37. The Lines Are Drawn

‘Do any of you chaps know how to drive a bulldozer?’ I asked the gang verging on a rabble that had formed around the base of the wicker man.

I’ll be quite honest and admit that even as I’d asked this, I hadn’t held out much hope of an answer even bordering on the affirmative, let alone actually one that had full run of affirmative’s lands. Amassed around the giant wooden toes, the men looked quite unlike a highly motivated ground staff with additional bulldozing skills and more like a fungal foot infection that had got slightly out of control. The impression wasn’t helped by the fact that there dying sunlight added a touch of yellow to their pallor. It made them look like a line of particularly stubborn toenails.
You might scoff at my use of the term ‘highly motivated’ when I described my staff back there but it’s amazing how low pay and high bonuses works out to our mutual advantage of all.

My advice to all of you should you ever need to employ the common man is to deliberately pay him each week exactly what you spend each month having your boots shined. These common folk can’t be trusted to spend their basic pay wisely. Even hygiene comes second or third to ale and cigarettes, which are, quite honestly, the limits of their ambitions. I’ve said it before and no doubt I’ll be forced to say it again but to put a damp cloth behind the ear of the common prole is to send it to a place that has long gone unmarked on every one of their maps.

The only way to keep them happy, however, is to pay each man a cash bonus for additional jobs they perform. Your common prole treats it as ‘found money’ and they are much less likely to squander it. If I had it my way, I’d fund all the blighters out of lottery wins. They’d spend their more money more wisely is they thought they’d won it because they got four numbers right every fortnight.

Alas, I have no time to run through the every nuance of the Murgatroid financial strategy and my radical solution to the welfare state. If I remember correctly, I was describing how I’d approached my staff to see if one had experience driving a bulldozer. It would be a chance for one of them to ‘earn a few bob’, as the popular vernacular would have it. Only it didn’t take me long before I began to see the ridiculous nature of my quest. Bulldozer drivers are not two to a penny. They are not even two to a bob.

Instead, my men looked back at me in silence and made me feel not to dissimilar to those farming chaps that occasionally admit that they’ve consummated their undying love for cattle.
In fact, I was about to turn on my heels when I caught a glance of something that reminded that we live to be surprised. And proles are often the most surprising creatures out there bar the Belgians.

No sooner had I given up expecting a response to my question than a hand was slowly raised at the back of the crowd. Its owner was a surly hammer of a man sucking a last drag of life out of the final centimetre of a cigarette which glowed between his lips. He mumbled something as unintelligible as it was undoubtedly unintelligent. It seemed to imply that ‘seagulls doze where aardvarks make their nests’ but it might have been something completely different. I haven’t ear for their lingo.

‘You’re sure you know how to drive a dozer?’ I asked again as a way of covering my confusion. It’s not good to show these proles a sign of weakness, which is how they’d interpret the fact that we often can’t understand a word they say.

The man nodded his lump of a head and wiped his flat nose against this coat’s high collar.

‘Heed my mongoose which gurgles like a sterile duck’ he said, or didn’t say, if you take my meaning.

‘Well then,’ I hesitated, ‘that’s most excellent... I suppose we can get started.’ I threw him the keys which disappeared into large hands like two sheets of steel pressed into the shape of bin lids. ‘And there’s a hundred pounds in it for you if you’ll follow me and do exactly as I say.’

The cigarette burned a little brighter and I thought for a moment he was going to inhale the whole of it like some tribes inhale flames to give them life. Instead he squeezed a thin pipe of smoke through his lips and mumbled something inarticulate I believe to involve hamsters or Hampshire. I really couldn’t tell which.

I was distracted with this puzzle when Samantha Spoon appeared at my elbow again like some infernal tennis injury.

‘What exactly do you plan on doing?’ she asked.

Though I’ve always appreciated the women’s help, I was beginning to see that she lacked the faith in everything that goes by that pleasant sobriquet of ‘the Honourable Jacob P. Murgatroid’. It was a kind of moral doubt which was slowly becoming intolerable, but no more so than when I was trying to understand a man whose mongoose apparently gurgles like a sterile duck.

‘There comes a time in every assistant’s life when they must simply believe in the ability of their employer,’ I told her as I began to walk towards the bulldozer with Surly in tow. ‘And this, Miss Spoon, this is one such time. You’d do well to stand back and watch how a man takes control of a situation.’ I looked to the blonde locks flowing away from a face looking even more troubled by the lowering sun than it had at the height of the day. ‘You look worried, Miss Spoon. I can understand that. In your shoes, I’d look worried too. But you’re not in the full possession of the facts. You’ve not seen what I’ve seen. You’ve never fought fights that I have fought and won. Plus, if you don’t mind my saying this, you’re lacking one vital quality.’

‘And what would that be?’ she asked.

‘Vision,’ I said and waited a moment as the words scooped another half an inch of furrow between her eyebrows. ‘We have a bulldozer,’ I explained. ‘This good man here knows how to drive a bulldozer. And what else can we be expected to do with a bulldozer but bulldoze?’

She looked at me warily and then she looked at Surley who I believe responded with a word or two about violins and pelicans.

‘That might be true,’ she replied to him and turned to me. ‘But bulldoze what?’

Surly jumped up into the cab and squeezed himself into the driver’s seat.

I pointed to the field. ‘That’s what we’ll bulldoze, my dear. And what’s more, we’ll bulldoze it like it’s never been bulldozed before!’

Surly started the engine first time and I thought it formed a rather delightful punctuation mark to my speech. It was not unlike those cannons that are give such a successful blast to the 1812 by that Russian chap with the name I can never spell.

It took much less time than a couple of four beat bars to give Surly his instructions and less time than the full symphony before the job was done.

Within the hour I was standing on the top of a run of earthworks that even my pagan ancestors couldn’t have faulted. Channel 4’s Time Team have never found larger defensive walls and I could almost imagine Tony Robinson running up the steep slope in that excited way of his, proclaiming it a minor miracle of the ancient world before getting down and dirty in some trench with Phil Harding.

For those of you who like a bit of general detail, I should explain that the embankment stood a good five feet and on its steepest side fell roughly away into a ditch as deep as the ramparts were high. This barrier stretched across the whole of the field and formed a wall against anybody who might wish to harm the wicker man, which stood behind it with a defiant swagger about its large wooden hips.

Once we’d finished piling up earth, I’d left Surly to smooth out the ground on the rear side of the embankment for those of us on the defensive side.

It was all going extremely well and I was lecturing the men on my plans for patrolling the barricade when Finch appeared from the direction of the stables.

You must remember that I’d left him in the care of young Falk and that had been two hours earlier. Whatever she’d done to detain him, she’d done it extremely well. He appeared with a large bandage around his head and holding a bag of what I strongly suspected to be ice.

‘Cooled down a bit?’ I shouted, delighting in the chance of setting my lungs to a good pun.
Finch’s face turned purple, or at least, the colour of a good blood pudding.

‘That’s a totally illegal use of council equipment,’ he protested, his voice not much more than a whisper. ‘Misappropriation of resources. That’s tantamount to theft!’

‘Then I believe I’ll have you off my land, Mr. Finch,’ I shouted back. ‘I believe you’re trespassing.’

‘Not according to the law I’m not,’ he replied, keeping his voice low. ‘You’ve gone too far this time, Murgatroid. I’ll have you for hindering council business. I’ll have you for theft. I’ll have you for… for… for…’

I wanted to help him make up his mind quickly so I picked up a lump of mud and hurled it his way. Not a little of it found its way into his mouth.

‘Assault!’ he spat heavily. ‘And now I’ll have you for common assault!’

Showing how little I cared about his threats, I jumped up into the bulldozer’s cab and threw another handful of earth.

‘There’s nothing common about it, Finch,’ I shouted. ‘Only, the next time you come back, bring more men. From now on, you’ll have to fight for every inch you take of this land.’

‘You can’t defy the rule of law,’ he returned, his teeth catching a pale yellow in the low afternoon sunlight and setting off the mud that had stuck to his chin. ‘You’ve gone too far this time, Murgatroid. And when I return, you’ll see that for yourself. When I return, I’ll bring the police with me!’

I pushed my foot on the bulldozer’s throttle and turned the big engine over until it poured black smoke that drifted over the barrier and down the other side to where it engulfed Finch. When the smoke cleared, he was not to be seen.

The moment felt thick with magic and destiny, though admittedly, it could just have been the smell of diesel. Whatever the reason, I felt moved to make one of those speeches that we men of destiny make when history’s lines cross and fates are decided.

I signalled my followers to gather around me.

‘Look here,’ I said, standing on the side of the bulldozer parked on the inner slope of the huge bank. ‘That man will return with reinforcements, so I want to establish a base of operations. Mr. Hawking? Send some of your chaps into town. We’ll need a large tent and some supplies. Miss Spoon. Get back to the Hall and ask My Man to get down here as quickly as possible. Tell him to bring all the guns and plenty of ammunition. Harry? You get in contact with your BBC friends and organise a camera crew.’

‘That’s already done,’ smiled Harry.

I remembered what Samantha Spoon had told me about his requesting the film crew trained for Angola but decided it was not the time to tackle Harry.

‘So long as they can do a good job,’ I told him. ‘This needs to go national as soon as possible.’

I looked out across the remaining faces.

‘The rest of you men need to arm yourself for the struggle ahead. This may seem like a petty dispute, but Britain was built on petty disputes. We’re now fighting for the right to live our lives according to the freedoms that have come down to us through the ages. This may have began as a fight about a simple harvest festival but it is now a fight for the right to live as free men in this country of ours. Jerimiah Finch would have us abandon the right to act freely in our own homes. He would try to alter the customs that have been passed on down generations. But he’s misjudged us all as he’s misjudged me. So long as I’m the prospective candidate for the fine constituency of C---– N----, I won’t allow these Mussolini’s in tweeds to come and take away our chickens and rescue our goats. Remember what Churchill said about those Germans? Well, imagine that I’ve said it just as well. And imagine I’ve said it louder. Much much louder!’

It brings a tear to my eye, even typing now, to remember how those men responded to my call. With a great round of applause they set themselves to their tasks. Meanwhile, Surly climbed up onto the bulldozer.

Proud tears hung on his eyes and clasping my hand to his, he said: ‘Take my bassoon and cleave it lengthways with a weasel and half a keg of cherry brandy!’

I ask you now: what man wouldn’t be moved by such loyal words?