Sprout Mask Replica Read online

  SPROUT MASK REPLICA

  ROBERT RANKIN

  Sprout Mask Replica

  Originally published by Doubleday, a division of Transworld Publishers

  Doubleday Edition published 1997

  Corgi Edition published 1997

  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 1997

  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.

  This book is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be resold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

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  Dedicated to my very good friend

  Mike Nicholson

  Who has put up with my company for a very very long time.

  Thank you, Mike.

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  BURNING ROPE

  My father smoked a pipe that smelled like burning rope,

  But he had met the crowned heads of Europe,

  And he’d walked across the desert, when all had said, no hope.

  And he used to keep a monkey on a string.

  And he once saw a sheep that had six legs.

  And he passed a copper penny through a giant’s signet ring.

  And he beat a man of letters playing pegs.

  And he saw the star of David in the West.

  And he touched the spray-lined Goddess on her saline wooden breast.

  And he smelled the salt of seven different seas.

  And could tell the age of women by their knees.

  And he sang the songs the sparrows teach their young.

  And he felt the actual rope that Crippen hung.

  And he knew the way from here to Kingdom Come.

  And we wondered why he ever married Mum.

  My father smoked a pipe that smelled like burning rope.

  But he had met the crowned heads of Europe.

  1

  THE PARABLE OF THE CHAIR AND

  THE SPORRAN OF THE DEVIL

  My father was a devout man and so the bedtime stories he told us often came in the form of parables. He was also a carpenter and so most of these parables concerned wood and furniture.

  It had always puzzled my father that, if the Good Lord had been a carpenter, how come none of His parables ever concerned wood and furniture. They were always about sowing seeds or fishing or things of that nature. All right, so He did tell the one about the foolish man who built his house upon the sand, but that was really all about a stone mason, as the carpenters would never have had a chance to get in and do the second fixings before the house got washed away.

  My father, therefore, sought to make up the deficit in the Good Lord’s woodwork parable account. And although, for the most part, the actual meaning of the parables was totally lost upon us, we being young and foolish and all, they were never without interest.

  I recall, in particular, the parable of the chair, because it, in turn, recalls to me the tale of my great great great granddaddy’s sporran. And both of these do play an important part in the story to come.

  So I shall narrate both here.

  Oh, I should just mention that when my father used to tell us these parables, he would do so in his ‘Laurence Olivier, Richard-the-Third, now-is-the-winter-of-our-discontent’ voice.

  THE PARABLE OF THE CHAIR

  A moral tale in seven parts

  1

  The chair was old

  Which is to say that the chair had age upon its side, not as antagonist, but as companion.

  Like wine, good wine, the chair had improved, grown mellow, matured with age.

  Not that age is any friend of chairs! Nay! Age has no respect for furniture. No cabriole leg, no varnished surface, no lacquered frame is inviolate to its sinister attentions.

  Age is no lover of chairs.

  2

  The chair was brown

  Which is to say that the chair had been newly painted.

  Not by some professional with no love for his work, but by an amateur, who did it because it needed doing and he wanted to be the one who did it.

  Not that a professional could not have done a better job.

  He could.

  But for all the drips and runs and missed bits, the paint which had been put upon that chair, had been put there with concern.

  And concern is ever the friend of good furniture.

  3

  The chair had three legs

  Which is not to say that it had not once possessed four.

  It had.

  But now, alas, there were but three.

  Fine and well-turned fellows they, but for all their brown gloss glory, most sadly did they miss their wayward brother.

  Whither he?

  Perhaps now timber-toe to some pirate captain sailing on the Spanish Main?

  Perhaps in some celestial chair-leg kingdom yet unknown to man?

  Or, mayhap now a leg upon the throne of a cannibal chief?

  Or mayhap not!

  But sorely did those three remaining legs pine for the fourth.

  For upon those three, though loyal legs, that brown chair could not stand.

  And being unable so to do, fell over.

  And being of no further use, Sid burned it!

  4

  Regarding Sid

  When Sid had burned the chair, he laughed.

  ‘That,’ laughed Sid, ‘is a chair well burned.’

  For of that once proud brown chair very little remained, save for a pile of smouldering ashes and a few charred nails.

  ‘That chair is no more,’ laughed Sid.

  And Sid turned away from his fireplace and sought a place to sit. But none there was, for he had burned his only chair.

  ‘Damn!’ cried Sid, not laughing, ‘I have burned my only chair.’

  ‘But,’ he continued, ‘it had just the three legs and was no use for sitting on anyway.’

  And happily this was the case. Or, unhappily, depending on your point of view.

  As Sid turned away from the fireplace, he tripped upon a length of wood which lay upon the rug and falling backwards, struck his head on the mantelpiece and fell into the fire, dying instantly.

  And was not that length of wood on which he had tripped a chair leg?

  I’ll say it was!

  5

  The quietness of Sid

  Sid, now being dead, said nothing more.

  And when, at last, he too had all burned away, a gentle breeze, coming through the open window, turned his ashes amongst those of the brown three-legged chair, until one was indistinguishable from the other.

  There was something almost poetic about it.

  And it didn’t go unnoticed.

  ‘There is something almost poetic about that,’ said Sid’s brother Norman, who stood watching from a corner.

  ‘I agree with you there,’ said Jack (Sid’s other brother) who stood nearby.

  ‘Our Sid has never been quieter,’ said Tony (brother to Norman, Jack and the late Sid).

  And no-one chose to disagree with that.

  6

  A question of laying-to-rest

  Norman’s thoughtful expression prompted Jack to ask, ‘What is on your mind, Norman?’

  Norman scratched at his nose. ‘There is the question of laying-to-rest,’ he said.

  ‘That is a question requiring careful consideration,’ replied Jack.

  Tony asked why.

  Jack said he didn’t know.

  ‘Because,’ Norman scratched at his nose once more, ‘the ashes of Sid and the ashes of the brown three-legged chair are now thoroughly mixed. I, for one, would not care an attempt at separating them.’

  ‘Nor me,’ said Jack.

  And Tony shook his head.

  ‘So,’ Norman continued, ‘if we were to gather up all the ashes and pass them to a cleric for a laying-to-rest with a Christian service, we might well be committing heresy or blasphemy or something similar.’

  Jack asked how so.

  Tony shook his head once more.

  ‘Because,’ Norman explained, ‘I have never heard of a chair being given a Christian burial. It does not seem proper to dignify a three-legged chair with a service essentially reserved for man.’

  Tony obse
rved that it wasn’t the chair’s fault that it only had three legs. In fact, if Norman would care to remember, it was he, Norman, who had broken off the fourth leg earlier in the day.

  Norman coughed nervously. ‘Well,’ said he, ‘that is my opinion. Although I might well be micturating windward.’

  Tony turned to Jack. ‘He has a point,’ Tony said. ‘After all, we don’t even know if the chair was a Christian.’

  ‘Come to think about it,’ Jack replied, ‘we don’t even know if Sid was a Christian.’

  ‘We do,’ said Norman. ‘He wasn’t.’

  7

  The four winds have it

  ‘If we were to scatter all the ashes to the four winds,’ said Norman, ‘then we could feel reasonably assured that Sid, even if mixed with a lot of three-legged chair, would get some sort of decent send-off. And we would not incur the wrath of God or the Church.’

  ‘I worry for the chair,’ said Tony.

  ‘I worry about that fourth leg,’ said Jack.

  ‘Oh, I worry a lot about that,’ said Tony. ‘But with Sid all burned away and everything, I don’t think we should complicate the issue.’

  ‘Do you think my four-winds suggestion a worthy one?’ asked Norman.

  Jack now scratched his nose.

  Tony looked doubtful.

  ‘Only I think we should hurry, because if we don’t sweep Sid up quite soon, the breeze coming in through the open window is likely to blow him all away.’

  ‘I think the four winds have it then,’ said Jack.

  ‘I think the breeze has done its work,’ said Tony, pointing to the spot where Sid’s ashes had so recently lain.

  ‘I think you’re right,’ said Norman.

  And through the open window, and borne upon the breeze that had now blown Sid all away, there came the cry of a tradesman plying for hire.

  ‘Old chairs to mend,’ he called. ‘Old chairs to mend.’

  THE SPORRAN OF THE DEVIL

  It seems strange now to think that as children we didn’t understand the meaning of that parable. Still, we were young and foolish and all, which probably accounts for it.

  And so bearing the meaning in mind, let us now consider the tale of my great great great granddaddy’s sporran. This piece of prose perfectly parallels the parable.

  Oh yes.

  The great3 granddaddy died at The Battle of the Little Bighorn. He wasn’t with Custer though. He was holding a sprout-bake and tent meeting in the field next door and went over to complain about the noise.

  With regard to the question of his laying-to-rest, it was decided that what remained of his mortal remains should be shipped back home for a Christian burial. The family being ‘careful’ with money and considering that the great3 granddaddy was probably not in too much of a hurry, the actual shipping home was done in dribs and drabs over a number of months. Great3 granddaddy eventually turned up at Tilbury aboard a whaling vessel mastered by the infamous Captain Leonard ‘Legless’ Lemon (of whom more later).

  After further weeks of travel, the coffin finally arrived in Brentford, carried on the back of a coalman’s cart, but still, remarkably, in the company of the great3 granddaddy’s tartan portmanteau. This gaily coloured chest contained the old boy’s personal effects: his sprout catalogues, grower’s manuals, bell cloches, dibbers, hoes and the like, along with his Highland Regiment full ceremonial uniform.

  The family had moved south many years before to escape the Great Haggis Famine, which explains why they lived in Brentford rather than Scotland.

  The family sold off the horticultural bits and bobs and raised enough money to employ the local undertaker to take care of the necessaries. This fellow upped the coffin lid and very hastily dressed the great3 granddaddy in the full Highland Regimental finery (for as you can imagine, the great3 granddaddy was pretty niffy by now). But the undertaker couldn’t get the coffin lid back on, due to the size of the great3 granddaddy’s sporran, it being one of those magnificent hairy affairs with lots of silver twiddly bits and tassels and Celtic knick-knackery and so forth.

  So the undertaker did the most logical thing. He removed the sporran, nailed down the coffin lid and arranged the sporran on the top, where it looked very imposing and pretty damn proud and most splendid.

  Or so he thought.

  The trouble began as the coffin was being borne through the streets of Brentford. At this time, 1877, Brentford was but a small farming community and superstitious with it.

  None of the locals had ever seen a sporran before, and in particular they had never seen one so large and magnificent as that of the great3 granddaddy.

  As the coffin passed upon its final journey, the peasants looked on and took to muttering and the crossing of themselves.

  ‘Surely,’ they whispered, one unto another, ‘that is nothing other than a devil’s familiar that rides upon the Rankin’s coffin.’ And the old ones made protective finger-signs and spat into the wind and wiped down their lowly smocks and hustled their children into their rude huts.

  The undertaker, being also a local, but of relatively sound mind, endeavoured to explain that they had nothing to fear, that the thing was but an article of dress called a sporran. This did nothing to ease the situation, for word now passed from rustic mouth to rustic ear that the Rankin was being buried in a dress and the thing on top of the coffin was (and here local accent came into its own) a ‘spawn’.

  Spawn of the Devil!

  Naturally.

  The officiating vicar, the infamous Victor ‘Vaseline’ Vez (of whom more later), was also a local man, but one of unsound mind, and he refused point-blank to bury the sporran.

  He would bury the remains in the coffin, but would not incur the wrath of God or the Church by giving a Christian burial to the ‘foul issue of Satan’s botty-parts’. And he too crossed himself, then folded his arms in a huff.

  The great3 grand-mummy, who had more soundness of mind than the lot of them put together, agreed to the vicar’s demands, took the sporran home after the service, but returned late that night to lay it on the grave.

  And there it lay. No-one dared to venture close to it, not even the Reverend Vez. The years passed, grass grew up around it, ivy entwined about it. A robin built a nest in it.

  But that was all a very long time ago.

  You see, the graveyard is no longer there. The council pulled it down, or rather up, and built a gymnasium on the spot. The Sir John Doveston Memorial Gymnasium, or Johnny Gym as it was locally known.

  And it was to this very gym, that, upon a bright spring morning in the year of 1977, the hopeful, agile, fighting-fit form of eighteen-year-old plater’s mate Billy ‘The Whirlwind’ Bennet came jogging, Adidas sports bag in one hand and borrowed training gloves in the other.

  The gym had never proved, a success. Some claimed that the ghost of a sporran haunted its midnight corridors. But others, who were more accurately informed, put the gym’s failure down to the ineptitude and almost permanent drunkenness of its resident caretaker/manager/trainer, Mr Ernest Potts, who had lived there for almost thirty years as a virtual recluse.

  Potts was an ex-pugilist of the cauliflower-ear persuasion, given to such lines as ‘I could have been a contender, Charlie,’ and ‘I’ll moider da bum.’ And on the bright spring morning in question, he was draped over the corner stool of the barely-used ring, reliving former glories.

  ‘And it was in with the left. Then in with the right. Then slam slam slam slam.’ Ernie took another slug from the corner bottle and there was more than just a hint of gin-stink evident in that early morning air. ‘Up and across and slam slam slam. And then,’ he gestured to the canvas, ‘eight, nine, ten, OUT!’

  Ernie sighed and squared his sagging shoulders. ‘I remember that night as if it were only yesterday. They had to scrape me off the floor. Took two of them to carry me back to the dressing-room. Old Fudger Marteene, my manager, and Dave ‘Boy’ Botticelli. I wonder whatever happened to them.’

  The could-have-been-a-contender of yesteryear wiped a ragged shirt-cuff across his chin and squinted down in some surprise at the boyish figure who had appeared, as if through magic, at the ringside.

  For a terrorsome moment Ernie thought, perhaps, that this was some mental manifestation caused by the gin, or even the phantom sporran itself. But no, it was but a ruddy-faced lad.