‘I’ll get us another round in, shall I?’

As Norman went off to the bar, I looked around and about me. I was in the Flying Swan, that drinking house of legend. No-one here had any plans to celebrate the millennium. They’d already done it. Last year. It had all been down to a tradition, or an old charter, or something. I’d missed it, but I’d heard tell that it had been quite an occasion. Second coming of Christ and everything. Norman had put on the firework display. I wondered if he would be doing the same for the Doveston’s bash.

‘Tell me all about this ball, then,’ I said when he returned with the drinks.

‘Oh yes, I was telling you about my costume, wasn’t I?’

‘Something about a peacock, you said.’

‘Yes, that’s it, the peacock suit. It’s not a peacock costume, that would be just plain silly. It’s a peacock suit, as in peacock mating display. You see, the male peacock’s tail feathers serve no purpose whatsoever, other than for attracting a mate. Female peacocks get off on males with big tail feathers. They always have. So those are the ones they mate with and, in consequence, natural selection has meant that the males have evolved bigger and bigger tail feathers. So big now that the blighters can’t even get off the ground. Not that they’re bothered; they’re too busy having sex.

‘I’m sure there’s some point to this,’ I said. ‘But so far it’s lost on me.

‘Well,’ said Norman. ‘Imagine a human equivalent. A suit that a man could wear that would attract females.’

‘There already is one. It’s called a Paul Smith suit.’

‘I seem to recall that yours didn’t work very well.’

I took a wet from my glass. ‘Whatever happened to Jackie,’ I wondered.

‘Died in a freak accident, I think. Tragic business. But I’m not talking about a very expensive suit that turns some women on just because it is very expensive. I’m talking about a suit that turns all women on. I have designed such a suit and when I wear it to the ball, I shall be able to have the pick of any women I choose.’

‘That’s bollocks,’ I said. ‘That can’t be true.’

‘I seem to recall that you said the same thing about my invisible paint. And where did that leave you?’

‘In hospital,’ I said. ‘With fractured ribs.’

‘Well, it served you right. The next time someone comes driving straight at you in an invisible car, hooting the horn and shouting out of the window, “Get out of the way, the brakes have bloody failed,” you’ll know better than to stand your ground, shouting back, “You don’t fool me, it’s a sound effects record,” won’t you?’

‘Whatever happened to that car?’

‘Dunno,’ said Norman. ‘I can’t remember where I parked it.’

‘So this peacock suit of yours will really pull the women, will it?’

‘Listen,’ said Norman, drawing me close and speaking in a confidential tone. ‘I gave the prototype a road test in Sainsbury’s. I was lucky to get out alive. I’ve adjusted the controls on the new one.’

‘Controls? This suit has controls?’

‘It works on a similar principle to the Hartnell Home Happyfier. But I’ve decided to hang on to the patent this time. I intend to prove to the world that a man with mutton-chop side-whiskers and an Arthur Scargill comb-over job can actually get to have sex with a supermodel.’

‘Only by cheating.’

‘Everybody cheats at something. The problem is that I’m going to have to keep my suit on while I’m having sex.

‘How about a pair of split-crotch peacock underpants?’

‘Brilliant idea,’ said Norman. ‘And to think that everybody says you’re stupid.’

‘Eh?’

Our conversation here was interrupted by a shout of: ‘It’s that bastard on the telly again.’ Knowing full well that the Swan did not have a television, or a jukebox, or a digital telephone, I was somewhat surprised by this shout. But sure enough, it was some out-borough wally with a tiny TV attached to his mobile phone.

Norman and I helped Neville the part-time barman heave this malcontent into the street. But while we were so doing, I chanced to glimpse the tiny screen and on it the face of the bastard in question.

It was the Doveston.

The photograph was only a still and one taken some years before. A publicity photo, of the type he liked to sign and give out to people. The voice of a mid-day newscaster tinkled from the tiny TV. The voice was saying something about a freak accident.

The voice was saying that the Doveston was dead.

‘He’s Leonardo,’ said Norman.

I didn’t ask. I knew what he meant.

Dead, is what he meant.

Mind you, I should have asked. Because this particular piece of Brentford rhyming slang was an ingenious twelfth-generation affair, leading from the now legendary fifteenth-century artist and innovator to several varieties of cheese, a number of well-known household products, two kinds of fish and three makes of motorcycle, before finally arriving at the word ‘dead’.

Norman was nothing if not inventive.

I sat now in the shopkeeper’s kitchen on one of a pair of Moms Minor front seats that Norman had converted into a sofa. If coincidence means anything, Norman’s kitchen, which was also his workshop, looked very much the way I imagine Leonardo’s workshop must have looked. Without the Meccano, of course.

‘He can’t be dead,’ I said. ‘He can’t be. He just can’t.’

Norman twiddled with the dials on his TV.

‘Get a bloody move on,’ I told him.

‘Yes, yes, I’m trying.’ The scientific shopkeeper bashed the top of the set with his fist. ‘I’ve made a few modifications to this,’ he said. ‘I’ve always felt that TVs waste a lot of power. All those cathode rays and light and stuff coming out of the screen. So I invented this.’ He adjusted a complicated apparatus that hung in front of the television. It was constructed from the inevitable Meccano. ‘This is like a solar panel, but more efficient. It picks up the rays coming out of the screen, then converts them into electrical energy and feeds it back into the TV to power the set. Clever, eh?’

I nodded. ‘Very clever.’

‘Mind you, there does seem to be one major obstacle that so far I’ve been unable to overcome.’

‘Tell me.’

‘Just how you get the set to start without any initial power.’

‘Plug it into the wall socket, you silly sod.’

‘Brilliant.’ Norman shook his head, dislodging ghastly strands of hair. ‘And to think people say you’re—’

‘Just plug it in!’

Norman plugged it in.

The Doveston’s face appeared once more on the screen. This time it was an even younger model, bearded and framed by long straight hair. This was the Doveston circa ‘sixty-seven.

A newscaster’s voice spoke over. This is what it said.

‘The tragedy occurred today at a little after noon in the grounds of Castle Doveston. The Laird of Branifield was entertaining a number of house guests, among them the Sultan of Brunei, the President of the United States and Mr Saddam Hussein. The party were engaged in one of the Laird’s favourite sporting pursuits: sheep-blasting. According to eye-witness accounts, given by several visiting heads of state, the Doveston had just drawn back on his catapult, preparatory to letting fly, when the elastic broke and the dynamite went off in his hand.’

‘Freak accident,’ said Norman. ‘It’s just how he would have wanted to go.

I shook my head.

‘But what a gent,’ Norman said. ‘What a gent.’

‘What a gent?’

‘Well, think about it. He died at noon on a Wednesday. Wednesday’s my half-day closing. If he’d died on any other day, I’d have had to close the shop as a mark of respect. I’d have lost half a day’s trade.’

Norman sat down beside me and tugged the cork from a bottle of home-made sprout brandy. This he handed to me by the neck.