12. GUINEVERE

It looks like the end might be nigh...

A car screeched to a halt and its window glided down, and before Albert Tench had got used to the idea he was wearing a tiny skirt and possibly minimal underwear he was being spoken to in warm tones.

“Fifty up front?” asked the driver, a middle aged man with a moustache and bow tie, “and another fifty if we get there in time?”

Albert felt the need to ask a whole handful of questions, but apparently Mandy Goright didn’t because she opened the car door in one easy movement and climbed in. Albert, having somehow found himself occupying her body, was in no position to ask anything, and when he struggled to arrange half a dozen words into some sort of coherent order, Mandy, for that, apparently was her name, nudged him aside.

“Fifty, then?” she said, smiling.

“Here,” he said, and passed her an envelope sealed with adhesive tape.

“What’s the deal, buster?” she asked.

“There’s no deal,” he replied, gunning the car into action in time to get away from that particular street corner when he noticed what could only be two undercover police officers walking determinedly towards them. “They might want to know too much,” he explained, smiling.

“And the deal, buster?” she repeated.

“Now let’s get one thing straight, young lady,” he replied brusquely, “I’m no buster and if you want the other fifty you’d better remember my name and call me Albert.”

That jolted the interloping Albert. He was actually sitting in the seat next to the mind or body or whatever it was he found himself occupying of a fellow Albert.

“And what is it you want for your fifty up front?” he asked. Or at least, his hostess asked it. He was, personally at a loss.

“There’s an old lady,” replied the driving Albert, “a dear friend of mine, and she’s not got much time left before the Almighty claims her for his own. I just want you to be seen by her, maybe speak softly to her, comfort her any way you can, and when it’s over you get the other fifty.”

“So you don’t want any of my normal services?” asked the Mandy part of her young body, and Albert, occupying the remainder of it, sighed his relief. He rather suspected that he might have some kind of idea about what she meant by services despite the fact that he still looked upon himself as a thirteen year old schoolboy, deceased.

“My dear,” he said, “there’s nothing I’d like less. I’m a happily married man and it’s my wife we’re off to see.”

“And she’s dying?” asked the Albert presence in the young woman’s body.

He nodded, and narrowly avoided a black cat on a black street in the black dead of night. “She’s the best person in the entire Universe,” he said quietly, “but she’s at the end of the line, poor dear. We’ve only been married for a couple of years and they’ve been the best years of my life!”

“You don’t look that old,” suggested Mandy.

“Oh, I’m not. But my dear Princess, that’s what I call her, Princess, is quite a lot older than me. You’ll meet her soon, and when you do I want you to pretend that you’re Guinevere. You know, of the royal court of Arthur in the olden times. You look like the sort of girl Guinevere might have been had she been born in more modern times.”

“Why does she want to meet a dead queen?” asked Mandy.

“Because she wants to meet the King. It’s complicated. The king knew a magician called Merlin.”

Albert Tench had heard all about King Arthur and his acolytes. They were the people who would have made history at school more interesting if the history teacher hadn’t debunked them as characters from legend rather than the real world. But he found himself getting drawn to the Albert who was driving the car and his strange tale of ancient beliefs and an old lady.

“This isn’t what I do,” protested Mandy, “go listening to wild stories from old men! I have to think when I’m listening to old folk and I’m best when I’m not thinking at all but letting blokes have their way with me and get it over with as soon as soon.”

“Here we are,” announced the driving Albert, “I’ll take you in and you can smile at my Princess and tell her your name is Guinevere. That’ll please her no end, that will! And you can tell her you know where Merlin is and that, when she’s better, you’ll take her to meet him.”

“All the pictures I ever saw of Guinevere show a pretty lady in a long flowing gown,” protested Mandy, “and I’m not like that at all.”

“It’s your hair that she’ll see,” Albert assured her, “your beautiful hair, just like in the stories of Guinevere,” he added, sighing. “She came looking for me, you know, said she wanted to marry Albert. Said she’d been wanting to marry me all her life. She captivated me, you know. You’ll see. She’ll captivate you, too.”

“I don’t want to see any dying old woman,” protested the young Mandy, “I really don’t, mister.”

“You’ve got my fifty, and I’ve another for you when you’ve played your part,” the driver said as he climbed out of the car. “That’s a hundred, and I’ll say that’s not bad for an hour’s play-acting when you might still be standing on that street corner waiting for Jack the Ripper to come along!”

“And she chose you because you’re called Albert, like the old queen’s husband was Albert, back in the olden times hundreds of years ago?” she asked.

“She said she wanted to marry a man called Albert before she died, in memory of one she used to know,” confirmed Albert, and his words rattled with sense and meaning inside the part of Mandy that was Albert Tench. A suspicion was forming in his mind and he didn’t like it one little bit. He had a mental image of a flighty teenager not so long ago, enjoying a bicycle ride with him on Christmas day and a fear that the old woman being talked about might have something to do with her made his heart, or rather Mandy’s heart, jolt.

“What’s her name?” asked Mandy, “I need to know her name if I’m going to talk to her.”

The driver’s moustache quivered when he smiled.

“I’ll let her tell you,” he said, “here we are, through this door and up the stairs.”

There was an old woman lying on the bed, maybe the oldest woman Mandy had ever seen, and when she looked at her visitors the truly ancient person smiled the most special smile Albert Tench had ever seen. It was a familiar smile, and yet unfamiliar.

“Why Albert,” she said, wheezing slightly, “I know you’d come… It’s your Miranda, your one and only Miranda, and I’ve waited such a long time...”

Then too many things happened at once. Mandy felt Albert leaving her, and she sighed hugely as a sense of unexpected relief flooded through her.

“That’s good,” sighed the Albert who had driven the car, puching another envelope towards her.

“Is that you, my love?” asked Miranda Tinkle as she let Albert settle somewhere inside her psyche, “at last…?”

He mumbled yes it was. At least, he hoped it was.

“Then we need to go for a little ride,” she said, “and no silly showing off this time...”

And he felt her heart thump to a standstill.

© Peter Rogerson 23.05.19