Goddesses or 49 ½ shades of charcoal, is the full title.
It is my challenge to 50 Shades. This isn’t about a woman who does things in the bedroom or dungeon, with which she can’t identify. It’s about a woman who realises her sexuality has been too long in the cupboard and when she finally releases it, is able to help those around her. Writers, should always write from the heart and risk the result.
Heroine Fightback
The story needs a plot. The bad boys misuse the good nature of my liberated heroine, but she fights back, beautifully.
Outrageous! Brilliantly funny – the beta-readers said.
Front and back cover to Goddesses – Goddesses – 49 ½ shades of charcoal
Author Jitters
The 31st August will be a challenge. That’s the day it will be delivered to the pre-order customers. It took me over two years to get the courage together to press the release button and publish.
Do it!
Do it! my friends told me. Release the ancient goddesses on the world. I start with Inanna and her ancient Sumer Song. I’d love to reprint it here, but I would have to put an 18 warning on the blog. It’s in full in the novel, which is definitely and 18!
18 warning for Inanna Song
As I grew up there was one moto for young men – show no fear, show no emotion. If I think back to the overriding emotion, it was guilt. This is me casting it off. So, for all the people out there, who want an uninhibited sex-life, perhaps this is how one should do it. You can pre-order now on Amazon.
Available 31st August 2020 – a post Covid read – hopefully.
I couldn’t wipe egg off my chin with such a work of art, but if I’d opened my mouth the contents would have landed on the tablecloth. I wiped my chin instead, finished my mouthful, calmed my breathing and said, ‘Sozz but it’s the only way to eat fried egg, and why are you surprised the innocent whore and her boss got the blame? Sounds about typical to me – I’ll wash and iron the handkerchief.’
She reached across the table and took the lacy egg-stained article from me.
‘Don’t be daft. First use it’s ever had. You can’t blow your nose on it. Snot goes through the lace.’
Not better than sex.
‘I think Millie has plans for those eggs. Cut the white off, slide the yolk onto your fork and then in it goes, whole. We always do it that way. It gives a different edge to the word ‘yokel’.’
Vera was baffled. Sid offered further explanation.
‘Saves on washing up as well.’
Vera looked at me and then the plate and then at Sid, standing by her shoulder.
‘Go for it,’ I said. ‘It’s not better than sex but comes near and is definitely safer.’
Vera looked at the eggs again and started removing the white. She then pursued the yolks round the plate a while, not having the courage to hoist them onto the fork, but endangering the delicate membrane that was struggling to retain the bulging yellow mass. I moved my chair to the side of the table adjacent to her, took my fork, scooped the first yolk onto it and headed toward her mouth. She sat there, tight lipped. Just as I thought the yolk would be wrecked somewhere between chin and nose, her mouth opened and in it went. Her eyes widened as she wallowed then swallowed.
‘Wow!’ she exclaimed.
LGBT Moments
That evening, after work, I was obliged to relay the bits of conversation that Sid had been unable to eavesdrop. It wasn’t much.
‘What’s it all about? You must have an opinion.’
Sid was always quick with opinions, even when not asked for one.
‘Strictly speaking, your honesty and pride as a villager should debar you from hanging out with her,’ she began. ‘On the other hand, the café is a converted orangery and we know how unbearable it can be to work in there if we hit a spell of good weather. So, take the job. What’s the money like? It must be more than waitressing.’
‘‘All she said was, ‘it will be better,’ but as she doesn’t know what we make in tips, how can she be sure she’s offering more? But the issue is, why me?’
‘Why she offered it to you?’
I looked to her for help although after years of friendship, I already knew she usually finished things with a raunchy or lascivious punchline.
‘She’s lesbian and fancies you,’ she concluded, and strolled off chuckling and congratulating herself for causing embarrassment. Sid had no idea how profound her analysis was, but it didn’t turn out to be me Vera fancied.
My Suffolk story, inspired by a visit to the county. I observed a waitress in a café and called her Millie. I imagined her relationship with her boss – a local aristocrat – reduced to making her home a business.
‘The dialogue crackles.’ Alice Wickham – New London Writers.
‘Relaxed, witty, clever and wonderfully cynical at times.’ Dr. Hilary Johnson
‘I walked home with a bursting head. What a day! The village aristocrat has cancelled games and the village Marxist has cancelled vitriol, while the village evangelist sounds like Lenin. Someone tell me what is going on!’
I wrote last week’s blog on the Despentes film of her book Baise-Moi, without having read the book or seen the film. That was deliberate. I didn’t want to write a criticism. I wanted to ask a question.
Since then, I watched the DVD (cut version, which saved me watching a man have a gun thrust up his rectum and then being shot), and then researched the two main actresses, Karen Bach and Raffaëla Anderson, who both came to their acting careers through porn films. There is a 30 minute interview with Anderson and Despentes on the DVD, justifying the sex-scenes in the film. Paraphrased – we all so it so why not film it? And, it wasn’t erotic so it wasn’t porn. They promise that there was no simulated sex in the film.
Not Erotic?
They are right. It isn’t erotic, but is that because we are desensitised? The film was made in 2003. I have no idea how it was viewed by the public back then.
A cover detail from the DVD
The film plot doesn’t attempt to justify the excessive violence. The shootings seem indiscriminate. If you are male you are a legitimate target, was the maxim. That said, I lost count of the female fatalities, but they were fewer than the deceased males. I think Despentes’s answer would have been, ‘an abused woman is entitled to be indiscriminate, because all men are guilty.’
Violent?
That’s pretty much the Me Too standpoint and if I were a woman I would be sticking to that, too. And the violence? Anderson said, ‘Film violence doesn’t make peaceful people violent. It just makes them more creative.’
It’s tempting, but I’m not going to argue that one!
The film is short – 73 minutes and if you take time out for introduction and credits it must be down to an hour. My point is, one could easily have given more weight to justifying the violence. Those who initially imposed a ban on the film probably thought it there for titillation and couldn’t be justified. I think more highly of Despentes and for me, that isn’t an option. I do think they missed an opportunity to explain the violence from within the film which is the best place from which to do it.
Criterion
My criterion for the value of a book or film is, do I know something after viewing I didn’t know before; did viewing the film force me to think about an issue? These two were definitely met by Baise-Moi.
Bach and Anderson reveal what stunning actresses they are, despite the lack of drama-school training. The disappointment was to learn that Bach died in a drug related accident in 2005 and the English translation of baise moi is given as rape me which is deliberately incorrect and sensationalist. A correct translation – fuck me – makes more sense. Best is to use the French title, which is usual.
Where does that leave The Last Stop, my fight-back book set in Berlin?
My objective was to reveal the contradiction inherent in law-making. The more the German Bundestag tinkers with prostitution laws, the worse things become. This wasn’t the intention when various areas of the sex industry were decriminalised. Berlin now has streets of caravans with Eastern European women on the inside and German pimps guarding the door and taking the money. Thus, it seems fair to allow my protagonists in The Last Stop, the right to fight back. They also get to analyse this right – I give them the words to justify their actions – and I supply a devil’s advocate who tells them how wrong they are to resort to go for the shoot out.
Excerpt
How did I do.
Take a read of the following excerpt and let me know.
Jack had come to Berlin to experience the throb of a world city. Within a few hours he’d experienced death’s long tunnel and then been an accessory to murder. And he’d learned, ‘we’ve got away with it’.
Although he was still shaking and wondering how ‘we’ came to be the personal pronoun of the moment, he observed the girl was composed and tidying the broken chair bits into his empty suitcase. The only one motionless was Dmitri.
Jack knelt by the body. It wasn’t bleeding from anywhere. Disposing of a pool of blood on the hotel carpet, would have been a problem too far.
‘Is he dead?’ Maria asked.
‘How would I know? Must be! Oh I don’t know, but how can you survive blows to the head like that?’
‘He looks dead.’
There was a long pause and then a quiet calm came over Jack. He started reasoning again. ‘If he isn’t already dead, he soon will be. That beating was awesome and I’ll take some convincing it was necessary.’
Black Lives Matter and Me Too, are the most recent manifestations of the hard truth. Western style democracies are not able to police themselves. Don’t get started on the human rights problems in the rest of the world.
So, the question is – if our governments can’t or won’t protect us, when is it reasonable to begin to protect ourselves?
Some countries have a rape culture, which is why women form vigilante groups for protection and retribution.
In GB it is impossible to get big business to accept moral or legal responsibility for their actions so, 3 years after the cladding catastrophe in London, residents of dangerous apartments in cities such as Manchester are still living in tinderbox high rise blocks, facing bankruptcy if they try to pay for the necessary work to be carried out. Thus, they are forced to live in dangerous, unsellable apartments. The architects/building companies have either disappeared or will prevaricate until the taxpayer picks up the tab. I predict that no one will go to jail for corporate manslaughter. The culture here is – privatise the profits, socialise the losses.
My book, The Last Stop (or Endstation in the German translation) picks up the point and asks when is it justified for the exploited to fight back. I might just predate Virginie Despentes. Her book, now a violent film, Baise-Moi, is probably too violent for me to watch. I will stop after a few minutes so Despentes’s excesses might be counter productive. If one needs so many health warnings, then only the sick and deranged will find it entertaining. The rest of us will never get to the point of getting the point.
And so it was with The Last Stop. My editor advised me to keep the humour. ‘But it isn’t supposed to be funny,’ I protested.
The Last Stop – Order here in English or German translation
‘Yes Clive. I know. But at least it is fun to read and won’t depress your public.’
Good point. If I need humour to get my readers to the point where they get the point, so be it. I left the humour.
The Last Stop – Order here in English or German translation. English language e-book, just £0.99
My name is Yoricks Bonksome and I’m a bit weed ‘orf as Her Majesty would say. I have had a terrible week. A man shouldn’t have to put up with it in the name of an honest day’s work. Now there is the rub. Honesty!
If I get accused of being a pathological liar, one more time, I will pop. Why can’t they use the proper name for it – mythomania sounds much better for a man with a degree in classics, and pseudologia fantastica, even better.
But ‘liar’ is a cheap shot. Of course I lie. I’m public school. Have you any idea what sort of a life you had under the prefect system, if you couldn’t think of a quick porky to assuage the smell of guilt around the dorm? You lied to save your arse and you can interpret that anywhichway you like.
Yes! We learned to lie at Fretton. It was viewed as an essential skill. It prepared us for our future careers in politics, or as a captain of industry when those trades union idiots got round the collective bargaining table and if you took a vain swish at a leaver outside off stump and got an edge, you weren’t going to trudge back to the pavilion without some sort of excuse by the time you got there.
Public School kids don’t lie all the time. An Eton Mess is genuinely a mess. That must put us some way onto the map of honesty.
Talking of maps, there we have another problem. It’s jealousy I think. Just because journalists can’t afford the most expensive real estate in the country, they mock. I can’t help living in Upper Bumble. Poor old Glove lives down the way in Lower Cackout. They are names – not descriptions and of course I know how many children I have sired.
There you go. A chap uses the oldest nod nod, wink wink, locker-room joke in the book and it offends some right of something for women who consider it something with sex in it. Well everything has sex in it. I thought we’d fucked that lot off the day we got rid of Jerkow as Speaker and now I’m pilloried for not having said 8, when asked.
8 offspring. Let me tell you what that costs in maintenance and then you’ll feel sorry for me. I don’t have to pay for them all because some gals – the more feisty ones I might add – took a lump sum straight after I’d unhitched my trousers from the bed post, but I pay for 4 at a thousand a month – £48000 a year on my salary of nearly £200 000 is a lot. If I pay full tax on that 200k I’m down to less than 100k after maintenance. And seeing as I took a whopping pay cut to be where I am now, people could show a bit of understanding for some of my other failings.
Don’t you think?
Category is flash fiction – fiction! This has nothing to do with anything real. All characters are figments of my imagination.
Picture An Advert forBock Bier – a traditional German strong beer, covered in my book, The Historical Companion to House-Brewing.
For decades, brown beers have been the most talked about but least purchased of the traditional ales. Now that seems to be changing. Perhaps it’s time to reappraise the beginnings of the genre.
They were most popular, before brewers realised that dark malts didn’t yield the extract one had assumed. Now this realisation occurred in the mid 1700s. Some clever unknown brewer hit on the idea of weighing a bucket of brown beer wort and an equal volume of water. And in that moment the idea of wort density, now called OG, was born. By subtracting the water weight from the wort weight, one knew how much extract was present.
Pale Beers have it.
Someone did the same with a pale ale wort, and the truth was out. Brown malts don’t maximise profit potential. That didn’t mean the end of brown beer popularity. There were other reasons to keep colour. Drinkers wanted them, brown beers are most forgiving of a poor quality gyle, and ingredients, can be brewed very bitter using burnt malt and thus save on hops, and can be made from stale pale malt, which has absorbed too much water (slack). One simply roasted a second time. Here is one method.
Historical Companion to House Brewing as e-book
Here is a charming picture of the Stopes Malt Roaster, which enabled slack malt to be up-cycled as brown malt.
The Historical Companion contains detailed descriptions of malt making in the small house brewery. It is the perfect partner hobby to craft brewing and allows one to brew authentic ales and lager beers, using the correct malt.
Unfortunately, we don’t know so much about the colour and extract from the early days, nor that much on the bittering potential of hops. That said, my Stout and Porter text allows one to have great fun in the brewery and as all my books are now available for your iPad or tablet/PC, Android or iPhone, there need no longer be soggy pages of recipe books flipping shut.
During C-19 lockdown, I decided to post chapters of my 5* novel. Coming of Age – the fast way, as a free read.
Since then, Goodnovels have signed me up and are serialising the whole novel – free to read at the moment.
Here is the link and I leave chapter one below, to give you a flavour.
Stats! Within a few days with Goodnovels hundreds of readers had viewed the free chapters and over 250 signed up to read it. Just Click and enjoy. The first Chapters are completely free so you get a really good insight to the novel, before you commit to spending. That’s fair!!
I wouldn’t have noticed Vera as she sat down, because of my terrible eyesight. The name was mine. It had to be me she was calling. But from where?
I searched the café. This meant peering across the space between, through powerful lenses. Vera wasn’t a regular visitor, even though it was her café. Most café owners would breakfast in their restaurant every morning, but not Vera and I certainly don’t eat here. It isn’t my café. I’m just a worker from the village, who tries to earn a few quid as a waitress, so when I finally spotted her over by the long trestles, used by coach parties, she was waving me over.
My heart skipped a beat as I imagined the conversation to come.
‘Millicent, we have too many staff on and being casual, I’m afraid I’ll have to let you go. I’ll have your last wages ready at midday.’
This wasn’t panic. She was on the other side of the room and had made an effort to call me. And how did she know my name? She’d had to learn it to sack me! A disaster! One always needs the money.
I walked over and tried not to curtsey. How daft is that? Just because she is Lady Vera, doesn’t call for a bended knee in the twenty-first century, but, if I’m honest, I would have curtseyed to keep my job.
And there was the next problem! What to call her. Vera? Impossible – even though she was technically a work colleague. Your Ladyship? No idea if that is even correct. I decided to treat her like any other customer, even though her husband owns the remarkable eighteenth-century hall and gardens and most of the villages around it, including the one in which my extended family live. The café is part of a tourist attraction, which provides most of the jobs in the area. It is nationally famous for its astounding home-made cakes, so Vera is a powerful woman and not one to irritate unnecessarily!
I arrived at the table with no decision made and tried to play safe.
‘What can I do for you, madam?’
It sounded all wrong. She thought so, too.
‘Sit down, Millicent.’
That was another surprise. I wasn’t mistaken. She did know my name. Nearly my name, I suppose. To this day, she is the only person who occasionally calls me Millicent instead of Millie.
And ‘Sit down’? Was my hearing playing tricks?
She is in her late forties, tall for a woman, stunningly elegant with her rich wavy slightly copper hair which is now gently greying. Her voice is beautiful, even though a little old-fashioned, almost an affectation nowadays with a twang of over-correct Oxford English. It’s so different to our Suffolk brogue that I assumed she hadn’t really meant for me to sit at her table and looked for some other opportunity that required me to be seated.
‘Oh, do sit down, girl!’ She barked at my moment of hesitation, but there was still a friendly intonation in her voice. That was a clue. I wasn’t about to get the sack, but still couldn’t imagine why else she had called me over. I gently and nervously dropped down opposite her.
‘Had breakfast yet?’
‘I’m not due a break until eleven Miss er madam. Sorry.’ I was flustering like a ten-year-old. She rescued me.
‘Call me Vera, for goodness sake.’
‘Thanks,’ I mumbled.
Why was I thanking her? Why was I mumbling?
An imperious call to my colleague and oldest school friend, who also waited tables, confounded the riddle.
‘Bring Millicent a full English breakfast Sidonie and put it on my tab.’
Sid blanched. She couldn’t abide Sidonie. No one used it.
‘Yes, madam,’ she replied in a tone barely respectful.
‘Millicent, while you are waiting, read that.’
She turned the copy of Country Lives she had been reading, on its head and pushed it across the table, scattering her breakfast crockery and nearly tipping the milk jug over. I rescued the milk and then studied the open pages for some time. I couldn’t concentrate. What was I supposed to be reading?
‘You’ve lost me. It’s mainly ads for high-class plant nurseries, horse tackle and nanny agencies.’
‘Try again. You are looking for the odd one out.’
I can’t abide the cat and mouse stuff. Life isn’t just a game, even if Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Why can’t she just tell me?
I scanned the page again, but still it felt like an exam I hadn’t learned for. I could read the words without comprehending a thing. She ran out of patience, much to my relief.
‘Well? What do you think?’
That put me on the spot.
‘Sorry Miss, Vera. What am I supposed to be looking at?’
‘The ad I put in. What else? You’ll have to be sharper than this,’ she retorted, but still friendly.
A long and beautiful finger glided across the table, across the paper, and settled on a small, advert in the ‘Vacancies’ column. I read the ad and then read it again.
Lady seeks smart cultivated young female companion for the summer months in the first instance. Apply in writing by 10th inst. to Lady Vera Ashington, Ashington Hall, Suffolk.
‘What do you think?’
‘I’m confused. Are you asking me to apply for the post?’
‘The tenth was last week. Do pay attention! Applications are closed. I got two hundred, all rubbish, from funny sounding women after a summer meal ticket or bimbos with dodgy boyfriends, for whom they were supposed to case the joint, no doubt.’
‘Not many young working women with honest intent have time to include Country Living in their regular reading.’
‘I’m sure you are right. Silly of me I know. Ad cost a fucking fortune too. That’s why I’m short circuiting the process. I want you to take the job. I’ve checked up. A-levels in music and English literature are just what I need. Apparently, you dance beautifully too. How is your art?’
Did she just use the F-word? I was too stunned to answer. I swear myself plenty when it’s called for, but Lady Vera Ashington complaining about the fucking cost. Wow! What my young brain must still learn about the fucking aristocracy. I composed myself for the nth time since sitting down with her.
‘Art knowledge is not notable,’ I replied with humble honesty.
‘No matter, you can swot up. And here is your breakfast. Eat up!’
Sid clattered the plate onto the table from an impolite height.
‘Want any sauces, Millicent?’ Her voice was a mixture of irony, sarcasm and mockery. I decided to play it safe. I could jeopardise things by not taking Vera seriously.
‘No thanks, Sid,’ I quietly replied and started eating. She had spilled the tea into the saucer – surely an attempt to make it difficult to drink in front of Her Ladyship. Vera noticed too.
‘Get Millicent a fresh cup of tea!’
Sid stalked off, nose in the air and sniffing a bit too ostentatiously for comfort.
‘While you are eating, I’ll tell you a story. It was written by a German Jew in the twenties or thirties – I can’t quite remember. Joseph Roth, he was called. Don’t confuse him with that dreadful American anti-Semite Jew Philip Roth. Did you know I’m Jewish?’
‘I had no idea and why would that be important?’
Oh dear. That came over too abruptly, so I added for further discomfort, ‘I’m rather fond of Philip Roth novels.’
I searched my memory for a title. My little pretence could backfire if she realised how clueless I was.
‘I find they tells it how it is.’
There! That did it. It was a risk bragging about an author I’d never heard of, but I felt the need to do a bit of protest after my earlier simpering performance. On reflection I thought I’d probably manoeuvred myself back to the dole queue. Wrong again.
‘I suppose you are right. A girl has to gain an insight into male masturbation somehow.’
Fortunately, I wasn’t drinking my tea as she said it. I swear I’d have sprayed her ladyship as I choked.
Sometimes the joke backfires
She continued.
‘But that was a good answer. I like it. That’s the point of the story. Be honest with those with power over you. The pressure is always on, to keep the influential happy. You don’t want to annoy someone who has the say over life and death. I could sack you on the spot, but you didn’t try weasel words with me. Well done.’
I didn’t continue my honesty by revealing how little I understood her. I thought I had been unnecessarily rude and there she was – thrilled by my integrity and not a mention of a dismissal. From which job would that have been?
‘To continue.’
The way she drew breath I knew I’d have plenty of time to concentrate on my eggs, before another answer was required.
‘Joseph Roth wrote a story about a powerful Sultan, who really had the power of life and death over others. It was called the ‘Thousand and Second Story’ I think. The Sultan’s problem was that no one told him the truth if the truth would upset him. No one wanted to risk his wrath by annoying him with bad news. He could never find out if his wife loved him, if his chancellor understood economics, his farmers agriculture or the captain of his yacht, navigation. If I remember, they got into a terrible storm, because the captain didn’t want to admit bad weather was on the way.
‘The Sultan became bored, because if you only ever hear good news, where is the titillation in life? So, he went on holiday to Vienna, and there the Sultan fell for a beautiful Baroness. The Austrian courtiers and diplomats didn’t want to displease him, and couldn’t tell him the Baroness was off limits, so they fixed him up with a prostitute who looked a bit like her and convinced him that the whore was the woman of his lust. You have probably guessed, he fell in love with the prostitute and began treating her like an aristocratic mistress. Huge and embarrassing gifts and so on. There was a terrible confusion. The prostitute and her madam got the blame for the chaos and went to prison, I think.’
I nodded and pretended to be interested while trying not to let the fried egg yolk slide off my fork. Getting a whole egg yolk in your mouth in one go is tricky enough without trying to hit a moving target, so I stopped nodding as soon as was polite and shovelled the yolk in. Delicious! My favourite way to eat egg. I looked up at Vera. Her mouth had fallen open in horror. She quickly regained her composure.
‘Interesting manners, Millicent. Have you heard a word I’ve said about the parable of the Sultan?’
Her voice cut through the air, but her tone was full of humour. I felt a giggle coming on. Suppress it girl. I couldn’t. The yolk escaped the corners of my mouth and Sid hadn’t left a serviette. Vera reached a beautiful white, folded, delicate, lace-edged lady’s handkerchief across the table. I wanted to protest that I couldn’t wipe egg off my chin with such a work of art, but if I’d opened my mouth the contents would have landed on the tablecloth. I wiped my chin instead, finished my mouthful, calmed my breathing and said, ‘Sozz but it’s the only way to eat fried egg, and why are you surprised the innocent whore and her boss got the blame? Sounds about typical to me – I’ll wash and iron the handkerchief.’
She reached across the table and took the lacy egg-stained article from me.
‘Don’t be daft. First use it’s ever had. You can’t blow your nose on it. Snot goes through the lacy bits.’
I was ready to wet myself. It wasn’t so much what she said as the dry delivery in her posh accent. I was reduced to sniggered snorts. She grinned, too. She was having a ball. Let’s keep it going. I looked over to the counter, where Sid was preparing a tea tray.
‘Sid,’ I sang, in order to mellow giving a mate an order. ‘Can you bring Vera two very runny fried eggs?’
‘Sure!’
I cleared the crockery from Vera’s side of the table, and had finished my own breakfast, just as Sid arrived with the eggs. Vera looked on mystified. She still hadn’t cottoned on, to what we were up to.
‘Can I stay and watch?’
Vera looked at Sid.
‘Watch what?’
‘I think Millie has plans for those eggs. Cut the white off, slide the yolk onto your fork and then in it goes, whole. We always do it that way. It gives a different edge to the word ‘yokel’.’
Vera was baffled. Sid offered further explanation.
‘Saves on washing up as well.’
Vera looked at me and then the plate and then at Sid, standing by her shoulder.
‘Go for it,’ I said. ‘It’s not better than sex but comes near and is definitely safer.’
Vera looked at the eggs again and started removing the white. She then pursued the yolks round the plate a while, not having the courage to hoist them onto the fork, but endangering the delicate membrane that was struggling to retain the bulging yellow mass. I moved my chair to the side of the table adjacent to her, took my fork, scooped the first yolk onto it and headed toward her mouth. She sat there, tight lipped. Just as I thought the yolk would be wrecked somewhere between chin and nose, her mouth opened and in it went. Her eyes widened as she wallowed then swallowed.
‘Wow!’ she exclaimed.
‘Next one,’ I said, as I scooped at the second yolk.
This time her mouth was already open in greedy anticipation. Her eyes shut in desire and she swallowed again, this time very slowly. Was she aware how full of lust her face was?
I looked at Sid, who had a huge grin across her face. She turned and swaggered back to her post at the counter.
Vera opened her eyes.
‘You’ve got the job! You will take it, won’t you? Twice your rate here.’
Will I take the job? Do cats crap in our seed beds?
‘Sure. What are my duties?’
‘Talk to me!’
‘That’s it? Where does the Sultan come in?’
‘Talk to me honestly. No flummery. You’ll be sacked for holding back the truth, not for telling it. I’m bored out my mind. My husband is away on business for weeks at a time, my own children have flown the baronial nest. I need an old-fashioned companion. Do you have a suitcase?’
I couldn’t admit that, as a family, we never went anywhere, because, if we had, we wouldn’t have had any money to do anything when we got there. And that assumes that the old banger we called a car, which was a van, would have got us there. So why would I own a suitcase? She sensed my embarrassment.
‘Every time you hide something from me, I’ll say ‘Sultan,’ and then you have to tell me. Deal?’
‘Deal,’ I said. This woman was a bit special, I decided. ‘And the same goes for you.’
‘How do you mean?’
‘I mean the Sultan rule applies to you, too.’
She paused, seemed about to tell me not to get above myself, but checked herself, and in a friendly voice said, ‘That’s OK. If we are to be friends, that is how it will have to work. And about the suitcase, I’ll send one over to your house. You are in the Church Cottages, aren’t you?’
She knew the answer already.
‘Number three.’
I was back into mumbling mode.
‘You’ll need at least three outfits. Smart, like you are now, smart casual for walking, and rough for the garden or stables.’ I continued studying the floor. The silence between us was deafening. She broke it.
‘Don’t worry Millicent. I’ll find something for you out of our wardrobes. See you tomorrow, eight sharp, use the main entrance.’
I stood up, unsure how to make my exit. She took my hand tenderly but firmly.
‘Don’t worry girl. You’ll do fine,’ and she left.
That evening, after work, I was obliged to relay the bits of conversation that Sid had been unable to eavesdrop. It wasn’t much.
‘What’s it all about? You must have an opinion.’
Sid was always quick with opinions, even when not asked for one.
‘Strictly speaking, your honesty and pride as a villager should debar you from hanging out with her,’ she began. ‘On the other hand, the café is a converted orangery and we know how unbearable it can be to work in there if we hit a spell of good weather. So, take the job. What’s the money like? It must be more than waitressing.’
”All she said was, ‘it will be better,’ but as she doesn’t know what we make in tips, how can she be sure she’s offering more? But the issue is, why me?’
‘Why she offered it to you?’
I looked to her for help although after years of friendship, I already knew she usually finished things with a raunchy or lascivious punchline.
‘She’s lesbian and fancies you,’ she concluded, and strolled off chuckling and congratulating herself for causing embarrassment.
Sid had no idea how profound her analysis was, but it didn’t turn out to be me Vera fancied.
Enjoyed this excerpt? The whole novel will be available through Goodnovel by end of January 2022.
Hildegard Kneff starred with Ernst Wilhelm Borchert, in ‘The Murderers Are Among Us’. A film about the Nazi war criminals, rejoining everyday life (1946)
Topography – a detailed description or representation on a map of the physical features of an area.
Terror – the use of extreme fear to intimidate people, especially for political reasons.
(Oxford Dictionary of English)
I put off visiting the museum of Gestapo atrocities, aptly called The Topography of Terror. One knows what happened. Why go for total immersion?
I have misgivings about the remembrance of WW1. Where is the political analysis of what caused the lunacy years, 1914 to 18? What good does remembering those young men a century later, do those young men? It is a bit late to now say, ‘oops – sorry – shouldn’t have happened’. In other words, we are not remembering the senseless slaughter in a way that will do the dead a service. We are doing it for our consciences – to make us feel better. Remembering a grandfather we never knew, buried in an unmarked grave in Flanders, along with thousands of others, is an odd sentiment – isn’t it? I have been obliged to change my mind! Isn’t it a cop out? Shouldn’t I feel the same about the Topography of Terror museum in Berlin? – too little and too late. I would discover how wrong I was! It is a powerful experience and it can never be too late.
When I trudged one winter’s day, through the ice, northwards, toward the Potsdamer Platz in Berlin, approaching the site of the infamous headquarters of the Gestapo and SS, I had no idea of the awful truths I was about to discover. The original building was destroyed. The cells and torture rooms in the cellars were intact. They needed excavating and were the first part to be opened. The building housing the museum is new.
When I left the museum of terror two hours later, I had learned three things, which is why it is important that everyone visit the museum, and the graves in the fields of Flanders. Every immersion increases knowledge. Knowledge empowers us to prevent it happening again – or so we hope!
What I learnt:
Fact 1. Everyone knew! The first shock was about the myths surrounding the SS. They were not just another military unit and everyone at the time must have known that. The pictures show that the population must have known Jews were murdered, and young women who dared smile at a French PoW were shaved by the angry mob. Because of the museum, there is now nowhere to hide. Albert Speer – Hitler’s architect – wrote his memoirs in the 60s from Spandau Prison. He was Germany’s conscience. He explained how it was possible not to know. Since his death, historians have shown his memoirs to be fairy tales. How could he not have known, when he was the top man organising forced labour in factories?
My mother-in-law was more refreshingly honest. As a young woman, she lived in what is now Russia. She experienced first-hand the murders. I have recorded her story, here.
Fact 2. Crimes were ignored. The SS murderers went largely unpunished after the war. In the museum is a massive wall of drawers . Each drawer is a person, about whom there was evidence that he had committed crimes. The pulled-out drawers are the criminals who were actually brought to justice. You will have to look hard to find them. Doctors who carried out human experiments, causing great pain, permanent debilitation or death, were free to practice in the community, after the war. There was evidence on approximately 106000 Nazi criminals. Successful prosecutions number around 6000.
The drawers containing evidence of war crimes. Only the open ones were prosecuted and often unsuccessfully.
Fact 3. The museum wasn’t built until the criminals were dead. The new exhibition and documentation building and the redesigned historic grounds, opened to the public on May 7, 2010. That is 65 years after the events. The perpetrators were dead by 2010.
Add 1 + 2 + 3 and you don’t get 6. You get a different truth. Not only were the criminals largely ‘pardoned,’ of their crimes by the governments of Germany, France, USA, Britain, but their crimes were not made public until most involved in the torture and genocide, had lived out their good middle class lives and were in comfortable graves.
Ex SS officers, openly reuniting after the war and celebrating their murders.
Neil MacGregor, in his book, Germany – Memories of a Nation, rightly says, ‘No nation put so much effort into dealing with its past, as modern Germany’. The Topography of Terror museum and the Holocaust Memorial up the road from it, are part of this clear out, but it is still not enough.
The reason why thousands of men per day could be sent to their death during the First World War, was the control the government had over the media. Many young men were murdered after sham courts marshal trials found them guilty of cowardice. The press was never able to report.
The reason why Hitler could control an unwilling nation for 12 years was because he controlled the press, radio, told lies and killed dissidents. He had an effective propaganda machine to explain away the unpleasant bits. The German voters believed the rhetoric in 1933. It was handy to accept the problems were down to trade unionists, communists, ethnic minorities (principally Jews) and anyone else who contradicted the lies. By the time the population saw through the propaganda and realised they had been hoodwinked, it was too late. The state had the guns and were prepared to use them. The state had the prisons and were prepared to indefinitely incarcerate innocent people in starving, freezing conditions, doing inhuman labour, all without trial. If there was a trial, the judges handed down the required verdict or they found themselves in prison.
Enough said – except here are some nagging thoughts that won’t go away.
Did our politicians and press really pillory the judges – demand they give up their independence and tow their line over Brexit? I’m afraid they did.
Do police in the USA randomly shoot black men and boys, because they don’t like them. It seems so. Black Lives Matter might change that, but we have been there, before.
Didn’t the police in Washington arrest journalists, incarcerate them for 36 hours and confiscate their equipment, when those journalists were covering anti-Trump demonstrations on the day of his inauguration? Doesn’t President Trump regularly call journalists liars if he doesn’t approve of their reporting?
Isn’t our present PM – Johnson regularly caught out fiddling with the truth and aren’t there newspapers prepared to treat his lies, sympathetically?
Are not foreign workers regularly demonised by our politicians and press, although there is no evidence they take jobs or depress wages? Everyone needs a boo-man.
Was not the Brexit campaign tainted with lies and half truths from politicians and media? It was a shabby first half year in 2016.
Is not the far right, across Europe, once again on the march? Wilders and Le Pen have been significant players in elections in Holland and France. The AfD is doing well in elections in Germany, despite using language that could come from the Hitler handbook of hate. Will 2020 be a watershed year for democracy. Right wing groups have protested about the wave of sympathy shown Black Lives Matter. Aren’t they trying to legitimise murder as a political end?
Suddenly I don’t feel so smug. Suddenly I’m glad that the Topography of Terror and the graves in Flanders are there, to visit, to confront us over how it works and show us how truly awful the result can be when we gag the press, pervert the judiciary and make minorities responsible for that which we don’t like.
Holocaust Memorial, Berlin
My Berlin Novel, ‘The Last Stop,’ deals with some of the post-war ghosts, still rattling around Germany. Free on Kindle Unlimited.
Here are the next two chapters from my 5* novel, Someone Tell Me What Is Going On. Day 10 is imminent. Can’t wait? Then get the complete novel, free through Kindle Unlimited.
Day 8. Interludes for more gossip.
Monday.
Not even out of bed yet and a text from Vera. I always put my phone on quiet, but my sister, Sonya, nosey as ever, opened an eye.
‘Who’s that?’
‘Vera.’
‘Why?’
‘She wants me to pick up her Financial Times? Seems the paper shop forgot to include it this morning.’
How can such an irrelevancy spark off the imagination of an eleven-year-old?
‘Have you seen the heap of papers poor Georgie has to lug up to the House every morning?’
‘She’s a big strapping lass. I’m sure she can cope.’
‘Aren’t we related to her somehow?’
‘Our mums share the same great grandmother.’
There was a pause while Sonya let that filter through her sleepy brain. I found I was dressing rather slowly.
‘And the girl in the stores is related to Georgie somehow, so she must be related to us.’
‘Too complicated. Sonya.’
‘Shouldn’t you be hurrying or something? You must be late. Don’t you care anymore? Bet you get the sack one day.’
‘It won’t be today Sonya love. I don’t want to be too early this morning. I put in one hell of a day yesterday, and I’m still not sure what I’m being paid.’
I thought she had fallen asleep again, but she was taking everything in.
‘Dad said Vera was really generous to you.’
‘True!’
‘And you have paid Mum back.’
‘Nevertheless, I need to let Vera know that I’m not doing ten-hour days and weekends as the norm.’
‘I thought it was a bit special of Vera to help Sid out. And that’s my bra you are trying to pull on.’
I studied the garment in my hand.
‘So it is. You’re nearly twelve and got bigger tits than me. How’s that work?’
‘Genes. I take after Dad’s side. Christ. I hope I don’t get tits like Gran.’
We both had to laugh at the thought. I found my bra and Sonya found a new angle.
‘Does Sid want to live in the stable apartments? They are very small.’
‘She’s lucky Vera fixed it for her.’
‘Sid always hated Vera’s lot. Now she has to be grateful. I bet she ends up pushing you out.’
I was speechless, but thought back to yesterday. I couldn’t work out if Sid wasn’t disappointed that Vera and I had patched things up.
‘And another thing – there is a dark shadow on your right cheek.’
‘Is there?’ I asked disinterestedly.
The slight detour past the post office-cum general store was no big deal – or so I thought! It’s just a wooden shack in the pub car park with an amazing view over the Broads. It has little useful on the shelves, but a phone call in the evening and they will have any wish you may have by the following morning. They also supply the convenience store at the garage. This means that your purchase history at either sales point is as carefully stored in the grey cells of the assistants, as if you had updated your algorithm with an on-line purchase. The main difference is that there is nothing confidential about purchases from the general store or filling station. The whole world gets to speculate, not just an Amazon server.
‘Hi, Millie,’ was how Sandi, who Sonya now reckons must be a distant cousin, greeted. I knew I would need to be in bobbing and weaving mode again. She doesn’t normally give me the time of day. She was after information.
‘You’ll know this one, Millie. I walked up with Georgie from the filling station this morning.’ (I groan inwardly). ‘And she said that Charley came by yesterday evening – nearly closing time – and bought some nappies. Now why would he need nappies?’
‘Nappies!’ I repeated after her, to gain a little time and maybe a few clues. It worked.
‘Yes, he came in and bought a top-up for a phone and some nappies. Now why would he do that?’
‘Because his phone had run out of credit?’
I enjoyed that one. There is nothing pisses a village gossip off more than a deliberately obtuse interlocutor. And here goes for the shake-off manoeuvre, where, without warning, I deftly change the subject.
‘Do you have Lady Ashington’s FT?’
Distant Cousin is a grand master in gossip and wasn’t deflected by my pathetic switch-move. She parried with a George Bush Junior shimmy – not noted for subtlety.
‘The nappies, you berk. Why did he need nappies?’
‘Maybe he has got some girl up the duff?’
‘Can’t be. They were the largest size available for children. And it apparently isn’t you he has got into trouble. That was only a week ago.’
Now I was outmanoeuvred. Vera used binoculars to spy on my nocturnal visit to the stables, but how did she know?
Explanation of nappies: Sandra still wets the bed, Sid had tried to save on nappy expenses because she was skint, and that’s why the mattresses at the cottage were sodden. It never occurred to me to buy nappies with Sid’s provisions, so she sent Charley on an errand. Sid only mentioned the phone top-up to me.
What do I say to Distant Cousin, knowing it will get back to Georgie Gossip? I’ll be conciliatory and pretend I’m cooperating.
‘I have no idea, Cuzz, but I’ll ask him if I see him.’
She was back onto me like a hound chasing a rabbit.
‘So why has Sid moved out – with Tom and Sandra?’
She has already guessed the need for nappies. Two and a half years is not unusual for a child to still need nappies at night, especially when that child is as stressed as Sandra must be. Distant cousin was pissing me off. Why did she ask all these questions? I needed to flee, so I terminated the discussion with a move of doubtful legality. I told the less-than-straightforward truth. I call it my Michael Gove. Dishonesty and stealth intertwined.
‘You’d best ask her. I’m sure it’s not a secret, but she hasn’t told me. She’ll tell you herself, no doubt. Lady Ashington’s FT, please.’
I finally got out with the paper. I considered boycotting the shop when Sandi was in there, but that wasn’t realistic. I texted a warning to Charley.
‘Beware Georgie and Sandi over the nappies. They are in tracker-hound mode.’
I received an immediate reply.
‘Saw Sandi earlier. Told her MYOFB.’
Typical bloke. Resorts immediately to an illegal Cummings Twirl in the middle of a gossip war! This could mean civil unrest in the village, with only Charley and me on the rebel side.
I arrived at the House and was glad of a moment to collect my wits. Vera didn’t answer her apartment door. I had a key but didn’t feel familiar enough to use it, so sat on one of the Chesterfields in the passageway, admiring the view over the fens. Just as I was beginning to relax for the first time that Monday, I heard a guide droning at a group of visitors, at the bottom of the stairs.
‘And this is the sixth earl who was Master of the Horse for Her Majesty throughout the fifties.’
I took out Vera’s notepad and wrote an aide memoir. ‘Ask Vera who still gives a damn about a MotH?’
Not even the Queen nowadays – I’d put money on that.
I’d have lost. I looked it up. Her Majesty appointed Lord Vestey in 1999, and he still wears a pretty frock with gaiters and silly hat on ceremonies, to this day.
I heard Vera behind me. She had just reached the top of the stairs and was rather out of breath. Where to start with the questions?
‘Hi, Vera. Out of breath? Anything the matter?
‘Thank you for asking, Millicent. I was in a hurry, because I knew you would be waiting. Go into the office in future.’
Questions! There were now so many. As we went through the front door and she had her back to me, I scanned my notebook list and decided to go for the least controversial. As soon as the apartment door was closed behind us, I opened.
‘Vera,’ I whined in my least provocative, silly teenager voice. At least I thought it sounded benign. ‘Why did you tell me you were Jewish, when you clearly aren’t?’
‘What makes you ask that?’
‘You said, during your introduction on Joseph Roth and the Sultan story, prior to the egg debacle, that you were Jewish.’
‘Did I? Well so what? Who cares?’
‘I do because you obviously aren’t Jewish are you?’
‘Why is that so obvious?’
I was getting a little tetchy. Why was she being so evasive?
‘Because you go to church every Sunday and it isn’t to a synagogue and that wouldn’t be a Sunday – I don’t think it would.’
My knowledge of Judaism was very lacking for a girl who had a GCSE in Religious Studies.
‘Surely one can go to any church.’ She hesitated, not so sure of her ground either. She resumed, ‘I mean God thingy stuff – they aren’t going to give a tuppeny-fuck whose house you are sitting in. With their omnipresence abilities and all that, they should get the message from the middle of a hay-field, shouldn’t they?’
I could hardly continue for a fit of the giggles. Her swearing took comedy to new levels.
‘‘Their omnipresence, Vera? They should get the message? They are plurals. If you believe in several deities, it probably doesn’t matter whose house you are sitting in as they would both be wrong. Polytheism rules you out of Church of England and Judaism. They are both monotheistic. But ignoring your confusion about how many gods are allowed, I still don’t think Jewesses can be regular C of E worshipers. These are mutually exclusive events. You can’t be Christian unless you believe Christ was the Son of God and you can’t be Jewish if you believe Christ was the Son of God. Ipso facto – you are not Jewish, because you attend a Christian House of Worship. Sultan, Vera. Why did you lie to me? First meeting too.’
Vera laughed at her own absurdity.
‘It’s Monday bloody morning, Millicent. Why are you giving me such a hard time already?’
‘Our religion teacher once said to me, ‘Never trust a Christian, Millie. They are deceitful and vindictive. It’s taken us two-thousand years to forgive the Jews crucifying Christ and we still haven’t quite managed.’ So, there is no easy time of it, just because it is Monday. Out with it! Why did you deceive me? When can I expect the vindictiveness?’
This time, it was me who had to laugh.
‘OK, OK. I’m not Jewish. I only said I was, because I needed to know my future summer companion harboured no prejudice. It was more a test, than a lie and a test/lie I now regret. How was I to guess you harbour genes from Miss Marple? And another thing, Miss Goody-Two-Shoes! Have you never lied to me in our first week of friendship?’
‘Never!’ I said with regal self-righteousness, and that made my third lie within a few days. Change the subject Millie.
‘Let’s have some tea,’ I suggested.
Vera insisted on playing in her new tea-kitchen. She served Darjeeling. I was feeling very wicked and very on form.
‘As a tea-snob, I think Darjeeling is an afternoon drink, but you’ve made it for mid-morning. What did they teach you at finishing school, Vera?’
This time she stood up, came round the table and gave me a hug.
‘That was brilliant, Millicent!’ she squealed. ‘Larissa Gormley-Stuart couldn’t have said it better. I’ll make a lady of you yet.’
‘Karl Vera. That was beautiful too. I try a put down on you and your class and you counter with a declaration that there is hope for me in the world of snob.’
She stood back a little, still holding me. She stared into my eyes. It was a real moment of friendship and expression that told me I was worthy of being in her confidence. Then she spoiled it.
‘Millicent, you are wearing so much make-up today. Why is that? You really have such lovely skin.’
I blushed.
‘What do you think my face looked like this morning Vera?’
She froze.
‘Oh, my Lord! How bad was it?’
‘Very blue and quite unlike having walked into something.’
‘Did your parents notice?’
‘They did after my little sister caught me trying her bra on by mistake, noticed my shiner even though the curtains were still drawn, and then announced it over breakfast to anyone who would listen.’
‘What did your Dad say?’
‘Before or after I told the truth of what happened?’
‘Before?’
‘I’ll kill the witch! Nobody hits my daughter.’
‘And after?’
I paused.
‘You mean, after I told them what I said – you know, the caring countess and whore with a heart bit.’
‘You told them that?’
‘Precisely as I said it! And my dad said he was surprised you didn’t hit me harder and if I ever said anything so disgusting, after all you’ve done for Sid, he’d hit me properly, even though he has never hit me in my living memory and probably not before. No danger there!’
She drew breath and hugged me again, this time with tears in her eyes.
‘You told the truth! Oh, bless you. You could have finished me – you know that.’
I finished my tea and said, ‘Let’s go for a walk in the garden.’
I chose the rose garden. It was not part of the tour, so we could expect some privacy.
‘What are you going to do about Sid’s mum and dad?’
‘Nothing. They have a few months before we can turn them out of the cottage. They will be offered help with their addictions. If they reject the help or fail to kick their habits, my site manager David – you remember David?’
I nodded.
‘Of course you do. David will begin proceedings, in accordance with their contract, to get them out. I have to pay their wages until notice is served, but the money will go to Sidonie and she can give them whatever she thinks appropriate.’
I was stunned into silence. On the one hand, what she said made perfect sense and was completely fair, but I was convinced they couldn’t come off their substance abuse and would therefore end up homeless, and still with a habit.
Vera changed the subject.
‘One of our tenant farmers wants to put wind turbines up. He’ll earn a fortune from it.’
‘That’s good, isn’t it?’
It came out a bit more provocatively than I’d intended. Vera winced, the way she does, when she can’t work out what I’m really getting at.
‘I don’t know. The farmer will earn loads, I’ll get a rake off, others will want to try too, but…’
‘What is there not to like about it?’
‘I think I have a conflict of interest and I don’t like that. It’s uncomfortable. The planning department won’t stop it, because they can’t. They will be overruled by a higher instance, so what is the point? But everybody who is anybody doesn’t want the turbines, has opposed the planning application, and knows that I could probably stop it with one letter to the farmer, saying ‘don’t’.’
‘Are you scared your posh chums won’t talk to you if you don’t stop the building?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And are you going to cave in?’
‘I suppose so.’
‘Why?’
‘They are my tribe, Millicent. They make me what I am.’
‘A posh privileged…’ I paused to think of a word politer than that on the tip of my tongue. She took me on.
‘Precisely. And as a noble among nobles, you don’t crap in your own nest.’
‘I see. Well – I don’t actually. You know what is right, but you won’t do it because Mrs Gormley-Stuart et al, won’t let you swan around in their company with a plumb in your mouth.’
‘I suppose that is how you would choose to see it.’
I sighed. ‘Is there another way?’
‘I think so. We are custodians of the countryside and as such, we have to protect it, even if it does mean a financial loss. You must be able to respect me for that.’
‘Respect you? Always! Custodian? Never! Productive crop planting and battery meat production doesn’t make for sound ecology. But look at it another way. Men, women and especially children are dying around the world, because some untidy crude oil extraction, pollutes crops big time. Have your tribe, with their shares in oil companies and their connections at Westminster, ever tried to limit that awful disgrace?’‘You have been binging on Greenpeace ads again, but I don’t see the connection.’
‘We all want cheap oil. We get it at the ecological expense of poorer countries. We kill their children with carcinogens, but the suggestion that we may have to tolerate a wind turbine on our hillside gets the knickers most complicatedly twisted. Please explain why we are upset about a hillside, but ignore poisoned children!’
There was a pregnant pause, while Vera cogitated.
‘You really hate us and all we stand for, don’t you? Can’t I get it into your numbskull, that without the power to say ‘No’ to a wind turbine, we have no function – worse still, no power. We would be dinosaurs.’
‘The power to say ‘no’ earned me a slapped face yesterday.’
‘Explain!’
‘You must have worked it out. I was so awful to you outside the church, because I was jealous of your intervention – an intervention I had failed to make, so I tried to say no. The poor say ‘No’, because they can, to protect their dignity, as if there is dignity in poverty. The rich say no, because they can, to protect their dignity, as if there is dignity in doing a wrong or dishonest thing.’
‘Interesting,’ she drawled.
‘And to avoid this truth, you are prepared to kill children.’
She hit me with a perfect dialectical argument. It hurt nearly as much as the slapped face.
‘Karl, Millicent. If we covered the land in turbines, we may become energy independent and greener and produce less harmful gases and all that, but we would worsen the lot of a family in a third world oil-producer. We would buy less oil, so the degree of exploitation would increase in order to push prices down and make oil competitive again. By not building turbines, we push the price of oil up and help poorer countries.’
Oh smugness, where is thy balm? I was dumbstruck by that lob-shot. I decided to rescue the point with a left-wing, volleyed smash.
‘Consequences, Vera. The obvious way out of your dialectical dilemma, is to cut off your heads, sequester your wealth and give it to UNESCO. Then you don’t have to worry about becoming dinosaurs, because you will already be extinct. After all, using your argument, you do nothing useful with your money.’
‘We make more money with it! It’s called wealth creation.’
‘Which you don’t need, but refuse to give to people so poor, they haven’t a pot to piss in. You’d rather poison them than give them a pot. That’s fifty quid, I think.’
‘You can shove your commie revolution in your old kit bag, Millicent Backhouse. This is comfy Suffolk and in the meantime whistle for your fifty quid.’
I started whistling the Marseillaise. She started laughing. We gave each other another hug.
‘By the way, I have to go to the solicitor tomorrow early. Hopefully, there is something that prevents me interfering with the planning process. Then the farmer gets his blasted windmills and I don’t have to annoy the county set.’
‘Is that likely?’
‘No idea? The family has been farming that patch for generations. Who knows what was agreed in seventeen fifty something and how easily it can be applied to wind farms?’
‘Why can’t you lie about the legal position and tell your posh chums you can’t block it?’
‘Because Larissa insists on accompanying me.’
I looked blank, then the penny dropped.
‘Larissa Gormley-Stuart intends to stake out the solicitor’s office, to make sure you don’t try to deceive the county set. She suspects you of some fifth column activity.’
‘And with good reason. I’d love to let Giles Ferguson have his windmills.’
A plan formed in my mind. I was willing to form a Vera-support network to help her make an independent and hopefully, correct decision. Vera didn’t need to know about her new ally in the wind-farm war, but hostilities against the counter-revolutionaries had begun. (Nice pun, Millie.)
‘What time are you leaving?’ I asked disinterestedly.
‘Before you are up.’
‘Whose car?’
I had to be really disinterested now so I pretended not to listen to the answer.
‘Hers. I pray it will break down and I can slope off without her, but she’s got one of those Japanese tank monster thingies, with four-foot wheels so there is little hope.’
We agreed to meet on Monday after lunch.
I had to walk home on my own. I would miss Sid. I phoned Charley and heard his phone ringing. There he was, sitting at the opposite bus stop to the one Sid and I always used. I hung up and watched him fishing around in his pocket for his phone.
‘Don’t bother. I’m here,’ I called across the road, but that grin again as he saw me. ‘I’m going to fall in love with that boy,’ I thought to myself.
‘What did you want?’ he asked.
I sat beside him.
‘To talk to you, of course. What are you doing here? This is hardly en route for the stables. But tell me, what do you know about the entrance to Gormley-Stuarts palatial gaff?’
‘It’s palatial – drive is 120 metres long and has eight centimetres of French rounded granite pebbles on it, with an electric gate that is activated by some radio-controlled device in her car.’
He drew breath to continue.
‘Whoa Charley. How do you know so much?’
‘Larissa regularly bullies Vera into lending her labour to smooth her pebbles or paint the gate. I’ve done both this year.’
‘How many cars do they have?’
‘No idea! Garage is the size of a small railway station. Hers is always on the drive. His, whatever it is, doesn’t come out at the moment due to a drink-driving disqualification last year.’
‘Goodness. Couldn’t he buy the cop off?’
Charley laughed, dimples and hair everywhere. I felt my knees weaken and various other body parts reacted, too. Not a breath of wind. Could he detect me?
‘Why all the questions about your least favourite villager? Are you planning something wicked? If so, can I be part of it? You and your dad must be really cross with her.’
I knew she had let my father down and suspected, from Vera’s intimations, that the woman had done something evil.
‘What do you know?’
‘She’s boasting round the village about having ordered a load of plants from your Dad, and then cancelling them after the point of no-return. Apparently, it was deliberate pay-back time, because your old man wouldn’t do her a lorry load of turfs for next to nothing last summer.’
‘Oh that?’ I pretended I knew all about it, but I was seething! I had a vision of her showing off to her coffee-nosed county set about dumping the lobelias. Before, it had been about Vera. Now it was personal, and time to get to the point.
‘Charley, would it be possible to stop Larissa leaving the premises tomorrow morning. Let her tyres down in the night or something like that.’
‘Tyres?’ he snorted with derision, ‘with all those ridiculous alarm systems on the house, drive, car, and the dogs that bark if you so much as fart within a hundred metres of the house. No way!’
‘Oh well. It was just a thought, but I really need that her not to be able to keep an appointment with Vera early tomorrow.’
A bus turned the corner and indicated it would stop. Charley stood up, ready to board.
‘If I could think of something, what’s in it for me?’
‘You know I’ll pay you in sexual favours, Charley boy.’
The bus stopped and the doors opened. He jumped on and bought a ticket, then turned and called back to me, ‘I’ll text you details. Make sure your camera is charged up.’
The bus accelerated towards the main road and turned left for Lowestoft and Yarmouth. I took Vera’s notebook out and wrote a reminder to find out why Charley needs to go to some point between here and Yarmouth.
Yes! I know. I’m as bad as the rest of the village.
Day 9. Wrecker Charley.
Tuesday.
Five o’ clock. I heard my phone vibrate. ‘Shit and derision,’ I mumbled. Through half-opened eyes I saw little sister spring out of bed and grab the phone.
‘Give it here,’ I barked, but it emerged as a croak. I was on a loser.
‘Let me read it or I’ll tell Dad you swore and had a wet dream about Charley boy.’
‘Girls can’t have wet dreams, you berk.’
‘Well you had something. What are wet dreams?’
‘Give me my phone and I’ll tell you.’ She was already flicking through my mails.
‘I’m not falling for that one. I want to know who texts you at five in the morning.’ She paused and then giggled. ‘There’s a thing. It’s Charley lover-boy and he says, ‘assume S at 9. Leave L 8. be in bushes opposite drive for 7.30, with camera ready. I have to work and will miss the fun, so make some good pics. Love Charley.’
We had to go through the obligatory puking noises as she read ‘love Charley,’ but then she was on fire.
‘What’s it about? I’m coming, too.’
I knew there was no point in arguing. It was school holidays, so she could stalk me all day if need be. She was so excited that she wouldn’t go back to sleep.
‘Yeh, sure. OK. Just wake me at seven.’
A moment of hesitation, as she absorbed the unexpected and immediate capitulation, then, just as I closed my eyes, she leapt on me and hugged me.
‘Aw. Thanks, Millie.’
My bladder nearly burst. I struggled from underneath her and padded to the bathroom.
We went downstairs shortly before seven, had bowls of cereal and tea and set off for the Gormley-Stuart estate. It was a magical morning, no clouds, but cool and still full of dew. The leaves were gently rustling and the distant reed beds rippling, as if some giant, invisible comb were completing a morning ablution. There was plenty of song from the bushes. The bird song gave me an idea. A quick phone Internet search and I gave Sonya her instructions.
‘Remember oriolus oriolus.’
‘What, why?’ came back as if fired from a gun.
‘It’s what we are going to photograph – should someone ask. OK?’
‘OK. Oriolus oriolus it is,’ she repeated as though it were a verse from the bible.
Skinny Sonya, about to go to secondary school, was turning into a bean pole. She was nearly as tall as me, but more athletic despite a formidable bosom, and was treating the whole outing as seriously as an eleven-year-old would. The big question was, could I rely on Sonya if we were caught hiding in a dry ditch, behind some bushes, spying on one of the smartest addresses in Suffolk? If we were spotted and the police called, if we accidentally set off an alarm, would she be able to not give the game away? I looked at her, looking in concentration at our target as we approached. Yes! She would say oriolus oriolus until supper time. She wore dark-coloured clothing – T-shirt and jeans, with an ancient sun hat pulled down over her face. She had probably watched an old gangster movie and remembered they blacked up before staking out the bank. She can be a bit intense, can our Sonya.
There were thick rhododendrons opposite the Gormley-Stuarts which belonged to another front garden. They had an equally long drive, so we could hide in front of the bushes in a dry ditch beside the road, without being detected by either house. I scoured the opposite drive and gate with my binoculars, but could see nothing to indicate that Charley had nobbled anything. Sonya squeezed my arm. I put the glasses down. There was Larissa leaving the front door and heading for her car. I gave Sonya the camera.
‘Zoom a bit, and then keep shooting until I say otherwise.’
Her excitement next to me as she became part of the action, was electrifying.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘Me? Keep calm and focus the glasses on Larissa. She’s behind the wheel, fiddling with something.’
The engine started and she roared down the drive toward the gate, taking her eyes off the gate, to do something again on the dashboard. When she looked up, her face contorted in horror. The gate was now focused by the binoculars and I noticed it was quivering but not moving. Black smoke was coming from the hinge end. I dropped the glasses and saw the car begin to skid as Larissa tried an emergency stop. The wide tyres had no grip on the dewy stones, but also didn’t sink in. The crash as her two-ton monster hit the gate was awesome. The brick pillars either side sheered, followed by the explosion of airbags. Then everything was strangely quiet, except for a slight hissing noise from under the bonnet. The peace could only have lasted seconds. Alarms sounded from around the house, in the house and finally from the car. The bag in front of Larissa deflated, but she wasn’t moving.
‘Shit! This has gone all wrong. Take the camera and go home, Sonya. Make sure nobody sees you!’
I climbed out the ditch, up to the road, and ran across. Climbing over the wrecked gate was hardest as it wobbled, perilously balanced on a pile of bricks. The car was pointing slightly up in the air and the door was a struggle. Standing on wrought iron scrolls, I was pulling at an odd angle. I could see that Larissa was only in shock. She allowed herself to be helped from the car and after a few moments, she regained composure. She could hardly avoid thanking me, but then went on the attack.
‘Thank you, Millie. What are you doing here? Why have you mud over your jeans and a grassy blouse on?’
I was ready for her.
‘Oriolus oriolus, Mrs Gormley-Stuart. It was sitting on your gate. Very rare in the UK. Beautiful specimen. I was watching it from the rhododendrons. I’m afraid you scared it away with your unusual driving technique.’
I ostentatiously adjusted the field glasses hanging from my neck and waited for an apology.
‘Oh, really. I’m afraid I did make rather a crash.’
That was nearly an apology. I missed the word ‘sorry’ but small mercies have to be accepted.
Various members of the house-staff were running down the drive and a police car could be heard turning into the lane. The gardener was making conciliatory noises, and she lapping them up, so I wandered off in the direction of home and sent Vera a message, warning her not to wait. Larissa would be a while.
Mid-morning Vera phoned.
‘Don’t wait for me this afternoon. I’ve decided to go shopping now I am here.’
‘OK. That’s fine.’
‘Larissa phoned to apologise for missing me. The reason she gave was a bit vague. Some accident, she said. Do you know anything?’
‘Apparently, she forgot to open the gate before driving onto the highway, but she’s not hurt.’
Vera finished with a curt, ‘Oh dear,’ and rang off.
My day should have been perfect! Larissa ram-raids her own gate. Brilliant!
However!
I knew we had caused an accident that could have resulted in injury. The idea to trap Larissa the wrong side of her gate, now seemed not so harmless and I had involved Sonya in the doomed escapade. The fallout was incalculable, and the nervous tummy I was developing reminded me of that.
Larissa’s house and car insurers won’t take the claim lying down. We have stirred up two insurance investigations and the police. One of them is bound to spot the sabotage.
I hope you enjoyed these chapters. There is more to come in the next weeks, but hopefully you can’t wait and might want to try the e-book version – just £0.99 or use Kindle Unlimited.
A blast from the past – Baltimore 1995 – AHA annual bash.
I was the principle speaker on the history of brewing. The handwritten copy of my talk is languishing in a filing box somewhere and I am not going to seek it out, so if you were there, Baltimore – June 14th 1995, and have a different memory to me, then apologies.
My souvenir gift from the AHA National Conference. Planet Beer
One of the beers I praised on that occasion, was the Farrrenbacher White Beer. It was a favourite that I only rolled out for beer talks and as it had an almost zero hopping rate, was excellent for adding other herbs and spices such as the woodruff, (mentioned in my last beer blog).
I put comfrey in the 1995 gyle, which caused consternation when I tried to enter the USA. The immigration official looked at my carrier bag with the comfrey tops poking out.
‘Please remove the bag, sir,’ he said.
I did.
‘What is it?’
‘Comfrey. It’s for my talk to the AHA. I’m going to put it in beer.’
I think he was a homebrewer and hoped to turn up for some of the talks. I expected him to confiscate my comfrey plant. I would have understood, but instead he told to go wash the roots and go on my way. What a star!
Gerard (1597) wrote of the comfrey root. ‘
‘The slimie substance of the root made in a posset of ale, and given to drink against the paine in the backe, gotten by any violent motion, as wrestling or over much use of women, doth in fower or five daies perfectly cure the same, although the involuntarie flowing of the seed in men be gotten thereby.
La Pensée, Clive. The Historical Companion To House-Brewing (p. 185). Kindle Edition.
Comfrey – No one photographs the root, which is the business end.
The talk was a huge success and the Farrenbacher Weissbier went down OK, although Bob Huber, the local brewer who made it for me, was puzzled, as were my audience, when I crushed the root with a wooden mallet and squeezed out the slimy substance, adding it to the Weissbier, while telling them it would cure screwer’s backache, but might produce a wet dream. What an adjunct to any brew, providing the dream is good.
No one would travel with a wooden mallet in their luggage, nowadays!
Here is a screen shot of the brewing method from my book, The Historical Companion to House-Brewing. Weissbier is a description of the colour and doesn’t imply wheat was used.
I hope you have fun trying it and be sure to try some herbs in it.
I remember going to a restaurant the night before my talk and blue crabs were the must have meal. They were well peppered and so the gallons of beautiful homebrew some Baltimore brewer had ready for us, was welcome. I was on at 8 am and crawled to the conference hall with some hangover, expecting to see 6 stalwarts. I think there were 600 expectant, knowledgeable brewers in there and I had the biggest adrenaline rush of my life.
Clive La Pensée 