GRISELDA WINGS IT HOME

With her mission apparently over, Griselda decides it's time for them to return home

"It’s time we were off,” Griselda hissed at Bumptious as the President shed crocodile tears over the prospect of having to walk around holding a woman’s sweaty, sticky hands if he didn’t do as he had promised.

“But where?” asked a confused Parish Councillor.

“This way,” decided Griselda, and leaving the geriatric Hoover cleaner well behind them she marched towards the way out as if she was only a tenth of her age and fitter than most athletes.

He followed her out of the dining room, still holding a sausage in one hand because confusion had slowed his consuming of breakfast and he was still feeling a vacuum somewhere in his stomach.

“I’ve ordered a thousand of those!” shouted the President as he watched her mount her best broomstick. “There’s going to be an army of my best soldiers trained to pilot them, you just wait and see. Those enemies of ours had better look out as the silent broomstick killers overcome them with more fire than you’d believe possible.”

“Best of luck then,” hissed Griselda with a crooked smile. “Remember your promise, reparations and repairs of Swanspottle,” she shouted back at him, “Or there’ll be sweaty fingers clutching your nice smooth hands.”

“As long as your niece isn’t so far away I’ll pop in myself to see that the job’s being done,” replied the President, who had reached the doorway and was preparing to wave them off as though he was a long lost relative and likely to miss their absence with sorrow and sadness, which he most clearly wasn’t.

“She’ll put in an appearance if I ask her,” smirked Griselda, and with Bumpy perched precariously behind her she soared majestically into the air, her thinning white hair streaming behind her and she shouting tally ho in a wild screaming voice that echoed around for mile after mile, causing small children to burst into tears, dogs to howl, and old women to quiver in fright.

“I can’t wait,” replied a barely audible President as she disappeared into the mid-morning heavens at an unbelievable speed and resumed enjoying his breakfast.

After an hour of almost reckless flight, with Bumpy beginning to think that any moment he’d fall off to a certain and irrevocable death, what with a feeling of almost disabling tiredness and the cold of the wind rushing into his face, she decided to land and take a break on the perimeter of a huge array of grass and concrete with gigantic intercontinental beasts trundling in regular order across it.

“What are we doing next?” asked Bumptious, frowning.

“Home, and quickly,” she replied, grinning. “Look over there...”

“What at?” he queried, but his heart sunk as he saw what he was supposed to be looking at.

It was an Airbus, and from where they stood it seemed improbable that the gigantic machine would ever move anywhere let alone take to the skies.

“Come on,” cackled Griselda, “that’s on its way to the UK and it doesn’t matter where it lands, just that it does somewhere!”

Bumptious had no choice. With a bravado that he was sure would alert any security measures in place that they were not only there but making for the massive machine she gently coaxed her broomstick complete with two passengers across a considerably large open space. It seemed impossible that they wouldn’t be noticed, but there was no sudden outcry, no deafening wailing from loud-speakers designed to prevent exactly what it seemed they were doing. It was as if they were in visible.

For they were going to steal a flight home! That was Griselda’s obvious intention and the determined look on her craggy old face confirmed it. Yet nobody noticed. Not even an apprentice staring at a screen hoping to beat the experts to an unexpected observation caught the least glimpse of the well-travelled besom broom and its passengers as Griselda made for the open luggage hatch at the front of the beast.

And suddenly they were inside.

And only just in time as the gigantic hatch started to close.

Bumptious had heard of dangers to humans travelling in the luggage compartments of high-altitude aircraft where there was no control of air-pressure as, almost on the verge of space itself, there was considerably less air to support the vehicle itself as well as the lungs of stowaways.

“This way!” hissed Griselda, and she led him deeper into the hold. “We’ll be safe enough,” she added with a grin, “look: there are a couple of dogs in here, in their travelling kennels, and they’re not going to come to any harm, so I doubt that we will if that’s what’s worrying you.”

“If you say so,” grumbled Bumpy, who was rapidly arriving at a state beyond simple thought. He was more weary than he’d ever been before and couldn’t remember the last time he’d fallen to sleep or even managed a half-waking dream. Time had passed like a series of images in the ever-changing bottom of a child’s kaleidoscope and he barely understood where he was.

Which was just as well as he found himself winking at a curious spaniel that was clearly a seasoned traveller, for it made no fuss at all as it lay in its box, winked back at him and proceeded to go to sleep as though being in the hold of an aircraft was so boring that he’d better do just that. But it had a wonderful effect on Bumpy and within a remarkably short time and being far from comfortable he had joined the spaniel in the land of nod.

If he dreamed during that flight he never remembered so much as a snapshot of any of them but allowed his overworked mental systems to go some way to recovering, oblivious to the sounds of a giant metal bird in flight as it ate its way through the miles above the Atlantic. And as he snored Griselda spent the time recharging her own batteries. And as her efforts had been the greater her exhaustion was more complete and her sleep all the deeper.

So it was as if no time had passed when the sounds of the flight changed and the two stowaways and the spaniel slowly resurfaced.

“Where…?” asked Bumpy, yawning but feeling a lot less weary than he had when they had settled down in the hold. He was aching, though. An aircraft hold was never designed for comfort.

“Blighty,” grinned Griselda. “As soon as the hatch opens we’ll be off. I’ve had a good snooze, so I can do my little bit to make sure we’re not noticed. We’ll be back in Swanspottle before the day’s out, with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of judgement from me! And when we are, mine’ll be a good half at the Crowne!”

“It’s been a nightmare,” he told her.

“You could thank me!” she snapped.

“What for?”

“You came to me and tried to put me under pressure for answers about what had smashed into those cottages, and I’ve not only found out what it was but have the assurance of the American President that it’ll be put right.”

“Do you believe him?”

“He’s a politician, so of course I don’t!” cackled Griselda, “but my niece will see that he does as he promised, just you wait and see.”

“Your niece?” he basked pointedly.

“Yes. My niece,” she hissed, and she winked at him as they zoomed at no inconsiderable speed through the now open hatch to the luggage hold, and into the slightly smoky air of the land of their birth.

© Peter Rogerson 01.03.18