Omally groaned. “It is the end of mankind as we know it,” he said. “I should never have got up so early today.”
Pooley, who had had carrots the night before, topped up his pint from the Irishman’s glass. “Steady on, John,” he said in a soothing voice. “It is a power cut, nothing more. We have been getting them more or less every Wednesday afternoon for months now.”
“But not like this.”
Old Pete’s dog Chips set up a dismal howl which was unexpectedly taken up by Neville the part-time barman. “Look at it! Look at it!” he wailed, pointing invisibly in the darkness. “Look at the bloody thing!”
Bitow Bitow Bitow Bitow went the Captain Laser Alien Attack Machine, scornfully indifferent to the whims of the Southern Electricity Board, or anyone else for that matter.
In the tiny kitchenette to the rear of the corner shop there was a sharp and deafening twang, and a great bolt of lightning burst forth, charring the walls and upturning the banks of pulsating equipment. There followed a moment or two of very extreme silence. Smoke hung heavily in the air, cables swung to and fro like smouldering leander vines and the general atmosphere of the place had more than the hint of the charnel house about it.
At length, from beneath the fallen wreckage, something stirred. Slowly, and with much coughing, gasping and sighing, a blackened toothless figure rose painfully to his feet. He now lacked not only his upper set but also his eyebrows and sported a fetching, if somewhat bizarre, charcoal forelock. He kicked away the debris and fumbled about amidst the heaps of burned-out valves and twisted gubbins. “Ahs,” he said, suddenly wielding a smoke-veiled gauge into view, “success I thinks.”
Something had come through, and by the measurement upon that gauge it was a relatively substantial, goodly few hundredweight of something.
Norman wiped away a few loose eyelashes with a grimy knuckle, satisfied himself that there was no immediate danger of fire and sought his overcoat.
Small Dave had finished his midday deliveries and was taking his usual short cut back from the Butts Estate towards the Flying Swan for a well deserved pint of Large. As he shuffled across the allotment, his size four feet kicking up little dusty explosions, he whistled a plaintive lament, the title of which he had long forgotten. He had not travelled twenty yards down the path, however, when he caught sight of something which made him halt in mid-pace and doubt that sanity which so many had previously doubted in him.
Small Dave took off his cap and wiped it across his eyes. Was this a mirage, he wondered, or was he seeing things? Something overlarge and definitely out of place was grazing amongst his cabbages. It was a foul and scruffy-looking something of bulky proportion and it was emitting dismal grumbling sounds between great munches upon his prizewinning Pringlea antiscorbutica.
Dave screwed up his eyes. Could this be the Sasquatch perhaps? Or the Surrey Puma? Possibly it was the giant feral torn, which, legend held, stalked the allotments by night. The postman drew cautiously nearer, keeping even lower to the ground than cruel fate had naturally decreed. Ahead of him the creature’s outline became more clearly defined and Small Dave knew that at least he was staring upon a beast of a known genus. Although this gave him little in the way of consolation.
The thing was of the genus Camelus bactrianus. It was a camel!
Small Dave’s thoughts all became a little confused at this moment. He was never very good when it came to a confrontation with the unexpected. Arriving with a six-inch letter to discover a five-inch letter-box was enough to set him foaming at the mouth. Now, a camel on the allotment, a camel that was eating his precious cabbages, that was a something quite in a class by itself.
Dave’s first thought, naturally enough, was that the thing should be driven off without delay. His second was that it was a very large camel and that as a species camels are notoriously malevolent creatures, who do not take kindly to interference during meal times. His third was that they are also valuable and there would no doubt be a handsome reward for anyone who should return a stray.
His fourth, fifth, sixth and seventh thoughts were loosely concerned with circuses, Romany showmen who were apt to snatch dwarves away for side-shows, an old Tod Browning movie he had once seen, and the rising cost of cabbages.
Small Dave’s lower lip began to tremble and a look of complete imbecility spread over his gnomish countenance. He dithered a moment or two not knowing what to do, flapped his hands up and down as if in an attempt to gain flight, gave a great cry of despair, took to his heels and finally ran screaming from the allotment.
He had not been gone but a moment or two when a soot-besmirched head arose from behind a nearby water-butt. Apart from its lack of teeth and eyebrows, it bore a striking resemblance to Sir Lawrence Olivier in his famous portrayal of Othello.
A broad and slightly lunatic smile cleft the blackened face in two and a wicked chuckle rose in the throat of the watcher.
“Success indeeds,” whistled Norman, rubbing his hands together and dancing out from his hiding place. With a quick glance about to assure himself that he was now alone, he skipped over to the cabbage-chewing camel and snatched up its trailing halter line. “Huts, huts,” he said. “Imshees yallahs.” With hardly the slightest degree of persuasion and little or no force at all, Norman led the surprisingly docile brute away.
From behind Soap Distant’s padlocked shed, yet another figure now emerged. This one wore a grey coverall suit, was of average height, with a slightly tanned complexion and high cheek-bones. He looked for all the world like a young Jack Palance. Through oval amber eyes he watched the shopkeeper and his anomalous charge depart. Drawing from a concealed pocket an instrument somewhat resembling a brass divining rod, he traced a runic symbol into the dusty soil of the allotment and then also departed upon light and silent feet.
7
When the lights returned once more to the Flying Swan, a moment or two after the holocaust in Norman’s kitchenette, they exposed a frozen tableau of deceit and duplicity, which was a sad indictment upon the state of our society.
Neville stood poised behind the counter, knobkerry at the ready, to defend his optics against any straining hands.
Pooley held Omally’s glass above his own, a stupefied expression upon his guilty face. Two professional domino players each had their hands in the spares box. Old Pete’s dog was standing, leg raised, to the piano, and a veritable rogues’ gallery of similar deeds was exposed the entire length of the bar.
Neville shook his head in disgust, “You miserable bunch,” was all that he could say.
The only patron who had not shifted his position during the unscheduled blackout was a green-haired youth, who had been so engrossed in his war against the aliens that he had been totally oblivious to the entire event. Bitow Bitow Bitow Bitow crackled the machine. Bitow, Bitow… “Bugger!” The lad restrained a petulant foot and slouched over to the bar counter. “Where’s me drink gone, Nev?” he asked.
The part-time barman shrugged. “Ask this mutinous crew,” he suggested. Raffles Rathbone turned towards the assembled multitude, but they had by now returned to their previous occupations. Conversations hummed, darts whispered and glasses rose and fell. All was as it had ever been.
“Same again then is it?”
“Why not? Got sixteen thousand, personal high score, got me initials up there three times.”
“Oh goody goody,” sneered Neville. “Are you sure you only want the half of shandy, I shouldn’t crack a bottle of Bollinger, should I?”