The Antipope Read Online Free PDF Page A

to be either members of the clergy or little old ladies.
    Norman had never owned a motor car, although there had been times when he had considered building one or even constructing a more efficient substitute for the internal combustion engine possibly fuelled upon beer-bottle tops or defunct filtertips. His wife had viewed these flights of fancy with her traditional cynicism, guffawing hideously and slapping her preposterous thighs with hands like one-pound packets of pork sausages.
    Norman squinted thoughtfully down into the murky waters, finding in the rainbow swirls a dark beauty; he was well rid of that one, and that was a fact. He was at least his own master now, and with his wife gone he had left his job at the Rubber Factory to work full time in the paper shop. It’s not a bad old life if you don’t weaken, he thought to himself. A trouble shared is a trouble halved.
    “And it is a long straight road that has no turning,” said a voice at Norman’s elbow.
    Norman nodded. “The thought had recently crossed my mind,” he said dreamily. Suddenly he turned to stare full into the face of a shabby-looking tramp of dreadful aspect and sorry footwear.
    “Sorry, did I startle you?” asked the creature with what seemed to be a voice of genuine concern. “It’s a bad habit of mine and I really must control it.”
    “Oh no,” said Norman, “it is just that on a Wednesday afternoon which is my early closing day I often come down here for an hour or two of quiet solitude and rarely expect to see another soul.”
    The tramp smiled respectfully. “There are times when a man must be alone,” he said.
    “Exactly,” said Norman. The two gazed reflectively into the filthy waters for a moment or two. Norman’s thoughts were soft, wavering things, whose limits were easily containable within the acceptable norms of local behaviour.
    The tramp’s, however, hovered in a spectrum that encompassed such dark and unfathomable colours that even to briefly contemplate their grim hues would be to trespass upon territories so ghastly and macabre that the very prospect would spell doom in any one of a dozen popular dialects.
    “Can I treat you to a cup of tea along at the Plume?” the tramp asked.
    Norman felt no affinity towards the tramp, but he felt strangely compelled to nod at this unexpected invitation. The two left the canal bridge and strolled up the Brentford High Street towards the Plume Café. This establishment, which stands at a point not twenty yards from the junction of Ealing Road and the High Street, can be said at times to play host to as many Brentonians as the Flying Swan itself. Those times being, of course, those when the Swan is closed.
    The Plume is presided over by an enormous blonde of Peg-like proportions known to all Brentford as Lily Marlene. Why Lily Marlene is uncertain, since the sign above the door says “Proprietor Mrs Veronica Smith”. Lily presides over all with the air of a brothel madam, her expansive bosoms moving in and out of the shadows behind the counter like twin dirigibles. Whatever happened to Mrs Veronica Smith no-one has ever dared ask.
    Norman swung open the shattered glass door and entered the Plume Café followed by a sinister tramp. In the gloom behind the counter, unseen by human eye, Lily Marlene made a shadowy sign of the cross.
    “What will it be?” Norman asked the tramp, who had seated himself beside the window and showed no inclination whatever to do any buying.
    “I shall have one of Lily’s surprising coffees I think,” the creature replied.
    Norman strode to the counter. “Two coffees please, Lil,” he requested of the hovering bosoms, which withdrew into the darkness of their hangar and returned in the company of a pair of arms. These generous appendages bore at their fingers’ end a brace of coffees in the traditional glass cups. Norman paid up and carried the steaming cups back to the table.
    “Cheers,” said the tramp, holding his cup up to the light and