Sprout Mask Replica by Robert Rankin Read Free Book Online Page A

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