by Brian Hughes
Gordon Thompson’s fluttering fingers alighted on a truffle. “Mr Talbot? I trust I’ll be seein’ you at the Bison’s Lodge this evenin’? I believe Mr Barker ’imself will be deliverin’ the address.”
Gerald Talbot’s tie visibly tightened around his windpipe. He slackened it, a crown of sweat encircling his forehead.
“Of course the press ’ave grossly exaggerated the situation.” The lord mayor nodded satisfied. “I believe Mr Pimlico, the Chronicle’s editor, has been unsuccessful in his application to our club. I wouldn’t be surprised if he was on some sort of vengeance mission.”
“Under the circumstances, p’raps now would be the time to correct such matters, eh Talbot?” The truffle was devoured. “Horrocks?”
Thompson searched for the butler.
“’Aven’t we got any of those shortbreads with pictures of cows on ’em? I’m rather fond of those.”
“I’m afraid that Shepherd’s Biscuits haven’t sent us any this week, Your Honour.” Horrocks bent his spine in subservience, the whites of his eyes reflected in the mayor’s polished toecaps. “Apparently a new manager has taken over the factory, Sir. Some ‘Socialist’ by all accounts.”
The word ‘socialist’ was almost spat from his lips.
“Reckons he wouldn’t ‘kow-tow’ to ‘those theivin’ nepotistic bastards on the council’, if he was ordered to, Sir.”
The mayor eyed up the Battenburg now that the plate had been reduced to a collection of crumbs. The other councillors mutely joined him, all with obvious intentions on it themselves. “Shepherd’s biscuits? That’s your constituency isn’t it, Jacobs?”
A weasel-featured man in a shiny suit bolted upright at the mention of his name. The mayor continued in a contemplative manner. “Wasn’t there some trouble recently? ’Bout the pollution from the factory chimney? Bit of a ‘hoo-hah’ in the local press?”
“I believe so, Mr Mayor.” Jacobs craned across the table, rubbing his bony hands together. “Apparently there’s been an unprecedented rise in asthma sufferers on the Grimeswold Estate. Some idiotic parents reckon that Shepherd’s Biscuits are to blame. We had an ‘Independent Environmental Report’ commissioned. Must have got lost behind a cabinet somewhere.”
“Yes…perhaps you’d better telephone this new manager fella, Jacobs. Warn him we might start digging out our old reports. Can’t be doin wi’ these communist upstarts tellin’ us how to run our business at the town hall. And while you’re about it, you might remind ’im that my wife is particularly partial to those frilly pastries. Not that we’re making any demands, you understand?”
Everybody nodded. The mayor drew a finger across his bloated neck as an indication to Miss Valance not to include that last detail in the minutes. Miss Valance blew a bubble of gum from her purple lips and continued sharpening her nails.
“Now, onto more serious matters. In particular, the planning application for the new retirement ’ome at Fell Top Nature Reserve. An ideal location for the elderly, I’m sure you’ll agree?”
Councillor Ordenshaw had been studiously consulting her copy of the Chronicle. She took a dainty slurp of coffee, lowered the cup and looked at the assembly. “Has anybody read the Chronicle today? About what’s going on at Barley’s Farm?”
Councillor Smallbone, a man so small that even with three cushions it was difficult for him to peer over the table, snuffled haughtily. “I ’aven’t bothered with the paper recently. Not since that incident with the sheep. Intrusion into people’s private affairs is that? I mean, is that the sort of thing the public wants to read about? I’ll be pressing the lobby on the privacy bill about this one.”
Councillor Ordenshaw folded her newspaper. “Apparently those pretend-gypsies from Wilberforce’s Fair are putting on some sort of display. They’re going to erect a permanent edifice at Nine Acre’s farm.”
“I mean that chap from London Terrace, ’ee murdered ’is wife and they don’t call ’im Albert the Strangler, do they? And Bernhard Shuffleton married three women? They don’t call ’im Bernhard the Bigamist do they? You shag one lousy shee…”
“What sort of edifice?” Councillor Talbot interrupted.
“Some sort of penitentiary. It’s going to be a blot on the landscape.” Councillor Ordenshaw lowered the paper, her spectacles and her brows all at once. “Perhaps we ought to look into this.”
“Pretend gypsies, eh? What do they do, other than stink the place out?” The mayor rummaged through his memory. It seemed forever since he’d eaten normal food, having stuffed himself sick with ‘Nouvelle Cuisine’ and ‘Ferrari Rockets’ and those ‘After Dinner bits of cardboard.’ “I don’t suppose they can lay their grubby ’ands on any beef burgers, can they?”
Talbot threw in his tuppence worth. “From what I’ve ’eard, they can lay their hands on anything. Theivin’ bastards!” He failed to see the irony in his statement. “I motion we put a stop to whatever they’re doing.”
“Motion carried!” With which decisive words the Mayor rose to feet and heard his stomach growl. “Come along everybody. And Horrocks? Bring the brolly, it looks like rain.”
October the Seventeenth, 1999. For those having difficulty with the way this book keeps moving through time, please bear with me. The journey is going to get more tangled yet.
Night was drawing itself across the cemetery that Greyminster had become. The shadows around the buildings deepened, turning cracks into menacing wells. The pitter-patter of boots on uneven ground denoted the passage of Grandma Jo through the desolate town. The flap of unlady-like plates traversing the same ground followed the tread of Sarah Kingdom.
“I ’ope you don’t mind me askin’, but where the ’Ell are we going?” Grandma Jo stopped, flattening one palm against a workman’s hut that had partially sunk into somebody’s cellar. With her other hoary duke she lifted her left foot and rubbed the tread. “All this runnin’ about’s playin’ havoc with me bunions.”
“No time to stop, Grandma.” Sarah fumbled for the old woman’s hand. Another rumble shook the buildings. Windsocks of dust tumbled soundlessly all around. “The ‘Overlords’ are gaining on us. I know a place they haven’t discovered yet.”
The two tiny figures moved on. Two frightened rodents, one tall, one short, scurrying desperately for shelter from whatever gargantuan bully threatened them. The creak of an iron cover. The duo vanished, the manhole grinding noisily back into place above them.
“Where are we now? Can’t see a damn thing!” Grandma Jo blinked against the darkness. “Smells a bit rough. I ’ope we’re not in a sewer. You get trouts in sewers. Don’t want one them bitin’ me ’emorrhoids!”
There was the noise of a match being struck. The arched brick vaults of the underground passage flickered into view. The trembling light danced almost erotically over the dripping ceiling, highlighting the awe-struck faces of several shivering children. They were filthy and pressed together like sardines in a tin.
Grandma Jo’s jaw almost hit her boots in shock. The flame fizzled and burnt out.
“Shit and bugger!” Sarah’s voice echoed around the walls.
“Who’ve you brought us, Sarah?” Another voice rose from the dark.
Grandma Jo suspected that it belonged to the youth she’d seen facing her bosoms. He looked the sort. All broken glasses held together with plasters.
“This is Grandma Jo, Bobby. I found her in the ‘Overworld’ on her own.”
“Well we don’t bloody want ’er.”
“What you want is a damn good smack, young man!” There followed a loud, resounding whack. It was accompanied by a muffled yelp. “It’s worse than bleedin’ Peter Pan is this! What the ’Ell are you lot doin’ in this cesspit?”
“It’s not a cesspit.” The child’s voice was less acerbic now, broken beneath his sobs. “This is the back entrance to Greyminster library.”
“What?” Grandma Jo snorted. “You tryin’ to tell me that that doily of bricks up there is all that’s left of the library? W’at�
�s ’appened to all those books?”
“We’ve got some of ’em down ’ere with us, Grandma Jo…” said an altogether softer voice.
Grandma Jo had a good memory for faces. She paired the voice off with the beggarly girl she’d briefly witnessed. She’d looked the decent, winning sort. All cute and full of sayings that doting parents send off to the Sun.
“We’re ‘Eco-warriors.’ We’ll look after you.” A tiny hand was thrust amicably into Grandma Jo’s own collection of leathery tassels. It gave them an optimistic squeeze. “P’raps you can help us kill all those monsters, Grandma? You sound very clever. P’raps you can stop them from gettin’ us when we’re all asleep?”
Chapter Twelve: The Greatest Show on Earth
Anne Barley submerged her doughy arms in the cast-iron bathtub, located a King Edward by its crinkled touch, and then attacked it with the peeler. Outside her window a crowd of Romanys were reconstructing their fairground.
It was easy to understand why the Romany Council had disowned the Wilberforce clan. To have accepted them with open arms would have been tantamount to claiming that gorillas were members of the human race.
Every so often a visitor would stray from the designated route around the field and peer in through the kitchen window. They watched enthralled, presuming Mrs Barley to be the main attraction as advertised on the posters. She couldn’t help thinking that this was probably how goldfish felt. Inevitably, however, their gazes would then fall on Giles, and then they’d hobble off embarrassed.
“If oid ’ave known it was gonna be this busy I’d have charged ’em three times as much.” Giles pitched his wife an accusatory scowl as though it was her fault. By way of retaliation she gauged an eye from a softening spud.
“I think it’s toime I ’ad a word with that ugly barstard!”
That ‘ugly barstard’, more commonly known as Mario Wilberforce, was currently surveying his new plot. A porky Havana was wedged between his teeth.
All around the industrious sounds of hammers on iron pealed sedulously upwards. Here and there the noise of a guy rope being cut by one of his sons hastened the departure of the campers.
“One daya Pablo, all this will be yours.” Mario cocked his fat head on one side. “Providing of course I donna pass away inna mysterious circumstances.”
He placed one palm on the youth’s bulging shoulder. Pablo shuddered in the middle of a swig of Thackery’s Old Bastard. His shirtsleeves were rolled up revealing a dadaist collage of tattoos. He tossed the beer can to one side, pressed his thumb against his nostril and blew.
“W’at did I say, eh, Pablo? I saida they’d come.” A boa constrictor of townsfolk wound through the narrow lanes towards the stile. “From this vantage point, Pablo, the ’ola Lancashire can see what we’re putting up.”
Pablo looked around as the crunch of wheels over bracken alerted him to Goliath's arrival. It was almost as though the cage, now covered by unwashed blankets sewn together, was towing the storm in its wake.
A hush descended across the workers, the ancient shire horse struggling to heave the crate through the mud.
“Eessit safe, Poppa?” Pablo wiped the sweat from his head with his arm and gave it a sniff. “What would happen if eet managed to breaka free?”
“What are you talking abouta, Pablo? What a wild imagination my illegitimate son ’as!” Mario watched as the three-inch thick hessian gave a creak and snapped. For a moment fear gurgled through his features. “That sort of thing only ever ’appens in films, Pablo. Don’t fret your ugly leetle head. Go ’elp Maria to beata de children.”
Across the patchwork of smouldering fields Allotment Street commanded an excellent view of the distant cage. As the late afternoon slunk steadily onwards the cage’s shadow spilled across the town.
Mrs Barker dragged her dehydrated body across the patio, her walking stick acting as a punt to her tired frame. Sergeant Partridge was close behind, concerned she might tumble, his massive hands hovering around her shoulders.
Dennis had bounded ahead. Now he searched the broken cucumber frame for tell tale signs of the alien coalbunker.
“’Ere you are, Mr Partridge!” His face lit up. “There’s tyre marks all over Mrs Barker’s prize winning gherkins.”
Jack studied the zigzagging ruts. “Why would a coalbunker ’ave wheels?”
“It wasn’t the space-craft that ’ad wheels, Mr Partridge. It was the robot. The one that kidnapped Grandma Jo!”
Jack pulled his corpulent frame upright and confronted Mrs Barker. “And w’at exactly did you witness?”
The old woman grimaced. “It’s hard t’ say exactly, Constable.”
“Sergeant, Ma’am.”
“I just remember talkin’ to Grandma Jo…” Vacancy strolled across the old dear’s face as the cupboards of her memory were turned out one by one. “And I was watching those baby cows in that field over there…”
The walking stick swung towards a collection of heifers. “I remember wonderin’ at the time what those men cows were eatin’…”
“Bullocks…” Jack corrected her.
“No, it’s true. That was just before I passed out.” A succession of muscles fought valiantly with the geriatric’s pliable face. “I reckon it was Dennis w’at must have hit me! I’m not the sort ’oo passes out willy-nilly, Constable.”
“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Jack scratched his neck with growing concern.
“It’d take more than a rocket in the shape of a coal bunker to bother me.” Mrs Barker was building herself into a frenzy now. “I’ve seen a lot of unusual things in me forty years on the council. Things best left undisturbed. And I’ve lived through two World Wars and I don’t scare easy. This young ’ooligan must have belted me with sommet. I’ve still got the gash across me forehead.”
“That’s where you ’it the patio,” Dennis stated firmly.
Mrs Barker advanced on him troublesomely. “Are you callin’ me a fibber, Dennis Lowry?”
Dennis never got the chance to reply. At that very moment there was a crash from Mrs Barker’s house as the china cabinet fell over. The three-piece suite seemed to detonate too, throwing scatter cushions through the latticed window.
Darts of frame mushroomed out across the patio. Various objects thudded to the ground. The three onlookers shielded themselves with their arms. Tiddles rocketed by overhead on a plume of smoke. Seconds later he disappeared into the birch tree, accompanied by a howl.
“What the ’Ell was that?” Jack Partridge uncoiled his arms and stared in confusion at the broken pots. His expression of astonishment gave way for one of cynicism. “Buggerin’ ’Ell! Every time I step foot out of the station something ’appens!”
Then the back door flew boisterously off its hinges. The drainpipe splintered bringing with it a length of moss-encrusted gutter. And two jostling figures filled the door-frame. Two arguing, barging, shoving figures, their shoulders wedged against each other.
“Spike?” Dennis peered out from beneath his armpit. “Mr Partridge? That’s Spike from Crookley’s Grove.”
“Aye, I know!” The sergeant breathed deeply in. “Edward Johnson. Or ‘Spike’ as ’ee’s known amongst what few friends ’ee has.”
He removed the notepad from his trench-coat pocket and tracked down his pen amongst the shopping receipts. “Nasty bit of work. Mark my words, Dennis, don’t go knockin’ about with ruffians like that.”
Sergeant Partridge had come across Spike before, generally when Spike had been involved with some harebrained scheme of the Crookley’s Grove Gasworks’ Gang. He wasn’t an evil or malicious young man. Not through and through, anyhow. Just the sort of uneducated adolescent who committed petty crimes in order to keep his peer group entertained.
Hoisting his trousers up by the belt, Jack took an authoritative step forwards.
“Geddout of me way!” Nancy punched Spike on his windpipe. An unpleasant squawk flew out of his mouth as though a jackdaw had been nesting in his throat. With a grunt the two bodie
s tumbled across the doorstep.
“All right, Spike.” Jack Partridge stepped in front of them both. “I’m arresting you and your girlfriend for breakin’ an’ entering.”
“Sorry, Jack.” Spike wasn’t deliberately pushing his luck. He’d always referred to the sergeant by his Christian name. Those denied any privileges in life, such as a decent upbringing, always counted themselves as equals with figures of authority. “Can’t hang about. The end of the World’s comin’ and someone’s got to stop it.”
He brushed down his denims and set off towards the garden gate. Nancy shook the confusion from her head, removed a dandelion from her apron, and hurried after him.
“’Old on, Gypsy. What’s the rush?” She reached the gate as well. “You’ve already done it once. At least you’ve already goin’ to have done it once, even if you ’aven’t done it yet.”
With which perplexing words she leapt the drainage dyke. The rustle of hedges beyond the cabbage patch suggested that both of them were now on the edge of earshot. Off they raced, towards the town across the smoky fields.
Mrs Barker clamped a doddery palm around her head. She hoisted herself up from where she’d hit the flagstones after passing out again. “What’s goin’ on? What the ’Ell are you doin’ in me bloody bed?”
“Don’t ask, Mrs Barker.” Jack bent down to help her back onto her feet. He felt a twinge mischievously nibble at one of his vertebrae. “Nobody never tells me nowt.”
“Mr Partridge?” Dennis was peering into the building, his elbows resting on the shattered remains of Mrs Barker’s windowsill. Something was filling the room to bursting point. “There appears t’ be an old fashioned caravan in ’ere.”
Don’t worry if you’re confused by all this. Exactly why our heroine uttered that baffling statement before running after Spike will be revealed...eventually. Messing around with temporal mechanics is often baffling. It might be some time before the strands of this story start to link up again.