“Bit-mapped graphics, eh?”
The young man cleared his throat with a curiously mechanical coughing sound. “Bit-mapped,” he said slowly. Above his left eyebrow the short row of eighteen vertical lines gave his face a permanently quizzical expression. “Now, perhaps, sir, you would care to order?”
“Two pints of Large,” said Omally.
“As you wish, sir. Will your irate companion be thinking to order two for himself also, do you think? Once he recovers his senses?”
“We are only just outnumbered,” quoth Pooley. “Shall we make a fight of it?”
“All in good time, Jim. Now please calm yourself and lend me a couple of quid.” The pale barman raised a tattooed eyebrow. “Usury is strictly forbidden upon the premises, by order of the brewery.”
“A pox on the brewery,” said John. “Jim is minding some money for me. Can I have it back please, Jim?”
“Certainly.” Pooley thrust a couple of hundred smackers into Omally’s outstretched palm and outstretched his own towards the nearest pint.
The new barman deftly reached across the counter-top and caught up Jim’s wrist in a vice-like grip.
Turning Jim’s palm towards the ceiling he drew out a light-wand and ran it across. “Your credit rating is triple A,” he said. “Two pints for yourself is it?”
“Make it three,” said Jim bitterly. “I feel a bit of a thirst coming on.”
“As you please, sir.” The pale young barman replaced his headphones and, nodding to himself, drew off the business.
Bearing their pints away, John and Jim stalked off to a side-table where they dropped into a brace of chairs and sat staring into one another’s eyes.
After a somewhat pregnant pause, Jim said, “I’ve had enough of all this, John.”
Omally nodded thoughtfully. “It is not very much to my own liking,” said he, gulping away the nearest pint. “If you want my considered opinion I feel that we should both do very well to have it away from this district post haste.”
“Look at those bastards.” Jim gestured towards the brewery henchmen who were even now tearing up the Swan’s antique carpeting to run a power-line across the floor.
“Rio would be your man,” said John. “Dusky maidens rolling green cigars upon their bronzed thighs. A train-robber chum of mine has lodgings thereabouts. The climate so they say is ideal for the professional drinking man or the unemployed war criminal.”
Pooley considered his printed palm. “I can’t be having with all this stuff. Things are no longer healthy hereabouts.”
“So let us away.”
Jim chewed upon a thumbnail. “I think you’re right,” said he. “But what about all this Revelations business? Do you think that the Professor is correct in his theories? If it is the end of the world then it might catch up with us even in Rio.”
Omally downed another pint. “I have my doubts about the whole thing. Listen, with the old currant bun beaming down and a bottle or two of duty-free on the patio table we can give the matter serious thought. What do you say?”
“I say it’s time we had a holiday.”
“Good man. Now the travel agent’s in the Ealing Road closes at six, I can be up there in five minutes on the bike and back in another five, I’ll book us aboard an aeroplane for first thing tomorrow.”
“Do it then.” Jim dragged out another bundle of banknotes and thrust them at John. “Go at once. I’ll get some bottles to take out, this place is beginning to depress me.”
“Right then, I will be back directly.” Omally left the Swan and mounted up Marchant, who had set himself in for an evening kip. He bumped down the kerb and pedalled furiously up the Ealing Road. Cresting the railway bridge he swept down the other side, legs outspread, past the Mowlem’s building. Without warning he suddenly came into contact with a great body of halted traffic. The road was a shambles of stalled automobiles and shouting drivers. Cars were parked at crazy angles across the road, and those at the vanguard lay, their bonnets stove in and steam issuing from their shattered radiators. A blank wall of dark light rose from the street at the junction with the Great West Road. It soared into the sky, an impenetrable barrier blocking all further progress. Omally dragged on his brakes but his iron stallion appeared to have developed ideas of its own. It rocketed him headlong into the boot of a stalled Morris Minor. John sailed forward in a blizzard of whirling banknotes, to tumble down on to the bonnet of the defunct automobile and roll on to the roadway. Cursing and spitting he slowly dragged himself to his feet and stared up at the grim barrier ahead, struck dumb with amazement and disbelief. The curtains, which the Professor had observed for so many weeks through his rooftop viewer, had finally closed upon the borders of the Brentford triangle.
And the parish was now completely sealed off from the outside world.
16
As word spread from house to house that the veil was drawn down, the people of the parish flocked into the streets. They flowed hurriedly towards the borders to stand, their noses pressed against the walls of hard air, staring out into the beyond. The vista, normally so mundane as to be invisible, now assumed a quality of remoteness and unreality. That none might any longer pass into that world made it fairyland and the figures that moved there became exaggerated and larger than life. And though they shouted and coo-eed and smote the barrier with sticks and staves, the world beyond did not see them, nor hear their cries for help. The world beyond simply went on doing that which it had always done – which wasn’t very much, although it seemed so now. Although the trapped people watched desperately for some sign which might signal the recognition of their plight by the free folk, who now passed within inches, none came. Their faces never turned and they went about their business as ever they had. To the world outside it seemed that Brentford had simply ceased to exist.
What attempts were made to stir up a bit of healthy rioting were stifled almost as soon as they were begun by the arrival of police snatch squads. Strange pale young men in protective uniforms, sporting minuscule headphones, and carrying small black boxes attached to their belts, moved swiftly into the crowds to bear away the outspoken to waiting meat-wagons. Those who had voiced complaint reappeared hours later passive and uncomplaining, clearing their throats before speech with curiously mechanical coughing sounds. Brentford’s ghost people drifted back to haunt their houses and closed their doors behind them.
Days began to pass one upon another, each one the same as the last. Pooley and Omally sat in the Swan bitterly regarding the new barman as he soullessly directed the redecoration of the grand old watering hole. Through the Swan’s upper windows, now being double-glazed, the dark walls shimmered. Beyond them the sun shone, but here in Brentford a thin drizzle hissed upon the pavements and trickled down the gutters. Old Pete hobbled in, shaking rain from his cap and muttering under his breath. As he passed his coinage over the counter the young barman tut-tutted and warned him that such cash transactions would soon be impermissible. Old Pete muttered something in reply but it was only the word “pox” that caught the ears of John and Jim. Pooley lit up a Passing Cloud and drew deeply upon it, he opened his mouth to speak but no word came. Omally read the expression and the open mouth and nodded hopelessly. There was no need for either question or answer, nobody knew what they were going to do next, or even why. When the barman called time six minutes early the two men parted with no words spoken and wandered away into the night.
The disappointments and the hopelessness of it all were beginning to take their irrevocable toll.
Pooley lay on his bed, hands cupped behind his head, awake to the sounds of the night. The room was now heaped with a pointless array of useless and expensive articles. The wardrobe overspilled with tailor-made suits, shirts, and shoes. Quadrophonic record players, all lacking plugs, and most not even unpacked from their boxes, lay half-hidden beneath every Frankie Laine record Jim had always promised himself. He had riffled every Brentford store in the vain attempt to spend his wealth. Finding an estate agent with property deeds still for sale he had purchased all available for wallpaper. The things he ordered arrived by the hour, to lie in soaking stacks on the pavement. Jim went about the business with a will but, as with everything now, the task was hopeless. He could never outspend his own wealth. Progress across the cluttered room was made the more precarious for fear of sinking to his doom in the marshland of expensive shagpile carpets heaped one upon another. He should have been sleeping the sleep of the drunk, but no matter how many pints he struggled to down, nowadays he still remained fiercely sober. None of it made the slightest bit of sense to Jim, there seemed no purpose to any last bit of it.