7. A BRACE OF BODIES

Rain, then a television crew, then Crin's distraught wife...

I’d been right about it being an odd day when I’d mooted it at the crack of dawn, and before Scabby and Jed returned with Angela things took a turn for the worst. Or if not the worst, it could hardly be called the better. But the worst had yet to come.

It started to rain at precisely the same time as a television crew pulled on to the same lay-by that the pleasant young shiny police officer had vacated an hour or so earlier.

“What are we going to do about Crin?” asked Joanie as the heavens opened.

“It won’t matter if he gets wet,” I pointed out, “it can’t really do him much harm, not with him being in the state he’s in.”

“And who are these?” asked Joanie out of curiosity as a large man sporting a raincoat and a large moustache strode towards us, rehearsing how he would shake our hands as he came.

Finally he reached us, his mouth under a damp moustache probably smiling, though it was hard to tell.

“Cratchet from Limpet Television,” he boomed in the sort of voice that was probably invented to supercede high wattage amplifiers. “Are you Maid Marion?” he asked of Joanie, with a lascivious tooth sticking out below the moustache.

“I beg your pardon?” she asked as I hovered in a direct line between the umbrella-bearing Cratchet and the increasingly wet Crin who was still supporting his soggy Sunday Times Colour supplement and its fascination with posh ingrowing toenails.

“You mean the Robin Hood crew?” I asked, and he nodded, a fine spray leaving his upper lip as its hirsute covering wiggled with every movement of his head.

He nodded. “We’re to make a docu-thingy about the efforts being made by working class wallahs to keep alive the history of the land we live in,” he boomed. “And there was no character more certainly British than Robin Hood, so here we are, cameras and all!”

“He was a good egg,” I agreed weakly, but then I could think of little else to say.

“We could do with his sort again,” nodded Cratchet, “these are dark days, I’m afraid. I say, your friend doesn’t look so well, and isn’t he getting wet in that chair?”

“He’s a drummer,” I said as if that was explanation enough.

“Still...” the moustache rumbled.

“It’s an Eastern system of relaxing, taught us by a mystic way back,” put in Joanie, “we’re a folk combo from the sixties having a reunion...”

“I say!” Cratchet warbled, “that might be worth a few yards of tape!”

“We’re having a reunion at the weekend,” I said with an edge to my voice that I was almost proud of, “and we’ve come on a Tuesday because, well, Tuesdays are odd days, aren’t they?”

“I’ve always thought that,” agreed Cratchet, much to my surprise, and he nodded his head towards a moist Crin who was getting no wetter because the sudden squall of rain had just as suddenly stopped, “but he’s an odd cove all the same,” he added.

“Your Maid Marions are behind that old bit of wall,” I said, pointing at the crumbling edifice, “though I can’t say I saw a Maid Marion. There are two Robin Hoods, though.”

“Two? Jolly good!” bristled Cratchet, “I’d best go and take a peek. I hope your drummer feels better soon.”

“He always does,” I told him seriously, “I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve warned him about pneumonia, and it’s never happened. But then, he’s a foreigner.”

“I’ll go and meet the outlaws, then,” said Cratchet, folding his umbrella as the sun beamed down again.

“Good idea,” smiled Joanie.

Cratchet made his way to the path that led beyond the crumbling wall, waving towards the television van as he did so. A small detachment of one separated itself from the vehicle and joined him as he disappeared from sight behind stonework that had almost, but not quite, stood the test of time.

It wasn’t long after that and the other camper-van returned, and to my mind not before time. Jed and Scabby climbed out, along with the woman I assumed was Crin’s partner.

We hadn’t met before, or at least, if we had it had been in that walking along the street way that we meet all passers by, not looking unless they had something odd about them, like a hawkish nose or a female beard.

Angela had both. Maybe, I thought in that instant during which I forced myself not to laugh at her, maybe she had developed the beard in order to draw attention away from the nose.

“That’s my Crin,” she said as she ran towards the corpse in the deckchair, “and he’s wet.”

“It’s been raining, my love,” cooed Joanie, who also seemed to have developed a strategy to avoid mocking the eccentric, her choice being to call them love.

“I suppose I should burst into tears,” she added in a voice that I thought really ought to belong to a nubile and classy female of the radio or television newsreader and utterly well-breasted variety.

“There’s no need to,” I told her seriously, “he’s dead and wouldn’t understand.”

She looked at me and at least half a dozen whiskers twitched. “There’s no need to rub it in,” she said. “Crin was my heart and soul, my strength and my being, everything worth while in life. I don’t think, nay, I know, I won’t be able to continue without him...”

“Oh dear,” murmured Joanie.

“You might,” I assured her, “I was married once, and I survived.”

“Did she die?” asked Angela, and I shook my head. “Divorce,” I told her, “it’s probably less painful, but the net result isn’t all that different.”

“You shallow old man!” she spat at me, “how can you begin to understand? He loved me as I am! I even offered to have a nose job, and he said my nose was already perfect, and when I suggested shaving he confiscated my razors and said there was no need.”

“He was a good man,” whispered Joanie, hiding her face behind a discreet handkerchief.

“The very best,” I nodded, wondering if I was right. I’d known him quit well in The Sparkers days, but hadn’t seen or heard much of him since.

“Now he’s in the great beyond,” sobbed Angela, dragging a huge handkerchief from a handbag she was almost carrying and mopping her eyes with it, “he’s gone where all of us fear to travel, yet travel we must when we are called to the skies by the immortal voices of the saints! And I must join him. Yes, I must go there too, while there’s still time to find his spirit amongst all those who are dying around us, must say farewell to this cruel world...”

“Hold hard!” I said.

“Angela, no!” shouted Jed, and Crabby sighed and shook his head.

But to no avail.

Angela made one last despairing cry and plunged a blade that had been beautifully hidden inside her voluminous handkerchief, right into that part of her chest that must have had something to do with her heart.

And she slowly collapsed into the second deckchair, the one next to Crin, that seemed, right then, to have been waiting for her.

And I knew in an instant that she was dead because the rain had formed quite an interesting puddle on the deckchair, and she didn’t say a word about it.

And we were left with a brace of bodies.

TO BE CONTINUED...

© Peter Rogerson 15.06.18

Author's Note

I like to write an episode most days, but as I'm going on a holiday with my wife later today it'll be a few days before the next episode appears.