‘Oh yes, I’ll switch that off’

‘What?’

The Doveston strode back to the big front doors and flicked a tiny hidden switch. I experienced a slight popping of the ears and then a feeling of well-being began to spread through me, as if I were being warmed by a tropical sun. But not too much. Just enough.

‘Mmmmmmm,’ went Jackie, flinging off her mink.

‘Right on,’ said Rapscallion.

The Doveston grinned. ‘It’s clever, isn’t it?’

I went, ‘What?’ and ‘Eh?’ and ‘How?’

‘It’s an invention of Norman’s. He calls it the Hartnell Home Happyfier. There’s one installed in every room.’

I went, ‘What?’ and ‘Eh?’ and ‘How?’ some more.

‘You see,’ said the Doveston, ‘Norman saw an advert in the Brentford Mercury for ionizers. They’re all the fashion nowadays, supposed to pep up the atmosphere in offices and suchlike. Norman thought that one would be good for his shop. But when it arrived and he tried it out, he found the results to be negligible. He thought that perhaps it was broken, so he took it to pieces to see how it worked and he discovered that there was damn all inside it and what there was didn’t do much anyway. So Norman got to work with his Meccano set and designed a better one. One that really did the business.

‘Norman’s one has three settings. Grim, which is what I had mine set to. That really discourages burglars, I can tell you. Normal, which is what you are experiencing now. And Yaa-hoo-it’s-Party- Time, which really gets the joint a-jumping.’

‘But that’s incredible,’ I said. ‘How does it work?’

‘Something to do with the trans-perambulation of pseudo-cosmic anti-matter, I believe.’

I shook my head in amazement. ‘But an invention like that must be worth millions.’

‘You’d think so, wouldn’t you? And yet I was able to buy the patent from Norman for less than one hundred pounds.’

‘Why you crooked, double-dealing—’

‘Not a bit of it. I have no wish to profit financially from Norman s invention. I just wanted to make sure that it remains only in the right hands.’

‘And these right hands would be the ones that often hold a Filofax?’

‘I generally hold mine in my left hand. But essentially you are correct. Shall we dine?’

We dined.

And as we dined, the Doveston spoke. And as had the walrus of old, he spoke of many things. Of pipes and snuff and smoking stuff and Brentstock Super Kings.

He spoke of his plans for the house. It was currently called Bramfield Manor, but he intended to change the name to Castle Doveston. It was to be made a secure area. I assumed that this meant secure against any possible attacks from villagers with flaming torches. But I later came to understand that this meant secure against the surveillance of the so-called secret police.

He also spoke of his plans for the future. That it was his intention to open shops all over the world. I enquired as to whether each of these shops would be kitted out with a Hartnell Home Happyfier, turned up to full blast.

I did not receive an answer to this question.

Before the meal began, the Doveston had asked me to get out my Filofax and Mont Blanc pen so that I could take down all he said for the biography. I explained to him that it really wasn’t necessary, what with me having total recall and everything. But he still made me get it out and stick it on the table.

I did make a few jottings and I did draw a really good picture of a big-bosomed lady riding a bike. But sadly, as this is not an illustrated book, it can’t be printed here. But then neither can anything the Doveston said.

I suppose it could have been. If I’d taken the trouble to write it all up.

But frankly, I couldn’t be arsed.

The meal was splendid though. A five-course Crad supper with afters. Served by the cook who had come with the house.

Afterwards, over brandy and cigars, the Doveston spoke a lot more. We were all rather drunk now and feeling very mellow. Rapscallion snoozed in an armchair by the fire. Jackie hiccuped and blew out the candelabrum at the far end of the room. And I wondered just how I might persuade her to come up to my room and enjoy the Yaa-hoo-it’s-Party-Time setting of the Hartnell Home Happyfier.

As I watched the Doveston standing there beside the great fireplace, holding forth about his plans for this thing, that thing and the other, my thoughts travelled back, as thoughts will do, to times long gone and done with.

I wrote in the very first chapter about how this was to be no ordinary biography, but rather a series of personal recollections. And I have stayed true to this. Our childhood days were happy ones and I knew that there would be good times ahead.

But I also knew, for I had glimpsed the future, that there would be evil times and that the Doveston would meet a terrible end. But seeing him there, in his very prime, full of plans and full of life, it all seemed so unlikely. This was the grubby boy who had become the rich successful man. This was my bestest friend.

Whenever I am asked about the times I spent with the Doveston, it is always the period between 1985 and the year two thousand that people want to know about. The Castle Doveston years and the Great Millennial Ball.

Did all that incredible stuff really happen? Was what we read in the tabloids true? Well, yes and yes. It did happen and it was all true.

But there was so much more.

And I will tell it here.

17

‘He's Richard, you know,’ said Norman.

I looked up from my pint of Death-by-Cider. We sat together in the Jolly Gardeners, Bramfield’s only decent drinking house. It was the summer of ‘eighty-five, the hottest ever on record. Outside tarmac bubbled on the road and the death toll from heat-stroke in London was topping off at a thousand a week. There was talk of revolution in the air. But only inside in the shade.

‘Richard?’ I asked.

‘Richard,’ said Norman. ‘As in barking mad.’

‘Ah,’ said I. ‘This would be that fifth generation Brentford rhyming slang that I find neither clever nor amusing.’

‘No, it’s straightforward one on one. Richard Dadd, mad.

Richard Dadd (born sometime, died later) painted pictures of fairies, butchered his old man and ended his days in the nut house.’

‘Touché.’ I smiled a bit at Norman. The shopkeeper had grown somewhat plump with middle years. He had a good face though, an honest face, which he had hedged to the east and west with a pair of ludicrous mutton-chop side-whiskers. As to his hair, this was all but gone and the little that remained had been tortured into one of those greased-down Arthur Scargill comb-over jobs that put most women to flight.

For the most part, he had grown older with grace and with little recourse to artifice. His belly spilled over the front of his trews and his bum stuck out at the back. His shopcoat was spotless, his shoes brighdy buffed and his manner was merry, if measured.

He had married, but divorced, his wife having run off with the editor of the Brentford Mercury. But he had taken this philosophically. ‘If you marry a good-looking woman,’ he said to me, ‘she’ll probably run off with another man and break your heart. But if, like me, you marry an ugly woman, and she runs off with another bloke, who gives a toss?’

Norman had been brought down to Castle Doveston to do some work on ‘security’. He was as anxious to get back to his shop as I was to get back to my conservatory. But the Doveston kept finding us more things to do.