"Necrophenia" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

11

It was nearing Christmas, in the year of sixty-three.

The nights had all drawn in and it was chilly.

The snow lay deep and all around,

And tramping o’er the frozen ground

There came a postman by the name of Billy.

I liked Billy the postman. He was a great improvement on the previous postman, who had yet to recuperate from the dose of rabies from which he was suffering.

There had been some unpleasantness. My brother had been arrested and questions had been asked regarding the whereabouts of several thousands of pounds’ worth of brand-new musical equipment. These questions had not been satisfactorily answered, and when the finger of accusation came to point with an unrelenting pointyness towards my brother, who was presently receiving medication, board and lodging at St Bernard’s Lunatic Asylum, I felt that I did not want to confuse things by owning up myself. And my brother was himself beyond caring at this time, for he growled at me through the bars of the special padded room where he spent much of his time, ‘I’m a tiger – what would I want with a Marshall stack? Tell them, Tyler, I beg you.’

He was clearly beyond my help.

And I had rehearsing to do.

I had not been invited to reattend school classes after the summer holidays. I had apparently outstayed my welcome at Southcross Road Secondary School. The headmaster had invited me into his office on the first day of the new term to put his and the school’s position to me in a manner that I could understand.

‘ Taylor,’ he said to me as he ushered me into the visitors’ chair, which stood, with three inches cut from its legs, before his desk.

‘ Tyler,’ I corrected him.

‘ Tyler,’ said the headmaster. ‘Yes, that’s as good an occupation as any for a lad such as yourself.’

‘My name is Tyler, sir,’ said I.

‘Then how apt,’ said he. ‘And good luck with it, too.’

And then he asked me to sign a special form. Which was for my own good and merely a formality. ‘Just a sort of release form,’ he said, ‘to release you from the shackles of education and let you loose on the world, as it were. And how is your brother getting along?’

‘They had to give him some sleeping tablets,’ I said, ‘because he woke up again.’

‘The world we live in today,’ said the headmaster. And he passed me his pen. ‘Just sign it at the bottom there,’ he said. ‘You don’t need to read it. You can read, I suppose? We did manage to instil that into you, I hope.’

I nodded and that pen hovered.

‘Sign it, boy,’ the head now shouted, ‘or I’ll give you six of the best.’

And so I signed his form and was discharged instantly from school. And I had to hand him my satchel and my cap. Even though they were mine and my mother had paid for them herself. And then I was escorted to the school gate and sent away with a flea in my ear.

And the school nurse put that flea there.

And I never did know why she did. Nor did I ever know why I’d been expelled from school. And probably I will never know.

Nor probably ever care.

And I did walk free from that school upon that day, I can tell you that. It was always a strange feeling to walk the streets during term time – if, say, you had to go to the dentist, or help your mum shopping, or some other important reason that stopped you going into school. But to walk out of the school and know that you were never going back, that was really odd.

And as for that flea-

Well, I shook it out before it could lay any eggs and I stamped it into the pavement. And I walked tall, because I was no longer a schoolboy.

I was a man.

And so I went down to the local public house for a beer.

But the landlord threw me straight out again because I was underage. So I went down to Cider Island, that little area beside the weir where all the winos spent their days, and I shared cider with them until I was dizzy and sick.

And then I stumbled home, to receive a really epic hammering from my father.

Those were the days, eh?

But now it was nearly Christmas. The snow lay on the ground deep and crisp and even and The Sumerian Kynges had their first professional gig. Professional in that our audience would be paying to get in to see us, even if we weren’t actually to be paid for performing. And as the representative from the new nightclub that was employing us told us, we were ‘showcasing’ ourselves. Great things were expected. And so we were all young and eager and carefree.

And life was ours for the taking.

Our first gig was to be played at the opening of a nightclub in Ealing Broadway, just down the alleyway steps opposite the Underground Station. It was called The Green Carnation Club and we were top of the bill.

I still have one of the posters. Somewhat crumbling about the edges now, but still bright with pre-psychedelic mimeograph red, upon a background of brown.

Below us, second from top of the bill, was Venus Envy.

A male pre-op-transexual band. Who were already pretty famous. I had read all about them in a copy of Teenage She-Male Today magazine that had been popped through our letter box by Billy the postman, who had a sense of fun that I never fully understood.

Venus Envy featured ‘Jimbos’, which were, apparently, the male equivalent of Bimbos. I learned a lot from that magazine and it was a real pleasure to boast about what I knew to the other guys in the band.

Especially Neil, who always seemed to know so much about everything. He confessed, in fact he fairly gushed, that he knew absolutely nothing about Jimbos, and eyed me rather strangely.

But I had heard that Venus Envy were pretty good, and they were especially interesting to me because of the Aleister Crowley connection. I had read much about Aleister Crowley, England ’s last great magician. The self-styled Beast of the Apocalypse, whose number is 666, Crowley probably wrote more on the subject of occult magic than any other person. Oh, and my dad met him once. Honest.

But I digress. Apparently Venus Envy’s lead singer, Vain Glory, was a member of the Ordo Templi Orientii and all the band’s song titles had been derived from the titles Crowley had given the various murals he painted on the interior walls of his Abbey of Thelema in Cefalu, Sicily. I treasure the memory of those names:

Egyptian Aztecs Arriving from Norway

The Long-Legged Lesbians

Morbid Hermaphrodite from Basutoland

Japanese Devil-Boy Insulting Visitors

Pregnant Swiss Artists Holding Crocodile

They were really meaningful titles for songs and there would have been no point in writing such songs unless those songs had meaningful lyrics to go with their meaningful titles.

Ours were really really meaningful. And I will give you a sample, shortly.

So, on this crisp December night, with the snow laying all around and about and little flakes of it drifting down towards the allotments, which looked particularly beautiful in what moonlight there was to be had, I stood in the doorway of The Divine Trinity, a hand-rolled cigarette travelling up to my mouth and then down again, and watched the arrival of Toby in our van.

Yes, that’s just what I said. A van! Toby had got us a van. And although strictly he wasn’t old enough to be driving it, he explained to anyone who demanded explanation that he was driving through necessity rather than choice and so they should leave it at that.

He had acquired the van from Leo Felix, the local used-car salesman (who, even then, referred to his cars as ‘previously-owned vehicles’) with a sum of money composed of our shared savings.

It was an old-time Bedford van with sliding doors, so you could ride along with the doors open and your leg hanging out, looking cool. And but for the fact that it drank petrol and oil in equal quantities due to some essential piece of engine being unincluded in the price, and the fact that the exhaust pipe was somewhat peppered with holes and dispensed a thick, black, foggy sort of a smoke cloud into the rear of the van to the great distress of anyone unlucky enough to be sitting therein, it was a cracking van!

The suspension was a little ‘stiff’ and the tyres, which lacked for any discernible tread, also lacked for inner tubes and had been filled with sand by Leo, who assured Toby that all tyres would be similarly filled in the years to come as pneumatic tyres were nothing but a passing fad.

So, it made for an interesting ride.

We didn’t have to load up the full monty of equipment. We couldn’t have anyway – it would not all have fitted into the Bedford. The Green Carnation owned to a house PA and Venus Envy were prepared to let us use their amps and speakers, which was jolly decent of them. They even sent one of their roadies to help us load up at the allotment. Jolly decent, I thought.

And they had let us be top of the bill, even though they were already quite famous. More than just jolly decent, I decided. Really, really decent pre-op trannies.

I was so looking forward to the gig.

I was nervous, of course, with the old butterflies in the stomach. But I wasn’t going to let on to the other guys. I would put a brave face on it and set an example. After all, I was the lead singer.

The snow was falling most heavily by the time we had loaded up. And frankly I wasn’t that impressed by Venus Envy’s roadie, who spent most of his time attending to his nails and brushing away imaginary smuts from his white satin trousers. He was very flattering about our stage clothes, though, so I suppose I shouldn’t be too harsh on him.

But, as I say, the snow was falling heavily and the moon was gone, so it was damnedly cold when we set out for that gig. But we were young, and eager and carefree and life was ours for the taking. So the fact that we had to push the van to get it started and Neil fell down and took the left knee out of his jumpsuit and Toby laughed at this and Neil hit him and there was some talk about abandoning the gig and indeed music as a career choice before we had even left the allotments did not bode particularly well for the coming gig.

But that was nothing, and I repeat nothing, in comparison to what was yet to come.

I am not going to waste the reader’s time, or patience, with any more of that ‘if I’d known then what I know now’ kind of toot – you’ve had quite enough of such stuff.

But if I had known, then I would at least have known who to kill and why.

But let me waste no more words at all here.

This is how it happened.