3
The judge, in his final summing up of the case, described the attack as vicious and cold-blooded. He said that for all his long years at the bar, he could not recall an incident of similar barbarity. He drew the jury’s attention once more to the horrific photographs taken by the police scene-of-crime photographer, which showed in gory detail the full extent of the victim’s injuries. He displayed the broken blood-stained cricket bat and spoke of the long drop from the second-floor window to the pavement below.
He spoke of escalating violence, the influence of television, the need to be firm (but fair), the need to see justice well and truly done and the need to clear the streets of inhuman monsters and make them safe for dear little white-haired old ladies to walk upon.
And then he added that in his personal opinion the attack was totally justified and dismissed the case out of hand. He also dismissed Mr Pooley’s claim for one million pounds’ compensation. Mr Pooley, he said, had got the hiding he deserved.
“As a practitioner of Dimac myself,” the judge said, “and a fellow Freemason in the same lodge as Mr Compton-Cummings, I would have dealt with you far more severely.”
Bang went the gavel onto the block, the court cleared and Jim was left alone in his wheelchair.
At a little after lunchtime closing John Omally arrived to push him home. “Look on the bright side, Jim,” he said. “At least you were on legal aid.”
Months passed, bruises healed and bones knitted themselves back together. Out of respect for the punishment Jim had taken, the patrons of the Flying Swan made no further reference to winds from the East. And after the brief excitement of the court case, the borough of Brentford settled itself down to do what it did best. Nothing. With style.
It was almost a year to the day of Jim’s beating that a large brown envelope tumbled through his letter box and came to rest upon a welcome mat that had long worn out its welcome. Jim plucked the item up and perused it with interest. He hadn’t ordered anything and it wasn’t his birthday. A present from a well-wisher? An admirer? Ever the optimist, Jim took his treasure into the kitchenette, placed it upon the stained Formica worktop and worried it with the carving knife. Away came the wrappings and out came the book.
The book!
Brentford: A Study of its People and History.
Jim stared at it in disbelief. Compton-Cummings had actually had the bare-faced brutality to send him a copy. It beggared all belief.
“You bastard” Jim snatched up the book and stared it in the glossy cover. “I just don’t believe this.” He put a foot to the pedal-bin pedal and raised the lid. A noxious stench rose from within, possibly even as noxious as the infamous, and now publicly chronicled, “breath of Pooley”. Jim released the pedal and fanned his nose with the book. “I’ve been meaning to empty you,” he told the bin. He carried the book over to the cooker. “But you’re gonna burn!”
It had been a slow month financially for Jim. The gas had been disconnected.
Jim carried the book to the sink. “Drown, then,” he said, then shook his head. Drown a book? He sat down at the kitchen table and thumbed the pages. They fell one upon another with the silky flow of an old school Bible. Jim sighed once more and with weary resignation flicked through the index for P.
His finger travelled down the page.
Plague Origin of Black Death traced to Brentford.
Planetary Alignments Astrology invented here.
Plasma Vortex Engine Invented here.
Plastic Ditto.
Platform Tickets World’s largest collection housed in museum.
Pooley’s finger travelled further down.
Plot Guy Fawkes’s confession fingers Brentonian.
Pocahontas Born here.
“Eh?” said Pooley.
Pomegranate Farming Doomed attempt by local man.
Poor House Location of.
Pooley’s finger went up, then down again. “I’m not here,” he said with some elation. “He’s left me out. He’s a decent fellow after all. Well, what about that? He sent me a free copy just to show there were no hard feelings about taking him to court for beating the life out of me. What a gent! I wonder if he signed it.” Jim flicked forward. “No, he didn’t. But I think he should. I’ll go round there now, I’ve nothing else on.”
And so saying, he did.
For the reader who, now thoroughly won over by Jim’s personality, is eager for a description of the man, let it be said that Jim Pooley looked the way he always has looked. Except when he was younger, of course.
A man of average height and average weight, or just a tad above the one and underneath the other. A well-constructed face, a trifle gaunt at times; a shock of hair. Well, not a shock. A kindly countenance. His most distinctive feature, the one that singled him out from all the rest, was of course his
“Golly,” said Jim. “Whatever is going on here?”
He had reached Golden Square, a byway leading from the historic Butts Estate. A Georgian triumph of mellow rosy brick, once home to the wealthy burghers of the borough, now offices for solicitors and other folk in “the professions”.
Jim stopped short and stared. There was an ambulance drawn up in front of the offices of Mr Compton-Cummings. His door was open and out of it a number of men in paramedic uniforms were struggling beneath the weight of something spread across two stretchers. Something covered by a sheet.
Jim hastened forward. The genealogist’s secretary, the one who had handed Pooley the teacup, stood on the pavement sobbing into a handkerchief. A crowd was beginning to gather. Jim pushed his way into it.
“What happened?” he asked.
“Robbery,” said somebody. “Bloke shot dead.”
“He was never shot,” said somebody else. “Axed, he was.”
“Garrotted,” said yet another somebody. “Head right off.”
“Talk sense,” said Jim.
“Some big fat fellow’s died,” said a lady in a straw hat. “Myocardial collapse, probably. It’s always your heart that gives out if you’re overweight. I used to be eighteen stone, me, but I went on a diet, nothing but roughage. I…”
“Excuse me,” said Jim, pushing past. He caught the arm of the weeping secretary. “Is it Mr Compton-Cummings?” he asked.
The secretary turned her red-rimmed eyes up to Jim. “Oh, it’s you,” she said, between sobs. “I remember you.”
“Is it him?”
The secretary’s head bobbed up and down. “He had a heart attack, just like the lady said.”
“Told you,” said the straw-hatter.
“And he’s dead?”
“I tried to, you know, the kiss of life, but he…” The secretary sank once more into tears. Jim put a kind arm about her shoulder. It was a pretty shoulder. Well formed. Actually, all of her was well formed. The secretary was a fine-looking young woman, a fact that had not gone unnoticed by Jim. “Come inside and sit down,” he told her.
The paramedics, now aided by several members of the crowd who were eager to get in on the action, were forcing the lifeless sheet-shrouded corpse of Mr Compton-Cummings into the back of the ambulance.
Jim led the secretary up the steps and through the front door. In the outer office Jim sat the secretary down in her chair. “I’m terribly sorry,” he said. “I came here to thank him for sending me a copy of his book, and for leaving the bit about me out of it.” Jim placed the book upon the secretary’s desk. Unsigned it would always remain.
“He felt bad about that,” sniffed the secretary. “And about beating you up. It played on his mind. He was a good man, I liked him a lot.”
“I’m sorry. Can I get you a cup of tea, or something?”
“Thanks.” The secretary blew her nose. “The machine’s over there.”
Pooley applied himself to the task of dispensing tea. He’d never been very good with machines. There was a knack to technology which Jim did not possess. He held a paper cup beneath a little spout and pressed a button. Boiling water struck him at trouser-fly-level.