The Complete Greyminster Chronicles

by Brian Hughes

  “You insulta my honour, Mr Barley!” The picket fence of Mario’s teeth now turned downwards. “You insult the name of my mother anna the ’istory of my great family.”

  “Bastard that innit?” Giles scratched his scalp, caught a passenger, and sneered. “Listen Luigi! We’re both men o’ the world. I’ve got over’eads to consider.”

  “Aye, like ’aving to pay for de holes in your pockets t’ be mended. De holes where all your money as worn de lining away!”

  Farmers are not renowned for their caustic wit. Barley scratched a sliver of earth from his temple and continued. “Listen t’ me, Billy Smart. Oi’ve got campers on that field, see?” He removed the grotty pipe from his mouth, grabbed a passing chicken and tore a feather from its tail to use as a pipe cleaner. “And it ain’t gonna come cheap having to turf ’em all off. They’ve already paid up f’r the next two years.”

  Mario didn’t have time to ponder on such matters. How farmers conducted their business was up to them. Personally he would have just sent his sons out to deal with the trespassers, brandishing broken cider bottles.

  “Okay, fifty quid a week an’ not a penny more.” He leant backwards. “Jus’ so long as you getta rid o’ dose bastards?”

  “Sixty quid?”

  “Fifty five?”

  “Seventy?”

  It didn’t pay to barter with Giles Barley for long. Mario brought the deal to a conclusion with a sudden movement.

  “Done!” One mammoth palm was proffered amicably towards the farmer. Mario winced as Barley hocked a greenie onto his own. “Justa make sure they’re gone before the hour is up. We needa de whole field for our show.”

  Having wiped his hand on his trousers Giles crossed to the hand-made placards surrounding his buxom wife. He gathered them together in a bundle across one crooked arm.

  “Don’t you go frettin’ your big fat ’ead, Pavaroti.”

  He span one of the notice boards around. It read quite simply: DANGGER! TOcksIC WASTe DUmPING SIGTE. There iz no need for alarm. Greyminster Cunty Counsil wud like to asshure all peeples using this feeld that the waste is ov suffishently low kwontities to hav no permanunt effex.

  Grabbing the mallet Giles Barley cast Mario a knowledgeable nod. “A few o’ these strategically ploiced should soon clear the barstards orf my land!”

  CRACCCCK! Nancy Skunk belted Spike angrily on the head. He was sent tumbling backwards into the cage marked, ‘Yeti.’ Deep inside, a pair of luminescent eyes blinked.

  “Watcha go an’ do that for, Missus? I was only tryin’ to ’elp?” Spike shook the numbness from his ears.

  “’Cos y’ve done enough ’elping for one day!” Nancy shook the screwdriver threateningly. “You’ve already landed us on the Marie Celeste an’ frightened all the crew overboard. Then you materialised fifteen times in Berkley Square in the dead of the night, left your lunch beneath the foundations of the Tower of ‘Pizza’, and accidentally let go of the diplodocus’ rope when y’ took it for a swim in Loch Ness!”

  “So I’ve made one or two mistakes?” Spike hoisted himself up in disbelief. “I’ve added a couple of mysteries to the world? Not exactly a crime, is it?”

  “A couple of mysteries?” Nancy’s lips curled up into a growl. “You pulled the emergency brake right over the top of Glenn Miller’s plane...God only knows what ’appened to that! You startled the Light Brigade down that ’illside, told Oscar Wilde ’ee was clever enough to win his court case, distracted King Alfred whilst ’ee was cookin’, told Joan of Arc she’d look better in trousers an’ pulled that big metal plug out of the middle of Atlantis! And then you went an’ flicked your fag out of the back door down Puddin’ Lane. And you call that ‘A Couple of Mysteries?’ What was it you said to that bloke with the beard?”

  “I just told ’im ’ee’d better keep an eye out for low flyin’ arrows, that’s all!”

  “That was King ’Arold! ’Ee should ’ave won that bloomin’ battle! That’s how Britain went on to conquer the World!”

  “Look Lady! I might not know much about ’istory, but obviously I know more than you!”

  Spike made a grab for the screwdriver. Nancy had the reflexes of a cat on extra-strong catnip. She stowed the screwdriver down the front of her chequered blouse.

  “Britain never conquered the World! ’Istory is ’istory, and no matter what I do it’s always gonna be the same.”

  “For God’s sake, Gypsy! You come from the wrong end of a council estate! What the ’Ell do you know about Quantum Physics? You’re several genes short of a full pool! You haven’t got the first inkling!”

  Nancy leaned forcefully behind the words. “This engine is set to take us through all the major turnin’ points in World ’Istory. That’s what ’appens when it has to be reset ’cos some useless cretin’s buggered it!”

  “I can’t believe you’re still ’arpin’ on about that! Truth is y’ can’t get it to work, can y’?” Spike folded his arms and gave the console a kick. “You’re all mouth, Missus. If you’re so clever tell us ’ow this thing works!”

  “It’s far too complicated for an ’alf-wit like you. I’ve made a study of council estates.” Nancy ran the sum total of her anthropological investigations through her RAM. “Full of fat women with blotchy legs ’oo think that books are to replace broken bed legs with. People wi’ no bloody ’ope and no ambitions ’oo wander round each other’s ’ouses, causing fights and ’aving affairs ’cos its the only emotional fulfilment they’re gonna get.”

  “Don’t think you can change the bleedin’ subject! ’Ow can we move about through time then?”

  “We can’t!” Nancy was struggling now. Her own limited knowledge of Quantum Mechanics was far too patchy to sustain an argument. “That’s just a 20th Century concept! Put about by physicists ’oo haven’t got a clue. Nobody actually moves through time. People used to believe that time was static and we travelled along it in one direction. The Dark Lord realised that time was the one that was movin’, and we were the ones standin’ still.”

  Spike thought carefully for a moment. “What difference does that make?”

  “To travel through time all you’ve got t’ do is find a log caught up in the current an’ jump on board.”

  “You’re just talkin’ bollocks, Missus!”

  Nancy raised an angry finger. Exactly what she intended to do with it we’ll probably never find out. At that moment a violent thud signalled that the craft had landed.

  Nancy rushed to the console and checked the dials.

  “Where are we now?” Drawing back the curtain Spike gazed out across a ridge of grass. Beyond it a collection of bobbing heads rose and fell in a wave. Some sort of celebration was obviously underway.

  “Friday 22nd, November, 1963. Some town in America called Dallas.” Nancy snorted, obviously relieved at the date. “At least there’s bugger all you can mess up round ’ere, Mr Gypsy!”

  Humans are contrary by nature. Tell a child not to steal biscuits from the top of the cupboard and he’ll automatically start planning to sneak one out right under your nose. To make matters worse, if the parent hadn’t warned him in the first place, he’d probably have never considered doing it. A Polish potato peeler gets his leg caught up in an out-of-control combine harvester and, despite his previous thirty years of lethargy, suddenly wants to run the London Marathon on a stump.

  Whilst such obstinacy is, in many respects, an applaudable quality, at that moment it was getting Sergeant 89D’s goat right up. Grandma Jo wasn’t the fragile pensioner he’d originally suspected. In fact the interfering old battle-axe was turning out to be a minx of the first degree. She deliberately ignored his orders, poked her nose into machinery, tampered with wires and tapped valves with her gnarled old fingers.

  “Put that down!” The frustrated droid flourished his metal rod in front of her kneecaps. “I shall be forced to use the Pain-Stick!”

  “Keep y’ lid on, Charlie. I’m only ’aving a look. It’s an ’obby of mine.”

/>   FFFistttcacacacack!

  Grandma Jo raised her blackened finger, watching a curl of smoke drift from its stub. “That was a live one. ’Ere Charlie, ’ave you got a monkey wrench? Looks like your over’ead camshaft’s buckled!”

  “Mrs Lowry? I have strict instructions to deliver you to the Dark Lord in one piece. However, if you do not…”

  “’Ere, keep ’old on this, would you?” A soiled rag flopped over the sergeant’s head. He struggled to remove it, his arms not long enough to reach.

  “Madam! I must warn you that any further interference…”

  An oilcan was balanced on the cloth, grease running down the sergeant’s head. Across the cluttered floor the two underlings sniggered. Private 45F also had the hiccups which added to the growing merriment.

  “Give us a leg up will y’ Charlie?” Grandma Jo mounted the shelf, what appeared to be a brass plaque having caught her eye.

  The sergeant grunted as a rubber sole crushed his antennae. There was a noise that sounded similar to a wooden ruler being twanged as his antennae bent.

  “Do not force me to take ’ostile action. I ’ave it within my capacity to…ngh!”

  With a sudden lunge Grandma Jo hoisted her boneless body upwards. The mechanical dustbin toppled over. He hit the floor, his wheels spinning helplessly as another major design flaw became obvious. The old woman’s boots disappeared onto the shelf, leaving the sergeant angrily spinning.

  “Corporal 85B an’ Private 45F! Arrest that human and clap ’er in irons!”

  “Now, what ’ave we got ’ere?” Grandma Jo inched along the shelf, one or two items of yet-to-be-invented machinery being nudged off.

  She forced her spectacles down her nose and studied the plaque. It was actually a grating. The sort of hatch that in 1960’s sci-fi programmes allowed imprisoned heroes unlimited access to their craft. Screwing up her face up in concentration, she grabbed one edge and gave it a tug.

  “Bugger it!” Much to her chagrin the cavity behind wasn’t a labyrinth after all. Just some dadaist arrangement of circuitry.

  Not to bother. Adopt and adapt.

  With fingers that resembled the roots of a shrub she grabbed the most colourful wires, the assumption being that if somebody had taken the time to colour them then they were probably important. Gritting of her dentures, she yanked.

  “Oh, buggerin’ Nora!” A small object in the shape of a Volkswagen Beetle came away in her grip. The lights in the bunker ceiling flickered hauntingly.

  Seconds later the world turned on its head. Workbenches tumbled. Spods rattled and span. With a crunch, the coalbunker stopped.

  For a few more moments shredded books fluttered maniacally about the room.

  Grandma Jo blinked, stared at her feet above her head and reached a conclusion. She was a canny old bird was Grandma Jo, regardless of her age. The fact that the wall had now been replaced by the roof suggested that they’d landed.

  “I think I’ll ’ave this. It might come in ’andy.” Stuffing the motor into her trousers, she fixed her gaze on the wooden shutter above her. The exit. The only thing standing between herself and the homely world of her potting shed. Some sort of ladder was in order.

  Several bits of furniture were hastily assembled into a pyramid. The final rung, for want of something better, was Private 45F who was still hiccuping despite being jammed upside down between two milk-crates.

  “’Ope you don’t mind, Gentlemen. But it’s time I was on me way.” With the agility of a mountain ibex she clambered up and wrestled the hatch open. A pall of smoke shivered through the opening as Grandma Jo thrust her head into the cold beyond. For a moment she hovered indecisively. “Bugger it. Better out than in!”

  She disappeared into the piquant atmosphere of the night. Behind her the wooden dials of the Time-Event Calendar read, ‘October 17th, 1999.’ Not a mammoth distance from the date she’d originally left Allotment Street. But a week in politics can be an awful long time.

  Chapter Nine: A Courtesy Call from the Boys in Blue

  The rifle swung in front of Spike’s nose, the ornamental gas lamps making its barrel shine. Lee Harvey Oswald forced his shoulder against the butt, peered through the sights and raised the barrel level with Spike’s head.

  “Sorry, Mister.” Spike shuffled backwards, attempting to occupy only a fraction of his normal mass. “I didn’t mean no ’arm by what I done. It’s just that your ’ead was all red.”

  He swallowed. “And you were all out of breath from runnin’. I just thought you might want a lift.”

  “A lift?” Oswald sneered. “My God, you’re ugly. You’ve godda face like a horse’s fanny.”

  Fortunately Spike had watched enough American programmes to know the difference between the types of fanny found on different sides of the Atlantic.

  “There’s only one organisation that’d use someone as ugly as you.” The murderer leant forwards, buffing the handle of the rifle with the cuff of his shirt. “You’re with the CIA.”

  “I’m not, honest. I’m with the Nat West.” Spike was rambling. “I ’aven’t got much in me account mind. Just the leftovers from me last rent cheque. But I can draw it out. It’s only about three and an ’alf quid, but every little ’elps in the Communist Movement.”

  During Oswald’s sojourn on the Greyminster Rose Spike had gone to great lengths to sing the praises of the Russian Intelligence. “I know that Ruskies ’ave nothin’ to eat. Except potatoes. Even their leaders look like spuds.”

  The console spluttered in the shadows. Oswald looked round.

  Nancy raised her harsh little eyes in scorn. “Y’d better say goodbye to your friend, Gypsy. I’m takin’ ’im back where ’ee belongs.”

  She cast a glance along the corridor. One of the smaller containers had burst, a landslide of steaming compost decorating the floorboards. “Look what ’ee’s done to me Boggart Cat. It’ll take me a week to shovel that lot back inside.”

  “What are you fiddling around with?” The rifle was swung towards the pig-tailed pilot.

  Without so much as a concerned wrinkling of her nose, Nancy made a few minute adjustments to the levers.

  “There’s no point in aiming that antiquated heap of junk at me, Sunshine. I’m a hologram and naturally impervious to bullets.” She threw her captor an enormous grin. “And stop panicking. If I wanted to hurt you I would have shot y’ with me laser cannon be now.”

  Oswald lowered his sights. “What the Hell are you two supposed to be? Some sort of gypsies?”

  “Don’t call me a gypsy!” The sentence left both Spike and Nancy’s mouths at the same instant. A couple of mutually indignant glances were hastily exchanged, before Nancy continued.

  “I told you. I’m a Solid-Energy Hologram. And I’m taking you back to where y’ came from.”

  “Don’t push your luck.” Oswald struggled onto his feet, his hair glued to his forehead. The cage he’d been sitting on, unaware that it contained the most irate Welsh Griffin in history, toppled backwards.

  “Didn’t you see me shoot the President?” Oswald almost spat the words. “Another triumph for Socialism.”

  “Not a bad move on be’alf of the gun lobby, neither.”

  Another lever was pulled, another button punched. The Greyminster Rose shook as Lee Harvey Oswald took a step towards Nancy.

  “I ain’t gonna lose sleep over killing a stupid girl like you.”

  “Suit yourself, mate. It doesn’t matter any’ow. Accordin’ to my ’istory books the bullet didn’t actually kill President Kentucky. ’Ee was rushed to ’ospital in time. “

  At that moment a thud buckled the boards, indicating that the caravan had hit rock bottom. So great was the impact that Oswald struggled to remain upright.

  Nancy seized the opportunity. In a flourish of limbs she grabbed the rifle and smacked him hard around the head with it.

  “This is where you get off, Pal.” She thrust the weapon down the rear of his denims, seized his belt and hoisted his body above
her head. “If you’d like to leave without any fuss, you won’t get ’urt. Otherwise I’ll set the Clangers on y’.”

  Oswald was forcefully ejected through the hatch. A muffled thump indicated that he’d hit something solid.

  With a slam the door was closed. Nancy turned to the bewildered Spike who was attempting to free his boot from the Griffin’s claw.

  “As for you, Mr Gypsy!” She stomped across the floor, bearing down on him angrily. “That’s the last time I’m goin’ to sort out your mess. You can bugger off back t’ your own poxy existence. No matter ’ow little time there is left!”

  She yanked a lever on the control panel. Spike managed to untangle himself from the mythological beast. As the caravan shuddered out of normal existence, he stared at the fuming girl.

  “Where’d you put ’im?”

  “Back where ’ee belongs. Well almost back where ’ee belongs.” Nancy belted a couple of switches. “It’s difficult to be precise with such antiquated equipment. More or less in the exact spot any’ow, give or take the odd thirty seconds and the odd ’undred feet.”

  In the Texas Book Repository, Lee Harvey Oswald shook his head. Then he stared at the grubby boxes all around him. He knew this place. He’d worked here before. It was where he’d originally planned to…

  Crack!

  Outside the building, his initial shot from the grassy knoll echoed noisily about the hot brick walls. It was accompanied by a sudden outburst of screams.

  Grabbing the rifle Oswald scrambled to the window, just in time to finish the job off. Properly this time.

  October the Third, 1999. The condensation performed acrobatics on the window beneath the choreography of Dennis Lowry’s nostrils. Outside a wind toyed with the chickweed on the patio. Behind him Dennis heard the sound of a custard cream coming into contact with a saucer.

  “Would ya loike a top-up there, Sergeant?” Margaret Lowry hovered before Sergeant Partridge, the teapot in its brightly coloured sweater swaying beneath his red chin. In desperation the overweight policeman searched for somewhere to put his plate down. The Lowry house had shelves everywhere, crammed to breaking point with lollipop-stick chalets, trinket boxes covered in seashells and religious iconoclasm. Attached to the wall above Jack’s head hung an enormous tapestry of the pope.