And with that she pressed the button on her belt and promptly vanished.
“Ha ha!” Bobby Boy laughed up from the floor. “You’re dead, Russell. Ha, ha, ha.”
Russell smiled. “I don’t feel very dead,” he said.
“But she’ll shoot you, yesterday.”
“I don’t remember being shot, yesterday.”
“What?”
“You didn’t really think I’d leave a loose end like that floating about, surely?”
“What?”
“I’m afraid I did something yesterday,” said Russell. “I crept into Julie’s bedroom and did a bit of reprogramming to her time belt. I think you’ll find she’s a long way from here now. Back in the year dot.”
“You bastard!” croaked Fudgepacker. “That was my wife.”
“The Führer’s girlfriend,” said Russell. “She played you false. She played everybody false.”
“Ah yes,” Ernest Fudgepacker rose from his knees. “The Führer, the Führer.”
“Ah yes. The Führer.” Russell perused the golden Rolex on his wrist. “I think just about now, on the western horizon … If you’ll just look into the sky.”
Ernest Fudgepacker turned and as he did so a bright flash, almost like a daytime firework, lit up the western sky and then faded into the blue.
Ernest Fudgepacker groaned.
“Bomb on board the Flügelrad,” said Russell. “If only he hadn’t kept popping back from the future to have a drink with you. Still, at least this time he went out with a bang, rather than a whimper.”
“What do you mean?”
“I saw what you did to him in the future,” said Russell. “What did you do, sacrifice him to that time creature of yours?”
“I would have, a couple of years from now, for what he did. Taking my beautiful wife.”
“Well, he’s gone now,” said Russell, “for ever. And that, gentlemen, I think, is it. I’m afraid the excitement has all been a little much for me, I will have to have a lie down. I can call for a paramedic if you want, Bobby Boy.”
“No thanks,” the thin man climbed unsteadily to his feet.
“And you’d best get back to the Emporium, Mr Fudgepacker,” said Russell. “There’s a lot of business coming your way.”
“There is?”
“I’m producing a movie,” said Russell. “It will be my last. But I’ll want to hire props from the Emporium. Many props. All the props. You’ll make enough for a happy retirement, Mr Fudgepacker. I wouldn’t deprive you of that.”
Mr Fudgepacker sighed. “You’ve a good heart, Russell. You’ve always had a good heart.”
“Sadly,” said Russell, “I now have a bad one. But you’ll get your retirement fund. I’ll see that you do.”
Mr Fudgepacker shuffled to the lift door accompanied by a sulking Bobby Boy, and then he turned.
“Tell me, Russell,” he said, “what’s your movie about?”
“It’s autobiographical,” said Russell. “It’s called Nostradamus Ate my Hamster.”
22
“And?” said Pooley.
“And what?” said Omally.
“And what happened next? I suppose.”
“Well, nothing happened next. That’s the end of the story.”
“Oh,” said Pooley, taking a sip from his pint. “So that was it. Just like that.”
“Just like that.” Omally joined Jim with a sip from his own. “But it wasn’t really just like that, was it? I mean Russell gave up all of his life for just that one moment. A pretty noble thing to do by any reckoning.”
Jim nodded thoughtfully. “It’s not the way we would have done it,” he said. “If we’d done it there would have been explosions going off and people running all over the place.”
“But we didn’t do it, did we?”
Jim now shook his head with an equal degree of thoughtfulness. “No,” said he, “you’re right there.”
“Cometh the hour, cometh the man,” said Omally, raising his glass to his companion.
Jim raised his in return and both took deep respectful draughts.
“But what do you think did happen to Russell?” Pooley asked.
Omally shrugged. “Who can say? Perhaps he’s dead now. Or perhaps all the things in the story have yet to happen. After all, I’ve never seen his movie, have you?”
“No,” said Jim. “And let’s face it, we’ve never actually met the fellow. We didn’t get atomized at Christmas time and we didn’t get sent into the future. The Swan’s still here and we’re still in it.”
“Makes you think,” said John Omally.
“It certainly does,” Jim agreed. “And it makes you wonder also.”
“Some say,” said John, “that he is still alive. In fact …” And here Omally gestured towards old Pete, who stood at the bar counter tasting rum, his dog Chips sampling a drips tray that Neville had put out for him. “Some say that old Pete is actually Russell.”
“Leave it out!” Jim coughed into his pint. “Not that surly old sod.”
“I heard that,” said Pete.
Me too, thought Chips, but he said only “woof.”
“Others,” Omally drew Jim near with a beckoning hand, “others say that if you were to go to Fudgepacker’s Emporium and discover the secret door, go down the steps and enter the boiler room, you would find a tiny curtained-off corner. And if you had the nerve, you might draw that curtain aside. And there, there, seated on a kind of throne-like chair, you would see Russell. Still a young man and just sitting there staring forever into space. You see, some say that he was never a real person at all, that he was just a construct. A bit of you and a bit of me. A bit of everyone who cares about the borough, called into life by magical means when the need arose. Cometh the hour, cometh the man. And possibly …” John paused.
“Possibly what?” Jim asked.
“Possibly if you were to go right up to him and put your ear to his lips, you might just hear this little voice.”
“Little voice?”
“Little voice. And it would say …” John paused again.
“What would it say?”
“It would say, Help me, help me.”
“Urgh no!” Jim shook his head fiercely. “That is a terrible story, John. That is quite horrible. That’s not the way it should end at all.”
“No, you’re right.” Omally finished his pint. “But, of course, other folk say other things. I heard tell, for instance, that because Russell stopped all the bad stuff from happening by giving up his whole life, that he, of course, changed the future. So if none of the bad stuff could happen in the future, he would never go there, get the time belt and have to do all he did. So, in a twinkling of an eye, everything un-happened and he was a young man again, working back at Fudgepacker’s.”
“I like that one,” said Jim. “That one I like. That’s what I’d call a happy ending. I hope it happened that way.”
“Me too.” Omally rattled his empty glass upon the table. “Me too.”
A young man now entered The Flying Swan. He was a fit and agile-looking young man, with a fine head of thick dark hair. He approached the bar and the new blond barmaid Neville had taken on for lunch-times turned to greet him.
She smiled the young man a mouthload of lovely white teeth. “What will it be, sir?” she asked.
The young man paused a moment, as if suddenly torn by some inner struggle, possibly regarding what blond barmaids expect a real man to drink. But the moment he paused for was a brief one and straightening his shoulders he said, “a Perrier water, please.”
“Oh good,” said the blond barmaid, beaming hugely and beautifully, as if possibly recalling something her horoscope had said. “Oh, just perfect.”
Omally looked at Pooley.
And Pooley looked at Omally.
“Now that,” said Jim, “is what I call a happy ending.”
“I’ll drink to it,” said Omally. “Hey, Russell, two pints over here.”