Ethelbert's Sunday Morning

by Marcus Freestone

function appeared to be for the extinguishing of miniature fire sticks which some of the locals had brought with them to the cave, even though using them in the cave was strictly forbidden.

  One of my companions was clearly also restless and spent much of her time bouncing off the walls and running around in circles like a caged animal. Bearing in mind the aquatic nature of our surroundings, she was clearly the wisest of us she had arrived equipped with a fishing net.

  The air in the main cave was quickly becoming unbreathable so we all moved into the small coridoor which seemed to function as an airlock in conjunction with the magic door that, although underground, appeared to nevertheless lead into the outside world and it's precious fresh air.

  Some of my companions succumbed to heat exhaustion and left the cave to forage for food, leaving only three of us. My two companions vanished near the magic door so I was alone. Luckily I found myself in the company of two non-indigenous cave dwellers who also remembered a much better, drier cave I used to frequent in a previous century, where a single gold coin was enough to quench a thirst and there were no orange creatures to crush your jacket. Both of these new people had pleasant frontal protruberances on the upper halves of their bodies. I had encountered these before in a previous decade but could not fully remember their purpose.

  One of these new people was very animated in conversation and constantly moved her frontal protruberances in my direction, squashing them against the upper half of my body in a manner which ignited distant memories of long ago nights spent in a series of much smaller caves. Although I was sure I had interpreted the meaning of this exchange correctly, nonetheless my courage failed me and I did not reciprocate towards the creature by squashing any of my protruberances against her body as I think was her intention.

  Thus it was that I left the cave shortly afterwards with my 2 original companions but not with any new acquaintance. On the way home, after parting with my companions and therefore being defenceless, I was attacked by a ferocious little pig but the fucker will live to regret that when my complaint to the I.P.C.C. lands on his desk.

  GOING HOME

  The constant droning of Radio Two continued to burrow into his brain like cancer. In a way radio Two was cancer, for Norman at least. Not that there is anything harmful about Radio Two per se; most of its listeners can stomach the output and not be reduced to housebound hypochondriacs but Norman was the exception. Norman Braithwaite had given up on life and retreated into a world populated entirely by the comforting blandness of his chosen radio station.

  The radio continued to blather its output into his ears. The single speaker seemed to almost take pleasure in inflicting the sound upon him - a sadistic pleasure, built on the knowledge that Norman Braithwaite had nothing else in his life. Of course, the speaker did no such thing - it was an inanimate piece of machinery, incapable of objective reasoning. To suggest that it had thoughts, ideas, feelings would be to commit an absurd act of anthropomorphism - almost as absurd as suggesting that the forces of nature are the result of a cosmic deity with human characteristics.

  Norman Braithwaite believed in God. Not even a very well defined God, merely the watered-down, innocuous version of God that people accept when they lack the intellectual stamina to make even a cursory examination of a specific religion or philosophy, but feel nonetheless that they ought to believe in something. His pseudo-beliefs enabled him to abdicate his personal responsibility for his own life - but that's the function of all beliefs.

  His soul-destroying peace was broken by the sound of the ancient telephone ringing in the hallway. Eleven rings later, the arthritic old man had managed to ease himself into the hard-backed chair that sat beside the hard-backed book that sat beside the phone.

  "Hello, Burnley four... seven...?"

  Clare interrupted before he tried to read the entire number from the card in the center of the plastic dial via his 1968 spectacles.

  "Hello, Dad," she said, clenching her hand tightly around the receiver, and her teeth tightly around each other, "how are you?"

  "Oh, you know, can't complain - well, no-one to listen last three years. I 'ad to take my legs t' doctor yesterday."

  "Again!" Clare desperately tried and failed to subdue the incredulity and impatience in her voice. "What's the matter this time?" She sighed heavily in anticipation of an answer.

  "Oh, they didn't find 'owt, but they're all stiff and it's not right is that."

  Clare hurriedly got a word in edge ways, before he started listing all his other symptoms. A train slid noisily into the platform behind her, and she felt a momentary yet strong urge to curl up in ' front of it and go to sleep.

  "Anyway, I'm on Euston station now, I should be home about tea time." She was trying so hard to end the conversation but Norman, in his usual fashion, carried on regardless:

  "I don't suppose I'll get to meet this boyfriend of yours?"

  "No, you won't!" she replied, unable to prevent herself from mimicking his sarcastic inflexions.

  "And why not?" he continued, attacking her like a five year old full of sugar and E-numbers.

  "You now why, because you'll only make snide comments about his hair or something."

  "Why, what's wrong with his hair, got a poofters perm has he?"

  "No," she said, seething audibly, "it just happens to be quite long."

  "1 see." he paused, just long enough for Clare to think he'd let the matter rest, before adding, "Don't they have barbers in London?"

  "Yes!!"

  "I blame the Dutch, they started this long hair business. They've even got his type round 'ere now. Mind you, you can't get a decent bloody 'aircut in Burnley for love nor money these days - go in t'barbers and ask for a razor cut, they look at yer stupid like."

  "Jesus!" muttered Clare.

  "So," Norman thundered on, oblivious, "this bloke of yours, I suppose he's from somewhere fancy in London?"

  "No, dad - actually he's from Rottenstawl."

  "Pah!" exploded Norman. "Bloody southerners!"

  Clare bit her lip and drew blood.

  "I mean," her father continued remorselessly, "I don't see why you had to leave Burnley..."

  "... in t' first place!" she chimed in synchronously, using the opportunity to ruthlessly mimic his anachronistic pronunciation.

  "And you've started talkin' posh."

  "No I haven't!" Clare was by now so exasperated, her teeth were in danger of filing each other down to the gums.

  "I've never felt the need to abandon my roots."

  "Yes, dad, I'm painfully aware that you've never ventured out of North Lancashire in your whole life."

  Norman sniffed sarcastically. "And what can you 'ave in London you can't 'ave in Burnley?"

  Clare's soul was screaming in pain and frustration. She closed her eyes momentarily but was disturbed by the image of an Italian man beckoning her towards a door which bore a sign saying "Second Circle this way'.

  "A decent degree, a life." she finally replied.

  "I've got a life!" he retorted, rather too quickly and indignantly, leaving Clare with an uncomfortable feeling in the pit of her stomach.

  She glanced hopefully at the telephone's small LCD panel, inviting it to rescue her. Shit! -sixty three pence left.

  "Oh, got to go, my money's running out. I'll see you later."

  "Ay, alright, I'll put kettle on."

  "Bye, dad."

  "Ay, 'appen you're right."

  Clare waited for her father to replace his receiver before she slammed hers against the wall of the kiosk four times in a vain effort to vent her tension and anger. It didn't make her feel better, but it did succeed in reducing the receiver to a tangled mess of wires and splintered plastic.

  "I don't know," Norman said to himself, pottering back into the living room, "three years in London. I bet you can't get a penneth 'o peas down there. Mind you, even round 'ere it's fifty pence worth 'o peas in chippy nowadays. Ay, it were a grim day when we went decimal. I blame Ted Heath."

&n
bsp; His slippered feet padded over to the adjoining kitchen. Norman had had a doorway knocked through to save him the gargantuan effort of walking the extra fifteen feet through the hallway ("Well, it's not easy getting about at my age" he had told the unsympathetic builders, endlessly).

  "Haven't got a life?" he said, filling the kettle. "Bloody cheek! A decent brew and Radio Two, what more could you ask for? Okay, I might not get out much, but I'm getting on now, Right, let's look in Radio Times."

  His slippered feet conducted the same arthritic shuffling motion back into the living room, and deadened fingers fumbled with the magazine, apparently finding page-turning an unutterably difficult task.

  "Ay, much as I suspected, nowt decent on in t'afternoon. Thank 'eavans for Radio Two. Even that blasted video recording machine she left when she buggered off to join southereners tuned out to be a blessin' in disguise. At least I don't 'ave to watch all modern garbage on t'television - soap operas, wouldn't give 'em house room! I blame Lord Reith."

  His reverie was interrupted by the whistle of his Cro-Magnon kettle.

  "Ay, appen I'll 'ave a nice pot o tea and a couple 'o jam scones and settle in front of a decent film, no modern tripe."

  As the gas was turned off and the china clinked and clattered, Norman continued his interior monologue of abject, unacknowledged loneliness.

  He'd always had a habit of talking to himself, but Clare's departure had brought on many physiological symptoms, one of which was his almost perpetual interior monologues. It wasn't so much that he was