One Of Our Dinosaurs Is Missing

by David Forrest

  “It’ll be very embarrassing,” said Melissa. “I’ll have to be in uniform, and you’ll be in tails. And I shan’t know if you should stay in an ante-room with the other children, or go in with the guests.”

  “I shall be a guest,” said Randy.

  “Pig.”

  Randy looked sideways at the tall mirrors on the walls on either side of the wide divan, with its smoky mirror bedhead. He twisted over and began undoing the buttons down the front of Melissa’s blouse. He watched himself undressing her from a dozen different angles. It was erotic. A thousand diminishing beds on either side of him contained a man undressing a titian-haired girl. He peered at the reflecting bedhead. A broad-shouldered man was also undressing a girl. Randy could see right down her cleavage. He looked at the foot of the bed. In another mirror was the same couple. He glimpsed black stockings, and a pair of panties.

  Randy watched the girl on the ceiling loosening the man’s belt. Then her long, white fingers smoothed down the zip ... Randy turned his back to the audience above him.

  “To hell with the lot of them,” he mumbled.

  It was dusk when Randy next looked at the line of beds beside him. Hundreds of naked and exhausted couples lay sweatily resting. A whole dormitory of them. He looked at the man in the headboard. The man winked at him and grinned. Randy grinned back.

  The five nannies stood together in the banqueting room of the Carlyle Hotel in New York. Their uniforms gave a strange hospital look to the elegant surroundings, and the formally dressed guests.

  “No taste,” said Hettie, quietly, watching another couple walking in through the door. “She shouldn’t wear tweed to an affair like this.”

  “Hush, Hettie,” whispered Emily, sipping a cocktail that a waiter had offered her. She held the glass delicately with her left hand, and neatly adjusted a small bib around the throat of baby Lindon with her right. “I hope they hurry with the small sandwiches,” she said. “I refuse to feed my children on canapés. And nuts and olives are bad for them.”

  “Certainly bad for them,” agreed Una. She felt herself beginning a sneeze, pulled her handkerchief from her handbag, and had a quick sniff at the garlic clove that Vittorio Porcello had given her as a good-luck charm. She wished he was with her.

  There was a sudden, sharp rapping. “Ladies and gentlemen,” called a voice. “Pray silence for His Excellency, the British Ambassador.”

  The diplomat stood beside a door at the farthest end of the huge room. His voice was rich and deep. With some surprise, the nannies noticed that Jumbo Hooligan was standing beside him.

  “Ladies and gentlemen,” began the Ambassador. “I hope that you’ll all forgive my informality in welcoming you like this. I know that it is a little early for speeches, but there is a special reason for your being here tonight. And, because it is a special reason, I have to say these few words first.” He turned and whispered to Hooligan. The big man smiled.

  “We have some very important people here tonight,’’ continued the Ambassador.

  “I told you,” preened Mrs. Badenberg to her husband.

  “They are standing over there.” The Ambassador pointed across the room to the nannies. Susanne looked behind her. There was nothing but the wall. “The very important people are those five nurses.”

  There was a surprised murmur from the guests.

  “Not only important to you, as the custodians of your children, but important to their country, Great Britain. I am sure that none of you are aware that, recently, they have all, by great enterprise, courage and determination, served the Western world in the highest and most noble manner. Security prevents me from giving you full details. All I may say, is that the United States government appreciated their assistance, and relayed its thanks, officially, back to Whitehall. Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth the Second, has seen fit to make a special award.” He turned to an aide, who held out a small bundle of white packets.

  “Nanny Hettie MacPhish,” called the aide. Hettie blushed and walked towards the Ambassador. He shook her hand and smiled. He reached forward and she felt him pin something on the stiff front of her uniform. She curtsied and started to walk back.

  “Just one minute, ma’am,” grinned Jumbo Hooligan. He held out an envelope toward her. “Tokens of appreciation from the United States Government.” Hettie took it and curtsied again. Hooligan’s mouth grinned even wider. He wondered how each of the nannies would spend the five-thousand dollar Government checks.

  Hettie’s face tingled. She knew it was red. She felt hot and flushed as she walked towards her friends. She heard the Ambassador’s aide call Emily’s name. Hettie risked a quick look down at the thing pinned to her uniform. She felt a lump harden in her throat. Gleaming, on the starched uniform, was the Silver Greyhound, the badge of the Queen’s Couriers.

  It had been a long hard winter. Snow had fallen in New York until March. The ponds in the park were still frozen and New Yorkers, collars up, hat brims down, sludged their way from subway to offices and home. Spring was late, but it arrived today. Herman, the hobo, welcomed it back.

  “Hi, bum,” he called to a lone grey squirrel which haunched in front of his seat, waiting for him to toss some of his biscuit crumbs. “Here comes the sun.”

  The squirrel grabbed an untrusting mouthful and scampered to the shelter of a tree. The buds were hatching new-green, undusted by the city traffic.

  Herman reached into his coat. “Hey, Euclid, how you doin’ in there.” He pulled out his varicoloured snake. Euclid coiled his tail round Herman’s forearm and wriggled back into the jacket and the attraction of the hobo’s warm chest. “Come on out and see the park,” commanded Herman, dragging the snake back into the open. “Show your shiny collar.”

  Just behind the snake’s head, on the slimmest part that was nearly a neck, a thin gold band encircled him.

  “Ain’t you pretty,” said Herman, stroking the snake’s sleek sides. “And ain’t you got just the prettiest clothes? Real gold clothes.” He looked down. His own Fifth Avenue tuxedo was crumpled by nights of sleeping rough. The New York Times, which had served, complete, as a blanket during the night, lay on the pathway in front of him. He stared. A familiar face stared back. It was Billie Big Canoe, in the centre of a flock of pretty girls in the foyer of the Plaza Hotel. Herman nudged the newspaper with his foot for a moment, then pulled it to reading distance. The caption to the photograph read: “Wall Street’s wonder tycoon, William Longship, celebrating another coup today in negotiating the takeover of Alsop’s New West Supertraderies.”

  Herman sighed. He thought back. Days of riotous high life with the jet-set. A trip to Europe. Cocktails, dinner and breakfasts with his former socialite idol, Hazel Willingboddy--from whom he’d caught gonorrhoea in St. Moritz. That was before his dinosaur money ran out.

  “Goddam me, Billie.” Herman smiled sadly at the newspaper picture. “You always said I was a foolish virgin ... but I wonder if you’d stake me fifty bucks?”

  Memorandum

  FROM: The pen of your enlightened Chairman Mao Tse-tung.

  TO: The Department of Geophysical Research, Peking Academy of Sciences.

  Comrades:

  Regretfully, and due to its unfortunate exposure, I have had to cancel my brilliant stratagem to destroy the Capitalist West by means of our Great Leap Downward.

  However, as I said in my speech of February 27th, 1957, which you no doubt recall, it is “sheer fantasy to imagine that the cause of Socialism is all plain sailing and easy success, without difficulties and setbacks, or the exertion of tremendous efforts.”

  I now propose to approach the problem from another direction. This plan will be known as the Great Leap Inwards. The duty of your Department is to supply me with the precise date, hour, minute and second when I should signal our beloved population of 750,000,000 to jump simultaneously into the Pacific Ocean, thereby causing maximum water-displacement, which will...

  Dinosaurs Is Missing