Waiting for Godalming

God's other son, Colin, who was edited out of the Bible when Jesus got artistic control, is a bit pissed off. Well wouldn't you be, with your brother stealing the lime-light like that? But now God's been murdered, and there's no way Colin's gonna let the meek inherit the Earth. He's in charge now, and there's gonna be some changes around here…

For my bestest buddy

NICK REEKIE

A great Sherlockian

You work it out!

I really hated the doctor’s office.

It smelled of feet and fish and fear. A fetid fermentation. And I really hated the doctor too. He was a wrong’un, that doctor.

On the outside, to the naked eyeball, he looked fine. He looked just the way that a doctor should look. The way that you would expect a doctor to look. But that’s what they do, the wrong’uns. That’s how they survive amongst us. They look just right. Just how they’re supposed to look. Which is why no-one ever suspects them of being what they really are.

Wrong’uns.

But I know. Because I took the drug. I can see them for what they really are. Foul demonic creatures of Hell. And I can stop them too. I could put paid to their plans for world domination. I could drive them back to the bottomless pit. I could. I really could. If only I could stay awake for a little bit longer. Just a couple of days. That’s all I need. Just a couple of days.

“So,” said the doctor, glancing up from his case notes,
my
case notes. “Do you want to continue with the consultation?”

“Buddy,” I told him. “All I want is some more of those wide-awake tablets. So I don’t keep falling asleep.”

“The tablets help then, do they?”

“Tablets always help,” I said. “That’s what tablets are for, isn’t it?”

“Some of them.” The doctor peered at me over his spectacles. I’d had a pair like them once. Special lenses in mine, though. Invented them myself.

2D spectacles. The opposite of 3D spectacles. When you looked through mine, they made the world go flat. Like you were watching a movie, see? Like you were
in
a movie. Ken Kesey once said, “Always stay in your own movie,” and that’s what I do. That’s how
I
survive. I made the frames of my spectacles long and narrow, so that my world was a widescreen movie. But they weren’t a success.

I had some really hairy moments on the motorway.

So I don’t invent things any more. I just stick to what I do best. And that is being the greatest private eye in the business.

“Do you want to talk about your dreams?” the doctor asked.

“No,” I told him. “I don’t have any time for dreams.”

“Let’s talk about you then. Let’s talk about you, Mr Woodblock.”

“The name’s Wood
bine
,” I said. “Lazlo Woodbine, private eye.” And I added, “Some call me Laz.”

The doctor leafed some more through his case notes. “Mr Woodbine, yes, and you describe yourself as a living legend.”

“I am the man,” I said. “The one and only. The last of a dying breed.”

“And just what breed would that be, exactly?”

“The nineteen-fifties American genre detective. The man who walks alone along those mean streets where a man must walk alone.”

“Not entirely alone,” said the doctor, flick flick flicking through those case-note pages. “There is this Gary character who works with you.”

“It’s
Barry
,” I said. “His name is Barry.”

“Ah yes, Barry. And Barry is a sprout who lives inside your head.”

“He doesn’t
live
there. I’ve told you before.”

“He’s a dead sprout?”

“He’s a theophany. And before you ask me
again
what that is, it’s a manifestation of the deity to man, in a form which, although visible, is not necessarily material. And before you ask me
again
whether I can see Barry, the answer is no. I can only hear him. And only
I
can hear him. He speaks to me from inside my head. He’s my Holy Guardian Sprout.”

“As in Holy Guardian Angel?”

“As I have told you many times before. There are more people on Earth than there are angels in Heaven. God improvises. He shares out the produce of His garden. I got a sprout named Barry. Perhaps you have a pumpkin called Peter.”

“Are you suggesting that I have a very big head?”

“If the elephant man’s cap fits, wear it.”

“What did you say, Mr Woodbine?”

“I said, you have an elegant man’s head. Now please can I have some more tablets before I fall asleep again?”

“All in good time,” said the doctor, doing that thing that doctors do with their pencils. “Let’s talk a bit about this case you say you’re on. It involves a handbag, doesn’t it?”

“No,” I said. “My last case involved a handbag. This case involves a briefcase.”

“Is there always luggage involved in your cases?”

“That’s what a case is, luggage.”

“I don’t think I quite understand.”

“Well, we all have our luggage to carry around. That’s what makes a man what he is, his luggage.”

“Surely you mean baggage.”

“Luggage, baggage. A man
is
what he carries around. A handbag, a briefcase, a doctor’s bag, carpet bag, Gladstone bag, kit bag, duffel bag, saddle bag, portmanteau, suitcase, attaché case, despatch case, guitar case, overnight case, weekend case, vanity case, satchel, knapsack, rucksack, haversack …”

“You certainly know your luggage,” said the doctor.

“Buddy,” I told him, “in my business, knowing your luggage can mean the difference between looking through the eyes of love and staring down the barrel of a P45. If you know what I mean and I’m sure that you do.”

“I don’t,” said the doctor.

“Well
I
do,” said I. “There was one case I was on back in ninety-five and I confused a sabretache with a reticule. That case cost me my two front teeth, my entire collection of Lonnie Donegan records, my reputation as a connoisseur of pine kitchen wall cupboards, my pet duck named Derek and …”

“What?” asked the doctor.

“Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz.”

“Wake up!” shouted the doctor.

And I woke up in a bit of a sweat.

“Listen,” I said. “All I want is the tablets, so I can stay awake. You want me to stay awake, so I can tell you all about the case. I want to stay awake, so I can close the case. For pity’s sake, man, we both want me to stay awake. So why don’t you just give me the damn tablets and then I’ll stay awake?”

“All right,” said the doctor. “I’ll give you a tablet now and you can have another when you’ve finished telling me all about your case.”

I could see he was lying. It shows up on their heads when they lie, the wrong’uns. Their quills go blue at the tips. But of course he didn’t know that I could see his quills. He didn’t know that I was on to him. But I was. I could see his quills and his terrible reptilian eyes and those awful insect mouthparts that kept chewing chewing chewing. I could see it all, because I had taken the drug.

And so I told him all about the case. Just to pass the time. Just so I could stay awake for a couple more days and wipe him and his kind from the face of the Earth. I didn’t tell him all of it. Because I didn’t know all of it. And even if I had, I wouldn’t have told him. I told him my side of the story, when I was called in on the case. I don’t know for sure just what happened earlier, because I wasn’t there to see it happen. I guess it all really began in that barber’s shop. But like I say, I wasn’t there, so I couldn’t say for sure.

Now you don’t really see barber’s shops any more. They’ve gone the way of the Pathe News and Raylbrook Poplin, the shirts you don’t iron. But once, in a time not too long ago, the barber’s shop was a very special place. A shrine to all things male.

Here men of every social order gathered for their bi-weekly trims. The gentry rubbed shoulders with the genetically deficient, princes with paupers, wide boys with window dressers. Here was egalitarianism made flesh. Here was a classless society. Here all men were equal beneath the barber’s brush.

A mile due north of Brentford, as the fair griffin flies, the Ealing Road enters South Ealing and for a space of one hundred yards becomes its high street. And here, in the high street, hard upon the left hand path, betwixt a wool shop, where the wives of wealthy men felt yarn, and a flower shop where they fondled floral fripperies, there stood at the time when our tale is told, a barber’s shop that went by the name of Stravino’s.

And Stravino’s was a barber’s shop as a barber’s shop should be.

Above the door and rising proud as a porn star’s pecker, the red and white striped pole, encased within a cylinder of glass and powered by an unseen engine, spiralled ever towards infinity. The front and only window, bathed on rare occasions by bob-a-jobbing Boy Scouts, displayed in ten-by-eights of gloss-gone monochrome the fashionable haircuts of a bygone day. The face of King Gillette, creator of that famous blade of blue, stared sternly from a box of safety razors. And dead flies, belly up, arrayed themselves in pleasing compositions.

Bliss.

Ah, perfect bliss.

But if ’twere bliss to view it from without, then what of it within?

Ah, well, within.

’Twere poetry within.

For

Stravino’s shop was long and low

With walls of a nicotine hue.

The floor was ankle-deep in hair

And if you dared to stand and stare,

That hair would soon be round your leg

And filling up your shoe.

The Greek himself was a colourful man

Who rejoiced in the name of Smiling Stan

And worked his trade with great élan

And sang some opera too.

There were hot towels in a chromium drum

And a row of cinema chairs

Where the patrons sat to await their turns

And savour the screams from the hot towel burns

And open the old brown envelope

And dodge the flying hairs.

For the Greek could snip with incredible zest

He’d have at your head like a man possessed

And few could help but be impressed

By his knowledge of cosmic affairs.

And so on and so forth for many verses more. But we have not come here to versify. We have come here with a purpose and that is to meet the hero for our tale.

For the present, he is unaware that he is the hero. Indeed, by the looks of him, he seems hardly cut from that cloth of which heroes are tailored. He is slender, slightly stooped and sits with downcast eyes, patiently awaiting his turn for a trim. He speaks to no-one and no-one speaks to him. He is eighteen years of age and his name is Icarus Smith.

It’s a good name for a hero, Icarus Smith. Encompassing, as it does, both the mythic and the mundane. But other than his having a good name for a hero, what can there be said about the man who bears this name?

Well.

If you were to approach young Mr Smith and ask that he recommend himself, he would like as not ignore you. But if the mood to communicate was upon him, as seldom it was without a good cause, for he rarely spoke to anyone other than himself, he would probably say that he considered himself to be an honest God-fearing fellow, who meant harm to no man and called each man his brother.

His brother by birth, however, might well choose to take issue with this particular statement, letting it be known that in his opinion, Icarus was nothing more than a thieving godless ne’er do well.

But then that’s brothers for you, isn’t it? And Icarus, for his part, considered
his
brother to be barking mad.

So can any man be truly judged by the opinions of others, no matter how close to the man himself those others might be? Surely not. By a man’s deeds shall you know him, said the sage, and by his deeds was Icarus known.

To most of the local constabulary.

He did not consider himself to be a thief. Anything but. Icarus considered himself to be a “relocator”. One who practised the arts and sciences of relocation. And to him this was no euphemism. This was a way of life and a mighty quest to boot.

To Icarus, the concept of “ownership” was mere illusion. How, he argued, could any man truly “own” anything except the body that clothed his consciousness?

Certainly you could acquire things and hold on to them for a while and you could call this “ownership”. But whatever you had, you would ultimately lose. Things break. Things wear out. Things go missing. You die and leave the things that you “owned” to others, who in turn will “own” them for a while.

You could try like the very bejasus to “own” things, but you never really truly would. And if you didn’t hang on like the very bejasus to the things that you thought you owned, then like as not you wouldn’t “own” them for very long.

For they would be relocated by Icarus Smith. Or if not relocated by Icarus Smith, then simply stolen by some thieving godless ne’er do well.

Now for the cynics out there, who might still be labouring under the mistaken opinion that relocating is merely thieving by another name, let this be said: Icarus had not become a relocator by choice. He was an intelligent lad and could have turned his hand to almost anything in order to earn himself a living. But Icarus had dreamed a dream, a terrible dream it was, and this dream had changed the life of Icarus Smith.

Icarus had dreamed the Big Picture. The Big Picture of what was wrong with the world and the method by which
he
could put it to rights. And when you dream something like that, it does have a tendency to change your life somewhat.

In the dream of Icarus Smith, he had seen the world laid out before him as the Big Picture. People coming and going and doing their things and it all looked fine from a distance. But the closer Icarus looked, the more wrong everything became. The Big Picture was in fact a jigsaw puzzle with everyone’s lives and possessions slotted together. But it was a jigsaw that had been assembled by a madman. A mad God perhaps? The more closely Icarus examined the pieces, the more he became aware that they didn’t fit properly. They were all in the wrong places and had been hammered down in order to make them fit.

Icarus realized that if he could take out a piece here and replace it with a piece from over there and move that other bit across there and shift that bit up a bit and so on and so forth and so on and so forth and—

He had awoken in a terrible sweat.

But he had seen the Big Picture.

And he had found his vocation in life. As a relocator.

Icarus realized that the world could be changed for the better by relocating things. By putting the right things into the right people’s hands and removing the wrong things from the wrong people’s hands.

It was hardly a new idea; Karl Marx had come up with something similar a century before. But sharing out the wealth of the world equally amongst everyone had never been much of an idea. Anyone with any common sense at all realized that a week after the wealth had been distributed, some smart blighter would have wangled much more than his fair share from the less than smart blighters and the world would be back where it started again.

It had to be done differently from that.

But Icarus was working on it. For, after all,
he
had had the dream.
He
had seen the Big Picture.
He
was the chosen one.

He realized from the outset that he would not be able to do it all alone. The task was far too big. It would be necessary to take on recruits. Many many recruits. But that was for the future. Everything had to start in a small way and so for the present he must go it alone.

And it had to be instinctive and
not
for personal gain. He had to eat and clothe himself and attend to his basic needs, but above and beyond that there must be no profit.

Icarus also knew that the “powers that be” would not take kindly to his plans for changing the world. The powers that be thrived on the concept of ownership. Icarus, in their eyes, would be a dangerous criminal and subversive who could not be allowed to walk the streets.

A few early run-ins with the local constabulary had taught Icarus discretion. And, having read a great deal on the science of detection and seen a great many movies, a
very great many
movies, Icarus had become adept at covering his tracks and leaving no clues behind at the “crime scene”.

But, as relocating had to be instinctive, rather than premeditated, there was always a margin of error. And the possibility of capture and internment was never far away.

On this particular day, being the one on which our epic tale begins, Icarus sat in Stravino’s shop in the cinema seat nearest the door. Sunlight, of the early morning spring variety, peeped down at Icarus through the upper window glass and grinned upon his hairy head.

The seat that Icarus occupied was number twenty-three and had once been number twenty-three in the three and ninepenny stalls of the Walpole Cinema in Ealing Broadway.

But the Walpole Cinema had been demolished and, during the course of that demolition, the rows of seats numbered from twenty-three to thirty-two had been relocated.

By Icarus Smith.

In fact there were a great many items to be found amongst the fixtures and fittings of Stravino’s shop that owed their presence to the science of relocation. An understanding existed between the barber and the relocator and Icarus Smith was assured of free haircuts for life.

Today he thought he’d have a Tony Curtis.

There were three other clients in the shop of Stravino. One sat in the barber’s chair, the other two upon the relocated seats. The one in the chair was Count Otto Black, a legendary figure in the neighbourhood. Count Otto possessed a genuine duelling scar, a Ford Fiesta called Jonathan and a bungalow with roses round the door. Count Otto was having his mustachios curled.

Two seats along from Icarus sat a soldier home on leave. His name was Captain Ian Drayton and he was a hero in his own right, having endured sufficient horrors to qualify for a medal. Between Captain Ian and Icarus Smith sat the third man. He was not Michael Rennie.

The third man’s name was Cormerant and Cormerant worked for a mysterious organization known as the Ministry of Serendipity. Cormerant wore the apparel of the city gent, pinstriped suit and pocket watch and bowler hat and all. Cormerant muttered nervously beneath his breath and shuffled his highly polished brogues amongst the carpet of clippings. On his lap was a black leather briefcase, containing, amongst other things, a pair of black leather briefs.

Icarus Smith was aware of this briefcase.

Cormerant was unaware of his awareness.

At the business end of the barber’s shop, Stravino went about his business. He teased the tip of a mustachio with a heated curling tong and made mouth music between his rarely polished teeth.

“Living la vida loca in a gagga da vida,” sang the Greek.

“Cha cha cha,” sang Count Otto, in ready response.

It might well be considered fitting at this point to offer the reader some description of Stravino. But let this only be said: Stravino looked
exactly
the way that a Greek barber should look.
Exactly
. Even down to that complicated cookery thing they always wear above their left eyebrow and the shaded area on the right cheek that looks a bit like a map of Indo-China.

So a description here is hardly necessary.

“Hey ho hoopla,” said the Greek, breaking song in midflow to examine his handiwork. “Now does that not curl like a maiden’s muff and spring like the darling buds of May?”

“It does too,” agreed the count. “You are za man, Stan. You are za man.”

“I am, I truly am.” Stravino plucked a soft brush from the breast pocket of his barbering coat and dusted snippings from the gingham cloth that cloaked the count’s broad shoulders. The professional name for such a cloth is a Velocette, named after its inventor Cyrano Velocette, the original barber of Seville.

Stravino whisked away the Velocette with a conjurer’s flourish and fan-dancer’s fandango. “All done,” said he.

“Your servant, sir.” The count rose to an improbable height and clicked his heels together. “It is, as ever, za pleasure doing business with you.”

“One and threepence,” said the Greek. “We call it one and six, the tip included.”

“Scandalous,” said the Bohemian count. But he said it with a smile and settled his account.

“Captain,” said the Greek, bidding the count a fond farewell and addressing his next client. “Captain, please to be stepping up to the chair and parking the bum thereupon.” Captain Ian rose from his seat and made his way slowly to the barber’s chair. It had to be said that the captain did not look a well man. His face was deathly pale. His eyes had a haunted hunted look and his mouth was a bitter thin red line.

Stravino tucked the Velocette about the captain’s collar.

“What is it for you today?” he asked.

“For me today?” The captain gazed at his ghostly reflection in the tarnished mirror. The mirror was draped about with Spanish souvenir windmill necklaces and votive offerings placed there to honour St Christopher, the patron saint of barbers. On the glass shelf beneath were jars of brilliantine, shaving mugs and porcelain figures, statuettes of Priapus, carved soapstone marmosets and Stravino’s spare truss.
[1]

“Do what thou wilt,” said the blanched soldier, who had studied the works of Crowley.

“Then today I think I will give you a Ramón Navarro.”

Outside a number sixty-five bus passed by.

The driver’s name was Ramón.