by Heide Goody
“They use those stinky chemicals so that we don't have to smell the human waste,” said Em.
“But it smells so much worse than human waste,” complained Joan.
“Shhhh,” hissed Christopher from outside. “The police are talking to Heinz now. I can see he's giving them some long, long story that they're not really interested in. He's doing all these big arm movements up to the sky.”
“I expect he's telling them about his love balloon,” Francis chipped in.
“Dunno,” said Christopher. “The police are splitting up now, there's a couple coming over this way. Oh no, wait. Heinz's calling them scum pigs and they're going back again. One of them was going to hit him, I think, but the other one said he's not worth it. Now they're coming over here. Oh. Oh, hell fire!”
“What?” hissed Em.
“Not good,” said Christopher. “I need to distract them.”
There was silence and then the shouts of several people.
“Tie those down!” shouted one man.
“I did!” shouted another.
“Can anyone else hear that roaring noise?” asked Joan.
Something clattered onto the roof of the Portaloo.
“This will work, trust me!” called Christopher from above them.
“What will?” asked Joan, but then her world rocked. The Portaloo threatened to topple over but righted itself, swaying vigorously so that Joan, Em and Francis were flung from side to side on top of each other.
“I'm just gonna say this,” shouted Christopher's voice, with a slight tremble of uncertainty. “I'm the patron saint of travel, as you all know, so I will do my best to make sure that this ends well. You might want to keep the door shut though.”
“The patron saint of drama queens, more like,” said Em, and cracked open the door to the Portaloo. The three saints cried out in unison when they both saw the ground rushing away from them.
“Cwistopher, what have you done?” screamed Francis.
“I think,” called Christopher on the ground now far below them, “that I've invented the first hot air balloon with en-suite facilities.”
“What do you mean, you can't stop it!” screamed Heinz at the balloon engineer. He tugged at his thinning hair as his balloon took off without him. That was bad enough. What made it worse was that his precious custom-made balloon was towing a chemical toilet beneath it.
“Nothing I can do,” said the engineer. “Someone loosed the ropes and, er, tied one of them to the Porta – Merde! Is that a wolf?”
The startling appearance of Francis’s pet wolf caused more than one police officer to draw his pistol. The wolf ignored them, mounted a police car and leapt for the balloon. The animal missed the balloon basket but managed to latch onto the bottom of Heinz’s message banner.
“Never seen that before,” said the balloon engineer. “Looks good though doesn't it? You can read your message perfectly!”
“Yes, but it's not supposed to have a wolf hanging onto it by his teeth,” wailed Heinz.
“He can't stay like that,” predicted the engineer. “He's sure to drop off when his jaw gets tired. Look at the balloon now it's inflated. Purple vein and everything, just like you wanted.”
The engineer turned out to be half-right. The wolf did indeed plummet earthwards shortly afterwards, but it wasn't his jaw muscles that failed, it was the fabric of the banner. A long tearing sound and the right half of the banner accompanied the wolf's descent. The wolf landed heavily, but then stood up and shook himself.
Heinz looked up at the balloon.
“Oh no, no, no. The message!”
The engineer followed his gaze.
“Mmmm, there's quite a bit missing now, isn't there?” he said, adjusting his bifocals. “Oh. That's most unfortunate.”
The message below the monstrous penis now read:
Liam, I hate
your face
kiss my
arse
Heinz made a thin, keening noise as he ran up to a policeman.
“Shoot it down! You need to shoot it down!” he yelled, pointing at the balloon.
“Sir, I'd like you to please calm down,” said the policeman.
Heinz sobbed, shoulder-barged the policeman and made a grab for his gun.
“I need to stop it!” he howled, pulling the pistol from the man’s grip. He ran across the airfield, waving the pistol and fumbling with the mechanism, trying to work out how to use it. He fired some shots into the sky, but then found himself rugby-tackled to the ground by strong arms. The gun was wrenched from his hand and he found himself handcuffed with several guns trained on him.
He rolled carefully to his side, to see the balloon floating into the distance, Portaloo still attached. It was likely that the love of his life would be able to see it by now. He closed his eyes and sobbed in misery just as his phone rang out with Miss you nights — Liam's ringtone.
Chapter 7 – In the Forest
Christopher watched the phallic balloon and the attached chemical toilet as they headed off in a south-easterly direction. The former patron saint of travel offered it benedictions and fair winds until it was gone from sight and then looked down at the Wolf of Gubbio, which was still gnawing on a scrap of banner.
“Well, you horrible bag of teeth and fur,” said Christopher, “looks like it’s just you and me.”
The wolf, clearly equally unimpressed with the new situation, sniffed loudly and ran off.
“Hey!” shouted Christopher. “Come on! Team Heaven sticks together.”
But the wolf had not run far. A familiar Fiat 500 car had drawn up on the airfield and the wolf was vigorously snuffling at the driver’s jacket pocket.
“Sure, go to the man with the treats,” muttered Christopher as Officer Matt Rose tousled the wolf’s fur and fed him a biscuit from his pocket. “A bloody Judas with fleas, that’s what you are.”
The Wolf of Gubbio gave Christopher a brief glance that told him it wouldn’t take thirty pieces of silver or even thirty dog biscuits to buy his shaggy loyalty, and then went back to pestering Matt for more titbits.
Matt spoke briefly to the police and the balloon engineers and then scanned the southern skies.
“Gone beyond your reach, thief-taker,” said Christopher, sauntering over.
Matt took out his phone held it to his ear.
“Ah, Major Chevrolet,” he said. “Yes, it’s me again. No, I can’t leave you alone. Not just yet. I wondered if I could get a location on that… yes, please. And I promise I won’t bother you again for at least another hour.”
Matt nodded as the person on the phone spoke. The Wolf of Gubbio belched and whined unhappily.
“No,” said Matt. “I’m afraid, that’s simply not possible.” He looked around at the closely cropped grass of the airfield. “That would be exactly where I’m standing right now. I can’t see a sign of – Hello. Hello! Major?”
Matt lowered the phone and sighed.
“Impossible.”
“What is?” said Christopher.
Matt tapped another number into his phone and held it to his ear once more.
There was a ringing sound which, to Christopher’s ears, sounded paradoxically distant yet close by, near but muffled. Matt frowned and looked round. Christopher tilted his head to listen.
“Um,” said Matt.
Christopher got down on one knee and, tentatively, put his ear to the wolf’s side. Matt stared down at the wolf.
“You didn’t, by any chance, eat a phone, boy?”
The wolf with the ringing innards whined once more.
“Swallowed it whole,” said Christopher.
He stood up and brushed the dirt from his knee.
“That’s impressive,” he said. “Stupid. But really quite impressive.”
Several hours after take-off, the blue box came to a sudden halt and, if there had perhaps been only one passenger on board, it wouldn’t have been so painful an experience. As it was, Francis’s head bounced off the wall o
n impact, was nutted savagely by Joan’s on the rebound and both met with Em’s as she too slammed against them.
“Cuntybollocks!”
“Fudging heck!”
“Chwist Almighty!”
Francis put a blue chemical-painted hand to his head.
“We’ve landed.”
Joan, who took several moments to determine that the drunken swaying feeling she was getting was not entirely due to a knocked noggin, shook her head.
“I don’t think so. Em, are you all right?”
“I think my fags have dropped down the bog,” groaned the Holy Mother.
“I’ll take that as a ‘yes,’” said Joan and cautiously opened the door. It halted against a thick tangle of branches.
“Where are we?” said Francis.
“In a tree,” Joan replied. “But not far from the ground.”
“How far is not far?” asked Em.
“I think the rope is just tangled up.”
With some contortions, Joan drew her sword and fed it through the crack in the door.
“What are you doing?” said Francis.
“I’m just trying to angle my blade,” Joan grunted, slipping her whole arm out and waving her sword blindly around the space above the toilet closet. “If I can just locate the —”
As her sword did indeed locate the rope above them, the box dropped several feet, smashed into unyielding ground and tipped over onto its back.
“Lord above!”
“Cocks!”
Entangled and in pain, Joan looked up as the no longer entangled penis balloon became erect once more.
“Do all… willies look like that?”
Em huffed as she tried to free herself.
“More or less,” she said. “Although not usually that big.”
They watched it recede into the sky.
With difficulty, the three saints climbed out of the box. They all took a minute to stretch, check for injuries and assess their position.
“So,” said Francis, as he wrung toilet chemicals from his habit, “we’re in a fowest.”
“And covered in blue shit and pilot’s piss,” said Em.
Joan looked round at the deep trackless woodland.
“And chances are no one knows that we’re here.”
“Wherever here is,” said Francis.
“Toulon is on the coast,” said Joan. “Whatever direction we’ve travelled in, we know we need to head south.”
“I could ask a passing squiwwel,” said Francis.
“Cos there’s always going to be one of those, isn’t there?” snorted Em.
“There is,” said Francis, pointing at a red squirrel perched in a low branch. He went over to chat.
“Now we could find a bearing by the sun,” said Joan, trying to find the sun in the grey, tree-cloaked sky. “If only we had Christopher here.”
“I think we can manage fine without him,” said Em. “And, if he’s so bloody brilliant, he can find us in Toulon or en route.”
“What’s that?” said Joan, nodding at the plastic dial now in Em’s hand.
“My compass,” said the Virgin Mother. “South is that way.”
“But Bwother Squiwwel says the best path is that way,” said Francis.
“I’m not putting my faith in another rat.”
“Sciuwus vulgarwis and wattus norvegicus are quite unalike. Completely diffewent species,” protested Francis. “Aren’t you, Bwother Squiwwel? Yes, you are.”
Em inspected her cigarettes, half-removed one of the now blue and soggy sticks and spat in annoyance.
“Well, I’m going this way,” she said firmly. “Joan. Coming?”
“Sure,” said Joan and picked up her sword and carrier bag of armour.
In the prefab cabin that served as an airfield office, Christopher watched Matt, the balloon engineer and a couple of local police officers pore over maps of the local area.
“They’ll have floated in this general direction,” said the engineer, drawing a line to the south east with a marker. “And moving at speeds of up to twenty miles an hour.” He consulted his watch. “Which might put them as far away as this.”
He ringed an area on the map.
“Miles off,” snorted Christopher. “I gave them a helpful push and they’re going to be way over yonder if anywhere.”
“Of course, it might have come to earth much sooner,” said the engineer.
“We’ve had no reports of a downed balloon,” said a police officer. “And I think one as… distinctive as this one will be noticed.”
The engineer sighed.
“I’m worried that it will come down in these forests. My enormous penis balloon will be torn to shreds.”
“We’re losing time and daylight,” said Matt. “I’m driving over there right now.”
“If it lands in the forest then this search could take days,” said the police officer.
“My wife’s sister has a guesthouse in Longecombe, here, if you’re looking for somewhere to stay.” The engineer smiled hopefully.
“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” said Matt.
“Huh,” said Joan, a humourless laugh.
“What?” said Em.
“I’d never seen a Portaloo before and then I see two in one day.”
“What?”
Joan gestured down the slope to where a large plastic box lay on its side at the base of a tree.
“Arse trousers!” exclaimed Em.
“Is that our Portaloo?”
Em gripped the compass in her hand savagely.
“How the titting hell did that happen? We’ve been walking south the whole time.”
Joan shrugged and walked on.
“It could be a different Portaloo. I mean this forest is generally lacking in amenities and people would certainly appreci —”
“Stop!” said Em.
“What?”
“Walk back.”
Joan slowly backtracked. Em turned equally slowly as Joan approached.
Em kicked Joan’s bag with a clank.
“Hey!” said the Maid of Orleans.
“Your sodding metal armour’s thrown off the needle,” said Em. “We’ve walked in a damned circle. Two hours to walk in a damned circle.”
“We should not have left Francis by himself,” said Joan.
“You’ve said that already.”
“I’m just saying it again. And I wish Christopher was here.”
“You’ve said that too.”
“I know.”
Christopher’s bulk took up all the back seat of Matt’s small car and yet still he was squashed, his shoulders straining against the roof.
“Not exactly the roomiest of cars, your Fiat 500,” he commented, as Matt drove away from Lyon. “I mean it has great fuel economy and it’s a really neat design. However, diesel versions like this don’t like doing short runs from cold and they have this nasty habit of contaminating the sump oil with fuel which can have disastrous consequences. Oh, and the transmission can make this worrying knocking sound. Yep, there it is. Can you hear it?”
Matt was concentrating on the road ahead. The Wolf of Gubbio looked back at Christopher from the front passenger seat.
“Eyes front, boy,” said Matt. “If you can magically intuit where your friends are, I’d appreciate it.”
The wolf raised its head obediently and sniffed for good measure.
“That woman, Mary, is becoming increasingly desperate,” said Matt.
“Only because you’re flaming well chasing her,” said Christopher.
“She could really have hurt people with that balloon stunt. The sooner she’s behind bars, the better.”
“I’m not having that,” said Christopher and clicked his fingers. The engine coughed and died and the car began to coast to a halt.
“Oh, look,” he said. “I think there’s that transmission problem playing up.”
“No, no, no,” said Matt as he tried to re-engage the engine whilst simultaneously pul
ling the car over towards the hard shoulder.
“Yes,” said Christopher. “I can’t have you arresting the Mother of God before our mission is complete. The Celestial City crowd are depending on us and I’ve got to demonstrate my mettle because there’s no way I’m going back to the Prayer Assessment Unit.”
“This is not what I need right now,” huffed Matt.
“Well, I’m sorry,” said Christopher. “I appreciate the lift and all, but I think this ends now.”
Matt put on the handbrake and shook his head in despair.
“Seventy miles from any possible crash site.”
“Seventy miles?”
“... give or take,” said Matt. He looked at the wolf. “What now, eh, boy?”
“Tell you what, Matt. How about I let you drive me to the woods where they are but I won’t be able to let you proceed any further? Deal?”
Christopher grunted. In response, the engine spluttered and began to run smoothly once more.
“Okay,” said Matt with a smile of relief. “Let’s hope that doesn’t happen again.”
Em kicked a pine cone savagely.
“I do not want to spend a night in the arsing woods,” she said.
Joan continued to gauge the area in which their chemical toilet had crash-landed.
“As camping sites go, this is as good as any. It’s elevated, dry and, if Francis comes looking for us, it might be best to be at the spot where we landed.”
“We don’t even have sleeping bags,” said Em.
Joan nodded thoughtfully.
“We do need to sort out the basic necessities: water, shelter, food, fire.”
“Okay,” said Em, resigned. “I’ll sort out water and fire. You go find us some dinner.”
“There was a stream down the hill there,” said Joan. “Any thoughts on how you’ll carry the water?”
“No problem,” said Em. She stamped her foot and, at once, a spring of clear water bubbled through the ground and formed a shallow pool.
“Impressive,” said Joan.
“Bernadette of Lourdes near screamed in terror when I performed that one in 1858. Miraculous springs I can do. Undoing of knots is another speciality. Healing of the sick and lame not guaranteed. Right, for dinner, I’d like an American hamburger with all the trimmings.”