Lively Custard Read online

  I gave a sigh. "Very well. But we must think about finding you somewhere else to live if things are really so bad as you say."

  I was woken around eight the following morning by Jenny bringing tea.

  "I had to boil the water on the gas ring," she said. "There's been a power cut. And there's ever such a fuss in Mr. Dalton's garden."

  "Fuss? In what way?"

  "It looks like another tree. At least I don't remember him having a big tree like that and in any case it's made an awful mess of his potting shed. The electricity people are there as well."

  "Really?"

  Trevor Dalton lived three doors up and worked as a school caretaker. I'd known him since we were boys. Unlike me though, he still worked at Frinton County and I often dropped in for a chat to see if I could pick up a bit of gossip about the old place. That morning I found him in the back garden of his little cottage gazing up into the boughs of the most spectacular Chestnut tree, while a team of hard-hatted electricians milled about, erecting a little shelter over a hole they'd begun to dig. The remains of his potting shed lay scattered about the base of the tree, it having apparently sprung up from underneath. One half of what I took to be the mains electricity cable was held aloft, snagged in the tree's branches, while the other half I presumed was still buried in the earth where the electricians were furiously burrowing.

  "Ah," I said. "That explains the power cut. Pity about the shed, Trevor."

  "No harm done," he replied. "It were rotten anyway."

  "Lucky it didn't rupture the gas as well."

  "Suppose so."

  "Whatever are you going to do with it?"

  He slid back his cap and scratched his head. "I've always wanted a tree-house," he said. "I reckon I could fix a good one up there."

  I was touched by his enthusiasm.

  "Pity it wasn't around when we were boys," I said. "Imagine the fun we might have had with it."

  Just then the man from the council arrived with his clip-board and tape measure. He wiggled his finger, said: "Bollwoddle," and introduced himself as Leonard, then proceeded to inspect the tree, shaking his head all the while.

  "Run the bloated barfly!" he spat. "As if the horny toad last night wasn't the cold one."

  "Ah, you mean the tree on the motorway?"

  Leonard seemed embarrassed. He was a little old to be playing with the modern vernacular and obviously not very good at it, since I'd evidently understood him. He reverted at once to plain English. "Popping up all over the place," he said.

  "You mean there are more?"

  "A dozen we know about. We've got ruptured water mains all over town. Puddles everywhere."

  "How dreadful!"

  "Well, we can work round most of them. The one on the M65 will have to go of course. Pity though. It's the finest oak I've ever seen."

  "Mine's a Chestnut," said Trevor, proudly.

  "You won't be allowed to cut it down, you know."

  "Perish the thought," said Trevor.

  "Any idea what's causing it?" I asked.

  Leonard shrugged. "Not my department really."

  Several other trees popped up in the course of the day - everything from hornbeams to hawthorns, but by far the most spectacular occurrence was a stand of scots pines that came up outside the town hall. The Mayoral Limousine was overturned and a Vauxhall Astra carried aloft some forty feet - requiring the assistance of a mobile crane in order to extricate it. But for all the mess the Mayor was said to be delighted.

  Naturally, the nation's press descended upon us and within days the sleepy market town of Frinton-Cum-Hardy became a global sensation. I passed the library one afternoon, and there I spied Doctor Chumley, loitering shamelessly in front the beech tree, a copy of "Rolling my Conkers" in his hand which he flashed to the assembled cameras. He seemed to be making some obscure connection between our tree phenomenon and the infernal book.

  "All fell within the shark's basket," he explained. "And so of course the frilly ones took their place by the ringlydoe."

  I moved on in utter contempt of the man. The book explained nothing, but it was sufficient to get him on the tea time news. "Rolling my Conkers" consequently shot to number one in the book chart and suddenly, threadworn literary types were to be seen on pretentious arts programmes poring over the endless and quite preposterous metaphors as if they actually meant something. Meanwhile the author, Mr. Jarvis Tongue, perhaps wisely, declined all invitations to be interviewed, thus preserving his mystique rather than exposing his metaphorical buttocks.

  Down went the ripping chord upon her Kiwi's bare and threaded slowly cross the dripping windowsill, thick with words of dry gravy.

  Lively custard. Indeed!

  Frinton-Cum-Hardy weathered this media onslaught as best it could. Fortunately attention spans are short these days and by the end of summer we had the place to ourselves once more. By this time Market Street had become pedestrianised, on account of a small copse having taken root at either end. And my own potting shed was duly torn asunder by a noble cherry with which I was absolutely delighted.

  Meanwhile, I noted the fashionably scruffy now wiggled their little fingers and exclaimed "Yow!" upon greeting. Thus, by degrees, I sensed the trend of these trendy ones drifting more towards the post-literary. Alas it seemed poor Jarvis Tongue had had his season of fame.

  Trevor built his tree house and sat up there of an evening smoking his pungent rough-cut while gazing out over the houses and the meadows beyond. I took to joining him now and then and once, over a drop of malt he asked me what the rhubarb was with me and Jenny.

  I raised my hands in defence. "Cold pudding," I assured him. "Strictly cold pudding, old man."

  "I thought she'd moved in."

  "Spare room. Uncle trouble. But cold pudding and mutual, I'm sure. Besides she's half my tangibles."

  "Too fresh a sprout for your dinner-wear, you mean?"

  "Exactly."

  He gave a sigh.

  "Tangibles or no, are you sure it's mutual?"

  "Of course. Why do you ask?"

  "Well, folk reckon she's always had her winket cocked at you."

  "Her,… winket?"

  By the end of that summer "Rolling my Conkers" went the way of all contemporary print, finally appearing on the shelves of Books Galore before disappearing altogether. Jenny purchased a copy for me and duly brought it home.

  "Look, Mr Armitage? Look what I've brought you? It's that book – remember?"

  "Ah, splendid. But listen, we really must talk about things, you know? Plain speaking and all that? There are rumours… some are saying you've cocked your winket. And your winket's far too fresh a leaf for my old dinner ware, you know? Too fresh by far."

  She giggled. "Mr Armitage! Really. Listen, when we reach the stage when words can mean anything, perhaps it's better we don't talk at all 'cos then well understand each other all the better." With that she sat in my lap, snuggled comfortably close and began to unbutton her blouse. "How'd you like to touch my bunnies?" she asked.

  Slowly then she went a-tumbling down the tidy swathe, her lily fronds a-floating upon the green felt of that piano grand, and music therefrom did bang upon the drum. And in the morning she stood, rose from a tiny corm, and waving in the blue yonder, told all who passed this was his end of days and late had woken up to take her home with him.

  Bollwoddle.

  In spite of its early demise in printed form, "Rolling my Conkers" went on to achieve some measure of underground credibility when the last remaining hard copies were scanned and placed online. These varied from one pirated version to the next of course, depending on the quality of the OCR software that had been used, but there was no discernible loss of meaning, since it was Jarvis Tongue's perverse genius to ensure it was the reader who provided the meaning in the first place.

  So, with the in-crowd moved safely on to pastures new, there arose a curious revival among the second wave, the sort of people, like me, I suppose, who still frequented the DOS chat forums a
nd wrote poems on their Sinclair Spectrums. Meanwhile Tongisms entered the common vernacular with the ease of a virulent sickness, and for all my earlier disdain I took to dipping into the copy Jenny had bought me. It was, I found, a curiously comforting tome, on account of my not having to worry about what anything meant. Even more intriguing though was the mind's insistence on supplying plausible interpretations for what it knew to be utter nonsense.

  When autumn finally came, the trees of Frinton-Cum-Hardy shed their leaves, carpeting our walks with gold and crimson. And as the weather grew cooler there came fewer arboreal manifestations, so the council set in motion plans for getting things back to normal. Telegraph poles were moved, water, gas and electricity supplies re-routed and roads diverted. Few trees were felled and the whole operation seemed more one of adapting to our circumstances, rather than combating them.

  Then, in the spring, the trees began to appear again. Slowly, in ones and twos, but gradually reforesting the commons, and tracing out the lines of communication to neighbouring towns. Housing was unaffected, though why the trees should spare bricks and mortar yet sprout so blatantly through our potting sheds remained a mystery.

  It was an inevitably popular topic of conversation for Trevor and me, when the warmer weather enticed us back into his tree-house of an evening. "Its like the tablecloth as it would have been if we hadn't eaten off it," he remarked. "All clean, instead of dobbled with ketchup and cold chips."

  "Yes,.. a sort of reversion." I turned to my by now heavily dog eared copy of "Rolling my Conkers". The book had exceeded all expectations, though not for the reasons that had originally been intended. I'd taken to consulting it on all manner of conundrums, a process that involved framing a question in my mind, opening the book at random and selecting a passage. Then I would dive into the sea of slithering words and thrash about for anything of apparent relevance. Incredible though it might sound, by this method I found I could come up with an explanation for virtually anything, or arrive at some profound insight that eluded the otherwise rational processing of one's brain. "Rolling my Conkers" it seemed was the oil that freed the cogwheels of cognition.

  "It says here, and I quote: 'Far beyond that one sweet pea the vines did surely stretch and tangle. But swinging through the window did he trip and break his leg-o.'"

  Trevor slid his cap back a fraction and meditated on it. "So," he said. "If Frinton-Cum-Hardy's the sweet pea, and the trees are the vines. Then the window,.."

  "Is a window of opportunity, perhaps, through which some people are looking to swing."

  "Okay, I'll go with that. So, if we look upon this as an opportunity, we'll break our leg-o, in a manner of speaking?"

  "Exactly. For example, I hear over in Market-Chingford they're even planning to cut down any hardwoods that cross over the boundary between us and them. There's a line of oaks that's been steadily making its way over there for weeks. English hardwood's worth a fortune on the open market, because its so rare, you see?"

  He shook his head and muttered darkly: "That's a bad brew, a bed brew, indeed."

  "Different council." I reminded him "They come under West Bingley, not like us. They've always had too much beer behind their belly buttons in West Bingley."

  "But they'd be drinking a frog if they tried it, surely?"

  I closed the book. "According to Jarvis Tongue they would. But we'll see."

  We pondered on this for while, then Trevor sought a change of subject.

  "How are things between you and Jenny?" he asked. "Still cold pudding?"

  "Not any more. We had a chat. Expecting our first little Charlie in the Summer."

  Trevor beamed and punched my arm. "Well, there you are. I told you didn't I? I told you she'd tipped her winket at you."

  "Yes, except I can't help thinking she only tipped it so she'd have somewhere to hang her curtains and keep warm. I mean, God bless her, I love the girl and she's welcome, but I'm not much of a prospect, other than my own front door, am I? Not much more than a shovel of coal keeping the fire in these days, and the bunker's all but empty."

  "Ah, but think on it: Jenny and that little Charlie of yours, well they'll have the key to that front door one day. It's a passing on. Like when we ran relays on sports day for old Stinker at school, remember? You'd bust a gut while you were carrying that baton, knowing you had 'im on yer back. But when you'd passed it on, it was up to the next bloke and you could breathe easy."

  Trevor looked down at the row of little gardens, at the strips of grass, at the larch-lap demarcations and the rough brick backs of the houses. Lights were beginning to glow in the twilight, curtains were being drawn.

  "Built in 1900 this street," he said, waving his pipe and showering the gloom with sparks. "You and I were born here, lived all our lives here. Ran like mad 'uns up and down these backs when we were nippers. Generations went before us and generations will follow. Hanging curtains, keeping warm. Yon Jarvis Tongue can prattle all he likes but warm pudding and your own front door, that's the meaning of life if you ask me."

  "Seems rather a bleak vision though, don't you think?"

  "How can you can say that with the likes of young Jenny to roll your Havana? Bleak no! I'd swap rolled Havana for cold sheets any day."

  "Well, I know what you're saying, but still old man, there's more to life than that. For example, don't you really want to understand where these trees are coming from? What's causing it?"

  "Seems to me any explanation's as good as the next one, like reading that book of yours. We can say whatever we want and argue 'till the paint goes sticky but it won't alter the fact that we'll never know all there is to know. Puddings will always blow hot and cold. There's nowt in a pudding,.. too transient a thing for it to mean anything, but if you look to moments like this warm summer's night among the trees, now and then something will touch you deep inside. And you'll realise that understanding anything means about as much as spit on a sponge. Spit on a sponge, old man."

  It was to be the last time I spoke with Trevor. One evening, while Jenny and I attended ante-natal classes, he tumbled tipsy from his tree house and died among his cabbages with an enormous and quite inexplicable smile on his face. There are children in the treehouse now and hot pudding in the bedroom where once his sheets had been a cold wrapping. And no one knows or cares about the words we shared, or the games we played as boys.

  Transience.

  A passing on.

  Recently, I was strolling on the common with Jenny, our little Charlie, now in his second year, running out ahead and chortling with delight. The sun was glimmering low upon the dew as he tore a swathe through the long grass in his little red wellies. There had been much water 'neath the bridge since those trees first came and Jenny tipped her winket at me. Oh, life goes on, yet for all the daily grind, and nappies filled, her hands are warm and they do roll so very gently still. She turned to me then, that amber eve, her eyes aglow, but did not speak. And there was a moment, upon the common, beneath the trees when the glimmering parted and I saw beyond the mist to hills of gold. It was the briefest of happenings, but it poured a swelling heat into a heart worn thin by years of making do with pudding cold. Then Charlie tripped over a root and squealed like a stuck pig.

  I still think of Trevor in his tree house sipping malt and sucking on his pipe, and slowly I am coming to the conclusion he was right. The first oak to cross the parish boundary into Market Chingford was duly cut down and sent off to a sawmill, thence to a London cabinet maker who turned it into a set of wardrobes and a kitchen dresser. But it was, as Trevor had foreseen that night, rather a bad brew, for the trees took to coming up in the middle of living rooms after that - but only in Market Chingford, you understand. The place now lies in rubble, deserted, to be gawked at by eco-tourists, some of whom I note still clutch their second hand copies of "Rolling my Conkers."

  Like me they look for answers to the strangeness of the world and, 'twixt its tortured lines, as in all our idle twaddlings, they sometimes catch a glimmer. But
all we mortals really have are moments now and then when we might feel a glory that rises beyond articulation. The long in-betweens are marked by puddings, hot and cold, with the constant dig of Stinker on our backs, until the march of front doors passes from the present generation to the next. And the rest, as they say, no matter how lively the custard.

  … .is just a load of old bollwoddle.

  Michael Graeme

  From the same author on Feedbooks

  Love is a Perfect Place (1999) A short story by Michael Graeme - a twenty minute read: He scooped some water up and drank. It astonished him. It tasted like he imagined the most perfect water should taste, but it was a sensation spoiled by the queer fact that he wasn't thirsty even though he had walked for hours under a hot sun.

  "Perhaps we don't need food,... or water," he said. "Only when it pleases us."

  He looked around then at the land and he felt a chill. What manner of place was this? And what manner of being had he become?

  * * *

  The Enigma that was Carla Sinclair (2004) A short story by Michael Graeme (a 45 minute read):

  I was not completely unhinged. She was just a computer program, a crude simulation - at best a never ending animated cartoon with only one character and no story line. But she was "something",... a hobby I suppose you might say. Other young men had hobbies, equally obscure, though perhaps more socially inclusive. They collected camera gear, they went fishing, raced cars or drank themselves stupid. Me? I coded in my bedroom. Same thing? Well, not quite. You see, while other people's hobbies took them out of themselves, mine enabled me to climb deeper inside.

  * * *

  A Moth on the Moon (2004) A twenty minute read, by Michael Graeme: Conspiracy theorists excepted, most people know the United States landed a man on the moon in 1969. What's less well known however, is that the British beat them to it, in 1947.