Robin McKinley's Blog, page 73

Aaaaaaaaand with a flourish of trumpets

 

In honour of Peter’s 85th birthday today*, I wish to announce the Hottest News of All:

Peter’s NEW NEVER BEFORE PUBLISHED NOVEL, IN THE PALACE OF THE KHANS, is available as a download on amazon: 

http://www.amazon.co.uk/Palace-Khans-ebook/dp/B00AAR6R4G/ref=la_B000AP8MOG_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1353616551&sr=1-1

 

And here’s the start of the first chapter, which you can read as you limber up your clicking finger, and unholster your credit card. . . .

 

CHAPTER 1

________________________________________

Day 1. (28/7/2007, if you want to be exact, but Day 1’s easier.)

Hi there. This is from Dara Dahn, capital of Dirzhan. That’s way out east. Next but one and you’re in China.

DD is a twin city, like Budapest (been there) and that place in the US (haven’t). Looking out of my window, this side of the river’s Dahn and the other side’s Dara. That thing bang in the middle, right on the river (see photo), is the Palace of the Khans. Now, that is one cool building. That’s where the president lives…

“But the man’s a monster!” said Nigel’s mother, not looking up from her book.

“What kind of a monster?” said Nigel.

“You don’t want to know,” said his father.

“How do you know what I want to know?” said Nigel. “We’re all supposed to be keeping a blog for Mr. Udall. He doesn’t want to plough through a lot of stuff about the height of mountains and the length of rivers. ‘The president of the People’s Thingummy of Dirzhan is a monster’ would be a cool start.”

“People’s Khanate,” said his father. “Hum. I shall have to think about that.”

“If you don’t tell me I’ll put it in anyway and post a copy to the Daily Mirror,” said Nigel. “‘Ambassador’s Son Calls President Monster.’”

“And if I do you won’t?”

“I’ll show you before I post it so there’s time to change anything you don’t want me to say.”

“You should be negotiating over this dam, not the crew we’ve got. All right. The deal includes not talking to anyone about what I tell you outside this room. We detected three listening devices inside the embassy when we first moved in, quite sophisticated ones.”

“Wow!” said Nigel. “They wanted to know stuff about the dam, I suppose.”

The dam was a big deal for Nigel’s father.  He’d been Trade Secretary in Santiago until a year ago, and it didn’t look as if he was ever going to get a move up. Dirzhan hadn’t had an embassy at all then, only an office where the Ambassador to Kyrgyzstan next door showed up once a month or so. Then the project for a British consortium to build an immense new dam in the Vamar Gorge had come up, and the British had decided that they’d better have a real ambassador on the spot. Nigel’s father had dealt with one of the companies in the consortium before, so he got the job.

Dirzhan was in the back of beyond of Central Asia, but there was one big plus side. The president of Dirzhan had been so keen on having a real British ambassador in his crazy little country that he’d simply turfed out the owners of an old family hotel, large enough to hold an apartment for the ambassador as well as the actual embassy, and as a result here Nigel was having breakfast in a gorgeous room looking out over the roofs of Dara Dahn.

“You still haven’t said what kind of a monster,” he said.

“A monster of efficiency, I suppose. Sometimes he appears to have no decent human feelings at all. Apart, perhaps, from his affection for his daughter. If someone threatens his prestige or stands in his way he has them removed, which may well mean that they end up dead. Usually it’s done by members of his bodyguard, but if he wants to make a special point of it he does it himself.

“In the early days of the dam project—before my time here—there was a disagreement in his cabinet about who should be the main contractors. Two of the ministers had taken bribes from an Italian bunch. They misjudged the situation and argued their case a bit too forcefully. The President gave them plenty of rope, until without warning he took a gun from a drawer and shot them both dead.”

Nigel felt the blood drain from his face. There was something about people getting violently killed. It was the stuff of the old nightmares he still sometimes had. He’d never seen it happen in real life, of course, and in video games and films he’d learnt how to armour himself against the shock. But here, safe, relaxed, having a luxurious breakfast alone with his parents, his mother reading while she ate, his father holding forth about something while he spread his butter in an exactly even layer…

Neither of them seemed to have noticed. He pulled himself together.

“He’s a Varak, from the north,” his father was saying. “They’re the smallest group, but they tend to hold positions of power because neither the East nor the West Dirzh, in the south, trust each other an inch. If they were to co-operate they’d run the country, but they can’t, so they let the Varaki do it.”

“Do they think he’s a monster?”

“Hard to say. He’s got complete control of the media, and ordinary people wouldn’t tell an outsider what they think. My guess is that if there were ever such a thing as a free and fair election in Dirzhan he’d get about eighty per cent of the vote, simply because he makes the country function.

“He was a lecturer at Moscow University when the USSR fell apart twenty years ago, and his half-brother, who was the local chief of police in Dirzhan, seized power in the chaos and declared independence. He brought our chap back from Moscow and made him president to give a respectable façade to his regime. He then set about milking the economy for all it was worth.

“Our chap, the president, was not so happy. He was just as much of a thug as his brother, only a lot more intelligent. He wanted power, and he saw that he’d have much more power as the head of a prosperous, functioning state than a ramshackle, broke, falling apart one. He wasn’t interested in stashing millions of dollars away in Switzerland.

“There was only one way the disagreement could end, and he got his blow in first. It is widely believed that he arranged to have his brother strangled and watched it happen on CCTV. He then rushed in and shot the men he’d hired to do it and announced that he, personally, had foiled a coup attempt against the regime but had arrived too late to save his brother.

“The media trumpeted the story to the world, but I doubt if many Dirzhaki believed it. It’s a weird little country—one foot in the age of the internet and the other one still in the middle ages.”

“Can I put that in my blog?”

“Um. I suppose so, provided you don’t say I told you. Anyway, the Dirzhaki had been here before. Khan after Khan in the old days had most the men in his family killed off as soon as he moved into the palace.”

Nigel was ready for it this time.

“But the Varaki didn’t like it,” he said in a no-big-deal kind of way.

“Oh, they’d have taken it in their stride—like I said, it was what they were used to. At least the men he’d shot had only been Dirzh.”

“I suppose that’s pretty monstrous, but…”

“He’s a monster all the same. Tell him about the snow ibex,” said Nigel’s mother, still not looking up from her book. It didn’t mean she hadn’t been listening. She read like breathing. She could do other things at the same time.

“I was coming to that. At first glance it seems to be true crazy-monster behaviour, but in fact it fits into the same pattern. I sent you a postcard of a snow ibex, didn’t I, Niggles? It’s a species of goat found in these northern mountains, nothing to do with the true ibex though it’s a very handsome creature. In the old days it was a royal beast. Only the Khans were allowed to hunt it. The villagers were well rewarded after a successful hunt, but if no animals were found the head man of the village was staked out to die, on the grounds that he’d been allowing poachers to operate. The communists put a stop to that, and the ibexes were hunted almost to extinction for the sake of the rams’ horns, which are highly prized in Chinese medicine. When the president staged his coup the numbers were down to down to the last eighty-odd animals. It’s still an endangered species, but the numbers are now up in the hundreds, thanks entirely to him.”

“What’s so monstrous about that? It sounds like good-guy stuff.”

“He does quite a bit of good-guy stuff if it suits him. He doesn’t waste billions buying high-tech fighters and tanks. He’s much more likely to spend it on schools and hospitals. He has total control over what gets taught in the schools, mind you. If a teacher steps out of line he doesn’t just get fired. He disappears. Same with journalists, even more so.

“The business about the snow ibexes came up when he declared that Dirzhan would henceforth be known as the People’s Khanate. As president he obviously had inherited the rights and privileges of the khans, and henceforth only he would hunt the snow ibex.

“Those last animals were confined to one remote valley, where the villagers were not in the habit of paying much attention to edicts from Dara Dahn. So the hunting continued, though by that time it might take a skilled hunter two or three weeks to track and kill a ram. They were utterly unprepared when the President showed up and told them that he had come to hunt the snow ibex. Unsurprisingly, with only eighty animals left, none was found for him to hunt. The headman of the local village was staked out and died in the night—Dirzhan winters are harsh as they come. The village was searched, all the hunting rifles were burned, any householder with an ibex skull was hanged in his own doorway.”

Again Nigel was ready.

“Wow! That’s monster stuff all right. This was up in the mountains, so they were Varaks too?”

“Varaki. My guess is that he wanted to show the Dirzh that nobody gets any favours unless it suits him.”

“What happened next year? Did he shoot one?”

“I must go now. I’ll get Roger to show you the CD. And think about this business with his daughter, Niggles. I can get you out of it if you don’t feel like it. No problem.”

It wasn’t true and they both knew it. He needed to keep the monster sweet.

“Oh, I’ll go all right…”

“Nigel!” said his mother. “At least wait till…”

“No, Mum. I don’t expect there are a lot of kids for me to hang out with here. It’ll be interesting, even if it’s only just once. Provided I hit it off with her, of course. I wonder if she plays chess. Do I get to meet the monster?”

* * *

* And how’s this for a birthday present:  EARTH AND AIR is on the WALL STREET JOURNAL’s best books of 2012:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424127887324481204578179520370339826.html

 

 

 

Birthday puppy redux

 

 

Speaking of Pavlova.  There was a slight communication breakdown between the Taker of the Superior Photos and me,  but here said photos are at last.

 

TA DA

A couple of days ago I met a woman, while Pav and I were out doing our unguided-missile routine masquerading as Walking the Puppy, who claimed to be a huge bull terrier fan.  Her daughter has one, she said, and it’s adorable, the whole family loves it.  I beamed.  Then she said, a bull terrier will never win a beauty contest, of course.  I stopped beaming.  WHAT?  I pulled myself together enough to say, Bull terriers have their own beauty, and she replied oh well yes, in this patronising tone.  It would be bad for Pavlova’s thus far excellent social skills for me to break training and encourage her to bite this woman, but I entertained the idea briefly.*  Then this woman added, and they’re very stubborn you know.  Oh, go away, I didn’t quite say. **

I realise that the bull terrier profile is a controversial topic.   But if you’ve got any kind of eye, you can see that this is a paradigmatic example of whatever-it-is.  MY PUPPY IS DROP DEAD GORGEOUS.  ANYONE WHO DOESN’T AGREE WILL BE BITTEN.  I AM THE HELLGODDESS, YOU KNOW.  I HAVE DEMONS AT MY DISPOSAL.  MANY OF THEM HAVE VERY EXCITING TEETH.

Some fatuousness on the part of the proud recipient of the gift puppy should be, I feel, forgiven.

 

Hi there. Oh, you’re still here.

Darkness, somewhere in the background, is expressing outrage that that interloper is on the SOFA.

I am Queen of All I Survey. Especially Hellhounds. Now if you’d please let go of me so I can go rule. I’m very paws-on, you know.

And yes, those are PINK ROSES on the kitchen table behind us.

There’s that Roman emperor profile again. She should totally be on some currency or other. Empress of all she surveys, then.

 

This is why the photos I take don’t seem to turn out so well. (And yes, I liked WHEN THE KING COMES HOME. So did Peter. I think you can just about see Gwen Bailey’s THE PERFECT PUPPY in that stack too.)

You can’t see SAGITTTARIUS RISING and THE LANGUAGE OF MATHEMATICS.  There’s also a basic physics book in there somewhere.  Yes, it’s significant that KING is on top.

And let us not forget our other, original breathtaking lovelies. Darkness is still beautiful even in a permanent Puppy Snit.

 

I apologise for the absence of ooooh wookit fuzzy tummy photos. ***    I will be careful to correct this oversight in the next batch.

* * *

 

* I thought longer about biting her myself.

** This conversation occurred before yesterday’s Rain Epic.  But the only real head-to-header Pav and I have had so far was the almost-three-hours I stood on her a couple of weeks ago because she was NOT going to settle and I was NOT going to make her (sez she).  I’m still worrying about adolescence.  Which should start arriving in another six weeks or so.  Meanwhile she sits pretty well, lies down sort of, is beginning to comprehend wait and has no truck with walk, as an alternative to mad caroming, whatsoever.  She will even–believe it or not–hold a sit for about five seconds with food on the floor in front of her after I let go of her, and waits for the release.  I think this is nearly incredible in a FOOOOOOOOOOOOD oriented hellterror puppy.  Five seconds is a long time.

*** And it’s true, you can put up with a lot for a fuzzy puppy tummy.

Stubborn

 

 

You have never seen anything so pathetic as a certain hellterror puppy this morning, having been yanked unceremoniously from her cozy bed* and thrust out into the cruel world of the back garden where it was raining.  And it was, indeed, raining.  It was teeming, it was hammering, it was relentless, it was wet.  She had a quick pee and then crept back to my feet and crouched there, tail clamped between legs, ears flat to her (increasingly sodden) head, one forefoot delicately and piteously raised.  I had no idea hellterrors could do the pathetic thing, at least not to this noble standard.  The sad tales of the death of kings that Sid laid on for Kes were nothing to this.  Furthermore I thought hellterrors didn’t care about the weather?  I was rather looking forward to finally having a dog to go on long wet walks with that didn’t involve dragging my companion or companions along stiff-legged at the furthest extent of their leads and looks of reproach so dense they might be fatal if I were standing badly when they struck.  The hellhounds and Southdowner and Nemo and I went for a wet walk once and Nemo enjoyed it.  The hellhounds did not, although I think some of the looks of reproach bounced off him that day instead of me.**

Anyway.  Pavlova is not a fan of wet weather.  And I had to get off to the abbey.  I took her out, as above.  I took the hellhounds out for a quick hurtle and they were delighted when we turned around and came home as soon as the necessary business was accomplished.  Usually I force them to keep walking even when it’s coming down in cats, dogs and stair-rods.  I took Pav out again, and exactly the same thing happened as it had the first time.  Woe, oh woe.  Tragedy.  Rain.  I put her back in her crate with only a mingy token breakfast because I am mean and horrible and because I dislike cleaning crates*** . . . and tried to brace myself for what I was nonetheless likely to come home to.

Wolfgang and I splashed and forded our way to the abbey but it only took me five hours and forty minutes to find a parking space, so I was early.  There were only forty-three of us for sixty-seven bells, but we made a noise.†

Afterward as I was leaving—and this had occurred to me last night—I thought I might just have time to hare across Hampshire and get to the monks in time for the midday prayer.  Well, I didn’t.††  And as I was flooring the GO pedal for the second day in a row I was thinking that it really wouldn’t be all that funny if I acquired points on my license as a result of scrambling inappropriately to attend a church service.  I arrived in a spray of wet gravel, left poor Wolfgang parked at a very funny angle, and bolted indoors.  The service started about ten seconds after I sat down (trying not to breathe audibly).†††

I returned home at a rather more sedate pace, clutching Tintinnabulation’s peace around me like a shawl, greeted hellhounds, opened Pav’s crate and . . . no horrors.  Well.  So I took her outdoors again.  Before I left it was still a little early but by now it was well after time for eliminatory events to have happened.  It was also still raining.  The performance as before.  This time, however, I was wearing my raincoat, and I prepared to wait.

Eventually she crept away from my feet and went and hid under one of the café chairs that live in the little courtyard.  There are plants sitting on it, but it’s all openwork, and no real shelter.‡  She put her head out from under the seat occasionally to give me anguished looks.

Fifteen minutes later she slooooooowly Assumed the Position, moving as if she were a hundred and ninety years old and all her bones ached, and . . . produced the MOST ENORMOUS crap.  And then raced back to the kitchen door, tail wagging furiously, because NOW FINALLY I would let her back in.  And she would get the rest of her breakfast.  After I dried her off.  She was certainly very wet.

The thing is . . . fifteen minutes is nothing for a stubborn animal.  NOTHING.  If you’re going to engage a critter you do have to be prepared to win, and if obstinacy is an issue . . . bring your knitting.  In this case I’m assuming that biology was on my side:  she’s still only a puppy, her control is not perfect, AND SHE REALLY NEEDED TO HAVE A CRAP.  But I’d like to think that she’s also just a good-natured hellterror shaped mutant.

* * *

* I’ve been worrying about her this last week because it’s been so cold and poor sad disregarded thing that she is with no crate-mate to curl up with^, mind you she is in the kitchen with the Aga AND is ON the table so well above standard floor draughts^^, she’s got so many blankets it there it’s sometimes hard to find her.

^ Olivia and Southdowner not merely agreed but agreed noisily that no sane person takes on more than one bull terrier puppy at a time.

^^ Yes.  I’m starting to worry about the on-the-table part, which involves me lifting her in and out.  At not-yet-twenty-pounds this is not an issue, but it will become one soon.  I have bizarrely adjusted to not having a kitchen table—as previously observed I tend to sit on a stool by the counter and the Aga, which is keeping my tea hot—and if I have people in we sit in the duh sitting room.  Maybe she won’t like it on the floor!+  Maybe she’ll be COLD!

+Maybe I’ll dislike having another chair permanently in the sitting room even more than I dislike the amount of sunlight the crate blocks out perched on the table.

** Clang.  Nemo is a tough customer.

*** And her tabletop palace at the cottage is a thundering ratbag to take apart and put back together again.

† And I received a lecture on striking from one of the Very Old Guard whom I am delighted to say I don’t see often, because if it weren’t that it was unsporting to knock little old shaky people down^ I might have been ejected from the ranks of the abbey ringers for violence to a senior member.

^ As well as not really much fun.  They tip over too easily.

†† Although I now know how long it does take to get to Tintinnabulation from Forza, which is useful, if alarming, information.  Have I mentioned that I put sixty one quids’ worth of petrol in Wolfgang about a week ago and I’m already down to half a tank again?  I want a kind of Epcot of Christianity where everything is all shiny and cheerful and right next door and there’s a mini railroad that will take you wherever you want to go while you sit and knit and think Deep Thoughts.

††† I lingered for a while afterward—the chapel stays open—to let the sense that I’d been to a service settle into me.  Also, they’d been reading Psalm 22, which is terrifying.

‡ I was thinking, because I am insane, even if I do have only one hellterror puppy, that it would not be that big a deal to put a big tray across the seat so she could crap underneath in the dry if that would make her happy.  At least till she gets too tall to fit under the chair seat.

 

Full tilt living

 

Another insane day, starting last night when it took hellhounds TWO HOURS to eat their supper.*  Today has been conducted at breakneck speed with a lot of shouting**, and with a pause of fraudulent calm in which to ring handbells.***  I then shot around getting two frelling shifts of hellcritters rehurtled, banged them into the mews on my way out of town, said a brief hello to the familiar-looking fellow who lives there, and tore off for choir practise.  As I pressed the pedal to the metal† I was thinking, I dropped out of the Muddles last time because I couldn’t take the strain and that was before I had a baby hellterror.††  Gah.

Choir practise was fun.  Except for the chilblain part I enjoyed it immensely.†††  And I’m sorry I’m going to be missing the carol sing on Saturday just because I have some dumb old opera to go to.‡  I have no idea why I seem to be surviving the exigencies of the Muddle practise template better this go-round than I have previously—or whether this desirable alteration will last.  Maybe chasing hellterrors de-furs the arteries.  Maybe the thought of having a pee behind a tombstone in sub-freezing weather has stiffened my bladder’s resolve.  Maybe God wants me to sing, in which case he might have given me a better VOICE.

And now if you will excuse me a little early, I have to get up tomorrow morning early enough to squeeze my double hurtle in before I leap into Wolfgang to go ring a funeral at the abbey.  The funeral isn’t that early, but I’m assuming I need to allow about six hours to find a parking space.  The gentleman couldn’t have waited to die till after Christmas?‡‡

* * *

*  Too Much Information Alert:   I have a curious range of dog insanity.  Hellhounds, as we know, don’t eat.  Hellterrors, on the other hand, don’t crap.  She will do almost AAAAAAAAANYTHING to avoid having a crap.  She is certainly not going to Perform anywhere but her exactly designated areas, two each at cottage and mews, and she pretty much has to be nailed to the spot to do it at all.  And she still wiggles and twitches and fidgets and scratches and tries to run back to the door at the slightest sign of weakness from the attendant hellgoddess.  This leaves me in the undesirable position of trying to guess if she’s due, and thus know to stand in an indomitable manner and insist.  If I guess wrong . . . she craps in her crate and flicks a corner of the blanket over it.^  ARRRRRRRGH.  I hope this is a phase she is going to grow out of soon.  The thing that floors me is that she knows that she will get a handful of kibble the moment she has Performed, and, as frequently mentioned, she LOOOOOOOOVES FOOOOOOD more than anything, even Chaos.^^  There are no signs of discomfort, it comes out fast and easily once she’s stopped ding-donging around and does it.  The slight ray of hope is that I think I’m beginning to differentiate general hellterror vivacity and I-need-to-go-OUT dangling from the ceiling.  Housetraining is based on the idea that a dog doesn’t want to make a mess in its den, even if it has a freshly-washed blanket to flick over it.

^ This includes her travelling crate, which is barely big enough for her to turn around in.

^^ I’m not even in the contest, except as provider.

** One of those days when my zero metabolism has been handy.  Oh, was I supposed to eat something?

*** Have I told you that our new recruit, Jillian, whom you have heard of in other, tower, contexts, is STICKING WITH IT?  She is not coming to her senses.  I think tonight was her fourth at the grim rockface of handbells.  Yaaaaaaaaay.  And I’m playing another suck—I mean, I am encouraging another abbey ringer who has expressed interest to come along some evening and have a go.  Tea and biscuits included^.  Mwa hahahahahaha.

^ And there is a loo.  And a lovely radiant Aga.

† I did nothing of the kind.  I drove like a little old lady.  I am a little old lady.  Also I’m not liking the roads.  We’ve had hard frosts every night for most of a week and there’s a lot of water lying around in a mischievous and troublesome manner.  Tonight, for example, it’s supposed to warm up, but it didn’t start warming up till bits of road and pedestrian hurtleways had already frozen . . . and then it started raining.

†† Nor did I have a twenty-five minute commute to my home tower.

††† The chilblains, the FATALLY BANAL John Rutter song^, and a big sullen wodge of Stainer.  Still, no playlist is perfect, and we’re also singing Good Stuff™.

^ I swear there is a John Rutter machine.  You turn the crank and it grinds out vaguely music-like noise the way the M25 grinds out low-grade evil, in a quote I can’t immediately find from the Nice and Accurate Prophecies of Agnes Nutter, Witch but which I’m sure you all know.

‡ I am not missing this one.  Not.  http://www.metoperafamily.org/metopera/liveinhd/LiveinHD.aspx ^

Although it had better be fabulously sung since I’ve seen this staging before and think it’s silly.

^ After Saturday this link will take you to the next opera, I suspect, and the individual opera pages are 404 not found as I write this.  But it’s Aida this Saturday.

‡‡ They will find in his papers the day after tomorrow instructions that he would like bells rung for him in a small village in Yorkshire.

Hot news, continued

 

 

Peter’s THE LIZARD IN THE CUP is also available:      http://www.themurderroom.com/books/l/lizard-in-the-cup,-the/

And on amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Lizard-Cup-ebook/dp/B00AJ1ZMN0/ref=sr_1_7?s=digital-text&ie=UTF8&qid=1354864740&sr=1-7

Here’s the American amazon link:*

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Ddigital-text&field-keywords=the+lizard+in+the+cup

 

And here is the end of chapter one to whet your appetites:

 

. . . “The first thing you ought to do is contact the local police. They . . .”

“No cops,” said Thanatos. Behind the two words came the whole force of his soul, now focussed again. This mattered. Mattered more than his hypothetical murder.

Pibble didn’t like it at all, nor the stillness of the rest of the group, waiting to see how he’d take it. He turned to the trolley and found a bottle of Whitbread’s, much too chilled for his taste. When he turned back with the icy glass in his hand the faces round Mr. Thanatos were still forcing themselves into naturalness. Only Doctor Trotter, who was standing over by the window teasing Zoe’s broken English with his pidgin, seemed unaware that a new and nastier wind was blowing.

“You still want to help, Jim?” said Mr. Thanatos. There was a question in his hot small eyes, and it wasn’t Who’s been paying for a holiday you could never have afforded? It was Who do you trust? Where are your loyalties? Who is your friend?

“I suppose so,” said Pibble. “I was going back tomorrow. I’ll have to ring up Mary . . .”

Mr.Thanatos cackled.

“I like you, Jim,” he said. “Now tell me what to do.”

Pibble found it hard to collect his thoughts as he stood in front of the armchair and watched Tony d’Agniello’s long fingers moving in small caresses through the fuzz of fur that showed on the rich man’s chest where his gold robe opened in a vee. It was impossible not to feel jealous—jealous in a different fashion from how he might have felt if she’d been curled up against heavy, handsome Dave instead of this gross old bear.

“How long have they known you’d be coming here now?” he said.

“A week, ten days. I didn’t know myself. Buck was here already, doing a job for me, but the rest of us came out almost as sudden as you.”

“All right,” said Pibble. “I think Buck’s right and you should stay inside the fence for a couple of days. It looked quite good to me…”

“Cost twenty pounds a yard,” said Dave. “We’ve got guards on it, and three dogs. We can arm the men.”

“You said a couple of days, only?” said Buck. He sounded as though that spoilt the fun.

“Suppose we treat the threat as real,” explained Pibble. “There are three serious possibilities. First, that the enemy have an ally inside the house, who might, for instance, poison you. Second that they will try a commando-style attack, probably from the sea. Third that they will send a couple of professional gunmen to the island and try to ambush you. Shall we take them in that order —which is actually the order of improbability.”

“We’ve hired a new gardener,” said Dave. “And there’s a room-maid I’ve not seen before.”

“Pay them off,” said Mr. Thanatos. “We can grow weeds and sleep in dirty linen.”

“OK,” said Dave. “The mouth of the bay’s narrower than it looks. We can get Tisiphone round.”

“Until a sou’wester blows up,” said Mr. Thanatos. “I’m not having my new boat smashed for a crappy idea like this.”

“If a sou’wester blows up there won’t be any ski-ing and you can go to Paris,” said Dave. “A raid’s a lot to lay on, isn’t it, Jim?”

“Yes. That’s why I said it was improbable. You’d need a boat, a crew, someone who knew the water … The best bet is gunmen on the island. I think we could check that in a couple of days.”

“It’s a hell of a lot of island,” said Dave. “Guerrillas hid out for months here in the war.”

“It isn’t like that,” said Pibble. “When a professional lays on a job like this—usually it’s a bank raid—the first thing he plots is his getaway. He won’t tackle it unless there’s an escape route. Here he’ll have a powerful boat at a safe anchorage, and another over at Zakynthos probably. He will pretend to be a tourist, which will give him a reason for wandering about in unlikely places, and my bet is that he wouldn’t seem to have any connection with the getaway boat, which would have arrived separately. He’d be staying at one of the hotels, or just conceivably in a tent. So what we’ve got to do is check the hotels, have a look at the new arrivals if possible, and check the safe moorings. If we draw blank in both, I think Thanassi will be safe out on the rest of the island. The odds would have risen, and he’d be staking a hundred years against his week, which isn’t such a good bet.”

“We have come here to work,” said George. “Not to play foolish detective games.”

“OK, OK, we’ll let you off,” said Mr. Thanatos. “Dave, too. What’s your Greek like, Jim?”

“Puerile,” said Pibble sadly.

“Hell. Buck can check the hotels —he’s only got to show his card and they’ll give him every document in the building— line all the guests up for him and throw out the ones he picks on. OK, Buck?”

“Fine.”

“Zoe can check the harbour for you,” said George. “This is a stupid game, but she will enjoy it. She likes boats, and making friends with strangers. It will amuse her while I do my boring work.”

“That’s great,” said Mr. Thanatos, beaming. “She can find a few pretty girls for me while she’s at it. Then Jim can do the rest of the island, seeing he thinks it’s so easy.”

“What does it consist of?” said Pibble.

“Nothing except a bunch of phoneys out at the South Bay villas, the other side of the town,” said Dave. “Some of them have jetties, and they all speak English.”

“Is that all?” said Pibble, surprised.

“Most of these islands are like that;’ said Dave. “They look as if you could land anywhere, and so you can; but the minute a wind blows up you’ve lost your boat. Even those South Bay villas are dangerous in a west wind, and this place is hell in a sou’wester. The rest of it’s rocks and cliffs and a few beaches.”

“Then we should be able to do it in two days, quite easily,” said Pibble. “After that you’ll have your professional bodyguards here, and they can keep an eye on the likely places in case something turns up after we’ve checked. I don’t think there are any other precautions we can take with the men we’ve got, and even if there were I don’t think there’d be any percentage in taking them.”

“Don’t forget the monastery,” said Mr. Thanatos.

“Hell, they wouldn’t try up there,” said Buck.

“Best anchorage on the island,” said Mr. Thanatos. “And those two old lushes would do anything for a few hundred drachs. They know more about smuggling than they do about praying. If they get their souls past St. Peter it’ll be as contraband. You go and look them over, Jim. Look the whole place over. It’s worth the visit.”

“What’s your interest, baby?” said Miss d’Agniello, tweaking a hair out of the mat on his chest “I don’t see you getting to be a monk.”

Thanatos clutched her to him and his grating laugh shook the Dubuffets.

* * *

* And with reference to a blog comment saying that the YELLOW ROOM link is UK only, here’s the American:

http://www.amazon.com/The-Yellow-Room-Conspiracy-ebook/dp/B00AJ1ZN3O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355342419&sr=8-1&keywords=yellow+room+conspiracy

 

The things one does for one’s resident wildlife

 

I had a computer archangel here for MOST OF THE DAY and I HOPE that some of the more egregious nonsense has been despatched to Computer Gremlin Purgatory where it can either repent or, after a decent interval in which to realign its wiring to holiness and humility, be sent on to headquarters and fry.  Love that smell of burning hardware.  I seem to have my email addressbook back WHICH WOULD BE NICE.  Possibly email will now revert to, you know, sending and receiving.  The best thing however, supposing it has been genuinely exorcised, is the SELF ZOOM feature on this laptop, which is where I (theoretically) do the most work, although it’s been getting harder and harder* as my screen ratchets around like . . . a hucklebutting hellterror.

But the presence of an archangel does tend to throw the lower orders into disarray.  This would include me and dependent hellcritters.  The pattern of the day was perhaps set when I stepped in dog crap not only in the churchyard but ON THE MAIN PATH THROUGH the churchyard.  What is the MATTER with people?!?  Every time a little old lady glares at me, out with one of my shifts of hellcritters (and I never am out without a hellcritter or two), I cringe.  It’s not me lady!  I PICK UP!

. . . Anyway.  I was in the churchyard with the puppy at the time, juggling lead and Pooka while I texted Raphael asking for ETA since he could not possibly have got past us on our way there:  Already here, he texted back, laconically.  Pavlova can move surprisingly fast on those little short legs and we hucklebutted back in unison.**

But by the time he left I was dazed*** with . . . failing to understand anything he told me.†  And I had three pairs of beady little eyes all wanting to go out.  Now.  In fact, a couple of hours ago.  The problem is that the hellhounds always go out first.  I put the hellterror out for a pee so she’ll last till it’s her turn, but in terms of actual hurtles, the hellhounds have precedence.  But Pav was already showing signs of dismantling her crate and I couldn’t entirely blame her, while hellhounds will go back to sleep more or less indefinitely.  I’ve mentioned that it’s WINTER, right?  It’s FREEZING out there.  There is ICE on the ground†† and your seventeen-year-old car needs to run about fifteen minutes to get the needle off COLD.  I casually tucked Pav under my arm, nonchalantly picked up her lead on our way to the door, and left in my house slippers and ONE light cashmere pullover††† and no hat, no gloves, no coat . . . while the hellhounds watched suspiciously but were clearly appeased by the lack of any sign of a Real Hurtle, ie, shoes, gloves, coat, hellhound harnesses. . . .

I lasted our shortest ten-minute round and had to bite my tongue not to scream COME ON every time she stopped for a sniff.  But it worked.  Pav had her second mini-hurtle, hellhounds were positively friendly when we got back, and rioted with Pavlova while I shivered into my proper gear, locked her up, and prepared to go out for a real hurtle.

Oh, and I’ve written this entire blog AND THERE WAS NO ZOOMING.

* * *

* Meanwhile Astarte the iPad has connectivity issues.  Neither Raphael nor I have much idea how much of them is the weird, I mean unique, I mean weird, way connectivity is set up (apparently) on the iPad (I think Raphael made an attempt to explain this to me but I started wailing and rending my garments really soon and he didn’t get very far) and how much is the ongoing and apparently permanent fact that all the wiring on the cottage’s cul de sac is made of cheap string and chewing gum, and broadband cough cough cough sits on this unstable framework uneasily, like a dowager on a shooting stick.^  Have I mentioned recently that the local MPs and the town and county councils keep announcing high speed broadband for this area?  They’re still announcing it.  I don’t know if ‘high speed broadband for this area’ includes rewiring cul de sacs that are presently making do with cheap string and chewing gum.

But this means that when I am having a Bad Night, as it might be last night, and I decide I might as well turn the light back on, grab Astarte and do some work, if said work includes emails or the blog, I probably can’t because The Server Is Not Available.^^

Fortunately there is reading, hard copy or e-.  And knitting.^^^

^ Depends on your dowager, of course.

^^ Yes I take Astarte to bed with me.+   And no I am not going to get up and go sit at a desk.  If I did that I’d never get any sleep at all.  Also, in the WINTER?  There are three good location choices during the winter at the cottage:  in front of the Aga.  On the sofa covered with hellhounds.++  And in bed+++.  You will note that ‘sitting at my desk’ does not appear in this list.

+ Hands up people with iPads who take them to bed.

++ The only occasions the hellterror joins us at present is when she’s being Suppressed.  We will, eventually, all four fit on the sofa at the mews.  I’m not sure this can be done on the littler sofa at the cottage.  I may have to ask Atlas to build an extension.

+++ Possibly with supplementary hellhounds. I know hellterrors have a remarkable line in pogosticking but I’m not sure my tall bed is ever going to be an option.  At a little over seventeen pounds Pav is still quite haul-aroundable especially because she’s used to it and has always dangled well# but I will start losing ground here shortly.  I’ve said before that I can carry Chaos at a pound or two under forty but Darkness at a pound or two over is a struggle.  I’m hoping for a delicate svelte hellterror like Auntie Missy.  A nice little square short-legged thirty-five pounds I could probably carry around in brief bursts indefinitely so long as she remains agreeable.

# I have mixed feelings about her supporting her own weight by standing on my hip or my leather belt:  this also gives her rocket-launch capabilities.

^^^ One of my favourite yarn and knitting sites is as bad as the blog.+  Arrrrgh.  If this is supposed to be a money-saving add-on it needs to be attached to my other favourite knitting sites as well.

+  My own blog doesn’t love me.  How unfair is that.

** I’m not as good at it.  It requires four legs and attitude.  More to the point she was happy to gallop out in front and not linger to get under my feet, pull my shoelaces and hang off my jeans hems—going HOOOOOOOOME where there is FOOOOOOOOOOD.  Usually I’m proceeding much too slowly for her.  Lead manners.  We are attempting to install lead manners.^

^ What do you mean, walk?  FOOOOOOOOOOOOD.

*** I spent a good hour clearing off and scrubbing down the deep windowsill over the sink, and repotting most of the plants that live there undisturbed for months and months barring watering and the occasional jolt of food.  Mostly I neglect my houseplants because . . . I neglect my houseplants, but as I was doing an unusually good job of tying up a repotted begonia^ I was thinking that the other reason I tend to ignore the teeming and seriously untidy jungle that are all the windowsills at the cottage is that houseplants are marginal at best—plants don’t actually like living indoors—and that while pruning and feeding outdoors usually results in a gratifying burst of growth, pruning and feeding indoors is usually the sign to die.

^ Whose name is Buffy.  No, really.  Buffy and Peardrop tend to be sold together so unfortunately I think it refers to the colour.

† Where is that wax tablet?  I bet my iPad stylus would work on it just fine.

†† ::Checks the location of her Yaktrax::

††† Although there were two cotton turtlenecks under it.  And the longjohns.  And the two pairs of socks.

Cold and appalled

 

Glaciation was more than usually living up to its name tonight—even Colin admitted that it was a trifle brisk in the ringing chamber and Colin is one of these blokes who wears cotton sweatshirts over his polo necks all winter long.  The wind chill is minus forty?  Colin is still wearing a sweatshirt.  He does have a parka, but it doesn’t even have a lining.*  I’m wearing two turtlenecks, a wool pullover and a wool cardigan over the pullover, long johns and two pairs of socks.**  I was still cold.  I nearly took my coat off the travelling-puppy crate and put it back on again*** but that would have been cruel.†  And the bells were all cranky and tried to keep coming down on you.††

I wasn’t sure I was going to make it to Glaciation tonight.  I’m still really tired††† and I had another voice lesson today.  I took the Recording Demon with me and managed to forget to turn it off after the warm-ups and thus recorded the whole lesson.  And between the previous paragraph and this one I temporarily lost both sanity and sense of self-preservation and played it back, right up to and including me saying, I left this thing on the whole time and if I have any sense at all I WON’T LISTEN.

I listened.

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAUGH.

Now I’m even tireder.  Maybe I’ll just curl up in a miserable little heap on the floor and groan myself to sleep.‡

* * *

* Mind you a nice hot flush will keep you toasty but they’re unreliable little beggars and I’ve never had one arrive at an opportune moment.  No, they prefer to drive you out of bed when you were actually asleep or turn you into a bright red self-basting sausage in a public place.  I would like to know the physics of the bloat that frequently accompanies the bonfire of your vanities.  One minute you’re your standard wizened crone-like self and the next minute you’re the Michelin Woman.  Genetic Lego?  Teeny weeny molecular hydraulic pumps?

The Incredible Hulk is a menopausal woman.  Pass it on.

** Leg warmers would be nice but they are not wise in the presence of a puppy.  She tends to pull me along by my jeans hems and shoelaces as it is.

*** If warmth is the only criterion I should leave the coat where it is and put the puppy down my shirt.  Harder to ring that way however.

† Although the only times I’ve ever seen her shiver it was with WILD EXPECTATION.  Look look a dog!   Look look a person!  Look look the kettle has just boiled!^

^ I usually put a little hot water over her kibble and stuff like bits of chicken+ that have been in the refrigerator.  This means that every time you make a fresh cup of tea you must dash her expectations.

She’s still only a puppy so ask me in a couple of years and I only want a (reasonably) well behaved companion hellterror, so I’m not going to be expecting her to learn to dance the fandango or make hollandaise.  But she will do ANYTHING for food.  This has its practical applications.++  If she’s out of her crate and you’re trying to make a cup of tea you will keep tripping over a SITTING puppy.  SITTING is one of those things that produces food.+++

When we’re out on one of our mini-hurtles as soon as we turn for home there’s no dillydallying—home is where FOOOOOOD is and she will get some the moment we’re safely across the threshold.  If I say her name she will have to check it out because sometimes when I call her there is foooooooood and she wouldn’t want to miss one of those times.  She learned ‘wait’ INSTANTLY as soon as there was a bit of kibble in my hand.  She spends so much time on her back having her tummy rubbed I really should teach her to roll over.

+ And leftover cooked Brussels sprouts.  My puppy eats leftover cooked Brussels sprouts.

++ She might like learning to make hollandaise.

+++ Although if you’re on the floor with her and a handful of kibble, she will be so excited by the presence of fooooood she will keep FORGETTING to sit.  But once you get her sort of focussed she will lie down FOREVER if there’s foooooood involved.  —Lie down? she says.  Sure.  I can do that . . . foooooooood.

†† God is tiring.  Major life transitions are tiring.  I went to the full dress Sunday morning Mass [sic] at Tintinnabulation Abbey yesterday and nearly had to be carried out after to a waiting ambulance with oxygen and a defibrillator.^  And THE CLOISTER WALK which at least a dozen people have recommended to me is out of print.  Abebooks will have it.  But she won’t get a royalty from the sale.

^ The real reason the monks offer tea and coffee to us plodders afterward is to give us a chance to pull ourselves together and find our car keys.  Car?  Key?

†† So not finishing the top of their 360°.  And to ring a method accurately you need the full 360° swing^.  Cold and/or cranky bells will resist completing the full circle, and, just to make things more amusing, will resist erratically so whatever you do to adapt will be wrong.  And this has nothing to do with relative size:  at Glaciation, for example, the two is much likelier to come down on you than the four, although the four is a substantially bigger bell.  The four was popular with me tonight because the hottest electric fire was standing immediately behind it.

^ I will spare you a lengthy discussion of ringing below the balance which you mostly have to do on the big bells to keep your place in the line if your big bells are enough bigger than your small bells.  I don’t ring biggish+ tenors all that often and I’m always caught out by this.  You find where you need to ring by ringing, and then when the conductor calls ‘stand’, woops, you can’t, because you’re not swinging to the top, so then if you’re me you have to bong another stroke or three to get the sneaky freller high enough again to stand.   This is embarrassing and everyone hangs around joking about how every bong after the conductor says Stand is another round at the pub.  Ha ha frelling ha.

+ I don’t ring big tenors

‡ ::whapping self up longside the head::  If I can ADJUST to reality, the Recording Demon is a useful tool.  And blondviolinist who is a professional musician AGREES with me that it’s okay not to be perfect.

Waaaaaaah.  I want to be perfect.  Okay, I’ll settle for listenable-to.  Peter says I sound like my confidence is improving.  Peter is tone deaf.

Hot News

 

Peter’s THE YELLOW ROOM CONSPIRACY has been reissued from Orion.

http://www.themurderroom.com/books/y/yellow-room-conspiracy,-the/

And it’s available on amazon:

http://www.amazon.co.uk/The-Yellow-Room-Conspiracy-ebook/dp/B00AJ1ZN3O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1355095478&sr=8-1

BIG FAT THUNDERING WARNING:  Read the excerpt that follows here FIRST, BEFORE you click on either link.   For some reason known only to the gremlins that have invaded their brains, whoever are in charge of such things have seen fit to give away the FABULOUS ENDING OF CHAPTER ONE as the synopsis/come-on/‘product description’ (in amazon’s magnificently literary phrase).  Do yourselves a big favour and read it in context here.

And then of course buy the book immediately.

* * *

. . . Her hands had begun to tremble. Sherry dribbled down her wrists. I picked my way out and took the glasses from her.

‘Bother,’ she said. ‘I thought I was going to make it all the way.’

I grunted. Shock, emergency, a quick little surprise sometimes, can do that. The shakes go for a few minutes. It’s a commonplace of the disease. If she needs to Lucy can make use of it, deliberately as it were shocking herself into momentary full control, but of course there is a law of diminishing returns. She put a quivering hand on my elbow and let me lead her up to the bench at the top of the border. It’s only there for looks, and the occasional visitor – as far as I’m concerned there are always more interesting things to do in a garden than sit down. But now the sun-sodden stone was delectable against my spine, as necessary to me as the drink. Two doves answered each other, from the orchard and from beyond the stables. The patch of common hemp agrimony at the top of the Maroon Border murmured with insects, which is one of the things it is there for. Something honey-scented drifted on the imperceptible breeze. Lucy leant against my side, her shakes dwindling from their after-shock extravagance to their usual steady tremor. Only the radio was wrong. It was like the focal point in a Magritte, deliberately placed in the perspective between the borders in order to deconstruct the idyll. The black casing contradicted the sunlight. The shape, mean-proportioned, square-edged, embodied the unnaturalness of artifact among all the growth and green. The object itself snapped at me about what I’d done.

I put the glasses on the bench, strode down the path, slid the secateurs into my pocket, took the radio into the scullery yard and dropped it in the bin. When I came back Lucy appeared to have fallen asleep, bolt upright, a knack she’d always had. She was wearing a sleeveless linen shift with nothing, I guessed, underneath. (She could still dress herself, but simplified the process as much as she could.) Though I’d done her hair well that morning, by now it had half-loosened itself from its bun, but that had always been her style. I remember a diplomatic reception, presumably while she was still married to Tommy Seddon, as she was hostess. Royalty of some kind had just arrived and she was greeting them. I was admiring the way she made her formal curtsey look like a friendly and natural gesture when her sister Harriet, standing beside me, whispered ‘Trust Lucy to look as if she’d already started going to bed when she suddenly remembered she was supposed to be here.’

Now straggles of fine grey hair hung down by the pale slant of her cheek. The ‘masked’ look, symptomatic of the disease, was only slightly present, subsumed for the moment into the mask of beauty she had always worn. Her thin white arms seemed frail as paper. Her whole attitude cried to me of her vulnerability (though both frailty and vulnerability had, until her illness, been almost pure illusions). Once again, for the thousandth time, the pang of love stabbed through me. I stood letting it fade away, much as I had done with the blood-loss a few minutes before, and then walked on. My footsteps woke her, or she had not been asleep, but she didn’t open her eyes till I settled beside her.

‘I switched it off as soon as they said the name,’ she said.

‘I was stuck.’

‘Yes, I saw. That was a terrific shot, Paul. I’ll buy you a new one for your birthday.’

‘See if you can find a water-proof one. They have them for camping.’

‘May I have my sherry?’

I held it to her lips so that she could empty it enough for her to hold without spilling, then picked up my own and sipped.

‘What a perfect day,’ I said.

‘It’s all looking too beautiful,’ she said.

‘I only see what’s still wrong with it. Oh well, I suppose it’s not bad. Let’s hope the weather holds.’

‘You always say you prefer to look at gardens in the rain.’

I must have sighed. Despite the banalities of con¬tentment, the aftertaste of the radio programme kept regurgitating itself in my mind. Lucy read my feelings.

‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

‘Don’t let’s talk about it.’

‘I think we’ve got to. As a matter of fact I’ve been thinking about it a lot. I’m going to start getting worse soon.’

‘Nonsense. There’s no reason why you shouldn’t stay pretty well as you are for years still. You’re on a plateau. I had a long talk with Liz Sterling, when was it . . .?’

‘She doesn’t know. I’m the only one who knows. It’s been quite a nice plateau, and I’m glad it’s lasted as long as it has, but I can feel the edge coming. It doesn’t matter what Liz Sterling says.’

I opened my mouth to snap at her, and closed it again. What was the point? I’d lied to her about what Dr Sterling had told me.

‘What’s for lunch?’ I said.

‘It’s cold. Let’s stay here. It’s lovely here. Please, Paul. I want to talk to you. I’ll make it as easy as I can for you.’

‘You don’t have to make it easy for me.’

‘It’s really just two things . . .’

I was aware of some inner effort taking place. This itself was a rare event – not the effort, but my awareness. I suppose I know her better than anyone else in the world, but I am nowhere near understanding her, why she is what she is, says what she says, does what she does.

‘I’ll have the good news first. If any,’ I said.

‘I don’t know if it counts,’ she said. ‘Will you marry me, Paul?’

I was startled into laughter and spilt some sherry. Years and years ago, lying sleepless in a dirty little hotel in Samos, I’d heard faint rhythmic murmurs from her and realised she was counting.

‘Greek sheep?’ I’d murmured.

‘Men who’ve proposed,’ she’d said. ‘It’s your fault — you set me off, teasing me about Waldemar.’

(He was some kind of international financial brigand who had a plush cruiser moored in the harbour. Lucy had spotted him and let on she’d met him. I’d suggested making ourselves known in the hope of an invitation on board. Lucy had refused, saying that he was one of her rejectees and hadn’t taken it well. I rather crassly – I was in a bitchy mood – had asked how long the list was and where he came.)

‘I’ve got to thirty-seven,’ she said. ‘Not counting the ones where I didn’t speak the language so I didn’t know whether actual marriage was part of the proposal.’

I’d already known, even then, what she’d been telling me, that part of our unspoken contract was that I should not figure in that list.

‘I want it soon,’ she said now. ‘While . . . while I can still understand what’s happening. It’s all right, Paul. I’m not trying to tie you up. I’ve got everything worked out. While you were in Scotland I got Timmy to come and we went round and looked at some homes and found one which will do. He’s going to sell enough of my shares to buy an annuity which will cover the fees. And we’ll have a marriage contract which will say you’ve got to let me go there as soon as it’s no fun living with me.’

Timmy is her son, now Lord Seddon. I like him. He and his wife Janice come and stay two or three times a year. Lucy’s daughter, Rowena, is beautiful in her mother’s style, but has opted for a life of near-fanatical uprightness, and so is uneasy with Lucy and me.

‘As your husband,’ I said, ‘I shall surely . . .’

‘No you won’t. I’m going to tie it up like a miser in a novel. Timmy says . . . does that mean “Yes”?’

‘A provisional yes, subject to contract, as the estate agents say. Do I get a kiss, or must I listen to the bad news first?’

She sat still. Again I could sense the inner process. It wasn’t the proposal of marriage which had caused it earlier, either. It must have been whatever was coming now. I waited, steeling myself.

‘This is while I can still understand, too,’ she said. ‘Will you tell me how you killed Gerry? I think I know why, but how? How did you get into the room? And out again?’

The drumming dark that I had experienced in the flower-bed returned. This time it can have lasted only a few seconds. Lucy seemed not to have noticed.

Silence. The doves. Bees. The far drub of a helicopter. Sunlight. The flood of memory. In my mind’s eye a large lawn, also sunlit, but the air dense and still. Four women in sports gear gazing towards the facade of a large house, their postures tense with amused alarm. The tinkle of breaking glass. All different, all long ago, but in my own throat and chest the selfsame sickness and oppression that I was feeling now.

‘I had always imagined it was you,’ I whispered.

 

How do I get myself into these things, continued

 

So, you all remember Gemma shouting to Albert last Sunday service ring, ROBIN CAN BE IN THE CHOIR! —?  It has not been a great week* and I managed to forget that the [local ringers’] guild Christmas ring and mince pie fest was today.  To the extent that I had an uneasy sensation I might be singing in another choir with insufficient back up I thought it was next week.  Now the reason I hadn’t responded to the initial email to the entire guild saying that Leandra was in charge of putting together a choir for the Christmas service was because I wasn’t going to go because I had an OPERA.**  And then, last Sunday, Gemma told me that they had had NO responses—and that the choir as presently constituted were Leandra herself, Albert her husband, and Gemma’s husband and son who aren’t even ringers, but they’re both singers and they like carols.***

I have an opera, I muttered, feebly.

What time does the opera start? said Gemma briskly.

Five-forty-five or thereabouts, I said, feeling the ground crumbling beneath my feet.

You can come with us, said Gemma.  We’ll get you back in time.  ALBERT—!

Well, that was Sunday.  Sunday was a long time ago.  Leandra is an alto and the world is rotten with third rate sopranos they DON’T NEED ME.  I made the mistake of not cancelling handbells on Friday and Gemma bounced through the door and said, Nicholas [her husband] has declared that we must have a rehearsal, so we’re all meeting at our house at 12:45 tomorrow.

Wha’? I said intelligently.†

For the choir, said Gemma, still bouncing.††  Remember?  You’re in the choir for the guild Christmas service tomorrow.

Whimper, I said.  Has Leandra found any more bodies?

No, said Gemma.  But it’ll be fun, she added.

Why is it going to be fun? I said.  Why aren’t you singing? I added—suspiciously.

Oh, heavens, she said.  I don’t sing at all.

I stared at her.  She didn’t look shifty.  There are people who don’t sing at all.  Niall, for example.  At that moment I wished I was one of them.

See you tomorrow, I agreed broken-spiritedly on parting.

I was only about ten minutes late getting off this morning††† but . . . gridlock.  Frelling frelling frelling I hate the whole commercial Christmas thing.‡  I finally arrived, raving, forty minutes late, to the comforting-but-not-in-a-good-way news that Albert and Leandra had only got there about five minutes before me, for the same reason.  So we had twenty minutes of rehearsal which only proved to me that terror makes me squeak, and I already knew that.  I don’t read music—I go home and I figure it out—there are way too many British versions of Christmas carols that I don’t know at all, and I can barely say my name on pitch if I’m doing it by myself and some frelling musical human is trying to sing HARMONY.‡‡

It’ll be fine, said Leandra.  It’s just to make a show.

It was a beautiful day, just by the way.  It would have been a beautiful day to take hellhounds on a long walk through the fields and forests beyond Ditherington or Warm Upford.  I stared out the window of Gemma’s car and tried not to moan.

There was ringing first.  It was a ground-floor ring with the wretched font in the middle of the circle, bristling with knobs and excrescences that you could see having a snatch at your rope if it swung too near.  There were also a lot of civilians standing around watching us ring . . . and as I stood there pulling on a rope I thought, and in a few minutes I’m going to be the only soprano in a cough-cough choir of five people.‡‡‡

Well.  I lived.  We all lived.  Leandra made Gemma come stand with us§ in the ‘choir’ because six would look better than five.  True.  And I heard the occasional small piping noise from Gemma’s general direction.  And we had a good organist which makes all the difference, and it’s not like any of these were anthems, we were just supposed to be leading the congregation, hahahahahahahahahahaha.  And, for better or worse, you could certainly hear me.  I was making a noise.  I was TRYING.

Because—warning: gloppy moral follows—this was finally the point.  It would have been pathetic not to have any choir.  I knew when I said ‘see you tomorrow’ to Gemma last night that I’d just agreed to miss the opera.§§  But occasionally you have to do something badly to do it live, you know?  To be a person with other people even if that involves singing when you’re not Anna Netrebko or Natalie Dessay.  To get out there and support your team.  The vicar thanked us, and I thought yeah, yeah, you’re a vicar, but Gemma said later that he’d meant it:  that he’d said that he would be leading several carol services and it was nice to have other people up there on stage with him.§§§  Gemma was going around with a notebook and pen and taking names for people we can hit up next year.  We need a strategy, she said.  The blanket email approach doesn’t work.  And in the car coming home I said, and next year we are going to have a proper rehearsal . . .

* * *

* I cancelled handbells on Thursday because I was feeling so mouldy.  That’s serious.  But I dragged myself to choir practise.  I’ve only just started again, I can’t also start missing immediately.  I was even thinking I could maybe get out of it if I emailed Gordon, they are sure to be chiefly practising carols for the carol concert that I won’t be in because I have an opera that day^ . . . but I decided this was a bad idea, and besides, I like singing carols^^, so why not.  So I went.  And I FROZE TO DEATH^^^ but . . . it was okay.  Oh, and we didn’t sing any carols.  It was all about the concert next spring, which I don’t at this point have any excuse to get out of.  HE’S MAKING US SING O WHEN THE SAINTS [go marching in] WITHOUT THE MUSIC.  HE’S EXPECTING A LOT OF POST-MENOPAUSAL WOMEN TO MEMORISE AN ENTIRE PIECE OF MUSIC.#

^ prospective irony alert

^^ Second prospective irony alert

^^^ I brought a hat.  AND I FORGOT TO WEAR IT.  Well, my brain was cold.  Clearly I need to knit a beret.  It should be harder to forget something YOU MADE YOURSELF.

# I think the under-40s and the blokes can do this one by themselves.

** Note that I’ve already missed the first Met Live I booked for due to the exigencies of puppy digestion.

*** Also, Gemma can be very persuasive.  Apparently sometimes her family also decides it’s easier to say okay, whatever.

† Niall, who is one of these people who genuinely can’t carry a tune in a paper bag^, may have snickered.

^ Although why anyone would want to carry a tune in a paper bag has never been satisfactorily explained

†† People like Gemma can bounce while sitting quietly in their chairs.

††† This TWO SHIFTS OF DOGS thing is a bogglefrag.  And Pavlova turned four months old yesterday, which means she’s up to fifteen minutes of walk a day.

‡ I swear it’s worse this year.  Of course this is the first year I have had to drive to my bell tower, inconveniently located in a big town with lots of shops.  And meanwhile my head and heart keep exploding on account of this being my first year as a Christian.  I carom from hysterical loathing of the advertising babes in low-cut Santa suits and the Make Your Own Chenille Reindeer kits^ to a sudden sharp consciousness of Jesus as a baby and . . . ::explodes::

^ There are some remarkably dire Christmas knitting projects out there.

‡‡ It was . . . even rather frustrating.  I could have learnt probably any of it—even the blasted descants—this is not difficult music, it’s all very straightforward stuff for little amateur choirs—most of it I probably could even have learnt well enough to hang on to what I was doing in spite of those frellers singing harmony.  But I can’t do it by sight and I can’t do it cold.

‡‡‡ Nice friendly cooperative bells though, even if the two does long to tip off the balance in the wrong direction.  If I didn’t overpull this wouldn’t be a problem.  But it was also a nice ROUND ringing circle, you know, circular, unlike the dratblatted ringing queues at the abbey, and I made it through a touch of bob minor and a plain course of Stedman doubles as if I knew what I was doing.

§ Nanny nanny boo boo ya boo sucks

§§ Un Ballo in Maschera.  Sigh.  I did listen to it on radio 3, but I would have liked to see Dmitri Hvorostovsky.  And Gemma did get me back in time.  But I had hounds and a terror to hurtle and the ME was already snarling at me in a decidedly unfriendly manner.

§§§ I both totally get this and slightly wonder if maybe he’s in the wrong line of work.

KES, 57

FIFTY SEVEN

 

“Do I want to know how this happened?” said Serena.

“She’s not a this,” I said.  “She’s a dog.  Her name’s Sid.”

Serena leaned against the door frame and shut her eyes.  “Okay.  Look.  You realise you are putting me in an awkward position here, don’t you?  I should be throwing you out on your ear and demanding some kind of—of—I don’t know, damages or something.  I’m not going to, and if Jan were here he wouldn’t either, but this is still a business, you know?  There are going to be people staying in this room after you, and they won’t want to be bitten by fleas.  Or black widow spiders or small rodents, or whatever else is hiding in—among—underneath—she looks like she’s been incompetently felted.”

I looked at my dog.  Up close in daylight . . . she might well be a short-haired dog for a while, after I’d cut all the mats out.  Possibly while wearing gloves in case of black widow spiders.

“Sorry,” I said.  “Yes.  I do know.  And we’re leaving right now, and I’m worrying about whether Sid is going to agree to be passenger dog, because I haven’t got any other choices if she doesn’t.  I don’t know anything about her . . . except she’s now mine.  I just paid the first colossal vet’s bill,” I added a little wildly, “including getting her microchip changed to my name.  And our first stop is the pet shop to buy a brush.  Or maybe I’ll just ask Gus to bring a hedge-trimmer on Sunday.”

“You don’t like taking your major life crises gradually, do you?” said Serena.  “I’ll tell Gus to sharpen the blades.  Microchip?  That thi—she—is microchipped?”

“Yeah,” I said.  “Her previous owner doesn’t want her back.”

“Um,” said Serena.  “Um.  Why?”

“I guess she ran away a lot,” I said vaguely.  I thought mentioning the demon dog description might be a bad idea.  “She broke her leg jumping out a window once.”

“Oh,” said Serena carefully.

At this stark moment my phone rang.  I jumped like I’d been bitten by a small rodent or a black widow spider, and Sid surged to her feet ready for . . . I found myself remembering  Thy new comrade is swift and loyal and high-couraged.  And bony, I thought.  And looks like she’s been incompetently felted.  I had meant to turn my phone off again and forgot.  I pulled it out reluctantly.  It was Mr Wolverine.  I turned it off and put it away without answering.  I was trembling.  Oh, pigs’ bladders and tapeworms and cobras.  Particularly cobras.

“Uh oh,” said Serena.  “Was that last night’s bad news?”

“Yes,” I said.  There was a silence so thick and solid you could have nailed a bookshelf to it and stacked all thirty-two volumes of the last hard copy edition of the Britannica on it.  Serena was just starting to say, “S’okay, I have days like —” when I said, “Divorce lawyer.  Mine.  I call him Mr Wolverine, which is a defamation of wolverines, who I’m sure are honest and straightforward and kind to their mothers.”  Sid, who had sat down, stood up again, looking for the villain.

“Oh,” said Serena.  “I’m sorry.”

“The divorce has already gone through,” I said frustratedly.  “How bad can it be?”

There was another, slightly less intense silence that you probably couldn’t have piled anything heavier than the complete works of Patricia A McKillip in paperback on.

“You shouldn’t say things like that to someone who’s been through it,” Serena said finally.  “But your ex is the one with all the money, isn’t he?”

“All the money,” I said with feeling.  “All the money.  So why can’t Mr W go away and leave me alone forever?  I even paid his bill, which would keep a family of four in the Four Seasons Penthouse Suite for a month.  With beluga caviar for breakfast.”

“Why won’t he leave you alone?” said Serena.  “Because you’re still moving.  Divorce lawyers and bounty hunters hate that.”

I didn’t mean to, but I laughed.

“Sorry,” said Serena.   “I’m not helping.  I’m sure there are worthy, decent divorce lawyers with a sense of humor like normal people.  I just haven’t met them.  Mine . . . well.”

“I had to ask for a higher flaming settlement to pay his bill.”  Sid shoved her face in my hands, which is how I found out I had balled them into fists and was banging the knuckles together.  I stopped.  I petted my dog.  I sighed.  The rest of her was maybe felted, but the top of her head was silky and there was another little silky bit under her chin.  “I hadn’t wanted to use him in the first place . . . never mind.”  I kept petting my dog.  I felt my blood pressure dropping.  That’s what dogs are for, although it tended to go the other way with my mom’s Ghastlies.

“I take it all back,” said Serena.  “You and Sid are obviously made for each other.”