CK Publishing

Up to the Wyre - Part One

Billy leans forward carefully on the edge of his stool, prods with the black cushioner on the end of his stick at the greeny-black wing cases of a passing ground beetle, applies just enough force to the beasty to give him a little guidance as to the direction he must take to reach the door from the bar-lounge into the road, for Billy knows any heavier force would be an affront to the dignity of the creature and an assault upon that creature's equilibrium.

"You know," Billy says to the barman, idly, "I've often wondered whether Richard Nixon meant what everyone thought he meant or whether it was all a misunderstanding."

"What d'you mean?" queries Stevie from the far end of the bar, even though she knows something of the nature of what is coming, even if not the content, and that the comment is not hers to answer in the first place.

"When he said, 'There can be no whitewash at The White House'," replies Billy.

"What I mean to say," he continues, settling centrally on his stool, "maybe he was just making some comment about the poor supply situation in decorating materials for the building. You know a shortage of emulsion. Or is it made of white stone?"

The old dog, lying across the doorway into the kitchens, scratches in an attempt to dislodge some fur-hidden invader, fails, and yawning widely, shows a collection of yellow teeth anyone would have been proud of.

"Yes, I see what you mean," says Stevie, sipping carefully at the froth on the top of her pint of Orrocks' Old Thruster. "Something taken out of context. Mixing up say emotion and emulsion. Saying they have to slap on a few coats of white now and again to keep The White House white."

"What! Nothing to do with Watergate? I find that a bit far fetched," says the still small voice of Big Eddy from the opposite end of the bar from Stevie.

These two have not sat within five yards of each other for some three years now since that unfortunate misunderstanding about personal space and Big Eddy taking the hump about Stevie's supposed infringement thereof. Which she denies.

Stevie thinks about the subject under discussion for a few minutes which is evidenced by a slurp at her beer and a corrugation of her brow.

She sighs.

Eventually she speaks, "I think the answer lies in that old maxim which by coincidence I just happened to catch from the half-open, rear window of a slowly passing hearse this very morning."

The barman scours industriously at the already gleaming surface of a pint sleeve with his pristine cloth, occasionally holding the glass up to catch the light from the central chandelier for checking purposes, and coughing a little overcomes his hesitancy to ask, "What 'old maxim'?"

"Yes, what 'old maxim?" enjoins Billy, scratching at his bald head with the buckle on his watch strap, all the while knowing he has the occupants of the place well and truly hooked.

"That one that Tarzan is always quoting," says Stevie.

"TARZAN!" This is a simultaneous call from at least five occupants of the room.

At this moment both leaves of the heavy door from the road are thrown back and a huge priest stands framed in the opening. Glancing down at the carpet immediately to his front he lightly skips to avoid the toiling shape of the ground beetle coming towards him and turns to hold one leaf of the door to allow the beetle to make a dignified exit to the porch.

"Unto the pure all things are pure. Who taketh my nickname in vain?" bellows the priest. "For verily I am come amongst you and I do hunger and thirst. Especially thirst."

"That one, there, that one," says Stevie.

(This is an extract from the first part of Up to the Wyre which appeared in its entirety in issue two of the Writer's Muse.)