Ethelbert's Sunday Morning

by Marcus Freestone

probably found nothing; if so there's no need to complicate my private life any further. Okay, fine."

  He ended the call and threw the phone onto the bed. He ran his hand through his hair trying to gather his thoughts. After a few minutes of pacing around the bed he picked up the phone and put it into his shirt pocket. Standing up, he opened the bedroom door and returned to the living room. Julia was stretched out on the sofa with a glass of wine and a half empty bottle on the floor beside her.

  "You'd better not have too much of that."

  "Piss off, I'll do what I like."

  "Clearly. Okay, just tell me why you had me followed and what this Prenderghast man found, if anything."

  "You can't even be bothered to look guilty, can you?"

  "I've nothing on my conscience. Look, Julia, I'm not fucking about, this is potentially deadly serious. Please just tell me what happened."

  "I thought you were seeing someone else."

  "Why...? Okay it doesn't matter, I'm not and I never have. What did the dick tell you?"

  She got up from the sofa and went over to the sideboard. Opening a drawer she removed a manila envelope, threw it at him and slumped back onto the sofa, slurping at her wine. Matt opened the folder and leafed through the contents.

  "Is that it? Five photos of me going in and out of various shops?"

  "Yes, but that's enough. Doesn't Ghent look just like Basingstoke high street?"

  "If you could crawl out of that bottle for a moment and answer one very important question – is all you know that I wasn't in Ghent when I said I was?"

  "You lied to me."

  "Okay, we'll deal with that, but first I have to make another call."

  He took out his phone and pressed a few buttons.

  "No it's fine, all she knows is that I wasn't in Ghent. Ghent, it's in Belgium. That's not important, it's all fine because there are only a few photos of me in Basingstoke. No, nobody else, just me going in some shops in the high street... Nobody could possibly work out anything from that.... No, it's fine, I'll deal with it." He paused in disbelief. "What do you mean you've already sent out a team – surely you're joking?"

  He glanced at Julia who was half dozing on the sofa, a nearly empty wine bottle cradled in her lap, seemingly oblivious to his conversation.

  "Look, she's half pissed, she won't remember a thing. I'll come up with a convincing story, that's my fucking job, remember?"

  The sounds of running feet and shouting could be heard on the stairs.

  "I'll get you for this you arsehole!" he hissed, dropping the phone on the sofa and reaching into his jacket pocket.

  "Don't do the door..." he shouted just as the front door flew off its hinges and five men with machine guns ran in and immediately begin searching the kitchen.

  "We're in here, you fuckwits, there's nobody else in the flat."

  He held up the ID. in his wallet and the lead gunman screamed into a headset mic.

  "Abort search!"

  "Thank you, Tony. You can all fuck off now, there is no situation here."

  "Pardon me, sir, but what about the woman?"

  Matt looked around to see Julia, now very much awake and with an expression that suggested she was quite keen on receiving an explanation of why five armed men have just kicked her door down.

  "Ah. Shit. Okay, there wasn't a situation until you clowns turned up. Five of you? For one primary school teacher?"

  "Just following orders, sir," said Tony.

  "I know; I'll strangle Donaldson when I see him."

  "Would you like me to do that for you, sir? I've been on a course in strangling."

  "I'm sure you have, but that won't be necessary, tempted though I am.

  "Excuse me," said Julia in a menacingly quiet tone.

  Matt nervously turned his attention back to her.

  "I can explain."

  She sat up and fixed him with an expectant glance. He looked at Tony and the other four, who were all either staring fixedly at the ground or suddenly finding something of interest in another part of the room. He looked over at the splintered remains of the front door. He looked back at Julia.

  "Give me a few minutes."

  Ten minutes later he sat on the sofa beside her and took a deep breath.

  "You're a primary school teacher and you make rugs as a hobby. Well, being an artist is my hobby, my job is working for... a government agency."

  "The paramilitary wing of the Child Support Agency?"

  "Look, I know this is a bit much after all these years and you feel I've lied to you, but I work in Intelligence. I've signed the Official Secrets Act. If I tell you anything about my job I'll be in prison faster than you can say 'whoops, there goes my extremely generous pension'".

  "Do you carry a gun?"

  "Not usually," he laughed. "I don't run around like that lot, it's mostly quite boring: going through phone records, bank accounts, lots of admin. It's not glamorous at all."

  "So what happened to my front door?"

  "Crossed wires. Believe me, I will be doing some serious shouting when I see the clown responsible for this."

  Tony walked in from the kitchen.

  "Excuse me, sir, but do you need us anymore. Only it's costing about five grand an hour just for us to be standing here."

  "Well go home then."

  "Erm... there is just one matter, miss?"

  "What?

  "Those tiles in the kitchen. They're just what my wife's looking for, where did you get them?"

  "Homebase."

  He saluted smartly.

  "Thank you very much, miss. Sir. Come on lads."

  The five gunmen trooped sheepishly out.

  "The replacement door has arrived," shouted Tony from the stairs.

  Two very nervous looking young men carrying a door shuffled past the five gunmen.

  "And you'd better do a good job," shouted Julia, "or he'll have you killed."

  She pointed at Matt then stumbled inelegantly into the bedroom, slamming the door behind her. Tony tapped one of the men on the shoulder.

  "Don't worry, sir, there'll be no killing tonight."

  "I wouldn't fucking bet on it!" shouted Julia. "Get in here, Matt."

  He looked at the two terrified men, crossed himself and opened the bedroom door.

  ETHELBERT'S SUNDAY MORNING

  Ethelbert was past ninety but had never really picked a direction in life, or a gender. He/she had undergone so many sex change operations that he/she couldn't even remember which way they'd started out. Therefore Ethelbert now compromised: a typical daily wardrobe consisted of black trousers and lilac jumper, cream skirt and football shirt, or leg warmers and a lumberjack shirt. A wispy beard was ever present. Time was spent veering randomly between woodwork and knitting, 'Top Gear' and 'Loose Women', 'The Sweeney' and 'Murder She Wrote', Andy McNab and Barbara Cartland. Two cats shared the house, one male one female. There was a vague memory of having been married once or twice but to what was unclear.

  Having the first name Ethelbert was unfortunate enough but, such were the vicissitudes of having been born in 1920, that Ethelbert Gaylord had been cursed on both fronts. All thirty six cats over the years had been called Leslie to simplify matters and to use up the job lot of engraved collars Ethelbert had purchased during a drunken afternoon in Brighton in 1951. Recollections of the exact reason for this fortuitous purchase had gone for good now but Ethelbert was still occasionally plagued by random memories of a small shop that only sold pet collars, envelopes and surgical trusses. That would explain why Ethelbert had written four thousand letters during 1952, but not why they had all been addressed to Lord Mountbatten and all contained a vociferous complaint about the lack of toilet facilities on Hampstead Heath.

  Ethelbert cleared away the breakfast things, having, on principle, eaten a sumptuous fried breakfast every single morning since the day they abandoned rationing. Once again it would be a running battle between clogged arteries and flatulence, but the flatulence would probably win again today
and Ethelbert would live to fry another day. The two Leslie's ate a far healthier breakfast of smoked kippers and exhibited far less flatulence.

  The kitchen was unchanged since the day in 1943 that Ethelbert and Leslie's one and two had moved in to the house. The smell of washing up liquid and Gin mingled with the dense cigar smoke that swirled around the room; the cats were very lucky to be at ground level with only the smell of damp slippers and mothballs to distract them from their opulent daily diet. Indeed, bearing in mind the amount of cigar smoke, fried-bacon- meets-burnt-saucepan smoke, and the occasional Gin spill ending up in their water bowl, it was surprising that the average lifespan of all thirty four previous Leslies was nineteen. This meant that, at their peak, there were seventeen Leslies resident at once – that was when Ethelbert bought the trunk.

  Colin yawned expansively and looked at his watch but the hands had stopped – so had the feet. The decision to buy a watch that was also an eighteen inch scale model of Arthur Mullard was one he had seldom regretted during the last seventeen years but he had to now admit that, as the battery had run out eight years ago, it may be time to invest in a more practical timepiece. Nevertheless he estimated that about seven hours had passed so it was probably safe to come out from under the kitchen table.

  Gingerly and pedantically he stood up, banging his head on the kitchen table.

  “Thatcher!” he exclaimed, which was the generic, all purpose swear word he now employed in all situations since an unfortunate episode in a Basingstoke crematorium in 1987 had forced him to fore go all foul language.

  Pressing himself to the wall he crept inexorably and tangentially towards the hallway. He knew that possible evil