty much any woman,' said Mad John. 'So why have a posh one? They're really high maintenance and most of them are rubbish in bed. Believe me, I've had loads. If I had a quid for every posh woman who's taken pity on me, invited me back to her home, given me a bath and then, as if for the first time, noticed how ruggedly handsome I am, and then given me a right seeing-to on her four-poster bed, before filling my pockets with cash, I'd be a rich man myself by now and able to get myself pretty much any woman I wanted.'

Derek stared lopsidedly at Mad John. 'Is all that true?' he asked.

'Gawd, you are drunk, aren't you? Come on, I'll help you home. It's knocking-off time for me anyway.'

And so Mad John helped Derek home. Derek's mum thanked Mad John for his trouble, then told him that she felt a terrible guilt that such nice people as Mad John had to sleep on the streets with no roof over their heads and would Mad John care to come in and have a bath?

'Why thank you very much, madam,' said Not-so-Mad John. 'Let's get your lad up to his bed first, shall we?'

And so Derek had an early night.

Mad John didn't, but that's another story. And as it's a rude one, propriety forbids its telling here.

Two streets north of Derek's mum's abode, and just one from the rather posh house where Mad John lived, but where no-one saw him sneak into at night, was the pinkly-painted terraced dwelling of one Big Bob Charker.

At a little after eight of the delicious Brentford evening clock, Minky Charker answered the knock at her front door to find Kelly Anna Sirjan, freshly showered and looking radiant, standing on the doorstep of pink stone.

'Oh,' said Minky, wife of Bob the Big and missing. 'You are the very last-but-one person I expected to find upon my doorstep.'

Kelly didn't ask. She just said, 'Can I come in?'

'Ming the Merciless,' said Minky Charker. 'In case you had been thinking to ask, but were too shy to do so. Do come in then, I'll put the kettle on.'

Kelly went in and Minky put on the kettle.

'Do you think it suits me?' she asked.

'It's the right shade of pink,' said Kelly. 'But I came here to ask about your husband. I don't suppose you've seen him today, have you?'

'Gracious me, no,' said Minky, taking off the kettle and hugging it to her ample bosoms, as one might a puppy or a small dwarf named Dave that one has taken a sudden liking to. 'I thought that he'd been Raptured. Or at least I think that's what I thought.'

'I see you have a lot of candles burning,' said Kelly.

'You can never have too many candles burning,' said Minky, giving the kettle the kind of stroke that you might give to a really friendly otter. Or a hamster, or perhaps a quill-less porcupine that you had taken pity on. 'You can never have too many candles burning, or too many bottles of nail varnish, or too many different brands of kitchen cleaner under your sink.'