Looking for Mrs Dextrose

by Nick Griffiths

  And I was on a roll. “These gentlemen have put up with your bile for far too long. Mr Reculver, Mr Hoath, Mr Chislet, Mr Peel and Mr Wilmington-Hovis, Dad – my offer still stands…”

  Nurse D’eath’s slow handclap started, echoing around the tiled bathroom, muffled by the plumpness of her mitts. Clap… clap… clap… clap.

  “Very good, the younger Mrs Dextrose. Very good. Well, be my guest. If your ‘friends’ have the temerity to leave. Be my guest – I’ll hold the door open for them. So. Who’s going to the beach with young Mr Dextrose? Who’s first?”

  Feet shuffled. With my gaze I sought each of them in turn, first laced with expectation then, when each avoided my eyes, with pleading. Even Reculver bowed his head.

  “Actually, I don’t want to come.” It was Wilmington-Hovis.

  I walked over to him, his frail old frame in that wicker chair. “But Mr Wilmington-Hovis – Mr W-H – it was your righteous indignation that shone the brightest. You’re part of the reason I did this. Surely you can’t…”

  “Sorry,” he said. “I have to go home.” He swivelled his chair and turned away.

  I could not bring myself to look at Nurse D’eath. I could already picture her face.

  “Ahem.” Kenneth John Peel this time.

  Not him, too? Surely not? “I’m… I’m not going either. Actually.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because. Well.”

  “Because well what?”

  “I’d rather not say.”

  “Oh come on, Mr Peel! Kenneth John Peel! Ken John Peel! The man they wrote the song about!”

  “Well, you see, I’d miss the place.”

  “Sorry?” I was dumbfounded. “You’d miss this place?”

  “Alright. Not so much the place. I’d miss the therapy.”

  I’d heard it all now. “Surely you’re cured by now!”

  “Hmm. Well. It’s not quite like that.”

  “So what is it like?”

  Hoath butted in: “If you must know, Nurse Death wanks us off every morning. I’m tempted to stay myself.”

  Nurse D’eath stood aside, arms folded, smirking, while Peel wheeled Wilmington-Hovis out of the bathroom. Those squeaking wheels made the only noise.

  The game was over and I had lost. They were institutionalised, hopelessly ingrained in the system. I’d been wrong to push them so far, so quickly, the fragile old souls. I felt a surge of guilt. “Look, I’m sorry, I…”

  “Mink this! I’m with the boy!” came Dad’s rallying cry.

  Reculver glanced at Hoath who glanced at Chislet, the three old friends in their polyester-cotton night attire, with their veins and their growths. As one, they nodded.

  The team was back together.

  We were going to the seaside!

  Nurse D’eath merely watched, a supercilious grin slapped all over her chops. When we were gathered together in solidarity, she led us to the front door and held it open. Her parting words were: “They’ll crumble. You’ll see. And don’t you think you’ve got away with this.”

  Dad stuck two fingers up to her.

  It felt good to have him back.

  With my father in the passenger seat and Reculver, Hoath and Chislet in the rear, we bounced along on full throttle while the engine complained, beneath a sky the colour of squid ink.

  No one spoke, as the three long-term inmates discovered the outside world anew. Past the church and Martin’s the butcher’s, down Oak Tree Hill where the cows were sleeping, past the village green and the duck pond, out onto the roundabout and the main road. A car passed us going the other way; its occupants pushed their heads out of its windows and youthful jeering careened away with them.

  “The young scallywags!” cried Hoath, unaccustomed to the contemporary vernacular.

  “What a set of minks,” muttered Dad.

  After we passed through Little Dritt, its stone cottages with their thatched roofs and its local shop, the sea appeared to our left, across untended grassland.

  I heard Reculver gasp, “Oh my.”

  It was a particularly beautiful night. A pair of lumbering cumulo-nimbus clouds drifted either side of a near-full moon, radiating its intense light and casting it over a casually undulating sea. White and red lights blinked on and off out there, scattered about the water: vessels on the hunt for fish.

  The sand appeared silver, a strip of precious metal. As we approached Dritt-on-Sea, passed the tram unlit and stationary at the end of its line, the pier, our destination, came into view.

  “That’s where we’re heading,” I told my boys.

  “I don’t care where we go,” replied Reculver. “Just make it last.”

  A couple were just strolling off the pier, arm in arm, as I parked at the roadside ignoring the double-yellow lines. I checked my watch – 00.47.

  A hefty breeze was blowing in off the sea, which blew my jacket open as I stepped out of the car. I wrapped the fabric tightly around me with one arm as I opened a back door with the other.

  Reculver, Hoath and Chislet stared at one another.

  “Come on, out you come!” I cried over the blustery wind. “The world won’t bite!”

  Hoath was out first, fine strands of red hair flailing crazily; then Reculver, beaming once again. Chislet emerged finally, bouncing himself along the back seat like one of Barnes Wallace’s bombs until he could flip out his legs.

  When he righted himself, he clasped my hand. “Thank you, son,” he said. “You’ve done us proud.”

  “Why. Er. Thank you, Mr Chislet.”

  But he was already gone.

  It was bitterly cold and I – the youngest and therefore the likeliest to survive – was the only one wearing appropriate clothing. I couldn’t keep those old gentlemen exposed to the elements for long or they would literally catch their death.

  They were standing, huddled together, waiting for me. The old guard. Heads bowed against the wind, hair – on those fortunate enough – dancing, pyjama trousers pulled up to belly buttons, slippers (and socks, in Chislet’s case), and brushed cotton tops. Their teeth were chattering, but I could see it in their eyes. Alive. Eager.

  The scene brought a lump to my throat. “Come on, boys!” I called out. “There’s shelter at the end of the pier! Last one there’s a sissy!”

  I led the way. The wind blew right through us, howling, whistling past the pier stanchions, as our footsteps thudded on the boards and we gripped tightly to the railings.

  “Sorry about the weather!” I quipped when we had finally made it, and the five of us gratefully threw ourselves into the shelter at the pier’s end, the wind having only increased in intensity the further we staggered out to sea.

  It was effectively two open-fronted, green-painted wooden huts with glass panelling, set back to back, each featuring a pair of wrought-iron benches. Though the wood rattled and the glass shook, the shelters did at least function as intended: they were little havens. Once inside, it were as if someone had turned the volume down.

  Hoath and Chislet were shivering and Dad, whose teeth were chattering out meaningless Morse code, looked as if he might throttle me. I could see in Reculver’s face that he was trying to hide his discomfort – and he had the dressing gown – but there was pain in his eyes and his pale skin had turned a shade of alabaster.

  I apologised once again, this time sincerely.

  “Please, Pilsbury,” said Reculver, squeezing my knee. “The last thing you need to do is be sorry. You’ve set us free out here, my boy. If I died now, I’d die happy.”

  I smiled at him and hoped he wasn’t tempting fate.

  Hoath added: “You seem to forget: we’ve explored the Poles. This feels like the Tropics!”

  Chislet nodded.

  Bless them.

  “How much longer we got to stay here?” demanded Dad. “Minking freezing!”

  Reculver looked back down the pier and said, “Here, someone’s coming.”

  He was right. A tall, lean figure, male in outline, wa
s heading towards us. I wondered why on earth anyone would be braving these elements at this time of night.

  When the approaching man was no more than 20 yards away, the moonlight started to pick out some of his features. He had dark hair, cut into a bowl haircut, was wearing jeans and some sort of casual jacket. He looked… sort of familiar.

  When he was very close, I recognised him.

  It was Tk-Tk.

  The chief Gdgi’s son from the Q’tse village.

  The chief I gave the cigar to. The poisoned cigar.

  The chief who almost certainly died.

  If he’d come all this way to find me, I was a dead man.

  I couldn’t run back to land because the pier was too narrow to get past him, and there was nowhere else to go other than downwards, down into the briny. Before I could make Hobson’s choice, Tk-Tk was upon us.

  “Hello Pilsbury. Do you remember me?” He positioned himself in front of us, back pressed against the railing to steady himself against the wind. I could only just make out what he’d said.

  I would have to talk my way out of this. Make the lad see sense. “Yes, I do remember you,” I called back. “You know, the Shaman tricked me into giving that cigar to your father. I had no idea it was poisoned.”

  He looked unconvinced. “If that is true, then why did you flee?”

  An awkward one.

  Thankfully, Dad cut in. “Who is this minker, son?”

  Tk-Tk heard this. “Son? Then this is your father?”

  From behind him and beneath his jacket, the young man pulled out a knife, about a foot long with a serrated edge. The moonlight travelled up and down its blade as he waved it. “Old man, come over here!”

  “Oh mink,” groaned Dad.

  Keep him talking, I thought. Play for time. “You put the doll in my room?”

  He smiled. “Yes. A nice touch, I think.” Impatiently he grabbed my father, who had been dawdling on the hostage front, and dragged him out onto the pier, out among the elements.

  Dad’s greasy, stringy hair whipped around his blanched face. Fear had overtaken him. Even he couldn’t cope with this one.

  Devoid of any better ideas, I ploughed on. “Why did it take so long? For you to find me?”

  “To find you was easy. I am a hunter. To fly here was much money. I washed dishes for many weeks to earn this. It will be worth it.”

  “Will it?” It was all I could think of.

  He flashed his teeth, waving the knife point in my direction. “Yes, it will, when I have revenge!”

  I heard the words, “Sod this,” and spotted something bright yellow, about the size of a penny, head for Tk-Tk, then become caught by the wind and divert towards my father. A moment later, there was a feathered dart hanging from his left cheek.

  I turned to see Mr Chislet holding a wooden pipe, about a foot long, to his lips.

  What the hell was going on?

  I watched Dad feel for the dart, hold it between two fingers and pluck out it. As he stared at it, lost in disbelief, his knees went. He dropped then fell forward.

  “DAD?” I yelled, and rushed to his aid, with no thought for Tk-Tk and his knife. Why hadn’t I reacted sooner?

  I put my arms around him and lifted him up, as he had done to his wife so very recently. “Dad?”

  From above me came Tk-Tk’s voice: “It is done. My father’s life for your father’s life.”

  Harrison Dextrose’s pupils were drifting in and out of focus. He held a finger to his dry, chapped lips. “I don’t have long, son. Let me speak,” he said weakly. Tears were already spilling from my eyes, landing on his poor, scarred cheeks. I could see the pinprick of blood where the dart had gone in, and wiped at it with a finger.

  He spoke: “Pilsbury, son. Listen. I’ve a secret… you’ve a half-sister. You’ll find…” His voice trailed off. His eyelids flickered. Closed.

  I didn’t care about his secrets, didn’t care about anything but him. The father I had fought so hard to keep. “Dad! Dad! Dad!” I shook him. “Dad! Please don’t die.”

  “Mink,” is what he said.

  I buried my head in his chest and screamed blue murder.

  I felt a tap on the shoulder. “There’s no poison on that dart.”

  Chislet.

  Even in my trauma, it registered.

  I looked up at him, misted eyes sore in the wind. “What?”

  “Yes,” he said. “It’s just a dart. There’s laws against poison in Great Britain.”

  Reculver stood beside him. “Did we mention he was blowpipe champion of Western Npala five years running. Weren’t you, Mr Chislet?”

  His friend nodded.

  I looked back down at Dad.

  One eye opened. “Did I hear that right?”

  The other eye opened. “Is I still alive?”

  Yes, he was! “You fucking bastard.”

  “Don’t be mad at us,” he implored. “I really thought I were gone when I saw that dart. Scared the living mink out of us. Seriously, me life flashed before me eyes.”

  I started thumping him repeatedly on the chest with the sides of my fists, laughing and crying at the same time. “Short film, was it?”

  “Here, that stuff I said…”

  “Already forgotten,” I lied.

  He winked and I noticed that his face had turned blue, but not from the cold; this blue disappeared then reappeared. I sat on my haunches and looked back towards the shore. A police car had stopped beside the pier and two coppers were getting out.

  Dad propped himself up. “Here for that little mink with the knife,” he said.

  But Tk-Tk was nowhere to be seen and the coppers were coming our way.

  “They’re here for us,” I said.

  “Right,” said Reculver, ripping off his dressing gown and handing it to Hoath. “I’m not going back to that place. Goodbye Mr Hoath, Mr Chislet. New boy. Pilsbury – thank you.” He smiled and ruffled my hair.

  With a final wave, Reculver dived, gracefully for an octogenarian, off the end of the pier and into the turbulent waves. We watched his ghostly white arms flash in and out of view, the froth of his kicking feet in their wake. By the time the boys in blue had reached us, he had been swallowed up in darkness.

  Death-Defying Places in Which to Make Love to a Lady – Kenneth John Peel, 1962

  I Climbed the Matterhorn On One Leg Before You (And Other Firsts) – Kenneth John Peel, 1948

  You’re Cold? I Thought it was Summer! – Kenneth John Peel, 1947

  Three Men on a Goat – Chislet, Reculver & Hoath, 1967

  Taming the Yeti & Other Adventures – Reculver, Hoath & Chislet, 1955

  Big Game Recipes – Hoath, Chislet & Reculver, 1951

  Don’t Let it Snow! Don’t Let it Snow! Don’t Let it Snow! – Reculver, Chislet & Hoath, 1937

  Idea for a Blockbuster Movie: Jaws – Royston Wilmington-Hovis, 1976

  How It Began

  It was my 18th birthday when I chanced upon Harrison Dextrose’s The Lost Incompetent: a Bible for the Inept Traveller, little knowing that it would one day lead me to kill a man with a dead penguin.

  I regularly visited Second-Hand Books in Glibley, my hometown, being a voracious reader of anything from fiction to manuals on making furniture (though I never actually made any). Each time, I would rifle discreetly through the vintage pornography tucked into a hidden corner – dog-eared copies of Girl Illustrated and Lost in Bloomers, their covers featuring demure girls with dark curls and wry smiles who had forgotten to wear any clothes.

  It was while flicking through the familiar magazine covers, as a birthday treat to myself, that I found Dextrose’s book. Perhaps someone had changed their mind about buying it and had dumped it there, or they’d had insufficient funds and All Gussets and Garters had won.

  I picked it out, realising that fate had meant me to read it. Fate did not let me down.

  The edges of the pages were brown and gently undulating. On the cover was a black-and-white photograph of the author�
�s head. Harrison Dextrose stared defiantly into the camera, eyes alive with rancour. What manner of man was this? A full, dark beard festered around his jawline and encroached on his cheeks. His hair was a mop of curls, greased down in a futile attempt at neatness. Tiny broken blood-vessels coursed between the blackheads on his nose. Flaunt the imperfections – I loved Dextrose on sight. The back-cover blurb read:

  Harrison Dextrose is the last of the great British explorers. This is his first book, a cornucopia of strange incident, concerning his journey from Blithering Cove in England to Mlwlw in Aghanasp, tracking down his former acquaintance, the philanthropist Livingstone Quench. Dextrose names this his Dextrosian Quest, a justly grandiose title. It will take him through lands rarely written about, because they are considered unfashionable. However, the author never ceases to find colour, even if he must inspire it himself. Which he often does.

  Dextrose had clearly lived. The eyes said ‘early 40s’, the features said ‘add ten’. Stuff the Walter Raleigh of history books, who returned to these shores fawning and proffering root crops. Here was a real sea-faring hero, ravaged by alcohol and sexually-transmitted disease, who probably couldn’t remember the name of the ruling monarch. Were his parents alive, I felt sure they would have long since disowned him. Was there anything of me in him, I wondered? I liked beer and had always been an embarrassment to my parents…

  With thanks to:

  Tom, Lucy and Lauren at Legend Press.

  Robin Wade at Wade & Doherty.

  Ian MacEwan (reading), Neil Newnum (drawing),

  Mr S (rainforest vibe).

  Endnote

  1. The Lost Incompetent’s editor had censored the author’s multiple profanities with the word ‘mink’. Interestingly, it appeared that Dextrose had adopted the affectation.