33. Prequel To A Bulldozer Fight

What Ho Proles!

‘Hello, hello!’ burbled Harry. ‘Did somebody mention a bulldozer?’

Now, confess it: you’re impressed by the merry zip with which this member of the BBC’s crack team of journalists gave eyeball to the breaking news in the room. Rarely has the license fee been put to better use, or surely a better use than sending David Attenborough out to befriend pandas or the whatnot...

I also thought it a reassuring sign of the down payment Harry had put his new lease on life that he had reacted more quickly than other less astute bods in the room.

I, for instance: I had remained perfectly motionless, shoe leather content to remain intimate with rug as I contemplated the deep swelling sensation that had risen from the pit of my stomach and was now choking me with my own anger.

‘A bulldozer, indeed!’ I growled and felt my face turn tomato.

A frightened Mrs. Priggs took a few steps back from the door, clearly aware that even a man known for his able leg break and a fiendish googly has need of a good run-up on occasion.

‘Those… those… those damnable caddish swine!’ I cried and barged my way out of the room.

Harry followed at my heels, suddenly acting like a reporter on the scent of a scoop full of something deeply unpleasant.

‘This all sounds rather exciting,’ he observed if not actually pestered in that way of all dedicated newshounds. ‘I sense there’s trouble afoot.’

I was glad Samantha Spoon had followed us out. She has a proven record when it comes to handling a crisis.

‘It’s the C--- N---- harvest festival bonfire,’ she explained calmly as I stormed into my office and pulled my favourite piece of ironmongery from the rack.

‘A bonfire would look good on camera,’ agreed Harry as I emerged out onto the landing. ‘Traditional setting in the countryside… Festivities of the common folk… The caring landowner sharing a pint of golden cider with his loyal… What’s the shotgun for, J.P.?’

I broke Twin Barrel Bessie open and checked the fine old girl’s chambers.

‘I believe it is still an English landowner’s right to shoot trespassers who venture onto his land,’ I said, thinking that by stating it so simply I wouldn’t be asked any more damn foolish questions.

‘Now that is the sort of thing we’d be interested in filming!’ declared this voice of the liberal BBC. ‘Sounds just about perfect! A Tory on a shotgun rampage is much better than Oliver Letwin in a toga!’ He paused a moment to reconsider his last point. ‘Though I do suppose it depends on how short the toga.’

I pocketed the handful of cartridges I had picked up with old T. B. Bessie and it wasn’t until we reached the top of the flight of stairs leading to the hall that I spoke again.

‘I often wonder if we weren’t actually taken over by the Soviets during the seventies,’ I said. ‘I swear that this council of ours is run by communists of the reddest hue. They simply hate tradition like I have a hating of Russian literature. Give me a good old fashioned thumping yarn with proper British full every half dozen words.’

‘So the council have been giving you grief, have they?’

‘I’ve already had two meetings with this man Finch, the so-called official in charge of bonfires. He also happens to be the brother of my main political rival, this Granger woman. The whole thing has turned decidedly personal and heavily menaced with political undercurrent.’

‘What happened?’ asked Harry, scribbling all this down as we walked. ‘You’ve not already had a shoot out, have you, J.P?’

‘Jacob stole the poor fellow’s pipe,’ said Samantha.

‘So what if I did?’ I snapped. ‘And in future, when in my presence, please don’t refer to that man as a poor fellow. Damnable cad is closer to the mark.’

‘Well it was a bloody foolish thing to do!’ she replied. ‘Stealing a pipe! You were only going to rouse the poor… the poor damnable cad. If anybody made this personal, it was you, Jacob.’

‘Me?’ I protested, treading another step before digging in my heels and pausing half way down the flight of stairs. ‘I didn’t arrive in another fellow’s home and light up a pipe before quoting EU regulations on smoke pollution.’

‘Sounds most uncivilised,’ agreed Harry, though if I thought I was about to find the might of the BBC on my side, I was mistaken about the appeal in the flash of a pair of blonde eyes. ‘I mean, Jacob, wasn’t the man a guest? And don’t such things fall under the umbrella of hospitality?’

‘Being a guest doesn’t allow people to take liberties,’ I assured him and carried on down the second flight of stairs in the hope that Harry in his wisdom would consider my words as a warning as to his own behaviour.

It seemed to do the trick.

‘And now you’re going to fighting him on the fields and beaches?’ he cried, his voice snapping smartly to attention. ‘How splendid!’ He scribbled something down in his standard BBC issue notebook then a moment later as his pencil came to a halt. ‘So, what’s wrong with having a bonfire?’ he asked. ‘It sounds like a very rural thing to do.’

I heard Samantha whisper the words ‘animal sacrifices’ and Harry gurgled something of his unease. I wondered again if he hadn’t caught a bit of that animal rights zeal his wife had so pitifully expended on the plight of dolphins.

I doubted him even more as we reached ground level.

‘If you don’t mind my asking, J.P.,’ he began, slowly. ‘But don’t you think that in the course of this election you’ve killed more animals than is probably good for a chap? Even if you are a Tory.’

For once, I let that Tory crack go.

‘It’s a local tradition,’ I answered. ‘We can’t start changing local traditions because of the bad publicity. Can we Mr. Hawking?’

‘No we can’t, sir, Mr. Murgatroid, sir,’ replied Mr. Hawking who was stood waiting by the doors to the hall. Hawking had worked on the estate for the last ten years, his main claim to fame each year being his overseeing the construction of the wicker man.

‘Wouldn’t mind, squire,’ he said, twisting his hat in his hands, suggestive of his inner strife, ‘but he’s the best work we’ve ever done. We’ve got him standing a good five feet higher than last year and that’s nearly fifteen feet higher than the year before. It would be a marvellous site, sir, to see him go up in flames.’

I had to smile. I’ve always had a soft spot for Mr. Hawking. His features remind me of a hawk or a weasel. Stoat-like was another phrase that often came to mind but the point was his thin face ran out towards the tip of his long nose and a small mouth lay hidden in the shadow cast by two large thin nostrils sporting decades of unclipped growth. I always think an ungroomed nostril is what sets many of these rural types apart from the modern world where too much character has been trimmed away by the invention of nostril clippers.

‘This bulldozer,’ I asked, ‘where is it and how might we defeat it?’

‘I’ve got a couple of lads blocking the road,’ said Hawking, putting his hat on his head. ‘But that’s a big machine and they said they have the right to come on the field and do what they like.’

‘We’ll see about that,’ I said, pulling on my old deerstalker and stepping out into the fresh morning air.

The day had failed to warm up and remained crisp like freshly laid linen. The eggshell azure of the sky matched the fierce determination I could see in the faces around me. Even Harry Lamb’s eyes shone with an intense blue as he walked and scribbled notes.

I turned to find Samantha brushed her hair from her eyes as she tried to keep up.

‘Look, Jacob,’ she said. ‘You have to promise me that you won’t go doing anything silly.’

‘Silly?’ I played with the world like it was a mouth ulcer. ‘When have you ever seen me do anything silly?’

He eyes fell to the shotgun under my arm.

‘Oh, this?’ I laughed. ‘This is only meant as a deterrent. And it isn’t even loaded. Or of it is loaded, I wouldn’t shoot it towards another human begin.’

‘What about a council official?’ she asked.

‘Then you have me stuck a metaphysical crossroads, Miss Spoon,’ I said. ‘And we’ll just have to see what comes lumbering around the corner.’