“Someone such as yourself?”
“Good idea,” said John. “But time is of the essence, we don’t want any opportunists dipping in before us. When we leave here you collect a couple of tools from my plot and whip the bed out and I will go around to Norman’s.”
If Pooley had looked doubtful before, it was nought to the way he looked now. “I do not feel that I am getting the better part of this,” he said slowly.
“Better part?” Omally’s face was all outrage. “We are a business partnership are we not? There are no better parts involved here. Surely you are now sowing seeds of distrust?”
“Who, me? Perish the thought. The fact that I will be labouring away in a minefield digging up a rusty old bedframe while you stand chit-chatting in a cosy corner-shop had not crossed my mind.”
“So?”
Jim folded his brow. “Whose round is it?”
“Yours, Jim,” said John Omally, “most definitely yours.”
5
Norman had been dancing gaily through his morning’s work. Between customers he had skipped backwards and forwards, turning the enamel door handle and squinting into the gloom to assure himself that all was as it should be. The wheel had been tirelessly spinning for more than four hours now and showed no signs whatever of grinding to a halt. As the Memorial Library clock struck one in the distance he turned his sign to the “Closed For Lunch” side, bolted up, and pranced away to his sanctum sanctorum. The wheel was an undoubted success and, as such, meant that Phase One of his latest, and in his own humble opinion undeniably greatest, project was complete.
Norman slipped off his shopkeeper’s overall and donned a charred leather apron and a pair of welder’s goggles. Dusting down his rubber gloves with a tube of baby powder, he drew them over his sensitive fingers and flexed these magical appendages. With a flourish, he dragged aside a length of gingham tablecloth which curtained off a tiny alcove in one corner of the crowded room.
Upon a worm-eaten kitchen chair sat another Norman!
Clad in grey shopkeeper’s workcoat, shirt, tie, trousers, and worn brown brogues, he was a waxen effigy of the Madame Tussaud’s variety. The scientific shopkeeper chuckled and, reaching out a rubber-clad finger, tickled his doppelgänger under the chin. “Afternoon, Norman,” he said.
The double did not reply, but simply sat staring sightlessly into space. It was as near a perfect representation of its living counterpart as it was possible to be. And so it might well have been considering the long years of Norman’s labour. Countless thousands of hours had gone into its every detail. Every joint in its skeletal frame was fully articulated with friction-free bearings of the shopkeeper’s own design. The cranial computer banks were loaded to the very gunwhales with all the necessary information, which would enable it to perform the mundane and tiresome duties required of a corner-shopkeeper, whilst its creator could dedicate the entirety of his precious time to the more essential matters of which Phase Three of the project were composed. All it lacked was that essential spark of life, and this now ground away upon the kitchen table at precisely twenty-six revolutions per minute.
Norman chuckled anew and drew his masterpiece erect. Unbuttoning the shirt, he exposed the rubberized chest region which housed the hydraulic unit designed to simulate the motions of breathing. Tinkering with his screwdriver, he removed the frontal plate and applied a couple of squirts of Three-in-One to the brace of mountings, identical in shape and size to those which now cradled the ever-spinning wheel. He had sought far and wide for a never-failing power supply, having previously nothing to hand save clumsy mains cables which, even when disguised by poking from trouser bottoms, left his progeny little scope for locomotion. This compact unit would do the job absolutely.
Norman crossed to the table, and with a set of specially fashioned tongs carefully lifted the spinning wheel upon its polished axle-rod. It turned through space gyroscopically, if nothing else it would certainly keep the robot standing upright. With a satisfying click the wheel fell into place, and Norman closed the chest cavity and rebuttoned the shirt, straightening the tie and workcoat lapels. The shopkeeper stepped back to view his mirror image. Perfection. There was a gentle flutter of movement about the chest region, a sudden blinking of eyelids and focusing of eyes, a yawn, a stretch. Clearing its throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound, the creature spoke.
“Good afternoon, sir,” it said.
Norman clapped his hands together and danced one of his favourite silly dances. “Wonderful,” he said with glee. “Wonderful.”
The robot smiled crookedly. “I am happy that you find all to your satisfaction,” said he.
“Oh, indeed, indeed. How are you then, Norman? Are you well?”
“A bit stiff, sir, as it happens, but I expect that I will wear in. Is there anything in particular you would like doing?”
Norman clapping his hands, “How about a cup of tea, what do you think?”
“Certainly, sir.” The robot rose unsteadily to its feet, stretched himself again and waggled each foot in turn.
Norman watched in sheer exaltation as his other self performed its first task. The tea was exactly as he would have made it himself. “You will pardon me if I don’t join you, sir,” said the pseudo-shopkeeper, “but I do not feel at all thirsty.”
At a little after three p.m., Pooley and Omally left the Flying Swan. As the two friends strode off down the Ealing Road, Neville the part-time barman shot home the brass bolts and padded away to his quarters. The floor boards groaned suspiciously beneath his tread but Neville, now buoyed up with a half-bottle of Bells, closed his ears to them.
“Right then,” said Omally, “to business, it is yet three p.m. and we have not earned a penny.”
“I have missed the bookies,” said Jim. “I am a hundred thousand pounds down already.”
“The day may yet be saved, positive thinking is your man. To work then.”
Pooley shook his head and departed gloomily down Albany Road, en route for the allotment. Omally squared up his shoulders and entered Norman’s corner shop. Behind the counter stood Norman, idly thumbing through a copy of Wet Girls In The Raw. Beneath the counter crouched another Norman, chuckling silently into his hands.
“Afternoon, Norman,” said Omally. “Packet of reds if you please, and a half-ounce of Golden.”
The mechanical confectioner cleared his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound. “Certainly, sir,” said he, turning away to seek out these articles from their niches. Below the counter Norman clicked his tongue in silent displeasure. Above the counter Omally’s hand had snaked into the peppermint rack and drew a packet away to his trouser pocket. Norman would have to chalk that one up to experience and punch a few more defence mechanisms into the machine’s computer banks. He scribbled a hurried note on to a discarded ice-cream wrapper and awaited developments. He did not have to wait long.