Introduction:
Over recent years there have been many
reports of big cats in Devon, particularly
in the South Hams. Photographs, pug marks,
scratched trees and predated deer are
evidence that the ministry have denied.
The Beast of Bodmin Moor is more than a
myth. Yet with the ever increasing pressure
of land use and the loss of secluded parts
of the south West, there has been no man
attack, yet.
Avoiding the dark trodden paths, she walked in silence through the woods,
treading instinctively on grass, dead leaves and stones.
Only the occasional pad mark in a mud patch betrayed her existence.
Against the dark shadows in the Beech and Oak wood, her sleek black sheen passed unseen,
unheard, unknown. Felis had cubs.
She was as natural a part of this English countryside as the trees that surrounded her.
The great Oak, mother of the forest,
still kinked in a Thoreau scratch, had been trodden down as a sapling,
by a direct ancestor to Felis. Her undiscovered line was as ancient as the forest itself.
She mewed, telling her cubs the legends, the oral history of their kind.
At the beginning of time, the God Yagwar, was tricked by man and carried across the sea.
He was kept in chains with his mate Felis. They were paraded around at public executions,
baited by the crowd and made to perform.
They chewed through their bonds and escaped in the confusion when the thunder God struck the circus down with a bolt of lightening.
Yagwar and Felis were burned in the fire and that is why every English Big cat is black.
And that is why they have hidden from the very smell of man ever since.
It had been three days since she last hunted. The last meal was but a skinny rabbit.
It was well enough for her, but nursing two cubs and having to spend a day in seclusion because of man stink on the wind,
she was hungry.
The dry stone wall at the edge of the wood provided good cover and the rising sun behind her put her blackness in invisible silhouette against the trees.
The new born lamb did not even see her streak across the field:
A movement as swift as a cloud’s shadow.
Its neck snapped under the powerful crack of feline jaws. Breakfast died in silence.
In a few seconds she carried her kill back to the shadows. The lamb,
born too early in the morning to make the man count, would not be missed.
Its surviving twin suckled in the innocence of ignorance.
She hurried her meal back to the lair.
There was a mixture of the exhaust of quad bikes and men on the wind.
The sheepdog, barking excitedly in the distance, would cower from her trail in silence.
She sprayed her mark at the boundary of her territory. Her real estate sign read,
‘keep out: youthful, strong, cubs to defend.
Felis was angry. She had left her instructions and arrogant men treated her mark with total disregard.
Yagwar knows they make enough stink of their own. It was almost dark,
well past the time of men in the wood. There was a young male in the area.
He was not sick, nor old, but was adolescent. Like her own male cubs,
they sometimes wander off with the enthusiasm of youth, but are naïve to the ways of the world.
If it was hers she would have boxed it round the ears and made it go home.
This wanderer was a fool.
The last thing that Jonathon’s mother told him was not to go off out.
There had been a blazing row about it of course and he, the more determined for the instruction,
went off out. The usual odd ball crew were hanging around the shopping precinct.
The usual attractions of illicit alcohol and cigarettes made for a gang of rowdy teenagers.
As usual they were up to nothing but still managed to do it loudly.
Within the hour Jonathon had consumed two litres of cider and five cigarettes.
The world was spinning and he was violently sick on the foot path.
It was dark now and the rest of the gang had shoved off before the police arrived.
Jon decided to take a walk in the woods to sober up. He dared not go home in a drunken stupor.
He had managed to blunder his way across the fields without falling down a rabbit hole and twisting an ankle.
He was slightly lost but had a vague idea which direction to walk to get home.
He needed to clear his head. The spinning had stopped and his mouth had stopped salivating.
There was just a stale taste in his mouth and the beginnings of a nauseous hangover were taking shape.
He decided to walk through black wood copse and follow the bridle path down to the village.
From there it was but a ten minute walk home.
He wished he had listened to his mum and not argued with her. He wanted to go home.
She tensed as she saw the youth blundering through the brush. She could not miss it.
He made more noise than a herd of deer in a panic. The shape was not whole in the half light.
Like her eyes, her mind saw a twilight memory.
In her mind was a primal instinct handed down from the ancestors of Yagwar.
Her ancestors had evolved to hunt the Howler Monkey.
In her tribal homeland it was the primary food source. There were no men then.
They had not even crossed the straits from Asia to the north.
Still the big cats hunted primates.
She crawl walked, covering the ground with deceptive speed,
heading off the path of the young primate blundering through the undergrowth.
He was heading toward a large Rhododendron at the side of the man path.
She arrived a good ten seconds before him. Her paw crushed his skull with a single blow.
There was no one to hear her killing saw call. She picked him up at the back of the neck.
Her huge sinews drove her squat muscular legs.
Her springy backbone sprang up the tree like a toy monkey up a stick.
She rested her prize in the fork of the oak.
The dense foliage and clumps of parasitic Mistletoe made her kill invisible to all,
unless they looked up. Men never looked up.
Jason’s parents reported that there son was missing.
The police were convinced he was just another run away.
He would turn up dead in the gutter in London with a needle in his arm.
So they didn’t search very hard and they were not going to waste valuable police resources on a non starter.
The cubs were delighted with their meal. They mewed their approval of the new meat.
It reminded them of a small pig they had once.
They growled a name between chunks of thigh meat: Long Pork, they called it.
Felis tried to tell them it was like monkey, but they would have none of it.
Such is the way of rebellious youth.
“The Rolls is on its way Sir Bernard.”
Cod fish cold, glazed, rheumy eyes shone wetly down at the world over the half moon pince-nez.
“Good meeting, Wetherall”.
“Indeed Sir Bernard, will there be anything else before we leave Sir Bernard”?
Wetherall had a way with him that left people thinking him a mollusc.
You almost expected him to glide around the room to the door: glued to the walls,
his shadow leaving a glistening trail on the wallpaper.
“I don’t think so Wetherall”. Sir Bernard enjoyed emphasising the pronoun,
rendering his secretary lower than the cleaner.
Five minutes later a very flustered Wetherall slithered in the room and slid sideways up to his boss.
“The Rolls has been delayed Sir Bernard and the company Mercedes is in for service I am told.
I am terribly sorry Sir Bernard, but I will order a limousine tout de suite for you Sir”.
He wringed his hands in a macabre ablution of pain.
His eyes screwed up as though he had eaten something biological and disgusting.
‘You sycophantic creep’, Sir Bernard thought.
“Forget it: I will see Piers out front”, he muttered out loud. He said.
“Get Merridrew to meet me outside, we will walk up to head office together.
You can come along behind with the papers for the meeting”.
“But Sir Bernard, I am so sorry that the car was late.
I will personally see to it that heads roll for this”.
“Whatever you’ve decided Weatherview. I am sure they will”, he said menacingly.
He shut the door and seemed to have forgotten the existence of his minion before he had taken two steps.
Merridrew was waiting on the landing, briefcase in hand,
camel hair on his back and rolled brolly in the other.
Everything about him said: Over privileged Oxbridge twit,
with a London club and an unspoken mission of keeping his boot on the necks of the plebs.
Capital called him the crème de la crème: an example of what the young establishment should be.
“Good morning Sir Bernard. Bernard I’ve, got the agenda and I want to talk it over with you,
have you got a few minutes to chat”?
‘So that’s why the car was late: so you can trap me in your web.
You’ll have to do better than that my boy. In fact that is below unsubtle for you.
I wonder what you’re up to’, he thought.
“Is that why the car’s late?” He quipped.
“Car, Bernard”?
‘Now that’s why I like you Piers. You keep to the rules of formality,
then drop the sir bollocks for equality, then spring your plot.
The trouble is son; I have a nose for vanity. I know I am a shit,
because that is what I want them to think. I never let them know my real game.
Perhaps that’s why they wont play poker with me. They think I can see their cards,
if only they knew the truth’.
“The car was late and the Merc is in for a service.
I have a $12billion organization and I can’t get a lift from my hotel door to the office a mile down the road.
Now I thought you might have arranged that as an opportunity to gain my attention,
well you’ve got it”.
“But Bernard, how the hell was I supposed to know that there was no car.
I was just going to scrounge a lift off you to save myself the taxi fare”.
“Ha, ha. You’re a fine one Piers, let’s walk to the office,
it’ll give us a chance to have a little chat”.
After coming down from Oxford, Piers Merridrew was a vessel filled.
He was filled with the confidence of the young and privileged.
He was filled with that aire of self assurance which is the property of the well educated.
That polish had yet to be tarnished by the acrid nous of the well informed.
He was confident that those entrusted with the well being of others had golden souls and that the working oikes had feet of clay.
That is why he felt confused and fearful of the facts that he was about to divulge to Sir Bernard.
He could not grasp the glaring coincidence that the statistics indicated.
It seemed that anyone who crossed Sir Bernard in business crossed over to the next world very soon after.
Piers was certain that the thread his mind had followed indicated nothing more than an over indulgence in Mario Puzo novels.
They walked in silence down the stairs, only opening the conversation as they hit the fresh air and buzz of the streets of London.
“I love this place; it is almost as anonymous as any other city in the world.
You could move in here and still not have met your next door neighbour from one year’s end to the next.
So what’s the game at this meeting Piers”?
“I was rather depending on you to tell me that Bernard”.
“Yes, well enough of the false humility: Tell me what you think.
I need us both playing the same hand in the same game”.
“Well: The Health and Safety Executive are worried that the company has more fatalities world wide than most other comparative organizations.
Our main defence is that it is none of their business because they happened abroad mostly,
but we don’t want to make them walk out with fleas inn their ears.
If we try to out bluff them, they will just raise the stakes.
And the less dirty linen there is in the public laundry the better.
So I think we can explain most fatalities away.
I think we can safely do that and then take each point as the argument goes round the table.
Play it like whist, using your trumps when you can and folding to Misere.
The risk of a grand slam from them, like a serious safety issue,
is less than the mud that they could stir up if we close ranks”.
“You mean admitting to shagging the help before they accuse us of rape”?
“Not quite as bad as that I think, more like a slap for a sexist joke with the female staff”.
Whilst Piers whittered on with his overcooked metaphors, Sir Bernard spoke on his mobile phone:
“It’s me. Which fuckin’ smart arse decided to show me who’s boss by making me walk to my own fucking office”…
“That’s what I thought. Sort the little bastard out now... Yes now; right now.
That’s what I pay you for isn’t it? Fuck me. What do you want a fucking taxi ride”?
He hung up the phone and as he placed it in his coat pocket asked:
“Right: So what are the figures”?
“Five hundred and twenty six: worldwide”
“Fuck me: Dead”?
“Steady on Bernard, don’t make it five, twenty seven.
We employ, over twenty thousand people world wide. The majority are natural causes,
most of them absent sick at the time. There are a few fatal accidents,
but not in areas that you would not expect them,
mostly heavy industry and dangerous occupations”.
“Like what”?
“Deep sea diving: motorcycle testing and racing;
construction and mining of course and an anomaly or two.
“What anomalies? Talk to me Merridrew: what do you mean anomalies”?
“Steady down Sir Bernard”. Piers Merridrew was a bit taken aback.
He had not been addressed by his surname by Bernard for six months or more.
“I wonder what the fuck they think I’ve done. Oh well, fuck it,
I’ll just roll it downhill ‘til it crushes someone else.
Then put the blame them. Never mind Piers. Look I do not want any surprises here.
I mean it. I do not want people poking around for negative press when we are trying to expand our European operations here.
Now what are the anomalies”?
“Well sir, there is a single fatality of ten employees on a building site in our Pacific division.
It turns out that an aircraft crashed on the building killing all occupants of the aircraft and nine employees on site.
It is tragic but clearly not our fault. It was just an accident”.
“I thought you said ten”?
“Well that’s a part of the other anomaly”?
“Yes”.
“It seems that operation was running at a loss. Not that it was unprofitable,
but shrinkage came to light”.
“If you mean some thieving bastard had his hands in the till, say so”, he interrupted.
“Strangely enough the manager down there committed suicide the week before the accident.
He jumped out of the tenth floor window of our San Francisco offices apparently.
Piers blood froze as he saw the black look in Sir Bernard’s face.
Two coals from hell examined his face for a sign of suspicion.
Their black on black glow seemed to suck the colour out of everything their gaze fell upon:
black holes of hate. Piers felt the strength in his spine turn to water.
“Then there was the suicide in the New York office and the Bristol incident of course.
That one made the papers. Wilson hit a shopper when he too committed fenetricide.
In fact they all died in the same way, like some convention of philosopher’s catastrophes.
“What”? Sir Bernard snapped.
“They all jumped out of windows, like Neitche.
“Well, Bernard, it seems that as an organisation, we have more suicides than anyone else”.
“Suicides”? The black orbs glowed again, making the day look washed out and colourless.
“Yes, you know: people who top themselves.
We have had six suicides amongst the executive staff”.
“Well how the hell are we going to explain that away”?
Piers opened his mouth to speak as Sir Bernard’s phone rang in his pocket.
He looked at who the caller was and pushed the accept button.
He listened to a short statement, said “Right” and hung up.
The glance over to Merridrew told him to carry on.
“We do have a project related to a charitable write off.
They take reformed addicts on and give them a job and a life.
We can relate the deaths to drop out rates and relapses”.
“You mean we drove them to it but it’s still their own fault.
Ha, ha, ha, ha. Remind me to look at your pay cheque again.
It seems the consequence of not playing ball is a dangerous game on this firm, eh”?
“Oh very good Bernard”, he said as they turned into the foyer of the reception at head office,
where the conference was to be held. There was a great deal of lost looking people,
milling around with extremely serious faces.
He grabbed the arm of a woman he knew worked in the same department as him.
“What’s up Maggie”?
“Oh Piers, it’s Reggie Wetherall: He jumped out of his hotel window two minutes ago”.
‘There are two visitors at the door: Identity unknown’.
The dulcet tones of his Home Utility Management Protocol: or HUMP for short,
announced visitors. The HUMP is a better model than the more secure,
but less easy to handle: Safe Home Utility Tracker - Ultimate Protection, or SHUT-UP.
That particular system seems so security conscious that it is restrictive to the householder.
‘I told the host advisor…’
‘You mean that door to door snake oil salesman,
who conned you into spending more money to fix a problem that was their fault’.
‘He was very helpful’, Harry protested petulantly.
‘Yes he helped himself to the contents of your credit card and then some.
He swiped your card alright’.
‘Well of course he swiped my card, how else would he get paid’?
‘No: I meant the ancient meaning, slang for stolen. Anyway:
aren’t you going to see who is at the door,
someone might be waiting to sell you some crock or other’.
‘Well at least this model has a female voice and it lets you in the fridge without calling the police’.
Harry opened the door to two people, who had the look of the serenely disturbed,
as if they were sitting for Rubens or Michelangelo.
He only managed to open the door half way before they were firing rhetoric at him.
‘Do you read your holoscripture’?
‘Eh’?
Some prefer to hold the Lord’s word in their hands as I do’.
He brought his hand from behind his back.
Harry thought he was going to be shot by a nutter any moment soon.
‘Imagine: dying like Lennon’, he thought.
The big black book swung forward. The bible puncher was a very fast draw.
The magazine flipped through itself, the pages clicked like the sound of a revolver spinning.
It stopped at the first page of the New Testament:
An area in which he had specialized and dedicated his life.
‘Do you read your bible’?
‘Who is it Harry’? The voice bagatelled its way from the front room to the front door.
‘Born again crustaceans’, he pinged back.
‘Shut the bloody door then’.
‘I’m sorry I’m not interested’, he informed the canvassers.
‘These are the words of all sinners who have not come to Christ’, the caller clichéd.
‘I don’t mean to be rude but…’.
‘Join us in pra…’
‘I said I don’t mean to be rude, but if you insist’.
As the prospect slammed the door it stopped in the jamb,
half an inch from his nose. His ears were ringing from the shock of it.
He tapped his shoe against the frame and went next door.
Jesus Montoya was used to this kind of thing.
He was absolutely certain that it was nothing personal.
It could not be possible that people did not want to talk about the only way to live ones life.
No: It was the beast in them. That rude man, who tried to break his nose,
was just lacking the Lord in his heart.
He had spoken with his elders and had booked a passage on the time transporter.
He was going to try to influence the church to follow a different path than the one it had grown.
Most of the problems of the church he conceded,
were caused by events in the past which were dealt with by people who knew no better.
He would re-inform them of the true path and put the church back on line now.
His first visit was to renaissance Venice.
He believed he could help Galileo with his teachings.
He influenced him into a less pious style in favour of something a little more rational.
The poor man only escaped with his life by agreeing to stay under house arrest for the rest of his life.
He tried the holy Roman church in the tenth century.
He converted a dozen or so monks in a week.
It was so unfortunate that they appeared to already have been condemned men.
On the very next Monday morning they were all burned alive at the stake.
It was a terrible tragedy.
The time committee dragged him over the coals on that one.
He would have been banned from time travel but for a gaff in the prosecution’s case.
Inexperience was the main problem: they had never had to deal with anyone that stupid before.
Unshakeable in his faith and determined in his resolve,
he came to the inevitable conclusion that there was only one way to put faith back on the rails.
He would have to go back to the beginning.
He did the sums and calculated coordinates of the date phrase himself.
He thought it better not to divulge his destination just at the moment.
For that matter he thought it best that he keep his own counsel about his destination as far as the Time Advocacy Committee Executive, (TACE: pronounced with a hard ‘c’), were concerned. The booking clerk looked at the date phrase requested. It was years off the banned zero time CE, so he booked it without question.
At the time phrase bay, his slot was approaching, so he stuffed his bible inside his kaftan.
For some reason you weren’t allowed to carry personal items back to the past.
He imagined that it had something to do with turning up in the middle ages with a flash light or something.
When he arrived he found out why extra baggage is banned.
The material mass of the book became one with him.
Now he was not entirely confident that his guts were not morocco bound and his belly felt as though it were made with paper.
He felt sick and he had a giddy on.
He met some villagers. The translator implant gave his voice a strange,
distant tone, like you might imagine a sage or magician might affect,
but he could understand them and they he. So something had gone right.
He still felt relieved that the book was still just that.
The chances were, he felt, that if the bible was still in one piece, then so was he.
As he began to spread the word of Jesus he was met with some very blank faces.
It got so bad that some thought he was possessed by some demon.
He had to escape to the boonies for a while.
It took six weeks for everything to settle down.
Whilst he was in hiding in the bush he was forced to live off grasshoppers and crickets and other survival fare.
He also took advantage of the opportunity to review his position.
He could not believe that his calculations could be five years out.
He still had the rest of his time slot here.
He began to wish he had not booked such a large phrase.
There was nothing to do but sit in the desert and starve.
There was only one thing for it: he would have to do something to save the expedition.
It is like when you knock on people’s doors.
They only say no because they don’t know what they are talking about.
He decided that if he could not spread the word, as there was no word yet,
he might as well recruit some future members.
He would tell of his coming and baptize people in the name of god.
After all, if he was the only Christian in the world, as even Christ wasn’t here yet,
then he must be the highest Christian authority.
So it was up to him to see to it that the path was cleared.
He soon gained some following.
Families used to go down to the river with a picnic on Saturday afternoons to watch the nutter dunk people in the river.
It had become quite a side show, up there with bear baiting and public executions.
As the end of his time phrase approached, so did a very angry old man.
This wrinkly claimed to be the local priest and claimed all rights on all rites.
When he was told that he could not have twenty dinari on the shekel he went ballistic.
The situation calmed a little when he explained that he was not charging,
so there was no commission. He gave the old geezer the whole show.
Within the hour the crafty old boy had a good business going.
He traded as John, ‘I know it’s true: I’m his uncle’.
The security police were waiting for him at the time slot bay.
‘Montoya: you are so in it boy’.
He was frogmarched forthwith to the TACE.
This was where the quick fire canvasser met his match.
The chairwoman of the committee wanted him put in prison.
As there had not actually been any breach of the law, ancient or contemporary,
there was not much they could do about it now.
There was a poor old man who was beheaded on the whim of a murderously spoilt child,
but that’s what happens when you over empower children.
‘As it happens, by mere coincidence, the historical events of the past were not altered.
But that is no thanks to you Montoya. You are going to pay for this:
You made this mess; you fix it. I am sending you back down in time.
Oh yes, you are banned for life from travelling up in time, starting now.
When this is all over I will ban you from travelling down as well,
so there’s no point in making stupid promises,
you are not going back after you have mended the damage you have created. But for now…’
‘Three years living on goats, dates and bad water: What did I do deserve this’?
Suddenly he became aware of a golden aura surrounding him.
At last he thought as the time phrase bay appeared in front of him.
The security guards were waiting for him.
He only had to step a little closer to convince them to allow him to go home for a bath first.
They took him and spent their time deodorising the car whilst he had a shower.
When they were satisfied that the car no longer stank of goat dung,
they checked their charge for the same disorder. He was satisfactorily clean,
so they tipped him out of the tub and threw a bathrobe at him with equal ceremony.
‘Five minutes’, the one capable of language uttered.
He was not overly concerned about the reception that the committee would give his report,
but was dressed and out of the door in two. He worried about drying off on the way.
‘Well Montoya, what happened’?
‘Nothing’
‘What’?
‘Nothing ma’am
‘Don’t play those stupid games with me. What happened,
couldn’t you stay awake long enough to see the star in the East?
What did the Magi have to say’?
‘Well there was a fantastic super nova. You could read a book by it at night.
If you’d had a book’, he quickly covered. ‘I didn’t see any three Magi. I did see this rich king travelling through though. He stopped at the inn I was at. It was a nice place: there were vines all round the door. There was a lovely view down the valley. There were three trees on the top of the hill. But we aren’t here to talk about the view are we’?
The chairwoman’s eyes burned through him. He could almost hear her telepathically,
‘Montoya: I am going to get you one way or the other’.
‘Anyway this king had come to see a birth he said,
but I don’t know whose baby he was going to see. Anyway,
all he did was moan about his staff and the price of the accommodation most of the time.
He was so mean he would not let his camel drivers go for a drink after work.
They must have gone anyway I think, because all he did was mope and brood about it most of the time’.
‘So nothing happened at all’?
‘No ma’am: nothing’.
‘Well there is only one thing for it: You will have to go back again’.
Turning to the clerk she continued, ‘Send him back about thirty years later’.
She bored into him.
‘You might get the calendar in line with the time line one day Montoya’.
‘But…’
The gavel cut him short.
He’d only been back a day and he smelled like a donkey.
He decided to stay in Galilee this time. It was a bit cooler by the sea.
At least there was a bit of breeze off the water.
Two days rolled into months and he just became increasingly bored.
The most frequent daily activity was nothing.
This seemed to occur in increasingly long periods. He still had his bible though.
He suspected that they might send him back and he did not want to feel that queasy again.
It had left him strung out and hanged up to dry like a wet dishcloth.
So he buried it and dug it up on his return.
Now the only thing he needed to do was to wait for the Messiah.
To date he had heard nothing of him: there was not a whisper.
Boredom overtook the pleasure of a lazy life, so he decided to do something.
He opened up a woodwork shop and started turning wooden bowls and table legs on a peddle driven wood lathe.
It was all state of the art technology,
which made it all the more remarkable that he managed to fashion a surf board out of gopher wood planks.
Archaic: but it worked.
At least he could begin to enjoy a little leisure whilst he waited around.
There was a new sign over the workshop. He realised that he could not call it Montoya’s,
but Jesus was as common a name then as it is in his time,
so he stuck just his first name over the door.
There were precious few customers for his wooden bowls.
Not many people were in need of dog bowls then.
There was still no sign of the messiah yet, but he knew He would be here,
history said so. After two years of waiting he knew it would have to be soon.
And as our Lord must be here now, he felt it safe to spread the word.
Things went along as usual for a while.
He had managed to convert a couple of local fishermen,
but that was all with the exceptions of a few hangers on and Tom.
He was particularly argumentative, but he wanted to believe, he could tell.
You don’t go knocking on doors evangelising,
without spotting a good prospect when you saw one.
There was an enormous summer storm.
His new friends were caught in their boat with the wind and rain whipping offshore.
They could not sail head to wind, so they could not make the wooden jetty.
In a moment of quick thinking, he grabbed the board and a long rope.
He tied one end to a pile in the jetty,
threw the board in the water and jumped in with it.
He only had to wait for three waves.
The gale had whipped the shallow water into a boiling mass of energy,
trying to force its way from the shore.
He jumped on the board and its nose lifted.
In seconds he was standing up on it like a pro. He made it out to the boat,
jumped in, tied the rope to the prow and let them sweat hauling it ashore.
In their panic they forgot to haul their nets in first,
so the haul in was even harder.
Remarkably one of the side effects of having the net spread out in the squall was interesting.
The gale blew the water and everything in it, helter-skelter down wind.
All the sand and gravel just dropped through the net of course.
Everything else stayed caught. It was the biggest haul of fish ever seen on that coast.
The net nearly burst under the tonnage of fish.
They worked all through the night and all the next day,
gutting and hanging fish in the smokers. There were enough kippers to feed an army.
They were grateful to God for the catch,
but they had no idea how they were going to get rid of it all.
The next day the stories began to spread.
They were gossiping about the brave carpenter,
who got on his strange boat and saved the brother’s lives. Then he had hauled them in,
catch and all, single handed. Then they were saying all sorts of stupid things.
One even said that he’d seen it with his own eyes. He insisted that there was no boat,
just a boiling gale. Then he claimed that the carpenter walked out there.
Of course no body believed him, but it was such a great story it did the rounds for years.
As the local drunk he would tell you anything for a goatskin of cooking wine.
An awful feeling came over Jesus Montoya as he realised that he was going to have a lot of explaining to do to the TACE committee.
He went back inside and picked up his bible to practice.
He could still flick that bible from behind his back and open it right there on the first page of the New Testament.
There were no ribbons or markers, just pure skill and practice.
‘I must read more than just that page one day’, he thought idly.
That his report would have to be word perfect was confirmed a few days later.
It really was not his fault. That drunk who claimed he walked on water was a big hanger on now.
So he decided to spend some time with the old boy.
One drink led to another and he ended up absolutely hammered.
He overslept the next day, which happened to be a Saturday.
So he turned up at the synagogue hung over, if not actually still drunk.
It was because he was running late that he almost forgot to change his shekels into kosher money.
He had to rush back to the foyer and cut a quick deal with one of the money changers.
He picked a bad one and was just about to pay him when another tout leaned over his shoulder and offered a better price:
a much better price. He turned around and because he was still drunk,
he stumbled and fell over the first tout’s changing table. His cash went everywhere.
Of course there was a free for all that nearly turned into a riot. He nearly got arrested.
One of the rabbis was telling him off.
‘Who are you anyway? I bet you don’t know the first thing about our history.
You sound like a foreigner anyway with your sing-song voice.
And you could do with a shave and a hair cut. I’ll tell you what:
You tell me; who was the king of the Jews before Abraham?
‘Before Abraham was? He asked quizzically.
Someone else, trying to help him out, asked him:
‘Who is responsible for rescuing Simon’s boat last week? Eh? Answer me that then’?
Relieved to have a question to which he knew the answer,
he switched to that questioner and said:
‘I am’.
The rabbi just stood for a moment in stunned silence.
Then he started baying for his blood. Jesus just made himself scarce.
He didn’t have a clue what was going on, or why.
The crafty old priest marked his card though. There was a right row over the money.
The Romans didn’t want to know, as far as they were concerned they were still owed their forty five percent whether it was stolen or not. That brought the exchange rate into focus. That foreign little sod had wrecked a good little earner for him. Synagogue accountants were crawling all over the place. He could feel them on his back like a homespun kaftan. He needed a scapegoat.
The next day Jesus was tried, convicted, passed over to the Romans, scourged and crucified.
The time committee were frantic. The chairwoman, Mary, took full personal responsibility.
She felt obliged to take Jesus’ girlfriend Mary with her.
They took a time phrase from the moment that he passed out.
They told the guard that he was dead and could they claim the body?
After some argument over protocol and whether he was dead or not,
the diplomatic path was smoothed with ten bars of gold.
The soldier maintained that he would have difficulty explaining such a large sum.
He was convinced when they suggested he say that he won it at craps.
They grabbed their patient, ran into a burial cave and headed straight back to the time bay.
The mobile hospital awaited his arrival and he was able to be operated on immediately.
The next day he was up and about. Amazingly there was not a broken bone in his body.
The muscles, tendons and skin had all been glued or laser welded together.
All that was left were the holes,
which they could do nothing about in the short term until there were new skin cells to work with.
He had them over a barrel. He threatened to sue to get his own way.
He wanted to return to finish off what he had started.
She would not let him go back for the two months that he demanded.
She was firm on that: forty days, the same as the last time.
On his arrival back he went to find Simon and Peter.
He explained the truth of what had happened. They were shocked and surprised naturally,
but surprisingly philosophical about the reality in front of their eyes.
He explained that he had been to another place for three days and that he was back for six weeks to sort this whole mess out.
After Tom had called around to see for himself,
he cut a deal with Simon and Peter never to tell the others about time travel.
He warned Peter that he was the rock of this plan,
that he held the keys to unlock the whole disaster if he didn’t keep his word.
Honest fisherman that he was, he never did. He knew that he could not say nothing,
so he tweaked the story a little to make it more acceptable to the locals,
even if the tale had no credibility. Then Jesus Montoya, also an honest man,
paid the brothers for the five thousand smoked fish he gave away.
He went round to his friend’s father’s house to tell him the truth about the trick he pulled at his daughter’s wedding.
The story about miraculously turning water into wine was a cheap trick.
He showed him how to play find the lady and left him to skim the Romans at his leisure.
He kept quiet too. Soon it was time to leave for ever.
He said his goodbye’s and sent his co-ordinates to the time phrase bay.
He never could remember whether it was east or north first?
There were only fifteen minutes to go when he realised that it was easting first.
He had to work it out the other way and run for his future to extend to now.
It was so unfortunate that the position was in the middle of the market place.
It was too late to do anything about it now. There would be another row with the committee.
They would ground him for sure this time, or any other time except the now in which he was born.
He was just hoping that nobody would notice when they all looked amazed and pointed to the sky.
The time differential seems to cause a golden aurora around the subject and on up into the ionosphere.
As if that wasn’t enough, the last communication that he received from the past was pure bad luck.
He could see the golden aurora growing around him.
The market place had just begun to lose a little contrast as a dim hint of the shape of the time bay began to appear.
A pigeon, which was flying past, was startled by the sudden appearance of a golden wall,
two feet in front of him. He flapped all the air brakes he could into trying to stop dead in the air.
The stress made him relax his cloaca and a white good luck charm bid Mr Montoya good bye.
The last that the past saw, was Jesus the carpenter,
who used to talk about that book all the time, disappear in front of their eyes.
He had a golden halo around his head. After he had gone there was a dove climbing quickly up into the sky.
As a smoker, my main influence for pipe smoking was probably Huckleberry Finn.
Despite Mark Twain’s dire warnings to any boy who copied the antics of the wayward orphan,
or his rebel friend Tom Sawyer, or more likely because of them,
the blue curl of sweet scented smoke was irresistible to me. And it still is.
I bought my first pipe at the tender age of eighteen,
a beautifully curved Peterson briar. It was a work of art in itself,
with a genuine Stirling silver ring on the top of the condensation system.
Sadly that pipe was lost just five years ago and I still miss it,
even though twenty five years of faithful service had left it a little pocket battered.
Still my collection on the rack,
with one for each day of the week and spares in the drawer are part of my persona.
The corn cob; the meerschaum, and my new favourite curved briar,
sit alongside my several straight briar pipes.
The one pipe that I have never had is a churchwarden.
You have to be something of a show off to walk the high street with one of those poking people’s eyes out.
Without doubt I have the personality to get away with it; I just did not have the right hat.
One day, when I was unable to escape a trip into the city to shop,
I spotted a wonderful black fedora.
The scene was now set for me and I was enlightened by the idea of breaking in an appropriate pipe to go with it.
It was then that the idea crossed my mind that it would be a great idea to make my own design of pipe.
For many a long year I had looked longingly at the hand crafted pipes,
locked in the glass cabinet of the local tobacconist, not labelled ‘too expensive for plebs’.
The philosophical discourse explaining the necessity for the kids to live on beans for a month had escaped me to date.
That great maternity to resources stirred my imagination to greater heights and concluded that the country lanes near to our home were filled to the brim with wild briars.
A short reccie in wellies and camouflage anorak confirmed that some of them had roots the size of a cricket ball.
My obsession was set. The British winter,
especially in the South West of England has a fantastic capacity to do a year of weather in half a day.
Setting out in bright warm sunshine, there was a spring of anticipation in my step.
I arrived at my previously examined stretch of hedgerow and paused to take a little coffee from my back pack and light a pipe.
The force eight winter gale blew out the lighter,
which would not have lit the tobacco anyway because it was soaked by the horizontal rain,
hammering down like an iced fire hose.
Ten minutes of shelter under the protection of an oak tree saw the weather change back again to warm,
cloudy bright clemency. And whilst awaiting my chance I spied it:
The mother of all briar roots. It was just out of reach of course, on the top of the hedgerow.
The wet Devon clay was difficult to negotiate, but with a struggle and the help of tree roots and grassy tussocks,
I reached my goal. The Bowie knife slid out of the sheath at my back and then the painstaking process of cutting back the vicious thorn thatch could begin. Some of the stems were an inch thick, with thorn claws that would make a sociopathic bear envious. But as any well prepared rambler would, I had packed my leather gardening gloves in with the mint cake.
As I reached for an offending root, which was preventing me gaining the prized bole,
my left foot lost its grip. The clay bank, slicker than axle grease,
pitched me face first into the brambles. That was when I lost my glove.
At the same time I had to grab something to stop me sliding down the bank.
The burn of bramble thorns ripped the skin of my hands like sliding down a cheese grater.
I sat at the bottom staring at a dozen bright red angry stripes across the delicate forearm skin,
wrist, palms and fingers of my hands. Ruddy brown thorn tips,
protruding out of the end of each foot long scratch, burned like acid.
Well that did it. I was not going to be beaten by a blackberry,
not that I am obsessed or anything. I retrieved my knife and did what any man of mettle would.
I stamped my feet and shouted abuse at the bushes. Using my Bowie as a machete,
I slashed the vines down only cutting my finger once. The coat was an old one anyway:
Well it is now. I won my briar though and three others just like it.
All that remained was to let them dry out in the shed and whittle them into shape.
They all had lovely long stems to make the desired churchwarden pipe:
Just like the computer generated ones in Lord of the Rings:
Even if they were of the realm of the Elves and Hobbits of Middle Earth.
Excitement mounted as they dried out over a few days.
Fortunately the boles had been exposed to the elements and were already well seasoned wood.
All that was required was to strip off the outer bark with a box cutter and carve and drill the pipe.
I knew the shape would appear like a sculpture.
I could see shape that lived in the raw material. My wife never did understand me.
She always tries to pour cold water on the imagination.
I failed to see why she thought it necessary to use a vice. And as for that childish ditty,
‘always cut toward your chum, never cut toward your thumb’,
well you can imagine my impatience.
The first pipe proved of no use. There were rolls and folds of progressive roots,
all covered with green bark. When the pipe was finally revealed from the block,
it had about three holes in it. The same proved true for the second and the third.
After returning from the hospital: The slice in my index finger only requiring four stitches,
I returned to the task in hand. There was but one left and it appeared to be equally useless.
It was obvious that this would require another trip to the hedgerow.
I returned with a dozen briar roots and a warning from the farmer, who has no
understanding of these matters even if it is his hedge.
I had to suffer the indignity of having my boys say that I looked like Arnie Schwarzenegger in Predator.
And that I could disappear if I stood with my back to the mud bank.
It was then that I decided that I would box clever. I surfed the web,
looking for pipe making sites.
That was when I found out that briar pipes are made from Mediterranean Erica root boles and not English bramble roots.
Wayne really hates old people. It wasn't a general dislike of witnessing the ageing process.
He meant it. He hates wrinklies; he believes they are enough to give a saint
Theret's syndrome.
"Wayne? Wayne?" his mother called from the kitchen:
Her voice rising at the first insistence and lowering on the second.
Her tone sounding like the carillon of doom.
'Oh shut up you old bat', he thought. "Yes Mum?" he answered questioningly.
"Come in here now and get these dishes done".
"In a minute".
"Now, you little shit, now".
"No: It stinks in there".
He never could move quite fast enough: no matter what footwork or fancy shadow dive he made,
somehow she always got him. His right ear hummed to the throb in it.
"And you'll get more than a thick ear next time, you cheeky little bugger.
Now get in here and…". She paused to swing the right. It came from hip height,
open handed.
She flicked her wrist over as the elbow locked to make a topspin forearm smash the likes of which they hadn't seen at the open.
His vision blurred with the violence of the slap.
He felt his tendons crick as his neck stretched. ".don't be so bloody cheeky or I'll hit you".
Wayne was determined not to cry, especially in front of his grandmother.
The ammoniacal stink from granny's armchair brought tears to his eyes anyway.
The white matter, dribbling out of her mouth and down her chin, seemed to have a life of its own,
as gravity forced it ever downward, trickling down her yellow stained housecoat.
He managed not to be sick, but he retched involuntarily.
He prudently covered the reflex with a cough, lest he get another slap.
He sullenly did his duty.
His attention was drawn back to granny by a gurgle. She sat there. Her grey,
white mop of hair straggled down, plastered on her waxy face, the colour of raw pastry.
Her lips, greycracked; lines on a pale, puckerless parchment.
Both myopic eyes look through him. Bottle bottom lenses making both orbs look like matching dog's bowls for the hounds of hell.
Wayne wasn't always like this of course. He hadn't always hated his granny.
He was fourteen now and he did have a mind of his own, but he was not the hateful sort really.
It was just that granny had turned his opinion. He hated all old people now.
It was about three weeks ago, when she became very ill, that his hatred started.
She had a visit from a man that she described as an old friend.
The old crone called at the house and stank the place out.
He had a sweet sickly musk: A chemical smell like you get when you walk past the funeral parlour;
that and the mothballs. There was something else about him.
He seemed to have a shadow that moved slightly late,
like when you are convinced that something is in your peripheral vision,
but when you look there is nothing there. It must have been an optical illusion of course,
but you got the distinct feeling that there was something not quite right,
something that did not fit.
It was almost as though he wore a flat cap and his shadow had a top hat.
He knew it was silly but when gran went off her legs in that chair,
he had the same feeling about her.
It was just past midnight when he turned from the TV.
He thought he saw his grandmother’s shadow jump back into the right place.
It was his tired eyes of course. He ignored it and went to bed,
where he had difficulty sleeping because he was cold,
which is unusual for the middle of the summer. He put that down to being over tired too.
He was worried about gran being so ill, but was reassured when he heard her moving around downstairs.
He eventually drifted off to sleep.
In the morning the summer sun shone through his window. He rose to a new day in fine spirits,
which were immediately dashed when that all pervading stench invaded his nostrils.
It was like opening the door of the fridge that had broken down last month.
Downstairs gran was still in her chair.
She was sitting resting on the other arm of her big recliner.
She had made another mess in the night. He trod in it. He sat in it; he hated it.
Now she was in that armchair she just sat there stinking of it.
His mum was mopping it up.
At least the disinfectant masked the physical presence of the ooze dribbling down her leg onto the floor.
As he watched he could swear that he saw her shadow move a few millimetres.
It must have been the swishing of the mop causing an optical illusion, he concluded.
She had not moved for three weeks. His mum would have none of it.
Every time he tried to talk to her about it she hit him and shouted at him,
telling him not to be so disrespectful. That's why he hated her.
That's why he hated old people:
Because it always seemed to be his fault and that was what was not fair;
that and the appalling smell. He could hear her guts rumbling now.
Her head lifted back and her plastic teeth bared as she let out a satisfying "Ah".
A distinct ppfffffft whispered as subtly as a horses' fart.
The stench as her gas escaped made Wayne feel sick again.
When he heard her incontinence bubbling into her drawers, something inside him snapped.
"That's it", he yelled.
He smashed the breakfast plate in his hand on the floor and stared straight at his mother.
"That's it Mum: That is it. Either she goes or I do.
I can't live with her another day. I know she's your mum and all mum, but she stinks.
You stink of her, I stink of her and the whole house stinks of her”.
"But old people always smell a little Wayne, dear", she offered in defence.
Granny got up to turn the TV up. She hadn't done that for three weeks now.
"Oh look Wayne, granny's better."
This time Wayne did cry and scream.
As a wet stream of warm incontinence ran down the front of his leg,
he watched the dribble from her mouth flood as her bottom jaw sagged open.
Maggots dribbled in a trail from the wet, black stained armchair:
Following their dinner toward the TV.
What were you doing down at the lake then?
Just fishing
Don’t give me that you ponce, what do you take me for?
You were down there at five in the morning for a reason Wilson.
And you and I both know that the gentle art of fishing with an angle had nothing to do with it.
Now let’s start again shall we and this time don’t mess me about with your stupid tales.
What were you doing down by the lake at five in the morning?
The room was regulation government green.
A kind of off puke colour that almost exactly failed to please the eye.
When you were taken into a room of that colour you knew that it was not to judge the local flower arranging competition.
There had been a job the night before. Of course everyone knew about it,
they were talking of nothing else down the pub last night.
There was a rumour that the filling station had been held up and that the manager had copped for it.
They say he was stiffed. What that had to do with me I had no idea.
I went there to fill up and get some chocolate bars and Coke. Me and Spike,
Spike Harrington, we had decided to go for the big carp in the lake at the local park.
The thing was that the boating lake was only ever fished by small kids.
All they ever fetched out of it were small roach and skimmers.
The biggest thing out of there this year had size ten stamped on the sole.
But Spike and me know different. We were down there a few nights ago eating a sandwich,
drinking a beer and chewing the fat over work and the wives as you do.
I chucked a crust of bread in for the ducks. It was dark nearly,
so there were no ducks on the water. They had gone off to roost for the night.
This crust was just bobbing there floating on the glass surface of the pond.
You could barely see it in the dimming light.
It was just a shapeless ghostly shadow on the mirror surface of the June water.
Then shhhloooop, a black hole opened in the surface and this great gob of bread just disappeared without further sound.
It was the nightmare of ginger bread babies everywhere. It was a monster.
We decided to go down and fish it in the early hours, before the boating lake opened.
Now it is not my fault that the garage was robbed that night,
any more than it was my fault that I am on the CCTV camera buying goodies at the shop.
I told them that it was just a coincidence. For some reason they don’t believe me.
They have this idea that I am tied up with this robbery and they are like a Jack Russell with a bone.
They just will not let go. I have been grilled for three hours now and they are expecting me to crack.
How giving you a hard time is supposed to get you to change your story,
when you tell them the truth in the first place, I have no idea.
The copper came back in the room. Round three I thought to myself.
He went through the leaning thoughtfully pose.
He was carefully studying the paper in front of his eyes only.
His hawk nose held up a pair of gold framed specs that made him look like a rat up a drainpipe.
I wasn’t sure whether the fastidiousness and habitual tapping of the paper was an affectation or not.
For all I knew it was the crossword.
Right: Let’s go through it again shall we. You were supposed to be down at the lake,
and all your tackle is spread all over the place.
I believe that you put fishing tackle there just to make us think that’s what you were doing.
I put it to you that you and your accomplices stole the money from the garage,
killing the manager at the same time. Then you ran with the money,
took it down to the lake and hid it somewhere.
You were then going to wait for everything to quieten down and use your landing net to retrieve the money.
You are in this right up to your neck and both you and I know it.
Now you are just fishing, I said.
It was another hour before the brief arrived. I told him off because he had taken so long.
He apologised and told me that they had only let him know that I was in custody twenty minutes ago.
He played a straight wicket and was frankly quite blunt with this goon of a copper.
They let me go on police bail, ‘pending further enquiries’.
All I could think of was the fact that there was a bloody great carp in that pond and he was twenty pounds at least,
if that vacuum suck was anything to go by. We always name our fish,
especially if they are very interesting. We called this on Dyson.
I ran a bubble float out; half filled with water and size ten barbless bronze forged hook to ten pound leader.
Risky I know but this wily old girl had been around long enough not to get caught for a very long time.
A bit like me really I suppose.
We set up a bivouac so the shadows did not cross the water, then settled down to wait.
I know it was a bit cheeky, but Spike and me we decided to rub the copper’s nose in it.
We took it in turns to walk up to the garage and buy a hot pie and a coffee each.
I couldn’t resist a grin at the camera as I left.
Imagine old pince-nez ponce seeing that video the next day.
It had become a campaign now. That fish was an obsession, police or no police.
We decided to camp out for the week if needs be.
There were four lines out now on bite detectors.
I had a boilie to hair rig and a luncheon meat plug out as well as a sweet corn and hemp seed on the method with a pva bag system.
I was having old Dyson come rain or shine. True to form the old bill turned up.
Plod was flat footing all along the bank.
I told him to walk quietly and stop stamping about or piss off.
His stiff necked attitude changed when I cast a four ounce lead and bounced it off the tree next to him.
He crept down to the water’s edge, keeping his shadow behind the bivvy.
That was better I told him and I saw the shadow of doubt on his mind as he viewed all the tackle laid out,
sleeping bags, landing nets, carping mats and all the right gear.
Are you really trying to catch a carp here, he asked.
Of course we are, I told him.
Like I told him at the interview; the damned thing slobbed a whole crust of best sliced Hovis in one gulp.
It was a big one. Spike told him she was called Dyson because of the suck of that big rubber mouth.
But he was no sucker himself. He came round twice a day asking questions and snooping around,
checking all our tackle and repeating himself like a broken record.
We were there for four days and nights.
The next morning he came round and wanted to know where Spike had gone.
I told him we had decided to show up at home for breakfast.
We were taking turns. When he asked why I just asked him if he was married.
He nodded and turned the corners of his mouth down in received understanding.
We knew that he finally believed us on the Saturday morning.
He came down to the water’s edge with a couple of white paper bags.
Any luck yet? He whispered.
I brought you a couple of bacon and egg sarnies from the station canteen.
We knew we had a convert to carp fishing and asked him if he would like to join in with the hunt.
He settled down at the back of the tent and started asking questions about the tackle.
All he got was ‘shush’ for an hour and he decided to talk with us a bit later.
It is surprising how bored the uninitiated become when they have never landed the big one.
No patience some people.
As soon as he had finally pissed off I called Spike up on the mobile phone and he arrived with the carp he had caught up at the commercial lake and nicked when the bailiff was not looking.
We took some snaps of it with the digital camera and let it go into the lake.
It was a bit fagged out , being in a bucket for half an hour,
but managed to revive in a few minutes. Then we hauled in',
packed up and grabbed the money from under the tent and ran for it.
The feeling of excitement as we counted all that cash made the whole job a delightfully dangerous operation.
It was even better when flat foot bought us both a pint in the pub when we showed him the photos.
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