Gerald wasn’t at all sure that this was okay, and he was still having trouble with the concept of such a cheerfully bloodthirsty woman being in a position of command. Of course, being cheerfully blood-thirsty was something he expected of commanding officers, that was why you sent your sons off to public school after all, so they could learn the joy of pain, particularly inflicting it, but cheerfully blood-thirsty women? Weren’t women meant to be submissive, timorous baby machines who offered one tea and cake? And, to make it worse, cheerfully blood-thirsty women admirals? He was aware, dimly, that women were allowed to vote nowadays, which seemed rash enough as concessions went, but thank goodness nobody was, as far as he knew, suggesting that the natural order be so far subverted that they should be allowed to be officers, and give orders and things like that. And yet here was an indubitable woman, very much so, calling herself an admiral and giving orders as if to the manor born, and two men letting her get away with it. There was something not quite right about this whole situation, but Gerald’s CO had ordered him to help the ‘Admiral’ and her crew, and, as stupidity was just as much a characteristic of the English County Male as sadomasochism, it would never occurred to him question his orders, even if they were barking mad. Thus the spirit of the Light Brigade lived on. However, the orders, though quite clear in stating that he should help these madmen, had been woefully vague in many other respects, in particular what he should help them to do, so he said “Well, of course, I’ll do whatever I can to help you, er, Admiral, but what exactly is it you want me for?” The ‘Admiral’ looked appalled; “Me? Want you? Are you out of your mind?” she said, which seemed rather unfair to Gerald, for if anyone was out of their mind it was not him, as well as being utterly incomprehensible, so he tried again. “What I mean,” he replied, trying to stay calm in the face of madness of a sort the he had imagined only his Lydia could create, “Is my orders say to help you, so you must want me for something, so what is it?” The ‘Admiral’ looked even more appalled, but before things could get even more tangled the small green person interposed himself, tugging on her arm and saying, “I think he wants to know the mission parameters, Ma’am.” Hearing this, she relaxed and said “Oh, the mission parameters. Why didn’t he say so? I thought he was propositioning me,” saying which she shuddered violently, and then, calmed a little, she returned her attention to Gerald and said “Well, Stinker, we want to visit somebody called Hardcastle, and we have reason to believe that you can make it happen. Is that right?” Gerald heaved a sigh of relief; at last something he could understand. But, though this woman and her subordinates were apparently mad, he felt the need to give them some useful advice, for fear they be disappointed when they reached their goal. “Well, I do know Mr Hardcastle,” he said, “But I’m not sure he’s the sort of person you’d want to meet. He’s not quite the thing, you know.” The woman didn’t know. “Not quite the thing?” she said, “What’s that mean?” The Engineer thought he knew, and panicked: “He’s onto us; he’s saying Hardcastle isn’t the one. We’ve got to leave right now!” but the Green person was more relaxed, “I think it’s an idiom, Ma’am, meaning that this individual considers Hardcastle his inferior in some way.” The ‘Admiral’ brooded for a moment on this, as she obviously found it hard to imagine anyone inferior to Gerald, then said “Oh. Right. Oh do be quiet” (this to the still panicking Engineer) “Okay, now, Stinker, do try to understand this, because if I have to repeat it I might get irritable, and you wouldn’t like that: I don’t care if you think you’re better than Hardcastle or not; I want to see him, and I want you to take me to see him, and I don’t want you...”
She broke off her litany with a kind of gulp, staring raptly over Gerald’s shoulder. Turning to see what had so gripped her, Gerald saw that his Lydia had re-entered the room. But this was not the tear-stained, faintly shabby young matron of just a few minutes ago; this Lydia was wearing a long, shimmering, backless and nearly frontless evening gown which Gerald had thought very alluring and arousing back in the days when she was Lydia Marvell, and he had not yet married her and consequently lost all further interest in her as an object of desire. Now, of course, it shocked him immeasurably, for she was Lydia Marsden, and his wife, she wasn’t meant to go around being an alluring and arousing object of desire any more; she was meant to fulfil his dynastic imperative and ensure that meals and cups of tea were readily available whenever he felt like having them. Being alluring and arousing objects of desire was what other women, to whom he was not married, were meant to do. So, seeing his wife doing these things, Gerald was vexed, and he was working on expressing his vexation in the form of a formal matrimonial rebuke, when the Admiral broke her reverie by saying, in awe-struck tones, “Wow. Check out the curves on that baby,” then, addressing the small green person rather the world at large, “Science officer, am I dreaming, or did a hot babe just walk through that door?” The small green person replied “Well, Ma’am, what with all humans appearing equally hideous to me, I cannot answer for whether the person in question is a ‘hot babe’, but it is indubitable that a female of your species is standing over there.” The Admiral wiped her brow, said “A simple ‘yes’ would have done, you know,” then returned to contemplating Lydia, rather in the manner of a gourmet inspecting a perfectly cooked tournedos Rossini, and said “Wow” again. Gerald was about to have another go at rebuking his wife when the Admiral once more pre-empted him, this time switching from speech to action, surging across to Lydia and saying “Well hello, darling. I’m in charge of that crew,” (waving vaguely at the Engineer and the small green person) “but you can call me Admiral. Now, let me rock your world,” whereupon, without waiting for permission she took Lydia in her arms and delivered a kiss which was a good deal more lingering that was generally considered good form in a welcoming peck between well-bred County Ladies. While Gerald looked on aghast, the small green person and the Engineer respectively rolled his eyes and said “She’s at it again,” and the Maid uttered a sharp bark of laughter.
When Lydia, who very noticeably had not struggled anything like as much as Gerald thought a proper County Wife ought to when passionately kissed by, well, anyone (in fact, after an initial “Mmf!” of surprise, she seemed, if anything, to have been aiding and abetting the Admiral in making the kiss as long and as impassioned as possible), and the Admiral broke free from their embrace, Lydia though, naturally, a little flustered, was clearly heard to say “Well, she wasn’t lying, that’s for sure” (which puzzled Gerald absolutely, for he had felt no earthquake) and didn’t seem anything like as shocked or disgusted as Gerald thought she ought to have been. In fact, she seemed positively invigorated, with bright eyes and an uncharacteristic appearance of joie de vivre which gave Gerald considerable cause for concern; what with the transparent négligée episode and now this, it was regrettably clear that his wife must be going out of her mind, and the medical authorities should be alerted at once so they could take whatever steps were required to properly crush her spirit. He therefore sidled out to the hallway with the intention of asking Doctor Dixon to come and see Lydia as a matter of some urgency, while the Admiral, who seemed equally invigorated by her experience, was saying “Okay men, change of plan. What we’ll do is, you two go off with Stinker to find this Hardcastle guy and do your stuff, and I’ll stay here to make sure no harm comes to the doll.” While Lydia seemed delighted at the prospect, the men and the maid clearly did not buy this as an explanation for a moment. The Engineer said “Come off it, we all know you just want to get her out of that dress and put her through her paces while we have to do all the work” (which clearly got Lydia all excited, given that she asked “Should I take it off now, then?” and started to fiddle with her shoulder-straps), the small green person said “I shall never understand sexual reproduction” and the maid confronted the Admiral, saying with some vigour “And what’s wrong with me, that’s what I want to know? I’ve got a better figure than her, and I know what to do with it. All she’s ever done is baby-making.” The
Admiral winced at this graphic reference to heterosexuality and (while the Engineer tried to explain to the wholly incredulous small green person that strictly speaking what the Admiral wanted to do with Lydia was not sexual reproduction) replied, “Well don’t you think she needs somebody to show her something better, then? And anyway, you’re not my type” before switching attention to Lydia, saying “Okay doll, keep the dress on for now; ready for seconds?” and sticking her tongue down her throat before the poor woman had a chance to say more than “Oh y...” resulting in the scene which greeted Gerald on his return from arranging that Dr Dixon would come round in about an hour: his Lydia and the Admiral locked in a passionate embrace (again), the maid trying to interpose herself between them (not, as he thought, out of loyalty to her master, but because she wanted a go at the Admiral herself), and the Engineer continuing his thankless task of trying to explain the difference between sex and reproduction to a small green person who had clearly decided that he didn’t believe a word of it. Gerald didn’t know where to look, and he didn’t know what to say when the Engineer appealed to him, asking, “Can you please tell this idiot that when two women fuck neither of them has a baby? He won’t believe me.” First there was the bad word, a bad word uttered in the company of, er, ladies no less (not that any of them seemed to have noticed, being far too taken up with their own affairs), which was shocking enough, but then there was the whole concept of women doing ... that ... with one another, on which his attitude was that if Queen Victoria didn’t believe it was possible then that was good enough for him. But then again, his Lydia and the Admiral (if she really was one) certainly looked very ... impassioned, so he didn’t know what to think.
For Gerald, not knowing what to think was, of course, not a hindrance, as thinking was not encouraged in the English officer class. Instead, drawing on ancient prejudices, passed down from his australopithecine ancestors, Gerald reacted: he strode over to the clinched couple and said, in the most commanding voice he could summon up, “Madam, unhand my wife”, realising as he spoke that there was something subtly wrong about this utterance, as admonitions went. “Yes,” cried the maid, “don’t do her, take me!” and though Gerald didn’t understand what this meant, he was at least able to glean the impression that in his desire to separate his wife from this terrible woman, at least long enough for Doctor Dixon to give Lydia something soothing and sedative, he had an ally in the form of the maid. Suitably encouraged, he carried on “I demand that you cease forcing your attentions on my wife. She is a decent English matron, and decent English matrons only kiss one another fleetingly on the cheek, if at all, so I don’t care what you Americans do ...” at which point the Admiral separated herself from Lydia long enough to say “Well, she seems to like it; and I’m not American.” Gerald riposted (rather cleverly, he thought), “I don’t care if you’re American or Canadian or from New Zealand, my wife is a very sick woman and you should not take advantage of her in this her hour of...” but the Admiral interrupted him saying, “Nothing wrong with her that a bit of attention and a good shag won’t cure; anyway you’re getting annoying, Stinker: why don’t you just take those two idiots and introduce them to Hardcastle, like I told you?” When Gerald, who completely failed to understand what diving birds, good or otherwise, had to do with anything, showed signs of continuing his admonition, she added “Go on, get on with it; or would you rather I kill you?” removing one hand from the depths of Lydia’s bodice in order to pull a pointy thing, just like the one the Engineer had waved at him earlier, from a pocket in her uniform, which she waggled about threateningly. He decided (again, rather cleverly, he thought) to call her bluff (for something so small, with no obvious barrel or blade, couldn’t possibly hurt anyone seriously), saying “I’m not scared of you” to which she replied, “Well you bloody well ought to be”, and, to show him why, she pointed the thing at the Maid, who promptly vanished, leaving only a cloud of grey dust, which began to settle on the ground where she had been standing.
There was a stunned silence, or at least there should have been. In fact, though Gerald was stunned and silent, Lydia was too taken up with experiencing and providing outspoken commentary upon the bliss induced by what the Admiral’s other hand was doing (“Oh my, that’s good. Why can’t Gerald do this to me? Please don’t stop,” and so on and so forth) to pay any attention to anything so mundane as the fact that she was going to have to find a replacement domestic (no easy task in this time of trouble), and the Engineer and the small green person were still arguing about human sexuality, so there was quite a lot of background noise when the Admiral turned to the white-faced Gerald, gestured with the pointy thing and said “Now bugger off, or you’re next.”
Chapter 2: The Middle, with Gerald
A good while later, Gerald, the Engineer and the small green person arrived at the residence of Amos Hardcastle. They had taken longer than Gerald had expected because the Engineer had taken one look at his car and said “I don’t care if you’re suicidal; you’re not getting me in that thing,” and so walking had been the order of the day. And if the state of Gerald’s bunions was not sufficient to have soured his mood even more than the sight of his wife making out with another woman, his attempt at making light conversation by replying “Oh, so don’t you have machines yet where you come from?” had merely resulted in the Engineer saying “Why you cheeky...” and then getting out his pointy thing again. It was clear that his initial intention was to use it on Gerald, but thanks to the small green person, that did not come to pass. He leaped into action, grappling with the Engineer for control of the pointy thing’s direction of aim, simultaneously shouting “Idiot! How will we find Hardcastle without him?” The Engineer, having accidentally dematerialised a passing goat and the postman, fought to get the device back under his control and replied “I don’t care”, sending off a shot which took out Gerald’s car, thus rendering the question of its use moot, to which the small green person, regaining the initiative and causing three cows to seek pastures new, replied, “And what about her highness? What will she say if we fail because you’re a trigger-happy moron?” which made the Engineer say “Oh lor,” and drop the pointy thing, which promptly exploded, while simultaneously puzzling Gerald no end, for he was not aware that any members of the Royal Family were in the vicinity. After which excitement, the Engineer beguiled the walk to chez Hardcastle with a lengthy and, to Gerald at least, entirely incomprehensible lecture, in which he got very agitated about some things called ‘carcinogens’ and ‘ozone’, which apparently explained his aversion to riding in a car, though, thought Gerald, in as far as he could think rationally, what with the fact that his systemic disability in that direction caused by being an English County male was on this occasional considerably potentiated by the fear induced by being in company with, as far as he could tell, a pair of homicidal maniacs, they hardly justified making a perfectly good car go the way of his maid.
But that was the way it was, and so it was with sore feet and a confused mind that Gerald was ushered, with his companions, into Mr Hardcastle’ drawing room, where they came upon none other than the object of their search: Amos Hardcastle in person, together with, by way of an unanticipated bonus, his fiancée Lucy Rivers, his daughter (by his first marriage, one should hasten to add, for Lucy Rivers was not the sort of girl to go around doing naughty things like having children out of wedlock, being, in almost every respect, save that of having agreed to marry a rank outsider like Mr Hardcastle, the kind of proper County Maiden that Gerald rather wished he had married) Rachel, and her peculiar friend Clarissa Bertram, peculiar because, despite being of impeccable county stock, she had, of all things, insisted on going, not off to finishing school, to learn how to please her future husband, but off to Cambridge, to learn about mathematics. And what good that would be to her future husband, who at the moment was slated to be young David Barton, a proper County Male, Gerald had no idea whatever; he could only assume that David had been led astray, in a moment of passion, by a figure w
hich made Flossie’s (she of the Dog and Duck) seem quite flat by comparison, and hence hitched himself to a woman who promised to be even less suited to being a County Wife than was Lydia.
Despite the surprise natural to one who finds a tête-à-tête with his affianced interrupted by the sudden appearance of one to whom, in private, he was known to refer as “that snobby bastard with the hot wife”, not to mention a man with singed eyebrows and a soldering-iron in his pocket, and a small green person, Mr Hardcastle showed himself a perfect host, being quick to welcome his guests with the offer of a seat and a snifter. And this, just when Gerald was beginning to hope that things might settle down into some semblance of normalcy, as he accepted his whisky-and-soda and settled down to rest his aching feet, was where things started getting strange again. First off, the small green person rejected the offered drink, explaining “My species absorbs moisture directly from the atmosphere, so I have no need to drink.” And then, when the awkward, puzzled silence following that bizarre statement was broken by Lucy Rivers asking, cautiously, “Is that why you Americans had prohibition, then? Because you don’t need to drink?” and the small green person replied, in a rather tired tone, “Do I look like I’m American?” to which Lucy responded, with admirable honesty, “I wouldn’t know; I’ve never met one”, which was quite bad enough, as Gerald was only too well aware that the nationality issue was one that these strange people were rather touchy about, the Engineer, who had been examining his drink carefully, peering at it through a pocket magnifier, dipping strips of coloured paper into it, sniffing it suspiciously, and generally treating it as if it were a chemical sample rather than a refreshment, finally got round to taking a cautious sip. His reaction was sufficiently violent as to completely pre-empt Lucy’s planned next question (“Well are you Welsh, then? I hear they don’t drink there”): he spat out his sip of whisky-and-soda, threw his glass into the fire and cried “Ethanol? Are you mad? What are you doing drinking ethanol? You’ll kill us all, you psychopath,” and he was off again, lecturing the unfortunate Mr Hardcastle, Gerald (who had been there before) and Lucy on the evils of ethyl alcohol, and the many terrible things it could do to the human body in health and (particularly) in sickness.
The New Star Page 2
