The Chickens of Atlantis and Other Foul and Filthy Fiends Read online

  ‘I only did what was natural,’ I said, ‘as any ape would do.’

  ‘And did it well,’ said my friend, guffawing as he handed the pamphlet to me.

  I perused it once.

  Perused it twice.

  Perused it once again.

  ‘Oh my,’ I said, when I had done. ‘Oh my, oh my, oh my.’

  ‘Oh my, indeed,’ said Mr Bell. ‘Now we understand what that fellow said earlier about you being the “father of the monkeys”. It would appear that a monkey house in the grounds is currently home to several hundred of your own descendants.’

  And then Mr Bell had to run to the toilet.

  For otherwise he would have wet himself, as he was laughing so hard.

  * I do not usually employ the term ‘poet’ when I describe myself. I prefer the term ‘visionary’ – but I appreciate the gesture. (R. R.)

  * It is not racist to poke fun at the French. In fact, it is to be admired. (R. R.)

  20

  r Bell at last regained sobriety.

  I chastened him for his rude behaviour and he fell into laughter once again.

  At last, when he was finally done, he shook his head.

  ‘I suppose it is a natural enough thing,’ said he. ‘Monkeys will be monkeys, after all.’

  I perused the pamphlet. ‘Two hundred monkeys,’ I said, in some awe. ‘I have a tribe of my own.’

  Which caused me to think about matters. For, as I have written in an earlier chapter, tribalism appears to have caused more problems for the human race and indeed others than almost any other thing. I know that many blame religion, but religion is so often used merely as an excuse for being nasty.

  Mr Bell took out his fountain pen. The one that had been a gift to him from the Rajah of Nepal for sorting out a delicate matter involving an elephant named Dwelly van der Poodleberry-Uffington Smythe.

  Mr Bell replaced the fountain pen in his pocket and I never did find out exactly why he had brought it out in the first place.

  ‘Would you like to visit your tribe?’ he asked me.

  ‘Yes, I certainly would,’ I said. ‘Shall we go and meet them now?’

  ‘I would rather like lunch first,’ said Mr Bell, ‘and perhaps a pint of porter. If I recall, from a case I once solved hereabouts, there used to be a rather splendid public house named the Flying Swan along the Ealing Road. Shall we take a walk to the town and see if it's still there?’

  ‘And then see my monkeys after lunch?’

  ‘See your monkeys after lunch indeed.’ And a silly smirk appeared on my friend's face.

  ‘Beware the teeth,’ I said, and I bared them.

  ‘Quite so,’ said my friend, and he ceased his foolish grinning.

  We left Syon Park and strolled along the highway, bound for lunch. Motor carriages passed us by, horrid noisy things.

  ‘The internal combustion engine,’ said Mr Bell, displaying once again his arcane knowledge. ‘Dismissed, I recall, by Mr Tesla as inefficient and harmful to the environment.’

  ‘Arthur Knapton has much to answer for, if it truly was he who changed history and erased the wonderful technology of our age.’

  ‘Much indeed.’ And we continued on our way, my companion deep in thought.

  I knew the town of Brentford quite well and found it for the most part as I remembered. Late-Victorian houses built of London stocks and sheltering beneath slate roofs. Flowers in window boxes, pussycats asleep upon doorsteps. Ivy climbing the library walls, a floral clock in the memorial park.

  ‘You are wondering,’ said I, breaking in on the thoughts of Mr Bell, ‘exactly what your arch-enemy the Pearly Emperor is up to hereabouts.’

  ‘Bravo, Darwin,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘According to this bus ticket, he got on at Kew and off at Brentford.’

  ‘If we knew exactly when,’ I said, ‘we could lie in wait and bop him on the head when he gets off that bus.’

  ‘It was never going to be that easy,’ Mr Bell assured me. ‘But look, here we are – the Flying Swan, and it has changed hardly at all.’

  And it had not.

  We entered together and each took stock in our way.

  I beheld an elderly saloon bar, grown old with dignity, smelling as an alehouse should and bathed in that particular light that drifts through etched-glass windows. A bar-counter extended the length of one wall, and a row of Britannia tables faced it from the other. It did not fairly bustle with folk, but was just full enough.

  Mr Bell saw what I saw, but he of course saw so much more. His practised eye gleaned details from details, drew up a mental log of characteristics, created a macrocosm from the microcosm.

  And things of that nature generally.

  Behind the bar-counter there stood a young fellow, well dressed in white shirt and dicky bow, his hair sleekly brilliantined. He worried at a pint pot with a polishing cloth whilst chatting with a little knot of locals.

  I discerned a pair of young scallywags, an ancient in wellington boots* with a half-spaniel snoozing at his feet and a chap in a brown shopkeeper's coat, all of them drinking beer.

  Mr Bell made lip-smacking sounds and we approached the bar-counter.

  Now, it might have been expected that we would raise some attention, dressed as we were and me being no man at all. But we elicited nothing more than casual glances and welcoming nods of the head.

  The smartly dressed barman detached himself from his company and smiled upon our presence.

  ‘What will it be, sir?’ he asked of Mr Bell, in a voice that contained not a hint of a Scottish accent. ‘We have eight hand-drawn ales on pump – two more than the Four Horsemen down the way and three more than the Purple Princess up-aways.’

  Mr Bell gazed, with a look approaching love, from beer-pull, to beer-pull, to beer-pull.

  ‘What shall we have, then, Darwin?’ he asked of me.

  I did swarmings up onto the counter and peerings at the pumps. This brought some amusement to the patrons.

  ‘Likes his beer, then, does he?’ asked the ancient.

  ‘He much prefers champagne,’ said Mr Bell. And then to the barman, ‘What would you recommend?’

  ‘Large,’ said the barkeeper, drawing a sipping into a tiny glass.

  Mr Bell took and tasted, then nodded and smiled. ‘A pint and a half, if you will.’

  ‘Have you travelled far?’ enquired the barman as he drew the beers for Mr Bell and me.

  A certain handshake then was exchanged and certain words were muttered.

  ‘The first one's on the house,’ the barman said.

  It was exceptionally good ale. And the barman watched us with a great deal of pride as we enjoyed the drinking of it.

  ‘I assume you are with the Victorian show at Syon,’ said the barman.

  Mr Bell nodded to this.

  ‘You are not thinking to move into the neighbourhood, then?’

  ‘Only passing through,’ said Mr Bell.

  ‘I think that would be for the best.’ The barman smiled upon us, then made the introductions.

  ‘My name is Neville,’ said he, ‘and I am the part-time barman. This gentleman here in the wellingtons is Old Pete, chap in the shopkeeper's coat is Norman, and these two fellows are Jim Pooley and John Omally.’

  Heads were nodded, smiles exchanged, and I watched Mr Bell's eyes dart from detail to detail to detail, shoe to shirt-cuff, forelock to fingernail. It was a joy to see my good friend at it.

  ‘And what conclusions have you drawn from your surreptitious observations?’ asked Neville, the part-time barman.

  Which, I feel, caught Mr Bell by something of a surprise.

  ‘Enough to know that I am in no ordinary alehouse,’ said Mr Bell, in a calm and measured tone. ‘As was clear from the moment I entered.’ And Mr Bell nodded in thought.

  ‘You are a detective, then,’ said Neville.

  Which caused some alarm to Pooley and Omally.

  ‘A private detective,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘And I do not believe that the case I am
presently engaged upon will cause concern to anybody here.’

  ‘Splendid,’ said Neville. ‘You see, Brentford has its own private detective, Lazlo Woodbine – the creation of local author P. P. Penrose, who sadly died earlier this year in a bizarre vacuum-cleaning accident.’

  ‘I see,’ said Mr Bell.

  Though I did not. In fact, I had no idea whatsoever as to what was going on with this conversation.

  ‘Look around you,’ said Neville, ‘and in no more than six words tell me what you see.’

  ‘An all but perfect public house,’ said Mr Bell without hesitation.

  I counted up his words.

  ‘Precisely,’ said Neville. ‘And outside you see Brentford, where the flowers are a little bit floweryer and the trees that bit more tree-ie than elsewhere.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr Bell. ‘And the beer here –’ and he raised his glass and held it to the light ‘– is just that little bit more beery, so as to make it all but perfect.’

  ‘Precisely,’ said Neville once more. ‘And how would you, with your particular skills in mind, explain it?’

  Mr Bell now shook his head. ‘I confess that I cannot,’ he said.

  ‘Would you care for me to do so?’ asked Neville, the parttime barman.

  Mr Bell did noddings of the head.

  ‘We do not know when it began,’ he began. ‘Perhaps it has always been so, but there is a magic here in Brentford, and those who live in these parts feel it every day. You will know that there are four cardinal points to a compass – north, south, east and west. In Brentford, however, things are different. Here we have a fifth point.’

  ‘I do not see how that can be possible,’ said Mr Bell.

  Old Pete dug into a tweedy trouser pocket and withdrew from it an ancient compass of brass. Engraved upon its lid were the words:

  P. Pullman & Co.

  Brentford

  1750

  Old Pete flipped open the lid and held the compass towards myself and Mr Bell. We both peered at it with interest.

  Then I looked up at Mr Bell.

  And he looked down at me.

  ‘Oh my dear dead mother,’ said Cameron Bell.

  ‘Do any doubts remain?’ asked Neville.

  ‘None at all,’ said my friend. ‘The needle points to a fifth point on the compass.’

  ‘So how might this be?’ the part-time barman continued. ‘Well, I will tell you, sir. Things in Brentford are just a little bit “more so” because Brentford, it might be said, stands on the front line between reality and otherwise. Brentford is where the mundane meets the mysterious, the Earthly, the outré, the worldly, the wildly weird. And so on and so forth and such like. To the north, Ealing. To the south, Kew. To the east, Chiswick. To the west, Isleworth. To the other point on the compass—’

  Mr Bell listened and so did I.

  ‘Fairyland,’ the part-time barman said.

  ‘Fairyland?’ said Mr Bell, and he shook his head not a little.

  ‘We live upon its border,’ said Neville. ‘So when the weird stuff happens, the weird stuff happens here.’

  Mr Bell's glass was now empty and the part-time barman took it to the pump.

  ‘I have had little to do with the fairy kingdom,’ said Mr Bell. ‘In truth, I believe I have only met one of their number in all of my life. A troll named Jones. A quite unspeakable creature.’

  ‘Well, we get the lot here,’ said Neville. ‘More at times than you'd think we could handle. But we bumble through.’

  ‘More than simply bumble, I suspect,’ said Mr Bell.

  ‘We do what we can.’

  ‘Which is why you said that you thought it was for the best that I am only passing through,’ Mr Bell said.

  ‘Precisely so once more, sir. We have enough to be going on with. You are clearly a chap with a backstory, bound on some kind of adventure. You have an eccentric suit and a well-dressed monkey as a companion. You would be a bit-of-a-character, to my way of thinking.’

  ‘And mine, too,’ said Mr Bell, for few regarded him more highly than he himself did.

  ‘Then you will understand why I must say what I must say,’ said Neville. ‘For to have you here and have you getting involved in whatever adventure you are presently involved in would complicate matters considerably for us.’

  ‘You are engaged upon something big yourself, then?’ Mr Bell asked.

  And as he was asking, the saloon bar door opened and a tramp of evil aspect and sorry footwear peeped into the room. He gazed all around and said, ‘I'll come back later.’

  ‘So,’ said Neville, to Mr Bell, ‘I regret I must bar you for life. Please leave this establishment quietly so not to inconvenience the neighbours.’

  I looked up at Mr Bell.

  ‘Fair enough,’ said he.

  * The Iron Duke had already popularised those by the 1880s. (R. R.)

  21

  ‘air enough?’ I said to Mr Bell, when we had left the Flying Swan. ‘Fair enough? He barred us and you say fair enough!’

  ‘He treated us to lunch before throwing us out,’ said Cameron Bell. ‘An all but perfect ploughman's lunch. The best I've ever tasted.’

  I agreed that the cheese was superb – just that little bit cheesier than the norm.

  ‘So what else could he do?’ Mr Bell was breathing in the healthy Brentford air. ‘These people have quite enough on their hands without being drawn into our nonsense.’

  ‘Nonsense?’ I asked.

  ‘Hm,’ went Mr Bell. ‘Naturally, I did not mean nonsense as such.’

  ‘Naturally.’

  ‘But he told me everything I needed to know and that was the point of the exercise.’

  We had come to a bench before the Memorial Library and we sat down upon it. The bench was just that little bit more benchy than other benches I'd sat on.*

  ‘What is this “everything” of which you speak?’ I asked Mr Bell.

  ‘The reason why Arthur Knapton is here, of course.’

  I shook my head and sat and soaked up sunlight. It really was very nice indeed here in Brentford. It was the sort of place that I would really like to live. Perhaps we could give up adventuring for a while, I thought, rent a small house and become regular patrons of the Flying Swan.

  ‘Tempting, isn't it?’ said Mr Bell, who was clearly harbouring similar thoughts. ‘And obviously part of its magic. I wonder what effect this marvellous place has had upon Arthur Knapton?’

  ‘Do you know where he is?’ I asked.

  Mr Bell dug into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out a tiny compass of his own. One that I had not seen before, but suspected might well have been a gift from an Arabian potentate for solving a delicate matter involving a sand dancer, a stick of celery and a spotted dog called Carlos.

  ‘I purchased this in Woolworths,’ said Mr Cameron Bell, ‘years ago, as a present for my nephew. Look at its face and tell me what you see.’

  I examined the tiny compass. ‘Same inexplicable business,’ I said. ‘Its needle points to a fifth point, one I have never seen before today.’

  ‘Fascinating, isn't it?’ said Mr Bell, turning the compass this way and the other. ‘It points to the realm of the faerie – where, if I am not altogether wrong, we will find Arthur Knapton.’

  I put it to Mr Bell, in as polite a manner as I could, that I was not altogether certain about this business of Fairyland. That in fact I had my doubts regarding its reality. And indeed a sneaking suspicion that the part-time barman and his cronies might well be having a gi-raffe at our expense.

  Mr Bell shook his head and said, ‘Neville and I are Brothers under the Arch.’

  ‘Well, I don't want to get involved with any fairies,’ I said. ‘I want to go and visit my monkeys. You said we could visit my monkeys after lunch, and we've had our lunch now and I want to visit my monkeys.’

  Mr Bell rose and dusted down his tweeds. ‘And that is fair enough, too,’ he said. ‘Monkeys now and fairies at midnight. That is the way that it should be done.
’

  And it was.

  We returned to the grounds of Syon House, passed by the mansion and the Victorian fair and approached the monkey sanctuary.

  I do not know exactly what I had been expecting. Perhaps a sort of gentle-monkey's club not unlike my own in Piccadilly. Panelled walls of oak and overstuffed leather couches. Bananas served from silver bowls to smartly suited simians. A well-stocked bar and a billiard room.

  What I found appalled me!

  The sanctuary was nothing but a cage. A huge cage, quite cathedralesque, but nonetheless a cage.

  And my monkeys were not civilised one bit. They were nude and rude and noisy. They skittered about, flung dung and publicly engaged in that monkey business which should really only be practised in private.

  I was truly horrified.

  ‘They are behaving like—’

  ‘Monkeys?’ said Mr Bell.

  ‘Monkeys,’ I said, and sadly I said it, too. ‘I had thought that . . . perhaps—’

  ‘Perhaps they would have acquired your intellectual capabilities?’ Mr Bell shook his head, and sadly, too. ‘You are a very special fellow, my little friend. You are one of a kind. I know of your tutor Herr Döktor's conviction that education could accelerate the evolutionary process of Man's hairy cousins, and perhaps he is right. You stand before me as proof that it can be done. But for this to be passed on from generation to generation . . . ? Perhaps, if many generations were taught as you have been taught. Perhaps.’

  ‘So Man will always be Man and Monkey will always be Monkey?’

  ‘How can it be otherwise? Even if all of these apes had acquired your skills, they would, alas, still be apes nonetheless. They would not turn into men.’

  ‘I know that,’ I said, and rather bitterly I said it, too. ‘I am not stupid. A Man is a Man and a Monkey is a Monkey. But I, through my education and the intimate friendships I have formed with yourself, Colonel Katterfelto and Lord Brentford, have come to learn so much. To appreciate so much. The love of good food and fine wine. The wonders of the written word. The music of Brahms and Beethoven. How sad it feels to me that my own descendants should be denied these marvellous things.’

  ‘Yes,’ agreed Mr Bell. ‘It is sad. And having viewed the horrors of the London Blitz at first hand, I can say, without hesitation, that Mankind has made no progress whatsoever in this dismal century. Perhaps Man has come as far along the evolutionary road as it is possible for him to travel. So perhaps, just perhaps, one day the Monkey may catch him up. Or even overtake him.’