At once.
All together.
Altogether.
Jim shook his head and pinched at his nose and sucked in very small breaths. Whatever this was, and it certainly was something, it was all too much for him. He tried to ease himself away from the wall but found to his horror that he couldn’t. The seat of his trousers appeared to be welded to the brickwork. His feet were glued to the floor.
And it couldn’t have been thirty seconds into the first number before the lead guitarist went into a solo. And yes, it was the most blinding guitar solo Jim had ever heard in all of his life and somehow Litany sang with it. Not words but sounds, musical notes, utterly pure, utterly precise. Rising and rising until the band cut short and there was nothing, nothing but the sound of her voice, a note, a single note, that seemed to enter into Pooley through the very pores of his skin and—
What?
“Cleanse,” whispered Jim. “I am being cleansed.”
“Thank you, Brentford, and goodnight.”
And all the lights went out.
And when they came back on again, the Gandhis were nowhere to be seen.
But what there was to be seen was something quite extreme. Blokes were clutching at themselves and weeping. Weeping men, and manly men too. Some were fingering at their heads and going “My barnet, it’s back” and others were feeling at their faces, saying “All my spots are gone.” And others still were patting private places and mumbling things like “Me piles have vanished” and “Ye pox is no more.”
Jim blinked and boggled and sighed and took deep breaths. Men in black T-shirts were sniffing at their armpits and each other’s. “Nice,” was their opinion. “Very fragrant.”
Jim found that he was sniffing too and nodding as he sniffed. And he felt so well. So healthy. He felt as if he had just spent a week at one of those places the toffs go to, where they cover you in mud and feed you lettuce and suchlike. Whatever that felt like. Good, is what that felt like. Incredibly good.
“What about that, then, eh?” A tiny voice spoke in his earhole.
Jim turned to see the fat bloke in the black T-shirt and shorts.
But.
The fat bloke wasn’t such a fat bloke any more.
“Four bloody inches,” the fattish bloke said. “Four bloody inches off my waistline.”
“How?” whispered Jim. “I mean, what happened, how?”
“It’s her voice. I knew it was true. The others didn’t believe me. They said it was just a rock legend. But I talked them into coming. I knew it was true, you see. I’d read all about the Gandhis and their Apocalypso Music”
“Slow down,” said Jim. “I don’t understand.”
“This was the incident. The one that started it all. And now I can say I was there. And if no one believes me” – the fattish bloke plucked at his trousers – “they’ll believe this, won’t they? My mum will be dead pleased. She’s always going on about me losing weight.”
“You knew this was going to happen.” Jim fought to make sense of it all. “You knew. How did you know?”
“Looked it up on Porkie.”
“What’s Porkie?”
“Its real name is SWINE. Single World Interfaced Network Engine. It pretty much runs the whole planet. Or did.”
“I’m losing this,” said Jim.
“Of course you are. But even if I told you all about it, you’d never believe me.”
“I’d give it a go.”
The fattish bloke turned to his friends, who were blissfully sniffing their armpits. “What do you think?” he asked them. “Should I tell him?”
The armpit-sniffers shrugged. One of them said, “What does it matter? We’ll all be off tomorrow.”
“Off?” said Jim.
“We’re going to Woodstock.”
“Woodstock?”
“Yeah. But never mind about that. Do you want me to tell you, or what?”
“Please tell me,” said Jim. “Tell me how you knew and tell me just what happened.”
“All right, I’ll tell you it all. I know I really shouldn’t, but as you tipped me off about John Lennon, I’ll tip you off about something in return. You might do us all a bit of good by knowing.”
“Geraldo,” said Jim. “It is Geraldo, isn’t it?”
“Was the last time I looked.”
“Geraldo, what do you mean about John Lennon?”
“You tipped me off that he didn’t die.”
“But he didn’t die.”
“No, but he should have done. And if he didn’t, it means that Wingarde’s been interfering again.”
“Curiously,” said Jim, “you’ve lost me once again. Who, in the name of whatever I hold holy, is Wingarde?”
“He’s a flash little hacker with a better rig than mine.”
“All becomes clear.”
“Does it?” asked Geraldo.
“No,” said Jim. “It does not.”
“Yeah, well don’t you worry about Wingarde. He might think he’s been really smart. But now that we know what he’s done, we’ll sneak back and put it right.”
“Put it right?” said Jim.
“See that John Lennon bites the bullet, as it were.”
“Eh?” said Jim, and, “What?”
“Well, we can hardly leave things as they stand, can we?”
“Can’t you?”
“Certainly not. And wasn’t that Elvis I heard on the barman’s sound system?”
Pooley nodded. “It was,” he said.
“Bloody Wingarde again,” said one of Geraldo’s cronies.
“Look,” said Jim. “Just stop. Just stop right there and here and now. Just tell me simply and in a manner that will not confuse me.”
“What?” Geraldo asked.
“Just who the frigging hell you are.”
“We’re fanboys,” said Geraldo. “Surely you can work that out.”
“Fanboys,” said Jim. “You’re just fanboys.”
“Well, not just fanboys. We’re rather special fanboys, as it happens.”
“And just how special might that be?”
“We’re fanboys from the future,” said Geraldo.
Don was a dead or dying duck.
The last of the final few.
The fowl of the air
Weren’t anywhere,
And there weren’t no rabbits too.
There were not even tiny frogs,
Nor jumping moles and that.
There barked no dogs
Or ’ollered ’ogs,
Nor sang no sing-song cat.
What now of your jovial toad?
Or ferret so fecund?
The pig on the road
Has done his load,
Like the swans on the village pund.[6]
All alone was Dead Eye Don
Whom quacked for all him worth.
And out somewhere
In that final air
The last quack on the Earth.
Bye bye, Don.
Goodnight, everyone.
Goodnight.
8
Being the professional he was, Neville took it like a manly man. He didn’t flinch and he didn’t tremble. He didn’t even break out in a sweat.
He would later admit in his bestselling autobiography, Same Again: The Confessions of a Full-Time Part-Time Barman, that the incident had shaken him severely and that he was never the same man ever again, be that manly or not.
It had shaken others who’d witnessed it, but none so deeply as Neville, who’d had to slip away afterwards and sit down quietly and dab his wrists with lemon juice and pray.
But then it had come as a terrible shock and the more Neville thought about it, the more inclined was he to believe that it couldn’t actually have happened at all.
But it had.
It really had.
Jim Pooley had walked into the Flying Swan in the company of twelve sweetly smelling young men in black T-shirts and shorts and he really-truly-really-really-truly had stood them all a round of drinks.
Thirteen pints of Large and all purchased by Pooley.
No wonder Neville would wake up in the night, all cold sweats and screaming.