East of Ealing by Robert Rankin Page B

night.
    For Neville, upon his bed of pain, news never reached him. The Sisters of Mercy who tended to his bed-pan and blanket-baths, hiked up their skirts and joined in the revelry, leaving the metaphysical fat boy to sleep on under his heavy sedation.
    For John Omally it was a night he would long remember. As Christ had feasted the five thousand upon half a score of Jewish baps and as many kippers, thus did Omally quench the thirsts of the Brentford multitude. Like the barman of myth, his hand was always there to take up the empty glass and refill it.
    For Jim Pooley, morning suddenly appeared out of drunken oblivion beating a loud tattoo of drums upon the inside of his skull. Jim shook his head. An ill-considered move. The tattoo grew louder and more urgent. Jim reopened a pair of blood-red eyes. He found himself staring into the snoring face of Miss Naylor, Brentford’s licentious librarian. “Gawd,” muttered Jim to himself, “I did strike it lucky last night.”
    The pounding was coming from below, from his front door. It was the relief postman. Jim rose giddily and lurched towards the bedroom door. The words “never again” could not make it to his lips. “Shut up,” he whispered as the hammering continued. Jim stumbled down the uncarpeted stairs and caught his bare toe for the umpteenth time upon the tack protruding from the sixth tread. Howling beneath his breath, he toppled into the hall to find himself suddenly swimming in a sea of paper.
    The hallway was jam-packed with letters, literally thousands of them, of every way, shape, colour, and form. Telegrams, buff-coloured circulars, and picture postcards.
    Pooley rubbed at his eyes as he lay half-submerged in the papery cushion. He was certain that they hadn’t been there the night before, but as the later moments of the previous night’s revels were blank to his recollection, as attested to by the snoring female above, Jim’s certainties were purely subjective in nature.
    The banging continued beyond the barricade of the king’s mail.
    “All right, all right.” Pooley clutched at his temples and fought his way towards the front door. Pushing envelopes to left and right with great difficulty, he opened it.
    “Mail,” said a sweating postman, thumbing over his shoulder towards a dozen or so bulging sacks which lay in an unruly line along the pavement. “Your bloody birthday is it then, pal?”
    Pooley shrugged, dislodging an avalanche of letters which momentarily buried him.
    “I’ve been sticking these bastards through your letter-box for the better part of an hour and I can’t get any more through. Do pardon this departure from the norm, but I must insist that you post the rest yourself. I am here on relief from Chiswick as the local bloke hasn’t turned in. What is this, some kind of bleeding joke?
Candid Camera
, is it, or that
Game for a Laugh
crap?”
    Pooley hunched his shoulders beneath the pressing load. “What are they?” he asked. “Who has sent them?”
    “From those which unaccountably fell open in my hands, they would seem to be begging letters to a man. What did you do then, come up on the bleeding pools?”
    “Something like that.” Jim made an attempt to close the door.
    The postman’s contorted face suddenly sweetened. “Is that a fact?” he said thoughtfully. “Then let me be the first to congratulate you.”
    “You are not the first,” Jim replied, “but thanks all the same. Now if you will excuse me.” He fought with the front door but Posty’s foot was now firmly in it. Pooley relaxed his grip. “Your foot is caught,” he observed.
    “It must be a wonderful thing to have money,” said the postman, edging forward. “I have always been a poor man myself, not that I have ever resented the rich their wealth, you understand, but I have often had cause to wonder why fate chose to deal with me and mine in so shabby a way.”
    “Really?” said Jim without interest.
    “Oh yes. Not that I complain, soldiering on