THE BLASTED DESERT Chapter fifteen

15. RICHES BEYOND THE DREAMS OF AVARICE

Alphonse Mulberry, lover of Bertie’s mother Enid (usually known as Mother) and eminent surgeon at Brumpton General Hospital, besides sporting unusual facial hair, was dressed in his pyjamas, a heart-warming floral design with pink shorts, even though he was sitting with a plate filled with fried breakfast in front of him. The casual reader might think that this author has a preoccupation with pink things, but he must report things the way they were and Alphonse’s pyjama shorts were pink. A really pretty shade of pink, to be precise.

“Did anyone hear that noise in the night?” he asked. “It sounded like a cross between a sparrowhawk on heat and an enraged bull.”

“I thought it was a dream until I found black feathers on the floor of your room when I popped in to shut the window,” frowned Mother. She was almost (but certainly not quite) dressed in a Burberry-patterned miniskirt (more like a pelmet than a real garment) and a diminutive blouse that contrived to reveal both upper and lower curves of her adequate bosom. “It’s a bit cold this time of the morning to have windows too open,” she added, fluttering her eyelashes at Imageous.

If you wore more clothes it wouldn’t seem so cool, he thought, perfectly accurately, though he did find her appearance ridiculously appealing despite his advanced years and vows of celibacy.

“It was a huge black bird with a message,” said Bertie, wincing when one of his mother’s nipples popped out of hiding. “At least, Brother Imageous said it was a message though it looked like a blank sheet of paper to me.”

“It was a message,” acknowledged Imageous, uncomfortably adjusting his trousers.

“But I couldn’t see it,” growled Bertie, not his usual cheerful self that morning, “not a jot, not a punctuation mark, not even a colon!”

“What did it say?” asked Alphonse. “I have a certain expertise in written messages from our feathered friends,” he added. “When I was a lad I got plenty of little billet-doux from nightingales and thrushes,” he added, his eyes suddenly closed as if he was transporting himself back to happier times when rapture had been the order of the day.

“What’s a billet-doux?” asked Imageous, aware of his sad lack of education, having been taught everything he knew at the Monastery since he was three and thus having had his vocabulary somewhat limited by the monks’ lack of belief in anything but an invisible deity and their own minimal comfort.

“A billet-doux’s a love-letter,” enthused Mother (or Enid, as Imageous had been told he should call her, though he hadn’t dared to address her directly yet). “I used to get plenty of billet-doux during my working years! There was a time when I was young and pretty…”

You are pretty still, thought Imageous.

“…when men by the score would send me little messages, describing my flesh and what it did to them in the most glowing terms. Oh, those were the days! I could make a hundred pounds an hour and work a twelve hour day on my own terms whenever I liked, and I liked it most days… it was worth it for the glowing reports in those billet-doux, though I was always a bit of a slave to sensation!”

You must have been quite a naughty woman, thought Imageous, and “naughty woman…” he said aloud.

She looked at him, and her eyes were twinkling.

“I can’t expect a refugee from that Monastery to understand,” she said, “though years ago, when it was fulfilling its purpose, most of the Monks would have understood better than even me! But yes, I guess some thought I was a naughty woman and the truth is I didn’t feel at all naughty. I just felt comfortable.”

“What do you mean, fulfilling its purpose?” asked Bertie.

“It was a refuge for so-called fallen women,” sighed Mother. “Oh mercy me! I’ve heard tails that would make any whore blush! There were some monks there, the naughty boys, they liked their comforts all right, but it didn’t help the ladies earn their crust – though they did get loads of divine forgiveness! If they wanted it, that is. Your Mother used to go,” she said, looking directly at Imageous. “She always liked the idea of being forgiven, though I’m sure she didn’t really think she needed it.”

“M-my mother?” stammered Imageous, whose own mother had left him with the monks when he had been three in order for her to get on with prostituting herself in comfort and without a snotty-nosed child in tow. He imagined she had never been as successful as Bertie’s Mother had apparently been, which made him proud because he had a feeling there might be something a little tacky about extreme wealth being garnered by a woman who spent most of her life on her back.

“Oh, yes, your mother,” sighed Enid. “She was a one, she was! She believed in two things – earning a crust and being forgiven for any sins that earning a crust might involve her in committing! But her name became a bye-word for fascinating experimentation, did Mrs Crotchet, or Fanny to her friends, of which she lad legions! She worked until she could have bought the bank she deposited her many crusts in and still had money to spare, and then she retired to join a travelling fair, where she still works on the hook-a-duck game. And she still looks quite stunning!”

“She’s … wealthy?” asked Imageous, his stammer becoming almost threatening to the transfer of sense and meaning.

“She’s got millions,” confirmed Bertie’s Mother. “She was a credit to the profession. She had a client list even I would have envied … headmasters of most of the elite public schools and their upper-crust religious teachers, lawyers and judges – so many judges she would never have been convicted of anything if she’d been arraigned at court, half a dozen senior policemen (which meant she was never actually accused of anything) and a few members of the Royal Family. You can see, dear Imageous, how you might have got in the way? She’s almost ninety now but still on the hook-a-duck stall at the fair she chose to work for, and she hasn/t lost her looks!”

“She’s still alive?” really stammered Imageous.

Enid nodded. “That she is, and proud as punch of you! But tell me about the black feathers I found on your bedroom floor…?”

“It was a confounded gigantic bird,” sighed Bertie.

“I’ve s-seen it be-before,” put in Imageous. “I-it leaves m-me a m-message every now and th-then.”

“A message?” asked Alphonse, sitting up keenly until his pink pyjama shorts became so stretched that they split with a loud farting sound.

Imageous nodded, not happy to commit himself to further stammering.

“What did it say?” asked Alphonse, so eagerly his bits and pieces popped out of the tear in his shorts and Enid’s eyes opened extra wide.

“I remember it word for word,” said Imageous, “and it was in capital letters. It said THE DESERT IS IN FRONT OR BEHIND, YOU CHOOSE.”

“Then you must go!” gabbled Alphonse, “and I’ll tell you now, young man! You must go to the Desert where you’ll find the answer to all your questions!”

…TO BE CONTINUED

© Peter Rogerson 08.02.17

THE BLASTED DESERT Chapter Thirteen

13 FATHER BROWN

“Mother!” called Novitiate Bertie as he pushed the front door open from the garlanded porch and paused on the threshhold.

“Is that you, sweetie-pie?” came a ladylike voice from somewhere inside the cottage, and after a rustling and footsteppy set of sounds Mother appeared at the end of a short passage and stood there, smiling broadly.

Imageous just had to gasp. He’d never seen anyone quite like this person, not in all of his life. Despite being in her fifties she looked a great deal younger, possibly as a consequence of the almost nothing that she was wearing over a splendidly shapely body and the subtle but skilfully applied make-up on her pretty face. For that face would have been pretty even without the help of lipstick and blusher. But more than the make-up and the mini-things that she was wearing she exuded a sense of health and well-being. There could be no doubt about it: Mother looked after herself in all the right ways.

“You look radiant, Mother,” almost cooed Bertie, and Imageous looked at him as if he was looking at a total stranger. Bertie was changed. He was no longer the humble novitiate but a member of the normal world.

“Why, hello darling,” smiled Mother, “I wasn’t expecting you today!”

“Our Lord and Master has burnt the Monastery down,” explained Bertie, “though I rather suspect it was lightning from the storm rather than any divinity.”

“Was there a storm, sweetie-pie? I thought I heard something as I lay luxuriating in bed with Alphonse,” cooed Mother. “It must have been that that woke me up.

“Alphonse is her current boyfriend,” explained Bertie to Imageous. “Sometimes I struggle to keep up, but he’s been with her for the best part of a year, and I like him.”

“And who’s the man in gorgeous pink with the most delicious boa I’ve seen in ages?” asked Alphonse’s girlfriend, smiling warmly.

“This is Brother Imageous, and the two of us escaped with out lives,” explained Bertie. “I’m afraid we’ll have to stay here until we get something more permanent sorted.”

“That’s perfectly all right! But the two of you will have to share a room,” cooed Mother. “I hope your gorgeous friend doesn’t mind.”

“I was rather hoping we would share,” grinned Bertie. “You know me, Mother.”

“You and your naughty little ways,” giggled Mother, adjusting a curl of blond hair with a carefully practised hand. “Come on in and have some tea and we’ll sort out something a little less spectacular for your friend to wear … what did you call him, Imageous?”

And the two visitors were swept into a tidy and well-equipped kitchen. Alphonse (for it was he) was sitting at one end with a huge pile of fried food on a plate in front of him. Imageous looked at him curiously, for he’d never seen anyone quite like him before. He had a well-manicured moustache like an almost oversized handlebar if his nose was looked at as the bicycle that it steered ,and the thinnest but most profuse beard that dangled frugally down from the point of his chin for the best part of twelve inches. He was wearing a dressing gown in green and yellow, and he shovelled the more than adequate breakfast into his mouth as if eating might actually be going to go out of fashion.

“Hi, fellas,” he said, spitting a tiny cocktail of bacon and egg wrapped in spittle towards them.

“Manners, Alphonse,” reproved Mother, or Enid as Imageous knew he’d have to call her if he ever dared address her directly.

“This is Bertie’s little friend,” cooed Mother, “so be nice to him. They’ve just escaped a conflagration.”

Then with no more of an explanation than that, she escorted the two refugees from the ashes of a Monastery to a spare room, taking them up a rickety staircase and along a short passageway.

“You’ll share this room, darlings,” she said, and then, directly to Imageous, “I can see you’ve been treated for something or other by all the bits of bandage hanging off you. When you’re bathed you must send for Alphonse to patch you up. He’s a doctor.”

“We’re in luck. She likes you,” grinned Bertie when she had left them and they’d heard her steps on the staircase. “She suggested you must bathe, and when she suggests things like that it’s as good as an order that must not be disobeyed. When you’re sorted I’ll show you where the bathroom is.”

Imageous looked around. He’d never been in a room like this. It was decorated mostly in pink, which matched his dressing gown perfectly, though he had the feeling he wouldn’t be wearing it for much longer. The bed, which was large enough to hold an army of Brothers, he thought, occupied most of the space and would be gloriously comfortable come nightfall. There was a double wardrobe and a dressing table which sported a huge mirror, and that was about that. Everything looked both tasteful and feminine.

Bertie opened the wardrobe and brought out a few clothes for Imageous. Apparently he kept several changes of trousers and shirts at his mother’s home, things that he never would be allowed to wear at the Monastery.

“These fit me, so they should fit you,” he said, “what do you prefer as undies?”

Imageous had no idea what undies might be and Bertie saw his confusion and produced a new packet of three pairs of blue boxer shorts. Imageous nodded, confused beyond speech at the way things were going.

“The bathroom’s through here,” said Bertie when he thought enough had been sorted to keep the bedazzled Brother from indecent exposure in public. “Come and have a bath. I’ll help you if you like because spending a lifetime in the monastery means you won’t know much about baths!”

“I don’t like…” began Imageous, and then paused. He didn’t like baths because he’d only had one in his entire life, and that had been supervised by nurses who had spent the entire time tut-tutting about the condition of his skin. There is, he thought, nothing worse than being tut-tutted at to make a fellow feel inadequate.

Before he was immersed in hot water in the bath Bertie, seeing what lay under the pink dressing-gown, called anxiously for Alphonse.

“He’s in a bad way,” he told the facially over-adorned medic, “and I think he needs treatment of one kind or another.

“I’ll take a peek,” Alphonse assured him, and even he expressed horror at what he saw, his absurd beard swishing about like a confused tassel, which didn’t do much for Imageous’s confidence.

In the end a great deal of toxic-smelling cream was gently rubbed into most of the Brother’s upper body and even part of his lower. But it did soothe him almost instantly, and when he was almost covered in bandages he felt as if they might be preparing him for the grave.

Once he was dried he was taken back down the stairs where he was introduced to the biggest shock to his understanding, in his more recent years, of the Universe and everything in it.

He was shown a large flat-screened television and told it was almost time for Father Brown….*

TO BE CONTINUED….

* A recent BBC series based on the novels by G.K.Chesterton and starring Mark Williams as the eponymous Roman Catholic priest who has a penchant for solving murders.

© Peter Rogerson 06.02.17