'Joe Faulkner'll have a spare,' a voice replied from underneath a bike.
'Lives up near Big Izzie,' another explained. 'Anybody'll direct you to her.' The lads laughed along with Algernon. Some local joke.
Algernon tried to interest me in the bike's pipes but I strolled on to hear the politician.
I'd give him five minutes' skilful heckling, then I'd cripple the bastard.
'It's the day of the Common Man!' he shouted. Nobody was listening. 'The day of equality is dawning! Share all! Possess all! Equality, the word of the age!' One of those.
He was really preaching against antiques. I hate jargoneers, as Florence Nightingale called folk like this twerp. It's today's trick, urge everybody else to be mediocre too.
People everywhere talk too much about the Common Man, what a really terrific bloke he is and how anybody different's either a secret anarchist or fascist at heart. It's all balls. Let's not forget that the Average Man's really pretty average.
'Nobody's ever equal,' I pointed out loudly. 'It's a biological and social impossibility.
Inequality's right,' I said pleasantly. 'Equality's ridiculous.'
I honestly believe this. I've been striving all my life in the glorious cause of inequality.
What can you say to stupid bums like this, that shut the Sevres porcelain factory so we could all have none?
'Clever dick,' he sneered. 'Piss off. Go and piss Izzie round.'
A few of the bike fiends who overheard laughed at this crack from beneath their tangles. Probably that local joke. I began to move towards him happily, then stopped.
Izzie?
Anybody'll direct you to her, they'd told Algernon as I'd passed him. To her. Female.
Izzie. Isabel? Isabella? Piss Izzie round - like a wheel? It reminded me of something.
Janie came hurrying over. She'd collected Algernon.
'We really ought to be going,' she was saying as they arrived. I was watching them approach. 'We're all too tired to think. I can cook us a hot meal. It's been such a tiring day. We need a rest.' She looked at me, worried. 'Lovejoy?'
'Is anything the matter, Lovejoy?' Algernon asked.
'You're so pale,' I heard Janie say. 'Has he said something to offend you?' She spun angrily on the startled orator and snapped, 'You keep your stupid opinions to yourself, you silly old buffoon!'
'No, Janie. Please.' My mouth was dry. 'I'm so sorry,' I explained gently to the speaker.
'It's my first visit here. Where is Big Izzie, please, comrade?'
'I knew you were one of us deep down, comrade,' he said, smug with pride. 'It always shows through the capitalist-imperialist veneer. Comrade Marx's definition of class illustrates -'
'He never defined class,' I said. 'He promised to in that footnote to his first German edition, now very valuable, but never got round to it. Big Izzie, comrade. We've a, er, political meeting near there.'
'Laxey,' he said. 'We ought to get together, comrade, to discuss class fundamentalism -'
'It's a date,' I said. 'Laxey, you said?'
'Long live the revolution!' he called after us.
'Er, sure, sure.'
I rushed them to the Lagonda and had Janie hurtling us towards the road to cheers and waves of the surrounding multitudes of the bike people. She was screaming for instructions at the fork but I didn't know where Laxey was. We scrambled for maps, then two cars came by and we had to wait till they passed.
'Laxey?' Algernon said at this point. 'Go left.'
'Sound your horn!' I cried in anguish, but anyone who beeps a horn in Britain is either on fire or psychotic. Janie's upbringing held firm. We moved sedately out on to the Laxey road.
'Who'll be there?' Algernon asked pleasantly.
'How the hell should I know who lives in Laxey?' I said, baffled.
'He means the meeting,' Janie began to explain. 'There isn't really any meeting, Algernon, you see. It was a… a ruse.'
'There's an enormous waterwheel at Laxey,' Algernon said brightly as Janie gave the car its head.
'Then why didn't you say so?' I hissed. If I'd not been in the front I'd have thrown him out.
'Is it what we've been looking for all this time? Its picture's on the coins.'
I fumbled in my pocket. It bloody well was, the imprint of a great waterwheel. One day I'll do for Algernon.
'It's even got a name,' he continued cheerfully. 'Lady Isabella. They say that when it was first made -'
'Algernon!' from Janie, tight-lipped. Algernon had known all along, the stupid sod.
I closed my eyes. Sometimes things just get too much.
The wheel's beautiful. You know, the Victorians really had it. If a thing is worth doing at all, they obviously thought, then it's worth doing well. On the side of the supporting structure was a plaque: 'Lady Isabella.' There she
