The Daily Dormouse. (aka Bike) Part 1258 by Angharad Copyright © 2011 Angharad All Rights Reserved.

I felt shattered, lying in Simon’s arms in bed, I reflected on the past few days. It struck me as sad that just one malevolent female had reduced our little paradise into hell in about twenty four hours. Our compassion was our weakness, our kindness was used against us. She twisted and manipulated, almost sucking me into her game as well as most of the others.

Somehow my hunch had been right, or seemingly so, we might never learn why she was taking the emerald back to India. Was she giving it up or was she keeping it with her and unable to get it through customs. I don’t know if I could fool customs and airport security but I’d have thought that keeping it in something of similar consistency like glass, or amongst glass beads or suchlike might have prevented the X-ray machines detecting it. Then again, if they were watching her, they might still have found it.

It was very likely detected before she left Heathrow and the authorities allowed her to convict herself with possession of the stolen stone. Then, did she die from an embolism, or would there have been a public outcry about her arrest? I suspect she’d have lied her arse off to the Indian courts about restoring the stone to its rightful owners, having come into possession of it by mistake or misfortune. Of course the devil looks after his own, so maybe she did die naturally. I’ll take Daddy to her memorial service if he wants to go, but I won’t go in the church. I’ll never forgive her for what she so nearly did to us, almost killing Tom and perhaps worse, so nearly destroying this family for the sake of his incorrectly remembered love. The persons who did love him were Celia and Catherine. It’s them he should be remembering, and I really do wish I’d known them better than just names on a gravestone.

“You’re very quiet,” said Simon. The Lark Ascending was playing quietly on my MP3.

“Uh? Oh, I was listening to the music.”

“I saw this played live at the Albert Hall when I was kid,” said Si, “our music teacher took us to see Nigel Kennedy play it.”

“I heard it at the Colston Hall in Bristol, in a concert by the BBC Symphony Orchestra, can’t remember who played it now, some Chinese girl, I think–she was very good.”

“Vanessa-Mae,” he said.

“May what?”

“Eh?”

“Vanessa may what?”

“No, that’s her name, Vanessa-Mae, she’s a child prodigy or was, she’s about our age, I think, and she’s British.”

“Yeah, she looks Chinese.”

“She is an oriental mix I think, but is a Brit by all accounts.”

“She sounded British when she spoke,” I conceded.

“She must have been pretty young then?”

“Yeah, I might have been at Sussex then or sixth form, can’t remember–my dad took us, he liked his fiddle music and I must admit I like the Twentieth Century British composers, especially Ralphy boy.”

“Ralphy boy this is only Vaughan-Williams we’re talking about, the man who told Hitler to get stuffed.”

“Did he?” Simon was full of useless information, including this piece.

“Yeah, old Adolf invited him to Germany to receive some award for his music and he turned it down.”

“Good for him, I had a friend at uni who hated him.”

“Which one, Adolf or Ralph?”

“V-W.”

“He was a lovely, if irascible old fart by all accounts.”

“He also destroyed all his manuscripts of the folk music he’d collected, thereby denying an archive the opportunity to keep what is probably lost forever.”

“It would have been his property to with as he liked.”

“I know, Si, but it might have been nice for later researchers to have seen his records of the original songs.”

“Oh well, we all make mistakes, if Hitler had won the war, Ralphy boy might have ended up against the wall.”

“He didn’t though, did he? Did you know Andrew Sachs was a member of the Hitler Youth?” I turned the tables on him, I’d heard him on a radio programme some time ago talking about his origins in Germany.

“What, Manuel?”

“Yep.”

“But he played Dr Watson in the Radio Four Sherlock Holmes?” protested Simon, “he can’t be a foreigner–I mean, Dr Watson is the epitome of an English gentleman.”

“So are you and Henry, and Tom for that matter, and yer all Haggis bashers.”

“Hark who’s talking.”

“I are from Brissle, I are.”

“But you were born in Dumfries, so every bit as much a porridge scoffer, as we are.”

“You were born with your mother, but that doesn’t make you female does it?”

“You told me your family was Scots.”

“Oh yeah, Watts is a Scottish name isn’t it?” I knew damn well it was, but I do enjoy winding him up. “For that matter, so is Watson. Remember Conan-Doyle was one of your men in skirts too. So he’d have made his narrator a tartan terror.”

“I’m well aware Conan-Doyle was a Scot, but in those days it wasn’t particularly important and he’d have probably referred to himself as English.”

“Oh well, that’s alright then.”

“Stop changing the subject, porridge scoffer.” Simon was trying to hit back.

“I hardly ever eat porridge, and never with salt or bagpipes.”

“Bagpipes?”

“Yeah, if I was Scots, I’d never be able to eat it without salt or bagpipes.”

“I always have sugar on it and cream,” Simon licked his lips, “Dad used to protest; anyway aren’t you being somewhat stereotypical?”

“Well of course all us gender variant types see things in black and white–you know black stockings and white stilettos.”

“What the hell are you on about?”

“Nothing, why?”

He sat up in bed and looked at me for a moment before saying, “I never did pay you back for snotting on my shirt.”

“I didn’t, it was just tears.”

“So why did you run?”

“Forgotten.”

“I have a way of making you remember.”

“Do you, what are you going to do shag me into recollection?”

“Now there’s an idea, but first this...” he leant over and began to tickle me. The swine had his leg over both of mine so I couldn’t escape and I very nearly wet myself. His fingers are too rough. I agreed to let him bonk me in the end because he threatened to tickle me again.

I suppose I could have refused and wet the bed, then made him sleep in it–nah don’t go there, we Scottish aristocratic sorts don’t do such things, we sit there looking dour while sucking cold porridge off our wooden platters.

Thinking of this nonsense I started to laugh. “What’s got into you?” asked Simon.

“Apart from you, you mean?”

“Great, making me laugh is hardly conducive to maintaining the wherewithal, is it?”

Of course that made me laugh even more and he fell out of me, making me snigger. “What’s the matter big boy, need me to kiss it better?” then I thought about what I’d just said and the strange glint in his eye.

Oh poo, sometimes I should keep my mouth shut–now would be a good time.