* * *
In the garden of Home Country the sound of the shotgun booming through the still night air, had jolted a squeal from Missus Hughes. And more importantly, startled Shoomba into a precarious level of wakefulness.
“Wha . . . ?” he hiccupped, lurching into a sitting position.
Through his mind raced a series of badly connected impressions: the smell of Burnt Bill; the sight through her window of a spent and exhausted Tina; the howling gibbery Allah - Allah chant of the Less from the darkness under the house; You have armed an explosive device. The ‘Ghani witch with a gun. Flashes of light and sound and the earth erupting at his feet. And now the definite boom of a shotgun. You didn’t have to be a philosopher to understand that whatever was stalking the neighbourhood was in no mood for games.
There was only one thing to do. He scrabbled to his feet, sweeping away the dirt and filth that encrusted him and the clutching appeal of Dorothy Hughes and, driven by rum-addled panic, he charged out across the yard, heading for home. Almost immediately his disintegrating armour tangled about his feet and brought him down, as luck would have it, dead centre amongst a series-wired trio of the Quiet Man’s smoke bombs. They were little more than toys - tricks that children could make - but the resultant fizz and crackle, coupled with the columns of white smoke, brought Shoomba almost to the brink of religious conversion.
“Aaiiee!” he screamed and, rising to his knees, raising his arms to the black vault of sky: “Jesus Cripes o’ mercy!”
Missus Hughes, seeing the wall of luminous smoke rise from the centre of the yard, and the beseeching shadow of Shoomba enraptured within, spread herself even thinner over her blind, prostrate, groaning husband.
Neville the Less Page 68