How to Steal a Piano

by John Hughes

  It had taken her some time to pluck up the courage to venture inside when it first opened; everything looked so contemporary and daunting. And the prices! She remembered the first time she eventually took the plunge and went in and asked for a cup of coffee. The array of different types had been bewildering. The man (with ‘Barista’ printed on the back of his shirt; she had looked up the meaning later – from the Italian for ‘bartender’) had been very helpful and explained them all to her; latte, mocha, macchiato, cappuccino, Americano, espresso. Mrs Roberts liked her coffee frothy, so she settled on a cappuccino. The young man then asked, “What size would you like, Short, Tall or Grande?” to which Mrs Roberts replied, “Don’t be so pretentious… a small one, thank you.”

  Mrs Roberts enjoyed drinking coffee in Starbucks, although for her the prices meant that it was an occasional treat rather than a regular event. Like Twinings, the pedant in her was perturbed by the lack of an apostrophe in their name. She had written to them, explaining that according to Wikipedia their company was named after a character in Moby Dick, one of the three mates on board the whaling boat Pequod, in which case there ought to be an apostrophe, Starbuck’s, to denote ownership. She also complimented them on their decision not to call themselves Pequod, as had nearly been the case according to Wikipedia. That would have been just too silly, she wrote. So far there had been no reply from Seattle.

  Mrs Roberts sat on a comfy sofa, sipping cappuccino and thinking about the C-word.

  When had it become so offensive… and why? She hadn’t fathomed that out yet and it continued to puzzle her. In the twelve-hundreds it had been used on public street signs, and in subsequent centuries in works of greatly respected literature. Yet nowadays, in complete contrast, and in the most enlightened times in history where the second most offensive word in the English language – the F-word – was commonplace, the C-word was well and truly taboo.

  Or was it?

  Perhaps her own middleclass morality was showing; hers and millions of others like her with ultra conservative attitudes firmly rooted in the standards of times long gone. Mostly old people who knew what was best for the semi-literate youth of today and were dragging their feet against the rip tide of popular feeling as in so many things. The selfish geriatrics who apparently had forced the Brexit vote and blighted the lives of future generations. If so, the lady judge had surely just breached a huge hole in their anachronistic dam.

  When she had finished her coffee, Mrs Roberts decided she would potter around the shops for a while, then return to the library and continue her research. Hopefully Mr Pardey would have gone by then.

  She might even begin drafting a letter of support and admiration to Judge Patricia Lynch QC.

  * * *

  In Boots, who also needed an apostrophe, Mrs Roberts bumped in to an old friend, Susan Grosvenor, a fellow widow; thus a potter around the shops turned into lunch and a good old chat.

  “Good to see you, Dotty. How have you been?”

  “Oh, the usual. You know, trying to make ends meet, struggling to get my old bones out of bed every morning and make the most of each day.”

  “You were always good at that,” said Susan Grosvenor with a hint of envy. “Unlike me, I’m a layabout by comparison, more so since Leonard passed away. So what’s taking up your time at the moment?”

  Inevitably, as it was so fresh in her mind, this prompt brought up the topic of Judge Patricia Lynch QC. Susan Grosvenor had read all about it.

  “What do you think, Susan?”

  “Disgusting!”

  “Don’t you think it was acceptable under the circumstances?”

  “Absolutely not! Fancy a high court judge using such foul language… and a woman… and in her own courtroom! She should be defrocked, or debarred, or whatever they do to judges when they behaved appallingly.”

  “I think they usually give them a peerage,” remarked Dotty musingly. “But she only repeated back the insult which the man in the dock called her.”

  “Not just any old insult. It was that word. She used that word!”

  “The C-word.”

  “Dotty! You shouldn’t say it, not even the first letter like that.”

  “Is that such a terrible thing nowadays?”

  “Yes it certainly is. That word is disgusting. Just because he used it at her was no excuse to repeat it! She ought to be a role model. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”

  Mrs Roberts nodded understandingly. “Yet most of the views I’ve read on social media are very supportive of her,” she said.

  “That’s also disgusting,” stated Susan Grosvenor. “The great unwashed revelling in it as usual with their extreme right wing views. They’re the real Brexit bunch. Trolls, isn’t that the correct word for them? That woman should not have stooped so low as to bandy insults with a moron like that. She’s brought the entire legal profession into disrepute.”

  “Isn’t having her removed from office a little extreme… a little right wing?” suggested Mrs Roberts.

  Susan Grosvenor, who was well on her way to being in high dudgeon, glared at her and turned up her nose as if suddenly confronted with a foul smell. “No!”

  There was an awkward silence. Mrs Roberts took a bite from her egg and cress sandwich.

  Susan Grosvenor sat rigidly in her seat as if in a trance. Then, out of nowhere, a grin appeared on her face and she laughed out loud. “Yes! How pompous of me. Of course it is. You’re absolutely right, Dotty. Perhaps we should change the subject.”

  Change the subject they did and talked about friends from the past, some still around but mostly dead and gone. They parted company on the best of terms, promising to meet again soon.

  Mrs Roberts wandered back in the direction of the library. It had been an interesting encounter, and a reminder to her of Germaine Greer’s point. That word still had the power to shock, and to engender strong emotions. Perhaps she, Mrs Roberts, was too broadminded, or rather more so than her compatriots who, let’s face it, were of a dinosaur generation dating from long before the birth of sexual intercourse, identified by Philip Larkin in that poem of his (she could never remember the title) as 1963, between the Chatterley Trial and the Beatles’ first LP. He was wrong of course, Mrs Roberts knew. Sex had been a very enjoyable part of her life long before either. The difference, it seemed to her, was that until then it had all been done in secret; under the surface; in private. It wasn’t talked about, and certainly not using those infamous Anglo Saxon four-letter words. The Chatterley Trial had been something of a watershed. She ought to refresh her memory about the details.

  But amidst all the bluster, Susan Grosvenor had made a very good point indeed, a simple one but a very good point nevertheless. Two wrongs do not make a right. Perhaps, after all, Judge Patricia Lynch QC had been out of order to use the language she did in court.

  Mrs Roberts weighed this in the balance as she walked through the entrance of the library.

  * * *

  Mr Pardey was nowhere to be seen, thank heavens. The grubby-looking youth had gone too and a dowdy woman of indeterminate age Mrs Roberts had never seen before had taken his place. She resumed her old seat at the nearest computer.

  Further reading revealed that although not taboo in the Middle Ages, the C-word had started to become so even in Shakespeare’s day and the Bard had used it cautiously, implying rather than stating it. Probably the most famous example appears in Hamlet (Act III, Scene 2 to be precise) when the eponymous Prince of Denmark asks Ophelia, “Lady, shall I lie in your lap?” Ophelia replies, “No, my lord.” Hamlet, pretending to be shocked, responds, “Do you think I meant country matters?” The double meaning of the first syllable of ‘country’ was no coincidence.

  By all accounts, the next two hundred years brought about a considerable change in attitude, and for no obvious reasons that Mrs Roberts could identify other than the rise of Puritanism and the sobe
ring influence of the likes of Oliver Cromwell. By the end of the eighteenth century the C-word was generally frowned upon and had all but vanished from print, apart from in very private publications.

  And so it remained until the second half of the twentieth century. For the United Kingdom, it was the Lady Chatterley Trial in 1960 referenced by Philip Larkin that opened the floodgates. Penguin Books Ltd. were prosecuted under the Obscene Publications Act 1959 for intending to publish D.H. Lawrence’s Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which included liberal use of both the F-word and the C-word. Lawrence had published the novel privately in 1928, but no real attempt was made to do so publicly until Penguin. In March 1960, ahead of the intended publication date, they presented fifteen copies to the police, effectively challenging them to prosecute – which they did. A summons was issued in August at Bow Street Magistrate’s Court in London and the trial began towards the end of October. Wikipedia summed up the result rather neatly, Mrs Roberts felt:

  The jury found for the defendant in a result that ushered in the liberalisation of publishing, and which some saw as the beginning of the permissive society in Britain.

  Although fifty-six years ago, she remembered it well and had followed the six-day trial in the newspapers as it evolved. She was thirty then and enjoying a healthy sex life with Richie. When it was published a month after the trial, they were both keen to read this notorious book; a bargain at only three and six in paperback! Getting hold of a copy was the problem. Bookshops all over England sold out on the first day – a total of two hundred thousand copies. Foyles in London sold their three hundred copies in fifteen minutes and took orders for three thousand more!

  When they eventually managed to get their hands on the book, Richie read it first and feigned disapproval when his wife insisted on doing the same. They didn’t discuss it, but for weeks, if not months, their sex life took on an edge to it, a rawness, which was new and very exciting.

  Mrs Roberts was feeling tired. She looked at her watch. Good heavens, five-thirty! The library would be closing soon. To round off her day, she did another quick Google search on Judge Lynch’s name and came up with an interesting comment she had missed before from a journalist relating to her use of that word:

  It wasn’t shocking that it was said in a court of law, just the fact that it was a judge who said it.

  Mrs Roberts didn’t know whether to agree or not because she had never been in a courtroom and had no idea what language was used. It seemed common sense to assume that proceedings were undertaken politely and respectfully without resorting to sexually explicit insults; this was certainly reflected in what she had seen on television. Judge John Deed would never allow it.

  It was an interesting point though; the shock element was the fact that a judge had said it. So, was the offensiveness of the C-word on a sliding scale depending upon who was using it, and to whom, as much as where it was uttered? For two football hooligans – on the terraces, in a pub, in the street, or in Sainsbury’s – it would be par for the course because they were what they were; mindless thugs in any location. But coming from a judge, whether in the high court or in Sainsbury’s – or perhaps Waitrose in their case – its use was always going to be shocking. (Incidentally, the pedant in Mrs Roberts approved of Sainsbury’s branding, for obvious reasons.)

  Now feeling very weary, she logged off her computer and popped to the loo again before saying goodnight to Mrs Anderson and making her way to the bus stop. There was a bit of a queue and the electronic sign in the bus shelter indicated the next one on her route would arrive in seven minutes. She’d believe that when she saw it.

  A young lad stood up from his seat in the shelter and indicated she was welcome to it. Mrs Roberts thanked him and sat down gratefully. She felt a bit woozy. The lunchtime sandwich had been a good few hours ago and she felt her stomach rumbling. What would she have for supper, she wondered – lamb casserole out of the freezer perhaps, or the rest of the spinach quiche with new potatoes and beans? She wondered what high court judges had for supper.

  The bus arrived after twelve minutes. Mrs Roberts took her place at the end of the queue. When she stepped on board and approached the driver, to her dismay she saw it was the awful man with the comb over from this morning. Her heart sank.

  “I suppose you want to see my bus pass, do you?” she said with more than a little irritation in her voice.

  He glanced at her disdainfully. “Do vacuum cleaners suck?”

  The meaning, including the implied vulgarity, was lost on Mrs Roberts. She pulled out her pass and again pressed it against the Perspex. Again the driver looked the other way and paid it no attention.

  She put the pass away and turned to walk down the bus. Then she paused, looked up at the driver and, in a firm but perfectly measured tone, said, “Actually, young man…” and proceeded to speak the phrase that had preoccupied her thoughts all day; the phrase that felt perfectly appropriate for the moment and the use of which, she was quite certain, Judge Patricia Lynch QC would have wholly approved.

  The driver’s eyes widened and his jaw dropped. The passengers in the bus, which was full, had heard it as clear as a bell. They stared towards her in absolute silence, not moving an inch, like a still photograph. The proverbial pin could have dropped; and so it stayed for a few brief seconds that seemed to last an hour. Then someone clapped, then someone else clapped, then the whole bus was clapping and cheering.

  Mrs Roberts was taken aback. She was confused, and didn’t quite know what to do, suddenly finding herself the centre of attention and lauded in such a fashion. So she did what she often did when out of her comfort zone; she simply smiled. The smile was followed by a nod of appreciation and she mouthed “Thank you” several times in different directions, as if on stage acknowledging an appreciative audience. The applause showed no sign of abating, so finally she put down her shopping basket and handbag and, slowly and graciously, curtsied as low as her eighty-six-year-old limbs would permit. Once back up again, she gathered her bags and sat down in the nearest empty seat, just as the bus pulled off.

  It was a snapshot moment. One of those key events in life that instantly embed themselves into your head, never to be excised, where they remain forever. We all have them and they are a blend of public and personal incidents. For Mrs Roberts they were… her first day at school… V.E. Day… her first kiss… her eighteenth birthday… losing her virginity… her wedding day… giving birth… Coronation Day… the death of her mother… Churchill’s funeral… the 1966 World Cup Final… the Aberfan disaster… the first moon landing… the 1981 royal wedding… becoming a grandmother… Richie passing away… Princess Diana’s funeral… and, last but by no means least, the day she told the driver of the number 452 bus from Sevenoaks to Dunton Green that he was a bit of a cunt.

  What a day! Goodness, she would sleep well tonight. But not before – yes, now that all the hoopla was over she had made a decision as she sat staring out of the window, watching the world go by. Spinach quiche for supper after all, with new potatoes and green beans, washed down with a nice cup of tea.

  Twining’s, naturally.

  Runner

  Jez, Chris and Toff had spent the day at Sandown Park races, and fared well. They came away with pockets crammed full of banknotes and their heads spinning from a combination of booze and high spirits. Their mood could be described as ebullient, not that they would have been familiar with a four-syllable adjective – Jez possibly, Chris unlikely, Toff no chance. As Jez drove them out of the car park at a snail’s pace, queuing to get onto the Portsmouth Road, they had one thing on their minds. Food.

  “Fancy a Chinese?” said Jez.

  “Prefer Indian,” said Chris.

  “Chinky for me,” said Toff.

  The majority verdict won. Chinese. They were heading towards Surbiton.

  “What about that one on the Brighton Road, near the railway bridge?” suggested Jez as he weaved his wa
y round the Scilly Isles roundabout. “What’s it called?”

  Chris googled it on his phone. “The Mandarin Palace. Do we have to? I fancy a curry.”

  “Chinky!” yelled Toff. “You’re outnumbered.”

  “He’s right,” said Jez. “Chinky it is.”

  They parked in Victoria Avenue and walked around the corner onto the Brighton Road. The Mandarin Palace was a hundred yards up on the right. Just beyond it a train rumbled over the bridge.

  “Have we done this one before?” said Chris.

  “Don’t think so,” replied Jez. “Bit close to home.”

  “We’ve done most of them round here at one time or another.”

  Toff peered through the window. The restaurant was half full. “Looks posh,” he said, seemingly unimpressed. “What about that one down by the station?”

  “This’ll do fine,” said Chris.

  “Not too posh for us,” agreed Jez who took the lead, as he invariably did, and marched through the door. “Alright?” he said to the rotund, neatly dressed man who greeted him.

  “Good evering,” said the man. “My name Ping. Welcome.”

  “Alright Ping.” Said Toff. “What’s your surname, Pong?”

  Mr Ping grinned and bowed slightly. “You have reservation?”

  “Yeh,” said Toff. “I’ve got one. I’m worried your chicken is cat. My Aunty Joyce lives just round the corner and her Tiddles went missing last week.”

  Mr Ping grinned some more. “Ah, the old ones always the best.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “Nothing, nothing. You booked?”

  “No,” replied Jez. “Table for three.”

  Mr Ping consulted a booking sheet on a clipboard. “No probrem.” He indicated a table towards the middle of the restaurant, along one side. “This one flee.”

  Jez ignored it and eyed up the table in the window, which had a grey metal sign in the centre that read Reserved. “This one’ll do.”