GRISELDA ENDS HER DANCE

Preparations are made for a journey across the Atlantic.

“My niece might come too,” said Griselda craftily after she’d explained that there was only one way they were going to find out why the UFO appeared in Swanspottle and destroyed a row of charming if draughty ancient cottages, and that involved travelling across the mighty Atlantic ocean and visiting the White House in Washington. Bumptious Tiddles, the leader of what was tantamount to being a defunct Parish Council had protested most vehemently at the suggestion that a journey like that need in any way involve him.

“I’m going nowhere, and that’s flat!” he shouted above the raucous rhythms of Chubby Checker doing the twist again. “I’ve got no head for heights,” he added, trying to sound convincing.

Griselda fixed her eyes onto him and they were spooky affairs. They seemed to reach into his very soul and see all the nastiness he’d accumulated over the years. They seemed even to peel back his memories one by one and snigger at what they found there. They even delved into his love-life and sniggered in a way that eyes don’t. He’d never seen anything like them.

“I haven’t even got a passport,” he concluded feebly, and even he knew that absence of official documents would be no barrier at all if this ancient piece of ancient and spooky womanhood wanted to do something.

“Tittle!” she snapped, confirming his suspicions. “We’ll go by broomstick and slip in by a back door that I know...”

“B-b-broomstick?” he stammered.

“My best one,” she grinned, “you’ve never seen anything like it! Talk about supercharged or what! And the luxury of just the right number of knobbles to keep my geriatric bottom satisfied over what will be quite a long journey if we stick to the skies all the way...”

“But … but … have you any idea how far it is to America?” he stuttered, “it takes hours on a Jumbo and days on an ocean liner! It’s impossible by broomstick!”

“Tosh,” she smirked, “where I’m concerned there are no obstacles except those that dwell in the mind, and your mind, if you don’t mind me saying it, Councillor, is absolutely chock-a-block with obstacles of every possible hue! We’ve got to dust them away, clarify your thinking, create a man out of you!”

Bumpy was at a loss for words. This ancient crag of a woman seemed to have something to contradict anything he might say, and when he failed to respond favourably to her was cogent and forceful arguments she played her ace card.

He niece.

“But I’m gay….” he tried, but to no avail.

He knew his own preferences when it came to friends and partners like the back of his hand and he’d had the odd cohabitee over the years capable of confirming it. After all, Sailor John was his best ever friend and they got on so well together he’d even thought of resigning as a councillor, giving up his dream of success in politics for good, and turning for a trade to the big blue briny, until he discovered that Sailor John had been forced into retirement due to an inability to stand upright on even the most motionless of seas, but he had insisted on keeping his nickname as a means of impressing like-minded souls, and Sailor John he was, though no longer any kind of sailor.

“Tush,” grinned Griselda. “Come on. Drink up and we’ll be back to my little place to pick up my number one broomstick. Then, my hearty, we’ll be off for the States come wind or fine weather, cloud or rain, snow or hail! We’ll have a journey that you’ll remember for the rest of your life, and may that be a long and glorious affair with the charms of my niece visiting you whenever you feel low!”

“But I’m gay...” he mumbled again, but followed her anyway.

Bumpy had been in politics of one kind or another all his life and he knew many a slippery way out of just about any situation. He had even managed to get the borough treasurer locked up for fraud when the truth was the very opposite and that good official had kept his books with such singular perfection that not even a penny went adrift. But he’d used a devious argument involving virtual debts and hypothetical sums, and succeeded. So he should be able to deal with this old hag, surely? But he found, there and then, that no matter what he said he could get nowhere near influencing this piece of what he looked on as geriatric scum.

“I’m not, you know,” she grated at him from the back of her throat.

“What?” he stammered.

“Scum,” she said, “not even of the geriatric sort. but you’ll find that out for yourself when we’re heading into an anticyclone a thousand miles from land with only the twigs of my besom between us and certain doom!”

His legs should have responded to instructions sent by his brain, instructions that said run, run, run, as fast as you can and even faster but they wouldn’t. Instead of him galloping like a demented schoolboy down the street and away as fast as he could go he found himself tagging along behind Griselda, incapable of any independent action of his own.

Incapable, he thought shamefully, of even thinking.

And still totally under the control of the oldest woman he had ever encountered and with the sun beaming down from a sparkling blue sky, he found himself sitting astride the knobbly shaft of an elderly broomstick behind the slightly musty fragrance of that old woman’s garments as she did something with her bony backside and, as if by magic, rising with her into the heavens with a cry on his lips and a faltering heart in his chest.

The nightmare of the journey back to Griselda’s cottage was every bit as bad as the nightmare of the journey from that same cottage to the Crowne and Anchor had been and Bumptious found himself vomiting before they reached her front door. He couldn’t help feeling a, for him, strange feeling of empathy as the noxious contents of his stomach, diluted as they were by the two drinks he’d had at the pub, cascaded onto the nicely permed head of a mini-skirted tart who happened to be sauntering along enjoying the weather and looking for trade.

“Oh mercy me and I’m sorry,” he wept, but she didn’t hear, not with her ears filled with goo.

They were back swiftly enough, though, and Griselda leapt from the broomstick with practised ease and had her key in the front door before Bumpy could have said Jack Robinson even if he’d wanted to. He did, however, managed to mutter b***h under his breath, and trying to sort out a suitable adjective that might precede it.

“We’ll have a cuppa before we go,” she grinned at him, “you like my special tea, don’t you?”

He didn’t, but was incapable of making any reply save the rather rancid Grrr that didn’t mean anything at all.

The next half hour passed, so far as the Parish Councillor was concerned, in a blur of nonsense as Griselda packed the smallest suitcase he’d ever seen with an assortment of lingerie that had gone out of fashion before the first world war stole too many lives from too many people.

“My best knickers,” she cackled when she noticed him ogling them. “They were made to last,” she added with a bashful grin.

By the time she was packed and ready he was beginning to feel more like his old self and was on the brink of asking her where her niece was and could he sit next to her when she went to an outhouse and returned with what she described as her Mark One super-duper dream of a broomstick.

It didn’t look much different from the one they’d travelled to the pub on, though the twigs at the business end maybe sparkled a little.

“Off we go, then,” smirked Griselda, leaping onto the front end of her best broomstick, and he couldn’t help it. Something or someone, probably the old witch he was learning to detest, had control of his mind and however hard he tried he could only straddle the shaft of the broomstick and submit to a power he would never understand.

“Wheeee!” she shrieked, and the force of several g’s almost swept him back to the ground.

Almost, but unfortunately for him, not quite.

© Peter Rogerson 01.02.18