Susie and the Snow-it-alls

by Gregory Dark

  * * *

  Susie and her escort had by now almost reached the Ughloovre. Around them, in an apparently never-ending swarm, the Emos continued their inexorable progress.

  “Zere is at the Ughlooovre food, n’est-ce pas?” asked Nespa in a way she sincerely hoped was rhetorically.

  “The Vis-all-seer eats only after she has spoken,” replied Momma. “Beforehand it is too likely to upset her digestion. She cares so very deeply that her words will be correctly understood.”

  “There is no pill strong enough to still her anxiety,” said Poppa. “So much does she care, so very much.”

  “You obviously don’t,” Momma told Susie.

  “Don’t what?”

  “Care,” said Momma. It was an accusation. She cracked her knuckles. “I-knew-its are but Snow-it-alls in waiting, Susie. Snow-it-alls are as successful as they are – as successful as we are – because we do. Care. Take care to care, Susie.”

  “In the first place …” Susie started to say. She would have mentioned that she was no I-knew-it, had no intention of becoming one. She would have gone on to say that, certainly, she cared. Not about everything, of course. But about the things she cared about she did care. A lot. But she was interrupted.

  “What is it that you’re going to talk about?” asked Poppa.

  “ … I am not now, nor have any intention …” Susie was saying. Then she heard Poppa’s question. Dreading the answer she knew in her heart was coming – and with that same heart in the mouth she could feel forming the words – she asked: “Talk about?”

  “In your speech?” Momma said.

  “What speech?”

  “The speech you’re making to the Emos.”

  “I’m not making a speech,” Susie guffawed, whilst at the same time a dread was welling within her.

  “At the Ughloovre,” said Poppa.

  “There or anywhere else.”

  “Don’t be absurd,” said Momma.

  “Why else would we be here?” said Poppa.

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” said Momma.

  “Ridiculous? I’ll tell you what would be ridiculous. Me making a speech, that would be ridiculous. I’ve never made a speech in my whole life.”

  “Nobody’s ever done anything once in their lives,” Poppa said. “Even the Snow-it-allest had to make her first speech.”

  “I’d have thought you’d have prepared,” said Momma.

  “If you’d cared you would have prepared,” lectured Poppa.

  “I didn’t know,” wailed Susie.

  “Shows how much you do care,” said Momma.

  “If you’d cared you would have prepared,” lectured Poppa again.

  “I did not know.”

  “Twice the reason to prepare,” lectured Momma.

  “If you’d have cared …”

  * * *

  O’Nestly was crouched over the lifeless figure. He was on the point of giving it the kiss of life when he noticed the most delicate expansion of its chest. It was alive. It was breathing. Now the thing to do was to get it to hospital, or whatever else they had here. He looked around fretfully.

  “Don’t look round,” said the figure in a quiet voice, but one remarkably sturdy given the apparent unsturdiness of its owner. “Get your head between my head and the camera. I need to talk.”

  O’Nestly sited the camera. He did as he was bid.

  “Keep looking around as if you’re still wondering what to do. Keep your head between mine and the camera.” Again O’Nestly did as he was bid. “I’m Dremo,” said the Emo. “I was the one who talked to Susie at the snowball.”

  “Are you not well?” asked O’Nestly. “I don’t understand.”

  “Don’t talk,” said Dremo, “unless you’re facing away from the camera. Some of the monitors can read lips fluently.”

  “What’s this all about?” asked O’Nestly, who had again turned his head towards the Emo.

  “Look back again,” Dremo told him. “Don’t let it appear that we’re having a conversation.” O’Nestly did so, resumed his ‘desperate’ scouring up and down of the street. “There’s another side to the Snow-it-alls,” said Dremo. “You interested in seeing that other side of it?”

  “I come from a place where there was always another side to that being reported,” said O’Nestly. He’d remembered to turn his head from the camera. A rear view of his head would have given the impression that his scouring had simply changed tack.

  “I’m going to get up soon,” said Dremo. “I’m going to be fine, going to thank you for your concern. Then we go our separate ways.”

  “Right,” said O’Nestly, covering his mouth with his arm.

  “I’ll meet you again beyond the furthest door on the Ughloovre’s right side as you look at it with Neverrest behind you,” said Dremo.

  O’Nestly flicked a glance behind. “Right,” he said as he did so.

  “Don’t rush,” said Dremo. “But don’t dawdle either. Above all, do not tell anyone else. Anyone. You understand?”

  “Loud and clear,” said O’Nestly.

  “Turn to me now,” Dremo told him. “Without making it obvious, let your head clear the camera’s view of mine. As soon as you’ve done that, I’ll start coming to.”

  O’Nestly brought his hand to his mouth as he cleared his throat. “Right,” he said as he did so.

  “Now,” said Dremo.

  As if he’d heard something from Dremo, O’Nestly turned to face him. As he did so, he cleared the shot. Dremo rubbed his head, wondered what on earth had come over him, thanked O’Nestly for his care, hoped that opportunity would give him a chance to repay him, and scrambled off in the direction of the Ughloovre.

  O’Nestly watched him scramble. He then took a left down the next street and seemed to follow a different path entirely.

  Chapter 23

  “How should I blueming know what you should blueming talk about?” Bluemerang challenged Susie back. “There’s talkers, Susie,” he started to pontificate, “and there’s doers. More of a blueming doer, me.”

  “Well, ‘do’ some thinking, then,” Susie suggested, even knowing such suggestion to be forlorn.

  “You might perhaps mention ze food shortage,” Nespa proposed.

  “Not helpful, Nespa,” Susie sulked.

  “Ze car, she need petrol, non?” Gallicked Nespa, a soupçon miffed at Susie’s attitude. “A brain wizout food, he also cannot work.”

  “I’m going to make a total fool of myself,” Susie lamented.

  “Oh that,” said Bluemerang. “I’d have thought you’d have been blueming used to that.”

  “Oh thank you so much, you two,” said Susie. “Really. I mean it. Thank you for all your helpfulness and things.”

  “Il n’y a pas de quoi,” said Nespa.

  “Yeah,” said Bluemerang. “What Nespa blueming said.”

  This conversation took place ‘back stage’ at the Ughloovre. They were in a small, annexy-type room which, Susie supposed, would fit the bill for a dressing room were the need to change clothes ever an issue. They knew Elaide was in a larger room next door to this one. I-knew-it 31 and 32 had already been in to enquire, on her behalf, as to the main thrust of Susie’s oration. She had looked at them blankly. The I-knew-it had gleamed a smile, which Susie had believed to have been of undiluted malice, and had withdrawn. Momma and Poppa had gone Susie knew not whither.

  Susie was neither a great strutter nor a great fretter. On those rare occasions, however, when she did so, she did tend to strut and fret with a dedication that sought to compensate with intensity what it lacked in frequency. Thus it was that she was strutting and fretting her hour back-stage when Mr E returned from Neverrest.

  “Have a good chat?” Bluemerang asked him good-naturedly.

  “Delightful,” Mr E returned.

  “What am I going to say, Mr E?” Susie fretted. “What am I going to say?”

  “I understand, don’t you know, ‘hello’ is traditional.”

 
“Not to you,” Susie strutted. “To the Emos.”

  “Hello, Emos?” Mr E suggested.

  “You’re not helping,” Susie fretted.

  “I am, you know,” said Mr E.

  “Sure,” she fretted.

  “I realised, at the foot of the mountain, that we can’t not help each other. Sometimes it might only be negatively that we tender such help. But we are always helping. And if we do not help, the fault, don’t you know, lies not with the helpers but with the helped – or, in this instance, the not-helped.”

  “And you, Mr E, are such a case in point,” Susie sarcasticked. “Such a great big help.”

  “A man has fallen down a well. We send a strand of cotton down to him. It is not our fault that he does not try to pull himself out with it. Nor is it the fault of the cotton.”

  “The cotton would snap,” snapped Susie.

  “And when the cotton does snap, then the stranded man can blame the cotton. But not until the cotton has snapped.”

  “And just how is that supposed to help in this situation?”

  “Think about it,” Mr E suggested. “You don’t learn from being taught, Susie. You learn, don’t you know, by thinking about what you’ve been taught.”

  “So helpful,” Susie snarled.

  There was a knock at the door. Without awaiting permission, I-knew-it 31 and 32 simply walked in. Susie was on the point of indignating when it thrust a wad of papers into her hands.

  “Your speech,” disgruntled 31.

  “Elaide wrote it,” said 32, whose gruntle was even more dissed than 31’s. With which, and with similar ceremony to its entrance, the I-knew-it left.

  “Now, that,” Susie said, brandishing the sheaf with a smiled phew, “is helpful.”

  “To whom?” asked Mr E. “Certainly not to you. How are you helped by parroting the thoughts of others?”

  “I won’t make an idiot of myself,” Susie said.

  “Won’t you?” asked Mr E. “Is there anything more foolish than for a human being to become a parrot? Is that not like the eagle wanting to become an earthworm?”

  “I’m no good at public speaking,” Susie protested.

  “That is not important,” said Mr E. “It is being good at being Susie which is. And that, Susie, … that is really important.”

  “Oh, that’s so easy for you to say,” Susie huffed. For a moment she had been strut- and fretless. She now resumed those activities with a ferocity so tigerish that it might have been supposed to be vengeance.

  Again knocklessly the door was opened. Elaide stood in its frame. “Ready,” she said. This was not an enquiry as to Susie’s readiness, it was a statement of her own and that therefore Susie, whatever her state of readiness, should now leave.

  “Right,” said Susie with a farewell glower at Mr E. “You coming?” she asked him pointedly.

  “To see parrots, don’t you know,” he replied, “I go to the jungle.”

  “Come, child,” said Elaide almost kindly. She walked with Susie down the corridor. “There’s a jungle, you know, in Grammarcloud,” she continued: “The Freudle jungle. Syllabylly tells me it’s spectacular.”

  “And Syllabylly might be?”

  “They really do teach you nothing, don’t they, in Earth schools?” increduloused Elaide. “Syllabylly, child, is Grammarcloud’s oracle. It was she who told us you were coming. She also tells me one day you’ll visit the Freudle jungle. Which just goes to prove that Syllabylly is not infallible. I-knew-its do not leave the IAO. You read my notes.”

  “Well, not yet, ma’am,” Susie replied, fazed by Elaide’s last ominous comment. “I haven’t had the time.”

  “It wasn’t a question,” Elaide told her. “You will read my notes.”

  With which she walked onto the Ughloovre stage.

  A standing ovation welcomed her.

  The spontaneity of which might have seemed more fulsome to Susie had it not been for the ranks of pengrins ensuring both the ovation and its standingness.

  Susie followed on behind, a lamb to the laughter of her mockers. Her audience was one only of mockers.

  Chapter 24

  But Susie was not mocked. She was not jeered or heckled or booed. She was listened to, in fact, with ears that were apparently attentive and appreciative. At the end of each paragraph (marked on her copy with the word ‘applause’), the Emos would clap enthusiastically. At those paragraphs followed by ‘APPLAUSE’ the Emos would clap wildly. The pengrins had a copy of Susie’s speech. It was they who ensured the Emos applauded in the designated paragraph breaks.

  The address expressed Susie’s delighted surprise at the wonderment of IAO society (under the wise tutelage of the Snow-it-alls). Such an advance on the backwardness of Earth extolled the virtues of the Snow-it-alls, their wisdom, courage and compassion. She expatiated on the need for order in society and for due reverence to be shown to those due reverence. Finally she expressed her gratitude for all the many and various kindnesses, charities and hospitalities which had been extended by the Snow-it-alls (may their names be reverenced) both to her and her frogs.

  At the end of her notes was the single word ‘ovation’. This the pengrins ensured took place. The Emos, as one body, rose to their feet, clapped, stamped their elongated feet, cheered, whistled. Susie had never experienced anything like it.

  To begin with, she was coy in its acceptance, almost diffident. Elaide came to take her hand. She raised Susie’s arm and her own, bathing in the spray of the applause. Susie could not help but get wet herself. Like many a first-time swimmer, terror ceded to enjoyment, and enjoyment to fun. Fun was even threatening towards frolic.

  Elaide escorted Susie from the stage. The applause ceased. Just as if it had been cut by a knife. Filing out from the last tier to the first, the Emos (at exactly the same speed with which they had arrived) started to make their way home.

  Susie was still too soaked, though, in applause-spray for her to notice any of this except in the most peripheral of ways. Aglow, she turned to Elaide also to receive what she thought would be her approbation. But Elaide was too concerned with her own thoughts. Once invisible to Emo scrutiny, she dropped Susie’s hand and swept, imperiously, back to her dressing-room.

  “We leave in ten sockends,” said Elaide.

  “Right,” said Susie cheerfully. “Sockend?” she asked her frogs. None of them knew. Mr E, she noticed, was not happy with her. “Sockends?” she asked Momma.

  “Twenty-five munites,” she replied with an exasperation too expansive for it to be able to disguise itself.

  “Well, that ex-blueming-plains that blueming one,” blueminged Bluemerang.

  “What?” Susie asked of Mr E who said nothing. “What?” she asked a bit more forcibly.

  “If you speak, don’t you know, as a ventriloquist’s dummy,” he said, “then your success will be that of a ventriloquist’s dummy.”

  “No-one’s ever cheered me like that before,” Susie said, yanking her aglowness back from the ether into which it was threatening to vanish.

  “It wasn’t you, though, don’t you know, they were cheering.”

  “Ruin the whole thing for me, why don’t you?” complained Susie.

  “There’s nothing to ruin,” said Mr E. “The Emos were being forced to cheer. And not your words but Elaide’s.”

  “I’m not a writer,” Susie pointed out she thought reasonably.

  “But you are a Susie,” Mr E told her. “Writers don’t get cheered. Ever. Certainly not spontaneously. Those who excite real cheers, don’t you know, are those with the courage to be themselves.”

  “I need to talk to you,” puffed O’Nestly, who suddenly appeared from nowhere.

  “I was just wondering where you’d disa-blueming-ppeared to,” said Bluemerang.

  “Now,” O’Nestly insisted.

  “We’re leaving any time,” said Susie.

  “Now,” O’Nestly insisted again.

  Susie saw he was in some earnest.

  “I’
ll just be outside,” she told Mr E, “I need some air.”

  “Sure you can breathe for yourself?” he asked her.

  “I can also choose my own friends,” she replied and, carrying O’Nestly, stormed out.

  “Where’s she going?” Poppa asked.

  “She needs some air,” Mr E replied.

  “We’re about to leave,” Poppa perplexed.

  “Maybe ze pause might give us a chance to nibble a petit snack?” suggested Nespa.

  The door phhhted open and disgorged Susie, still with a bibbed Bluemerang, and O’Nestly.

  “Keep your mouth covered,” O’Nestly told her, covering his own.

  “What?”

  “Cctv cameras. The monitors can lip-read.” He appeared to be scratching his nose.

  “What is it?” Susie asked, with her back to where O’Nestly had indicated the camera was.

  “There’s another world here, Susie,” O’Nestly confided in her. “It makes The Ughloos seem like a paradise. It’s seriously awful. Seriously. A Hell. ‘The Ughlies’, it’s called.

  “It’s where Emos who ‘incur displeasure’ are sent,” the sponge continued. “They don’t live in ‘The Ughlies’. They barely exist. They subsist.”

  “Well, that’s all very sad, O’Nestly,” Susie hisspered. “But what’s that got to do with me? Or with us, come to that?”

  “Come and have a look,” O’Nestly invited her.

  “We’re about to leave,” Susie testilied back.

  “A quick look.” O’Nestly was pleading with her. There are some Irish voices which have kissed the Blarney stone; there is not one Irish eye which hasn’t. Susie was on the point of surrendering when a pengrin kerfuffle heralded the arrival of the Visall-seer’s palanquin.

  Susie shrugged helplessly. O’Nestly’s crest was not fallen but felled. “We’ll find a pretext,” she sought to console him, “to come back another day.”

  “Sure we will,” O’Nestly said darkly.

  “Home,” said Elaide, sweeping through the phhhting door straight into her conveyance. “Child, you will ride with me.”

  Susie did notice the look which passed between 31 and 32. She needed no interpreter to tell her that look boded her no well whatsoever.