Cowboys and Dinosaurs - Chapter 3

3. The Lost Treasure of Cap'n Jim

The flat had no refrigerator. It was therefore necessary, in the few days between now and getting a job, to subsist on half pints of milk, supermarket sandwiches, and pepperami. Steve suspected he was not getting enough of his daily recommended allowance of vitamins, minerals, fibre, omega three, polyunsaturates, Boswelox, and friendly bacteria.

There was also no washing machine. It was necessary to attend the local branch of Paupers Anonymous, also known as the launderette. Here it was possible to meet a broad spectrum of humanity, all of whom were publicly declaring, by walking through the doors, Hello world! I am so dirt broke I cannot afford a washing machine. Once, when Steve had been very, very small, launderettes had been more common. Now, in a world where the average household had a bread maker, three different makes of foot spa, and an automatic cappuccino machine, they were the laundry equivalent of soup kitchens. They made him feel at home.

Half the inhabitants of the launderette, at any one time, would be Somalians, coffee-coloured, elegantly giraffe-necked, assegai-thin women with aristocratic noses and cheekbones supermodels would pay plastic surgeons for. Incapable of speaking English, they would gabble to one another in Somali, or Kikuyu, or Swahili, or Arabic, or whatever language it was Somali ladies spoke. Steve, suspecting solipsistically that they were discussing the no doubt inadequate size of his tiny white penis, attempted to lose himself in his copy of WHAT CARAVAN MONTHLY, the only non-soap-related title he'd been able to find in the pile by the dryers. One of the Somalians - frighteningly tall, skeletally thin - was dressed bizarrely, like a ballet dancer dragged through a knicker factory. Simultaneously supporting a skirt, leggings and legwarmers, she was pushing a mop around behind the dryers. The Somali customers were ignoring her; Steve imagined she must be some sort of Moslem untouchable. Possibly her tribe had committed some foul anti-islamic sin at some time in the past, perhaps involving running into a mosque and ordering pints with pork scratchings all round.

The other inhabitants of the launderette were white - the odd tracksuited denizen of the nearby sink estate and the occasional Pole, but mainly twentysomething students and teenage school leavers. Steve, twentysomething, squirmed in embarrassment at having to sit with girls who cared what position boy band singles were occupying in the charts, or whose cellulite had just been photographed on the beach. He prayed no-one would attempt to start a conversation with him and belittle his scanty knowledge of the oeuvre of Justin Timberlake.

The council estaters seemed to come into the launderette only to talk to their womenfolk, who worked there. This made sense; the council provided all their worldly needs save blow and crystal meth, after all. Eastern Europeans only ever came in once - a great shame, as their women were heartbreakingly beautiful. The Kashubian beauty who came into the washeteria one week would drive past in a customized BMW with her gold-chain-plastered boyfriend the next. The Poles had come here to make money, and they had come with skills Steve did not have.

He had given up on the job at Anne Sommers over a week ago. He had not passed Botham in the hall; he suspected the man was sneaking out at odd hours deliberately to avoid him.

In the March 1998 edition of WHAT CARAVAN MONTHLY, he learned that the new Severndale Lightning was surprisingly roomy for a nominal two-bedder, but that the length of its towbar made it prone to jack-knifing. It also weaved alarmingly at speed. The Cholmondley Cheetah, meanwhile, though possessed of eye-catching sexy lines, was cramped, and its toilet did not pass what the magazine described ominously as the Maximum Curry Throughput Test. The Vinley Velociraptor possessed good straight-line speed, but lost it on the corners, and its racing stripe was just so Eighties.

The door to the cold street outside jangled as a customer entered. The man was black, dressed in the pure white baker's costume Moslems seemed to feel was appropriate when talking to God. He had the same cheekbones and nose as the Somali ladies, and it was them who he first approached, yelling and screaming at them with excited arm movements. Steve, who had seen many such men hacking helpless American helicopter pilots to bits with machetes in Hollywood movies, became even more engrossed in the septic tank capacity of the Farringdon Firestreak.

The Somali women shrank from their man in fear. Their man threw his hands in the air in despair. Evidently the women had done something very, very bad.

Then the man noticed the woman with the mop and began to shout at her in turn. Steve guessed from his frantic gesticulation that he was drawing her attention to the fact that her face was uncovered and she was daring to show the world that she had legs. Possibly he imagined she had previously been unaware of this. He managed about two sentences of Foreign before the woman changed her grip slightly on the mop and skewered him in the solar plexus with it like a high-powered snooker cue.

He made a series of tiny puffs like a slow puncture deflating, and fell to his knees. His face went white as a cue ball; his mouth opened and closed to suck in air, but his chest was paralyzed. Eventually he collapsed onto all fours, forehead bowed to the lino as if supplicating God.

The woman continued to mop the floor without taking a further glance at him. The man eventually worked himself up to a crabbed half-crouch and scuttled sidelong out of the door holding his innards.

The Somali women looked on, no more able to breathe than their man had been. Through the launderette's large plate glass windows, Steve saw the man attempting frantically to lever a brick out of a nearby wall.

"Erm", he said aloud. The floor mopper looked up. The man looked up at her, realized his activities had been seen, and redoubled his efforts to free the brick. The mopper squeezed out her mop, took up a heavy window hook leaning against the wall, and padded out of the launderette into the street.

The man had by now succeeded in freeing the brick, and faced her down across the street. She raised the window hook into a throwing position. He, too, held his brick ready to throw.

After fifteen seconds or so, it became evident that the man's arm was tiring. Eventually, scowling contemptuously, he lowered the brick towards the ground, then threw it, underarm like a girl, evidently hoping to catch her by surprise.

She flicked out her wrist and caught it. His eyes rolled in his head with the purest essence of despair. Then, she whirled and flew the window hook with every ounce of effort that could be wrung out of her. He cringed rather than dodging; it struck him hard in the arm and rebounded onto the tarmac. She threw the brick next, hitting him in the hand, then seized up the window hook again and began to beat him with it. He wailed like a child and retreated on his legs and one arm, holding his free arm over his head.

She held her window hook high in the air and let out a hideous ululation of victory, shaking her weapon. Then she turned and walked back into the shop, and began mopping the floor again.

One of the Somali women leaned over to her and solicited her attention politely in Africanese. The floor mopper looked up.

"It ain't no use you going on like that", she said. "Do I look like a bleeding foreigner?"

Steve buried his head in WHAT CARAVAN. Apparently a custom one-man caravette had been built specifically for towing behind Honda Gold Wing motorcycles. It was surprisingly roomy.

***

"So you got your dole, then."

Steve sighed. "Eventually. They wanted to know how much money I had in my bank account, how many beds my flat had, whether I had children who weren't yet of age who were earning income from paper rounds or street begging, and whether I was paid in any currency not commonly regarded as currency, viz. bobbins, favours, casino chips or promissory notes. And the interviewer kept interrupting me to shout 'ARE YOU COHABITING'.

"Subtle", said Gonoroid.

Steve was sitting facing Gonoroid over the knife-scored surface of a table in their local. WOG'S OUT had been cut into the surface, along with PAKI'S OUT, QUEER'S OUT, and a more recent addition, POLE'S OUT. Gonoroid was surreptitiously adding PINK'S IN with a craft knife.

"Thanks for the alleged beer", said Steve, staring at it suspiciously.

"Don't mention it. How's the bank balance?"

"Going down fast. I went for another two interviews today. Temporary work. They kept me in their office for two bloody hours filling in forms on my sexual orientation and doing data entry tests."

"And?"

"They said they had an immediate vacancy for a toilet cleaner."

"You're lucky there", said Gonoroid, sipping his own half of fizzy piss. "Usually the Somalians snap those up."

"Apparently the Somalian guy who was doing it had his work permit revoked. He wasn't attending Britishness classes regularly enough."

"Do you need to know how to be British to clean toilets?"

"Pretty much. All our doctors are Indian, our nurses Zimbabwean, our prostitutes Russian, our plumbers Polish. There's precious few jobs left for a Briton that don't involve the arse/sewer interface."

The local was nondescript, the furniture dilapidated. Horse brasses had been nailed half-heartedly round the walls. Water rings covered every table surface like the sucker marks of some cephalopod leviathan. There was a picture of dear little doggies playing poker. There was a thoroughly inadequate Wheeloplenty X70 single-payline one-nudge bandit in the corner. Steve had been informed by Mr. Botham that the X70's weakness was an insufficiently sensitive TILT switch. This particular X70 bore a garish picture of huge-bosomed star maidens being improbably-menaced by a bipedal alligator with a hard-on. A mountainously-muscled space trooper was rushing to the rescue with what might, at the angle it had been drawn, have been a Light Sabre of some stripe, or might just have been another hard-on. The game was entitled THEY WANT OUR WOMEN.

"How's things in Music?" said Steve.

"Shite", said Gonoroid. "All the little bastards want to do is play guitar. Violins aren't cool. None of the instruments I teach are cool."

"Saxophones are cool."

"All they want to play on the saxophone is Theme From The Pink Panther. Candy Dulfer will not play Theme From The Pink Panther."

"Who's Candy Dulfer?"

"The coolest saxophonist in the world."

"Not so", said Steve. "The coolest saxophonist in the world is internationally acknowledged to be Zoot out of the Muppets."

"Steve, Zoot isn't real. He has a man's fist up him."

"Well, you're real, and -"

"Stop that right there, mister."

A shambling mass of string vest and gravy stains approached the table to gather dead glasses.

"Hello Dave."

The shambling mass nodded. "Brevet Sub-Commander."

"Dave is the only person who ever gets my rank right", glowed Gonoroid. "This is an exact copy of the uniform worn by Cadet Breitling during his brief battlefield commission in TOSS 17, The Mancunian Menace."

"I remember that", said Steve. "He told U.L.T.R.A. 1, the ship's computer, to stop bothering him, and the computer failed to mention the ship was under attack by a Mancunian Armada."

"The Mancunians were scary", said Dave. "I hid in plain sight. My family couldn't afford a sofa."

"They were men wearing orange stocking masks", scoffed Steve. "I've had scoutmasters who were scarier."

Gonoroid shuddered. "We've all had scoutmasters who were scarier. Mine had based his entire life on pirate movies. He insisted we call him Cap'n Jim. He'd turn up to scout meetings in an eyepatch and tell us we all had to find his buried treasure. I've often wondered if it warped my early development in some way."

Steve's eyes widened at the thought of the possibilities.

"Where was his buried treasure?"

"In a small field outside Milton Keynes, normally", said Gonoroid. "Usually under the same tree. Eventually it got so we'd just go to the tree and dig up the treasure. It was the same treasure every time, some old silver spoons that belonged to his mother. In the end he was sectioned and found to have a brain tumour. He escaped from St. Andrew's in Northampton and was recaptured digging under the tree, singing lusty sea shanties. He died on his way back to the loony bin. It was terribly sad."

He took a draw on his half. He had ordered a half because Steve had insisted on one.

"This is Dave", said Gonoroid. "Dave is God."

Dave nodded politely, as befitted a deity.

"You're a god?" said Steve.

"I am God", said Dave. "The original and best. The Lord of Hosts, the Prince of Peace. And I feel it only fair to warn you that I am a jealous God and will abide no other gods beside Me."

"Collecting glasses", said Steve, "in a pub in Crouch End."

"No-one of you can predict where you will meet God", said Dave. "Yea, I walk among you in the humblest of guises to test your faith."

"Wouldn't coming right out and telling us you're God tend to invalidate the disguise?" said Steve. He became suddenly, uncomfortably aware that the entire bar had gone silent, and that faces were fixed on him. Someone was confronting the house lunatic.

"I move in mysterious ways", explained Dave.

There was applause from the back of the room; a customer's voice yelled "GO DAVE". Steve sat and tried desperately to think. The entire Bible, with all its rich streams of messianic bullshit, had vanished from his memory.

"What about the appendix?" said Steve suddenly, fixing Dave with a finger.

"What about the appendix?" said Gonoroid, nonplussed.

"You are going to say", said Dave, perfectly calm, "that the appendix has no function. How can it have been created deliberately? It must have evolved by chance."

An 'Ooooooo' swept the audience. There was more polite applause. The mere mortal was doing well.

"Exactly!" said Steve, basking in a warm alcoholic glow of perceived victory. "Exactly!"

"The appendix's function has not yet been made manifest", said Dave. "When humanity is resurrected, its function will become clear. If an autopsy were to be performed on an angel - which I would never allow to happen - it would be seen that the appendix has metamorphosed, like the stubby wings of a caterpillar, into a new and marvellous organ with properties you mortals can only guess at."

Worshipful applause ensued, far louder than Steve's had been. Steve flapped his hand in annoyance. "BUT! BUT! BUT!" The applause continued, however, and only when Dave raised a single horny-nailed finger did it die down.

"Yes?" said Dave.

Steve inhaled with immense drunken care. "But does that mean", said Steve, "that I won't go to Heaven if I've had my appendix out? Because, because", he added victoriously, "I have."

"No it does not. The human body, no matter how it suffered in life, will be gathered together and made whole again at the Last Trump."

"The last what?"

"Trump. And you are about to make a tedious fart joke, which I shall suffer with divine patience."

Steve, who had indeed been opening his mouth, shut it.

Then, he giggled. The audience giggled with him. Or, more probably, at him.

"You've got to admit", he said, "it does sound like, like the Last Fart."

Dave bore Steve's sense of humour stoically.

"There will be farting in the hereafter", he said. "Farting is a natural and beautiful action of the human body as created by God. Angels fart incessantly. As a matter of fact, they fart glorious hosannas to My name."

A glorious hosanna sounded from the audience.

"So you're telling me" said Steve, "that the appendix metamorphoses into a set of vocal cords for your arse?"

Dave bent close to Steve's ear and whispered deafeningly: "IF THAT BE TRUE, YOU HAVE NO NEED OF AN APPENDIX, MY SON."

The pub erupted in uproar. It was clear that Steve had been ignominiously defeated. Despite this, regulars filed past and clapped Steve on the shoulder.

"Good try", said one of them.

"Lasted longer than Rowan Williams", said another.

"That wasn't fair", complained Steve.

"Dave hasn't lost an argument as to the actuality of his divinity yet", said Gonoroid. "Against priests, vicars, Doctors of Theology, archbishops, rabbis, yogis, and four star generals of the Salvation Army."

"We had that Richard Dawkins in here once", said Dave.

"How can he be God?" grumbled Steve. "Not even bloody omnipresent, for crying out loud."

"He doesn't know what he's saying, Dave", said Gonoroid. "The evil drink you created for your own doubtless very good reasons clouds his mind."

"I know what you did in bed this morning", said Dave. "For I was there."

Steve stared boggle-eyed at the barman and leaned over to confide in Gonoroid.

"Truly", he said, "this man is the Son of God."

Then he added:

"Let's get two bits of wood, nail them together, and -"

"Let's get you home", said Gonoroid firmly, hoisting Steve to his feet by his elbow with surprising gay strength.

***

The outside air was like a bucket of cold water, facially-applied.

"He knew what I did in bed this morning", said Steve.

"Wise are the ways of Dave", intoned Gonoroid reverentially.

"Granted, I always do the same thing in bed every morning, but -"

"So do all men", said Gonoroid. "All single men, anyway."

Steve, transfixed in sudden fascination, grabbed Gonoroid's uniform epaulette.

"You masturbate? Gay men masturbate?"

Gonoroid steered a thin line between stopping Steve from falling over and stooping to Bad Touching. "Oh, yes. Often in formation."

"How can that be? In order to masturbate, you have to think dirty about women."

Gonoroid staggered under Steve's lurching weight. "Ah, well, you see, we think about men."

"Do you? You PERVERTS."

Gonoroid kicked the front door open, and the two crabbed down the hallway using the walls, floor and stairs for support. Then Gonoroid's Miss Selfridge storecard found Steve's door, and Steve remembered falling forward into the flat, then blackness.