19. Mr. Bridlington

What Ho Proles!

‘Sir?’ said the man, breathlessly leaning against the barrow like some weak-kneed greengrocer struggling to shift a particularly prosperous potato harvest. ‘Sir?’ he said again but this time his face darkened as his voice struggled to overcome the noise of the crowd. In a blink of an eye, the stoop to his shoulder disappeared and he seemed to stand a foot taller as he turned to them and with a strangled scream, he brought the crowd to order. Then he seemed to wither even as he turned to look up at me.

‘Sir,’ he said, his voice now loud and clear. ‘Can I just say, sir, that you are a very great Englishman!’

You understand, I suppose, I wouldn’t normally repeat such compliments if it weren’t absolutely vital to the narrative. Nevertheless, it was just the sort of thing a man likes to hear after devoting so much breath to a long speech full of finely tuned political nuance.

‘Well, thank you so much for saying so,’ I replied from my lofty perch of the fruit and vegetable barrow. ‘One always likes to think one is doing one’s patriotic duty, Mr...’

‘Bridlington,’ said Mr. Bridlington. ‘John Arthur Alexander Bridlington: eighty seven years old, forty years with British Railways, and a life-long supporter of the Liberal Democratic Party until this moment. Now I’ll be voting for you, sir. I’ll be voting Murgatroid.’

‘Well, I’ve very glad of your support,’ I assured him.

From a distance, I must have looked like an overfilled sack of ripe apples; such was the pride making my chest swell and cheeks blush red. It always feels good to get a convert to the Tory cause but since Central Office has been giving us all coupons for every new member we bring into the fold, I felt doubly glad. It meant I now had enough coupons to get a new set of golf clubs and, in my mind at least, Mr. Bridlington was worth a whole nine iron.

‘Of course, Mr. Bridlington,’ I continued, ‘I can’t say that I’m totally surprised. You do look like the sort of chap who takes the running of the nation seriously and I always pride myself on being extremely sensitive to the feelings of our more senior citizens. Might I ask: what made you see the light at an age when, if you don’t mind my saying so, senility usually starts to creep in?’

‘Oh sir, I’ve still got my faculties,’ he assured me, tapping a finger to his bony brow. ‘It’s like I always say, sir: my prejudices keep me young.’

‘Do they indeed?’ I replied. ‘Well there might be some wisdom in that. My Uncle Hector Murgatroid lived to one hundred and ten years and until his dying day he could never forgive the Kaiser.’

‘It’s what you were saying, sir,’ he said, tugging at the lead that still wouldn’t come from the crowd. ‘It’s like you were saying... They want control.’

‘They?’

‘Brussels!’ he screamed, sending a new ripple of quiet through the crowd. ‘Those damn European bureaucrats. They want to control us all!’

‘They do indeed,’ I agreed and raised my voice to make sure that even an ignorant couple of pre-pensionable ladies loitering outside Dorothy Perkins could catch the full import of what I was saying. ‘They all want control. Whether you’re a bibliophile who fears your favourite book shop will turn into an pizzeria, or you are a larger lady confused by European gusset sizes, you know that we don’t need other countries telling us how to run out lives. Only a Murgatroid victory will keep your book shops safe. Vote Murgatroid and keep gusset sizes down to single figures!’

I confess that I know very little about gussets but judging from the applause from those outside Dorothy Perkins, I was sure that I had hit some kind of chord.

‘You should have control, sir,’ proclaimed Mr. Bridlington boldly as the applause died down.

‘You’d see to it that we’d come to no harm.’

‘Well, if you put it like that...’ I said with a large smile meant for the crowd.

But Mr. Bridlington was not for letting me off that lightly.

‘It’s my late wife, sir,’ he said as he grabbed my ankle. ‘The last words she said to me… She said: that Mr. Murgatroid would make a fine politician!’

‘Did she, indeed?’ I replied. ‘And those were her last words?’

‘Well, she did ramble a bit towards the end but I say she knew what she was talking about. And that business you were saying about the spring festival, sir. If that’s true, then I’m properly disgusted, I am.’

‘Ah, a bit of a pagan are we, Bridlington?’

‘Lapsed, sir,’ he said. ‘I am a lapsed pagan. Fourteen years in the robes but that was on account of my late wife. She believed in the old rituals.’

‘Well, you shouldn’t worry yourself,’ I answered. ‘I’ll be damned if officialdom will prevent centuries of religious service taking place in my fields.’

He released my ankle and patted me on my foot. ‘That’s what I thought, sir,’ he said. ‘And that’s what my wife thought. And it struck me, sir. It struck me as I was listening to you that you might be able to help me. You might be able to solve my problem with Mr. Mullins.’

I raised myself up and directed my words as much to the crowd as to our dear Mr. Bridlington.

‘We Murgatroids were created in order to help this country,’ I announced. ‘And if I can help any man, woman, or child, then it’s my duty to do so!’ I turned back to the fellow standing at my feet. ‘Now then,’ I said, ‘who is this Mullins and how might I help him?’ I’d run the name across the card index in my brain and drawn only a partial match. ‘I don’t think I know he fellow, unless he’s related to a Mrs. Mullins who used to breed horses for the Queen... By any chance, his first name’s not Daniel?’

The man bounced with a wheezing laugh. ‘Mr. Mullins isn’t married!’ Mr. Bridlington replied, tugging at the dog lead again. ‘And it’s just Mr. Mullins.’

‘So he’s a bachelor,’ I surmised. ‘Then who is this bachelor Mullins that goes without a Christian name?’ I couldn’t deny that by this point, I’d been quite taken in by this odd fellow and his problem.

He bent down and fumbled around his feet. For an awful moment, I had a horrible premonition that he was going to ask me to kiss his dog.

‘This is Mr. Mullins,’ said Mr. Bridlington, reappearing at my toes. His arms came level with the barrow but they carried on to thrust something large, soft, and white into my arms.

‘And that, sir, is the finest five pounds of duck flesh you’ll find in the country of C---- N----.’

I don’t know about it being the finest, but I was quite sure that it was indeed a duck. A duck on a dog lead.

The duck gave an unnaturally loud quack and the crowd began to roar with laughter.

I didn’t know what to do. I was mortified to find myself holding a duck.

Did I mention it was a large white duck.

A duck!

‘It’s a duck?’ I repeated a little too loud for some of the know-it-alls in the crowd who began to make quaking noises of their own. Then Mr. Mullins, the insolent fellow, gave another loud quack and pecked me softly on the nose.

‘He’s been a bother to me since my wife left me, sir,’ said Mr. Bridlington, busy zipping up his anorak. ‘I’ve been thinking long and hard about what I should do with him. But when I saw you up there, talking so much sense, I knew then. I knew as soon as you started to speak, sir. You can have him and may he bring you plenty of good luck, sir.’

And with that, Mr. John Arthur Alexander Bridlington turned around and melted back into the crowd.

I looked toward Larry ‘Bomber’ Harris who seemed to break out of some kind of spell. He stepped up to take the bird from me, but as soon as his hands touched the duck, Mr. Mullins pecked him viciously on the hand.

Larry gave a loud yelp like only a true classicist can yelp. I believe it was in Latin. He retreated, the damn coward, as yet more applause rang around the crowd which seemed to have doubled in size with every one of Mr. Mullin’s quacks.

I sometimes fail to understand people. A few moments earlier, they couldn’t even ask me a single question to save their rotten necks, yet now they were crowding around the barrow just to see a bundle of duck called Mullins.

I didn’t know what to do.

‘Any more questions?’ I asked, slightly too desperately.

‘Yes,’ shouted a shopper. ‘What you gonna do with y’duck?’

I didn’t appreciate the laughter. It says so much about a poor spirit that has infected the British people since the nineteen sixties. It explains the hesitancy of my reply.

‘Er...’ I said, hopelessly looking to my team for a cue. Mrs. Priggs only looked stern. Harris was rubbing his hand. My Man was still busy with the hecklers and the rest of them couldn’t be seen. In the end, I had to think on my loafers.

‘I’ll do what any other man would do with a duck,’ I decided to assure them in the noble tradition of political ambiguity.

‘You going to eat it, then?’ shouted another voice.

‘Perhaps that’s not a bad idea...’ I said with a grin.

At that the crowd turned ugly and when the ‘boos’ started to come my way, I was forced into a strategic reverse, disguised by a neat bit of verbal footwork.

‘Oh yes,’ I cried. ‘Perhaps my keeping it isn’t a bad idea at all...’ I said, trying to appear unaffected by the change in the crowd’s mood. ‘I’ve always wanted a duck of my very own.’

There is no way to explain people. No sooner had these words left my mouth than they began to cheer me. But as my father says: when you see an opportunity, bag it with both barrels.

‘Yes, I’m keeping it!’ I declared to yet another loud cheer. ‘Never let is be said that there’s no room in the Tory Party for a duck.’

‘I’d vote for a duck,’ shouted a wit at the back of the crowd. This too got a roar of approval.

‘Vote for the duck!’ shouted another.

Then another: ‘Viva Mr. Mullins!’

‘Viva indeed,’ I cried, holding Mullins up so everybody could quite literally have a gander. I accept any pun I’d hoped to employ here doesn’t work on account of lexical differences applied to branches of the family Anatidae. A ‘gander’ being a male goose. But this said, the crowd whooped it up for the damn bird.

‘This here is a Tory duck!’ I proclaimed. ‘And we’d be proud to have your vote.’

Ten minutes later, I climbed down from the vegetable barrow and into the arms of my mightily relieved campaign manager.

‘You did well,’ Larry whispered, ‘but thank God for that duck.’

‘Now can you take this damn creature off me?’ I asked, desperate to offload Mr. Mullins to somebody who might be more appreciative of his qualities.

‘Certainly not!’ replied Larry, stepping back and rubbing the back of his hand. ‘That duck’s your ticket to success. You carry him. Let people see the fine brute!’

He led me through the crowd and I had to climb into the back of the Bentley with the duck still in my arms.

As we drove off, the animal even had the temerity to stick its head out of the window.

It raised the biggest cheer of the day.

Sometimes, one must really wonder about the wits of the common man.