Snuff Fiction

15

I had no home to go to. My parents had disowned me when sentence was passed. My mother wept the tears that mothers weep and my father took it like the man he was and said that he’d never cared much for me anyway. As I drove down to London, I had but one destination in mind and that was the House of Doveston.

The House of Doveston was no longer in Brentford, but then the House of Doveston wasn’t a house. It was a very swish tobacconist’s in Covent Garden.

I knew that the Doveston had sold his penthouse flat in Hawtrey House. He’d sent me a press cutting, all about how the council were selling off the flats and how fortunes were being made. Another cutting covered the trial and conviction of Councillor McMurdo, who had apparently siphoned away millions from the borough coffers. I never met up with McMurdo when I was inside, I think he went off to one of the rather luxurious open prisons, where people who have behaved badly but have good connections are sent.

Now, I was impressed by the House of Doveston. It was right on the central plaza, next door to Brown’s Restaurant. And it was big.

The style was Bauhaus: the German school of architecture and allied arts that was founded in 1919 by Walter Gropius (1883—1969). The experimental principles of functionalism that he applied to materials influenced the likes of Klee, Kandinsky and notably Le Corbusier. Although the Nazis closed down the Bauhaus in 1933, its influence remains amongst us to this day.

I gazed up at the building’s façade, all black glass and chrome. The name was picked out in tall slim Art Deco lettering, which, along with the triple tadpole logo, was in polished chrome on polished black. It was austere, yet grandiloquent. Understated, yet overblown. Unadorned, yet ostentatious. Vernacular, yet vainglorious.

I hated it.

I’d never given a monkey’s member for the Bauhaus movement. Give me the Victorians any day. And one thing I had learned in prison was that running gags which involve esoteric knowledge and the use of Roget’s Thesaurus earn for the teller a well-deserved kick in the balls.

I pushed open the black glass door and swaggered into the shop.

And someone kicked me in the balls.

I toppled backwards, out into the street, passed by a shopper or two and sank to my knees in the road.

‘Oooooh,’ I went. ‘That hurts.’

A large and well-knit black chap in a natty uniform stepped out from the shop and glared down at me. ‘Move on, sniffer,’ he said. ‘No place for your type in there.’

‘Sniffer?’ I went. ‘Sniffer? How dare you?’

‘Sniff your glue pot down the road. Go on now, or I’ll kick your ass.’

I eased myself with care into the vertical plane. ‘Now just you see here,’ I said.

He raised his fist.

‘I am a friend of the Doveston,’ I said.

The knuckles of the fist made crackling noises.

‘I have a letter here of introduction.’

My left hand moved towards my left coat pocket. He watched it carefully. I made rummaging motions with my fingers. His head leaned forward, just enough.

I brought him down with a right cross and put the boot in.

I mean, come on now, I’d just spent seventeen years in prison. Did you not think I’d learned how to fight?

I squared up my shoulders and marched back into the House of Doveston. I was not in the bestest of moods.

The shop interior was something to see and once inside I saw it. It was like a museum, everything displayed behind glass. A staggering selection of imported tobaccos and the largest variety of cigarettes I have ever laid my boggling eyes upon.

I have never been much of a poet, but standing there amongst the wonder of it all, I was almost moved to verse.

There were showcases glittering with pipes and snuffboxes,

Cabinets of match—holders, ashtrays and cigars.

There were tall glazed cupboards of rare tobacco pouches.

There was snuff of every blending in a thousand tiny jars.

I wandered and wondered and gaped and gazed. There were items here that were clearly not for sale. These were rare collectors’ pieces. The pouches, for instance. And surely here was the famous calabash smoked by the magician Crowley. And there the now-legendary Slingsby snuff-pistol, fashioned to resemble a Derringer. And that was not Lincoln’s corn-cob, was it? And that was not one of Churchill’s half-smoked Coronas?

‘It bloody is too,’ said a familiar voice.

I turned around and saw him. He stood there, large as life, bigger than life. I looked at him and he looked at me and each one saw the other.

He saw an ex-convict, dressed in the garb of a scarecrow. The exconvict’s hands were crudely tattooed, as were other body parts, but these were hidden from view. The ex-convict’s head was shaven, his cheeks scarred and shadowed by a two-day growth of beard. The exconvict’s frame was lean and hard and muscled. The ex-convict looked far older than his years, but had about him somehow the look of a survivor.

I saw a businessman. A successful businessman. Dressed in the garb of a successful businessman. A Paul Smith suit of linen that crumpled where it should. A gold watch by Piaget, that clenched the tanned left wrist. Brogues by Hobbs and haircut by Michael. Another two-day growth of beard, but this ‘designer stubble’. The successful businessman’s frame was going on podgy, but he looked far younger than his years.

And the look of a survivor?

Yes, I think so.

‘Edwin,’ said the Doveston.

‘Bastard,’ I replied.

The Doveston grinned and I saw a gold tooth winking. ‘You made short work of my door supervisor,’ he said.

‘And I shall make short work of you too. It is payback time.’

‘Pardon me?’ The Doveston stepped back a pace.

‘Seventeen long years I served for you.’

‘I did my best to get you out.’

‘I must have missed the explosions.’

‘Crude stuff,’ said the Doveston. ‘I couldn’t bust you out. You’d have had to spend the rest of your life on the run. But I set you up in prison, didn’t I? Always kept you well supplied with money and snout.’

‘You did what?’

‘Five hundred cigarettes a week.’

‘I never got any such thing.’

‘But you must have got them. I sent them with the press cuttings and I know you got all those, I’ve seen the archive. Very nice work you did on that. Well put together.’

‘Just hold on, hold on.’ I raised a fist and saw him flinch. ‘You sent me cigarettes? With the press cuttings?’

‘Of course I did. Are you saying that you never got them?’

‘Never.’ I shook my head.

‘And I suppose you never got the Christmas hampers?’

‘No.’

‘Oh,’ said the Doveston. ‘But you must have got the fresh salmon I sent every month.’

‘No fresh salmon.’

‘No fresh salmon.’ The Doveston now shook his head. ‘And why are you dressed like that, anyway? You’ll be telling me next that you never received the suit of clothes and the wristwatch my chauffeur delivered to the prison when he picked up the archive. And where were you when he came to pick you up? Did nobody tell you what time he was coming?’

I shook my head once again. ‘Bastards, bastards, bastards,’ I shouted. ‘Bastards, bastards, bastards.’

The Doveston made the face that says ‘poor little sod’.

‘I shall have to write a very stern note to the prison governor,’ he said.

‘A stern note? No.’ I gave my head another shake. “Why don’t you send him a nice box of candles instead?’

‘A nice box of candles.’ The Doveston winked. ‘I think that can be arranged.’

He led me upstairs to his flat. I will not bore the reader with a description. Let us just say that it was bloody posh and leave it at that.

‘Drink?’ asked the Doveston. ‘Yes,’ I replied. ‘Smoke?’ asked the Doveston. ‘Don’t mind if I do.’ ‘Canapé?’ the Doveston asked. ‘What the fig is that?’

‘Just something left over from the party I’d organized for you last night. It’s a pity you missed it, I’d set up a couple of really cracking women with lovely long legs. Gorgeous Herberts they had on them too.’

‘Herberts? What are Herberts?’

‘Bums, of course. Fifth generation Brentford rhyming slang. Herbert rhymes with sherbert. Sherbert dips, fish and chips. Chip off the block, sound as a rock. Rock’n’roll, bless my soul. Sole and turbot rhymes with Herbert. It’s simple when you have the knack.’

‘Have you seen much of Norman lately?’ I asked.

‘Once in a while. He keeps himself busy. Very into inventing he is, nowadays. Last year he invented a machine based on Einstein’s Unified Field Theory. He teleported the Great Pyramid of Cheops into Brentford Football Ground.’

‘How very interesting.’

The Doveston handed me a drink, a fag and a canapé. ‘Tell me this,’ he said. ‘If you thought I’d stitched you up, why did you continue to work on the Doveston Archive?’

I shrugged. ‘Hobby?’ I suggested.

‘Then tell me this also. Is there any chance of you taking a bath? You really pong.’

I took a bath. I shaved and I dressed in one of the Doveston’s suits. I had to clench the belt in a bit around the waist. But the Doveston said it looked trendy. His shoes also fitted and by the time

I was all togged up, I looked the business.

Emerging from the bathroom I found myself gawping at one of the most beautiful women I’d ever seen.

She was tall and slim and svelte. Her skin was clear and tanned; her legs were long and lovely. She wore one of those ‘power-dressing’ suits that were so popular in the Eighties. Short black skirt and jacket with the Dan Dare’ shoulders. She balanced herself upon five-inch stilettos and her mouth was so wide that you could easily have got your whole hand in there, even if you were wearing a boxing glove.

‘Hello,’ she said, exposing more ivory than a big-game hunter’s holdall.

‘Hello to you,’ I said and my voice echoed from the back of her throat.

‘Are you a friend of Mr Doveston?’

‘The bestest friend he ever had.’

‘You’re not Edwin, are you?’

‘That is the name he likes to call me.’

‘Well well well.’ She looked me up and down. Then up and down again. And then she looked me halfway up. ‘You’ve got a hard-on there,’ she said.

I grinned painfully. ‘I have no wish to offend you,’ I said, ‘but I don’t suppose you’re a prostitute?’

She smiled and shook her head, showering me with pheromones. ‘No,’ she said, ‘but I’m shamelessly immoral. There’s not much I won’t do for a man in a Paul Smith suit.’

I made small gagging sounds.

‘Aha,’ said the Doveston, striding up. ‘I see you’ve met Jackie.’

‘Ggggmph. Mmmmph,’ said I.

‘Jackie’s my PA.’

‘Flash Gordon, actually. But then I had been in prison.

I nodded in a manner suggestive of comprehension.

‘You don’t know what a PA is, do you?’

I shook my head in a manner suggestive of the fact that I did not.

‘Pert arse,’ said the Doveston. ‘Let’s have some drink and fags and all get acquainted.’

I grinned a bit more. ‘I’ll just pop back into the bathroom and change my underpants,’ I said.

Suavely.

I got on very well with Jackie. She showed me some tricks that she could do with canapés and I showed her a trick I’d learned in prison.

‘Don’t ever do that in front of a woman again,’ said the Doveston when he’d brought Jackie out of her faint.

Jackie took me all around London. The Doveston gave her something called a credit card and with this magical piece of plastic she bought me many things. Suits of clothes and shirts and ties and underpants and shoes. She also bought me a Filofax.

I stared helplessly at this. ‘It’s an address book,’ I said.

‘And a diary. It’s a personal organizer.’

‘Yes. And?’

‘It’s fashionable. You carry it everywhere with you and always put it on the table when you’re having lunch.’

I shook my head. ‘But it’s an address book. Only woosies have address books.’

‘There are pouches in the back for putting your credit cards in and a totally useless map of the world.’

‘Yes, but—’

‘These are the 1980s,’ said Jackie. ‘And in the 1980s there are only two types of people. Those who have Filofaxes and those who don’t. Believe me, it is far better to be a have than a have-not.’

‘But look at the size of the bloody thing.’ ‘I’m sure you’ll find somewhere to put it.’ ‘Where do you keep yours?’ Jackie pointed.

‘Oh yeah,’ I said. ‘Of course. Silly question. I’m sorry. And I did get a watch. Watches were a big number in the Eighties.

And none of that digital nonsense. Real watches with two hands and Roman numerals and clockwork motors. I still have the watch Jackie bought for me. And it still keeps perfect time. And it didn’t explode at midnight before the dawn of the year two thousand. Curiously, I have no idea whatever became of my Filofax.

‘You’ll need a car,’ said Jackie. ‘What kind would you like?’

‘A Morris Minor.’

‘A what?’

‘One like that.’ I pointed to a car across the road.

‘A Porsche.’

‘That would be the kiddie.’ And it was.

The Doveston set me up in a little flat just off the Portobello Road. ‘This area is coming up,’ he told me.

I viewed the greasy limo and the broken window panes. ‘It would perhaps do better for puffing down,’ I suggested. ‘I don’t like it here.’

‘You will not be here for long. Only until you have decorated the place.’

‘What?’

‘Once it has been decorated, we will sell it for double the price.’

‘And then what?’

‘I will move you into a larger flat in another area that is coming up. You will decorate that one and we will sell it once again for double the price.’

‘Is this strictly legal?’

‘Mark well my words, my friend,’ said the Doveston. ‘There is a boom going on in this country at the moment. It will not last for ever and many will go down when the plug is pulled. In the meantime, it is up to us, and those like us’ — he raised his Filofax, as if it were a sword — ‘to grab whatever can be grabbed. These are the 1980s, after all.’

‘And tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.’

‘Exactly. I’m not into property. Buying and selling houses holds no excitement for me. I want to make my mark on the world and I shall do that through my expertise in my chosen field of endeavour.’

‘Tobacco,’ I said.

‘God’s favourite weed.’

‘I have no wish to share another Brentstock moment.’

‘Ah, Brentstock,’ said the Doveston. ‘Those were the days, my friend.’

‘They bloody weren’t. Well, some of them were. But do you know what happened to me when I smoked that stuff of yours?’

‘You talked to the trees.’

‘More than that. I saw the future.’

‘All of the future?’

‘Not all. Although it seemed like all at the time. I saw glimpses. It’s like déjà vu now. I get that all the time and sometimes I know when something bad is going to happen. But I can’t do anything about it. It’s pretty horrible. You did that to me.

The Doveston went over to the tiny window and peered out through the broken pane. Turning back towards me he said, ‘I am truly sorry for what happened to you at Brentstock. It was all a terrible mistake on my part. I worked from Uncle Jon Peru’s notes and I thought that the genetic modifications I’d made to the tobacco would only help it to grow in the English climate. I had no idea the cigarettes would have the effect they did. I’ve learned a great deal more about that drug since then and I will tell you all about it when the time is right. But for now I can only ask that you accept my apologies for the awful wrong that I’ve done you and ask that you don’t ever speak of these things to other people. You can never be certain just who is who.’

‘Who is who?’

‘I am followed,’ said the Doveston. ‘They follow me everywhere. They watch my every move and they make their reports. They know I’m on to them and that makes them all the more dangerous.

‘This wouldn’t be the secret police again, would it?’

‘Oh yes,’ said the Doveston, grave, in the face. ‘Uncle Jon Peru Joans knew exacdy what he was talking about. You experienced the effects of the drug. You know it’s

‘Yes, but all that secret police stuff. I remember you saying that they would be in the crowd at Brentstock. But I thought you were only winding me up.’

‘They were there and they’re out there now. At some time in the future, when I consider it safe, I will show you my laboratory. You will see then how the Great Work is progressing.’

‘The Great Work? Uncle Jon Peru’s Great Work?’

‘The very same. But we shall speak of these things at some other time. I don’t want to keep you talking now.

‘You don’t?’

‘I don’t. You’ve got decorating to do. You’ll find all the stuff in the kitchen along with the plans for which walls you have to knock down and how to plumb in the dishwasher. Try and get it all done by next week, because I think I’ve got a buyer lined up.’

‘You what?’

But the Doveston said no more.

He turned on his designer heel and, like Elvis, left the building. He did pause briefly at the door to offer me a smile and a wave, before he went.

And it was then I saw it.

That look in his eyes.

The look that Uncle Jon Peru had had in his.

That look that the monkey in the Mondo movie had.

And I suppose it was at that very moment that I realized, for the first time ever, just how absolutely mad the Doveston was.

But I wouldn’t let it spoil our friendship. After all, I was on a roll here. I was in the money. I had a Paul Smith suit, a Piaget watch, a Porsche and a personal organizer.

All of these began with a P.

I really should have noticed that...