The Da-Da-De-Da-Da Code by Robert Rankin Page A

there in the first place. Drowning child? There
was
no drowning child!’
    ‘You saw the drowning child with your own eyes.’
    ‘We both know that I cannot trust the evidence of my own eyes.’
    ‘I suspect that you’re being personal again. But no matter. It’s a beautiful day – how do you plan that we spend it?’
    Jonny Hooker made an exasperated face. ‘Look at me,’ he said. ‘I’m wearing nothing but a hospital smock. I am officially an escaped mental patient. They’ll have my picture in the papers and on the news.’
    ‘You’d better keep your head down, then. That would be my advice.’
    ‘Oh, sound advice, thank you very much.’
    ‘I do detect a certain tone in your voice.’
    ‘I’m starving,’ said Jonny. ‘I’m starving and I’m freezing to death.’
    ‘Then you must be fed and warmed. My advice would be to hide out here in the park until things calm down a bit. Back in the days when Sir Henry Crawford owned the mansion here, he employed an ornamental hermit to adorn the grounds. The hermit was allowed a Bible for his spiritual sustenance and access to the kitchen garden for vegetables, which he was required to consume raw. He wore a rabbit-skin surcoat and boots made from bark and—’
    ‘Please be quiet,’ said Jonny. ‘I have no wish to live the life of a hermit, ornamental or otherwise.’
    ‘You were pretty much a hermit anyway. Living rough and foraging for your own food will be character-building. And you know what they say: a healthy body makes a healthy minefield.’
    Jonny had long ago given up on the thankless task of taking a swing at Mr Giggles. ‘Perhaps,’ said he, ‘I will just return to the hospital. The bed was comfy enough and I’m sure I could come to some arrangement with Nurse Cecil that would involve me being fed at regular intervals.’
    ‘A tree house,’ said Mr Giggles.
    ‘What?’
    ‘You could build a tree house, here in the park, high up a treeand camouflaged. And there’s loads of fish in the ornamental pond. You could catch fish at night. And you could rig up ropes between the trees, swing from one to another, like Tarzan.’
    Jonny had always liked Tarzan.
    ‘I’ve always liked Tarzan,’ he said.
    ‘Really?’ said Mr Giggles. ‘Fancy that.’
    ‘No,’ said Jonny. ‘
Not
a tree house. Although, perhaps … I wonder what time it is.’
    And, as if in answer to his question, the distant clock on the spire of St Mary’s chimed the seventh hour.
    ‘I have an idea,’ said Jonny.
    The park rangers’ hut was nothing much to look at from the outside. It was one of those horrid Portakabin affairs, of the variety that working men rejoice to inhabit on building sites. There is always the suggestion about such huts that dark and sinister things go on inside them. *
    The park rangers’ hut lurked behind trees to the north of Gunnersbury House. The trees were many and various. There were the standard oak, ash and elm, sycamore and horse chestnut, but this being Gunnersbury Park, a park which, it must be said, had, over the years, been owned and landscaped and planted and tended by one rich weirdo after another, some of the trees that prettified the place were of the ‘odd’ persuasion. You don’t see moosewood every day – well, not hereabouts anyhow – nor too much in the way of monkey puzzle. And there were sequoias, cornels, dogwoods, ilex, sal and Papuan minge trees, in considerable abundance.
    The monkey puzzle having been planted during Princess Amelia’s residence, the minge trees during that of Sir Henry Crawford. Who, being a member of the aristocracy, was never averse to a bit of minge in his ornamental garden.
    Jonny drew Mr Giggles’ attention to the monkey puzzle tree.
    Mr Giggles pointedly ignored it.
    The park rangers’ hut was locked.
    ‘You’ll have to smash a window,’ said Mr Giggles.
    ‘Which is where you are wrong,’ said Jonny, and he rootedaround and about the door. Presently he upturned a flowerpot to disclose