by Gregory Dark
“Right,” said Susie, barely a quarter convinced. “And so where do I fit into all of this?”
“In polo, Syllabylly tells us, they have ‘chuckers’.”
“Do they?” said Susie without enthusiasm.
“And you,” said Cam, “you’re the ’er we’re going to chuck.”
“You mean,” indignated Susie, “that I’m the ball?”
“You’d better ballieve it,” said Ox. And with his giant paw he scooped Susie off the ground and lobbed her across to Cam.
The polo-game had clearly begun.
Chapter 9
Hello? Excuse me? This is Susie. You know, as in a girl-about-town, young lady of elegance and sophistication? Of grace and poise? Not some kind of shuttlecock to be whizzed backwards and forwards with abandon.
The only chucked heretofore Susie had been, she’d been chucked under her chin as a baby. Aged about … oh, three and a half minutes. She could still remember the cringe-making that had been. The adult smells of beer and tobacco and cheese-and-onion crisps, the fumes of condescension as they goo-gooed at her. This being chucked was almost as undignified. Hurtling through the air as she was.
“Stop, stop, stop,” said Cam, almost immediately.
“What’s the matter?” asked Ox.
“Soals, gilly,” said Cam. “We’ve gorgotten the foals. You can’t play polo githout woals.”
“What are we thinking of?” asked Ox. “Wait here,” he told Susie. “Don’t go anywhere. We’ll be right back.”
“Right,” said Susie, without really knowing what was ‘right’ about it.
“Zis,” said Nespa from the touch-line, “is a very strange game.”
“Strange?” exclaimed Bluemerang. “It’s downright riblueming-diculous.”
“And that,” Mimimi scoffed, “from someone who plays cricket!”
“I am hungry no more,” said Nespa. “Now I am ravenous.”
“We cannot believe that we am to be expected to watch this … whatever it is. We leaders and amphibassadors have matters of steak to attend to.”
“I think,” said O’Nestly, “that the word you’re groping for, your preciousness, is ‘state’.”
“Me, I zink matters of steak are far more important,” said Nespa.
A great squawking interrupted further discussion. The polo-bears had returned with the polo-mallards. These, they had assumed, would form the goals at either end – much as, in the park, two dumped jerseys do. Sadly, for the polo-bears, the ducks seemed rather less keen on the idea than the average jersey.
“Now, just stay there,” Ox told the second of the two ducks whom he had plonked on the snow-covered ground.
“Just thay stere,” Cam told the second of his two ducks, also plonked on the snow-covered ground. There was maybe fifty yards between the goals.
“Ducks!” exclaimed Ox and tutted.
“Ducks!” exclaimed Cam and tutted.
“Mallards!” exclaimed Ox to Susie as he rejoined her in the centre of the pitch.
“Lammards!” exclaimed Cam to Susie, when she too got there.
“Right,” said Ox, and without further ado, he scooped Susie into his giant paw and chucked her through the air to Cam at about a zillion and three miles per hour.
Cam ran with the ‘ball’ for a few yards before hurtling Susie back through space to Ox.
“Stop, stop, stop,” said Ox. “The goals are waddling off.”
“WHAY STERE YOU ARE!!!” commanded Cam imperiously. Ducks, however, don’t seem over-impressed with imperiousness. Perhaps that is one of the things humans have to learn from them.
“Come back here, you pesky ducks,” shouted Ox, as the birds squawked and quacked to various different outposts.
“Yes,” echoed Cam. “Bome cack here, you desty pucks. Like night row!!!”
“‘Bome cack here’?” sniggered Susie. Although she would have tried to deny it, she had started to quite enjoy being chucked through the air. It was a sort of whooshing, without you’re having any control at all.
“No-one ever tell you, don’t you know, it’s bad manners to mock the afflicted?” ‘asked’ Mr E, almost testily.
“No-one ever tell you, it’s bad manners to tell people off about their manners?” Susie fired back and turned to square him in the eyes. “You look quite green, Mr E,” she said.
And indeed he had turned a gentle shade of sage. His paisley was beginning to match the hue of his eyes. “I don’t know, don’t you know, that I’m really up to being chucked,” he said.
Further medical discussion was curtailed by Cam despairing at Susie, “Isn’t there anything else you can use for polo poal gosts?”
“I know,” eureka’d Ox. “I know, I know, I jolly well know.”
“I think he knows,” Mr E ‘joked’ weakly with Susie.
“The Sufrogs!” exclaimed Ox. “The Sufrogs can be the goal-posts.”
With which both he and Cam bounded over to the ‘touch-line’ where the Sufrogs seemed to be gathered in some kind of unofficial huddle.
“I can’t see Miss Chief wanting to be a goal-post,” Susie said.
“No,” said Mr E, his face slowly returning to its usual colour. “Still, could be fun, don’t you know, to see her reaction.”
“A goal-post?” hoity-toitied Miss Chief. “We am not sure we heard you correctly. It is not possible we heard you correctly. You want us to be what?”
“A poal gost,” Cam said.
“Oh, a poal gost,” said Miss Chief. “Well, of course. That’s altogether different. What’s a poal gost?” she hisspered to O’Nestly.
“Beats me,” said the sponge.
“If I don’t find somezing very soon to eat, forget goal-posts, I shall just be so many bones left on ze ground frozen.”
“Go and get yourself a snowwich,” Ox suggested, as if that were the most natural thing in the world.
“Snowwich?” asked Nespa. “Snowwich? Ah, you mean sandwich, n’est-ce pas?”
“You see any sand round here?” asked Ox. “There … behind that rock there, there’s a whole pile of them. Look!” he pointed, like he was pointing at the Eiffel Tower and the pointee couldn’t see it.
“Zat crag-like zing?” asked Nespa.
“Just break a bit off, and eat,” said Ox.
“Ledicious,” said Cam. “Now,” he continued, “poal-gosts.”
Nespa, her brown tail wagging as if it were on a spring, wandered to behind the boulder, beyond which was the pointed out snowwich crag.
The snow was thicker here, and Nespa’s progress had more to do with jumping from one spot to the other than walking.
Above her the aerorabbit, Conscut, that had vroooomed before vroooomed again. Nespa did notice it this time, wondered what it could be. Her speculation was cut short by a voice hisspering at her: “Tell Susie I want to see her.”
It was not a voice Nespa had ever heard. She looked about her to try and find its owner. Nothing.
She had to be imagining it.
“Tell Susie,” the same voice said more precisely, more slowly, “I want to see her.”
But Nespa had found the crag of snowwiches. An eating Nespa was a frogdog who heard nothing.
Chapter 10
Careful to keep her snowwich-bearing paw clear of the snow, and munching several large examples of the newfound delight, Nespa was bouncing herself back to the group. Mimimi had replaced Mr E in Susie’s pocket.
“I’m sure I was supposed to tell you somezing,” she said to Susie when she got back. “Oof! My memory. It is like English cuisine. It does not exist.”
There was much discussion about which of the Sufrogs should be which of the goal-posts. Which should be right and left of Cam’s goal or Ox’s. And there was even more discussion about Mr E’s advice that Miss Chief should referee and what that referee should do about the absence of any whistle. Finally, though, the bandying got unbandied and the badinage became goodinage and they all took their allocated places so that the game cou
ld begin.
The shape vroooomed overhead for yet another time. And yet again, no-one, not even the polo-bears, paid it any mind.
The bears stood in the middle of the field. Miss Chief, as had been agreed, shouted out “Peep”.
Cam grabbed Susie, chucked her to Ox. Ox darted around and bobbed for a bit, before chucking Susie straight back to Cam. Cam executed a perfect one:two and … GOAL!!! One goal for Cam. Ox patted Cam on the back. And they both strolled back to the middle of the pitch.
Miss Chief belonged to that school of referees who believe that it is the game’s responsibility to come to them, rather than the referee’s to go to it. She was thus fairly much in the same spot as she had been at the game’s inception.
Once again, Cam and Ox stood eyeball to eyeball, the relatively diminutive Susie between them. Once again Miss Chief “peeped”. Ox grabbed Susie, chucked her to Cam. Cam darted around and bobbed for a bit, before chucking Susie straight back to Ox. Ox executed a perfect one:two and … GOAL!!! One goal for Ox.
“Whoa!” screeched Susie. “Just hang on a minute.”
“Balls which speak?” wondered Ox. “Do we allow, Cam, balls to speak?”
“Peep,” peeped Miss Chief. “Foul, foul.” She pointed at Susie. “Balls are not permitted – do you hear me? – to speak. If balls speak they get sent off.”
“You can’t send off the ball, Miss Chief,” said Susie sneer-ingly. “If the ball gets sent off, there’s no game. And that would be even sillier than this game.”
“Silly?” increduloused Ox.
“Gis thame?” increduloused Cam.
“Silly,” Susie confirmed. “Stupid. Silly and stupid.”
“Gis thame?” asked Cam again.
To her own disapproval, Susie heard herself adopting that know-it-all tone of voice she so hated in Phil when he started explaining things to her which he clearly felt – and she didn’t – were blindingly obvious. “The point is to try and stop the other person scoring goals.”
“Why?” asked Cam.
“Because that’s the game,” exasperated Susie.
“Why?” asked Ox innocently.
“If you don’t stop the other one scoring,” said Susie, “what’s the point?”
“Because I eat,” said Cam, “I ston’t dop anyone else eating.”
“In order for me to sleep,” said Ox, “I don’t have to stop anyone else sleeping.”
“That’s not the same thing at all,” Susie said. She was conscious now that her Sufrogs were strangely quiet. They were watching her. Pride had become involved.
“Why?” asked Cam.
“Because one’s eating and sleeping and the other one’s playing a game,” she explained entirely to her own satisfaction.
“And playing games,” asked Ox, “isn’t that meant to be fun?”
“Meant to be, yes,” Susie said, remembering all her frozen hours on frozen pitches. “Look,” she continued, “if no-one stops you scoring a goal, then no-one wins.”
“And no-one loses,” said Ox blandly.
“Well, of course,” said Susie. “You can’t have a winner without having a loser.”
“Ce wan,” said Cam.
“And do!” said Ox. “With our way of playing, we’re both winners.”
“Woth binners,” Cam confirmed.
“And both losers,” Susie triumphed, knowing she had played her trump card.
“Why?” asked Cam.
“Because,” Susie said as a statement, but one which was voiced in a tone wondering whether the trumps had been changed without her knowing.
“Losing’s horrible,” Ox winced.
“Rohibble,” Cam agreed.
“And games are called games because they’re supposed to be fun.”
“Fupposed,” said Cam, “to be sun.”
Susie was getting confuseder and confuseder.
“What’s fun about something where half of those taking part have a horrible time?” asked Ox.
“Fat’s whun about that?”
“And in championships,” Ox continued, “even worse.”
“Even worse,” Cam agreed.
“A hundred people enter, one person wins. There’s one happy person and ninety-nine unhappy ones,” said Ox.
“What in we thorld,” asked Cam, “could se billier than that?”
“Our way,” said Ox, “one hundred people enter and one hundred people win. There are ninety-nine more happy people our way than yours. What’s silly about that? Is it silly being happy?”
“No, being happy’s not silly,” said Susie, who was becoming concerned that being chucked about had done something to her thought processes.
“Is it thilly, sen,” asked Cam, “making other heople pappy?”
“No,” Susie said a touch indignantly, “that’s not silly either.”
“We’re not being silly, that’s what we’re telling you,” said Ox. “What, yes, is silly is making one person happy at the expense of so much unhappiness. It’s silly making losers.”
“Laking mosers,” Cam agreed.
“Well done, winner,” Ox said to Cam. “Good game. Your goal was splendid.”
“No less yas wours,” said Cam to Ox. “Dell wone, winner.”
The game was over. For all their eloquence on the subject, Susie felt there was a definite loser in the game. And she was it!
Chapter 11
“Zat,” Nespa said, as she licked the last of the last snowwich from her paw, “could be described as a very good hors d’oeuvre. Now is time for ze entrée.”
And she scampered off back in the direction of the snowwich crag. However, she scampered back from a different starting point.
“WATCH OU ……” Ox started to yell.
Too late.
Nespa hit a patch of ice. Patch? A small lake of ice. First she skedaddled for a while, then she skewobbled. She skeskated for a bit, before skedaddling some more and skewobbling all the morest. Within moments she had almost skedisappeared over the horizon.
“Wow,” said Mimimi admiringly. “Wow! Major deal: Ice surfing. Wow,” she wowed again. And she jumped straight out of Susie’s pocket, and dropped – deadly – to the ground.
As did, of course, all the other Sufrogs.
Susie sighed. It was the sigh of a mother with wayward progeny. “Some frogs,” she sighed, “never learn.” She picked Mimimi up. She and all the other frogs therefore returned to immediate life.
“Oh really well done,” sarcasticked O’Nestly, “the Yank.”
“No major deal, right?” Mimimi insisted.
Nespa was slitheringly returning to her point of skeembarkation.
“It’s terribly dangerous,” Ox told the would-be ‘ice surfer’. “In parts the ice is very thin. You could easily go through it.”
“Oh, and so, like, what am I?” asked Mimimi. “Like an elephant or something? Like a hippopotamus that’s just shrunk a bit? I want to do it. Really. I want to do it. And like now. Like right now.”
“The ice,” Ox warned them again, “will not hold you.”
“It won’t hold you,” Miss Chief returned. “But, then, the size you are, that’s scarcely surpassing. The polar ice-hat couldn’t hold you. We, on the other hand, am a delicate silt-like thing.”
“Sylph, Miss Chief,” said O’Nestly. “It’s ‘sylph’ you’re after saying. Though, thinking about it …”
“You want to swap places, O’Nestly?” asked Mimimi.
O’Nestly turned his big frog eyes onto Susie. Eyes that whimpered, “Oh, please, Susie, pick me up and put me in your pocket.”
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Susie eventually succumbed. She leant down, picked O’Nestly up. As soon as they made contact, Mimimi was out of her pocket and onto the ice. Miss Chief was quickly behind her.
Susie tucked O’Nestly in her pocket.
“The ice’ll crack,” Ox pronounced glumly.
“Fey’ll thall in,” Cam pronounced glumly.
“I have serious doubts a
bout that,” said O’Nestly. “If they fell in, that would be fair. And, sure, don’t we know, all of us, that the one thing that the world isn’t is fair?”
“This isn’t the thorld, wough,” said Cam. “This is Crammargloud.”
“And life’s fair on Grammarcloud?” asked Susie, hope sparkling off her like bangs from a firecracker.
“No,” replied Ox in a what-a-daft-question sort of way.
Nespa scrabbled back onto the bank which had so mercilessly skedropped her from its clutches. It was ‘the bank’ only because it was where the packed snow ended.
“Zat was extremely not nice, n’est-ce pas?” said Nespa. “Zat was like a handshake wiz an Arctic eel: very cold, very slippery.”
Beyond her Miss Chief and Mimimi were whizzing back and forth like things possessed – but, it has to be said, possessed too of a certain elegance and grace. Miss Chief’s proudest possession was her red scarf. The scarf was never allowed to stray from her neck. A few, in admiring it, had had the temerity to try and touch it. Miss Chief had become a lioness, and the scarf her favourite cub. No-one had tried to touch it twice. This scarf Miss Chief was now waving above her head in the nearest anyone had ever seen her to joyous exuberance.
Mimimi had somehow managed to describe with her body a ‘wow’-shape. She just looked like a ‘wow’. There is no other way to describe it.
Eyes of very different expectations watched them from the ‘bank’. Some dreading their imminent inundation. Others, let’s be frank, hoping for it.
“I’m surprised, don’t you know,” said Mr E to Bluemerang, “you’re not with them.”
“Big blueming baby’s blouson activity, skating,” Bluemerang replied loudly. “Now, white-blueming-water surfboarding, that’s a real sport. Or croco-blueming-dile racing. Skating, more your speed I’d have thought, Mr E.”
“Oh, I’m afraid when you get to my age, don’t you know, even baby’s blouson activities are far too strenuous.”
“And what blueming age would that be, then?”
“Nine hundred and ninety nine,” Mr E replied.
“Years???” increduloused Bluemerang.
“Does it matter?” Mr E asked the Australian. Enmeshed within his wisdom by silken strands there was a deep melodic melancholy.