STORYTIME – Part 3

Here it is, Part 3. A bit shorter this week, as I haven’t spent quite so much time writing.

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PART 3

The door of the Lady Luck creaked open. This was to be expected. The door was incapable of making any other sound, as if, in its early days, it had tired of its first elocution lesson and run off to sea. Somehow it reminded Lester of a kid in his first ever French class who, having decided that he already knew everything worth knowing, went round telling everyone in the most extravagant accent that he had ze cheveux brown.

Instead of standard electric lighting, there were lanterns sprawled around the tavern, providing just enough light to navigate a voyage past coastlines of chairs and tables. Paraphenalia scattered like rocks: a diver’s helmet hung from the ceiling, low enough to catch the top of someone’s head if they weren’t paying attention. An old blunderbuss was balanced on the wall, a relic from the days of Old Empire, telling anecdotes like a retired old colonel, fondly reminiscing about natives and spears and cow-hide. An enormous replica shark took up an entire wall – a catch from one of the regulars, who had once been a whaler. Not a very good whaler, mind, hence it being a shark. The real shark used to scare away customers, so it was replaced with an 8-foot plastic toy from Sea World. It gave the pub a jovial, light-hearted atmosphere, which was both unwarranted and unwanted. The Lady Luck was a tavern for the braver souls, the ones who left their souls in the darkest oceans or the deepest rainforests.

Gert was hurriedly telling Lester all he knew about the bar.

“The one thing you’ve got to remember in the Lady Luck, young’un, is you don’t have to pay a pound for your rum, like you would in the Moon On The Hill. You play for it.”

They sat down next to the third turtle from the Moon On The Hill, or Sadie, as she was otherwise known. Maximilian was making his way over, having just told the barman the story of a cobra victim in Woolwich.

“This is no ordinary pub. Here rum is gambled for, not sold,” an Irishman grunted.

“Before the round is bought, the table pledges a game. Each drinker bids to buy the round,” Maximilian explained.

“Bids?”

“The drinker with the highest bid leaves for the bar. Let’s say I pledge the most,” Sadie insisted.

“At the bar, I pay my bid. I’m handed a coin and I throw it high, high into the air. If it lands tails, I must go back to our table with nothing for myself or the others, having lost my bid. If it lands heads, I throw again.”

“This sounds like a maths lesson,” Gert grumbled. He didn’t like maths lessons, mainly because he had trouble pronouncing the word ‘maths’. In his opinion, the Americans were right on in getting rid of the bloody awkward ‘s’ at the end.

“It doesn’t stop there,” continued Maximilian, “On the second throw, a tail will send her back to us with the promise of two drinks for herself, to be received whenever she likes, and one drink for the table. A head will let her throw again.

“On the third throw,” Maxi spoke again, as if continuing a song, “a tail will send her back to our table with the promise of four drinks for her, and one for the table. A head will let her throw again.”

“On the fourth throw,” Sadie finished, “a tail will send her back with eight guaranteed drinks for herself, and one drink for the table. A head will let her throw again, and so on.”

“This is how we drink at the Lady Luck, and why the Lady Luck is so named.”

“We even made up a shanty about it.”

“We sing a lot of shanties, here in the Lady Luck.”

“Can we sing a shanty now?” Lester asked, hopefully.

“No.”

“You see,” Maxi explained, “the men and women in here are free spirits, adventurers. They laugh at the chance of peril, they love not money, and spend every last penny on rum.”

“What sort of amount do they bid?” Lester asked.

“Why, some would give the earth to play the game! Men have pledged their diamonds, their homes, their family, just to buy drinks here. Many a time has a night ended in a bloody duel, a fight to the death for the privilege! But the Lady Luck is a perilous mistress, and whilst some leave here with all the rum they could ever drink, others are forever in her debt. Some never leave at all.”

“How much did you bid tonight?” asked Lester worriedly, eyeing up the drinks on the table. He was thinking about the ghost stories he had heard that day. He didn’t want to be a ghost.

The question was waved away. Bids, as a rule, were not disclosed, although Maximilian was no longer wearing trousers.

“Gert and Lester, you’ve got a round to bid for.”

Lester looked nervous. He wasn’t ready for a duel. Ten years ago another kid threatened Lester with a spud gun, and ever since he’d had a morbid fear of potatoes.

“What’s your bid, young’un? I’ve got three quid and this tub of marmalade,” Gert pulled out the marmalade, laying down his aces.

“I’ve got a bus ticket and this Wispa.” The Wispa had melted, so it didn’t really count.

This reminded Maximilian of a ghost story involving fudge, which he started to tell, but Sadie quickly interrupted.

“Where’s the bus ticket to?”

“The bus station.”

“Hmmm.” As the wisest of the group, it was clear she would have to adjudicate the winner. She knew it depended on one vital question.

“Is it still valid?”

“Hang on.” Lester examined the ticket, peering at it carefully, “No, this was my ticket to get here. It’s expired.”

“In that case, Gert, you – and you alone – have the chance to win the world. Go, take your chance!” she whispered, urgently.

With that, Gert ambled up to the bar.

The table went quiet, as tables often do. Tables aren’t particularly effusive, as a matter of fact. Sadie turned her neck slowly toward Lester, anticipating a question.

“Sadie, why aren’t you in the Moon On The Hill tonight?” Lester asked, believing her to be a regular of that sacred establishment.

“Because I am in the Lady Luck. It is not possible to be in the Lady Luck and the Moon On The Hill at once, you know.”

“Although Gert has tried.” Maxi interjected, feeling that Sadie’s last assertion was shamefully materialistic, and that he hadn’t talked enough in the last few minutes.

“He had a plastic cider bottle with him and feared he’d be cast from our hallowed drinking halls in ignominy. So he tried to hide his cider in the Moon when the barman of the Luck was looking, and in the Luck when the barmaid of the Moon was looking.”

“Did he succeed, Maximilian?”

“No, he hadn’t performed the necessary rituals. It is possible for an extended body to be in two places at once, as I have shown in my experiments, but Gert’s cider bottle remained firmly in his pocket.”

He wanted someone to ask him about his experiments. No-one did.

The Irishman had, for some time, been staring stoically ahead, gazing intently at something far away. Lester had followed his gaze once or twice – the man appeared to be staring at a moss-covered anchor propped up against the bar. The Irishman sighed and coughed, before looking steadily at Lester.

“So you’re investigating this murder?”

“Yes, sir.” The Irishman looked like the sort of man you called ‘Sir’.

“Oh, allow me to introduce Bill. This, Bill, is Lester.”

“Hello Bill. What do you do then?” Lester questioned brightly, because this was the sort of thing one said.

Bill ignored the question. He wasn’t going to answer no landlubber’s question. What could such a child understand about the ways of the navigator? Instead, he continued with his own line of questioning.

“Who is to be punished for this crime against God?”

Lester blanched. He could hardly report the current state of the investigation, which largely consisted of Gert’s love of naps. Nor could he describe the findings of the detectives, for they mostly concerned ghost stories and breakfast.

“What matters to Bill, you see,” crooned Sadie, taking her time over the thought, “is the rhythm of the sea. He wants natural justice, the waves of punishment to wash over the sin. He reminds me of old Oklahoma, people just living their lives, who didn’t know words like ‘love’ and ‘fear’. They lived them, love and fear, felt the beat of the heart. It’s the jazz of the soul.”

Maximilian nodded in agreement. “That is what the dead tell me. It’s all about the jazz of the soul!”

Gert returned from the bar, carrying three rums and a pickled gherkin. He seated himself comfortably between the jazz lover and the mystic, handing a rum to Lester and the gherkin to Bill, who, as it happened, liked gherkins. Gert kept the other two rums for himself. Before he could speak, Bill repeated his question, slowly and insistently.

“Who is to be punished for this crime against God?” He thumped his hand on the table, to make sure everyone understood.

Gert misunderstood. “I don’t think Maxi’s that bad. His stories might be a bit annoying, but they’re hardly crimes against God!”

Maximilian frowned. His stories were brilliant. Everyone loved his stories.

“Oh! The murder! I’d forgotten about that!” Gert instantly regretting saying that.

Sadie expressed surprise that the chief investigator of a murder had forgotten all about the murder, even though it was only the day after. Bill, however, continued to stare at the anchor, lost somewhere in the Celtic Sea.

Gert did some thinking on his feet, or rather, in his head. “Well, we’ve ruled out some suspects! We know it wasn’t Pixar Paul or Janey, because they have a cast-iron alibi. They were in the Moon On The Hill. You can’t do a murder if you’re in the pub!”

“Unless you’re in the Hood And Hangman.”

“Obviously you can do a murder if you’re in the Hood and Hangman, that goes without saying. They say the quiz machine’s built out of skulls. And the big telly only shows live executions, even when the footy’s on.”

Gert thought this would shock the table far more than it did. The others weren’t that interested in watching the footy, even if Manchester United were playing.

“You can murder if you’re in a pub,” Maxi began, ominously, “Long ago, in…”

Gert didn’t feel like a story just yet. “So we’ve ruled out Pixar Paul…”

“No you haven’t,” Maximilian was moody at not being allowed to tell stories at will, “It is possible for an extended body to be in two places at once. My experiments have determined this.”

Again, nobody asked about the experiments, despite the heavy hint. Sulking, he wandered off to the loo.

“…and you too, Sadie. We have a crowd of witnesses to testify you were spreading the word of jazz. Including me and Lester.”

Lester nodded. He’d secretly spent the morning trying to see the blues in his bedroom, but his singing had disturbed the neighbour’s cat.

“He was a good man,” Bill commented.

“Yes, yes,” Gert agreed, hiding his nervousness. He still didn’t know who had been killed and, as chief detective, he felt it proper to conceal this, “How well did you know him, anyway?”

This was the wrong thing to have said. “How well? Well enough, thank you!” Bill crossed his arms angrily and went back to staring at the anchor. Sadie and Maximilian glared at Gert for having said something so dreadfully out of place.

“It feels so strange that we’ll never see him again. All the things he did, gone, just like that.”

“He led quite a life,” remarked Maximilian, returning from the toilet, “A life that was not always happy. But it was eventful, and that’s more than we can dare hope for.”

“And to finish like that, right outside the Hart,” Sadie lamented, “Some men are born in the wrong time, and that’s terrible, some die in the wrong place, and that’s a tragedy.”

Gert might have joined in with the lament, for he liked a good eulogy as much as the next man, but he had only just noticed that Maxi was in his pants, and found this rather distracting. He had, however, picked up a few key details about the murdered man.

“Gert,” asked Sadie, interrupting Gert’s meditation on Maximilian’s knobbly knees, “how did he die?”

Internally, Gert panicked, but on the outside he was winter-coat smooth. “Ah, we haven’t got the path… pathog… crime doctor’s report back yet. We’ll have to wait and see.”

“But you must have some idea! We know he was found outside the Hart, but what did it look like?”

Gert realized he would have to take a wild leap into the dark and guess. It was the Lady Luck, after all.

“Oh, I think it was a blunt instrument of some sort.”

“Aye, that’s what I heard,” breathed Bill. “That’s what I heard.”

He paused.

“A good man, Abraham. Aye, a good man. Punish someone for this.”

With that, he stood up, took one slow, last look at the anchor, and then trod out the bar, without saying goodbye or good luck. The others watched him pace away, rocking slowly from side-to-side, as if on water or rum.

“Ah, Abraham! Abraham!” Suddenly worried that he was sounding a little too cheery about a dead man, Gert lowered his voice, “Abraham. Of course. I remember now. He used to play draughts with Bill, here in the pub.”

“There’s no friendship like that of draughts players,” Lester added, trying to be sage-like.

“They weren’t just draughts players together, you know,” Sadie explained, “They were shipmates together, long ago. I don’t know the details.”

“I know the details,” Maxi ventured, “I can tell you, if you like.”

Sadie groaned, but decided that a story could not be postponed any longer. Gert and Lester leaned forward attentively, ready for another tale.

TO BE CONTINUED

STORYTIME – Part 2

I’ve written a bit more of my story. Some of this was written after a couple of glasses of wine – reading it back I can definitely tell which bit it was. It is, again, a 1st draft. There are already things I’d like to change about the first two parts, but I’ll leave them be for now. Enjoy!

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PART 2

Gert’s investigation didn’t really start until the next evening. He reckoned that there wasn’t much point starting when everyone was asleep, and he needed the daytime to have a sleep. He snoozed until drinking time, and then summoned Lester.

The problem was that Gert had never actually been a detective before. Of course, like all entrepreneurial young men, he’d set up a detective agency in his early teens, but it hadn’t lasted long. His one and only investigation was the Case Of The Missing Lunch Money, when, after systematically searching the area and interviewing all possible actors, he had conclusively proved, beyond all doubt, that nobody could possibly have committed the crime, other than himself. For his brilliant inductive reasoning he was, of course, promptly expelled, although the fiver found in his pocket may have had something to do with it.

Lester wouldn’t be much help as a sidekick. Gert had first met Lester on a bus a few weeks previously, although perhaps ‘met’ is too tame a word. Lester had been sitting quietly, staring at the window – the kid had a disconcerting tendency to stare at transparent things, rather than through them – and Gert had been in the mood for a good shout.

“I don’t want any trouble from you youn’un!” he roared. There are many different sorts of things that roar – lions, pirates, tides, The Forties, Brian Blessed – but Gert’s roar had a beauty all of its own, like a hyena laughing through a wind tunnel.

Lester turned his attention from the window and stared blankly. He quickly assumed that Gert was harmless, and grinned foolishly instead. This was a fatal error. Gert took the smile as an invitation and sat down beside Lester, taking up around three-quarters of the space, as some men inexplicably do.

“I was kidding, I was kidding. Oh, where are my manners?” Gert, as every true gentleman ought, proffered his plastic 2-litre cider bottle. Lester respectfully declined – he wasn’t used to drinking before lunch, even though he hadn’t quite reached 18.

Lester had spent the previous ten minutes pretending that his hands were pelicans peering over the window ledge, so Gert’s earthy, hairy conversation came as a bit of a shock. In fact, the next few minutes would be bamboozling.

“Well, I’ve got 6 wives, and 21 girlfriends!” boasted Gert, “and none of them want me to shave!”

“Uh huh.”

“I’m going to see one of them now. She always likes apples, so I’ve brought her some apples!” Gert held Exhibit A, the cider bottle, up on high, as if it were a flaming torch in a Byzantine palace.

“Do you know, lad, how to behave towards a woman? How to treat them?”

“No, not really…”

“Well, take it from me, there’s only one thing you’ve got to know. Take it from me, you won’t find it in any magazine or self-help book, mind.”

Lester waited. His pelicans were holding tight to the seat in front, as if they reckoned the bus would tip over.

“Here it is,” Gert leaned in conspiratorially, talking behind his hand, but loudly enough for other passengers to hear.

“Treat ’em with respect.”

He leaned out again, and winked.

“There. That’s the secret”

Lester hadn’t been expecting that, and both smiled.

“How do you treat your parents? Do you respect them? Gert looked him up and down. “Ah, you look like a good kid. I bet you treat ’em right.”

Lester’s hands had relaxed, and they were examining the seat’s cushion cover. Gert noticed.

“Arr, you’re playing the old pelican hands game! Listen, Lester, do you know what I do? I’ve got a little boat in the harbour! Goes up and down on the waves, it does, rolling the waves. I’d be out on the oceans blue now, sailing the seventy seas, but it’s all rough and stormy out, mind. No sailing in this weather.”

Gert smiled again.

“Listen, this is my stop – I’ll see you around and about the town, if you please.” With that, Gert stood up, pressed the big bell button, and strode out into the bright blue sun, a hundred miles from the sea.

They were to see each other around and about the town. Gert implicitly trusted Lester, in the way that most people trust someone who’s prepared to listen to them for nearly three and a half minutes. Lester, for his part, trusted everyone who deigned to talk to him. Lester hadn’t investigated a murder before, and Gert decided that the young’un would have to be eased in gently. Perhaps he could arrange the magnifying glasses or file all the case notes. Maybe make tea for witnesses. There was bound to be something he could do.

The night after the murder, the two of them met again in the market square.

“We have things to talk about, Lester.”

“Like what?”

“We’ve got to decide what sort of detective I am! Am I Sherlock Holmes, a thinking man?”

“No.”

Gert bristled at Lester’s hastiness. “Fine. What about Miss Marple?”

“What kind of detective was she?”

“She was… well, I’m not sure. Think she was just old. That was her thing, being old.”

“You’re not old.”

“No, I’m not. I’m not Belgian either, which rules out Poirot.”

“Was Poirot the one who always rode on expensive trains?”

“Yep. Don’t know why they weren’t cheaper, what with all the murders on them.”

There was a long pause as both thought about the price of train fares in this day and age.

“I know, be Columbo! Do that turn after interviewing someone, then find out their innermost secret! You could do a turn.”

“I can do a turn! On a good day. When I haven’t had too much cider.” Gert considered. “Criminals already know the Columbo turn, though.”

“Turn twice?” Lester offered, eagerly.

“What, turn around and then back? You’ve got it, young’un! Everyone will think I’m doing a Columbo turn, but then I’ll turn again, and they’ll realise I was only pretending to do the turn, and then they’ll be so shocked they’ll tell me all their secrets!”

Gert pictured the scene. “Or maybe they’ll just think I’m doing a big turn to prove I can. That’s what us acrobatic types do. Somersault down the street, turn handstands in the park, just because we can. Yeah, they’ll think I’m one of them acrobat fellas and ignore me.”

“You know what, I don’t really feel in the mood for a murder mystery, Lester. There’s no dread. After the murder I had a bit more cider, than a snooze, then some eggs. I mean, I’m not feeling it.”

“Did you find anything out about the case today? Like who was killed?”

“Doesn’t matter. Look, we’re here to solve a murder, not find the victim. Already been done, you see.” Gert tapped his own nose, as if to check it was still there. “That lad who ran into the pub, remember? He found the victim.”

“I suppose so.”

Gert racked his brains.

“I know what’ll get us in the mood for sleuthing – a good ghost story!”

“Do you know any ghost stories?”

“No. But I know who does…”

Gert paused, just long enough, to raise the tension. However, Lester was examining his hands again and didn’t really notice.

“The person who knows a ghost story is… Maximilian!”

“Maximilian the tour guide?”

“Yes, but not just any old tour guide. A ghost tour guide.”

Gert’s logic was once again faultless, thought Lester. If you want a ghost story, go to the guy who tells ghost stories.

“His tour starts in the market square in 2 minutes.”

As if waiting for a cue, a very mystical, mysterious looking man tapped Lester on the shoulder. He wore a turban and a v-neck sweater, with the turban posed at a jaunty angle. Having said that, it was generous to call it a turban. It looked as if it had been constructed by someone who didn’t really know anything about turbans, but really wanted to wear one because it made him look exotic and interesting and cool.

The moment would have been more mysterious still, if there hadn’t been 4 or 5 Brummies standing behind with chips, waiting for the tour to start. One was scratching his arse, but in a relatively thoughtful way.

“Maximilian!”

“Gerrrrrrttttttt!.”

Maximilian liked to be generous with his sounds. Lester was suitably impressed. Gert beamed.

“And a boo to you too! Maxi, we need a ghost story. Just to get us in the mood for our murder mystery.”

“Of course. To see the murder for what it truly is, you need to enter the soul of the victim, watch the murder unfold from the other side of the grave, understand what has happened to that soul as it leaves this life and gazes on, powerless to change and turn and manipulate the minds of Man. In that case, you are in the right place. Come with me, and you shall learn about the dark perils before and beyond death. Terrible things happen in both this world and the next, young friends.”

“And you may join as well,” he offered the Brummies, one of whom was looking for somewhere to pee.

Gert was suitably impressed. He could feel his spine tingling already, and his mood picking up, like a spaniel who’s caught the scent of the postman. The little group toddled off, posing at on the corner for a photo of the cobblestones. They turned and disappeared down a winding alley for a while, turning left and right, before emerging on a major road they could have reached in half the time by taking the main street.

“Here,” proclaimed Maximilian importantly,” is where our first tale takes place.”

“I know that some of you may be sc-ep-tics.” He pronounced every syllable of the word, and then one more, as if it were a dirty curse. “I’m not going to talk you round. Some people don’t believe, and that’s that. But I urge you to have an open mind. There’s more to this Earth than bricks and mortar and concrete and tarmacadam. More than just houses and trees and sheep and horses and Connecticut and the price of milk. We all get lost in streets and pigeons and constitutions and beards and cottage pie, and we don’t listen for the other country. Listen out for your long dead grandmothers and your as-yet-unborn great-great nieces, for they are calling to you.”

Lester strained his ears. He reckoned he might be hearing his father’s uncle’s uncle, but on second thoughts he decided it was probably his stomach, as the smell of chips was making him peckish.

Maximilian continued.

“Do you see these cottages, just across the road?” They did. “We cannot venture any closer, brave adventurers, for the current occupants throw toilet rolls at me if I go too close.. Yet, on that very site fifty-three years ago, a brutal kidnapping took place.”

He paused, letting the image consume the gathered crowd.

“It was political, as these things often are. They called it the Cold War, but it was anything but cold. Both the Communists and the Yanks knew that all-out nuclear war would obliterate the very earth we stand on, so all combat was carried out on a tiny scale. The Yankees had their own methods, generally involving ecological disaster. You know, train a school of dolphins to swim into Russian waters and eat some of the plankton, thus leaving the Soviet amphibian population slightly depleted. They say it was Omega-3 deficiency that led to the decision to reject Communism as a practical political structure – that’s just a theory, and it may be well be right, but it’s all far beyond the likes of me.”

“What I do know about is the Russian tactics. Those scheming Soviets didn’t want to stick to training whales – oh no. Instead they turned their attention to people!”

The Brummies gasped. They knew that, once upon a time, war was made against human beings, but they never expected to confront this dreadful truth.

“The Russians had a plan. They couldn’t destroy the West in one great strike, but they could defeat it piece by piece. Instead of launching a vast army, they attempted to take out the British people one-by-one. Their plan was to systematically subdue each and every member of the British population in turn, until there was no one left. The first to go was Maggie Jones, of Darlington who was carried off in the night. She was soon followed by Arthur Makepeace, once of The Wirral, who was dragged inside a postbox as he walked past. Little Billy Stuart got stolen in a ball pool and carted off to Leningrad. The Kremlin would have succeeded in taking us all, too, if England had been the size of San Marino!”

“Anyway, one day they came here, to our sleepy town. A young grocer was their target, a Miss Nancy Worthington. Oh, she was surprised, all right. The Russians arrived one morning in Spring, fiendishly timing their arrival after the milkman’s and a bit before old Mrs Crisp came round for a cup of tea.”

Just then a cat miaowed. Gert stared it out, furious at the interruption.

“So the Russians turned up, all three of them, in their dirty old white van. They’d first acquired the van back in ’54, hiring it under false names. The proprietor thought they were Welsh, and mistook their coarse Eastern accents for the sweet melodies of Pontypridd.”

“The bastards!” a bystander exclaimed, with feeling. It is difficult to exclaim ‘The bastards!” without feeling.

“Anyway, they opened up the van, took out their dusty carpet, brushed it down a bit, rolled it up. They carried it to the front door, Svetlana holding the front of the carpet, Alexey at the back, Nadia moving around a bit. She couldn’t decide whether to grab the back or help out at the front, or linger about in the middle and support the weight. In the end she was only in the way, and the others could have carried it without her.”

“They forced the door open, and laboriously pulled the rug up the stairs. Miss Nancy tried to run, but no-one can run from the might of Mother Russia. Nancy was trapped in the front bedroom, the carpet was unravelled, and poor Miss Nancy was thrown to the floor. Those diabolical Communists rolled the rug round and round and round her, until escape was impossible.”

“She was carried slowly down the stairs, the Russians taking care not to hit the bannister, and through the front door, minding the step. She was placed in the van, the kidnappers jumped in, and the van sped off back to Eastern Europe, behind the Iron Curtain. She was never seen again.”

By this point, Lester had blanched, turning as pale as a cream carpet in the winter sales. Even Gert was tongue-tied, speechless at these horrors.

“Twenty minutes later, Mrs Crisp turned up for her morning brew. All she found was a pint of milk, an open front door, and a note – a note to say that Mother Russia had taken another of our daughters.”

“It is said that, whenever the East wind blows, it carries young Nancy’s voice from the ice white snow of foreign steppes, calling out for England.”

“A classic, diabolical tale of kidnap. Menacing Soviets rolled up a young English woman in a carpet and drove her all the way to Moscow. It is to the greatest credit of the Americans, that their brave dolphins brought down the Berlin Wall!”

“Hear, hear” chorused the crowd.

Gert, however, was nonplussed. “I thought this was a ghost story? Where is the ghost?”

“The young woman, Miss Nancy Worthington,” Maximilian explained, courteously and patiently.

“But you said her voice was carried here by the wind! That’s not a ghost! I want ghouls and squeaking chains and figures in white sheets moaning!”

Gert mimicked a ghost. “Wooo! Woooo-ooooo-oooo!” He raised his arms high and wiggled his fingers hauntingly.

Exasperated, Maximilian ignored him. “Let us continue on our journey through the after life. Turn around and head towards Boots.”

The Brummies turned and strode on, enjoying being at the front for a change. The one with the chips walked a metre ahead of everyone else, imagining that he was leading the pack, telling everyone the tales, like a greasy Dickens in a grimy street. Maxi fretted at the back of the group. He didn’t like to be walking behind everyone else. You never saw Ayrton Senna walking behind everyone else. No, he’d be proudly zooming ahead, pushing the boundaries of physics and engineering and sport as he lapped the stragglers and the journeymen.

Maxi worked his way through the pack, as if making up for a poor qualifying performance and subsequent lowly position on the grid. He called the group to a halt in a leafy little square. Four benches loitered in the space between the grand houses, pretending that they were minding their own business, when really they were worried that everyone was staring at them. Benches aren’t much good at casually hanging around – they don’t have a mobile phone or a portable music player, so everything gets a bit uncomfortable.

Maximilian stood before a great white Georgian building. The house was at peace, with pale tinted windows at blossom smiling at the sides. The crowd gathered in front of him, forming an arc with the guide at the centre. They stopped talking and waited for him to begin.

“The house you see in front of you is haunted.”

The Brummies jumped. They’d never seen a haunted house before.

“It is haunted by a mother and her children. They once lived here, in a old wooden house that stood here before this splendid thing behind you was ever created. The children had a father too, but he doesn’t haunt the place. Oh no, he is long gone, summoned back to Hell, the eternal fire from whence he came.”

Lester shivered. There is something about talk of eternal fire which always makes you feel particularly cold on a brittle November night.

“You see, he was no man born of woman. He was not from this Earth. He had no ancestry, no childhood, no hometown. He was, this creature, what is known as a fire demon.”

Maximilian lingered over the words ‘fire demon’, almost spelling them out, letting the audience contemplate them for a moment.

“Fire demons are sent to this women, given corporeal form. They take the shape of ordinary men, assume their form, acquire their habits, beliefs, superstitions. They enter into our conceits, our prejudices, act as if they they, too, were once born weeping and will slowly, fatefully cry their way to life’s passing.”

“Yet all this is mere pretence, for they were not born here and will not die here, at least not in the way we mortals do. A fire demon seeks to wreak the most suffering it can upon the world, consuming itself in the process.”

“Like a bee,” Gert helpfully suggested.

“Ah, not at all like a bee, my friend. The sting of a bee may be sharp for a little while, but the destruction of a fire demon is the most terrible of nightmares.”

“I don’t know, bee stings are pretty nasty, especially if you’re allergic.”

“In a way, everyone is allergic to the fire demon, for no mortal can withstand fire.”

Gert acknowledged this and backed down. He decided to shut up and listen to the story.

“The fire demon, then, is indistinguishable from an adult male human. They are easily not to notice them.”

“One day Mary Murphy met her man. He was a tailor, she a seamstress. He was gentle and kind, with good strong hands. Apparently good, strong hands were considered particularly attractive back then, I don’t know why. After a brief courtship they married. Two beautiful children were born. The family lived here, in this old wooden house. The two made garments for the town, and what fine garments they were! The whole town loved them and the clothes they made.”

“Years passed, and the children grew. But what they didn’t know, what no-one knew, was that their father was a creature of Hell. And one day, just when the family were settled and happy, the fire demon revealed itself.”

“It was a cold November evening, just like this one. A fire was crackling in the hearth, the children’s porridge was laid out on the table, ready for supper. All were smiling, basking in the joy of family life.”

“At that moment, just when Mary’s smile was widest, it burst into flame, and the fire spread rapidly, too rapidly for escape. Mary watched her children fall in the smoke and flames. She struggled with the inferno, but she was powerless as they were. She, too, succumbed to the hellfire. Her howls rent through that fateful night, and are heard there still.”

“In twenty minutes the house had fallen too, burnt to tiny ashes. The townsfolk said that their homespun garments were the last things to burn, all the children’s clothes eventually turning to dust as frantic onlookers desperately, hopelessly fought the blaze.”

“A new house was built – this gleaming, glorious house. Yet the evil remains, lurking in the shadows of November nights. The ghost is sometimes heard, shrieking and crying as her life burns around her.”

“So beware of the men you meet. However courteous they are, however helpful, there is always a chance, a very slight chance, that they were not born human. Fire demons lurk among us, hidden and secret, waiting for the very moment when we are most happy, and taking our happiness away in an instant. Anyone could be a fire demon, and you’ll never know, not until the end.”

The group were quiet now. Gert, however, was delighted. He starting clapping enthusiastically, and the entire group slowly joined in. Maximilian basked in the applause.

“Thank you, thank you! That concludes the tour. If anyone’s up for a pint, I’ll be in the Lady Luck in half an hour!”

On the way to the pub, Gert rambled on to Lester.

“I’ve got that murder feeling tonight! Murder investigation feeling, I mean. I’m not going to burst into flame! Although I would say that, wouldn’t I? Maybe the only way is to say that I am going to burst into flame – I wouldn’t say that if I was, so I can’t be a fire demon!”

“You might be bluffing, though.”

“Ah, there is that. Difficult thing, this fire demon business. Like a game of poker, but with real pokers. So, are you ready for some sleuthing?”

“Yes!” Lester beamed.

“Me too. We’ll start tomorrow, right after we’ve been to the Lady Luck. I’ve got some cider to drink.”

And with that the two pushed opened the creaking swing doors of the Lady Luck.

TO BE CONTINUED

Apologies

I’ve only had a blog for a few days, but I already need to apologise for three things:

 

1. In my first post I promised there wouldn’t be any policemen or screaming children. I’ve already broken this promise, as my third post contains both. Sorry.

2. I also promised that there wouldn’t be any donkeys. I’m sorry for that. There are some donkeys here.

3. More seriously, I’ve just looked at my latest reading list and realized how few female authors I’ve been reading lately. This is inexcusable. I would sincerely welcome any recommendations.

 

That is all.

STORYTIME – part one

Just after lunch today, I started writing a stupid story. It seemed like a good idea at the time, in the way that everything seems like a good idea at the time, even if it’s shit. Anyway, I decided I’d post whatever was on the page by the end of the afternoon. I’m not entirely sure where it’s going, and, if I continue, I’ll definitely come back to part one, but here it is, first part, first draft.

I think the plan’s for it to become one-part murder mystery, 9-parts ridiculous people telling ridiculous stories to one another, with the mystery only there to give it some structure.

————————————-

“Pub!”

He didn’t actually say that, but Gert always said that, just by the way he moved. There were loads of pubs on the main street, but the two walked right on by. Gert didn’t really know where they were going, and Lester never knew where they were going, but they were in a hurry to arrive, all the same.

The big chain pub came and went.

“Why do we have a massive Lager Lounge, anyway?”

“No-one knows, lad, no-one knows. That’s true of all the Great Works of Humanity. Pyramids, the Taj Mahal, that massive ice-cream statue in New York. There’s more to this world than banks and bingo halls.”

“So it’s like our very own Christ the Redeemer?”

“The big goalie statue in Rio? Aye, protecting the market square from the wrath of God. If he ever were to rain down his fire upon us, Heaven forbid that he would, we’d wash it with beer. There’s nothing in Hell or Earth that can withstand beer, you know.”

The remaining pubs and taverns and watering holes came thick and fast, huddled together for warmth, as if they’d left their coats in the Lager Lounge and didn’t want to miss their taxi.

“Up ahead’s the Old Lion, where the professional types sip fine ales and lecture each other about Society. Then there’s the Grey Hart, The Cockatoo – for all the twirly moustaches – The Lady Luck, just round the corner. There’s the Farmer’s Arms – that’s for anyone in tweed. And that, that…”

Gert gestured towards a dark pub in a dark corner of the street. On cue, the wind gasped through its windows, as if it were an unrealistically evil villain in a children’s tale. Lester knew all about the Hood and Hangman, or at least he thought he did. It had a reputation – not a place to be late on a Saturday night, they said, unless you knew how to defend yourself against a broken pool cue. Mothers used it to scare their sons and daughters into doing homework – he’d been told countless times he’d spend his life in the Hood and Hangman if he didn’t do the washing up.

They both looked away, as if recoiling from an evil spirit they dared not speak of. Instead they hurried along an alleyway, down a little hill. The town’s real heart was away from all this hubbub, down a small back street, past golden-headed lanterns and smooth old cobble stones. To the left, just where you weren’t looking, sat the Moon on the Hill, quiet and meditative but for the strain of a long, low saxophone.

It never closed before half two. Long after all the jobsworths and jokers had gone home, the Moon on the Hill kept the lights down low and the ciders flowing. There was no money in staying open this late, but no-one cared. Business plans and profits happened to bankers in big cities, to young go-get-em suits with a point to prove. No-one had proved anything in our town since the nineteenth century, whatever the local mystic said.

It was Wednesday evening in our little bar – jazz night. Once the November night took over and the street lights sparked up, the only place to be was the blues bar, down below the street, away from dreary winter days. It was here that Gert finally stopped his frantic half-jog, half-canter, and descended the steps, Lester panting behind.

“Come on,” he gestured, opening the musty door. Lester stepped in to the warm, watching purples and oranges sweep from the lights and through the cellar. There was a crowd, but the kind of crowd where you’d recognize every face, every figure.

If you’ve left the city you’ll know that every small-town bar is full of rock n’ roll legends. Men cruise through the door in their leather jackets, ladies croon to the small, fuzzy jukebox over in the corner. There’s always a middle-aged man by the bar who’ll never forget his first voyage to The Dark Side of the Moon. In this bar Elvis was relaxing on the leather sofa, waiting for the fun to begin. A smoothed-out Joni Mitchell leapt to her feet for some reason. Three Kurt Cobains squatted by a small table, all plain black tees and crinkled denim, while earnest Stevie Nicks ordered another fiery cocktail.

Gert hopped eagerly past the legends, waltzing left of tables and right of chairs, leaping over bags and ducking under beams. Lester tiptoed behind, apologizing to no-one in particular. They jigsawed to the corner, to some ragged, dusty men and women behind the stage.

No words was spoken as Gert and Lester sat down. The three old jazz hands crooned their necks towards Gert, registered his presence, gave a little nod of acknowledgement, and slowly, quizzically, turned their heads to Lester. Lester was inexplicably reminded of three ageing turtles, who had seen all the young limpets before, and had forgotten what was a starfish and what was a sea monster.

“Lester, meet the blue crew. This is Janey” – Gert pointed to a necklaced woman, who smiled sagely. And here’s Pixar Paul…”

“Why Pixar?”

“He’s never seen a Pixar movie!” someone whispered in his ear.

“Never seen a Pixar movie? What?” Lester didn’t understand, and didn’t keep his voice down. “What about Up?”

“No,” Pixar Paul replied, stony-faced.

“Wall-E?”

“No.”

Two of the Kurt Cobains overheard, and joined in.

“Toy Story! You must have seen Toy Story! Everyone’s seen that! With the cowboy and the talking potatoes…”

“NO. I’ve never seen that.”

The third Kurt Cobain tried to be helpful. “Toy Story 2?”

Everyone looked at him.

“Oh, I know, what about Pirates of the Caribbean?”

“The one with the English lad in eyeliner? Yeah, I’ve seen that.”

The gathering crowd looked a little shocked.

“Oh, hang on, that’s not Pixar, is it? The pirates are all real. They’re all fake in those cartoon films.”

Pixar Paul was looking more and more glum by now. Janey took Lester to one side.

“Paul’s very sensitive about never having seen one of those movies. It marks him out from the crowd, sets him apart from humanity, but not in a good way. Not like Galileo or Eleanor Rigby or a young Henry David Thoreau. More like Hitler. Or that guy who tells people they’ve got weird feet. So just stay off the subject from now on, ok? Nobody wants to be Hitler.”

“Ok,” he replied, uncertainly. “But why doesn’t he just go and watch a Pixar movie?”

“Because then he wouldn’t be Pixar Pete,” she explained, “He’s always been Pixar Pete.”

“Pete?”

“Paul, sorry.”

“Even when he was a baby?”

“Yeah, even when he was a baby. Even then, he’d never seen a Pixar film.”

Lester couldn’t fault her, but was still confused. “Why can’t he just be Paul?”

“Because, well… nobody can just be Paul. I’m not just Paul. You’re not just Paul.”

No, I’m Lester,” said Lester, brightly. “You’re Janey.”

She sighed. “Oh, never mind. Anyway, the band’s starting up, and I need a drink. Sit down.”

Lester returned, and found the third turtle staring at the empty chair where he’d been sitting. He sat down. She was still staring.

She considered him for a moment. “What’s your name, kid?”

“Lester.”

“Why Lester?” said a voice from behind. Kurt 2 wanted to know everything today.

“For Lester Young, right? You’re young Lester!”

“Pretty stupid to call him young Lester, he won’t always be young.”

“Who’s Lester Young?” Lester asked.

“Who’s Lester Youuung?!” roared Pixar Paul, unsure whether to denounce him like a preacher or educate him like the Early Learning Centre. “You’ve never heard Lester Young play? They say he was a seagull with the sax…”

“A seagull?” Gert queried. His knowledge of jazz wasn’t that great, but he’d never heard of a seagull on saxophone. He could picture it though, a groovy little seabird picking up the alto, putting on some shades, blowing a banging tune on the shoreline, fluttering its wings to the beat…

“Yeah, a gull. He’d cut away from the rhythm, rising and soaring and diving and soaring and rising like some crazy seabird and then he’d briiiing it back, all the way back, back down to the beat. Yes sir!”

“I saw him up in Montreal, long time ago,” Janey joined in, “They say the war ended and his saxophone rang out across the world. I heard it. I heard that sax, ringing out across the world. The world stopped playing at soldiers, then and there.”

“So he wasn’t actually a seagull then?” Gert asked, a little disappointed. He’d definitely have paid to see a jazz band with a seagull in it.

“Have you ever, continued Janey, who was warming to her theme, “Have you ever been in a glacier, in cold, cold ice, and put on a jazz record? Soared over the crevasse, between the ice, floating on the wings of the blues? That’s who Lester Young is. Perfect freedom. Freedom like a seagull’s wings.”

“Don’t you dig a crazy saxophone, Lester?

“Um, I, I…” Lester was struggling to swim this evening. He’d always had trouble telling apart the sound of a saxophone from the sound of a trumpet, and didn’t really want to be shown up. He didn’t yet know what every adult human being knows, that it’s actually impossible to tell a saxophone apart from a trumpet or a trombone or a cornet, and everyone’s just pretending. The jazz hands all knew this, but they’d never admit it, even if their lives depended on it for some awkwardly contrived reason.

“What do you listen to, Lester. What do you bop to in your bedroom?”

“What crazy tune comes out of your speakers?”

“Have you ever sung the blues?”

He didn’t have time to answer.

“Have you ever been a seagull, Lester?” Janey demanded. Or are you Seagull Lester, the kid who’s never been a seagull?”

“He’s not a gull! He’s a pigeon!” Kurt Cobain One trumpeted supremely.

“Yeah,” cackled Kurt Cobain Two, “Get this. He’s not Lester Young, he’s Leicester Square!”

He thought this was the wittiest thing anyone had ever said. The jazz hands stared at him patronizingly. Gert threw a sock at him. The three Cobains, luckily, left the conversation.

The third turtle smiled. It had been a long time since she’d last found a new audience.

“Do you know, Lester, why the blues is called the blues?”

The others paused, ready to hear her tell the famous tale again.

“I was there, there in the early days of jazz. When the blues were still pale and colourless and a little translucent. It was me and Duke Ellington, down in New Orleans, way before he became a duke, or a doook, as he used to call it. Just plain old Viscount Ellington. Anyways, the Viscount had this thing for rhythm. Nowadays they say it’s a condition, begins with ‘s’, sounds like cinema or something…”

Some of the legends were listening in to their favourite story, and tried to help out.

“Syntactica!”

“Syncopation.”

“Semaphore!”

“Centrifugal!”

Gert thought he knew. “Sinuses! He could smell!”

“No, Gert, he couldn’t smell it. No-one can smell rhythm, that’s ridiculous. Actually, he was a sinner for rhythm – yeah, that’s it.”

“A sinner for rhythm,” she repeated. “As a kid, he’d feel the rhythm, and he loved the rhythm, real strong, like. But he loved it too much, clung to it as most men cling on to happiness, or love. He couldn’t do without it. And the Devil, Lord curse him, is always there, watching us, finding our weaknesses watching us fall.”

“The Viscount didn’t know that you oughta let the rhythm fly, watch it go like a seagull, and kiss it as it boogies past, just like the poet said.”

“And the Devil said to the Viscount, ‘Viscount, I see you feel the rhythm, and I will help you. I can give you the chance to see the rhythm too, see it with your jazzman eyes.”

“Yes, weird red man, I’d like to see the rhythm!”

Lester gasped. “A Faustian pact!”

“Actually, no, it wasn’t a pact. The Devil was a bit absent-minded that day, forgot to take anything in return. Left the Viscount with his soul all intact, and forgot about asking for a receipt. So the Viscount was a sinner for rhythm, and the Devil went away with nothing.”

“Anyway, Ellington walks in with me to this New Orleans bar, and something special happens to him. This dude’s playing the piano, 4/4 time, and he’s seeing a misty green, like a Scandinavian forest, not that he’s ever been to Sweden, mind.”

“He leaps on the stage, picks up an instrument, and plays and plays and plays. The band are a bit peeved, but the crowd love it. He jazzes fast and slow and somewhere in-between, and then fast again, and eventually settles for this sound. We’re all watching, gasping, but he’s far away…”

“What’s he seeing?”

“Well, when he played fast and slow and fast, he could see all the colours of the rainbow, all out there, brighter than light. But when he settled into this rhythm, there was something else.”

She paused, partly for dramatic effect, partly to eat an olive.

“What did he see?”

“The world’s all turquoise and cobalt and sky-blue. He’s seeing the sea and the sky and cobalt and Italy’s football shirt and Argos plastic bags and the old Ford Mondeo and a 16-25 railcard cover and lagoons and rivers and Monday. And then he stops, stops and strolls to the front of the stage, and he takes the applause.”

“And someone calls out to him, ‘What do you call that sound, what you just played?’ He thinks for a moment, he stands there all still, and he says,”

“I call it the blues.”

The other jazz hands sat in reverent silence. Gert cheered. Stevie Nicks clapped from a long way away. The band started up again, playing a little bit of ragtime to ease the mood. The storyteller ate another olive, pleased with herself. Lester smiled. He’d never heard a story like that before.

So the band played on, and the old jazz hands told more stories. The third turtle told tales of folk songs and stars and wind-swept Oklahoma. There was plenty of cider and purple and orange – a perfectly ordinary Wednesday night. Or so it seemed.

“Help, somebody help!” shouted the door, or rather the person in the doorway. “THERE’S BEEN A MURDER!”

The bar continued as normal. There was a murder pretty much every night in the Hood and Hangman, particularly if the pool table had started swallowing people’s 20p pieces again.

“It was outside the Grey Hart!”

Now that silenced the room. Nobody died outside the Grey Hart, ever, not even on Saturdays. That’s why it was called the Hart, and not the Hangman. Somewhere a child screamed, but this may have been unrelated.

Some people looked at the town policeman who was sitting with a pint. He bore a remarkable resemblance to one of the Bee Gees. But most people knew better than to look to the law in this town.

“There’s only one person who can solve this”, said Joni – perhaps a little presumptuously, because no-one yet knew whether the culprit had been caught. All heads turned to the corner. Not to the corner with the jukebox – jukeboxes can’t solve mysteries – but to the far corner, where Gert sat.

Gert stood up, munificently.

“Come with me, young Lester. We’ve got a mystery to solve.”

TO BE CONTINUED (probably)

My reading – 09/10/13

Ok, here we go. First book list. In the year since finishing my MSc I’ve been diving enthusiastically into books again, so I thought I’d make a note of my reading. I hear that Darwin used to make a list like this, so I’m trying to ape him (sorry.)

I’m one of those people who reads about a thousand books at once, but only finishes one occasionally. I’m pretty smug whenever a book does get finished, though.

Books I’m reading

The Brothers Karamazov – Dostoevsky

Why Nations Fail – Daron Acemoglu and James A. Robinson

Intellectual Impostures – Bricmont and Sokal

The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement – David Graeber

For Whom the Bell Tolls – Ernest Hemingway

Ethics – Spinoza

The Deep Ecology Movement: An Introductory Anthology – ed. Alan Drengson and Yuichi Inoue

Flat Earth News – Nick Davies

The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence and Its Causes – Steven Pinker

The Acceptance World: Volume 3 of Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell

Brick Lane – Monica Ali

Hopefully, a couple of those will be finished by the next list – as some people who’ve spoken to me recently will know, I’ve been making slow progress on a few of these. Maybe publishing a list will change that. Oh, and I ought to record my successes too, for future reference. Only books I’ve finished for the first time will count.

Books I’ve finished in the last few months

The Places in Between – Rory Stewart

The Soul of the Rhino – Hemanta Mishra

What We Know About Climate Change – Kerry Emanuel

Economic Fables – Ariel Rubinstein

A Buyer’s Market: Volume 2 of Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell

A Question of Upbringing: Volume 1 of Dance to the Music of Time – Anthony Powell

Cricket’s Greatest Rivalry: A History of the Ashes – Simon Hughes

Fatty Batter: How Cricket Saved my Life – Michael Simkins

Bodyline Autopsy: The Full Story of the Most Sensational Test Cricket Series – David Frith

On the Road – Jack Kerouac

Tono Bungay – H.G. Wells

Fermat’s Last Theorem – Simon Singh

The Pirates! In an Adventure with the Romantics – Gideon Defoe

So there’s a target. I’ve already seen a few more books that I like, and suggestions are always welcome for new reading, as are comments on anything I’ve read. Hooray for books!

FIRST POST

Hello

I’ve been meaning to start a blog for ages. It’s entirely for my own benefit, so I don’t care if anyone else reads it or not.

The plan is to write things. Any things. It might be philosophy, or short stories, or politics, or random amusements. Think of it as a Punch and Judy show on an old-time beach, but without the donkeys or policemen or screaming children.

I’m also writing to keep track of my reading, so expect to see some boring lists of books.

Oh, and my name’s Jeremy, by the way, just in case you’re not me. If you are me, however, then that sentence is going to look rather strange.