Jim did. “I don’t,” he said.
“To maim and mutilate with little more than a fingertip’s pressure. It is banned now under the Geneva Convention, I believe.”
Jim’s fist unfurled.
“Good man.” The fat one winked. “Reseat yourself. I’ll call for tea and crumpets.”
Jim sat down. “It’s just not fair,” he said.
“We cannot choose our parents, nor they theirs. Such is the way of the world.” Mr Compton-Cummings strained to rise from his chair and made good upon the third attempt. To the sound of considerable wheezing and the creak of floorboards, he manoeuvred his ponderous bulk to the door and coughed out a request for tea to a secretary who sat beyond, painting her toenails with Tipp-Ex.
Pooley’s unfurled hand strayed towards a heavy onyx ashbowl. A single blow to the back of the head and a sworn testimony on his own part that the fat man had merely tripped and fallen were all that would be required. But the obscene thought passed on at the moment of its birth. Jim was not a man of violence, and certainly not a murderer. He was just plain old Jim Pooley, bachelor of the parish of Brentford, man of the turf and lounger at the bar counter of the Flying Swan.
He had hoped so much that he might have been more. That perhaps somewhere, way back down the ancestral trail, there might have been one noble Pooley, who had achieved great ends, performed mighty deeds, written the poetry of passion…
Or left an unclaimed legacy!
But no.
Jim had been shafted again.
Not, as was usually the case, by the quirks of cruel fate, or the calumny of strangers, but by one of his own tribe, and a long-dead one to boot. It really wasn’t fair.
Mr Compton-Cummings ladled himself back into his reinforced chair and smiled once more upon Jim, who leaned forward.
“Listen,” he said. “What if, for a small remuneration, you were to change the name in the manuscript?”
“Change the name?” The genealogist puffed out his cheeks.
Jim nodded enthusiastically. “To, say…” He plucked, as if from the air, the name of his closest friend. “John Omally,” he said.
“John Omally?”
“Certainly. I’ve often heard John complain about how dull his forebears were. This kind of notoriety would be right up his street.”
Mr Compton-Cummings raised an eyebrow. “But that would be to hoodwink and deceive the common man.”
“It is the lot of the common man to be hoodwinked and deceived,” said Jim. “Believe me, I speak from long experience.”
“Out of the question. I have my reputation to think of.”
“And I mine, such as it is. Listen, if this gets out I will be the laughing stock of the borough.”
“I sympathize, of course. But it is my bounden duty as scholar, researcher, writer and gentleman to do all within my power to ensure absolute accuracy in the book I am compiling. Such is the standard I have set for myself – a standard which, were you to view it from a more objective viewpoint, you would find admirable and worthy of emulation.”
“I doubt that,” said Jim, making a grumpy face.
Mr Compton-Cummings turned up his pink palms.
“What more can I say? After all, it was you who answered my advertisement in the Brentford Mercury for local people, who felt that they might have had ancestors who played a part in the making of this fine town, to come forward and have their ancestry traced, for free. You who plied me with talk of blue blood coursing through your veins. You who swore upon your mother’s life that it was a Pooley who had won the land upon which Brentford now stands in an I-spy-with-my-little-eye competition with Richard the Lionheart. You…”
“Enough,” cried Jim, waving his hands. “My motives were entirely altruistic.”
“Then we are kindred spirits.”
Jim once more took up the computer print-out and perused its dismal details. Back they went, an unbroken chain of Pooleys, marching through time. Well, hardly marching, slouching was more like it, with their heads down, probably to mask their evil breath. Peons and peasants, sanitary engineers and shovellers of sh…
“Ah, here’s the tea,” said Mr Compton-Cummings.
The secretary held Jim’s towards him at arm’s length. Her face was turned away.
“Thanks very much,” said Jim.
“Look on the bright side,” smiled the genealogist, sipping at his Earl Grey. “My book will be a very expensive affair, pandering to an elite minority. The scholastic fraternity, Fellows of the Royal Society, the intelligentsia. Hardly the class of folk to be found flinging darts in the saloon bar of the Flying Swan. The chances are that your rowdy drinking chums will never even see a copy, let alone purchase and read it. The secret of your malodorous predecessor will most likely remain just that.”
Jim sipped at his own tea. The cup smelled strongly of Dettol. Mr Compton-Cummings was probably right. John Omally rarely read anything heavier than the Morris Minor Handbook. Archroy was a Zane Grey man and Neville the part-time barman subscribed to SFX Magazine; Old Pete stuck to the People’s Friend and Norman of the corner shop to the Meccano Modeller. Though wise words were often spoken within the Flying Swan, those words derived not from books but rather from personal insight gained through the observation and intuitive understanding of natural lore. He was safe. Of course he was.
“Well, thus and so,” said Jim. “You are no doubt right, I’m sure.”
The genealogist offered Pooley one fat smile for luck, the two shook hands and Jim took his leave.
As he trudged up Moby Dick Terrace towards the Ealing Road and the Flying Swan, Jim sighed a great deal inwardly, but put his best foot forward. So what if he hadn’t sprung from noble stock? So what if he came from a long line of nobodies? So what if the only Pooley who had merited more than a statutory birth, occupation and death mention in the parish records had been some kind of brimstone-breathing ogre? So what indeed! Jim, though often daunted and done down, was an optimist ever. He rarely opened his eyes upon a new day without a sense of wonder and excitement. Certainly, on more than a few occasions, those eyes were somewhat bleary and bloodshot and the brain behind them still blurred from drink, but life was life and life was now. And Jim lived his life to the fullest he could manage.
Jim breathed in the healthy Brentford air, scented with honeysuckle, jasmine blossom and sweet pea. The sky was blue as a blue could do and the sun beamed down its blessings. Alive was a wonderful thing to be on such a day as this. Jim pulled back his shoulders, thrust out his chest, put a pace into his stride and found a tune to whistle. God was in his heaven and all was right with the world of Brentford.
Pooley had a fair old skip on by the time he reached the Flying Swan. He put his hand to the saloon bar door and pushed it open, to find himself confronted by a most bizarre spectacle.
Old Pete’s half-terrier, Chips, lay upon its back in the centre of the floor, a paw drawn across its canine snout. It appeared to be shaking with mirth. At the bar counter, several customers had handkerchiefs tied cowboy-bandit fashion about their faces. Two old fellas from the estate sat at their domino table holding their noses and fanning their beer, while John Omally stood with his arms folded and a Vick inhaler stuffed up each of his nostrils.
Neville the part-time barman stuck his head up from beneath the counter. He was wearing a gas mask. “Wotcha, stinker,” he said in a muffled tone. “Just breezed in from the East?”
And then the Swan’s patrons collapsed in helpless laughter.
Pooley stood, slack-jawed and shaking, slowly clenching and unclenching his fists. “Compton-Cummings,” he said in a cold and deadly voice.
“Got him in one,” declared Neville, removing his gas mask and mopping tears of laughter from his eyes. “He phoned here five minutes ago, plugging his latest book. Thought we’d all be keen to buy a copy.”
Jim Pooley left the Flying Swan and went home to find his old school cricket bat.