"Robert Rankin - Brentford 04 - The Sprouts Of Wrath" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rankin Robert)

The Sprouts of Warth
Book 4 of the now legendary Brentford Trilogy
Robert Rankin



Foreword
Brentford was enjoying another tropical summer.
Although torrents of rain fell unceasingly upon Hounslow, Haling and Chiswick, and the gardeners of Kew
had taken to the wearing of sou'westers and fisherman's waders, the good people of Brentford lazed in their
deckchairs and sipped cooling drinks or strolled the historic thoroughfares in shorts and sunhats. Brentford was
like that.
To commuters passing daily across the flyover, bound for the great metropolis somewhat east of Haling, all
seemed mundane enough. Lines of slate rooftops sheltering late Victorian houses, a gasometer, a watertower, a
row of flatblocks. Nothing unusual here, one might have thought, nothing to inspire wonder, just another West
London suburb. A few more acres of urban sprawl. But no. There was something more to Brentford than that.
And though it was difficult to put a finger on just what that might be, it was definitely there all right. A very very
special something.
Upon a May morning, shortly before the dawn, a long black automobile of advanced design and foreign
extraction turned off the Great West Road, crested the railway bridge beside the Mowlems building and cruised
soundlessly down towards the streets of Brentford.
Upon reaching the London Road, where the Arts Centre thrust its jagged shadow up towards the night sky, the
car halted and a curiously stunted figure, clad in chauffeur's livery, emerged from it map in hand.
Having examined this carefully, by the light of a pen-torch, he tapped with caution upon a blackly tinted rear
window. The panel of glass slid away with a hiss and the
chauffeur momentarily stiffened as an exhalation of stale and stagnant air filled his nostrils. Coughing politely
into a scented handkerchief, he proffered the map to the unseen occupant of the rear compartment and said, The
site lies just beyond the building, sir, upon the island. It is the last of the five. You now possess them all.'
A sigh issued from the rear compartment, a plaintive, yet unearthly sound, followed by an agitated wheezing,
as of lungs far gone in chronic decay.
Then all is as it should be,' hissed a voice, scarcely more than a choked whisper. 'And today the plan will be put
into operation.'
The chauffeur dabbed at the cold sweat which had risen to his brow and accepted the return of his map with a
trembling hand. Even through his white kid driving gloves he could feel that the paper was now cold and damp.
He bowed stiffly, returned to his seat and put the curious vehicle once more in motion.
As the thin line of dawn broadened along the rooftops of Brentford, the car swung away towards Kew Bridge
and was presently lost to view within the shadow of the great gasometer.

1
The dawn choristers completed their rowdy ovation to the new day as the Brentford Mercury's driver tossed his
first Friday bundle in the general direction of a cornershop doorstep. On high Olympus, the Fates, nodding in
agreement across their breakfast ambrosia, declared the day officially begun.
Norman hoisted the bundle of weekly locals on to the worm-eaten countertop, where it struck with an appro-
priately dull thud and raised a glorious cloud of dust. The shopkeeper sighed with pleasure. Since the departure
of his wife with a former editor of the borough's organ he had allowed the business to run magnificently to seed. His
dust was the envy of every married man in the neighbourhood and Norman, revelling in each new pleasure
afforded to him by his unexpected return to bachelorhood, was living, as he considered it, 'life to the full'. Upstairs
last week's underpants lorded it upon the bedside rug; today's sartorial excesses stretched to a pair of odd and
undarned socks and the garish Hawaiian shirt his wife had particularly hated. Norman had also recently cultivated
a pair of ludicrous mutton-chop whiskers which he considered to be rather dashing.