The Triple Goddess (69 page)

Alas! Bill shook the country to its core

By confirming his lift didn’t stop at each floor:

Else put, the fuse having blown in his mains,

The lights were all out in the area marked “Brains”.

William got the idea, a doozy, a beaut,

Of disputing the assertion of Danish Canute

That a king wasn’t able to keep his robes dry

When down at the beach the low tide turned high.

“I look at it different”, Bill said to the nation,

“Old Canute’s scientific demo-monsteration

Was to prove, when his piggies were wriggling in sand,

The sea did his bidding as well as the Land.

“The air, too,” said the King, “our subject be,

When winging ’twixt palaces A, D and G

Sans engine—and right now hie we

From Buckingham Palace to Bexhill-on-Sea.”

On a day that monarchists be-wail and curse,

Anointed Will was in for much worse

Than wet feet when he attempted to fly

Un-emplaned in his disloyal subject the Sky.

No prizes to those who re-frained from betting

An outcome of nowt but a salt-water wetting:

For royal exsanguination, or copious blue-bleeding,

Versus dampness saline is dire exceeding,

Which was proven when Bill told his subjects to clap

As he jumped off the roof and gave a quick flap...

And the soldiers, perforce, who were Changing the Guard

Had to clean up the mess where he’d landed, hard.

Now, if you’re the sort who comes over teary

At the drop of a king, most
noblesse
oblige
-ly,

Know that Bill as he plummeted royally past

Consid’rately lowered the flag to half-mast.’

Dark glowed with self-appreciation and awaited an outbreak of applause, which failed to materialize. The children stared at him in dismay and he made a communal moue.

‘Now can we hear
Bad Bob
, miss?’ came a small voice.

Ophelia said briskly, ‘No, I don’t think that would be a good idea. You’ve had quite enough education for one day. Anyway, your mothers will be along to pick you up in a few minutes.’

‘They’re not here yet, miss.’

Dark’s face darkened. ‘Oh go ahead, indulge yourself. Children! To be seen on occasion, if absolutely necessary, but not heard. Spare not the rod. Declension of the Latin noun for Discipline:
Bendover
,
Whackeroo
,
Youchee
,
Sorebum
’. Stomping down from the pulpit he resumed his seat on the bench, and folded his arms and concertina bellows of chins on his chest.

As Ophelia began quietly declaiming, the children fell mute and linked arms, mouthing the words and swaying with the rhythm that she had stolen from A.A. Milne:

‘Our Bob was not a good dog, he liked things his own way,

He wouldn’t lie down when we told him to, or heel or sit or stay;

If we met him in the village, or walking in the town,

He’d put on his signature snooty stare

And lift his nose high in the air

As if to say, “I really don’t care for words like ‘Buy’ and ‘Own’.”

‘Our Bob was not a good dog, if we stroked him he would bark,

He bit the postman and chased the cats in the garden and the park.

When we caught him in the act, and looked stern and asked, “But why?”

He’d frown a little towards the south,

And ponder on the season’s growth,

And open wide his rubbery mouth to yawn into the sky.

‘Our Bob was not a good dog, he didn’t seem to care,

If we wanted to take him to the vet he’d vanish in thin air.

When we said to him, “Where were you?”, and, “We waited quite a while,”

He’d lick the fur upon his paw

And grind his teeth and jut his jaw,

As if to say, “What a terrible bore,” with a sort of wriggly smile.

‘Our Bob was not a good dog, he couldn’t give a woof,

The best things in his pampered life were cats stuck on the roof.

He’d also go for squirrels and any number of rabbits,

At sight of him they cut and run

As if they’d heard the shot of a gun...

Which he considered tremendous fun.

He wouldn’t change his habits.

‘Bob led a comfy life and slept beside the fire,

He wanted you to think he was a doggy country squire;

He got up when he felt like it and didn’t work a lick;

He’d bark and bark until we went and threw a ball or stick.

He wouldn’t take a bath
¾
he was never in the mood
¾

And was always most particular how we prepared his food.

‘Our Bob was not a good dog, he’d hide from us and stray,

And disobey his owners in a hundred different ways.

But even Bob had dreams, of things that crawl and creep,

Since, like ourselves, dogs have nightmares

While we are all in bed upstairs.

It’s not just chasing pheasants and hares

After they’ve gone to sleep.

‘Bob usually dreamed of rabbits, and partridges, and cats,

But this time he saw dinosaurs, a mammoth, and giant bats.

For the first time in his life, the chaser was chased instead.

Running as fast as his legs allowed, which felt as heavy as lead,

He shinnied up drainpipes, raced down streets, and scrambled into trees,

And trembled and panted and went weak at the knees.

‘Though our Bob was not a good dog, he’d always slept so well,

Until this night when he was surely in a canine Hell.

For the first time in his life he knew the nasty feeling

Of quaking with his hair on end and running out of breath;

His heart was in his mouth, and he was scared to death…

Then he awoke, saw his room, and the ceiling.

‘“Only a dream!”, yelped Bob. “Thank goodness! Not for real!

Oh, I’ll never chase a cat again, and always come to heel,

I’ll let the rabbits nibble the grass, and ducks and pheasants nest,

I’ll groom myself, and take great care to always look my best.

I won’t run away, and I’ll ask the postman if he’s got a moment to play.”

‘As we came down for breakfast, Bob was wagging his tail,

He licked us on the hand, and went to get the mail.

When Ginger the cat came in he was all solicitude.

He wouldn’t go out without his lead,

He brought us our slippers, and papers to read,

He looked pleased whatever was in his feed. Bad Bob was suddenly Good!

(But we never found out what happened. It still strikes us as strange.

We’d love to know whatever it was that made our Bad Bob change.)’

This time the voices cheered. Dark, wrapped in his cloak of ill humour, thought that his story was just as unpleasantly good, and disgustingly moral, as this one, which had such a saccharine ending it made him want to toss his cookies, and biscuits and cake. Then the mothers and nannies started arriving to collect their children and charges. As the women bore down the nave they greeted Ophelia effusively, and cast venomous glances at her superior. Those children whom nobody had yet appeared to collect, keeping a wary eye on Dark, sat on the steps at the foot of the chancel and played with toys from a crate, which the church kept on hand to occupy them so that they did not squall during services. But they were soon all departed, and when Ophelia looked to where Father Fletcher had been sitting he was gone too.

After collecting up the scattered playthings and returning them to the box, Ophelia walked pensively down the lane that connected the church to the Street, and on to the cottage where Effie, having brewed the mid-morning coffee in anticipation of her companion’s return, was attacking freshly baked flapjack with a toffee hammer.

Chapter Ten

To the Reverend Ophelia Blondi-Tremolo, her church was like a person whom she regretted having let into her life, and either could not dismiss it from it, or had come to rely upon it as indispensable to who she was. Of particular concern was the extent to which she imagined that the building might be considered more of an asset to the village than she was, and held in higher esteem. Often it seemed that she and the church were in competition, and that the parishioners venerated the place more than they did their Maker. Its pastor felt upstaged in the performance of her sacred duty, somehow redundant its discharge.

One could not deny that the building looked attractive, beckoning, when viewed from the downs above on a summer’s day, as the sun caressed its weathered stone and lichened roof, and sparkled on the flints. There was a tower from which the irregular sound of the three bells being rung on a Sunday filled one with a veteran pleasure, as it mingled with the choral voices of sheep in the green amphitheatre of the rounded escarpment. It was a rock of ages, and the countryside draped itself around its well-loved form as if it were a natural outgrowth of the land. As a result, Ophelia worried that those who came to services were drawn, not by the desire to worship, but the church’s scenic location at the foot of the downs; by its alleged foundation by a local saint, St Bertram; by its Saxon and Norman construction; by the historic lead font, one of only several in the county, which, during the Civil War, had been sunk in the churchyard for use as a horses’ drinking trough, to disguise it and save it from being melted down for bullets; by the oak pulpit carved by a disciple of Grinling Gibbons, and the Jacobean altar rails donated by Archbishop Laud.

Everyone adored the place, and there was a roster of volunteers who kept it clean, decorated it with flowers, mowed and weeded the churchyard, and tidied the railed tomb and gravestone plots.