And so I watched and I learned.

The police car, all glossy black, an Armstrong Smedley, one-point-five-litre, with running boards and the big bell on the top, slewed to a halt outside the wake house. Four coppers, as we knew them then, before they were known as “the Filth”, jumped out of the car and took to beating upon the front door. And shouting very loudly.

“I’m impressed,” I said to Dave. “But surely they’re beating upon the wrong front door? That’s the one next door to the wake house.”

“Just watch,” said Dave, “and be ready to run inside the wake house, as soon as I give the signal.”

“What will the signal be?” I asked.

“I’ll hoot like an owl.”

“It’s the wrong time of day for that, surely? Why not moo like a cow?”

“A cow? In Brentford?”

“Bark like a dog, then.”

“I don’t do dogs,” said Dave. “Doing dogs is common.”

“You could whinny, like a horse.”

“That’s too posh,” said Dave. “Only girls who go to posh private schools can do that properly.”

“Is that true?” I asked.

Dave nodded knowingly. “When the day comes, and it will, that you find yourself in the company of a posh woman who once went to a posh private school, you just ask her whether she and her friends used to whinny like ponies.”

“And?”

“And I bet you she’ll say she did.”

“All right, then,” I said to Dave. “I’ll bear that in mind for the future. It is my intention to marry a very posh woman one day. I’ll ask her on our wedding night.”

“Ask her earlier,” said Dave. “Then you’ll know for sure whether she’s really posh or not. You ask her the first time you take her out. Before you’ve queued up for the pictures or bought her a portion of chips, or anything. No, on second thoughts, wait until after you’ve had a bunk-up with her. Until you’ve had that, it doesn’t really matter whether she’s posh or not.”

“I’ll bear all that in mind,” I said. “So what will the signal be, then?”

“It will be an owl,” said Dave. “Let’s speak no more about it.”

I shrugged beneath the hedge and viewed the doings across the road. The front door of the house next to the wake was now open and a man in pyjamas was remonstrating with the policemen. He was shouting things at them. Things like: “I’m not a homo!”

I glanced at Dave. Dave was grinning wickedly.

“I know that man in the pyjamas,” I whispered.

“Of course you do,” said Dave. “It’s Mr Purslow, the maths teacher. Didn’t you know he lived there?”

I shook my head.

“I did,” said Dave. “He’s off sick with diphtheria.”

“He looks very angry.”

“He’s always angry. I hate Mr Purslow.”

“Oh, look,” I said. “He’s punched that copper.”

“I knew he would,” said Dave.

And now other front doors were starting to open, as front doors always do at the arrival of a police car. Folk were issuing from them and into the Butts Estate. Posh folk, some of them, folk who looked as if they surely must have daughters who were good at impersonating ponies.

And then the front door of the wake house opened and a number of drunken men, who looked for the most part as if whatever offspring they might have had would all be rubbish at whinnying, came a-blundering out with greatly raised voices of their own.

Amongst these were the Daddy, who, to my surprise, and also my satisfaction, was accompanied by Mr Timms the undertaker, whose head he held firmly underneath his arm.

“It seems that your daddy took your side,” Dave observed. “They must have been fighting for quite some time. It looks like your daddy is winning.”

A policeman turned upon my father and asked what he thought he was doing with the undertaker’s head.

My daddy told him and I heard the word “homo” once more being used.

I shall get to the bottom of this homo-business, I told myself. Which might have been funny if it had meant anything to me.

I heard one of the coppers saying something about the Butts Estate being “a den of vice”. But as the only vice I knew was in the woodwork room at school this didn’t mean anything to me either.

“Wooo-eee,” went Dave.

“Yeah, it’s good this, isn’t it?”

“No, wooo-eee, woo-ee.”

“Eh?” said I.

“I’m hooting.”

“In your pants?”

“Like an owl. It’s the signal.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.”

“Follow me,” said Dave. And I followed him.

Things were warming up nicely in the road, if you like that sort of thing. Fists were beginning to fly and truncheons to be drawn. Those were the days before riot sticks, CS gas, electric prods, stun-canes and phase-plasma rifles with a forty-watt range. These were the days when villains put their hands up when caught and said things like “It’s a fair cop, guvnor”. There was respect for the law in those days.

A constable struck down Mr Purslow with his truncheon.

My Uncle Jonny, who played darts with Mr Purslow, struck down the copper with his blind-man’s cane.

We skirted around the growing chaos and slipped back into the wake house.

Dave shut the front door quietly behind us and put on the security chain. “Mr Penrose awaits you,” he said to me, as we stood by ourselves in the hall.

I hesitated for just a moment. Well, it was a big deal. I was about to reanimate a dead man. I was in uncharted territory, so to speak.

“Are you scared?” asked Dave.

“Of course I’m not.”

“Then, get on and do it.”

“All right, I will.”

I strode down the hall to the wake-room door and pushed it right open. Before me the room lay in silence. Shafts of smoky sunlight still fell through the tall casement windows, onto the coffin of the great author, lighting up his nose.

I hesitated once more.

“Go on,” said Dave. “Go on.”

But I was now having second thoughts. I don’t know why this was. Well, perhaps I do. I think it must have been the silence and the sense of peace. The repose of death, if you like. Death is first of all about stillness. Of everything becoming still. The senses themselves. The organs of the body, the blood, the cells. All the things that were chugging away – the lungs going up and down and the heart going pump, pump, pump, and the bits and bobs in the brain going think, think, think – all have become still. All are silent. Still.

Well, for a brief while at least. Until the putrefaction begins. Then there’s lots of activity.

The nose of Mr Penrose looked terribly, terribly still.

“What are you waiting for?” Dave asked. “Get on with the reanimating.”

“I don’t know if it’s right,” I said.

“What?” Dave stared at me. “Are you bottling out?”

“Don’t say that. I’m not. It’s just …”

“Give me the herbs,” said Dave. “I’ll stick them into his gob.”

“You can’t just stick them into his gob. You have to do the ritual. Say the words.”

“Go on, then, if you really are as brave as you’re always saying.”

I crept slowly forward, reached the coffin and peeped in at the face of Mr Penrose.

And didn’t it look peaceful. So at rest. So in repose.

“He looks happy as he is,” I said to Dave.

“I don’t believe this,” Dave said to me. “After all the trouble I’ve gone to, telephoning the police and everything, and now you’re bottling out.”

“I’m not. I don’t know. It doesn’t seem right.”

“But he’s your favourite author. He wrote the Lazlo Woodbine books, the best books in the world. And if you bring him back to life he can write us some more.”

“Yes, but …”

“And don’t you think he’ll thank you? He’s bound to be happier being alive again rather than being dead, isn’t he? And everyone else will be happy too. And the Queen will give you a special badge. And P.P. Penrose might even make you a character in one of his new books. Maybe a baddie who will be shot dead by Laz with his trusty Smith & Wesson during the final rooftop confrontation.”

I shook my head.