“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.”

Jim Pooley awoke to another Saturday morning. Jim eased himself gently into wakefulness in that practised manner of his and lay, taking in the ceiling and gauging the potential measure of the day. Jim’s waking eyes strayed towards the chart that he had Sellotaped to the bedroom wall above the fireplace.

The FA Cup fixtures chart.

This chart had a lot of crossings out on it now, and a lot of arrows scrawled hither and thus. And a lot of circles about the name Brentford United. The team were going great guns now. As a result of the professor’s continuing missives and Jim’s instructions to the team, things were really rocking and rolling. Four FA Cup qualifying games they’d played now and had won every one of them. Decisively.

Jim viewed the other wall. The wall by the door. The door with all his press cuttings affixed to it, and the magazine front covers, too. The ones that had him on them. Him. Jim Pooley of Brentford. There he was on all those covers, in his Bertie Wooster suit, giving the big thumbs-up. FHM, Loaded, The World of Interiors, which had done a feature on his kitchenette. And House and Garden, which had struggled, although quite successfully in Jim’s humble opinion, to get a two-page spread out of his window box. He even featured on the cover of this month’s Cissies on Parade, although why that should be, Jim wasn’t precisely sure.

But he was quite the man about town now. He’d even been invited for a night out at Peter Stringfellow’s club, which Jim had found rather noisy and crowded – although Omally, who had gone along with him, had added many telephone numbers to his little black book.

Jim stared at all the glossy covers and the press cuttings. It wasn’t right, Jim knew that it wasn’t right. It wasn’t real. Although folk kept telling him that it was, it was all stuff and nonsense really. He had little to do with the team’s success. He was just a pawn in some terrible game being played out between Professor Slocombe and William Starling. He was right in the middle, in the firing line – although no one was actually firing at him at the moment. And for that fact he knew he should feel grateful and be enjoying himself.

But Jim was not enjoying himself. He didn’t want to be this person. He just wanted to be Jim Pooley, man of the turf, investor in the Six-Horse Super Yankee.

All he really wanted was just to be left alone to be Jim.

Jim Pooley sighed. Why did life have to be so complicated?

John Omally awoke in his own cosy bed, in which he was alone upon this Saturday morning. John had sworn off the women for more than a week now, which was quite a big thing for him. It had not exactly been a voluntary swearing off, though; it was more that he just didn’t have the time. There was simply too much club business to be dealt with.

John had always been of the opinion, as have many, that people tend to make simple matters difficult. He believed that things could be dealt with simply, that every problem had a simple solution. Certainly John had held to this opinion because he had rarely encountered any situations that were actually difficult, up until recent times. He had always sidestepped them.

Now, however, everything seemed to be difficult.

The town councillors who had received injuries when the floor of the executive box collapsed had decided to sue the club for damages. Their solicitor Mr Gray, an unwontedly vicious individual who Omally surmised must have received some slight or missed some business opportunity to have put him into such a vile frame of mind, was going all out for many thousands of pounds. John hadn’t mentioned this to Jim for fear of upsetting the lad. And then there was The Stripes Bar. It should have been raking in the money, what with the strippers and everything, but it wasn’t prospering. Neville had drawn the clientele back to The Flying Swan, which was infuriating.