Norman drew a bespittled finger across the old tin’s surface in an attempt to bring up the brand-name. Did people still eat sweeties like this? he wondered. Or had they ever? He couldn’t recall ever having sold any. Out of sudden interest he picked up the old tin and gave it a shake. It was empty, of course. Probably evaporated, he thought.
Norman shrugged once more; he really ought to sling them all out, they served little purpose and could hardly be described as decorative. But he knew he would never part with them. They gave his shop character and were always good for inspiring conversation from the lonely pensioners who happened by, upon some pretext or another, only really wanting a bit of a chat.
Norman thrust his one-feather duster back into its appointed niche and flexed his shoulders as if in an attempt to free himself from the strange melancholia which filled him this morning. Things were going to change in Brentford and there was little good in crying over spilt milk or whistling down the wind.
Upon the counter lay the small brown package which Small Dave had delivered. Norman knew exactly what it contained; the American stamps and spidery Gothic lettering told him well enough. This was the last component he required, the final tiny missing piece of the jigsaw.
This was the make or break. Several years of planning and many many months of hard and exacting work had gone into this, not to mention the small fortune spent upon research, preparation and final construction. This experiment was indeed ‘The Big One’. It was a Nobel Prize job this time, and no mistake. Norman had named it ‘The Ultimate Quest’, and it was indeed a goody.
Certainly, in the past, Norman’s little scientific diversions had not been altogether successful. In fact he had become something of a figure of fun because of them. But this time he was sure he had cracked it. The people of Brentford would certainly sit up and take notice of this one. If his calculations, combined with those of a certain Germanic physicist not altogether unknown for his theory of relativity, proved to be correct, then things were going to be very different indeed hereabouts.
Norman patted the tiny brown package. If all was present and correct he would begin the first practical working tests this very early-closing day, then we would see what we would see.
The shop bell rang in a customer. It was Old Pete with his half-terrier Chips as ever upon his heels.
‘Morning, Norman,’ said the ancient, cheerily, ‘a half-ounce of Ships if you will.’
‘Grmmph mmmph,’ the shopkeeper replied, for the first time becoming aware that the Captain Laser Astrogum had suddenly set hard in his mouth, welding his upper plate to his lower set.
‘Grmmph mmmph?’ queried Old Pete, scratching at his snowy head. ‘Now what would it be this time? Let me guess? Experimenting with some advanced form of Esperanto is it? Or having a try at ventriloquism?’
Norman clutched at his jaw and grew red about the jowls, his eyes began to roll.
‘Ah,’ said Old Pete, tapping at his nose. ‘I think I am beginning to get the measure of it. Something in mime, isn’t it? Now let’s have a go, I’m quite good at this, give me a clue now, how many words hi the title?’
Norman tore at his welded teeth and bashed at the counter-top with a clenched fist.
‘Five words,’ said Old Pete. ‘No, six, seven? Is it a film or a book?’
Norman lurched from the counter in a most grotesque fashion, grunting and snorting. Old Pete stepped nimbly aside as he blundered past, while Young Chips sought a safe hidey hole.
‘It’s a poser,’ said the old one, as Norman threw himself about the shop, toppling the magazine stand and spilling out its contents. ‘I have it, I have it!’ he cried suddenly. ‘It is the now legendary Charles Laughton in his famous portrayal of Victor Hugo’s Hunchback of Notre Dame.’
In hearty congratulations for Norman’s excellent impersonation the old man, who still retained a considerable amount of strength in his right arm despite his advancing years, slapped Norman upon the back. The blow loosened the cemented teeth, which flew from the shopkeeper’s mouth, tumbled noisily across the linoleum, and finally came to rest in an impenetrable place beneath the counter, where they lay in the darkness grinning ruefully.
‘Sanks yous,’ spluttered Norman, ‘sanks yous, Petes.’
‘Credit where credit is due,’ the elder replied. ‘My tobacco now, if you please.’
Norman staggered to the counter and tore out a one-ounce packet from the tin. ‘Ons a houses,’ he whistled through his naked gums. ‘Ons a houses.’
Old Pete, who was never a man to look a gift impersonator in the mouth, accepted his reward with a hasty display of gratitude and departed the shop at speed. Halfway up the Ealing Road Young Chips unearthed a pristine copy of Bra-Busting Beauties from its secret hiding place beneath a beer crate outside the Swan.
‘This has all the makings of being a most profitable day,’ said the ancient to his furry companion. Young Chips woofed noncommittally. Being naturally clairvoyant he sensed something rather to the contrary and therefore wished to reserve judgement for the present.
4
The allotment golfers had come to something of a critical stage in their game. They had by now reached the eighteenth ‘green’ and Omally had but to sink a nine-foot putt across Reg Watling’s furrowed spinach patch to take the match. Betting had been growing steadily during the morning’s play and with each increase in financial risk the two men had grown ever more tight-lipped, eagle-eyed, and alert to the slightest infringement of the rules.
Omally spat on his palms and rubbed them together. He stalked slowly about his ball and viewed it from a multiplicity of angles. He scrutinized the lie of the land, tossed a few straws into the air and nodded thoughtfully as they drifted to earth. He licked his finger and held it skyward, he threw himself to the ground and squinted along his putter sniper fashion. ‘Right then,’ said the broth of a boy. ‘It looks like child’s play.’
Pooley, who was employing what he referred to as ‘the psychology’, shook his head slowly. ‘That would be at least a three to the sinking I would believe.’
Omally gestured over his shoulder to the water-butt wherein lay Pooley’s ball. ‘You would be phoning for Jacques Cousteau and his lads, I shouldn’t wonder.’
Pooley shrugged. ‘That is an easy shot compared to this.’
Omally sniggered. ‘Keep your eye on the ball, Jim,’ he advised.
Omally’s putting technique bore an uncanny resemblance to that practised by seasoned Yorkshire batsmen at the Oval. The putter had a tendency to dig well in on such occasions, sometimes to a depth of some three inches or more, and once beyond digging range. There was generally a fair amount of lift on the ball, although the Now Official Handbook of Allotment Golf suggested that any balls putted above shoulder height should be considered as drives and the player penalized accordingly.
Omally squared up his ball whilst Pooley continued to employ ‘the psychology’. He coughed repeatedly, rustled sweet papers in his pocket and scuffed his blakey’d heels in the dust. ‘Is that a Lurcher or a Dane?’ he asked, pointing towards some canine of his own creation.
Omally ignored him. There was big beer money on this shot. John suddenly swung the putter in a blurry arc and struck deeply behind his ball, raising a great clod of earth, which is referred to in golfing circles as a divot. The ball cannonaded across the allotment, with a whine like a doctored tom, struck a section of corrugated iron fencing, bowled along Old Pete’s herbaceous border, and skidded to a halt a mere inch from the eighteenth hole.
Omally swore briefly, but to the point, flung down his putter and turned his back upon the wanton pill.
‘Bad luck,’ said Pooley, amid ill-concealed titters. By way of consolation, he added, ‘It was a brave try. But would you prefer that I pause a moment before sinking my ball, on the off chance that an earth tremor might secure you the match?’
Omally kicked his golf bag over.
‘Steady on,’ said Pooley.
John turned upon him bitterly,
‘Go on then, Jimmy boy,’ he sneered, ‘let us see you take your shot.’
‘You won’t like it.’
‘Won’t I, though?’
Pooley tapped at his nose. ‘Care to up the betting a trice?’
Omally stroked his chin. ‘From the water-butt in one, that is what you are telling me?’ Pooley nodded.
‘Unless you, like the Dalai Lama, have mastered the techniques of levitation and telekinesis, which I do not believe, I do not rate your chances.’
‘You will kick yourself afterwards.’
Omally spat on to his palm and slapped it into that of his companion. ‘All bets are doubled, will that serve you?’
‘Adequately.’ Pooley strolled over to the water-butt. With the lie of the land, it certainly was in a perfect line for the hole. Just down a slight slope and into the depression where lay the eighteenth.
‘I shall play it from here,’ said Jim, turning his back upon the target.
Omally stuck his hands into his pockets. ‘As you please,’ said he.
‘I will play it with a mashie if you have no objections.’
‘None whatever.’ Omally selected the club and handed it to his companion. Pooley leant forward and chalked a small cross at the base of the water-butt. Drawing back, he grasped the club hammer-like in his right fist and with a lewd wink struck the ancient zinc tank a murderous blow.
It was a sizeable hole and the water burst through it with great enthusiasm. Bearing down with the sudden torrent, and evidently much pleased to be free of its watery grave, Pooley’s ball bobbed along prettily. It danced down the slight incline, pirouetted about the eighteenth hole, as if taking a final bow, then plunged into it with a sarcastic gurgle.
‘My game,’ said Pooley rubbing his hands together. ‘Best we settle up now, I think.’
Omally struck his companion a devastating blow to the skull. Jim collapsed into a forest of bean poles but rose almost immediately with a great war cry. He leapt upon Omally, catching him around the waist and bearing him towards the now muddy ground. ‘Poor loser!’ he shouted, grinding his thumb into Omally’s right eye.
‘Bloody damn cheat,’ the other replied, going as ever for the groin.
The two men were more than equally matched, although Omally was by far the dirtier fighter. They bowled over and over in the mud, bringing into play a most extraordinary diversity of unsportsmanlike punches, low kicks and back elbows. They had been tumbling away in like fashion for some ten minutes, doing each other the very minimum amount of damage, yet expending a great deal of energy, when each man suddenly became aware that his antics were being observed.
Some twenty yards or so away, a solitary figure in a grey coverall suit stood silently watching. At the distance it was difficult to make out his features clearly, but they seemed wide and flat and had more than the suggestion of the Orient about them.
The two men rose from the ground, patting away at their clothes. The fight was over, the ref s decision being a draw. They beat a hasty retreat to the doubtful safety of Pooley’s allotment shed. Through a knothole in the slatted side they squinted at the grey figure. He was as immobile as a shop-window dummy, and stared towards them unblinkingly in a manner which the sensitive Jim found quite upsetting. He was of average height with high cheek-bones and a slightly tanned complexion and bore a striking resemblance to a young Jack Palance.
Pooley sought about for his tobacco tin. ‘I don’t like the look of this,’ he said.
Omally, who had liberated Pooley’s tin from his pocket during the fight, was rolling a cigarette behind his back. ‘He is probably some workman chappy,’ he suggested, ‘or possibly a bus conductor or site engineer from the gas works.’ The hollow tone in Omally’s voice was not lost upon his companion.
‘He has more of the look of a municipal worker to me,’ said Jim, shaking his head dismally. ‘A park-keeper perhaps, or . . . ‘
‘Don’t say it,’ said John. ‘Some spy from the Council come to inspect the allotment?’
Pooley clenched his fists. ‘This is all too much. Discriminated against and ostracized from the Council courses, now tracked down here for further discrimination and ostracism, hounded down because of our love of the game. It is all too much to bear. Let us kill him now and bury his body.’
Omally agreed that it was all too much to bear but thought Pooley’s solution a little drastic. ‘All may not be lost,’ he said. ‘He may have only just arrived and may only have witnessed our slight disagreement regarding the excellence of your trick shot. He may not suspect the cause.’
Pooley gestured through a broken window-pane to where his golf caddy, a converted supermarket trolley, stood bristling with its assortment of unmatched clubs.
Omally hung his head. ‘The game is up,’ said he in a leaden tone.
Pooley put his eye once more to the knot-hole. ‘He is still there. Perhaps we could reason with him, or better still offer a bribe.’
Omally thought this sound enough, every man having his price. ‘How much have you in your pockets?’ he asked.
Pooley smiled grimly. ‘We have not yet settled up over the game. I think that it is for you to approach him, John. Employ your silken tongue and feel free to invest a portion of my winnings if needs be. You can always owe me the difference. I consider you to be a man of honour.’
Omally licked the end of his captured roll-up. ‘All right,’ he said nobly, ‘I shall go. We shall consider your winnings to be an investment to secure a further season of uninterrupted play. During this period I have not the least doubt that if your game continues at its present standard you will have the opportunity to lighten my pockets continually.’
Pooley opened his mouth to speak but thought better of it. In such matters Omally generally held the verbal edge. ‘Go then with my blessings,’ he said, ‘but kindly leave me my tobacco tin.’
Omally straightened up his regimental necktie, squared his broad and padded shoulders, threw open the hut door, and stepped out into the sunlight. The figure lurking amongst the bean poles watched the Irishman with an inscrutable expression. Omally thrust his hands into his trouser pockets and gazed about the allotment with extreme nonchalance. He yawned, stretched, and then, as if seeing the figure for the first time, flicked at his mop of curly black hair and bid the stranger a hearty ‘Good morning there.’
The figure uttered not a word but merely stared on regardless.
‘There’ll be rain before the evening I shouldn’t wonder,’ said Omally, who was rarely rattled. ‘Won’t do the ground any harm though.’ As he spoke he slowly strolled in the stranger’s direction, covering his approach with the occasional sidestep to scrutinize some flowering bloom. But soon there was less than fifteen yards between them. ‘Should get a rare old crop of beans up this year,’ said John, stepping nimbly over Old Pete’s watering can.
In order that he might reach the Council spy, for by this time Omally felt one hundred per cent certain that this was in fact the lurker’s despicable calling, it was necessary for him to pass behind Soap Distant’s heavily-bolted corrugated iron shed. Soap himself had vanished away from Brentford under most extraordinary circumstances, but his rental upon the shed was paid up until the turn of the following century and his hut remained untouched and inviolate.
Omally sneaked away behind it. He lost sight of the spy for but a moment, but when he emerged at the spot where the malcontent should have been standing, to John’s amazement, not a soul was to be seen.
Pooley came ambling up. ‘Where did he go?’ he asked. ‘I took my eyes off him for a moment and he was gone.’
Omally shook his head. ‘There is something not altogether kosher about this, I am thinking.’
‘He must have legged it, had it away on his toes.’
Omally scratched at the stubble of his chin. ‘Perhaps,’ said he, ‘perhaps. There is a terrible smell of creosote hereabouts, has anybody been pasting his palings?’
‘Not to my knowledge.’
Omally shrugge
d, ‘Shall we play another round then?’
Pooley scrutinized his Piaget wristwatch. ‘I feel a little unsettled,’ he said. ‘Perhaps we should adjourn now to the Swan for a cooling pint of Large to ease our fractured nerves.’
‘That,’ said Omally, smacking his hands together, ‘is not a bad idea by any reckoning’.
5
Bitow . . . Bitow . . . Bitow . . . Bitow . . . Whap . . . ‘What?’ The ungodly sounds echoed across the library-silent saloon-bar of the Flying Swan, rattling the optics and jarring the patrons from their contemplation of the racing dailies. Neville the part-time barman clapped his hands about his ears and swore from between freshly clenched teeth.
Nicholas Roger Raffles Rathbone, currently serving his time as local paperlad, stood before the Captain Laser Alien Attack Machine, his feet at three of the clock and his shoulders painfully hunched in his bid to defend planet Earth from its never-ending stream of cosmic cousins ever bent upon conquest, doom, and destruction.
Bitow . . . Bitow . . . Bitow . . . Bitow . . . His right forefinger rattled away at the neutron bomb release button and a bead of perspiration formed upon his ample brow. ‘Go on my son, go on.’ Little streamers of coloured light, like some residue from a third-rate firework box, flew up the bluely-tinted video screen to where the horde of approaching spacecraft, appearing for all the world like so many stuffed olives, dipped and weaved.
Bitow . . . Whap . . . ‘What?’ Young Nick levelled his cherry-red boot at the machine, damaging several of his favourite toes.
Neville watched the performance with a face of despair. He too had made that gesture of defiance with an equal lack of success. The boy Nick dug deeply into his denim pockets for more small change, but found only a pound note, whose serial number corresponded exactly with one which had lain not long before in Norman’s secret cashbox beneath his counter. He turned his back momentarily upon his humming adversary and bounced over to the bar counter. ‘Give us change of a quid then, Nev.’