To The North

16

To The North

October 25 Not. Well we got away safely as planned. Egg driving in his Ovenden Stables green and white anorak and riding breeches, Crumpy beside him in a borrowed ditto anorak and jeans, his breeches having been vetoed on account of too spiffing, no-one would ever take him for a lad in those (provided by Mr Lamont, of course), and us in the back. Mrs O. had insisted that it’d be colder in Scotland so we all had jumpers and in my case a slightly too large anorak over it. There hadn’t been any more spare anoraks, so Bean Minor was allowed to wear his own one, now rather short in the sleeves for him, but as the Egg said with a grin, it added verisimilitude, while Bean was in a long, shabby grey hooded thing over a long, shabby grey Tee, in other words no different from usual. Plus Trelawney, in jeans, heavy jumper and Tee: he’d wanted to come, Bean Minor had been keen for him to come, (this probably having something to do with being pointedly excluded from the Bean’s concerns as too young for most of his life), and Henry had said that Mac wouldn’t notice one more. Tho his Tee was a maroon Marbledown School one and thus verging on smart.

    It was all right being in the back: the horsebox was very roomy, it could take six horses, and at some time in its history proper seats with seatbelts had been put in, the days of the lads being condemned to perch on bales of hay being over, the Egg had explained cheerfully. And we could see forward into the cab, and there were several small side windows, rather high up, so it wasn’t as claustrophobic as I’d feared. Tho it wasn’t by any means the biggest box the stables owned. There were several others, including one huge one which had its own driver, Donnie, who was an expert at handling the monster.

    The horsebox had a separate side door for the lads, one didn’t have to let the big ramp down, in fact the whole thing was very cleverly arranged. Tho Donnie’s was even cleverer, it had a proper bunk in it for when he needed to sleep over, which he sometimes did, not so much in Britain but sometimes an owner would want a horse sent abroad to race or one that he’d bought collected from somewhere in Europe. Well at about this time I started to get an idea of the scope of Mr Ovenden’s business, and in fact to wonder how he’d ever managed without someone competent like Mrs Fletcher to help with the office accounts. And it was certainly very clear now that Henry would never be capable of taking over from him, not that anyone had thought he would, really, but it definitely came home to me now. And to Bean and Bean Minor, it was revealed.

    “So what about Egg’s plans to run one of the clubs for Oncle Albert?” the minor legume asked uneasily.

    “Good managerial experience,” said the Bean into the car mag. he’d somehow got hold of.

    “Yes but…” Bean Minor looked at me anxiously.

    “Well he can still do that for several years, Mr O. isn’t going to pop off any time soon, you know. I think Henry must be nearly thirty, so he’d be… About fifty-five, I’d say. Mrs O.’s a few years younger but she’s over the menopause now: she was telling me that the week it finally dawned that the blasted periods were over for good and she wasn’t getting any hot flushes any more she rang an old school friend and they had a blow-out lunch with Champagne to celebrate—no males need apply!” I said with a laugh.

    “Must you, for God’s sake?” sighed the Bean predictably.

    Well I could just imagine what my darling John would have said to that! So I did my poor best.

    “Shut up Bean, Bean Minor’s more than old enough to be aware of such things and if he isn’t he ought to be! This is the twenty-first century, we’re not dashed Victorians in crinolines, women are half of humanity, you know!”

    “Um yes,” said the minor one, rather pink about the cheeks and ears but valiant. “We did it in Human Bio, actually. –Not a subject as such, Mel,” he explained carefully. “It was part of the Humanity and Society course.”

    “Yes,” Trelawney agreed, pinkish but determined.

    “I see,” I replied limply. Gosh, had Marbledown actually emerged from the Victorian era, then?

    “I dare say, but one doesn’t need to talk about it,” said the Bean sourly.

    “One DOES!” I shouted.

    “Um, yes, Sandy said something like that,” Trelawney admitted gamely.

    “Sandy?” I queried.

    “Their Housemaster,” said Bean in a very bored voice.

    “You know that, Mel!” urged Bean Minor.

    Yes well. Schooldays are over, little chums. Oh well, give it time, it’d dawn. So I only said: “I don’t remember any teacher with red hair.”

    Blank silence.

    Then it registered and the lads both cried: “No! Mr Beach!”

    Er… Oh good God. “Sandy beach” being the thinking, if such were the word. “Right. Got it. Well, good for him,” I managed.

    “He was all right,” Bean Minor allowed tolerantly.

    Yes well he must have been. Help, telling the boys that sort of thing had never dawned on me and Mireille during the time we’d all been at the château. I lapsed into a guilty silence…

    Once we were well clear of the village and anyone who might recognise us, the Egg pulled up: he’d promised I could come in the front too, as it had an extra seat, long, rather narrow and hardish, behind the two front ones. An older style, the Egg explained. At need, one could kip on it, was the idea. And I got out, and was duly awarded the seat beside the driver, Crumpy wedging himself onto the one behind.

    And we set off again on the long haul to Scotland…

    Well anyone who raves about the charming English countryside can jolly well drop dead, there is nothing charming about English roads. Evidently horseboxes don’t like the motorways so we didn’t just drive straight up the M1, and as a matter of fact Henry had tried to explain that it went in the wrong direction, but as north was north I didn’t quite get that one. I mean, if you head north surely you hit Scotland in any case, it’s unavoidable. No, but old Mac’s place was in the Western Highlands. Oh, yes? Fascinating.

    Be that as it might we saw an awful lot of large but apparently secondary roads complete with road hogs, tradesmen’s vans, large lorries, and family saloons travelling at a crawl, full of fighting families—at one point an empurpled infant was observed to hurl a fuzzy toy out of a window into oncoming traffic—and bordered by miles of shabby industrial areas and miles of boring suburbia, interspersed with hideous acres of bright yellow rapeseed or the stubble of such that had been planted earlier, thanks for that horticultural detail, Egg (A.) Ovenden. So I might just as well have stayed in the back. Even tho it was really quite comfortable up here.

    Of course what these dashed secondary roads were not lined with was ladies’ loos! So eventually I had to say: “Egg, if you don’t pull in soon I shall burst.”

    At which point it was admitted that it might be time for elevenses tho it wasn’t yet eleven, but breakfast seemed like five hours back and in fact had been.

    “But I say,” the Crumpet ventured: “there won’t be any laybys, will there? I mean, if this is a secondary road they won’t be catering for— I mean, no big motorway caffs with um, proper pull-ins and ladies’ loos, will there be?”

    “Shut up, Crumpy,” sighed the Egg. “There is a place, not far from here.”

    “Uh—do you mean to say you’ve come this way before?” croaked the Crumpet.

    “Eh? Yes, I’ve been driving for Dad for years. One has to come this way to get to (equestrian detail of venues doubtless well-known to the great British racing P.)”

    What? And we’d thought he was bravely navigating us through Unknown Territory! The Crumpet managed to breathe heavily, while personally I was choking with indignation.

October 27 Not. Continuing: So quite soon we pulled in to a large caff and I was able to use its loos. Surprisingly clean, thank God, with plenty of paper, thank God, plus actual paper towels. And horrible pink squirty liquid soap, but that was only to be expected, I think they manufacture it specially for roadside ladies’ loos all over Britain—well I’ve never struck one that didn’t have it. And airport ones, come to think of it.

    The caff was fairly full of large lorry drivers belonging to those large lorries parked outside, consuming, since it wasn’t actually lunchtime yet, merely vast quantities of bad tea, worse coffee, cakes, cream doughnuts, giant sausage rolls and meat pies. But we managed to find a table to ourselves and sat down to a lovely beanfeast of— Quite.

    “I say, the sausage rolls aren’t bad!” beamed Trelawney.

    “Misguided child,” I sighed.

    “What? I say, that’s a bit on the nose!”

    “Ignore her: all those chaps she’s been going round with have been taking her to posh restaurants and feeding her on gourmet nosh,” explained the Bean.

    “Oh.” he said, looking at me dubiously. True, in my present guise I did not perhaps resemble anything likely to appear in a posh restaurant. Especially as Carrie-Ann’s old jeans had an enormous patch on the bum. What on Earth could she have been doing to have worn them right through like that? Or perhaps there’d been a fault in the fabric: they had been seconds, she’d revealed. Which did kind of explain the unlikely label on the back pocket, yes. It went well with the patch, sucks, eat your heart out, purveyor of overpriced so-called Designer jeans.

    “Have a lovely cream doughnut, Mel,” suggested Egg with a laugh in his voice.

    “Va te faire—” I broke off. “No, thank you so much, Mr Ovenden!” I fluted, fluttering my eyelashes frantically at him.

    “Ugh!” he gasped, recoiling.

    Hah, hah! It’s not often that I manage to disconcert the Egg.

    The Bean was just discovering that his piece of English fruit-cake tasted exactly the same, sweetish and rather sawdusty, as “un cake” (technically a slice) from any and every cheap corner bar in Paris, when my mobile rang.

    “Don’t tell them where we are!” warned the Crumpet hastily.

    “Pas si bête. –Hullo? –Oh God, it’s Mum,” I reported as the usual strident tones assaulted my eardrum.

    “Put it on speaker-phone,” the Egg suggested with a grin.

    I raised my eyebrows slightly to indicate that he’d asked for it, but did so.

    “… darling where on Earth are you? I rang the flat but there was no answer so I tried that frightful Prosser but all he’d say was that the boys had gone off to the country with some friend or other and you weren’t there!”

    At this point the Crumpet muttered: “Three cheers for Prosser.”

    “And he called me Mrs again, he does it on purpose! Darling, did you get the message I gave the bloody man about my coat?”

    What? “Y—”

    “Well never mind that, it’s too hot for it here of course; they tried to claim it was winter and the nights would be a lot colder when we went off to this frightful safari place, you wouldn’t believe it, darling: appalling! I said to Reggie, what do you mean, ‘glamping’? In the first place there’s no such word, it’ll be something the bloody Yanks dreamt up, and don’t dare to claim there’s anything glamorous about sleeping in a bloody tent! And to give me the keys, I’d drive right back to town immediately! So then—you won’t believe this, darling—he had the cheek to say that if I tried that I’d be eaten by a lion or trampled by a wild elephant because it’s at night all the wild animals come out and no way was he letting the company in for that sort of compensation claim! So I said what do you mean, wild animals, you said this was a park! At which the damned Black who was supposed to be our guide but hadn’t done any guiding at all unless one counts ordering, positively ordering poor Maurice not to put his head out of the window, which personally I don’t—this Black fellow had the cheek to say it was a park, a safari park! And when I wanted to know why they didn’t control them in proper cages and dens in that case, he laughed and said I was in ‘Sith Orfricah’ now, and that was what a safari park was! I ask you! That’s not a park! And the drive out was appalling! Nothing to see, flat as a pancake, and no proper roads at all, a filthy track, dust all the way. I was covered in it by the time we got there—covered! But when I said I must have a shower—now this shows you, darling, they’re totally primitive—the Black creature had the effrontery to say in that case he’d come with me to the ablutions block—block! I ask you!—with his gun! Really! So Trisha said she’d come too, but I said No, the man looked quite capable of raping and killing the both of us and burying the remains and then letting off his gun and claiming a wild lion had taken us! And they could damn well bring me some hot water in this revolting glamp thing!”

    She’d paused to breathe so I managed to say: “So Trisha’s with you, is she? That’s good.”

    “Good? The useless woman’s had migraines ninety percent of the time, she claims it’s the heat and something to do with the altitude! While the whole place is flat as a pancake and all one can see is dust and dead-looking bushes! There’s nothing to take lovely snaps of at all. I thought we’d be in a beautiful jungle, all lianas and things!”

    “Like Kew,” murmured the Bean, and he and Bean Minor collapsed in sniggers.

    “Well darling next day I was adamant, as you can imagine, after the most putrid breakfast imaginable: one does not expect to be faced with porridge or something that’s the native idea of porridge here, and I said so to Reggie, and there was no nice tropical fruit at all, can you imagine it? And naturally they wouldn’t know a decent cup of coffee if they fell over it. Probably just as well, because who knows where the milk might have been? So Trisha and I just had black tea and bananas, at least the natives’ fingers couldn’t have been into those! So I said to Reggie ‘I am going back to town right now and no arguments!’ –My dear, the horrid man must have had an arrangement with the glamp people because he insisted on taking shots of me standing outside the frightful thing! Well, I said, if anyone asks me I shall tell them exactly how horrible it was, and I hope they sue you and get their money back! Which did not go down frightfully well but after all there are limits! Wild elephants and lions indeed! My contract states quite clearly that I am to be shown having a shower with an elephant!”

    “What?” croaked the Egg, dropping the remains of his sausage roll.

    “Did she say shower?” hissed the Crumpet, his eyes bulging.

    Meanwhile Mum was shouting: “A tame elephant! Not one of one of those wild ones! The frightful Black fellow claimed that they lose their tempers and flap their ears or something and rush at one and overturn the jeep and trample one to death!”

    “Yes, wasn’t there an incident— Oh yes, poor Josh was chased by one with flapping ears,” the Bean recalled.

    Meanwhile Mum was shouting: “… said ‘Take me back to town IMMEDIATELY!’ –So we’re back at the hotel, darling, well so-called, the service is shocking, all Blacks and all either totally blank or downright impertinent, worse than the ones on Guadeloupe, you’d think they owned the country, and the food practically poisonous, they keep trying to foist vile local stews on one, Well, I said, I am not a native thank you very much, and I do not care what poisonous unpronounceable Dutch name it may have—my dear, horf of them or,” she said in a horrible imitation of a Dutch or possibly Afrikaaner accent. “Unspeakable, someone should have warned me, I thought it was a nice English-speaking place like Bermuda, and it’s the last time I work for this foul production company, I can tell you!”

    “Until they offer her a huge fat bribe,” muttered the Bean.

    “So I rang Jackie immediately, darling, as you can imagine, and he said wild elephants were definitely not in my contract and nor were safari parks and he’d arrange for a local tame elephant and we could do the shot with it! And he didn’t know what Reggie had imagined he was doing but he’d speak to the CEO immediately! So Trisha and I are coming home, darling, and would you make sure that the blasted man turns the power on? Last time we were sure there was a damned power cut and had to stumble round with Trisha’s torch, unable to so much as boil the kettle and no hot water: disgusting! Until Trisha managed to get hold of him and make him admit that the electricity must be turned off. So we’ll see you very soon, darling! –YES! I’m coming! God!” And with that she rang off.

    Our table emitted a stunned silence, not least because of the sudden cessation of the racket.

    Finally the Crumpet uttered: “Jesus. I mean, I’d known she was a shocker, but…”

    “Yep, takes the cake, all right,” the Egg allowed. “Er, suppose we should’ve told her to take care in case the bloody terrorists might have a go,” he admitted uneasily.

    “Huh! With her in full flow?” snorted the Bean. “She’s never been known to let anyone get a word in edgewise.”

    “No,” I agreed. “It’s all right, Egg, don’t worry about it. We can always contact her once she’s home. But she never gives out her address or even her home phone number, you know.”

    Trelawney was now looking at me uneasily. “I say, Mel, this, um, elephant thing…”

    “With the shower, he means, I think,” said Crumpy helpfully.

    “Yes, I mean… She wouldn’t, would she? Not for real?”

    “Only if it’s a very tame elephant with its keeper standing by and a fetter on its leg, old man,” said the Bean kindly.

    “Yes, he’s right, Trelawney,” I agreed. “Publicity stunt, you see.”

    “Gosh,” he croaked.

    “Unfortunately that’s typical of Lady Patrizia, little chum. Have a gorilla,” said the Egg kindly, passing a plate on which their depredations had left one solitary sausage roll.

    “Well yes, I think I will, if nobody else—? Thanks, Egg.” He consumed sausage roll gratefully, his eyes still very round above the bulging cheeks.

    The Crumpet was mulling it over. “I say, the electricity at the flat’s not controlled centrally, is it?”

    “No,” the Bean agreed. “The fuse box is just inside the front door. Mum wouldn’t have realised it and Trisha’s about as bad about that sort of thing.”

    “That’s right. Mr Prosser would have to have come up and turned it on for them,” I added.

    “Flipped the switch,” clarified Bean Minor.

    “Help,” the Crumpet muttered.

    “You know,” said the Egg thoughtfully, “she must’ve—try a ham and cheese sandwich, Mel, it’ll help—as I was saying, she must’ve insulted just about everything one can insult about South Africa.”

    “Well she didn’t have a go at their politics but as you probably gathered she doesn’t know anything about them,” the Bean admitted.

    “No,” I agreed somewhat thickly through my ham and cheese sandwich. It was quite soothing, really: Egg was right, it did help.

    And the burning pangs of hunger and thirst having been assuaged, we returned to the horsebox, Crumpy this time kindly letting Bean take his place. Which resulted in his nodding off as miles and miles of non-entrancing parts of Britain fled by us. Or crawled by us: there seemed to be an awfully high proportion of traffic snarls in villages, small towns and even quite large towns. Many of which had quite historic churches or town halls, oh really, Egg? Fascinating. And this one had an ancient market—see? Mm, fascinating.

    So at the next comfort stop I changed places with Trelawney and went to sleep in the back what time Bean Minor alternately read his book and purveyed bits of it to anyone still awake (one of John’s, it seemed to be about engineering or possibly planes or both), interspersed with efforts to stand up and peer out of those high windows, and Crumpy tolerantly listened to him or read his newspaper or reminded him to keep his seatbelt done up. Well—soporific, yes.

    We stopped somewhere for lunch but it was more of the same so I stuck to ham and cheese sandwiches, which seemed to be as prevalent here as further (presumably) south. However the rest of them decided on something hot, which turned out to be bangers all round. I.e. bangers and mash (Crumpy: bangers good but the mash sort of didn’t taste like potato, very odd); bangers and chips (Egg: both okay); toad-in-the-hole (Trelawney: wanted to see if it was better than School’s; no, about as bad); bangers plus macaroni cheese (Bean: one could sort of taste the cheese); and bangers and roast potatoes (Bean Minor: not actually roast, boiled and then deep-fried, his discerning palate determined). The HP sauce thoughtfully provided by the management proved popular at our table. There was a wide choice of aerated coloured dyes for those wishing to slake their thirst but the Egg managed to find a cache of plain spring water, so we had that instead.

    A real English experience. Quite.

October 30 Not. Continuing: After lunch Crumpy offered to drive, to spell Egg for a bit, as there was quite a straight stretch ahead and he thought he could manage even with all that weight on behind, but Egg pointed out that he didn’t have a heavy vehicle licence, so that was that. And we all piled back into the horsebox, this time with me and Bean Minor in the front. Tho after not very long at all the minor legume was admitting that it wasn’t as interesting as his book, actually, he’d expected to see cows and things and, um, maybe a big strawberry farm! Eh? Well they must grow them somewhere, he pointed out logically. But the Egg thought that’d be more likely to be down in Kent or those parts and in any case didn’t they usually slather them in black plastic? Oh. The sibling peered out nonetheless but after a while announced that there weren’t even any cows. Nor there were, tho true, the milk must come from somewhere. Unless they were all down in K— No, hang on!

    “They’ll all be down in the Channel Islands!” I said brilliantly. “Jerseys and Guernseys!”

    “Don’t make me laugh while I’m driving!” gasped the Egg.

    “Well they are cows, aren’t they? Miss Pinkerton was trying to encourage the dear Gels to take an interest in putrid children’s lit., it was nominally a free period, you see, and the books she forced on us were full of them!”

    “On Jersey and Guernsey?” said the Egg faintly.

    “Um, well I don’t think the exact geographical location was mentioned—it never is, really, is it? And the sun is shining all the time,” l noted, glancing out at the pale blue-grey bits in between the larger grey bits out there.

    “I think I might once have read a Famous Five vol. in which it poured, but come to think of it, that was probably a plot device. In essence, you’re correct, Sister Bean,” the Egg replied with a grin. “My point was, the islands in Q. aren’t big enough to run herds that would keep the whole of Britain in milk for its breakfast cuppa, old thing. But they are breeds of dairy cow, yes. They’ve spread, so to speak. And there are others,” he ended vaguely. “Can’t think of any names, tho.”

    “Hang on! What about the friendly cow all red and white?” asked Bean Minor excitedly.

    “What?” I croaked.

    “It was a poem. At School. –Was it?” he asked himself. “Yes, that’s right, we were looking at English verse forms and the teacher quoted it as a simple example of a rhyme scheme. A, B; A, B,” he added arcanely.

    “I can’t see any rhymes in that,” I noted dubiously.

    “Um, it was one line, I think.”

    I could feel the Egg shaking slightly beside me. “Talking of children’s lit., Sister Bean, it’s from a very well-known 19th-century book of children’s verse. The rhymes are ‘white, heart, might, tart.’ Classic A, B; A, B, all right: typical of the quatrain as used by practitioners of the form in rather more adult offerings.”

    “Where did the ‘tart’ come in—hang on, that is tart as in une tarte Tatin, is it?” I groped.

    “Yes. The cow provided the cream for it.”

    “Oh, yes! So she did! I’d forgotten that!” beamed Bean Minor.

    And with this and similar exciting idle chit-chat the afternoon was whiled away, the sky darkened, tho as it was the nominal English summer it wasn’t supposed to this early, and the Egg decided with a grimace that it looked like rain but we’d push on to (name of English human settlement, size undetermined) and grab some slightly belated tea there and then head for (ditto Scottish name) where he’d arranged to meet Henry and have dinner.

    The minor legume went on peering out optimistically into the growing murk, noting at one stage, as we seemed to be travelling parallel to a railway for a bit, “I say, is that train heading for Scotland? We could have come by rail!”

    The Egg sighed. “What, and have Mel spotted catching the thing at King’s Cross or wherever? If they are on the lookout for her the stations will be the first place they’ll look.”

    He wasn’t wrong, in spite of a rather big If. And the minor legume subsided, with the remark: “Never mind, it’s something different to do in the hols.!”

    Er… Yes. Who was that supposed to cheer up, the Egg or me? Or himself?

    And we drove on, Bean Minor, who of course loves trains, continuing to peer out wistfully at the railway line, until it went in one direction, tho still apparently northish, and the road in another…

October 31 Not. Well we duly grabbed the tea, this time trying coffee, not good was the unanimous verdict, but at least wet, and on the lads’ part the cakes (sweet, sawdusty) and vanilla slices (sweet, gluggy). Ugh! In that case they were as disgusting as they looked. The Crumpet noted sadly that he’d been hoping for Eccles Cakes but the Egg, tho coughing slightly over a crumb of the outer integument of his very yellow vanilla slice, managed to explain that we were now too far north for those to be a popular viand, old man. Oh. Well where were we, actually? Patiently the Egg told him. Blank silence…

    “Norther, is it?” asked the Bean eventually. “I say, one can’t really say that, can one?” he noted.

    “Yes, it is further north,” Egg confirmed heavily “Anyone want this last vanilla slice? There were only four of these things with the bright pink icing, I’m afraid.”

    “It isn’t real vanilla,” Bean Minor noted detachedly. “And there’s no cream or egg in the custard.”

    “I quite like it, tho,” Trelawney admitted.

    “Okay, you have that, then,” said Crumpy in some relief, “and we’ll all try the pink things. Unless you’d like to change your mind, Mel?”

    “No thanks,” I replied, shuddering slightly.

    “Righty-ho!” And the plate was passed…

    Thoughtfully the Bean concluded as the last vestiges vanished: “Well the pink and the coffee sort of, um, not neutralised—counteracted each other, really.”

    “Well said!” the Egg agreed cheerfully. “Shall we press on? All vote Aye, Junior Drones?”

    Clearly there was nothing to stay for, was there? So the Ayes had it. Tho Bean Minor did note: “I say, you chaps, we could have a chorus of groans for the coffee.”

    “Better not: those huge chaps that came off those giant tankers might not approve,” said Crumpy hurriedly. “They seem to be aficionados, so to speak.”

    “Good point,” the Egg acknowledged. And with that we really were out of there.

    The day grew darker as we headed north, and Crumpy, now back in the front with us, began to mutter about distances from the equator and endless twilight and land of the midnight sun, but the Egg managed to shut him up by pointing out that those were rainclouds, old man, and this here—switching his windscreen wipers on—was the rain starting to come down.

    “Oh is it? Damn. Well I mean, one reads about the beauty of Scotland when the heather’s in bloom in summer and all that. Or was it a picture on a dashed vase? Could have been, now I come to think about it. –You remember, Egg! That thing we saw at School!”

    Even the Egg was stumped by this one. He managed: “We’re not in Scotland yet, tho. Was it one of those dashed talks in Hall? Because I usually slept through—”

    “No; telly thing. –Could it have been in class?” he asked himself.

    “Oh!” I realised. “Was it about antiques? Bean Minor said that one of his teachers made them watch that.”

    “That was it, yes.”

    “Oh,” said the Egg weakly. “Yes. Fodder for last period on wet Friday afternoons, really, Mel. Well so far as our Form was concerned. That was when we were in the Remove.”

    “The year you dreamed up the Junior Drones?”

    “Mm. Well that was towards the end of that year, but yes, that was it. –Well yes, I suppose there were some vases with hairy Scottish heather on them, Crumpy, but didn’t it mainly feature as a background to hairy Scottish cattle?”

    “Could have done, mm, now you come to mensh. Pinkish, purplish. Goddawful.”

    The Egg winced. “Yes.”

    “Why would anyone want to paint hairy cattle on vases?” I groped.

    “Beats me. They’d have been Victorian, I think,” the Egg replied cheerfully.

    Er… Ye-es?

    “Well no accounting for tastes. –Long-horned, that was it!” the Crumpet dredged up from the recesses of that rag-bag in his head. “I say, it’d be jolly if we could see some of them. Think this Mac chappie might have any, Egg?”

    “No idea: all the family’s ever had to go on are Henry’s reports,” he sighed.

    “Oh. Got you, old man. Pity. Suppose one can but hope…” He peered out at the gloom. “I say, it is getting darker.”

    “Yes, damn it. Coming down in torrents,” the Egg agreed heavily, slowing down. “God knows what time we’ll get any dinner, but we can’t stop on the way, Henry’ll be wondering where the Hell we are.”

    “Right you are, old boy,” the Crumpet agreed. “Not starving, I hope Mel, dear?”

    “No. As a matter of fact I can still smell those vanilla slices,” I returned, nobly eschewing the phrase “The stink of those vanilla slices is still in my nostrils.”

    “Er—mm. They were rather strong. Well same thing wherever one goes, I suppose!” he added cheerily. “I mean, would it be better on the Continent?”

    “YES!”

    The cab of the horsebox rang with silence.

    “I’m terribly sorry, Crumpy!” I gulped. “But honestly— In France people eat real food—certainly anywhere along the secondary roads. Every little café or corner bar would have crisp half-baguettes stuffed with saucisson, um, garlic sausage, or ham according to preference, as a matter of course. With real coffee and decent bottled water. And the German food was different, but nice too, the time Oncle Patrice took us up to Germany to taste some real Riesling at the, um, I think the English call it the cellar door: from the vignoble.”

    “Vineyard, yes,” the Egg agreed. “What sort of food was it?”

    “Well the bars often had different types of sausages, often hot, and the cafés had good coffee and real cakes made on the premises, and some of them sort of doubled as a pâtisserie so that people could just come in and buy cakes to take home.”

    “That sounds great,” the Crumpet admitted.

    “Yes, but one presumes your uncle knew the right places to stop at,” the Egg noted.

    “Well he knew enough to avoid most of their autobahns and anything that looked like a caff near them, yes!”

    “Yes. Well—one takes your point.”

    “Mm.”

    “Right. Austria’s even better, according to Dad,” said the Crumpet thoughtfully. “It’s donkey’s ages since he was there but he can still bore on for hours about the incredible cream cakes—real cream, Mel—and the light-as-air pastries they served up!”

    “Yes. Well this is England,” sighed the Egg. “Shut up, Crumpy.”

    Apologising, he shut up, and we drove on into the rain…

    After a considerable time had elapsed, with a considerable amount of ineffectual peering into the grey murk over endless vistas of industrial England, a sort of reddish glow was discerned in the sky and the Egg said in dismay: “Hell, is it that late?” And the Crumpet looked at his watch and confirmed it was—unless we were lost?

    To which the driver replied sourly that No, we weren’t, and did he wish to navigate? He didn’t. So he just peered out and reported that it seemed to be clearing, well sort of. Hang on, was that west or east?

    Well joggers has never been my strong point, of course, but after consulting my left and right hands and working out which was which—I mean of course I know which is which but I get the names confused—and then correlating that with what certain annoyed male persons had drummed into me about maps which always had North at the Top, I managed to say, since Egg had merely taken a deep breath and remained silent: “It must be west, Crumpy, if the horsebox is still going north.”

    “Is it?” he asked simply.

    “Yes,” groaned the  Egg.

    “Oh, good show. Well that must be the bally old sun setting.”

    “Yes; I think they call it ‘breaking through the clouds’ in English books,” I recalled.

    We peered at an unenticing view of a lurid glow in the sky behind an industrial area.

    “Is that just cloud or are those chimneys smoking?” ventured Crumpy.

    “I doubt if there are any active chimneys these days in post-industrial England,” noted the Egg sourly.

    “More cloud, then,” he decided.

    He was right: as we peered the clouds closed in again, and the glow from the putatively setting sun, unless there was a big fire over there somewhere, was lost to view.

    And we drove onwards through the rain, the traffic in front of us seeming to thicken with every drop: where the Hell could they all be going? Surely not that many people wanted to go to dashed Scotland, which, it was now becoming all too horridly clear, was in all likelihood not enjoying any sort of heather-clad balmy summer, with or without hairy cattle as depicted on Victorian vases. Help.

    It seemed endless but at long last we reached the appointed town and struggled through its traffic jams, prevalent in spite of the advanced hour, and reached the venue appointed by Henry. A pub. Well its windows offered a welcoming glow, that was something. And once Egg had found a place to park we staggered back to it. Very luckily by then the rain had stopped or possibly we’d driven out of it.

    The Hearty one was discovered in a bar with an empty glass in front of him. “You’re bloody late,” he greeted us.

    “Traffic jams, rain, more traffic jams, more rain,” replied the Egg. “Added to which, that thing drives like a tank.”

    “Mmf,” he agreed through a mouthful of crisps.

    “Henry!”

    “Whap?” he said through a mouthful of crisps.

    “Do they do dinners here?”

    “Yes, very decent dining-room. Well you’re a bit late for it but one can but ask. Come on.”

    We staggered after him…

    Thank God, dinner was still available! So after a much-needed visit to the pub’s loos—that pink liquid soap again, I’d forgotten the pubs when citing its sites, so to speak—we were able to collapse round a big table and have it. Whatever it was, as the Bean noted: at this stage even another vanilla slice would have done.

    Well it was better than that. Roast beef, slightly overdone but never mind, artificial gravy which after a cautious tasting Bean Minor advised us all to avoid, the nearest it had ever got to a joint of meat was on this here table, mash, sliced carrots, bright green peas, so they must have been frozen ones, and strange puffy browned things that looked like American muffins gone wrong.

    “Yorkshire pudding,” the Egg and the Crumpet explained in chorus.

    “We’re not in Yorkshire, tho, Mel,” Henry added painstakingly.

    Er…

    “Sort of puffy thing,” the Crumpet contributed helpfully.

    Er…

    “They tried that on us at School. Ninety percent of it ended up flying through the air so they didn’t offer it again,” noted Trelawney.

    Right: fair warning. I tasted it… “What’s it supposed to be like?” I croaked.

    The English persons present looked at one another.

    Finally the Crumpet ventured: “Dunno, really. Think this is the leathery variety.”

    The Egg tried his. “Yes.”

    “Not squashy in the middle?” Trelawney ventured.

    “No.”

    “Well they’re one up on School, then.”

    “That must have been when I was away,” Bean Minor noted. He tried a tiny bit of his.

    “Well?” I asked.

    “They’re right. Leathery. Some sort of… Flour and water paste?” he offered. ‘I don’t think there’s any shortening in it.”

    The Egg looked at my face and took pity on me. “I have read about real Yorkshire pudding, Mel, but I’ve never tasted anything that came near it. Apparently it wasn’t originally made in these individual serves at all. Just ignore it.”

    It was looking at me, but I did my best to ignore it and concentrate on my meat. Really not bad, considering how late we were, and how long it must have been sitting in the oven. Never mind, the beer or in my case shandy, I’m not fond of English beer, helped to wash it down.

    The desserts on offer were apple pie with custard, or ice cream with “fruit of the season”. The Junior Drones all voted for the latter, the more so as Bean Minor and Trelawney had launched into the horrors of School custard, which to judge by the hotel’s idea of gravy would be the variety here. The fruit of the season turned out to be tinned peaches but true, peaches did ripen at this season, they were within the letter of the law. For his part, Henry ate his way stolidly through the apple pie, complete with a short crust which was all too clearly stodgy and damp, and bright yellow custard, which was the same yellow as that of the vanilla slices and smelled exactly the same…

    Yes well I could write bitterly to Mireille, Tantes Louise and Thérèse, Marthe, or Oncle Patrice describing the journey’s culinary delights but none of them would believe me. On the other hand, Oncle Albert would, he’d often visited England! Yes okay, I would write to the family at the resto, and it was a while since I’d been in touch with dear old Patrice, so— Hang on.

    “Um, Egg,” I said as we settled ourselves in the roomy lounge bar and Henry, Crumpy and the Bean went off to “get ’em in,” “would it be okay for me to email the relatives in France and tell them about today?”

    “Uh—well depends how serious these damned terrorists are, Mel. There’s an outside chance that they might try to get something out of the family—chat them up, you know.”

    “Mm. Bother.”

    He sighed. “Better safe than sorry.”

    Yes well that was a very English expression. But I agreed sadly that he was right.

    He got up. “I’ll get you a Cognac, Mel dear, those blighters will never think of it.”

    “Mm. Thank you, Egg,” I managed to say.

    Well I suppose the Cognac helped in that I didn’t actually break down and bawl. But it was terrible not being able to contact John and not knowing if those clowns at the MOD had managed to keep him safe, and now not even being able to give the relations any news—! They’d be wondering what had happened to me and in no time they’d be ringing me wanting to know what was up and I’d have to lie to them. Well I didn’t care what I told Grannie or come to think of it Mum, but when it came to people who really loved me…

    Well bother.

    So take it for all in all I was not in a very good mood next morning as, after the hotel’s idea of early breakfast (I draw a veil), we set off in convoy for the Western Highlands of Scotland. Henry had been ordered not to drive fast and lose us, and the Bean had volunteered to go with him to make sure he didn’t. Well the one-eyed man bally well leading the blind, as Crumpy croaked, but at least he’d put up his hand for the job, he was improving. (Slightly, understood.)

    I let Bean Minor go in the front with Egg and Crumpy. This resulted in Trelawney telling me a long, boring story about one, Fenders or was it Feathers who had been some sort of Luminary when he, Trelawney, had only been at Prep. School but see, his cousin Knew Him, and after innumerable second- or third-hand reports of cricketing prowess at School it eventuated that he’d gone on to do Engineering and—etcetera.

    “Mm. Did he? Mm, lovely,” I managed. “Um, jolly good!” I added hastily, realising in some horror that I was starting to sound just like Mrs O. or Mrs Fletcher!

    Then it belatedly dawned. “Oh—you’re interested in engineering, are you, Trelawney?”

    “Yes. I thought you knew,” he replied.

    Gulp. Did I? Um… Oh yes, vaguely…. “Well,” I managed in a would-be rallying tone, “that’s good, maybe you could aim at joining up with Geoff Stephenson and his uncle; they’re doing bridge stuff out in Australia at the moment.”

    “Really? Stephenson?” he breathed reverently.

    Uh—why such exaggerated reverence? …Oh! Dashed cricket: of course.

    “Yes. Um, well you’d have to get your quals. first, old chap, I thi—”

    “I could do them in Australia! I could go out with your brothers!” he cried, his eyes shining.

    My God, what had I started? On the other hand, would his dashed parents care?

    “See, I could do an engineering degree while Bean Minor’s doing his oenology stuff!”

    Y— Uh, if the Aussies would let either of them in, tho I supposed it’d be like here: enormously inflated fees charged to misguided foreign students. Then they chucked you out of the country, having already—the Egg had been steamed up about this very recently—threatened not to allow your wife or kids to join you while you got the dashed degree, no kidding. Well I didn’t know what Australia’s exact policy was but given their attitude to desperate refugees arriving by boat it’d be exactly the same as the worst of the Tories here.

    “Um, well I don’t think it’s definite that the boys are go—”

    “Yes it is, Mel! They were telling me all about it!”

    Oh, God.

    So I refused kind offers to let me swap with Crumpy or Bean Minor when we stopped for elevenses and in fact decided not to get out at all, the probability of there being anything edible north of the Border being about fifty to one against. So Trelawney had a turn in the front instead. And I very nearly didn’t get out when we stopped for lunch either, tho by that time I was busting to go to the loo and so had to.

    Funnily enough Scotch lunch was as bad as English lunch in the Britain of the 21st century. But I agreed to go in the front for a while and on we went. Into the grey murk, quite.

    Behind us Bean Minor, optimistically convinced we were Nearly There, was looking hopefully for such items as Wild Deer, Scotch Thistles and Scotch Heather—Crumpy must have been brainwashing him earlier—but N.B.G. Tho there were a lot of rocks, Mr O. had been right about them…

    “Mel! Mel! Wake up!”

    I roused, blinking. “Huh?”

    “You’re missing everything!” the minor legume declared accusingly.

    I peered. “Ugh, where are we now?”

    “Mel! Scotland, of course!”

    I peered. Ugh. There was an English word for it… Bleak.

    Well frankly any terrorist who could track me down here would deserve a medal.

Next chapter:

https://theeggandfriendscomethrough-anovel.blogspot.com/2026/04/the-scottish-scheme.html