The Scuttletongues of Midgely Manor

dyaogirl

Hearing mention of the pilot she recovered her thoughts quickly. “Grand idea” she said. “How about a inviting some of the local performers we saw on boardwalk last week when that heathen was being hung for stealing that precious apple from Libby’s lunch basket the day she ventured out to the countryside with her new baby for a picnic? There were some very lively and upbeat performances during that execution!” Sir Tarquin looked downcast on his wife. Didn’t she remember not to bring up Libby’s name in front of the Reverend?

FinsburyParkCarrots

Sir Tarquin's brute slab of cheek, normally stone-inpregnable, began to twitch and pulsate in irritation, until Maybeline thought with some mixture of alarm and fascination that his glass eye was going to pop out and land in a bowl of pickled onions on the tea table by the Reverend's elbow.

"Yes, Charles Hardy-Banger's one of the best bomber pilots that Z Division has, the Major was telling me the other day", hawked the Reverend. "Real spunk, he has, so they say. He's stationed in McBorrock's Barracks. Very obliging he is to the villagers. He even escorted my wife through Shagge Valley when she got caught coming back from choir practice the morning of the landslide. The exercise did her good because I say, she came back with a positive glow in her cheeks."

"Oh, I have occasion to visit Shagge Valley!", piped Maybeline bloombreastedly. "That's where Lib - er, my sis - - er, I have occasion to visit Shagge Valley! Very treacherous it is, unless you know the secluded woodland paths, yes."

Sir Tarquin's glass eye popped out noisily, ricochetting off the window and flying through the air before landing in the hot bowl of broth Staggers the head charlady was bringing into the library for Reverend.

Being Enlightened

Bibliobella wrote:

I'm laughing, Mr. Carrots.

Me too! I'm not one to run with these excercises but I do get a kick outta some of them!

dyaogirl

The Reverend looked up hearing soft plop as the eye landed in the bowl of broth intended for him. Sir Tarquin rushed over fumbling through the noodles and broth looking for his eye. “Ah! A round object! I think I have found it!” he thought. He summoned what grace he had to pop his eye back in place. It was the right size but the texture somehow felt odd. He shrugged it off and went back to his guest.

The head charlady looked down in horror at her tray as a glass eyeball stared back at her. She noticed the gourmet extra stout riverbend trout’s head she used to garnish the soup was strangely missing his eye!

FinsburyParkCarrots

"Er, forgive me," coughed the Reverend, "But I think remembering, now, my wife's got a broth waiting for me back at the Parsonage. She uses fine herbs she picks up on her walks with the pilot. She calls her broth a Shagge Valley Romper, and I must say it's rather warming to the old cockles. Now if you excuse me, I must be on my way! I look foward to seeing you next Tuesday when His Majesty will arrive! How are the preparations going for the dinner?"

Ali

"We've cooked the goose and the stuffins seems to begest a rather delightful taste to it.The corn is husked and the yams are prepared.Have the guests aquired into the yard yet?"

FinsburyParkCarrots

"Who said that?", asked the Reverend.

"Oh, just Aunt Marjory who lives in the third storey attic for mad aunts. She has a gramophone horn attached to her ear and hears everything that goes on. We thought of keeping her a secret like they do in Gothic horror stories but the truth is, she's rather entertaining for frightening governesses and the like. Keeps 'em in line to think there's a ghost about the place."

"Oh, yes, yes, I see", stuttered the Reverend backing politely and gradually out of the room, accidentally into a bookcase (at which our heroine Bella was still standing and reading) before making his excuses and escaping through the oak door, only to fall over The Master thus separating him from poor Reginald.

* * * * *

It was Monday, eve of the King's arrival at Midgeley for an eminent supper. The courtyard was regravelled, the scullery polished, the servants' liveries adjusted to proper hem size, the groom's sideburns trimmed, the statues' rude bits covered with fig leaves, the dogs gelded, the cows milked, the chickens plucked, powdered, gutted and stuffed, the chapel bells practiced, the local hoodlums taken out and buried alive and Maybeline delightfully adorned in a new designed outfit befitting Sir Tarquin's eminent wife. Yet she was bored, not apprehensive. It was not the audience of the monarch she craved the following day; it wasn't the esteem and write- up in Country Snob Quarterly that she so desired! It was the delightful fantasy of an impending airshow, and a reunion with Hardy-Banger. Oh, that lucky Reverend's wife! Oh! Oh! Oh! er, oh! Oh, but to devise some pretext for visiting banned Libby in Shagge Valley with darling Charles! Oh! Oh! Oh, rapture!

dyaogirl

A knock at the door startled Maybeline out of her languid day dream and as she hastily smoothed her clothing into place with irritation mounting, she went to see who could be visiting at this hour of the evening. She peered in the foyer at Libby dressed in a low cut scarlet velvet dress looking quite ashen and out of breath!

FinsburyParkCarrots

"Ssssssssshhhh, don't let Bastard Features - sorry, your darling hubbie - know I've arrived. Thought I'd let you know I got your letter via Bella who was in the coffee shop the other day just as I was having a morning cup. Now, yes! I've drawn a blueprint of the area and I've worked out that while Sir Tarquin's meeting the blacksmith to get the King's prize filly shoed tomorrow morning, you and I can scurry off to Shagge Valley on our unicycles - if you don't think unicycles too dashed unwomanly, eh?, hawhaw - and we can be over the wall of McBorrock's Barracks in a jiffy with these soldier's costumes, false moustaches and a bit of rope. How say you?"

"Sounds a jolly wheeze, sis."

"Good-o. Now, don't tell the old Bastard a thing and I'll hurry away through this open window while it's dusking. Got the unicycle parked outside. So, see you at nine, round by the back of the septic tank. Oh, and Rita Vita Bagge sends her love! Right, must dash!! Twenty-three skiddoo!"

olderman

Crazed Jesters laughed aloud as the throng cheered an approval.

"Hooza!!", the mutinous, glutinous crowd did sound, "Hooza", as it was a populous song.

Libby hurried along to bathe as was her custom when finished with her entertainment.

Downstairs the drama unfolds and the skinny Baron pulls his hat over his small head and takes leave of the night.

"I've been set upon a midnight's long lost light," coughed his majestic silliness. "Pray, tell me what is my fate, kind gypsy."

"You'll be well cared for, my bastardness. Fear not the heap of madness that engulfs your relations. This too, shall pass."

FinsburyParkCarrots

Maybeline was awoken from this dream predawn, on the morning of the King's visit, by the noise of The Master harrrurrrrrghhhing and flatulating stentorously on the day of his demise, somewhere outside in the loading bay where he was privileged to take a constitutional last hurrah with a bale of hay; and by the light drilling buzz of Sir Tarquin's stale port snore.
Gathering her senses from the phantasmagoria of motley, jaggling bells and courtly dancing that had filled her dream filled brain, and gathering her hair into a Rapunzel like cord she pulled herself from her marriage bed so as not to wake her husband (who was to desist from slumber at six). She lightfootedly tippy toed in her nightie across to the open bedroom window to find a ladder secured at the ledge on the outside wall. In the dawning gloom outside, she could see on the gravelly ground beneath, a little figure topped by foreshortening with Libby's head, and in the tenebrous black pale of a clouded Albion moon she could see her sister's hands swaying.

"Shhhhhhhhhhhh, don't wake Bastard Features! Come, get down, don't worry about dressing! I have the unicycle ready! We can change into our uniforms on the way!", came her sister's stagey whisper, hissing through the dew.

"But it's very early, Lib! Tarquin will notice!"

"Never mind him, come on! I've got things all worked out! Down the ladder! Quick! Get on the unicycle here!"

FinsburyParkCarrots

Maybeline heard the ladder rattle and thump on the stone wall under the pound of her heart in her throat, as she headed down, her cold bare feet beneath her dropping onto rung after rung.

"Come on, come on, sis!! I see a streak of dawn light over Staines Heath."

"I'm coming! I'm all in a tangle -- blasted nightie -- okay! Down! Phew! Where's the unicycle?"

"By the wall."

"I can't see, it's dark!"

"Here, take my cigar and use it as a torchlight."

" Cigar smoking now? I thought I could smell something! Well, Libby, you really are a New Woman! Smoking cigars and riding unicycles! Right, I'm on! Which way do we go?"

"Follow me, keep close! The dawn will follow us. Keep the cigar! Smoke it!"

"Pfffuughhhh!! It's strong!"

"Turn this way, over the gravel! Try not to make too much of a scrunch on the pebbles. Turning here! There's a gap in the hedge."

"But isn't there a stream coming up? Babbler's Brook?"

"I put a plank over it. Don't worry! Keep peddling!"

justam

Maybeline had never ridden a unicycle so she was a bit wobbly on it. She fell once or twice and burned a hole in the nightie with cigar, but she found it fun anyway!

dyaogirl

The mastery of the unicycle took some doing but she'd seen Charles Hardy-Banger's best bomber pilots Z Division and his taste for unicycle riders. She set her jaw and was determined to tackle this skill and she was riding easy pie high in the sky in no time! She rode that unicycle to her dreams as she moaned a bit, thinking of her dear Charles in those regulation army knickers!

FinsburyParkCarrots

Amid the swarthy furze hedges and dewscented roadside rhododendrons, in the darkblue reddening twilight of dawn, they wobbled, banged, steered their way until the black wall of the barracks appeared on the top of Pokers' Hill.

"There it is! Here, stop off, and we'll change into these outfits!"

The two ladies downed their unicycles in a nearby ditch from which a curious badger watched as they took off their nighties and pulled from a large sack two regulation army uniforms, buttoning them hurriedly and piling their hair under green felt army hats. The badger was bemused to see these two ladies affix large handlebar moustaches under their noses, practice speaking deeply and climb up a ladder that the badger had seen one of the ladymen put up on the wall of the barracks an hour before. He watched them climb up and up into the blackness, up onto the top of the wall, then heard two crashes as hedgerow leaves flew upwards into the startled morning air.

dyaogirl

He chuckled to himself. “And they said badgers weren’t naughty” he thought as he picked up the nighties and dragged them back to his hideaway. What a grand surprise it would be to see them flying from the flagpole for the morning reveille! Oh! he was one clever badger!

FinsburyParkCarrots

In the stumbling fumblerumble of tumbling dawn the sisters cluttered about the concrete drive to the barracks searching for an open window or back door but, of course, all was locked up. Their only strategy was to go through the front and greet a sentry with papers Libby had forged as a contingency.

"Corporal Dumbmoppe and Flight Lieutenant Bugges here from Vitalogy Department. Come to check on the men to see if they're sticking to their Self Pollution programme."

"Jolly good, men. Papers seem to be in order. Go straight in. Major Twaddle is in the office having his early gin."

And the two ladymen coughed under the effort of their deep voices and passed through the building's deep oak doors until the smell of kneecap ointment and boot polish rebounded about the shiny walls and floors leading to the airmen's dormitory and the sleeping Charles!

But before they could arrive there, they were called by a sharp bark.

"Men! Where are you going?"

It was Major Twaddle.

dyaogirl

Major Twaddle was as wide as he was tall. The flap on his forehead stained brown from his continual smoking habit sunk over his brow line making his small red beady eyes look like he was peering from a foxhole. Having lost his arm in a poker game accident one of his sleeves was neatly pinned to the back of his coat. He thought himself clever than most as he hid his gin neatly tucked inside his unused sleeve.

FinsburyParkCarrots

"Yes, you two! Where are you lollygaggin' off tah, eh?" His loud slobbery bullybeef voice rasped in an elastic echo about the sisters' felt hatted ears.

"Er, Self Pollution. We've come to take samples."

"Never mind all that. This is a bloomin' emergency. Captain Jellybottom turned went AWOL last night on the thought of flying for the King, and Corporal Twatt went with him. We're got half of Z division patrolling the boats at Dover lookin' for 'em. We need two replacements. I sent up tah Vitalogy for two recruits. You'd be them, then. Come on then, follow me, we'll getcha along to the trainin' room and getcha ready for flyin'! Just have tah call the other pilots now at reveille, includin' Hardy-Banger. Great man dat. Right, come along, look sharp! Are we men? Yes!!! Forward, march!!! Left, right, left, right!!!!"

dyaogirl

As Maybelline’s doubts started growing she was thinking of politely bowing out. But all of a sudden a great golden light seem to illumine the doom and gloom of the hallway and out stepped Hardy-Banger seemingly to have grown in stature his trousers a bit tight for his well endowed physique. The first rays of dawn peeked over the horizon haloed around his trouser leg. He stopped and smiled a blinding glisten from his white teeth bounced and hit the cufflink attached to Major Twaddles sleeve pinned to the back of his coat. Maybelline’s breath quickened her resolve returning even stronger.