Well.
Fudgepacker’s does the weird stuff. The really weird stuff. The stuff you couldn’t hire anywhere else.
If you need a pickled homunculus, an eight-legged lamb, a hand of glory, a scrying stone, a travelling font, a thundersheet, a shrunken head, the skull of the Marquis de Sade, Napoleon’s mummified willy, a tableau of foetal skeletons re-enacting the battle of Rorke’s Drift …
Then Fudgepacker’s is, as Flann would have it, your man.
The company was founded and still run by Ernest Fudgepacker. And that is the Ernest Fudgepacker, seminal Arthouse B Movie maker of the late Fifties and early Nineteen Sixties. Director of I Bleed in Your Breakfast, Sherlock Holmes Meets the Princess of Pain, Bound to Please, Love Me in Leather, Surf Nazis Must Die[5] and Blonde in a Body Bag.[6]
Hollywood hadn’t been ready for Ernest.
Shepperton hadn’t been ready for Ernest.
The censor had been ready for him though.
Ernest retired from directing. It was Hollywood’s loss. And Shepperton’s. Though the censor didn’t seem too fazed.
Fudgepacker opened his emporium in nineteen sixty-three, to coincide with the assassination of President Kennedy. He reasoned that, should his guests ever be asked at some future time whether they could remember where they were when Kennedy was shot, they would say, “Why yes, we were at Fudgepacker’s opening party.”
Where he got all his mysterious stock from no-one knows, because he’s not telling. But he was right on target back then. Ken Russell was making the good stuff and Hammer films were knocking out the classics. But that was then and times are not so clever now.
Movies change with the times. Movies reflect the times.
And the best of times are always in the past.
Morgan returned to the packing bench and Russell to the office. Once Fudgepacker’s had owned to a staff of twenty, now there was just the four. Morgan and Russell, Frank the manager and Bobby Boy. Although Bobby Boy wasn’t there very often. Stomach trouble, or he was looking for another job. Probably the latter, as Bobby Boy wanted to be an actor.
Morgan was certainly looking for another job. He wanted to be a spy or an explorer. Russell, however, was not looking for another job.
Russell liked working at Fudgepacker’s. Russell liked old Ernie. Ernie was a character. Russell even liked Frank the manager and no-one ever likes a manager.
Russell returned to his desk, but he couldn’t bring himself to sit at it, he paced up and down before the window. Outside the day was dull, the sky gasometer-grey. The waters of the Thames were grey. Grey cars drifted along the grey Kew Road, going nowhere.
Russell put a bit more spring into his pacing.
“Don’t do that,” said Frank. “It reminds me of my first wife.”
Russell sat down. “Frank,” he said, “did you ever drink in The Flying Swan?”
“Don’t think I know the place. I once lit Sophia Loren’s cigarette, though. Did I ever tell you about that?”
“You mentioned it in passing, yes.”
“Beautiful woman,” said Frank. “They don’t make women like her any more. I was prop man at Pinewood then. Happy times.”
“Are we expecting any customers today?”
“Trevor Jung phoned, said he’d be in later. He’s working on a pilot for a new TV sitcom.”
“There’s always room for another sitcom,” said Russell.
“They don’t make sitcoms like they used to. That Wendy Craig was a beautiful woman. I never lit her cigarette though, I think I helped her into her coat once, or perhaps that was Thora Hird.”
Russell clapped his hands together. “I think I’ll rearrange the office,” said he.
“No,” said Frank.
“Then I’ll go and dust the grimoires.”
“No.”
“All right. I’ll polish the funerary urns. They could do with a buff.”
“No.”
“I could wash up the teacups.”
“No!”
“But I want to do something.”
“You are doing something, Russell. You are sitting at your desk awaiting a customer. They also serve who only stand and wait, you know. Or in your case, sit.”
Russell made a sorry face. Things had been much better before Frank became manager. Frank with his love of rosters and paperwork. Russell hated inactivity, he liked to be up and doing, he couldn’t bear to waste time. It was Frank who had instigated tea breaks. He dictated exactly who did what, and when. It was a very inefficient system. But Frank was the manager and there was nothing Russell could do about it.
“So, I’ll just sit here?” Russell said.
“Just sit there, yes.”
And so Russell just sat there, drumming his fingers on the desk.
And absolutely nothing happened.
Nothing whatsoever.
Which was strange really, considering the immutable laws which seem to govern these things. According to these immutable laws, something should definitely have happened right about now. And something big. Big enough to cover all the foregoing dullness and chit chat, or if not actually happened, then at least offered a strong hint of humungous happenings to come.
Possibly something along the lines of … Unknown to Russell, great forces were even now at work. Great forces that would change his world for ever, in fact change everybody’s world for ever. For Russell was about to take the first step on a journey that would lead him into realms where no man had ever set foot before. Or such like.
But nothing did.
So Russell just sat there drumming his fingers. It did occur to him, however, that it might be interesting to find out whether there was any truth to the tale Morgan had told him. He could spend his lunchtimes and evenings asking around Brentford, to see if there really had been a Neville and a Pooley and an Omally and a Flying Swan. And if there had, then whether any of the fabulous tales told of them were actually true. It was something to do. It would be interesting. Yes.
“Can I give the floor a mop?” asked Russell.
“No,” said Frank.
3
The Contents of Box 23
Back in the Nineteen Fifties, when the world was still in black and white, policemen were jolly fresh-faced fellows who all looked like Dixon of Dock Green. They were firm but fair, these fresh-faced fellows, and the felons whose collars they felt put their hands up without a fuss and said things like, “It’s a fair cop, guvnor, slap the bracelets on and bung me in the Black Maria.”
So, no change there.
In those monochrome days, before the advent of crime computers and international networks, “information received” was stored away in big box files on a high shelf in the chief constable’s office. There were always twenty-three big box files. The first twenty-two dealt with the everyday stuff, tip-offs regarding forthcoming sweetshop robberies, or those suspected of sneaking through the back doors of the local cinema without paying. Box 23, however, was an altogether different plate of pork. This contained the odd stuff, the stuff that didn’t quite fit, reports of curious phenomena and mysterious uncatagorizable material.[7] Remember that these were the days when the strolling beat-bobby was a well-respected figure in the community. Folk talked to policemen back in those times, sent them cards at Christmas and polished their bikes during Bob-a-Job week.