THE GARDEN OF UNEARTHLY DELIGHTS
ROBERT RANKIN
The Garden of Unearthly Delights
Originally published by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers
Doubleday Edition published 1995
Corgi Edition published 1996
Kindle Edition published 2012 by Far Fetched Books
Diddled about with and proof-read by the author, who apologises for any typos or grammatical errors that somehow slipped past him.
He did his best, honest.
Copyright Robert Rankin 1995
The right of Robert Rankin to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with sections 77 and 78 of the Copyright Design and Patents Act 1988.
All the characters in this book are fictitious, and any resemblance to actual persons living or dead is purely coincidental.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, copied in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise transmitted without written permission from the publisher. You must not circulate this book in any format.
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In memory of my dear little white-haired old mother
who flicked past the rude bits
Give my love to dad.
love and laughs
and
Rock ‘n’ Roll
Oh yeah!
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1
‘Rock ‘n’ Roll,’ said Maxwell Karrien, as he opened the official-looking envelope. ‘This is something of a great surprise.’
He called out to his wife of some years’ standing. ‘Wife,’ called he, ‘come look at this.’
‘Whatever is it, dear?’ the dear one answered.
Maxwell scratched his head. ‘It would seem that I have been awarded The Queen’s Award for Industry award.’
‘The saints preserve us all,’ said his voluptuous spouse, her bosoms entering the sitting-room before her like a dead heat in a Zeppelin race. ‘And you never having done a day’s work in your life.’
‘‘Tis true,’ said Maxwell, giving his head another scratch for luck. ‘And it would appear that I have dandruff also.’
‘All in one day.’ His wife smoothed down her satin housecoat and shuffled her pompommed slipperettes.
Maxwell dropped into his favourite armchair. ‘I suppose I shall now be called upon to officiate at Council functions, open fetes and jumble sales, kiss babies and give talks at the Women’s Institute.’
‘I never knew dandruff made one so important,’ said his wife, whose sarcasm had got her into trouble on more than one occasion.
Maxwell kicked her playfully in the ankle. ‘Limp off and make my breakfast,’ he suggested. ‘I have some serious thinking to do.’
‘Your day for the use of the family brain cell then, is it?’ whispered his wife, between gritted teeth, as smiling sweetly she hobbled away towards the unfitted kitchen.
It was not a marriage made in Heaven.
What with her hating him and him hating her.
And everything.
Maxwell took his tin and liquorice papers, rolled himself a ciggy and composed his handsome features into a look of grave concern. ‘This must be a mistake,’ he told himself.
‘It is probably meant for Mr Camp next door,’ he continued.
‘That would be it,’ he concluded.
But upon once more examining the gilt-edged certificate, these thoughts were forced to flee. There were the letters which formed his name. Bold as brass in copperplate.
‘Papyrophobia,’ said the fearful man. ‘This is not Rock ‘n’ Roll.’
After a breakfast of egg, bacon, sausage, baked beans and a fried slice that the not-so-dear one had stubbed her cigarette out on, washed down with two cups of Earl Grey, Maxwell decided that he would take his certificate around to Father Moity at St Joan’s to get an unbiased opinion.
For he reasoned thus: if I ask Duck-Barry or any of the lads at The Shrunken Head, they will say, ‘Well done, Maxwell, get the drinks in.’
And if I ask the man in the cardy at the Job Centre, he will say, ‘Queen’s Award for Industry award, eh? Then we’re stopping your dole money, mate.’
And if I ask at the Police Station, the policemen will become embittered that I received it rather than they and they will smite me with their truncheons, as they do every time they see me anyway.
And so by such reasoning, ten o’clock of the morning hour found Maxwell in a confessional box, his Queen’s Award award upon his knee and his chin upon his chest.
To the eastward side of the grim little grille, Father Moity seated himself, mumbled holy words and pecked at his crucifix.
‘Spit it out,’ said he.
‘Bless me, Father, for I have sinned, it has been seventeen years since my last confession.’
Father Moity put on his most professional face (which he kept in a jar by the door) and scratched at his old white head. This was going to be a baddie, he thought, and, I seem to have dandruff, he discovered.
‘It all began this morning,’ said Maxwell in a reverent tone.
‘You have not been to confession for seventeen years and you have the nerve to tell me that it all began this morning?’
The priest coughed into his cassock and marked out a cross on his chest.
‘I have been awarded The Queen’s Award for Industry award (award),’ said Maxwell.
‘Blessed be,’ said the priest. ‘And is it for seventeen years of sinlessness that this award has been awarded?’
‘Sinless towards industry,’ said Maxwell. ‘For I have never done an honest day’s work in my life.’
‘Then isn’t it a wonderful world that we’re living in today and I don’t think that our likes will ever be here again,’ said the priest, who feared not the sin of plagiarism.
‘I was hoping for some advice, Father,’ came the voice of Maxwell to his ears.
‘Advice is it you’re wanting? Well, here’s some now for you to be going on with.’ The priest coughed once again.
‘I should cough?’ asked Maxwell, somewhat bewildered. ‘Is that the advice you’re offering?’
‘Not a bit of it. I recently had a bad asthmatic attack.’
‘I’m sorry to hear that.’
‘Indeed,’ said the priest. ‘Three asthmatics attacked me outside Budgen’s. Was my own fault, I should have heard them lying in wait.’
Maxwell scratched once more at his head. His dandruff had cleared up, at least. ‘About the advice,’ he adventured.
‘Lead by example,’ said the priest. ‘By your deeds let others know you. These Queen’s Award award awards are not handed out willy-nilly to any old Tom Thumb, Dick Dastardly or Harry Potter. It has probably arrived in the wrong post, for some service to industry that you have yet to perform.’
‘You think that might be it then?’
‘Seems obvious to me, my son.’
‘Well thank you very much, Father.’ Maxwell rose to take his leave.
‘Will you not be after confessing any of your sins then?’ asked the priest, in a sing-song Irishy kind of a way.
‘No, I think not.’
‘Then go with God, you capitalist bastard.’
‘Thank you, Father.’
‘Bless you, my son.’
Maxwell slouched from the church and took to plodding homeward, the heavy weight of his potential responsibilities pressing down upon his shoulders. As he crossed the canal bridge, he considered tossing his Queen’s Award award into the murky depths. But on a second thought he didn’t and continued on his way. On the corner of Maxwell’s street stood the Tengo Na Minchia Tanta Café. Right where it had always been. Maxwell stepped inside to take some beverage and think things through.
The new girl behind the counter knew Maxwell by sight alone. ‘What would you like, sir?’ she enquired, and there was more heaving sensuousness, more unabashed eroticism, more blatant vibrating sexuality in those few words, than could ever really happen in real life.
‘Pardon?’ asked Maxwell, whose life was real enough to him.
‘Tea or coffee, sir?’
‘Coffee, black, no sugar, please.’
The new girl liked male customers who took their coffee black with no sugar. Very manly, she thought. Very machismo.
Those who knew Maxwell through introduction rather than by sight alone, might well have scoffed at this, for Maxwell was no great man for the ladies.
The Maxwell these folk knew was a decent enough chap on the whole, but with that said considered by some rather dull, if not stupid.
The looks of himself were fine enough. Nearing the magic six feet in his height and in the middle of his twenties, he was gaunt of frame and square about the shoulders. Well favoured in the face department, with kind grey eyes, a happy mouth and a nose like a friendly arrow head. His hair was black and well quiffed back and his mood was, in general, hearty. But Maxwell did have his foibles, his choice of dress being one such. Maxwell held in high favour the America of the nineteen fifties, the America of Wurlitzer Jukeboxes and Chevrolet Impalas and Danny and the Juniors. And this holding in high favour had a tendency to reflect itself in his day wear.
Maxwell sported Oxfam zoot suits, slim Jim ties and bowling shirts. Shirts whose collars had no ‘stand-up’, large, substantial, crepe-soled boots. And as those who have ever sought to make a statement of their individuality through their choice of apparel will readily affirm, eccentricity of dress rarely fares well in societies where conformity is considered the standard by which others judge you.
Those who fail to conform are at best mocked and ridiculed, at worst, ostracized or injured.
If you are wealthy you can do as you damn well please. But if you are not, and Maxwell most definitely was not, then pleasing is something you must do for other people.
The rich can dress up to impress, the poor must dress down to survive. Maxwell dressed as he pleased, Maxwell was poor, hence to the world that Maxwell inhabited, Maxwell’s appearance was ‘stupid’.
And it had to be said, his habits did not exactly aid his cause (if cause he had, which actually he didn’t). When not in the company of his beautiful wife, whom he had married in haste to repent about at leisure, Maxwell could, like as not, be found in the public library.
Here he passed away much of his life, deeply engrossed in the science fantasy novels of P. P. Penrose (best known for the internationally best-selling Lazlo Woodbine series) thrilling to the daring exploits of Sir John Rimmer, Dr Harney and Danbury Collins (the psychic youth himself) as they locked in mystical conflict with the evil Count Waldeck.
Maxwell seriously ‘got into’ these books. They were escapism nonpareil. And though, to the outward world, his dress code offended many and his conversation was at best uninspired, in that personal inner world of fantasy fiction, he was up there with the best of them, often solving some inexplicable conundrum pages before Sir John and his loyal companions caught on.
So this was the Maxwell that those who knew him knew. Dull, said some, and stupid, others, and Maxwell alone knew himself.
Maxwell paid for his coffee, took it to a window seat and sat down miserably.
The new girl behind the counter smiled him a smile. Here is a fellow, she thought, who needs a shoulder, nay a breast, to rest his weary head upon. A handsome fellow. A shame about the stupid clothes though.
Sandy the sandy-haired manager stood at the new girl’s shoulder. Making one of his rare appearances at the Tengo Na Minchia Tanta, he had been examining the till roll upon Maxwell’s arrival, and now felt it the moment to confront the new girl with his findings. ‘Surely,’ said Sandy, ‘I spy a deviation here.’
The new girl’s eyes left Maxwell, toured the café, took in the window view and finally met up with those of her employer.
‘You what?’ she asked.
‘The cash in the register and the takings logged upon the till roll vary to the tune of twenty-three pounds, two and threepence,’ said the manager called Sandy.
‘What is that in new pee?’
‘It is instant dismissal.’
‘Stick your job then,’ said the new girl, divesting herself of her gingham serving smock, slipping on her crushed-velvet coat and finding herself the new girl no longer.
Sandy stroked his sandy-whiskered chin and watched her stalk off through the doorway. ‘While I labour away to grow this beard,’ he exasperated, ‘mere slips of gals rip me off for twenty-three pounds, two and three, old money. We should never have gone decimal in the first place.’
Maxwell stirred his unsweetened coffee with the wrong end of his spoon and wondered, perchance, if the Queen’s Award award award had been intended for his father, who presently laboured industriously on the sewing of mailbags, at the pleasure of Her Majesty. Most likely not, was his conclusion.
‘I’ll have to ask you to drink up, sir,’ said Sandy, vacating the counter to approach his single customer. ‘This embezzlement of funds has sorely tried my nerves and I feel a headache coming on.’
Maxwell drank up his coffee and continued on his way.
When he arrived at the marital homestead he was most surprised to see a man of Romany stock carrying his favourite armchair to a waiting cart and returning to Maxwell’s front door with a goldfish in a plastic bag.
‘Blessings, ma’am,’ said the gypsy, presenting this to the dear one.
‘Hold on there,’ cried Maxwell, storming up his garden path. ‘Surely that is my favourite armchair.’
The gypsy shrugged, muttered ‘barter’ into Maxwell’s ear and then took flight. Maxwell put his weight against the door his wife was closing and entered his hall. ‘What is the meaning of this?’ he demanded to be told.
The dear one explained to him that it was ‘barter’ and all quite legal and above board.
Maxwell took the plastic bag his wife was holding and examined its carrot-coloured contents. ‘This fish is dead,’ he declared.
The dear one sighed and rolled her eyes. ‘Of course it’s dead, Maxwell. It would be cruel to keep a live goldfish in a plastic bag, wouldn’t it?’
Maxwell raised his hand to scratch his head again.
‘For God’s sake, don’t,’ his wife told him. ‘It is becoming a habit and there’s no telling where it will lead.’
Maxwell returned the bag of fish to his wife and placed his hands safely into his trouser pockets. ‘I shall miss that armchair,’ he said. ‘It was my favourite.’
‘You’ll get over it. How did you get on with the priest?’
Maxwell closed the front door and leaned back upon it. ‘Father Moity thinks that the Queen’s Award award must have arrived early by mistake. That it’s for something I have yet to do.’
‘You’ve yet to wallpaper the spare bedroom,’ the dear one suggested.
‘I’ve yet to own a house that has a spare bedroom.’
‘Good point.’ Maxwell’s wife put down the plastic bag which contained half a pint of water and a dead fish. She took up her handbag, opened this, removed a number of cosmetic accoutrements and began to worry at her face with them. ‘I had a thought while you were out,’ she said, examining her progress in the hall mirror. ‘Would you like me to tell you what it was?’
‘I don’t know,’ said Maxwell. ‘What do you think?’
‘I think you would.’
‘That’s a relief then.’
‘You could sell it.’ The dear one viewed her own reflection. ‘Sell it for money. To buy things for me with.’
‘Sell it?’ Maxwell’s face lit up like a Blackpool skyline. ‘Sell it! You are a genius.’ He almost kissed the dear one there and then. Almost! ‘You’re right. It’s mine. I’ll sell it. Rock ‘n’ Roll be praised.’
The slim legs of Maxwell carried him at speed towards The Shrunken Head. As every boy must have his dog and every dog its day, so every tale must have its pub and every pub its tale.
The Shrunken Head lurked at the bottom of Horseferry Lane. Long gone, of course, the horse-ferry, but the lane remained the same. And so the pub.
A venerable oak-framed edifice, daub and wattle; bottle glass. Dungeon door and spittled floor. Close on by the river’s bank, its kegs to slake the thirst of lighterman and big bargee and grizzled tattooed salt.
Very close on by the bank. So close, in fact, that each high tide gave cause for great alarm. But just far enough up the bank for there not to be a single decent view of the river from the beer garden.
Such, they say, is life.
Those who know The Head know of its jazz nights and of these they speak in tones akin to awe. For when the moon is in the seventh house and Jupiter aligns with Mars, then do Papa Legba and his Voodoo Jazz Cats set the joint a-jumping. But of them, more, and later.
Elderly, low beamed, well cellared, was The Head and run by Sandy, who had business interests here and there and all about the borough.