The Brightonomicon (Brentford Book 8) (26 page)

‘We’ll want to look our best for the occasion.’ Hugo Rune had on his best tuxedo, with the lacy shirt and velvet dicky bow.

‘But it is a naturist restaurant. We will have to take our clothes off!’

Mr Rune let free a mocking laugh. ‘Rizla,’ said he, ‘Hugo Rune does not disrobe in public.’

‘Shy, eh?’ I said.

‘On the contrary,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘but should I expose what lies presently dormant beneath my kecks in a public eatery, the inevitable attention of the womenfolk present and the inadequacy felt by their
male companions might well erupt into jealous rage, which would interfere with my digestion.’

‘Indeed,’ I said. ‘So can I keep my clothes on, too?’

‘We will represent ourselves as high muck-a-mucks of the brewery, come to observe the proceedings.’

‘Well, you
have
acquired the brewery’s tickets.’

‘Quite so. Now let us hasten to the street where you can hail us a cab.’

The driver of the taxicab was a fellow who called himself Darren. Darren was a supporter of a football club named Hull, to which even ‘torture to the third degree as administered by cardinals of the Inquisition could not procure disloyalty’. Darren expounded his theories regarding why Marmite went white when you repeatedly patted it with your finger. And how there was really no such thing as chicken.

‘Eggs, right,’ said Darren, as he drove along Western Road en route to Hove. ‘Every day there are millions and millions of eggs. You can buy them everywhere, right?’

I nodded in agreement.

‘But also everywhere, there are millions and millions of chickens for sale in supermarkets, and sandwich shops, and restaurants, right?’

‘Right,’ I said.

‘So where do they all come from?’

‘They come out of eggs,’ I said.

‘But the eggs are all for sale.’

‘Well, obviously not
all
of them,’ I said. ‘A very great many must hatch into chickens. A
very
great many.’

‘Which would require a
very
great many cockerels to inseminate all these chickens that lay fertilised eggs that turn into more chickens.’

‘I would assume so,’ I said.

‘So where are all these stud farms full of randy roosters?’ asked Darren. ‘You have all these battery-chicken farms where chickens lay eggs. But you’d need millions and millions of randy roosters. It’s all a conspiracy. Eggs come off assembly lines, and so do chickens. They’re artificial. And we should be told. I’m going to start a protest.’

I scratched at my head.

‘You need a haircut,’ said Mr Rune.

*

When we arrived at the police cordon that blocked off Church Road some one hundred yards before George Street, I left the cab with haste, leaving Mr Rune to deal with the matter of the fare.

And I recognised two of the policemen in the cordon – the same two who had ordered Mr Rune and me to move back behind the line before the Earl-Grey-weeping statue of the late Queen Victoria.

‘Good evening, Officer,’ I said to the first policeman. ‘Nice night for a protest, eh?’

‘Perfect night, sir. Move back behind the line, if you will.’

‘I have tickets to the restaurant opening,’ I said, and I flourished same.

‘You lucky bugger,’ said the first constable. ‘All those “Page-Three” girls with their kit off, and me and my compatriots here with nothing to enliven our evening other than the thought of the inevitable truncheoning-down of protesters that lies ahead.’

‘And the stun-gunning,’ said the second constable. ‘And the tear-gassing, of course, not to mention the employment of the bowel-loosening infrasound canons that have been supplied to us for testing by the Ministry of Serendipity.’

I felt it prudent
not
to mention those bowel-loosening infrasound canons.

‘Very wise of you,’ said the first constable.

And suddenly Mr Rune joined me.

‘Oh,’ said the second constable, sighting Mr Rune. ‘It’s you, is it? Are we supposed to tip our helmets or something, you being a Thirty-Fourth-Degree Mason or whatever?’

‘A simple curtsey will suffice,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Now please clear a path for us between the protesters.’

‘There
are
no protesters,’ I said, for my powers of observation were keen.

‘No,’ said constable number one. ‘I’ve just heard word on my special police walkie-talkie that they are presently trapped inside an imaginary telephone box on the Level. Imaginary firemen are cutting them out.’

‘I just love the nineteen sixties,’ I said.

‘Me, too, sir,’ said the second policeman. ‘Especially the drugs.’

*

I don’t know whether we were the first to arrive at Eat Your Food Nude, but I knew that we were not the last. There is a balance to these things and a strict pecking order, celebritywise. But I will not go into any of that here, because frankly I did not care – I was just hungry. There were a lot of paparazzi present and these individuals aimed their cameras at us.

But to Mr Rune’s appalled disgust, they did not take any pictures. ‘They do not know who you are,’ I said, as we strolled up George Street, past the charity shops. ‘They are only here to photograph the famous.’

‘Rizla,’ said Hugo Rune, ‘how would you like to appear upon the front page of the
Leader
tomorrow?’

‘That very much depends,’ said I. ‘If it is alongside the headline “DO YOU KNOW THE IDENTITY OF THIS MURDERED MAN?”, then I am not altogether keen.’

Mr Rune smiled that certain smile of his, the one that I might not have mentioned before, and we strolled on towards dinner at Eat Your Food Nude.

We were greeted at the door by two muscular types wearing nothing more than fig leaves.

‘Invitation,’ said one of these, fingering the fig leaf that he wore upon his head. And I made free with our tickets.

‘Go through, please,’ said the other. And we did so.

‘Fine-looking women,’ said Mr Rune.

Now, I have to say that I rather took to the décor of Eat Your Food Nude. It had that comfortable, lived-in feeling to it.

The walls were painted all-over mauve, which I knew to be this year’s black.

Upon them hung many silk-screened prints of the Andy Warhol persuasion.

There were sofas and chairs of a velvet ilk and many a beanbag sack.

And tables of oak of every shape, which answered every occasion.

‘Most poetic,’ said Mr Rune, ‘but that was the
last
chapter, surely.’

‘It is a very nice place,’ said I. ‘And we appear to be the first arrivals.’

‘First in, last out,’ said Mr Rune. ‘I have no pretensions.’

‘If the sirs will proceed to the disrobing area,’ said the maître d’, who had approached us silently upon his bare feet and now loomed before us, as naked as the day was long. Mr Rune explained to him that we were from the brewery.

‘Indeed, sir, yes,’ said the maître d’, with exaggerated politeness. ‘But as you will observe from your tickets—’ and he turned them over ‘—“NO KIT OFF – NO SERVICE”. It’s in big black capital letters here. I’d overlook your dinner suits if I could, but it’s more than my job’s worth.’

I looked at Mr Rune.

And Mr Rune looked at me.

And our stomachs growled in unison.

Now, I really do not wish to go into this in detail. Mr Rune and I were guided to the disrobing area, where we divested ourselves of our garments and received cloakroom tickets for same. When Mr Rune asked where exactly we might be expected to put our cloakroom tickets for safekeeping, as we no longer possessed pockets, he received a reply from the cloakroom attendant (who looked very much like a bog troll to me) that might either be described as ‘cheeky’ or ‘downright insolent’, depending upon your point of view.

Mr Rune and I, then in the buff, were escorted to our table. And I
do
have to confess that as to whether Mr Rune’s claims regarding God’s generosity to him in the matter of wedding tackle were genuine, I could not say.

Because I really, truly did not want to look.

We sat ourselves down and took up our napkins.

And I laid mine over my lap.

Well, you never can be too careful regarding the soup course.

The tablecloths were of crisp white linen and the cutlery was none too shabby, either. There was a selection of glasses, rising from little tiny shot jobbies to great big brandy balloons. A bit like a set of Russian dolls. Or dogs, perhaps. And there was salt and pepper. And only ketchup, no HP. Proper posh.

Mr Rune called for the wine list and made his choice guided, as far as I could see, by price alone.

‘The Mulholland eighteen fifty-one,’ said he. ‘And bring two pint pots.’

And then, as we sat guzzling wine, the other diners began to appear. And much to my utter amazement, many of these were
famous.
And I do have to say that, much to my utter amazement, once they had visited the disrobing room and returned to the restaurant as naked as jaybirds, I was hard put to identify them. It is really difficult to recognise the famous when they have their clothes off. They all look alarmingly similar.

‘Is that Jimi Hendrix?’ I asked Mr Rune.

‘No, that’s Janis Joplin.’

‘But
that
is Brian Jones, surely?’

‘No, I think you will find that it’s Jim Morrison.’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘I know
that
is Johnny Kidd – he still has his eye patch on.’

‘No,’ said Mr Rune. ‘That’s David Bowie. Oh, good, they’re throwing him out. He always tries to sneak into events like this.’
^*

Mr Rune pointed out Gram Parsons from the Byrds, Pigpen from the Grateful Dead and somebody called Kurt Cobain, who was not even born yet.

‘Tell me,’ I said to Mr Rune, ‘who is that black fella over there?’

‘That’s Robert Johnson,’ said Mr Rune.

I gave my head another scratching and considered the possibility of getting myself a haircut. ‘Now hang on a moment,’ I said, ‘I recall having a conversation with your confederate Hubert, and he told me that all these rock stars had died at the age of twenty-seven.’

‘That hardly surprises me,’ said Mr Rune, finishing off the last of the Mulholland ’51 and calling out to the waiter for more. ‘Hubert claims to be a descendant of Nostradamus. But surely you’re missing the point here, young Rizla. Everything we deal with is to do with time – my search for the Chronovision, anomalies of time, holes in time.’

‘But these rock stars are dead,’ I said.

‘They don’t look very dead to me,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Would you care for me to introduce you to any of them? Most are personal friends.’

‘I do not really fancy getting up,’ I said, steadying my serviette. ‘I am comfy here.’

‘We’ve extra chairs at our table and we haven’t ordered the nosebag yet. Who would you care to speak with?’

‘Him,’ I said. And I pointed.

‘Robert Johnson,’ said Mr Rune. ‘Why does this not surprise me at all?’

‘Because you are the All-Knowing One?’ I suggested.

‘Bobby boy,’ called Mr Rune to the great blues legend. ‘Would you care to join us over here?’

All right, I confess it, I had trouble with this.

Perhaps all of these nineteen-sixties rock stars had not yet died at age twenty-seven. Maybe one or two of them had, but possibly their deaths had not been featured in the
Argus
or the
Leader,
concerned as those organs were with local events.

But I was damn sure that Robert Johnson
had
died in nineteen thirty-eight.

But there was Robert Johnson, naked as the day that he was born, approaching our table.

‘Lower yourself into a chair,’ said Mr Rune.

And Robert Johnson did so.

‘This is my companion, Rizla,’ said Mr Rune. ‘He is anxious to meet you.’

Robert Johnson smiled upon me and I smiled back at him.

And through my smile I also stared in awe.

Could this really be
the
Robert Johnson?

The man who started it all – rock music, soul music, all that now we had and loved?

The man who had supposedly gone down to the crossroads at midnight with a black-cat bone and sold his soul to the Devil, who then tuned his guitar?

The man who always after this played with his back to the audience, for fear that they might see a magical something?

That magical something that Keith Richards discerned when he first heard Johnson’s recordings?

That you would need an extra finger upon your left hand to play the way he did?

Robert Johnson put out his hand for me to shake it.

It was his left hand.

As it extended in my direction, I took to counting the fingers.