‘I’m lost, sir,’ said the Doveston. ‘Could you tell me the way to the -railway station?’
‘You are indeed lost,’ said the man, in a voice that the boy described as chilling. ‘But now I have found you.’
‘Goodbye,’ said the Doveston, turning to leave.
‘The door is locked,’ said the man. And it was.
‘Please don’t kill me,’ the Doveston said.
The man smiled and put away his pistol. ‘I have no wish to kill you,’ he replied. ‘On the contrary, when I have finished with you, you will be anything but dead. You will be more alive than you can possibly imagine.’
‘I would rather just leave, if that’s all right with you.’
‘No,’ said the man, ‘it’s not. Now listen carefully while I explain the situation to you and then, when I’ve finished, you can make up your own mind about what you do.’
‘Do you mind if I smoke while I listen?’
‘No, certainly, have one of mine.
The boy Doveston grinned at Mr Vaux. ‘I was hoping he’d say that,’ he said, ‘because I’d never tried a Carroll’s before. I must say, however, that it was something of a let-down. The quality of the tobacco was good, but the watermarked paper has a slightly glossy feel and burns unevenly. I was impressed by the charcoal filter, but there is definite room for improvement there. Possibly the addition of a cork tip such as with Craven A. I—’
But this particular discourse was cut short by the sound of Mr Vaux’s slipper striking his desk. ‘Get on with it!’ cried Mr Vaux.
The boy got on with it.
‘The man told me that he was part of an élite group of scientists working for the government. They had created an electronic brain that was capable of predicting future developments in technology. It couldn’t actually tell the future, because it couldn’t access all the information required to do that. It worked on a mathematical principle. If you are asked to work out what two and two make, you will say: four. Which means that you have predicted the future. You have foretold what will happen when you add two and two. The electronic brain works something like that. He said that it had worked out that by the end of the century we would be almost completely reliant on machines like itself, computers, to run society. They would be linked into almost everything. Food production, military defence, telecommunications, transportation, hospitals, banking, whatever.
‘But, he said, there would be an unavoidable design fault in the programming of these systems. Something to do with the little date-counters inside them. And this would mean that when they reached the year two thousand, many of them would break down. Society would then collapse, he said.’
Mr Vaux stroked at his moustachios. And if I’d had some to stroke, I’d have surely done the same. It was fascinating stuff. Radical stuff Incredible stuff And, curiously, it also seemed as if it were familiar stuff I felt certain that I’d heard all this before. In fact, the more I thought about it, the more absolutely certain I felt that I’d heard all this before. Indeed that I’d read all this before.
In a comic book that the Doveston had recently lent to me.
I don’t think Mr Vaux had read it though. I think he would have stopped the tale-telling sooner if he had. I think he quite enjoyed the bit when the boy refused to submit to the brain-implant operation that would have linked him to the electronic machine and the man pulled the lever that dropped him through the trapdoor into the cage beneath. It was here, of course, that the Doveston met the princess with the silver eyes, who had been kidnapped for use in some similar experiment. I don’t know whether you can actually pick a padlock with a matchstick and whether there really is a maze of subterranean caverns beneath Brentford inhabited by dwarves with tattooed ears. I remain uncertain about the amount of firepower the Brentford constabulary were able to call upon when they surrounded the house. And I’m certain we would have heard the explosion when the man pressed the self—destruct button rather than be taken alive.
But it was a thrilling story and I do feel that it was really decent of Mr Vaux to let the Doveston finish.
Before he bent him over the desk.
Although we were never taught German at the Grange, we all knew the meaning of the word Schadenfreude. And we all enjoyed the beating. It was a suitably epic beating and at the end of it Mr Vaux had four of the injury monitors convey the unconscious Doveston to the school nurse to have his wounds dressed and the smelling bottle applied to his nostrils.
All in all it was a memorable afternoon and I include it here as I feel it offers the reader an insight into just what sort of a boy the Doveston was.
Imaginative. And daring.
At home-time we helped him out through the school gates. We were all for carrying him shoulder high, but his bottom, it seemed, was too tender. However, he was a hero, there was no mistake about that, and so we patted him gently upon what areas of his body remained uninjured and called him a jolly good fellow.
As we left the school our attention was drawn to a large black and shiny motor car, parked in the otherwise deserted street. On the bonnet of this leaned a man in a chauffeur’s uniform and cap. At our rowdy approach he stepped forward. Not, however, to protect the car, but to hand the Doveston a bag of sweets.
We looked on in silence as the chauffeur returned to the car, climbed in and drove away at speed.
I have a lasting impression of that moment. Of the car turning the corner past old Mr Hartnell’s shop. And of the passenger in the back seat, smiling and waving.
The passenger was a beautiful young woman.
A beautiful young woman with astounding silver eyes.
3
‘Sir, will you be good enough to tell your friend that my snuff box isn’t an oyster.’
Uncle Jon Peru Joans was no uncle of mine. And neither was he one of the Doveston’s. The boy had adopted him.
He had adopted various adults in and around the borough of Brentford and visited each on a regular basis.
There was an ancient called Old Pete, whose allotment patch he helped to tend. A tramp known as Two Coats, with whom he went on foraging expeditions to Gunnersbury Park. The lady librarian, who was apparently teaching him Tantric sexual techniques. And there was Uncle Jon Peru Joans.
The boy’s choice of adults had been scrupulous. Only those possessed of useful knowledge qualified. Old Pete was reckoned by most to be the man in the district when it came to the growing of fruit and veg. Two Coats was the man when it came to what we now call ‘survivalism’. The lady librarian was definitely the woman in most respects. And then there was Uncle Jon Peru Joans.
‘What exactly does he do?’ I asked the Doveston, as together we shuffled over the cobbles of the tree-lined drive that led to the historic Butts Estate.
The boy took to scratching his left armpit. There was currently a plague of pit weevil in the school and we were all most grievously afflicted.
‘Come on,’ I said, ‘tell us.’
‘He doesn’t do much now,’ said the Doveston. ‘He is something of a recluse. But he served with the Royal Engineers and later the SAS. He knows all there is to know about dynamite.’
I kicked a bottle top into a drain. ‘So it’s blowing things up again, is it?’ I asked.
‘There’s nothing wrong in blowing things up. It’s a healthy boyish pursuit.’
‘That’s not what Vicar Berry says.
‘Vicar Berry is an old hypocrite,’ said the Doveston, worrying now at his right armpit. ‘He was an army chaplain and saw plenty of blowings-up. He merely wishes to deny the young the pleasures he himself enjoyed. You will find that’s a common thing amongst adults.’