THE CO-PILOT AND THE GOBLET

Just as driver Dave thinks he can take a break his daughter turns up in tears.

THE COACHMAN'S HOLIDAY - 7

THE CO-PILOT AND THE GOBLET

“What you need, Driver Dave, is a co-pilot,” observed an extremely inebriated Harry, leaning against a crumbling wooden post and watching as the coach driver Wasp struggled to wash the smears of nature off his coach. There were always plenty of smears of nature, mostly excrement of one sort or another, but Dave Wasp was a proud man and even prouder of his vehicle.

“A co-pilot? What’s one of them?” he asked.

“A servant to do your will,” replied Harry, “like on boats at sea. The driver in charge of the sails is the pilot and his first mate is the co-pilot.”

“I thought he was the captain,” sighed Dave wearily, “and this s**t is taking a darned sight too much shifting for me.”

“It’s been caked on,” replied a lethargic Harry. “You should get old Annie to screech at it. Her sharp tongue would shift just about anything, I’ll be bound.”

“I could do with someone, that’s for sure,” sighed Dave.

And then…

“Dad!” came a new voice, “are you there, dad?”

And a teenage girl hove into sight.

“What in the name...” almost exploded the driver, “are you doing here, Jane? You should be back at the big house learning how to scrub hearths and polish silver, not here in the sticks of the east coast almost giving your old dad a heart-attack!”

“A goblet went missing from the Big House and I got the blame,” wailed Jane, “and mum knows I never did it. I wouldn’t. I’m a good girl, I am, and I wouldn’t steal anything, not even a goblet from silly old Fanny Poshnose! So before the lawman could come along and blame me she shoved me onto a service coach, and here I am. She said as you’d take care of me and sort things out.”

“You poor soul,” sighed Dave.

“So you’ve a thief in the family have you, oh so goody goody gumdrops Dave?” sneered Harry, who was still recovering from a two day-old hangover, a recovery not being really helped by the half pint of gin he was sipping for breakfast.

“I’m no thief, Dad!” wailed Jane, “that man’s a liar if he thinks I stole anything, ‘cause I didn’t!”

“Of course you didn’t, Jane,” the driver told her. He knew his own daughter well: don’t most fathers know their offspring well and aren’t they usually right?”

“Well well,” added the voice of the old crone, Annie Anon, who had followed her own nose to see what all the fuss was about. “What’s going on here, and who’s this sweet young lady?”

“She’s a thief,” sneered Harry.

“Who says so?” asked Annie, “because from the look of her I’d say she’s never touched a wrong thing in her life, and I’ve got gypsy in my blood, so’s I know things like that!”

“She said,” snarled Harry, who was letting his hangover take complete control of his already much diluted mental processes. “She said she was blamed for stealing a goblet, and that’s good enough for me, the scheming little hussy!”

The driver stopped what he was doing and went up to the offensive Harry, scowling, his face like thunder, and any more intelligent man would have been warned that his very life might be in danger, for arguments in those now distant times could often finish in the sort of violence in which one of the parties ends up a considerable amount less than alive.

“Take that back!” he hissed at Harry.

But Harry was in a world of his own as he downed a goodly mouthful of strong gin and decided to sit on the ground next to the crumbling wooden post that he had been leaning against.

“The gal said it,” he slurred, “she said as the toff in the big house knew it was her pinching his silver, and if a toff says it it’s got to be right ‘cause toffs are one thing and we’re the rest. Toffs are decent folk. Toffs don’t ever do anything wrong, so help them gawd!”

“I’ve never met a toff who wasn’t a crook,” put in Annie, appalled at the skinny man’s total lack of understanding when it came to the self-elevated upper echelons of society. “They take and they take and they take, and when they’ve given up taking they take some more,” she muttered. “How do you think it’s them as gets all the gold and us paupers who get the pewter?”

“I ain’t got no pewter,” slobbed Harry, and he pointed at the tearful young Jane, “’cause she has… She stole it from me, sneaked in at night under cover of darkness and grabbed all me pewter...”

“I’ve never seen him before!” wailed Jane.

Driver Dave kicked Harry firmly in the stomach and returned to comfort his daughter. “There there,” he said, “of course you haven’t.”

“The man has no mind,” decided Annie, “he’s been totally taken over by that there gin, which I’ve an occasional taste for myself, and that’s that. He’s stopped thinking. Instead, he’s like the blind parrot who only knows where he is by harking to the echo of his own squawks!”

“I like that,” whispered Jane, “it makes sense of a sad old drunkard.”

“I know the folks at that Big House,” said Annie to the girl. “I was there once, and then that witch Treesa Mayhem came along and took my everything and I had to go onto the streets begging, and I sold my two boys so’s I could buy a crumb for breakfast. I sold ‘em as meat, but the good Lord spared them and they were brought up as toffs in that big house. So they know a thing or three about what goes on there!”

“Mother!” ejaculated Tom, who had come along to see what all the fuss was about, “what do you know about it?”

“Enough,” she said, warily. “A man gets to be born and grows up and suddenly finds himself surrounded by silver this and silver that as if it was going to have no end whilst the poor man down the road eats stones and gravel for his dinner because that’s all he’s got. Yet he was born and grew up too, so why’s it turned out like that?”

“It doesn’t seem fair,” acknowledged Tom.

“And then they blame a poor innocent bairn when one of their silver pots goes astray,” concluded Annie. “So don’t you fret, my precious, we all know you’re innocent, and if you’re not we don’t care!”

“Mother!” admonished Dick, who’d joined them, “how could you!”

“Easy!” she chortled. “and I’ll tell you summat,” she added, “then folks in the big house, the Poshnoses, they’re all show you know, all fancy curtains in the windows and dried bread on the table! But a gypsy woman gave me a frock, and that frock has brought me great fortune and given me a chance to do good in the world. I’ll go back home when this here holiday is over, and I’ll buy that big house from under their feet, young lady, and you’ll be free of suspicion!”

Jane nodded, wondering how a crone such as this could possibly have the wealth to put things right, then she smiled.

“And,” she said, “I’ll repay you with this.”

She fumbled under her coat and produced a silver goblet, shining like silver should if it’s been polished half to death.

“I never stole it, though,” she said, “they slung it at me when I ran away, said not to return and … the devils slung it at me!”

© Peter Rogerson 29.05.18