Chocolate and Cuckoo Clocks

by Alan Coren

  A load seemed immediately to lift from my mother’s shoulders. Freed from the nightly trudge up the let-down ladder to the fortified eyrie where my father, according to Nanny Phipps, waited, crouching on the wardrobe, to pierce her with the forked tail common to his infernal kind, my mother now tripped about the premises, singing. Nanny Phipps herself, having been thrown into Holloway on several counts ranging from treasonable butchery to maliciously wounding a health official with a sharp instrument, to wit, a censer, she was replaced by Nanny Widdershins, a great, plump, apple-cheeked, rosy-nosed, white-haired, cottage-loaf of a woman, always smiling, always with a joke on her lips, even when force-feeding me tapioca down a rubber tube or shaking me awake in the small hours to see whether or not I had wet the bed. To this day, I cannot see a chicken crossing the road without either throwing up or ruining my trouser-leg.

  Since my mother had always wanted a daughter, and Nanny Widdershins had always wanted an airedale, these two, freed from the constraints which my vanished father might otherwise have put upon their fancy, now had their way with me. Dressed in a velvet frock and false ringlets, I was led around the house on a leash; when other four-year-old boys were learning fretwork and football, I was taught how to crochet and retrieve. Indeed, at the 1943 Cruft’s, only a technicality (spotted at the last minute, and in a fashion I shall carry with me to the grave, by a large borzoi) cost me Best Of Show. But Mother and Nanny Widdershins were good sports; they laughed all the way back to Hampshire.

  All good things, however, as one learned so often in the nursery, come to an end. In the bleak midwinter of 1944, even as Patton and von Runstedt hurled themselves upon one another in the Ardennes Forest, so Mother and Nanny Widdershins locked wills in a no less bitter battle. I fell sick, and could not crawl out of my basket: Mother diagnosed chicken-pox; Nanny Widdershins insisted it was distemper. Doctors and vets fought it out with bare knuckles on the gravel drive; times were hard, fees were few. How it might have ended, who can say? For, as the altercation reached its height, a camouflaged Hillman Minx swung suddenly into the drive, disgorging four burly redcaps who flung themselves upon Nanny Widdershins, manacled her to the front bumper, and charged her with desertion.

  She protested in vain; the more hysterical her shrieks, the more convinced the MPs became that here was but one more pusillanimous metamorphosis of the notorious blind cripple who had eluded them for close on five years. Even the ultimate appeal to reason, at the sight of which even the older vets blenched, was summarily dismissed on the grounds that there were no lengths to which a treacherous swine like that would not go to avoid serving his King. The khaki Hillman shot out of the drive; the medical practitioners sheepishly gathered up their scattered bags and bottles, and slunk quietly away.

  As for Mother, she thenceforth gave up the parental ghost. Unable, on her own, to cope with a growing boy given to singing ‘The Good Ship Lollipop’ in a breaking falsetto and biting postmen on the ankle, she promptly answered an advertisement in a Salisbury tobacconist’s window and despatched me to Miss Sadie Himmler’s Academy For Strict Discipline, at which I presented myself the following Monday with my tin trunk and jumbo packet of Spiller’s Shapes. Miss Himmler, though initially somewhat surprised, took me in, since I had brought a term’s fees in advance, in folding money. A kindly soul when she was not thrashing middle-aged businessmen with her rhino whip, she was good to me, even if I did not fall precisely within her professional remit, and I was happy there, learning much at her fishnet knee. Indeed, as a middle-aged businessman myself now, I still travel down to Salisbury to visit her, though just for old time’s sake, now that arthritis has sadly sapped her magnificent right arm.

  And what of those early years themselves, and the proud procession of magnificent female authorities that moved so memorably through them? Did they indeed make me what I am today? Who, at such distance, can categorically say?

  I know only that when I step into my polling booth next time around, there will, for me, be no alternative.

  43

  Mr Noon

  A Novel by D.H. Lawrence is to be published by Cambridge University Press next month, 54 years after his death. Researchers found the MS. among papers at the Humanities Research Centre of the University of Texas, Austin.

  The new book is called ‘Mr Noon.’ Lawrence wrote it in two parts and hoped they would be published as separate novels, but the publishers found them too short.

  Daily Telegraph.

  Mr Noon lived up to his name.

  He did not get up with the cock.

  He did not get up with the sun.

  He did not get up and collect the nice fat heavy eggs, still warm from squeezing out of the plump chicken loins.

  He did not get up and tug the long rubbery-flubbery teats of Daisy the Cow so that the bright hot milk spurted ringingly into the big dark depths of the bucket.

  He did not get up and take Roger the Ram down to the bleating sheep to let Roger the Ram go humpity-humpity and make the sheep feel as if great big waves were crashing on the shore time and time and time again.

  Mr Noon did not get up in the morning at all.

  He stayed in his bed until noon.

  Mr Noon would stay in his bed in case a visitor turned up.

  Many visitors did turn up at the little cottage, but Mr Noon would send them away again.

  Every day, the Postman would call up to the little open window of Mr Noon’s bedroom.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Noon!’

  And every day, Mr Noon would call out:

  ‘Eff off, Postman!’

  Every day, the Jehovah’s Witness would call up to the little open window of Mr Noon’s bedroom.

  ‘Good morning, Mr Noon!’

  And every day, Mr Noon would call out:

  ‘Eff off, Jehovah’s Witness!’

  And so on.

  Mr Noon liked using naughty words. He did not think they were naughty at all, and he was right. People who object to naughty words are guilty of hypocrisy and cant. Mr Noon hated cant.

  ‘Silly cant!’ said Mr Noon, lying in his bed.

  He would look at the ceiling all morning, and make pictures in his head. Don’t you do that, too?

  Mr Noon would see trains rushing into long dark tunnels.

  ‘Whoosh!’ went the trains.

  ‘Wheeee!’ went their whistles, inside the tunnels.

  Mr Noon would see his Dad going to work.

  His Dad was a miner. Every day, his Dad went down a long dark hole. When he got to the bottom, he would take out his big shovel.

  Dig, dig, dig, went Dad Noon!

  Mr Noon would see all this, lying on his bed.

  He would also see his Mum. Mum Noon was a school-teacher. But most of all, she liked riding horses. He would see her, on the ceiling, riding a big black stallion, with her skirt tucked into her knickers, and her nostrils flaring. The stallion’s nostrils flared, too. Sometimes they would ride into a tunnel, if there wasn’t a train coming.

  When they got home, they were all sweaty! So Mum Noon would get out a great big tin bath, and put it in front of the fire, and put the horse in it, and scrub its back.

  Mr Noon liked that picture best of all.

  By mid-day, when no visitors had called, except the Gasman, and the Man About The Rates, and the Double Glazing Man, and the Reader’s Digest Man, and the Tally Man, Mr Noon would at last get out of bed, grind his big yellow teeth, and say:

  ‘Boogger! Boogger! Boogger!’

  Then he would clump down the little creaky staircase in his big honest clogs and out into the smelly old farmyard and try to find something nice to worm.

  On a good day, it might be Sharon the Sow. But on a bad day, it might only be Corky the Cat.

  Then, one fine, ripening, spring morning, with the fat fuzzy pussy-willow catkins jiggling up and down outside his bedroom window and making his throat go all dry and funny, Mr Noon heard an unfamiliar voice call up from below.

  ‘I say!’ it trilled. ‘Is anyone
at home?’

  Slowly, the image of tall dark beetling industrial chimneys raping innocent verdant hills faded from Mr Noon’s ceiling. The voice was not a Postman’s voice or, indeed, anything remotely like it.

  ‘Aye,’ grunted Mr Noon cautiously, from the bed (for it was still only ten-fifteen). ‘Aye, appen there be.’

  ‘Oh, ripping!’ cried the voice. ‘Oh, top-hole! Oh, super!’

  Slowly Mr Noon broke the habit of a lifetime and, well before mid-day, swung his big hairy feet out of bed and onto the linoleum, and walked, squeak-squeak-squeak, to the little window and looked out.

  Mr Noon found himself staring down into the upturned smiling face and almost equally upturned open blouse of a very pretty lady. Mr Noon gripped the little window ledge with his big hairy hands to stop them trembling: it was a Visitor!

  ‘Can ah elp thee, miss?’ croaked Mr Noon

  ‘Oh, would you?’ cried the young lady. ‘I was just driving past in my motor and I could not help noticing your little chickens. I have a teensy-weensy dinner-party tonight, just a few ripping top-hole chums from the upper classes, and a couple of plump pullets would be absolutely tickety-boo!’

  Mr Noon closed his eyes. Then he opened them again, struggled to ungrip his hands from the little window ledge, and retreated, lurching, into the room.

  Mr Noon pulled on his thick corduroy trousers.

  Mr Noon pulled on his coarse linen shirt.

  Mr Noon spat on his big hairy hands and smoothed down his big hairy head.

  Then he went downstairs. Clump, clump, clump, went his clogs.

  Mr Noon stepped into the unfamiliar morning.

  ‘Pullet?’ he said, hoarsely.

  ‘Definitely!’ trilled the young lady.

  The breeze blew her thin cotton skirt against her legs. Her huge eyes were the deep blue of a faceworker’s scars. The sun caught her soft forearm down, reminding Mr Noon of the lioness’s belly at Nottingham Zoo.

  Mr Noon licked his lips.

  ‘Appen ah’ll ketch thee a couple,’ he murmured, fighting a sudden dizzy spell. ‘Tha’ll want plump ’uns, ah tek it?’

  The young lady nodded, and winked, and clapped her hands, and giggled.

  Mr Noon lunged suddenly, his huge corded muscles bulging, and hurled himself at the squawking chickens.

  Scuttle! went the chickens.

  Grab! went Mr Noon.

  Kof-kof-kof! went the chickens.

  Oh! went the young lady.

  Mr Noon brought them to her, one in each hand. They were still warm. They were still wriggling, slightly. She touched the plump little bodies with her long slim white fingers.

  ‘So many feathers!’ she murmured. ‘And I’m late already.’

  She turned her big blue eyes up to Mr Noon’s strong dark face. ‘I suppose a pluck would be out of the question?’ she said.

  Mr Noon fainted.

  When he came round, he found the Postman, the Double Glazing Man, the Tally Man, the Reader’s Digest Man, and the Man About The Rates standing over him. They had been watching, the way folk do in those parts.

  Only the Jehovah’s Witness had made an excuse and left.

  ‘Where be er?’ enquired Mr Noon.

  ‘Er be gone,’ replied the Postman.

  ‘Funny to see you up and about so early,’ said the Tally Man. ‘Reckon as how we won’t be able to call you Mr Noon no more.’

  The Double Glazing Man nudged him in the ribs, and winked.

  ‘Mister Bloody Good Opportunity, more like!’ he said.

  How everybody laughed!

  All except Mr Noon, of course.

  44

  No Bloody Fear

  HOTEL FOR PHOBICS

  Britain’s first hotel for phobics has opened in Firbeck Avenue, Skegness, helped by £42,000 from the Government’s small firm guarantee loan. Mr Tony Elliott, founder of Nottinghamshire Phobics Association, said:‘People may have all sorts of psychological problems and we will try to look after them at the seaside.’

  Daily Telegraph

  Dear Sylvia,

  Well here we all are, safe and sound if you do not count Norman’s hairpiece blowing off coming from the station, that is one of the little penalties of having to keep your head stuck out of cab windows, I am always on at him to get his claustrophobia looked at but it is not easy to find a doctor who will see him in the middle of a field. We would have stopped to retrieve it, but a gull was on it like a bloody bullet, it is probably halfway up a cliff by now with three eggs in it.

  Sorry, Sylve, I had to break off there for a minute, it was writing cliff did it, one of my little turns come on, I had to put my head between my knees and suck an Extra Strong, I do not have to tell you why, I know; remember that time before we was married and you and me went to the Locarno, Streatham, and that ginger bloke sitting by the spot-prize display asked me to dance, and when he got on his feet he was about six feet nine and I brought my Guinness up?

  Anyway, we got to the hotel all right, apart from Norman’s bloody mother trying to avoid stepping on the pavement cracks between the cab and the gate and walking into a gravel bin, she come down a hell of a wallop and her case burst open and her collection of bottle tops was bouncing all over the place, it took us near on two hours to get her into her room in the cellar on account of no lift below ground floor, so the management had to bag her up and winch her down through the coal chute, all on account of she can’t get to sleep unless she hears rats running about. Still, one consolation is that that’s the last we’ll see of the old bat for two weeks, due to where Norman will not go inside, Tracy comes out in blackheads if there’s no windows, big Kevin is allergic to hot water pipes, little Barry gets diarrhoea in the presence of rodents, and me, well, you know about me and bottle tops!

  The landlady was ever so nice about Norman. They had a bed all made up for him in the shrubbery, no plants so big he couldn’t see over them if he began to panic in the night, and a very nice man near him, but not too near, who sleeps in the middle of the lawn with his foot roped to a sundial in the event of gravity suddenly stopping and him falling off into space. Turned out they had a lot of army experience in common: they both had boots as pets, during National Service.

  My room is quite nice, too, lots of things to arrange: you can stand the coffee table on the tallboy and put the hearthrug on it with the potty on top, and if you turn the potty upside down you’ll find it’s large enough to stand a hairspray aerosol on it. Of course, it’s all getting a bit high by then, but it looks lower if you stand on the bed, so I’m quite happy really, even if I can’t have Tracy sharing with me due to bees figuring prominently in the wallpaper, and I can’t visit her, either, on account of they’ve put her on the top floor. It’s all expense, Sylve, isn’t it? Still, we managed to get big Kevin and little Barry to share: the management found them a triangular room, so they’ve got a corner each to stand in, leaving only one for them to keep an eye on; they can get quite a lot of sleep, in turns.

  Mealtimes are great fun, everybody is ever so sociable, there’s a very nice man from Norwich I think it is, who comes round to every table just after we’ve all sat down and touches every single piece of cutlery, and two charming sisters from Doncaster who eat standing on their chairs due to the possibility of mice turning up sudden, and a former postmaster who sings ‘Nola’ whenever there’s oxtail soup. My Norman has been a great hit, due to not coming in for meals: everybody takes it in turns to go to the window and feed him, also give him little titbits to carry over to his friend tied to the sundial, because the waitress has agoraphobia and can’t even look at the forecourt without going green.

  Not that there aren’t little squabbles from time to time: Sunday, we had plums and custard, and little Barry likes to arrange the stones on the side of his dish. What he did not realize was that this makes Mr Noles from Gants Hill, who is on our table, punch people in the mouth. Big Kevin, as you know, is not called big Kevin for nothing and has had to learn to look after himself from an
early age, due to where his father is unable to come inside and help him, big Kevin took hold of Mr Noles by his collar and chucked him out into the corridor, which was a terrible thing to do, it turned out, because Mr Noles has a horrible fear of narrow places and pays £2 per day extra to enter the dining-room via the fire-escape, but big Kevin was not to know this, he is only a boy, though getting enormous enough for me to feel queasy every time I stretch up to make sure he’s brushed his teeth. The upshot of it was, Mr Noles was hurling himself about in the corridor for close on twenty minutes before Mrs Noles could get a net over him. He broke eighteen plaster ducks, three barometers, and put his elbow straight through ‘The Monarch of the Glen’, though doing less damage than you might think since its face had already been painted out on account of the night porter having a morbid fear of antlers.

  And all the time my Norman is shouting ‘What’s going on? What’s bloody going on?’ from the garden, deeply distressing his friend tied to the sundial who can hear all this breakage and shrieking and reckons gravity is beginning to pack up and bring things off the walls.

  Still, it turned out all right, Mr Noles and big Kevin made it up, they have a lot in common, basically, both being unable to walk down a street without picking bits off hedges, and he asked big Kevin to join him on the beach because Mrs Noles never went there on account of her terror of being buried alive. She likes to spend her afternoons standing on the concrete forecourt with a big bell in her hand and a whistle between her teeth in case of emergencies, so her husband and big Kevin and little Barry and Tracy and Norman and me all went off to the beach. Trouble was, it would all have been all right if Norman’s new friend hadn’t been unsettled by the false alarm over gravity: he did not want to be left alone, so the porter found a huge coil of rope so that Norman’s new friend could come down to the beach without untying himself from the sundial, but it was nearly three hundred yards and you have to go round two corners, so you can’t see what’s going on behind, and what happened was the rope got caught in a car bumper and one moment Norman’s new friend was cautiously creeping along beside us, and the next he was suddenly plucked from our midst.