Eight pipers piping

(Just had a short time this morning so I thought I would write this. It was sort of inspired by a story told to me by a policeman many years ago and it also serves as a reflection on musical tastes.....)

Robert had been a police officer for nearly ten years and had seen a great deal.
In the early days he used to share much of his day with his wife. It seemed like a good form of therapy at first, then it became something of a burden for Helen, his wife. She began her career in nursing around the same time and their exchanges were good, but gradually they both began to hold back – sometimes it was just too much to explore over a quick pasta sauce and a bottle of Australian red.
Gradually, their exchanges became very selective. Humorous stories prevailed over the general tragedies of life on the front lines of society. Occasionally something hard had to be shared but for the most part, they both just got on with it.
A year after joining the CID Robert came home in a bit of a quandary. He had spent all day on a case that seemed quite straight forward. A man, he called him Joe, had killed his best mate (named Bill) and then walked into the station to confess. The outcome of the interview was both humorous and tragic. Robert didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.
“Look,” he said to his wife, “you and your sister play practical jokes on each other and I must admit that some of them are quite funny, but these two guys had taken it to a different level altogether.”
They were eating a Chinese takeaway and drinking stubbies of French beer left over from a trip across the Channel earlier that week.
“I have watched you and your sister getting quite cross with each other but it doesn’t stop you. After this story, you might want to rethink how ‘practical’ these jokes really are.”
Helen waited with a little knowing smile as she refilled her bowl with rice and chicken with cashew nuts. Her and her sister Gail never really got very cross; they never took each other’s jokes that seriously.
“When I sat down to talk to this guy, Joe, I already knew that the duty sergeant had told a couple of the lads the top-line story and people were laughing about it. Silly tricks that grew out of hand ending up with one of them loosing it and killing the other over what might have seemed like a silly prank. To be quite honest, you know I have never really joined in on that sort of humour so it made me feel a little bit uneasy. I mean, you could hear laughter in the corridor and you could see that this guy Joe was in shock.”
“You shouldn’t have interviewed him, then.”
“No choice, really; I had to get his statement as close to the time of the incident as possible. You know how people’s minds instantly start re-working their stories subconsciously, editing out the harsher bits, building in better explanations and so on. Interview as early as possible, then get them help. In lots of cases, they really need to get it off their chest anyway.”
“OK.” Helen conceded.
“So he sits there and I do all the recording preliminaries and then the basic details and he starts to blurt it all out and I get him to calm down a bit and start from the beginning. I ask him to give me the whole story and so he does.”
“For five years now the two have been doing bigger and better jokes on each other. It started with Joe sending a strip-a-gram to his mate to deliver a birthday greeting, only the woman was also an ex-girlfriend of Bill’s and the restaurant she did it in was posh, which resulted in the management asking Bill, his guest and the stripper to leave. Now this would have been bad enough but Joe managed to time it so that it interrupted Bill while he was in the process of proposing marriage to his current girlfriend.”
“Did Joe want to deliberately break them up? Did he have something for Bill’s girlfriend?” asked Helen.
“I asked and no, it was just a silly prank. When you listen to him you begin to feel that there is something a little bit lacking in this guy’s store of empathy. Same goes for Bill as it panned out. After the shame of the ejection from the restaurant and the resultant rejection to his proposal of marriage, Bill resolved to get his revenge.”
“A series of tit for tat jokes began. Each one seemed to be both sillier and less funny than the previous one and some cost quite a bit of money and lots of bother, too.”
“Well, are you going to give me examples?” Robert was filling his bowl and had popped a large, batter-covered king prawn in his mouth which was slowing down his story.
“Only if you promise never to mimic these stupid pranks.”

“Of course!”
“Well the list was quite long but here are a few highlights. After Bill got Joe’s new car towed away, Joe managed to convince a locksmith that he was locked out of Bill’s house and had him change all of the locks. Then he went away on holiday leaving Bill to sort that out. So, after having a ton of soil, then a ton of manure tipped onto Joe’s front garden, Joe retaliated by booking a whole series of ‘therapists’ who turned up at Bill’s door one evening and then continued to turn up at his office, too.”
“Therapists?”
“Yeh, ranging from some traditional ones like psychotherapists, physiotherapists and osteopaths to the alternative ones such as acupuncture, Chinese medicine consultants, etc, through to more dubious ones like Swedish Masseuses, sex therapists, psychics and horoscope readers, etc. They were all expensive to hire and were very angry when they were told it was all some sort of practical joke.”
“Wow. One or two, yes, but that is excessive.”
“Please, don’t even go there. Then there were internet tricks, like putting various things of Joe’s on Ebay, like sending estate agents around to not just to Bill’s house but to his ageing parent’s house and various siblings. The water company dug up Joe’s front garden to plug a leak that wasn’t there and charged him for the privilege so Bill had an endless supply of people responding to his apparent adverts claiming that he wanted to fund new business ventures. Joe was set up as a new porn star with his own, mocked up web site which caused lots of problems not least because the pictures were all ‘borrowed’ from a website that did not take kindly to Joe using their material for his own personal gain.”
“Phew! Did they have any time or money to do anything with their lives, apart from playing tricks on each other?”
“I have no idea how they managed to finance these things. They both seem to have had relatively ordinary lives apart from their jokes.”
“And did they still regard the other as a friend?”
“Err, it seems so. They went out to the pub together, communicated regularly, shared other friends and seemed to be almost normal.”
“But the thing got worse?”
“Well, that was the rub. That was the problem. They had called a truce. They were starting a new life as non-competing, non-joker friends. They even signed a pact together.”
“A pact? What, like the North Atlantic Treaty? Did they have to sit down with lawyers and agree a form of words?” Helen was mildly amused as well as a little bit bemused.
“A mutual friend found some sort of agreement on the internet – apparently this is not a unique case and there is some sort of name for the ‘condition’ they were both ‘suffering’ from.”
“Practical joke-itus?”
“Something like Competitive, Compulsive Prank Disorder, I think he called it.”
After some laughter and further speculation Helen returned her husband to the situation. “So, what went wrong?”
“Well, everything seemed to be going really well. With the compulsion to beat each other up using practical jokes behind them, they both got on with life a bit more seriously, Joe found himself a girl that he wanted to marry and Bill started to see someone, too.”
“No tricks on their respective partners?”
“Not a sausage. In fact, Bill was the best man at Joe’s wedding and he didn’t even tell jokes about Joe that were particularly offensive or inappropriate.”
“And married bliss ensued until now?”
“Well, the wedding was yesterday. The bride and groom stayed at the Groves House Hotel last night after the celebrations.”
“Very posh, nice grounds!”
“Quite. And this morning they were due to go on their honeymoon but instead, Joe popped ‘round to Bill’s and bumped him off with a shotgun.”
“Why? What happened?”
“Joe and his wife, Maria’s flight was at eight thirty this morning and dear old Bill thought that a grand setting like the Groves called for a grand sort of wake up call. So this morning, at half past five, eight highland pipers dressed in Joe’s family tartan (the Magoo’s, apparently) piped him and his lady wife awake from the lawn of the hotel.”
“And Joe hated the pipes so much he blasted away his best mate?”
“Well, not quite. Bill had meant it as a good thing – Joe loves the pipes, or so he says - but Joe was convinced Bill was back to his old tricks again.”
“Why? What was so bad?”
“That’s just it. I asked him straight. I wanted to know what was so bad and he looked at me as if I was completely stupid. He said, ‘They woke us up and I knew then that Bill had it in for me. The pipers were standing there just outside our window and they were playing Mull of Kintire for God’s sake! And then, as I opened the window, they started playing Flower of Scotland. If I had my gun there I would have shot them all. Mull of Kintire AND bloody Flower of Scotland! What else could I do?”
Helen sat quietly stunned for a few minutes before popping the last of the spring roll in her mouth.
“I suppose you’ve got to draw the line somewhere.” She said as she opened another couple of bottles of beer.

Six geese a-laying

(Children’s stories are always fun to do. This is another one to read to children but I hope the adult reader can get something out of the story too!)

Long ago, on a small farm a young lad sat watching his geese, wondering what to do.
His mother had warned him, “Mark my words,” she had said, “if these geese don’t start laying soon you will have to take them to market and sell them.”
The young lad, whose name was Jack, was very sad; he had tried everything to get them to lay eggs but they just would not do it. He had six geese, his fine young ladies, and one gander called Goosie. He would call to them “Here Goosie Goosie gander! Here my fine young ladies!” and they would gather ‘round him looking for food. But no matter how happy, no matter how well fed, no matter how comfortable his geese were, not one of them ever thought it a good idea to give him even a small egg. He would sit down amongst them and talk to them. He would sing songs and tell them stories and he would take them for walks to the pond and back. He had tried every trick in the book, but not one egg appeared and his mother told him again and again, “We can’t afford to have geese that won’t lay. They must go. You must sell them at the market.”
So, Jack had gathered his flock together and he told them straight, “Girls, this is your last chance! If you do not lay any eggs by the morning we will have to set off for market and that will be that. Goosie, if you want to keep enjoying the good life get to work! Help these ladies NOW!”
In the morning he had looked everywhere but he could find no eggs.
“Good bye mother,” said Jack, “I have sixpence and a pack with some food. It takes three days to walk to market and three days to come home. Wish me luck!”
“Good luck!” she said, wiping a tear from her eye, “Be careful and remember, sell them for no less than sixpence each. They are fine looking birds, even if they can’t lay eggs...”
Jack wandered down the lanes and across the heath guiding his geese with his stick as he sang them his favourite songs. One was “Will the wind every stop blowing/” and another was, “Does my sweetheart know the colour of my eyes?” and his very best one was, “I walk the roads in springtime, and see all nature wake.” The geese seemed happy as they trotted and chattered and occasionally stopped to peck something interesting on the path.
The first night he found a small hollow up on the heathlands. The dip in the land was surrounded on three sides by gorse bushes so he led the geese into the sheltered area and slept across the entrance like a human gate, protecting all that was inside.
In the morning he opened his eyes and looked at his lovely geese. On the ground, in the little hollow, he could see that his birds had laid some eggs! He gathered them up and counted them. Seven fine eggs! One for his breakfast and six to keep!. He gently stored them in his pack and they set off again.
All day, the sun shone and the skylarks flew up either side of his path and hovered high in the air singing their shrill songs. He saw rabbits in the grass close by and ravens would sit in the branches of small trees watching them all go by.
Jack told the geese stories of the robber prince called Jackadoo and his merry gang of swashbucklers. He explained how the stars floated in the sky and why the grass was green and occasionally he would share a little joke with the birds or ask them a riddle or two to pass the time.
As the sun began to set Jack found an old house. It had no roof and holes for windows but it was shelter and inside the floor was covered in fine grass and soft moss. With a warm fire in the corner and an old board blocking the door, he settled down for the night with his little flock. “Good night my little beauties.” He called to them. Then he fell asleep and dreamed of sailing ships and pirate mice with eye patches.
In the morning he got up and began to laugh with joy.
There, scattered on the ground, were even more eggs! He counted thirteen this time! Twelve for his pack and one for his breakfast.
That day, as the breeze kept them cool despite the bright, hot sun, Jack entertained his geese with magic tricks and dances.
To the tunes from his little pipe he danced jigs and reels and showed the geese how to strip the willow and be as dashing as a white sergeant. He showed them courtly dances and demonstrated the way to lift your partner off her feet and spin her till her hair was wild and her cheeks were red. He then made little cloth flowers emerge from the backs of the heads of his birds and surprised them by making his pennies roll across his knuckles. He produced long lines of coloured silk hankies from his mouth and made them disappear from his nimble fingered hands.
That night, just a few miles from the market town, Jack saw a little island in the middle of the river and waded out to it with the geese swimming beside him. The place was sheltered and peaceful and the sound of the water was delightful. The moon’s reflection sparkled on the dark surface of the river and the other sounds around him settled his mind and calmed his tired geese.
Jack sang a series of lullabies to his geese and praised them for being such good and clever birds. “I will miss you all, my little lassies, and I will miss you too, Old Goosie!” Then he fell asleep and his mind wandered across a beautiful and mysterious landscape chasing dragons and rescuing maidens all through the night.
In the morning Jack lay with his eyes closed. “What will I see today?” He wondered.
Opening one eye he looked at the ground nearest to him. He started counting eggs, then thought he better open the other eye too because he needed both eyes to count so many eggs.
“You have been saving these up, haven’t you!” he laughed.
There were nineteen eggs lying around the island. One for his breakfast and eighteen for the pack. It was hard packing the eggs away as there was not much room and he wanted to make sure every egg would be safe.
“Three days and more than three dozen eggs! What shall I do?”
Jack wanted to go back home with his geese but knew his mother would not be happy. “They have been laying eggs on the way to the market but would they continue to lay eggs if I took them back home?”
Jack thought that it was probably best to take them to market so he walked on with them quietly humming his favourite tunes. By the time he had reached the entrance to the town he was happy again and playing lively dance tunes on his little tin whistle. In the market place people gathered around to listen to him play. They dropped coins at his feet and put money in his top pocket asking him to play their favourite tunes. Before he knew it, the afternoon was closing in and the market stalls were closing up.
“What shall I do now, my little lovelies? The market is closing and I still have not sold you! Oh dear, what will mother say?”
Then he sat down beside his birds and gathered up all of the coins. He pulled out the money from his top pocket, too and began to count.
“Even if I had sold each of you for a hundred pennies I still would not have made as much as I have here!” he shouted with glee. “Let’s go home my little friends and tell mother all about our adventures!”
As he stood up he saw a familiar face in the crowd. It was farmer Julius Macdingle with his bushy beard and his horse and cart.
“Hello Jack,” said the farmer, “I have not seen you at market before.”
“It’s my first time here.” Said Jack, “But now I must head back home!”
“Well now,” said the farmer, “I could give you and your lovely geese a lift in my cart if you want, but there would be a little matter of the fare.” Farmer Macdingle was always interested in making a little more moeney.
Jack thought for a moment and realised that he would be back home much quicker by cart.
“And what is your fare?” Asked Jack, knowing that he had enough money to pay for the journey.
“Well, I’m wondering,” said the farmer, “seeing your geese makes me think and I can think of nothing finer than a goose egg for breakfast. So if you have, say, half a dozen eggs to spare I would take you all the way to your home today.”
So Jack opened his pack and said, “Choose your six from this.” and farmer Macdingle whooped with delight.
“Lad,” he said, “you have been keeping these lovely geese secret! These are the finest eggs I have ever seen. When we get home I will place an order with you for a dozen eggs a week. Hop in board and let’s get going!”
So farmer Macdingle kept the horses going at a fair old pace as Jack told him stories and asked him riddles. He did some magic tricks and sang a couple of songs and the time passed so quickly they had hardly spent a minute of time wondering at the stars above or thinking about the road ahead.
And when they stopped by Jack’s gate they turned to the geese in the back and Jack said, “Well farmer Macdingle, there’s the other six eggs you wanted!” And sure enough, the six geese had been a laying as the wagon had bumped and rolled along the country roads.
So, Jack got to keep his geese, after all and they still lay their eggs for him. Six laying geese and their Goosie Goosie gander for company. And Jack goes to market every week now on a fine grey mare, and there he earns his money singing songs, playing tunes and doing magic tricks for the crowds.

Seven Swans a Swimming

(This is set in part of the French countryside Alison and I walked through. We walked for days through forests and even encountered a wild boar on one path. I gathered a whole load of stories in my mind and this just happens to be one of them....)

He had once read how people in the country used to sustain themselves across each year by working out on the land during the more kindly months then stayed in doors engaged in cottage industries during the colder periods. He had imagined something like that sort of pattern when he decided to live in this remote rural area. However, he was not particularly skilled in anything that could be bottled, boxed or wrapped and sold and he had discovered very early in his time here that there were no large farms or estates here requiring casual labour during the spring, summer or even autumn.
Not that he needed the money – it was just the boredom, really. He wanted things to do.
Then, in his second year in the place he had a sudden scare. It was something that both terrified him and gave him a new purpose.
He was just about to leave the little patisserie just off the market square one Friday morning when he saw two men climb back into an English Rangerover. They had been talking to Marcel in the local bar and he had given then the brush off. They were not looking too happy and Marcel was pretty pissed off by the look of it. He knew everyone’s routine and was aware that George was probably in the patisserie so, when the Rangerover was scuttling down the road away from the bar he looked across at the door George was standing at and nodded to him.
George stepped out and glanced down the road to the bottom of the town to see the brake lights of the big motor flash as it paused at the crossing down near the bridge. It then made a rapid turn to the left and headed west on the river road.
George crossed to the bar and exchanged a cautious greeting with Marcel. The Frenchman was at least ten years older than George but seemed even older today.
“They were not your friends, I trust.” He stated rather than asked.
“Never seen them before. What did they want?”
They were looking for someone like you.” Replied Marcel, his eyes watching George openly and carefully. “But I could not recall even you when I heard them speak.”
“Thank you. Nosey Englishmen are even worse than friendly ones. They would have expected me to help them even if I told them I was not interested.”
“Hmm. Probably true.” Marcel decided to shrug the whole thing off. “Want a coffee?”
“Just a small one, Marcel, I have lots to do today.”
George sat looking at the local paper, checking out the weather and the local sports section before looking at the headlines. He was looking at the paper but he was not reading much. Half his brain was on the question of “Who?” and the other half was engaged in looking and listening while pretending to relax.
As soon as seemed reasonable for someone who was in a hurry but really didn’t have that much going on in his life, he left the bar and strolled back to his car.
He lived about two miles out of the little town and often walked back and forth along a path through the woods following the river, but today he had really been thinking of doing some work on the property and he had been pondering that a couple of nice cakes would brighten up the weekend, so he had driven in. He was glad he had done this. He kept running the faces through his mental database but nothing was coming up. He knew the type, of course. They were big trouble for anyone who happened to be their target. The question was –were they after him? He felt that it was too close to home to think otherwise.
His conclusion was that he had become too complacent. Time to get himself sorted.
Well, he hoped he had enough time.
He parked the car in the small barn which was his garage and workshop and walked through a connecting door to the large barn, climbed to the hay loft he looked out through the holes in the old stone wall that passed for windows in this ancient structure. He could see down the valley from there. On an old stone shelf alcove carved into the wall he had a powerful set of binoculars. Carefully, he scanned the various places he had scoped out long ago as possible locations for observers and hostiles. You could not use such places as a guide for snipers – professional ones would make themselves invisible and would be impossible to detect in this sort of mixed woodland, farm and hedgerow landscape. But thugs with scoped rifles and observers preparing to do him harm would choose particular sites for the job. He had spent the first few months identifying them all and then another year adding to the list. Shame he had stopped doing his daily check up on these sites.
On the third sweep around the possibles he caught sight of what looked like the Rangerover as it drove along the valley in the opposite direction to the one it had taken out of town. Either they were doing a loop or they were surveying the place methodically, back and forth, criss-crossing the area. He watched as the vehicle slowed and turned into the sheltered lay-by he had earmarked as the most obvious stopping place. It was half way up the side of the valley, taking advantage of an old, tight bend in the road that was left there after they straightened and widened it. Much of it was hidden from the road by trees yet it held a commanding viewpoint over his property. If he had known about the place he would not have bought the property. But then, again, such an obvious place had its advantages. It was also easily observed from the barn and could be reached (unseen) by foot if you knew what you were doing.
George watched as the two oversized men rolled out of the car as if it was a mini. They stretched and casually strolled to the small wall by the edge of the lay-by. There was a steep drop from the old road down to the rocky river below and the trees were thin enough here, as a result of this, to open up the view down to George. The two men seemed to lean awkwardly against the wall which made George scoff. They were too tall to make that look even a little bit casual. They were casing his home and were leaning their arms on the wall so they would not accidentally point as they talked. They knew what they were doing and had obviously worked out that if they could see so clearly, they could also be clearly seen.
It was only ten in the morning and already it was too late to do anything much. It was obvious that they were coming for him soon.
He had to have a game plan – and fast!
Of course, he could ambush them when they arrived on his land. He had worked out a number of scenarios to do that.
Perhaps he could sneak up on them and drop them at the lay by? If they decided to set up camp there, or at any of the other sites, come to think of it, he might just give it a try.
Or he could lure them somewhere and ambush them. He had one possible scenario that might work if that was what was required.
He pulled up one of the old bar stools he had placed there last year and rested his feet as he quietly observed them. One was in his early thirties, blond cropped hair, very square head with difficult to distinguish features, his face was a bit like a boxer’s from here. Nothing fine or petite about even his face. The other had darker hair which looked like it was thicker and slicked back from his face. He was large but it looked like he had worked at getting a larger, fuller figure. Perhaps a chiselled face but a body pumped up with something more than just exercise, perhaps. Who was the senior member of the party? George was betting on the darker haired one but was not sure why. Perhaps there was some body language he was reading sub-consciously.
After another ten minutes or so the double act returned to their car and headed off up the road away from George’s property.
“They’ll be back!” he said.
He trotted back down and fished out the shotgun he kept hidden in the workshop and checked through the property carefully. He should have done this when he first arrived, which worried him a bit (“Am I going soft?” he wondered) but he was glad that he had seen the goons properly and had been able to assess the threat they presented. After satisfying himself that the property was clear and unsullied, he put his cakes in the fridge, his bread in the bin and settled down to checking his intruder alarm systems.
He had six carefully placed cameras covering the perimeter of the property and two more on obscure access points. There were two radio controlled cameras set up along the road leading either side of his turn-off and another two on the drive. He had not checked the batteries in the remotes for some time, but he had not turned them on either. He sent a signal to each one and they responded with clear images forming in their allotted squares on his large format screen. A system check told him the batteries were OK for the moment but he would need to change them by tomorrow if he ran them on a steady basis from now.
He set the system working at what the software called “Maximum Alert” and went to the kitchen for some coffee.
Every time a vehicle drove past the cameras on the road the system beeped and he looked into the study to see what sort of car it was. By lunch time the goons had driven past his drive three times.
Lunch was a simple affair – some cheeses and cold meats, bread, butter and fresh fruit juice. He sat eating while watching the little images on the screen. At one o clock the car passed again and he took his gun and fresh coffee up to the barn where he sat on the stool and surveyed the valley again. The two thugs were now in what he called the “woodland drive observation spot” which was easy to drive to but gave the observers better cover for their car and themselves. He had driven there on a number of occasions and believed that it was a good spot except when the hunting season was on – not that these guys would understand that. So now he knew that they were serious and were planning their moves carefully. Now he knew he would have to act quickly before they started calling the shots.
This was his territory – he should be able to do something!
Of course, he could get to that spot, too. And because of its position he could empty his shotgun into them and pile them in the back of their car, drive it even deeper into the forest and leave them. Perhaps if he did that and left the car doors open there would not be much of them left when they were eventually found....
It all seemed too messy. He knew the best place to dump them and he even had a half baked plan to get them there, too.
He sat ‘till almost three watching them and thinking about it. He was worried that the cat was already out of the bag. If they were on contract to a particular person they would probably have called him by now to say they had found Georgie-boy and were about to do the dirty deed. But, of course, they had not seen George in the flesh yet, so perhaps they would wait to get a proper confirmation first. Were they there to observe the house and catch a glimpse of him first?
George reckoned that they had shown his picture to a couple of people and that was why they were there. They must be pretty certain that their quarry is currently nestling cosily in the pretty little cottage next to the barn. They would spend the day working out the best possible scenario and then attack him – probably at some point during the night.
All this indecision was winding George up. He was beginning to sweat a little and his adrenalin level was gradually rising. He needed to act, he could not risk waiting until they dropped in on him.
He made his mind up and headed for the small barn. There, he put his shotgun, hunting rifle and some ammunition in the car. Plan A would be to get close and finish them ASAP and plan B would be to lure them to his favoured spot. Plan A or Plan B.... he ran back into the other barn and climbed to his observation spot. One last look then action time!
He got there just in time to see them move back to their 4 by 4 and climb in. Looks like plan B might be the one to go for. If they were going to hit him tonight they would be looking for some food and rations. The most logical place would be the Intermarche on the other side of town. They did not seem shy about driving past his place so the most likely route they would take would be straight into town past him then out the other side following the signs saying “Intermarche 5 minutes straight on” and the like.
He rushed to the car and drove it to the end of the drive and waited. When he saw the car coming down the hill towards him he put on his indicator showing that he was going to turn in the opposite direction to them and then, as they passed he made certain that they could see his face clearly. He looked straight at them as if he was just casually waiting for them to pass so he could carry on with his daily chores. He could see them clocking him and felt sure he had them hooked. So he drove off immediately they were passed him and saw the big car’s brake lights come on bright and hard. By the time he was at the top of the hill and turning along the ridge they were doing a quick three point turn. “Good,” he thought, “they have taken the bait. Let’s see if this works.” Then he burst out laughing. “If it doesn’t work I’ll be dead...or tied to a chair wishing that I was already dead!”
As he drove steadily on he kept thinking of making a run for it but knew it was too late for that. He could see the big car following at a careful distance away.
His plan was quite simple, really. He had scoured the local landscape for this place and had spent hours, even days, checking it out. It was isolated, infrequently visited and, best of all, had a large, deep pool of water conveniently situated at its heart. He drove steadily for another ten minutes then turned off onto a single lane of tarmac – what the locals called a piste. After a few minute’s drive into more and more dense woodland he turned onto an unmetalled road which wound up a small, heavily wooded hill. At the top he drove onto a wide clearing. From this spot you could look across a landscape of rolling hills covered in mixed deciduous forest but the edge of the clearing also looked over a large, gaping hole. This had been a working quarry until about twenty years , he knew, but the road to the bottom was now blocked off and the path was so overgrown it was not fun to walk along. George knew this because he had checked out the land below. Up here was a spot where hunters parked their cars because this whole area was great for hunting. The local “joke” was that sometimes poachers disappear here because when they drive up at night to do a bit of illegal hunting they sometimes end up driving off the edge of the cliff.
The cautionary tale had been an inspiration to George.
So he parked at the other side of the clearing, visible from the entrance but enough room for the other car to come in and block the exit. Then he quickly got out of the car, picked up his rifle and slung the shotgun over his shoulder and dashed into the woods. There was a path that took him just beyond the entrance. He then sat on a clump of stones behind a large bush and waited, listening to the 4 by 4 being inexpertly driven up the hill wondering why people drove cars they are incapable of controlling properly.
He heard the car stop half way up with its engine running and heard someone getting out of the car. So, they were not as stupid as he had hoped. One was going to come at him in the car while the other worked his way around to the other side of the clearing. They must have a detailed map of the area and the passenger had been checking out the place as they drove; smarter than the average heavies. George now worried that they might be ex-servicemen and rapidly ran through the options in his head.
The foot soldier would choose the path that swung around the side of the hill then basically emerged from the trees next to the path he had used from the car. From his memory of the map the path was clearly marked. He decided to wait until the car started up again before he returned along the path. Partly because he suspected that the foot soldier would signal to the car once he was in position and partly because the noise of the car would give him good sound cover which would allow him to move quite fast.
It took more than five minutes for the ambush to be set up. George heard the car engage gear and begin its slow climb and he trotted along the path keeping himself low and watching out for twigs and other dangers while also keeping an eye out for the thug ahead. He stopped just short of the clearing and watched the broad back of the dark haired man who was casually leaning against a tree watching George’s car.
The car stopped exactly where George had expected it to with the front half in the clearing and the back half still snuggled in the shadow of the path. The blond guy switched off the engine and stepped out of the vehicle. He casually stretched and George noted the holster under the jacket and had no doubt the other one had something similar under his smart leather jacket, too. He was also sure that they had the skills to use their weapons effectively, too.
As the blond slowly walked across the clearing he swept the place with a calm, almost amused stare, looking for any anomalies or signs of movement in the dense undergrowth. He walked all the way to the car and looked in, tried the handle and opened the door. He looked in the glove compartment and released the catch for the boot. He then opened the boot and had a quick shuffle through the debris he found there. After closing the boot, he strolled to the edge of the clearing and looked down at the large pool below. Several white swans were moving around down there and as he began to count them one disappeared below the shiny blue surface and two others bobbed back up, hardly causing a ripple on the smooth surface.
He turned and walked casually towards the other man who then emerged into the sunlight. They were going to decide what to do next but George was there to make that decision for them. Helpfully, the blond man turned his back to the woods as he pointed towards the cliff with the pool at its bottom and George shot them both in the back with his hunting rifle and, just to make sure, put another bullet in the back of each man’s head.
He was going to go through their pockets but decided not to do that. He was already shaking from the shock and horror of what he had just done and he just wanted to finish the job and get the hell out of there. So he trotted over to the Rangerover and, after putting on a pair of old driver’s gloves, he climbed in and drove the car to the edge of the cliff. He dragged the men to the car one at a time and then spent almost half an hour struggling to get them into the car. At first he had thought that he would place them in the two front seats but that was just impossible to do. The easiest thing was to open the tailgate and bundle them in there.
Drenched in sweat and aching with the effort and shaking with the horror of it all he closed the tail gate and went back to the driver’s position. After a minute’s debate with himself, he climbed in and reversed the car about four or five feet. Luckily, the car was an automatic and much simpler than he had expected. He experimented with the gears and brakes, putting the car into drive with the hand brake on made the thing whine but it stayed where it was so he dropped it back into park and before stepping out he wound down the windows using a central block of switches next to the driver. He took a deep breath then leant forwards and moved the gearshift into drive then he grabbed the hand brake and pushed it down.
The car suddenly surged forwards and nearly took him with it. He threw himself back and landed with a bump on the ground. He lay there and watched, transfixed, as the big car seemed to drive out into empty space then disappear. He was getting up when he heard a nasty crunching sound then a great splash and a large number of white swans appeared before him as he stepped to the edge. They were flapping and looked quite put out by the sudden appearance of the car. He stood and watched the car burp and gurgle air as it disappeared below the surface. Interestingly, the swans were already starting to head back to their watery home.
He was about to turn away when his ‘phone began ringing. The sudden shock of it made his heart jump and he shook violently as he struggled to get the thing out of his pocket. What if it had done that just a short time before, when he was standing in the woods biding his time?
He looked at the number and answered it. It was a London number he recognised. The chief superintendant who had handled his case and had arranged for his new identity and “safe” location. “Damn,“ George thought to himself. “Perhaps I should have ‘phoned him first.” But then, what would the Metropolitan police have done? The danger was too imminent for them to have done anything themselves and the local police were really not the answer either. He had done the right thing to handle it himself. So he was partly worried and keen to keep this incident quiet and partly angry at having been exposed to immediate danger like that.
“Hello, sir,” Said George, hoping he sounded quite calm,” What can I do for you?”
“Hello, Mr er, Philips. This is just a quick courtesy call. Just to let you know I have sent down two of my men to check out your current circumstances. It is always worth doing a security check from time to time, try out the locals and see how they react to inquisitive strangers and so forth. I’ve asked them not to disturb you and my initial report from them has been pretty good. Seems like you’ve settled in there pretty well.”
George watched the last of the swans as they landed back on the water.
“Hello? Are you there?”
“Yes, sorry, just distracted. Watching some swans swimming on a small lake.”
“How lovely. They said the area is quite attractive. Must say, I think they have enjoyed wandering around your patch but I didn’t want them causing you any upset. They’re quite harmless really, ha ha!”
“Well, er, thank you.” Answered George.
“OK, so as long as everything is fine with you I’ll give them another couple of days and then call them back.”
“Thank you for letting me know!” said George. “Good bye.” And then he switched off the phone and put it back in his pocket.
He counted seven swans swimming below him before he turned and walked back to his car.

Four Calling Birds

(OK, so this is not a story.... it is an accompaniment to a larger story I am writing at the moment. Alison and I walked from Walsingham to Santiago last year and I am still getting my head around the experience. This is one short reflection which touches on a much larger story. Hope you don’t mind!)

They were constantly being asked what it had been like to walk that far.
How do you begin to answer such a question? Each day had followed a similar routine, they had faced all sorts of road conditions and the weather had swung from one extreme to the other and back again as they had continued their journey.
After resisting the temptation to tell people that if they wanted to know, they should try it themselves, they sat down and tried to find a reasonable explanation that would do the trick.
What were the constants? What could it be reduced down to that would make sense?
One idea they had was to tell people about the way the landscape unfolded as they walked. The slow pace walkers enjoyed let them see things. In particular, there was the sky. They were constantly aware of the changes in the sky; the clouds took on momentous proportions at times and then the weather would change and everything would close down. You would be walking along a ridge, looking down across a wide valley and the sky would fill with grey clouds. You would watch as the rain moved across the landscape in squalls at first, then as a long wall heading for you. You would see the whole sky lower until what had been open and grand was now closed down and dark. Your world would shrink from the distant horizon to the edge of your hood or the brim of your hat.
Another way to think of it was the balance between the rituals of the day and the combination of uncertainty and limited expectations you experienced. Yes, you might have an idea of where you were going to stay that night, but even that knowledge could be limited. Places might be closed or full, they might be well equipped or barely habitable, they might be crowded or empty, there might be food available and sometimes there was nothing unless you had it with you.
So, your rituals became a constant in an unpredictable world... you focused on settling into your corner of the room/bunks; getting your clothes and yourself washed; you carried food with you and replenished it whenever possible; you dealt with your physical issues (mainly managing your feet and dealing with blisters, etc) and sorting out your kit; you kept a record of what you had done and you checked out the next day’s route along with places to stay; checked out the other pilgrims and updated your news.
This routine dealt with much more than just the immediate needs. You accepted the overcrowding and limited facilities, the lack of privacy or comfort and the associated effects of these (snoring through the night, people getting up an hour or two before anyone else); people messing about during the night; smells, noises, mess and inconsiderate behaviour; the simple fact that the closest thing to a comfortable seat was the bunk bed and wall you sat on or the park bench you had lunch on that day; lack of your own books, music and other comforts; almost no English language conversation beyond that between you and your partner; etc.. Much of this was just background to the routine and rituals you performed. It was the backdrop to the joy of the journey, the wonderful people and places and so on. It was not the stuff to dwell on and was hardly to be considered as difficult, never mind seen as hardships.
So each day was a new challenge with the unexpected always about to happen and with a guaranteed format to follow and an understanding that we could expect very little, so what we got was always enough.
But really, that didn’t seem to be enough to answer the question. It did not do the whole experience justice and made it sound harder than it was. In fact, it was continuously and relentlessly wonderful...
Listing why they did it, they discovered that the top of the list was crowded with things like, “because we wanted to do it”, “because we enjoy doing this sort of thing” “because we had the opportunity to do it” as well as other more esoteric things like, “because we felt called to or felt a need to do it” and “because we wanted to walk in solidarity with those who live their lives without a home and have no choice in the matter”.
They also compiled another list defining what they got out of it, which matched a lot of their reasons for doing it in the first place (so, they did it because they enjoy doing such things and they got a lot of enjoyment out of it.... no surprises then?). It also emphasised just how much they had enjoyed walking in each other’s company but that, in itself, does not describe what it was like.... This was all very reassuring but none was of it constituted an answer.
Then, one day, as they were walking along the Thames Path enjoying the feeling of taking that sort of journey again, even if it was only for a day, something occurred to them.
Part of that magical pattern that made up their way was punctuated by birdsong.
In the morning they recalled the echo of birdsong as it rang through the cobbled streets and across the urban landscapes they had walked. They would even hear it in the lulls between traffic sounds as they trudged down busy city roads and it would fill the hedgerows of country lanes and forests as they slipped out of small villages or packed their tent in some rural campsite. Birdsong from the common birds like the blackbird and thrush were their morning call and their companion as they began each day.
Then, during their days walking, the birds of the day kept pace with them. In the wide flat fields of Normandy, and even through Burgundy, the Berry, across les Landes and even on the steep slopes of the Navarre and across the high plains of Northern Spain they would hear the skylark as it skipped skyward to sing its wild, adrenalin filled song while flitting and hovering above the fields. That sound, carried in the wind, playing in variations across so many landscapes was as evocative of their walk as the morning songs.
Then, in the evening, as they dried their clothes and ate their early meals before settling for the night, there always seemed to be the sound of birds screaming and calling along the streets. From Northern France to Spain the birds like martins and swifts would emerge from their nests huddled under the eaves and shaded corners of barns to swoop and dive through the buildings and along the quiet lanes, catching their evening meals as they sang of the joy of being able to fly so fast and so wildly through human shaped landscapes.
The fourth sound was something that led to a little debate.
In Northern France, right through to Burgundy, the days were punctuated by the sounds of cuckoos calling from across rivers, valleys and fields. They were never closer and seemed to take pleasure in filling large empty spaces with their haunting, repetitive calls. Perhaps it was the change in seasons, rather than the location that brought about the silencing of their calls, but it was a sound that had not been heard in England and was their companion across the first half of France. Was this the other sound that would help to illustrate their experience?
If seasonality or location were not barriers then another candidate would be the nightingale who sang its incessantly virtuoso song in a tree above their tent one night in the Eure/Loire borders area in France. Or perhaps they should consider the wild and whacky sounds made by toads or frogs in the many ponds and rivers across France and Spain. At times they were more like gargled screams and in other places like mad whoops, but they were there like odd question-marks scattered across much of their walk. Not birdsong, admittedly, but there all the same.
Then, as they passed under one of the many bridges along the river on their walk, they heard a familiar sound. Pigeons were cooing and scuffling in the crowded shadows above their heads and they looked at each other and nodded in agreement.
From the start in the Norfolk countryside to the primitive, misty villages of Galicia there were pigeons. Whether it was the wild and throaty call of the ones in the woods or the feral, urban murmurs of their ragged cousins perched on gothic church facades and under thatch on half timbered farm houses, it was a sound that stayed with them all the way.
So now, when asked what it was like, they had an answer to accompany the many stories and commentaries.
Along with the landscape and the skies, keeping them company in every language, from morning ‘till the coming of the next day, through the ups and downs of social and culinary experience, between the discomfort and unexpected luxury they remembered birdsong, like brightly coloured threads traced across the tapestry of their journey. Four birds to encounter as they started out, walked through the day and rested in the evening.
Four birds calling to them across the continent, keeping pace with them and adding familiarity to the paths and places as they went. Four common birds for a simple pilgrimage – isn’t that enough?

Five gold rings

(Although I love science fiction I tend not to write much of it but I could not resist this. It started with the idea of being an open book and went on from there...)

They were sitting in a little bar in the space station waiting for their connecting flights. George was a Xenobiologist waiting for his connection back to earth and Maria, an old colleague, was waiting for the ship out to a new system that had just a bunch of letters and numbers defining it – the authorities were getting a bit edgy about giving out info on new habitable or exotic systems these days. There were too many freeloaders, pirates and voyeurs around and not enough virgin systems.
Maria was quizzing George on the places he had been and what he had discovered. Her favourite story from him so far was based on a massive habitable planet she had vaguely heard of. She wanted to know more about that and he promised to give her a summary of his findings and some video before they parted.
What she had been excited about was the potential for intelligent life and he had outlined just such potential.
“All life relies to some greater or lesser extent on its environment to ensure that intelligence develops and flourishes. You would think that language and the ability to record and share information would guarantee growth in development but this place proved that environment can play a huge role.”
“What we found were huge landmasses like great prairies but stretching right across the planet. Enough water for abundant life, lakes, rivers and so on but the ecosystem was dominated by a massive land creature that could grow to tens of kilometers across. They moved slowly across the landscape living for centuries, occasionally mating and, although we do not know the whole lifecycle, we know that they dominated the land in at least five different stages before the occasional one developed into this great behemoth.
“Ironically, these are not the creatures we grew interested in and became excited about. It was, in effect, the equivalent of fleas living on these creatures backs that caught us most. These life forms appeared, at first, to be very insectoid in nature. They have six legs and were dependent on the land-creatures for everything. Of course, when you are not more than 70 cms high and the creature you live on is about a kilometre high and presents you with a sheer cliff of shiny shell between its back and the ground you tend to stay on top. It appears that the gene pool is mixed when two or more land creatures join together to either mate or socialise. This only happens every few decades at best.”
“So these highly intelligent creatures live on the animals’ backs and the animals wander at random across the face of the planet. They are not seasonal creatures, so they do not migrate to the warm or the cold regions in any sort of regular pattern, they do not tend to travel in a particular direction and may drift for months in one steady direction then change or constantly waiver and move around at will.”
Why am I telling you this? Well consider the poor creatures on their backs. How may an intelligent being successfully make any order out of such chaos? Does the sun rise in the east and set in the west? Do the weather patterns have any pattern to them? What sort of long term vision can you have? What about the stars? There are hardly any mountains or landmarks... How easy is it to develop your rational picture of the world or bring order to it? How can you share this knowledge with those from the backs of other creatures? “
“Don’t get me wrong, they have tools, they mine the creatures for much of their nourishment and use the variety of other things that make up the beast’s back and even farm the flora and fauna that have adapted to the beast’s back. But it is limited and the results are a sort of developmental dead end – at least for now.”
“And what about this other being? Do you prefer it because it is slightly more humanoid in appearance or because it has more potential?” asked Maria as they sipped their third drinks.
“Well, I think I just like the poetic sense of them; they are just such wonderful beings to study. I just feel that their whole existence, although highly developed and sophisticated, is too fragile to be exposed to human nature. The thought sends shivers of fear down my spine.”
“We were in this fantastic system and, even although none of us were superstitious, it all just looked so good we knew we were onto a winner. I mean, the main, inhabited planet was so beautiful with its red, green and blue surface and the five gold rings turning around it! We were mainly studying another being on a neighbouring planet, one that seems to live and operate at more than twice our speed, by the way. The things we will learn from them will be extremely useful – even their experience of time and space will be extremely valuable, once we are able to contact and converse with them successfully. So, while I left behind some of the guys working on a sort of virtual reality based comms system we went as a team to check out the next planet.”
“All the reports were of a slower, more subtle being with a reasonably well developed society, some rudimentary social and civilised trappings and, what we would call, high level optomisational potential. The usual blurb indicating they could develop into a competing system eventually. We couldn’t wait to see what they were really like.”
“What we found was an amazing being with a complex life cycle and a truly ancient culture. Nothing suggested to me that they would be interested in developing further. I know that sounds arrogant and backward, possibly even containing culturally imperial overtones. No, I am not trying to impose some sort of black mark on their abilities or even suggest that they are incapable of going further. I just watched them, fell in love with them and could not see what their motivations for change would be if we did not go in there, interfere and destroy their current culture and well being.”
Maria was desperate to know why he felt that way. What made them so special.
“Oddly,” George began again, “it was their physical being that appeared to me to be their grace and potential downfall. Let me describe them. I will show you images later once you have heard my story.”
They live on a planet which has a year about half again longer than us and they tend to take about twenty years to reach puberty. After as much as another fifteen years they become mature adults and it can be another five to ten years before they bond and mate. They are roughly humanoid in shape but are closer to two and a half metres high, quite thin but robustly built with long heads that are wider at the bottom than at the top, they have three eyes, two for stereovision and one for close up, two ears roughly as we have and hardly any nose with self closing nostrils, and their limbs appear quite standard although they are long and have four, not five, digits including the opposing one.”
“They are quite colourfully skinned and, although they wear a small amount of clothing this is on their limbs, about the lower torso (yes, they have genitals that initially look quite odd and frightening but function similar to ours) and they have been known to wear various forms of head gear and decorations that are similar to jewellery. Their oddest feature by far is their torso; their upper torso to be specific.”
“Looking at them face on their body, roughly from shoulders to waist, is a sort of eighty centimetre wide, one metre tall rectangle of skin concave in shape and filled with what look like complex scars, tattoos and other markings. They look manufactured but naturally occur. To your right (their left) you will see a long straight ridge of what looks like bone but is, much like a rhino horn, made of hair. On the other side of the torso you will note a whole load of these ridges. They get more of them as they grow old – one for every year of their life, as far as we can make out.”
“We witnessed how they go from one side to the other too. At a certain point in the year they just start scratching and tugging at their chests and gradually the skin begins to detach. After a few days it comes completely loose and then they tug at the ridge until they manage to stretch the skin across the front of their torso leaving this great flap. What we saw next amazed us all. Once the ridge was in its new place on the other side of the torso the creature simply tucked the flap in between the end two ridges – the original ridge on their right and the new ridge they have just pulled over from the left.”
“That, in itself would be amazing but knowing that does not tell you enough.”
Pausing for effect, George swills down his drink and waves to the waiter for another for each of them.
“What do you think they do when they meet strangers or get together for special events, or when two decide to mate for life? They open themselves up to each other... literally! Yes, each being contains a complete book of its life as part of it. You can read them like books and as such. Each flap of skin between the ridges is a record of one year of their life and can be read by them like we would a set of personal files. As a result, they are the most honest creatures you would ever meet. Their lives, as humans often say but seldom mean literally, are open books.
“What’s more, violence is abhorrent to them. Imagine doing something that would risk destroying your life, your being, so totally. You see, not only are they open books, all their lives. When they die the book of their life is removed, the last year, or what is left of it becomes final page and the back skin becomes the cover of the book, and the whole thing is stored in the family library. The whole history of their world is written in and tied up in their books.”
“Wow,” said Maria in awe. “I would love to see them. Imagine studying them, how fascinating!”
“Which sums up my point exactly. We need to build a wall around them and protect them from us. Our curiosity and avarice, our desire to accumulate, collect and dissect would destroy them even if our culture and other aspects of our nature did not!”
Maria still looked wistfully at George. “A planet with five gold rings, you say?”
“Damn, me and my big mouth! Please Maria. Promise me, forget what I just said. Please, for pity sake, put it out of your mind!”

Ten Drummers Drumming

(I had lots of ideas for the drummers drumming but, when I starting writing this story of Mr Downing’s life it seemed the only way to use the drums – hope you think so too.)

Nobody really knew him.
He was a quiet man, a regular church goer who kept himself to himself.
A cliché of a widower whose family had all moved away.
He had one son in Australia who had three children but Mr Robert Downham had never seen any of his grandchildren in the flesh. It was a difficult fact for a loving son to have to face that his father was frightened of flying and could not come to visit them. Flying the whole family to England was too great an expense for the son. So, they kept in contact through letters and by telephone. The Australian family did most of the talking and writing.
Robert had not missed the irony in the fact that his sister, who lived in a remote village in France, had married a French airman. They had met and married a long time ago, in the sixties. The Frenchman, a Mr Chassain, had been almost twenty years older than her – and they had settled in France. She was now an odd, old lady living on a widow’s pension in a tiny little cottage overlooking the Creuse river. Apart from Christmas cards, they had enjoyed no contact for years.
His daily routine had seemed unremarkable to say the least. He was an early riser and would be seen walking down to church for early morning Mass, regardless of the weather. On his return, he would buy a paper and no doubt read it with his breakfast. He was of the old school; a Catholic who did not eat before taking Communion. But he had not been one of those people who hankered back to the “old days before Vatican II”, in fact in most ways, he seemed to be someone who liked the modern church. On Sundays he usually attended the liveliest Mass with lots of modern music and loads of families. But he always seemed a little remote.
During the week he would take a stroll to the pub for a pint, say hello to the person behind the bar and sit quietly in a corner reading his book for half an hour or so. He was so regular that the place he tended to sit in was unofficially “Bob’s seat” but he never minded if it was occupied and never realised that if anyone settled in that seat prior to twelve o clock a member of staff would often politely ask them to move.
The people in the local shops, library and doctor’s surgery all knew who he was and said hello. Neighbours were also happy to have him live nearby as he was quiet, polite and friendly without ever being a cause for concern.
Once a week he would travel on the bus to the cemetery where he would have a silent chat at his late wife’s grave side. Quietly, he would tell her all that had happened that week and find comfort in being connected with her in the peace of the moment. He still missed her and often wondered at the way cancer had so rapidly snatched her from him.
If you had been privileged to see the inside of his house you might have been surprised by the wide range of music CD’s he owned. He had been a keen musician for much of his life but arthritis and a deep shyness had combined to ensure that he could not practice anymore and that he would not share this enthusiasm with any other person. But it still gave him enormous pleasure to explore the rich world of music in the privacy of his own home.
Robert had a modest income but he spent carefully and was gradually saving up to pay for his son’s family to come over to visit him. It was one of the things that preoccupied his mind in quieter moments during his day.
Then, one Tuesday, while sitting reading Hemingway’s “Islands in the Stream” by a crackling fire in the pub with still half a pint of Bombardier in the pint glass he let out a loud sigh and never took another breath.
It took the barmaid a couple of minutes to realise what had happened. She was serving a customer and heard Bob sigh. She had even looked over towards him and had noticed a strange, serene look on his face but it was not until after serving another customer that it occurred to her that the same expression was still there and that he had not moved for some time.
When they started to sort out his affairs some interesting things began to emerge.
For a start, Robert had saved up enough for his son’s family to come over and they arrived well in time for the funeral.
The son, whose name was also Robert, but everyone called him Bobby, took over the arrangements and spent some time in conversation with the parish priest.
It turned out that his father had been quietly instrumental in getting all sorts of things done within the parish and, indeed, had been a quiet friend and supporter of many parishioners. The priest was unusually upset at Robert’s death. Bobby had not expected his father to be quite so popular with the priest and was still taking in the details when the funeral took place.
So, the quiet affair that Bobby had travelled across the world to share in turned out to be less quiet than expected.
To be fair, it was not just Bobby and the priest who were surprised.
As the crowd gathered in church to mourn Robert’s death and celebrate his life they discovered that he had not just touched their life in some quiet but significant way. He had touched so many people’s lives they could not get over it. One woman turned to her neighbour in the pew and discovered that Robert had helped both of them financially when their lives had seemed to be spiralling down into disaster. A young man discovered that he had been given the same sort of support and advice from Robert as his neighbour, despite the fact that the other man was almost twenty years his senior. So, Robert had been quietly helping people for a very long time. It just seemed like no one had been around to join the dots. Everyone had believed that they had been the only one; the only person that old Robert had helped.
Another thing that surprised them was the choice of the music and the service Robert had requested for his funeral. He had even put aside money for the occasion. In the choir loft there was a gospel choir who lifted the roof with their jubilant voices and the youth band played some very modern music from the front of the church close to his coffin. They thought it a little bit odd but were glad of the bequest in Robert’s will that was going to pay for a new sound mixer for them.
And then, there was the reception after the funeral which was going to be an international food feast! Who would have thought that he even knew the dishes and the people who had gladly agreed to make them but, of course, that was Robert for you.
But the really amazing thing; the one thing that Robert had stipulated as a must; the only thing that his will said must happen, even if it ended up using all of the money he had left, was his final send off from the church.
At the end of the service, as the pall bearers came to take up the coffin and as they carried it out of the church, Robert had paid for ten African drummers to play a particular piece... as close to the original as possible (he had specified the CD and track from his collection).
The drummers lined up as the pall bearers began to walk towards the coffin then they began to drum. Ten drummers beating out a complex and growing rhythm that caught everyone’s hearts. It was so powerful it lifted them up, gave them a new perspective on his life and a new hope in theirs that they would be able to take away with them. A dance of life beaten out on tight skins. A dance of joy celebrating Robert’s life that would send him off on a new adventure.
The common view had always been that no one knew Robert Downham.
After his death, everyone wished that they had done more to celebrate his life before he died.
“That,” the priest said, “is a feeling that I encounter a lot at funerals.”
Boom Boom

Nine Maids a Milking

(please expect more children's stories! Fun to write and an opportunity to be as silly as ever... well silly without being judged for it, perhaps!)


Mary lived on a dairy farm. Her dad looked after the cows and Mary and mum would milk them. She knew every cow by name and they all knew her.
She would pick up her stool and walk with her mum to the barn and say, “Hello Daisy.” And Daisy would flick her tail and say, “Moo!”
She would say, “Hello Buttercup.” And Buttercup would chew some hay then say “Moo!”
She would say, “Hello Tulip.” And Tulip would blink her big eyes and say, “Moo!”
She would say, “Hello Clover.” And Clover would twitch her ears and say, “Moo!”
Finally she would say, “Hello Marigold.” And Marigold would nod her head and say, “Moo!”
Five beautiful black and white cows to milk each day and then mum and dad would deliver the milk when Mary was at school.
But the village was growing, people were building new houses and the new folks said the milk was too expensive and any way, it was not like the super market milk. They asked for semi-skimmed and wanted it to be delivered before breakfast.
Dad said that they didn’t make enough milk to sell to the supermarkets and their milk was too good to be skimmed or semi-skimmed. “You can’t do that to my milk! Oh no you can’t.”
They only had enough room on the farm for five cows and that was that. If they couldn’t make a living with the farm they would have to stop and get office jobs. They would have to sell the cows.
So one Sunday afternoon, as Mary was walking through the woods near the farm thinking about the problem she stopped and let out a big sigh.
“What shall we do?” She said to herself.
“About what?” came a small, snappy voice.
“That’s funny,” She said, “I talk to myself a lot but I have never had any replies!”
“Don’t be silly,” said the voice, “you were talking to me.”
Mary looked down and saw a little pixie standing on a large stone. He looked crossly at her and said, “Well? Now that you’ve tricked me into speaking to you I will have to grant you a wish. Only one, mind you! You are not allowed to be greedy!”
“Wow!” Mary shouted, “How exciting! A real wish?”
“Of course,” grumbled the pixie who did not seem as keen on the idea as Mary was.
“No tricks?”
“No tricks, but you have to wish now. You cannot wait!”
Mary thought hard, she thought even harder, then she thought until she felt herself beginning to pop and realised she had been holding her breath.
“Phew! OK, I know what I want to wish for.!”
Alright, tell me.”
“Well, we have five cows and we milk them every day but they don’t produce enough, the milk is not the sort the people in the village want and they want to buy it at supermarket prices!”
“So what is your wish?”
“I want two cows to make skimmed, two to do semi-skimmed and one to make real milk and I want them to make lots and lots more milk than they do at the moment!”
“Hmm,” said the pixie, “that seems like a lot more than one wish to me.”
“No, it is only one wish but as it has to be done to a herd of cows it just seems like more.”
“OK.” Said the Pixie, “Inky binky tiddly winky, alakazam kazoo, all you’ve said in this long (but single) wish, it will soon come true.” Then he turned around three times and disappeared.
In the morning Mary got up and helped her mother milk the cows as usual.
“That’s funny,” said her mum, “Daisy’s milk is different.”
“That’s because Daisy and Marigold are giving us skimmed milk. Buttercup and Tulip will give us semi-skimmed and Clover will give us the best milk of all.”
“I know you told us that yesterday, Mary, but I never thought it would really happen!”
That day, they milked and milked, they filled every bottle and bowl, cup and tub, bath and jar and it still seemed to flow without a stop.
Dad said, we are going to need more help with this, so he got on the ‘phone and asked the Job Centre for milk maids. Then he spoke to the supermarket and agreed a price for the skimmed and semi-skimmed and even for his finest milk, too.
It was sad for mum and Mary when they agreed they should leave it up to the milk maids from now on. But it was exciting, too. And all through the day and all through the night as many as nine milk maids could be seen busy milking in a row.
Two milked Daisy and two milked Marigold and the skimmed milk never tasted so good.
Two milked Buttercup and two milked Tulip and the semi-skimmed shimmered in the light.
But only one was needed to milk lovely Clover as she produced only the finest milk, and the best milk always took longer to do.
One breakfast time, as mum and dad watched the morning milkmaids take over from the night shift ladies, Mary said, “Wishes are amazing, aren’t they?”
“Yes Mary, that is true.” said dad. “But wouldn’t it have been easier to wish for a bucket or a hose pipe that was always full of milk?”
“Yes, but then we would have sold our cows and we would not have been dairy farmers anymore!” replied Mary.
Which was true.

Three French Hens

(Sorry, I couldn't resist this. Yes, a proper who dunnit, this time. What has always fascinated me is how the detective destroys the reputation of everybody else before he gets to the real murderer. Class war under the guise of detection, n'est pas?)


The great French detective had asked them all to be in the library at eleven. The large windows looking out over the grounds let in great shafts of golden light as the morning sun climbed towards the hottest part of the day but, in the room, the dark leather and walls of old books seemed to sooth and cool. They absorbed the heat of the day as well as any extraneous noises.
Small in stature, the man still had considerable presence as he strutted around the room.
“We are here this morning to answer one question, and one question only. Was the death of Lady Walsingham a tragic accident or a terrible crime; indeed was it a stark manifestation of evil dressed in the clothes of an innocent and tragic misfortune?”
He turned and surveyed the room.
“I must tell you now. I know the answer and to show you the truth I must explain the why and the how.”
“You, Miss Barnes had every reason to want to harm your oldest and dearest friend.”
The young woman gasped and began to stand up but he raised his hand and she retreated to her seat as if he had gently pushed her back. “She had stolen your only love,” he pointed to the young man standing by the Adam fireplace. Long and languid, he seemed to show no sign of interest as he smoked one of his Turkish cigarettes. “Or so it seemed. But of course, Mr Hadley here had no intention of ever marrying Lady Walsingham.”
“Steady on there!” Retorted the young man, suddenly alert and annoyed. “Ah, you show surprise. You feign annoyance but we both know that when you were in the Congo last year you were married to a certain Miss Bingham who is now masquerading as the Lady’s Maid to the late Lady Walsingham. A marriage which you kept secret but could not conceal from me!. I saw the note, did I not? It did not, as you say, fall out of her Ladyship’s purse but was something that Miss Bingham has been carrying around and she has read it on more than one occasion. And, indeed,” The detective, drawing the folded note from his pocket gracefully swepped it under his nose to take a theatrical sniff at it, “the perfume it is gently infused with is not of her Ladyship’s blend but of this young woman’s here.” He dramatically pointed the paper at the pretty blond girl standing in the corner in formal maid’s wear. As she fainted the detective turned back to the room.
“But this is all just a smoke screen because, as we all know, Lady Walsingham had other problems. Didn’t she, Sir Harry?” The old man with the large handlebar moustaches who had been sitting quietly in the largest, darkest, deepest armchair in the room moved his head into the golden light of the morning and looked at the detective with an expression so full of hate it would have wilted the very roses in the vase across the room. But the detective never even flinched, “You were so heavily in debt that you had resorted to emotional and even physical extortion to try to get your niece to give you the money. She lived in mortal fear of you yet she would not yield – why was that? Was it because she had grown strong as a result of her recent relationship with Mr Hadley? Or was the real reason that her new butler, Mr Thriplow, was now giving her extra support?”
He turned to the statuesque man in his early thirties who, while looking every inch the perfect butler, exuded a confidence and arrogance that only the best public schools and breeding could endow.
“I ask you, would a butler... even the very best butler, know the members of the top table at Peterhouse in 1928, or, indeed, know the nickname of the English master at Eton who was a champion oarsman before the war? No, these little things told me more than you might expect and, when I noticed his small collection of first editions in the little book case by his bed yesterday, I knew they were not the modest collection of an amateur enthusiast on a butler’s income but some prized items from one of the most distinguished collections in the country. You can take off that ridiculous wig and reveal yourself, Sir Wandsworthy. Your discretion and lifelong desire for quiet and modesty aside, you are a superb athlete and swordsman. You came here to protect your only true love but she slipped through your fingers like the sand. Your enemy was not using muscles but the brain, so you failed. I am so sorry.”
The butler’s rich, glossy black hair came off to reveal a head of fine golden hair and the features of the face softened as a more familiar looking man emerged from the disguise.
“But it was up to one person, and one person only, that we must look for the answer to this terrible injustice.”
“The Rt Hon Sir Larry Mouton; the only person who had, not only the motive, but the brain and the opportunity to murder the poor young woman.”
Sir Larry rose to his feet. Despite the time of day he had been sitting at the long table quaffing single malt, looking on as if none of this had anything to do with him.
“How dare you sir! I will have to thrown out of this country, you ... Frenchman, you.”
“Quite,” smiled the detective, “as you can see, he has no fear. He does not think that I, a mere foreigner could possibly work out his plot and follow the threads back to him. You see, it was Sir Larry that laced her Ladyship’s tea with just enough stimulant (was it from your personal supply of coke Sir Larry, yes?)... just enough, I say, to incite the paranoia and fear that lived so close under the surface.
He knew her so well, after spending so many summers here when they were younger. It was he who, in a jealous rage had planned each step along the way, enticing her into the old children’s house down by the lake. Those memories of childhood ambition, the plans to marry her and take ownership of all of this were dashed in that very place, were they not? It was there that she rejected you when you were both young teenagers and it was there that you planned to destroy her!”
“No! I still loved her!” cried the young man but the detective waved this away. “You escorted her, unseen by all in the house, while everyone thought you were in the drawing room, playing the piano. But we can see, if we look hard enough, the concealed gramophone that produced the music that gave you your alibi. With her ladyship becoming more agitated you introduced her to the little house and settled her in the small downstairs room, locking the front door while she was not looking then dropping the key in her purse. Then you quietly slipped out the back door, locking that too.”
The detective was becoming more indignant as he strutted back and forth reeling off each new step in the dark plot.
“You KNEW that she was pathologically terrified of birds. In particular, you KNEW that she feared the presence of even the smallest of hens. You had been there when, as a small child, she had discovered her dead, beloved nanny being pecked by these creatures, yet you revelled in the idea of using this against her, did you not!
Inside that house where safety and security should have been hers, she found herself confronted by three hens.... three highly trained hens, mark you, who eagerly sought to peck at her very dress... the one you had given her and encouraged her to wear that day.”
“This is not true!”
“Oh yes it is. It was unmistakable. The feathers I found in the house were all consistent with this. You see, I recognised them. They all belonged to that particular breed of hen that is so often used in the theatre and other places where animals are required to be trained. Only the best, most intelligent of creatures could be used for such a trick. And this was your downfall because I recognised them.”
“No!”
“But yes, you call me a damned Frenchman but you needed French hens for your plot, did you not. Only three of the finest French hens would do to induce such a sense of terror in her Ladyship’s mind that her poor heart would give out and she would die! This is the answer. This is the truth! See, even now you have one of their feathers in the turn up of your trousers. ”
“Damn you!” Cried Sir Larry. “Damn you all!”
The police had been waiting by the door and they quietly marched in to take custody of the now defeated Sir Larry as the rest of the demoralised group sat aghast.

TWO TURTLE DOVES

(No appologies for the romantic theme. It started off with an idea for a sort of who dunnit and ended up like this. Ho hum. A product of last year's snow.)


The snow fell all day and then all night and, when she woke up the next day, it was still falling.
She sat with the family waiting for it to stop, thinking of Henry and hoping that he would get there on time. All day she watched as the large fluffy flakes swirled, faltered then multiplied until a new blizzard began. The window was banking up with the stuff and even the cat had decided to stay indoors but still she held her hopes high.
At three o clock her mother said that the butcher boy from the village was telling everyone that the last train from London would be the four o clock- the snow was getting too heavy to clear and it was going to be a cold, white Christmas after all. And so, despite the pleading from her mother and sister, she pushed along the lane, the snow compressing in soft crunches as she moved through it until the lights of the station turned the white landscape into a honey coloured glow of hope.
The last train came and it was trudging out of the station in heavy shrugs when she looked down the darkening platform and saw him standing there, just as he had done earlier in the year, with his bags at his feet and his hands at his hips. His cap was quickly coating in the renewed flurries of snow as he looked quizzically at her as if to ask “What have you done? Why did you summon up this white mess during my leave?”
She hardly seemed touch the snow as she walked back with him to the house. The war was now far away, at least for this Christmas, and all her fears could be buried in the cold dark as she hugged his arm and listened to his voice.
At home it was strangely quiet. The tea seemed more reserved than before. The conversation was hard, but she understood as she saw the reluctance in his eyes. The trenches were not a subject for conversation. The hardships were bad for a junior officer like him but much worse for the men under his command and he was not one to pretend that his destiny and theirs was in some way separate. He cared for those who depended on him. He had even said that he truly loved his men and she loved him even more for that.
The silence of the snow was intense during that night. Tomorrow was Christmas and they would go to church before breakfast then settle in for a quiet day as she helped her mother prepare the Christmas meal. She had talked about the family Christmas so many times with Henry that she was convinced he knew the whole routine as well as she did herself but this was their first Christmas here and it all seemed to be filled with unnecessary tensions and difficulties. Her father seemed to be both proud of Henry’s achievements and cross with him, too.
In the church that morning the vicar had gone on and on about the sacrifice that “our young men” were making in the trenches and she had felt Henry stiffen at her side as he had done in the summer when he had last been with them. She had squeezed his hand and they had shared one of those silent moments, when everything around them had disappeared as they focussed just on each other. He had called such times as “telescope moments” because they seemed to cut the distances down to inches and distil minutes into seconds. She loved that sort of feeling and she knew he loved such moments too.
At home things seemed to get harder. Her mother appeared to harbour some secret feeling of resentment towards him; which made it difficult for her feel comfortable as she sat with Henry in the drawing room or when she announced that she was going to go out for a walk with him before the meal was served.
But she needed that time alone with him. She needed to be able to talk freely with him and the longer they stayed in the family home the harder it was to spend any time in private with him or to talk with him at all. It was this damnable war, she kept thinking. This war will be the end of us all. But she kept telling herself to shrug this sort of thinking off. It was going to end soon and if she let these feelings dominate her life she would never be able to keep any sort of sense of hope in her heart – she would collapse within herself before she had any chance of having a good life with Henry. And goodness knows, he deserved something much better than that.
On the path by the river she stood looking at the ragged ice hanging from the river bank and commented on the way the water seemed to flow across the stones in the middle of the river. The water was almost effervescent and appeared to dance across the rocks as if it was reluctant to touch them.
“The river wants to be somewhere else. It is too cold to be here and it wants to pass through as if it has not even touched the ground it has passed across.” She said, and he laughed.
“We have no choice,” He said, “we touch everything and everything touches us.”
She asked what he meant but he just shrugged. Pressing him again, he said, “Everything we see is changed by us and we are changed by it.”
She watched the water going by and imagined that her act of looking at it might change someone’s life further down the river, or, perhaps cause someone to change their life as they gazed into the water of an ocean a thousand miles away.
“How romantic!” She heard him say, then she slipped along the bank trying to catch up with him as he laughed along the way.
That night, as the afterglow of Christmas seemed to calm everyone, her sister turned to her and told her how much she loved her. She said, “No matter what happens, I will always be with you.” And it felt so sudden and final, despite the fact that they had just spent such a wonderful Christmas together.
What sort of premonition does this hold? She pondered the question as she prepared for bed and then sneaked downstairs to see if she could catch Henry before he went to bed.
She had expected he would spend a little time with her father as the two were fond of cigars and brandy or other spirits. Henry had come home in the summer talking about the merits of whisky with her father and she had been pleased to see her father experimenting with whisky as a result. But tonight she was listening out for that silent space that often opens up after an friendly but intense conversation.
She slipped into the kitchen and had just sat down at the table when she heard her father mounting the stairs.
She found Henry in the back room, where they tended to have their meals and where the large windows (now popularly called “French windows”) looked out over the garden.
The snow was no longer large and fluffy flakes. They were tiny flecks of ice drifting across the scene in a meteor shower of dazzling slow motion.
She watched as the sparkling dusting of ice coated everything, even the snow itself, in a light frosting of ice.
“You know I love you.” He said, and her heart felt a sudden release of pressure as she felt immensely good inside.
“Of course, you know I love you too.”
There was silence, then he said to her, “I worry about you.”
“You said this when you came here in the summer.”
“I know. It does not make it easier.”
She wanted to ask when he would be able to come back again but she felt that it was not a good idea.
Then, before going to bed she asked what he thought their future might be like. She wanted some reassurance. She was hoping for a simple answer, an affirmation of their future together, but his reply was vague and ambiguous. He told her that she could always rely on his love... but she would have to rely on her own strength to see her through.
She lay in bed seeing his face, watching her mother and father, feeling her sister’s resentment and her heart seemed to sink into nothingness.
In the morning, the sky from her window had such an intense pale blue that she felt that Henry’s eyes had been stripped of their colour and painted there, from the ground to the distant horizon. The trees were dramatic etchings cut in black lines edged with white and the landscape formed layers of white and dark across the valley beyond the village.
The table was set for breakfast; three places each with plates, cups cutlery and her favourite napkins. The boiled eggs were hidden in the thick towel, as always and the teapot was in its cosy. The fire was warming, too as her sister sat, holding some bread on the end of the long fork, toasting it against the fierce heat of the flames. Her mother came in from the kitchen and smiled at her.
“How are you this morning?” Her voice contained an uncertainty that was also reflected in her eyes.
“I’m fine.” Was all she could muster, but she felt that there was something empty, something hollow inside her.
She got up from the table and started walking to the stairs. By the time she was on the first step she was running. Her mother called something to her but she was already at the landing. She didn’t even knock on the door to Henry’s room. She just burst in, expecting to waken him up; hoping that he would be able to reassure her.
The room was empty.
The bed had been stripped and the bare pillows were stacked up on top of the folded quilt on the chair at the bottom of the bed. The small fire was empty and cold and the room felt abandoned. The small bedside table had a thin coating of dust and the window needed cleaning. Her quick breath form little clouds of condensation as her heart beat quickly. She sat down on the cold bed as her sister entered the room.
The two sat quietly on the bed looking out at that pale blue sky.
“We thought we had lost you.” Her sister said as she leant closer and gave her a hug.
“Did you know his eyes are the same colour as the sky?”
“Let’s go back down stairs, its cold in here.”
“We were going to spend the rest of our lives together.”
“You already feel cold. Come and get something warm to eat.”
“There were only three places for breakfast. I thought he had left during the night the this room is so empty.”
“I know.”
“So cold.”
“I know.”
“When they said he was missing, I felt that there was at least some hope. He couldn’t just leave me like that.”
She stood up with her sister and they walked towards the door.
“I don’t even have a photograph of him and I worry every day that I might begin to forget what he looks like.”
“His mother sent us a photograph last month but you refused to look at it.”
As they walked down the stairs her sister agreed to find Henry’s picture after breakfast. Then they would go for their traditional Boxing Day walk by the river – it had been such a long time since they had gone out together. As they sat quietly eating breakfast the bells began to ring in the church at the bottom of the lane and a cockerel began to crow in their neighbour’s garden.

A partridge in a pear tree

(Partridges are basically ground birds. They live in fields and hide in hedgerows and are not designed to land on things like branches. So a partridge in a pear tree is apparently an old expression for something that is both rare and deeply unlikely)

He was running down the alley dodging rubbish and hopping over odd lines of bricks, old steps and pipes like they were the practice obstacles you see professional footballers stepping over as they train.
But he was sweating in a way that none of these icons do on film and he was wearing the sort of grimace that forms a permanent mask on dead people...ones that have been gruesomely killed, that is. Of course, he was not trying to act out some silly fantasy by dashing full pelt through this dark and dangerous space.
He was simply running for his life.
He was running so fast that he felt that his feet were hardly touching the ground, which was partially good - because that meant that he was flying like the wind away from his attackers.... but it also made him feel like he was not pushing hard enough; he was not getting the full grip he needed to project himself out of their grasp.
“What the hell did I do to deserve this?” He kept asking himself as he hoped they were not calling out the cars and motorbikes, the outlying gangs and the Mothers’ Union to nab him. But he already knew why, really, and it was all a bit of a formality unless he got away now.. this minute.. totally away.
As he neared the end of the dark passageway he began to realise he would have to stop. The balance between them catching him from behind was now tipping in favour of the threat waiting beyond the dark, in the well lit road ahead. He knew the area intimately and was thinking about what might be waiting for him.
Had they been quick enough to get anything there before him? Could he risk it and just head across the road to the next dark space?
Or, if it was still clear, should he make for an alternative exit route?
He had been debating the issue as he leapt over shit filled bags and skidded through the feathers and slime left by rank take-aways and seedy massage parlours, condemned butchers and gypsy greengrocers selling home-made booze. He knew them all and was counting off the detritus as he danced through the dark. There were even doors he could have slipped through but alliances were less than feeble here when one worthless life was at stake.
Deciding to stop at the last minute he stepped on something more oil based than an Arab state and landed on his backside, gliding across the paving stones towards a parked car. His feet bumped hard against the solid rubber of the tyre and his elbows left two bloody streaks behind him before he hit the stop.
Luckily, he was very low.
The legs of two people to the left were supporting guys he didn’t like the look of and to his right there were at least three others heading his way so he did the only thing he could and rolled under the car he had just hit and crawled diagonally from the rear nearside to the front offside before scanning any further.
Across the road he could see activity. There was one parking space about three cars down ahead of him and a big bastard of a car was slowly turning into that. He watched as several gorillas climbed out and did their thing, spreading out to cover that side. Another vehicle just parked alongside the first and more of the same squeezed out of it like malevolent toothpaste ready to scoop him up and brush him out of the neat little grid he had rattled.
“Well, what the fuck!” he thought. “there is nothing else to do!”
So he began to crawl, pausing at the front of each vehicle he passed under to watch the foot traffic as it passed. The he would wiggle as fast as he could from the shelter of one machine to the next. Once he crawled under a car just as it started it’s engine. He froze for a micro second then began crawling as fast as he could. Every inch seemed to trickle by, he felt like he must be leaving slime behind as he went, he was the snail that was about to be crushed! He didn’t care about the scratches and bumps, or the glass and the crap he scrambled across. He had committed to going forward because he felt he could not go back – backwards was too slow and backwards meant being stranded with a great empty space in front waiting to be filled by his enemies. He HAD to go forward.
He heard the gear shift as he reached the space below the engine and he thought this was going to be it but he just kept on going. The car moved then stopped almost immediately. A voice came from somewhere above. No words could be distinguished but it was just an additional sound that seemed to cut through the almost deafening rumble and whine of the motor. He looked sideways and saw the polished shoes of some one he did not want to meet at the moment poised on the edge of the kerb. The engine clunked into neutral again and the noise dropped to something less than overwhelming in scale. He noticed with some amazement that the car above him had shifted a small but significant distance without him realising. It was now almost touching the car in front. The driver had obviously moved forward in preparation to reverse bringing its front out into the traffic flow, ready to accelerate away.
He had seconds to take advantage and began crawling again with increased intensity.
As his legs began to slide under the next vehicle he heard the whine of the car increase and he threw himself forward in a rapid and frenzied horizontal surge of panic and movement. He kept on going onto the next vehicle and the next one carried by the sheer momentum of fear and adrenalin. He even forgot to check the spaces between vehicles. But, after the second car had been passed and the third was about to end he stopped.
How many cars had he crawled under so far? And how many before the street ran out? Would they have people waiting at the very ends of the streets, too? What were they doing at the moment, anyway?
He decided to take a look so he crawled to the edge of the kerb and tried to look up and along the street back to where he had emerged from the alley way. There were too many legs and shoes and not enough bits of information to tell him what was going on. He crawled back a bit and looked along the street ahead but got nothing worth processing from that, too.
Crawling to the road side of the vehicle he could see much more but most of it consisted of traffic and parked cars on the other side of the street.
Then he saw two of his pursuers run across the road to talk to the gorillas he had seen getting out of the cars earlier. One of them pointed back to the alleyway and he saw them shaking their heads. He pointed in one direction, then the other and they shook their heads.
He watched and his emotions rolled up and down the scales, bungey jumping like crazy as the lead searcher seemed to run through the options.
He watched them being sent to both ends of the road. He saw others being sent to check in all the buildings. Then he saw the guy point to two of the bruisers. It looked like he was saying to them, “You two, start checking under the cars. Yes, under the cars. Come to think of it, you and you, too. You two work on this side towards the ends of the street and you two take the other side of the road.”
Back to crawling before he even watched them crossing to his side of the road. How long would they take to reach him? Damn, his exit was also being cut off any way!.
Then he stopped with a curse as he watched a pair of feet appear in front of him. He heard a noise and saw the shape of what looked like a suit case bump down onto the road and roll on two small wheels to the middle. Another noise as a catch was released and then the case disappeared. Quickly the feet disappeared.
He grabbed the moment. Crawling out of the front of the car he stood up, keeping his upper torso bent low as scanned the area around the car. Someone was just entering a doorway wearing the same shoes he had seen from below. The car in front was a large SUV with a massive boot. One suitcase sitting quietly in the middle of the space and some old bags, blankets and other stuff up against the back seats.
No time to think, he climbed into the car and proceeded to cover himself in the stuff. AT best, he thought, he won’t be noticed, and at the worst he could be held and arrested.... Any way, it seemed worth trying - what else was on offer?
He lay still and heard another case enter the boot and the boot close. The person packing the car had obviously been more intent on leaving than they had been in checking out the state and contents of their boot. With a sigh of deep relief, he heard the engine start, felt the car begin to move and finally felt the surge as the car accelerated into the traffic stream.
Now, all he had to do was wait for the car to stop, then escape without the driver noticing he had even been there.
Simple.
With nothing left to do and no ideas for escape in his head he turned to the reason why he was there in the first place.
How had he managed to get himself into this crazy situation?
With the gentle roll of the big car’s suspension lulling him he began to review the last couple of hours.
First there had been the party. A couple of hundred people heaving around the dance floor in eccentric snapshots as the lights flashed and the bass boomed out; drinks on two long tables and so abundant there were half drunk glasses everywhere; drugs on offer and sex in even the not so dark parts of the place; rank toilets full of everything unmentionable, including people; a beautiful girl in front of him dancing in the best sort of way – close and sexy, a happy, easy, hungry look in her eyes (or was it just what he was thinking) and he felt relaxed, keyed in, ready to make a good night of it.
Then three guysjust barge in, blocking her from him. He taps the smallest one in the middle on the shoulder in a not unfriendly manner. He doesn’t feel threatened and does not believe the move is a deliberate act; just some guys she knows bumping into her and crowding him out without thinking. He smiles as the guy turns towards him and clocks onto three things immediately.
Firstly, the small guy is not friendly. His face is dark with anger and aggression. Secondly, the guy does not like being interrupted and clearly is not used to being interrupted or, for that matter, touched. Thirdly, this little guy is not one of the lads, he is one of the local chiefs; he’s not someone you approach unless you have something to offer that he really wants... and even then, you go through his flunkies to offer it, you never approach him. He’s one of those older blokes with big bruisers watching out for him as young tarts hang on his every word.
Shit.
The fourth thing that rings like a bell or shouts at him like a fire alarm is that the girl is not co-operating with whatever the little guy is saying. Bad news for her, no doubt but the expression “collateral damage” has already started to flash at him in bright throbbing lights above the situation. He needs to excuse himself from the situation and leave the place fast.
The name of the chief suddenly enters his mind but he can’t remember if it is the guy’s street name which should never be uttered in front of him or if it is the name of respect. He usually knows such things but this is not the best of situations. Be begins to raise his hands in a sign of appeasement and realises he is still carrying the almost full bottle of beer in his hand. He sort of shrugs and tries to keep smiling in a non-threatening, and respectful while harmless way.
It is not working and he feels the prod of the gangster’s fingers poking at his chest as he says something. Despite the overwhelming noise the older guy does not even try to shout to make himself heard.
Thinking the best way to solve the problem is to turn and run, he shouts “sorry, mate!” then regrets the “mate” bit as he tries to turn away, still looking contrite and harmless.
A strong hand moves to his shoulder and redirects him back to the older guy “I’m sure his name is Charlie Diamonds... do I call him Mr Diamonds or is that a nickname? Damn!”
Old Charlie decides to shout at him this time and he makes sure he can hear at least some of what is said by presenting his ear to Mr D’s mouth. He heard something about “....bringing MY best little girl to a place like this........ more respect..... do about it!”
Trying his best to be heard while not sounding like he is screaming he apologises, explains he has just met her and would not have danced with HIS (Mr D’s) best girlfriend. He had no idea she was HIS and was very SORRY. No harm meant!”
Mr D just appears to get even more angry and shouts words that are washed away with the thumping beat. His two musclemen lean in to add emphasis to the words but all that comes to him is, “...I ...... sleep with my......... ...... you say?”
“Honest! I just met her. She’s a very lucky girl to have you as her lover. I’m truly sorry I offended you in any way.”
Mr D raises himself on his toes and rears back about a foot looking aghast. His face turns red and his two flunkies seem to switch into active/aggressive mode and the noisy dance floor seems to clear all around them just as the music stops with a thump.
“What did you say about me and my daughter?” Shouts Mr D and the whole place stops as he advances and aims a might blow to the head.
Circumstances could have been better. The blow could have landed but an instinctive jerk of the arm to fend off the blow sends an almost full bottle of beer smashing into the nose of Mr D and he drops to the ground like a stone.
The beer bottle drops too before a rapid exit between the two bruisers who cannot believe their eyes. As he exits the door of the disused factory he hears Mr D shouting, “GET HIM. GET HIM NOW!!!!”
And so the chase began.
As he ran through the alleys and streets, over empty parks and through people’s gardens he kept seeing flashes of the last few seconds in the party. Mr D’s growing anger, the amused look on the girl’s face which grew into open laughter, the shock on the faces of Mr D’s flunkies and the confused looks on those he passed on his way out.
Every bad, vaguely bad and slightly naughty person will be on the look out for him now. Every bored and stupid person, every hooker and addict, every dealer and pimp and probably half the police force, too.
He should have read the signs. He should have kept quiet, listened better, been more neutral and contrite. Four warning signs and you just blew it any way....
He was almost asleep with the heat from the car and its steady motion and level noise. Almost asleep when the ‘phone rang and he panicked thinking it was his until he realised that the guy in the car had a phone with the same ring tone as him.
“What do you mean you haven’t found him yet!” The voice was angry, spoken with a sort of heavily bunged up nasal tone to it and sounded just like Mr D’s.
“How many more men do you think you need? You know who he is, where he lives and he was on foot! Even fucking Noddy would have found him by now! Call me back in an hour to tell me you’ve found him – no ifs, no buts just do it!”
“Dad! It was obviously an accident. He never meant to hit you.”
“He broke my nose. My nose!”
“But you were going to hit him.”
“Look Charlene, we’ve talked about it. It doesn’t matter what you say. I run a business and no one can get away with what he did. Do you understand? No one.”
In the relative silence of the car two people sat in the front being cross with each other and one person lay in the back wondering who would come to his funeral. Then he wondered if they would give his body back to his mum to bury anyway. He was frightened to move but, at each slowing down of the car he peeled back some of his covers and checked out the tailgate. It looked like there was an interior handle but there were too many imponderables.
If he opened the door to make his getaway at a junction Mr D would notice straight away. A light would go on somewhere on the dash board, there might even be a warning noise telling the driver that a door was open and the interior lights may also go on at the same time. So, no silent slipping away unnoticed.
Then there was the problem of not knowing where he was. He could be in the middle of the suburbs, the middle of the countryside or somewhere else in the city. And what if Mr D had his two favourite body guards following in another car? Come to think of it, he had not looked into the car before getting in. They might be sitting in the back seat between himself and the Charlie/Charlene combo in the front.
Too much to worry about. Even the serendipity of the situation was too much for him. How had he managed to climb into Mr D’s own car? He had run for miles before scrambling sub-vehicle to the escape car. Did they have some sort of suicide magnet plugged into his brain? Was he actually going mad? How was he going to get out of this? And now his hip was hurting like hell. He had obviously damaged himself without realising it and was going to be disabled and helpless when they finally open up the tailgate and find him. What else could go wrong?
He was lying there feeling progressively worse when another two things happened at the same time. Perhaps, he thought, they were connected?
The first was the sudden slowing down and stopping of the car, along with a perfunctory “Shit” uttered from Mr D. The second was a slight shifting in his body which revealed that his hip had been resting on something very hard. A judicious fumbling of his left hand revealed the cause... a large wrench. Well, he thought, at least I have something to defend myself with.
“Must be a burst pipe or perhaps an accident.” He heard Mr D say.
“Look, someone is standing by the lights?” in the girls voice, then a door opened and he heard a third voice say, “Good evening Charlie. Out on our own, are we?”
“Fuck, Walter, what are you doing out here? We’ve not stumbled on one of your little jobs, have we? If so, just give us the room to turn around and we will get out of your way ASAP.” Mr D’s jollity sounded a bit strained but the two obviously new each other.
“No, my friend, you’re not causing me any bother. In fact, you’re just the man I want to see.”
After a brief utterance the other voice said, sharply,” keep your feet off the pedals. You don’t want us to mess up your nice new car, do we? Not with your darling daughter in the passenger seat.” The laugh was distinctly unpleasant. “In fact, let’s switch the engine off completely.” And the sound of the car died.
“What do you want?” Mr D’s voice.
“Oh, how about everything?”
“You’re crazy.”
“Well, that won’t be your concern in a little while so I shouldn’t get het up about it now.”
“Listen Walter. I’ll get out of the car now. Just let Charlene drive off and that will be the end of it, OK?”
The laughter was even more unpleasant now. “Sorry, old boy. No can do. She’ll just have to see how good she is at surviving once old papa is out of the way.”
“Look, I have accounts you will never be able to get at. Surely, there’s a price you’ll accept?”
“Mmmm. That sounds interesting. Perhaps you won’t rest quite so easily after all.”
Mr D’s “Shit!” was drowned with much louder laughter.
“I should have known when we couldn’t find the young bastard. He was one of yours. He was, wasn’t he? A neat little set up, I’ll give you that.”
“Hah, that’s the beauty of it, old boy. I don’t even know who he is! He is just a lucky occurrence, something that pushed the calendar forward by a few days. No matter. He is probably being reduced to a pulp by your boys as we speak – no chance for me to thank him or for you to take your revenge. Shall we vacate the banger, now?”
It occurred that now was a good time to also leave the car. With at least one door open and all the focus on the front of the vehicle now was the time to go. And, anyway, what would they do with Mr D’s corpse? Put it in the boot? Certainly time to go.
He pushed down the door handle quietly and tried his best to slip out of the narrowest of openings. In his hand swung the heavy wrench. He pushed the door back and kept as low as possible listening to the sounds of the two men.
“Keep her in the car!” came Walter’s voice.
With only the interior car light (he was convinced the tail gate was closed so he felt that Charlie’s door must still be open) and with the red glow from a small, portably road-works traffic light ahead, the visibility was limited. Thankfully, most of the last hour had been spent either under cover of darkness or in a light-free car. The crunch of footsteps was coming towards him but he feared that someone was also heading for Charlene’s side of the car. He almost slid under the car but thought better of it. Sneaking a peek down the driver’s side of the car he saw Charlie and Walter heading his way and another figure climbing into the driver’s seat. Scurrying back to the passenger side he saw the front door open then close and a voice from the driver’s side saying, “Sorry, lass. The boss does not want you to do anything. Just sit there and it might turn out alright in the end.”
He was sure he could hear her scoffing at that and he felt some affinity with her.
Charlie and Walter walked off at an angle from the back of the car and he decided to take a loop around the shadows then follow them. He listened as they walked.
“Let’s talk sense her, Walter. You’re going to overstretch yourself if you try to take over my patch. You should be doing a deal with me, not doing this!”
“Oh, I’ve done my deal already!”
“I heard you were talking to Jazz!”
“You should have taken more notice, then!”
“I did. I helped him with that deal on Hillside two weeks ago. That must have cost you a bomb!”
“Wonderful, isn’t it? That was part of our deal. We just let you cover part of the cost of your own downfall” The laughter again hid everyone’s footsteps. Then they stopped just as this exchange ended.
“Look, old boy. We have your daughter in the car and I have a couple of men at the end of this path waiting for me with a van and a car. You can either sit in the car with me or lie on the floor of the van with a bleeding leg. I won’t kill you either way now. Not until we’ve talked some more. But I will spend some quality time with your lovely daughter and well... you have other family. The possibilities are endless.”
At this comment Charlie made a lunge at Walter and the two scuffled briefly.
“Well well well. What will go POP when I pull this trigger, do you think? Is your fist fast enough? C’mon Charlie, you know what the score is.”
He could see the two figures separate just ahead of them. Both were so focussed on each other they had no idea he was there. So he hit Walter as hard as he could on the back of the head. This was probably a mistake that cost Walter his life, but he had no scale to measure his blow with. Too light and the gun would have been on him. Too light and he would have been one of three dead people.
He stood there and made a “Shhh” noise.
“Sorry,” he said. “I am the guy who was dancing with your daughter. It was all just an accident and I tried to get away by hiding in the boot of a car. I had no idea the car was yours!”
“Hah!” came the voice of Mr D. “Hah!” He watched as Mr D checked out the dark figure of Walter. It took a few minutes but when he stood up he was very close.
In a whisper he said, “Can you hear me, son?”
“Yes, I can hear you very clearly. What should we do next? Your daughter..”
“Shh. She will be OK for now. Do you have any other weapons on you?”
“No, just the wrench from your car. I..”
“Shh, OK, I don’t think Walter had many men in on this little venture. In fact, I doubt there is any one through there.” He pointed with his head towards the end of the path. “You see, he has the keys to a car in his pocket. Why would he keep them with him?”
“For safety’s sake?”
“Well done!” came the whisper.” Let’s go! Quietly.”
They stepped quietly through the path in the dark undergrowth and emerged on another narrow country lane. Walter obviously not only knew the route that Charlie would take but also the way in which the country lanes were laid out in this area.
“Stay back.” Charlie walked cautiously towards two dark vehicles. He tried the keys in the van, which was the closest one then moved on to the car. He stopped by the driver’s door and began to fumble with the key when another shadow emerged behind him.
“Can I be of assistance, Mr Diamond?” the big man asked as he stretched out towards the smaller man.
Two steps and a serious swing with the wrench resulted in a whispered utterance from Mr D of “Timber!”
But they both crouched down and began to move around the car as quietly as they could. Was there someone else in the dark? At the back of the car he saw Mr D shrug at him speculatively. He understood what Mr D was suggestion, nodded and stood up, walking towards the passenger side of the car as he quietly whistled. “Are you there?” he called in a stage whisper.
A dark shape appeared at his side and just as he was about to tell Mr D to keep low he realised that his new companion was much taller than either of them. That was when the great dark figure grunted and dropped at his feet.
“We are about even, son.” Said Mr D as he pocketed the gun he had used to slug the bruiser. “The decider is about to be worked out.”
It took three minutes for Mr D to explain what was going to happen next, five minutes for him to get into place and a life time for the events to pan out.
First, he slipped back along the little lane, avoiding the immobile lump that was Walter. Then, he found his way across the road to the rear of Charlie’s car and worked his way up in the undergrowth past the front of the vehicle. He got there just as the other car arrived behind the first car. Headlights on full almost gave his position away but he had been ready and had kept himself low and his eyes both closed and averted.
With his peripheral vision he detected the lights going from full beam to normal and kept his vision shaded with his hand as he waited.
Mr D had said that he would signal for the minder to get out of the car.
At first he suspected that this was not going to happen.
Then he saw Charlene getting out of the car. As she stood up by the door the minder got out and pointed a dark lump at her. He waived it and she began to move towards the back of the car.
After the silence of the night, the new car behind was making a lot of noise. The car revved a couple of times and while it seemed to add urgency to the whole thing what it really did was cover the noise of footsteps. As both the thug and the girl reached the back of the car a shadow joined the larger shadow, something shiny arced through the air and a dull crump was followed by a sigh and a lolloping bump on the country road.
Mr D stepped out of the car and a muted cry of “Daddy.” accompanied footsteps to the other car.
He took his time getting there. He was now becoming aware of the cuts, bruises, bumps and smells of the night that were now closing in on his sensibilities.
“Can you drive?” asked Mr D.
“Just about.” A quizzical look brought an additional response,” Of course I can. I am just not used to this sort of evening. I’m a little bit... brittle?”
Mr D laughed. Sit with Charlene and drive. I have a few phone calls to make. She’ll tell you where to go.”
He drove with Charlene’s hand on his thigh as he cautiously steered the car through the country lanes listening to Mr D’s instructions to his many, many minions.
He looked at the dashboard. He had arrived at the party around ten pm and had spent only a short time there before meeting with Charlene and starting to dance with her. It was now just coming up to one in the morning.
He was not someone who drove big posh cars. He was not strong or brave or even someone who thought he had a violent streak inside him.
Out of his depth, out of his environment and out of his mind.
Charlene squeezed his thigh one last time as he slowed down at a set of large metal gates.
“Oh, and by the way. The lad you were looking for? He ran rings around you all and then he saved not only my life. He saved my daughter’s life, too.”
After a pause, “Yes, I think you are only just beginning to understand what that means.” said Mr D, before he dropped the phone back into his pocket.
“I don’t know about you,” he said to the two of them. “But I’m ready for a really stiff drink, eh?”
As the gates opened he noticed the name of Mr D’s mansion. It was Partridge house.
Noticing the look Charlene said, “When daddy bought the plot he had no idea what he would call the house but when he looked at the name of the little road it became obvious.”
“That’s right, lad. This is number one Pear Tree lane.”