Jim leapt from his studio seat to find himself leaping from the bench before the Memorial Library. Omally’s grinning face filled all the world.
“Counting sheep?” grinned John. “Hey…”
Jim caught him with an uppercut that swung the Irishman over the bench and into the bushes behind.
Omally rose in a flustering of foliage, clutching at his jaw. “Mother Mary’s handbag, Jim. You hit me.”
“And there’s more to come, you robber of my millions.”
Jim took another mighty swing, but this time John ducked nimbly aside. Carried by the force of his own momentum, Jim too plunged over the bench. Omally helped him to his feet. “Calm yourself, Jim, be at peace there.”
“Be at peace? I was there, right there, I had the numbers, I… God, the numbers, what were the numbers?”
“One hundred and eighty was one of them.”
“You bloody fool, Omally.” Jim took yet another swing but this too missed its mark and Pooley went sprawling.
“Stop this nonsense, Jim. I’ve come to make you rich.”
“I was rich. I was. I had it. Help me up for God’s sake, I’m stuck in brambles here.”
Omally helped him up once more and dusted him down. “You didn’t have it, Jim,” he said softly. “And I heard the numbers you were mumbling. That was last week’s lottery draw.”
“It was? But I was there and I was all bandaged up and…”
“Leave it, Jim. I’ve come to make you rich. I really have.”
Jim shook his head, dragged himself back over the bench and sat down hard upon it. Omally joined him.
“Go on, then,” said Jim. “Let’s hear it.”
John yanked Jim’s book from his jacket pocket. It had about it now a somewhat dog-eared appearance.
“You’ve creased it all up,” said Jim sulkily.
“Never mind about that.” Omally leafed through the pages, then thrust the open book beneath Jim’s nose. “Cast your Sandra’s over this,” he said.
“My Sandra’s?”
“Sandra’s thighs, eyes. I’m working on a new generation of rhyming slang, based upon the most memorable features of ladies I’ve known in the past.”
A young man on a Vespa rode by and Jim made a low groaning sound deep in his throat.
“Go on,” said Omally. “Take a look.”
Jim took a look, although not with a great deal of interest. His eyes however had not travelled far down the page before an amazed expression appeared on his face and the words “Sandra’s crotch” came out of his mouth.
“Sandra’s what?”
“Sandra’s crotch. It’s all too much!”
“Well, that isn’t quite how it works, but it has a certain brutish charm.”
“This is barking mad,” said Jim.
“Yes, there is a small brown dog involved.”
“But it’s a member of the… I never knew they were born in Brentford.”
“I don’t think anyone did. And I don’t think they know about that either.”
“Chezolagnia? What does that mean?”
“You really don’t want to know, Jim. Have a look at the photo on the next page.”
“There’s photos too?” Jim turned the page. “Sylvia’s…”
Omally put his hand across Jim’s mouth. “Crotch was distasteful enough,” said he.
“Mother,” said Pooley. “John, this is dynamite. We’d end up in the Tower of London. Stuff like this could bring down the entire establishment.”
“Couldn’t it too,” said Omally.
“Imagine if this fell into the hands of someone who had it in for the English.”
“Imagine that,” said John Omally, son of Eire.
“Oh no, John, you wouldn’t? You couldn’t?”
“No,” said John. “I wouldn’t and I couldn’t. What a man gets up to in the privacy of his own love menagerie is his own business.”
Jim turned another page, then went “Waaah!” and thrust the book back at John. “Take it away. Burn it. I wish I’d never looked.”
John closed the book and tucked it back into his pocket.
“Then we’re not rich at all,” said Pooley with a long and heartfelt sigh.
“Oh yes we are.”
“But you said you wouldn’t and you couldn’t.”
“I was only warming you up. That isn’t the bit of the book that’s going to make us rich.”
“You mean there’s worse in there?”
“Not worse, Jim. And nothing like that at all. That was just a little footnote, but it set me thinking. What do you know about the Days of God and the Brentford Scrolls?”
“We did them at school. Something to do with Pope Gregory changing the calendar from the Julian to the Gregorian which meant cutting eleven days out of the year and this batty monk from Brentford going on a pilgrimage to Rome to demand God’s Days back.”
“And?”
“Well, didn’t the Pope get so fed up with him going on and on about it that he said the people of Brentford could have two extra days a year if they wanted them?”
“That was it, and gave him a special decree authorizing it.”
“The Brentford Scrolls.”
“Those very lads.”
“But the monk was murdered when he got back home so Brentford never got the extra days that it didn’t want anyway and everyone lived happily ever after.”
“Well done, Jim. In a few short sentences you have reduced the most significant event in Brentford’s history to a load of old cabbage.”
“I’m sorry, but I fail to see the significance of this significant event. Especially how it will make us rich.”
“Then allow me to explain. The Pope told the monk that Brentford could have two extra days a year, the Days of God, in perpetuity. But the option was never taken up. Now all this happened in 1582 and it’s now 1997, four hundred and fifteen years later, which means…?”
“I haven’t the foggiest,” said Jim. “What does it mean?”
“It means that by the end of this year Brentford has eight hundred and thirty days owing to it. That’s over two years, Jim.”
“Do pardon me for missing the point here, John. But so what?”
“Jim, what is going to happen on December the thirty-first 1999?”
“A very big party.”
“Correct. The millennial celebrations. The biggest, most expensive, most heavily funded bash in history.”
“So?”
Omally threw up his hands. “So the people of Brentford are actually entitled to celebrate the millennium two years earlier than the rest of the world, by special decree of Pope Gregory. He reorientated the calendar and what he decreed goes.”
Jim opened his mouth to say “So?” once more, but he said “Come again?” instead.
“You’re catching on, aren’t you, Jim? The Millennium Fund. Millions and millions of pounds, set
