Sprout Mask Replica (7 page)

Uncle
Felix, or just plain Felix, was a much-copied man.

‘Look
at that,’ he would cry, as he stared through the window of some fashionable
boutique. ‘Ripped off again.’
[9]

The
troubled passer-by to whom this cry was directed would turn to Felix and reply,
‘How so?’ or ‘What do you mean?’

Felix
would then point to some article of clothing on display and ask, ‘Now who do
you think originally designed that then?’

And the
passer-by, with the words ‘Better humour this one flashing up on the old mental
warning-board, would then say, ‘Your good self, might it be?’

And
Felix would nod and answer, ‘Just so.’

Exactly
why it was that Felix only managed to reveal that he was the progenitor of such
an item shortly after it had become the current fashion was a mystery not only
to others, but also to himself.

The
phrases, ‘I thought of that first’ and ‘another of my ideas’ were never very
far from his lips.

The
story I am about to relate begins shortly after the Second World War
[10]
(an event which Felix had
foreseen, but kept to himself for fear of spreading panic). Felix was at that
time occupied as a clerk in a government building, Gaumont House on the
Uxbridge Road. It was ten of the morning clock, the time when plugs are pulled
from government switchboards up and down the land and her majesty’s servants
ease their stiffened collars and put their spats up for a well-earned ten
minutes of tea and Bourbon biscuits.

Felix
was thoughtfully stirring his Earl Grey and running his eye across the front
page of
The Daily Sketch.

The
news was bleak, but then the news was
always
bleak, always had been
bleak and always would be. It is a recognized fact that the paper with the
bleakest news has the largest circulation and in those days every household in
the Empire subscribed to
The Daily Sketch.
Except for those that didn’t.

Once,
and I mention this only in passing, there was a newspaper in America that
called itself
The Good News
and printed nothing other. It ran to three
editions before closing.

‘I see
that the Prime Minister has finally taken my advice over this Spanish thing,’
said Felix, dunking his biscuit.

Norman Crombie
(for indeed it was he) looked up from his copy of
Tit Bits.
‘What advice
was that, Felix?’ he asked.

‘Withdrawal,
my boy, withdrawal.’

Norman,
whose tastes in literature at that time were limited to ‘the sensational novel’
and ‘naturists’ publications’, knew only one meaning for the word ‘withdrawal’.

‘Good
Lord, Felix. You told him
that?’

‘I had
been meaning to,’ said Felix.

The
door opened and Mrs Molloy entered the office.

Mrs
Molloy was short and stout and smelt of Parma violets. One day (and this was a
fact known only to Felix Lemon), she would give birth to a son. He would be
christened Ernest and grow up to be a serial killer of unparalleled ferocity.

‘There’s
a letter for you, Mr Lemon,’ said Mrs Molloy, adding in a tone of undisguised
glee. ‘It’s an OHMS.’

Felix
accepted the brown, windowed envelope and held it up to the light. ‘I’ve been
expecting this,’ he said.

Norman,
who greatly feared all things official and only worked at Gaumont House because
of the luncheon vouchers and his unrequited love for a switchboard girl called
Joyce, took to the crossing of himself. ‘I would much prefer it if you opened
that elsewhere,’ he told Felix.

Felix
Lemon thrust the envelope into a pocket of his pin-striped suit. ‘I will read
it later,’ he said, promptly forgetting its existence.

The day
followed its regular format. A memo came down from the higher-ups regarding a
new filing system which Felix assured Norman had been on his mind for quite
some time. Lunch-hour found Felix pleasantly surprised that the snack bar
opposite had taken the advice he’d been meaning to give and had its windows
cleaned. And the afternoon turned up three more incidents where Felix’s uncanny
powers of second (hind?) sight proved once more infallible.

That
night Norman returned home praying that a bus, which Felix had foreseen but
failed to mention, might mount the pavement and flatten Mr Lemon for good and
all.

‘That
Felix is becoming utterly unbearable,’ Norman told his small wife, who sadly
(for had Felix chosen to mention it, the accident need never have happened),
would later trip upon the torn piece of limo in the hall and break her leg.

‘Never
mind, Norman,’ said the ill-fated Mrs Crombie. ‘We both know that when it comes
to having ideas stolen by ungrateful ne’er-do-wells, you are top of the list.’

Norman
nodded thoughtfully at this ambiguous statement. ‘I think she knows what I’m on
about,’ he said.

Norman’s
wife went out to the kitchen, tripped on a piece of torn limo in the hall and
broke her leg.

On Saturday morning Felix
took his pin-striped suit to The Blue Bird Cleaners. This was not a company
that specialized in avian hygiene, but an early form of dry-cleaners. At that
time a wet—cleaners.

Felix
placed his suit upon the counter. Had he remembered to mention it, he would
have told the cleaner not to over-iron the trousers. But he did not and the
suit would later return with a ventilated rear end.

‘Anything
in the pockets, guy?’ asked the careful cleaner, recalling how Felix always
remembered afterwards that he’d left a five-pound note in his pocket, caused a
stink and got his dry-cleaning done for nothing.
[11]

A
thorough search turned up a brown, windowed envelope. ‘Oh and oh,’ said Felix.
And then regaining his composure. ‘I will take this envelope with me, rather
than leave it here, thank you.’

The
cleaner nodded politely, gave Felix a little blue slip (with a bird logo on
it), and went off to perform his heinous work on Felix’s doomed trousers.

Felix
took the envelope and himself off to a secluded bench in Walpole Park. Here he
opened the envelope at arm’s length.

The
words MINISTRY OF SERENDIPITY caught his eye. ‘Aha,’ said Felix, as he read
through the text, ‘exactly as I would have predicted. I wonder what
serendipity
means,’ he wondered.

The
missive was short to the point of abruptness.

As you will know (it ran),

Your name has been put before us

regarding your special gift. Please report

at once to the address below:

Department 23

Ministry of Serendipity

Mornington Crescent

(take train from South Ealing Station)

Felix
scratched at his head, which now had the dandruff he’d been expecting, and rose
to the dizzying height of five feet eight and a half. He opened his mouth to
speak, but as there was no-one present to listen, he closed it again. And he
took himself off to the station.

Felix
stood shuffling his feet for quite some time before he could buck up enough
courage to purchase the ticket. Some inner something advised caution, but just
what this was Felix couldn’t quite say.

‘A
return to Mornington Crescent,’ he said at last.

The
ticket office clerk eyed Felix up and down. ‘Are you quite sure about that?’ he
asked.

‘Quite,’
said Felix.

‘Five
pounds,’ said the ticket office clerk.

‘Five
pounds?’
Felix took a step backwards. ‘But I can
get a Red Rover that will take me anywhere in London, train
and
bus, for
five shillings.’

‘That’s
nothing,’ said the ticket office clerk. ‘In communist Russia you can ride on
any train for nothing. You could get on the Trans-Siberian Express at, say, Grymsk,
which is in the province of Scrovenia, and travel more than one thousand miles
across the Russian steppes to Kroskow in Morovia, which is near to the Black
Sea and it wouldn’t cost you a penny, or in their case a rouble.’

‘Is
that really true?’ Felix asked.

‘No,’
said the ticket office clerk, ‘I made it all up.’

‘Why?’
Felix asked.

The
ticket office clerk shrugged. ‘I don’t know. I suppose I’m a bit of an
anarchist really. You know how it is, square peg in a round hole, free spirit
trapped in a ticket office. I’m thinking of chucking it all in and taking the
hippie trail to Kathmandu.’

Felix
flipped back a couple of pages. ‘I think this story is set in the late
nineteen—forties,’ he said. ‘Hippies don’t come along until the Sixties.’

‘I
wouldn’t know about that,’ said the ticket office clerk. ‘You see I was just
lying again.’

‘Oh,’
said Felix. ‘Well, can I have a ticket to Mornington Crescent, please?’

‘No you
can’t. Sorry.’

‘Why
can’t I?’

‘Because
there’s no such station.’

‘Of
course there is.’

‘There
isn’t.’

‘Is.’

‘Is
not.’ The ticket office clerk pointed a long slim finger, the shape of an
asparagus tip, towards the Underground map on the wall. ‘See for yourself.’

Felix
saw for himself ‘It’s been crossed out,’ he said.

‘It’s
always been crossed out. No-one has ever been to Mornington Crescent.
[12]

‘But I
have
to get there. I’ve got an appointment at the Ministry of Serendipity.’

‘Ooh!’
said the ticket office clerk. ‘Well, that’s another matter entirely.’ He dug about
in some cubby hole beneath his little window and drew out a strip of aluminium
foil embossed with runic symbols, odd ciphers and the like. ‘Here you go then,
there’s no charge.’

‘No
charge?’

‘Well,
call it five pounds.’

‘Fair
enough.’ And Felix paid up.

He
wandered down to the platform to await the train. Normally on a Saturday
morning such as this, the platform would be a carnival of colour, Exotic Ealingites,
togged up in their finery, setting off ‘up West’. But today, not a soul. The
platform was deserted but for Felix, which meant it wasn’t
really
deserted
at all, but it
almost
was. As near as makes no odds.

‘I
wonder where everyone is,’ Felix wondered. And then the train came in.

It was
a very odd train, of a design quite new to Felix, although one he
had
considered
drawing up and sending off to London Transport. It was sleek and black and
there didn’t seem to be any windows. A door hissed open and Felix peered in.
The carriage was empty.

Felix
sighed. ‘This might appear strange to someone who wasn’t in the know,’ he told
himself.

‘Please
enter the carriage, Mr Lemon,’
came a mechanized
voice. Mr Lemon entered the carriage, with some degree of uncertainty. The door
hissed shut and the train sped off.

Felix
sat down on the only seat. It was spot-lit. It was very comfortable, but there
was nothing much to look at. There not being any windows, or anything.

Presently
the train drew to a halt and the door hissed open.
‘Kindly disembark, Mr
Lemon,’
said the voice. So Felix did so.

He now
stood upon the platform of Mornington Crescent. And a very smart platform it
was too, all litter free and no graffiti. There were posters advertising
seaside resorts such as Skegness and Scarborough. These were printed in those
soft pastel colours, that say 1930s to anyone who cares to listen.

‘Up
the stairs please, Mr Lemon.’

Felix
found the stairs and trudged up them. At the top a door blocked further
progress, so Felix knocked upon it with his knuckle. The door went hiss and
slid back. Felix poked his head through the opening and then followed it with
his body. The door hissed shut again.

Felix
now stood in one of
those
rooms. You know the ones. The ones with the
leather Chesterfields and the Victorian busts and the picture of Her Majesty on
the wall and the tall window that looks out onto Big Ben and the great big desk
with the leather desk set and brass trough lamp and the man from the ministry
who sits behind it with his back to the window. We’ve been here before, we know
this room.

‘Glad
you could make it, Mr Lemon,’ said the man behind the desk. It was the ticket
office clerk from South Ealing Station.

‘How
did you do that?’ asked Felix.

‘I just
opened my mouth,’ said the man, ‘and the words came out.

‘No,’
said Felix. ‘I mean how did you get here before me?’

‘I was
driving the train.’

‘Oh I
see.’ Felix didn’t.