“The wheels of God grind slowly,” thought Norman to himself. “But they do grind at twenty-six revolutions per minute.”
2
Neville the part-time barman flip-flopped across the deserted saloon-bar of the Flying Swan, his monogrammed carpet-slippers raising small clouds of dust from the faded carpet. Rooting with a will, he sought his newspaper which lay upon the pub’s welcome mat beneath a pile of final demands, gaudy circulars, and rolled posters advertising the forthcoming Festival of Brentford.
Shaking it free of these postal impediments, Neville unfolded the local tabloid and perused the front page. More good good news. Earthquakes and tidal waves, wars and rumours of wars. Jolly stuff. And on the home front? Well, there was the plague of black fly currently decimating the allotment crops. A rival brewery had just put its beer up a penny a pint and its competition, ever happy to accept a challenge, were hinting at rises of two pence or more.
One particular gem caught the part-time barman’s good eye: the local banks, in keeping with a countrywide trend, were investigating the possibility of dispensing with coin of the realm and instigating a single credit card system. That would go down a storm with the locals, thought Neville. Without further ado he consigned the wicked messenger of bad tidings to the wastepaper basket. “I shall cancel this,” said the part-time barman to himself. “I shall ask Norman to despatch me something of a more cheerful nature in the future. Possibly the People’s Friend or Gardener’s Gazette.”
But on further consideration, even those two periodicals were not exactly devoid of grim tidings nowadays. The People’s Friend, not content with simply going up three pence, assailed its readers with a fine line in doom prophecy, and the Gardener’s Gazette dedicated most of its pages to large anatomical diagrams of black fly. Neville shrugged his dressing-gowned shoulders. Seemed like a nice day though, but. The sun rising majestic as ever from behind the flat-blocks and tickling the Swan’s upper panes. Always some hope for the future. Although, lately, Neville had been feeling more than a little ill at ease. It was as if some great burden was descending upon him, inch by inch and pound by pound, down on to his bony shoulders. He was hard put to explain the feeling, and there was little point in confiding his unease to the regulars, but he was certain that something altogether wrong was happening and, moreover, that it was happening to him personally.
Leaving his newspaper to confide its black tidings to the fag ends in the wastepaper basket and his mail to gather what dust it wished upon the doormat, Neville the part-time barman flip-flopped away up the Swan’s twenty-six stairs to his cornflakes and a cup of the blackest of all black coffees.
In another part of Brentford other things were stirring this Shrove Tuesday morning and what those other things were and what they would later become were matters which would in their turn weigh very heavily indeed upon certain part-time barmen’s shoulders.
They all truly began upon a certain section of unreclaimed bomb-site along the High Street between the Beehive pub and a rarely used side-turning known as Abaddon Street. And as fate would have it, it was across this very stretch of land that an Irish gentleman of indeterminate years, wearing a well-patched tweed jacket and a flat cap, was even now striding. He was whistling brightly and as it was his wont to do, leading by the perished rubber grip of a pitted handlebar, an elderly sit-up-and-beg bike. This was one John Vincent Omally, and his rattling companion, labouring bravely along, although devoid of front mudguards and rear brake and sorely in need of the healing balm offered by Norman’s oilcan, was none other than that prince of pedaldom, Marchant, the wonder bike. Over the rugged strip of land came these two heroic figures, the morning sun tinting their features, treading a well-worn short-cut of their own making. Omally whistling a jaunty tune from the land of his fathers and Marchant offering what accompaniment he could with the occasional bout of melodic bell ringing. God was as ever in Omally’s Heaven and all seemed very much all right with the world.
As they came a-striding, a-whistling and a-ringing, small birdies fluttered down on to the crumbling ivy-hung brickwork of the surrounding walls to join them in a rowdy chorus. Beads of dew swung upon dandelion stems and fat-bellied garden spiders fiddled with their diamond-hung webs. It certainly wasn’t a bad old life if you had the know of it, and Omally was a man whom it could reasonably be said had that very know. The lad gave a little skip and doffed his hat to the day. Without warning his foot suddenly struck a half-buried object which had certainly not existed upon his previous day’s journeyings. To the accompaniment of a great Godless oath which momentarily blotted out the sunlight and raised the twittering birdies into a startled confusion, the great man of Eire plunged suddenly towards the planet of his birth, bringing with him his bicycle and tumbling into a painful, untidy, and quite undignified heap.
“By the blood of the Saints!” swore Omally, attempting to rise but discovering to his horror that Marchant now held him in something resembling an Indian death-lock. “In the name of all the Holies!” The tangled bike did what it could to get a grip of itself and spun its back wheel, chewing up several of Omally’s most highly-prized fingers. “You stupid beast!” screamed himself, lashing out with an oversized hobnail. “Have a care will you?” The bike, having long years of acquaintanceship with its master to its credit, considered that this might be the time to keep the now legendary low profile.
Amidst much cursing and a great deal of needless profanity, Omally struggled painfully to his feet and sought the cause of his downfall. Almost at once he spied out the villain, a nubble of polished metal protruding from the dusty path. John was not slow in levelling his size-nine boot at it.
He was someway between mid-swing and full-swing when a mental image of a bygone relative swam into his mind. He had performed a similar action upon a half-buried obstruction during the time of the blitz. The loud report and singular lack of mortal remains paid a posthumous tribute to his lack of forethought. DANGER UNEXPLODED BOMB! screamed a siren in Omally’s brain. John lowered his size-nine terror weapon gently to the deck and stooped gingerly towards the earth to examine the object. To his amazement he found himself staring at the proverbial thing of beauty. A mushroom of highly-polished brass surmounted by an enamel crown. There was that indefinable quality of value about it and Omally was not slow to notice the fact. His fingers greedily wore away at its earthy surrounding, exposing a slender, fluted column extending downwards. From even this small portion it was clear that the thing was a rare piece of workmanship; the flutes were cunningly inlaid with mother-of-pearl. Omally climbed to his feet and peered furtively around to assure himself that he was alone with his treasure. That he had struck the motherlode at last was almost a certainty. There was nothing of the doodlebug or Mark Seventeen Blockbuster about this boy, but very much of the antique bedstead of Victoria and Albert proportions.
John rubbed his hands together and chuckled. What was it his old Da had once said? A dead bird never falls out of the nest, that was it. Carefully covering his find with a clump or two of grass, Omally continued upon his way. The birdies had flown and the spiders had it away on their eight ones, but before Omally reached his secret exit in the planked fencing he was whistling once more, and Marchant was doing his level best to keep up with the increasingly more sprightly tune.