Knees Up Mother Earth

30

Old Pete sat before his allotment hut upon a battered campaign chair. The chair had seen many campaigns and Old Pete had seen them with it. Old Pete’s hut was of the corrugated-iron variety, with a pitched roof, curtained windows and a rather elegant porch that the oldster had added to make it stand out from the many similar sheds that bespotted St Mary’s allotments.

Not that there had been any need to, for Old Pete’s patch was a sufficient cornucopia to draw the eye on any day of the week. Even including Tuesdays.

He grew the most wonderful things.

Amorphophallus titanium rose erect and proud from iron tubs and Rajflesia arnoldi, which the natives of its native Sumatra believe is pollinated by elephants, covered many feet of ground. Lycopodium sp, the plant that Druids grew to bring good favour, blossomed alongside Lunaria annua, which was said to have the power to unshoe horses that stepped upon it. There was Ferula asafoetida, which wards off the evil eye, and something known as the Tree of Life, upon which bloomed certain fruit that Old Pete was disinclined to harvest.

All in all it was a garden unlike any other, with the possible exception of those belonging to Professor Slocombe, or Gandalf.

It was all rather special.

Old Pete took a sniff at the air. Fragrances of stinkhorn and stenchweed and arse violet filled the ancient’s nostrils. He took from the tweedy pocket of his elderly waistcoat an antique pocket watch and shone a torch upon its pitted face.

Eleven-fifteen of the evening clock. Old Pete shivered somewhat. He replaced his watch, switched off his torch and turned his jacket collar upwards. And then he shivered again. But it wasn’t from the cold. Old Pete ground his dentures together, rooted about between his feet, drew to his lips a tin can and took a swill of sprout brandy. It tasted good. The crop had come in early this year and the still that Old Pete illegally maintained within his hut had performed its duties well. The old one sighed and took another swill. He was not a happy fellow, Old Pete was not. He would be a happier fellow were he able to sit here, undisturbed, for another hour swilling sprout brandy and then take himself off to his bed. But Old Pete knew in his antiquated bones that this was not to be.

He knew, he just knew, what was about to occur.

He had tried for so long, for all these long long years, to put the past behind him, and indeed the future, if that was possible. But he knew that this was the night, the night he had dreaded all these years. It would happen tonight, or it would not happen at all.

Sounds came to Old Pete upon the gentle Brentford breeze, sounds that he knew well enough – the sounds that he had been dreading.

The sounds of swearing and of engine noise.

“Get a bl**dy move on, you b*st*rd!” shouted Noman.

“Is this appalling language really necessary?” asked Mr Wells.

“I’m sorry, Mr Wells,” said Norman, “but if I don’t shout at this van it will not work.”

“Technology ain’t up to much nowadays,” observed Winston from the back of Norman’s van.

“It’s the Hartnel Grumpiness Hyper-Drive,” Norman explained. “The engine is powered by negative energy. There’s so much of the stuff about, and none of it being put to good use.”

“And where exactly are we now?” asked Mr Wells.

“Turning into the allotments,” said Norman. “Go on, you sh*tbag!”

“The allotments,” said Mr Wells as Norman’s van bumped through the open gates on to the rutted track beyond.

“Like I explained to you,” Norman continued, “Peg will be home any time. I couldn’t have her finding you two and the Time Machine in her kitchenette. You know what women are like, they ask all kinds of uncomfortable questions and they’ll rarely take even a well-told lie for an answer.”

“And so we are coming to your allotment patch.”

“To my allotment shed, yes. We can hide the Time Machine inside and you and Winston can sleep in there for tonight. Tomorrow I’ll arrange for board and lodgings at Madame Loretta Rune’s in Sprite Street. She’s a Spiritualist, but she takes in lodgers. You’ll get bed and breakfast.”

“Ah,” said Mr Wells as his head struck the van’s roof. “Spiritualism, is it? I have some interest in that myself. I am currently investigating the case of the Cottingly Fairies. Two young girls have taken photographs of fairies, you know. Very interesting case. I am an expert on this subject.”

Norman swung the steering wheel. “You’re a useless swine!” he shouted.

“How dare you!” said Mr Wells.

“The van, sir, not you. Faster, you f*ckwit!”

“Quite so.”

“Although.” Norman’s van ploughed down a row of beanpoles, destroying Mr Ratter’s potentially prizewinning crop. “Although, I think you’ll find that it was Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who investigated the Cottingly Fairies.”

Winston chuckled.

“Why chuckle you?” Norman asked.

“Because Mr Wells is Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. It’s his pen name when he dabbles in a bit of fiction.”

“A mere hobby,” said Mr Wells. “The world will remember me as a great scientist, and a saviour of mankind.”

“But you don’t look anything like Sir Arthur Conan Doyle,” said Norman, as Mr Kay’s cabbages went the way of all flesh.

“False moustache,” said Winston. “Not to mention the hat.”

“The hat?” said Norman.

“I told you not to mention that.”

“Ah,” said Norman. Thoughtfully. “Well, we’re here now. Would you like to get out?”

“Not really,” said Mr Wells. “I would prefer to repair to Madame Rune’s for a cognac and a cigar, before turning in for the night.”

“Nevertheless,” said Norman, “this, I regret, is where you will be staying tonight.”

Amidst much grumbling from Mr Wells and immoderate chuckling from young Winston as he shinned over the passenger seat, the three debouched from Norman’s knackered van and into the moonlit allotments.

“You’re a very nice van indeed,” said Norman, “and I love you very dearly.” The van’s engine died and its lights went out.

“And what now, gov’nor?” Winston asked.

“That’s my hut over there,” said Norman. “The one with the solar panels and the wind-farm attachment on the roof. We’ll unload the Time Machine and drag it inside.”

“Just one thing,” said Mr Wells.

“Yes?” said Norman.

“Well,” said Wells, “I appreciate that you wished to remove us and my machine from your kitchenette before your wife returned home, in order to avoid having to answer any difficult questions.”

“This is true,” said Norman, opening the rear doors of the van. “A good wife makes a good husband, but a woman scorned is a mischief unto sparrows.”

“Possibly so, but that said, how will you explain to her the fact that you had to demolish much of the rear kitchenette wall, which you did in order to remove my machine from your premises?”

“She wants an extension building,” said Norman. “She’s been wanting it for years. I’ll tell her I started tonight, to surprise her when she got home.”

“Nice thought, gov’nor,” said Winston. “You’ll probably get yourself a shag out of that.”

Norman shuddered. But as with Old Pete, this wasn’t from the cold. “It never rains but it pours,” said he. “Please give me a hand with the Time Machine.”

It was a struggle.

But then isn’t getting a Time Machine out of a van and dragging it into an allotment shed always a struggle?

Norman unpadlocked his shed and threw open the doors. They were double doors. Norman had a very large allotment shed.

“This is a very large allotment shed,” said Mr Wells.

“It’s really a lock-up garage,” said Norman. “I bought it in instalments and installed it here.” Norman laughed foolishly, although for why, no one understood.

“There are certain things every man needs,” said Norman, once the Time Machine had been dragged within, the doors closed and the lights switched on. “A lock-up garage, an allotment shed and a wife who is always eager to please her husband sexually. Two out of three and you can chalk your life up as a success.”

“And I am expected to sleep here?” Mr Wells made a most disdainful face.

“It’s the best I can offer you for now.”

“I am not accustomed to camping out in such wretched hovels as this. Take me at once to Madame Rune’s.”

Norman did a bit of pensive lip chewing and then rephrased a careful suggestion. “I feel it would be safer this way,” said he, “for yourself and your youthful ward here. I am not precisely clear as to what exactly the computer program was doing. Nor, in truth, do I think that I want to know. But as you were able to, how shall I put this, zero in upon it when I perused the program, do you not think that this King of Darkness of yours might similarly be able to do so?”

“Undoubtedly.”

“Might he not suspect that you, his archenemy, had a hand in the destruction of the program?”

“Undoubtedly also.”

“Then he might wish to exact revenge.”

“Ah,” said Mr Wells.

“And you are presently unable to evade him due to the fact that your Time Machine is disabled.”

“Ah,” said Mr Wells once more.

“So perhaps it would be best if you took refuge here in this secret hideaway for the night.”

“Hm,” said Mr Wells. “Perhaps you are correct. But only for tonight, though.”

“Only for tonight,” said Norman. “Then I’ll sort out proper accommodation and we’ll get your machine working and you can be off on your way back home, having thwarted the evil schemes of the King of Darkness.”

“All right,” said Mr Wells. “I will put up with the discomfort for tonight. The computer program is destroyed and as soon as the Time Machine is made serviceable once more, Winston and I will return to the nineteenth century.”

“For the busy man time passes quickly,” said Norman. “I’ll say goodnight to you, then. There are a couple of sleeping bags over here. I’ll be back in the morning with some breakfast.”

“Goodnight, then,” said Mr Wells.

“Ta-ta for now,” said Winston.

Norman left his allotment shed, returned to his van, shouted abuse at it and drove homeward.

Winston unrolled the sleeping bags and he and Mr Wells settled down for an uncomfortable night.

Moonlight shone in through the window of Norman’s lock-up garage/shed and lit upon the faces of the getting-off-to-sleepers. Mr Wells huffed and puffed and grumbled to himself, but eventually took to snoring. Winston went out as a light will do and lay, bathed in moonlight, making one of those angelic-sleeping-child faces that even the naughtiest and most impossible children always seem capable of making.

A shadow briefly crossed the face of the angelic sleeper.

It was the shadow of Old Pete.

The elder peeped in through the window and viewed the sleeping child.

Old Pete drew a deep and silent breath. “So it was all true,” he whispered to himself. “All the vanished Victorian technology. All true. As true as it is that the child sleeping there is none other than myself. I never liked being called Winston. I’m glad I changed my name to Pete.”