Dandruff Hits The Turtleneck Page 20
Chapter Twenty
We Are Gathered Here Today
The estimated time of arrival for Arnold Matson’s guests was six o’clock, which did nothing to explain why someone was trying to put a hole in his back door by hammering on the knocker at ten-past-five. Dashing downstairs in his clean vest and unbuttoned shirt, plus, thankfully, crisp new boxer shorts; he unbolted the timber to find Harold Garstang and an unfamiliar female companion on his door step. Welcoming them both in from a bitterly cold night and hiding his modesty behind the door, he asked them to go through to the lounge and make themselves at home.
‘Sorry we’re a bit early,’ said Garstang, ‘but we finished our game of cribbage a bit rapidly and thought we might as well pop along.’
Arnold remained bashful behind the door but enough of him was visible for Garstang’s companion to give him a quick once up and down inspection.
‘Oh sorry, Arnold,’ apologised Garstang, ‘this is my old and very dear friend, Edith Moseley.’
Matson couldn’t quite make out whether the expression on Edith’s face was one of constipation or ensuing frost bite, but she continued staring for a few moments longer before making a low resonating noise, not unlike a hand drill going into a piece of particularly tough masonry.
‘Would you like to go through?’ spluttered Matson, ‘I’ll be right with you, I’ve er…’ he stammered.
‘Just got to put your trousers on,’ completed Garstang, ‘anybody we know? Ha-ha. Come on Edith, let’s go and get comfy…’
Edith then opted for a high-frequency register of disregard, as though she was inhaling a generous pinch of snuff through an alto saxophone, before the pair eventually hobbled confidently into the lounge bar. As soon as he was in the clear, Matson shot upstairs and tried to collect his thoughts after a somewhat inauspicious start to the evening.
Two minutes into his evening and already Matson was back to his all too familiar state of anomie. Pulling on his trousers and looking himself straight in the eye in his wardrobe mirror, he told his reflection to get a grip of the situation and delved into his memory bank for a crumb of comfort. Of course…it was as plain as the spot that was beginning to appear on the side of Arnold’s nose, ‘Oh, my Lord what is that?’ shrieked Matson…’oh, it’s just a shadow, calm down, you’re alright…’
He remembered his ounce of reassurance…What seems so complex – bee society – obeys simple rules. They allow each colony to be efficient but adaptable. A shift in preference adjusts the economy to cope with whatever hits it. The most wonderful of all known insects, that of the hive bee, can thus be explained by natural selection having taken advantage of numerous, successive slight modifications of simpler insects.
‘I’m not afraid of Edith Moseley,’ he told his full-length mirror.
He zipped up his flies like a man going into battle, worried once more if it was a spot and not a trick of the light, and went downstairs to join his early arrivals.
Pausing in the doorway of the back bar, Matson observes Garstang and his companion, Edith, as they waste no time at all in helping themselves to the buffet laid on by their host. They choose a simple selection of tit-bits and settle at an alcove table. Matson continues to watch the couple from his vantage point and isn’t overly surprised to see that Garstang has snaffled a bottle of wine from the freebies on offer. Matson doesn’t begrudge the old boy his indulgence and, after his own brief encounter with Edith in the hallway a few minutes earlier, fully understands why any man sitting in the company of this woman feels the need for Dutch courage to make things go with any kind of a swing.
Harold tucks into his nibbles and amicably chats away. Edith Moseley’s expression rarely alters throughout and she continues her Pavlov’s dog impersonation along with her incessant staring into the distance, which gives the impression she is trying to straighten sheets of corrugated metal from fifty paces. Matson strokes his chin and cogitates for a further thirty seconds before he draws a deep breath and enters the fray.
‘How are we all doing, alright?’ he enquires. Edith Moseley turns her head in dismissive computation to check who else is in the room.
‘Food alright?’ prompts Matson.
‘Is this meant to be crab?’ Edith hisses.
‘Well…’ deliberated Arnold, ‘It’s a sort of crab mix, really,’ he burbled, ‘crab, herbs, a few surprises, a bit of mayonnaise…’
‘It’s got wedged underneath my palate,’ said the delightful Miss Moseley.
And I hope it stays there, thought Matson before opting for a conversational diversion as he plops next to the relative sanctuary of Harold Garstang.
‘So, how’ve you been, Harold, my old mucker?’ slides in Matson, trying desperately to dig through the ice.
‘Oh, not so dusty, Arnold. He keeps me going, you know.’ Garstang pats his three-legged dog, Pinky, on the head and startles it from a doze.
‘Can’t be easy for a dog when it’s only got three legs,’ empathises Matson, simultaneously observing Edith Moseley contorting her face as she examines an unfamiliar presence amongst the lettuce on her ham sandwich.
‘It’s chervil,’ Matson chips in helpfully.
‘Is it really?’ replies Edith, unimpressed, before ousting every speck she can detect and dispatching the offending intruders onto a paper napkin.
Observing Edith Moseley chewing, Arnold is reminded of the powerful, grinding mechanics in the rear of an old refuse collecting lorry and the carefree expression and rotating lips of a camel about to venture across the Sahara desert. Her face maintains the same wary look of mistrust with each mouthful she chews and swallows, as though she is convinced that sooner or later one of the morsels will be the one which contains the poison. Harold Garstang pours half-an-inch of red wine into an ash tray and places it by his three-legged dog’s nostrils. The animal perks up, laps down the liquid, shakes its head and sneezes, before returning to the horizontal. ‘Helps him sleep,’ asserts
Garstang. Matson makes a flimsy excuse and leaves the couple to their own antics. ‘What if no one else turns up?’ Matson thinks to himself as he changes a new barrel of best bitter. He needn’t have worried. After what seemed like an eternity, six o’clock eventually ticked round and the cavalry arrived; not that Matson knew them from Adam…
A first meeting with Councillor Ted Scampi is not dissimilar to being confronted by a force-ten hurricane in a trilby with a whiff of strong aftershave thrown in for good measure. Arnold greeted him at the back door and Ted breezed and bugled straight through to the lounge bar. He gave Garstang a pat on the shoulder which jolted the old boy forward by about eighteen inches before he turned his attention to Miss Moseley.
‘Hello Edith, love, how’s your belly for spots?’ he boomed.
‘Ted,’ acknowledged Edith dismissively, before popping a whole pickled onion into the lion’s den.
Arnold Matson’s worries had receded a little by six-thirty. The fear of thirty or forty strangers descending on his pub was no longer a concern and he took heart from the fact that he was landed with a sum total of seven people to wile away the evening with. There would have only been six but the Reverend Colin Wheatsheaf popped in unexpectedly to say hello and Arnold persuaded him to stay on as an ally.
Although it wasn’t a cast of thousands, it was certainly an eclectic mix. Local newspaper tycoon Stribley Wainwright had made an appearance, along with Turf Accountant Moot Point. The final guest, somewhat unexpectedly, was crime writer Reginald Frimpton, who had left his non de plume Felicity Grayling at home for the evening and arrived on his treasured Triumph Bonneville motor cycle ruddy-cheeked and oozing bonhomie.
As soirees go, it had its moments of enlightenment, but it certainly contained its fair share of spikey and awkward exchanges. I could paint you a picture with the most delicate of brushes as to what actually emerged throughout a very long evening but that would be a premature insight into seven very different human beings. The fact is, when Edith Moseley decided it was way pa
st her bedtime and asked her host to open the back door, Arnold Matson was unable to fulfil the request. During the eight hours or so that everyone had been chatting, arguing or otherwise, the heaviest snow fall for thirty years had hit the village and the powerful drifts against the building rendered them helpless. They were cut-off and trapped…and no one was going anywhere.