The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) (22 page)

‘You cannot
become
a Dyslectic,’ I rightfully protested. ‘You either
are
one or you are not.’

‘Well, I
am
one now,’ said Fange, ‘which rather proves my point, don’t you think?’

‘Okay,’ said I, ‘I will go along with this. How did you become a Dyslectic?’

‘Answered an ad,’ said Fangio, ‘in the
Weekly World News.
It’s a religious sect – fastest-growing religion in America. I’ve seen the Light of the Lard. I’ve been made Hull. And they give you a special enchanted omelette and everything.’ And he pointed to something cheap and nasty and plastic that hung around his neck.

‘That is not an omelette,’ I said. ‘That is an amulet.’

‘See,’ said Fange, ‘it’s working already. And I got a badge.’ And he now pointed to something pinned upon his lapel.

‘That is not a badge,’ I said. ‘It’s a
budgie.’

‘That would explain why it squawked so much when I did the pinning on.’

Oh, how we laughed. Till we stopped.

‘Enough of this gay repartee,’ said I.

‘Are you implying that I’m a choirboy, sir?’

‘Well,’ said I, ‘if the shirt fits, lift it.’

‘That’s easy for you to say, young Razzler.’

‘Ah,’ said I, ‘it is not young Rizla any more, for while
you
are now a member of the Temple of Dyslexia,
I
—’

‘It’s the
Tadpole
of Dyslexia,’ Fange corrected me.

‘Quite so. Well, just as
you
are presently a member of that,
I,
for my part, am now a practising detective of the nineteen-fifties persuasion, hence the trenchcoat and fedora.’

‘Ah,’ said Fangio, ‘so that’s it. And there was me thinking that you were “having a bubble”.’

‘A laugh?’

‘No, a bubble. From a dyslextic perspective, of course.’

‘Any sign of my bottle of Bud and hot pastrami on rye?’ I asked.

‘None at all so far,’ said Fangio. ‘So, are you going out on your own, then? Have you been giving your arching morders by Mister Hugo Rune?’

‘I do not think “arching morders” is dyslextic,’ I said. ‘I think you will find that to be a spoonerism.’

‘Is it that time of year already?’ Fange asked. ‘I’ll have to put the decorations up.’

I mused upon that, but failed miserably in the attempt.

Oh, how we laughed once more.

‘So I am no longer to be referred to as Rizla,’ I continued. ‘I am now to be known as Lazlo Woodbine, private eye. Although actually, you being a practising Dyslectic will come in handy here, as one of the running gags in the Lazlo Woodbine books is that people always mispronounce his name.’

Fange looked at me blankly. And he did it very well.

‘They get the name
Woodbine
wrong,’ I said.

Fange shrugged. ‘As you please, Mister Humphreys.’

‘No,’ I said, and sternly, too. ‘Not like that. They might say “Mister Woodcock”, or “Mister Woodpecker”.’

‘Or “Mister Woodlouse”,’ said Fange.

‘Well, I suppose they might, but that is not very nice.’

‘I’ll let you know if I come up with anything worse. But if you don’t mind, I’ll have to interrupt this toot we’re talking because I want to switch on the TV – the croquet is on at Lourdes.’

‘Very good,’ I said. ‘You mean that the
cricket
is on at
Lords.’

‘No,’ said Fange, shaking his head and all but dislodging the wig that I had not as yet got around to ridiculing. ‘I mean the croquet at Lourdes – the Benedictine Bears versus the Franciscan Foxes. Who really
are
foxes, if you know what I mean, and I’m sure that you do.’

‘That is one of
my
catchphrases.’

‘You should have mentioned that earlier.’ And Fange went off and turned the TV on.

‘Could I
please
have a bottle of Bud?’

‘Oh,
all right!’
huffed Fangio. ‘It’s want want want with you.’

Fangio served me a bottle of Bud and a bowl of chewing fat. ‘We’re out of hot pastrami,’ he explained. ‘Now please stop talking. I want to watch the match.’

I had never really considered croquet to be much of a spectator sport. And I certainly never knew that it was televised.

Nor that it was quite so popular.

All of a sudden, the bar seemed to be full of supporters, most wearing the distinctive brown of the Benedictine strip. In fact, they wore numbered mini-habits, which I was informed were selling like hot cross buns at the local sports shops. Fangio’s eyes were upon the match and he refused all requests for drinks, referring the requesters to a pair of female bar staff that he had taken on for the day. These bar staff were bikini-clad and wore snazzy papal mitres upon their bonny blonde bonces.

‘Now
he’s
the man!’ cried Fangio, pointing to the TV screen as the camera zoomed in on a monk who was taking a mighty swing with his croquet mallet. ‘Like the Wolf of Kabul wielding Clikki Ba.’

I shook my fedora. And wondered what the world might look like if you were standing upon your head and viewing it between the straps of a tart’s handbag.

‘That’s Father Ernetti,’ said Fangio. ‘Father Pellegrino Maria Ernetti.’

‘That name rings a bell,’ said I.

‘No, you’re thinking of Quasimodo.’

‘No, I was not.’ I watched the Benedictine Bear taking his swing.

‘Oh and it’s through the hoop!’ cried the commentator.

And the pub crowd went into a Vatican wave.

‘Father Ernetti,’ I mused to myself. ‘I
do
know that name. Of course I do. According to Mr Rune,
he is
the creator of the Chronovision – the TV that broadcasts past events.’

And aloud I said, ‘It is him – he is the one.’

‘Damn right,’ said Fangio. ‘He’s a one-man lean, mean grilling machine.’

I shook my hat for a second time and applied my attentive faculties towards the television screen. Not only had I not realised that croquet was a spectator sport, but I had certainly not considered it to be such a violent spectator sport. It made ice hockey look almost refined. The monks, and indeed the nuns – for this was a mixed sport – went at each other like knives in the water, and water off a dead duck’s back.

‘Have
you
joined the Tadpole of Dyslexia?’ asked Fange.

‘No, I was merely thinking out loud.’

‘Well, keep it down. We’re trying to watch the match.’

*

And I have to say that I quite enjoyed it, what with all the bloodshed and the swearing, which, although in Latin, still made its meaning obvious. And the skill, of course. We all applaud the skill in sport. We do not just enjoy the violence and mayhem. Or watch the Grand Prix hoping for a really spectacular crash.

Well, not
all
of us.
Do
we?

And when the final whistle blew and the bar crowd erupted into cheers and the singing of the dirty version of ‘Ave Maria’ and Father Ernetti was carried shoulder-high around the pitch by the few of his team-mates who had not been stretchered off injured, I clapped somewhat myself and Hail-Maryed away with the best of them – the best of them being a chap called Kevin and his son, who had come down on the special bus.

‘I have tickets to the final tomorrow,’ said Fange. ‘Excuse my failure to employ the Dyslextic dialect there.’

‘What?’ said I. ‘Are you flying out to Lourdes?’

‘Hardly. The final is to be held here. Tomorrow, at the sports stadium in Woodingdean.’

‘The stadium is in Withdean,’ I said.

‘Exactly,’ said Fangio. ‘That’s what I said.’

I took my bottle of Bud
and
the bowl of chewing fat away to a side table that was not being overturned by joyful Benedictine supporters and pondered on my lot.

‘You’ll go blind doing that,’ said a lady in a straw hat, who was passing by en route to the female toilets.

I obviously had to get to the Withdean Stadium and speak to this Father Ernetti – Mr Rune would surely expect me to do no less than this – although what exactly I would say to the good father, I did not know. Talk croquet and sort of work up to his Time TV, perhaps. And then a truly terrible thought struck me, like a dendrophiliac’s dongler at an autopederast’s arboretum, for I had slipped somewhat from the Woodbine idiom. What if the evil Count Otto Black knew that Father Ernetti was on his way to Brighton? Would he not seek to contact the monk? Count Otto wanted the Chronovision for his own
evil ends. Would he not perhaps seek to acquire its creator? Kidnap him, torture him into providing the plans?

‘This is deep,’ I said. ‘This is very deep. And very dark, too.’

‘And it will give you hairs on the palms of your hands,’ said the lady in the straw hat, who was returning from the toilet.

‘I am on the case here,’ I said to myself when she had passed me by. ‘This all makes sense. The Woodingdean Chameleon. Well, Fangio confused Withdean with Woodingdean, but that is near enough. And chameleons are masters of camouflage and Count Otto Black will surely disguise or camouflage himself in order to capture Father Ernetti. I have only been a detective for a couple of hours and I damn near have this case already solved.’

The bar was all but deserted once again, the croquet fans having returned either to their places of work, or to the mother who bore them. And but for an Oriental and a salesman travelling in tobaccos, there was only me and the fat boy, Fangio.

I returned to the bar counter, taking with me the chewing-fat bowl, and ordered another bottle of Bud.

‘And don’t think that I don’t remember that you never paid me for the first bottle,’ said Fangio, presenting me with same.

‘About these tickets you have for tomorrow,’ I said, with more savoir-faire than a salirophiliac at a sperm bank’s summer sale. ‘You did say tickets, did you not?’

‘I might have said “rickets”,’ said Fange. ‘Or if I didn’t, I probably should. Or property shed, or pebbly shroud – the permutations are endless.’

‘I would like one of those tickets,’ I said, and I cast him the kind of smile that would win you a first prize at Crufts.

‘You can’t have one,’ said Fangio. ‘One is for me and the other for my fiancée Norma. For we are soon to be joined in wholly monotony.’

‘You do
not
have a fiancée,’ I informed the befuddled barkeep. ‘You once had a black and white cat called Ginger that deserted you, if I recall correctly, after you shaded in its white parts with felt-tip pen in an attempt to win the blackest cat competition that the Goth Licence sponsored for the Brighton Festival.’

‘I do too have a fiancée,’ said Fangio. ‘That’s her over there.’ And he pointed with the stick he used for stirring.
^*

I followed the direction being pointed out to me by the stick that the barman used for driving cattle to market on a winter’s morning.
^†

‘My Norma,’ said Fangio, proudly.

I shook my hatted head for the third, and hopefully last, time that day. ‘Fangio,’ I said, ‘that is
not
your fiancée Norma. That is one of the lady-boys of Bangkok, who pitched their tent here during the Festival.’

‘Then I have been betrayed by my Dyslexia,’ wailed Fangio, affecting a face of vast distress. ‘One of the lady-boys of Bangkok? I thought he was one of the blousy lays of Babcock.’

‘Easy mistake to make,’ I said, ‘if you are stupid. Now, about that ticket.’

I recollect that Fangio put up a respectable struggle to retain his croquet ticket. I issued silken words of persuasion. And then harsher words when he still failed to comply. And I recollect also that finally I had to strike down the fat boy with the chewing-fat bowl, because sometimes words are simply not enough.

And it was a long, hard search for those tickets. I went through all his pockets. And the drawer of the cash register.

It finally came to light when, in a right old sulk, I kicked the unconscious barman in the head and they turned out to be hidden under his wig.

‘Mr Rune will be so proud of me,’ I said as I left the bar.

And I felt certain that he would.

PART II

Oh Stadium of Withdean, high perch’d on lofty crag,

A stony fortress hewn for love of sport

Where land-bound winds from stormy oceans drag

At lichen’d walls, where nesting crows consort.

Yea doth this bastion, this architectual whim,

When fill’d with acolytes of ath-el-etes

Rejoice with cries exhalted, from lovers of the gym

And cost both arm and leg for decent seats.

I cannot be having with poetry, myself. I mean,
what is
poetry? Song lyrics without the musical accompaniment, when you come right down to it. I mean, folk singers, on the whole, are pretty rubbish, but at least they have taken the trouble to learn how to play the guitar. And how can you
really
tell a good poem from a bad poem? I think they are supposed to rhyme, mostly, but even if they
do
rhyme, does that make them any good?