Raiders of the Lost Car Park, page 18
‘That other bloke? Jesus, you mean! You can’t even bring yourself to say his name.’
‘He ripped me off,’ Father Christmas complained. ‘Just because he was born on my birthday. He even named himself after me. Jesus Christmas! Doesn’t sound right anyway.
‘I have tried to explain to you about him before,’ said Arthur. ‘I don’t know why you get so worked up. You’re both gods, aren’t you? In as many words, and as near as makes no odds. But you’re a far more popular god than him really.’
‘Am I?’ asked King Christmas.
‘Of course you are. I keep telling you. Christmas Day. Which god would you choose, if you were a kiddie? The squalling brat in the manger, who’s getting all the presents, or the jolly red-faced man, with the nice white beard, who’s bringing you presents?’
‘I know which one I’d choose,’ said the king.
‘And me,’ said Arthur.
‘So do you think I should use my special spell to bring joy and goodwill and presents once more to the world of men?’
‘Nah,’ said Arthur. ‘Stuff the bastards is what I say.’
‘My opinion entirely,’ the king agreed. ‘I’m the guvnor. I’m in charge. And I’ll run the world my way.
‘Quite so,’ said Arthur. ‘You do it your way.
‘I will,’ said the king. ‘And, Arthur, as you have done so well, I am going to promote you. From now on you are my chief of security.’
‘Oh goody goody gumdrops,’ said Arthur Kobold through gritted teeth.
‘And I want a bit of peace and quiet, Arthur. No more horrible humans stealing my cars. No-one trying to bring down my kingdom. You take care of that for me and we shall all live happily ever after. Is this Murphy creature going to be a problem?’
Arthur shook his head. ‘Not unless he manages to raise an army against us. And I can’t see where he’d get one of those from, can you?’
22
Twenty-three thousand travellers are expected to attend the free festival at Gunnersbury Park tomorrow. Lord Crawford, interviewed this afternoon at Heathrow, shortly before his departure for a long weekend in Antigua, said that he deeply regretted that he would not be able to attend the festival in person, but hoped that everyone would have a jolly fine time. And make their own toilet arrangements.
A police spokesman said that the area surrounding the park would be closed off and that no travellers would be allowed through. He did not expect any trouble, although there was always, what he described as ‘a hard core’, who turned nasty. The regular policy of meeting violence with violence would be adopted. On-the-spot film of the skirmishes will be shown tomorrow on News at Six.’
Bollocks turned off the radio. ‘Uncanny,’ said he. The happy bus was rolling merrily along. Tuppe stood on the back seat and watched the world that passed behind. ‘It looks like we’ve got us a convoy, he said.
Cornelius sat beside him. He whistled while he worked. He had the ocarina in one hand and a skewer in the other.
Tuppe dropped down beside him. ‘How’s it coming?’ he asked. ‘And careful with that skewer,’ he went on. ‘You nearly had my eye out.’
‘Do these new holes look in the right places to you?’ Cornelius handed Tuppe the ocarina.
Tuppe gave it a looking over. ‘They do to me. Can you remember the order to play them in?’
‘No need,’ said Cornelius. ‘As you will be doing the playing.’
‘Oh yes? And when will I be doing this?’
‘Tomorrow evening. At the festival. On Star Hill. We know there’s a portal there, don’t we?’
‘We don’t know exactly whereabouts though. It’s a big hill. It could take a lot of blowing.’
‘Oh I think we can get the hill to meet us halfway.’
‘You have a serious plan in mind, then?’
‘Certainly do.’ Cornelius tapped his nose with the skewer and nearly put his own eye out.
Tuppe was certainly right about the convoy. As the happy bus bowled along, other buses fell into line behind it. Not all of these looked particularly happy though. Most looked dark and dire and altogether intimidating. And, it had to be said, their occupants didn’t look a bundle of laughs either. Morose was probably the word. Down right evil were three more.
But they weren’t, of course. Anything but. These were middle—class university graduates, with first-class honours degrees in sociology and psychology and philosophy and ‘the humanities’ (whatever they are). All those qualifications which aren’t worth that aforementioned bogeyman’s bottom burp in the economic climate of today.
Not that it was the failure to secure work in their chosen fields of endeavour that drove these people into a life on the road. Oh no, it was a shared wish to make the world a happier place to live in.
Now at first glance, or even at second or third, shaving lumps out of your hair, dressing in evilsmellingrags, dragging small dogs around on strings and generally carrying on in the vilest imaginable manner, might not seem the way to go about making the world a happier place.
But not so. Throughout history, society has forever Looked to find a scapegoat in times of crisis. When trouble looms, there’s nothing people like better than o find some minority to blame. It’s a tradition, or an old charter, or something.
It leads to pogroms and ethnic cleansing. It is most unpleasant.
And this is where the travellers come in.
At a secret congress in the early 1980s, a group of socially aware unemployed young graduates sat down and set out a manifesto. They would form themselves, they said, into a band so despicable, so foul and unspeakable, that they would become the universal scapegoat.
It worked like a dream, and does to this day. When the travellers appear in town, old scores are forgotten, the community bands together in perfect harmony against the common foe.
It unites. And it remains united. And bit by bit the world becomes a happier place.
Or so it says in The Book of Ultimate Truths.
Arthur Kobold tucked the king into bed. Good old
Father Christmas, the Guvnor, Secret Ruler of the
Whole Wide World, snored soundly.
Arthur stood over the sleeper and made a gun with the fingers of his right hand. ‘Bitow bitow bitow,’ he went as he mimed the assassination.
‘The King is dead. Long live King Arthur the First.’ He blew imaginary smoke from his gun barrel forefinger. ‘King Arthur, d’you hear that, punk?’
The king stirred in his slumbers, mumbled something about chimney pots and lapsed into loud snorings.
Arthur Kobold slunk from the room.
Prince Charles returned to Buckingham Palace. He returned in the company of Polly Gotting. There was no way he was going to let her out of his sight. They were made for each other. He just knew it. There was the age difference, of course. And the class barrier. But one of the best things about being a member of the royal family was that you could pretty much do anything you wanted. That was the whole point of being ‘a royal’, wasn’t it?
Charles could never understand why the Press made such a fuss when one of his family went off the rails (an expression which was something of a favourite with him). Surely it was a ‘royal’s’ duty to do just that. In private, naturally. Not where it might frighten the horses.
Polly followed the prince through the palace corridors. She gazed up at the historic walls, with their historic paintings hanging above the historic furniture. Although there could obviously be no moral justification for so very much wealth being in the hands of so very few people, there was something almost comforting about it. Its permanence, perhaps? She certainly wasn’t a royalist, teenage royalists are not exactly an endangered species (they’re much rarer than that), she was simply a person.
And as a person, and being here, it was quite clear that there was more to the monarchy than just the sum of its parts.
Prince Charles led her up a sweeping flight of steps, which might well have been the very one on which Cinderella dropped her slipper. He opened the door of his private apartment and smiled her inside. A telephone was ringing and he went off to answer it.
Polly sat down on an enormous bed and took in the room. There was another opportunity here for a pretentious and not particularly amusing architectural description, but as a running gag, it hadn’t really proved its worth.
So Polly looked all around, wasn’t all that keen on what she saw and waited for the prince to return.
When he did he said, ‘That was my equerry, Leo Felix. Dark chap. You met him when you came for the interview.’
Polly nodded.
‘Leo says that I’ve been invited to host the concert that Gandhi’s Loincloth are giving tomorrow.
‘Hairdryer,’ said Polly.
‘I don’t think I have one,’ said the prince.
‘Gandhi’s Hairdryer. You said Loincloth.’
‘Did I?’ asked the prince. ‘That’s funny, because Colin, that’s the lead singer, he’s a chum of mine. Loincloth? I wonder why I said that.’
‘You were looking at my legs when you said it.’
‘Ah,’ said the prince. ‘One was, was one?’
‘One was, I’m afraid. Are you going to host the gig, then?’
‘I really don’t know. What do you think? Would it be the done thing?’
‘Would you like me to be the done thing again?’ Polly asked the prince, which was pretty excruciating, but people do say things like that when the relationship is still at the hot-and-horny stage. And at least they hadn’t started giving each other nauseating little pet names yet.
‘Toot toot,’ went the prince. ‘Big Boy is coming into the tunnel—’
‘Don’t be a prat,’ said Polly.
‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Tuppe, when Cornelius had finished outlining his serious plan, ‘that is a serious plan you have just finished outlining there.’
‘So, what do you think?’
‘Well, let me get it straight. What you are suggesting is, that, as Bone knows the Gandhi’s drummer, ‘he swings it for me to get up on stage in the middle of the gig and play the magic notes through the megawatt sound system. Then, when the portal opens, you do a sort of Pied Piper routine and lead a twenty-three-thousand-strong peace convoy through the portal and into the Forbidden Zones.’
‘Exactly. Overwhelm the blighters with a single unexpected and peaceful invasion. I don’t want to wipe them out, Tuppe, I just want them to leave mankind alone to get on with its own business.’
‘And you really think Kobold’s bunch will agree to that?’
‘Well, if I suddenly found twenty-three thousand travellers in my front room, I’d agree to pretty much anything in order to get them out. Wouldn’t you?’
Tuppe grinned a wicked grin. ‘And I’d be prepared to reward, most handsomely, the enterprising young man who could get them out.’
Cornelius winked. ‘My thoughts entirely. Arthur Kobold owes us substantial damages. We won’t be taking a cheque this time. So, what do you think, a blinder of a plan, or what?’
‘Well.’ Tuppe screwed up his face. ‘I think it’s a real blinder. But, I do have to say, that if Anna were here, I have the feeling that she just might say that it was a very sad plan and possibly that it sucked. No offence meant.
‘None taken, I assure you. So, do we, as they say, give it a whirl?’
‘As they say, we do.’
The sun went down upon Gunnersbury Park and no lights showed from the big house, home of the Antigua-bound Lord Crawford. There were plenty of lights beyond the walls though. These were of the revolving variety and adorned police car roofs. Roofs that had those big numbers on them for helicopter recognition during riot situations.
Not that there were any riot situations on the go at present. Oh no. The police cordon that ringed the park around and about, and blocked off lots of vital roads, showed not the vaguest hint of riot.
The officers of the law lounged upon bonnets, smoking cigarettes, filling in their expense chitties and discussing the sort of thing that policemen discuss when in the company of their own kind.
The TV news teams had all departed several hours before, having got all their required footage. And the anarchic travellers, who had put- up such a violent struggle trying to break through the police cordon, now sat in cells, smoking cigarettes, filling in their expense chitties and discussing the sort of things that actors discuss when in the company of their own kind.
Of the twenty-three thousand genuine travellers, there wasn’t a one.
Mickey Minns was in his shop, checking his equipment.
He had just returned from The Flying Swan.
The patrons of Brentford’s most famous watering hole were taking their pleasures outside on the pavement this particular evening. In deckchairs. They were viewing the borough’s newest arrivals: the travellers.
Now, as anyone who has ever spent any time there will tell you, Brentford is not as other towns. Anything but. And the previously related concept, of the travellers as universal scapegoats, didn’t amount to much hereabouts. In Brentford camps which were divided, stayed divided. And camps which were together, remained together.
The pubs, for instance, being the very linchpins of local culture, had long ago picked up sides regarding most things. The arrival of the travellers didn’t alter much.
The Shrunken Head, whose takings had been down of late, due to a new landlord with a penchant for a pub quiz, put up the TRAVELLERS WELCOME sign immediately.
Neville at The Flying Swan put it to the patrons.
‘Yes or no?’ he asked them.
Norman the corner-shopkeeper said ‘no’. He had already put up the barricades and was preparing himself for the holocaust to come.
Old Pete was of the yes persuasion. ‘They’re a free—love mob, aren’t they?’ was his argument.
There were yes-folk and no-folk and don’t-know-folk and don’t-cares. And when Neville finally called for a show of hands, it was fifty-fifty.
Which left Neville with the casting vote. Something Neville really did not want.
And then, out of the blue, or, as many cynical fellows were later to remark, right on cue, in walked John Omally, resident drinker at The Swan for more years now than he cared to think about and a man always ready and willing to give his all for the common good.
John thought for a moment and then came up with an inspired compromise. A vetting system, whereby he personally would undertake the responsibility of deciding who was worthy to enter the hallowed portal of The Swan and who was not.
Neville was delighted with this, because if anything went wrong, he could put all the blame on Omally.
The patrons were delighted with this also, because if anything went wrong, they could put the blame on John Omally.
And John Omally was delighted with it, because he intended that nothing would go wrong. Not with him outside, carefully vetting the potential customers. That is, selling the entry tickets.
‘It is called the spirit of free enterprise,’ he told his best friend Jim Pooley.
‘I thought that was a car ferry which sank,’ replied Jim. ‘But I’ve got all those rolls of raffle tickets you asked me to buy this morning. Red ones and green ones.
‘Jolly good. Red ones are admission to The Swan, ten bob a head. Green ones are, sorry The Swan’s full up, but would you like-to buy a ticket for the festival, two pounds a head.’
‘I thought it was a free festival,’ said Jim.
Omally offered him that ‘nothing is free in this world’ look. ‘You’d better start the ball rolling, Jim,’ said he. ‘Do you want a ticket to get into The Swan, or what?’
The happy bus had reached Brentford. It was parked down by the Grand Union Canal. Opposite Leo Felix’s used-car emporium. The natty-dreader had left his business empire in the hands of his brother—in-law, him working full time for the prince and everything.
Cornelius stretched out on a whole lot of cushions and viewed the stars.
‘It’s funny to be home, but not really to be home,’ he said.
‘I suppose it must be.’ Tuppe made himself comfy.
Cornelius yawned. ‘It’s going to be a big day tomorrow.
‘And then some. If you can pull this off, you’ll change the whole world.’
‘And the whole world will never know about it. That’s the beauty of the thing, Tuppe. Kobold’s bunch will be forced to surrender, due to the sheer weight of numbers. And afterwards, who would believe anything the travellers said anyway?’
‘Inspired,’ said Tuppe.
‘Thank you,’ said Cornelius.
And they both settled down to sleep. Each secure in the knowledge that the other believed wholeheartedly in the plan.
Which, naturally, they did not.
It would have slipped past many people, probably because it has not been mentioned before, that the following day was The Queen’s Unofficial Birthday. She had her real birthday, of course. And her Official birthday. But this was something new. Her special People’s birthday.
It was an innovation, conceived by certain advisers and publicity people at the palace. These folks studied a lot of history and recalled the time, chronicled in The Book of Ultimate Truths, of a pre-war period, when the King’s coronation was broadcast ‘live’, three times in a single year, as a morale booster. And morale boosters such as that, the world could always do with.
And hence, these palace people had had big meetings with certain bigwigs in the TV industry. And a live nationwide broadcast had been given the big thumbs up.
There wasn’t going to be much to it. All the Queen had to do was come out on the balcony, read a small prepared speech and wave at everybody.
It had been scheduled for eleven in the morning. But now the bigwigs were having a bit of a rethink.
There was this Gandhi’s Hairdryer gig, you see. The big free festival. It had been eating up a lot of headlines and was also going out live, as a worldcast. If the Queen’s balcony wave could be made to coincide with this, perhaps during a break between numbers, while the Gandhi’s were off-stage laying groupies, or something, it made sound financial sense. Two for the price of one. And word had reached the bigwigs’ ears, via a certain Rastafarian equerry, that Prince Charles had agreed to host the Gandhi’s gig.
