Lively Custard
Michael Graeme
Published: 2004
Tag(s): fiction fantasy speculative satire humorous romantic
Lively Custard
A Short Story
By
Michael Graeme
Copyright©M Graeme 2004
Thank you for downloading this short story. I hope you enjoy it. Other works are available for free at the Rivendale Review website - www.mgraeme.ic24.net also from Lulu.com
The little market town of Frinton-Cum-Hardy was not exactly a part of the nation's literary scene. Indeed there had long been a sense of anything "literary" having deserted us altogether, ever since our last cosy little book shop closed some twenty-odd years ago. Of course, more recently, one's ability to procure a decent book has improved, at least for the web-savvy, courtesy of the dot com. vendors, otherwise we would be entirely at the mercy of the publisher's clearance outlets, of which Frinton-Cum-Hardy boasts several. Unfortunately, the latter tend to be of the here-today-gone tomorrow variety and in the main cannot be relied upon.
By far the most resilient of these establishments is Books Galore on Market Street where, to be fair, a good many bargains are to be had provided you have no clear idea what you're looking for in the first place. Books Galore also has the considerable merit of being the only employer who was willing to offer my dear Jenny a job, when she left school.
Jenny lived a few doors down from me, with her aged aunt, though she seemed to spend an increasing amount of time in my place, tidying up and hoovering around, while I worked on my memoirs, my quest for the meaning of life, and other such web-published nonsense. It was she who called round one evening bearing a glossy flyer advertising a lecture to be given in the public library by the "eminent" literary critic Doctor Eric Chumley. The subject of his talk was to be an analysis of the Stunner Prize winning novel, "Rolling my Conkers." by the reclusive and hitherto little known author: Mr. Jarvis Tongue.
Now, I must admit I had not read "Rolling my Conkers", though of course I'd heard of it on account of the publicity surrounding the prize.
"Why don't you go, Mr. Armitage?" asked Jenny. "It sounds just up your street. I mean books and stuff."
Jenny had a charming innocence and a sparkling wit that disguised her inability to read above the level of top infants. I remember fondly the evenings we laboured over tales of Wilma and Biff, only for her to begin fussing over a dusty cobweb, or some other convenient distraction. Alas, poor Jenny; books would never be her forte and it is one of life's little ironies that she should eventually find a job selling them.
"Doctor Chumley?" I mused. "Sounds rather imposing. I doubt I shall understand a word." I leaned back in my chair. "Though I suppose it would do me good to get out more," This was certainly true! "Now, tell me: what news of Frinton-Cum-Hardy?"
She sat upon my desk and swung her skinny legs while sifting her memory for the day's gossip. "There's a tree sprouted overnight in the library car-park."
I feigned surprise. "Really?"
This was a little game we played. It had begun as a means of breaking the ice, when she had been a gangly adolescent, and me a grumpy, prematurely redundant schoolteacher, trying to make ends meet by coaching backward students. "What news, my dear?" I would ask and she'd reply with some made up nonsense that had grown ever more outrageous as the years had passed.
"A tree you say?"
"Full grown. Huge it is. And it's causing such a row 'cos the cars can't get past."
"Then we must ring the council and have it cut down."
"Oh, no," she said in all seriousness "They can't cut it down. Someone from council's been already and 'cos of its size he says it must be at least two hundred years old, so he's put a preservation order on it."
"How remarkable! But surely, if its in the way?"
"I know. They're having a meeting about it. But the they way they do witter on I'd say that tree's safe for a long time to come."
She looked at the flyer, spelling out the words in her head while twiddling her tongue, as if feeling the curve of them. "Have you read that book? Only I could look out for it at the shop if you like. "Rolling my Conkers." She giggled. "It sounds a bit rude to me."
"It's metaphorical, my dear. I suppose it could mean something vulgar, but I'm sure it doesn't."
She looked at me blankly. "Met-a-phor-ic-al?"
"Words that are used to mean something other than what's actually written down," I explained.
"But who decides what means what?"
"Well, no one really. There are usually clues in the context, and people generally understand."
"So I could call that cup a sandwich, and you'd know what I meant?"
"Well, not exactly. But I could say my cup was empty and it might be taken to mean my spirits were low, or I felt drained."
"But your cup is empty. Can I make you a cup of tea while I'm here?"
"Erm,… well… yes. That would be lovely."
"So, will this Doctor Chumley be talking about metaphors then?"
"About them, and probably in them as well."
"It sounds fun. Can I come too?"
"Well, of course. Though you'll probably find it rather tedious, I'm afraid."
On the evening of the lecture, Jenny turned up at my door wearing a very pleasant if somewhat old fashioned dress that she'd borrowed from her aunt. Her sister, Paula, who was a hairdresser, had given Jenny's normally lank locks a bit of a perm. I also caught a whiff of perfume and suddenly she seemed quite grown up. None of this should have surprised me, of course for by then Jenny was well into her twenties and rather a comely lass. There was an air of excitement about her as she chattered dizzily all the way down Chapel Street and into the town centre. I found her company delightful as always, though I was still anxious she might find the evening something of a bore.
When we arrived at the library I was puzzled by a small crowd that had gathered outside. They were gazing up into the boughs of a mature beech tree that was growing in the middle of the approach to the library car park.
"Then it's true," I said.
"Of course," said Jenny. "Come and see."
At first I thought it was a prank, the tree some sort of stage-prop, but I tapped it with my stick and it seemed solid enough. It had apparently burst through the tarmac, it's girth swelling to four or five feet in diameter.
"It's astonishing," I said.
"Don't you think its pretty?" asked Jenny.
"Pretty? Why yes. I just don't see how it could have grown so big like that overnight. I mean, it's impossible."
"Can't be," she said with disarming logic. "Or it wouldn't have happened."
After settling into our seats in the library's little lecture theatre, I took a moment to weigh up the crowd. There were your usual middle aged tweedies, myself included, and there was also a gathering of the fashionably scruffy. Now, I admit I was surprised when Doctor Chumley eventually took to the podium. He was far younger than I'd imagined, more fashionably scruffy than tweedy and with piercings through his nose and lip that would have earned him a thick ear if I'd been his father.
"Good evening ladies and gentlemen," he said. Then he paused and the crowd responded with a round of polite laughter as if at some secret joke. He held up a glossy hardback with a picture of a tree on its cover. "Rolling my Conkers," he said. There was silence, except for a stifled snort from Jenny. Then it began:
"Bollwoddle," said Doctor Chumley. "Fair doodle. Bollwoddle." He sighed, his eyes lowered mournfully, his arms reaching out as if to bless us all. "And in the morning, before the afterwards, said ringing loud to pinch my nose, he went." This last sentence was delivered with such poignancy, I felt the hairs stand on the back of my neck. It was the oddest thing,
for though I sensed the passion in the man, I couldn't understand a word he said. I looked at Jenny. She was sitting upright and perky, smiling, eyes aglow. Perhaps it was my hearing.
Chumley went on. "And so you see, the model for the artichoke was obviously torn from his Sunday morning. It sent shivers through the dull middle and had the cockatoo spinning all over the kitchen floor. But never did anyone say they'd seen the moon rise over the gasworks, which all goes to prove my whistle stop at point blank. Point blank, I say. Bollwoddle."
This raised a murmur of assent from the audience, who were now clearly hanging onto the good doctor's every word.
"But," he continued, brandishing a warning finger. And then again, though softer this time, as if to draw us into his confidence: "But. " The finger began to wag from side to side. "We must not forget the billio, for the billio is the crux, and all before it slides."
I listened attentively for a good half hour but, try as I might, his words ran through my fingers like greased rope. Gradually I fear the lecture became no more than a bee buzzing in my ear and I eventually drifted off, carried into some delightfully exotic dream, on a wave of Jenny's aunt's perfume. Then came the shuffle of feet and the scraping of chairs. It was evidently over, the audience crushing slowly to the back of the room where tea and biscuits had been laid on by the WRVS. Nearby I noticed a veritable mountain of "Rolling my Conkers" was being slowly dismantled, exchanged for twenty pound notes and tucked under the arms of the newly literate Frinton-Cum-Hardians. And the air fairly crackled with wonder at the genius of the reclusive Jarvis Tongue, and the sparky erudition of Doctor Chumley.
Jenny squeezed in close and asked me what I'd thought.
"It's the biggest load of tripe I've ever heard."
A bespectacled youth at my elbow turned sharply, his face tight with indignation. "Well I enjoyed it," he said.
I was surprised, and curious. "You did? Then would you mind explaining it to me?"
"Well obviously," he replied, "if the farthing on the porch step doesn't twinkle how am I to know where to hang my hat?"
Meanwhile the crowd circulated. I recognised Harold Pearce, the owner of the Jaguar dealership on Cop Lane, talking in an animated fashion to his wife. At one point they both tipped their heads back and laughed. "Bollwoddle," they sang in unison.
Now at this point I must admit I was for slipping outside but Jenny gave a little pout and tugged me back in the direction of tea and biscuits.
"This is the best part for me," she complained.
"Very well. It's just that I haven't a clue what anyone's talking about."
"I can't follow it either," she said. "But then I didn't really expect to. I just like looking at what people are wearing."
The back room was all a-throbbing with lively conversation, but I tried not to focus on any of it in case it further aggravated my nerves. It took very little these days to set my ears ringing, and then I would have to spend the next day or so lying down in a darkened room, a malaise that had lost me my job, which was ironic since it was probably the flipping job that had caused all the problems in the first place! With a deep breath then, I made my way to the WRVS counter and asked for two cups of tea. As I went I ran the odd sentence of the doctor's lecture through my mind. Had things really moved on so much beyond the staid, provincial boundaries of Frinton-Cum-Hardy, that I no longer understood my mother tongue?
Of course, I might easily have suspected this was no more that a case of the Emperor's New Clothes, that all I had to do was expose Chumley as a charlatan and then everyone would wake up, except everyone seemed to have got something out of the lecture. Indeed they were positively energised by it. It was as if all the courtiers at the Emperor's ball had dropped their kit and begun to dance.
In pensive mood, I made my way back to where I'd left Jenny, but was accosted on the way by Amelia Barrett, local solicitor and keeper of my last will and testament. No more sober and straight laced a spinster would you find anywhere.
"So," she said, gesturing with her eyes to where Jenny was by now engaged in conversation by a gaggle of horny male youths. "Fresh towels on the Monday morning then?" she enquired.
Was that some catty smear on Jenny's good name I wondered? Why did nothing make sense any more? Had I suffered a mild stroke? Was I merely tired? "Erm,… "
"Bushing fastly I'd say," she went on earnestly.
Was the meaning carried in the intonation? Had words themselves become irrelevant? I shook my head slowly and gave a sagely sigh. "Swivelling slowly, Mrs Barrett. Swivelling slowly's the way." At which she coloured brightly and looked daggers at me, as if I'd suggested something filthy. Obviously intonation was not the key, and I had some way to go before I caught on.
The young men of Frinton-Cum-Hardy had, I noticed, developed a sudden and peculiar affectation when greeting each other. It involved extending the middle finger downwards and shaking it while uttering the words: "Bollwoddle." The gesture was the same when greeting a female except it was accompanied by an awkward knee-bending action, bobbing up and down, as if riding a horse. Several engaged Jenny in this apparently sophisticated and cosmopolitan manner, all to her apparent amusement.
"Bollwoddle," said one.
"Bollwoddle," said another.
Each bobbed earnestly, though somewhat out of sync, resembling to my eye a ragged entourage of self conscious jack-in-the-boxes. Jenny looked from one to the other, covered her embarrassed smile, and blushed modestly.
"The young men were quite taken with you," I remarked later, upon rejoining her.
"Oh, no Mr Armitage," she answered guilelessly. "They don't want to share my babies or anything. They just want to touch my bunnies."
For a moment I thought she'd caught the bollwoddle bug, but on careful reflection I realised she had probably made the most penetrating observation of the evening.
"Well - erm - all the same, I'm sure their interest is perfectly normal. All young men have a certain fascination for things of - well - that nature."
"That's as maybe, Mr. Armitage, but they needn't dress it up with their posh manners. I'm a simple girl and whoever touches my bunnies has to share my babies as well."
"Admirably put, my dear."
At that moment none other than Doctor Chumley himself approached, twiddling his nose-ring, somewhat caddishly, and resembling, in my imagination at least, the piggy-wig in Lear's nonsense rhyme. He wiggled his middle finger at us and bobbed obligingly for Jenny.
"Fart?" he enquired.
I looked wide eyed at him while Jenny covered her mouth and coloured yet again.
"Fart," he repeated, a little louder this time.
Jenny turned away in order to control her mirth, at great pains not to show herself up in front of such a cultured academic.
"I heard you the first time." I said.
"Well, on the down-blast, don't you think?"
By now I'd had quite enough. "Look here young man. I haven't the faintest idea what you're talking about."
Jenny caught my arm, sensing my agitation and was afraid that perhaps I would expose my small town ignorance through a moment's indiscretion. But I was not to be swayed.
"As for that infernal book, I've never heard as much rubbish in all my life."
"Have you read it?" he enquired.
The plainness of his words wrong-footed me. "Well, actually no."
"Then how can you possibly diggle-bat on the ringo, old possum?" His tone remained level, but challenging.
"I can… bloody well diggle-bat as much as I like. I taught English in this town for fifteen years and I haven't heard a word of it spoken all evening."
Doctor Chumley gave a condescending smile. "This book's perhaps a livelier custard than you're used to throwing then, old man."
"Oh really?" I gestured to the copy tucked under his arm. "I wonder, would you mind if I read the opening paragraph?"
He shrugged. "Be my sleep-over."
It was a heavy tome, the design of the tree on the cover highly
stylised. I found the first page and began to read:
Down went the ripping chord upon her Kiwis bare and threaded slow across the dripping windowsill, thick with words of dry gravy. Dry gravy. Rocking high and low, the day. The day. And when her full moon rose she walked beyond the gasworks gate and sat upon the clay. The clay. And sat upon the clay,…
I snapped the book shut with a faint grimace and handed it back to Chumley who waited expectantly for my opinion.
"Remarkable," I said, with a carefully measured dose of sarcasm.
"It has a mesmeric quality, don't you think?" he gave a cocky wink "Lively custard eh?"
Then, keen to mingle, he wiggled his finger at us and bobbed in parting.
"Lively custard?" enquired Jenny.
"The only custard in this room, my dear is the stuff that's apparently replaced everyone's brains."
But bolwoddle and custard were not the only conundrums to challenge our senses, for that same evening, the driver of a petrol tanker swerved suddenly in order to avoid ramming a twenty foot oak tree that had apparently taken root in the middle lane of the M65, just a few miles north of Frinton-Cum-Hardy. I heard it on Newsnight shortly after returning from the library. Jenny had poured us both a glass of wine and seemed reluctant to make tracks for home.
"We're famous," she exclaimed. "We're on the news. Another tree. Isn't it odd?"
"After what I've heard this evening I wouldn't be surprised by anything." I looked at my watch, a calculated gesture that was entirely lost upon her. "Don't you have work in the morning, dear?"
"Well, yes. But Uncle Bob's staying at Aunty's and he's a bit over-affectionate these days, if you know what I mean? So, anyway, I thought I'd stay in your spare room for a few nights if that's all right, Mr Armitage. I'd feel much better. It's ever so awkward and I do hate being impolite to uncle Bob but impoliteness seems to be the only way to make him behave. "
It was not the first time this had happened. Jenny frequently complained about her cramped quarters and all manner of domestic inconvenience, from her over-affectionate uncle to her aunt's voluminous snores.
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