11. MARMADUKE SPEAKS OUT

Now we come to the nub of this yarn as Marmaduke reveals the nasty side of his character

The shenanigans of a brief honeymoon was over and Marmaduke Lauderdale had a very important meeting to address. In order to push his message over he needed a concrete example, couldn’t find one so, being a blue blooded politician, made one up.

His invented character was one he’d long fantasised about. Even though he’d never actually met anyone ike Jusper (he thought the invented name was appropriate) he knew the man as if they were cousins. On the black side of the family, that is, where criminality swarmed in a sea of poverty and pus.

So he stood up in front of the well attended meeting after being introduced by a bored council official, and began.

“I should think,” he said slowly, “that we all know a Jusper.”

There was silence because nobody had the least idea what a Jusper might be. Was it an alien from the Andromeda Galaxy? Was it some Mafia family intent on stealing their every penny? Who or what was it?

“Let me tell you about the rogue I met on my recent honeymoon…” pausing for applause that didn’t come because Marmaduke wasn’t as popular as he thought he was and everyone knew he’s had a church wedding which many thought dodgy for a man with his opinions, then continuing, “Jusper came into my life one night when I was taking a stroll under the stars with my brand new wife...” pause again for applause that was so slow in coming it consisted of a single slow handclap, and continuing with, “The evening was cool, there was barely a breath of fresh air and I came upon a shadowy figure holding what looked very much like a glass cutter to me, standing by a window and looking very mush as if he intended to break in…”

He looked around him. The suggestion of an anonymous figure combined with criminality seemed to have attracted the attention if some of his audience. Well, he thought, he’d make them shiver with fear before he was done, and they’d all be grateful that they were represented in Parliament by a bold and brave figure like him. So he ploughed on.

“I whispered to my wife to go to safety. ‘This is no place for a woman’, I told her, ‘so it would be best if you sheltered away from danger…’ And she did, because there’s more sense in her pretty head than you’d believe could exist anywhere on this planet, and anyway her new master had advised! Then I apprehended the shadow.

“I place one firm hand on one shoulder and told him that he was under arrest! A citizen’s arrest, you understand, we all have the right to stop evil doing if we are brave enough!”

That’s a good line, blowing my own trumpet, giving myself a touch of the Batmans! But I might have done that if it had been real, mightn’t I? I’m no shivering coward, am I?

He looked around him, seeing a slight stirring in the crowd. He felt a stab of discomfort whan he noticed a dark, possibly African, face on the second row. He must, he decided, be careful. It’s easy to let accusations of racism spoil a speech, and anyway, he was no racist as such, was he?.

So he contirued, self-warned and treading carefully.

“Now you all know that I haven’t got a racist bone in my body, but when I spun the fellow round I noted that he had a dark complexion, not unlike the gentleman on the second row in front of me, though it’s a great relief for me to know it wasn’t him! No sir! The man I apprehended was very different. He was loosely joweled (what does that mean?) and had about him a scarred and roguish appearance, bloodshot eyes. In fact, his looks were so terrifying I was tempted to let go of him and forget that I had ever seen him, but as you all know I’m made of sterner stuff than that!”

A raucous splutter terminated with a throat-clearing cough was the most annoying reaction from his audience which he’d decided was too left wing for him, so he slowly moved his head round, right to left, making out that he was taking in every individual in that hall, though in actual fact his brain was racing along while he decided not to be quite so dramatic as he sometimes was.

“’What are you doing here with glass cutters in your hand, my good fellow?’ I asked him, and he suddenly became quite timid as if he knew he had met a more powerful man than himself.

“’Don’t tell on me massa?’ he beseeched me, and I felt a twinge of sympathy for his condition. Clearly this wretch was only here, looking like a burglar or some other evil thief, through need. Maybe, I thought, he had a family of urchins back in the hovel that he calls home…”

He paused yet again, this time to see if the soupçon of sympathy that he’d injected into his speech as he spoke of the wretch had reached his audience. There was a vague indeterminate shuffling which he interpreted as a positive sympathy and he smiled, then nodded, and continued.

“’Who are you?’ I asked him, and he told me his name. It was complex, being from another land, but I understood the Jupser he mouthed as being his given name. I would say Christian name, but he clearly came from a place where our British holy values have never reached…”

That was good! Not racist at all, just xenophobic, but with just cause… That fellow on the second row is staring at me, but I haven’t criticised his colour or that of any other foreigner.

He continued. “Then I asked him where he hailed from and how come he was at this window of this particular hotel and what he was doing there, and to cut a long story short I’ll tell you, in a nutshell, what he told me. Remember, I have cut out a great dal of pleading and near tearful apologising, clearly meant to bring me round to sympathising with him, but I could never do that because for whatever reason he was intent on criminal activity, and that is not the British way!

“He told me he came from an island far away, he couldn’t say exactly where it was because he’d never been to school and knew nothing about the various lands on the Earth. I mean, my friends, such ignorance! He said he was brought to our country on a ship, a small boat that threatened to turn over and drown him with every wave that crossed the mighty ocean. He then said that having arrived on our shores he was trying to earn an honest living through decent work, but very few people would employ him. He said he had five children, all constantly hungry, and a wife with,” and here he paused as if to give his audience something to amuse them in contrast to the misery he’d described, “a huge bosom!”

There was a titter from his crowd, but not exactly what he had hoped for. But then, he thought, who can account for the varying moods of the ignoramuses who attend his meetings?

He decided it was time to get to the nub of the meeting and return home to Dragona (who was showing disturbing signs of putting on weight, which he did’nt particularly like) in time for a hearty lunch.

“So my friends, that is the tale if Jusper and how I apprehended him. He’s in prison now. That’s where he ought to be and I made sure he went there! He was intent on stealing something from the hotel. Maybe food? Who can tell?

“But he is a forward promise of what is to come. Our little island will be overwhelmed with his type, the Juspers of this world, out to take and never give. And I ask you, can we afford enough jails to hold them as they flood in small boats across mighty oceans? That is my message to you. They must be stopped in their tracks before they take over our jobs, our homes and our wives!”

There should have been applause at that rousing conclusion to his speech, but the room was unnaturally quiet. What was wrong with these people? Didn’t they see the dangers that lay ahead, for themselves, their children and even their grandchildren?

The man he’d noticed on the second row stood up and spoke in a quiet voice, yet it was not so quiet that all those present couldn’t hear it.

“You are a rouser, sir,” the man said, “a man who lacks any sympathy for those that your own forefathers robbed of everything. Yes sir, I say robbed. For they came with their guns and their bibles and they stole more than a few morsels that your impoverished thief wanted. They stole whole countries, entire cultures, and enslaved them!”

It was only then that the applause came, quietly at first but then rising to a crescendo.

I’ll sort him and his cronies out, thought Marmaduke as he made his way out of the hall, going the back way so as not to have to mingle with his audience that seemed to have been somehow brainwashed by the simple short speech made by the man on the second row. He could have wept. He wanted an audience to be in his own hands, and it wasn’t.

Just you see if I don’t! I’ll rouse all hell if I have to, and send the whole lot of them back to the land of their birth! We’ll fill the biggest liners of the oceans with them, and send them far away. Then the land will be fit for us who are native to it!

© Peter Rogerson, 28.05.22

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