Away Day

Many people have to travel for business. Best advice is: don't leave home... unless you have a good reason to go back.

(First published in Runshaw Writers' Write Lines magazine)

Just another commuter, Lizzy thought, as she stood at the barrier, collecting tickets. Everyone in London always in a hurry. Never time to stop and exchange pleasantries. Pity – he had a certain look about him she liked.

" ‘Morning," he said, courteously. "This is Farringdon Underground station, isn’t it?"

Ah, she thought, not local. "Big city, isn’t it?"

"Vast," he replied, struggling with briefcase and unnecessary raincoat as he passed her his ticket.

That settled it – definitely a Lanky accent. Like her Dad’s. "This is the wrong ticket," she said, patiently.

"How much more is it? I’ve got a job interview at half past. I’ve only come from Euston."

It flashed through her mind how her Dad had "got on his bike" and come down to London from the Northwest looking for work in the Eighties, and had never gone back. "You’ve given me given me your Virgin Day Return ticket – you’ll be wanting this back. It’s your Underground ticket I need to see."

He swapped the ticket for the Virgin Return to Wigan North Western. "You see, this job means a lot to me if I get it and I’m running late. I’ll have to be fast."

"This is the right ticket," she said.

He thanked her then sprinted for the station exit.

He sprinted back a moment later. "You couldn’t tell me where Saffron Hill is, could you?"

She told him.

"Thank you – must dash."

He was back within the hour. His pace was rather more measured but he seemed no less agitated. "Excuse me."

"Yes?"

"I – I’m awfully sorry, I don’t even know your name."

"Lizzy."

"Nice to meet you. I’m Arnold. Lizzy, I was wondering if I could ask you a favour."

"Well… I get off in half an hour so you might be lucky," she grinned. She was kidding with him, but wasn’t quite sure he realised.

"Oh. Ah. That’s jolly kind of you. Thank you. You have a nice laugh. But what I really wanted to say was – I don’t suppose by any chance anyone has handed in a Virgin Day Return ticket, have they?"

"You mean this one?" She held up the little card. "You must have dropped it before. I didn’t notice it till you’d gone."

"Yes, that’s it…"

Lizzy noticed that her customer had suddenly gone rather quiet, as if a final burden of anxiety had been taken from him. But not in a good way. "I expect you’ll be down South here again before long."

He hesitated. "I wouldn’t bet on it."

"Oh? Why’s that?"

"I don’t think the interview went that well. In fact, not awfully well at all."

"You can always hope," she said.

"I think when they say, ‘We don’t want you, you’re not adequately qualified and you don’t have the necessary experience,’ it’s hard to take it as a good sign."

"Oh," she said. She looked him up and down. He was about her age, clean-cut – smartly dressed, if a little crumpled. Did he really want to come and live down here? If her father hadn’t come South, would she herself have moved anyway? She could imagine Arnold, setting out that morning neat and tidy and eager, hopeful and optimistic. Now all he had was a return ticket and a long journey home. "You’ll be going back to Euston then?"

"With these Away-Day tickets or whatever they’re called, you can only travel on certain trains. The return is not till early this evening. I was expecting the interview to last a little longer. I suppose I’ll just have to find a way to pass a few hours."

She studied him again. "You know," she said, "I wasn’t joking when I said I was getting off-duty. Perhaps I could join you. How does Kew Gardens take your fancy?"

"I was hoping you’d suggest something, I didn’t like to ask."



They had explored the hot-houses of white-painted wrought iron and glass with their exotic foliage, climbed the spiral stair cases up to the walkways just below the roof, and looked down on the succulent fronds, while exchanging idle chit-chat that had been about nothing, yet told each everything that needed to be known by the other. Now, sated and not a little tired, they went outside.

"You’re a Lancashire lad, aren’t you?"

"How d’you mean?" Arnold said.

"‘Vast, pass, dash, laugh,’" she recited.

"What on Earth are you talking about?" Arnold was puzzled.

She burst into giggles. "No Southerner would pronounced them the way you do!"

"Really?"

"No – it’d be all ‘Varst, parss, darsh and larf!’ You say them proper, like me Dad.

"In that case, he grinned, "let’s sit on the grass."

"I like coming here," Lizzy announced, gazing at the parkland as if it were her own private garden. "Me Dad grew up in the country, so he said."

"I like countryside. Do you?"

"When I can get to it. Either here or Richmond Park. That’s almost real countryside."

He rolled on his side to look at her. "I suppose so. I’ve never been. But isn’t it still inside London?"

"It feels like countryside. I once saw a deer. Don’t tell me Wigan is countryside."

"I don’t live in Wigan."

"Where do you live, then?"

"It’s a village, outside. Called Appley Bridge."

"What’s that like? Is that countryside?"

"Oh yes," said, turning away. "It’s in a beautiful river valley, full of fields and trees. I live in a small old house near the Leeds and Liverpool canal. I bet you’d love it."

She looked round at the park, with its strolling visitors and pathways and its feeling of being ersatz – familiar, totally explored and well-trodden by countless feet. Not wild and strange and fresh. "Why do you want to move down here then?"

"Job, career, prospects… Don’t know really."

"You mean – it’s someone else’s idea of what’d make you happy."

He considered her remark. "You’re probably right, Lizzy. In fact, now you mention it, I’m sure you’re right!" It was as if an epiphany had befallen him. "I don’t want to move down to London at all! It’s just a big sprawling city that some people think is important. There are other important things." He stopped, as if another thought had struck him. "But you live down here."

"Why should that matter?"

"Well…"

"Yes?" she teezed.

"I wouldn’t like the thought of not seeing you again. Meeting you has been the nicest thing that’s happened to me today. The nicest thing in a long time."

"What a sweet thing to say," she said, making fun of his grave tone. Then, herself, more serious: "In fact – actually – Arnold, this has been the nicest day I’ve had for a long time, too."

He plucked a green stem from the lawn. "Oh, Lizzy," he said, mock-serious. "What are we going to do?"



Euston Concourse, early evening. People bustling over the black rubber tiles, heaving luggage, dragging reluctant children, staring nervously at the annunciator board, checking arrivals and departures.

"Tickets, sir?" said the inspector at the gate.

"Here," said Arnold. "One return…" he turned and took Lizzy’s hand. "And one single."

The End

The Road To Perdition

What might happen if you let students - an intemperate bunch at best by all accounts - to throw a party behind the students union bar. Nostalgia about what might have happened afterwards

"Where does this road go?"

"It doesn’t go anywhere – it’s stationary."

"Stationery!" I said in mock surprise, at an attempt of surreal humour. "You mean it’s made of paper? It’ll collapse into the Bristol Channel!"

"It’s stood here for years," said Tariq. "Solid as a rock." All night he’d adopted this insouciant tone. At first it had seemed hilarious. Then funny. Then slightly amusing. Now, in the grey morning, it was getting just a tad irritating. This may have been in inverse proportion to how sober I was. "What’s to stop a big gust of wind blowing us off this bridge and into the water, dozens of feet –"

" – hundreds of feet – " He corrected.

" – hundreds of feet below?"

"Well, there’s that railing there."

"Then what?"

"Nothing."

"Nothing?"

"Absolutely nothing."

"Would the authorities come and rescue us?" I pressed the point.

"God, no."

"Why not?"

"Well… if they’d seen us here at all, they’d have come and arrested us for trespass."

"But that’s still no reason not to rescue us."

"It is, if you think about it," Tariq reasoned, reasonably. "You see, if they’d not seen us to arrest us, they’d can’t have seen us to rescue us, can they? Besides…"

"Besides – what?"

"Besides, the fall would kill you, and even if it didn’t, you would drown in the current. If the hypothermia didn’t get you first. So it’d hardly be worth their bother."

I digested this. We’d been walking for about half an hour on the path-and-cycle-way that ran alongside the elevated approach to the Severn Bridge. This, Tariq had informed me, was a cantilevered path. I looked up ‘cantilever’ much later, and it said: "A cantilever is a beam anchored at one end and projecting into space." I could aver that this was true. The path was "temporarily closed for safety reasons" with a small barrier but we’d scrambled over that. We were now barely out over the water and hadn’t even reached the huge concrete structure, the size of a large block of flats, into which the suspension cables were anchored. There was absolutely no cover of any kind and we would have been clearly visible for miles to anyone who’d cared to look.

"Well I’d hate to put them out, if they’re so busy not seeing trespassers and all. I mean we’re hardly hidden from view." Even to myself I was beginning to sound a little grumpy.

"No, but we are a long way off. That’s probably why they haven’t seen us." Tariq still seemed as chipper as ever. "That and the fact that no-one in his right mind normally crosses on foot."

"Tariq, exactly why are we crossing the Bristol Channel by suspension bridge on foot at nine o’clock in the morning."

"Ah. You do you remember last night?"

"Which bits?"

"The later bits."

"The bar-staff party."

"And afterwards?"

"Nope." I strained to recall something. Something that might have been important, the sort of thing that explained why I was here now doing this thing. "Not really. Little bits. The bar closed. We tidied up in twenty minutes and that left us forty minutes in which to cram an entire party evening’s drinking, before the Students’ Union building shut and we all got slung out. We started drinking and… I don’t think I remember anything after that."

"The people all lying around on the grass?"

"Not really. Were they drunk?"

"It was hard to tell. They were all unconscious." Tariq seemed remarkably unconcerned about this, much as he was about everything else.

"Don’t you think they might have been drunk before they became unconscious?" I asked.

"Oh, yes. Let’s face it, everyone was drunk. In fact, every thing was drunk by the time we were thrown out."

"Why weren’t we unconscious?"

"Must have been down to our robust constitutions," Tariq grinned. "Anyway, that’s when I suggested that we go down to Keele motorway services and hitch a ride with the first truck-driver who’d give us a lift."

"You did what?" I’m not sure how much I was surprised, feigning outrage, or genuinely outraged. "Why couldn’t I have just been unconscious like everybody else?

"You said you thought it was a good idea."

"I said that? Why didn’t you disagree with me?"

"I thought it was a good idea, too. After all, it had been my idea. So that’s what we did. You insisted on going back to your room first for some reason, then we set off."

"You can’t just hitch-hike away from a hangover."

"Oh no? Look at you now? Up, fresh as a daisy, out in the bracing open air. Imagine all those others – just waking up with their heads throbbing. Have you got a hangover?"

He had a point. But so did I. "No – but I’m nearly getting my tits blown off in this ‘bracing air’!"

"So it wasn’t such a bad idea."

"But… but how? What happened?"

"We got a lift to Aust Services back there and the driver said he was having a stop-over, so we said we’d walk."

"But why are we crossing the River Severn bridge on a pathway closed to the public?" I persisted.

"Because it’s there!"

"But we don’t have to be!"

"And to get to the other side, of course."

"Of course. How silly of me."

"Because, on the other side is where my uncle lives. He owns a pub in Caerleon. The Red Lion. Or the White Lion, I’m not sure which. But I’m sure we’ll find it. And he can give us a lift back to Keele."

I was starting to worry that this was actually making some kind of sense, when it shouldn’t. "Tariq, don’t take this personally, but you’re, sort of, of a dusky Asian hue and you’re from Bolton. How come you’ve got an uncle who owns a pub in south Wales?"

"What’s wrong with that? I’m a good barman back at the Students’ Union, aren’t I? Serving booze to white folks runs in our family."

"I suppose you’ve got a point. How far is it to Caerleon?"

"Oo… only a few minutes’ walk. We’ll soon be there."

"Tariq, we’ve been walking for hours and we’re not even half way across and I can barely see land in either direction."

"It’s just a trick of perspective. The bridge is only a couple of miles long – at most – including the approach sections.

"Then – how far to Caerleon?"

"Not far. Only about 15 miles."

"Only!…"

"There’s two things to keep in mind. Firstly, don’t look down."

I looked down. We appeared to be walking on thin steel plate. Well, it looked like steel plate. Its apparent thinness was revealed because at frequent if irregular intervals there were holes right through the metal, for no readily apparent reason, about the diameter of a ten pence piece, revealing the steel to about the thickness of a ten pence piece. Clearly visible below that, about as far down as a ten storey building, curling, twisting brown waves, like a pit of vipers, wriggled, waiting with waning patience for their prey to fall amongst them.

"What was the second thing?" I croaked.

"We’ll be alright, just so long as we don’t hit a spot of bad weather."



We reached about half-way across the bridge, and became the centre of a sphere of air, sky and water, with just a puny piece of engineering to indicate Man’s existence. At that point, some weather – a spot, bad – blew in from the general direction of America, and it seemed to be in a hurry. The metal at our feet was matched by the metal sky overhead, and the metal water below disappeared from view as we became entombed in a racing ball of cloud. Every step we took seemed to turn us sideways. To have jumped up, losing contact with the armour-like decking, would have been suicidal.

Then the rain came in. To call it rain was a bit of a liberty, insofar as the only resemblance this phenomenon had to rain was that it was wet. Horizontal spears of water daggered into us, making us yelp. But this was just the beginning. We started to realise we might be in serious trouble when it became unwise even to lift one foot off the slicked surface, and we attempted a cross-country skiing movement. Progress went from slow to slower. Then, as the bullet rods and hydro-tracer puckered and cratered my denim jacket, making it dark as though stained with blood, we fell to our knees. As an afterthought, we decided to lie down altogether and time froze – as, indeed, did we – until the venom of the elements subsided once more. Eventually, the wind lessened, we got to our feet and we plodded on in what was to me a bubble of misery.

Long after we were no longer over the waters of the Bristol Channel, the road continued in an elevated arc round to the west parallel to the bum of Wales. Hours seemed to drag past. Eventually road met land, and we were able to get off the motorway and walk on the grass embankment alongside. Caerleon, whatever it was like, still did not hove into view. I was not sure how it would appear but I was imagining something like Valhalla. The morning grew old and tired.

At long last, we crossed under the motorway to get on its northern side and approached a motley collection of buildings. This was Caerleon. This was Caerleon? It was, probably, quite a pleasant village – it even had some Roman remains somewhere, to which some human remains were in danger of being added – mine – but it was hard to appreciate under the circumstances. Its one merit was that it contained a public house where we could find shelter, rest, food and, most importantly, transport to take us back to the home whence we’d so pointlessly come.

It took some time for Tariq to identify the correct pub. It turned out that Caerleon, with a population of just two thousand souls, had twelve of the establishments. The one we wanted was in fact called The Black Bull – Tariq had been close, apart from an appalling lack of awareness of colour and zoology.

The only thing was, we were too early and the place was still shut.

We had nowhere left to go.

All we could do was wait for his relatives to wake, open up, let us in and take us back to the little student residence blocks we called home.

"Drink has driven me to this," I exhaled, and, exhausted, slid to the ground, where fatigue enveloped me like a foggy pall, and I sank from the conscious world.



When I finally saw my room again, many, many hours later, several things argued for my attention. Firstly, not only was the door unlocked, but it was slightly open. Secondly, the light was left on. Thirdly, an empty vodka bottle was embedded, neck first, into the wall plaster. It came back to me. I had taken this bottle back to my room "for later," but having got there, I had drained the last of its contents then flamboyantly thrown it at the wall, as if completing some dramatic toast. To my befuddled amazement, it hadn’t shattered and I hadn’t the heart to attempt to heap further injury upon it.

And that was how, for me, the one and only Keele University Students’ Union bar-staff party ended.

The End

The Florist And The Spider

(A small but baffling crime has the local police applying the latest investigative technology to detect the culprit, from a long list of suspects. A humorous short story, with a twist.)

Florist’s Window Smashed For A Bunch of Flowers. This was the headline in the local newspaper that evening. The story went on to report: The Florist’s shop in the High Street had its front window smashed earlier today and apparently an expensive bouquet of flowers was stolen. Police were on the scene immediately as, by chance, a CID officer was in the vicinity at the time. "I just happened to be passing moments after the incident," said Detective Constable Neil Bell. "We are taking this matter very seriously as we are operating a policy of zero tolerance to petty crime and vandalism. We are following up a number of lines of enquiry."

"Why smash a florist’s shop window just for a bunch of flowers?" said Detective Inspector Keating, Neil Bell’s superior, just as Neil sat down and put his feet up on his desk.

"Because you wouldn’t get any flowers if it was a bakery or an ironmonger’s," said Bell, without looking up from his notepad.

Keating bent over Bell’s shoulder and said, "If you’re so clever, show me what you’ve come up with so far. And get your feet off your desk. You make the place look untidy. Number one conference room in five minutes."

"Are you sure?" said Bell, without moving. "I mean, it’s only a bunch of flowers."

"Five minutes. Zero tolerance, remember? And that means the feet too. Put ‘em down – you’re not on holiday."

Five minutes later, Bell was standing before the whiteboard in the conference room with Sergeant Cross, Inspector Keating and Bell’s oppo, Scott McKay. Quite a team. Though Bell knew Cross was only there out of courtesy and that both he and Keating would leave him to it once he’d done his little briefing. Even McKay would probably busy himself with something else – there was talk of a theft of a large quantity of sausages across town.

"Everybody here? Right – " Bell answered his own question, pulling the top off his marker pen. "This is what we’ve got so far."

"Nothing at all, I would imagine," said McKay, who looked like he wanted to be elsewhere.

"You’d be surprised."

"Witnesses?" said Keating, sounding authoritative.

"Not to the smash and grab itself, but quite a number of interesting suspects in the area.

"Do tell," said McKay.

"OK," said Bell, who turned to the whiteboard and drew a big oval in the centre of the whiteboard, and wrote the word Florist in the middle.

"Is this going to take long?" said McKay.

"Shut up and find out," said Sergeant Cross, who was probably wondering the same thing.

"I spoke to the proprietor, Mr Kent. He said that he saw no-one at all in the street at the time. He also said that he’s had a number of breakages in recent months that he can’t account for and he is beginning to the think that the shop may be – well – haunted." Bell drew another circle on the whiteboard, wrote the word Ghosts in it, and drew a line between it and the word Florist.

"Oh, great," said McKay. "So now we have to investigate suspects in the afterlife."

"Shut up," said Sergeant Cross.

"He did have one other theory," said Bell, "but as he had never seen anyone he thought it unlikely to be the explanation."

"And a ghost is?" said McKay.

"What was the theory?" said Inspector Keating.

"Kent said he was in dispute with a chap called Gallagher." Bell drew a third circle and labelled it. "Gallagher owns the confectioner’s around the corner. Kent said he once had to get some spare change from Gallagher one day a few weeks back because the cash float in the till was low. Gallagher later accused him of not paying up the full amount, and got quite heated about it, but Kent says it was just a mistake."

"So Gallagher smashes his window and grabs a bunch of forget-me-nots in revenge?" said McKay.

"Shut up," said Sergeant Cross.

"I went round to see Gallagher, and he said he’d forgotten all about it – we’re only talking ten quid. But Gallagher had another theory."

"Oh, great," said McKay. Sergeant Cross glared at him. "What was it?

"Gallagher says that there are some property developers interested in the whole block. He’s heard that they can get pretty imaginative when it comes to persuading reluctant tenants to sell up. They are called Astra Holdings." Bell drew another circle on the board and linked it to the centre.

"Intimidation," said Sergeant Cross, pursing his lips with his first show of enthusiasm. "Could be a motive."

"My brother-in-law works for Astra Holdings," said Inspector Keating, with a withering tone. "They’re as straight as a die. Some other property company started that rumour about them."

"Oh," said Sergeant Cross, slumping back in his chair.

"Just a minute, said Inspector Keating, "isn’t there a CCTV camera on that corner of the High Street?"

"I was coming to that," said Bell. "It turns out that the camera is angled on the pub, The Drunken Duck, across the street and doesn’t show the front of the florist shop. But we do know several people who were in the area." Bell left the whiteboard and switched on the trolley-mounted TV and VCR in the corner. Picking up the remote control, he set the tape running. The picture was a mix of black and grey. Faintly discernible was The Drunken Duck. "Here," he pointed to the pavement in front of the pub, "a few minutes earlier was some sort of argument between two men who had just come out of the pub. At one point, one of them – here, you see? – seems to throw something at the other, but misses." Bell paused the tape.

"Blimey, they started early in the day, didn’t they?" said McKay.

"Any idea who they were?" said Sergeant Cross, glaring at McKay again.

"No – I’ll need to go back to the landlord and show him this tape to see if he recognises them." Bell drew yet another circle on the whiteboard and wrote Disturbance –something thrown? in it. Only the lettering didn’t quite fit the circle. The diagram was getting rather crowed. "But there’s a couple of other faces I’ve identified in the street."

"Amaze us," said McKay.

"Shut up," said Cross.

Bell ran the tape on a few seconds before pausing it again. "This is Thomas Fairchild," he pointed to a grey figure. "He’s a known schizophrenic out on Care In The Community – he’s regarded as harmless, according to his psychiatrist, a Doctor Fisher, as long as he remembers his meds. We’ve pulled him in a couple of times for trying to direct traffic on the motorway – presumably he doesn’t always take ‘em. Dr Fisher said Fairchild has a thing about Stargazer Lilies – thinks they are the most beautiful flowers in the world."

"So he took ‘em," said McKay.

"The missing flowers were not lilies."

"Perhaps he’s branching out."

"Dr Fisher said he attended an out-patients clinic twenty minutes later at the General. He didn’t have any flowers on him then. Still," Bell drew on the whiteboard once more, "we can’t rule him out. Then there’s this chap," Bell pointed to the screen. "This is Reggie Blower. He’s an environmental campaigner. He was arrested last year up at Crofter’s Farm for destroying genetically modified maize."

"Does Mr Kent sell genetically modified roses or anything?" said Cross, wearily.

"Kent says of course not. There’s no such thing, apparently."

"You’d still better draw him on the board," said Cross with a hint of irony. "You wouldn’t want to miss him out while you’ve a bit of space left."

"There’s room for just one more," said Bell, as he scribbled with his back to his little audience. "While I was talking about this to Mr Kent, he told me he’d had a customer, a Mr Ledbetter, who had complained that some flowers he’d bought a week ago gave him hay-fever when he’d never had it before." Bell filled one last circle with this name, and added one last line to Florist.

"Was he in the Mafia, this Ledbetter? Did he threaten to have Kent sleeping with the compost before the day was out?"

"No," said Bell. "It was just that, when I asked Mr Kent whether he’d had any dissatisfied customers, Ledbetter was the only one he could think of."

"I never knew it could be so exciting being a florist," said McKay.

Pointing to the mass of circles, lines and scribbles now sprawling out in all directions on the whiteboard, Inspector Keating said, levelly, "Is that it?"

"Yes," said Bell.

"And what do you call that?"

"It’s a spider diagram. It shows all possible lines of enquiry in the case."

"I don’t think you’ve much chance of solving it," said Inspector Keating, rising stiffly to his feet.

"It’s a complete mess," said McKay, as the officers filed out, "that’s what I call it. You won’t catch me getting involved – " he pointed to the diagram – "with that."

"Shut up," said Sergeant Cross, closing the door behind them.

"No," said Bell to himself, shaking his head. "I don’t think I’m going to solve it either."



"Darling, I’m home," said Neil Bell. "Happy anniversary!"

"You remembered!" said his wife, seeing him standing in the doorway. "I didn’t think you’d be able to get me anything – I found your wallet after you left for work this morning."

He handed her a huge and impressive bouquet of flowers. "Well – it has been a busy day… but you know me – I’d always grab you something, no matter what."

THE END

Imagine

(Imagine meeting John Lennon. A short story where a young piano-tuner from a sheltered background helps the composer of one of the world's most loved songs.)

Dave waited at the entrance to the impressive white mansion in Weybridge, the heart of London’s stockbroker belt. A distinctly un-stockbroker-like voice was audible through the gleaming panelled door.

"I’m not saying that I’m not doing any more rock and roll! I’m just telling you, like I’ve told other people before – I’m not going to be wriggling me ass at thirty to Twist and Shout." There was a pause during which someone may have been answering back, followed by: "Lemme get the door."

The door opened, and there stood one of the four most famous men in the world.

"What the hell do you want?"

Dave gulped. He had tried to prepare himself for this moment, but for the good it had done him, he could have spent the trip down from London playing tiddlywinks.

"Gosh!… Mr Lennon."

"Yeah, I know my name – who the hell are you?"

"I wasn’t expecting meeting you. I thought you’d have a servant or something."

"It’s his night off."

"But it’s day-time," said Dave, now slightly puzzled.

"Well, he’s must be having a hard night’s day. So what are you after?

"I’m from Steinway’s. The London store sent me."

John was studying him carefully. "What for?"

"We sold you a piano," said Dave. "I’ve come to have a look at it."

"I wish I had an exciting job like that. Why?"

For a ghastly moment, Dave began to fear he had made some kind of mistake. "You said it needed some attention. Can I just say that we’re delighted you chose one of our instruments? The thought that it will be on one of your records – "

"I’m not letting you in just like that," John interrupted. "How do I know you’re not just after an autograph or a lock of me hair?"

"Please don’t worry – I’m not a fan… Well, I am a fan, actually… of your music. I think it’s marvellous. But that’s not why I’m here. We understand you have a problem with a piano we supplied."

"Don’t you have a card or something?"

"We don’t normally carry them. But I’ve this." Dave produced a piece of paper from a pocket and read out: "The piano was a Walnut upright Model Z. It says here you paid just over a thousand pounds for it. I understand from the store manager that you took a liking to it when you learnt that it had been made in Hamburg."

"Yeah, that’s right." John seemed to relax. "You’d better come in. Welcome to Tittenhurst."

"Thank you. May I say Mr Lennon, that it’s a privilege to meet you. We’re really not supposed to say this but I am really quite an aficionado of your music."

John closed the door and started to lead Dave into the depths of the house. "Yeah, well… that’s nice. D’you wanna cuppa tea?"

Dave was surprised by this kind, simple offer and nodded.

"Hey, Yoko!" John called out. "Put the kettle on – lad here needs a brew. What’s yer name?"

"David. Dave… to my friends."

They entered what was apparently a music room. "Right, Dave, let’s get cracking. One piano here, crippled inside."

Dave stared at the piano for a moment before saying anything. "Why have you taken the front off it?"

"Well – you have the lid open on a grand, don’t you? Like the big white grand over there?"

"So – what’s wrong with it?"

"I’ve only gone and lost me goddam glasses down the front of it, haven’t I?"

For the first time since his arrival, Dave felt relieved. Perhaps this wasn’t going to be too difficult after all. "Oh, I see – I’m terribly sorry, sir. I’ll retrieve them for you right away."

"I’m not usually that clumsy. It was actually Yoko. She came up behind me to give me a cuddle. We got a bit carried away and me specs came off. They weren’t the only thing, either."

Dave was startled. "Good Lord! There’s nothing else in there, is there?"

"Oh no," said John. "Just the specs. I wouldn’t bother but every time I play this… what’s this chord? Something starts buzzing down inside. It’s like fret-buzz on a guitar, when you don’t hold the chord down properly. What chord’s that?"

Dave studied John’s fingers on the keys. "Let me see… It’s F6, in that inversion."

"In what? It’s not one of those aeolian cadences, is it?"

"No, Mr – John. An aeolian cadence is – "

"I don’t wanna know what one is. I still think they sound like exotic birds. Finding out would spoil it."

"But you do know chord names, don’t you? Pardon me for asking, but I was just curious."

"That’s alright. I know chord names on guitar. But I’ve been playing that since I was at art school. I’m composing more stuff on piano now ‘cos I don’t know it as well and I surprise meself."

"That sound like a great idea," Dave said. "I’m really pleased to hear you are still writing. I thought perhaps that when The Beatles – "

"Why does nobody think there’s life after The Beatles?" John suddenly became animated. "We weren’t born Beatles. We had a life before we were Beatles and we’ve got one now The Beatles are over. We were just a band that made it really big, that’s all. It was just a dream. The world will go on without us. It’s over. That’s reality."

"Of course. I’m sorry. I’m going to have to take the bottom panel off."

"I tried to do that but I couldn’t figure out how it worked. I thought maybe it was nailed on."

"No – there are catches just inside. I can reach down this gap over the top of the panel, and… there we are."

"Great," said John. "Just as a matter of interest, how old are you?"

"I’m thirty. Why?"

"You’re the same age as me! Yet you look twice my age. And the way you talk. Take that stupid tie off for a start. It makes you look like Sir Joe Lockwood. Or Dick James. I don’t know which is worse."

"Very well. But… I’m not sure how – "

"Don’t grow old early. Walk before you try to run. And just relax, man. Hey, Yoko, where’s that tea? Do you fancy a fried egg butty?… "

Some time later, the two of them were reclining on the floor, tea mugs and plates scattered around them. The piano was fixed, the refreshments had been welcome, and Dave was finally beginning to unwind.

"You know your way round a piano," said John. "I’ll give you that. Perhaps you can teach me which end I blow into."

"I beg your pardon?"

"I was only joking. How’s your egg butty?

"Ah," Dave laughed. "I’ve never had one before. Best one I’ve ever had!"

John, seeing the joke, laughed back. "So d’you really like me music, Dave? Honestly?"

"Honestly, John? I love it. You create such wonderful images. Some of the chaps at Steinway aren’t convinced, but to me it’s like dreaming outside your head. Specially that one, I am The Walrus. It’s like a Van Gogh painting in music. It’s like you know a dream I’ve had – even if it was a disturbing dream – and you’ve set it to music. How did you do that?

John was suddenly serious. "Dreams you dream together are reality, man."

"Gosh. It’s brilliant. I think you’re a genius."

"Yeah. I am. I know." And then he winked.

Dave hesitated. "I’d love to know how you compose something like Walrus."

John reflected. "Sometimes it’s easy. It just comes to me in little bits. Then I join them up. You hear something and next thing it’s in a song. I loved that noise you made when you brushed all the strings in the piano at once, Dave. How’d you do that?"

"I was leaning on the loud pedal so that none of the strings was damped. All the strings were vibrating at once."

"The world’s biggest chord. It sounded like thunder. I wonder if you could use that somewhere in a song. It’d sound really weird, – not a lot of people would get it. They don’t get that it’s just as good art as anything else. It’s a con – only it’s not a con. If you call it art, then it’s art."

"I suppose it is," Dave nodded. He’d never thought of art like this. "Who’s to say something isn’t art?

"Exactly, Dave. Exactly!" He turned and peered at Dave over his freshly-retrieved spectacles. "I suppose you know all the chords there is?"

"I’ve grade 8 piano but… "

"When we first started playing, before we even became Beatles, we’d travel all the way across town to meet someone who knew a chord we didn’t. Right back when were The Quarrymen, if we heard someone on the other side of Liverpool had a chord they could teach us, we’d get on a bus and go and see him. Just to learn it."

Dave nodded. "But I’m no composer. Not like you."

"Don’t put yourself down. There might be a hit lurking in you right now."

"Well… you’ve got your glasses, John. I think you should find that the buzzing sound has gone now."

"Ta." John leapt up and perched on the piano stool. "Let me just try it. There’s this song I’ve been working on… That’s a C major, I know that one. Oops – got a wrong note there."

Dave was watching carefully. Standing next to one of the world’s two most famous composers while at work was something he would remember till his final hour. "It’s not really wrong, John," he said quietly. "You’ve added a ninth to the chord. You just caught the D with your thumb."

"Is that it? I thought a ninth would make it bluesy, like a seventh. I wanted something a bit softer than that."

"But you’ve left out the seventh. So it does sound, sort of, more dreamy. Debussy might have used it like that."

"C with a ninth added? I wonder if that smart-ass McCartney knows about that."

"I don’t know, John. He might do. Is he a good piano player?"

"He thinks he is." John grimaced. "Specially since that Long and Winding Road. Probably does know a bit more about it than me. So if I play C with a nine then F with a 6. What do you think of that?

Dave listened thoughtfully. "It’s quite nice, isn’t it?"

"I like the idea of a nine," said John talking almost to himself. "I like it being like a dream. Nine is a very special number. I was born on the ninth. I think special things’ll happen, every time the ninth comes round each month. When me and Yoko had our names changed to John Ono Lennon and Yoko Ono Lennon, there’s nine letter ‘O’s’ in our names."

Dave smiled. "And nine letter ‘N’s’"

"N for nine. Nine’s me lucky number. I like that. Lemme try it again. If I just rock me hand, like strumming a guitar softly… What d’you think of that.

Dave could feel the prickle of hairs rising on his arms. "That’s so simple. Yet it’s so beautiful."

"Yeah. That’s going to be me fave rave. Thanks for your help, Dave. I think I’ll do it like that. It does sound better with the nine in."

"It really is lovely," said Dave, drifting into the music. "Peaceful. Uplifting even. What are you going to call it?"

"You’ll have to wait and see, Dave," said John. "It’ll probably be on the next album. Till then, just imagine."

THE END.

Love In Birmingham

(Short humorous story about a romantic tryst in The Midlands city)

Steve would never say he was, as they say, "desperate," but it had been a good few months since he had last been out on a date. In a moment of elation – or, possibly, weakness – after Birmingham City had actually won a match, he confided in his friend, Jerry, this fact, just as they were leaving St. Andrews football ground.

"How long?" said Jerry, choking on his Bovril.

"Many moons," Steve replied.

"I know someone I can set you up with. Her name’s Ann. Leave it to me."

A week later, Jerry said he had got Steve a date.

"How will I recognise her?"

"Easy," said Jerry. "She’ll be in the Bull Ring tomorrow afternoon, dressed all in purple. If you miss her, here’s her mobile phone number."

Steve, however, had his doubts. What if he didn’t like the look of her? To be on the safe side, he took the binoculars he used at football matches with him, so that he could do a reconnaissance of his intended companion, unobserved from a safe distance, and arrived at the Bull Ring twenty minutes early.

He was glad that he had. He spotted a female figure, dressed, unmistakably, all in purple, hovering near the market stalls. All in purple, except for a claret-and-blue scarf.

Just as he was about to sneak away, his mobile rang. It had never occurred to him that Jerry would give his number to her. He didn’t want to be rude.

"Where are we going to meet?" asked a female voice.

Steve had a brainwave. He told her where to find him, then slunk off home.

Next week, Jerry caught up with Steve.

"How could you? How could you do such a thing?" Jerry demanded crossly.

"Do what?"

"Tell Ann to meet you like that?"

"I said, ‘Meet me at the corner of The Rotunda.’ I thought she would have known it was a joke."

"But she was an Aston Villa fan! She was walking round outside the building for three hours!"

The End

Little Miss Perfect

His life was simple and perfect, but not everyone was pleased. So he tried to do better. Then she came along... and that's when things started to get complicated.

"Spare some change, guv’nor"

"Why don’t you try getting a job and doing some hard work, you lazy so-and-so?"

The man was smartly dressed, a typical City type.

"Can I ask you a question?" said Bill. Bill was far from smartly dressed.

"What?"

"What do you work at? What do you do?"

The man gave a patronising smile. "I’m a futures and derivatives trader – if that means anything to you."

"Any particular market?" Bill asked affably.

The man, who had looked as though he was about to hurry away, hesitated. "Well, Commodities actually."

"Metals? Oil?"

"Some oil. I’m not at the Petroleum Exchange."

"I bet Brent Crude at 50 dollars a barrel is causing a bit of a headache for you, isn’t it?"

"It wasn’t to be expected." The man was no longer smiling.

"You’re not happy."

"Nor would you be, with the market so volatile." The man was beginning to look uncomfortable, as if he had entered what he thought was a familiar building but had got the wrong address.

"Well," said Bill. "There you go. I’m happy. I’m not worried about anything at all. And there you are – dashing off to work with the weight of the world’s future oil prices resting on your shoulders. Sure you wouldn’t like to swap places?"

"I, er – "

"‘Cos I wouldn’t."

The man made a sound as close to "Harrumph!" as makes no difference and started to stride off, when Bill called after him: "Don’t bid 55 dollars."

The man halted once more and turned reluctantly. "Why not?"

Bill smiled as he himself began to turn away from the conversation. "Because people don’t like a price that divides exactly by 11. It looks too much like an accountant’s stuck on an extra 10% for himself."

The man glared at him. "You’re wasted down here," he said with a hint of rancour, "do you know that?" With that he marched off in one direction, while Bill sat down on the door step next Soppy Sally and Big Jimmy, a broad grin now creasing his grimy face.

"Poor sod," said Bill. "What a day he’s going to have, eh?"

Soppy Sally was staring at him seriously. "He’s right, you know," she said after a long pause.

"Oil going over 55? No chance – it’ll slip back first and then he’ll be happy – for a few minutes."

"No – not about that," said Sally, "I don’t even know what that means. I mean what he said about you being wasted down here."

The grin evaporated from Bill’s face. "Oh don’t you start," he sighed.

"No, really. You’re young, you’re clever, you know things. What are you doing here, living rough, sleeping on the streets? You could make something of yourself."

Inwardly, Bill cringed. "You’re sounding like my father."

"Maybe he was right," said Big Jimmy. "Are your folks still around?"

"My Dad is," said Bill, "my mother died when I was a kid."

"Why don’t you go and have a word with him? You never know – maybe he could help you go to college or something. Got to be better than sitting here all day, getting piles."



So that’s what started it really. Bill was still on good turns with his father, Archie, despite the "dropping-out" thing, and Dad was only to glad to welcome his prodigal son home. And when the son expressed a firm intention to finish his schooling at college and get some qualifications, his father could not help but be delighted. By the time Bill had got some ‘A’ levels and was all set to go to University, Daddy could hardly believe the reversal of fortune in his only child.

"You must be very proud of yourself."

"I suppose…"

"Aren’t you pleased you’ve become such a success."

"Maybe."

Bill’s father couldn’t understand his son’s lukewarm attitude to his own achievements. "You’re not… just doing this to please me, are you son?"

"No, of course not, Dad," Bill laughed, "I’d never do a thing like that."

"OK," said his father, choosing to let the matter rest – seeing as he couldn’t understand it – "what do you want to want to study at University?"

"What do you want to want me to study?"

"What do I want?" said Archie, surprised. "Let me think. You were always good with numbers and you did well at economics. Why don’t you do a business studies degree?"

"In that case, I’m going to do biology."

His father was crestfallen. "Is that to get back at me in some way – for something I’ve done?"

"No, Dad," Bill assured him. "I just don’t want to end up working in the City."

Bill’s degree course flew past. He got a double first in molecular and physical biology. Bill’s father had retired by now from his job in the fitted-kitchen-bathroom business, and could not help the glow of pride he felt every time he thought of how well his son had turned out. "What are you going to do now?"

"Doctorate," said Bill, without expression. Then he shrugged. "I’ve got this thing about genetic diseases I wanted to check out."

Bill’s father still felt puzzled. "Do me a favour, son. Don’t get too excited or anything."

"Don’t worry, Dad. I won’t"

And so it happened that Bill spent two years at a university in the West Country, doing research in genetics, quietly and with application, without ever once communicating any sense of enthusiasm for what had become a considerable body of work. He even got a paper published in a prestigious journal, but mentioned it only in passing to his father, when he was home one weekend early in the summer, just as he was popping out to fetch some milk. If anything Bill by now seemed to Archie almost morose, sullen even. When he came back with the dairy product, his father was waiting for him.

"What’s up?" his father demanded, as if he was claiming the repayment of some debt his son owed him. "You’ve become a real high-flyer, achievements other people could only dream about, you get your work published, yet you hardly remember even to mention it. What is wrong?"

Bill chewed on his lip. He knew there was no way of evading the issue with his father. "It’s just that – this life… It just feels like, like I’m missing something."

"Well, you are son. I’ve known you were missing something for some time – and you’ve only just realised?"

Bill took a deep breath. "What am I missing, Dad?"

"I should have thought it was obvious! There’s no woman in your life. No love. No fun!"

Bill regarded him steadily. "I think you might be right." He nodded to himself. "Yeah, that could be it. Ever since I met – well, there’s this one woman I met recently… I really like her, but – "

"But what?"

"I don’t know how to get near her. I don’t know how to impress her."

"You are joking. What is she, Little Miss Perfect or something?"

Bill sat down at the kitchen table, interlocked his fingers and covered his mouth. "She could well be," he mumbled.

"Why don’t you ask her out?"

"Because it wouldn’t work," Bill said, shaking his head behind his fingers, like every word was a betrayal of some personal secret.

"How do you know until you give it a go?"

"I know."

His father considered for a while. "Bill – nothing’s ever out-smarted you before. You must have idea you can try."

Bill bit the flesh on the sides of his fingers. "There is one thing. There is a trip being organised for this summer – a canal boat-trip. She’ll be going. Some of my colleagues have been arranging it. She’s an environmentalist – background in biology, natural history, usual stuff. This group are going away for a trip on The Grand Union in two boats. It’s sort of a working holiday – like minds get together, sail through the countryside, discussing nature and so forth. If I tag along, I might just be able to get to know her a little. Then maybe I could ask her out or at least talk to her or something."

Bill’s father narrowed his eyes. "Sounds like it could be tough. A real challenge."

Bill knew what his father was doing but went along with it anyway. "I’ll give it a try."

"What’s her name?"

"Felicity. Felicity fforbes-Akel."

"Is that a fact?" said his father, raising an eyebrow. "I’ll look forward to meeting her."



Felicity fforbes-Akel was not just "some environmentalist." She was widely recognised as one of the leading authorities on ecosystem modelling in the world. The Green Party in Germany came to her for advice. What she didn’t know about Mendel and the hybridisation of peas simply wasn’t worth knowing. She was also very pretty, attracted men like flies and had a tendency to swat them down as such, if they didn’t match up to her quick, witty and articulate intellect. Which was most men, actually. She left a trail of battered and bruised egos across the surface of the planet that she so strove to preserve. Yet still they came – while there was no man in her life, she was regarded as fair game. Game that had a habit of turning on and slaying the hunter. Bill’s father had spoken no less than the truth when he called her Little Miss Perfect. She wanted – demanded – perfection in everything. Bill had spoken rather less than the truth when he said he "rather liked her." He idolised her, he was besotted with her, he was in awe of her. This was the woman he thought would make him happy. He was sure, on this holiday, that he was about to die.

"This boat trip," Bill said to Archie, "I’ll go on it, on one condition."

It was typical of Bill, his father thought, to manoeuvre the issue so it seemed like he was the one forcing Bill to do something – as if that were ever possible! "What condition?"

"That you come with me. If I’m going to be flayed alive, I want some behind me in my corner, for moral support.

"If that’s what it takes," said Archie, in turn pretending that he was under duress, when actually the idea of a summer canal trip and the opportunity to meet some of Bill’s pals quite appealed to him, "then I insist on bringing someone along with me."

"Who were you thinking of?"

"My drinking mate, Freddie. He’s retired too now – could do with getting away for a bit of a break.

"It’s a deal."

It was quite a group, spread over two narrowboats. Dr Aubrey Pinkerton, an authority on ecological systems, Mr and Mrs David Souther who had once had their own natural history programme on TV and who argued a lot, Stephen LeClare of the Worldwide Fund for Nature, Jennifer Tiffin, Felicity’s closest friend and confidant, three other colleagues from Bill’s university department, and of course, Archie and Freddie. Archie has suggested, as it was being decided who should go in which boat, that Bill would be best positioned if he shared a place on the same boat as Felicity, but Bill had said that was getting too close too fast. So Bill, Archie and Freddie, with Bill’s associates took one boat while the rest were in the other.

"Hello, Felicity, you remember me?" Bill said as cheerfully as he could. "I once borrowed your library card off you and I never gave it back." Perhaps not the best gambit in the world.

She thought for a moment. "Aren’t you that post-grad who just published a paper on a theory of DNA-sequence-transposition-generated diseases?"

"Yes, that’s me."

"I thought I recognised you," she said, pausing to think. This sounded promising. "I thought it was flawed in a number of fundamental areas. I’ve already started drafting a critique in response." This did not sound so promising. It was, after all, the main thrust of the research for his thesis. More important, it was supposed to be impressive.

"By the way, Felicity," said Bill, with a nervous cough, "I’d like to introduce you to my father. Dad, this is Felicity fforbes-Akel."

"Heard a lot about you, Miss fforbes-Akel. It’s nice to meet you." Archie thought this would set a convivial tone.

Felicity addressed Bill: "I didn’t know one was bringing guests. Is your father an expert in something?"

"I certainly am," Archie answered when Bill looked as though he couldn’t.

"What’s your field?"

"Bathroom fittings."

"I see." Felicity turned to put her sports bag luggage into her chosen boat. "I was thinking in a little more global terms."

"Doubtless you were, my dear girl, but it still wouldn’t help you fix a leaky tap."

Bill prayed that he could just slip beneath the waters of the marina and drown quietly.

"That went rather well," said Archie to Bill as they clambered aboard their own boat.

"I’m glad one of us thought so," Bill replied heavily.

Things did not improve noticeably from there. Every morning, after being moored up overnight, the party was usually woken by Mr and Mrs Souther having a fight – or "debate" as there preferred to put it, about something or other. Bill tried to get across from his boat to Felicity’s whenever he could think of a pretext, but always found Dr Aubrey and Stephen LeClare in close attendance – when she wasn’t in deep discussion with her pal Jennifer – and, for his pains for trying to be helpful, he was given jobs like emptying the chemical toilet – which kind of ruled him out any romantic overtones until the smell had worn off.

On the second day, When Bill popped aboard asking if there was any way he could make himself useful, Felicity remarked that she was having some difficulty steering the boat. Only too glad to oblige, he took over the tiller and promptly grounded the keel in a silt-bed. Bill noticed the boat was sitting too low in the water. He immediately realised what the problem was – the bilge needed emptying and he promptly switched on the pump to drain it. This got the boat off the mud, but it got Bill into very hot water with Felicity for polluting the canal with diesel-laced mucky water and killing the fish. At a lock, he dropped the windlass in a bank of nettles and while Jennifer tried to retrieve it with the boat-hook, he accidentally hit the throttle, causing Stephen LeClare to crack his head on the hatch. Worse, Dr Aubrey fell overboard. It was difficult to be sure which of these catastrophes upset Felicity most, but if Bill had had to guess, it might have been this last thing. Dr Aubrey seemed especially esteemed in Felicity’s eyes.

Evening conversation at various canal-side pubs did not prove to be a successful second front. If Felicity spoke to him at all, it was with a cold, aloof air – usually to remark on something he’d said she didn’t agree with, think correct, or to remind him of something he’d done. Archie was watching all this carefully. At least his friend Freddie seemed to be having a good time.

One evening, Felicity seemed so overwhelmed with the ennui of it all that she and Jennifer returned to their boat early. As soon as they had left the pub, Archie dragged Bill outside.

"Son – you’ll never get her – I know you’re clever and successful and all but she’s Little Miss Perfect. She wants everything just-so, and you’ll never be able to please her. She wants someone not human. One of these other dweebs will get her ahead of you."

"Thanks, Dad."

Bill, as usual, was loathe to accept his father’s judgement on anything; he decided he would go on a little spying mission and listen at a port-hole to Felicity’s and Jennifer’s conversation. He recognised Jennifer’s voice first.

"I thought you were going to be spoilt for men on this trip," – Bill noticed she was giggling and probably a little tipsy – "Is there anyone who takes your fancy?"

This was just the sort of inside information he was hoping for. Better to know the score than play in the dark.

"There are those three chaps from the university," Felicity answered in a frivolous tone Bill had not had the pleasure of hearing before. But I think if I had to choose, it would be between Stephen LeClare and… "

"Who?" Jennifer was excited in anticipation.

"Dr Aubrey! I think he’s gorgeous!"

"What about that post-grad fellah, Bill – the one who’s brought his dad?"

"You are joking! I’d rather go out with David Souther than him."

"But David Souther’s married and a loud-mouthed bore."

"Nobody’s perfect" she replied.

Bill was, as they say, devastated. Nothing could save him from the awful mess his life had become.

Little did he know they were about to get a lot worse.

He was in no mood to returning to the boat and his father or the pub and the loose collection of folk he of recent times started to call his friends. He thought back to the days of living on the street, with real friends like Soppy Sally and Big Jimmy. He had kept in touch with Big Jimmy over the years and paying him the odd visit – there was no way Jimmy would have come to see him. As for Soppy Sally, everyone had lost track of her – but that was probably something of her own choosing.

Thinking about the old times gave him an idea. He hitched a ride – something he had become adept at doing in his former life – to the nearest big town, even though it was late in the evening. He needed some place to consider what he was doing, to take stock of his life and the changes he had made over the past few years. Somewhere he felt comfortable and familiar. Somewhere he could think.

Every town has one and it wasn’t long before he found it – a run-down part of the urban landscape, seldom visited by the affluent and well-heeled. Scruffy, dirty, all but deserted. It felt like entering his bedroom after a long trip abroad. It was a seasonably warm night. He found the cosy little alcove of a set of loading bay doors behind some industrial-size bins and had the best night’s sleep he had enjoyed in years.

When he woke up, the stiffness in his limbs from sleeping on a stone step was almost pleasantly familiar. The bright light of morning prickled his eyes. The first thing to do, as always, was to go for a walk to get the circulation flowing again. Then perhaps find some breakfast; then: some serious thinking.

He’d found himself an abandoned bagel, still perfectly fresh – a real hunter’s trophy – and he’d treated himself to a cheap mug of sugary tea from a vendor’s van, and felt ready to decide what to do about Project Bill’s Life. He was aware of a reluctance to go back to the DNA disease research, but that didn’t seem important. He was aware of how utterly he had failed with Felicity fforbes-Akel, and that did. This wasn’t going to be easy. He’d wandered into a park and was seated on a bench, rapt in thought, when he was suddenly and unwelcomely interrupted.

"Did you drop that?"

A female figure of singular ugliness was addressing him. It wasn’t so much her appearance – though, in all honesty she was no oil painting, unless someone had splashed the canvass with thinners before the paint had dried – but her manner; that, and the uniform – with a bag across her shoulder – made her look a little like a military man, he thought. But, mostly, it was her attitude. A uniform meant authority and her voice was authoritarian. If there was one thing in life he detested, it was authority.

"Drop what?" he challenged her, querulously.

"Don’t be dumb with me, young man – " young man? he thought; on closer inspection she was not much older than he was – "that soft drinks can underneath your seat."

He put his elbow on one arm of the bench, propped his chin on his hand, tipping his face petulantly up towards her. "Where would I get a soft drink from?"

"Probably the gutter, judging by the state of you. Do you know it’s an offence to drop litter?"

Bill paused to bend forward and look between his legs to look at the offending article. He raised his head and said, "It isn’t mine," and blinked innocently.

"It’s between your feet. That’s as near to property you’ll ever have. Put it in the bin."

"No I won’t – it’s not mine!"

"Yes you will – it doesn’t matter!"

"And if I refuse?"

"You will be fined."

"I won’t pay."

"You’ll go to jail."

"I have a get-out-of-jail-free card."

She pushed his face close to hers. "No, you don’t."

"I know my rights."

"And I know mine. If I say something, it’s right. Pick up that litter, or I will arrest you."

"You wouldn’t."

"Look into these eyes. Am I lying?"

Bill looked. She had a point. "I’ll pick it up."

"It’s too late now – I’ve decided to give you a ticket anyway."

"For what?"

"Dropping litter."

"I didn’t drop it."

"I’d say you did."

"You’d be lying."

"Who would believe you when I have these eyes?"

She had another point. "That’s not fair," he protested mildly.

"I never said it was. What’s your name?" She had extracted a pad of forms from her military-style bag.

He hesitated. It was always appropriate to hesitate at times like this. "Freddie," he said at last. "Freddie fforbes-Akel."

"You’re kidding," she accused.

"Would I lie about a name like that?"

Touché. She wrote it down.

"Are you sure?"

"It was my father’s wish, God rest his soul. He left me an orphan. No-one raised me not to drop litter. How was I to know it was wrong?" Perhaps a bit of pathos would help.

"Address?" She barked. Perhaps not.

"The homeless hostel on Exchange Street." He had overheard it mentioned at the tea-van. Always good to get to know the local environment.

She asked him a couple of other questions, then she wanted to know if he had any identification on him. No, of course not. She persisted – then he had a brainwave – Felicity’s library card – it only showed her surname and initial. "I’ve a ticket for the library where I come from," he said.

"Why would you be in a library?"

"Because it’s warm."

"You wouldn’t lie to me, would you? Because if you lie to me, I’ll have you for conspiring to pervert the course of justice."

"It wouldn’t be much of a perversion. You’d never make it stick."

"Look at these eyes again. I’m a community police officer and this is a no tolerance zone. Or, to put it another way, this is my zone, and I’ve no tolerance. I could make anything on you stick to a non-stick frying pan and fry. You’d feel the heat of my displeasure. I’d make sure if I brought you to book you wouldn’t need a library to keep warm for a long time, if you told me anything other than the truth. Believe me. Everyone else would."

If there was one thing Bill hated more than authority, it was authority’s version of the truth. He hated telling them his truth. He had no intention of telling this authority figure anything truthful.

"I believe you are right," he said, showing her the library card.

She glanced at it. "So your name really is Frederick fforbes-Akel?"

"That’s right," he said, sounding as honest as he could.

"Sign the bottom of the form," she directed, "here."

He was just in the process of signing the form, Mickey Mouse, and preparing to make a run for it – he reckoned in his casual clothes he could outstrip anyone in uniform – when who should come into view, walking down the path, but the real Freddie and Bill’s father, Archie?

"There he is!" said Freddie.

"Bill!" shouted his father, as the two hurried towards the bench.

The community police officer who looked a little like a military man, turned to look at the newcomers then turned back to face Bill. Her eyes seemed to grow until he could see the whites of her eyes all the way round their dark, piercing centres. "Bill?"

Bill swallowed hard. "I’ve no idea who this man is."

Freddie overheard this. "How can you deny your own father, Bill?"

"Your father?"

Bill wanted to look sideways to see how far a single bound would free him. But she would see his eyes move and give him away. "What’s your name?" he asked, as conversationally as he could.

"I’m your worst nightmare, but you can call me Doris. I say again. Father?"

"I can understand how the concept might be alien to you. He is my father but we’re not really close. In fact, he’s closer to that chap he’s with, if you see what I mean."

Doris made the error of looking round. Bill made no mistake as he fled across the sedate bowling green with a running-track sprint. Doris glared after him. "You can run," she said to herself, but you can’t hide, Mr – " she looked down at her pad – "Mickey Mouse!!!" Doris’s anger boiled over. She swore she would track down Bill if she had to chase him to the ends of the Earth. The Romans’ pursuit of Hannibal would be a mere bagatelle in comparison, she vowed, if he wanted to play pinball with her.

Still furious, she arrested Archie and Freddie for loitering with intent, soliciting, and performing a lewd act in a public place, just to help her calm down.

And so Bill started his first day on the run. Every police car that came near him put him into a panic, and with good reason, because on every occasion they started chasing him. Goodness only knew what story Doris must have told them. He could not go back to the canal, the to the boat trip and his friends whom he now missed slightly. He needed to hide. He felt sure he could loose himself in the town. But he could find no respite from the hunt. Hell had no fury like an officer of the law belittled. He moved on to another town and things were no better. Doris tracked him down inexorably. In every town he went to, just as he found his feet, she found him.

He had to admit, albeit grudgingly, that he was developing a respect for her persistence, as well as her ability seemingly to follow – even predict – his every move. He gave up trying to hide in the town and moved to the city. Firstly, Birmingham, but she was hot on his trail – too obvious perhaps, being at the end of the Grand Union Canal. Then Manchester, but to no avail. Next Liverpool and he nearly walked into a trap. Then Leeds – once again she was waiting for him.

He could not risk returning to the university. He managed to contact them and made a vague description of his circumstances and they merely replied, in effect, that he had to submit his thesis with six years of starting for it to count, two of which had elapsed and beyond that they seemed not to care. He wasn’t too concerned about this; he might want to return to his PhD at some point – the thought of all his work going to waste chafed him mildly; as he said to himself, he just liked to have as many options as he could and keep them all open. He dare not risk, for a variety of reasons, to attempt to approach Felicity – she appeared more than ever to belong to a different world, one he could never reach. He wrote to his father on a few occasions but never risked leaving a return address.

Yet, still, he found himself, for all his care and cunning, just one step ahead of his arch-nemesis, Doris. There was apparently nothing this woman would not do to get her man.

He went down into the very depths of the city, places nobody outside knew, a world within a world, a world he had grown used to and could understand, move in, get lost in, but where no outsider should be able to follow. She followed. She knew the streets as he knew the streets, she even seemed to know how he walked the streets, where he would eat, where he slept. He was accepted by other street-dwellers wherever he went but, wherever he went, he got reports that "a woman from the law" had been asking about him. Sometimes it was the previous day, sometimes a few hours earlier, sometimes just a few minutes before. The occasions where he just managed to elude her were growing. And she never gave up. Why did she trail him so? How did she know where to look? He couldn’t help feeling that, in a different life, they could have been friends. Certainly, or so it appeared, they would have had a lot in common to talk about.

How did she do it? No matter where he hid, she was on to him. It was as if she could read his mind, know his very soul even. He couldn’t help admire her, her tenacity, her cunning… But. He was running out of place to hide and of patience to run. He was going to have to resort to something drastic. Fortunately, he had left himself one option here also.

He had to go and see Big Jimmy. It was not a step he chose lightly. Big Jimmy had been a special friend. The one thing Bill didn’t want to do was to bring this authority figure into his neighbourhood, bothering him. It would also mean a farewell. It would be the last time he saw Big Jimmy. But the more he thought about it, the more he realised there was no other way out. Big Jimmy held the answer. Literally.

During one of his occasional visits from his new life to Big Jimmy, Bill had given him something to take into safe-keeping. A package. A package, containing something potentially very valuable. Bill had anticipated this, something he might need in his new life, and, as he had said before, he liked to have as many options as possible and keep them all open. He headed, by a circuitous route down to London, managing, on the way, to send a message to Big Jimmy that he was coming.

"Good to see you, Jimmy."

"Aye, and you, mate. Sounds like you’ve been having a rare old time of it."

"You heard?"

"Everybody’s heard. We may not move in your high-flying circles, but gossip’s a commodity – which you may remember from when you were one of us."

"One of you… I sometimes wish… Never mind."

"Why do you think she’s after you? She doesn’t fancy you, does she?"

Bill frowned. "I wouldn’t think so."

"Do you fancy her? Have you been leaving a trail she can follow?"

"Of course not!" Bill expostulated. "Don’t be daft."

"Alright – you don’t have to bite my head off."

"You’ve got it?"

"Here you go," said Big Jimmy, handing Bill a sealed package.

"You really haven’t opened it?" said Bill, scrutinising Jimmy’s face.

"Of course not… Well, maybe just a little."

"Of course you did. I would have. You saw what’s in it?"

"Passport, driving-licence, birth certificate, credit cards – a whole new identity. You’re going away and you’re not coming back."

"That’s right, Jimmy. I’m sorry. This is going to be goodbye… You could have sold all that stuff for a lot of money."

"Aye, I could have."

"I’d have paid you more."

"I know."

"I’ll give you money now, if you like."

"There’s no need, lad."

"Payment for holding the package."

"Alright, a few quid, but that’s all."

"One other thing," said Bill, "you won’t tell… anybody, anything about – "

"I didn’t even look at the name on anything. So I couldn’t even tell her, even if she used thumbscrews."

"Thanks, Jimmy, you’re a gem."

"Besides, it’s looks like I won’t have to. She’s standing right behind you."

Bill froze, Just for a moment, he thought Big Jimmy might be joking. But two things suggested that this was not the case. Firstly, Jimmy wasn’t really noted for is sense of humour. Secondly, he could feel the presence that had been on his tail for so long. Only this time it was very, very close.

"Hello, Bill," said the oh-so-familiar voice he had heard so many times in his dreams.

"Hello, Doris. You’ve caught up with me at last."

"You knew I would."

"I was wondering what took you so long." He turned to face her. Somehow she looked different. Still the same outfit, still the same outlook, but not the same anonymous figure of threat. She looked almost… well, desirable.

"You’re under arrest, on a list of charges too long for me to go into here. Anything you say will be used against you in any way possible."

"Doris, I wish to make a statement."

"Yes?" she said without interest, reaching for her cuffs, her finest pair of Kenwood Rigid-Locks; she had been waiting for this moment for a long time.

"Doris, I think I love you."

Doris stared at him, speechless. Her eyes went all white a bit like the way they did when she first tried to apprehend Bill. But this time, it was with astonishment. She was not used being astonished. Even her face was astonished at showing an expression of astonishment, and it was astonished also.

"Love me?" No-one had ever said that to her before. She was not sure the words made any kind of sense in the real world.

"Yes," said Bill, "love you." You know me better than anyone else I’ve ever met – anyone alive. You know my likes and dislikes, you know where I like to go, you know the places I know. You know everything I do."

"Love you?"

"You do?" said Bill. "You love me?"

"I – " she began, but ran out of words. She dropped her cuffs on the ground. "I don’t know. What does it feel like. I’ve never loved anyone before."

"Like you want to stop running. Like you’ve found someone you want to spend the rest of your life with. Like you’re home."

Doris turned away to think. Stared at a wall, like the uneven pattern of poorly lain bricks were in a code that might hold the answer. "Yes," she said at last. "Yes, it does feel like that. Ever since you signed your name Mickey Mouse on my ticket. Funniest thing anyone’s ever dare do with me. Ever since we first met."

"Love at first sight," said Big Jimmy.

"Shut up" Bill and Doris both said to Big Jimmy, although they were both staring at each other. Then Bill turned to Big Jimmy and gave him back the package.

"Here," he said, "you might be able to sell this for a few quid."

"What’s in that?" said Doris, although she already knew.

"Believe me," said Bill, facing her once more, "you don’t want me to tell you."



It was, as they say, a whirlwind romance. They got a special licence and were married within six weeks. Big Jimmy declined to come but he sent his best wishes on a postcard, bizarrely, from Acapulco. Some of Bill university friends attended and one was Best Man. Felicity fforbes-whatever-her-name-was wasn’t invited – rumour had it she had married Dr Aubrey and the two of them were occupied writing pretentious articles for heavyweight journals describing the dire peril the planet was in. Bill’s father Archie was there, in a state of delighted bewilderment at the way things had turned out: "Are you sure she’s the one you want?" he said to Bill, before the ceremony.

"Yes, quite sure," said Bill. "She really is my Little Miss Perfect."
Archie remained bewildered, but luckily Freddie was there too, helping Archie drink too much.

For a honeymoon, the happy couple had been of one mind. They were going to go on a tour of the countryside, stopping at any bed-and-breakfast that took their fancy, and avoiding cities as much as possible, until they felt ready to come home – wherever that might be – when they were ready and not before. Their starting point would probably be somewhere near the university in the West Country which had agreed to take him back so that he could finish his PhD. They decided they would start in this general area and work their way in a rough clockwise direction around the country.

"You’re not hoping you might just bump into Felicity fforbes-Akel before we set off, are you?" said Doris.

"You knew about her?" said Bill.

"Of course," said Doris. "I backtracked where you had come from and found your little boating trip. Everyone was impressed by your efforts to impress her. Everyone except her, of course."

"No," said Bill, shaking his head. "She’s the last person I ever want to see."

As they set off westward down the motorway, little were they to know that Dr Aubrey and Felicity fforbes-Akel-Pinkerton were in fact just a few miles ahead of them in their new hydrogen-fuel-cell-powered four-by-four, which had just broken down; they had brought the huge but eco-friendly vehicle to a halt, as irony would have it, in a large diesel spill on the hard shoulder.

"Don’t you worry," my Sweet," said Dr Aubrey, "I’ll walk to a breakdown phone and call for help." (Felicity did not approve of Dr Aubrey having a mobile phone either.)

"But who are you going to call? The AA, the RAC or NASA – after all, they designed the power cells."

"Let’s see who gets here first," was all Aubrey could think of to say. He was just about to set off when he realised that diesel oil was all over his boots. He stepped on to the grass verge and was trying to scrape the offending fluid off, when he lost his footing and fell down the bank out of sight. At least he had not tumbled the other way and landed on the slow lane.

"Aubrey! Aubrey! What’s happened," cried out an alarmed Felicity at the sudden disappearance of her husband. "Where’ve you got?" She clambered out of the passenger door and stepped straight into the slippery mess her husband had trodden in.

"I’m down here," he wailed faintly. "I think I’ve twisted my ankle."

Felicity looked down the bank and saw her husband in an ungainly tangle with hedge of meadowsweet.

"Hang on, I’m coming," she called. She never spoke a truer word; just one step and she too slipped and hurtled down the bank to join Aubrey in the bush.

"Are you alright?" said Aubrey, breathless and anxious.

"I – I think I’ve twisted my ankle too," she gasped.

"How are we going to get out of here?"

Meanwhile, cruising along the motorway came Bill and Doris.

"Do you know," said Doris, "I’ve never been happy like this before?"

"I know what you mean," said Bill. "I’ve never been happier." It was the first conversation between them for some miles. It was as if they were reading each other’s minds.

Both saw the large four-by-four, pulled over on the hard shoulder, door open, but no-one in attendance.

"Something wrong here," said Doris."

"We should check," said Bill.

"Right."

Doris pulled over. They checked out the exotically powered vehicle but could find no trace of its passengers. Something made them both feel they should look further.

"Damn – I’ve got Diesel on my shoes."

"Me too."

Just as they topped the rise, they saw the two unhappy eco-warriors, both waist-deep in a hedge.

"Felicity!" said Bill.

"Help!"

"We’d better get them out," said Doris.

Just at that moment, the pair of would-be rescuers both lost their footing, and tumbled down the slope towards its earlier victims, with a cry of dismay.

Now there would be some fun.

THE END

On The Beat

(Short humorous story when a cop meets his favourite rock star)

"Claudia Raine?"

"You got me."

"I’m…"

"Call me Claudie. Come in," she said casually and walked away from the door.

The most immediately noticeable feature of the room – apart from the complete and utter mess, piles of clothing draped over half-hidden furniture, every surface covered with empty beer bottles, dirty glasses, crushed cans, overflowing ash trays, unidentifiable bric-a-brac and general rubbish – was a speaker cabinet with four – four! – huge drivers, standing on cheap set of open and overflowing drawers. That and the guitars. The guitars were all hanging neatly as if to attention along the wall from the kind of fixtures gardeners use for spades and the like in tool sheds. There was an Ovation Classic, two Fenders, both a Telecaster and a Stratocaster, a Gretsch Tennessean, a Yamaha 12-string and some others.

"You from Mojo?"

He stepped cautiously into the room. "No, I’m from…" but at that moment he stumbled over some cabling snaking across the floor. For a moment, he thought he was going to have to choose between falling on to a small television on the floor, or an expensive-looking record deck complete with vinyl LP perched precariously on a chair. He grabbed a littered table, causing a plant pot to fall off the back.

"Never mind," Claudie said. "I got a loose schedule today. You can interview me anyway. Wanna beer?"

"No… Thank you." Before he could say more she had gone into an adjoining room that looked like a kitchen except for the fact that a bomb seemed to have gone off in it. There was a crash, a tearing noise, and the sound of a bottle being popped with an opener.

He took in the rest of the room. Over to his right was an ugly set of Ikea CD racks, packed to the top. At least all the CDs were put away. Looking closer, he saw the CDs were stacked in alphabetical order. Under what might have been a bed were piles of sheet music, some in folders, stapled or paper-clipped together. On the nightstand, an ash-tray was grimly trying to contain a mountain of roll-up stubs, next to a Walkman with tiny earphones.

"What magazine are you with, then?" She was stood in the doorway with a bottle of Stella in her hand.

"I’m not with a magazine, Ms Raine."

"Oh?"

"I’m Detective Constable Burton, Greater Manchester CID."

"Wow," she said, not seeming overly impressed. How do I know you’re a po-lice man? Where’s your uniform?"

"I’m in plain clothes."

She took in jeans and jacket at a glance. "You’re telling me, honey. You’re a walking style famine. Don’t they teach you how to dress? To blend in?"

"What’s wrong with my clothes?"

"Let’s just say you’d look better in your uniform. I could have tried your helmet on."

Burton turned away and, stepping carefully to avoid standing on anything, pulled a pair of headphones from where they were hanging from a drawer.

"You got a warrant to search these premises?"

"I’m not here to conduct a search," he said, stiffly.

"Betcha glad about that," she said with a grin, and punched his shoulder with her bottle hand. "So what can I do for you, Detective Constable Burton? You come to stitch me up?" She laughed at her own joke. "Burton – stitch-up. Geddit?" She propped the beer bottle against a cushion on the sofa and began rolling a cigarette.

"I’m here about an alleged incident at the Band On The Wall pub last night."

"You call that an incident? That was an event."

Burton had interviewed lots of people, over the years of his career, about alleged incidents. Usually, there weren’t too happy to be speaking to him. They had a tendency to latch on to word alleged, because that could mean that the incident hadn’t actually happened. He liked people to think they were in trouble because it tended to make them more co-operative, as they gave their version of the facts. He especially wanted Claudia Raine to take the situation more seriously. After all, he had an objective to achieve in being here. He studied a poster Blu-tacked to the wall. On it was the word Apocalypse.

"Have you been with Apocalypse long?"

She was licking the edge of her Rizla and paused a moment before answering. "A while," she said, and started hunting for a lighter.

"Before that you were with The Gin Crew, weren’t you?"

She looked mildly impressed. "Hey, that’s right." She held up her tobacco pouch. "D’you want one."

"No, thank you."

"I split from them months ago," she said tossing the pouch and the lighter on to the table. "Personal differences."

He bent down and retrieved the plant he’d knocked over and put it on the table, noting its familiar-shaped leaves, and looked at her, impassively.

"Got that from an admirer," she said. "Guess he couldn’t afford flowers. Such a little plant, too. Under eight inches tall."

"Quite," he said, and began to pick up other items from the top of the drawers. There was a small, round-topped box about the size of a packet of cigarettes, with the word Farter printed on it, and a can of Right Guard.

"I thought you said you didn’t have a search warrant," she said.

"I’m not searching. Just looking. Men’s deodorant?"

"It gets hot on stage. Girlie stuff can’t hack it." She still sounded relaxed, conversational. "What was this alleged incident?"

"It is alleged that you assaulted a member of the public during your act."

"I did?" She looked genuinely puzzled.

"You hit him with the neck of your guitar."

"It was a headless bass," she corrected him.

"You nearly turned him into a headless fan," he said, with an edge to his voice.

"The twat jumped up on stage. I was just fending him off."

"You fended him right off the edge of the stage into the audience. He needed stitches afterwards."

"He stumbled. It’s a long way down. Needed stitches, did he?"

"So did the member of the audience he landed on."

"Haven’t you heard? It’s lonely at the top. Or it’s supposed to be. If I hadn’t done it, security would have. And they wouldn’t have been so polite about it."

Burton could see he still wasn’t getting her rattled. He continued to inspect objects on the drawers, picking up the round-topped box. "What is this, exactly?"

"The Farter? It’s an effects pedal. Like a fuzz box. For lead guitar."

"Oh." He nudged a crushed beer can off the drawers and spotted a lump of something dark and crumbly wrapped in Cling-film. "And this?"

It was the first time she had looked uncomfortable. "If I told you, you wouldn’t believe me. And I’d have to kill you."

"Looks like a full ounce. Claudia Raine, I am arresting you on suspicion of possessing a controlled substance. You do not have to say anything, but you may harm you defence if you fail to mention when questioned something you later rely on in court. Anything you do say…"

"It’s Oxo."

"What!?"

"It’s Oxo. I carry it around with me at gigs. You get dehydrated and lose a lot of salt with sweating. I like to have a drink made of that when I come off stage."

"What’s wrong with keeping it in the foil wrapping?"

"The foil tears. You see, I wear leather pants and they’re very tight. It’s safer wrapped up like that. See how crushed it is. Plus I don’t want to be known as some freak who carries Oxo around in her pocket."

"You must think I’m daft!"

"You arrest me for possession of a stock cube and everybody’ll think you’re daft."

"And what about the assault?"

"Get real. The twat fell off the stage. Five hundred people saw him. It’s not as if I swung my guitar like an axe and brained him. You’d never get that to stick. And you know it."

Burton sniffed the Cling-film-wrapped package. There was an unmistakable savoury aroma. He was wrong-footed. He played his last card. "Who’s to say I might find something else in my pocket on the way to the station?"

"My lawyers. Klein, Mullin and Mansfield. You’ve heard of them, no doubt."

He put the little package back down on the table. They seemed to be at an impasse.

"There might be a way out of all this," he said.

"I thought there might be." From her tone, Burton finally realised that Claudia Raine had been around a little and was way ahead of him from the moment she opened the door. She knew people every bit as well as he did. Everybody wanted something.

"I thought it a shame," he said, somewhat at a tangent to their foregoing conversation, "when The Gin Crew split up."

"Why was that?" She was prepared to be patient.

"I… I used to enjoy your gigs."

"Why, thank you kindly, sir."

"I went to a lot of your gigs."

"I know."

"How do you know?"

"Someone who dresses the way you do?" she snorted, and stubbed out her cigarette.

"Have you any idea how boring it can get being in the Police?"

"Well, it got to Sting in the end. Someone should write a song about it."

Burton coughed and studied his shoes. " I have written a song."

"Oh, God. I was scared you might have."

"Would you like to hear it."

"Arrest me now. I’ll even plead guilty."

"I was hoping I might be able to get it to you when you were in The Gin Crew. But they split up. Then I caught your act last night. And that idiot tried to get at you on stage and… well, that was the end of him. But it gave me an idea."

"To commit police harassment?" She swigged her beer.

"Something like that." He looked longingly at the beer. His throat was very dry. "I could make a real nuisance of myself. If I wanted."

"I wouldn’t argue with that."

"My colleagues and I could always make a visit to you backstage. What would you say the odds were against us finding something.

Claudia tapped the rim of the beer bottle against her lips. She seemed to decide. "What’s this song, then?"

"You really want to hear it?"

"Oh my," she said, with mock melodrama, "do I really have a choice?"

He shuffled his weight from one foot to the other. Something fell off the drawers behind him and knocked over a double angle spot lamp.

"That’s criminal damage," she said.

"It’s arranged for piano," he said, pulling a sheaf of paper from his jacket pocket. "Do you play piano?"

She shoved a heap of clothing off what Burton had presumed to be a desk, and revealed a Roland keyboard. "A little. I’ve got Grade Eight. What’s it called?"

"Love Patrol."

"Oh, Jesus," she sighed, and took the papers from him. She studied them for a moment, then pulled up a practice amplifier as a piano stool. "Perhaps we could do it in an ironic post-modern sense. Go and put the kettle on."

Burton navigated his way to the kitchen. As he got to the door, she threw the Cling-film package to him. "Make us both a cup."

He was gone a few minutes, time spent partly hunting for two mugs, and washing them. She played snatches of the chords he had written, and la-la-ed fragments of melody. He came back in and sat beside her, handing her a mug.

"Well," she said, taking a long swig from her mug, "the lyrics are crap but no-one ever hears them. And we’ve got to change the title. But it’s got a good hook." She took another drink. "A very good hook. I just might be able to do something with it."

He took a long drink from his mug and pulled a face. "This," he said, "is the strangest Oxo I’ve ever tasted."

"I didn’t say it was pure Oxo. Great, isn’t it?"

The End

Coda

Summary
Surrealist humour with musical medical twist

For some weeks I had been experiencing feelings of discord. During quiet moments when I was resting, reading a newspaper or memorising recipes, I would detect unseemly rumblings from within my torso. I could feel my internal organs were out of tune, little overtures of muscular spasms, uncontrolled movements from within. At first I dismissed these as normal bodily functions, the background to everyday life. Yet I knew the harmony of my body had been disturbed. Eventually I could sustain it no longer and visited my physician.

As I gave a recital of my symptoms, he became a silent audience, listening to my theme of mounting disquiet. I finished my piece.

"What does it sound like to you, Doctor?" He refused to be drawn into an opinion. "I think you should go for some tests."

I felt several grace notes of alarm tinkle down my spine, and my solar plexus tightened like cat-gut. My temples hummed with dismay. I pressed. He gave an inscrutable look.

"These things are open to several interpretations. Let me arrange the tests for you."

"Tests! What sort of tests?" I exclaimed, staccato.

"We need to make some recordings. Then I will be able to tell you more."

So, within weeks, a booking was made for me to visit the local hospital. I was accompanied by a kindly nurse. I had to take various substances for some of the run-throughs to work properly. I had tubes inserted into places I prefer not to mention.

I returned to my Doctor’s.

"What do the tests reveal?" I asked.

"There’s no easy way to break this to you," he recited. "You need to compose yourself. It seems you may have an ensemble of musicians in your lower intestine."

"What?" I exclaimed. I felt sick to the pit of my stomach. "How is that possible?" A threnody of despair raged in my ears. I could not understand what he was saying.

"You should know that the body is like a place of many galleries. Sometimes it’s like the pits." He put on a studious face as he introduced me to the facets of his world that he was taught at medical school but which are unknown to the layman. "Normally, these work in tune with one another, to their own natural rhythm. But the body is a complicated thing. Sometimes you get the odd busker developing in there, sometimes a duo, occasionally a quartet."

"I have never heard of such a thing," I gasped, my panic reaching a crescendo. "Surely it is very rare."

"It has a more common time than you would think."

I cast my mind back to television programmes that I had seen between those with my beloved recipes. Now I came to think of it, I had heard of ailments like this. I had just not taken much notice. I had always been a healthy person. You never think something like this could happen to you. New questions began to transpose themselves from the recesses of my memory.

"Are they likely to be – instrumentalists?" I asked.

"Instrumentalists, singer/songwriters, sometimes a capella groups. Let’s hope it’s not a dance band."

"A dance band!" I gasped. "Could it be as bad as that?"

"Dance, jazz, who knows? Let’s just hope we caught it before the malady lingers on. Otherwise, there is a danger it could turn into a whole orchestra. You will need to go for more tests."

I returned to his surgery a few weeks later. His expression was grim and I knew it must be bad news.

"Go ahead, Doctor. Tell me."

"The tests reveal," he spoke with a slight rallentando, "unmistakable signs of a brass section. The disease is more advanced than we thought. Are you sure you didn’t have more obvious symptoms earlier? Auditions, perhaps?"

"What can I say, Doctor? I thought perhaps I was eating too much roughage. I’ve always had obbligatos in the morning. What do we do now?"

"There are four areas which we can try in concert. Drugs, radiation, surgical rearrangement, and alternative therapies such as relaxation and visualisation."

"But I was relaxed, taking a tacit rest, until I found out a symphony was being rehearsed in me. What is visualisation, anyway?"

"Visualisation is a technique you can do for yourself. Try to imagine what the orchestra looks like. Has it got a string section? Are the woodwinds organised? Is there a first violin or solo pianist? Most importantly, can you see the conductor?"

"Why is he so important?"

"Because if you can find the conductor, force him from his podium, and remove his baton, the orchestra cannot play, and your condition will be beaten, four to the bar. The recital will be over. You will go into remission and recover."

"Is there anything else?" I asked, impromptu.

"There is just one thing," said my Doctor – I could tell from the timbre of his voice that he did not hold this alternative any more highly than an improvisation. "You could try standing anywhere there is a lot of noise."

"Noise?" I echoed, "why?"

"Noise interferes with practice sessions, affects rehearsals and destroys the coherence of the orchestra’s repertoire."

"I’ll try it," I said.

It was to be a most unpleasant experience. At first, it was difficult to find anywhere cacophonous enough. I sought out road-works, building sites – anywhere there were pneumatic drills in use. I would come home with my ears ringing. I stood on the central reservation of motorways – they were not loud enough, and too middle of the road – I could feel the exposition of a piece developing within me. I had a lucky break with the onset of the holiday season – the local airport provided many charter flights, but even with take-offs every few minutes, there was too much silence in between. My ears told me all was not well. I returned to my Doctor.

"Things are getting worse," I told him. "I think I can recognise the style of a composer."

"Who do you think it is?" he asked. "It could be hard to Handel. And if it’s a variation of Elgar, that would be an Enigma."

"Beethoven," I said.

He sighed. "At least it’s not Strauss," he said with signs of relief. "A condition like this can sometimes be a Strauss-related illness. If it was Strauss it would be – well – goodnight Vienna."

"Thank God," I murmured. "It’s like that old-fashioned dance – one minuet you’re in, the next…"

"You’re out. Do you detect a time signature?"

"No, but I think the key is F major."

His brow furrowed. "Could be the Pastoral. Anything else?"

"The second movement may be molto vivace."

"Ah – you have been fooled by the relative minor." His experience clearly showed in these matters. "That would make it the Ninth Symphony."

"Oh no," I said, "not the Chorale! Not the Ode To Joy."

He put a reassuring hand on my shoulder. "Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that," he said with a gentle air. "That’s the finale."

Autumn approached, and with it, the opportunity to buy fireworks. I purchased as many bangers as I could, crackerjacks, rip-raps, screaming banshees. Eventually my neighbour complained when my hat blew off my head and landed on the roof of his conservatoire, traumatising his wife.

Finally, in desperation, I went clubbing. Night after night I would stand next to the speaker stacks, soaking up house music until I was overwhelmed with nausea – usually within two minutes. I persevered, until I was staggering home in the small hours, crazed with tinnitus.

I returned to my Doctor after another round of tests. I was on the brink of despair. The house music had been my last hope.

My Doctor looked overjoyed, the first time I had seen him smile in months. "The results of your latest tests have just come back. You are in the clear! I’ve never seen anything like it. No strings, no woodwind, no percussion. Even the timpani have gone."

I was astounded, "Are you sure?" I said. This seemed too much to hope for after all I had endured, and my mind resonated with doubt.

"Your orchestra has gone. You have no music in you."

Still I hesitated. "It’s just that… well, every time I walk I think I can hear a squeaking sound coming from my bottom." It was no time for false modesty.

"Show me," he said. I walked round his consulting room. "Hear that?" I said, "that faint high pitched sound?"

He looked dubious. "Let me ask my colleague for a second opinion. The tests were very conclusive."

We went into his colleague’s consulting room and my Doctor explained the situation. "This patient of mine believed he had an orchestra growing internally."

"What?" said the second doctor. "Is he mad?"

"And now he believes he can still hear tunes coming from his bottom when he walks."

"Walk around a little," said the second doctor. I did as I was instructed.

"What do you think?" said my Doctor to his colleague.

"I don’t know," he said, with a shake of his head. "It just sounds to me like some silly arse whistling."

THE END