The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived (2 page)

‘Harken
unto me,’ the youth continued, ‘Ninnghizhidda, lak Sakkak, Laibach, Napalm
Death and Celtic Frost. Ye ghids and bogiebeasts, come serve I that standith in
the five-pointed star. Deliver unto me what I request. Come bring me wings!’

Norman
had decided upon the direct approach. Keep things sharp, crisp, to the point.
Summon up the deep, dark denizens from out the pit-that-hath-no-bottom. Have
them cough up the goods. Then back with them to from whence they came. And
quick. It was all for the best.

‘I
summons you and constrain you by the powers of Lord Cthulhu, who is not dead
but only getting his head down for a bit of shut eye. Obey my commands.
Manifest. Give me Wings, Wings, Wings! I want them and I want them now. All I
want is Wings!’

If
there was a distinct (a very distinct) air of blasphemy about all this, then
there was also the feeling that some callous spirit, with an eye for the
obvious, might any moment appear before Norman, bearing a copy of Paul
McCartney’s latest album in its scaly paw.

‘Wings!’
impeached Norman. ‘I command you, bring me Wings!’

It was
no laughing matter really (especially the Paul McCartney gag). It was a very
bad idea doing this. The birds that had been making free with the dawn chorus
had gone very quiet indeed. And there was a definite chill in the air.

But
Norman had started and he meant to finish. Chris had underlined for him a
certain Latin incantation, which was known as
The Great Calling.
And the
young magician in the Y-fronts bawled it out at the top of his voice, with a
bit of the old ‘What do we want? Wings! When do we want ‘em? Now!’ thrown in
for good measure, wherever he felt it appropriate.

And
then suddenly Norman stopped.

Something
was stirring. Something large. Norman couldn’t see it, but somehow he could
sense its approach.

And
then he heard it.

From
far away upon that misty morn, there came a distant-flapping sound, which
sounded, for all the world, like nothing less than the sound of a distant
flapping.

Norman
got a cold sweat on to go with his damp behind. He strained his eyes into the
rising mists. The sun, now half awake, glistened upon the hedgerows and dazzled
him.

He gave
his ears a strain also. The flapping sound grew louder. Something was on the
approach. Something monstrous.

Great
wings were beating on the morning air. Great wings like those of The Giant
Condom itself.

‘Yes!’
screamed Norman, most pleased to get such a swift return upon such a small
Satanic outlay. ‘I’m here. My Wings. My Wings. My Wings.’

It was
overhead. It was right overhead. It had come straight to him. This was it.

‘My
Wings!’

There
was a sharp, snapping sound; a moment’s silence; a scream from on high. The cry
of a great bird? Not as such.

Another
scream and then down though the mist, at the speed of one hundred and eighty
feet per second, came a cascade of wire, wood, wax, pegs, feathers— And Norman
the elder.

‘Look
out below,’ went this unhappiest of men. ‘Test-flight systems failure.
Aaaaaaaagh!’

‘Oh my
God!’ Norman the younger struggled to make his escape. But his left toe had
somehow become intimately entangled in the crotch of his Y-fronts.

So he
couldn’t.

In the
few seconds that remained to him on this plane of existence, young Norman had
just enough time to ponder on the folly of the particular method he’d chosen to
go about solving the man-powered flight problem. But not quite enough to
apologize to God.

Shame
really.

The sun, now fully risen,
looked down upon the drying grass of Druid’s Tor and viewed the broken wreckage
that had once been Norman and his dad.

The old
sun smiled, for, after all, it had seen this Icarus sort of stuff before and
would probably come up to see it again. Sometime.

A
little later a party of librarians came up to hold an initiation ceremony and
found the sorry remains of the two erstwhile airmen. They too mused upon man’s
folly.

One, by
the name of Chris, who wore the robes of Initiate Novice Zero Grade, pushed
aside his corkscrew hair and raised his eyes towards the heavens as if
searching for a sign.

‘Surely’,
he said, ‘that would be a Roman Catholic priest I see floating up there.’

2

The most amazing man who
ever lived lay soaking in his bath.

Those
who personally attended to the most amazing man, who primped and pampered his
person, plumped up his pillows and plucked his nasal hairs, knelt about the
polished marble bath-tub in attitudes of supplication and readiness.

Theirs
was to
do.
His was only to
be.

Below,
in the grand reception hall, its pink walls made gay with a priceless
collection of Canalettos, Caravaggios, Carsons, Klees and Koons, servants in
wigs of burnished golden wire and tasselled leotards greeted the visiting heads
of state, the captains of industry, the archbishops, press barons, poets and
princes.

Daily
they came, these great folk, to seek the most amazing man, that he might favour
them with his advice, forward a solution to some world crisis or another, bless
or father children. Offer them a word. Or just a simple gesture.

In the
most amazing man’s nympharium, his concubines lounged upon silken cushions,
sucking sherbet lemons and soaking their Lotus-feet in bowls of baby oil. Some
read copies of
Hello!
magazine. Others did not.

In the
kitchen, Dave the griddle chef turned a spam fritter in the frying-pan and whistled
a Celtic Frost number.
[2]

In a
distant room, the most amazing man’s private secretary took the morning’s
telepathic dictation from her master and clattered away on the typewriter.

All was
peace and harmony, the way that all should be. With half-closed eyes and belly
breaking surface, the most amazing man broadcast in thoughts the words, And
though I am naturally touched that you have named the flagship of your new cruise
line after me, I regret that I shall not be able to swing the old bottle of
Bol’, as I will be attending the world premier of my new movie. Yours, et
cetera, et cetera.

‘Kindly
read that back to me, Mavis, then be so good as to pop over to the kitchen and
tell Dave he’s whistling that Celtic Frost number in the wrong key. Then you
may take the rest of the day off.’

In the
distant room, Mavis plucked the sheet of Conqueror from the Remington and read
from it aloud. ‘Thank you, master.’ Then she said, ‘You are, as ever, the nice
one.’

‘I am
indeed.’ The day’s mail taken care of, the most amazing man sank lower into his
bath water and sought to compose the final mathematical equation needed to
complete his formula for the universal panacea and elixir of life.

And he
would have had it too, if it hadn’t been for the violent pounding upon his
bedsit door and the howls of complaint from his landlady.

And had
he not been the most amazing man who ever lived, it is probable that he would
have awoken to find, that as in the very worst of comedy traditions, his
amazingness was nothing more than a dream and he was very much less than
amazing.

‘Get
out of that bed, you lazy sod, or I’ll have my husband Cyril come and break
down the door!’

The
most amazing man who ever lived awoke with a start. To find himself, once more
in the swank West London office of his publisher.

‘My
sincerest apologies,’ he said to this body. ‘I think I must have dozed off.’

‘No
need to apologize.’ The publisher spoke though gritted teeth. ‘No need at all.’

‘On the
contrary, my dear fellow. I momentarily deprived you of my scintillating
conversation. Quite unforgivable on my part.’

‘Quite.’
The publisher leaned back in his big, red-leather publisher’s chair and puffed
on a small cheroot. ‘You were perhaps about to scintillate me with an
explanation regarding the overdue delivery of your manuscript.’

The
most amazing man shook his head. ‘On the contrary once again.

I
merely dropped in to give you my monthly expense chitty and pick up a cheque.
And to bring untold joy to you, by my simply being here, of course.

‘Of
course.’ The publisher viewed the bringer of absolutely no joy whatsoever, who
dwelt hugely in the guest chair beyond his big, red-leather-topped publisher’s
desk. How, he asked himself, did he let this man persuade him to go on forking
out great chunks of the firm’s profits each month, while he worked upon his
autobiography? His auto
hagiography?

A work
entitled
The Most Amazing Man Who Ever Lived.
A work of which, as yet,
the publisher had not seen a solitary page.

Who
was
this man?

What
was he?

He was
certainly
somebody.
His physical presence alone marked him far from the
madding crowd. He was large in every sense of the word: well over six feet tall
and generously proportioned around and all about. He swelled from within a
three-piece green plus-fours suit of handloomed Bolskine tweed. A red silk
cravat was secured at his massive throat by a diamond pin. Exotic rings
sheathed most of his prodigious fingers. A watch chain, hung with amulets and
crystals, adorned his straining waistcoat.

His
head was a great shaven dome. His face all beetling brows and jostling jowls.
His nose was a hawk’s beak. His mouth wore a merry grin.

But it
was the eyes that had it. Black with white pupils they were. You didn’t see
eyes like that every day of the week. And the way those eyes looked at you. As
if focusing not upon
your
eyes, but at some point near to the back of
your head. As if they could see right into you. Most disconcerting that.

And he
was doing it right now.

The
publisher flicked ash from his cheroot towards the ashbowl and missed. That was
what he looked like, this man.

But who
was
he?

The
stories regarding him were legion. He had travelled everywhere, met everybody
and done everything. Sometimes done it twice. He had crossed the Sahara desert
on a unicycle to win a bet with Humphrey Bogart and swum around Cape Horn
because President Truman had told him it couldn’t be done. Mother Teresa
referred to him as ‘a sexpot’ and his own grandmother gave him the credit for
teaching her how to suck eggs.

He’d
wowed them at Woodstock, when he upstaged Jimi Hendrix with a ukulele solo and
had twice won the Summerslam at Wembley. The beasts called him brother and the
brothers called him bro’. And in Fiji he was worshipped as a god.

His
name was well known to the publisher, who had written it in the
pay
section
of far too many cheques.

It was
Hugo Artemis Solon Saturnicus Reginald Arthur Rune.

And he
had fallen asleep once more.

‘It
will not do!’ The publisher brought his fist hard down upon the red-leather top
of his red-leather-topped publisher’s desk, upending the ashbowl and jangling
the telephones.

The
Tallahassee Tap Dance Champion of 1934 awoke once more and enquired as to
whether his cheque had been made out.

‘There
will be no cheque until I see words on a page. Your words.’

‘I have
many words,’ said Hugo Rune. ‘All of them profound and lots running to several
syllables a piece.’

‘I want
the completed manuscript by the end of the week. There will be no more cheques
until I receive it.’

‘I’ll
take cash then,’ said the man who shot the man who shot Liberty Valance.

‘You
will take yourself off to your typewriter. And
now!’
The publisher rose
from his big, red-leather publisher’s chair, pointing the direction to the
door.

‘Sit
down. Sit down.’ Hugo Rune fluttered his porcine pinkies and the publisher sat
down. The publisher jumped up again. ‘I will not sit down,’ said he.

Rune
cocked his head upon one side and perused the publisher. He observed a slim
fellow, elegantly dressed in white cotton shirt, club tie, black blazer and
grey flannels. Middle forties, neatly featured, own hair and teeth.
Well-developed cerebellum.

The
publisher’s name was Andrew Jackson-Five. A name well known to Rune, who had
seen it signed at the bottom of far too few cheques for his personal liking.
And a name that the man who once
hopped
the four-minute mile could read
clearly on the tag inside the publisher’s shirt collar.

Rune
also noticed the increased motor-neuron activity in the publisher’s
hypothalamus, indicating his desire to take an early lunch.

‘I know
a nearby eating house’, said Rune, ‘that serves a most affable
boeuf en
croute,
fried chicken livers with grilled pineapple, bread-and-butter
pudding and banana custard. Also the griddle chef knocks out some home-brewed
vodka that could strip the tiles off the nose cone of a Saturn Five. Shall we
dine?’