GRISELDA KILLS SOME TIME

Griselda is on her way across the Atlantic to visit the American president.

The first (and only) Griselda Entwhistle concert had been a triumph. She had warbled and soared and plunged to the depths through half a dozen unique and surprisingly moving musical extravaganzas and had been rewarded by demands for encore after encore, and she was back in the cabin allocated to the lady soprano who had originally been booked to perform on the cruiser.

And that lady soprano had decided that life as a seagull wasn’t for her, and had returned. Well, no-one could blame her, could they? There are larger birds than seagulls ranging over the oceans, and some of them might look upon an inexperienced creature like herself as a tasty snack in hard times. Anyway, whatever had motivated her to return to the cruise ship had worked, and she was back.

Griselda, when she wasn’t being pompous and selfish and grossly unfair could be a true delight and epitome of charming empathy. And this latter was the version of Griselda on display when the seagull returned and with a dozen or so uncomfortable squawks readjusted its feathers and flesh until it was a slightly ruffled soprano called Annie, completely at loss as to what she had been and why she had been it.

That kind of metamorphosis can be quite confusing even when you know it’s happening and are expecting it, and most alarming when you’re not.

She wasn’t the beauty that Griselda had turned herself into, being plain and over forty with rounded shoulders and traces of a ginger moustache, nor did she have anywhere near half the charm and the grace of the young incarnation of the witch. But Griselda did acknowledge that right might well be on the woman’s side and she smiled warmly.

“I was obliged to substitute for you at short notice when you scarpered on wings of delight,” she beamed, “but as you’re back I’ll give you a couple of tips before we go if you like, just to make everything seem seamless.”

“I don’t know what you’ve done to me, but I didn’t like it,” snarled Annie, “a slip of a lass like you thinking you can substitute for a lifetime of treading the boards, like what I’ve done! Working men’s clubs with f*g ends flung at me and bad words and worse, then other adult clubs I’d rather not mention with dirty old men in macs gawping at some tart taking her clothes off when they should have been listening to me! And then after years of disappointment I gets this peach of a job with folks with money all around and what happens? I get converted into a filthy old pigeon...”

“Seagull,” corrected Griselda glibly.

“Seagull, then, and I get to fly off with all manner of eagles chasing me intent on goodness knows what, and ruffling my feathers!”

“I’ll tell you what,” smiled an unmoved Griselda, “I’ll give you a bit of assistance before I go...”

“You going, then?” demanded the affronted singer, and she calmed down when she heard that. “it’s all right, then, and no harm meant on my part,” she added with very little grace and a great deal of grudging.

Then Griselda muttered something totally meaningless to anyone but her and whatever force, be it good or evil, that she coerced into rendering assistance to her wishes, and before their eyes and much to the surprise of the still grumbling singer that individual underwent a metamorphosis that was nowhere near as extreme as the one Griselda had performed on herself but which still created a magnificent improvement on what had been. Therefore at the end of it Annie was apparently younger by a good dozen years, retained very little of her moustache and was far perter of bosom. In other words, she didn’t really look too much like the young Griselda but the short-sighted might think that she did.

“I knew I was pretty,” she muttered with very little grace and no gratitude, and Griselda may well have thought well, if that’s going to be your attitude then I’ll damned well turn you back to the embryonic hag that you were before I started, but didn’t have time because a knock at the door announced that it was time for the second part of the evening’s concert and the singer was reuqired on stage.

“Off you go, dear,” encouraged Griselda, “and remember, any fiscal rewards you receive from an adoring public should really be mine seeing as I’ve upped your very negative ante for you, but you can keep it anyway out of the kindness of my heart.”

“Silly tart!” croaked Annie, and she pushed her way out of the cabin and towards the stage entrance, still in a thunderously ungrateful mood.

“Unappreciative b***h!” cackled Griselda who was at that moment reverting to her old familiar form, a grisly centenarian with warts and formidable skill with broomsticks everywhere.

“What do we do now?” demanded Bumptious, “and where do we lay our heads down tonight? We can’t stay here because it’s Annie’s room and we’ll be keel-hauled or worse for being stowaways”

“We get a new cabin,” croaked the refreshingly aged Griselda. “I didn’t like this one, anyway, too utilitarian for my liking and nowhere nearly classy enough. Where’s that old chum of yours, Bumpy? The geezer that goes around calling dear old ladies totty?”

“You mean Sailor John? He’s probably still nursing his crown jewels,” grinned Bumptious, “and if he isn’t he mentioned to me that he would be serving strong drinks at the bar on the upper deck.”

“Then to the upper deck we go!” decided Griselda. “All I need to do is smarten my frock up a bit so as to fit in with the hoity toity and we’ll be perfectly fine.”

Mere minutes later the two of them were making their way to the top deck, past the entrance to the cabaret where the newly polished singer was doing a decent enough job entertaining a rather bored looking audience. Griselda had changed her disgusting old rags into a ball gown of magnificent proportions and bright colours.

“Nowhere near as good as you,” said Bumpy, surprised, meaning Annie.

“It takes a real lady to entertain the troops!” cackled Griselda, “but she’ll pass muster once the passengers get drunk. If she’d been more grateful I might have given her more talent.”

The upper bar was quiet with very few customers on account of the expected quality of the cabaret, and Sailor John was up there supervising the place by polishing glasses until they twinkled whilst looking bored and pretending not to be drinking from a glass containing bright green liquid.

“Not you!” he grunted at Bumpy, “who’s the old tart?”

“Remember what happened when you called the young woman totty?” asked Bumpy warningly, “the same might happen if you call Griselda here a tart!”

“Old bag then,” grunted Sailor John, clearly ignoring the implied threat.

“Then it’s time you learned some manners, young man,” croaked Griselda, and without apparently moving a muscle she managed to make the ill-manner Sailor John howl with pain as she mentally and very cruelly squeezed a tender part of his anatomy until he thought his eye-roving days might be over. “Is that enough?” she asked when he was at the point of collapsing into a molten pile of weeping humanity.

“S-sorry,” he stammered, “’scuse me...” and he scurried off to vanish through a door marked “gents”.

“He won’t believe that was you,” grinned Bumptious, “but he will mind his p’s and q’s once he’s straightened things out down below.”

“So he should,” smirked Griselda, “now who’s having what to drink? I fancy a nice glass of milk stout and then we’ll decide what to do when we disembark in the good old U.S of A.”

“Without a passport between us?” asked Bumpy cynically.

“We’ll fly the last bit, then,” decided Griselda, “for we have an important mission. What did you say you wanted to drink?”

“I’ll have a drop of the green stuff Sailor John was pretending not to be drinking,” said Bumpy, “I wonder what it is?”

“Here you are. Find out for yourself,” said Griselda with a grin, “whatever it is, it’ll help while we kill a bit of time...”

© Peter Rogerson 09.02.18