Sprout Mask Replica (5 page)

This
eye-witness report stated that Sir Rupert was ‘eyeing the rivets, hungrily’.

When
Norman next chanced by at my uncle’s back gate he was surprised to notice that
certain changes of an environmental nature had taken place thereabouts.

The
little white wicket fence had gone, to be replaced by a huge stockade of
ten-foot telephone poles closely bound with rope. A door of similar stuff took
the place of the gate. On this door was a notice.

Norman
knocked on the door, then pushed and entered. Entered all-but darkness.

‘Back,
back!’ A fearsome figure sprang up before him, a pointed stick clutched in a
filthy mit. ‘Read the notice, then come in again.’

Norman
beat a retreat and the door slammed upon him. He now perused the notice.

D.M.Z.

DE-METALIZED
ZONE

IT
IS STRICTLY FORBIDDEN TO

ENTER
THIS GARDEN WHILE IN

POSSESSION
OF

ANY
METAL ITEMS.

To
wit, watch, money, fountain or

ball-point
pens, rings, or other jewellery,

hair
slides, combs, belts (metal buckles),

braces
(likewise), shoes (metal eyelets &

Blakeys)
etc. REMOVE ALL and place

in
the box provided.

Then
shout ‘ALL CLEAR’.

Norman
pursed his lips and gave his head a scratch. Now what was all
this
about?
Well, there was only one way to find out. Norman hastily divested himself of
metal objects, belt and braces, shoes and all and popped them into the box
provided.

‘All
clear,’ shouted Norman.

A
weighty-looking length of wood eased out through a slot in the barricade and
secured the lid of the box-provided. A voice called, ‘Enter, friend.’

Norman
entered, holding up his trousers.

It was
pretty dark in there, because the out—there which had lately been Uncle Brian’s
back garden, was now definitely
in-there.
The fences had been raised to
either side and even against the back of the house. Telegraph poles, in
regimental rows, all bound one to the next. The whole was roofed over with
lesser timbers and thatch. The effect was that of being inside an old log
cabin, whilst also being inside the roof of a thatched cottage. It was probably
a bit like one of those bronze-age long-houses that you used to make models of
in the history lesson at school.

It was
a curious effect.

It was
also very dark and gloomy. There weren’t any windows.

‘Whatever
have you done to the garden?’ Norman asked. ‘I mean that is
you
there,
isn’t it, Brian? I mean where are you anyway?’

‘I’m
here.’ Uncle Brian loomed from the gloom.

‘Cor,’
said Norman. ‘You don’t half pong.’

Uncle
Brian sniffed at himself. ‘I can’t smell anything. But what do you think,
Norman? Is this something, or what?’

‘Or
what?’ Norman strained his eyes. Light fell in narrow shafts between the raised
timbers. Some of it fell upon Uncle Brian. ‘And what
have
you got on?’

‘It’s a
sort of smock,’ Uncle Brian explained. ‘I knitted it myself with two sticks. It’s
made out of dry grass.

‘It
looks very uncomfortable.’

‘Oh, it
is.
Very.’

‘Then
why are you wearing it?’

Uncle
Brian tapped at his nose. The finger that did the tapping was a very dirty
finger. It quite matched the nose. ‘I will tell you if you’ll stay awhile.’

‘Well,
I can’t stay long. I have to see my solicitor, my family is being sued by The
White Star Line. I’d rather not go into it, if you don’t mind.’

‘Not in
the least. Now take a seat.’

‘Where?’

‘Anywhere
you like, there’s only the ground.’

Norman
took a seat on the ground. Uncle Brian took another.

‘Would
you mind taking your seat just a little further away?’ Norman asked. ‘No
offence meant.’

‘None
taken.’ Uncle re-seated himself and crossed his legs.

‘Straw
shoes,’ observed Norman.

‘I
knitted them myself. Now are you sitting comfortably?’

‘Not
really, no, but begin anyway.

‘So I
shall.’ And Uncle Brian began. ‘It was all to do with the motorbike.’

Norman
groaned. ‘I think I must be off,’ said he.

‘No,
listen. I was in the hospital, in one of the soft rooms, and I was wearing a
long-sleeved-shirt affair that did up at the back.’

‘A
strait-jacket?’ Norman suggested.

‘Yes,
all right, it was a strait-jacket. And I was lying on the soft floor and
looking up at this single barred window, and all became suddenly clear — the
science of things and where the world has gone wrong.

‘Indeed?’
said Norman, shifting uneasily.

‘Iron.
The bars were iron and the bars put me in mind of the motorbike. Bars.
Handle
bars. And I thought how much ill luck that motorbike had brought me and all
became suddenly clear.’

‘Go on,’
said Norman.

‘It is
my belief,’ said Uncle Brian, ‘well, it is
more
than just a belief, it
is my
utter conviction
that everything has a resonance, or frequency,
everything.
That’s matter and thought and good and evil and good luck and bad luck and
everything. And my utter conviction is that metal is capable of absorbing good
luck or bad luck, absorbing it and then discharging it.’

‘Like
batteries, said Norman.

‘A bit
like batteries,’ said Uncle Brian.

‘But
good luck and bad luck? I don’t see how.’

‘Then
allow me to explain. Think about what metal is used for. There’re a lot of good
things, but there’re a lot of bad things, bullets and missiles, bayonets and
bombs. Go back in history. Imagine, say, one thousand years ago. Some iron ore
is mined and a blacksmith forges it into a sword. At this time the metal is
quite healthy.’

‘Healthy?’
asked Norman.

‘Let’s
say uncontaminated.’

‘All
right,’ said Norman. ‘Let’s say that.’

‘It’s
uncontaminated.’

‘Well
said,’ said Norman.

‘Be
quiet,’ said my uncle.

‘I’m
sorry.’

‘There
is this iron sword. And a soldier gets hold of it and he goes into battle and
it’s hack hack, stab, thrust, slice, stab, disembowel, decapitate, chop,
mutilate, gouge— ‘Steady on,’ said Norman. ‘I get the picture.’

‘Right,
so now the iron of the sword is contaminated, it has absorbed this horror, this
ill luck. It now resonates with it. It oozes with it.’

Norman
shrugged. ‘It’s possible, I suppose, but unlikely.’ Uncle Brian scowled through
the gloom. ‘The iron has absorbed the unpleasantness. It is contaminated. Now,
let’s say the sword is later broken. It’s melted down again, becomes a bit of a
farmer’s plough.’

‘And
they shall beat their swords into plough-shares,’ said Norman, almost quoting
scripture.

‘So the
farmer gets the plough, but what has he got? I’ll tell you what he’s got, he’s
got an unlucky plough. He ploughs his fields and his crops fail. His crops
fail, so he goes bust and he sells his plough.’

‘And
the blacksmith makes another sword out of it.’

‘Wrong,’
said Uncle Brian.

‘Wrong?’
asked Norman.

‘Wrong.
This time he makes an axe.

‘Are
you just making this up as you go along, Brian?’ Uncle Brian shook his head,
releasing a cloud of dust that whirled as golden motes within a shaft of light.
‘I’ve given this much thought. Our lump of contaminated metal travels on
through history. Spearhead, cannonball, bit of a gun barrel, and when it’s not
these it’s something else, passing on its badness to poor unsuspecting folk.
The frying-pan that catches fire, that nail you stepped on that went right
through your foot, that hammer you smashed your thumb with.’

‘That
was
your
hammer,’ said Norman. ‘I’ve been meaning to give it back.’

‘What
about the Second World War?’ asked Uncle Brian. ‘All those lovely cast-iron
railings, melted down and made into tanks. And after the war, what industry uses
more recycled metal than any other?’

‘The
motor industry?’ said Norman.

‘The
motor industry. And what have we got now?’

Norman
shrugged. ‘Motor cars?’

‘Road
rage!’
cried my uncle, with triumph in his voice. ‘Cars
smashing into each other and people going off their nuts. The metal’s to blame.
The contaminated metal. I’ll bet that if you traced back the history of any
single car, at some time a bit of it was part of a weapon. Or something
similar. And why is it that your watch only runs slow when you’ve got an
important appointment?’

‘Because
I forgot to wind it, I think.’

‘You
think, but you don’t know. When I said that the metal became
contaminated,
that
is
exactly
what I meant. I am convinced that bad luck is a virus. You
can catch it.’

‘I
thought you said it was frequencies and resonances.

‘I was
just warming you up. It’s a virus, that’s what it is.’

‘And
you catch it off metal?’

‘Off
contaminated metal, yes. Let’s take gold, for instance. Not much gold has ever
been used for making weapons. It’s mostly been used for jewellery. And
jewellery makes people happy. Gold is associated with prosperity and good luck.’

‘It’s
certainly considered good luck to own lots of gold.’

‘There
you are then.’

Norman
made a thoughtful, if poorly illuminated face. ‘So what
exactly
are you
doing, cowering in the dark here, Brian?’

‘I’m
not
cowering. I am conducting a scientific experiment. And when I have
conducted it and proved it conclusively, I have no doubt that I will be awarded
the Nobel prize, for my services to mankind.’

‘I see,’
said Norman, who didn’t.

‘You
don’t,’ said my uncle, who did.

‘All
right, I don’t.’

‘Consider
this,’ Uncle Brian gestured all-encompassingly, though Norman didn’t see him, ‘as
an isolation ward, or a convalescence room. I am ridding myself of the bad luck
virus by avoiding
all
contact with metal. Here in my DMZ I wear nothing
that has ever come into contact with metal and I eat only hand-picked
vegetables from my allotment which I eat raw.

‘Why
only vegetables?’

‘Because
cattle and chickens are slaughtered with metal instruments, you can imagine the
intense contamination of those.’

‘Yeah,’
said Norman. ‘I
can.
But why
raw
veggies?’

‘Well,
I could hardly cook them in a metal saucepan, could I?’

‘I
suppose not.’

‘And
anyway I couldn’t spare the rain water.’

‘Rain
water?’

‘That’s
all that I drink or wash with. Tap water comes out of metal pipes.’

‘And
metal taps.’

‘And
metal taps, right. I’ve fashioned a crude wooden bowl that catches rain water.
But it hasn’t rained much lately, so I’m a bit thirsty.’

‘And
smelly,’ said Norman. ‘No offence meant, once again.’

‘None
taken, once again. But it will all be worth it. I am crossing new frontiers of
science. Imagine the human potential of a man who acts under his own volition,
utterly unaffected by either good luck or bad.’

‘But
surely such a man would have no luck at all, which would be the same as having
only bad luck.’

‘To the
unscientific mind all things are unscientific,’ said my uncle. ‘Now bugger off,
Norman, I’ve much that needs doing.’

And
Norman buggered off once more.

The laws of nature

Norman pondered greatly
over what my uncle had said. Certainly the digestion of metal had never brought
much luck to the Crombie clan. Norman wondered whether he should give up his
own hobby, that of sword swallowing, or at least restrict himself to bicycle
pumps for a while. But it was all a load of old totters, wasn’t it? Brian
clearly had a screw loose somewhere.

‘A
screw loose!’ Norman tittered foolishly. But there might be
some
truth
to it. ‘No,’ Norman shook his head. The whole thing was ludicrous. Luck wasn’t
a virus. Accidents simply happen because accidents simply happen. Why only
yesterday he’d read in the paper about a newly retired police sergeant who was
restoring some rare motorbike he’d found. This chap had the thing upon blocks
and was underneath tinkering, when the bike rolled off and squashed his head.
Accident, pure and simple.