The Second Big M Episode….

Foodge grabbed O’Hoo by both shoulders, “Please tell me you’re not going to call this in?  You know what happens to blokes like us if this place closes?”

O’Hoo shook his head, “No bloody way, there’s not a case I’ve solved that hasn’t relied on information received here.”

Merv pushed a couple of glass canoes of Pigs Arm Best Bitter, across the grainy, stained, timber bar. Granny had been experimenting with imported Tasmanian hops, hand roasted barley, and new yeast, which had been extracted from a pair of underpants found under the cellar stairs.

Foodge downed the brown fluid in one continuous gulp, “Christ that’s cold, what happened?”

Merv laughed, for the first time in years, “Granny fixed the refrigeration unit in the cellar, just this morning, turns out it was a busted fuse!”

O’Hoo mumbled something about draining a lizard, or, was it someone’s gizzards, and stumbled off.  Foodge reflected on his time at the Pigs. He’d started out as the rising star of the Police Prosecution Service, winning high profile cases by day and escorting some of the most glamorous women in Erskineville at night. The legal system would never allow a man like him, a (mainly) heterosexual teetotaller, into their inner sanctum. Foodge had been bullied by the other lawyers until he left, a broken alcoholic, fed on a steady diet of Pink drinks, with JW chasers.

Merv had been the one who’d turned everything around for Foodge. He’d literally pulled his face out of the urinal of the Pigs Arms gents, sat him down at the bar, fed him one of Granny’s famous Pigs Arms Big Breakfasts, then told him a few home truths. Merv pointed Foodge in the direction of work as a Private Dick, “A good Private Dick can name his own price and get as many roots as he can handle.”

Foodge’s life was transformed. He bought two pinstriped suits, a bow tie and his trade mark Fedora, which he never wore. Now, years later, he had a suite of one office, a luxury Zephyr, and a staff of two, if he counted Emmjay, the cleaner.

His reverie was disrupted by a soprano scream.

“Janet, my love, they’re only school kids,” called Merv. Janet had never really understood the concept of children being, well, children, as she’d never been a child herself. Every afternoon she screamed at the kids as they walked passed on the way home from school, thinking they were dwarfs trying to break the glass over the ‘Wretches Pilsener’ poster, outside.

O’Hoo was settling on the stool next to Foodge. “So, how are we going to avert World War Three?”

“This will have to be a triumph of diplomacy over bellicosity”, mused Foodge. “Those bloody Lambrettists have the strength of numbers to destroy Highbury and The Pigs, as well as everything that goes with it. We are going start with getting the boss of the Angles talking to the boss of the Lambrettists, but, how do we do that?”

“Hedgie,” called Foodge,” Can you come back over here, just for a minute?”

Hedgie was lying on the lounge, his head on Beryl’s lap, while Old Dot was at the piano, doing her best impersonation of Nina Simone. The only problem was that Dot could neither sing, nor play the piano well. Hedgie struggled back to his feet and ambled back to the bar.

“Hedgie, we need you to get the Professor down here, so we can plan our defence against the Lambrettists,” stated Foodge, as he fumbled with a pack of Camels. He never smoked, but kept them in his shirt pocket to add to the mystique of being a P.I.

“Professor won’t talk to you. Professor won’t talk to anyone. Not since his thesis on Fermat’s Last Theorem was ridiculed by the Feculty of Meths at the University of Sidney.” Replied Hedgie.

“Hedgie, the Angel’s only chance for survival is for the Professor to talk to Rocky  de Sasatra.” Urged Foodge.

The de Sasatra family had been the heads of the Lambretta club since the end of WWII. Foodge reasoned that if the leader of the Angels, the Professor, could talk to the head of the Lambrettists, there could be hope of peace.

“There is someone who can help,” interjected Merv, “Neville Coleman is the best man to act as a go-between.”

“Neville Coleman?” exclaimed Foodge,” the bloke who does the vegetarian meat raffle on Friday nights to raise money for the Annandale Sea Scout Dinghy Repair Fund. The bloody things rigged. His illegitimate son, Manne always wins. The poor kids still trying to get his dad to take him to the tofu farm to watch tofutabeasts being made into tofu burgers.”

“Where did you think the Pigs Arms Fisherman’s Club came from? They’re a break away, non-Lambretta, motor scooter group. Neville’s the leader?” grinned Merv. He’d both laughed and grinned in one day. Might be time to see a psychiatrist.

“OK,” said Foodge, “how do we get Coleman down here?”

“I’ll phone ‘im.” Mumbled Merv, as he turned to enter the ‘office’, which was about the size of a Public Telephone booth, only much less comfortable.

“Hedgie, phone the prof, NOW, here’s my mobile” said Foodge, a little louder than he intended.

“OK, OK, I’ll phone.” Hedgie backed away and headed for the public phone, one of the few left in Sydney that didn’t require a phone card, next to the ancient condom dispenser, next to the gents.

Foodge had forgotten that the Angles eschewed modern technology such as, mobile phones, calculators, electronic fuel injection, and such. The all lived for the day when the analogue computer would return, probably running on valves, coils and huge capacitors.

Merv was back behind the counter. “Neville will be back this evening, at the earliest.”

“Why, where the hell is he?” Foodge was umbraged that Merv had taken it upon himself to contact Neville without giving him the opportunity to speak.

“Him an’ Manne are at the Banks, fishing for Black Marlin”

“Black Marlin, does he really fish?” Foodge’s forehead was so screwed up it looked like a map of Afghanistan.

“Does he fish? He’s one of the last great big game fisherman. He’s fished all over the world, why, right now him an’ Manne are trying to break Dolly Dyer’s record!” boasted Merv, as he stood to his full height, towering half a head over Foodge.

Foodge was about to continue the argument when Hedgie’s considerable bulk re-appeared. Hedgie really was quite an unattractive fellow, mused Foodge, in one of those surreal moments one has during a crisis. “Thrall cumin!” blurted Hedgie, as the unmistakable stench of the gents wafted in, as if pursuing one of its members.

“So,” O’Hoo mumbled, as he, once again, managed to squirt ink from his Police Association pen all over his, now useless, Police Notebook, “Most of our side should be here for tonight.”

The Bowling Ladies had overheard all of this, and had already started a production line of egg and lettuce, or ham with pickles sandwiches. All on stale white bread, all with margarine that tasted something like 90-weight oil from an old Zephyr diff. An old dented urn was already bubbling away, like a witch’s cauldron, and a huge chipped, dark green, teapot had already been cleansed of algae, ready for the first acrid brew of the afternoon. The old girls were on a war footing.