The robot was on him in a flash and, whilst Norman cowered in the darkness saying the rosary and praying desperately for the little brass wheel he had so recently set in motion to irrevocably break down, the martial duplicate lifted his struggling prize high above his head and cast him once more across the shop. This time, however, there was little to cushion Omally’s fall. He struck the shop’s aged front door, carrying it from its hinges, and flew out into the Ealing Road to land across the bonnet of a parked Morris Minor. It is certain that a lesser man would not possibly have survived such an assault, but Omally, momentarily numbed, merely slid down the driver’s side of the car bonnet and prepared once more to come up fighting. “Nuts and noses” his Da always told him, and it was obvious that nuts were at present out of the question.
6
Jim Pooley slouched across the St Mary’s Allotments dragging Omally’s pickaxe and spade. At intervals he stopped and cursed, he was sure that he had got the worst part of this deal. Omally was probably even now sitting in Norman’s kitchenette sipping celery hock and discussing contracts. Somehow John always came out on top and he was left holding the smelly end of the proverbial drain rod. The fates had never favoured the Pooleys. In Jim’s considered opinion the fault lay with some Neolithic ancestor who had fallen out with God. It had probably been over some quite trivial matter, but as was well known, the Almighty does have an exceedingly long memory and can be wantonly vindictive once you’ve got his back up. Pooley cursed all his ancestors en masse and threw in a few of Omally’s just to be on the safe side. He was making more than a three-course meal out of the prospect of a bit of spade work and he knew it. Hopefully, a few digs at the thing and it would simply crumble to dust. At worst, a blow or two from the pickaxe would hasten the action. With all the millions to be made from Norman’s wheel a few meagre pennies for a buried bedframe seemed hardly worth the candle.
Pooley slouched through the allotment gates and off up Albany Road, the spade raising a fine shower of sparks along the pavement behind him. He turned into Abaddon Street and confronted the high fence of planking shielding the empty bombsite. With a heartfelt sigh Jim slid aside the hanging board which camouflaged the secret entrance, and climbed through the gap, backwards.
An ill-considered move upon his part. With a sudden strangled cry of horror Pooley vanished away through the gap. Omally’s spade spun away from his fingers and tumbled downwards towards oblivion. By the happiest of chances Jim maintained his grip upon the pickaxe, whose head now jammed itself firmly across the gap. Where once there had been well-trodden ground, now there was complete and utter nothing. The bomb-site had simply ceased to exist. Jim was swinging precariously by a pickaxe handle over the sheer edge of a very very large pit indeed. It was the big daddy of them all, and as Jim turned terrified eyes down to squint between his dangling feet, he had the distinct impression that he was staring into the black void of space.
“Help!” wailed Jim Pooley, who was never slow on the uptake when he discovered his life to be in jeopardy. “Fallen man here, not waving, but drowning… HELP!” Jim swung desperate feet towards the wall of the chasm, his hobnails scratched and scrabbled at the sheer cliff face but failed to find a purchase. “Oh woe,” said Jim. “Oh, help!”
A sickening report above drew Jim’s attention. It seemed that the elderly head of Omally’s pickaxe was debating as to whether this would be as good a time as any to part company with its similarly aged shaft. “Oooooooh noooo!” shrieked Jim as he sank a couple of inches nearer to kingdom-come. Pooley closed his eyes and made what preparations he could, given so little time, to meet his Maker. Another loud crack above informed Jim that the pickaxe had made up his mind. The handle snapped away from the shaft and Jim was gone.
Or at least he most definitely would have been, had not a pair of muscular hands caught at his trailing arms and drawn him aloft, rending away his tweedy jacket sleeves from both armpits. A white-faced and gibbering Jim Pooley was dragged out through the gap in the fencing and deposited in a tangled heap upon the pavement.
“You are trespassing,” said a voice somewhere above him. “These are your jacket sleeves, I believe.”
Jim squinted up painfully from his pavement repose. Above him stood as pleasant a looking angel of deliverance as might be imagined. He was tall and pale, with a shock of black hair combed away behind his ears. His eyes were of darkest jet, as was his immaculate one-piece coverall work suit. He wore a pair of miniscule headphones which he now pushed back from his ears. Jim could hear the tinkling of fairy-like music issuing from them.
“I was passing and I heard your cries,” the young man explained. “You were trespassing you know.”
Jim climbed gracelessly to his feet and patted the dust from what was left of his jacket. He accepted the sleeves from the young man and stuffed them into a trouser pocket. “Sorry,” said he. “I had no idea. My thanks, sir, for saving my life.”
“It is no matter,” said the young man. “Had you fallen you might have damaged some valuable equipment.”
“Oh, thanks very much.”
“It is no matter. This site has been acquired and excavated for a new complex to be built. Lateinos and Romiith Limited.”
“Oh, those lads.” Pooley blew on to the scorched palms of his hands. The “Acquired for Lateinos and Romiith” signs had been blossoming upon all manner of vacant plots in Brentford recently, and the black-glazed complexes had been springing up overnight, like dark mushrooms. Exactly who Lateinos and Romiith were, nobody actually knew, but that they were very big in computers was hinted at. “Don’t let the marker posts on your allotment fall down,” folks said, “or the buggers will stick a unit on it.”
“Well again, my thanks,” said Jim. “I suppose you didn’t see anything of an old bedframe while your lads were doing the excavations?”
“Bedframe?” The young man suddenly looked very suspicious indeed.
“Well, never mind. Listen, if you are ever in the Swan I would be glad to stand you a pint or two. Not only did you save my life but you saved me a good deal of unnecessary labour.” Pooley made as to doff his cap, but it was now many hundreds of feet beneath his reach. Cursing silently at Omally, he said, “Thank you, then, and farewell.” Snatching up Omally’s pickaxe head, he shambled away down Abaddon Street leaving the young man staring after him wearing a more than baffled expression.
Jim thought it best to return Omally’s axehead at once to his allotment shed before any more harm could come to it. He also thought it best not to mention the matter of the spade, which having been one of Omally’s latest acquisitions was something of a favourite with him. Possibly then, it would be a good idea to slip around to Norman’s and stick his nose once more against the kitchenette window.
As Jim came striding over the allotment ground, pickaxe head over shoulder and “Whistle while you Work” doing that very thing from between his lips, he was more than a little surprised to discover Omally in his shirt-sleeves, bent over the zinc water-butt, dabbing at his tender places. “John?” said Jim.
Omally looked up fearfully at the sounds of Jim’s approach. His right eye appeared to have a Victoria plum growing out of it. “Jim,” said John.
“You have been in a fight.”
“Astute as ever I see.”
“Outnumbered? How many of them, three, four?”
“Just the one.”
“Not from around these parts then. Circus strongman was it? Sumo wrestler? Surely not…” Pooley crossed himself, “Count Dante himself?”
“Close,” said Omally, feeling at his jaw, which had developed a most alarming click. “Corner-shopkeeper, actually.”