The Difference Between A Duck
— Teaser —
‘You really ought to be ashamed of yourself.’
These words accompanied the reheated dollop of leftover suet pudding that was presented begrudgingly to me. Chips would have been nice, but today an admonishment was the only side I could realistically expect.
Further words issued, but they merely followed the same tack as the first and my brain was able to filter most of them out. The executor of this disquisition and provender was my loathsome governess and supposèd tutor, Sister Gertrude. Why I still have a governess at my age is a moot point, and we will discuss this later only if it becomes necessary, so for now let us just accept that she is here and she is in the middle of one of her strops.
‘Steady on, Gertie, old girl,’ I said during one of her pauses for breath. ‘It was just a bit of fun. Nobody died.’
‘You’ll be the death of me. You surely will,’ she said.
‘Then I shall just have to keep on trying,’ I muttered.
I polished off my dose of sludge and pushed the plate aside. It was replaced with an envelope upon which was handwritten a name and an address, neither of which were my own.
‘This isn’t for me,’ I said. ‘Postman screwed up again?’
‘It is for you,’ she said. ‘But not to read. That would be far too challenging. It is for you to deliver.’
‘Aw, come on,’ I protested. ‘I’ve got better things to do.’
‘Yes, you have. But since you don’t do any of them, we’ll start off with something simple.’
‘Posting a letter?’ I took another look at it. ‘And what sort of a name is Friedelberg?’
‘That’s Miss Friedelberg to you. It is someone you will find most — edifying.’
Whatever that meant. I chose instead to respond with just, ’Whatever.’
‘You are to hand this in person to her at the address given. Think you can manage that?’
The location wasn’t too far away, so it wouldn’t actually be a major inconvenience. I guess if it helps smooth things over with Gertie and encourages her to churn out something better for dinner tonight, it could be worthwhile. If there’s one talent I have, it is in the art of cost-benefit analysis.
‘’Spose,’ I mumbled.
Now, you may have grasped from the preceding snippet of conversation that Gertie and I don’t see eye to eye on many issues. This can largely be explained by her failure as a governess and her incompetence as a teacher. She has been attempting to tutor me for many years, but even so still hasn’t mastered the knack of saying anything interesting enough to be worth committing to memory.
Her ineptitude in this basic task has been the cause of much vexation, not just to me but also to her, as for some inexplicable reason she has got it into her head that it is I who am the stumbling block in this process. This then invariably leads to rants and despair, and the overwhelming feeling that whatever knowledge she’s been trying to crowbar into me has been a complete waste of time.
Not, though, that I am opposed to wasting time. Far from it - time wasted well is time wasted wisely, as I’m sure some bygone scholar must have famously said, and if nobody has then I would like to claim the quote for myself. In fact, I consider myself to be an expert in the noble art of whiling away the hours. It is a skill that I have honed to perfection, and am always happy to practice either in the tranquility of my own solitude, or amongst an ingenuous body of like-minded patrons of the devil’s playground, as I’ve heard it unfairly disparaged.
I had returned home late last night after one such gathering in the local park, and once again Gertie had thrown a complete wobbly over it. She even made an issue over the two constables that had kindly made sure I arrived home safely. Most people would be grateful, surely?
Why she insists that I never fraternise with the kids from the estate, I just don’t understand. They turned out to be a fine bunch of fellows despite their quirky parlance. And although the meeting had begun with some light hearted joshing over my accent and attire, I was able to win them over with a few clever quips of my own, some fags and a case of beer.
After a few cans had been quaffed, I found myself privileged to be invited to join in one of their games. This one was called Filth The Filth and sounded jolly exciting.
‘What you’ve got to do is,’ one of the chaps started to explain. ‘See that police car over there?’
I craned my neck towards the vehicle in question, which was parked, unoccupied, across the road. ‘Yes.’
‘Climb onto the roof and do a shit on the blue light.’
What a brilliant idea! I have to say, I was hugely impressed with these fellows’ creativity, and my admiration for them grew inordinately.
‘Top sport!’ I said. ‘Do we all get to do it?’
‘We’ve all done it,’ my newfound friend said. ‘Everyone ’as to if they wanna ’ang with us.’
The others nodded and sniggered, and generally displayed whole-hearted support for my allotted assignment.
‘Has anyone been caught?’ I asked.
‘Naaah,’ another one of them answered. ‘We’ll keep look out for you.’
‘Yeah,’ said another. ‘An’ they’re usually pretty cool about it.’
‘I imagine they can see the funny side of it,’ I said. Well, who wouldn’t?
‘Yeah.’
I was put in mind of that grand old music hall song The Laughing Policeman by Charles Penrose, and imagined that if he’d seen a turd sitting on the blue light of a police car he could have written a whole new verse, which would doubtlessly be hilarious.
Perhaps it would go something like this:
One day he went to drive his car
And saw perched on the light
A gleaming glistening pile of poo
Which caused him great delight.
He could not use his notebook
To try take down its name
For just the very sight of it
Set him off again.
Ohhhhhh ha ha ha ha haaaaa . . .
‘The good old British Bobby,’ I said, in respect of the boys in blue.
‘An’ anyway,’ said the first one, ‘there’s sod all they can do about it ’cos the car isn’t technically damaged. My brother’s a lawyer, so ’e knows about these things.’
‘I suppose it can easily be blasted off with a hosepipe,’ I said, which made a lot of sense. They must wash police cars regularly, as you never see a dirty one.
‘Usually, the turd just flies off when they drive away. A lot of the time they don’t even notice it’s there.’
In honesty, I can’t claim full credit for performing this task unaided. I’m not a naturally courageous fellow, and I do feel that I might have baulked at the idea were it not for the assistance of the lager I had consumed. Some might draw comparisons to those Olympic athletes who take performance enhancing drugs to help them accomplish their mighty deeds, but my comrades here were not so judgmental. They were aware of my bolstered state and seemed not to mind one bit.
And so, after a quick look round to check the street was empty, I hopped onto the bonnet of the specified patrol car and clambered up to its roof, for which I was duly rewarded with encouraging chants from my compatriots below. Standing proudly before the blue light, I unbuckled my belt and lowered my trousers along with my undies.
Now, I would like you to appreciate a couple of difficulties involved in executing such a feat. First of all, the squatting position isn’t easy when you haven’t got a seat to rest your buttocks on, and secondly, those of you who have been called upon to defecate at random will be aware that at such a time there is no guarantee of being able to deliver the goods on cue.
However, I am proud to say that I performed my duty with great success, and out rolled a stupendous stool, worthy of the praise Shelley had bestowed upon the statue of Ozymandias. Yes, how majestic my deposit looked, poised protuberantly atop that domed beacon like a cairn at the summit of a sacred mountain. From a thick sturdy base, it curled upwards as a serpent’s body, elegantly narrowing to a tapered pinch. I took a flourishing bow, and with great gesticulations I presented my magnum opus to its admiring disciples below who, with zestful cheers and applause, enshrouded the vehicle that was my podium and gave it a laudatory shake.
A shrill alarm emanated from the car, its horn sounded repeatedly and every one of its lights blazed as if the climax to a Guy Fawkes fireworks display. Two coppers rushed out of the house it was parked by, and promptly quelled the cacophony.
My whilom friends were nowhere to be seen.
Needless to say, I didn’t feel my best the next morning, but I did stoically manage to catch the last few minutes of it. They didn’t seem like particularly good minutes, so I was glad I’d given the preceding hours a miss. But one thing that these not particularly good minutes did yield was the tail end of a telephone conversation I overheard Gertie having in the hall, as I stood bleary-eyed at the top of the stairs. Ordinarily, I wouldn’t pay much attention to such business, but this exchange appeared to be about something very important indeed. Me.
‘I simply don’t know what to do with him,’ I heard her say into the receiver.
There followed a long pause as Gertie listened intently to some advice from whoever was at the other end of the call. I suppose I ought to credit her for that. She was finally making some attempt to address her shortcomings. Maybe she was arranging to go on a much needed governess training course?
‘Thank you,’ she finally said. ‘Thank you very much. I shall write it now and send him round with it this afternoon.’
And so after lapping up the last of Gertie’s gruel, I set off on my errand. On my way there, I speculated about the nature of this Miss Friedelberg. I knew of no one in the area called that — perhaps she was new? With a name like that, she could be a foreign exchange student, here to practice her English and learn the ways of home counties village life. The letter is probably about some tuition that Gertie is planning to impose on her. Poor soul. If she wants to learn about the delights of the village she’s going to need someone more suitable to take her in hand. And if she’s interested in the delights of the village, who better than yours truly?
Soon enough, I found myself facing the Victorian cottage at the address penned on the envelope.
There were many similar cottages dotted about the locale, but none of them the same. They each had their own distinctive personality, perhaps reflective of their occupiers in the same way that dog owners grow to resemble their pets. Some had a rustic character to them, justified by the claim they were imbued with charm, but more often neglect. Such dwellings would typically harbour elderly couples who had been childhood sweethearts and grown old together, or the local rector whose calling was the spiritual wellbeing of his parish rather than the upkeep of his own home. Or in another case, the village idiot and his mad old mother, who in less enlightened times would have ended her days at the stake.
This cottage was not one of those. This one had sturdy straight edged red brick walls, and stood to attention like an unblinking palace guard. Its broad shoulders supported a grey slated roof of precision laid tiles in the manner of the coiffed head of a punctilious maître d’. At either end reared two tall matching chimneys, which appeared not so much to be reaching for the stars but glaring down from them, with the lofty contempt of a Michelin star chef inspecting a tin of corned beef.
Piggy-eyed windows peered captiously at you, taking care to reveal nothing of what thoughts and intentions lay behind them, and a sharply gabled porch jutted forward like the snout of a vigilant crouching dragon, and no less threatening.
I strode up the paved drive to the ominous entrance and confronted the hulking oak door it housed.
I paused slightly before knocking. Unusually, a qualm had just hit me. Now, I’m not the sort of guy who’s prone to qualms, but that’s what appeared to be needling me. It could have been a pang, or maybe even a twinge. Nope. No matter how I looked at it, it was definitely a qualm.
But despite the uncomfortable aspect of the building, I couldn’t pinpoint anything that was actually wrong with it. Not one fleck of moss or lichen besmirched any part of this edifice, its purity defying anybody, in particular cocky, unkempt youths, to touch it with their grubby little fingers.
Perhaps it was this flawlessness that was giving me this sinister sensation.
If so, then the fair Miss Friedelberg definitely needs rescuing from this place. And Gertie’s tutoring. It is a far cry from the Bavarian Alps with its cow bells, goat herds and flugelhorns. It would be irresponsible of me not to take her under my wing.
I drew a last drag on my cigarette and stubbed it out on the nose of a stone lion that stood sentry beside the porch. The butt I flicked at its twin standing similarly on the opposite side, catching it with a gratifying bounce on the bonce.
The nicotine hit kicked in and a pleasing calmness washed over me, dispelling the qualm, pang or twinge, or whatever it was. Addressing the door, I took hold of its polished brass knocker and gave it a sound rap. I stood up straight, gave my hair a flick and put on an engaging smile. Inside, I could hear a set of heels clunking sonorously along a wooden floor, gaining in intensity until they stopped. The door opened, and there she stood.
‘Ah,’ I said inwardly. My shoulders fell and my smile disengaged. This was evidently what I had been ordained to save my Alpine Frulein from.
Attired in a knee-length pencil skirt, starched white shirt and tightly tied-back hair — fair but not enough to qualify as blonde — she portrayed pretty much the dour air that Gertie would approve of. She looked, I thought wryly to myself, kind of like any one of those tutors that Gertie used to send me to when she’d reached the end of her tether with me. I cast my mind briefly back to some of those lessons, which would invariably end up with the tutor breaking down in tears and swearing never to spend another moment with me again.
But where this dowdy dame distinguished herself was in her deportment. For although I had encountered similar styled women before, none had quite the same bearing as she did. Sunlight shone upon her from an out of sight window behind, casting a lustrous aura about her. The floor, slightly higher than the step I was standing on, gave an added advantage to the statuesque physique she already held. Her grey eyes, disdainful yet inquisitive, appeared to probe my mind, and her thin, pale lips conveyed an antipathy before they had even opened and spoken.
A long and slender neck led down to pulled back shoulders and pushed forward breasts, bridled by her tightly buttoned blouse, which tapered down to a slim waist. Her charcoal grey skirt hugged broad hips and sheathed unseen thighs, but disported curvaceous calves upon shapely ankles descending into modest, black polished low heeled court shoes.
She was absolutely immaculate.
And equally terrifying.
‘Is Miss Friedelberg in?’ I said, rather more meekly than I would have liked, especially since I was supposed to be her knight in shining armour.
‘Step this way, Martin,’ she said, beckoning me to enter.
‘Oh, you were . . .?’
‘Expecting you? Of course, I was.’
‘Couldn’t you just send Miss Friedelberg out?’
‘Inside!’
Well, if I was to be the gallant hero then it looked like I would have to enter the dragon’s lair. I stepped over the threshold and she closed the front door behind me. She then turned the key, withdrew it and tested that the door was locked.
Gulp.
‘I understand you have something for me.’
‘I do?’
‘A letter.’
Ah, yes. The letter. I’d momentarily forgotten about that. Fortunately, I hadn’t forgotten to bring it. Gertie had ensured that I didn’t leave the house without it. I delved into my trouser pocket and retrieved the now crumpled envelope.
‘Can you pass this on to Miss Friedelberg?’ I said. ‘And can you tell her to call me — I’ll write my number on the . . .’
She snatched the letter from me and glowered at its creases.
‘I am certain it wasn’t in that state when Sister Gertrude gave it to you,’ she said. Her accent was mildly Germanic. Was this Miss Friedelberg’s mum? Or spinster aunt?
‘How did you . . . ?’
And then the penny dropped.
‘Right,’ I said, taking a glance towards the door. ‘I think my business here is done. I shan’t take up any more of your precious time, so if it’s okay with you . . .’
‘It is NOT okay with me!’
She picked up a brass letter opener from the hallway table, and sliced the top of the envelope with the flourish of a fencing master. She withdrew the letter and, making a show of donning a pair of reading spectacles, began to orate its contents.
