The Abominable Showman Read online

  We had tea at Granddad’s house that night.

  Granddad’s house was two doors up from our own, right next door to that of the ambulance nurse. Granddad had seen wartime service in Burma and preferred not to speak of it. He had often shown us his medals though, but there was not a VC amongst them.

  I liked Granddad’s house very much, it was a lot like ours but filled with interesting objets d’art. As with Lady Agnes, my granddad had many stuffed things under glass domes. He possessed the shrunken head of a Jivaro tribesman and a human skeleton that stood by his scullery window.

  My brother and I ate a tea of cakes while Granddad drank brown ale from a pewter tankard.

  ‘So what have you been up to?’ asked my granddad.

  ‘Nothing at all,’ I said in reply. ‘We are good boys, us.’

  ‘I was not accusing you of anything. I just wondered how you were spending your summer holidays.’

  ‘Mostly helping the poor,’ I said.

  But Granddad raised his eyebrows.

  ‘Mostly getting in trouble, I’ll bet,’ said he and he laughed a little too when he said it, which made his dentures rattle.

  ‘Might I ask you a question, Granddad?’ I asked. ‘For you know so very much.’

  ‘Is it a matter of fish?’ asked my granddad, looking hard at my brother.

  I shook my head and said it was all about medals.

  Granddad nodded his old baldy bonce. ‘What is your question?’ said he.

  ‘It’s about the Victoria Cross,’ I said. ‘Has a lady ever won one?’

  Granddad now looked hard at me. ‘Now why would you ask that?’ was what he said.

  ‘We are doing a project at school,’ I said, bravely.

  Granddad shook his head.

  ‘Did a lady win one?’ I asked in my politest voice.

  Granddad smiled a great big smile and nodded his head once more.

  ‘For valour in the face of an evil foe?’ I asked and Granddad clapped his hands.

  ‘So you’ve met Lady Agnes,’ he said.

  I bit my lip and did not say yes.

  ‘Or perhaps someone told you of her.’

  ‘Yes that was it,’ I smiled at my granddad and he smiled back at me.

  ‘Would you like me to tell you the story?’ he said. ‘It is quite an adventure.’

  I said I would, but my brother said no, he felt rather sick and he just wanted his bed.

  ‘You can sleep on the box ottoman,’ said my granddad and he fetched a colourful blanket and tucked Andy in for the night.

  ‘Let us sit in my front parlour,’ Granddad said to me.

  My mother’s shoutings were growing fainter as she was losing her voice. Granddad turned up the gas lamp and pulled the curtains shut. He settled down in his wicker chair and I sat before him on a Persian pouffe.

  ‘I wonder how much I should tell you,’ he said. ‘I wonder how much she wants to tell you herself.’

  ‘I do not understand your words,’ I said.

  ‘Well, you have clearly visited her and she has clearly shown you her medal. I wonder, did she perhaps invite you back?’

  I shrugged and nodded my youthful head. You couldn’t slip much past Granddad.

  ‘I expect she would like to tell it her way,’ he said. ‘But let me tell you this. When she was young, in nineteen twenty-seven, I think it was, Lady Agnes performed a great deed for the British Empire and Queen Victoria gave her that medal you saw.’

  I shook my head sadly at this. ‘I do not think that is right,’ I said. ‘For Queen Victoria died in nineteen hundred and one. We did do Queen Victoria as a project.’

  ‘In the version of history you have been told,’ said my granddad, digging his pipe from his waistcoat and beginning the complicated procedures that were to be gone through prior to lighting it. ‘But that version of history is not the one that Lady Agnes and myself lived through.’

  ‘Again you speak words of mystery to me,’ I said.

  ‘Let us take Queen Victoria,’ Granddad replied, tamping tobacco with a nicotined thumb. ‘Born in eighteen nineteen, came to the throne in eighteen thirty-seven, died in nineteen hundred and one, according to your history books.’

  I watched as my granddad made ritualistic and devotional movements with his pipe towards the statue of Ganesha that stood on his mantelshelf. ‘She did not die until nineteen thirty-three,’ he said. ‘And in nineteen twenty-seven she and indeed the entire British Empire were engaged in celebrating her ninetieth year on the throne.’

  ‘But how could that be?’ I asked of my granddad. ‘How could she live so long?’

  ‘Magic,’ said my granddad and he winked at me. ‘A magic that is now all lost and gone.’

  ‘There’s little bits of magic left,’ I said, as I thought of the vegetable lamb.

  ‘Little bits perhaps, my boy. But once we thrived upon it.’

  ‘Tell me of this magic then, please Granddad.’

  The ancient fellow now rose from his seat and turned in a small neat circle. Gently tipping the bowl of his pipe to each of the cardinal points whilst reciting a curious charm to ward off the curse of the werewolf.

  When this was done he re-seated himself. ‘Magic,’ he said to me. ‘Ah magic. Let me tell you that back in those days, in the history that I inhabited, there was magic all around. Did you know that everyone has their very own holy guardian angel?’

  ‘My mother has mentioned it many times,’ I said. ‘She says that I have one, but it won’t speak to me because I am such a naughty boy.’

  My granddad, who was lighting his pipe, laughed into the smoke. ‘Your mother has certain issues,’ he said. ‘We will not speak of them here. But back in nineteen twenty-seven we were all in touch with our holy guardian angels. Bad people of course ignored the advice of theirs, others listened carefully and did what their angels told them.’

  I sniffed at the smoke from my granddad’s pipe, and recognised the smell at once. It was the same blend of tobacco as that smoked by the gentleman at the Atlantis Bookshop.

  ‘I’ll tell you a funny story,’ said my granddad. ‘About holy guardian angels and suchlike. In the nineteen-twenties when I was a young man, young women were becoming emancipated and some of them were becoming a bit too emancipated. They were very naughty ladies, very flighty ladies, very loose of morals,’ my granddad winked. ‘Some of them carried on in an outrageous fashion, the one I will tell you about now certainly did. Her name was Lily and she was a pretty thing. She was also a very dishonest thing with next to no conscience at all. And let me tell you this, my young fellow, the voice of your conscience is actually the voice of your holy guardian angel. So do try to listen when it speaks to you. Lily however ignored her guardian angel. She had several affairs, shall we say, all at the same time. One of which was with the Prince of Wales.’

  I did not say ‘Prince Charles’ because that would have been silly. I knew my granddad meant a former Prince of Wales.

  ‘A proud man,’ said my granddad, ‘and not one to be fiddled about with. But she dillied and dallied and played that great man false.

  ‘Well one day she woke up, you see, with a very loud voice in her head. It was her holy guardian angel and she, it was a lady guardian angel, told her in no uncertain terms that if she did not mend her ways the Prince of Wales would take out his pistol and on the twelfth of July he would shoot her dead. A somewhat sobering thing to hear, very first thing in the morning.

  “The twelfth of July?” said Lily.

  “The twelfth of July,” said her holy guardian angel. “At Sandringham.”

  “Right,” said Lily and she rubbed her palms together.

  ‘It was late in June you see and Lily had thought of a plan. She fussed and fussed and fussed about the Prince of Wales and as she fussed and pampered him she used her feminine wiles to borrow his money. And to borrow one or two of the crown jewels to wear at a ball and to persuade the prince that he should buy her that ring she had pointed out to him in Hatton Garden and
that dress she had seen in Mayfair and actually too that lovely horse that she had seen in Ireland.

  ‘And as each day passed she kept an eye on the calendar. Because it was her intention to be very many miles away from the prince and Sandringham by July the twelfth.’

  ‘She seemed to be a rather cunning lady,’ I observed.

  ‘Cunning and horrid,’ said my granddad. ‘And quite lethal too. The prince at that time had another mistress, known as Hairy Mary, due to her moustache and side whiskers. Hirsute ladies were very popular back in the nineteen-twenties. Well, Lily paid a gangster to put an end to Hairy Mary. The prince was distraught when he heard about ‘the accident’. He took comfort in Lily, of course. And he invited her down to Sandringham for a long weekend.’

  ‘I see trouble brewing,’ I said.

  ‘Hold on now,’ said my granddad. ‘Lily had her plans in place, she would go down on the ninth and steal whatever took her fancy and be away the same evening. Aboard a boat train and off with all her booty to the continent.’

  ‘She was an absolute rotter,’ I said.

  ‘An absolute rotter,’ Granddad agreed. ‘So down on the ninth she went. She enjoyed a lovely evening with the prince, engaged in certain recreations with him and when he was finally fast asleep, she stole what she fancied and then stole to her carriage.’

  ‘And escaped! The stinker.’

  ‘Not escaped,’ said my granddad. ‘The prince wasn’t really sleeping. He knew she was up to something, he took out his pistol, pursued her to her carriage and there he shot her dead.’

  ‘But her holy guardian angel said it was the twelfth when the prince would kill her.’

  ‘True enough,’ said my granddad, ‘and as the demons carried Lily’s soul away to Hell, that soul had harsh words to say to her guardian angel.’

  “You said the twelfth!” dead Lily cried.

  “I did,” said her holy guardian angel. “But prophecy is a tricky business you know. And I was only a couple of days out which is pretty good, considering, don’t you think?”

  My granddad laughed, the story was done.

  ‘Now off to sleep on the sofa,’ said my granddad.

  5

  I did not sleep well on Granddad’s lumpy sofa.

  I had not really been entertained by his story, which seemed to me to have something of a cop out ending. Perhaps though it was supposed to be a moral tale, or perhaps it was allegorical. I use the word ‘allegorical’ here to demonstrate that even though I was young, I was literate. I had a considerable arsenal of words at my command and could use them when required. I had not queried the meaning of the word ‘emancipation’ when my granddad had used it, nor indeed the word ‘sex’. Although I was perhaps a trifle vague about the latter’s connotations.

  I might add here, because it will prove relevant, that I did read an awful lot of books. Which is to say many. I read what the daddy had in his bookshelves. My very favourite was a nineteen-thirties cloth-bound edition of Ripley’s Believe It or Not. That book stands on my shelf even now. I read too the daddy’s fiction collection, works by H.G. Wells and Evelyn Waugh and F. Scott Fitzgerald too. And A History of the Twentieth Century from which I had learned of Queen Victoria’s established date of death. There were books too on the music and art of the nineteen-twenties. And several works by Mr Aleister Crowley.

  Everything, some say, has a purpose and nothing ever happens without a cause. I do believe now, in the light of events that were soon to occur and of which I at that time had no prior knowledge, that there was certainly a purpose behind the reading of those books.

  But that is for later.

  For the present, that was my present, I lay sleepless upon that lumpy sofa, wondering what the following day would bring and getting very excited at the prospect of seeing Lady Agnes once more.

  Lady Agnes and her vegetable lamb.

  I had saved a sandwich from my tea for that lamb and I intended to visit her house via the allotments where I would gather some sprouts from the daddy’s patch.

  There were many questions now bubbling up within me in the manner of boiling sprouts. I wanted to know more about the lady’s Victoria Cross and whether she had lived in that time my granddad spoke of, when Queen Victoria survived into the nineteen-thirties and there was magic and folk spoke with their holy guardian angels.

  So I did not sleep and I took my breakfast early.

  I ate buttered bread and strawberry jam and when Granddad came down at seven o’clock he made me a cup of tea.

  Granddad didn’t say anything much. He opened the curtains and gazed at the day and gave it approving nods. He took a brown ale out from under the sink and popped the cap from the bottle.

  ‘I have to go out soon,’ I said to my granddad. ‘Will you look after my brother?’

  Granddad grinned a gummy smile, for he wasn’t wearing his dentures.

  ‘I’ll take him home,’ said Granddad.

  At eight, having performed all my morning ablutions and washed my hands afterwards, I set off for the house of Lady Agnes. I was two hours early, I know, and it was but a ten minute walk. Yet the day was all sunny and birds chattered cheerily, I thought I’d have a nice stroll.

  And visit the allotments.

  Which proved rather fateful, as it happened.

  Cloistered away behind the Seaman’s Mission, St Mary’s allotments roll in gentle waves towards the waters of the Thames. It is all very picturesque, but then too is most of the borough of Brentford. And this of course was in the days before the flat blocks, when only church towers broke the grey slate skylines.

  As I mooched along I whistled Telstar, by the Tornados. Oblivious then to the fact that this Joe Meek-produced chart topper would not be released until the following year. When I reached the allotment gates I ceased to whistle. It was still early, still night for some. Might the Giant Feral Tom be on the prowl?

  Small Dave, our dwarfish postman, passed me by. Passed through the allotment gates, passed along the path and passed into the distance. Safely.

  I followed on.

  I knew well the daddy’s allotment patch. For after all he often had me digging at it.

  ‘Manual labour is good for the soul,’ he had told me many times from the shelter of his allotment hut, where he sat comfily holding a glass whilst I toiled in the sun.

  Squirrels and pigeons gossiped together, field mice nested, moles dug down below. Tomato plants rose up in splendour, rhubarb spread its leathern leaves, lettuces glowed bright beneath bell cloches. Brentford, some say, was once the Garden of Eden.

  I took myself to the daddy’s patch, sought out the key from beneath the flowerpot, released the padlock, entered the daddy’s hut.

  Then said, ‘Gosh!’ very loudly.

  For the normally neat and tidy hut was in some disarray.

  Seed packets scattered, hoes displaced and the half a bag of solid cement, which adorned the daddy’s shed, as its fellows adorned others too numerous to mention, had been cast aside in a manner quite cavalier.

  But it was not the untidiness that I found most upsetting, it was the spaceman’s body lying face down on the floor.

  You could tell he was a spaceman at first glance. The silver boots, the silver gloves, the one piece silver suit. The silver helmet with the weather dome.

  I looked aghast at the silveryness then turned my gaze towards the hut’s low ceiling.

  Surely, I reasoned, if this spaceman has fallen from space, there should be a great big hole in the roof of this here hut.

  But there was not.

  And the hut had been locked from the outside.

  Mystery upon mystery.

  But.

  I hastened to the prone and silver figure. Knelt and gently shook it at the shoulder.

  ‘Hello,’ I called. ‘Are you all right? Are you alive, or dead?’

  The spaceman made a groaning sound.

  ‘Alive,’ I said. ‘I’ll fetch a glass of water.’

  The spaceman mumbled som
ething, but it was difficult to tell quite what because he still had his weather dome screwed on tight to his space suit. I could not see any oxygen tanks though. The spaceman floundered and pointed to his head.

  We struggled together and twisted off the silvery weather-domed helmet. There came a sigh of releasing air and then another sigh from the spaceman’s throat.

  Then the spaceman turned onto his back and I looked down at his face.

  I could not even manage a ‘gosh’, I was so thoroughly shocked.

  The spaceman’s face was all but white, his nose was sharp, his mouth was small, his eyes were huge and golden. Here indeed was a man of space. Not a man of Earth.

  I became a-feared and quite confused and felt indeed a pressing need for the toilet.

  This was a man from another planet. Probably Mars, thought I, and having read The War of the Worlds several times, I knew that you can’t trust a Martian.

  Blurted words came out of my mouth and I made haste to use them. ‘I have to run an errand for my mother,’ I said. ‘Goodbye and see you later,’ and I made for the door, those two short steps to freedom.

  My progress however was halted by a silver-gloved hand that reached out and caught at my braces. Like all schoolboys of the day, I sported, even in the school holidays, that fashionable ‘braces-over-the-jumper’ look.

  The spaceman held me fast.

  ‘My daddy is commander in chief of all the army,’ I cried out. ‘Unhand me now, or he’ll send tanks and have you blown up.’ I frantically tried to unbutton my braces, but it seemed as if Mother, in whatever wisdom she considered she possessed, had actually sewn my braces onto my trousers.

  ‘Your daddy is a carpenter,’ the spaceman calmly said.

  I ceased to struggle and went, ‘Pardon me?’

  ‘I know your father very well.’ The spaceman’s mouth was rather strange. It had no lips and opened in a circle. ‘Your mum calls him Sauce and he calls her Mac and they both call you –’

  ‘I know what they call me,’ I said. ‘And it’s not my fault that I pooed my nappy a lot when I was a baby.’