Knees Up Mother Earth (28 page)

“Nicked plans?” said Norman in as normal a tone as he could muster up. “What is this about nicked plans?”

“All the technical gubbins – the wireless transmission of energy, all that stuff. The stuff that was somehow vanished out of history so that the King of Darkness couldn’t get his evil hands on the plans and do all the awful stuff that he would do with them if he got hold of them, if you know what I mean.”

“He sounds a very bad sort, this King of Darkness fellow,” said Norman.

“He is.” Winston stuffed another gobstopper into his mouth. “Mr Wells is determined to stop him, so he zeroed in on the computer program. The computer is destroyed now, so that should be that for now, in this time.”

“Right,” said Norman. “That’s that, then.”

“So if we can fix up the Time Machine, we’ll go home in it.”

“I’ll help you,” said Norman. “I’m sure together we can fix it.”

“You’re a good bloke, Norman, I can see that.”

“Thanks,” said Norman.

“I mean, you’re not an agent of the Devil made flesh, is ya?”

“Of course I’m not,” said Norman.

“Of course you’re not,” said Winston, thrusting yet another gobstopper into his mouth, but still managing to speak somehow. “You wouldn’t do anyfink that would help the King of Darkness gain control of the world, would ya? Like bunging him the plans for the supertechnology?”

“I certainly would
not
.” Norman crossed his heart. “Just one thing,” said he.

“Yeah,” said Winston, with difficulty.

“Do you know the identity of this Devil-made-flesh chap?”

“Of course,” said Winston. “We’ve already been to his time, five years in the future. We had to scarper back here quick – he nearly did for Mr Wells.”

“So,” said Norman, “what
is
his name?”

“William Starling,” said Winston.

Old Pete sat before his allotment hut upon a battered campaign chair. The chair had seen many campaigns and Old Pete had seen them with it. Old Pete’s hut was of the corrugated-iron variety, with a pitched roof, curtained windows and a rather elegant porch that the oldster had added to make it stand out from the many similar sheds that bespotted St Mary’s allotments.

Not that there had been any need to, for Old Pete’s patch was a sufficient cornucopia to draw the eye on any day of the week. Even including Tuesdays.

He grew the most wonderful things.

Amorphophallus titanium
rose erect and proud from iron tubs and
Rajflesia arnoldi
, which the natives of its native Sumatra believe is pollinated by elephants, covered many feet of ground.
Lycopodium sp
, the plant that Druids grew to bring good favour, blossomed alongside
Lunaria annua
, which was said to have the power to unshoe horses that stepped upon it. There was
Ferula asafoetida
, which wards off the evil eye, and something known as the Tree of Life, upon which bloomed certain fruit that Old Pete was disinclined to harvest.

All in all it was a garden unlike any other, with the possible exception of those belonging to Professor Slocombe, or Gandalf.

It was all rather special.

Old Pete took a sniff at the air. Fragrances of stinkhorn and stenchweed and arse violet filled the ancient’s nostrils. He took from the tweedy pocket of his elderly waistcoat an antique pocket watch and shone a torch upon its pitted face.

Eleven-fifteen of the evening clock. Old Pete shivered somewhat. He replaced his watch, switched off his torch and turned his jacket collar upwards. And then he shivered again. But it wasn’t from the cold. Old Pete ground his dentures together, rooted about between his feet, drew to his lips a tin can and took a swill of sprout brandy. It tasted good. The crop had come in early this year and the still that Old Pete illegally maintained within his hut had performed its duties well. The old one sighed and took another swill. He was not a happy fellow, Old Pete was not. He would be a happier fellow were he able to sit here, undisturbed, for another hour swilling sprout brandy and then take himself off to his bed. But Old Pete knew in his antiquated bones that this was not to be.

He knew, he just knew, what was about to occur.

He had tried for so long, for all these long long years, to put the past behind him, and indeed the future, if that was possible. But he knew that this was the night, the night he had dreaded all these years. It would happen tonight, or it would not happen at all.

Sounds came to Old Pete upon the gentle Brentford breeze, sounds that he knew well enough – the sounds that he had been dreading.

The sounds of swearing and of engine noise.

“Get a bl**dy move on, you b*st*rd!” shouted Noman.

“Is this appalling language really necessary?” asked Mr Wells.

“I’m sorry, Mr Wells,” said Norman, “but if I don’t shout at this van it will
not
work.”

“Technology ain’t up to much nowadays,” observed Winston from the back of Norman’s van.

“It’s the Hartnel Grumpiness Hyper-Drive,” Norman explained. “The engine is powered by negative energy. There’s so much of the stuff about, and none of it being put to good use.”

“And where exactly are we now?” asked Mr Wells.

“Turning into the allotments,” said Norman. “Go on, you sh*tbag!”

“The allotments,” said Mr Wells as Norman’s van bumped through the open gates on to the rutted track beyond.

“Like I explained to you,” Norman continued, “Peg will be home any time. I couldn’t have her finding you two and the Time Machine in her kitchenette. You know what women are like, they ask all kinds of uncomfortable questions and they’ll rarely take even a well-told lie for an answer.”

“And so we are coming to your allotment patch.”

“To my allotment
shed
, yes. We can hide the Time Machine inside and you and Winston can sleep in there for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll arrange for board and lodgings at Madame Loretta Rune’s in Sprite Street. She’s a Spiritualist, but she takes in lodgers. You’ll get bed and breakfast.”

“Ah,” said Mr Wells as his head struck the van’s roof. “Spiritualism, is it? I have some interest in that myself. I am currently investigating the case of the Cottingly Fairies. Two young girls have taken photographs of fairies, you know. Very interesting case. I am an expert on this subject.”

Norman swung the steering wheel. “You’re a useless swine!” he shouted.

“How dare you!” said Mr Wells.

“The van, sir, not you. Faster, you f*ckwit!”

“Quite so.”

“Although.” Norman’s van ploughed down a row of beanpoles, destroying Mr Ratter’s potentially prizewinning crop. “Although, I think you’ll find that it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who investigated the Cottingly Fairies.”

Winston chuckled.

“Why chuckle you?” Norman asked.

“Because Mr Wells
is
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s his pen name when he dabbles in a bit of fiction.”

“A mere hobby,” said Mr Wells. “The world will remember me as a great scientist, and a saviour of mankind.”

“But you don’t look anything like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” said Norman, as Mr Kay’s cabbages went the way of all flesh.

“False moustache,” said Winston. “Not to mention the hat.”

“The hat?” said Norman.

“I told you not to mention that.”

“Ah,” said Norman. Thoughtfully. “Well, we’re here now. Would you like to get out?”

“Not really,” said Mr Wells. “I would prefer to repair to Madame Rune’s for a cognac and a cigar, before turning in for the night.”

“Nevertheless,” said Norman, “this, I regret, is where you will be staying tonight.”

Amidst much grumbling from Mr Wells and immoderate chuckling from young Winston as he shinned over the passenger seat, the three debouched from Norman’s knackered van and into the moonlit allotments.

“You’re a very nice van indeed,” said Norman, “and I love you very dearly.” The van’s engine died and its lights went out.

“And what now, gov’nor?” Winston asked.

“That’s my hut over there,” said Norman. “The one with the solar panels and the wind-farm attachment on the roof. We’ll unload the Time Machine and drag it inside.”

“Just one thing,” said Mr Wells.

“Yes?” said Norman.

“Well,” said Wells, “I appreciate that you wished to remove us and my machine from your kitchenette before your wife returned home, in order to avoid having to answer any difficult questions.”

“This is true,” said Norman, opening the rear doors of the van. “A good wife makes a good husband, but a woman scorned is a mischief unto sparrows.”

“Possibly so, but that said, how will you explain to her the fact that you had to demolish much of the rear kitchenette wall, which you did in order to remove my machine from your premises?”

“She wants an extension building,” said Norman. “She’s been wanting it for years. I’ll tell her I started tonight, to surprise her when she got home.”

“Nice thought, gov’nor,” said Winston. “You’ll probably get yourself a shag out of that.”

Norman shuddered. But as with Old Pete, this wasn’t from the cold. “It never rains but it pours,” said he. “Please give me a hand with the Time Machine.”

It was a struggle.

But then isn’t getting a Time Machine out of a van and dragging it into an allotment shed always a struggle?

Norman unpadlocked his shed and threw open the doors. They were double doors. Norman had a very large allotment shed.

“This is a very large allotment shed,” said Mr Wells.

“It’s really a lock-up garage,” said Norman. “I bought it in instalments and installed it here.” Norman laughed foolishly, although for why, no one understood.

“There are certain things every man needs,” said Norman, once the Time Machine had been dragged within, the doors closed and the lights switched on. “A lock-up garage, an allotment shed and a wife who is always eager to please her husband sexually. Two out of three and you can chalk your life up as a success.”

“And I am expected to sleep
here
?” Mr Wells made a most disdainful face.

“It’s the best I can offer you for now.”

“I am not accustomed to camping out in such wretched hovels as this. Take me at once to Madame Rune’s.”

Norman did a bit of pensive lip chewing and then rephrased a careful suggestion. “I feel it would be safer this way,” said he, “for yourself and your youthful ward here. I am not precisely clear as to what
exactly
the computer program was doing. Nor, in truth, do I think that I want to know. But as you were able to, how shall I put this, zero in upon it when I perused the program, do you not think that this King of Darkness of yours might similarly be able to do so?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Might he not suspect that you, his archenemy, had a hand in the destruction of the program?”

“Undoubtedly also.”

“Then he might wish to exact revenge.”

“Ah,” said Mr Wells.

“And you are presently unable to evade him due to the fact that your Time Machine is disabled.”

“Ah,” said Mr Wells once more.

“So perhaps it would be best if you took refuge here in this secret hideaway for the night.”

“Hm,” said Mr Wells. “Perhaps you are correct. But only for tonight, though.”

“Only for tonight,” said Norman. “Then I’ll sort out proper accommodation and we’ll get your machine working and you can be off on your way back home, having thwarted the evil schemes of the King of Darkness.”

“All right,” said Mr Wells. “I will put up with the discomfort for tonight. The computer program is destroyed and as soon as the Time Machine is made serviceable once more, Winston and I will return to the nineteenth century.”

“For the busy man time passes quickly,” said Norman. “I’ll say goodnight to you, then. There are a couple of sleeping bags over here. I’ll be back in the morning with some breakfast.”

“Goodnight, then,” said Mr Wells.

“Ta-ta for now,” said Winston.

Norman left his allotment shed, returned to his van, shouted abuse at it and drove homeward.

Winston unrolled the sleeping bags and he and Mr Wells settled down for an uncomfortable night.

Moonlight shone in through the window of Norman’s lock-up garage/shed and lit upon the faces of the getting-off-to-sleepers. Mr Wells huffed and puffed and grumbled to himself, but eventually took to snoring. Winston went out as a light will do and lay, bathed in moonlight, making one of those angelic-sleeping-child faces that even the naughtiest and most impossible children always seem capable of making.

A shadow briefly crossed the face of the angelic sleeper.

It was the shadow of Old Pete.

The elder peeped in through the window and viewed the sleeping child.

Old Pete drew a deep and silent breath. “So it was all true,” he whispered to himself. “All the vanished Victorian technology. All true. As true as it is that the child sleeping there is none other than myself. I never liked being called Winston. I’m glad I changed my name to Pete.”

Jim Pooley awoke to another Saturday morning. Jim eased himself gently into wakefulness in that practised manner of his and lay, taking in the ceiling and gauging the potential measure of the day. Jim’s waking eyes strayed towards the chart that he had Sellotaped to the bedroom wall above the fireplace.

The FA Cup fixtures chart.

This chart had a lot of crossings out on it now, and a lot of arrows scrawled hither and thus. And a lot of circles about the name Brentford United. The team were going great guns now. As a result of the professor’s continuing missives and Jim’s instructions to the team, things were really rocking and rolling. Four FA Cup qualifying games they’d played now and had won every one of them. Decisively.

Jim viewed the other wall. The wall by the door. The door with all his press cuttings affixed to it, and the magazine front covers, too. The ones that had him on them.
Him
. Jim Pooley of Brentford. There he was on all those covers, in his Bertie Wooster suit, giving the big thumbs-up.
FHM, Loaded, The World of Interiors
, which had done a feature on his kitchenette. And
House and Garden
, which had struggled, although quite successfully in Jim’s humble opinion, to get a two-page spread out of his window box. He even featured on the cover of this month’s
Cissies on Parade
, although why that should be, Jim wasn’t precisely sure.

But he was quite the man about town now. He’d even been invited for a night out at Peter Stringfellow’s club, which Jim had found rather noisy and crowded – although Omally, who had gone along with him, had added many telephone numbers to his little black book.

Jim stared at all the glossy covers and the press cuttings. It wasn’t right, Jim knew that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. Although folk kept telling him that it was, it was all stuff and nonsense really.
He
had little to do with the team’s success. He was just a pawn in some terrible game being played out between Professor Slocombe and William Starling. He was right in the middle, in the firing line – although no one was actually firing at him at the moment. And for that fact he knew he should feel grateful and be enjoying himself.

But Jim was not enjoying himself. He didn’t want to be this person. He just wanted to be Jim Pooley, man of the turf, investor in the Six-Horse Super Yankee.

All he really wanted was just to be left alone to be Jim.

Jim Pooley sighed. Why did life have to be so complicated?

John Omally awoke in his own cosy bed, in which he was alone upon this Saturday morning. John had sworn off the women for more than a week now, which was quite a big thing for him. It had not exactly been a voluntary swearing off, though; it was more that he just didn’t have the time. There was simply too much club business to be dealt with.

John had always been of the opinion, as have many, that people tend to make simple matters difficult. He believed that things could be dealt with simply, that every problem had a simple solution. Certainly John had held to this opinion because he had rarely encountered any situations that were actually difficult, up until recent times. He had always sidestepped them.

Now, however, everything seemed to be difficult.

The town councillors who had received injuries when the floor of the executive box collapsed had decided to sue the club for damages. Their solicitor Mr Gray, an unwontedly vicious individual who Omally surmised must have received some slight or missed some business opportunity to have put him into such a vile frame of mind, was going all out for many thousands of pounds. John hadn’t mentioned this to Jim for fear of upsetting the lad. And then there was The Stripes Bar. It should have been raking in the money, what with the strippers and everything, but it wasn’t prospering. Neville had drawn the clientele back to The Flying Swan, which was infuriating.

The club shop was doing well, though, knocking out many, many team kaftans, but the money coming in was hardly covering all the expenses of keeping the club going.

Such as paying the players.

And there was a big problem with the players.

Before every FA Cup qualifying game, one of them had dropped out, vanished, had it away on their toes for financial or personal reasons. Horace Beaverbrooke had apparently run off with a lady tattooist. And Trevor Brooking, not to be confused with the other Trevor Brooking, had got so fed up with people confusing him with the other Trevor Brooking that he had given up football for life and opened a sports shop.

Or so they said. In Omally’s opinion, they had simply lost their nerve.

The substitutes – Don and Phil English, Barry Bustard and Loup-Gary Thompson – were doing their best, but soon the team would be coming up against the BIG OPPONENTS, the big-league fellows. A bunch of circus performers, no matter how well intentioned and aided by the professor’s magical tactics, could not survive against these.

Omally did sighings. Why did life have to be so complicated?

Norman awoke to find Peg snoring as noisily as ever beside him. Norman made a face of displeasure. He’d been dreaming about Yola Bennett, about doing certain things to Yola Bennett. But Norman hadn’t had any time recently to do these things to Yola Bennett in anything other than his dreams.

Norman’s waking hours had been rather busy.

And Norman’s waking hours had not been happy for the lad.

Norman was feeling bad. Norman was feeling guilty.

He should never have claimed that those inventions he’d discovered on the Victorian computer were his own. He should never have claimed the patents. And he should never have sold the rights on these purloined patents to William Starling.

Norman felt wretched. He was not by nature a dishonest man. He was a good man. But he was also a human man. He was a greedy man. He had clearly done a very bad thing. A truly bad thing, if the future of mankind had anything to do with it.

But had it really been his fault? Norman tried to convince himself that it had not. He had been seeking The Big Figure, hadn’t he? Which was why he’d answered the ad for the free computer parts and assembled the computer in the first place.

Norman did silent sighings. All that fitted, but rather too well. It was as if a hand greater than his own had had a hand in it. So to speak. It wasn’t his doing, it wasn’t just a coincidence – he’d been drawn into all this.

And what of Mr Wells and Winston? Norman was currently forking out his pennies and pounds to pay for their accommodation at Madame Loretta Rune’s. And Mr Wells, posing as Norman’s visiting Uncle Herbert, had become a regular patron at both The Flying Swan and The Stripes Bar, running up monthly accounts that Norman was also forced to cover.

And of course, Norman had been spending all of his free time at his allotment shed/lock-up garage trying to fix the Time Machine, which was one reason why he had had no time to see Yola Bennett. Christmas had come and gone now and so had the New Year and what did Norman have to show for all the work he’d been doing on the Time Machine?

Well, not very much, as it happened.

He’d had it all to pieces. In fact, it was now little more than pieces, but how it worked was still a mystery; and to add mystery to mystery, Mr Wells seemed to have no idea how it worked either. Which was rather strange, considering that he claimed to have built it.

As far as Norman had been able to make out, the Time Machine contained no internal mechanisms. There were some levers, but these seemed merely to enter a box which contained …

A sprout.

A sprout, yes!

Norman had examined this sprout. There was nothing immediately “special” about this sprout, although there was definitely something “odd”.

Norman had, upon first taking this sprout up in his fingers, felt an almost irresistible compunction to thrust it into his ear. He had imagined that the sprout was speaking to him. Norman had hastily thrust the mysterious sprout into the half-consumed jar of pickled onions that he had half-consumed and hastily screwed down the lid.

Norman was mystified.

Mystified, guilty, running out of cash and wondering about his wife, who seemed to be spending more and more time in the company of Scoop Molloy, cub reporter from the
Brentford Mercury
.

Norman did more silent sighings. Why did life have to be so complicated?

Neville the part-time barman awoke with a great big smile upon his face. It was a blinder of a smile and it really lit up the publican’s normally paler-shade-of-white visage. Neville stretched out his arms and brought his hands down gently.

On to shoulders.

Female shoulders.

To Neville’s right there lay a woman. A naked woman.

And to Neville’s left, another one.

Alike, were these, as two peas in the proverbial pod.
[34]
Naked ladies in Neville’s boudoir.

One naked lady called Loz.

And another one called Pippa.

Neville smiled some more and waggled his toes about. This was all right, this, this being a ladies’ man. He should have got into this kind of thing years ago. Why hadn’t he done that?

The smile faded slightly from Neville’s face. He knew full well why he hadn’t. But he was doing it now, making up for lost time. And in a big way, too. Two ladies. Two bare, naked ladies. And he hadn’t disappointed either of them. He was a Goddamn sexual tyrannosaurus.

Neville made a thoughtful face, although it still had a bit of a grin left on it. He knew full well that it wasn’t him, wasn’t
really
him. It was all down to Old Pete’s Mandragora. That stuff made Viagra look like spray starch.

And it was undoubtedly addictive. Neville was now downing a packet a day, and Old Pete was upping the price with every delivery. He was even talking about cutting Neville’s supply completely because he had “more important matters on his mind”.

More important matters than Neville’s sex life?

What could possibly be more important than that?

And then there was the other business.

The other business, which involved Young Master Robert, the brewery-owner’s beloved only son. He had further plans to liven up The Swan.

Neville’s smile all but left his face. All but.

Why did life have to be so complicated?

Pippa awoke and her hand brushed lightly against Neville’s todger.

“Stuff complications,” said Neville.

Arising, as one would, to the occasion.