by Lynne Truss
He didn’t struggle. That was the funny thing about Osborne. He was quite resigned. And as he later sat on the cold lino of the small upstairs junk-room in which he had been locked by Gordon’s dad without a word of explanation, a feeble ‘Bugger’ was all he could muster by way of complaint. Osborne suffered, unfortunately, from a rare and debilitating conviction that when nasty things occurred in his life, he must somehow have deserved them. So instead of the more conventional ‘Why me?’ he tended to ask ‘Why not?’ Hopeless, really. Instead of ‘You’ll pay for this!’ it was ‘I expect I’m paying for something!’ Arguably, then, the most distressing aspect for Osborne of being locked in a room miles from London by three crackpot strangers manifestly stronger, faster and quicker-witted than himself (and all with palpable designs on his body) was that it pointed to a past sin so heinous that it was a double disgrace not to be able to recollect it.
It was natural to be scared, however, especially if a friend (was it really Michelle?) had once lent you a copy of Stephen King’s thriller Misery, with all the most gruesome torture bits marked so deeply with a sharp pencil that there were actually holes in the paper. Osborne had started reading Misery comfortably one evening in his safe south London billet at about half-past eight, pouring himself a small brandy and listening to records; and finished it wide-eyed, stark sober, hyperventilating and peeing himself at four o’clock the following morning to the scary early-hours amplified hum of electric lights. For reasons obvious to anyone familiar with this book’s memorable plot, aspects of it now jumped up and down in Osborne’s imagination, shrieking. In Misery, a hapless writer is held captive by his ‘Number One Fan’ and made to write pulp fiction, under duress! Meanwhile, the fan indicates to him in various unignorable ways that she is dangerously off her rocker! She gets him addicted to drugs! Cuts his foot off! With an axe! Was this what fate had in store for Osborne, our inoffensive shed-man? Would Mad Gordon appear in flip-flops and négligé at any moment with a hatchet, a typewriter and a fistful of amphetamines?
Anyone else might have screamed at this point. But Osborne was not everyone. Rearranging himself more comfortably on the floor, and taking a few deep breaths, he attempted, believe it or not, to look on the bright side. You had to hand it to him – really. Say the worst happened, he reasoned. Well, he had been meaning to write a novel for ages; this could be his big chance. Oh yes. As for the drugs thing, well, for heaven’s sake, why not try drugs? Especially in a controlled environment, and especially (he added as a plucky afterthought) if he wasn’t going anywhere, having only the one foot. Something about that foot amputation failed to present itself in any cheery aspect, despite efforts. But otherwise it was a brave try, and for a while it completely took his mind off the other, more pressing, thing that most people would have been doing in the circumstances, i.e. plotting their escape.
Bugger. He suddenly leapt to his feet. Should he be tying sheets together, or something? Fashioning a crude weapon from a razor-sharp sliver of window pane and a ripped-off table leg? Starting a small fire and banging on the door? Well, probably, yes. For a few moments, Osborne stood rooted to the spot, but gesturing wildly in different directions as though intending to sprint off somewhere when he’d made up his mind. But the access of energy did not last, and he soon sat down again, defeated before he’d begun. Funny how the survival instinct did not apply to everyone, he reflected. When they were giving it out, he must have been too scared to step forward.
Once, he had discussed this matter with Makepeace down at the Birthplace of Aphrodite, mentioning as a case in point the remarkable behaviour of passengers in air disasters. If there is a fire at the back of a plane, he told Makepeace with astonishment, these people just climb over each other, every man for himself; then they jam the doorways and die. ‘I know,’ said Makepeace, ‘so what?’ ‘Well, I just don’t think I’d do that,’ he had replied, baffled. ‘Yes you would,’ said Makepeace flatly, ‘because everyone would.’ Osborne looked at him and shook his head. ‘But can you imagine yourself doing it?’ he persisted. ‘Of course,’ replied Makepeace with a tinge of exasperation. And he meant it. Afterwards Osborne found it hard to shake off the mental image of Makepeace on an aircraft blithely clambering over upturned faces not for any reason of life or death, but just to get first crack at the loos.
It was at least half an hour before he noticed the rabbit. When at last he registered its presence, it was chewing a photograph album; and to judge from the shreds of assorted paper and cloth on the carpet, this item was only the entrée in a many-coursed banquet now in full swing. Osborne also noticed that an electric flex for a small bar-fire had been gnawed right through. Oh great. An electrical fire was probably the last thing he needed (if you didn’t count the fairly unlikely sudden appearance on his ankle of a dotted line marked ‘Cut Here with Axe’). Osborne remembered with a shudder how one of his house-sitting experiences had been quite ruined by a pet rabbit chewing through the cable to the washing machine and causing a small explosion. A flash and a bang from the utility room had been followed by the sight of a rather dazed bunny with all its fur sticking out hopping lopsidedly into the living-room and then falling over. The rabbit was never the same again. If you held up three fingers and said ‘How many?’ it just looked at you.
Watching this rabbit of Angela Farmer’s, however, Osborne felt strangely moved. It reminded him of how lonely he was. And here was this innocent bunny sharing his captivity. Wow. If only he had the right teeth and shoulders, he might be Burt Lancaster in The Birdman of Alcatraz. He grinned widely and stretched his torso, and racked his memory for more examples of stuff about prisoners cheered up by a brush with wildlife; but beyond the little birdy in Byron’s ‘The Prisoner of Chillon’, he couldn’t think of much. He sighed and relaxed his face from the rather eerie Burt Lancaster impression. What about Job? he thought. Did not the God of the Hebrews send a bunny-rabbit to comfort Job, or was this yet another case of faulty recall? It was an interesting point to ponder. For example, if this rabbit were indeed engaged in work of a divine nature, would it really just sit there on the floor eating someone else’s photo album? Osborne thought about this question for a bit, and decided he didn’t have the proper theological qualifications for an educated answer.
‘What have you got there?’ he whispered instead. The rabbit took no notice and continued chewing. ‘Let’s see,’ he said gently, and although he was a bit worried about what a rabbit might do to you if you interfered in the early stages of its main course, he tugged the album free and stood up to place it on a top shelf, noticing in passing that it said ‘Our Weeding’ in gold letters on the cover. Funny, thought Osborne fleetingly, as he popped it into the cupboard. He had met many gardening fanatics in his time, but none that kept a pictorial record of their anti-dandelion campaigns. Fancy that. ‘Our Weeding’. He took it down and looked again. Oh yes, hang on, ‘Wedding’. Osborne laughed and shrugged. Well, ‘Wedding’ made a bit more sense, probably, but it was also somehow disappointing.
He opened it, just to be sure, and there it all was. Angela Farmer’s summer wedding, in 1975, to Barney Jonathan, the comedian and TV producer. Cake-cutting, kissing, hand-holding, marquee, the works. Lots of famous supporting characters in the background, mostly London stage variety types with shiny noses, all in seventies period costume of big collars and flared trousers and platform boots (despite the heat). As Osborne flicked through the pages, Angela and Barney smiled inanely at each other; Barney opened countless champagne bottles; Barney lit a huge cigar, with a knowing wink. Osborne’s trained eye picked out all the appearances of the shed, of course, even when it was not the main subject of the picture. He noticed it had been decked out in ribbons and used as a cold store for drinks. But the main thing that even Osborne could not ignore was the youthfulness of Angela – Angela looking fifteen years younger than she did today, and a lifetime more optimistic.
Osborne felt uncomfortable at the sight of Angela’s bridegroom. Barney was possibly the only person O
sborne had ever interviewed whose shed had subsequently received a scathing review in Come Into the Garden. In person, Barney had turned out to be precisely what you might expect from his roles on TV: good looking, well preserved, compulsively jokey, and a really mean bastard. It was at Barney Jonathan’s house, actually, that the terrible business with the hyperactive child had taken place, when Osborne was locked in the shed for a laugh. If his resulting piece about Barney was one of his best observed and best written, there were two reasons for it: first, four hours gives you quite enough time to examine the contents of a shed; and second, Barney’s character was so obnoxious that the writer needed to sew him up quite carefully, quoting him with deadly accuracy, so that he hanged himself with every word. Just mentioning his snide remarks about Come Into the Garden, for example, had been pretty useful for enlisting reader support against him; after all, you insult a magazine, you insult the person who’s reading it.
Odd to think that Angela Farmer had married him. What an awful mistake. Turning the pages of the album, Osborne felt a tear roll down his face. He absent-mindedly stroked the rabbit, drew his legs up close, and for the next couple of hours studied the images, one after another, as the short November Tuesday lost its brightness and slowly began to wane.
Makepeace, by contrast, had not been idle. The sort of person who experiences an incandescent adrenalin rush not only from air disasters but from a harmless chat about the classics or a bit of mild criticism, this excitable dwarf had no difficulty summoning the gotta-get-outta-here energy that so noticeably eluded his chum. After an hour of frantic activity, therefore, in which his pony-tail wore loose and his sweaty hair hung down around his grim, determined face, he sat surrounded by a small armoury of improvised weapons (ingeniously utilizing paper-knives, shards of mirror, scissors, staples) and panted like a dog. He was not a pretty sight. Having inadvertently nicked his hands a few times in the course of handling broken glass, and then rubbed his face, he was now smeared with blood and dirt, which added not inconsiderably to the startling picture of miniature savagery he presented, reminiscent of something climactic from Lord of the Flies.
He decided to ransack the room. No point doing things by halves, after all. So he started knocking things over, sweeping documents off shelves, attempting to tear directories in half (abandoning this when it proved humiliating), and flinging Gordon’s priceless work-in-progress computer disks around. It was only when he saw a set of files marked ‘Digger’ that he paused. Slavering slightly, he ripped open the first one, emptied the contents on the floor, and stirred the papers with his foot. Most of the documents seemed to be in computer code, all signed at the bottom by Gordon, but there was one that immediately caught his eye, because it was in the form of a letter. He knelt beside it to see.
Dear Digger,
You will find me in a country garden. I am an unknown quantity. My riddle is deep, and in the blue corner. Dig me up. I long for you. But remember the shirt of Nessus.
Makepeace couldn’t help thinking, even in his excitement, that he was glad not to have Gordon for a pen-pal. To a devotee of Digger, of course, this letter made a sort of cryptic sense, and was merely a harmless stage in a game of clues. But to Makepeace it was further evidence that the boy was mad and dangerous. Gordon had lured Digger to a country garden (‘Dig me up’ was the rather ghastly invitation), but warned him about poisoned shirts that stick to your back and tear your flesh. Makepeace had to get out of here at once. Forget the heroics with the home-made machetes, perhaps he should just wriggle out of the window and climb down the drain-pipe. On the other hand, if he calmed down and thought about it, couldn’t he see whether the key was still in the lock? Instead of fighting his way out, or crawling, there was just the faintest possibility he could unlock the door and walk out normally, down the stairs and out.
He peered through the lock and, sure enough, the key was there. Countless films had taught him what to do next. He slid a piece of paper under the door, poked the key with a paper-knife so that it fell on the paper, and then pulled it back under the door. Shame this didn’t occur to me earlier, he thought, as he surveyed the devastation in the room and tried to staunch the bleeding of his hands with a wad of tissues. But on second thoughts, perhaps it was perfect this way. Those bastard perverts deserved it. Should he also scrawl ‘PIGS’ on the wall with his own blood, or would it be too sixties? He decided to have a go, but he ran out of free-flowing blood after ‘PI’. Oh well, if this kid was such a mathematical brainbox perhaps he could distract himself by trying to understand PI, as so many had done before him. So, taking the ‘Digger’ letter with him, he left the room, locking it carefully and pocketing the key, and crept away downstairs.
In the shed, things were not harmonious.
‘You’ve got nothing to go on,’ barked Angela. ‘That guy Osborne is a sweetheart. You nuts or something?’ She paced up and down, smoking furiously, while Gordon and his dad exchanged glances.
‘Tell her,’ said Gordon’s dad.
‘You realize he could sue you for this?’ she continued. ‘Holding someone against his will is what is technically known as deep shit, you know that? Jesus, and he was so cute, too. We were really getting along.’
Gordon looked like he was going to burst into tears. Angela glared at him some more, and he felt wretched.
‘So what you going to tell me? It better be good.’
Gordon pulled himself together. ‘It’s just that, well, you know that deal I did a couple of weeks ago? The one for the seaside postcards business? It included the magazine this Osborne chap works for, and I decided to close it down.’
‘So? You feel guilty about a guy, you lock him up?’
‘Well, and then he turns up here with his punchy sidekick, and they act very peculiar and shifty as though they’re hiding something –’
‘Big deal,’ grouched Angela.
‘And then the little one breaks into the B&B when we’re out, and every time this Osborne sees me he leaps a foot in the air. Dad went back to check on the little one, but he’s gone. And Dad had to break the door down to my office, and it’s all mangled and covered with blood, and Dad’s best hatchet has disappeared, and it’s getting dark, and to be honest,’ he gasped, ‘I am really really scared.’
Angela huffed, but she also steadied herself against a wall. What the hell was all this blood and hatchet stuff?
‘Where’s the bunny?’ she barked.
Gordon and his dad swapped dejected glances. ‘We think, um …’ they faltered, and cast grim looks towards the top of the house, where Osborne currently languished. They didn’t need to finish.
‘Oh no,’ said Angela, ‘oh swell.’
By the time Lillian arrived unnoticed on the scene at seven o’clock that evening, Angela and the Clarkes had made a decision. They would telephone Trent Carmichael, the celebrated crime writer, and ask him for some expert help. They would not contact the police. Through the locked door to Osborne’s room, Angela had conducted a brief secret negotiation concerning the rabbit, with Osborne agreeing to let him out in return for some ham rolls, a few biscuits and a flask of tea. Osborne hastened to make it clear that he had not been holding the rabbit for purposes of ransom. The idea of taking a photo of the rabbit nervously holding a copy of today’s newspaper would simply never have occurred to him.
‘He seems like a nice rabbit,’ he added lamely as he handed him over, catching Angela’s eye and then looking away.
She felt terrible. ‘I’m sorry about all this,’ Angela said in an unusually meek voice.
Osborne, surprised, found himself reassuring her. ‘Don’t worry,’ he said, ‘I’m sorry too.’
She relocked the door and tiptoed away. Gordon and his dad would be furious to know she had talked with him. But then she tiptoed back again, and spoke very close to the door.
‘Listen. Osborne. Whatever your name is. Can you hear me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Don’t I know you from somewhere?’
�
��Somewhere, yes.’
‘Aren’t you going to tell me?’
‘Well, the trouble is I can’t remember.’
‘Swell. You can’t remember. That makes me feel much better.’
‘I’m sorry.’
There was a pause, during which Osborne assumed she had gone away, so he started eating his tea. But she hadn’t.
‘Osborne, tell me, how about if I came along to see you later, and brought a bottle of wine or something? How would you feel about it? Would you think I was taking advantage?’
Osborne choked on a piece of ham roll.
‘Forget it,’ she said. ‘Stupid, stupid.’
‘No!’ yelled Osborne, just catching her as she turned to go. ‘That would be great. But, do you mean, just you and me?’
She looked hard at the closed door as if hoping to read its expression.
‘Well, yes –’
‘I mean, you wouldn’t tell young Gordon?’
‘Why, do you want Gordon along too?’
‘No, no.’
‘Thank goodness for that. But you shouldn’t hate him, you know. He’s a good kid. And he’s really sorry about you losing your job. I think it’s your little friend that worries him more than you. With good cause, by all accounts. Did you know he’s on the loose with a hatchet, after ransacking Gordon’s office and spraying the walls with blood?’