"Robert Rankin - Knees Up Mother Earth" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

They were certainly not the rooms of the idle rich, although rumour did
hold in the borough that the eccentric millionaire Howard Hughes had once
occupied them. But then local rumour also held that Pocahontas had once
roomed at The Flying Swan and that Karl Marx had regularly taken tea at The
Plume Cafщ around the corner.
And as rumour is generally based upon fact, and facts are undeniably true,
there seems no reason to doubt these rumours.
Jim did not enjoy living the way he did. His unfailing cheerfulness belied
this fact, but fact indeed it was. However, Jim held to the philosophy that
there can be no beauty without ugliness, no enjoyment of pleasure without the
experience of pain and no appreciation of the joys that wealth can bring
without having first suffered the miseries of poverty.
And as it was Jim's intention н indeed, the very key that wound the very
clockwork motor that powered his very being (verily) н that he should shortly
become rich, the squalor of his rooms afforded him a certain cerebral
satisfaction.
And how would it be that Jim might achieve his ambition? Why, through
the science of betting, of course. For James Arbuthnot Pooley was a dedicated
Man of the Turf. What pennies Jim managed to acquire, he invested, day upon
day upon day, in his quest for wealth through the medium of the Six-Horse
Super-Yankee Accumulator Bet.
The Punter's Dream.
This particular dream had only once, as betting history records, been
brought to waking reality. And to a Brentford man it had been, one Steven
Montague Dean, son of Cyrus Garstang Dean, supplier of winged heels to the
classically inspired gentry. The year was 1928, coincidentally the year that
Brentford United had won the FA Cup for the second time. And whilst Jack
Lane was being carried shoulder high through the flower-bedecked streets of
the borough, Steven Montague Dean had stolen silently away with his
winnings, leaving the family firm to flounder. And was never seen again.
Local rumour held that Mr Dean had spent his winnings purchasing a
kingdom somewhere in Afghanistan, where he installed himself in a palace of
ivory and spent the rest of his life in the company of concubines.
Jim Pooley had a similar future all mapped out for himself.
Upon Jim's bedroom mantelpiece there stood a lone, framed photograph.
It was of Steven Montague Dean, clipped from a 1920s copy of the Brentford
Mercury that Jim had come across in the Memorial Library.
A single candle oft-times burned before this photograph.

Pooley had by now arisen from his bed. He had shaved and bathed, abulted,
suited and booted, and now he set off for the day in search of his fortune. His
rooms were in Moby Dick Terrace and, following the course taken by
Mahatma Campbell two hours previously, Jim marched purposefully up the
terrace, turning left at the Ealing Road and passing Bob the Bookie's.
Jim would presently return to Bob the Bookie's.
Jim now entered Peg's Paper Shop.
"Watchamate, Norman," said Jim, a-greeting the shopkeeper.
"Watchamate, Jim," Norman replied.
"Spring cleaning?" Jim asked.
Norman sighed. Deeply. "Tell me, what do you see?" he asked.