'Darcy and O'Mara' is a novel by Arthur Cronin.
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Wednesday, July 29, 2009

The Hospital


The garden gnomes wear their life-jackets all the time these days. They're afraid of being swept away in a flood. My grandfather did a lot of work promoting the tourist attractions in the area, but he couldn't do anything about the rain. He tried. He got a witch to do a dance, but this might have been for his own entertainment. One summer he acted as a tour guide at the ruins of a castle. He wore his Aran sweater, but it claimed that it was wearing him. Tourists were more interested in what the sweater had to say than in what my grandfather said about the castle.


My cousin Albert and his friends, George and Neil, were curious about a black ambulance they often saw driving down the narrow country roads. The word 'Ambulance' was written in gold letters, and there was a phone number underneath it. The paramedics wore fur coats, and the pockets of the coats were full of coins. If you asked them questions they'd give you coins. Albert got a glimpse into the back of the ambulance once. He saw leather armchairs inside, and potted plants on shelves.


They wanted to find out more about the ambulance, so they got Neil to fake a head injury. He could do this convincingly because he's suffered so many head injuries on the hurling field due to his refusal to wear a helmet. They called the ambulance, and when it arrived they pretended that Neil had fallen on his head while climbing over a gate.


The paramedics helped him into the back of the ambulance. They told Albert and George they could accompany their friend to the hospital. The three of them sat on armchairs and listened to Bach on the journey. They couldn't see where they were going because there were no windows in the ambulance. The trip lasted about ten minutes, and when they got out they were in the grounds of an old manor house.


It didn't look like a hospital from the outside, and it looked even less like one on the inside. The paramedics took the patient to the drawing room, where Albert, George and Neil were given coffee and biscuits. None of the other people in the drawing room looked like patients. Some were reading books near the bay windows. Two men played chess on a coffee table near the fireplace.


Albert, George and Neil left the drawing room and wandered around the hospital. It was a very peaceful place. In other rooms they found people reading or just relaxing on armchairs with drinks in their hands. In the library they met a woman called Emma. George had met her once before. She had a silver car that had been in her family since the thirties. It looked very luxurious inside, and it was still in perfect condition. They had often seen her taking a silver horse from her handbag and screwing it into the front of her car before she sat on the driver's seat and drove away. The car wouldn't move without the silver horse.


George asked her why she was in the hospital and she said, "I'm here for the peace. I can't sleep in my own house because I can hear a noise in the garden every night. I have exceptionally sensitive hearing. I inherited that from my father. I inherited the house and gardens as well, and the car. He built the house in an isolated place and surrounded it with an idyllic garden and a high red brick wall. He needed the peace and quiet because he could hear every noise. He could hear spiders walking across the strings of his grand piano at night, and he hated the music they played. Over the past few weeks I've heard something moving in the garden, and I've never been able to figure out what it is. I'm used to the noises of the insects and the mice and the birds. Unfamiliar noises always keep me awake. I came here to get some sleep. The peace of this place has done me the world of good. I've been staying here for over a week now."


"We could figure out what the noise is," Albert said.


"Finding the source of the noise would involve hiding in the garden in the middle of the night."


"That sounds like fun," Albert said. George and Neil agreed.


"In that case," Emma said, "I'd be extremely grateful if you found the source of the noise and eradicated it, if it needs to be eradicated."


She drove them back to her house. Her silver car was just as luxurious as the drawing room in the hospital. After making them some tea she gave them a tour of her gardens. It took over an hour to walk down all the stone paths and around the lawns, and make their way through the maze. They were looking forward to spending the night there.


After midnight the place seemed less appealing. At night, the noises made by insects, mice and birds made these creatures seem about ten times bigger than they actually were.


At two o' clock they heard the sound of footsteps. As far as they could tell, this sound was made by just one person. It was three against one, if a conflict followed their confrontation.


The confrontation came at the end of a path between two hedges. Albert shone a flashlight into the face of the intruder, and they recognised him. It was a man called Maurice. They asked him what he was doing in the garden and he said, "The reason for my nocturnal visits is to make sure the lady of the house hasn't allowed the silver-tongue-caressed words of Danny into her head and allowed Danny into her house. Danny is a man of many shallows. These shallows are secreted all over his psyche, like seaside rocks full of rock pools. He's always discovering new ones, but they never come as a surprise. If, in past explorations of his psyche, all he's ever found is rock pools, finding another rock pool is merely cause for a wry smile. The abundance of rock pools is re-assuring. If he stepped into an unexpected depth he'd drown.


"Emma has succumbed to his charms in the past. She has allowed the words in, even though she knows she should keep all the doors and windows closed. She asked for my advice on the subject and I told her she must put locks on the doors and windows if she doesn't want a future infected with Danny. You can allow yourself to lapse once or twice, but you have a duty not to let it happen three times. When the dolphins of duty duly arrive on the shore of the sea where we bite champagne and paint the seaside town red on a daily basis, we must be ready to receive the dolphins' dolorous message, to understand their language, to recognise the import of their message and not let its impact crush us under its hellish, whale-ish weight, and not let the rumbling of its earthquake reduce us to a crumbling pile of rubble. When duty calls we must break down the walls of routine, however re-assuring they may be, however art-endowed they are, however painted or papered or peppered with tapestries depicting rural idylls or the raucous, rowdy ruckus of city dwellers engaged in acts of festivity. We must face the unforgiving winds of fate, the swirling whirlwinds bearing whooshing daggers with kite-like wings and nightlight candles to advertise their trajectory into our backs even in the darkest of storms, and let those winds reach hurricane force if they must, tearing down every mast, ripping sails to shreds and tipping heads over shoulders so they'll fall on the deck and roll away to drop in holes, putted like golf balls or pitted against each other like pitiful pit bull terriers starved of food for days until their ferocity would make the hurricane whimper and cower with its tail between its whippet legs, but even when struck down by the evil glare of the hurricane we'll struggle to our feet and stand firm once more. We'll look the storm in the eye and say, 'Nothing will prevent me from fulfilling my duty, however foolhardy that may be.' This is how we must react when duty calls, and when our heads roll off we'll put them back on again and put on our sunglasses, even in the darkest storm.


"This is what I told her. She told me she agreed, and that her agreement was comprehensive. On the following day she instructed her left leg to position her left foot on the area of ground in front of her right foot. When this had been accomplished she issued a similar instruction to her right leg, only this time her right foot was to be placed on the vacant ground in front of her left foot. All of the commands were obeyed by her legs. The cumulative effect of these operations undertaken by obedient legs was as follows: Emma walked down the road towards Danny's house.


"Obedience to one's superiors is important in any walk of life. The oats of obedience may sway in a storm but they refuse to be flattened by an ego-fattened wind. The ego is the enemy of obedience. The self is a foot soldier who thinks he's a general. A grossly overweight self-indulgent windbag blows a ferocious, foul-smelling wind every time we have the courage to unfurl the pristine white flag of surrender to a higher power. The windbag will exhaust all its resources of air in its attempt to blow the flag away, but we must hold tight. It takes great courage to raise the white flag and send our signal of surrender to a higher power. It's an abnegation of the self. 'You're greater than I am,' it's saying. 'I recognise my insignificance when the headlights of your being shine a light in the nooks and crannies of the edifice I've been constructing for many years, an edifice I was proud to call my "self" until your bright light brought it out of a night I had thought was day. You showed me how bright a real day really is, how insufficient my edifice is in the light of a real day, how the nooks and crannies are home to things that can only ever be pleasing to the eye in the darkest depths of night.' It takes courage and wisdom to choose to be a foot soldier rather than a general. If the windbag succeeds, the self will be stronger, but much uglier. It will be filled with an unwarranted confidence to grow even further, to rule rather than obey, like a housing estate polluting the landscape when it should be meekly asking the land which chair it should sit in and which tea cup it should take. It's a house guest who believes he is the host. Your feet should always be foot soldiers and not generals. You can take them out for a walk in the park, but don't let them off the leash. Havoc will reign and ruin will pervade the aftermath of a decision to allocate decision-making responsibility to your feet. Of course, some people will exhibit courage and wisdom by taking on the role of a general. Emma had made that decision under the guiding light of duty. Her feet were willing foot soldiers, the oats of obedience made rigid by the bamboo sticks of duty, which have been strengthened by the batons passed on to them by the dolphins. She had made up her mind. She was on her way to tell Danny that it was over between them. A commendable operation.


"But it wasn't over between them. Her feet couldn't do anything about her mind's lapse because they were off the ground. They need ground to be able to retreat at the right time. Feet that can walk on air are a rare commodity. I've met people who can walk on air, but they barely qualify as people. 'Ghosts', you might call them. Or 'spirits' who have retired from being people. Even if her feet had found ground they wouldn't have gone against her mind's wishes. Like good butlers they'd always stand by and watch a disaster unfolding rather than disobey their master.


"In the midst of all these disasters I might have muttered something about the love I felt for her. Words sneak out of my head when I'm looking at the walls' adornments, paintings born of creative impulses ignited by the spark plugs of fear or the dark thugs of desire who creep up behind you and wrestle you to the ground, tying your hands behind your back, leaving you powerless, at the mercy of their will. Those words that sneak out often aren't allowed outside. They're the deformed younger brother locked in the attic until he escapes and shocks those who see him outside the house. I apologised for letting my words out and she didn't respond. I've been coming here at night to make sure Danny isn't visiting. Perhaps I need to become that deformed younger brother, and lock myself up in the attic until Death taps me on the shoulder and says, 'There's a spare seat in the back, if you'd like to come along.'"


"But Emma hasn't been sleeping here for over a week," Albert said. "She's staying in the hospital."


Maurice looked behind him. "You can tap me on the shoulder now," he said into the blackness.


"You don't need to worry," Albert said. "She isn't sick. She just needed a good night's sleep because she heard you in the garden."


"I know she's not sick. No one in that hospital is sick. Danny is a doctor there. If anyone there was really sick they wouldn't benefit from Danny's medical expertise."


"You're heading for the manacles in the attic alright," George said. "Why don't we go to the hospital and see what's going on. If she's on her own, then she's perfectly capable of resisting Danny's charms. And if she's with him then she's incapable of resisting his charms and you'll need to find a new hobby. You need to know one way or the other. Otherwise you'll drive yourself mad."


"I hear a tune of truth in that," Maurice said. "It's loud enough to drown out the music of madness, which is still a faint sound, but it's getting louder. To the hospital, before the music makes me start dancing."


They called the ambulance and they got Maurice to pretend he had fainted. When the ambulance arrived they helped him into the back and put him on an armchair. Albert, George and Neil went with him to the hospital.


He was taken to the drawing room in the hospital. Danny was called, and when he arrived in the room it looked as if he had just got dressed, which wasn't surprising given the late hour, and he also had lipstick on his face, which wasn't all that surprising either. "What seems to be the trouble?" he said to Maurice.


"Bit of a dizzy spell," Maurice said. "I thought I felt a tap on the shoulder and I was afraid it might be you-know-who, and the next thing I know I was looking up at my feet."


"Looking up at your feet every so often can do you no harm. A glass of brandy is what I always prescribe for patients with your symptoms."


A nurse brought the brandy and Danny left the room. Albert, George, Neil and Maurice followed him. When he opened the door to his room they got a glimpse of the woman inside before he closed the door. It wasn't Emma. It was one of the nurses. "So now you know," Albert said. "And I think Emma needs to know as well."


They went to find Emma's room. Neil stayed behind to look through the keyhole. Albert knocked on Emma's door and when she opened it he said, "We've found the source of the noise."


"That's a relief," she said. "What was it?"


"You can see for yourself, if you just come with us."


They took her to Danny's room. Neil couldn't see much through the keyhole, but it was enough to make his jaw drop. They told Emma to open the door and look inside.


Her jaw dropped as well, but it wasn't long before it was moving again. The words she shouted at him drowned out his attempted explanations.


She slammed the door. There were tears in her eyes, but she had Maurice there to comfort her. Albert, George and Neil left them alone.


The moose's head over the fireplace ignores the pigeon who looks in the window at him. The wife's uncle says that he was once on a train and all of the other passengers in the carriage were pigeons. He did his best to ignore them, but he couldn't because they kept talking about penguins.

Wednesday, July 22, 2009

Cat Pollution


I was thinking of building a wall with all the red bricks I found in the garden, but I was put off the idea when the wife's aunt said that one of her best friends was a brick who liked lying down with other bricks to make walls or pillars. She says that some walls are obscene.


My cousin Gary once got a summer job with his local community council when he was in college. The council wanted to promote the cliffs as a tourist attraction. After days of debate they came up with this idea: hand out free bowls of a breakfast cereal at the cliffs. Gary was hired to hand out the cereal. He'd talk about the cliffs as people ate. The cereal they used was called 'Womanisers and Vermin'. They got it cheap because it wasn't selling very well.


The cereal didn't attract any tourists, and Gary became bored very quickly. He remembered diving off the cliffs when he was young. He wondered why no one was doing it anymore, and why no one was swimming in the sea.


He asked people about it and they told him that the pollution was keeping people out of the water. There were far too many cats in the sea. It was almost impossible not to hit one when you dived in, and then they'd scratch your face. Gary wondered who was teaching the cats how to swim and scratch faces.


He decided to make an attempt at cleaning up the pollution, just to ease the boredom. He needed to lure the cats out of the sea. Mice would be the perfect bait, and he knew where to find some mice.


A man called Felix always had his walking stick with him. Mice would run up the stick and hide in his sleeve. Every night before going to bed he'd shake his arm, and the mice he'd accumulated during the day would fall out. Sometimes there would be over twenty of them.


Gary went to see Felix, and he came away with a box of twelve mice. There was an old castle near the cliffs. When Gary finished work one evening he used the mice to lure the cats into the castle. He set the mice free on the beach, and they followed a trail of cheese to the castle. A stream of wet cats emerged from the sea and followed the mice. The castle was soon swarming with cats. Gary left them there to chase the mice.


When he came back to the castle in the morning, all of the cats were asleep. He went to the cliffs to distribute the cereal. While he was waiting he ate some of it himself. He had to wait until noon before he had a visitor, but this man wasn't interested in the cliffs or in Womanisers and Vermin. His name was Victor. He said to Gary, "What have you done with my cats?"


"Before answering that I have a few questions for you. Why did you train your cats to swim and scratch people's faces?"


"They're happier swimming and scratching faces, rather than lazing about in my orchard. And they were starting to annoy me. Apples would drop on them as they slept in the orchard at night. They wouldn't wake up, but they'd make a strange sound. It kept myself and the wife awake. She made me do something about them. But they're happier swimming and scratching faces."


"They look even happier chasing mice in the castle."


Gary and Victor went to the castle. The cats looked happy as they slept.


"As long as they're not in my orchard," Victor said, "I don't really mind."


"But I can't keep bringing new mice for them every night. I have other things to be doing."


"So let them back into the sea."


"I can't do that either."


"I'm not really bothered about what you can't do. Forgetting about the cats -- that's what I can do. And it's what I'm going to do. Goodbye."


Victor walked away. Gary brought more mice for the cats that night, but when he returned on the following morning all the cats were gone. The mice looked very happy.


Gary believed the cats' owner must be behind their disappearance. He went to Victor's house and he told the story of the happy mice, but Victor seemed genuinely surprised. "If those cats have come to any harm," he said, "I'm holding you personally responsible."


"You're the one who deliberately forgot about them. If you own cats and you forget about them, you can't blame someone else when they come to harm. And anyway, they might be perfectly alright. We just have to find where they are."


Gary and Victor went back to the castle. A band called The Monochrome Tramps used to live outdoors during the summer. They had spent the night near the castle. Gary asked them if they'd seen who took the cats, but he knew what they'd say before they said it. The Tramps always point at Larry, and they say they saw Larry killing a pig. And Larry can't say anything because he's always eating ham sandwiches. Larry obviously wasn't concealing any cats, only ham sandwiches.


Gary and Victor looked in the grass around the castle and they came across the remnants of a trail of cream. Most of the cream had been consumed by the cats, but they'd left some of it behind. The lure of the source of the cream had made them go on. The trail led to an old hotel, a few hundred yards away from the castle.


"Mrs. Donnerust has the cats," Victor said.


"Why would she want so many cats in her hotel?"


"Probably to get rid of all the mice. The mice are keeping the guests away. Or else she wants to frighten away the ghost. He's keeping the guests away as well. Or else she just wants to distract the guests from the mice and the ghost."


"As long as the cats are happy."


"There's no way I'm leaving my cats with her. She once called me a bucket. It was the way she said it. We'll have to get the cats back."


"'We'? I'm not helping you get those cats back if they're going to end up in the castle or in the sea."


"Okay, I'll take them back to the orchard if you agree to help me."


"I will, but how are you going to lure the cats away from such a source of cream?"


"We don't have to lure them away. We could just make Mrs. Donnerust decide to get rid of them. And she'd decide to get rid of them for exactly the same reason I'd decided to get rid of them. I made a recording of the noises they made at night in my orchard. I played it back to them during the day, hoping it would make them feel guilty, but it didn't. If we played that in the hotel at night, she wouldn't be long getting rid of the cats."


Gary and Victor went back to the hotel after midnight. Gary opened the letter box, and they could hear the cats purring inside. Gary put a small speaker in through the letter box. Victor went around the back of the hotel and put a speaker in through the cat flap. They played the recording of the cats' annoying noises, and they turned the volume up.


Almost immediately, lights came on in bedroom windows. Gary and Victor removed the speakers and ran away as soon as they heard Mrs. Donnerust's footsteps on the stairs. Her method for getting rid of the cats was typical of her character. She got a sweeping brush and started swinging at them. A long line of cats flowed out through the cat flap. Gary and Victor were waiting with buckets of cream, and they led the cats back to Victor's house. They provided a taxi service for many of their feline friends. You can't hold a bucket of cream around that many cats without many of them attaching themselves to you.


Victor bought tiny parasols for the cats to sleep under at night. The sound of the apples falling on the parasols was relaxing. There were a lot more people at the cliffs after the sea was cleared of its cat pollution, but no one was eating the cereal. Gary ended up eating most of it himself.


The moose's head over the fireplace was disappointed to see Cork go out of the hurling championship at the weekend, but at least we're still in the football, and anything can happen in that. The wife's uncle says he once won a county medal despite the fact that their goalkeeper had two glass eyes.

Wednesday, July 15, 2009

Yogi Wormplodder


The garden gnomes could have sailed around the garden in their boat during the heavy rain. The boat must have capsized in the fish pond because they were wearing their life jackets.


My cousin Craig used to live in an apartment with some friends of his from college. He spent a lot of time with Beverly, who lived across the hall. They often went to a cafe in the evening, or they'd go for a walk in the park. One evening they went to see Bruce, who lived downstairs. He had a sense of his presence in the world. This sense wasn't constant. Sometimes he'd feel as if it had been erased. He wrote about himself to fill himself in again. He wrote about a spider too, but the spider wanted him to erase most of what he'd written. This spider felt that the text didn't match its self-perception. Bruce refused to accede to the spider's demand. One morning when Bruce woke up he found that the spider had covered his favourite spoon in a web. He was horrified. Craig and Beverly tried to convince him to erase what he'd written about the spider, but he refused to give in. He said, "I'd sooner erase what I've written about the two of ye."


"You've written about us?" Craig said.


He let them read what he'd written. Beverly read it out loud. In the first extract he wrote about her pretending to be a nun and Craig was posing as a wealthy businessman. They were in a crowded ballroom in an old hotel. Bruce's writings conflicted with their self-perceptions, but they both believed that the fictional versions were clear improvements.


They decided to try wearing these disguises. She bought a nun costume on the following day and he bought a fake beard. He wore it with his suit. That evening they went out for a walk in their disguises. The world seemed very different then. They started to notice all the other people in disguise. Some were disguised as priests and nuns. Priests and nuns were disguised as marathon runners.


One of their friends recognised them straightaway, but they didn't recognise him. It was Fergus, and he had shaved his beard. Just after he got rid of it he smiled at the beardless man in the mirror. But then he felt sad that his facial forest was gone. He remembered the good old days with his beard. They had been through many adventures together.


He went out for a walk, hoping to come across another adventure, but things seemed different without his beard, as if his life had entered a lull, or as if he'd lost a companion who was like a magnet for trouble. He never realised how much he liked trouble until then. He needed to get another beard as soon as possible, but it would take months to grow one as thick has the one he just shaved off. When he saw Craig with the fake beard he offered to buy it. Craig was reluctant to sell because he was having so much fun with the beard, but Fergus offered him a hundred euros for it, so he agreed. Fergus walked away with a smile on his face, but you couldn't see that because of the beard.


Craig and Beverly walked to the suburbs, where they saw a herd of wild pantomime horses running down the street. When the horses stopped to drink water from a puddle, Craig and Beverly went to have a closer look at them. They realised that there were real horses inside most of the costumes. One costume was occupied by two men. The man at the front told Craig and Beverly that they were a horse called Yogi Wormplodder. Yogi was running with the herd for safety. He used to have a jockey, but they had an argument and the jockey left to find another horse. Yogi would love to be re-united with the jockey, but he was probably at the races in the park, and Yogi couldn't go there on his own because he wouldn't feel safe. Craig and Beverly agreed to take Yogi to the park.


They had never noticed the races in the park before. There were over forty pantomime horses and each one had a jockey. All of the spectators were wearing disguises. A race was just about to begin. Yogi told them that their jockey was on a horse with the number three on its side. Craig went to a bookie and put the hundred euros on number three.


When the race began, number three went into an early lead, but the jockey seemed to be trying his best to slow the horse down. He swore at the horse and started kicking it, but it wouldn't slow down. It won the race by four lengths.


As Craig was collecting his winnings he noticed that the jockey had dismounted and was running away. Two men disguised as gangsters ran after him. Beverly, Craig and Yogi followed the gangsters.


The jockey ran from the park and tried to make his getaway down narrow city streets. When Beverly, Craig and Yogi turned a corner they saw the two gangsters at the other end of the street, and they did their best to catch up. As they were running past a bin they heard a man say, "I'm in here."


They waited until the gangsters turned the corner before opening the bin. They found the jockey inside. "You can't hide in bins forever," Beverly said.


"Why not?"


"Because eventually you'll wake up in a rubbish dump. Do you want to wake up in a rubbish dump?"


"No."


"Well then you can't hide in bins forever. You can't hide from those two men forever."


"I can't face them either. They told me to lose the race or else. They didn't say what they meant by 'or else', but judging from the way they said it, I wouldn't enjoy it. I did my best to lose the race but that bloody horse didn't care about what happened to me. I'll never leave Yogi again."


"That's a very good idea," Craig said. "You need to become an integral part of Yogi. I was thinking of the rear end."


"There isn't enough room," they heard Yogi's rear end say.


"What I had in mind was that ye'd switch places. The jockey would become the rear end and the rear end would become the jockey."


The jockey looked shocked at the idea and they could tell that Yogi's posterior was shocked just by looking at the tail.


"It's the only way," Beverly said. "They'd start looking in the bins before they'd even think about looking in the rear ends of horses."


"I suppose we don't have any choice," the jockey said, and Yogi agreed.


They insisted that Beverly and Craig turn around while they made the switch. Within a minute the jockey was in the horse and the rear end was sitting on Yogi's back, wearing the jockey's uniform. The rear end was a man with a long brown beard.


A few minutes later the gangsters came back down the street. They walked past Yogi and the jockey without so much as a glance, but they looked in the bin. The horse's tail spun around after they'd gone.


The moose's head over the fireplace has been listening to a song called 'Warm Swans' a lot over the past few days. The wife's uncle wrote it. It's part of a musical he wrote for an Amateur Dramatics Society. The show has been surprisingly successful. It's set in a hospital that has red velvet walls and swans who patrol the corridors to make sure the patients don't escape. He says it's based on personal experience.

Wednesday, July 08, 2009

Mrs. Lowdelerry's Tea Room


I've been thinking about doing something with the rockery, now that I've found it again. It often goes missing. My great-grandfather once spent years looking for it. When he found the rockery it had nearly escaped from the garden. He was glad he had caught it, but he missed the chase, so he deliberately lost it again just so he could look for it.


My aunt Joyce has a rockery in her back garden. A few years ago she wondered if she could re-arrange the rocks to better effect, to create a more welcoming sight for visitors when they stepped outside the back door. She wanted them to feel as if the garden was saying 'hello' to them. The whole world would seem like a nicer place then. A warm feeling would spread across the land. Clouds would hurry away and birds would sing. The cows in the fields would moo happily. People who sweep the streets in cities would start whistling. Traffic wardens would dance. Dinner parties would be greatly improved by the warm welcome of a garden. It wouldn't give the guests anything more to talk about, but it would give them the will to talk at length about subjects that otherwise would be exhausted after the words 'It was just a stick'. The guests would go home with smiles on their faces, and remnants of these smiles would remain throughout the night. They'd wake up with a will to fit as much as possible into the new day. So it was hugely important to get the rockery right.


Joyce asked a neighbour called Harriet to look at the rockery and come up with a different arrangement of the rocks. Harriet was practically an expert on rockeries, and she was delighted to have a chance to spend more time with rocks. Her nerves had been shattered by trees. They never did what she wanted them to do. Rocks were very well-behaved in comparison. She spent a few days working on Joyce's rockery and this left her feeling completely at peace. Joyce was delighted with the result. Everyone smiled as soon as they stepped out into the garden.


Harriet had a warm smile on her face when she went home after finishing the rockery, but the smile seemed long gone when she came back to Joyce's house on the following day. The trees had been at her again, and her dog had got sick on the lawn. He kept barking at whatever it was he threw up. She needed to get away from her garden, to clear her mind of it before she could figure out what to do about the trees and the dog's present. So she was taking a train journey to the coast that day. She asked Joyce if she'd like to go with her, and Joyce said she'd be delighted to go.


The closer they got to the coast, the more Harriet seemed to forget about the trees. They got off the train at a station in a small seaside town. Harriet suggested they begin with tea and cakes. "You should always begin with tea and cakes," she said. "It's important to have a pleasant beginning because this will colour everything that follows. You're unlikely to enjoy a pleasant end if the beginning isn't right. Of course, it's not always appropriate to have tea and cakes. At breakfast time tea and toast will suffice, but there should certainly be marmalade. Sometimes it's not possible to begin with tea and cakes, like when the starting pistol is fired to send marathon runners on their way. That's why I've never run a marathon."


She said she knew of an exceptionally good tea room on the seafront. It looked just like a normal house from the outside. This was because the owner, Mrs. Lowdelerry, wanted to keep undesirables away. If she didn't want to let someone in she'd just pretend that this place wasn't a tea room at all, that she'd just invited some friends around for tea and the cash register was an ornament.


Harriet rang the doorbell at this house and Mrs. Lowdelerry opened the door. She invited them into the tea room. There were ten other women there, all drinking tea and eating cakes. Harriet and Joyce sat down at a table, and while they were waiting for their tea and cheesecake to arrive they overheard a conversation at a nearby table. A woman called Gillian was saying, "Nothing ever happens. Thank God. I wouldn't know what to do if something actually happened. I'd be picking daisies for cows and knitting dungarees or flags for the people at the bus stop, depending on which one they'd prefer. 'Would you like a flag or dungarees?' 'I think I'll go for some dungarees today.' There's a chance that something might happen, but I don't think it's going to come to anything. Two young men are camping in the field behind my house. They're nephews of the man who owns the field. They're only staying until tomorrow. They're going to a bible studies conference."


Mrs. Lowdelerry had been listening to this conversation as well. She said to Gillian, "I don't wish to alarm you, but my sister had similar visitors in a field near her house. They said they were nephews of the man who owned the field and they were on their way to a bible studies conference. They said they'd be gone again on the following day. She didn't think it would come to anything either."


"And did it?"


"On the following day there were over a hundred people in the field and they didn't look as if they were on their way to a bible studies conference, unless fire-eating classes are part of bible studies these days. Some of the things they were drinking were worse than petrol. These intoxicants made them behave erratically. They kept forgetting to put their clothes on, and even when they remembered they often put on someone else's clothes. They shouted relentlessly and my sister didn't understand any of it, but she was still shocked by everything they said. The music would go on all night and this went on for weeks. My sister couldn't sleep. Towards the end of the first week she was getting visits from leprechauns who told her they'd put a stop to the party in the field very, very quickly with a word and a nod to a friend who could frighten a mountain out of its socket, or even just by playing music on a flute, music that would attract the little red creatures with the gold wings, and these creatures would fly around the flute, making a buzzing sound that exudes menace, a liquid menace that would pour into the heads of these field-dwellers through the holes in their faces, and when their heads were full the liquid would solidify and make them run from the field in terror. My sister thought that these red creatures were just figments of the leprechauns' imaginations. She asked them to do something about the people in the field, but they never did. She ended up spending most of her time working on a homemade gun, one that would shoot mashed potatoes, but her mind wasn't operating at full capacity because of the lack of sleep and she couldn't get the gun to work. It could shoot wine alright, but she could just throw wine at them. It never crossed her mind to throw mashed potatoes at them. Thousands of other things crossed her mind, like a plan to write a musical about a twenty-seventh letter of the alphabet. This letter was called Bob. That turned out to be a surprisingly good idea. The people in the field left because they couldn't stand listening to her composing songs for this musical."


Gillian looked shocked. She said, "Oh. Oh dear. I see. Oh dear. Do you... Would you like dungarees or... No. That's for the people at the bus stop. I see. Oh dear."


"Don't worry," Mrs. Lowdelerry said. "We'll nip this thing in the bud. We'll get rid of those two well-behaved young men before they break out into a hundred hooligans who can't remember the fundamentals of clothing themselves."


Harriet, Joyce and all of the other women in the tea room agreed to help. The plan they came up with was to fight fire with fire. They'd have a tea party in the field to get rid of the campers. They rounded up as many of their friends as they could find and they all went to the field. There were over forty middle-aged women in the field with the two young men, who were clutching their bibles. Mrs. Lowdelerry was there with her sister, who had brought the wine gun. Someone fired the gun accidentally. It caused consternation at first, but within minutes it was causing laughter and singing. Loud music and dancing followed soon after, and not long after that the two campers were seen running from the field, singing hymns as they fled. Most of the women in the field didn't notice their departure. They were too busy shooting wine at each other and dancing.


Harriet felt much better after the party. She saw that trees were nothing to worry about, and she informed them of this when she got home.


The moose's head over the fireplace is listening to the sound of the trees in the wind. It looks like summer is nearly over for another year. Rose, one of our neighbours, says she can't wait for autumn because she loves stuffing dead leaves into empty vampires. They want her to do this.

Wednesday, July 01, 2009

The Ring


The garden needed the rain. The gnomes have their umbrellas up, but they look happy. I've seen the tiny prints of their Wellingtons to and from the fish pond. I think they're hiding a boat somewhere.


My cousin Charlotte once went for an eye test. The optician told her that she didn't need glasses but she did need to spend more time looking at rabbits.


So she spent a lot of time in the fields around her house. She enjoyed spending time in the fields anyway. She lost count of the amount of rabbits she saw there. She also saw a fox and a squirrel, but it was one of the rabbits that interested her most. He had a sponge tied to his back. She decided to follow this rabbit.


He led her to a woman who was carrying two suitcases. She put the suitcases down when the rabbit stopped in front of her. She removed the sponge from his back and she said, "Thank you very much." She put the sponge into one of the suitcases.


Her name was Tara. She told Charlotte that she had been on her way to a variety show, where she was due to perform a song called 'That's why the alien is a tramp'. Her two suitcases were tied to the roof rack of her car, but as she was driving around a tight corner they fell off and rolled down a hillside. Most of their contents had fallen out. The rabbits were helping her retrieve those contents, but so far they'd only brought back sponges, and some of them weren't even hers. She was much more concerned about finding her engagement ring. She had put that into one of the suitcases because when it was on her finger it was too much of a distraction as she was driving. The variety show was just an hour away and she had to find her ring before going there.


She said, "If I go on stage without my ring, people will think that I've broken off my engagement to Freddie, and they'll see this as confirmation of the rumours concerning his involvement in a plot to steal a bottle of wine."


"I have some wine I don't want," Charlotte said. "He can have that."


"It's this particular bottle that everyone seems to want. And it's not because of the wine in it. They all want it because on the label someone has drawn a picture of a teddy bear with sharp teeth."


A man ran by. He was wearing a leather jacket. Charlotte's optician had told her not to look at men in leather jackets, so she looked down at the ground. She looked up again when she heard a man shout 'Where did you put the ring?'. The man who shouted this was chasing the man in the leather jacket.


"That seems like a promising lead," Charlotte said to Tara.


Charlotte took one of the suitcases and they ran after the two men, but the suitcases slowed them down. They couldn't keep running for very long. They stopped when they met a man who was sitting on a rock in a field filled with gorse bushes, long grass, wild flowers and a rock. They asked him if he'd seen two men running by. He said, "Do ye want to see my spider? He's made out of bread."


Tara was giving up hope of finding the ring, and a bread spider seemed like the sort of thing that would cheer her up. The man's name was Gordon. He took them to a corner of the field, but there was no spider. "Is it possible that the spider has been eaten?" Charlotte said.


"Well I'd have remembered if I ate him myself. I've never forgotten eating his grandmother because he keeps reminding me. She went well with butter and marmalade, even though she was a bit stale."


They searched for the spider. And for the engagement ring. And for the man in the leather jacket who knew something about the whereabouts of a ring.


They found the man first. He was chasing the man who had been chasing him earlier, and he was joined by six other man, all wearing black leather jackets. One member of this gang shouted, "Tell us where you put the milk churn?"


After they'd all run by, Charlotte said to Tara, "Do you want a milk churn?"


"No."


"Neither do I."


They came across a donkey who was pulling a cart. The cart was full of odds and ends. Charlotte said, "My optician told me I should spend as much time as possible staring at a cart-load of odds and ends, especially if that cart is being pulled by a donkey."


So she looked into the back of the cart. "That hair would make an excellent moustache," she said. "It looks as if it's hardly ever been worn. I wouldn't put my hand into that glove. It looks as if it's been worn about a hundred times too often. That diamond... is attached to a ring."


"My ring!" Tara said. She removed the ring from the cart and she put it on her finger. She kissed the donkey. "I might just be in time for my performance if I hurry," she said.


"I'll help you with the cases," Charlotte said.


Gordon said, "What about my spider? Who's going to help me look for him?"


As Tara was trying to think of a polite way of saying that she didn't care about the spider, a rabbit came up to her and the spider was tied to its back.


"It's so nice to see the rabbit helping the spider," Charlotte said. "But it's just as well the spider isn't made out of lettuce."


"I used to have a spider made out of lettuce," Gordon said. "He came to an unfortunate end when he met a moth made out of mayonnaise. They got on like a house on fire. And then I ate them."


Gordon said he'd attach the things in the cart to the backs of the rabbits and let them return all the items. Charlotte and Tara ran back to Tara's car.


They got to the concert hall just in time. Tara was too preoccupied with her performance to notice that no one could look her in the eye, but Charlotte noticed. When Tara finished her song the audience gave her a polite round of applause and they tried to avoid making eye contact. When she came off the stage the show's director informed her that Freddie had been kidnapped. Three women wearing black uniforms took him away in a van. No one knew if he wanted to be kidnapped. He didn't seem to be resisting.


Half an hour later, Tara got a phone call. It was the ransom demand. The kidnappers wanted the bottle of wine.


"Maybe he really did steal it," she said to Charlotte.


"Or maybe the kidnappers believe the rumours," Charlotte said.


"There's only one way to find out. I know where his safe is, and the combination. He keeps everything of value in there."


They went to Freddie's house. Tara had a key. The safe was hidden behind a painting in his study. She opened it, but all she found inside was a comic book and a statue of King Kong. "So he didn't steal it," she said. "I'm glad he didn't, but how are we going to get him back if we don't have the wine?"


They tried to think of a plan. Charlotte noticed a painting of a race horse on a wall. She stared at that because her optician had told her to look at paintings of race horses. But she couldn't think about the matter at hand because her mind kept drifting back to the donkey and cart. She ended up devoting all her time to remembering the things she'd seen on the cart, and it was only then that she remembered seeing the wine bottle with the teddy bear on the label.


They drove back to the countryside. There was just enough moonlight for them to find the donkey and cart. Most of the contents of the cart had been taken away by the rabbits. Gordon was still there, and he was drunk, so Charlotte and Tara were able to guess what became of the wine, but Tara said they only needed the bottle.


Gordon told them that the bottle of wine had been too heavy for the poor little bunny to carry, so he decided to help the rabbit by drinking its contents, and then he attached the empty bottle to the rabbit's back. He pointed towards the ditch where the rabbit had gone. Charlotte and Tara headed off in this direction.


They found the rabbit trying to get the wine bottle into a rabbit hole. They took the bottle from him, and they gave him a packet of mints instead. He was able to get this into the hole.


Charlotte and Tara drove back to the city. They filled the bottle with cheap wine and put it into a bag, and then they put the bag into a rubbish bin on a quiet street just in time for the midnight deadline. They watched as a black van stopped next to the bin. An arm reached out and took the bag, and shortly afterwards Freddie was thrown from the back of the van.


He was delighted to be re-united with Tara. He insisted that he had nothing to do with the theft of the wine, but he admitted that he drank some of it when he was at a party at a friend's house. Only after all the wine was gone did they notice the teddy on the bottle. They filled it with water, and his friend promised to get it back to its rightful owner. He had no idea how it came to be on the back of the cart. Tara and Charlotte had no idea how Gordon got drunk on water.


The moose's head over the fireplace enjoys listening to the sound of the rain on the window. He enjoys listening to Wimbledon as well. The sound of the tennis balls being struck and the screaming is almost hypnotic. The wife's uncle says that he once fell asleep while playing tennis. His opponent kept throwing her racket at his head, but he still proposed to her as soon as he regained consciousness.