3
The elevation of Ms Jennifer Naylor the former local librarian, to the posts, not only of town clerk but also chairperson of the town planning committee, had been met with howls of dismay and much bitter resentment by the predominantly male council.
They had always been prepared to find a place for a token female (as long as she confined herself to the taking of minutes or the brewing of tea) but now it seemed to them that they were paying a high price for their generous liberality. Ms Naylor was proving herself to be a force none of them had reckoned with. Loath as they were to admit that she had gained her positions through intellectual prowess and sheer strength of personality, noses were tapped, knowing nods exchanged and phallacious conclusions drawn. The talk was that she had “done a turn” upon some mythical council casting couch.
Acutely alert to the distinctive rattle of tiny minds, Ms Naylor remained unperturbed. Her sights were set upon far higher things, which included Parliament and an eventual shot at the premiership amongst them. Confounding her opposition here in Brentford was, she considered, good practice for what lay ahead.
As she showered upon this particular morning, Jennifer’s thoughts were upon the coming day. She had been up since dawn making a number of very important phone calls. If the Fates were with her today she would shortly be issuing the borough a kick up the trouser-seat such as it had never known before, and carving for herself a place in history, to boot. And then? One small step at a time.
The needles of water became gentle cascades as they struck the contours of a body honed to aerobic perfection. Her shower concluded, she patted herself dry with a peach-coloured bath towel, sprayed deodorant to the appropriate quarters, attended to the minutiae of feminine toilette and finally dressed herself in a confection combining sophistication and understated elegance with provocativeness and heaving sexuality. Just so.
Having examined her image in the cheval glass and found it satisfactory, she strode purposefully back to the bedroom, delved amidst the pale satin sheets and withdrew by the ear a certain bit of rough, by name John Omally.
“Thank you, John, and time for the off,” she said, smiling sweetly. Omally, who knew upon which side his particular piece of bread was buttered, dressed hurriedly and without complaint, and made off sans coffee and croissants.
He left as he had entered, with discretion, by the back door, withdrew his bicycle Marchant from Jennifer’s garage, mounted up and pedalled away.
She tossed the bed linen into the laundry basket, set the answerphone, swept up Filofax, executive briefcase and Porsche keys and made her departure from the front of the house.
Omally free-wheeled down Moby Dick Terrace towards the Half Acre, his old sit-up-and-beg whirring away beneath him like a good’n. The oil-bathed ball-races of the new Sturmey Archer purred contentedly and the similarly well-oiled saddle springs afforded John’s bum the contentment of all but concussion-free cycling. Bike and rider moved in harmonious accord and many was the Buddhist monk, who, recognizing this exhibition of dharma, tipped his head towards this perfect union of man and machine. It was a joy to behold. But it had not always been so.
The bike had been with Omally a good many years and for a good many of those years their relationship had been strained and at times positively painful to the both of them. And so it would no doubt have remained had not Chance, if such it was, chosen to intervene. Chance in the person of Professor Slocombe, Brentford’s patriarch and resident man of mystery.
Omally had been pedalling with difficulty across the Butts Estate, an elegant Georgian quarter of the borough, when he had found himself discharged from Marchant’s saddle to land in an untidy heap before the elder, who was standing at his garden door.
Professor Slocombe observed the “accident” and the subsequent violent attack Omally visited upon the prone bicycle and chose to intervene. Having calmed the truculent Irishman, he listened with interest to his tale of woe and requested that the bike be left in his care for twenty-four hours. In order to see “what might be done”. John, whose immediate thought was that the ancient was adding the science of bicycle maintenance to his seemingly endless list of accomplishments, gratefully acceded to his request.
It was therefore much to his surprise when arriving on the morrow he received for his troubles a large piece of parchment upon which was penned thirteen stanzas of archaic English. These read like the prophecies of Nostradamus and to John made precisely the same amount of sense. The Professor told him that, should he follow these requirements to the letter, he would find things very much to his advantage. Omally perused the parchment, his forehead furrowed with doubt. Whilst he was so doing, the Professor added that regular oiling was a necessity as was a change of brake blocks, a realignment of the dynamo and a set of new mudguards. Whenever possible the bicycle was to be left facing west when parked, sunshine being preferable to shade, that it was never to be left alone at night, but always in the company of another wheeled conveyance (or at the very least a lawn mower), that it was to be repainted vermilion and referred to at all future times by the name “Marchant”.
Omally peered furtively at the old man. This was a wind-up surely, in fact the wind-up to end all wind-ups.
The Professor, who read not only John’s aura but also his thoughts, raised a finger, slim as a twig, and said simply, “Trust me, John.”
Omally left Professor Slocombe’s that day leading Marchant thoughtfully by the handlebar. It really didn’t seem worth the candle. It would probably be better simply to dump the old bike and acquire another (Omally being one of those who considered an unpadlocked bicycle public property). But his trust in the Professor was implicit, so before he was half-way to the Flying Swan he had resigned himself that he would take up the challenge.
The parchment proved a great attraction to the lunch-time patrons and a distinguished panel of semanticists, Old Pete, Norman and Omally’s closest friend Jim Pooley, set about its translation with relish. As the instructions were teased into twentieth-century Brentonian, their curious nature became apparent. Stanza nine, lines three and four, proved of particular interest:
Ne’er Widdershins must Marchant go
lest peril and ill luck bestow.
Old Pete, who had recently joined the local coven, picked up on it almost at once. “It means,” said he, “that the bike must never be ridden around left-hand corners, on fear of terrible consequence.”
Omally buried his face in his hands. To plan one’s route whilst only ever turning to the right was not only ludicrous, it was downright dangerous. Especially upon drunken nights when the gutter led the way home.
But power to the Irishman’s elbow, he had persevered, and many a late-night reveller was left to wonder at the madman upon the vermilion cycle crying, “Homeward Marchant!” as he drove about in ever-decreasing circles, eventually to vanish like the Oozalem bird of ancient myth into his own back passage.
They had been difficult times and no mistake, but now as Omally pedalled effortlessly up the steep incline of Sprite Street, they were no more than memories. He and Marchant were en rapport, as the garlic eaters will have it, and the degree of this was remarkable in the extreme. For, to the trained observer, skilled in such matters as bicycle propulsion, watching the cyclist’s easy motion as he crested the hill, one thing would have been readily apparent: As man and bike moved in fluid harmony, one vital something — hitherto considered an essential prerequisite to bicycledom — was missing. The pedals turned, the wheels spinned, but nothing whatever moved between the chainwheel and the Sturmey Archer cog … Omally’s bicycle Marchant did not have a chain.