“I will buy you another,” said Omally.
“What with? You have no money, you are wearing my other suit.”
“You may have my Fair Isle jumper and cricket whites.”
“Bless you,” said Jim Pooley.
Omally edged open the hut door. All was still upon the allotment, the relentless sun beat down upon the parched earth and in the distance, a train rolled over the viaduct.
“Now as ever,” said Omally firmly; gripping the dummy he flung it forward with as much strength as he could muster.
There was a great ripple in the sky above the hut and down upon the dummy in a squawking, screaming cascade the birds fell in full feathered fury. Pooley struck his lighter and set flame to the strips of shirt tail.
“Throw them,” screamed Omally.
Pooley threw them.
There was a double crash, a flash and a great flaring sheet of flame engulfed the feathered hoard. Without looking back Pooley and Omally took once more to their heels and fled.
22
Brentford’s Olympic hope and his Irish trainer jogged around the corner into Mafeking Avenue, up the street a short way, down a back alley and through the gate into the rear yard of Jim Pooley’s house. Mrs King next door peered over the washing line at them. “People been round here asking for you Jim Pooley,” she said. “Why are you running about in your underpants?”
“He’s in training,” said Omally. “Who’s been round here asking then?”
“You mind your own business, I was talking to Mr Pooley.”
Omally smiled his winning smile. She was a fine-looking woman, he thought, how had he previously failed to make her acquaintance?
“Who has been calling,” asked Jim, “friends or what?”
“The police were here,” said Mrs King smugly, “D. I. Barker, he left his card.” She delved about in her apron pocket and pulled out a damp and crumpled card which had obviously been doing the local rounds.
“What did he want?” Jim asked innocently, accepting the card.
“Didn’t say, just said you were to notify them of your return as soon as what you did, if you see what I mean. Mind you, I’m not surprised, you’ve had this coming for years, Jim Pooley. In and out at all hours, rolling home drunk, making all that noise.”
Pooley ignored her ramblings. “Anybody else call?”
“An old man with white hair and a black coat.”
“The Professor,” said Omally.
“I wasn’t talking to you. Here, what do you think you’re looking at?”
Omally’s eyes had been wandering up and down Mrs King’s tightly fitting apron. “I was undressing you with my eyes.”
“Oh yes?”
“Yes, and that safety pin which is holding up your knickers is getting a bit rusty.”
Mrs King snarled furiously at Omally, flung down her washing and stalked off into her house, slamming the back door behind her.
“Was that wise?” Jim asked. “She’ll probably phone the police now.”
“I don’t think so,” said John, grinning lewdly, “I think she quite fancies me.”
Pooley shrugged and rolled his eyes. “Your technique is to say the least original,” said he.
The two men mounted the back staircase and disappeared in through Pooley’s kitchen door. There was little left to wear in Pooley’s wardrobe and so he was forced to don the shirt, Fair Isle sweater and cricketer’s whites left by Omally. He passed over the patent leather pumps, however, preferring to remain in his hobnails.
“A regular dude,” said Omally. Pooley remained unconvinced. “So what do we do now?” he asked.
“We might begin by a decent, if late, breakfast. What supplies have you in your larder?”
Pooley found two tins of beans, which he and Omally consumed with relish. “And now what?” he asked.
“We will just have to wait for the Professor to return.”
“Or the police.”
Omally nodded grimly. “Or the police.”
The day passed; there was little to do. Omally fiddled with the knobs on Pooley’s archaic wireless set, but raised little but static and what appeared to be a wartime broadcast. By five thirty the two men were pacing the floor like caged tigers and tempers were becoming dangerously short.
Finally Pooley could stand it no longer. “I think I will just step out to Jack Lane’s for a couple of bottles of light ale.”
Omally looked doubtful. “We had better not separate,” he said, “I will come with you.”
“Good man.”
If the atmosphere of the Flying Swan’s saloon bar was timeless, then that of Jack Lane’s was even more so. There was a positive sense of the museum about the place. No-one could recall a single change being made in the decor since 1928 when Brentford won the FA Cup and Jack Lane retired from the game to take over as landlord. “The Four Horsemen”, as the establishment was more correctly known, although none had used the name within living memory, had become a shrine to Brentford’s glorious one and a half hours upon the sacred turf of Wembley.
True, when Jack departed the game to take up the licensed trade his team lost its finest dribbler and dropped through the various divisions like a two-bob bit in a Woodbine machine. Jack himself became a kind of living monument. The faded photographs of the team he captained showed him standing erect in his broad-striped shirt, his shorts reaching nearly to his ankles and the leather ball between his feet. A close examination of these blurry mementoes revealed that Jack had changed hardly at all during the preceding fifty-odd years. Proudly he stood, his toothless face smiling and his bald head nobly reflecting the Wembley sunlight.
Now well over eighty and taking advantage of the fact, Jack held court over his cobwebbed castle, gnomelike and droll and caring nothing for the outside world and the so-called “changing times”. He had only noticed the Second World War because the noise had woken him up and he had wondered about why so many of his younger patrons had taken to the wearing of uniforms.
When Pooley and Omally sheepishly entered the saloon bar, the old gnome was perched upon his stool beside the cash drawer and eyed them with but a passing interest. “Close that door,” he mumbled, “you’re letting the weather in.”
Pooley looked at Omally, who shrugged. “He probably still thinks it’s winter.”
Pooley was going to say two bottles of pale ale please, but the words would not come. “Two pints of Large,” he said presently. Omally patted his companion on the back. The sporting ancient climbed down with difficulty from his stool and shuffled over to the pumps. Pooley recalled that it was always advisable to buy two rounds at a time in the Horsemen, as one’s thirst could not always survive the wait while Jack methodically pulled his pints.
“Better make that four pints,” said Omally, who harboured similar recollections.
Jack muttered an obscenity beneath his breath and sought two more pint glasses.
“So what’s the news then, Jack?” Omally asked cheerfully.
Jack Lane smiled and ran a ragged pullover sleeve across his nose, “News?” he said. “I haven’t heard of any news, what news should there be?”
Omally shrugged. “Just wondered, not much of interest ever gets by you.”
“You been barred from the Swan then, Omally?”
“Hardly that, just thought we’d pop in as we were passing, trade seems a little slack.” He indicated the empty bar.
“It’s early yet.” It was well known to all that Jack’s licensing hours were flexible; few entered his establishment until the hostelries they previously frequented were closing up their doors.
“We had a Lascar in last week,” said Jack struggling over with the first of the four pints. “Big buck he was, I told him, out of here I said.”
“Fascinating,” said John, “but nothing else, out of the ordinary happened recently then.”
Jack was by now halfway back towards the pumps and as Omally was on his deaf side he did not reply.