“It’s time I was away about my business,” said Jim, rising to his feet.
“Will you not be staying to have one more before you go?” John asked. Neville, rising like a titan from the cellar depths, caught this remark; being a publican, he was inured against most forms of sudden shock.
“Same again lads?” he asked.
“Two of similar,” said John.
Jim eyed him with open suspicion.
“Ten and six,” said Neville pulling two more pints.
“Jim,” said John.
“John?” said Jim.
“I don’t quite know how to put this, Jim.”
Jim raised his right hand as in benediction; Neville thought for one ghastly moment that he was going to cross himself. “John,” said Jim, “John, I know what you are going to say, you are going to say that you wish to buy me a drink, that in fact it would be an honour for you to buy me a drink and that such would give you a pleasure that like good friendship is a jewel without price. You are going to say all this to me, John, because you have said it all before, then when you have made these eloquent and endearing remarks you will begin to bewail your lot, to curse the fates that treat you in so shabby a manner, that harass and misuse you, that push you to the very limits of your endurance, and which by their metaphysical and devious means deprive you of your hard and honestly earned pennies, and having done so you will confess supreme embarrassment, implore the very ground to swallow you up and possibly shed the occasional deeply felt tear, then and only then you will beg, impeach, implore and with supreme dignity of stature approach me for the loan of the very ten shillings and sixpence most recently mentioned by our esteemed bar lord here.
“I am conscious that this request for funds will be made in the most polite and eloquent fashion and that the wretchedness you will feel when it will be a profound and poignant thing to behold and so considering all this and considering that Neville is not a man well known for offering credit and that you are my noblest friend and that to attempt to drink and run as it were would bring down a social stigma upon both our heads I will gladly pay for this round.”
Omally stood, head bowed, during this touching oration. No more words were spoken and Neville received the ten and sixpence in a duly respectful manner. The two drained their glasses and Jim excused himself quietly and vanished off into the direction of the bookie shop.
Neville pushed Jim’s glass into the washer and spoke softly to the pensive Omally. “You have a good friend there in that Jim Pooley,” he said.
John nodded. “God moves in mysterious circles,” he said.
“How so?”
“Well” – and here John Omally drained his pint glass to the bottom – “I was touched to my very soul by Jim’s remarks over the purchase of these drinks but strange as the man is he mistook the remark that I made to him completely.”
“Oh?” said Neville.
“Yes,” said John. “I had no intention of borrowing the price of a drink whatever.”
“What then?” said Neville.
“I merely thought to mention to him in as discreet a manner as possible that his flies were undone, but I shan’t bother now.”
John Omally offered Neville all his best for the time of day and left the bar.
2
Archroy had rented the section of allotment land nearest to the viaduct ever since it had been bequeathed to him five years before by a half-forgotten uncle. Each night during the season he would come from his shift at the wiper works and sit in the doorway of his hut smoking his pipe and musing about the doings of the day. Omally owned two adjacent strips, having won one of them from Peg’s husband at the paper shop, and old Pete had a further one.
Over in the corner was the untouched plot that had once belonged to Raymond, who in a previous episode had been snatched away into outer space by the invisible star creatures from Alpha Centauri. You could see a lot of life on an allotment.
This particular warm spring evening Archroy lazed upon an orange box smoking the blend of his taste and thinking that the world would be a better place if there was a bounty put upon the heads of gypsy car-dealers. Not that he had anything against them in general, but in particular he was very resentful. Archroy was not only the tenant of an allotment, he was also a man of marriage. Archroy’s marriage was a nebulous affair, he working day shifts and his wife working nights. Their paths rarely crossed. Omally thought this was the ideal state of wedded bliss and prayed for a woman who might wed him then take a job overseas.
Archroy accepted the acclaim of his fellows for choosing so wisely, but privately he was ill at ease. Certainly he saw little of his wife, but of her workings and machinations the catalogue was endless. Archroy kept coming home to find new furniture and carpets; one day he stuck his head up in the roof and discovered that his loft had been insulated. Strangely, Archroy was never asked by his wife to contribute to any of these extravagant ventures. Possibly because he rarely saw the woman, but mainly he suspected, because an alien hand was at work in his stuccoed semi-detached. He suspected that his wife had a lover, in fact not one lover but many. Archroy had an inkling that his wife was putting it about a bit.
He had found five minutes one evening just as they were changing shifts to interview his suspect spouse. Archroy had noticed that his old Morris Minor, which his wife described as “an eyesore”, was no longer upon its blocks in the garage but seemed to have cried “horse and hattock” and been carried away by the fairies.
“Woman,” he addressed his wife, for he had quite forgotten her name, “woman, where is my car?”
“Gone,” said she, straightening her headscarf in the mock rococo hall mirror. “I have sold your car and if you will pardon me saying so I have made a handsome profit.”
Archroy stiffened in his shirtsleeves. “But I was working on that car, it needed but an engine and a few wheels and I would have had it working!”
“A truck came and took it away,” said his wife.
Archroy pulled at his hair. “Where’s my car gone to, who took it?”
“It was a gypsy,” said his wife.
“A gypsy, you part with my priceless car to a damned gyppo?”
“I got a good price.”
Archroy blew tobacco smoke down his nose and made himself cough.
“It’s on the mantelpiece in a brown envelope,” said his wife, smearing gaudy red lipstick about her upper lip.
Archroy tore into the front room and tore open the envelope. Pouring the contents into his hand he found five brown beans. “What? What?” Archroy began to foam at the mouth. “Beans?”
“He assured me that they were magic beans,” his wife said, slamming the door behind her.
Thus it was that Archroy sat this particular evening in the doorway of his allotment shed, bewailing his lot and cursing not only car dealers but untrue wives and all those born of romany extraction. “Magic beans,” he grimaced as he turned the offenders over in his palm. “Magic bloody beans, I’ll bet he gave her more than just magic bloody beans.”