GRISELDA PLAYS A NINE IRON

Suddenly Griselda experiences a moment of surprise as the American President behave in an unexpected way

“Well, that was easy, my boy!” cackled Griselda as they stood on the broad avenue that led to one of the many golf clubs favoured by the American president. There was a great deal of evidence that someone important was there. Security men abounded, and Griselda had found what was possibly the only unsurveyed corner of that particular wedge of Creation, behind some large and impressively shiny waste bins next to what her nose told her was the gentlemen’s bathroom.

“I wouldn’t call it easy!” stammered Bumptious Tiddles, “I would call it dangerous and suggest, if I may, that we’re lucky to be alive. I mean, all that flying within touching distance of a jet fighter whilst doing well nigh the speed of sound! That fair took the breath out of me, and no mistake.”

“Yes, fun wasn’t it?” grinned Griselda, “I particularly enjoyed that last loop-the-loop when one pilot thought he was going mad and the other started praying to at least a dozen deities all in one long rambling monologue. But wait on! We’ve got more important matters to intend to! We must not forget why we’re here. That President, the one with absurd comb-over, sent an unidentified flying object to Swanspottle and it’s purely a fluke that you asked me what I knew and that I was able to identify it.”

“And it was all to do with a postcode?” almost sneered the still doubtful Parish Councillor. He still half-thought that the coincidence of a postcode in Swanspottle was enough for a mighty nation to send a missile intent on destruction to a humble row of near-derelict cottages in a backwash hamlet near Brumpton in England.

“That it is!” grinned Griselda, and as she was still in the cruel persona of a matriarchal school ma’am the grin was barely obvious. “I did explain,” she added, severely.

“DO69 mp,” sighed Bumptious, “I did get that, but…?”

“You’ve forgotten, like empty-headed politicians do when it’s convenient to forget,” snapped Griselda, her voice cutting through the air like a knife promising pain. “The last time I saw Mr President he was in what you might call an embarrassing state of undress and I was in his bedchamber. Now don’t start asking me how or why I got there, just take it as true that I did. I do things like that, you know, when I’m bored, and I wasn’t being a crusty old witch like I really am but a nymphet oozing with charm and vitality like you know I can be. Even I felt good when I caught a glimpse of myself in his star-studded mirror! I mean, what luscious curves, what a sweet and wholesome smile… Anyway, I dropped him a card with my address scribbled on it, together with a few kisses, and he whispered back to me that come Valentine’s day he’d send me a pressie. I’ve no time to go over it in any more detail again. Suffice it to say that the man I’m after is out there, wielding a gold club, and we’re going to join him and sort out why his Valentine’s gift was a bit OTT. But first, time to transform us both, me thinks. Now let me see. You can be my caddy...”

“What? A receptacle for tea?” ogled Bumpy, deliberately misunderstanding.

“Don’t be silly,” spiked Griselda with an almost solid spear of saliva shooting from her mouth and cutting into Bumpy’s face, making it bleed.

Then she went into her mumbling routine and he began to feel his body vibrating, painful here and tickling most pleasantly there (and especially just there), and he found himself writhing with almost unbelievable pleasure as his trousers were transformed into golfer’s plus fours, the fabric somehow managing to grab hold of and caress his wedding tackle as it stretched and tightened round that sensitive area, the garment’s appearance becoming almost florid red after the usual boring grey. And finally his face sprouting a sudden rash of designer stubble topped with an extravagant moustache that curled into a mighty handlebar. If it had been meant as a means of making the man look as different as he could look then it worked, and it certainly provided him with the appearance of a somewhat bored caddy wishing it was he who was playing rather than his boss, but putting up with a secondary place knowing that one day his own time would come. So much, then, for appearances!

Then Griselda started her own transformation. She had several templates in her mind after years of using them, and thought she knew exactly what would appeal to an American President with jaded tastes in his fellow man or woman. So she became that woman, that young yet old-enough-to-know-a-thing-or-two woman dressed in almost too much and yet seeming to wear nothing at the same time, and bearing with her an aura of vulnerability combined with intense and promising experienced sensuality. It wasn’t a disguise that she particularly enjoyed, nor was the role one that sat comfortably on her decrepit old shoulders, but, as she reasoned to herself, sometimes needs must. Her problem was she lacked quite a lot of life experience despite her age. Even with what seemed to be supernatural abilities at her beck and call her life had been far from adventurous until she’d reached her nineties.

“Blimey,” breathed Bumptious, “I might be gay, but I’d do a thing or two to get my hands on you, you scrumptious creature!”

“Maybe later,” she perved.

“I’ll hold you to that!” he whispered back.

“You couldn’t hold me to anything!” she replied, and he knew that he couldn’t go anywhere or do anything against her will. She was in control no matter what he thought, and the notion wasn’t as bad as he might have thought once upon a time.

“It would be interesting though,” he sighed.

“Shush! Now’s the time for us to make our way towards the President, and this has got to go according to plan or we’re in trouble before we start,” she hissed. “You carry this club, just in case,” she added, pulling the nine iron from her bag.

Then she faced towards the splendid golf course, one of the most aesthetically pleasing on the planet, what with broad fairways, golden bunkers and a lake, followed by her mousy caddy, he almost trotting in order to keep up with her long-legged strides.

And she did cut an awesome dash as she strode against a balmy breeze, her diminutive and very flimsy dress billowing out as her legs ruled the day and a baseball cap that seemed to have appeared from nowhere flattening her hair and shielding her lovely eyes from the morning sun.

She was halfway to the first tee when she was aware that someone touched her on her naked shoulder, bare as the day she’d been born as a consequence of her interpretation of what might most distract a hormone-fuelled President.

It may have been that it was all a facade so far as he was concerned and that he was a better man than many gave him credit for, or it may have been because he was fully aware that someone with binoculars and an FBI badge was watching from the shadows and that there was a team of possibly a dozen other agents with their eyes trained on him, but his face twisted into a sheet of orange rage.

“Take this woman!” he barked at everyone and nobody in particular, “She has no right to be here, so take her and shove her behind bars where the sun don’t shine! And give me a nine iron!”

Griselda stood stock still, shocked almost out of her mind for the first time in many a long year. The last thing she had expected was this scenario. She was used to being in command of just about every situation, and this one time she wasn’t

She heard the sound of weapons being prepared, and shuddered. Then,

“Quick!” she yelped at Bumpy, “get aboard!”

In an impossibly tiny moment she’d grabbed the club she’d ordered him to be carrying, leapt aboard it as if it was any old broomstick, scooped her fellow traveller who was dazed and confused off the ground with one supernaturally powerful arm, and somehow managed to perch him behind her, before zooming off into the balmy American skies as though no bird ever flew faster or sweeter.

© Peter Rogerson 19.02.18