Knees Up Mother Earth

17

John Omally awoke, coughing and gagging, to find himself no longer in The Stripes Bar but in the study of Professor Slocombe, sprawled upon an overstuffed chaise-longue.

John caught his breath and coughed and gagged some more. And then words came to him and John managed, “Jim. Where is Jim?”

“Jim is fine,” said the professor. “Have no worries for Jim.”

“I do.” John tried to rise, but fell back in exhaustion.

“He’s fine,” said the voice of Mahatma Campbell. And John looked up to see this fellow standing framed in the opening of the professor’s French windows. Mahatma Campbell held in his arms the prone and lifeless-looking body of Jim Pooley.

“Jim!” cried John. “What have you done to him?”

“He’ll be fine,” said the Campbell. “I got to him in time.” And he carried Jim to a fireside chair and dropped him into it.

“Careful,” said John, coughing somewhat more.

“I’ll raise Jim to consciousness,” said the professor. “And I think some drinks are called for.” And he rang the little Burmese brass bell upon his desk.

“Drinks,” said John, “and an explanation also. What have you got us into, Professor? That man who attacked me – he wasn’t a man.”

“All in good time,” said the professor.

“Now is the best time there is.”

“Then at least wait until I have awakened Jim.”

Gammon brought drinks upon a tray: a large decanter of whisky and four large glasses.

Professor Slocombe drew Jim Pooley into consciousness. Jim spewed water then took to coughing and gagging.

“A spell of disablement was placed upon him,” said the Campbell as he sampled Scotch and found it pleasing. “A darkster entered his dwelling and pushed his head ’neath his bathwater. I’d been keeping an eye out as you told me to, Professor. I crept up upon it and struck its head from its shoulders with the claymore you’d blessed for that purpose.”

“What is going on here?” Omally demanded to be told.

“When Jim is his old self again,” said the professor.

“I almost am,” said the sodden and shivering Pooley. “I will be when I’ve had a glass of Scotch. And Christ’s cap and old brown dog!” exclaimed Pooley. “I’m naked.”

“We did observe that,” said John, “but I, for one, was too polite to mention it.”

“You?” Jim gawped at the Campbell. “You carried me naked through the streets of Brentford?” Jim covered himself with a velvet cushion.

“I’ll have Gammon bring you some clothes.” Professor Slocombe reached towards his brass bell.

But Gammon was already standing in the inner doorway. “I felt that our nudist guest might feel the need for these,” he said, proffering a set of silk pyjamas and a dressing gown.

The fire blazed away in the fireplace and offered warmth to Jim, who sat before it cradling his glass of Scotch in trembling fingers, well dressed in PJs and a dressing gown, but still in a state of shock and no small terror.

“I am so sorry,” said Professor Slocombe. “I never thought it would come to this. Well, not quite so soon, anyway.”

“Not so soon?” said Omally. “You set us up for something terrible. You betrayed our trust in you.”

“I know it appears that way, but it was not my intention.”

Jim looked towards John. It was quite clear to Jim that something terrible had happened to John also.

“Sorry I missed the Benefit Night,” said Pooley foolishly. “How did it go? Did you raise a lot of money?”

“He’s in shock,” said Omally. “Look what you’ve done to him.”

“I am sorry,” said Professor Slocombe, easing himself into the fireside chair opposite Jim. “The two of you deserve an explanation and I will give it to you. You will not like it, but I will give it to you just the same.”

“What about the team?” Jim asked. “They didn’t get too drunk, did they, John? They’ll be all right for tomorrow’s game?”

“They’re fine,” John assured Jim. “They didn’t get drunk at all. I had the brewery knock up a special batch of non-alcoholic beer – Team Special. The team may have thought they were getting drunk, but they weren’t.”

“You’re a genius,” said Jim. “Where am I, by the way? This doesn’t look like my bedroom.”

“He is in shock,” said Professor Slocombe. “Perhaps we should speak of these matters on the morrow.”

“We’ll speak of them now,” said John. “You have put the life of my bestest friend in danger – and my own, but that is by the by. Tell us what is going on and what you have got us involved in.”

“Indeed. Mahatma, if you would be so kind, would you kindly refresh the glasses of my guests?”

Mahatma Campbell poured Scotch for John and Jim.

“What I am about to tell you,” said Professor Slocombe, “is the truth as far as I know it to be. You may choose not to believe it. Indeed, the Buddha himself said, ‘Doubt everything and find your own truth.’ But I say unto you, I believe this to be the truth.”

“Go on,” said Omally.

“Firstly,” said the professor, “it is essential that Brentford United win the FA Cup. This is what it is all about.”

John Omally sighed, loudly and pointedly. And he coughed a little, too, as he still had a cough or two left in him. “Let me get ahead of you here,” he said. “Are you suggesting that whatever attacked me and attempted to murder Jim has something to do with football?”

“In a manner of speaking, yes.”

“Oh,” said John. “So what attacked us, demons raised by a rival team? What would that team be, then – Hell United?”

“Hull United?” said Jim. “Are we playing them tomorrow? I thought it was Penge.”

“Why don’t you take a little sleep, Jim?” said John. “I’ll wake you up when all this is over and take you home.”

“It would probably be better if both of you spent the night here,” said Professor Slocombe.

“Better and better,” said John. “Get your head down, Jim, and keep it down until morning. I’ll mind your Scotch for you.”

“I can mind my own Scotch, thank you,” said Jim. “How were The Rock Gods? Were they good?”

“Fair to middling,” said John. “You didn’t miss much. Now please go on, Professor.”

“Thank you, John. When I said that in a manner of speaking this is all about football, what I meant by it is that this is all about football grounds. And magic. And the forces of evil. And the past, as we understand it, not being what we understand it to be.”

“What could be clearer?” said John.

“I will start at the very beginning,” said the professor, “when God created man and placed him in the Garden of Eden.”

“Have to stop you there,” said John. “I am not unacquainted with scripture. I know both Old and New Testaments well.”

“The Garden of Eden,” said Professor Slocombe, “was right here – right here in Brentford.”

“Perhaps I shouldn’t have stopped you just there,” said John. “I should have let you build up to that.”

“I was planning to do it in a most dramatic way.”

“The Garden of Eden was right here?”

“Right here.”

“Right here,” repeated John. “And do you know what?”

“What?” Professor Slocombe asked.

“That’s the biggest load of old rubbish I have ever heard in my life. Apart from the time Jim told me that he had acquired a goose that laid golden eggs.”

“It did,” said Jim. “Sporadically.”

“It was a chicken,” said John. “And this is a turkey.”

“Where?” Jim asked, looking around. “What kind of eggs does it lay?”

“Fried ones, probably. But this is rubbish, Professor. I want the truth from you. Something terrible happened tonight. You owe us the truth.”

“I am telling you the truth. You know that I am working upon my book – The Complete and Absolute History of Brentford. I have uncovered many strange things regarding the borough. This is perhaps the strangest, but this is what all this is about. The biblical Eden was here, John, right here in Brentford.”

“Are you serious?” John stared at the antiquated scholar. “You are serious, aren’t you?”

“If the Garden existed, it had to be somewhere.”

“In a somewhat more southerly and sunnier clime, I had been led to believe.”

“It was here,” said the professor, “where the football ground now stands.”

“So what is it that lies beneath the turf?”

“Ah.” Professor Slocombe smiled. “You show your hand, John. How much did you overhear of my conversation with Mahatma Campbell?”

“Not enough to understand what’s really going on.”

“Then let me put this to you as simply as possible. Yes, something does exist, imprisoned beneath the football ground, something that must not be released upon mankind.”

“What?” John asked.

“The serpent,” said Professor Slocombe.

“The serpent? The serpent that tempted Eve? The Devil?”

“Not the Devil. Not Satan. Satan, as we know him, is Lucifer, the morning star, the fallen angel. This is a more ancient evil – the original evil that is responsible for the original sin.”

“And it’s under the football ground?” John’s voice lacked somewhat for conviction.

“The serpent never left Eden,” said Professor Slocombe. “You know your scripture. God punished the serpent, cursed it to crawl for ever upon its belly. And he confined it also, that it might never leave Eden.”

“And someone wants to dig it up? Is that what you’re saying? If I believed for a moment what you’re saying, which I’m most uncertain as to whether or not I do.”

“You have experienced the evil,” said the professor.

“I certainly have, but who sent this evil to attack Jim and me? The serpent – is that what you’re saying?”

“A magician,” said the professor, “as skilled in the Black Arts as I am in the White. Whether I am his equal or not I do not know. Myself and the Campbell here are guardians, guardians of Eden. It is our duty to protect the borough, indeed the world, you might say, because there is no telling what horrors might be unleashed should the serpent be released from its bonds.”

“Why would God let that happen?” John asked. “If he boxed up the serpent, the serpent will stay boxed up. That’s my opinion.”

“God does tend to take what our American cousins would refer to as a rather ‘hands-off approach’ nowadays,” said Professor Slocombe, acquainting himself with further Scotch. “You will notice that although there was the Old Testament and the New Testament, there was never a third book in what would surely have been a best-selling trilogy. God does not interfere in the affairs of man in the way he did in biblical times. He has retired from all that kind of business.”

“You know him well, then?” said Omally.

“I’d like to say that we were on chatting terms,” said Professor Slocombe. And then his voice rose harshly. “But that would be really stupid. Pardon me.”

“Consider yourself pardoned,” said John. “So, and please let me get this straight in my mind, the serpent of Genesis is trapped in Eden, which is now underneath Brentford football ground, and an evil magician – and I’m one step ahead here – my guess is that he controls the Consortium that seeks to purchase the ground.”

Professor Slocombe nodded. “His name is William Starling. I know nothing of his origins. There seems to be no record of his birth. He appeared, as if out of nowhere, some five years ago and during that time has amassed a vast business empire. He is a very powerful black magician.”

“And he is intent upon releasing the serpent upon mankind?”

“In a word, yes.”

“Yes,” said Omally, thoughtfully and slowly. “And you, knowing all this – and, I suspect, knowing in advance that the only way Brentford Football Club could be saved was if the team were to win the FA Cup – saw to it that Jim was given the job of manager, putting him directly in the line of fire of this demonic magician!”

“In the same word,” said the professor. “And that word is yes.”

“Why?” John asked. “Why Jim? What has he ever done to you?”

“I haven’t done anything,” said Jim. “Were the Beverley Sisters good, John? Sorry I missed them.”

“I would not let any harm come to Jim,” said Professor Slocombe.

“Harm did come to Jim – and to me, too.”

“We will be more vigilant in the future.”

“There will be no future,” said John. “We quit.”

“We?” said the professor.

“Jim and me.”

“What am I quitting?” Jim asked. “Have I got a job?”

“You did have, but you haven’t now. Come on, Jim, we’re leaving.”

“I really wouldn’t do that, John.”

“You betrayed us.” John dragged himself from the chaise-longue and pointed an accusing finger at Professor Slocombe. “You literally sentenced Jim to death.”

“Jim is a good man, John.”

“I know he is a good man. He’s my bestest friend.”

“I need you,” said the professor, “both of you. I would have willed it differently. I had hoped that neither of you would ever have found out the truth, that I could have protected you from it. I underestimated my opponent. For this I apologise to both of you.”

“Well,” said John, “we’re still on our way. Enough of this.”

“You cannot leave, John, not without protection.”

“Then give us your protection and set us free from this madness.”

“You will prosper when we succeed.”

“Profit no longer enters into this. Life is more valuable than profit.”

“And there you have it.” Professor Slocombe smiled. “In your goodness, John. You are a rogue and no doubt about it, but the moment you regained consciousness you thought of Jim rather than yourself. I could not have chosen better in this borough than the two of you. You care for each other, and for Brentford – and for the world, too, I think.”

“Of course I care,” said John. “But—”

“I will care closely, John, for the two of you. This must be done. I ask you – no, I beg you, to help me in this.”

“You beg me?” said John.

“On my knees, if necessary.”

“No,” said John, “that won’t be necessary. That would be undignified. I would never ask that of you.”

“Then you will assist me in this most important matter?”

John shrugged. “Do I really have any choice?” he asked.

“You always have a choice.”

John turned towards Jim. “I know you are hardly compus mentis,” said John, “but what are your thoughts on this?”

“Zzzzzzzz,” said Jim Pooley.