“Off?” said Jim.
“We’re going to Woodstock.”
“Woodstock?”
“Yeah. But never mind about that. Do you want me to tell you, or what?”
“Please tell me,” said Jim. “Tell me how you knew and tell me just what happened.”
“All right, I’ll tell you it all. I know I really shouldn’t, but as you tipped me off about John Lennon, I’ll tip you off about something in return. You might do us all a bit of good by knowing.”
“Geraldo,” said Jim. “It is Geraldo, isn’t it?”
“Was the last time I looked.”
“Geraldo, what do you mean about John Lennon?”
“You tipped me off that he didn’t die.”
“But he didn’t die.”
“No, but he should have done. And if he didn’t, it means that Wingarde’s been interfering again.”
“Curiously,” said Jim, “you’ve lost me once again. Who, in the name of whatever I hold holy, is Wingarde?”
“He’s a flash little hacker with a better rig than mine.”
“All becomes clear.”
“Does it?” asked Geraldo.
“No,” said Jim. “It does not.”
“Yeah, well don’t you worry about Wingarde. He might think he’s been really smart. But now that we know what he’s done, we’ll sneak back and put it right.”
“Put it right?” said Jim.
“See that John Lennon bites the bullet, as it were.”
“Eh?” said Jim, and, “What?”
“Well, we can hardly leave things as they stand, can we?”
“Can’t you?”
“Certainly not. And wasn’t that Elvis I heard on the barman’s sound system?”
Pooley nodded. “It was,” he said.
“Bloody Wingarde again,” said one of Geraldo’s cronies.
“Look,” said Jim. “Just stop. Just stop right there and here and now. Just tell me simply and in a manner that will not confuse me.”
“What?” Geraldo asked.
“Just who the frigging hell you are.”
“We’re fanboys,” said Geraldo. “Surely you can work that out.”
“Fanboys,” said Jim. “You’re just fanboys.”
“Well, not just fanboys. We’re rather special fanboys, as it happens.”
“And just how special might that be?”
“We’re fanboys from the future,” said Geraldo.
Don was a dead or dying duck.
The last of the final few.
The fowl of the air
Weren’t anywhere,
And there weren’t no rabbits too.
There were not even tiny frogs,
Nor jumping moles and that.
There barked no dogs
Or ’ollered ’ogs,
Nor sang no sing-song cat.
What now of your jovial toad?
Or ferret so fecund?
The pig on the road
Has done his load,
Like the swans on the village pund.[6]
All alone was Dead Eye Don
Whom quacked for all him worth.
And out somewhere
In that final air
The last quack on the Earth.
Bye bye, Don.
Goodnight, everyone.
Goodnight.
8
Being the professional he was, Neville took it like a manly man. He didn’t flinch and he didn’t tremble. He didn’t even break out in a sweat.
He would later admit in his bestselling autobiography, Same Again: The Confessions of a Full-Time Part-Time Barman, that the incident had shaken him severely and that he was never the same man ever again, be that manly or not.
It had shaken others who’d witnessed it, but none so deeply as Neville, who’d had to slip away afterwards and sit down quietly and dab his wrists with lemon juice and pray.
But then it had come as a terrible shock and the more Neville thought about it, the more inclined was he to believe that it couldn’t actually have happened at all.
But it had.
It really had.
Jim Pooley had walked into the Flying Swan in the company of twelve sweetly smelling young men in black T-shirts and shorts and he really-truly-really-really-truly had stood them all a round of drinks.
Thirteen pints of Large and all purchased by Pooley.
No wonder Neville would wake up in the night, all cold sweats and screaming.
And it wasn’t just the matter of the purchasing of all those pints. It was that in the shock of it all, Neville had committed a cardinal sin. He had forgotten about the Swan’s dress code, which forbade the wearing of shorts in the saloon bar. He would never live that down at future Lodge meetings. The brothers of the Sacred Order of the Golden Sprout would make him the butt of many a bitter joke.
But it had happened.
It really truly had.
“Cheers, Neville,” said Pooley, accepting his change and, to the part-time barman’s further horror, thrusting the coins straight into his pocket without even bothering to count them.
Neville slipped off for that quiet sit-down. Pooley led Geraldo to a table.
“It’s a nice pub, this,” said the fattish bloke, seating himself upon a comfy cushion. “Very quiet, very sedate.”
“And the finest beer in Brentford.” Jim raised his glass and sipped from it. “Which is to say, probably the best beer in the world.”
“It’s not at all bad.” Geraldo took a mighty swig. “Although last week I had a beer in a New Orleans bar with Robert Johnson—”
“The Robert Johnson?”
“The Robert Johnson.”
“Who died in nineteen thirty-seven.”
“You know your bluesmen, Jim.”
“And so, apparently, do you. But listen, Geraldo. I’ve bought you the beer and so I’d like to hear the story. On the understanding, of course, that it is now beyond the ten o’clock watershed.”
“What is the ten o’clock watershed?” Geraldo asked.
“It is that time of the night when men in bars who have sufficient alcohol inside them begin the telling of tall tales, which generally conclude with the words ‘and that’s the God’s honest truth, I’m telling you’. This is considered acceptable social behaviour in bars. It’s a tradition, or an old charter—”
“Or something,” said Geraldo. “I get the picture.”
“And,” Jim continued. “Those who listen to such tall tales never ever respond by saying, ‘You are a lying git.’”
“Even if they are?” Geraldo asked.
“Even if they are.”
“Very civilized,” Geraldo said. “But what I’m going to say is the God’s honest truth, I’m telling you.”
“You’re supposed to say that at the end. But never mind, just please tell me your story.”
“Right.” Geraldo took another pull upon his pint and finished it. “I’d like another one of these,” he said.
“After you’ve told your tale.”
“Right.” Geraldo set down his empty glass and rubbed his podgy hands together. “Where to start. OK, I’ll start at the end, because that’s where it all began.”
Jim sighed inwardly. So far not so good, he thought.
“The end,” said Geraldo, “came about at precisely ten seconds after the ninth minute of the eighth hour of the seventh day of the sixth week of the fifth month of the year four thousand, three hundred and twenty-one. The scientists at the Institute confirmed this and that made it OFFICIAL.
“Ten – nine – eight – seven – six – five – four – three – two – one. That was zero hour, you see.”