by David Nobbs
‘C.J. doesn’t want you mixed up in our arboreal deception,’ said Reggie.
‘Precisely, Reggie,’ said C.J.
Mrs C.J. melted sufficiently to let C.J. put an arm round her.
‘I presume you were going to write after the attack to tell me that the monastic restrictions had been lifted.’
‘Monastic restrictions?’ said C.J. ‘What monastic restrictions?’
‘The monastic restrictions of our community, that you told Mrs C.J. about at Christmas,’ said Reggie. ‘How until Wednesday we lived a strictly celibate life in segregated dormitories.’
‘Oh, those monastic restrictions,’ said C.J.
Jimmy re-entered, minus his costume, plus Lettuce. ‘Top-hole aspen my clever Lettuce rustled up, what?’ said Jimmy.
‘Al,’ said Reggie.
‘You’re being fitted for your box hedge at five, C.J.,’ said Lettuce.
‘I know,’ said C.J. glumly.
Lettuce was introduced to Mrs C.J.
‘How did you cope with the monastic restrictions.’ said Mrs C.J.
‘Monastic restrictions?’ said Lettuce.
Mrs C.J. burst into tears.
Reggie ushered Jimmy and Lettuce out of the room.
When they were alone, Mrs C.J. hit C.J. across the cheek.
He stood up, holding his nose in his hands.
There was no blood.
‘You lied to me,’ said Mrs C.J. ‘You hate me.’
‘I love you,’ said C.J., standing at the french windows, looking over the bursting verdure of the garden. ‘I lied to you because I didn’t want you to come here till I’d finished my masterpiece.’
‘Masterpiece?’ said Mrs C.J. scornfully. ‘What pack of lies is this?’
‘Every evening, when the day’s work is done, I retire to my room and write,’ said C.J. ‘My book will do for ants what Watership Down did for rabbits.’
He returned to the settee, and turned to face his wife.
‘It’s the only reason I didn’t send for you,’ he said. ‘I could never have done my masterpiece and been with you. It would have been the last straw that broke the camel’s hump.’
‘What’s this masterpiece of yours called?’ said Mrs C.J.
‘I’ve tried everything,’ said C.J. ‘Watership Ant, Watership Hill, Charley’s Ant, Lord of the Ants, Ant of the Lords, Ant of the Flies, Ant of the Rings, No Sex Please we’re Ants, No Ants Please we’re British.’
‘Show me your masterpiece,’ said Mrs C.J.
‘You still don’t believe me, do you?’ said C.J.
He took Mrs C.J. to his room and showed her his masterpiece.
The fateful day dawned warm and sunny, innocent and smiling. They all felt foolish, as they prepared their disguises under Lettuce’s supervision. It wasn’t the sort of day on which it was easy to believe in attacks by bands of marauding yobbos. Mrs C.J. was determined to stay at her husband’s side, and it was decided that they should both be part of the same box hedge.
Shortly after lunch, David Harris-Jones arrived with Prue.
‘We’re reconciled,’ they said. ‘We’ve come back to help in the defence of our community. Little Reggie’s safe in Exeter.’
Prue looked radiant. David’s radiance was tempered by fear.
‘Unfortunately you haven’t time to disguise yourselves as trees,’ Reggie told them.
Trees?’ said David and Prue Harris-Jones.
Reggie explained the plan, and it was decided that they should stay in the house and act as reserves, in case any invaders broke through the leafy cordon.
By the time Linda drove Adam and Jocasta to the Perry-mans’, the sunshine had gone and there were menacing clouds.
It became much easier to believe in the threatened attack.
Jimmy gambled on the invaders not attacking before dusk. For, while Lettuce had done extremely well in the short time available, it has to be admitted that the deception would not have been effective in daylight.
As dusk gathered, and the rain began, Jimmy armed his band with clubs disguised as branches.
‘I hope we don’t intend to be violent,’ said Tom.
‘Of course not,’ said Jimmy. ‘But these people are louts. They’re the dregs. It’s the only language they understand.’
‘We’re supposed to be a community of peace and love,’ said Tom.
‘That’s why we’ve got to nail the bastards,’ said Jimmy.
He led his band of trees, shrubs and hedges to their stations.
Afforestation took place. The night began. The rain grew heavier.
Every twenty minutes a W288 slid past, a pool of golden light in the murk.
Ten o’clock, and not a yobbo in sight. A flock of starlings tried to roost in Joan. Somewhere, a larch sneezed.
The evening grew colder. The rain grew harder. They weren’t coming.
They might come after the pubs closed.
They didn’t.
At twenty to twelve the ridiculous, freezing, sodden, pointless vigil was rudely interrupted. Splitting the silence of the night came a screeching of brakes. A crashing of metal. A scream.
Reggie began to run.
‘Phone for an ambulance, David,’ he yelled into the house.
‘Stay in your places,’ called Jimmy. ‘It’s a diversion.’
‘It’s an accident,’ said Reggie.
People converged on the junction of Oslo Avenue and Bonn Close.
So did trees, shrubs and a box hedge.
Both cars had horribly mangled bodies.
Reggie bent down to talk to the driver of one of the cars.
‘It’s all right,’ he said. ‘The ambulance is on its way.’
The driver opened his eyes, saw a length of box hedge scurrying down the road, overtaken by a hawthorn yelling, ‘Let me through. Let me through. I’m a doctor’, and fainted.
Later that night, they all sat in the living-room and shared a communal bowl of prune whisky. The smokeless fuel roared brightly in the hearth.
Miraculously, nobody had been seriously hurt. They had returned home, feeling foolish. Defoliation had occurred.
Now the feeling of foolishness had given way to a sense of relief. They were warm and dry and united by strong bonds of shared experience. Many of their relationships were informed with true affection, and the others with a very adequate facsimile.
Joan sang excerpts from Gilbert and Sullivan, and everybody joined in the choruses.
To everyone’s astonishment, Tony blushed. Nobody could recall his blushing before.
‘Would you like me to hit Richard the Second, Act Two, Scene One, and score the old John of Groat speech?’ he asked.
‘Please,’ came the chorus.
‘It’s John of Gaunt actually,’ said Tom.
‘Same difference,’ said Tony, and he launched himself into it.
He declaimed with rare fervour, and only made one small verbal slip, when he said:
This blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England,
This knock-out, teeming womb of royal kings.’
Everyone agreed that his rendition was splendid. ‘Top-hole’ was Jimmy’s chosen epithet, and a man would have had to have been a veritable churl to have quarrelled with the old warrior’s assessment.
To try and follow that would be a case of the morning after the Lord Mayor’s show before,’ said C.J., ‘but . . . er . . . well . . .’
He glanced at Mrs C.J. She nodded eagerly.
‘I wondered if you’d like to hear a short extract from my books on ants,’ he said.
‘Book!’ exclaimed Elizabeth.
‘On ants!’ cried her equally surprised partner.
C.J. smiled at them all benevolently.
‘I know what you’re going to say,’ he said.
‘You didn’t get where you are today by writing books about ants,’ they thundered in unison.
True,’ said C.J. ‘But on the other hand it’s never too late for a leopard to change horses in mid-
stream.’
He went to fetch his manuscript. Soon he returned, clutching a large sheaf of papers.
He sat down. His audience adopted the cautious pose of self-conscious embarrassment that people have when listening to the literary efforts of their friends – a determination not be patronizing mixed with a conviction that it’s going to be dreadful.
He coughed.
‘Every evening, throughout the time of the year that is called Nith,’ he read, ‘which comes after Glugnith but before the festival of Prengegloth, the ants of the Hill of Considerale Fortitude sit around and tell stories. And listen to them too, because if nobody was listening it would be pretty silly to bother.’
C.J. paused to chuckle, then resumed his narrative.
‘ “Tell us a tale. Great Ant Ogbold,” squeaked little Squilblench. “Tell us the one about the journey of Thrugwash Blunk.”
‘ “Okey dokey, then,” said Great Ant Ogbold, smiling like a Cheshire cheese. “After all, it is Nith, and if we can’t let our hair down during Nith, then things have come to a pretty pass.
‘ “In the dark years before anybody believed in the Great Sludd,” he began, “a little ant named Thrugwash Blunk went on a journey.
‘ “His daddy didn’t want him to go.
‘ ” ‘Rolling stones butter no parsnips,’ he warned him.
‘ ”But Thrugwash Blunk went away, and got lost in the land of Threadnoddy, where there was a big fog, and he went round and round in eccentric circles.
‘ ”Then he met a conceited owl, who thought he was the cat’s whiskers and the bee’s knees.” ’
C.J. chuckled again.
‘ ” ‘Help me, owl, for I don’t know where I am,’ said Thrugwash Blunk, ‘and I didn’t get where I am today by not knowing where I am.’
‘ ” ‘I’ll tell you where you’re at,’ said the conceited owl. ‘No sweat, baby.’
‘ ” ‘Oh, thank you, owl,’ cried Thrugwash Blunk, and suddenly, without any warning...” ’
The yobbos came.
There was the almost musical sound of breaking glass from several directions. Everybody leapt to their feet and stood irresolute, not knowing in which direction to turn.
Everywhere there was crashing and shouting.
The first yobbo burst in through the curtains, yelling fiercely like a demented apache.
Everyone looked to Jimmy for leadership. This was his greatest moment.
At first he looked lost, still in the world of ants. Then he pulled himself together and issued his orders. They were a model of succinctness, if not of precision.
‘Get the bastards,’ he roared.
All was confusion. Youths appeared from all directions. The staff scattered in all directions.
C.J. hurried towards the front door, clutching his master-piece. He was too late. Two youths rushed in from the hall. One of them grabbed him and the other pulled the pages from his grasp. They had no idea what they were destroying. It was enough that he wanted it not to be destroyed.
The air was full of sheets of paper. Epic set pieces of ant life were ripped asunder, as C.J. and his assailants lurched around the living-room.
David Harris-Jones ran from the dining-room and up the stairs, chased by a youth with a knife. An older man followed, grappling with Reggie.
Elizabeth crept out of the kitchen, McBlane’s pestle raised above her head, but just as she was about to bring it down on the head of the man who was grappling with Reggie, another man pulled her off, twisted her arm, grabbed the pestle, and knocked her senseless.
Tony, Joan and Doc Morrissey were conducting a running battle upstairs, in and out of the bedrooms.
In the kitchen, Prue, Linda and Mrs C.J. were fighting off the invaders like cats.
On the settee, three men were trying to hold Lettuce down. She was screaming and yelling, thrashing around like a dying whale.
A huge man with a twisted nose walked casually into the living-room and felled C.J. with one casual blow. He lay prone among the ruins of his book.
David Harris-Jones ran downstairs and collided with Tom, who was running upstairs. They crashed down the stairs together and landed in a heap at the bottom, with Tom on top of David.
‘Get off me,’ hissed David Harris-Jones, but Tom was unconscious.
David Harris-Jones pretended to be unconscious as well.
A very tall young man kicked Tom casually, as he passed him on his way upstairs. Tom didn’t stir.
He kicked David Harris-Jones, and David groaned. The young man kicked him until he passed out.
Reggie and the older man were wrestling ferociously on the floor of the living-room.
Jimmy crawled over the carpet behind the heaving settee, a vase in his hands. He stood up, raised the vase, and aimed it at the biggest of Lettuce’s assailants. Lettuce made one last titanic heave which propelled her to the top of the writhing heap. Jimmy brought the vase down on the back of her head. The vase shattered and she passed out. Jimmy looked down aghast at what he had done.
Upstairs, Joan locked herself in a cupboard. Doc Morrissey lay gasping for breath. Tony was the last to succumb.
The three wild women in the kitchen were finally tamed by the superior strength of their aggressors.
In the living-room, the three men who had been freed from the attentions of Lettuce turned on Reggie and Jimmy. The guiding spirit of the community and his defence supremo fought bravely, but age and numbers were against them. Reggie heard Jimmy murmur one single word in his ear. It was ‘Dunkirk’. Then Jimmy passed out.
Reggie was on his own now. Further resistance was useless. He continued to resist, wildly, flailing arms and legs, yelling, screaming, a last berserk defiance amid the ruins of his dream.
And then he was falling. He couldn’t see. Darkness was all around him.
He felt a sharp blow in the small of his back, then a stabbing pain in the ribs. A fierce buzzing filled his head, and he could hardly breathe.
He was falling again. He had thought that he was lying on the floor, and yet he was still falling.
He tumbled far beyond the floor.
He tumbled far beyond Botchley.
He toppled over the edge of the universe into the blackness between our universe and all other universes.
At last he fell no more.
He grew dimly aware that somebody was becoming conscious.
But who?
It must be he, if he was conscious of it.
He remembered dying.
Was this Hell?
He tried to move. The display team of the Chinese Acu-puncture Service, the famous Red Needles, were practising massed acupuncture upon his body.
He tried to swallow, but his mouth seemed to be full of sour carpet.
He became aware of voices, groans, low conversation.
The yobbos! They’d come back.
A hand grabbed his wrist. He froze, waiting for further blows.
‘He’s dead,’ said a voice, and with joyous relief he recognized it as Doc Morrissey’s.
He opened his eyes.
‘Buggered if I am,’ he said. ‘You won’t get rid of me that easily.’
He managed to struggle agonizedly to his feet.
He looked round the room. Nobody had died. The whole staff were there, battered, bruised, but alive. Their faces were hideously distorted by contusions and black eyes.
A strange overwhelming pungency filled the air, and the carpet was covered in a fine multi-coloured dust. Pictures lay slashed on the floor, cushions and chairs had belched forth their innards, and there were torn sheets of paper everywhere. The curtains were billowing into the room as the wind tore through the gaping holes in the french windows. Reggie passed out.
There followed a sombre week.
Every chair in all five houses had been smashed, every window broken, every drawer pulled out and upturned.
On his arrival home at five fifteen a.m. McBlane discovered that his herb and spice racks had been destroyed. He wept. Lucki
ly for him there were no witnesses.
The spicy pungency was explained. So was the fine dust on the living-room floor. The whole house was covered in rosemary, thyme, sweet basil, tarragon, mace, dill, oregano, cayenne pepper, allspice, crushed chillies, paprika, coriander, nutmeg, turmeric, ground bay leaves, meat tenderizer, sage, ginger, cinnamon, cardamom, saffron, fennel and parmesan cheese. So were the remnants of C.J.’s manuscript.
Reggie put a consolatory arm on C.J.’s shoulder. C.J. winced, and Reggie speedily removed the consolatory arm.
‘It was no good,’ said C.J.
‘It was a damned good first effort,’ said Reggie.
Other comments included ‘super’, ‘knock-out’, ‘top-hole yarn’, ‘I liked it, and I’m not an ant person’ and ‘the most interesting story about ants I’ve ever heard’.
‘I realized that it was no good as I was reading it,’ said C.J. ‘I console myself with the thought that it’s a long lane that has no turning.’
The police arrived at nine fifteen in the morning. They didn’t believe Reggie’s story of a private fight that had got out of hand, and departed in bad humour.
The doctor did believe Reggie’s story. After the hysterical dysentery, he was prepared to believe anything.
Several people needed bandaging, splinting and strapping at Botchley General Hospital. Slowly, with agonizing delays, this was done.
As they tried to get comfortable in bed that Sunday night, Elizabeth asked Reggie why he had lied to the police.
‘I don’t want to be bothered with it any more,’ he said. ‘It’s all over.’
And so it proved. The guests who returned after the weekend took one look at the devastation and fled.
The newspaper reports of yet another chaotic event at the jinxed community caused the cancellation of all remaining future bookings.
Reggie arranged with an estate agent to put all five houses up for sale, as soon as essential repairs had been effected. He borrowed money from his bank manager, against the sale of the houses. He hired an overwhelmed glazier who almost cried with joy when he saw the extent of the damage. The glazier had a glass eye.
Reggie offered his staff three months’ wages in compensation. C.J., Tony and McBlane accepted. Tom and Doc Morrissey accepted one month’s salary. The rest refused to take anything.
It was time for farewells.