I looked at Norman.

And Norman looked at me.

‘Fire!’ shouted Norman. ‘Everybody out! Everybody out!’

‘What are you doing?’ I clapped my hand across his mouth.

‘Just leave him alone,’ said some other woman, welting me with her handbag.

‘Keep out of this,’ and I pushed her.

‘How dare you push my wife, sir,’ and some twat took a swing at me. I ducked out of the way, but O’Shit had a hold on my ankle and I fell forwards, bringing Norman with me. We went down amongst the toffs, who were floundering about and trying to stand up, whilst being kneed this way and that by Norman’s female fan club and the men of mighty miffedness.

‘Get off me,’ cried Norman. ‘We’ve got to warn everyone.’

‘Why?’ I gasped. ‘Why? This lot are the Secret Government. They’re the enemy. This bunch murdered the Doveston.’

‘Yes,’ agreed Norman. ‘You’re right there.’ He dodged a foot that swung in his direction. ‘Stuff ‘em,’ said Norman. ‘Stuff ‘em.’

Now, it does have to be said that Norman and I were up the minstrels’ gallery end of the great hall. Which was not the end we wished to be at. The end we wished to be at was the other end. The end with the big entrance doors. The struggling and pushing and kicking and general bad behaviour that was going on around us was an isolated sort of chaos. The majority of the party guests weren’t involved. They were showing considerable interest by now, but they were mostly just lolling about. And there were an awful lot of them and they were packed pretty densely and if Norman and I were to make our escape we were going to have to get through them.

‘Come on.’ I hauled Norman up. ‘Act casual. Make for the door.’ We fought our way out of the scrum in as casual a way as we could. Which was not, perhaps, quite as casual as it might have been, but time was ticking away.

‘I think we should forget “act casual”,’ said Norman. ‘I think we should go for “run for our lives”.’

‘I think you’re right.’

We ran for our lives.

But could we run?

Could we bugger!

We were reduced to doing a lot of leaping about, trying not to step on people’s faces. It was a bit like that ludicrous hop, skip and jump thing they do in the Olympics.

I had hoped for a clean getaway, but Norman’s fans weren’t having that. They came in hot pursuit.

‘Switch off your bloody suit,’ I shouted at him.

Norman fumbled once more in his pocket. But this isn’t easy to do when you’re hop, skip and jumping.

What happened next had an elegant, almost slow-motion quality about it. The remote control slipped from Norman’s fingers. It arced through the air. It fell towards the floor. It struck the floor and Norman’s big left platform shoe came crunching down upon it. And then there was a sort of sparkler fizzing. It came from Norman’s suit. The suit began to throb, to pulsate. It began to glow.

There was a sort of ear-splitting whine that turned every head in the place.

And what happened next wasn’t elegant.

What happened next was pure chaos.

25

Tomorrow belongs to those who can see it coming.

The Doveston

Allow me to set the scene, as it were.

Try to imagine that moment before the chaos kicked in.

Picture, if you will, the great hall.

Picture the duff decorations. The crudely daubed and badly stencilled walls. That vile dog-dragon thing that dangles from the chandelier. Picture the mariachi band, on high in the minstrels’ gallery. It’s the very band that once played Brentstock. Older now, of course, but still with lots of puff. And see their instruments. The trumpets and the flugelhorns, the cornets, the euphoniums, and indeed the ophicleides.

Now picture the people below them. All those beautiful people. Those rich and famous people. Those have-it-alls at the very top. Those people of the Secret Government. See how very well dressed they all are. How gorgeously attired. Some are on their feet, but most still loll about, languidly beckoning to waiters and shavenheaded dwarves.

And try if you can to picture Norman. He’s right down there in the very middle of the great hail. He’s still got his trilby on his head. Oh no, he hasn’t, no. He’s torn his trilby off his head. He’s beating at himself with it. He seems to be on fire. There’s this big corona of light all around him. There’s smoke rising up from his shoulders. And he’s flashing on and off. His suit. It’s going like a stroboscope. And there’s this awful noise now. It’s coming from the suit. It’s a high-pitched whining sound. A real teeth-clencher, an ear-drum-piercer.

All eyes are upon Norman. The lollers are scrambling to their feet, covering their ears and howling.

And now the chaos kicks in.

‘Ooooh!’ went Norman, beating at himself. ‘I’m reaching critical mass.

Now, generally speaking, your really big punch-up starts small and works its way towards a crescendo. A bit like a military campaign. Minor skirmishes, leading to the battle proper. Usually the two opposing sides get the chance to size each other up before charging headlong. That’s the way it’s done. You wouldn’t just jumble the two sides together, bung everyone into a big room and simply blow a whistle, would you?

That would be chaos.

Wouldn’t it?

Yet here, suddenly, in the great hall, were two utterly opposing sides, all jumbled up together. What sides are these, I hear you ask. One male side and one female, is the answer.

As Norman’s suit reached critical mass it discharged such a rush of power that there could be no middle ground. The force was overwhelming. The women overwhelmed with love, the men with absolute hatred. Norman was no longer Norman at all. To the women he was a God-like being. To the men, the Devil Incarnate.

Now, women always know what men are thinking and a woman will fight hard to save the man she loves. So, as the men rose up as one to slay the evil demon, the womenfolk rose up as one to save the man they loved.

And if you’ve ever seen two hundred women take on two hundred men in a no-holds-barred grand-slam tag-team main event, then you’ll know what I mean when I tell you it was brutal.

I got welted with another bloody handbag.

It was the war of the sexes. A kind of simultaneous female uprising of the kind no doubt dreamed about by Emmeline Pankhurst (1858—1928) that now legendary English suffragette leader, who in 1903 founded the militant Women’s Social and Political Union.

It was war.

But then war, what is it good for? I ask you. Absolutely nothing (Good God y’all).

The women beat upon the men and the men lashed out at the women. Norman tore his jacket off and flung it into the air. As waiters’ trays went sailing overhead and love-sick dwarves bit waiters in the nadgers, I did that thing that the handyman’s dog did. I made a bolt for the door.

I was not alone in doing this. Norman, on his hands and knees, his trousers round his ankles, caught me up.

He had his bunch of convenient keys in his hand.

‘Out,’ went Norman, ‘Out. Come on, I’ll lock the door.’

We scuttled out and slammed the front door shut upon the chaos. Norman turned the key in the lock. ‘That should keep them at bay,’ he said.

‘What’s the time? What’s the time?’

‘Damn,’ said Norman, kicking off his platform shoes and pulling up his smouldering trews. ‘My watch is in my jacket. But there can’t be much time left. A couple of minutes at most.’

‘Let’s head for the gates then. I’ll race you.’

I was on the staffing blocks and I was almost off, but Norman said, ‘Hold on.’

‘What?’ I said. ‘What is it?’

Norman peered into the darkness. ‘There’s something wrong out there,’ he said. ‘I can feel it.’