Young Master Robert made his announcement. “Ladies and gentlemen, as I was saying, as a representative of the brewery” – at this point young Chips made a rude noise which was received with general applause – “as a representative of the brewery, may I say how impressed I am by this turnout, enthusiasm-wise.”
“Enthusiasm-wise?” queried Omally.
“As you may know, this evening has been arranged at the brewery’s expense to launch a new concept in drinking pleasure.” He held up a bottle of Old Snakebelly. “Which I am glad to see you are all enjoying. There will shortly be held a barbeque where delicacies of a western nature will be served, also at the brewery’s expense. There will be a free raffle, prizes for the best dressed cowboy…” As he spoke, Young Master Robert became slowly aware that the assembled company of cowboys was no longer listening; heads were beginning to turn, whispers were breaking out, elbows were nudging. The Spirit of the Old West had entered the bar.
Norman stood in the Swan’s portal, his suit glittering about him. The sequins and rhinestones gleamed and twinkled. He had added four more sets of fairy lights to the arms and legs of the costume and these flashed on and off in a pulsating rhythm.
Norman came forward, his hands raised as in papal benediction. Spellbound, like the Red Sea to the wave of Moses’s staff, the crowd parted before him. Turning slowly for maximum effect, Norman flicked a switch upon his belt buckle and sent the lights dancing in a frenzied whirl. To and fro about the golden motto the lights danced, weaving pattern upon pattern, altering the contours of the suit and highlighting hitherto unnoticed embellishments.
Here they brought into prominence the woven headdress of an Indian chieftain, here the rhinestoned wheel of a covered wagon, here a sequined cowboy crouched in the posture of one ready to shoot it out. To say that it was wondrous would be to say that the universe is quite a big place. As the coloured lights danced and Norman turned upon his insulated brass conductor heels the assembled company began to applaud. In ones and twos they clapped their hands together, then as the sound grew, gaining rhythm and pace, Old Pete struck up a thunderous “Oh Them Golden Slippers” upon the piano.
The cowboys cheered and flung their hats into the air, Lone Rangers of every colour linked arms like a chorus line and High-Ho-Silvered till they were all uniformly blue in the face. Pooley and Omally threw themselves into an improvised and high-stepping barn dance and the Spirit of the Old West capered about in the midst of it all like an animated lighthouse. Then a most extraordinary thing happened.
The sawdust began to rise from the floor towards Norman’s suit. First it thickened about his feet, smothering his polished boots, then crept upwards like some evil parasitic fungus, gathering about his legs and then swathing his entire body.
“It’s the static electricity,” gasped Omally, ceasing his dance in mid kick. “He’s charged himself up like a capacitor.”
Norman was so overcome by his reception that it was not until he found himself unable to move, coughing and spluttering and wiping sawdust from his ears and eyes that an inkling dawned upon him that something was amiss. The crowd, who were convinced that this was nothing more than another phase in a unique and original performance, roared with laughter and fired their sixguns into the air.
Omally stepped forward. Norman’s eyes were starting from their sockets and he was clutching at his throat. The sawdust was settling thickly about him, transforming him into a kind of woodchipped snowman. Omally reached out a hand to brush the sawdust from the struggling man’s face and was rewarded by a charge of electrical energy which lifted him from his rented cowboy boots and flung him backwards over the bar counter.
Jim Pooley snatched up a soda siphon and without thought for the consequences discharged it fully into the face of the Spirit of the Old West. What followed was later likened by Old Pete to a firework display he had once witnessed at the Crystal Palace when a lad. Sparks flew from Norman’s hands and feet, bulbs popped from their holders and criss-crossed the bar like tracer bullets. The crowd took shelter where they could, young Chips thrust his head into a spittoon, his elderly master lay crouched beneath the piano saying the rosary, the Page Three girls hurriedly ducked away behind the bar counter to where Omally lay unconscious, his face set into an idiot grin. Norman jerked about the room, smoke rising from his shoulders, his arms flailing in the air like the sails of a demented windmill. The final bulb upon his once proud suit gave out with an almighty crack and Norman sank to the floor, where he lay a smouldering ruin.
After a moment or two of painful silence the cowboys rose sheepishly from their makeshift hideouts, patting the dirt from their rented suits and squinting through the cloud of sawdust which filled the room. Pooley came forward upon hesitant rubber-kneed legs and doused down the fallen hero with the remaining contents of the soda siphon. “Are you all right, Norman?” he asked inanely.
“Oh bollocks!” moaned the Spirit of the Old West, spitting out a mouthful of sawdust. “Oh bollocks!”
12
Captain Carson lay draped across an elaborately carved Spanish chair, peeping between his fingers at the preposterous display of exotic foodstuffs heaped upon the gilded tabletop. To think that any one of these rare viands might be purchased anywhere within a mile of the Mission would be to stretch the most elastic of imaginations to its very breaking point. Yet there they were. The Captain covered his eyes again and hoped desperately that they would go away. They did not.
Carrying the tramp’s shopping-list, some of which was totally unpronounceable, he had traipsed from shop to shop. It had been almost as if the shopkeepers were lying in wait for him. He had wandered into Uncle Ted’s greengrocery to enquire in a doomed voice as to the current availability of Bernese avocados. Uncle Ted had smiled broadly, torn a paper bag from the nail and asked if he would prefer reds or greens. At every shop it had been the same. When the Captain had demanded an explanation of how these gastronomic delicacies found their way on to the shelves, the shopkeepers had been extremely vague in their replies. Some spoke of consignments arriving by accident, others that it was a new line they were trying out.
After six such encounters in tiny corner shops which normally complained that they were out of sugar, that the cornflakes were late in again and that they couldn’t get tomato sauce for love nor money, the Captain, his head reeling, had staggered into the High Street off-licence.
“Your usual?” said Tommy Finch, the manager. The Captain sighed gratefully. Could it be possible that here was sanctuary, that this one place had remained free from the tramp’s contamination?
“Or,” said Tommy suddenly, “could I interest you in a half a dozen bottles of a magnificent vintage claret which arrived here in error this very morning and which is most moderately priced?”
The Captain had cast a fatalistic eye down his list. “That wouldn’t by any chance be Château Lafite 1822?”
“That’s the one,” Tommy had replied with no hint of surprise.
The Captain rose stiffly from his chair, picked up a can of pickled quails’ eggs and gave the label some perusal. As with all the other items he had purchased, and as with everything else which surrounded the mystery tramp, there was something not quite right about it. The label appeared at first sight normal enough, an illustration of the contained foodstuffs, a brand name, a list of ingredients and a maker’s mark; yet the more one looked at it the more indistinct its features became. The colours seemed to run into one another, the letters were not letters at all but merely rudimentary symbols suggestive of lettering.