‘You know what you’ve got yourself there?’ I said, when he was finally done.

‘No, what?’

‘Two bits of wood on the end of a string. Throw the stupid thing away before someone sees you with it.’

But somebody had seen him with it. In fact everyone working on the plantation had seen him with it. They were all standing and staring and now, to my amazement, they were clapping too.

The Doveston eyed his appreciative audience and I eyed the Doveston. He hadn’t given his permission for them to stop working and I felt it likely that he would give me the order to shoot a couple of the old ones as an example.

But he didn’t. Because now the workers were falling to their knees. They were bowing to the Doveston.

‘Yo Yo,’ cried one of them. Then, ‘Yo Yo,’ cried the rest.

‘What are they doing?’ the Doveston asked.

I shook my head in wonder. ‘They’re worshipping you. They think that you are Yo Yo.’

‘And who in the name of Virginian Gold is Yo Yo?’

‘Ah,’ I said. ‘You don’t know about Yo Yo, because you didn’t go to St Argent’s, like me. The Mexicans may be Roman Catholics on the surface, but they also worship their Old Gods. Yo Yo is one of those. He screwed up in some way in Heaven and was sent down to Earth. Here he did good work amongst the farmers and ascended to Heaven again. Where he screwed up again and was sent down again, where—’

‘He did more good works and went up again.’

‘That’s it. Up again and down again and up again again. Just like your down—and—upsy—down—again.’

The Doveston smiled a most Godly smile. ‘Just like my yo-yo, you mean.

The harvest came in right on time that year. And it didn’t cost the Doveston a penny. He had me go straight round to Norman’s with a small bale of tobacco. This I exchanged for one hundred yo-yos, which the shopkeeper knocked out on his lathe in less than an hour. The Doveston paid off his workers with these and they were well pleased, bearing the sacred objects away to their huts with much bowing and tugging at forelocks. Or whatever the female equivalent of a forelock is. A forelock, probably.

And so the yo-yo craze was born. It soon spread across the borough and Norman, had he had the foresight to patent the thing, would probably have made a fortune selling them.

The patent was, however, taken out by a certain Mr Grad, who sold it on to a leading toy manufacturer for an undisclosed sum and a royalty deal.

It was many years later that I discovered Mr Crad and Mr Doveston to be one and the same person.

The yo-yo craze was born and how it spread. The case was, as it has so often been, today Brentford, tomorrow the world. There was trouble, of course. The Archbishop of Canterbury condemned it as ‘an evil pagan cult’, which increased sales no end. Mary Whitehouse called for questions to be asked in the Houses of Parliament and questions were asked. A member of the Cabinet gave an interview on the lawn before the Palace of Westminster, stating that yo-yos were in no way harmful and his own daughter was filmed by the news teams playing with one.

There were the inevitable scare stories in the gutter press about yo-yo deaths and suicides. There was an epidemic of yo-yo finger, caused by overtight strings cutting off the circulation and this had Mrs Whitehouse back on the phone, demanding that government health warnings be put on the things.

This, in turn, had the Cabinet Minister back on the lawn, but this time unaccompanied by his daughter, who was apparently in hospital.

‘YO-YO MADNESS’, as the tabloids were now calling it, eventually died a natural death. These things just do. Crazes come and crazes go and few, if any, know the reasons why. They are here today and gone tomorrow.

And tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.

But what about Brentstock, I hear you ask.

Well, what about Brentstock indeed.

11

‘I’m thinking of giving something back.’

So said the Doveston.

We sat outside the Flying Swan. It was a warm late spring evening and I still felt utterly miserable. Mind you, with summer on the way, I was beginning to feel a bit more loving.

The sun was just going down behind the gasometer, its final rays glinting upon our pints of Large, and glittering in our eyes of baby-blue.

‘Giving something back?’ I said.

‘Giving something back.’

‘Well, I don’t know what you’ve taken, but I’ll have it back if you’re giving it.’

‘Not to you,’ the Doveston said. ‘To the borough, as a whole.’

‘I quite like the borough,’ I said. ‘I don’t think you should call it a hole.’

The Doveston lightly cuffed me in the ear. ‘Whole,’ he said, ‘with a W.’

I picked myself up from the ground. ‘I fear you have lost me on this one,’ I said.

‘I’ve had a good year so far.’ The Doveston finished his pint and gazed into its empty bottom. ‘My harvest is in early. Soon the tobacco will be ready for packing and soon after that, cigars and cigarettes and snuff, bearing the distinctive Doveston logo, will be rolling off the production lines. Also, I am worshipped as a God, which is no small thing in itself And I’ve had a bit of luck in one or two other directions.’ He took his yo-yo from his pocket and buffed it on his sleeve.

‘So you’re thinking of giving something back?’

‘To the borough, yes.

‘And what did you have in mind? Not something revolutionary, like paying your workers a living wage?’

‘Beware the fist that falleth on your ear. My workers have gone their way, to toil in the Grad fields of Chiswick. I was thinking that I’d like to organize some kind of celebration.’

‘A party?’

‘Something like that.’

‘Well not in my house, mate!’

‘Something bigger than that.’

‘Well, you can’t hire the scout hut again. They know it was you who blew off the roof.’

‘Aaah-choo!’ said the Doveston. ‘By the way, did you ever buy yourself another dog?’

‘No, I didn’t and I’ll thank you not to mention it again.’

‘I said I was sorry.’

‘But you didn’t mean it.’

‘Meaning it is not the point. It’s saying it that matters.’

I finished up my pint. ‘You can buy me another of these,’ I said. ‘And I’ve said that, so it matters.’

‘Do I look like I’m made of money?’

‘Actually you do. And if you really are intending to give something back to the borough, you might as well start right away.’

The Doveston got us in two more pints. ‘Listen,’ he said, cupping a hand to his ear. ‘Tell me what you hear.’

I listened. ‘Is it God already praising you for your generosity?’

‘No. It’s the jukebox.’

‘Ah yes,’ I said. ‘The jukebox that has only three records on it, these three being privately produced pressings made by the landlord’s son and his band.’

‘Precisely.’

I sipped at my beer.

‘Aren’t you going to make some fatuous remark?’

I shook my head, spilling beer down my front.

‘That will do for me,’ said the Doveston. ‘What would you say if I told you that I was going to put on a rock festival?’

‘Firstly I would ask you who was going to play at it. Then, once you’d told me, and if I was keen to see whoever it was, I would ask you how much the tickets were. And then, once you’d told me that, I would fall back in horror and say something like, “You must be frigging joking, mate!” That’s what I’d say.’

‘I was thinking of organizing a free festival.’

‘You must be frigging joking, mate!’

‘I’m serious. We could hold it on the plantation. We could get a thousand people on there easily — two thousand, at a push.’