Gold By Gemini

'You're all capitalist dupes and lackeys,' he was yelling, an unshaven political gospeller.

He got a few catcalls and jeers back from the bike fiends but kept going, a game lad.

'Your bike races are personalized general crimes!'

I drifted past Algernon. He was asking the others about plugs.

'Joe Faulkner'll have a spare,' a voice replied from underneath a bike.

'Lives up near Big Izzie,' another explained. 'Anybody'll direct you to her.' The lads laughed along with Algernon. Some local joke.

Algernon tried to interest me in the bike's pipes but I strolled on to hear the politician.

I'd give him five minutes' skilful heckling, then I'd cripple the bastard.

'It's the day of the Common Man!' he shouted. Nobody was listening. 'The day of equality is dawning! Share all! Possess all! Equality, the word of the age!' One of those.

He was really preaching against antiques. I hate jargoneers, as Florence Nightingale called folk like this twerp. It's today's trick, urge everybody else to be mediocre too.

People everywhere talk too much about the Common Man, what a really terrific bloke he is and how anybody different's either a secret anarchist or fascist at heart. It's all balls. Let's not forget that the Average Man's really pretty average.

'Nobody's ever equal,' I pointed out loudly. 'It's a biological and social impossibility.

Inequality's right,' I said pleasantly. 'Equality's ridiculous.'

I honestly believe this. I've been striving all my life in the glorious cause of inequality.

What can you say to stupid bums like this, that shut the Sevres porcelain factory so we could all have none?

'Clever dick,' he sneered. 'Piss off. Go and piss Izzie round.'

A few of the bike fiends who overheard laughed at this crack from beneath their tangles. Probably that local joke. I began to move towards him happily, then stopped.

Izzie?

Anybody'll direct you to her, they'd told Algernon as I'd passed him. To her. Female.

Izzie. Isabel? Isabella? Piss Izzie round - like a wheel? It reminded me of something.

Janie came hurrying over. She'd collected Algernon.

'We really ought to be going,' she was saying as they arrived. I was watching them approach. 'We're all too tired to think. I can cook us a hot meal. It's been such a tiring day. We need a rest.' She looked at me, worried. 'Lovejoy?'

'Is anything the matter, Lovejoy?' Algernon asked.

'You're so pale,' I heard Janie say. 'Has he said something to offend you?' She spun angrily on the startled orator and snapped, 'You keep your stupid opinions to yourself, you silly old buffoon!'

'No, Janie. Please.' My mouth was dry. 'I'm so sorry,' I explained gently to the speaker.

'It's my first visit here. Where is Big Izzie, please, comrade?'

'I knew you were one of us deep down, comrade,' he said, smug with pride. 'It always shows through the capitalist-imperialist veneer. Comrade Marx's definition of class illustrates -'

'He never defined class,' I said. 'He promised to in that footnote to his first German edition, now very valuable, but never got round to it. Big Izzie, comrade. We've a, er, political meeting near there.'

'Laxey,' he said. 'We ought to get together, comrade, to discuss class fundamentalism -'

'It's a date,' I said. 'Laxey, you said?'

'Long live the revolution!' he called after us.

'Er, sure, sure.'

I rushed them to the Lagonda and had Janie hurtling us towards the road to cheers and waves of the surrounding multitudes of the bike people. She was screaming for instructions at the fork but I didn't know where Laxey was. We scrambled for maps, then two cars came by and we had to wait till they passed.

'Laxey?' Algernon said at this point. 'Go left.'

'Sound your horn!' I cried in anguish, but anyone who beeps a horn in Britain is either on fire or psychotic. Janie's upbringing held firm. We moved sedately out on to the Laxey road.

'Who'll be there?' Algernon asked pleasantly.

'How the hell should I know who lives in Laxey?' I said, baffled.

'He means the meeting,' Janie began to explain. 'There isn't really any meeting, Algernon, you see. It was a… a ruse.'

'There's an enormous waterwheel at Laxey,' Algernon said brightly as Janie gave the car its head.

'Then why didn't you say so?' I hissed. If I'd not been in the front I'd have thrown him out.

'Is it what we've been looking for all this time? Its picture's on the coins.'

I fumbled in my pocket. It bloody well was, the imprint of a great waterwheel. One day I'll do for Algernon.

'It's even got a name,' he continued cheerfully. 'Lady Isabella. They say that when it was first made -'

'Algernon!' from Janie, tight-lipped. Algernon had known all along, the stupid sod.

I closed my eyes. Sometimes things just get too much.

The wheel's beautiful. You know, the Victorians really had it. If a thing is worth doing at all, they obviously thought, then it's worth doing well. On the side of the supporting structure was a plaque: 'Lady Isabella.' There she was, gigantic and colourful, pivoted with such exquisite balance that a narrow run of water aqueducted downhill was sufficient to power her round at some speed. She was breathtaking.

She was set in the hillside valley near a stone bridge. A deep crevasse sliced into the hill, exposing a ruined mine-shaft. Old discoloured mine buildings eroded slowly block by block higher up. An enormous massive beam projected skywards from the ruins, probably one arm of a pump of some sort for the underground workings.

'How colossal!' Janie said it. Colossal was the word.

There were steps up from the path to its main axle. Algernon rushed up to see the giant waterwheel swinging its immense height skywards.

'Imagine the size of the bike engine you'd need to -'

'Algernon,' I interrupted. 'Don't. No more.'

Janie was watching me. Just then she tapped me firmly on the shoulder.

'Well, everybody!' she cut in brightly. 'Home time.'

'What?' I rounded on her.

'Home time, I said. 'Janie put her hand on my arm like a constable.

'We've only just got here!'

'And now we're going. You owe me a day, Lovejoy.'

'But you said it wasn't today,' I yelped. 'And we've found her! My main clue!'

'No,' Janie said. 'It wasn't today, Lovejoy. But today's over. Look.'

I came to. The day had faded. Our car was the only one left in the car park beside the river down below. The little toffee shops had closed. In the distance lights showed where the seaside promenade of Laxey lay. Lights were coming on in the cottage windows. An old woollen mill blotted out the foreground. Mill owners of years ago had laid out the valley like a stone pleasure garden, now somewhat sunken and ill-kept. It was swiftly quietening into dusk.

'But, Janie, for God's sake -'

'It's dangerous, Lovejoy,' she said in that voice. 'Derelict mines, ruined mine buildings, horrid great pumps underground and a wheel this size. If you weren't so deranged by being near whatever the poor old man left, you'd realize how exhausted and frightened you really are.' She took my arm. 'Home.'

I tried appealing to Algernon but he backed down. Friends.

'I claim my day, starting from this instant,' Janie said. 'Twenty-four hours.'

Women make me mad. They're like the soap in your bath. You know it'd be good value if only you could find out what it's up to and where it is.

Algernon was nodding. 'True, Lovejoy. You're bushed.'

'There, then!' cheerfully from Janie. 'We're all agreed.'

I was defeated. I looked up at the Lady Isabella.

'Check the time, Algernon,' I said coldly.

'Twenty past eight.'

'Twenty-four hours, then.' I waited for orders. 'Well?'

'Home, chaps.' She fluttered her eyelashes and waggled seductively down the steps ahead of me. 'You'll thank me later, b'wana, when we're all cosy.'

Algernon joined in.

'Never mind, Lovejoy,' he said brightly. 'There's always another day.'