"Robert Rankin - Snuff Fiction" - читать интересную книгу автора (Robert Rankin)

The boy took to scratching his left armpit. There was currently a plague of pit weevil in the school
and we were all most grievously afflicted.
`Come on,' I said, `tell us.'
`He doesn't do much now,' said the Doveston. `He is something of a recluse. But he served with the
Royal Engineers and later the SAS. He knows all there is to know about dynamite.'
I kicked a bottle top into a drain. `So it's blowing things up again, is it?' I asked.
`There's nothing wrong in blowing things up. It's a healthy boyish pursuit.'
`That's not what Vicar Berry says.
`Vicar Berry is an old hypocrite,' said the Doveston, worrying now at his right armpit. `He was an
army chaplain and saw plenty of blowings-up. He merely wishes to deny the young the pleasures he
himself enjoyed. You will find that's a common thing amongst adults.'
I couldn't deny this was true.
`Anyway,' said the Doveston, focusing attention on his groin, where an infestation of Y-front worm
were gnawing at his nadgers. `Uncle Jon Peru Joans doesn't only know all about dynamite. He knows all
about orchids and hydro-dendrology.'
`Hydro-den-whatery?'
`Hydro-dendrology. It is the science of growing trees in water.'
I too gave my groin a thoughtful but much needed scratch.
`This is his house,' said the boy. And I looked up to see it.
The houses of the Butts Estate were of the Georgian ilk. Mellow pinky-bricked and
proud-proportioned. The gardens were well tended and the folk who lived here were grand. A professor
on the corner there and, deep amongst the trees, the Seamen's Mission. An old sea captain kept the
place, but none of us had seen him. There was peace and quiet here and there was history.
We never got much in the way of local history at school. But we knew all the major stuff anyway. It
had been passed down to us by our parents. `That's where Julius Caesar crossed the Thames.' `That's
where King Balm fell during the famous Battle of Brentford.' `That is the site of the coaching inn where
Pocahontas stayed.' And, most interestingly of all, `That is the house where P. P. Penrose was born.'
Prior to Mr Doveston, P. P. Penrose was undoubtedly Brentford's most famous son: author of the
best-selling books of the twentieth century, the now legendary Lazlo Woodbine novels.
Throughout his life it was popularly believed that he had been born on the Lower East Side of New
York. He affected a Brooklyn accent and always wore a fedora and trench coat. It was only after his
tragic early death (in a freak accident involving handcuffs and a vacuum cleaner hose) that the truth finally
came out (along with much of his lower bowel) -- he had been born plain Peter Penrose in a house on
Brentford's Butts Estate. He had never been to New York in his life.
They never put a blue plaque up, but we all knew which house it was. The one with the blinds
always drawn. In the summer, coachloads of American tourists would arrive to peer at those blinds. And
our friend Billy, who knew more than was healthy for one of his age, would take his mum s vacuum
cleaner along. The Americans would pay Billy to let them pose with it.
But I have nothing new to add on the subject of Penrose. And can do no more than recommend to
the reader who wishes to delve further into the man, his work and his domestic habits, that they sample
Sir John Rimmer's excellent biography: Some Called Him Laz: The man who was Woodbine.
Or the article on auto-erotic asphyxiation that was published in the last-ever issue of Gagging for
It! magazine, December 1999.
`I'm gagging for a drink,' I said. `Do you think that Uncle Jon Peru has lemonade?'
`He only drinks filtered water.' The boy Doveston reached out for the big brass knocker. `Now
remember what I told you to say,' he said in a serious voice.
`What was it you told me to say?' I asked, as I hadn't been listen-ing at the time.
`That you are my brother Edwin and you share my interest in plants.'
`But you don't have a brother Edwin.'
The Doveston shook his scrofulous head. `Do you want to see the monsters or not?'