THE CALL GIRL

THE CALL GIRL

The village was at peace, and had been for as long as the men and women who lived in it could remember.

There had been a time when skirmishes, some of them prolonged and almost describable as wars, had broken out between the people who lived there and neighbouring tribes. The arguments had never been over much – who had the longest spear, who killed the greater number of bambles, whose cave was smartest and had the best-kept garden… small little niggles that broke out into sporadic outbursts of violence.

Then Yoyo was born.

Even as a baby she was special. Her eyes were somehow brighter and her gurgle happier than those of other babies, and she learned to walk and talk (if the limited vocabulary of the people could be called talking) sooner than others of her age.

As a child Yoyo was inquisitive, as an adolescent critical and as a young woman voluptuous. It was back then, as the special child was growing up, that the worst of the warlike skirmishes with half a dozen other tribes took place, and several of the menfolk had been killed. It was a disgrace! They were needed on the hunt, to feed their young as well as the ever-growing tribe of the recently appointed spiritual leader, Crud, who needed to remain with his well-breasted woman because he was deeply involved in beings that could only be seen by him.

Some had deigned to dare to think that Crud ought to do something about all the skirmishes, but he didn’t seem able to. His calling was more spiritual than that!

But back to Yoyo.

When she was about fifteen she developed, over night, into the most glorious woman the tribe had ever produced. She was tall, not too slim but just about perfect, had long legs that made men gulp when they saw them and hair that always looked clean even when it wasn’t.

And Yoyo had a brain.

She had noticed how Crud got away with having his invisible friends. He made the odd proclamation, describing this or that essential behaviour as required by his retinue of gods, and never went out into the forest in search of fresh meat. He never even looked for nuts and fruits. Instead he somehow managed to get the rest of the villagers to contribute towards his well-being from their own tables.

“If,” she thought, “invisible friends can be such an aid to comfort and security, how would a girl find luxury if she actually contrived to have visible friends?”

And she mulled it over and decided it would be quite a good idea – if only she could find a way.

It was the attitude of a randy neighbour that gave her the idea.

Piggo was a smart enough young fellow, and in the summer when it was the fashion for the people of the tribe to go about naked it was quite obvious that he would be a good catch for any lass fortunate enough to beguile him into her heart.

He even tried it on with Yoyo. Well, he would, wouldn’t he? They were, he supposed, practically perfect for each other, she being a renowned beauty and he particularly long of personal equipment. They would make a good couple.

But being half of a good couple is not what she wanted, and she knew why. It would all end in misery – for her, as chief cook and wooden-bottle-washer and he with a tribe of other women after a drop of his semen.

No. She wanted the independent life that Crud had discovered, but without the weird mystery of invisible friends and what she looked on as the criminal charisma of the older man.

And she knew she was beautiful.

One day it all clicked in her head.

“Piggo” she whispered to her randy neighbour, “you can have me for, say, an hour – but it will cost you…”

“Cost me?” he stammered.

“Shall we say a nice roast leg of bamble?” she murmured.

“And in return, I can … an hour, you say?”

She fluttered her eyelashes at him and his heart went close to melting.

The leg of bamble was good, but the hour was better, or so Piggo thought. It was so much better that he fashioned some candles out of beeswax as a special gift for her, and coloured them red.

And what with the queues of visitors to Yoyo’s cave, some of them from miles away, peace broke out in the entire neighbourhood.

© Peter Rogerson 26.11.14