The World of Poo (6 page)

Geoffrey and Emma continued on their journey and before long they found themselves looking up at the most impressive gates Geoffrey had ever seen. As they stood there a change in the wind brought a smell of burning and fireworks that hit the back of his throat and made his eyes water. A shower of small sooty particles floated down around them.

‘That can’t be good,’ said Emma. She pushed the gate open in the manner of someone who knew she would always be welcomed, and they made their way into a yard surrounded by a collection of sheds and bigger stone buildings with thick, fortress-like walls. The roofs, however, looked very insubstantial and, in some cases, very new.

 

‘Those are the dragon sheds,’ explained Emma. ‘If one of the little dears explodes, the blast is channelled upwards. If we’re lucky we only lose a bit of roof.’

‘What happens if we’re not so lucky?’ asked Geoffrey, looking anxious.

‘Oh, you’ll be all right,’ she assured him. ‘We’ve got good protective clothing. It’s only the people who forget to wear it who lose their hair and eyebrows, and sometimes their fingers.’

They went into one of the smaller sheds where they met a girl who seemed to be wearing armour from the neck down and held a large helmet in her gloved hands. ‘This is Emma,’ said Emma. ‘Emma, meet Geoffrey.’

‘Hello, Geoffrey,’ said Emma Two. ‘Let’s get you and your dog kitted up.’ He was lifted up and lowered into big stiff leather trousers that didn’t bend at all, and was given big boots and gloves and a helmet. They even found a small helmet for Widdler, making him look like a snail peering out of its shell.

‘Let’s go,’ said the Emmas in unison, and ushered him from the shed into one of the big stone buildings. At first there didn’t seem much to look at. There was a series of concrete pens with small, grey-green, huddled lumps under piles of sticky ash.

‘Why are they all covered in ash?’ asked Geoffrey.

‘Well, we’ve not cleaned them out yet because Lady Sybil can usually tell what’s wrong with them from the colour and smell of their poo. They’ll have been eating quite the wrong thing.’

‘What should their poo be like?’ asked Geoffrey. ‘And can I have some for my poo museum?’

‘Well, like I said, in a healthy dragon there’s hardly any poo at all. Sometimes it’s just a fine ash that floats away in the air.’
²

‘I wish I could get some dragon poo,’ Geoffrey said. ‘I want to get poo from every animal in the world so that people can come to my museum and see it all and be amazed.’

To compensate for the lack of dragon poo thus far Geoffrey was given a baby dragon to hold. It perched on his hand blowing smoke rings and then suddenly, without any warning, deposited a small glowing ember on his gloved palm. Geoffrey couldn’t believe his luck! He closed his fist around it tightly for the rest of the tour in case one of the interchangeable Emmas decided that Lady Sybil needed to inspect it. When they came to leave, it seemed cool enough to surreptitiously transfer to his jacket pocket.

Geoffrey and Emma One set off back home hand in hand, with Widdler following so close to heel that he was often in danger of tripping them up.

Geoffrey kept looking up at the grand houses hoping to see a gargoyle. They were not far from home when they reached a very grand mansion indeed with huge curly iron gates and tall stone pillars on either side. His eyes lit up in delight when he noticed
that
on top of each tall pillar was a genuine gargoyle holding a shield. ‘You must get very bored just sitting up there all day. Would you like a sweet?’ Geoffrey said to one of the gargoyles.

‘It’s more than my job’s worth,’ said the gargoyle,
³
‘and I don’t get off duty until the end of the week. But Old Pediment over at number eight,’ he croaked, ‘is always on the lookout for interesting tidbits. He’s got a sweet tooth too.’

‘If I leave some sweets on my windowsill at number five do you think he’d find them?’

‘Doesn’t miss a thing. Old Pediment,
he
clears all the bird-tables this side of the road and I don’t just mean the birds’ food.’

As they walked away, Emma said to Geoffrey, ‘You are funny. No one I know talks to gargoyles.’

‘I want to know where they poo. Gargoyle poo would be a very interesting find for my museum.’

Lily opened the door to them when they arrived back at Grand-mama’s house. ‘Wipe your feet on the mat,’ she said, wrinkling her nose in distaste. ‘And who’s got a bonfire going?’

Geoffrey and Emma went into the drawing room to see Grand-mama, who was having a cup of tea. ‘My goodness,’ she said, ‘what is that smell? It’s as if someone’s been letting off fireworks.’ Her eyes went straight to Geoffrey’s jacket. ‘Whatever have you got in your pockets, my boy?’ Geoffrey reluctantly extracted the bags of sweets from one pocket. ‘Now come on, Geoffrey, you know I mean the other pocket.’

‘It’s baby swamp-dragon poo for my museum,’ said Geoffrey defensively as Emma helped him off with his jacket while Grand-mama extracted the charred ember with the sugar tongs and transferred the hot little nodule to an empty snuff tin. ‘He just laid it in my hand.’

‘Well, let me tell you that you are going to wash those hands before you eat anything, my boy,’ said Grand-mama. ‘I shall also have to buy you a new jacket before we go to the Guild annual luncheon.’

She gave Geoffrey a severe look from top to bottom and continued, ‘Your late uncle Cedric was very much the same.
If
I remember rightly he had a very large collection of things that looked like other things; one of the largest such collections in the world, I’ve been given to understand.’ She made a tut-tutting noise and added, ‘There’s no doubt about it, incongruity runs in this family. Now I think you should take your new acquisitions down to your museum before it gets too dark.’

Geoffrey made his way down to the end of the garden, where in the dusk he saw the shape of Plain Old Humphrey leaning on a shovel.

‘Hello, young man, what have you been up to today?’

‘I’ve had a lovely time,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I’ve spoken to a gargoyle and I’ve been to a sweet shop – would you like one? – and visited the dragon sanctuary and guess what I’ve got?’ He opened the snuff tin and showed the contents to Plain Old Humphrey.

‘Ah, that smells a bit like dragons to me. When I was a boy
we
had a little swamp dragon to light the fires. But one day my dad had a bit of an accident and my mum wouldn’t have them in the house after that.’

‘It’s my best poo so far,’ said Geoffrey. ‘I must put it somewhere really safe so I can label it up tomorrow morning.’

Later that evening, before he got into bed, Geoffrey remembered to take a few lumps of toffee from the crumpled paper bag and laid them out on the windowsill just in case Old Pediment the gargoyle were to drop by.

¹
By and large all rivers passing through cities and towns emerge a lot muckier than they start out. The River Ankh is notorious for its crusted, evil-smelling waters – mainly the result of the inhabitants using it as a drain, occasional burial ground and repository for all manner of ordure. The worst offenders are those who live or work along the bridges. Human nature being what it is, if it’s a question of paying someone to remove a bucket of poo from your dwelling or simply sitting above a hole where out of sight is out of mind, the latter option will win every time. In addition, if you’re having a bad day there’s the small consolation that you can give someone beneath an even worse one, if you time it right.

²
When in good health,
Draco vulgaris
(the herbivorous swamp dragon) produces hardly any waste material at all, because combustion is complete. However, swamp dragons are notoriously susceptible to digestive disorders and if their diet is not strictly controlled they can become very unstable. The resulting symptoms range from violent explosions to the production of large amounts of black or green ash. Like all immature creatures, baby swamp dragons are unable to completely digest their food.

Draco nobilis
on the other hand is a carnivore. This species is particularly fond of virgins, but knights in armour are a bonus because they add a certain amount of roughage to the diet.
Draco nobilis
poo is like that of any carnivore, but if knights in armour have featured on the menu in the recent past, the dragons excrete small tin roundels not unlike corned beef, but still in the tin as it were.