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‘You’ll need a car,’ said Jackie. ‘What kind would you like?’

‘A Morris Minor.’

‘A what?’

‘One like that.’ I pointed to a car across the road.

‘A Porsche.’

‘That would be the kiddie.’ And it was.

The Doveston set me up in a little flat just off the Portobello Road. ‘This area is coming up,’ he told me.

I viewed the greasy limo and the broken window panes. ‘It would perhaps do better for puffing down,’ I suggested. ‘I don’t like it here.’

‘You will not be here for long. Only until you have decorated the place.’

‘What?’

‘Once it has been decorated, we will sell it for double the price.’

‘And then what?’

‘I will move you into a larger flat in another area that is coming up. You will decorate that one and we will sell it once again for double the price.’

‘Is this strictly legal?’

‘Mark well my words, my friend,’ said the Doveston. ‘There is a boom going on in this country at the moment. It will not last for ever and many will go down when the plug is pulled. In the meantime, it is up to us, and those like us’ — he raised his Filofax, as if it were a sword — ‘to grab whatever can be grabbed. These are the 1980s, after all.’

‘And tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.’

‘Exactly. I’m not into property. Buying and selling houses holds no excitement for me. I want to make my mark on the world and I shall do that through my expertise in my chosen field of endeavour.’

‘Tobacco,’ I said.

‘God’s favourite weed.’

‘I have no wish to share another Brentstock moment.’

‘Ah, Brentstock,’ said the Doveston. ‘Those were the days, my friend.’

‘They bloody weren’t. Well, some of them were. But do you know what happened to me when I smoked that stuff of yours?’

‘You talked to the trees.’

‘More than that. I saw the future.’

‘All of the future?’

‘Not all. Although it seemed like all at the time. I saw glimpses. It’s like déjà vu now. I get that all the time and sometimes I know when something bad is going to happen. But I can’t do anything about it. It’s pretty horrible. You did that to me.

The Doveston went over to the tiny window and peered out through the broken pane. Turning back towards me he said, ‘I am truly sorry for what happened to you at Brentstock. It was all a terrible mistake on my part. I worked from Uncle Jon Peru’s notes and I thought that the genetic modifications I’d made to the tobacco would only help it to grow in the English climate. I had no idea the cigarettes would have the effect they did. I’ve learned a great deal more about that drug since then and I will tell you all about it when the time is right. But for now I can only ask that you accept my apologies for the awful wrong that I’ve done you and ask that you don’t ever speak of these things to other people. You can never be certain just who is who.’

‘Who is who?’

‘I am followed,’ said the Doveston. ‘They follow me everywhere. They watch my every move and they make their reports. They know I’m on to them and that makes them all the more dangerous.

‘This wouldn’t be the secret police again, would it?’

‘Oh yes,’ said the Doveston, grave, in the face. ‘Uncle Jon Peru Joans knew exacdy what he was talking about. You experienced the effects of the drug. You know it’s

‘Yes, but all that secret police stuff. I remember you saying that they would be in the crowd at Brentstock. But I thought you were only winding me up.’

‘They were there and they’re out there now. At some time in the future, when I consider it safe, I will show you my laboratory. You will see then how the Great Work is progressing.’

‘The Great Work? Uncle Jon Peru’s Great Work?’

‘The very same. But we shall speak of these things at some other time. I don’t want to keep you talking now.

‘You don’t?’

‘I don’t. You’ve got decorating to do. You’ll find all the stuff in the kitchen along with the plans for which walls you have to knock down and how to plumb in the dishwasher. Try and get it all done by next week, because I think I’ve got a buyer lined up.’

‘You what?’

But the Doveston said no more.

He turned on his designer heel and, like Elvis, left the building. He did pause briefly at the door to offer me a smile and a wave, before he went.

And it was then I saw it.

That look in his eyes.

The look that Uncle Jon Peru had had in his.

That look that the monkey in the Mondo movie had.

And I suppose it was at that very moment that I realized, for the first time ever, just how absolutely mad the Doveston was.

But I wouldn’t let it spoil our friendship. After all, I was on a roll here. I was in the money. I had a Paul Smith suit, a Piaget watch, a Porsche and a personal organizer.

All of these began with a P.

I really should have noticed that...

16

Beatle bones and smokin’ Stones.

Don Van Vliet

For a man who was not into property, the Doveston sure bought a lot of it. During my first six months of freedom, I moved house eight times. Each to somewhere grander in a more up-market neighbourhood. By Christmas of 1984, I had made it to Brentford.

Yes, Brentford!

The Butts Estate.

And which house was I living in? Why, none other than that once owned by Uncle Jon Peru Joans. It would have been a childhood dream come true — had I ever dreamed of such a thing in childhood. The dreams I’d had in childhood, however, were formed of far humbler stuff. Never once had I thought that one day I might live on the Butts Estate.

The conservatory had been rebuilt, but not in its original style. Two local jobbing builders, Hairy Dave and Jungle John, had hobbled a nasty double-glazed atrocity of the monstrous carbuncle persuasion across the back of the house and my first job was to pull it down.

I did have a bit of a party when I moved in. But all very low key and sophisticated. I’d been hoping to get my leg over Jackie, but she wasn’t having any. She told me that even though there wasn’t much that she wouldn’t do for a man in a Paul Smith suit, there was no way she was going to shag a bloke who was a painter and decorator. What did I think she was, a slapper?

I took that one on the chin and determined that one day...

One day...

Norman spoiled the party for me somewhat. He’d brought with him several bottles of home-brewed sprout brandy, of which he imbibed too freely. In a moment of drunken bonhomie, he called me his bestest friend and said that this was the bestest party he’d ever been to.

Except for one he’d been to back in ‘sixty-three, where somebody had blown up the host’s dog with dynamite.

Oh how we laughed.

I was really up for rebuilding that conservatory. I’d managed to get copies of the original plans from the Memorial Library and a nearby foundry had agreed to take on the job of casting the columns and decorative ironwork.

When, in the January of the following year, the Doveston told me that it was time to move again, I said no. I wanted to stay where I was, complete the conservatory and once again be a Brentonian.

To my great surprise the Doveston said that he didn’t mind. I could keep the house, but on one condition. He himself had recently acquired a property in Sussex. If I would decorate that for him at no charge, the house in the Butts was mine.