There was a squeak or two, then another loud splash. “He’s dumped my barrow, the bastard!” wailed Omally.

Jim said, “If you’ll pardon me, John, I’ll be off about my business.” He turned and blundered into a forest of bean poles.

“Duck, you fool,” whispered John, tripping over the struggling Pooley, “he’s coming back.”

The Captain appeared suddenly from the shadows of the riverside oaks. He surely must have seen the two fallen Rangers, yet his eyes showed no sign of recognition. Forward he came upon wooden legs, moving like a somnambulist, past the Rangers and back off in the direction of the Mission.

“There’s a bean pole stuck up my right trouser,” groaned Jim, “help, help, fallen man here!”

“Shut up you bally fool,” said John, flapping his arms and attempting to rise, “look there.” Pooley raised himself as best he could and stared after John’s pointing finger.

Away across the allotment a bright light shone from the Mission. Like a beacon it swept over their heads. For a fleeting moment they saw him, the silhouette of a huge man standing upon the Mission wall, his arms folded and his legs apart. Although the two saw him for only a brief second, the feeling of incontestable grandeur and of malevolent evil was totally overwhelming.

Omally crossed himself with a trembling hand.

Pooley said, “I think I am going to be sick.”

14

The Flying Swan was closed for three weeks. The sun blazed down day after day, and there were all the makings of a Long Hot Summer. There was never a cloud in the sky, the boating pond in Gunnersbury Park was down a full six inches and the bed of the dried-up canal cracked and hardened into a sun-scorched jigsaw puzzle. As each evening came the air, rather than growing blessedly cool, seemed to boil, making sleep impossible. Windows were permanently open, butter melted upon grocers’ shelves and every kind of cooling apparatus gave up the ghost and ground to a standstill. The residents who nightly tilled their allotment patches watched sadly as their crops shrivelled and died. No amount of daily watering could save them, and the press had announced that water rationing was likely.

When the Swan reopened it was with little ceremony. Nothing much seemed to have changed, some portions of the bar had been half-heartedly repainted and the gents’ toilet had been rebuilt. Neville stood in his usual position polishing the glasses and occasionally dabbing at his moist brow. It was as if Cowboy Night had never taken place.

The beer pulls had been returned to their places upon the bar, but only three of them were fully functional. “I put it down to vindictiveness upon the part of the brewery,” he told Omally.

“Good to see you back though,” said the Irishman, pushing the exact money across the counter and indicating his usual.

“That one’s still off,” said Neville. “And the beer’s up a penny a pint.”

Omally sighed dismally. “These are tragic times we live in,” said he. “A half of light ale then.”

Archroy sat alone upon the sun-scorched allotment, his head gleaming like the dome of an Islamic mosque. His discarded wig hung upon the handle of a rake in the fashion of a trophy before the lodge of a great chief. Evil thoughts were brewing in Archroy’s polished cranium. It had not been his year at all: first the loss of his cherished automobile and then the disappearance of his magic beans, the decimation of his tomato crop and now the aviary. The aviary! Archroy twisted broodingly at the dried stalk of what had been a promising tomato plant and hunched his shoulders in utter despair.

Things could not continue as they were. One of them would have to go, and the accursed aviary looked a pretty permanent affair. Three weeks in the construction and built after the design of Lord Snowdon’s famous bird house, the thing towered in his back garden, overshadowing the kitchen and darkening his bedroom. Its presence had of course inspired the usual jocularity from his workmates, who had dubbed him “the bird man of Brentford”.

So far the monstrous cage had remained empty, but Archroy grew ever more apprehensive when he contemplated the kind of feathered occupants his wife was planning to house within its lofty environs. He lived in perpetual dread of that knock upon the door which would herald the delivery of a vanload of winged parasites. “I’ll do away with myself,” said Archroy. “That will show them all I mean business.” He twisted the last crackling fibres from the ruined tomato stalk and threw them into the dust. “Something dramatic, something spectacular that all the world will take notice of, I’ll show them.”

Captain Carson sat huddled under a heavy blanket in the old steamer chair on the Mission’s verandah. His eyes stared into the shimmering heat, but saw nothing. At intervals his head bobbed rhythmically as if in time to some half-forgotten sea shanty. From inside the Mission poured the sounds of industry. For on this afternoon, and in the all-conquering heat which none could escape, great changes were taking place. Timber was being sawn, hammers wielded and chisels manfully employed. The metallic reports of cold chisel upon masonry rang into the superheated air, the splintering of wormy laths and the creaking of uplifted floorboards. Major reconstruction work was in progress and was being performed apparently with robotic tirelessness.

Hairy Dave swung the five-pound club hammer wildly in the direction of the Victorian marble fireplace. The polished steel of the hammer’s head glanced across the polished mantel, raising a shower of sparks and burying itself in the plaster of the wall. Normally such an event would have signalled the summary “down tools and repair to the alehouse lads”, but Dave merely spat upon his palm and withdrew the half-submerged instrument of labour for another attempt. His thickly bearded brother stood upon a trestle, worrying at a length of picture rail with a crowbar. Neither man spoke as he went about his desperate business; here was none of the endless banter, cigarette swopping and merry whistling one associated with these two work-shy reprobates, here was only hard graft, manual labour taken to an extreme and terrifying degree.

The long hot summer’s day wore on, drawing itself into a red raw evening which turned to nightfall with a sunset that would have made the most cynical of men raise his eyes in wonder. Jim Pooley stirred from his hypnotic slumbers upon the Memorial Library bench and rose to his feet, scratching at his stomach and belching loudly. The gnawing within his torso told him that he was in need of sustenance and the evening sky told the ever-alert Jim that day had drawn to a close.

He found his cigarette packet lodged in the lining of his aged tweed jacket. One lone Woody revealed itself. “Times be hard,” said Jim to no-one in particular. He lit his final cigarette and peered up at the sprinkling of stars. “I wonder,” said he. “I wonder what Professor Slocombe is up to.”

With the coming of the tropical summer naught had been seen of the learned ancient upon the streets of Brentford. His daily perambulation about the little community’s boundaries had ceased. Pooley tried to think when he had last seen the elderly Professor and realized that it was more than a month ago, on the night of his valiant deed.

“The old fellow is probably suffering something wicked with the heat,” he told himself, “and would be grateful for an evening caller to relieve the tedium of the sultry hours.”

Pleased with the persuasiveness of this reasoning Pooley drew deeply upon his cigarette, blew a great gust of milk-white smoke into the air and crossed the carless road towards the Professor’s house.

The Butts estate hovered timelessly in its splendour. The tall Georgian house-fronts gleamed whitely in the moonlight, and the streetlamps threw stark shadows into the walled courtyards and guarded alley entrances.