34. Murgatroid: Bullfighter

What Ho Proles!

There was a brief fleeting moment as I watched the bulldozer advance, when I felt the Murgatroid genes bristle under the brush of historical precedent. Murgatroids through the ages have taken part in some of the great military charges. We have been at the receiving end of them too. In the days before holidays to Kenya came with every box of Cornflakes, ours was a family big in the world of elephant hunts. Many a Murgatroid muzzle has been pointed towards the charging tusk of a bull elephant. A few of us even survived long enough to have the ivory shipped over and turned into decorative umbrella stands.

Alas, we now live in less demonstrative times and we rarely consider the pros of keep damp brollies in sensible places against the cons of the odd dead tusk. Instead these are crazy insufferable days when good Englishmen are charged down by bright yellow bulldozers.

‘You will not get away with this,’ I warned Finch, turning to look into the man’s eyes. ‘Tony Blair might be up for re-election but I swear I will make this about you!’

He grinned his own line of yellowing tusks. ‘I look forward to putting the council’s case,’ he said, his lips set wide and wet with excitement. ‘You have prevented us from doing out legally mandated job of removing a possible environment threat. We have every right… Every right by European law which states that…’

And that was enough! Mere mention of the E word had me reverting to stereotype.
‘European laws state nothing!’ I shouted and brushed the man aside with the butt end of my shotgun.

Striding out into the middle of the field, I put myself where I could be sure to be on an intercept course with the dozer. Either it or I had to back down and we Murgatroids don’t know the meaning of the word retreat.

‘For God’s sake, Jacob!’ shouted Miss Spoon. ‘It’s not worth it!’

Poor thing. She was not to know that there are only so many things a man can take in his life, so many times he has to step down from the brink. Moments of petty disagreement usually involving parking in disabled zones. But this was a matter of family honour, of English conviction, of British pride in the kind of people we are.

I raised the shotgun to my shoulder and pointed it at the bulldozer.

The beast squeaked and rumbled towards me like an asthmatic bull set on stun.

‘Jacob!’ screamed Samantha.

The bull rumbled on.

My finger rested on the trigger. I had the beast in my sights. I let go with one barrel.

The noise brought that sweet deafness where the world came to a rest but for the sudden departure of crows from a nearby copse. Then my ears cleared and I could see the machine still lumbering forward.

That’s when I first began to think that it wasn’t for stopping. I would be crushed beneath its tracks and Mathew’s Field would become Jacob’s Field and suddenly, immortality in a patch of mud didn’t seem such a good idea.

I was about to leap out of the way when the dozer came to a juddering halt.

Above the bucket, a bright orange hard hat appeared followed by a face.

‘Hand over the keys!’ I shouted at the man and showed him my gun.

Finch leapt forward. ‘You’ll do no such thing, Mr. Wells!’ he ordered. ‘Mr. Murgatroid won’t dare shoot you. It would be cold blooded murder.’

Well, I don’t know where he got cold blooded from. My gander was certainly in the pan and on the boil.

The man looked between Finch, myself, and Bessie. I could have told them that she rarely loses any argument. The engine died and he threw the keys at my feet.

I retrieved them before Finch who made a half-decent job of trying to stamp his foot on them. He only caught my knuckles.

‘Give them to me this instant!’ screamed Finch, looming over me.

‘When you get off my land,’ I replied, staggering back.

But it was all polite dressing to the fact we were now in what’s known in police reports are a ‘public order offence’. The damn coward stamped on my foot and tried to knee him. Both of us missed and in the confusion, I dropped the gun which discharged its other shell harmlessly into Finch’s associates who began to scream and cry just because a little rock salt had got under their skin.

Not that I gave it that much notice. Not with Finch’s fingers around my throat.

This was the stuff of the adventure tales you read as a boy. A flurry of blows well timed, this was not. I struggled with the man, using his slight disadvantages of speed and dexterity against him, while he used his weight against me. One moment, he pressed me back but then I would twist and the balance was tipped.

A minute passed with this kind of slow deliberate ballet before I managed to get a hand free. My knuckles shot out and connected with something long, cold, and involving nostril.

My blow sent him tumbling over like a mighty oak in a protected forest while in my hand I had the keys to the bulldozer. I wouldn’t be happy until they were a place that Finch couldn’t get them.

It was why I began to run. Odd, I know. Confessions come out at the oddest of times. But, indeed, I ran. Not quite sure how to do it at first, I simply lifted one leg up a little more quickly than normal and it seemed to work a treat. I ran, if this was indeed running, like no Murgatroid has run before. Then I heard a gasping sound and when I looked over my shoulder, Finch was coming after me. The damn blighter knew how to run two! It was most unexpected.

I urged my knees into more rapid motion and I soon found myself at the bottom of the field where a shallow brook cuts across the land, dividing the last of the Murgatroid estate from that of my neighbouring landowner.

Here, in order to give myself a breather, I have to explain about the neighbouring estate. Before 1990 and the big dot com boom, the estate had fallen into ruin after the last of the Marley-Wood family died, leaving no will and no issue. Whatever distant part of the family inherited it, they clearly had finer things to do than come live in C--- N--- (hard to believe, I know) so they sold the estate off to some developers who did nothing with until they sold it on to Mr. Falk.

Falk made his millions speculating on good things on the internet and had the good sense to move his money into gold before people realised that what these things weren’t as good as everybody had up to that point thought. Good things made a mint.

Since that time, the estate has been spruced up and the stables had been given a new lease of life. Falk lives there with his wife and one daughter and more staff looking after his stables than most British motor companies employ these days.

And it was to these stables that I intended to head. I have been on good terms with Falk and I was sure he wouldn’t mind my cutting across his land.

I went lolloping across the field, literally gazelle-like as I bounced through the long grass. I might say I might have found it quite invigorating had Finch not carried on his pursuit into this green savannah. Looking a little less nimble than I, he was a shade of purple less than fuchsia but certainly more than anything you could describe as ‘a healthy glow’.

I arrived at the stables, barely able to breath, but with Finch only a minute or so behind me. It was obvious now that the damn blighter would catch me.

I gazed around the empty yard and at a single stall occupied by a single horse disinterested in the bag of oats had been hung next to its door. Fearing that Finch would appear at any moment, it was into this bag that I thrust the keys to the bulldozer.

‘Give them back to me this instant!’ cried the voice followed by Finch who lumbered around the corner just as I’d moved away from the stable door.

‘Never,’ I said, waving my fist. ‘You’ve had your moment, Finch, but now it is my turn. That bulldozer will stand on that land, a testament to your imbecility!’

‘How dare you!’

‘Your insufferable intolerance!’

‘You can’t ignore the law, Murgatroid! It’s the law!’

‘Your buffoonery, your chicanery, your corruption, and your ultimate failure, Finch! You will now be a hunted man for I’ll let the country know that it is men like you who destroy everything that’s right and honest about this country.’

‘I’m not listening to this,’ said Finch, pushing me back. ‘Those keys are council property.’

‘You have no right to be on my land!’

‘Haven’t I?’ he said, raising himself to his full height. ‘And if I don’t do it, who will save all the goats and chickens you intend to sacrifice to your pagan gods?’

I confess, when he put it like that, I was brought up quite short. I’ve never thought of myself as a pagan. I’m firmly C of E and only agree to the damn harvest festival because it seems to keep the locals content.

Such was my shock that I didn’t notice that having caught his second or third wind, Finch launched into me. I caught him in the chest and fell back, the sound of tearing herringbone getting through all the pain to bring a tear to my eye.

A punch came ratting in and bounced off my chin but I responded in kind and neatly began to tenderise his right eye. More punches caught air before I managed to lift one through his defences. The uppercut connected squarely with his jaw and I heard teeth rattle.

And then a sound I didn’t recognise.

It was rather like a swish of air followed by a crack, followed by a sound that I could only describe as ‘urgh’ and the sudden piling of weight on my chest.

I looked up into Finch’s closed eyes but as I pushed him from me, I found myself staring up and stared into the face of Catherine Falk, daughter of the landowner and commonly agreed to be one of the most terrifying examples of young womanhood in the district. In her hand she was holding a large shovel with which I could only assume she had biffed Finch across the cranium.

‘Hello Mr. Murgatroid,’ she said. ‘Thought you needed a spot of help.’ She poked Finch with the shovel and turned to me, her face positively riddled with excitement. ‘I do hope he’s dead.’

Now do you see what I meant about terrifying?