by Rhys Hughes
“Thanks. The afternoon mail is very early today!”
“I was ordered by a highwayman to deliver it now, that’s why. You’ll have to sign here if you want the parcel.”
The man signed a receipt and then took the box that Grub passed him and staggered under its weight. “It’s very heavy! I wonder what it can be?” He set it down gently on the ground.
“None of that is my business,” pointed out Grub.
“True,” said the man, “but I’m going to open it in front of you anyway. I have been known to open parcels in front of postmen before. My name is Jagger, incidentally. I don’t mean that ‘incidentally’ is my surname, so don’t labour under that misapprehension!”
“I only labour under the discretion of my rightful employers,” insisted Grub, as Jagger tore open the box. No sooner had he ripped off the paper covering and untied the string holding the box shut than something inside jumped out. It was the highwayman from before!
The miscreant bowed ironically. “I guessed you might try a trick like this, so I wrapped myself as a parcel and persuaded an actor to work as a decoy on the road. I’m glad my scheme and foresight have proved to be correct. So I’ll say it again: stand and deliver!”
Grub rolled his eyes. “Do I really have to?”
Jagger whimpered, “But he’s Swishing Shoehorn, the most infamous and depraved bandit in Klipklop! Do everything he says if you want to remain alive. He has been known to eat spoons!”
“I eat them with a knife and fork, I’m not a savage!” pointed out the rascal with a menacing scowl. “And I make those items of cutlery from frozen soup shaped in special moulds!”
“Very well,” conceded Grub, “I’ll stand this time. The Postal Workers’ Union will be furious if I deliver twice.”
And before Swishing Shoehorn could explain his meaning properly, Grub had already reached down and removed the bicycle clips from his own legs. It was only at this point that the highwayman realised that Grub wasn’t a normal Klipklop citizen. Jagger was also amazed. Without any warning, Grub quickly rose into the sky.
“His legs are immensely long!” gasped Jagger.
Swishing Shoehorn removed his tricorne hat and scratched his wig with his pistol barrel. “He kept them doubled up all this time and has been walking around on his knees…”
“Doubled up? Tripled up, more like! Quadrupled up!”
But, in fact, Grub’s legs were folded no less than seventeen times. With the absence of the clips holding the separate folds together he was free to stand up properly for the first time in years. His weird multi-jointed legs were the prime reason he had decided to leave Coventry and emigrate to Klipklop. They attracted too much attention.
Like a concertina they expanded, those legs, taking him higher. Then he hit his head on the underside of a cloud. The sky above Klipklop was solid but this fact didn’t alarm him for he knew that the Duchy existed far below the nation of Liechtenstein. There simply wasn’t space on the surface. Europe was already too crowded…
There was a trapdoor in the cloud and the handle was on the outside, so he turned it and his head passed through the sky to the other side, emerging in the throne room of a castle or palace.
The Duke of Klipklop, a man who delighted in the name Fig the Date, was yawning loudly. The room was full of jesters, all of them dressed in motley, walking on their hands, shaking rattles or posing annoying riddles that were instantly solvable. “I’ve been sentenced but I’m no criminal. What am I? A paragraph! I’m shaped like a spiral but there’s nothing beyond me. What am I? A twist ending! I can be drawn but there’s no…”
“An outline. You’re an outline!” shrieked the Duke.
The jesters continued to caper and play.
The Duke sighed, “If only my court was like courts in the upper world, with a thousand serious fellows for every jester, but down here it’s the other way around and I’m only allowed one straight man. And he died of pleurisy last week. Now he’s gone I don’t have any reason to remain sane. I wish I could find his replacement!”
Suddenly he noticed Grub’s head and its demoralised expression rising through the floor in the middle of the room.
The Duke pointed at it in gratitude.
“You’ll do,” he said.
Trophy Wife
Word soon spread that Hubert had found himself a trophy wife. So there were three in the village now, if the story was true, which it might not be, and Dorian doubted it. “He doesn’t have the capacity to acquire one; that is a fact, not an insult,” he said to Gregor.
But it was an insult and they both knew it, a justified insult, for Hubert had never been remotely attractive to the opposite sex, neither in physical nor financial terms. And as for his personality: it was fungal and squalid, useful only for repulsing vermin and bats.
“But it could be worthwhile checking, just to be sure,” replied Gregor, and he raised his head to gaze up the hill at the modest mansion that stood there, misshapen, almost deflated, crumbling, flaking, completely out of place in these environs, a true abomination.
Dorian considered this suggestion and then nodded.
“Yes, let’s go up there. We’ll take our own trophy wives along, say we are just paying a social call to a new member of our elite club, the club of local men with trophy wives. How about it?”
“Why not? That’s one way of settling the question.”
Dorian added, “We do need to confirm the rumours or put them to bed or we’ll never be able to get any sleep.”
“To bed,” repeated Gregor with a frown.
“Yes, yes indeed, the rumours.”
“What if he is in bed with his trophy wife,” wondered Gregor, “when we call, I mean? What will happen then?”
“He won’t answer and we’ll go away, but I hope that doesn’t happen, I really do,” answered Dorian, “I guess we could always come back later or tomorrow or next week if forced to.”
“Who will force us? Who?” asked Gregor.
“We’ll force ourselves, of course. Enough chatter! Go home and fetch your trophy wife, and I’ll do the same, and we’ll meet back here in half an hour and climb up the hill to the mansion.”
“Meet back here with our trophy wives, both of us?”
“That’s the best plan,” said Dorian.
“I’m not sure she’ll want to come, my trophy wife,” said Gregor with a thin smile that was more like a wince.
Dorian stared at Gregor for a long time. “I wonder about you, I do, and I sometimes find myself asking myself questions about you and one day I am going to make you answer those questions. You take her nowhere and show her to no one, keep her prisoner in that cottage of yours. Could it be the case that she doesn’t actually exist?”
Gregor was shocked. “What are you saying?”
“I’m saying what I just said, no more, no less. You talk about this wife of yours, this trophy wife, but it’s just words. I’ve never seen her and you haven’t even described her to me. Maybe I’m the only proper member of the elite club, the club I mentioned earlier.”
“Now hold on, stop right there!” gasped Gregor. “She’s real, a trophy wife as genuine as yours or anyone else’s. How dare you disparage me in this manner? I’m not a liar. I have a trophy wife, one of the best kinds, that’s the truth and I don’t care if you believe me or not. You’ll see her someday, when she’s willing, when she’s ready. I don’t know what sort of man you are, Dorian, but I don’t pressurise my wife to do anything she doesn’t enjoy. She’s a trophy, not a tool.”
“So she doesn’t like meeting people or being seen?”
“As a matter of fact, she doesn’t.”
“Well, I’ll just have to take you at your word, Gregor. I’m not happy about that but I don’t have much choice right now. You can wait here if you like, right here, and I’ll go and get my trophy wife, a wife who does whatever I want, and I’ll bring her back here, and we’ll go up and pay a visit to Hubert. That’s still a good plan.”
&nb
sp; Gregor nodded and Dorian strode away, his fists clenched, legs strong and rhythmic, the muscles in the thighs and calves exactly what might be expected of a man who didn’t have to lie about his wife, about having an authentic trophy wife, about his vigour.
A cloud passed across the sun and parked itself there and it rained, but only on the mansion, and Gregor watched the droplets bouncing from the roof like translucent fleas, weirdly visible even at this distance, rainbows trapped in every one, like homunculi spectrums, and the scene brought to his lips a smile, though he didn’t feel delight.
Dorian returned with a small woman who had big eyes, puckered lips and smooth brown cheeks. She wore a white dress, a flowing garment of classical simplicity, but her head was covered in a woolly hat that didn’t go with the rest of her outfit; and yet it was her thin sandals that seemed most out of place. Sandals to climb a hill?
The ascent was steep, despite the fact it was served by a proper path, a regular track that farmers had once used to reach the pastures to the north, the sheltered lands below the disapproving mountains where fields of rye swayed in mild breezes and cows clanked their neck bells with the dullest possible thunks. Little stones rolled down.
Dorian’s wife didn’t speak a single word as they climbed. She held the hand of her husband tightly and he dragged her up, the soles of her dismal footwear sliding awkwardly over the rubble with a flatulent rasping noise that made Gregor chuckle secretly to himself, though he still felt unhappy inside. The rain ceased when they finally reached the door of the mansion and Dorian hefted the knocker and let it fall.
There were creakings and shufflings from deep within.
Dorian leaned forward impatiently.
“Just passing and thought we should pay you a social call!” he shouted even before the door fully opened, but Hubert didn’t seem intimidated by the unexpectedness of the visit. He ushered them in, all three in a line, his billowing sleeves sheathing hands that everybody knew were inexplicably but naturally chequered like a chessboard.
“Certainly, how nice to see you! Welcome to my abode!”
“I have been here before,” said Dorian.
“Really? Ah, yes I remember! After that business with the trumpet, or was it a trombone, and that dwarf, or was he a midget, who had taken up residence inside it and wouldn’t vacate. We had to find a strong man to puff into the mouthpiece very hard, blow a low note, or was it a high one, and blast the blighter right out! Those were the days, or were they? Now then, may I fetch you a brandy, or a juice?”
“I could have been that strong man, I could have puffed him out, but nobody asked me. I could have puffed him.”
“Now, now,” said Hubert. “They engaged Big Breath Bill, that’s who they arranged for the task, and he did a good job, without any difficulties he got the miniature squatter out of that orchestral instrument, blasted him out the window and over a hedge, he did.”
“I could have puffed him out myself, not just with my lungs but with my arse if need be, with my backside. That’s how strong I am, potent. I don’t like the fact they didn’t ask me.”
“Now, now,” chided Hubert.
“We want to meet your trophy wife,” said Dorian. He had suddenly seen no point in delaying the request.
Hubert shrugged. “Why not? Why the devil not? She’s a fine example of the type. There she is, right there, look!”
And he pointed above the fireplace, to the thing that hung on the wall over the cold hearth. Mounted on a slab of wood shaped like a shield, it was, and the taxidermist had done a bad job, unless she had actually had a lopsided visage, with one eye up and the other down, and one pointed ear and one square ear. And two forked chins.
“That… That’s your trophy wife?” stuttered Dorian.
“Certainly. Martha. I didn’t catch her myself, though, there’s no point lying about that. I found her in a market in the east, Samarkand, Xanadu, Margate, somewhere like that at any rate. Out east. The man who had her didn’t want to sell, she wasn’t for retail, he said. No, he kept her because he wanted her for himself, but I persisted.”
Much to Dorian’s dismay, Gregor spoke up. “You knew she was the right one for you as soon as you saw her?”
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, young man, that’s correct.”
“You fool!” spat Dorian. “You idiot!”
Hubert stiffened, one hand on the stopper of the brandy decanter, the other on a carton of juice. “That is no decent way to address a gentleman in his own relatively grand house nor even when he’s not inside it. Who are you to insult me? No technical answers to that question, please! It was rhetorical, an expression of my outrage.”
“Trophy wife? Pah!” spat Dorian.
“And what is wrong with her? What, pray?”
“Antlers, man! She has no antlers! None at all, not even stubs, nubs or buds. What are you playing at? Buffoon!”
And Dorian reached across, and with a very fluid motion, though not as fluid as the golden brown brandy within the decanter, or as the sweet scarlet juice inside the cardboard carton, he tugged off the woolly hat of his own wife, revealing the bony branches.
“That’s the head of a real trophy wife, of my wife!”
“I see, I see.” Hubert remained calm.
“And it’s better to leave the head on the shoulders.”
“I see, I see,” repeated Hubert.
“You’ve done it wrong, all wrong,” said Dorian.
Hubert considered this remark.
“But she’s loving, yes she is. My trophy wife, she loves me, she’s not just for show. I tell you that openly.”
“Up there? On the wall! Loving! Not likely.”
“Well, you say that, and yet—”
“Antlers! Head! Shoulders!” sneered Gregor. Unseen by the others, he left the room and the house, loping down the path to the bottom of the hill as if impelled by something stronger than gravity, a repulsive force from the mansion above him, from the skyline.
He hastened to his cottage, unlocked the door, went inside and closed the curtains, creating the necessary privacy.
He opened a little cupboard and there she was, glinting.
A silver cup won for rowing.
He wasn’t sure who had done the rowing, or when, nor even what kind of boat it had been done in; but none of that mattered. He dusted her, kept her clean, polished her with a special rag.
“Come to bed, darling,” he crooned with gentle passion.
She was meek and submissive.
Unbuttoning his shirt, he lay on his back and balanced her on his hairy sternum, never tiring of breasting her cup.
The Unkissed Artist Formerly Known as Frog
He was an artist by the name of Cripen but everybody called him Frog, and his opinion on the matter didn’t count. The fact he was a frog wasn’t enough in his mind to justify the lazy appellation but people called him Frog and kept doing so anyway. He was partly resigned to it.
But only partly. In his soul he yearned to be taken seriously and a start to taking him seriously would be to refer to him by his proper name, Cripen. There was no doubt about his talent. He was an excellent artist and his canvases really seemed to say something new. And yet...
His frogginess went against him. His fundamental essence of frog had an inexplicable effect on critics, who did a bizarre facial contortion when they saw his work, a shudder that wobbled up and down their faces several times, losing speed on each lap until it eventually slowed to a standstill as a very deep frown that was undiluted concentrate of shudder.
If they didn’t know the artist was a frog, this shudder never happened. So it was a reaction to the worker, not the work, and Cripen felt even more insulted when he learned this was the case. The truth is that the critics were anti-frog and it was a prejudice that impeded his career.
But art was his life and he couldn’t give up because of the ignorance of a handful of professional critics. He continued painting as always, and he was still able to show his work in certain s
mall exhibitions, but not once did he ever get a positive review, nor did he sell any pictures.
Thus he became the living embodiment of the famished artist but, luckily for him he was able to eat flies, so summers weren’t too bad. Although, as he was a giant frog, there were almost too few flies in the city to satisfy his appetite fully. In winter he had to seek less wholesome food.
So he went to the opening nights of shows by many other artists in lots of galleries and there he was able to take the free snacks on offer, mainly canapés, salted nuts and pickles, generally with a glass or two of white wine. And that is how he prevented himself from starving to death.
People who knew him would sometimes come over to chat. “How goes it with you, Frog? Are you still painting?”
Yes, he would nod. How could he give it up?
“No plans to find a proper job?”
Painting was a proper job, wasn’t it? What did they mean by asking such a question in a gallery? He sighed deeply.
I was sitting on the carriage of an underground train once when it stopped at a station and he came in from the platform. He hopped through the doors as they slid open and positioned himself in the space between the metal poles that are provided for standing passengers to hold onto.
Nobody looked. Commuters hate to show curiosity.
But I was fascinated by him and the fact that the carriage reminded me of an enormous artificial tadpole made me want to be a part of his life, to engage with him on some level. It’s not that I thought I could help him with his career or felt pity for him. It was something else.
I think it was just a case of understanding that here was a phenomenon that might never be repeated, a peculiar situation, a giant frog that had come to London in the hope of making a success in the art world, and not by exploiting the oddness of his corporeal form, but simply by creating paintings considered outmoded by the trendy art establishment.