East of Ealing (8 page)

“I’ve gone deaf here,” the other replied.

“Jim,” the Professor implored, “listen, please.”

“Pete,” said Pooley, “you old fool, give me that thing.”

Three o’clock was fast approaching upon the Guinness clock.

“Switch her on then,” said somebody, nudging Old Pete upon the arm.

Now, it must be fairly stated that Pete’s hearing aid was not one of those microchipped miracle appliances one reads so much of in the popular press. Such articles, one is so informed, although no bigger than a garden pea, can broadcast the sound of a moth breaking wind to the massed appreciation of an entire Wembley cup-tie crowd. No, old Pete’s contraption was not one of these. Here instead, you had the valve, the pink Bakelite case, and the now totally expended tungsten carbide battery.

“It’s broke,” said Old Pete. “Caput.”

“It’s what?”

“Pardon?” the elder replied. “You’ll have to speak up, my deaf aid’s gone.”

“Deaf aid’s gone. Deaf aid’s gone.” The word spread like marge on a muffin. The panic spread with it.

“Tear up the slip,” the Professor commanded, his words lost in the growing din. Pooley clutched it to his bosom as the threatened firstborn it was. Omally sought Neville’s knobkerry as the crowd turned into a mob and sought a beam to throw a rope over. It was lynching time in Brentford. Having seen active service in many a foreign field, Old Pete was well-prepared to go down fighting. He swung his stick with Ninja fury at the first likely skull that loomed towards him. Friend or foe wasn’t in it. Fists began to fly. Omally, knobkerry in hand, launched himself from the counter into the middle of the crowd. “On to the bookie’s, Jim,” he shouted as he brought down a dozen rioters.

Sheltering his privy parts and clinging for dear life to his betting-slip, Pooley, in the wake of Professor Slocombe, whom no man present would have dared to strike no matter how dire the circumstances, edged through the
mêlée
.

“He’s getting away,” yelled someone, struggling up from beneath the mad Irishman. “After him, lads.”

The crowd swung in a blurry mass towards the saloon-bar door through which Pooley was now passing with remarkable speed. The tumbling mass burst out after him into the street. Professor Slocombe stepped nimbly aside and took himself off to business elsewhere.

Leo Felix, who had been labouring away with welder’s blow-torch in a vain attempt to salvage anything of his defunct tow-truck, stared up, white-faced and dread, as Pooley blundered into him. “I and I,” squealed the rattled Rastaman, vanishing away beneath a small Mount Zion of bowling bodies. Jim was snatched up by a dozen flailing hands and raised shoulder-high. The stampede turned to a thundering phalanx which lurched forward, bound for Bob the bookie’s, bearing at their vanguard their multi-million dollar standard. Jim prepared to make a deal with God for the second time in as many days. When the sixth horse floundered, as surely it must, Mr Popular he was not going to be. “Father forgive them,” he said.

Antoine turned Bob’s Roller into the Ealing Road with an expensive shriek of burning rubber. Ahead, the advancing phalanx filled the street. Antoine yanked hard upon the wheel, but the car appeared to have ideas of its own. It tore forward into the crowd, scattering bodies to left and right. Jim cartwheeled forward and came to rest upon the gleaming bonnet, his nose jammed up against the windscreen. The Roller mounted the pavement, bringing down a lamppost and mercifully dislodging Jim, who slid into the gutter, a gibbering wreck, bereft of yet another jacket sleeve, which now swung to and fro upon a gold-plated windscreen wiper like some captured tribal war trophy.

Antoine leapt from the cab as Pooley’s sixth horse kicked betting history into a cocked hat and Bob’s Roller plunged onward, bound for the rear of Leo’s tow-truck and the paw paw negro blow-torch which was even now blazing away at the unattended oxy-acetylene gas-bottle beneath it.

“It’s been a funny old kind of day,” said Bob the bookie.

The Brentford sun arose the next morning upon a parish which seemed strangely reticent about rising from its collective bed to face the challenge of the day ahead. The Swan in all of its long and colourful history had never known a night like it. Jim had loaded the disabled cash register with more pennies than it could ever hope to hold and announced to all that the drinks were most definitely on him. The parish had not been slow to respond to this selfless gesture, and the word burned like wildfire up the side-streets and back alleys as it generally did when fanned by the wind of a free drink.

Brentford put up the “Closed for the Night” sign and severed all links with the outside world. The Swan’s rival publicans chewed upon their lips for only a short while before leaving their cigars to smoulder in the ashtrays and join in the festivities. The borough council awarded the swaying Jim their highest commendation, the Argentinum Astrum, before drinking itself to collective extinction. With the charred automotive wreckage of Bob’s Roller and Leo’s tow-truck removed, there had been dancing in the street that night.

For Neville, upon his bed of pain, news never reached him. The Sisters of Mercy who tended to his bed-pan and blanket-baths, hiked up their skirts and joined in the revelry, leaving the metaphysical fat boy to sleep on under his heavy sedation.

For John Omally it was a night he would long remember. As Christ had feasted the five thousand upon half a score of Jewish baps and as many kippers, thus did Omally quench the thirsts of the Brentford multitude. Like the barman of myth, his hand was always there to take up the empty glass and refill it.

For Jim Pooley, morning suddenly appeared out of drunken oblivion beating a loud tattoo of drums upon the inside of his skull. Jim shook his head. An ill-considered move. The tattoo grew louder and more urgent. Jim reopened a pair of blood-red eyes. He found himself staring into the snoring face of Miss Naylor, Brentford’s licentious librarian. “Gawd,” muttered Jim to himself, “I did strike it lucky last night.”

The pounding was coming from below, from his front door. It was the relief postman. Jim rose giddily and lurched towards the bedroom door. The words “never again” could not make it to his lips. “Shut up,” he whispered as the hammering continued. Jim stumbled down the uncarpeted stairs and caught his bare toe for the umpteenth time upon the tack protruding from the sixth tread. Howling beneath his breath, he toppled into the hall to find himself suddenly swimming in a sea of paper.

The hallway was jam-packed with letters, literally thousands of them, of every way, shape, colour, and form. Telegrams, buff-coloured circulars, and picture postcards.

Pooley rubbed at his eyes as he lay half-submerged in the papery cushion. He was certain that they hadn’t been there the night before, but as the later moments of the previous night’s revels were blank to his recollection, as attested to by the snoring female above, Jim’s certainties were purely subjective in nature.

The banging continued beyond the barricade of the king’s mail.

“All right, all right.” Pooley clutched at his temples and fought his way towards the front door. Pushing envelopes to left and right with great difficulty, he opened it.

“Mail,” said a sweating postman, thumbing over his shoulder towards a dozen or so bulging sacks which lay in an unruly line along the pavement. “Your bloody birthday is it then, pal?”

Pooley shrugged, dislodging an avalanche of letters which momentarily buried him.

“I’ve been sticking these bastards through your letter-box for the better part of an hour and I can’t get any more through. Do pardon this departure from the norm, but I must insist that you post the rest yourself. I am here on relief from Chiswick as the local bloke hasn’t turned in. What is this, some kind of bleeding joke?
Candid Camera
, is it, or that
Game for a Laugh
crap?”

Pooley hunched his shoulders beneath the pressing load. “What are they?” he asked. “Who has sent them?”

“From those which unaccountably fell open in my hands, they would seem to be begging letters to a man. What did you do then, come up on the bleeding pools?”

“Something like that.” Jim made an attempt to close the door.

The postman’s contorted face suddenly sweetened. “Is that a fact?” he said thoughtfully. “Then let me be the first to congratulate you.”

“You are not the first,” Jim replied, “but thanks all the same. Now if you will excuse me.” He fought with the front door but Posty’s foot was now firmly in it. Pooley relaxed his grip. “Your foot is caught,” he observed.

“It must be a wonderful thing to have money,” said the postman, edging forward. “I have always been a poor man myself, not that I have ever resented the rich their wealth, you understand, but I have often had cause to wonder why fate chose to deal with me and mine in so shabby a way.”

“Really?” said Jim without interest.

“Oh yes. Not that I complain, soldiering on in all weathers, crippled to the fingertips with arthritis, simply so the mail should get through.”

“Very noble.” Jim applied more pressure to the door but it was getting him nowhere.

“And my wife,” the postman continued, “a holy martyr that woman. If I only had the money to pay for the operation I am certain that she could be relieved of her daily misery.”

“Let us hope so.”

“And my poor blind son, Kevin!”

“Get your bloody foot out of my door.”

Knowing a lost cause when he saw one, the postman withdrew his boot and swung it at the nearest sack. The contents spilled out to flutter away upon the breeze. “Privileged bastard,” he called after the retreating Pooley. “Come the revolution, you and your kind will be first up against the wall. Capitalist Pig!”

Pooley slammed fast the door and stood engulfed in the flood tide of mail. He had sent out a few begging letters himself in the past, but now he knew what it felt like to be on the receiving end. Jim Pooley did not like it one little bit. His mail unread and his bedmate unwoken, Jim left the house that morning by the rear entrance.

Now he sat alone upon the Library bench. The sun had long arisen and all the makings of a great day ahead looked in the offing. Jim sighed mournfully and at intervals studied the palm of his right hand. He was not a happy man. He was a gentleman of substance now and it pained him greatly. The terrible feeling of responsibility, one he had never before experienced, gnawed away at his innards. It was all just too much. The total sum of his wealth was too large even to contemplate and with the passing of the night and the current bank rate it had already grown alarmingly.

Jim made a dismal groaning sound and buried his face in his hands. It was all just too much. He had never owned before what one might actually call “money” and certainly not what the “swells” refer to as the current account. He had had an overdraft once but that hadn’t proved to be up to much. And the manner in which he had acquired the fortune, also drastically wrong. No betting shop could ever have had that amount of readies waiting under the counter. And even if it had, it would be hardly likely to simply push them across the counter without a life or death struggle at the very least. Guns would have been toted and knee-caps an endangered species. He and Omally had transferred no fewer than twenty-six wheelbarrow loads from there to the bank. It was simply ridiculous.

And the bank? Pooley moaned pitifully. They had taken the entire thing for granted, as if he had been merely bunging in a couple of quid out of his wages. It was almost as if they had been expecting him. Through the bullet-proof glass of the office Pooley had seen the manager sitting at his desk, a pair of minuscule headphones clasped about his ears, nodding his head and popping his fingers.

And as for this, Pooley held up his right hand and examined the palm. The bank had refused to give him either a receipt or a cheque-book. With unveiled condescension they had explained that such methods of personal finance were now obsolete and that for security’s sake they must insist upon the new personalized identification system. They had then stamped his right palm with a pattern of eighteen little computer lines in three rows of six. Six six six. Pooley spat on to his palm and rubbed away at the marking; it would not budge. He eased up on the moaning and groaning and took to a bit of soulful sighing. He had become involved in something which was very much bigger than he was. He really should have listened to Professor Slocombe and torn up the slip.

A sudden screeching of white-walled tyres upon tarmac announced the arrival of Antoine with Pooley’s new car. Jim distantly recalled a deal he had struck the night before.

“Your carriage awaits,” said the chauffeur of fortune, springing from the automobile and holding open the door.

Jim was entranced. The car, a silver-grey Morris Minor, although of a model some fifteen years out of date, had all the makings of one fresh from the showroom. “Where did you get it?” he asked, rising from his gloom and strolling over to the automotive gem.

“Purchased with the money you advanced, sir,” Antoine replied politely. “Has a few tricks under the hood.”

Pooley circled the car approvingly and ran his unsoiled hand along the spanking paintwork. “Big Boda,” said he. “It’s a corker.”

“And what about the number plates?” Antoine indicated the same, JP 1.

“Double Boda,” said Jim Pooley.

“Would sir care to be taken for a spin?”

“Absolutely.” Jim clapped his hands together and chuckled. Maybe this being wealthy did have its compensations after all. Antoine swung forward the driver’s seat and Jim clambered aboard. The chauffeur sat himself down before the wheel and closed the door. “What is all that?” Pooley asked, spying out the Morris’ dashboard; it was far from conventional.

“Customized,” said Antoine. “By Lateinos and Romiith, who bought out the old Morris patent. This car will do nought to sixty in three point four seconds. It has weather-eye air-conditioning, fuel consumption down to near zero by merit of its improved plasma-drive system. Are you acquainted with quantum mechanics?”

“I get by,” said Jim.

“Solar pod power-retention headlights, underpinned macro-pleasure full-glide suspension. Sub-lift non-drift gravitational thrust plates…”

“Drive please,” said Jim, “I will tell you when to stop.”

“Where to, sir?” Antoine put the preposterous vehicle into instant overdrive and tore it away at Mach ten.

Pooley slewed back in his seat, cheeks drawn up towards his ears, his face suddenly resembling the now legendary Gwynplaine, of Victor Hugo’s
Man who Laughs
. “Steady on,” winced Jim.

“Gravitational acclimatization auxiliary forward modifications engaged.” Antoine touched a lighted sensor on the dash and Pooley slumped forward. “A quick tour of the parish, taking in the more desirable residences on the ‘For Sale’ list, would it be, sir?”

“Come again?”

“My previous employers always liked the grand tour.”

“I thought you worked for Bob?”

“Only at lunch times, I am a freelance.”

“Very commendable.”

The car screamed into Mafeking Avenue on two wheels, narrowly avoiding Old Pete, who raised two eloquent fingers towards its receding rear end.

“How many clients have you then?”

“Only you,” said Antoine. “I have attended to all those who came by the big payouts. One after another.”

The Morris roared past the Memorial Park, gathering speed.

“One after another. How many have come up recently then?”

“Twenty-five, although they were never in your league.” The chauffeur cleared his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound.

Pooley scratched at his head. He had heard of no recent big winners hereabouts. Jim suddenly smelt the great-grandaddy of all big rats. “Stop the car,” he demanded.

Antoine crouched low over the computerized controls, his toe edged nearer to the floor, and the modified family saloon performed another impossible feat of acceleration.

“Stop this car!” shouted Jim. “There is a stitch-up here and I’ll have no part of it.”

“Stitch-up?” leered Antoine. Pooley could just make out his face reflected in the driving mirror. It was not a face Jim would wish to recall in his dreams. The chauffeur’s normally amiable visage had become contorted into a death-mask of inhuman cruelty. The eyes glowed between hooded slits, the mouth was drawn down, exposing a row of wicked metallic-looking teeth. The face was no longer human, it was atavistic, something beyond and before humanity, compelling and vibrant with dark evil power. The flying Morris cannoned through the short cobbled alleyway between the Police Station and the Beehive and swerved right through the red lights and out into the High Road. It should surely have been forced to a standstill amidst the hubbub of mid-morning traffic, but to Pooley’s increasing horror the High Street was empty, the pavements deserted.

“Stop, I say!” screamed Jim. “I will pay you anything you want, name the sum.” Antoine laughed hideously, the sounds issuing from his throat being those of sharp stones rattled in a tin can. Pooley shook his brain into gear; “knobble the mad driver’, it told him. Climbing forward, Jim lashed out towards the driver’s neck. “AAAAAGH!” went Pooley, as his lunging fingers piled into a barrier of empty air, splintering nails, and dislocating thumbs.

“Safety-shield anti-whiplash modification,” sneered the demonic driver as Pooley sank back into his seat, his wounded hands jammed beneath his armpits. The car swung into a side-road Jim did not clearly remember and thundered on towards… Jim suddenly stiffened in his seat… towards the rim of the old quarry. Jim recalled that place well enough, he used to go ferreting there when a lad. The walls were fifty-foot sheer to a man. He was heading for an appointment with none other than good old Nemesis himself. Now was the time to do some pretty nifty fast thinking. Pooley thrust his brain into overdrive. Accelerating Morris, mad driver, two doors only, invisible force-field before. No sun-roof and Nemesis five hundred yards distant. Jim chewed upon his lip, worry beads of perspiration upon his brow. No way out before, above, but possibly…