by Hugh Macnab
recall.’
Shylock lowered his head between his hands as a fresh wave of despair washed over him. Noticing, Bb altered his hover-hieght until he was almost eye-to-eyes with his visitor and asked, sympathetically, if there was a problem.
‘Can you just tell me how I get out of here?’ asked Shylock, close to tears.
‘But you haven’t bought anything yet. What about my profits?’
‘Please,’ Shylock repeated in a subdued plaintive voice.
‘Oh, very well, by the door of course!’ said Bb, surprised that his guest needed to be told something so obvious.
‘What door?’ asked Shylock looking up.
For a second time, Bb seemed to be stumped. His single-eye cast around, searching for the entrance (or more relevantly) the exit. ‘Funny,’ he said. ‘I thought I’d put one here somewhere.’
‘You don’t know where the door to your own shop is?’ asked Shylock, incredulously.
‘Not exactly,’ muttered Bb. ‘You see, I just assumed my customers would come in, buy a few things at a healthy mark-up, and leave me counting the profit. I never really paid much attention to how they should leave.’
Shylock shook his head and sighed.
‘I can see your going to be difficult,’ mused Bb, scratching the underside of his bulbous nose with his lower front teeth. ‘I do agree with you though. You’ll have to get out of here somehow.’
‘At least we agree on something,’ groaned Shylock.
‘Well, there’s no need to be rude. I’m being as nice to you as I can,’ rebuked Bb. ‘And after all, you represent a pretty major problem for me. You can’t stay here, no, no, no. You have to go somewhere.’
‘Why can’t I stay here?’ asked Shylock. ‘It’s not my fault I’m here. It’s your shop!’
‘Well yes, but who invited you in? I certainly didn’t.’
‘If you didn’t want people to come in, why do you have a shop in the first place? Besides, how would you make your precious profits without customers?’
‘You present an interesting case. Are you a lawyer?’ asked Bb, suspiciously.
Shylock groaned, realising he was going nowhere with this conversation.
‘Regardless,’ said Bb. ‘Whoever’s fault it is, you still can’t stay here. Things must remain as they were.’
‘Why’s that?’ asked Shylock.
‘Because,’ asserted Bb. ‘That’s my job. To keep things the same that is.’
‘What about your profits?’
Suddenly Bb appeared nervous, perspiration broke out on his brow and his eyelid developed a nervous twitch. ‘Err…em..you’re not going to mention my profits, are you?’ he stammered.
Shylock smiled, sensing higher ground for the first time. ‘And who do you think I might tell?’ he asked.
‘Why, C..c..constance of course,’ stammered Bb. ‘You might tell Constance.’
Puzzled by the unusual name, Shylock asked who Constance was.
‘Why, Constance is….Constance of course. Who do you think he is?’
Shylock’s puzzled frown was sufficient to provoke further explanation.
‘Constance keeps everything constant. You know, invariable, fixed, immutable, never-changing – that sort of thing. And he won’t be pleased when he finds you here.’
‘Me!’ exclaimed Shylock, beginning to understand his host. ‘What you mean is he won’t be pleased to find out about your shop, and your profits.’
Bb spluttered and quickly opted for the nth-dimensional equivalent of the fifth amendment.
‘So, I’ve got you. Haven’t I?’ asked Shylock, before continuing. ‘Let me guess. You work for Constance, and you keep this beach unchanged? That’s why I don’t leave tracks in the sand, and why this driftwood keeps reappearing at my side. And your shop’s a nice little sideline – isn’t that it? And Constance doesn’t know!’
Shylock sat back and smiled smugly, enjoying his revelation and Bb’s moment of discomfort.
‘Okay, wise-ass’ said Bb. ‘So you’ve got me figured. I’m one of Constance’s apprentices. The question is, are you going to shop me…pardon the pun, or am I going to help you get out of here?’
‘My dear Bb,’ began Shylock, using his most placatory tone. ‘It would never cross my mind to reveal your - what is after all a most acceptable predisposition - interest in financial considerations. Especially seeing as how you have so generously offered to help me get out of here.’
‘Hmm,’ replied Bb, less than convinced but realising he was over a barrel. ‘Don’t go away - causing a frown on Shylock’s face - and I’ll see if I can find someone to help you.’
A horny journey
When Bb re-appeared, he was obviously in a much lighter frame of mind as if suddenly a weight had been lifted off his shoulders. Somehow this didn’t appeal to Shylock.
‘Come along then, on your feet!’ Bb hustled. ‘Let’s get going.’
‘Going, where?’ asked Shylock, rising.
‘It seems like we need to see Change.’
‘Change!’ repeated Shylock. ‘Who’s that?’
‘You’ll see, you’ll see,’ muttered Bb. ‘First you’ll need to change to travel.’
‘Why? What’s wrong with these clothes?’ asked Shylock, looking down at his denim shirt and dark green gaberdine trousers.
‘No, no, no! I mean you’ll have to change!’
Shylock stared at Bb, but before the implication of his words could begin to permeate his consciousness, he noticed the change which had already occurred. ‘Wings!’ he shouted, jumping backwards and landing on all four feet. He looked down. ‘Hooves! What have you done?’ he yelped.
‘Well you don’t want to stay here, do you?’ Bb asked, rhetorically. ‘And we need to get help to get you out of here?’ he continued. ‘So, you need wings, and the best I could come up with at short notice was a unicorn.’
‘A horn!’ moaned Shylock, imagining the difficult-to-focus-on long ivory tusk towering above his forehead.
‘It’s all for the best, honestly,’ said Bb, hoping difficult customers would provide higher mark-up’s. ‘Come on. If you’ll stop complaining and just come with me, we’ll soon get you out of here,’ he promised, in an altogether much better mood.
Resigned, shylock asked where they were going, immediately regretting his question. After all, some things are just best not known.
‘There you go again - not listening! I told you, were going to see Change, of course! And on the way, we can talk about Kanga and little Roo, Owl, Gopher and Christopher Robin himself. That should be fun!’
Loose Change
If Shylock had been unprepared for ‘Get Lucky’, the shock was nothing compared to his arrival at what he was assured was the residence of the person they sought.
Hovering in front of them was a milky-white semi-spherical glass dome about the size of a half-football field, mounted on top of a solid brass base-plate. Inside the levitating hemisphere, Shylock could make out tiny snowflakes falling.
Bb reached out and tapped on the glass, creating a minor snow flurry. ‘Well, here he is – in here. Unfortunately, no-one is allowed either in or out of here, for the time being at least.’
‘Nothing at all. Why not?’ asked Shylock.
‘That’s another story,’ replied Bb. ‘It wasn’t my idea…I’m only an apprentice,’ he explained, distancing himself from any potential accountability.
‘But how does he survive?’ asked Shylock.
‘Don’t be silly,’ Bb reprimanded. ‘All immortals can live forever…but then of course they would, wouldn’t they? Get it…you know…immortals. They’re imperishable, permanently abiding, eternal, perpetually enduring.…’
‘Quite,’ said Shylock, interrupting…worried that Bb’s choice of descriptions may have been unending, everlasting, or even perdurable…and then worrying more how his own mind seemed to be imitating Bb’s propensity for the extensive use of descriptors and alternative vocabulary.
Unconcerned, Bb continued. ‘Oh,
he might get a little lonely now and again, but apart from that I’m sure he does fine. He’ll probably be very pleased to see you…oops, sorry about that one,’ grinned Bb, alluding to the only form of communication available to Change.
Shylock ignored Bb’s attempt to lighten the situation and turned his gaze back towards where Change was incarcerated. Concentrating on the interior, he became mesmerised by the falling flakes and involuntarily, recalling his own younger face pressed against the window-pane in his bedroom, watching snow flakes fall, his mind drifted back to his childhood. A good childhood apart from one tiny thing - something so small and unimportant that he had kept it in a shoe-box, on the top shelf in the back of his mind for all these years. Something so trifling and inconsequential yet it chose this precise moment to reveal itself in all it’s splendour, the box suddenly tumbling off the shelf and freeing the carefully concealed content – pouring the memories into Shylock’s consciousness.
At first it had been his mother – he’s just a baby, a little scaredy-cat, then at play-school he was timid, or a shrinking violet. It wasn’t just the words, it was the tone – he would always remember the tone.
Then as he grew through school and college it became sissy, scaredy-cat, and lily-livered - graduating as he became older into yellow-belly and chicken.
Then when he revealed that he wanted to become a teacher rather than a soldier like his father and grandfather before him, he overheard his father - talking to his mother one night - accuse him of being a gutless, spineless wonder who’d always been a pathetic excuse for a son. An out and out coward! Although nothing was said to his face, he now knew how