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He turned the familiar key in the familiar lock and sought sanctuary. There were no letters of acceptance from publishers to greet him on the mat; the house smelled damp and dead. Jim sighed. The optimist in him was now in coma.
Jim closed the door and put on the safety chain. A lesser man than he might well have plugged up the gaps and turned on the gas at a time like this, but not Jim. Jim had no change for the meter.
He was just about to turn from the door when he heard the first click. It wasn’t loud but, as all else was silent, it was loud enough.
The second click was louder. It was a very distinctive click, the sort of click which, had it been able to speak instead of just click, would have said, “I am the click made by a gun being cocked.”
And then there was the third click, very loud indeed.
And then the bright, bright light.
Jim pressed back against the door. “My dear God, no,” he cried.
And then came the noise.
A screaming, shouting, yelling noise.
“Surprise!” screamed Celia Pe
“Welcome home!” shouted John Omally.
“Happy homecoming!” yelled Norman Hartnell.
Jim stood and stared as the hall about him filled. Professor Slocombe was there, and Old Pete and Small Dave and three young women from the windscreen wiper works (one of whom Jim had always fancied) and Sandra the shot-putting lesbian uniped. And there was the lady in the straw hat and her friend Doris and the medical student named Paul who knew all about the blues. And there was someone else and someone else and even someone else. But these folk were still in the kitchen as you really couldn’t get that many people into Jim’s hall. Mind you, you could never have got nearly fifty people into Professor Slocombe’s study, but as that seemed to have slipped by u
“Hip hip hoorah!” went those in the hall. And those in the kitchen. And others still in the front room. The couple making love in Jim’s bed would probably say it later.
“Welcome home, old friend,” said John Omally, wringing Jim’s hand between his own.
Jim tried to speak, but he just couldn’t. There was a big lump in his throat and a tear in each of his eyes.
“For he’s a jolly good fellow,” sang the assembled multitude, as John led Jim towards the kitchen and a drink.
Now, as we all know, there are parties, and then there are PARTIES!
At parties, you stand around sipping sherry and making polite conversation with doctors and dentists and architects and women with severe haircuts and halitosis. But at PARTIES! – at PARTIES! you do things differently.
At PARTIES! there is a fight in the front garden, someone being sick in the wardrobe, a couple making love in the host’s bed (you see, Jim’s had already got off to a good start). There’s a bloke who climbs onto the roof and moons at the moon, there’s another so well and truly out of it that he tries to tu
“Nice PARTY, Jim,” said a blonde choreographer with amber eyes and a fascinating mouth.
“Who is that?” whispered Jim, as the beauty vanished into the crowd.
“Oh, forget her,” said John. “She’s with her uncle Rob.”
“This is some PARTY though, John. Thank you very much.”
“Well, I couldn’t let you come home to an empty house. Cheers.”
“Cheers.”
The lady with the straw hat said “Cheers” also, and then she said, “That Old Pete bloke is up on your roof mooning at the moon.”
“Magic,” said John. “Having offended almost everyone on Earth he is now turning his attention to the cosmos.”
“Cheers,” said Jim.
“There’s some policemen outside,” said Small Dave. “They’ve come about the music.”
“There isn’t any music,” said Jim.
“That’s what they said, so they’ve lent us this ghetto-blaster.”
“Magic,” said John, hoisting it onto the unspeakable kitchen worktop and plugging it into the socket.
Howl, shriek and scream.
“It’s the Hollow Chocolate Bu
Professor Slocombe stuck his head round the kitchen door. “There’s some policemen outside,” he shouted. “They say to turn the noise down.”
“Magic,” said John Omally, turning it down by the merest fraction.
In Jim’s back garden, a chap who was well and truly out of it tried to tu
“Couldn’t you do that somewhere else?” asked the couple who were making love in Jim’s bed. It was a different couple.
“You know, John,” said Jim, as John topped up his glass from the dangerous blue vodka bottle, “you’re a good friend to me.”
John consulted his naked wrist. “It’s a bit early in the evening for that kind of talk, isn’t it?”
“Yes, you’re right. Dare I ask how the fund-raising is going?”
“So-so,” said John, making the so-so gesture.
“Hm,” said Jim. “Well, cheers anyway.”
And John topped up his glass. “I think I’ll go and see if I can find that blonde choreographer,” he said, turning up the ghetto-blaster.
“Go with God, my friend,” called Jim. And Jim lounged back against his unspeakable worktop, a glass of dangerous blue vodka in his hand, and the Hollow Chocolate Bu
“So God and St Peter are playing golf,” said Old Pete, now down from the roof and in the front room, “and St Peter’s wi
“Shall I goose her, or will you?” Old Pete asked the bishops.
“Now crop circles,” said Paul the medical student, toking on a joint of Cheech and Chong proportions. “Crop circles are the stigmata of the Corn God. A visual expression of the agonies of the landscape’s Passion, brought on through modern day man’s rape of the natural world. Agrichemicals, intensive farming, the land cries out in sorrow and pain. But will anyone listen? Will they?”
“Don’t Bogart that joint,” said the lady in the straw hat, snatching it away.
“Anybody here got an acoustic guitar?” asked Paul.
“No!” shouted all within earshot, and those out of earshot also. And Paul was hustled from the party and flung into the street. Acoustic guitar indeed!
“Huh,” said Paul, “and I can do ‘Blowing in the Wind’ without even looking at my fingers.”
“And stay out!”
A well and truly out of it chap ran by shrieking, “Free, I’m free!”
“Would you like to dance, Jim?” asked the blonde choreographer with the amber eyes and the fascinating mouth.