Sprout Mask Replica (4 page)

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.