The Antipope

2

Archroy had rented the section of allotment land nearest to the viaduct ever since it had been bequeathed to him five years before by a half-forgotten uncle. Each night during the season he would come from his shift at the wiper works and sit in the doorway of his hut smoking his pipe and musing about the doings of the day. Omally owned two adjacent strips, having won one of them from Peg’s husband at the paper shop, and old Pete had a further one.

Over in the corner was the untouched plot that had once belonged to Raymond, who in a previous episode had been snatched away into outer space by the invisible star creatures from Alpha Centauri. You could see a lot of life on an allotment.

This particular warm spring evening Archroy lazed upon an orange box smoking the blend of his taste and thinking that the world would be a better place if there was a bounty put upon the heads of gypsy car-dealers. Not that he had anything against them in general, but in particular he was very resentful. Archroy was not only the tenant of an allotment, he was also a man of marriage. Archroy’s marriage was a nebulous affair, he working day shifts and his wife working nights. Their paths rarely crossed. Omally thought this was the ideal state of wedded bliss and prayed for a woman who might wed him then take a job overseas.

Archroy accepted the acclaim of his fellows for choosing so wisely, but privately he was ill at ease. Certainly he saw little of his wife, but of her workings and machinations the catalogue was endless. Archroy kept coming home to find new furniture and carpets; one day he stuck his head up in the roof and discovered that his loft had been insulated. Strangely, Archroy was never asked by his wife to contribute to any of these extravagant ventures. Possibly because he rarely saw the woman, but mainly he suspected, because an alien hand was at work in his stuccoed semi-detached. He suspected that his wife had a lover, in fact not one lover but many. Archroy had an inkling that his wife was putting it about a bit.

He had found five minutes one evening just as they were changing shifts to interview his suspect spouse. Archroy had noticed that his old Morris Minor, which his wife described as “an eyesore”, was no longer upon its blocks in the garage but seemed to have cried “horse and hattock” and been carried away by the fairies.

“Woman,” he addressed his wife, for he had quite forgotten her name, “woman, where is my car?”

“Gone,” said she, straightening her headscarf in the mock rococo hall mirror. “I have sold your car and if you will pardon me saying so I have made a handsome profit.”

Archroy stiffened in his shirtsleeves. “But I was working on that car, it needed but an engine and a few wheels and I would have had it working!”

“A truck came and took it away,” said his wife.

Archroy pulled at his hair. “Where’s my car gone to, who took it?”

“It was a gypsy,” said his wife.

“A gypsy, you part with my priceless car to a damned gyppo?”

“I got a good price.”

Archroy blew tobacco smoke down his nose and made himself cough.

“It’s on the mantelpiece in a brown envelope,” said his wife, smearing gaudy red lipstick about her upper lip.

Archroy tore into the front room and tore open the envelope. Pouring the contents into his hand he found five brown beans. “What? What?” Archroy began to foam at the mouth. “Beans?”

“He assured me that they were magic beans,” his wife said, slamming the door behind her.

Thus it was that Archroy sat this particular evening in the doorway of his allotment shed, bewailing his lot and cursing not only car dealers but untrue wives and all those born of romany extraction. “Magic beans,” he grimaced as he turned the offenders over in his palm. “Magic bloody beans, I’ll bet he gave her more than just magic bloody beans.”

The 6.20 steamed over the viaduct and told Archroy that now would be as good a time as ever to repair to the Swan to see what the lads were up to. He was about to pocket his magic beans and rise from his orange-box when a stark black shadow fell upon him and sent an involuntary shudder up the wee lad’s back.

“Might I have a look at those beans you have there mister?” The voice came from a disreputable tramp of dreadful aspect and sorry footwear. “Sorry, did I startle you?” asked the creature with what seemed to be a voice of genuine concern. “It’s a bad habit of mine, I really must control it.”

“What do you want here?” snarled Archroy, outraged at this trespass upon his thoughts and land.

“About the beans?” the tramp said.

Archroy pocketed his beans. “Clear off!” he said, climbing to his feet. The tramp raised his right hand and made a strange gesture. Archroy slumped back on to his orange-box, suddenly weak at the knees.

“Those beans,” said the tramp. Archroy felt about in his pocket and handed the tramp the five magic beans.

“Ah.” The tramp held one between thumb and forefinger. “As I thought, most interesting. You say that your wife received them in payment for your old Morris Minor?”

Archroy didn’t remember saying anything of the kind but he nodded bleakly.

“They are beans of great singularity,” said the tramp. “I have seen beans and I have seen beans.” He returned the articles to Archroy’s still-extended hand. “These are beans indeed!”

“But, magic?” said Archroy.

The tramp stroked the stubble of his chin with an ill-washed knuckle. “Ah,” he said, “magic is it? Well that is a question. Let us say that they have certain outré qualities.”

“Oh,” said Archroy. He felt a little better about the beans now, the loss of his trusty Morris Minor seemed less important than possessing something with outré qualities, whatever outré might mean. “What are you doing on my allotment?” Archroy asked in a polite tone.

The tramp described a runic symbol in the dust at Archroy’s feet with the toecap of his sorry right shoe. “You might say that I am here to meet someone,” he said, “and there again you might not, if you were to say here is a man upon a mission you would be correct, but also at the same time you would be mistaken. There is much about my presence here that is anomalous, much that is straightforward, much that…”

“I must be on my way now,” said Archroy, attempting to rise and feeling at his knees. They offered him no support. “I am incapacitated,” he announced.

“… Much that will be known, much that will remain unexplained,” continued the tramp.

Archroy wondered if he had eaten something untoward, toadstools in his hotpot, or slug pellets in his thermos flask. He had read of strange distillations from the Amazon which administered upon the head of a pin could paralyse a bull elephant. There were also forms of nerve gas that might find their way into the sucking section of a fellow’s briar.

The tramp meanwhile had ceased speaking. Now he stared about the allotment in an interested fashion. “And you say that Omally won one of those plots from Peg’s husband at the paper shop?”

Archroy was certain he had not. “The one over in the corner with the chimney,” he said. “That one there is the property of old Pete, it has been in his family for three generations and he has made an arrangement with the council to be buried there upon his demise. Blot the Schoolkeeper runs the one to the west backing on to the girls’ school, it is better not to ask what goes on in his shed.”

Archroy rose to point out the plot but to his amazement discovered that the old tramp had gone. “Well I never,” said Archroy, crossing himself, “well I never did.”