Mr Butcher ventured a hopeful. “They’re not doing any harm, dear,” but his good lady wife knew it was coming and slapped away his paper with her polishing cloth. “Get out there,” she cried.
“A fellow caught a twenty-seven pound pike down at the cut last week on a number nine hook, just fancy that.”
“I’ll fancy something in a minute,” said his wife, in the way some wives are renowned for. “Get out there, Reg, you tell them.”
“Tell them what, dear? They’re only dancing, there’s no harm in that.”
“No harm in that? It’s heathen.” His wife crossed herself before the plastic Virgin on the mantelshelf. “They are godless savages.”
“They’re not savages, dear, they’re on the town council.”
“Well, that’s where you’re wrong, they got the sack, them with their evil heathen ways.” She made threatening motions towards the instrument of many others’ torture. “I shall make a phone call.”
“No, don’t do that.” Mr Butcher picked up his paper, folded it into the Peerage brass galleon rack and slipped his darned and stockinged feet into his Christmas slippers. “Don’t phone.” The phone bill nearly rivalled the national debt these days. “I’ll go out to them.”
“You just tell them to stop it. It’s not decent, this is a respectable neighbourhood, or at least it was until …” With his wife’s words coming hard upon his slippered heels, Mr Butcher hurried through the kitchen door and into the back-garden.
“Lads,” he called over the fence, “lads, I say.”
Paul and Barry Geronimo ignored his calls. They wore the full tribal regalia of the Sioux Medicine Man, Buffalo Horns, beaded hangings, buckskin loin-cloth, the whole bit. And they danced on regardless.
The dance was the Dance of Invocation to the Great Spirit. It would last for thirty-six hours, with only the occasional break for more Peyote or a trip to the toilet. During the latter stages of the dance Mrs Butcher would be carried, foaming at the mouth, into an ambulance and carted off for a period of intensive care at the “special” hospital in Hanwell. Mr Butcher, for his part, would wave his wife the fondest of farewells, do a little dance of his own and take his Angling Times down to the Flying Swan, where he would do away with a month’s housekeeping money with a reckless abandon unknown to him during the last twenty years.
But these things were for the future and so at present he leaned further over the fence and continued to call out imprecations to his dancing neighbours. It wasn’t for himself, he told them, he had no objections. The sound of beating tom-toms was music to his ears. It was his wife, you see, she suffered with her nerves, she was not a well woman. “Lads?” he called. “Eh, lads?”
43
The evening turned into night and the night into the coming day. And it was another good one. The people of the borough prepared to go about their business without any particular interest. Tomorrow was coming, the great day of the games and they all had their free tickets. Well, almost all. Old Pete waved goodbye to a well-pleased punter and pecked his old lips at the bulging bundle of money-notes he now clutched in his grubby paw. “Enjoy yourself,” he called. “Come on the Bs!”
Norman had been up most of the night tinkering in his lock-up garage and the Hartnell Air Car was coming on a storm. He had definitely come up with a winner this time. As the dawn broke on the black horizon he yawned, scratched his bum, locked up the garage and trudged back to his shop for an hour or two’s shut-eye.
Neville did not rise like a lark, more like a turkey on Christmas Eve. He had a bad feeling that he could not put a name to. Something was very wrong in the borough, his nose told him so. But exactly what, that was anyone’s guess. “Probably nothing,” said the part-time barman as he lay in wait for Norman’s paper-boy, pointed stick in hand.
Jim lay long in bed, nursing a hangover of extreme proportions. When the cabbage wine had gone he had done the unthinkable and broken into Omally’s hut wherein lay a half-crate of five-year-old Scotch. “If he is dead,” Pooley reasoned, “he will forgive me, if alive then I can always apologize.” Such reasoning had got Pooley where he was today, wherever that might have been.
The Professor looked in at his door. “Sleep on, sweet prince,” he said softly. “You are going to need all the strength you have.”
Inspectre Hovis had had a rough night. It had all been in newspaper headlines again. Each announcing in big black letters the sacking in great disgrace of the great detective. His commander had given him twenty-four hours to wind up his investigations, arrest the master criminals and recover the gold. Hovis awoke in a cold sweat to the sound of his telephone ringing.
“It must be tonight,” said the voice of Hugo Rune. “Be ready.”
Hovis replaced the receiver; his number was unlisted, he had not given it to Rune. “Tonight,” said Inspectre Hovis, “tonight.”
“And this is the London Olympics,” said the television set.
“And off you go,” said Neville, pulling the plug.
Young Master Robert danced before him in a youthful delirium. “That is for the benefit of the punters,” he cried, “switch it back on this minute.”
Neville gazed round at the deserted bar. “Why don’t you get stuffed?” he enquired under his breath.
“Your job’s on the line here, pal,” bawled the bouncing boy. “Get it back on, that’s an order!”
“As you please.” Neville inserted the plug in its socket. He could have found a far better place to stick it. “And to what do I owe this pleasure?” he asked.
“You useless skinny bastard,” said the Young Master. “You and your paddy mate thought you’d got the better of me, didn’t you? Thought you could wind me up, eh?”
“No offence meant,” said Neville, “none taken, I hope.”
“Do you see this?” The boy waggled an official-looking document beneath the barman’s nose. Neville did not like the smell of it. “See it, do you?”
“I think I can just make it out.”
“Well, take a good long look.” He spread the paper out upon the bar-top. “Peruse and inwardly digest.”
Neville cocked his good eye over it, firstly with disinterest, then with amazement, latterly with horror.
“You are selling the Swan?” he whispered in a creaking, breathless voice.
“Yes indeedy. This dump never made a decent profit, most likely because your hand was always in the till.” Neville took the greatest exception to that remark, but he was dumb-struck. “Well, now you can do the other thing. We’re selling it off. The brewery is diversifying, expanding into other areas, leisure complexes, recreational facilities, the growth market of tomorrow. These old spit and sawdust pubs are a thing of the past. The Swan is finished, you are finished.”
Neville’s brain swam in soup. “I… you … what…”
“Watchamate, Neville,” said Jim Pooley who, upon rising from his pit, knew exactly where he should take his breakfast.
“Jim,” said Neville, “Jim.”
Jim spied the barman’s grave demeanour. “Something up?” he asked, astute as ever.
“He’s just about to get his coat on and go down to the Job Centre,” said Young Master Robert.
“He is what?” Jim looked at Neville. “What is all this?”
“Not that it’s any of your business,” said the boy, “but this scrawny excuse for a barman is getting the elbow.”
“You are sacking Neville?” Pooley shook his head in order to wake up his brain. He surely hadn’t had that much to drink last night. But perhaps he had, perhaps he was having the DTs. “Sacking Neville?”
“He’s out. The brewery is selling the Swan.”
“Selling it, for how much?”
The Young Master turned the property details, for such they were, about on the bar-top. “Seventy-five-thousand pounds, more than it’s worth.”