Burley Cross Postbox Theft (39 page)

I points the rifle at it, Mr Brogan. ‘Call the damn thing off!’ I cry. The duck takes not the blindest bit of notice of the firearm (sensing as it was temporarily jammed up with mud, perhaps). It approaches (at high speed) and delivers my shin a savage nip. I turn the rifle around and try to beat it away with the butt.

‘Call the damn thing off!’ I cries again. ‘Or so help me, God, I’ll shoot the wretch!’

I glance over towards Miss Brooks and see as how she is swaying, gently, on her feet. She’s looking very queer, Mr Brogan! Her eyes is all a-flutter, her arms and shoulders commence to convulse, and then she topples over, backwards, into a dead faint.

(I say a dead faint, but t’was more of a fit than a faint, in point of fact.)

‘Damn you, Miss Brooks!’ yells I. ‘Get thee up, now, woman, get thee up!’

(She shows no sign of obliging me, Mr Brogan.)

Of course the duck now thinks I am to be blamed for its mistress’s sudden collapse and continues its attacks on me with a redoubled ferocity. When I approach the body and kneel over it (to tend to it in some manner), the damn thing delivers me a violent nip on my right thigh, then another, hard upon it, on my right buttock!

It is at this precise moment (midst all the fray) as I discover something most untoward, Mr Brogan: the strap of Miss Brooks’s swimming costume (a copious, dark blue garment of questionable age and construction) has worked its way loose
from one shoulder (fine shoulders she has, Mr Brogan – I won’t bother denying it!) and has fallen down, almost to her waist, revealing a single, pristine breast (this is not yet the untoward part), and lying on that breast (the breast is small as a poached egg, purple from the cold, but a breast, nonetheless), giving suck on the tender, pale flesh thereof, is a leech – fat, black and not less than two and a half inches long, one inch across (around six centimetres by two in the metric – but don’t quote me on that).

Hell’s bells! I shy back for a second, horror-struck (being no great fan of leeches), and then, struggling to keep my wits about me (and my gorge from rising), I reach forward a tentative hand to try to pluck the leech from its delicate mount. It takes several attempts (the thing is stuck on quite firm).

With the fourth try I have some success – detaching the tail section (if such it were), then gradually peeling the rest of the body away (careful not to leave any mark or tear on the pale flesh beneath). Once the vile parasite has been removed, I toss it over my shoulder (grunting, in disgust), and blow me if I don’t see my puce-faced assassin taking a quick break from his savage campaign to dart off and gobble the damn thing up!

By this stage the worst of Miss Brooks’s fit seems over with. Eager to preserve what remains of her modesty, I commence to start readjusting her costume. As I do so, however, two unrelated events takes place in what I can only call a ‘startling conjunction’.

The first is that the duck delivers me a hefty nip on the other buttock (the left). The second is that I am addressed by a voice from directly behind me which says, ‘Hello? Mr Tooth? Can I possibly be of any assistance here?’

I am naturally jolted by both eventualities (the nip
and
the voice, Mr Brogan), so much so, that I lurch forward, unexpectedly, and (being obliged to reach out my hand for support) am forced to rest my weight for a second on Miss Brooks’s still naked and rapidly purpling orb!

As soon as it is done, it is undone (you can be sure of that!), and then I turn, in shock, to apprehend no less a person than PC Roger Topping (out on call after receiving a tip-off about a missing dog – which turns out to have been naught but a patch of rust-coloured bracken).

‘Ah, Constable Topping,’ says I, ‘how timely! Miss Brooks seems to have been subject to some kind of an attack – I mean a fit…’ I quickly corrects myself, and then moves back a-way to let him fully apprehend her where she lies.

Well, the look on PC Topping’s face was quite something to behold, Mr Brogan! Not the kind of look – I can assure you – that is generally to be seen on the face of a professional officer of Her Majesty’s Constabulary! (If I didn’t know better, I might as almost think the giant nit-wit had a distinct
preference
for the shabby little baggage!) In two seconds flat he’s down on his knees beside Miss Brooks, cupping her wan face in his two giant mitts.

‘Tilly!’ he cries. ‘Tilly! Are you all right?’

‘She was standing there, right as rain, one minute,’ says I, ‘and the next she’s gone for a Burton!’

Constable Topping now observes (with an expression of blatant disquiet – nay consternation) that one half of Miss Brooks’s bosom is currently on display, and that there is a large, suspicious-looking hand-print spanning its neat circumference.

‘Have you been administering CPR, Mr Tooth?’ he asks, darting me an accusing look (before promptly rearranging the garment). ‘Don’t you know she’s epileptic?’

‘T’weren’t CPR,’ says I, ‘I wouldn’t know as where to start with all that… She had a leech stuck on her brisket, as it happens – a giant one, Constable Topping, two inches at least – and I felt as I was obliged to pull the damn thing off.’

‘A leech? he echoes, checking her airwaves for any impediments. ‘A freshwater leech? And of such improbably huge proportions? Where did it get to, then? What happened to it?’

‘I tossed it aside,’ says I, ‘then that dratted duck went an’ hoovered it up.’

‘She’s freezing cold,’ he murmurs, barely acknowledging my testimony (nor congratulating me for my prompt action, neither). ‘Fetch me her towel, Mr Tooth.’ He begins taking off his jacket so as to wrap her up in it.

‘I hope as you don’t think there was anything untoward,’ says I.

‘She’s freezing cold!’ he yells. ‘I said fetch me her towel, you bloody idiot!’

(I was not over-impressed by the ‘bloody idiot’ part, Mr Brogan, but I nevertheless obliged the gormless clod and went off to retrieve the thing.)

‘I’m glad as you’re here, Constable Topping,’ says I, on my return, ‘because Miss Brooks has been caught trespassing in my Private Fishing Lake – worse still, she has been apprehended in the act of submerging a dead badger in it!’

‘Damn you and your Private Fishing Lake, Mr Tooth!’ says Constable Topping, snatching the towel from me, then scooping up Miss Brooks in his arms (like she’s naught but a piece of thistledown) and promptly carrying her off with him.

I watch his swift departure with a sense of some astonishment, Mr Brogan.
Damn you and your Private Fishing Lake?!

The duck tarries behind a few moments longer, holding me, once again, in its fierce, blue-eyed gaze (blow me if that duck isn’t a double for my old grandmother – Flora Tooth! A legendary local Tartar, she were!).

‘Don’t know as what
you’re
staring at,’ says I, kicking out at the beast with my boot. It side-steps my assault, delivers me a final, hoarse hiss, then waddles off in hot pursuit.

I’ll tell you this for nothing, Mr Brogan: there is something
seriously amiss
with that piece of poultry, and make no mistake about it! It’s a reprobate, Mr Brogan, a scoundrel! A villain!

I’ve since been told that Muscovies are the only breed of
duck not to be furnished with a quack, and I thank the Lord for it! If it quacked even half as bad as it looked, I can’t as begin to conceive of the foul disturbance it might produce!

Damn that bird, Mr Brogan! And damn Miss Brooks, an’ all! And damn the moronic constable, into the bargain!

I’ve since wrote the man a stiff letter about the submerging of the badger. I said as I’d be contacting my lawyer over the issue (and here I am – a man of my word – doing exactly that). Do you think there is a legal case to be answered here at all?

If not, then perhaps we should seek ourselves a more subtle form of retribution (in the form of another ‘supportive’ letter to our dear gullible ‘friend’ Mr Donovan Lefferts)?

Revenge is a dish best served cold, eh, Mr Brogan? The way turkey (or duck) is oft best enjoyed on Boxing Day, alongside a good, rich dollop of fruity pickle…

Yours etc.,
Eliot Tooth

Coombes Cottage
Lower Field
Sharp Crag Farm
Nr Burley Cross

December, 2006

Dear__COUSIN SALLY__,

Welcome – be you friend, relative, old neighbour, ex-workmate, former sexual partner or all of the above! – to this year’s bonzer Coombes Family Christmas Round-up!!!!!

Surely it can’t be a whole twelve months since I sat down to write the last one, out of my mind on prescription painkillers (after an agonizing kidney infection), utterly broke and freezing cold, huddled up in front of a malfunctioning bar-fire, from our tiny bedsit in Hull?!

Of course we were all still struggling to come to terms with Ramsay’s sudden death at that point (when you marry a partner so much older than you are, you’re naturally resigned to the prospect of losing them prematurely, but under such awful circumstances? I still – to this day – can’t pick up a steam iron without shuddering…).

Then there was the loss of Thornton Manor (our beautiful, ancient, family home), poor Hayden and Dylan were taken into temporary care (although the problem
wasn’t
scurvy, after all!), Jared was facing those trumped-up shoplifting charges, Madeline was still coming to terms with her recent diagnosis and little Poppy was screaming the rafters down because I’d run out of teething drops!

Definitely
not
the best of circumstances in which to be composing a Christmas message – so please forgive me if my spelling was dodgy (or even more dodgy than it normally is!) and my tone was slightly hyper!

There’s been a hell of a lot more water under the bridge since then (many miles on the – currently broken – speedometer of our old camper van, countless Happy Meals devoured, numerous games of Ker-plunk lost and won, endless idle – and not so idle – threats issued from irate debtors, hundreds of GREAT,
GREAT
ADVENTURES in other words) and I really can’t wait to tell you all about it!

We miss Hull like crazy: those long, bracing walks collecting scraps of firewood on the muddy Humber beach in the pouring rain; ‘illegal’ chocolate fondues held on the roof of my flat (so as not to wake the baby!) dressed in gloves and balaclavas with my kind ‘comrades’ from the slaughterhouse; that mouthwatering aroma of curry and chips from the rowdy Balti Hut downstairs; the Coombes Family Band, Exoskeleton, performing outside M&S (me on accordion, Madeline on fiddle, Hayden on bongos, Poppy on tambourine, Dylan passing the hat around); my brief but intensely erotic relationship with Mr Nolan, our bailiff, which, while it ended quite badly (he was just manipulating my feelings to gain full access to our home, and when he managed it he took virtually everything, including the kids’ instruments) taught me the very, very valuable lesson that one day –
yes, one day –
I might finally be ready to open my heart and find ‘true love’ again…

What life-affirming times they were! And things have only got better, since…

You will have seen (from the new address) that we’ve moved back to West Yorkshire. It seemed the only sensible thing to do (once the boys were released from care) since Jared was on remand in Leeds and the journey from Hull wasn’t the easiest to manage with limited resources and a large family in tow.

We initially stayed for a few weeks at a B&B in Haworth – Brontë Country! (until it was closed down by Health and Safety) – then, after a chance meeting with an incredibly charming and ‘centred’ individual called Brother Julius (a shaman with the Church of the Broken Lyre – they’re amazing!

Really screwy – really kinky! Look them up on the internet!) and his gorgeous wife, Iona (named after the windswept Scottish island), who were running a stall at a New Age Fayre selling dream catchers (exquisite ones, which Iona makes herself out of local hides and crystals), we ended up moving into a fabulous teepee, just outside Timble near the Washburn Valley.

We stayed there, rent-free (brilliant!!!), for several months and the entire family got involved in the manufacture of wire cranial massagers (a spider-like metal implement which you push on to the top of the head and it stimulates various, crucial pressure points), but unfortunately the locals weren’t too keen on the encampment (there was a problem with our sewage pit – which was located just behind their tea shop).

That, coupled with unpredictable weather (May was very wet, so much so that two of the children developed trench foot), and a terrible flash-flood (which took literally all of our remaining possessions – bar Ramsay’s mother’s favourite blue glass decanter, which I never really liked in the first place!) meant that we were obliged to move into more ‘traditional’ quarters for a spell.

After a month in an abandoned warehouse (amazing parties! – incredible acoustics!) we actually ended up getting our own little council house after Jared’s case-worker, a beautiful, passionate man called Vito (the Spanish for ‘vital’ – read into that what you will!) pulled a few strings on our behalf.

Unfortunately, much of the equipment for the manufacture of the cranial massagers had been lost in the flood (soldering irons and the like) so we initially struggled to make ends meet. Then Iona moved in with us, temporarily (along with her two daughters Pearl and Lunar – Vito had gone back to his wife by this stage), and taught me the ancient method of hair removal – ‘threading’ – which originated in India but is widespread all over the Middle East.

It’s a rather fiddly and complicated process which is strictly
non-invasive and simply involves holding a piece of (clean – well, cleanish!) cotton between your two hands and your teeth, forming a tiny loop, trapping a single hair (or a line of hairs) in it, then extracting it/them with a sharp, rapid movement.

I like to think that I could have become very proficient in this amazing beauty treatment (and might easily have made an excellent living at it) if it weren’t for my two false front teeth (one or other of them kept flying out at critical moments, causing a certain amount of confusion and distress amongst my clients).

It was at around about this time that Jared’s case finally came to court (Yay!!!). We were all very apprehensive about it, but given that he’s only eighteen, and it was only his seventh offence, the judge went easy on him (double yay!!!). His closing summary was a little severe, however. He referred to Jared as ‘a persistent thief’.