“Quite so,” said Mr Luke Shaw. “How many packets will you take?”

“I won’t take any,” Norman said. “I can’t sell new brands of cigarettes to the locals. They won’t wear it. They’re very stuck in their ways.”

“I think you’ll FIND that THE offer I’m making you will reap BIG profits. The FIGURE I’m selling them for is most competitive.”

The ringing of the shop doorbell brought a sudden end to Norman’s reverie.

“FIND THE BIG FIGURE,” mouthed Norman.

“What are you saying?” asked Mr H.G. Wells.

Norman stared into the face of the Victorian time-traveller. “Oh,” said Norman, “Mr Wells. Good morning. What are you doing here?”

“I have come,” said Mr Wells, “to enquire as to your progress. I have been here for months now and although Madame Loretta Rune provides basic amenities and I have made many acquaintanceships in The Flying Swan and The Stripes Bar and have become an active supporter of Brentford United Football Club.” Mr H.G. Wells raised a fist and cried, “Brentford for the Cup!” before regaining his composure and his gravity and concluding, “I wish to return to my own time and the comfort of my own house in Wimpole Street, W. One.”

“It’s still there, you know,” said Norman. “There’s a blue plaque outside with your name on it.”

“I have pressing business.” Mr Wells raised his voice once more.

Norman shushed him into silence. “Peg is in the kitchen,” he said. “She’s still rather upset about the back wall. I’ve been meaning to fix it, but I’m spending all my spare time trying to fix your machine.”

“Pressing business,” Mr Wells said once more. “Time is of the essence.”

“I’ve been thinking about that.” Norman distractedly numbered-up several papers. “I mean to say that it doesn’t really matter how long you stay in this time, does it? Because you can always return to the very minute you left your own, if you want to.”

Mr Wells leaned forward over the counter top and glared hard at Norman. Norman smiled back at Mr Wells.

And Norman did a little sniffing, too.

The smell of Mr Wells fascinated Norman. He smelled like, well, a Victorian – the smell of the macassar oil that he put upon his hair, and the moustache wax, and the fabric of his clothing. Although …

Mr Wells wasn’t smelling all that savoury now. He’d been wearing the same set of clothes since his arrival.

“My problem regarding time does not concern the past,” said Mr Wells, whose breath was none too savoury either. “My problem with time concerns the present.”

“I don’t understand,” Norman said. “Do you think you could lean a little further back?”

“The present,” said Mr Wells, “and what might occur in the very near future if I have somehow erred in my sacred mission. If the destruction of the computer you acquired and the program that was running on it has not forestalled the rise to power of the King of Darkness.”

“Let’s not be pessimistic,” Norman said. “I’m sure it has.”

“But if it hasn’t?” Mr Wells made fists with both his hands. “I do not wish to be here when the Apocalypse occurs. I must be back in the past, preparing to make another assault. I do not wish to be here to watch humanity crushed and millions die, for I might well become one of those millions.”

A terrible shiver ran up Norman’s spine. “There’s something I think I ought to tell you,” said Norman.

“What?” asked Mr Wells.

“Well—”

“Norman!” boomed the voice of Peg, putting the wind up Norman and also up Mr Wells. “Norman, come in here. My toenails need a cut.”

“I’ll speak to you later,” said Norman. “How about lunchtime, up the road in The Flying Swan?”

“The Flying Swan,” said Mr Wells. “My favourite drinking house.”

“Mine, too,” Norman said. But he said no more, as Peg boomed his name again with greatly renewed vigour.

“And what is your name, lad?” asked Old Pete.

The elder sat upon Jim Pooley’s favourite bench before the Memorial Library. He leaned upon his stick and looked up at the ragged youth that stood before him.

“Winston, gov’nor,” said the lad, chewing upon one of Norman’s gobstoppers.

Old Pete smiled wanly at the lad – his younger self. It was a most uncanny sensation.

“And why are you not at school?” the ancient asked.

“Never been to school, gov’nor. Schools is for toffs, Gawd dance upon me dangler if they ain’t.”

Old Pete gazed with rheumy eyes at the face of his younger self and he scratched at his antiquated head, for herein lay a mystery. Old Pete could remember well when, as young Winston, he had broken into Mr Wells’ house and hitched a ride upon his Time Machine into the future.

The future that was now the here and now. And he remembered his arrival in Norman’s kitchen and Norman shipping the Time Machine to his allotment lock-up. There was no doubt he’d remembered that, which was why he’d gone as Old Pete to the allotment to witness it, to prove to himself that it had been true.

But he had no recollection of this – he did not recall that as a young lad he had met this old man in a park in the future. Why couldn’t he remember that?

“Can you spare us a penny?” asked Young Pete/Winston. “Me mum’s dying of consumption and I need it to buy ’er a new ’ot water bottle.”

“That isn’t the truth,” said Old Pete, “and you know it.”

“Nah,” said Young Pete/Winston. “It’s for meself, to pay for a poultice to put on me bum. It’s covered in workhouse sores.”

“How old are you?” asked Old Pete.

“I’m as old as me nose, and a little older than me teeth, two of which need pulling – could you make it a threepenny bit to pay the quack?”

Old Pete dug into his waistcoat pocket, and then he hesitated. He recalled a video he’d rented from Norman. Time Cop, it was called. He hadn’t actually meant to rent Time Cop. He’d meant to rent Strap-On Sally’s Sex Salon, but Norman had put the wrong video in the case.

But regarding Time Cop, it had starred this fellow that wasn’t David Warner but looked a bit like him. And this fellow had travelled through time and met himself. And the two had touched, with disastrous consequences. Something to do with the same self being unable to occupy the same place in two separate time periods. Something to do with the transperambulation of pseudo-cosmic antimatter, or something.

Old Pete did not wish to touch his younger self.

Just in case.

“I’ll tell you what,” said Old Pete, “I won’t give you a threepenny bit, but I will give you something much, much more valuable. Have you ever heard of the Ford Motor Company?”

Young Pete/Winston shrugged his shoulders, sucked upon his gobstopper and gave his ill-washed head a shake.

“Get yourself a job and invest in shares,” said Old Pete, “the moment the company sets up. Do you think you can remember that? Try very, very hard to remember that.”

His younger self shrugged once more. “The Ford Motor Company,” he said.

“And hang on to all your shares when the Wall Street Crash comes in nineteen twenty-nine. And buy land in Florida then, too.”

His younger self eyed his older self queerly. “Nineteen twenty-nine?” he said. “What’s your game, gov’nor?”

“I’m thinking of my future, your future, I mean. You must try to remember what I’ve told you. It will make you rich.”

“Big oak trees from little acorns grow,” said Young Pete/Winston.

Bloody Norman, thought Old Pete. “But you will try to remember?”

“I remember asking you for a threepenny bit.”

Old Pete drew same from his waistcoat pocket and flipped it towards his younger self. “I didn’t think it would work,” he said dismally.

“What’s that, gov’nor?”

“The Ford Motor Company! The Ford Motor Company!”

“Yeah, yeah, I remember that. Invest what I earn.”