Thursday, 2 April 2009

Chapter Eight:: Old Friends

As soon as I saw those two familiar faces in the van, for a moment all thoughts of Alfonso vanished from my mind, and in their place, came flooding memories of my childhood.

The small farm holding buried in the mountain woods, the white ducks pecking about in the grey puddles, the blue curl of steam coming up from the chimney, my father chopping logs for an hour without breaking a sweat, my mother carefully taking linen off the line strung between the kitchen window and the apple tree, and placing the folded sheets in the heavy tea chest at the bottom of the stairs. The smell of morning coffee and freshly baked rolls, the long walk down the hill to school, the small pile of odd coloured Wellington boots I found in the forest.

And then I realised I wasn't remembering my childhood, but someone else's. Wood demons can have that effect on you.

"Hello Cat", I said to the one behind the wheel, who grinned underneath his sunglasses. "Hello Stevens", I said to the other, who acknowledged me with a brief wave of his hairy paw.

If you have never seen a wood demon before- and they are quite common in my old country - they are hard to describe. Suffice to say they are hairier than you imagine, and their teeth glow in the dark.

"What do you want?" I asked.

"Vee vant our veevil back. Eets that simple."

"I might understand you better if you took that Gauloise out of your mouth."

"Sorry. We want the weevil back. Where is he?"

There are times in your life when you realise you only have less than moments to make the right decision. What to say to your most favourite author once you have finally trapped him in the lift. Whether to have your aunt buried or cremated. Whether to go for the custard tart or the cheesecake.

This was one such moment, and I panicked.

"Under the van", I said, "I think you ran him over".

The two wood demons swung the doors lazily open, and loped out onto the street. Their size made it difficult for them to look properly under the van, but I could hear them sniffing around and scratching the tarmac with their claws. I listened keenly for signs of life from Alfonso, but none came.

Stevens stood up, and leaned towards me over the bonnet. He doesn't speak, but one shaggy shake of his head was enough to let me know I was in trouble. The problem is, once you've made a promise with a wood demon, they never let you forget it.

Cat straightened up, and started whacking a rolling pin slowly and deliberately on his right paw. I recognised it immediately as one from my late sister's vintage collection, which all have pictures from saucy seaside postcards blazoned across them.

I took a step back, only to find the theatregoers still surging and crowding the pavement, as they waited for taxis which would never come. I was trapped.

And then, the miraculous happened. The strains of Huey Lewis and the News singing "It's Hip To Be Square" came dancing over the heads of audience members and demons alike, and a graffiti adorned skateboard skidded to a halt at my feet, with a very recognisable figure at its helm..

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chapter Seven: A Trip To The Theatre

To make up for our wet wedding weekend, I decided last night to take Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil, to be precise) who has made his home on my desk, to the theatre.

"Get on your best bib and tucker, Alfonso" I said breezily, adjusting my bow-tie in the mirror, "we're going to a show".

Alfonso wearily flicked over a still glossy page of his vintage "Smash Hits: Thompson Twins Special Edition", and said "I'm only going if it's Baywatch -The Opera".

"Don't be ridiculous, Alfonso. Baywatch -The Opera doesn't exist".

"We'll see about that", he said, with an alarming glint in his eye.

The play was quite long and about nothing in particular, featuring somebody I vaguely remembered from a commercial. The seats were hard and uncomfortable, although Alfonso was merrily perched on top of some solid silver eighteenth century opera glasses hung round my neck, which I had more or less stolen from my mother's bureau the night before the ballooning accident.

At the interval he suggested we leave, as a neighbouring burger restaurant chain was offering a particularly attractive meat/potato/small plastic toy combination deal, but I said that we needed to stay and find out if anything interesting was going to happen.

As it turned out, it wasn't, at least not on stage (unless you count a prop apple falling off a bowl of fruit and rolling under a sofa), but something unexpected did happen as we were leaving.

A surging crowd of theatregoers brandishing scrolled up programmes and empty water bottles seemed in a frenzy to push us out of the theatre, like a wave escaping from a dam, or perhaps just desperate to escape the paralysing nothingness of middle aged people we neither liked or cared about discussing the relative merits of 1950's beach holidays from a sitting position, when with a shriek - Alfonso tumbled off the opera glasses, bounced off a handbag the size of a tank and flew slap into the middle of the road.

He had time to gather himself and smile sadly at me for but a moment, before he disappeared under the wheels of a high-sided van; a van coloured the most hellish shade of deep red, bruised and scratched from headlight to exhaust.

Before I could protest or draw the crowd's attention to the weevil's plight, the smoked glass window wound slowly down, and the van's occupants finally made themselves known to me.

"So", I said, "I thought it would be you."

TO BE CONTINUED...

Chapter Six: A Wedding

This weekend, I took Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil, to be precise) who has made his home on my desk, to a wedding in the country.

It was the marriage of someone I didn't like particularly to somebody whose name I could never remember. I brought down out of the loft an emerald green smoking jacket which I had carefully removed from the still warm body of my late step-grandfather, all those summers ago, according to his very strict instructions. Alfonso made himself comfortable behind the tangerine carnation we had unfortunately been asked to wear, and off we set.

We arrived early in the small village miles from anywhere decent to stay where the couple had thoughtfully chosen to have their nuptials, and I found a space right by the churchyard, behind a red van which I could have sworn I had seen before.

I poked around the moss-covered gravestones of some people whose names you could no longer read, who had been there a very long time, listening to a solitary sparrow singing in the yew tree. Very occasionally the peace was disturbed by Alfonso tricking his Speak & Spell into saying undesirous words such as "fuckwand" and "breastpump".

The service committed the cardinal sins of being both predictable and uneventful, although Alfonso fell asleep, and I had to carry him out when he started snoring the theme tune of MacGyver.

At the reception, we were on the leftovers table, next to a couple of aunts, the vicar and a dull couple who's sole claim to fame was a university kayaking trip with the groom in 1992. Alfonso not only drank all the white wine, but when the wedding cake arrived, he rolled the dessert spoon over an upturned pepper shaker, creating an impromptu catapult with which he sent most of the ill-advised tiramisu style concoction flying directly into the cleavage of the bride's mother.

During the speeches, the effect of the amount of wine consumed in ratio to the size of a weevil's body was revealed, and he began to heckle. As the best man struggled through a seemingly endless anecdote about the groom and some missing golf clubs, Alfonso called out

"What do you think this is, New Faces of '86?! Bring on the fat man with the talking dog!"

We were asked to leave shortly after, and it began to rain. By the time we found our car, were sodden and dripping with mud.

As we crawled back along the motorway, trying to shake a red van driving right up behind us, I said to Alfonso-

"God I hate weddings"

He replied

"Which is why I've accepted invitations for us to go to one every single weekend between now and Christmas"

So, I squashed him in the Cortina's ash tray. But he'll be back tomorrow.

Chapter Five: A Bike Ride

Today a small parcel arrived in the post, with strangely familiar handwriting. I unwrapped the string and brown paper to find a small mother of pearl hearing trumpet, delicately engraved in amethyst with an Alpine scene. Under the horn was a card informing me that one of my second cousins by marriage in Bavaria had unexpectedly passed away, leaving strict instructions to forward me the enclosed.

"You know what this means, don't you?" I said to Alfonso, the small grey beetle (or weevil, to be precise) who has made his home on my desk.

"That they haven't left you any cash, again", he said, barely glancing up from his new Atari console Airwolf game.

"No, it means we can finally go for that bike ride I've been promising you."

Alfonso - it must be said - looked less than thrilled, but once I had carefully attached the hearing trumpet to the front of my helmet with an elastic band, and secured him in the trumpet with strips of masking tape, he looked positively furious.

But it was another beautiful spring day, and the city appeared bright and hard in the sun, like quartz. We sailed up to the top of a grassy hill, and took in the view, shielding our eyes from the glare with our hands. I produced a small picnic of pork pie and beer from my basket, and we sat under a tree wolfing it down in silence, feeling the warm light on our faces.

Later, we cruised back down into the old city, past the steps of the cathedral, and across the busy squares. We dawdled in the grand shopping streets, so Alfonso could press his nose against the windows of the golf sale shops, and snuck in and out of shady alleys. At some point there was a brief altercation involving a high-sided red van with blacked out windows at a junction, and voices may have been raised. (I wondered idly if it was the same van that I had heard backfiring the other day?)

We followed the large purple and green buses of our city, threading in and out of their elephantine convoy down to the river, where I belted hell for leather along the dusty paths, till the signs and railings of the city flew past, and began to disappear, blurring gradually into clumps of gorse and holly bushes.

As the sun faded, we suddenly found ourselves quite alone in the dusk, in a landscape I didn't recognise, with a distinctly unspring like chill creeping up on us. I turned around and steered us swiftly home, not pausing for breath until we reached the familiar broad avenues of the new town.

"Well," I said to Alfonso later, carefully unstrapping the conch, exhausted but happy, "what a city, eh? What a city we live in. What do you say to that, eh?"

He looked at me in that way which he has, and said

"I still think that van had right of way."

So, dear reader, I squashed him. But he will be back tomorrow.

Chapter Four: Lunch

Today, I took Alfonso (the small grey weevil who has made his home on my desk) out for lunch. This was in part a gesture of reconciliation as we have had some awkward moments recently, and also because, with the blossom popping out on trees and the daffodils all standing in a row- it felt like that kind of a day.

I carefully placed Alfonso in a small silver cigarette case that had been left to me by late grandfather. For some curious reason, it is inscribed with the initials V.A.R.P., which were not his. On the front, it is engraved with a picture of a hot air balloon, in the Art-Deco manner.

Alfonso was reluctant. "I don't smoke".

"Just get in", I said, and shut the box, which has a very satisfying and well made closing mechanism.

"If I was American, I could make millions from suing you", he said from within, but I pretended not to hear him.

We went round the corner to a little French place I know. That is to say, the tables at the front with white linen cloths, the laminated menu in swirling type offering croque monsieur type fare, the haughty waiter with a pencil moustache- all these things suggest a French brasserie. But I happen to know as a fact that they are all Bulgarian, and the food more or less bears this out.

The haughty waiter waltzed over to us between the empty tables.

I made him wait for several minutes, and then began to give my order.

"If I could have the chicken geziers salad, but without the geziers, and the dressing on the side. Then, I'd like the moules mariniere, but with spinach on the side, instead of frites."

The waiter scribbled on his pad. "Bread?"

I shook my head.

"And to drink?"

"Just some sparkling mineral water please".

"Very good monsieur", he said, but not like he meant it. "And for monsieur", he said, gesturing with his pencil towards Alfonso, who was engaged in a complicated game of Melrose Place Top Trumps with himself.

Without even looking up, Alfonso said very quickly and confidently-

"Foie gras, with a glass of Sauterne. Followed by the fillet - rare, and a bottle of your most expensive claret, of which I have very limited expectations but it can't be worse than what he's having. I will then decide between the iles flotant and the cheese board, but you had probably better saddle up both."

The waiter departed in stunned silence. Somewhere, in the streets behind us, a van backfired noisily.

Alfonso looked up, finally. "Heather Locklear again", he sighed. "I'm never going to win this game."

So, dear reader, I squashed him under a candlestick. But he'll be back tomorrow.

Chapter Three: Weevil At Work

Alfonso, the small grey weevil who has made his home on my desk, reappeared this morning and said:

"Where are you going?"

I told him I was going to work, and he insisted on coming with me, so I carefully placed him in a small lacquered Chinese box left to me by my late great-aunt.

"It smells of death, I'm not going in there", he said.

"It smells of roses", I said, closing the lid.

"Death!" said a voice from inside the box.

On the way to my office, we didn't talk much. I flicked through a copy of a free newspaper, and I think I could hear Alfonso listening to his favourite album, "The Very Best of Berlin" - but I may be wrong.

Once at work, I tend to get down to it, and left Alfonso at my work station to his own devices. I checked my email, both work and personal, and browsed some online news sites, and deleted quite a few emails about missing pencils and meetings that had happened several weeks ago.

I opened a document that needed some attention, but didn't do much to it for a while.

I popped down to the canteen for a coffee, and then decided on impulse to buy a pain au chocolat as well, because it was Wednesday. Back at my desk, I ate the croissant and drank the coffee while leafing through some old glossy magazines someone had left there.

After lunch, I went to quite a long meeting about something or other, and when I got back to my desk, replied to some emails that had arrived during the meeting, and listened to some voice mails, but did not return the calls.

I closed down the document, checked the online news pages again, and noticed it was time to begin packing up.

It was then that I noticed Alfonso, who I had more or less forgotten about, watching me from the corner of a battered desk tidy, in which he made himself quite comfortable amongst a dirty eraser and three solitary staples. He was wearing sunglasses and a Hawaiian tropical shirt, and drinking a weevil-sized pina-colada.

And looking at me, in that way he has.

"Yes?", I said, half way through stuffing the old glossy magazines into my briefcase.

"I'm just wondering", he said, before taking a very long suck of his cocktail through a straw, "what it is exactly that you do all day long?"

So of course, I squashed him. But he'll be back tomorrow.

Chapter Two: The Park

There is a small, dusty grey beetle (or weevil to be more precise) who lives on my desk, called Alfonso. He spent most of yesterday haranguing me for spending too much time on facebook, so I squashed him, but he popped up again today, over my mid-morning coffee, and suggested a walk in the park to talk things over.

I obliged, because it was such a beautiful spring morning, popped him carefully in a matchbox, and off we went. In the park, we found an old iron bench peeling with green paint facing a fountain which no longer works. I took out the matchbox, and Alfonso took some sun on the bench while we watched no water come out of the fountain.

After a while, an old lady in a very warm coat for this time of year, dragging a battered shopping case behind her, came and stood in front of us and stared at the fountain.

Alfonso said "Maybe she's got very thick glasses, which is why she can't see it's not working?"

"Ssh", I said, "she might be able to hear you"

"I doubt", he said, "she's probably deaf as well as blind."

"You're quite caustic for a small beetle", I remarked.

After a bit, the old lady adjusted her glasses and moved on.

Some other people came and went, and a large panting golden retriever went past, wagging his tail without any regard for weevils, and nearly sent Alfonso flying. Further off in the park, there were some kids kicking a ball around, and we could hear the chug of a lawnmower hovering in the distance.

Alfonso stretched himself out on the top of the matchbox. "This is the life", he said.

But I was still quite cross at the accusations from yesterday of spending too much time on facebook, so I squashed him. He'll be back tomorrow, though.