The wealthy burghers of Brentford who had ordered the construction of these wonderful buildings had attained their golden guineas through seaborne commerce: the import of spices and tea and opium and slaves. During these times, Brentford had been a prosperous community and upon May Monday The Butts had played host to the Bull Fair.[6]
Prosperity had left Brentford behind and the old rich had long departed. Rich folk still lived in The Butts, mainly outborough business types who earned their wealth in manners unfathomable to the plain people of Brentford, to whom they remained a great unknown.
There was much of the great unknown about Professor Slocombe. His origins were mysterious and it was somehow assumed that, like the mighty Thames which cradled Brentford in a loving elbow, he had always been there. Certainly Old Pete, one of the borough’s most notable elders, swore blind and with vigour that he had known the professor since he, Old Pete, had been a small child, at which time this enigmatic fellow was already a very old man.
What was known about Professor Slocombe was that he was a scholar of many esoteric schools, possessed of knowledge and wisdom to equal degree. That he inspired a frisson of fear was not at all surprising, but he was a kindly man and those who sought his advice or counsel were never refused or turned away.
The professor was attended by a decrepit retainer named Gammon, a fellow who rarely left the professor’s house and who dressed in the servant’s livery of a time two hundred years before.
On this particular morning, Professor Slocombe sat in his study doing what ancient scholars so often do – poring over equally ancient tomes. His old, bowed back was towards the open French windows, through which drifted the heady fragrances of the gorgeous orchids that bloomed all year round in his garden, in seeming defiance of the accepted laws of nature. The perfumes of verbena and cymbidium and Yggdrasil entered the room, blending with the fusty, musty odours of the countless leather-bound volumes overflowing from the ancient bookcases that hid the walls. And other odours, too, odours subtle and without name, issued from the many stuffed beasts, some of which were certainly mythical, and the multifarious curiosa that loaded every horizontal surface in the room. Treasures glittered within glass domes – centuries-old weaponry and da Vinciesque models, meteorites and gemstones, fossilised fairies and withered Hands of Glory; elaborate preparations wrought by Frederik Ruysch, composed of foetal skeletons arranged in allegorical tableaux; beard clippings from the Magi, Caspar, Melchior and Balthazar; a pickled homunculus; and a complete set of The Beano.
The professor was slim and slight with wild white hair and pale-blue eyes that veritably twinkled behind his golden pince-nez. He was sprightly and vital and should an actor have been chosen to play him, that actor would surely have been Peter Cushing.
Professor Slocombe turned one velum page and then another and then he closed his tome and sat back in his padded leather chair and spoke.
“Are you two going to skulk about out there for the duration of the morning?” he enquired. “Or would you care to come inside and enjoy a glass of sherry?”
John Omally looked at Jim.
And Jim looked back at John.
“I never know just how he does that,” said Jim, “but it never fails to put the wind up me.”
“Good morning to you, Professor,” said Omally, entering the old man’s study in the manner in which he would enter a church: with a certain reverence.
“Morning, sir,” said Jim, a-following on.
“Good morning to you both.” Professor Slocombe swung his swivelling chair around and viewed his visitors. He stretched out his slender legs, placed his bony elbows on his bony knees and pressed his palms together. “Come in, sit down,” said he.
Jim and John crossed the professor’s study floor, stepping carefully to avoid contact with some priceless artefact that stood perilously upon a carved ivory column or a Turkish coffee table. John eased himself into a fireside chair. Jim eased himself into another opposite it. The fire in the hearth that burned throughout every season burned on, although it appeared to cast no heat whatever into the drowsy room.
“Somewhat early in the day for you two,” said the professor. “I have become used to you visiting me of an evening, when The Flying Swan has cast you from its warm embrace and you still have points of dispute between you that I am called upon to settle.”
“Your wisdom is the stuff of local legend,” said Omally.
“And my sherry finds your favour, of this I am certain.” Professor Slocombe rang a small brass bell that rested at his elbow on his desk and almost as it rang the study’s inner door opened to admit the professor’s wrinkled retainer, Gammon. This wraithlike being, clad in his antique livery of green velvet frock coat with slashed sleeves and emerald buttons, red silk stockings and black, buckled shoes, bore in his crinkly hands a silver galleried tray upon which rested three Atlantean crystal glasses of sherry.
“And how he does that also has me baffled,” said Jim, as Gammon inclined his fragile frame and Jim accepted the proffered drink with a courteous thank you.
“There’s probably some trickery involved,” said Professor Slocombe. “The quickness of the mind deceives the hand, I shouldn’t wonder.”
John accepted a glass of sherry and so, too, did the professor. Gammon bowed his way backwards from the room, closing the door behind him. The three men sipped and sighed and sipped some more.
“Researching anything exciting?” John asked in the way of polite conversation.
Professor Slocombe smiled. “Land charters,” said he. “Not, perhaps, your mug of ale?”
“Interesting to yourself, though,” said himself.
“Pre-eminently. As you know, I am compiling a book: The Complete and Absolute History of Brentford. You would be surprised by the many interesting facts that I have turned up regarding the borough.”
“No we wouldn’t,” said Jim, taking out his pack of cigarettes. “There can be few places on Earth more interesting than Brentford.”
“You’ve never travelled widely, have you, Jim?” asked the professor.
“Jim gets a nosebleed if he goes on the top deck of a bus,” said John.
“I’ve been around,” protested Pooley. “I’ve been as far south as Brighton. Once.”
“They brought you home in an ambulance,” said Omally.
“I fell off the pier,” said Jim. “That water was deep.”
“There are more interesting places on Earth than Brentford,” said Professor Slocombe, “though not many. Lhasa in Tibet, perhaps, the Valley of the Kings. Gandara – they say it was in India, you know. And Penge, which I’m told is a very nice place, although I’ve never actually been there myself.”
Jim took a cigarette from his pack. Omally spied Jim’s pack for the first time and smiled to himself.
Professor Slocombe said, “Please don’t smoke in here, Jim, nicotine damages the books.”
“Sorry, Professor.” Jim looked longingly at his cigarette, then pushed it back into the pack and the pack into his pocket.
“You were saying,” said John, “about Brentford and the interesting facts concerning local charters.”
“Must we go through this rigmarole?” asked the professor, sipping further sherry. “You have come here with a definite purpose, I presume.”
Omally grinned and nodded.
“I will tell you this,” said Professor Slocombe, “whether it will be of any interest to you or not. There is a mystery surrounding the ownership of the lands that comprise the borough of Brentford. Once, these lands were the property of the crown, but during the Crusades they were given in parcel as a gift to a knight by the name of Sir Edgar Rune, who had saved the life of King Richard. Certain titles went with this land that made Brentford a separate principality. I am presently researching into where these land titles eventually went. Who actually owns what? It is fascinating stuff. And it might well prove that Brentford is a separate state – indeed, a separate country.”
6
It was at the Bull Fair in the year of 1760 that Dr Johnson viewed a live griffin in a showman’s booth. See Boswell’s biography, Vol. 14 Chap. 3.