The coin was an inch from the slot and the youth’s hand was beginning to tremble. A certain electricity entered the air, and with it the distinctive wail of a harmonica, as next door in the rear yard of the Star of Bombay Curry Garden, Archie Karachi performed an apt rendition of “Do Not Forsake Me Oh My Darling”. It was not that he had any knowledge of the drama enacting itself within the saloon-bar of the Swan, but rather that his son’s bar-mitzvah was coming up and he wanted to put on a decent show.

Neville’s nervous tic accelerated slightly, but he fixed the boy with a piercing gaze of the type favoured by cobras whilst surveying their four-footed lunch. Nick for his part was not really equal to such a battle of wills. He did his best to look determined, but a bead of perspiration appeared upon his lofty hairline and, taking with it a quantity of green dye, descended towards the bridge of his nose, leaving an unpleasant slug trail behind it.

“Leave it, eh?” said Neville.

“I… er.” The boy blew the green bead from the tip of his nose. A minute passed, a long long minute. Nothing moved in the Swan but for a twitching eyelid, and a synchronized right forefinger. Nick’s face was now striped, giving him the appearance of a sniper peering through long grass.

Neville’s good eye was starting to water. Somebody had to crack.

“I’ll have a half of shandy please,” said the boy, breathing a great sigh of relief. Neville smiled broadly and turned towards the pumps.

There was a sudden metallic click, a clunk and then… Bitow Bitow Bitow Bitow went the Captain Laser Alien Attack Machine.

“It’s all right,” said Nick sweetly, “it’s mended. You can phone up the brewery and tell them to cancel the engineer.”

Neville ground his teeth sickeningly and clutched at the counter top. He had been so close. So very, very close.

Old Pete entered the Flying Swan, Chips close upon his well-worn heels. “Good day to you, Neville,” said the ancient. “A large dark rum if you please.”

Neville did the business, the exact coinage changed hands, and the part-time barman rang up “No Sale”.

Old Pete eyed the player at the games machine with contempt and unplugged his hearing aid. “Pardon me whilst I withdraw into a world of silence,” he told Neville.

“Have you seen anything of Pooley and Omally?” the part-time barman asked.

“Pardon?” said Old Pete.

“Pooley and Omally!” shouted Neville. “Plug the thing in, you old fool!”

Pete refitted his jack plug. “Haven’t seen them,” he said, sipping at his drink.

“It has been more than a week now,” said Neville, with a hint of bitterness in his voice. “They are supposed to be doing a little bit of work for me. I fear that they have had it away on their toes.”

Old Pete shook his snowy head. “Perhaps the Four Horsemen has dropped its prices or the Red Lion has got a stripper in.”

Bitow Bitow Bitow Bitow Bitow went the Captain Laser Alien Attack Machine.

Bitow Bitow – Whap - “What?” Raffles Rathbone turned upon Neville. “You’ve been at this again,” he said, curling his lip. “The sequences have changed again, it’s not fair.”

“Get stuffed,” Neville told him.

“But it doesn’t give you a fair chance,” whined the young sportsman. “That’s the second time the sequences have changed.” He stalked over to the bar counter. “Give me a light ale,” he said bravely.

Neville whistled through his ruined teeth. “A whole half, eh, and no lemonade?”

“Straight,” said the lad.

Old Pete eyed the youth with distaste. Young Chips licked his lips and considered the boy’s ankles. Neville poured a half of light and Raffles Rathbone flung a handful of silver across the counter. Neville obligingly shortchanged him.

“Anything new with you?” Old Pete asked the barman when the shock-headed hooligan had returned once more to the humming machine.

“Very little,” said Neville. “I had another postcard from Archroy. Delivered, I hasten to add, by a relief postman of charm and good character, who chooses to deliver a fellow’s mail unread.”

Old Pete chuckled. “Wee Dave still shacked up in the loony ward at the Cottage Hospital then?”

“No, he’s out, but happily he has not returned to the round.”

“Vindictive, grudge-bearing wee bastard,” said Old Pete. “So what of Archroy, how fares the lad upon his travels?”

“He claims to have discovered Noah’s Ark upon the peak of Ararat,” said Neville rather proudly. “His last card said that he has employed a gang of Kurds to work upon chipping the lower portion of the great vessel from the glacial floor. It is tough going by all accounts.”

“It would be.” Old Pete stifled a snigger.

Neville shrugged. “It is a queer business. I confess that I do not know exactly what to make of it. It would be a rare one if it were true. I can’t help feeling that there is a catch in it somewhere and that it will cost me dearly.”

“Well,” said Old Pete, in a tone of great seriousness, “do not get me wrong, for I am no churchman, but I will tell you a strange thing. During the Hitlerian War I was serving as warden in a refugee centre in South London. One night I got chatting with a young Russian, and he showed me four photographs which he claimed to be of the Ark of Noah.” Neville’s good eye widened. “They were old grainy sepia prints, much travelled and much stained, but he treated them as if they were holy relics. He’d been torpedoed off a troop ship and he claimed that the photos had saved his life. It seems that the folk who live around Ararat have always known of the Ark’s existence. Apparently it is visible for only a few short months, once or twice a century, and during this time their holy men make a pilgrimage up the mountainside to scrape off pitch from the hull. This they make into amulets as a protection against drowning.”

Neville was fascinated. “But how did this fellow come by the photographs?”

Old Pete rattled his empty glass on the counter and feigned deafness. Neville snatched it up from his fist and refilled it. Old Pete continued with his story. “Told me that his father got them from one of a party of Russians who rediscovered the thing during the time of the Czar.”

“And did you think them genuine?”

“Who can say? They were definitely photographs of some very old and very large vessel half submerged in a glacier. I confess that I never took a lot of notice of them at the tune. There was an air raid going on.”

“But what happened to the young Russian?”

“Got blown up!” said Old Pete maliciously. “Seems that the photographs offered no protection against that kind of thing.”

“You made it all up,” sneered Neville, reaching for a glass and his polishing cloth.

Old Pete took out his shabby-looking wallet and laid it reverently upon the bar. “And what if I told you that he gave me one of the photographs and that I have been carrying it with me for more than thirty years? What would you say to that, oh doubting Thomas?”

Neville’s twitch, which had taken a temporary leave of absence, returned reinvigorated. “He didn’t? You haven’t…?”

Old Pete swept up his wallet and thrust it back into his pocket. “Course I bloody haven’t!” he said triumphantly. “You’ll believe any damn thing at times, won’t you, Neville?”

The part-time barman bit upon a filling. That was twice he had been done down in a single lunchtime and he would have no more of it. Silently he swore a great and terrible oath to his pagan deity, that he would unremittingly bar for life the next person, no matter whom it might be, who tried to get one over on him. To make it more binding he pricked his finger and drew the blood the length of his knobkerry. There was no getting out of a vow like that.

“Give me the same again please, Neville,” said the chuckling ancient.

Norman entered the Flying Swan looking somewhat ashen. Neville hadn’t seen him for some time and he marvelled at the shopkeeper’s lack of eyebrows and apparently hand-carved wooden teeth. Some new frippery of fashion amongst the shop-keeping fraternity, he supposed.