2
THE LAWS OF POSSIBILITY
THE LAWS OF SCIENCE
AND THE LAWS OF NATURE
And how the man who is foolish enough to tamper with any of these will inevitably come to grief
THE WORD LUNATIC, OR SO MY FATHER TOLD ME, COMES FROM THE conjoining of two separate words: luna, meaning moon, and attic, meaning upper storey.
Hence, lunatic means ‘having the moon in your upper storey’.
My Uncle Brian certainly had the moon in his upper storey, but it hadn’t always been so. Sanity’s sun once shone brightly through Uncle Brian’s sky-light, but a dark cloud had crossed its face. A cloud in the shape of a motorbike.
And I shall tell you how this came about and how this concerned one of
The laws of possibility
According to one of the above mentioned laws, and to quote the great Jack Vance, ‘In a situation of infinity, every possibility, no matter how remote, must find physical expression.’ And given this, it follows that there must be one man who has eaten, is about to eat, or will eventually eat an entire motorbike.
It stands to reason, if you think about it. Everything conceivable is bound to happen eventually, and not just once, but many times. It’s an old story, and one, if this particular law is to be believed, that has probably been told before.
Perhaps on several occasions.
Whether, on the dreadful day that the moon chose to enter Uncle’s attic, Uncle Brian knew anything about the laws of possibility, I am not qualified to say. But as far as can be ascertained, and to set the scene as it were, the uncle was standing in his garden at the time, the time being a little after ten of the morning clock, a packet of premier sprout seeds in one hand and a fretful frown on his face.
You see, there was he and there were his seeds, yet there, over there, in the corner of the garden, in the very place where his new sprout bed was intended to be, it stood.
Rusty old
Crusty old
Big, beefy, well dug in.
Left by the folk
Who moved out
Before he moved in.
Hideous eye-scar
Complete with a side car.
One Heck of a
Wreck of a
Motorbike.
Uncle Brian glared at the abomination.
‘To paraphrase Oscar Wilde,’ he said, ‘that bloody bike must go, or I must.’
The bike didn’t look too keen. And why should it have? It was well dug in, entrenched, ensconced. Had been for some thirty-seven years. The folk who’d moved out had made a feature of the thing. They had painted it buttercup yellow.
Uncle Brian telephoned the council.
‘Would you please send over some of your big strong boys with a lorry to collect an old motorbike that is standing untenanted on what is to be my sprout patch?’ he asked.
The chap at the council who had taken the call thanked my uncle for making it. He was most polite and there was grief in his voice as he spoke of cut-backs and slashed subsidies and how things had never been like this in his father’s day and how the council owed a duty to rate-payers and how it made him sick to his very soul that hitherto-considered-essential services were being axed all around him.
‘Then you’ll send over some of your big strong boys?’ asked my uncle.
‘No,’ said the chap and rang off.
My uncle telephoned the police.
The constable who took the call thanked my uncle for making it.
Regrettably, he said, the police had sworn off going near private back gardens, ‘things being what they were,’ and could only suggest calling the council.
‘Oh you have,’ the constable continued, ‘well, there’s not much we can do.’ As an afterthought he added, ‘Has this motorbike of yours got a current road fund licence?’
Uncle hurriedly put down the phone.
Two rag-and-bone men refused the motorbike, saying that a thing like that would lower the tone of their barrows. A scout troop canvassing for jumble said, thank you no. And a vicar with a collecting-tin declined it on religious grounds, stating that he feared to incur the wrath of God and the Church.
‘You could always just eat it, you know,’ said Norman[5], Uncle Brian’s best chum. ‘People do,’ he said, in a most convincing tone.
‘What people?’ asked my uncle. ‘And what parts could you eat? You couldn’t eat all of it, could you?’
‘Of course you could.’ And Norman went on to tell my uncle about how his family, the Suffolkshire Crombies, had been veritable gourmets of almost every conceivable type of wheeled conveyance.
‘In 1865,’ said Norman, ‘my great grandfather, Sir John Crombie (of India), ate an entire hansom cab, horses and all. His son, the late Earl Mortimer of Crombie, munched his way through an entire Pullman car in Paddington Station, the stunt taking nearly three years[6]. Many of the aristocracy came to witness the spectacle, some bringing hampers from Fortnum and Mason and others shooting-sticks to sit on, while they watched the more dramatic moments. It was said that Queen Victoria herself stopped off on her way to Windsor and spent a pleasant hour watching Earl Mortimer devour a number of velvet cushions and a coupling.[7] My uncle had his doubts. ‘You can’t digest metal,’ he said.
‘Of course you can.’ Norman kicked about in the dirt, turned up a couple of nuts and bolts and thrust these into his mouth. ‘You can eat anything.’ He munched a moment, hesitated and then, with a somewhat pained expression on his face, spat the nuts and bolts onto the ground. ‘I’m not hungry right now,’ he said. ‘But you no doubt get my drift.’
Uncle Brian nodded. ‘You mean you can really eat anything?’ Norman nodded back, his eyes were beginning to roll.
‘And a motorbike isn’t poisonous?’
Norman shook his head and clutched his jaw.
‘It’s very big. And it does have a side car.’
‘Smash it up with a sledgehammer… ooh… ouch.’ And with that suggestion made, Norman mumbled out a fond farewell and sped away to his dentist.
‘Smash it up and eat it,’ said my uncle. ‘Now why didn’t I think of that?’
By three of the afternoon clock, on a day that was none but the same, Uncle Brian was to be found standing on the dusty plot that was to be his sprout patch, sledgehammer in hand and look of determination on his face. Three of his fingers now sported elastoplast dressings of the kind he had once recommended as an essential adjunct to camping out. The thumb of his left hand was sorely missing its nail.
‘Take that, you bastard!’ His fine clear voice boomed towards the house, bounced off the kitchen wall and travelled back over his head to vanish in a neighbour’s garden. The sound of the sledgehammer smiting the motorbike followed it swiftly.
Another swing. An inner wrench. And what is known in medical circles as an aneurysmic diverticulum. Or Hernia.
Uncle Brian sank to the ground clutching those parts that a gentleman does not even allude to, let alone clutch.
Oh my God!’ screamed the uncle. ‘My God, oh my God.’ As bad as the smashing up of the bike was proving to be, it was a huge success when compared to the eating part. Uncle Brian, whose smile had once dazzled the ladies with its dental glare, now wore the blackened stumps of the social outcast. He was ragged and stained with oil. His toupee had slipped from his head and become buried in the dust. All seemed lost.
All, in fact, was lost.
Quite suddenly, very suddenly — well, just suddenly, because suddenly is enough — there came the sound of a siren going ‘Waaaah-ooooh, waaaah-ooooh’; the way sirens used to do, a screeching of brakes and a regular pounding of police feet.
All this hullabaloo caused Uncle Brian to unclutch his privy parts and take stock of the situation.
Hands gripped him firmly by the shoulders and he was drawn to his feet. Then he was shaken all about.
‘Come quietly, my lad,’ advised a young constable, kneeing my uncle in his oh-so-tenders. ‘Did you see that, Sarge? He went for me.
‘Employ your truncheon, Constable.’
‘Right, sir, yes.’
The young constable took to striking Uncle Brian about the head. ‘Stop!’ wailed my uncle. ‘Stop. Why are you doing this?’ ‘Don’t come the innocent with me,’ advised the police sergeant, bringing out his regulation notebook (which is always a bad sign). ‘It’s a fair cop and you know it. This garden is the property of a Mr Brian Rankin. One of Mr Rankin’s neighbours telephoned a few minutes ago to say that they had just arrived home to discover a tramp in Mr Rankin’s garden smashing up his motorbike. Oh my God!’
‘Oh my God?’ queried the young constable.
The police sergeant stooped down and picked up a small enamelled badge that lay in the dirt. ‘Oh my God, say it’s not true.’
‘It’s not true,’ said the constable, stamping on my uncle’s foot.
‘Ouch,’ said my uncle, in ready response.
‘But it is.’ The police sergeant fell to his knees and began to beat his fists in the dirt and foam somewhat at the mouth.
‘Now look what you’ve done,’ the constable told my uncle. ‘Take that, you villain.’
‘Ouch,’ went my uncle again.
The police sergeant drew himself slowly to his feet and did what he could to recover his dignity. ‘You,’ he mumbled, waggling a shaky finger in my uncle’s face. ‘You iconoclast. Do you realize what you’ve done?’
Uncle Brian shook his head feebly.
‘A 1935 Vincent Alostrael. You’ve smashed up a 1935 Vincent Alostrael.’
‘Is that bad?’ asked the constable.
‘Bad?’ The sergeant snatched the truncheon from the young man’s fist. ‘Bad? There were only six ever made. Even if this one had been rusted to buggeration and painted buttercup yellow it would still have been worth a fortune.’
He raised the truncheon high and brought it down with considerable force.
My uncle was dragged unconscious to the Black Maria and heaved there-into. The police sergeant rolled up his sleeves and joined him in the back.
Now it has to be said that according to the laws of possibility, to which this little episode is dedicated, it is more than likely that this very same incident has occurred before.
Possibly even as many as five times before.
But given the growing rarity of the 1935 Vincent Alostrael, the likelihood of it ever occurring again is pretty remote, really. Fascinating, isn’t it?
The laws of science
Uncle Brian spent quite some time in the hospital. The doctors marvelled at the X-rays of his stomach. These revealed a regular scrapyard of nuts and bolts and piston rings. Copious quantities of cod liver oil were administered in the hope of easing these through his system and their exit was made clearer by the surgical removal of a police truncheon.
A specialist diagnosed my uncle’s condition as a rare psychopathic eating disorder known as Crombie’s Syndrome and recommended a long stay in a soft room, with plenty of experimental medication.
It was all a bit much for my uncle.
When the doctors finally lost interest in him, he was dispatched home for a bit of care in the community. He was never the same man again.
My Uncle Brian had found science.
Now there is nothing altogether strange about a Rankin finding religion. Religion is in the genes with us. And I have set about the writing of this work with the intention to explain, through a brief history of my lineage, how it was I came to the discovery that I am the long awaited Chosen One.
But more, much more, of that later.
For now, be it known that Uncle Brian had found science.
He found also, upon returning home, that the remains of the motorbike had mysteriously vanished from his back garden. And it was no coincidence that a certain truncheon-happy police sergeant had taken early retirement and vanished with them.
Uncle Brian sighed and nodded and took to the pacing up and down of his back garden, muttering to himself and occasionally stopping to strike the fist of one hand into the palm of the other and cry aloud such things as, ‘Yes, I have it now!’ and, ‘All becomes clear!’
‘What all is that?’ asked best friend Norman, leaning over the garden gate.
Uncle Brian sucked upon his new false teeth. ‘Science,’ said he. ‘Now bugger off, I’ve lots to do.’
So Norman buggered off.
Pressing family business kept Norman buggered off for almost a month. A television company researching a documentary about the sinking of the Titanic had turned up the name of Norman’s granddad, Sir Rupert Crombie, on the passenger list. The documentary makers were eager to interview Norman about an eye-witness report that Sir Rupert had been seen on the night of the disaster in the vicinity of one of the watertight bulkheads which later inexplicably collapsed, causing the ship to sink.
This eye-witness report stated that Sir Rupert was ‘eyeing the rivets, hungrily’.
When Norman next chanced by at my uncle’s back gate he was surprised to notice that certain changes of an environmental nature had taken place thereabouts.
The little white wicket fence had gone, to be replaced by a huge stockade of ten-foot telephone poles closely bound with rope. A door of similar stuff took the place of the gate. On this door was a notice.
Norman knocked on the door, then pushed and entered. Entered all-but darkness.
‘Back, back!’ A fearsome figure sprang up before him, a pointed stick clutched in a filthy mit. ‘Read the notice, then come in again.’
Norman beat a retreat and the door slammed upon him. He now perused the notice.
D.M.Z.
DE-METALIZED ZONE
IT IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO
ENTER THIS GARDEN WHILE IN
POSSESSION OF
ANY METAL ITEMS.
To wit, watch, money, fountain or
ball-point pens, rings, or other jewellery,
hair slides, combs, belts (metal buckles),
braces (likewise), shoes (metal eyelets &
Blakeys) etc. REMOVE ALL and place
in the box provided.
Then shout ‘ALL CLEAR’.
Norman pursed his lips and gave his head a scratch. Now what was all this about? Well, there was only one way to find out. Norman hastily divested himself of metal objects, belt and braces, shoes and all and popped them into the box provided.
‘All clear,’ shouted Norman.
A weighty-looking length of wood eased out through a slot in the barricade and secured the lid of the box-provided. A voice called, ‘Enter, friend.’
Norman entered, holding up his trousers.
It was pretty dark in there, because the out—there which had lately been Uncle Brian’s back garden, was now definitely in-there. The fences had been raised to either side and even against the back of the house. Telegraph poles, in regimental rows, all bound one to the next. The whole was roofed over with lesser timbers and thatch. The effect was that of being inside an old log cabin, whilst also being inside the roof of a thatched cottage. It was probably a bit like one of those bronze-age long-houses that you used to make models of in the history lesson at school.
It was a curious effect.
It was also very dark and gloomy. There weren’t any windows.
‘Whatever have you done to the garden?’ Norman asked. ‘I mean that is you there, isn’t it, Brian? I mean where are you anyway?’
‘I’m here.’ Uncle Brian loomed from the gloom.
‘Cor,’ said Norman. ‘You don’t half pong.’
Uncle Brian sniffed at himself. ‘I can’t smell anything. But what do you think, Norman? Is this something, or what?’
‘Or what?’ Norman strained his eyes. Light fell in narrow shafts between the raised timbers. Some of it fell upon Uncle Brian. ‘And what have you got on?’
‘It’s a sort of smock,’ Uncle Brian explained. ‘I knitted it myself with two sticks. It’s made out of dry grass.
‘It looks very uncomfortable.’
‘Oh, it is. Very.’
‘Then why are you wearing it?’
Uncle Brian tapped at his nose. The finger that did the tapping was a very dirty finger. It quite matched the nose. ‘I will tell you if you’ll stay awhile.’
‘Well, I can’t stay long. I have to see my solicitor, my family is being sued by The White Star Line. I’d rather not go into it, if you don’t mind.’
‘Not in the least. Now take a seat.’
‘Where?’
‘Anywhere you like, there’s only the ground.’
Norman took a seat on the ground. Uncle Brian took another.
‘Would you mind taking your seat just a little further away?’ Norman asked. ‘No offence meant.’
‘None taken.’ Uncle re-seated himself and crossed his legs.
‘Straw shoes,’ observed Norman.
‘I knitted them myself. Now are you sitting comfortably?’
‘Not really, no, but begin anyway.
‘So I shall.’ And Uncle Brian began. ‘It was all to do with the motorbike.’
Norman groaned. ‘I think I must be off,’ said he.
‘No, listen. I was in the hospital, in one of the soft rooms, and I was wearing a long-sleeved-shirt affair that did up at the back.’
‘A strait-jacket?’ Norman suggested.
‘Yes, all right, it was a strait-jacket. And I was lying on the soft floor and looking up at this single barred window, and all became suddenly clear — the science of things and where the world has gone wrong.
‘Indeed?’ said Norman, shifting uneasily.
‘Iron. The bars were iron and the bars put me in mind of the motorbike. Bars. Handle bars. And I thought how much ill luck that motorbike had brought me and all became suddenly clear.’
‘Go on,’ said Norman.
‘It is my belief,’ said Uncle Brian, ‘well, it is more than just a belief, it is my utter conviction that everything has a resonance, or frequency, everything. That’s matter and thought and good and evil and good luck and bad luck and everything. And my utter conviction is that metal is capable of absorbing good luck or bad luck, absorbing it and then discharging it.’
‘Like batteries, said Norman.
‘A bit like batteries,’ said Uncle Brian.
‘But good luck and bad luck? I don’t see how.’
‘Then allow me to explain. Think about what metal is used for. There’re a lot of good things, but there’re a lot of bad things, bullets and missiles, bayonets and bombs. Go back in history. Imagine, say, one thousand years ago. Some iron ore is mined and a blacksmith forges it into a sword. At this time the metal is quite healthy.’
‘Healthy?’ asked Norman.
‘Let’s say uncontaminated.’
‘All right,’ said Norman. ‘Let’s say that.’
‘It’s uncontaminated.’
‘Well said,’ said Norman.
‘Be quiet,’ said my uncle.
‘I’m sorry.’
‘There is this iron sword. And a soldier gets hold of it and he goes into battle and it’s hack hack, stab, thrust, slice, stab, disembowel, decapitate, chop, mutilate, gouge— ‘Steady on,’ said Norman. ‘I get the picture.’
‘Right, so now the iron of the sword is contaminated, it has absorbed this horror, this ill luck. It now resonates with it. It oozes with it.’
Norman shrugged. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but unlikely.’ Uncle Brian scowled through the gloom. ‘The iron has absorbed the unpleasantness. It is contaminated. Now, let’s say the sword is later broken. It’s melted down again, becomes a bit of a farmer’s plough.’
‘And they shall beat their swords into plough-shares,’ said Norman, almost quoting scripture.
‘So the farmer gets the plough, but what has he got? I’ll tell you what he’s got, he’s got an unlucky plough. He ploughs his fields and his crops fail. His crops fail, so he goes bust and he sells his plough.’
‘And the blacksmith makes another sword out of it.’
‘Wrong,’ said Uncle Brian.
‘Wrong?’ asked Norman.
‘Wrong. This time he makes an axe.
‘Are you just making this up as you go along, Brian?’ Uncle Brian shook his head, releasing a cloud of dust that whirled as golden motes within a shaft of light. ‘I’ve given this much thought. Our lump of contaminated metal travels on through history. Spearhead, cannonball, bit of a gun barrel, and when it’s not these it’s something else, passing on its badness to poor unsuspecting folk. The frying-pan that catches fire, that nail you stepped on that went right through your foot, that hammer you smashed your thumb with.’
‘That was your hammer,’ said Norman. ‘I’ve been meaning to give it back.’
‘What about the Second World War?’ asked Uncle Brian. ‘All those lovely cast-iron railings, melted down and made into tanks. And after the war, what industry uses more recycled metal than any other?’
‘The motor industry?’ said Norman.
‘The motor industry. And what have we got now?’
Norman shrugged. ‘Motor cars?’
‘Road rage!’ cried my uncle, with triumph in his voice. ‘Cars smashing into each other and people going off their nuts. The metal’s to blame. The contaminated metal. I’ll bet that if you traced back the history of any single car, at some time a bit of it was part of a weapon. Or something similar. And why is it that your watch only runs slow when you’ve got an important appointment?’
‘Because I forgot to wind it, I think.’
‘You think, but you don’t know. When I said that the metal became contaminated, that is exactly what I meant. I am convinced that bad luck is a virus. You can catch it.’
‘I thought you said it was frequencies and resonances.
‘I was just warming you up. It’s a virus, that’s what it is.’
‘And you catch it off metal?’
‘Off contaminated metal, yes. Let’s take gold, for instance. Not much gold has ever been used for making weapons. It’s mostly been used for jewellery. And jewellery makes people happy. Gold is associated with prosperity and good luck.’
‘It’s certainly considered good luck to own lots of gold.’
‘There you are then.’
Norman made a thoughtful, if poorly illuminated face. ‘So what exactly are you doing, cowering in the dark here, Brian?’
‘I’m not cowering. I am conducting a scientific experiment. And when I have conducted it and proved it conclusively, I have no doubt that I will be awarded the Nobel prize, for my services to mankind.’
‘I see,’ said Norman, who didn’t.
‘You don’t,’ said my uncle, who did.
‘All right, I don’t.’
‘Consider this,’ Uncle Brian gestured all-encompassingly, though Norman didn’t see him, ‘as an isolation ward, or a convalescence room. I am ridding myself of the bad luck virus by avoiding all contact with metal. Here in my DMZ I wear nothing that has ever come into contact with metal and I eat only hand-picked vegetables from my allotment which I eat raw.
‘Why only vegetables?’
‘Because cattle and chickens are slaughtered with metal instruments, you can imagine the intense contamination of those.’
‘Yeah,’ said Norman. ‘I can. But why raw veggies?’
‘Well, I could hardly cook them in a metal saucepan, could I?’
‘I suppose not.’
‘And anyway I couldn’t spare the rain water.’
‘Rain water?’
‘That’s all that I drink or wash with. Tap water comes out of metal pipes.’
‘And metal taps.’
‘And metal taps, right. I’ve fashioned a crude wooden bowl that catches rain water. But it hasn’t rained much lately, so I’m a bit thirsty.’
‘And smelly,’ said Norman. ‘No offence meant, once again.’
‘None taken, once again. But it will all be worth it. I am crossing new frontiers of science. Imagine the human potential of a man who acts under his own volition, utterly unaffected by either good luck or bad.’
‘But surely such a man would have no luck at all, which would be the same as having only bad luck.’
‘To the unscientific mind all things are unscientific,’ said my uncle. ‘Now bugger off, Norman, I’ve much that needs doing.’
And Norman buggered off once more.
The laws of nature
Norman pondered greatly over what my uncle had said. Certainly the digestion of metal had never brought much luck to the Crombie clan. Norman wondered whether he should give up his own hobby, that of sword swallowing, or at least restrict himself to bicycle pumps for a while. But it was all a load of old totters, wasn’t it? Brian clearly had a screw loose somewhere.
‘A screw loose!’ Norman tittered foolishly. But there might be some truth to it. ‘No,’ Norman shook his head. The whole thing was ludicrous. Luck wasn’t a virus. Accidents simply happen because accidents simply happen. Why only yesterday he’d read in the paper about a newly retired police sergeant who was restoring some rare motorbike he’d found. This chap had the thing upon blocks and was underneath tinkering, when the bike rolled off and squashed his head. Accident, pure and simple.
Norman cut himself a slice of bread, then went in search of an Elastoplast to dress the thumb he’d nearly severed.
Accident, pure and simple.
And painful.
Another month went by before Norman returned to my uncle’s DMZ. Norman would have liked to have returned sooner, but he was kept rather busy issuing high court injunctions against the publication of two books in the disaster series The Truth Behind… These books, The Truth Behind the RIOI Disaster and The Truth Behind the Destruction of Crystal Palace, mentioned the names of certain past members of the Crombie family, in connection with the consumption of fire extinguishers.
It was a somewhat penniless Norman who eventually found himself once again knocking at the stockade door.
All seemed rather quiet within, and answer came there none.
‘Hello.’ Norman knocked again. ‘It’s me, Norman. Are you in there, Brian?’ Norman put his ear to the door. Nothing. Or? Norman’s ear pressed closer. What was that? It sounded a bit like a distant choir singing. It sounded exactly like a distant choir singing.
Norman drew his ear from the door and cocked his head on one side. Perhaps someone had a wireless on near by. He pushed upon the stockade door, which creaked open a few inches and then jammed. Norman put his shoulder to it and pushed again.
‘Go back, go back,’ called a voice. ‘You’re rucking up the carpet.’
The door went slam and Norman went, ‘What?’
There were scuffling sounds and then the door opened a crack and a wary eye peeped out. It was one of a pair of such eyes and both belonged to Uncle Brian. They blinked and then they stared a bit and then they sort of crossed.
‘What order of being are you?’ asked their owner.
‘Don’t lark about, Brian. It’s me, Norman.’
‘I dimly recall the name.
He’s lost it completely, thought Norman, I wonder if I should call an ambulance.
‘No, don’t do that.’
‘Do what?’
‘Call an ambulance.’
‘How did you—’
‘I just do. Are you all clear?’
‘Actually I am,’ said Norman. ‘I have absolutely no metal about my person whatsoever. I’m right off metal at the moment.’
‘Then you can come in. But first you’ll have to promise.’
‘Go on.
‘Promise that you won’t speak a word of anything I show you to anyone. Promise?’
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’ Norman made the appropriate motions with a bespittled finger.
‘Then enter, friend.’
Uncle Brian swung open the heavy door. A light welled from within. It was of that order we know as ‘ethereal’. A smell welled with it.
‘Lavender,’ said Norman, taking a sniff.
‘It might well be. Now hurry before something sees you.
‘Some thing?’
‘Just hurry.’
And so Norman hurried.
Uncle Brian slammed shut the door and turned to grin at his bestest friend. His bestest friend had no grin to return, his face wore a foolish expression. The one called a gawp.
‘God’s gaiters,’ whispered Norman. ‘Whatever is it all?’
‘Isn’t it just the business?’ Uncle Brian rubbed his hands together. They were very clean hands, the nails were nicely manicured.
‘It’s—’ Norman turned to view his host. ‘Whoa!’ he continued. ‘What happened to you?’
Uncle Brian did a little twirl. The transformation was somewhat dramatic. Gone the matted hair, greasy aspect, ghastly dried-grass smock and unmentionable whiskers. He was now as clean as a baby’s post-bath bum and perky as a fan dancer’s nipple. On his head he wore a monstrous bejewelled turban, of a type once favoured by Eastern potentates as they rode upon magic carpets. And gathered about him, by a silken cummerbund, great robes of similar stuff. That stuff being decorative brocade and a good deal of it.
‘Dig the slippers.’ Uncle Brian raised the hem of his garment to expose a pair of those curly-toed numbers that the potentate lads always favoured. ‘Hip to trip and hot to trot, what say you?’
‘I’m somewhat stuck to say anything as it happens, this place it’s—’
‘Bloody marvellous,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘It’s an exact re—creation of the harem of the Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, who ruled the Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566.’
‘Yes, of course,’ mumbled Norman. ‘Well I recognized it straightaway, naturally. But where did you get it from? I mean, Shiva’s sheep, Brian, you didn’t nick it, did you?’
‘Certainly not.’ Uncle Brian swept over to a low carved satin-wood couch and flung himself onto an abundance of cushions. ‘It’s all a present.’
‘A present? From who, or is it from whom, I can never remember.’
‘It’s from whom, I think. And that whom is …’ Uncle Brian paused for effect. ‘The fairies,’ he said.
Oh dear, thought Norman, he’s a basket case.
‘I never am. I did it, Norman, I did it. Cured myself of the good luck-bad luck virus, freed myself from the influence of iron. And lo and behold.’
‘Curiously I don’t understand,’ said Norman, who curiously didn’t.
‘Iron, dear boy. Don’t you know your folklore? It all makes sense to me now.
‘It’s still got me baffled,’ Norman shuffled his feet on the deep-pile carpet that smothered the ground and tapped his toe on a Persian pouffe.
‘Iron repels fairies,’ said Uncle Brian. ‘Surely everyone knows that. In the old days it was regular to hang a pair of scissors over the cradle of a new-born infant to protect it from being carried away by the fairies. There was a dual protection in that because open scissors form a cross.
‘But what has that got to do with all this?’
Uncle Brian shrugged up from his cushions. ‘Get a grip, Norman.
I freed myself from the influence of iron. The reason fairies are no longer to be seen is because there’s too much iron. It’s everywhere.
And it’s bad for their health. So they’ve retreated. But my DMZ, the old Demetalized Zone, attracted them, like,’ Uncle Brian gave a foolish titter, ‘like, dare I say, a magnet.’
‘Preposterous,’ said Norman. ‘Ludicrous, in fact.’
‘If you say so.’ My uncle plumped himself up and down on his cushions. ‘You’d know best, I suppose. Shall I bring on the dancing girls?’
‘What?’
‘Well, it is a harem after all.’
‘You’ve got dancing girls? You’re kidding, surely?’
Uncle Brian rose to clap his hands.
‘No no,’ Norman raised his and then slumped down onto the Persian pouffe. ‘This can’t be true,’ he said. ‘It just can’t.’
‘I knew I wasn’t wrong about the iron,’ said Uncle Brian, re-seating himself in a sumptuous manner. ‘Although I’ll admit that I wasn’t expecting all this. Things have worked out rather well really. How’s it all going for you, by the way?’
‘Oh, swimmingly,’ said Norman. ‘I’m virtually bankrupt. It seems that my ancestors have been responsible for almost every major disaster in the last one hundred years and thanks to this wonderful world of information technology and stuff that we’re presently living in, all their dirty deeds are now being brought to light and I’m knee-deep in doggy doo.’
‘I hope you didn’t bring any in on your shoes, that’s a very expensive carpet.
‘Cheers,’ said Norman.
‘Still,’ said my uncle, ‘chin up, old friend, you’re here now and it would be uncharitable of me not to share some of my largesse with you. What would you say to a helping of untold worth?’
‘I’d say thank you very much indeed.’
‘Well, there’s treasure chests all over the place, why not fill your pockets?’
‘Can I?’ Norman’s mouth dropped open and his eyes grew rather wide.
‘Least I can do for you, old man. After all, if you’d never suggested that I eat my motorbike, I would never have formulated my theory about iron, been visited by the fairy folk and come to gain all this.’
‘No, you’re right,’ said Norman. ‘You’re absolutely right. Where are the treasure chests?’
‘Well, there’s a big pouch of jewels over there,’ said my uncle, pointing. ‘The fairies only delivered it today, I haven’t got around to opening it yet. Help yourself, dig in.’
Now there are some among you, and you know who you are, who just know what’s coming next. And churlish of me it would be to deny you your triumph. I could simply leave a space at the bottom of the page for you to write it in yourself, but then that would be to deny the others, who hadn’t seen it coming a mile off, and who might cry, ‘Cop out ending!’
So here it comes.
‘This pouch here?’ asked Norman, spying out a large furry-looking purse-like thing with silver attachments.
‘Yes, that’s the one.
And of course it was.
Norman opened up the opening bit and peered inside.
‘Emeralds,’ he cried. ‘Emeralds the size of tennis balls.’
And in he delved, most greedily.
And then he said, ‘Hey, these aren’t emeralds, these are sprou— And snap went the sporran of the Devil, gobbling him up with a single gulp and concluding with a huge highland hogmanay of a belch.
‘Baaaaaaeeeeeuuuuugh!’ by the sound of it.
Uncle Brian reclined upon his couch, blew upon his fingernails and buffed them on his robe. ‘That will teach you, you bastard,’ said he. ‘Revenge is sweet, oh yes indeed. Are my dancing girls there?’ And he clapped his hands.
Clap-clap.
And he brought on the dancing girls.
This is not, of course, the end of the story, but it’s all there is for now.