The Antipope

This story uncovers suburbia's darkest secrets – mostly in The Flying Swan, a cosmic Rovers Return where Neville the barman and Archroy, owner of five magic beans, do battle with beasts of the occult and in particular the rather unpleasant Pope Alexander VI, the last of the Borgias.

The first book in the Brentford series, 1981

A long finger of early spring sunshine poked down between the flatblocks and reached through the dusty panes of the Flying Swan’s saloon bar window, glistening off a pint beer glass and into the eye of Neville, the part-time barman.

Neville held the glass at arms’ length and examined it with his good eye. It was very clean, small rainbows ran about its rim. It was a good shape too, gently rising to fill the hand with an engagingly feminine bulge. Very nice. There was a lot of joy to be had in the contemplation of a pint glass; in terms of plain reality of course, there was a deal more to be had in the draining of one.

The battered Guinness clock above the bar struck a silent 11 o’clock. Once its chimes had cut like a butcher’s knife through the merry converse of the Swan’s patrons. But it had been silent now these three long years, since Jim Pooley had muted it with a well-aimed pint pot. These days its lame thuds went unheeded and Neville was forced to more radical methods for clearing the bar come closing. Even the most drunken of revellers could understand a blow to the skull from the knobkerry he kept below the bar counter.

At the last thud of the Guinness clock Neville replaced the dazzling glass. Lifting the hinged bar top, he sidled towards the saloon-bar door. The Brentford sun glinted upon his Brylcreemed scalp as he stood nobly framed in that famous portal, softly sniffing the air. Buses came and went in the morning haze, bound for exotic destinations west of London. An unfragrant miasma drifted from the Star of Bombay Curry Garden, sparrows along the telephone lines sang the songs their parents had taught them. The day seemed dreamy and calm.

Neville twitched his sensitive nostrils. He had a sudden strange premonition that today was not going to be like any other.

He was dead right.

Jim Pooley, that despoiler of pub clocks, sat in the Memorial Library, pawing over ancient tomes in a never-ending search for the cosmic truths which might lead a man along the narrow winding pathway towards self-fulfilment and ultimate enlightenment. “Looking up form and keeping out of the rain” was what the Head Librarian called it. “Mr Pooley,” she said, in those hushed yet urgent tones affected by those of her station. “Mr Pooley, why don’t you take your paper around to the bookie’s and there study in an atmosphere which must surely be more conducive to your purposes?”

Pooley, eyes fixed upon his paper as if in a trance, mouthed, “You have a wonderful body on you there, Mrs Naylor.”

Mrs Naylor, who lip-read every word as she had done upon a thousand other such occasions, reddened slightly but maintained her dignity. “Why can’t you look at the books once in a while just to keep up appearances?”

“I have books of my own,” said Jim silently, “but I come here to absorb the atmosphere of this noble edifice and to feast my eyes upon your supple limbs.”

“You haven’t even a ticket, Mr Pooley.”

“Give us a French kiss,” said Jim loudly.

Mrs Naylor fled back to her desk and Pooley was left to his own devices. His eyes swept over the endless columns of racehorses. Somewhere he knew, amid this vast assortment, existed six horses which would win today at good odds, and if placed in a “Yankee” accumulator would gross £250,000 at the very least. Such knowledge, of course, is generalized, and it is the subtle particularities of knowing which horses to choose that make the thing difficult.

Pooley licked the end of his Biro, especially blessed by Father Moity for the purpose. He held it up to the shaft of sunlight which had suddenly and unexpectedly appeared through an upper window. Nearly spent, more than half of its black life-fluid ebbed away, and upon what? Upon ill-considered betting slips, that was upon what. Pooley sighed, his concentration gone. The delicate balance had been upset, and all through Mrs Naylor’s chatter.

Oh well, thought Pooley, the sun is now over the yardarm. He rose from his seat, evoking a screech from the rubber-soled chair legs which cut Mrs Naylor like a rapier’s edge. He strode purposefully towards the door, and on reaching it turned upon his heel. “I shall be around then this evening directly your husband has departed for his night shift,” he announced.

Mrs Naylor fainted.

As Neville stood in the door of the Flying Swan musing upon the day’s peculiarity, a beggar of dreadful aspect and sorry footwear shuffled towards him from the direction of Sprite Street and the Dock. He noted quite without thinking that an air of darkness and foreboding accompanied this lone wanderer.

“Ugh,” said Neville. He felt twin shudders originate within his monogrammed carpet slippers, wriggle up the hairs of his legs and meet in the small of his back, where as one united shudder they continued upwards, finally (although all this took but a second or two) travelling out of the top of his head leaving several strands of Brylcreem defying gravity. Neville felt a sudden need to cross himself, and performed that function with somewhat startled embarrassment.

He returned to the bar to await the arrival of the solitary traveller. Time passed however, and no such shadow darkened the Swan’s doorway. Neville sloped over to the door and gazed cautiously up the street. Of ill-omened tramps the street was empty.

Neville scratched his magnificent nostrils with a nicotined finger and shrugged grandiloquently. “Now there’s a thing,” he said to himself.

“Could I have a glass of water please?” said a voice at his elbow.

Neville controlled his bladder only by the merest of lucky chances. “Lord save me,” he gasped, turning in shock to the quizzical face of the materialized tramp.

“Sorry, did I startle you?” asked the creature with what seemed to be genuine concern. “It’s a bad habit of mine, I really must control it.”

By this time Neville was back behind the bar, the top bolted shut and his shaking hands about glass and whisky optic. “What do you want?”

“A glass of water, if I may.”

“This isn’t a municipal bloody drinking fountain,” said Neville gruffly. “This is an alehouse.”

“My apologies,” said the tramp. “We have I think got off to a rather poor start. Perhaps I might have a pint of something.”

Neville downed his large whisky with a practised flick of the wrist and indicated the row of enamel silver-tipped beer pumps. “State your preference,” he said and here a note of pride entered his voice. “We have a selection of eight ales on pump. A selection which exceeds Jack Lane’s by four and the New Inn by three. I think you will find it a hard business to out-rival the Swan in this respect.”

The tramp seemed fascinated by this intelligence. “Eight, eh?” He walked slowly the length of the bar past the eight gleaming enamel sentinels. His right forefinger ran along the brass rim of the bar top and to Neville’s horror deftly removed the polish, leaving in its place a trail like that of a slug. Halting at the end he became suddenly aware of Neville’s eyes and that the barman was involuntarily clenching and unclenching his fists.

“Sorry,” he said, raising his finger and examining it with distaste, “again I have blotted my copybook.”

Neville was about to reach for his knobkerry when the friendly and reassuringly familiar figure of Jim Pooley appeared through the bar door whistling a tuneless lament and tapping his right knee with his racing paper. Jim mounted his very favourite bar stool with time-worn ease and addressed Neville with a cheery “Mine will be a pint of Large please, Neville, and good morning.”

The part-time barman dragged his gaze from the unsightly tramp and drew Jim Pooley a fine glass of the true water.

“Ah,” said Jim, having drained half in a single draught, “the first one is always the finest.” Pushing the exact amount across the bar top for fear that prices might have risen overnight, he sought anew the inspiration, his by divine right, that had so recently been denied him in the Memorial Library.

“I feel a winner coming on,” he said softly. This was occasionally a means of getting a free top-up at this hour of the day.

Neville made no reply.

“I think this might well be the big one,” continued Jim. Neville maintained a stony silence. He did not appear to be breathing.

“I wouldn’t be at all surprised if…” At this point Jim Pooley looked up from his paper and caught sight of the part-time barman’s ghastly aspect. “Whatever’s up, Neville?”

Neville clutched at his breath. “Did you see him leave?” he stuttered.

“Who leave? I didn’t see anybody.”

“He…” Neville peered over the bar top at the brass rim. It shone as unsullied and pristine as it had done when he had polished it not fifteen minutes previous.

“A tramp.”

“What tramp?”

Neville decanted himself another large scotch and threw it down his throat.

“Well I never noticed any tramp,” said Jim Pooley, “although, and you’ll think this ridiculous when I tell you.”

“What?” said Neville shakily.

“Well, when I came in here just now I felt the strangest of compunctions, I felt as if I wanted to cross myself.”

Neville did not reply.

A scratch of the bell, a screech of brakes, a rattle of front wheel against kerb and a hearty “Hi-O-Silver” and John Omally had arrived at the Flying Swan. “You stay here and enjoy the sun, I’ll be out later,” he told his bike, and with a jovial “God save all here and mine’s a pint of Large please, Neville” he entered the bar.

Neville watched his approach closely, and noted to his satisfaction that Omally showed no inclination whatever towards crossing himself. Neville pulled the Irishman a pint and smiled contentedly to himself as Omally pushed the exact amount of change across the counter.

“How’s yourself then, Jim?” said Omally.

“I feel a winner coming on,” Pooley confided loudly.

“Now is that a fact, then it’s lucky you are to be sure.” Omally accepted his pint and drained half in three gulps.

“You are late today,” said Pooley by way of conversation.

“I had a bit of bike trouble over on the allotment, Marchant and I were not seeing eye to eye.”

Pooley nodded. “Your bike Marchant would be all the better for the occasional squirt of Three-in-One and possibly a visit to a specialist once in a while.”

“Certainly the old lad is not what he was. I had to threaten him with premature burial before I could get it out that he needed new front brake blocks and a patch on his back tyre.”

“Bikes are not what they were,” said Jim. He finished his pint. “This one’s done for,” he said sadly.

“Seems so,” said John Omally.

“Whose shout is it?” said Jim.

“Whose was it last time?” said John.

Jim Pooley scratched his head. “There you have me,” said himself.

“I think you were both buying your own,” said Neville, who had heard such discussions as these go on for upwards of an hour before one of these stalwarts cracked under the pressure.

“Lend me a pound John,” said Jim Pooley.

“Away into the night boy,” the other replied.

“We’ll call it ten bob then.”

“We’ll call it a good try and forget about it.”

Jim Pooley grudgingly patted his pockets, to the amazement of all present including himself he withdrew a pound note. Neville pulled Jim Pooley another pint and taking the pound note with both hands he carried it reverently to the till where he laid it as a corpse to rest. Jim Pooley counted and recounted his change. The terrible knowledge that Jim had the price of two more pints within his very pockets made Omally more companionable than ever.

“So how’s tricks, then, Jim?” asked the Irishman, although his eyes were unable to tear themselves away from Pooley’s waistcoat pocket.

“I have been experiencing a slight cash flow problem,” said Pooley. “In fact, I am on my way now to pay several important and pressing debts which if payment was deferred by even minutes might spell doom to certain widely known political figures.”

“Ah, you were always a man of strong social conscience, Jim.”

Pooley nodded sagely. “You yourself are a man of extraordinary perception at times, John.”

“I know how to call a spade,” said John Omally.

“That you do.”

Whilst this fascinating conversation was in progress Neville, who had now become convinced that the ill-favoured tramp had never left the Flying Swan but was hiding somewhere within awaiting closing time to rifle the till, was bobbing to and fro about the bar squinting into dark and obscure corners and straining his eyes about the upper portions of the room. He suddenly became aware that he was being observed.

“I’ll just go and check the pumps,” he muttered, and vanished down the cellar steps.

Pooley and Omally drank a moment in silence. “He has been having visions,” said Jim.

“Has he?” said John. “An uncle of mine used to have visions. Said that a gigantic pig called Black Tony used to creep up on him and jog his arm when he was filling in his betting slips – blamed that pig for many a poor day’s sport, did my uncle.”

“It’s tramps with Neville,” Jim confided.

“What, nudging his arm and that?”

“No, just appearing like.”

“Oh.”

The two prepared to drink again in silence but found their glasses empty. With perplexity they faced each other.

“It’s time I was away about my business,” said Jim, rising to his feet.

“Will you not be staying to have one more before you go?” John asked. Neville, rising like a titan from the cellar depths, caught this remark; being a publican, he was inured against most forms of sudden shock.

“Same again lads?” he asked.

“Two of similar,” said John.

Jim eyed him with open suspicion.

“Ten and six,” said Neville pulling two more pints.

“Jim,” said John.

“John?” said Jim.

“I don’t quite know how to put this, Jim.”

Jim raised his right hand as in benediction; Neville thought for one ghastly moment that he was going to cross himself. “John,” said Jim, “John, I know what you are going to say, you are going to say that you wish to buy me a drink, that in fact it would be an honour for you to buy me a drink and that such would give you a pleasure that like good friendship is a jewel without price. You are going to say all this to me, John, because you have said it all before, then when you have made these eloquent and endearing remarks you will begin to bewail your lot, to curse the fates that treat you in so shabby a manner, that harass and misuse you, that push you to the very limits of your endurance, and which by their metaphysical and devious means deprive you of your hard and honestly earned pennies, and having done so you will confess supreme embarrassment, implore the very ground to swallow you up and possibly shed the occasional deeply felt tear, then and only then you will beg, impeach, implore and with supreme dignity of stature approach me for the loan of the very ten shillings and sixpence most recently mentioned by our esteemed bar lord here.

“I am conscious that this request for funds will be made in the most polite and eloquent fashion and that the wretchedness you will feel when it will be a profound and poignant thing to behold and so considering all this and considering that Neville is not a man well known for offering credit and that you are my noblest friend and that to attempt to drink and run as it were would bring down a social stigma upon both our heads I will gladly pay for this round.”

Omally stood, head bowed, during this touching oration. No more words were spoken and Neville received the ten and sixpence in a duly respectful manner. The two drained their glasses and Jim excused himself quietly and vanished off into the direction of the bookie shop.

Neville pushed Jim’s glass into the washer and spoke softly to the pensive Omally. “You have a good friend there in that Jim Pooley,” he said.

John nodded. “God moves in mysterious circles,” he said.

“How so?”

“Well” – and here John Omally drained his pint glass to the bottom – “I was touched to my very soul by Jim’s remarks over the purchase of these drinks but strange as the man is he mistook the remark that I made to him completely.”