Writing Dusters (aka Bike) Part 640 by Angharad

“What? You shot someone?” Neal looked aghast at me, “I can’t believe this.” He was shaking his head, “Almost anyone but you, Cathy. I mean shooting someone?”

“They was nasty men and they was shootin’ at us. They shotted some pleecmens.”

“Who did?”

“The nasty mens. They was in a car.”

“Okay, Meems, be quiet please. We were attacked by some more of the mob who abducted Stella last year. We’d been abducted the day or so before and they were going to kill us, even the junior detachment, if you get my meaning?” Neal nodded, I continued, “We’d been taken up to somewhere in Scotland, their plan was to wipe out the Cameron clan and they nearly succeeded. Tom, the two girls and me, were taken to this old farmhouse and that’s where they were going to kill us. I managed to neutralise the guards so we could effect an escape.

We were headed towards Fort William and they attacked the two cars we were driving, they hit both the escorting young policemen. I had a Kalashnikov in the boot, I’d brought it from the farmhouse and I fired back. I must have hit something because they crashed into the loch and drowned.”

“You fired a Kalshnikov? Yer actual AK47?”

“Is that the same thing?” I asked, completely bemused.

“Geez, Cathy–that is–I don’t know–what to say, apart from, wow, girl. I’m totally flabbergasted. Our very own urban freedom fighter. Like I said, wow.”

“Well yes, I suppose I was fighting for our freedom from a nasty gang of bad guys–yet in fighting on the same side as the police–in your eyes, wouldn’t that make me an agent of repression?”

“Normally, yeah–but you were defending your children, and that’s always a special case. They say, deadlier than the male.”

“I thought it was, ’more deadly than the male’, I corrected.

“Yeah, well, Shakespeare, he did some good lines.”

“Ahem, I think you’ll find it was Kipling.”

“What the guy who makes exceedingly good cakes*?

“No, yah dummy, the man who wrote the Jungle Book.”

“Oh, that Kipling? Of course.”

“If you can treat these two imposters just the same…’ and so on.”

“Oh yeah, all Land of ‘Ope and Glory, stuff. Gung-ho, me lads all the way to the Somme.”

“He was a Victorian/Edwardian, and he lost a son in the Great War. They say he never got over it.”

“How come you know so much about this stuff, I thought you were a biologist, not a literature student?”

“My father was very keen on the macho poetry stuff, he made me learn oodles of it by heart, or thought he had. My response was to commit it to very short term memory and to have forgotten it by the next day. Bits, however, still stick here and there.”

“I think it’s really cool, be able to quote poetry.” Neal was a bit too effusive in his praise and I didn’t think it was cool even though I did consider Kipling was quite a clever wordsmith, if a bit too chauvinistic for my taste.

“It saved my bacon once.”

“What did?”

“If.”

“If what?”

“If, the poem.”

“How could a poem save your bacon? Is this some trick quotation?” Neal looked a bit concerned that I was trying to trap him and prove my superiority over him.

“I had been turned down for the cycling team, but I so wanted to prove myself as better than being a wimp, which was how everyone seemed to see me. I was training on the bike every spare minute I had. I ran into a group of the rugger team out on a training run. I was on my bike, a Raleigh racer thing, and I literally ran into them, they were coming towards me. Of course I came off and my toe-clips didn’t release so I couldn’t get up and escape.

“They were about to pulp me, I’d hit their top wing forward or something, he was built like the proverbial brick erm…house.” Neal nodded at my description. “I was about to need a change of knickers, when I started reciting the thing in my head, only I wasn’t, it was out loud–God, I was frightened.

“So off I went, ’If you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs…’ They suddenly stopped in their martial intentions and made me recite it properly, then they applauded, stuck me back on my bike and told me to …erm, go–well the second word was--off.”

“Can you remember the words, now?”

“No,” it wasn’t true, but I wasn’t going to recite them for anyone.

“Pity, I really see you in a different light, Cathy, not only are you action woman, but a woman of letters as well. I am most impressed.”

“It’s Tom you want to hear, when he gets a little too much of his uisge beatha, he starts reciting Burns. It’s quite funny at times, what he can’t remember he ad libs, it can be really funny.”

“Well I’ve seen Tom the worse for wear a few times, never heard him reciting poetry.”

“Well it’s hardly something I’d make up is it? When I had Spike there for a while, he’d recite, ’To A Mouse’ every time he went past her cage. I’m sure she’d heard it often enough to come in on the second line.”

“You’re not taking the proverbial are you?”

“Neal, would I do a thing like that to you?”

“Yes, you would, you bitch.”

“Mummy’s a wady, not a bwitch,” said Mima loudly. Loudly enough for Spike to jump out of her hands and scramble up her arm and onto the top of her head, where I snatched her up and shoved her back into her cage. Her little heart was beating nineteen to the dozen and Mima was at first shocked and then a little frightened by the rodent’s actions.

I managed to calm her down and reminded her that If she’d kept quiet, when all around her were being noisy, the dormouse would have stayed in her hands. It was only because she’d spoken loudly, almost shouted, that Spike had taken fright and flight.

By the time we’d got back to the car–where Simon was beginning to wonder if I’d been taking a class–that she found herself able to laugh about it and tell Simon. He laughed as well, although I think he was a little worried.

“Are those vermin of yours safe to be handled, I mean she doesn’t need a tetanus or worse, does she?”

“Of course they’re safe, I wouldn’t put one of the girls in danger, would I? Use your head, Simon, it’s for more than hanging your hats on.”

“Yes, Mummy,” he said back, which Mima found to be highly amusing and at which, I just glared through narrowed eyes.

*A slogan from a cake advert on UK TV.