'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
Click here to buy the paperback or download the ebook for free.

Wednesday, November 29, 2006

The Hat Stand


The wind has been strong over the past few days and it's brought some much needed action to the garden. The clothes on the line look as if they're trying to escape. When I was young my grandfather used to say that the clothes were inhabited by ghosts who got dressed to go to a play and then found that they couldn't go anywhere. He shot them to put them out of their misery.


My uncle Cyril once found himself face to face with a goose, although he refused to accept that the goose had a face. He said that'd be giving too much credit to the goose. His refusal to accept that the goose stole his credit card denied the goose the credit it deserved. Seeing as I've used the words 'credit' and 'goose' too much already, I'd like to tell the story of Aunt Joyce and the hat stand instead. There isn't really a story about the goose and the credit card until Cyril tells it.


Aunt Joyce once bought a hat stand because she thought it looked like herself. During the summer she used to put a red wooly hat and a scarf on it because it reminded her of winter. In winter she put a straw hat on it to remind her of summer. Cyril put a bowler hat on it once and said, "Now you look like Liza Minelli in Cabaret." She bought a cactus that looked like Cyril and stuck a knitting needle in it.


She gave the hat stand a completely new look just to get rid of the image of Liza Minelli. She put a red dress and a silk scarf on it.


One of Cyril's friends, Myles, used to stand on chairs when he had something important to say. Everything in his life was unimportant but it all became important when he was drunk. He could never stay standing on a chair when he was drunk. These basic facts explain why he often has a bandage around his head and a dazed look in his eyes. He's often on medication too, and this doesn't mix well with the drink.


He went to a party at Joyce and Cyril's house one evening. When he first saw the hat stand in the hall he thought it was Joyce. She looked beautiful, and she seemed to be beckoning him towards her. The thought that Cyril was otherwise engaged with the goose broke down his resistance.


The hat stand was in a dishevelled state when Joyce saw it later. The next time she met Myles was at the house of a mutual friend. When he mentioned their encounter in the hall she said, "What encounter?"


"Don't pretend you didn't enjoy it," he said.


"Enjoy what?"


"Don't pretend you don't remember."


"Remember what?"


Myles forgot what he was talking about for a while, but he eventually remembered. "Our little encounter in the hall," he said. "That's what. We kissed. We started fires. We created small explosions."


Joyce remembered the hat stand and she put two and two together. "That wasn't me!" she said.


"I've heard that before. It won't work."


"It was the hat stand."


"In fairness, I haven't heard that one before. But I have heard 'it was inflatable', so excuses like that won't work."


She had to stand on a chair to get away from him.


She wondered what she could do to quench his passion. He had never shown any interest in the hat stand when it was dressed only in the wooly hat and scarf. She couldn't wear nothing but the hat and scarf herself. That might completely quench his desire, but it might have the opposite effect too. Joyce thought the latter was much more likely. She wasn't prepared to do that anyway.


She wore the hat and scarf with a rain coat, but it didn't put him off. She tried many different looks, including the bowler hat. When he saw that he said, "I have a caravan on the coast. Let's go there now."


But she was able to direct the aim of his affections elsewhere, entirely by chance. One of her friends, Ursula, called around to collect old clothes for charity. The cupboard under the stairs was full of old coats and hats that Joyce wanted to get rid of. Ursula stood outside the cupboard as Joyce went through the contents of it. Myles saw Ursula there. She was holding hats in both hands, and she had another one on her head. Coats hung from both of her shoulders. An umbrella was leaning against her legs. She reminded Myles of Joyce when she seduced him in that very hall. He fell in love with Ursula. Later in the kitchen he stood on a chair to ask her out to a French film. He fell off when she said yes, but he didn't mind then.


The moose's head over the fireplace will be playing the part of Santa in a Christmas pageant. His attachment to fireplaces got him the role. The only other candidate was drunk at the audition and he accused everyone of being anti-communist. He'll be playing Rudolf instead.

Wednesday, November 22, 2006

The Right Thing To Say


The wife's aunt likes to look at the dog running around the garden. She has a pair of reading glasses that makes him look like a small monkey. When the dog ran off with a plug in his mouth, dragging a lamp behind him, she said that it looked as if the monkey was wearing a red bow tie. She wasn't even wearing the glasses then.


My cousin Jane joined an orchestra of amateur musicians. She played the violin, and she met a man called Kevin who played the trumpet. He was studying mathematics, which he often spoke about, and she didn't know what he was talking about most of the time, but she liked listening to him anyway.


On one beautiful summer day the orchestra were playing in a vast park in the city. There was also a dog show in the park, and this ended in chaos because the prize for the winning dog was just a banana. The anger of the owners was reflected in their dogs. The orchestra's performance came to an end when hundreds of dogs ran through their ranks. Some of the musicians ran away.


The day came to an end in a night at the edge of town, in a small shop that was so quiet you could hear the buzzing of the lights, and then back out to the fading sound of motorbikes and black horses. Kevin and Jane sat on a wall in the light of a full moon. She said, "Do you ever get tempted to play the xylophone when Maeve isn't looking?"


"Yes."


"I always have trouble resisting but she'd kill me if I did. She told Francine she'd kill a hamster if she even touched it."


"Yes."


"I don't know which hamster she meant. I don't think I could live with the guilt of being responsible for the death of a hamster just because I couldn't resist playing a xylophone. Unless it was a really bad hamster. If it had a Hitler moustache it'd be easy to believe that the hamster was bad."


"Yes."


After a few minutes of silence he said he'd like to be a satellite of something, something he liked, or even loved. She asked if he was trying to seduce her. He thought carefully about his answer. It eventually came out as a 'yes' dressed in these words: "I've always wanted to be a satellite."


She remained dressed in so much more than just words. She put on her glasses too.


On the following day he spoke to his friends as they waited for a lecture to start. He told them about his tendency to say the wrong things.


"I played volleyball once," Eric said, "and then I saw a woman with a red and black hat. I told her I was playing volleyball and she said, 'I know.' I should have asked her how she knew, but the obvious questions never come to my mind in situations like that. I always seem to say the wrong thing. Not wrong in an 'I killed a seagull' sort of way. I mean wrong as in 'not quite right'. I could come up with something slightly better if I thought about it. I have to think, whereas it comes automatically to most people."


"I know someone who killed a seagull," Stan said, "I don't care if that's the wrong thing to say. The only type of statements that I think are wrong to say are those in the 'I slept with your sister' family, and even then there are circumstances when it's perfectly acceptable to say that."


"Who killed the seagull?" Ciara said.


"My brother."


"Would it be wrong to say he's a nail?"


"No, that'd be surprisingly accurate."


Eric said, "'I have some words for my mouth to exhibit' -- I once said that, but I couldn't think of anything to say after it."


"I do think about what to say," Kevin said, "but I still get it wrong."


"You just have to put more thought into it," Eric said. "It's the only way. What would happen if you just said the first thing that came into your head?"


The first thing that came into Kevin's head was fish and it scared him.


The lecturer went to the microphone and said, "Have you ever woken up and got the feeling that you're really a brick?"


Kevin met Jane in the afternoon. She said, "I like your shoes."


He thought carefully about his response. He didn't want to dress it up in any unnecessary clothes.


They went to an art gallery. One side of the building was all glass. They looked at a huge yellow wall with a bit of orange, and grey letters. It was lit up by the sun through the glass.


They went to a house in the suburbs where Vera lived. She was in the orchestra too. They walked along a path around a field and listened to her complain about Maeve. "I played one note on her xylophone. One note. She was nowhere near the room, but then I heard footsteps on a corridor and then on a stairs and then another corridor and another one and then she came bursting through the door and said, 'I'm going to have to kill something now.' I know someone who laughed at a funeral. I couldn't help playing another note on the xylophone right in front of her. I was terrified. I tried to change the subject. I said there was a lot of smoke coming out of her head and maybe there was something wrong with her brain, but that only made things worse. She said a lot of things but the general gist of it was that I had the musical ability and personality of a wasp."


Vera met some neighbours of hers on the path and she could start her complaint all over again.


Kevin and Jane walked behind them on the path. They were floating higher and higher all the time, rising into the pale blue sky, getting further and further away from the world and other people, the sides of their faces lit up by the evening sun. He finally managed to say something unadorned by any unnecessary words. He looked into her eyes and said, "I don't like hamsters."


It wasn't much, but it was a start.


"Neither do I," she said.


"Especially bad ones."


The moose's head over the fireplace looks like a cowboy through the reading glasses, or so the wife's aunt says. She's probably just thinking of the time we put a cowboy hat on his head and a cigar in his mouth to make him look like Clint Eastwood. He nearly got a part in a play because of that. He was cast as a zoologist instead, but the zoologist got to shoot more people than the Eastwood-type character.

Wednesday, November 15, 2006

The Architect


I stood in the glasshouse and looked up at the rain. My great-grandfather used to play the accordian in here. He often played in the garden, and he came in here when it rained. My great-grandmother used to say that it looked as if the glasshouse was crying.


My cousin Hugh often went to a cafe with his fiancee, Annabel. There was a red carpet on the ground. The tables and chairs were all white. One side of the cafe was mostly glass. There were no windows at the other side, and it was badly lit.


A man with a pony-tail often sat alone at a table in one of the dark corners. He wore a grey overcoat. He never spoke to anyone, and he avoided eye contact. None of the regulars knew who he was.


Hugh bumped into him one day as he was leaving the cafe. The man with pony-tail was on his way in. They got talking, and he was much friendlier and more forthcoming than Hugh had expected. His name was Robert, and he said he was an architect. Hugh had an interest in architecture. They sat down at a table, and Robert told him about some of his designs.


When he was younger he wanted to design on a grand scale, but he knew he'd never get anyone to build his designs. He started designing houses and buildings that would be the size of a caravan, and he was able to build many of them himself. He built some for others. He took Hugh to see some of them.


To get into one of them, they had to climb a ladder to the top and then slide into it. He designed all of the furniture, fixtures and fittings as well. For one particular kitchen, he designed and built a spherical toaster and a pen (he still used the word 'built when he spoke about these objects).


He took Hugh to see one that he built for a friend of his called Jenny. She had a house that she didn't like, so she got him to build this in her back garden, and she spent more time living in it than in the house.


Most of the surfaces inside were oak. There was a dark green carpet on the ground. It looked like moss. The single central leg of a round table rose from the ground like the trunk of a small tree. There was a spoon on the table.


Robert said to her, "Do you really need to have that spoon there?"


She picked up the spoon and said, "If it doesn't stay there, you can take it away with you." She held it as if she was about to stab him with it.


"I don't know which option would be less painful," he said.


"I can put this spoon wherever I want."


"You have a whole house outside where you can put spoons wherever you want. A whole house. In design terms that house is just a self-assembly drawer, exactly like millions of others. You couldn't hurt that house if you stuck a spoon to the ceiling."


"If you say another word about the spoon I'll glue it to the ceiling here."


Robert thought for a while, but he didn't have anything else to say and he decided to leave.


As they were leaving they met Jenny's neighbour, Derek. He said to Robert, "Have you thought any more about my van?"


"Yes."


"Have you come up with any ideas?"


"No. I told you before: I'm never going to do anything to your van."


"Think about it. That's all I'm saying."


Derek drove away. Robert said to Hugh, "He wants me to 'do something' to his van. He's seen the house I did for Jenny and he thinks I can 'do something' to his van."


As Christmas approached he looked increasingly sad. He said to Hugh, "People are putting up decorations in their houses. In my houses. And she still won't move the spoon."


"You've really got to get over this spoon thing," Hugh said. "You just need practise."


"I just need people to pay more attention to their spoons."


Hugh put a spoon on the table and said, "Try paying no attention to that."


"You can't just leave it there."


"Of course I can. See if you can sit at the table for ten minutes without moving the spoon, and then tomorrow you could try twenty minutes."


After a week of sitting at the table with a spoon, Robert was able to accept the fact that the spoon had just as much right to be there as he had.


He went back to Jenny's house with Hugh. When she saw them arrive she put the spoon on the table, but he just said, "I like what you've done with that spoon."


"You don't mind that it's on the table?"


"Not at all."


"What if I were to put it... here." She put the spoon on the ground.


Robert nodded and smiled, but he cracked after about three seconds and he tried to take the spoon. Jenny got there first, and she chased him away with the spoon in her hand.


As they left the place they saw Derek's van parked outside his house. Hugh said, "Why don't you do something to the van? If you could manage that, you might be able to relax about the Christmas decorations and the spoon."


"I could never bring myself down to the level of doing things to vans."


"A few years ago, I bet you never thought you'd be working on such a small scale."


"No."


"You would have thought that you could never reduce yourself to this level. But you can. And you can go further down to the van. Christmas decorations and spoons would be around about that level."


"I suppose I could try anyway. It's the smell I'm most worried about."


Hugh didn't recognise Robert the next time they met in the cafe. Robert had cut his hair short and dyed it black. He was wearing a light blue suit, and he was starting to grow a moustache. Hugh wouldn't have recognised him at all if he hadn't sat in his usual seat. Hugh went over and said, "That's an interesting new look."


"Thanks. You could say something similar about Derek's van."


"Did you do something to it?"


"I did. I set it on fire. Hence the new look. I'm trying to hide from Derek. Actually, you could do with a new look yourself. I told Derek that you convinced me to do something to his van. When you set a man's van on fire they'll try to get revenge on anyone they think is responsible. I'd suggest wearing a hat with..."


"Shut up! Don't say another word. You can have no influence in designing my new look."


"Why not?"


"Because you'll think you own it."


"I won't. If you just..."


"Shut up!" Hugh ran from the cafe.


He told Annabel about what happened that evening. "That's awful," she said. "I think you should wear a hat. One that comes down over the sides of your head, and you can tie it underneath. One with a red..."


"You've been talking to him, haven't you?"


"No, I haven't met him at all."


"He told you how I should look, didn't he?"


"No, not at all. I formed this opinion myself when I was walking around the shops earlier."


"I only just told you about what he did to Derek's van."


"Yeah... but y' see..."


Hugh ran from the house. He went to see Derek. The burnt-out shell of the van was still in his driveway.


When Derek opened the door and saw Hugh he said, "You!"


"Yes, it's me, well done. I'm only here to get revenge on Robert."


"He set my van on fire."


"Yeah, I know, well done. He told my fiancee what I should wear."


Derek didn't think that was as bad as setting a van on fire, but he was happy to associate with someone who'd seek revenge for something so insignificant.


Hugh said, "The only way to hurt Robert is to alter one of his creations. It'll drive him mad. A spoon is like a prison sentence for him. What we need to do is to alter the van in some way. When he sees it, it'll be a very unhappy Christmas for him."


Derek knew someone who had just been involved in organising a tennis tournament, and he was able to get hundreds of tennis balls. They put the balls into the van.


The next time Hugh met Robert he said, "I went to see Derek to explain to him that I had no idea you'd set his van on fire, but he's actually happy with the van. He's added a few tennis balls to it and he thinks it looks fantastic. He thinks you've created a work of art. Or actually he thinks he's created a work of art when he added the tennis balls, and in fairness, the balls do make a difference. He just had to add to your creation to make something good out of it."


Robert looked horrified.


"But don't worry," Hugh said. "You just have to get used to seeing a few tennis balls in a vehicle, and then the van won't bother you."


Hugh put three tennis balls into Robert's car. Robert couldn't even sit inside it at first, but he gradually got used to it, and Hugh said he was ready to see the van.


When he saw the hundreds of tennis balls in the van he looked as if one of his houses had been set on fire. Derek laughed at this reaction. Then they had to hold Robert back when he tried to set the tennis balls on fire.


That Christmas he came back dressed as Santa, with a can of petrol in his sack. He tried to set the tennis balls on fire again, but Derek had been on the look-out for anyone who might vandalise his van. He chased Santa down the street with a stick, and he couldn't have asked for a better present than that.


The moose's head over the fireplace doesn't seem to mind his latest role as a ventriloquist's dummy. The wife's uncle saw a ventriloquist who had a walking stick, and his dummy had one too. The dummy kept poking himself in the eye with the stick, and saying 'ow!'. The wife's uncle decided to have a go at ventriloquism with the moose's head. You never see his lips moving, but the moose's head never says anything. I think he might have forgotten about the ventriloquism. He just spends hours talking to the moose's head, who seems to enjoy listening to him.

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

Take Note


Some people stand in fields and sigh. I walk around the garden and point. It's becoming a hobby of mine. When I was just a beginner I used to point at the shed, but I've moved on to more advanced things. Yesterday I pointed at where the dog buried the garden gnome, whose feet are above ground, sticking up in the air.


My cousin Albert spent a lot of time with two friends of his, Michelle and George. He'd have preferred to spend time with Michelle, but she seemed to prefer George. Michelle and George kept taking note of things together, and Albert always felt left out.


Little mice ran around in circles. They took note of this. For them, taking noting of things involved suddenly crouching on the ground and saying 'shh'. If they were on a soft carpet they'd stay on the ground, but they never stayed long on the cold ground outside. They loved taking note of the mice on the rug in front of the fire. They were unable to take note of things when they were already on the ground because there was nowhere else to crouch, and it allowed them to devote all their attention to each other.


The three of them were in a field by the lake one Saturday afternoon. They saw a man with a long nose, a grey shirt and a pigeon on his shoulder.


Michelle and George both crouched in the long grass and said 'shh'. Michelle whispered to George, "I think we should take note of his grey shirt."


They seemed quite happy on the grass. Albert left them and went home. He felt that this day was dark grey and heading for black. He sat at his kitchen table. He felt like painting a white line right across the day, and then another one if he felt like it. It'd be a way of saying 'up yours' to the day. He tried to think of how he'd do this in practise, and the only idea he could come up with was painting a white line across the side of his shed, which was blue. So he did it. And then he painted another one. His shed looked stupid with two white lines on one side of it, so he painted the whole thing. He ended up with a white shed and the day was blacker than ever because he preferred his shed when it was blue. The only idea he could come up with to rectify the problem was to paint his shed black, but he didn't have any black paint. He went inside when it started to rain.


Lucy was in a park. She stood in the rain with her hood up, waiting for someone to address the small crowd who had gathered there. The speaker was supposed to talk about squirrels. She hoped it would be someone with a big moustache, so he'd seem more unreal. The bigger the moustache, the better. And if he's wearing a top hat, that'd be even better again. From there she could easily imagine people chasing a pig, and convince herself that this was much more exciting than it actually was.


She had discovered an affinity for unreal things. Real things were normally so much more disappointing, especially when they involved standing in the rain and listening to someone talk about squirrels. When the speaker finally made it to the small platform, he was wearing a rain coat, and he looked no different to the rest of them. There was no moustache, and no way of inferring a pig chase. There wasn't even a squirrel.


She called to see Albert on her way home. The rain stopped and the sun came out. She looked in awe at the shed through the kitchen window. The rain had washed some of the white paint away. The shed was a luminous light-blue, glowing in the sun.


She asked what happened and he said, "There was a man with a pigeon on his shoulder. His shirt was grey. And then I came home and I painted the shed. I wanted to paint it black, but this is what the rain did."


It was magical to her. It seemed more unreal than anything involving a pig, but this really was real. "It feels like snow on Christmas Eve," she said.


On the following day she came around in her white rain coat. She had a colour chart to choose the colour of rain she'd like to go with her white coat. She'd chosen a light blue.


He said, "That's the shade of blue I want to paint my shed."


"We have so much in common."


He realised that he was much better off spending time with Lucy than with Michelle. They went to the cinema and walked in the park. She made up a story about a sleeping pig instead of telling him about the speech in the rain.


When Michelle and George came to see the shed they went out into the back garden. George crouched and said 'shh' to take note of it, but Michelle just stood there, staring at it with her mouth slightly open. It took a few minutes before she was able to speak, and when she did she only asked Albert questions about the shed. George said, "I think there's something we should take note of in the car." But she ignored him.


She kept spending time with Albert after this, and she stopped taking note of things with George. He did something to his own shed, but it didn't work.


Albert wanted to get rid of her because he preferred the company of Lucy. He thought that the only way of accomplishing this was to get Michelle to take note of something with George, preferrably on a soft surface that would encourage them to stay there.


George and Lucy were both very keen on this idea. Lucy suggested that the surface should be a picnic rug by the lake. A picnic could keep them there all afternoon. A pig chase would be something that Michelle would want to take note of, but the pig would be too unpredictable. He might head straight for the picnic.


But Lucy came up with a better idea. She knew a man who was very thin, and people started calling him Stick. Then they started calling him 'Stick of the Antarctic' when he wore a heavy coat. He liked this name, and he grew into the role of an Antarctic explorer. He wore fur-lined clothes and dark glasses. Stick decided to form a band, because he already had the look. He was the lead singer, and his backing band wore dark suits and top hats. They were known as 'Stick of the Antarctic and his Financial Backers'.


Lucy's plan was to take Michelle to the picnic by the lake, and then Stick would run by, chased by the Financial Backers, who'd be demanding their money back. She'd take note of this by crouching on the picnic rug, and George would do likewise.


They never made it to the picnic rug. They were just inside the field when Michelle crouched on the ground and said 'shh'. George followed her down and whispered, "What is it?"


"It's a mouse. He's running in circles."


Albert and Lucy left them alone to take note of the mouse. They went to the rug and had the picnic themselves. They didn't bother telling Stick and his band that there was no need for the chase, and they spent a pleasant afternoon taking note of the Financial Backers chase Stick around the lake.


The moose's head over the fireplace isn't entirely happy with his new look, and I can't say I blame him. The wife's aunt is painting his portrait and she decided he should wear a beret, but rather than placing it on his head, she hung it off one of his antlers. You can see in his eyes that he's not happy with this, and it's very disconcerting to see what's effectively a discontented hat stand.

Wednesday, November 01, 2006

The Actors


Afternoon goes straight into night now that the clocks have gone back. The local kids have been doing their best to do something about this with their fireworks, but they've largely failed.


My cousin Isobel walked through the city in the rain, trying to remember where she left her umbrella. After a while she didn't mind getting wet, and she started to enjoy the sights of the streets in the rain.


There was a light on in a cafe, and she went inside. She bought a coffee, and she sat at a table near the window. A man was writing at the next table. When he saw her he asked if it was raining outside. She told him about losing her umbrella, and about how she didn't mind because the city was a beautiful place when it was wet. He told her he was writing a play, and he said he'd include her in it. She'd be a character who walks the streets in the rain.


When she went back outside she appreciated the sights even more. People went by beneath multi-coloured umbrellas. Some of the cars had their headlights on. She watched the ripples of the rain drops in the pools of water on the pavement. A duck went by, followed by six ducklings. She waved at them as they passed. A dog went by in the other direction, and she followed him.


He led her to a theatre. She went inside, and she saw people rehearsing a play about a man who lost his head. He was using a loaf of bread instead of a head. A wizard tried to help him, but he just did something with a chemistry set that turned the bread blue.


The actors didn't know what to do after this. They stood on the stage and tried to figure out where the story could go from there. Isobel said she was a character in a play, and maybe her presence could send the storyline off in another direction. They asked her to join them on the stage, but her character was just someone who walks the streets in the rain, and it didn't seem she could add anything to the blue bread-head story.


When the duck and the ducklings walked across the stage Isobel said, "We could follow them."


The ducks led them out of the theatre, down the street and into an art supply shop. They met a woman who was buying small tins of paint. "I'm just buying lots of different shades of blue," she said. "Especially anything with 'marine' in its name, like aqua-marine. Having the paint helps construct an image of the sea in my head, even if I never actually paint anything."


One of the actors told her about the problems they were having with the play. He said, "Maybe it's enough for the audience to have various scenes in their heads, or bits of stories, and they could arrange these stories themselves."


"I could take ye to a fantastic setting," the artist said. "It's an old hotel. The man who owns it inherited it from his uncle, but he just makes and repairs clocks there. It hasn't been in use as a hotel in years. I'm supposed to be painting a mural in the dining room. I've been planning this for years, or at least I tell him I'm still planning it. I'm just going to wait until he decides he wants a mural of the sea. And even then I might not do anything."


She took them to the hotel and introduced them to Edward, the owner. The lobby seemed like the perfect setting to add into their play, even if it did nothing more than sit there. There was a wide oak staircase, with a red carpet. There were two crystal chandeliers on the ceiling high above.


Edward was working on a huge clock that was full of unnecessary cog wheels. As he was showing them this, they heard footsteps upstairs. He looked frightened.


"Is there anyone else in the hotel?" Isobel said.


"No. Or at least there shouldn't be. But I heard noises last night too. I had a look around this morning, but there was no one there."


"Do you think it's a ghost?"


"I've never had trouble with ghosts before."


The artist said, "I used to live in a house on the seafront and people often said it was haunted, but I think it was just someone we forgot about."


They all tip-toed up the stairs. They stayed close together. They heard voices coming from a room. The voices stopped when Edward knocked on the door. He opened the door and went inside. The others followed him.


There were eight people in the room, men and women. There was a nineteenth century look to their clothes.


"Can I help ye?" Edward said.


"We booked some rooms," a man in a dark brown suit said.


"This place hasn't been a hotel for nearly twenty years."


"The receptionist took our booking."


"There is no receptionist."


"We booked these rooms."


"How long are ye planning to stay for."


"We don't know yet."


"This isn't a hotel, y' know."


"We booked these rooms."


Edward retreated from the room to think about the problem. The artist asked if he was sure he hadn't just forgotten about them. He was sure he hadn't.


The actors were delighted with the way their play had gone, and they didn't need an ending for it. They'd just add this storyline to the other storylines they had and let the audience sort it out.


Isobel didn't want to leave it like this because it felt like they were leaving Edward in the lurch. She said, "We need an ending to this story, preferrably one where those people leave the hotel."


"We could follow the ducks again," one of the actors said.


"They'd just lead us to a different story," Isobel said. "But I know just the man solve this problem."


She left the hotel and walked back towards the cafe. The rain and stopped and the evening sun came out from behind the clouds. The playwright was still in the cafe. She told him everything that had happened to her since she became one of his characters, and she asked him to come up with an appropriate ending. He thought about it as he walked back to the hotel with her, and he'd come up with the ending shortly after arriving, when he saw the actor with the blue bread who was wearing a costume that made him look as if he didn't have a head.


After a quick rehearsal, the headless man performed his part in the play. He went upstairs to the room where the guests had gathered. He stepped inside, with the blue bread under his arm, and said, "Leave! Leeeeave!" They just stared back at him. "Because the chef is just a monkey on the shoulders of another monkey. Look at what the food did to my head. And God help you if you refuse to eat it."


The guests suddenly remembered that they had to be somewhere else, and they left. The playwright added in one more scene in which he bought Isobel dinner.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoyed our Halloween party last night. A few people came as the moose's head. They all thought it would be clever. The moose's head dressed up as Frankenstein. I put a sheet over my head. It was just an excuse to avoid some people.