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There was a rat tat tat tat on the door, and Sonia started barking excitedly, hoping that it was someone coming to feed her. She would have been more hungry had she not licked up all the crushed mince pies off the floor. The barking and incessant knocking on the door roused the ex, who was sleeping off the eggnog in the spare room. Eventually he shuffled out and opened the door; the knocking had become dangerously insistent.
“Yes?” he said to the woman in the red cape standing on the doorstep. Inwardly, he groaned. “Batwoman, I presume?”
“Get out of my way, Alvin, you good for nothing lush, and what are you doing here anyway?”
“No idea, Gertrude, more to the point, what are YOU doing here?”
“Tis the season of good will, you arsewipe, where’s that idiot daughter of mine?”
Corrie:
I was offering the plate of mince pies to Mr Cornwall, who had been coaxed out of his room for the first time in ages and was sitting next to the gum tree sapling that Aunt Idle had strung with fairy lights in lieu of a Christmas pine, when they arrived. We were all surprised to hear the taxi hooting outside, that is, except Bert. I heard him mumbling something about “She bloody meant it, the old trout,” but I didn’t remember that until later, with all the commotion at the unexpected guests.
“Here, take the lot,” I said, shoving the mince pies on the old guys lap, as I rushed to the door to see who it was. A tall autocratic looking woman swathed in beige linen garments was climbing out of the front seat of the taxi, with one hand holding the pith helmet on her head and the other hand gesticulating wildly to the others in the back seat. She was ordering the taxi driver to get the luggage out of the boot, and ushering the other occupants out of the car, before flamboyantly spinning around to face the house. With arms outstretched and a big smile she called, “Darlings! We have arrived!”
“Who the fuck it that?” I asked Clove. “Fucked if I know” she replied, adding in a disappointed tone, “Four more old farts, just what we bloody need.”
“And a baby!” I noted.
Clove snorted sarcastically, “Terrific.”
Suddenly a cloud of dust filled the hall and I started to cough. Crispin Cornwall had leaped to his feet, the plate of mince pies crashing to the floor.
“Elizabeth! Do my eyes deceive me, or is it really you?”
“Godfrey, you old coot! What on earth are you doing here, and dressed like that! You really are a hoot!”
“Why is she calling him Godfrey?” asked Prune. “That’s not his name.”
“He obviously lied when he said his name was Crispin Cornwall, Prune. We don’t know a thing about him,” I replied. “Someone had better go and fetch Aunt Idle.”
“Who else is coming? Don’t remind me, I can’t bear it,” Elizabeth said fretfully while Norbert opened and closed his mouth like a goldfish.
“I have an idea!” she announced suddenly, standing up and crushing a mince pie that had rolled under her desk. “Gather round, come on, come on!”
Arona Haki shuffled in with the dustpan and mop, as Finnley blew her nose loudly and wiped the tears from her eyes. Norbert stood silently, waiting.
“It wouldn’t matter WHO came,” Liz paused for effect, “If none of us were here!”
“But we are here, aren’t we,” remarked Finnley. Norbert and Haki murmured in agreement.
“We are now!” replied Liz, “But we could be gone in an hour! We could go and visit my cousin ~ third cousin twice removed, actually ~ in Australia. They have an old inn and it’s sure to be half empty, it’s in the middle of nowhere, and,” she added triumphantly, “It will be lovely and warm there!”
“Blisteringly hot, more like,” muttered Finnley, “And would they like unexpected visitors for Chri, er Kri, er, that date on the calendar?”
“I’m sure they’d be delighted, “ replied Liz, crisply. “Not everyone is as curmudgeonly about Chri, er, Kri, er that date on the calendar as we are. And anyway,” she added, “If I write it into the story that they are delighted, then they will have no option but to be pleased to see us.”
“If you bloody lot are coming to the Flying Fish Inn, I’m buggering off to Mars for the holidays” said Bert.
Elizabeth spun round, saying sharply, “Bert! Get back to your own thread this instant! The bloody cheek of it, thread hopping like that, really!”
map sight
strange managed animal shouted stop
months sent began light
wrong create added rat surpriseElizabeth suddenly felt overwhelmed with loving kindness, and hugged everyone. “I am so sorry I’m a sourpuss at times, I love you all.”
While everyone was speechless, she continued: “This is indeed a trying and difficult season at times, despite our best efforts to eradicate it from our calendars. The social constructs of cheer and goodwill must never be confused with acquiescing to the pressures of the needy, if the needy resort to emotional blackmail and bullying. Indeed, it is a kindness to all concerned, not least ones own self, to refuse to kowtow simply because of the date on the calendar!”
“Hear! ……Hear!” said Norbert slowly.
“Blimey,” muttered Finnley, while Arona Haki whistled and said “Bloody heel!”
“Waaaahh wahhhha!” cried the cold baby shivering on the patio.
“Oh my god, the fucking baby!” Elizabeth shouted, leaping up and running outside, and accidentally tipping over the sherry bottle and the plate of mince pies.
“Christmas! You’re kidding me! Is that why the plaza was full of donkeys and goat cheese and that dreadful jingly singly stuff? Bolt the doors quickly! Haki! Lock the gate! We don’t want anyone here full of good cheer or god forbid, bringing mince pies!”
“Finnley, what are you still doing here? Can’t keep away, eh! Well, you’re welcome to stay as long as you like, you amuse me,” Elizabeth said graciously.
“Come back here Haki, you silly goose! Send a message to the mother that I will meet her on Mars in six months time. Tell her,” Liz frowned, trying to think of the right words. “Tell her peace be with you and bugger off. And you can bugger off yourself now, Haki, and send Norbert in.”
Elizabeth felt that she was losing track of all the new characters being added willy nilly without her prior consent and approval, it was most disconcerting. She decided to make a new law, that no new character could add more characters without her express permission. She would grant the existing characters a weekly audience in which they could present their new characters for inspection. Characters that Elizabeth failed to approve would be sent to Mars, or the Australian outback.
The idea of having her own robot appealed to Lizette, and she was already starting to feel an affectionate soft spot for Finnley 8. It ~ was it a he or a she? would do nicely as a personal servant and dogsbody. She wondered if the management would loan the robot to her for the duration of her stay, as a personal assistant and proof reader.
“If anyone needs exterminating,” muttered Clove under her breath when she heard Finly on the phone, “It’s you, you fucking Nazi.”
I wonder if they realize, Elizabeth was thinking, that I could write them all out of the story at the rat tat tat of a few keys.
“Rat tat tat tat,” Elizabeth said to Haki by way of a warning, enunciating each word clearly, and then wincing as she bit her tongue again in the same place.
Arona Haki wasn’t sure what to make of it, and fled.
“I think it should be have you, not has you, Miss Liz” remarked Haki, helpfully.
Elizabeth bit her tongue, literally, in her attempt to swallow her reply.
“I blame you for that” she said, unfairly.
Elizabeth slept late, not waking until the alchemy of the early morning had long since passed and the sun was high. It was a long luxurious moment between the remaining fragments of dreams and the harsh reality of the day before she remembered all the new additions. Where had they all come from? By what strange forces of attraction had they been drawn to her?
Enough of that nonsense, she told herself, as she climbed into her arthritis as if it were a pair of old slippers. She buttoned on a belly ache for good measure, and placed a headache on top of her tousled hair.
“Now then” she said, “Who the fuck are you lot and what are you all doing here? Has any of you thought to make coffee?”“
Aunt Idle:
Trying to get a conversation out of Bert was like trying to prise a can of beans open with a nappy pin. If he’d been a bit more willing to discuss it with me I might have told him about the note, but I didn’t. I suppose he was disgruntled because I was more interested in that medical team buying up ghost towns than his bridge, so we sat in silence for the rest of the trip. Not that I wasn’t interested in the place on the other side of the river, but there was something very odd going on, and I couldn’t put my finger on it. That note, made from old maps at the Brundy place, then Flora’s card with the same name on ~ what the dickens was going on? Should I ask Flora point blank, or would that alert her that I was on to her? Might be better to be more subtle, see what I could find out before confronting her. I even thought of getting the remote view team to see if they could find anything out ~ although the results were so sketchy that might just be a wild goose chase, lead me off in the wrong direction.
“Take the next left, Idle, down this here track,” Bert said.
Miles away I was, so I didn’t hear him at first and had to slam the brakes on a bit sharpish. I caught Bert rolling his eyes at me and glared at him.
The track hadn’t been driven on for months, if not years ~ that much was obvious. We bumped along kicking up a cloud of dust for a few miles before the river came into sight, then the track followed the river for another half a mile or so, eventually petering out.
“We’ll have to walk from here,” said Bert, getting out of the car. I passed Bert the rucksack with the bottled water and locked the car. “You don’t need to lock the car here” Bert snorted.
“Habit,” I snapped, “Lead the way.”
edge teleporting bridge
enjoy sight others whispered
built carefully
village travelers cup hours
wide hook land line dream
free travel form“Arona Haki, have we any nappies? Or something to feed this thing? Baby formula and bottles, that sort of thing?” Liz asked.
The old woman shrugged. “How would I know?”
“Well you had better beetle off down to the shops then and buy whatever we need. I’ll hose it down on the patio.”
Shocked, Arona Haki wondered whether it was her place to tell the new boss that wasn’t the way to treat a baby. “Miss Liz, I really don’t think…”
“I don’t pay you to think!” Liz snapped, not that she meant it, but she felt the need to establish some respect, after the fiasco with the last staff.
It was good to get off the ship and finally arrive. Lizette had been having doubts during the long journey, wondering if she had made the right decision. Admittedly she’d been bored back home on earth and was ready for a new adventure, but once on board the ship, the doubts had crept in. Often she had woken up in the night during the journey in sheer panic, feeling trapped, but had managed to calm down and look on the bright side. The settlers needed her unique skills and her usual unbridled enthusiasm, and it would do nobody any good if she gave in to moments of fear and confusion.
Finnley 8 had helped her adjust her suit, which seemed cumbersome and restricting ~ Lizette normally preferred to wear next to nothing back on earth. But with her customary sanguine attitude, she quipped to the robot, “Well, at least I don’t have to wear a bra underneath all this bumph!”, to which Finnley 8 made no reply.
“I wasn’t expecting a mutiny this morning, really, how inconsiderate of them, they could at least have waited until I’d had my breakfast. You just can’t get the characters these days. Plotting against me all night while I slept the sweet sleep of an innocent lamb, I ask you! Where will it all end?!
Ah well. They were due to be pensioned off anyway, poor decrepit old things, past their write by date anyway.”
Liz was initially speechless, then miffed ~ but then an idea started brewing in sync with the kettle.