NGLND XPX

by Ian Hutson

They found themselves back in familiar surroundings which in and of itself spoke volumes about the success of their mission. Still, is there anything more comfortable than a battered leather club chair in an Officers Mess? Cholmondeley didn’t think so and nor did the sexually-sated Labrador resting at his feet. Shakespeare had stopped worrying about helmets and decompression and tubes of Winalot and now he didn’t think much at all again really, except “food” and “wow, sexy leg or what?” and “this cushion will be the mother of my puppies” and “food” and “pee” and “walkies” and “food”. Oh, how soon one slips out of the adrenal flow at the end of a mission! Cholmondeley and Shakespeare were well-matched. There were days – even whole months – when Cholmondeley’s thoughts remained at a similar level, except that at Cholmondeley’s age he tended more towards thinking “pee” and less to do with making puppies.

  This post-mission evening though, as the Hendricks in his glass slowly melted the ice-cubes, Cholmondeley was a worried man. The mission had been completed, but had the dams been properly breached, so to speak? They had done all that they could but had they done enough? Even the amber glow from the wireless could do nothing to pull his eyes away from the painted metal-framed window that overlooked the airfield. Out there, tended once again only by three nesting woodpigeons and a weekly drive-by check from the Military Police, stood two of the Ministry of Defence’s scant dozen or so Morris Space-Travellers. Special Travellers these two, caked in winter salt and with scorch-marks from the entire planet’s atomic arsenal, with a feint green glow in the darkness caused by the “falling-out” or something technical that they said he need not bother himself about.

  The announcer on the wireless Home Service had more plums in his mouth than sounded plausible for a heterosexual man in a serious profession. There was news. Petrol rationing was to be continued at one gallon per vehicle per month. Princess Anne had ridden Crusty-Buttocks, a fourteen year-old gelding, to victory at Burghley (Crusty-Buttocks was apparently a horse). There was to be a re-count in the by-election at Froomington-upon-Sea following an accidental draught in the counting room. The weather was expected to continue as sunny or overcast with occasional showers or dry spells, some wind and some no wind at all. It was possible that there might be a light frost in the morning, or it could turn in places to snow or fog, or into a spectacularly fine sunrise. Travellers and commuters were advised to wear summer-weight clothing and to take with them a coat, scarf, gloves, sun-hat, woolly hat, umbrella, sandals and Wellingtons, plus the usual survival rations to guard against unscheduled train stoppages.

  There came then the sound of the announcer tapping his papers into line too close to the microphone.

  In other news, Her Majesty’s Government wished to announce that the very rude extinction-level comet had been nullified by the heroic actions of a small team of brave chaps, and that an emergency knighthood was to be conferred on the expedition leader, Sir Cholmondeley, and an honorary B.E.M. to his assistant, Higginbotham B.E.M. A Labrador dog known as “Shakespeare” that had accompanied the men on their expedition would also awarded the Freedom of the City of London, a juicy bone and his first real bitch in season.

  Shakespeare cringed as he heard all of the other dogs on the RAF station guffawing and then howling the lyric to Vera Lynn’s classic hit... “Like a ver-er-er-er-gin, touched for the very first time...”

  All previous advice to prepare quietly for extinction and the cancellation of the football season was rescinded.

  Foreign radio was reporting that the comet had dissipated “due to the heat generated by the deployment of the world’s atomic arsenal in a carefully planned operation to surround the body of the comet with international explosions and other clever foreign things”.

  The world was slapping itself collectively on the back with the Russians, Chinese, Indians, Germans and French claiming what Hollywood said was rightfully a wholly Hollywooden victory, hell yeah, nuke that mother, baby. Apparently each country had already raised invoices relating to the expenditure of their nuclear arsenal and had presented them to every other each other in the World Government, demanding immediate payment and a lifetime presidency of The Union. Wales was complaining formally that none of the invoices had been translated in to Welsh and Scotland had already rejected the invoices, explaining that in view of the theft of their North Sea Gas they didn’t feel any need to make further payment to anyone for anything ever again.

  In world news, some mysterious items of space debris obviously completely unrelated to the comet threat had left a trail of destruction on the far side of the channel, causing widespread damage valued at six or seven guineas. A singed tin-roofed shed had apparently crash-landed on Brussels, a flush toilet complete with cistern and pull-chain had destroyed the Arc de Triumph, a dog kennel had smashed into the Brandenburg Gate complete with a large box of very healthy fresh doggy do-do and, most mysterious of all, the Russian presidential white stretched-Audi limousine had been flattened during a military parade by an old solid-fuel boiler system and sixteen attached radiators. The Foreign Office confirmed, rather unnecessarily, that there was no cause for alarm.

  A hailstone the size of a lady’s town-bicycle (unoccupied), thought to be the last remnant of the previously extinction-level comet, had landed in Rutland Water and caused quite a splash. Leisure boating had not been disrupted and the model-yacht regatta at the weekend would go ahead as planned.

  Elsewhere, in cricket news...

  Cholmondeley, Higginbotham and Shakespeare sat up, and began listening intently.

  * * * * *

  Footloose, en pas de basque

  [back to table of contents]

  There follows a distressing account that I present verbatim, word for word, step for tragic step, entirely as it was presented to me, and other distracting repetitions, and redundancies, and extra commas, from the private psychologico-scientifical journals of a gentleman very familiar with the history of some of the better families in the Lesser Updyke Downdale area of t’Greater Oop-North. Breathe, damn you, breathe – that was just one sentence, you have a long way to go yet...

  There are some scenes of a quite distasteful nature and I warn you now that the tale is wholly unsuitable for ladies of good social standing or of fashionably inadequate lung capacity.

  I include this particular tale purely in order to meet my European Union quota in viz the mandatory educational, moral substance and civic fortitude-encouraging content of the anthology. It relates to a family both great and good of that centre of cotton-milling excellence; Tottering on the Wold (between Pittling Down and Lessissomuch Moor). To preserve parental modesty and to discourage excessive gossip we shall simply refer to them as the Nouveauriche family, thus making it obvious to lesser folk that they are nothing at all to do with the real Nouveauriche family currently residing in Millowner Towers, Thrashworker Park, Tottering on the Wold.

  We begin our account in a small but neat new-build stately home of some seventy or eighty rooms and set in a similarly bijou ration of just one thousand acres of formal garden, and all called by the moniker of Millowner Towers of Thrashworker Park, Tottering etcetera etcetera etcetera. This green and pleasant little jewel of the Nouveauriche family (no, not that one, the fictitious one) is itself set for all to enjoy in a scant further twenty thousand acres of high-walled, gated, dog-patrolled parkland with shark-patrolled lakes and gamekeeper-watched woodlands screening the vistas from t’blight caused by t’mill and t’mill-workers’ humble but homely and enlightened and employer-provided tied accommodations.

  Just over t’hill from t’house (must stop doing that now, t’it’s really annoying) lies an old abandoned steam pumping station built in the heavy Victorian style. The very self-same pumping station that used to feed pressure to the many garden fountains and, in particular, to the large single jet that the incumbent Lady Nouveauriche quickly had capped with a marble statue of Venus (the snooty Roman bitch, not the planet). Lady N took this benevolent action for fear of “giving the ga
rdeners unnecessary urinary-tract related ideas as they discourse among the box hedgerows and perennial shrubbery during their various horticultural endeavours”.

  It is this dark, satanic pumping house with its ornate cast ironmongery, industrial scale cathedral-like glazing and raised and suggestively empire school of Victorian architecture and finial that became the focus for almost all of the moral lapses of the younger folk in the area and was, inevitably and ironically, to prove to be their entire social undoing, rocking the very brick and stone foundations of the nearby newly-begun Industrial Revolting.

  Make of this document what you will, for I have lived too many years in warm, un-sane, dis-sanitary climates to lay legally or spiritually plausible claim to any moral high ground, and must necessarily throw myself upon the mercy of the Anglican Church and of your own good offices. I ask of you only this, that you take care not to leave this volume on any open shelf where others less educated or without such breeding and resolve as you possess may find it, but rather, that you lock it away safely with the Greek Works and with the improper pencil sketches of Goya and his school. I also ask that you lay down a sturdy rug of quality weft, weave and deep pile, the better to break my fall when I throw myself upon the mercy of your good offices or other such mutually convenient venue to be agreed.

  I pick up the history from the point at which the young lordling of the manor, the mill-owner’s eldest son, is being challenged by his dear be-luvved Muther and Fayther for an explanation following yet another reporting of the family Six Cleveland Bays & best barouche GTi Coupe being seen parked at the old pumping station of a night.

  The young lord, sensing that the ignition keys to the horses are about to be restricted, decides to make a clean but thoroughly manly breast of it, wi’ chest-hair and manly man-nipples and a heart o’northern English oak and such. The conversation here necessarily began with some brisk initial meanderings through a fellow’s private members-only club business, some serious weather-related issues and an assessment of the podiatric health of the parkland sheep that I omit in the name of brevity. We join Fayther and son just after oblique but pertinent and very firm enquiries have been made regarding the young chap’s increasingly over-burdensome vest laundering needs – needs that have grown exponentially along with sightings of the ill-parked family barouche.

  ‘Father, Mother, I am almost a man now and... and, well, there’s something I have to tell you. Something of the horses and carriage, aye, but something as is also quite apposite to the current complaints of the household’s male-clothing laundry posher and mangle-winder.’

  ‘Yes, son? Whatever it is you may tell us without fear of the narrow-minded reactions of your forebears, we are a modern, forward-thinking family. A man who cannot embrace the new and the innovative is a man who hasn’t single-handedly built no fewer than three textile mills, a set of fine domestic accommodations and a fortune to rival that of Croesus himself. Let us cut quickly to the chase like gentlemen. If it is gambling or entroubled-servant related then I ask only that you paraphrase such as may be for the sake of your dear Mother’s blushes, for she naturally has little experience of the ways of young and feckless men and thus is ignorant of the more rank of their purse and trouser follies. There is nought you may tell me that cannot be made right with the firm application of a crisp pound note in the right hands, or some small recourse to the Antipodean offices and summary transportation by commercial sailing vessel.’

  Samuel, the mill owner’s son both in question and under questioning, seriously doubted that, but continued. If twer to be done twer best twer done bluntly, really twer. He took a deep breath and dived in.

  ‘Aye, Father, well, there comes a time in every teenage boy’s life when simple alcoholic drink, hard oriental drugs and non-choreographed rebellion just aren’t enough and, well - he finds that he has to drive out to the old abandoned pump-house and just, well ...dance. Dance as though he were born to Waltz and his soft-soled imported Italian leather loafers just can’t stay still on his plates o’meat.’

  ‘Son, whatever are you telling us? Are you ill in some way? Maud – call for a doctor to be fetched immediately, the lad is quite obviously out of his usual sorts.’

  ‘No Father, Mother... you must steel yourselves. I don’t wish to be the cause of any parental perturbation but I... well, it is as I have indicated. I love to boogie. There. What has been said cannot be un-said. Boogie-oogie-oogie.’

  The young lad turned back from the windows and threw his arms in the air (catching them again in the deep, double-stitched pockets of his morning tweeds). ‘A weight has been lifted from my shoulders. So now you know. I express my innermost feelings through a combination of movement, pose and counter-poise. Je dance, ergo sum. Ich cogito ballet, tap, morris, clog and ballroom, including but not limited to salsa and a little of the Baroque, and therefore I am.’

  Mother properly and promptly fainted into a small cherry-wood Rennie Mackintosh by the fireplace, her lace handkerchief flying to her face in some awful, but wholly feminine reflex action. Father simply went puce and cracked the monocle he was wearing.

  ‘Innermost feelings?’ expostulated his Father, incredulously.

  ‘“Boogie”?’ queried his dear, sweet, innocent Mother, not realising quite what the word meant, and so completing her fainting manoeuvre with a weak flourish of the earlobe.

  ‘Yes Father, Mother – my feet, well, they just won’t stay still and I feel that I can fly, fly like a young swan in a steelworks Father. You should see my free-format ĕchappe Rita Tushingham two-step shimmy Father, oh if only you would, if only you could! I know that you would approve! If only you could see me dance, Father. Then you would know that everything is going to be alright! It’s quite respectable really, even if it is quite injurious to the vest by way of excess perspiration and attendant snagging upon items of dramatic machinery during some of the more devil may care body-flips.’

  Mother blinked back into semi-consciousness. Her corsets remained quite rigid, but everything at either end of her bodywork flopped about a bit in a most harrowing manner.

  Father braced himself against a Japanned Gothic-revival smoker’s friend with ornate legs and a decoupage frontage paying homage to tintype African portraiture of a feminine nature (the one lapse of sexual restraint he allowed out of his private library).

  ‘Son... son, I don’t quite know how to ask this but, well dash it all you’re my son and a man needs to know these things. Son, think carefully – do you... do you ever... have you ever... I mean... never, surely, the... pas de basque? Surely not? Never that. All may be mended somehow if only never that.’

  Samuel kicked his youthful heels indolently on the fringed Persian under the gaudy early Gainsboroughs. ‘Sometimes Father, yes. Sometime the pas de basque is involved.’

  Mother fainted again, this time into a small creme de Laudanum and a brain-refreshing fig roll biscuit served with warmed silver tongs by an indolent wench fresh appointed somewhat unwisely from a smaller household. Mother was in no condition though this day to worry about the crumb situation.

  Father pressed the point. ‘Alone? Do you practise this... this rhythmic self-abuse alone?’

  Samuel squirmed. ‘Nay, Fayther, not alone but in the company of like-minded souls.’

  The frame of Father’s hitherto round monocle was assuming the outline of a crushed, artistic oval containing the remnants of a shattered lens. One or two shards were lodged in his moustache.

  Mother interjected. ‘Cump Unny?’

  Samuel elucidated as best he could. ‘Nay, Mother, company. Tis my proud northern accent tha does misunderstand.’

  Father seemed not to have noticed the brief exchange.

  ‘Son, this is most important, I want you to think very, very carefully indeed before answering my next question – your whole inheritance and status as my son and heir may hinge upon it. Have you ever... have you ever indulged in demi-grand rond de jambe ... under my roof?’

  ‘Father – yes, yes
I have and I have loved it’ Samuel said with what he hoped was added gravitas in his voice. ‘Simply loved it, do you hear and I’d do it again in a flash if only they would stop waxing under the loose rugs in my room. Pas de valse is in my blood, Father, and there’s nothing you or I can do to get it out of there. Tis stuck fast as though t’wer health-giving pork fat lining the very pistons of my heart. I’m a natural dancer, Father. Tis Nature fayther, not nurture – although there has been some assistance and training from other ... men who dance. I have learned much under the wing of a slightly older man.’

  A terrible moment came upon the room.

  ‘Then son, you’re no son of mine.’

  Mother crunched and ate the delicate little bubble-blown stemmed Waterford crystal glass her creme d’Laudanum had been served in, swallowing noisily as her tonsils got in the way. She rang for another (another glass that is, not a replacement set of tonsils). Sobering indolence incarnate re-entered the room and served alcoholic solace to the inconsolable with all of the grace of the graceless. In her white pinafore and mop-cap she bobbed a curtsy and busied herself by trying to avoid the antique treasures as she left the room along with her elbows.

  ‘Why Father, whatever can you mean?’

  ‘The Tottering on the Wold Nouveauriches do not dance. We never have. We never will. It’s not in our blood. We are god fearing and respectable. Damn it, I am a mill owner!’

  ‘You’re wrong Father, so wrong, and yet you don’t know the half of it.’ Young Samuel Goreblood Nouveauriche drew himself up to his full height and faced the dusty light streaming in from the latest design double-hung pinion-drawn sash windows of the morning withdrawing room. ‘Mother, Father, I do not... dance entirely within the confines of our family’s social standing. At first I did, Father, for I thought I was the victim of some lesser-known upper-class malaise, but then I discovered the world, Father. There are others who dance too, others of all means and backgrounds, and we have...’