Mrs Bean explained. “Not at it, near to it. So that the water creates waves and moves it nearer to us; then we’ll be able to grab hold of it and pull it out. I remember one off my Brownies doing it when her ball landed in the canal.”
“Ah. Yes, excellent idea, Mrs Bean.” Mrs Wisbech looked around for stones. “Perhaps a few pebbles from the pathway might do the trick?”
The three ladies each armed themselves with a handful of pebbles and commenced to throw them into the pond as near to the inflatable rubber woman as their stone throwing skills allowed. If just one of them had thrown pebbles the idea might have worked. However Mrs Bean’s pebbles, which landed on the far side of Glorious Gloria, were cancelled out by Miss Preece’s, which landed on the near side of her. Most of Mrs Wisbech’s pebbles landed on her. Consequently all that happened was that Glorious Gloria began to bob up and down like some sort of erotic buoy.
“This isn’t going to work,” frowned Mrs Wisbech.
Mrs Bean thought she’d heard something and cupped a hand to her ear. “Was that the front doorbell? Your landscape gardener perhaps?” she said, half hoping it was.
“Ignore it,” said Mrs Wisbech.
“Larger pebbles,” said Miss Preece. “We need larger pebbles. These pebbles aren’t causing large enough waves to move it to any degree. Do you have any larger pebbles, Mrs Wisbech?”
Mrs Wisbech thought for a moment. “Bricks!” she said, suddenly inspired. “There were some bricks over from when we had the barbecue built. I think Harold put them in the greenhouse.”
Six red bricks were obtained from the greenhouse.
“Leave it to me,” said Mrs Bean, rolling up her sleeves. “I always won the throwing the rounders ball competition in the school sports.”
The first brick, launched by Mrs Bean with all her skill at throwing the rounders ball, scored a direct hit on the inflatable rubber woman, bounced off it at right angles and decapitated the fishing gnome.
“Sorry,” said Mrs Bean.
“Damn!”
“Frightfully sorry, Mrs Wisbech.”
“I suppose Harold might be able to repair it,” said Mrs Wisbech, but without much hope.
Whether Harold’s gnome repairing skills would be adequate was unclear. What was very clear was that he wouldn’t be able to do much about the koi carp on which Mrs Bean’s next brick scored a direct hit, killing it instantaneously.
What remained of the colour in Mrs Wisbech’s face drained instantly. She flung her hands in the air. “My God! Harold will go mad. They cost us five hundred pounds each, we’ve only had them for a week.”
“Look,” said Miss Preece, pointing at Glorious Gloria. The resultant turbulence from the two bricks had caused her to turn over onto her face. “It’s turned turtle.”
“I wish it would turn into a blasted turtle,” said Mrs Wisbech. “And paddle off somewhere far away.” She turned on Mrs Bean and shook a warning finger. “Now you aren’t to throw any more bricks, do you hear. I don’t want you killing the other one.”
“At least now that it’s turned over you can’t see its enormous breasts,” consoled Miss Preece.
“You can see its enormous bottom,” said Mrs Wisbech, not even slightly consoled. “And that horrible thong thing between its legs. Which is a more horrific sight than its bosom, if anything.” She looked at the others desperately. “We just have to get it out of there somehow, ladies.”
Mrs Bean cocked an ear. “Is that the doorbell again?”
“Bugger the doorbell!” said Mrs Wisbech. She bit her lip. “Sorry, forgive my language, I don’t....it’s all this....” She spread her hands in a gesture of hopelessness.
“Perhaps we could pop it?” suggested Miss Preece. “It would sink to the bottom and out of sight if we could manage to pop it. Have you anything with which we could pop it, Mrs Wisbech?”
Mrs Wisbech thought for a moment. “Well there’s the carving knife, that might do the trick I suppose,” she said, but with no great conviction. “Or a screwdriver, perhaps.” Then, suddenly inspired: “Harold’s bow and arrow! He’s a member of the Derbyshire Bowmen, he’s got a bow and arrow.” She made for the door. “If the landscape gardener tries to get in through the back gate keep him at bay.”
Two minutes later she returned with a large crossbow. “Here it is. This will do the trick.”
“Is that a bow and arrow?” queried Miss Preece, looking at it uncertainly.
“That’s how they are nowadays,” said Mrs Bean. “All knobs and sights and fiddly things. I saw them in the Commonwealth Games, terribly complicated; if Robin Hood came back and tried to fire one he wouldn’t have a clue.”
“I’m afraid I share Robin Hood’s ignorance of them,” said Mrs Wisbech, looking at the bow and scratching her head.
“I think I should be able to manage to fire it, if I may?” offered Mrs Bean.
Mrs Wisbech wasn’t sure. “You didn’t win the bow and arrow competition at your school sports by any chance?”
“No. But you might recall that one of the two bricks that I threw hit its target?” said Mrs Bean, a bit miffed.
“I recall that the other one hit one of the koi carp we paid five hundred pounds for and that I only have one five hundred pounds koi carp remaining.” said Mrs Wisbech, with feeling. She thought about it for a moment, then shrugged her shoulders. “However, as I don’t know how to fire the blessed thing....” She handed the bow to Mrs Bean. “But please, please be careful.”
Mrs Bean loaded the bow as Mrs Wisbech and Miss Preece looked on, the former still by no means happy about it. Miss Preece wrinkled her brow. “Is that the arrow?”
“The bolt, you call it,” said Mrs Bean, knowledgably.
Mrs Wisbech started to feel a little better about it. If Mrs Bean knew that the business part of the weapon was no longer called an arrow, but a bolt, she obviously knew what she was talking about. But words were cheap. Could she fire the thing? And even if she could fire it, could she hit the target, could she hit the horrible inflatable rubber woman that was scandalising her pond with its filthy presence?
She could. Gloriously. The wonderful, quite wonderful Mrs Bean released the bolt from the bow and almost immediately Glorious Gloria exploded with a loud bang as it scored a direct hit. Then continued on and hit the other koi carp, which surfaced two seconds later, stone dead and draped in part of Glorious Gloria’s bottom.
“Sorry. Sorry about that, Mrs Wisbech” said Mrs Bean, full of remorse. She brightened slightly. “However I did pop the inflatable rubber woman.”
“Yes, you wouldn’t recognise it now,” added Miss Preece. “What’s left of it.”
Mrs Wisbech sighed. “I suppose that’s something to be grateful for.”
Miss Preece noticed that a small card had been washed to the pond’s edge. “What’s that?” she said, pointing it out.
Mrs Wisbech bent to pick it out of the water. There was some writing on it. She read it out. “Glorious Gloria. With the compliments of An Hour In Bed. Enjoy.”
****
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Pugh’s secretary popped her head round the door. “The Junior Ministers are here, Mr Pugh.”
Pugh buried his head in his hands and groaned. “Tell them to go away.”
“I’ll send them in shall I?”
Pugh nodded glumly; he’d have to see them sooner or later. He would far rather have spent his time trying to come up with a way of making An Hour In Bed a viable concern again than listening to Dowell, Hilversum and Brick, for surely there must be at least one way. However a month ago The Prime Minister had charged his Cabinet Ministers with producing new vote-winning ideas that might be incorporated into an election-winning manifesto. Ideas from the Department of Transport had to be in by tomorrow’s deadline and as Pugh hadn’t come up with anything he hoped his trio of underlings might have come up with something.
Pugh’s three whipping boys trooped in. He barely acknowledged them with a grunt.
As he wai
ted for them to seat themselves he searched their faces to see if any signs of having had a good idea had left themselves etched there. He fully anticipated seeing nothing but blank canvasses but both Dowell and Hilversum looked even more pleased with themselves than usual, so maybe they’d managed to break the habits of a lifetime and come up with something sensible.
Pugh wasted no time on pleasantries or small talk. “Well, what have you got for me?” he said, before they’d hardly settled. The Junior Ministers each waited for one of the others to speak first. Pugh made their minds up for them and picked out the Parliamentary Under Secretary in charge of Aviation. “Justin?”
“Well I was thinking we might do something to reduce the time people have to spend getting through all the airport security checks we’ve had to impose since 9/11.”
“And?”
“Well clearly people are getting really pissed off with it, so it’s something they’d really appreciate. I mean they’re spending half their holiday queuing. Happened to me when I flew to Rome the other week. Three bloody hours it took me. Anyway it’s high time we pulled the plug on it. Just limit the search to people who look like they might be terrorists.”
“People who look like they might be terrorists?”
“Middle Eastern types, Iraquis, Iranians, Afghans, swarthy looking people with dark complexions and moustaches.”
“What about women?”
Dowell sniggered. “Well that description covers most of the Middle Eastern women I’ve ever come across. But we could specify all people who wear the hijab or burka. I think it would be a real vote catcher. Quite clearly it would be very popular with the electorate.”
Jim Brick intervened. “It wouldn’t be very popular with people with black moustaches who happened to be a bit dark-skinned. Quite a few MPs are like that.”
Pugh turned to Brick. “You don’t like the idea then, Jim?” Although he disliked Brick immensely Pugh knew that he often talked a lot of sense, even if it was sense he didn’t necessarily agree with.
“Oh I’m not saying that,” said Brick. “No, I’m just saying it might be a bit awkward; a bit difficult to implement. No, I think it’s an excellent idea. I’m sure if we put it to Phil he’d be bound to go for it.”
Warning bells immediately rang in Pugh’s head. There was nothing Brick would like better than for him to go to Phil with some crackpot idea and come back with egg on his face. If Brick said something was a good idea you could bet your boots it was a bad idea and could only result in amounts of egg in large proportions descending on his physiognomy. He nodded sagely and said: “Yes, well I think we’d best put that one on the back burner for the time being, Justin.” He turned his attention to Hilversum. “Anything we can do on roads and rail, Tony? That might encourage people to vote for us?”
“Yes, I think we should shut down the railways.”
Pugh raised an eyebrow. “Shut them down?”
“Think about it. Clearly everyone would then have to travel by road. Clearly people who haven’t got a car would have to buy one or failing that walk wherever they wanted to get to. Clearly if they chose to buy a car it would mean more jobs for the motor industry. And most clearly of all, if they chose to walk they’d all be fitter and less of a drain on the Health Service and we’d save millions.”
Although Pugh could see workers in the car industry being overjoyed and falling over themselves to vote Labour should Hilversum’s idea be implemented he immediately saw a snag. “I thought the roads were overcrowded already?” “We’ll build more roads. Clearly this would create thousands and thousands of jobs in the construction industry. Jobs that could be filled by all the people who were made redundant when we closed down the railways - after they had received suitable training of course - which would bring thousands of jobs to the job training industry.”
“And these roads? Given that there isn’t any room for any more roads without making compulsory purchase orders, which would cost the country billions in compensation, where would they be built?”
Hilversum smiled. “On the railways. Tear up the old railway lines and build roads on them. Which would clearly have the effect of revitalising and creating thousands of jobs in the scrap metal and steel-recycling industries. Or alternatively we could leave the rails as they are and fit all new cars with an extra set of wheels, which they could then use on the railways when they drove directly onto them after leaving the roads.”
Pugh looked sharply at Hilversum. Was he taking the piss? Or could he actually be serious? One could never be sure with Oxbridge upstarts. He’d been serious when he’d suggested making the M25 a one-way system, alternate days clockwise and anti-clockwise, and the Prime Minister had almost gone for that. Help was at hand in his dilemma, however, as from the corner of his eye he noticed Brick shake his head and grimace. “I can see you’re not too keen on the idea, Jim?” he said, turning to Brick.
“You can say that again.”
For his part Pugh thought Hilversum’s plan to be one of the most stupid ideas he’d ever heard in his life, and as a Cabinet Minister of four years standing he’d heard more than a few; however if Brick intimated it was a bad idea that meant it was a good idea. “Well I think it’s an excellent idea,” he said. He smirked at Brick to show him he had his number, before continuing. “Well done, Tony. I’ll put it to Phil.” He turned his attention back to Brick. “And you, Jim, have you managed to come up with anything?”
Brick shook his head. “Not in my department, no. The only thing I thought we might give a try is in Justin’s area.”
“And is?”
“Well I thought we might do something about single car occupancy. Penalise the sole occupants of cars. Help out the situation with our crowded roads. I believe the idea was mooted a year or two ago but that was as far as it went, never got beyond the White Paper stage. Remember, Justin?”
Dowell shook his head. ”Must have been before my time.”
“It was designed to encourage car sharing, to get drivers to actively seek out people making the same journey. Which would mean of course they were no longer the sole occupant of their car and thus not liable to pay the single occupancy penalty.”
Hilversum didn’t like the sound of it at all. “This would apply to Members of Parliament too, one would assume?”
“We have chauffeurs, don’t we,” said Brick, patiently. “We never drive ourselves; the single occupancy charge would never apply to us.”
“I do,” said Pugh, recalling his visit to Ramsbottom to view his inheritance, and the many other times he had dispensed with the services of his chauffeur for one reason or another. “I drove myself about four hundred miles only the other day. And I certainly don’t want to be paying a levy for driving myself. I....” He was about to go on to say that he quite enjoyed emitting some carbon by bombing down the motorway whenever he felt the need of it, when he suddenly stopped.
Dowell didn’t think much of the idea either. “Besides, I thought we were supposed to be coming up with vote-catching ideas?” he scoffed. “I can’t see a single car occupancy tax getting us many votes from car drivers.”
“You have to look at the bigger picture, Justin. And the bigger picture tells us....”
Pugh, now with a strange light in his eyes, suddenly burst in. “Yes well thank you all for your time gentlemen, that will be all.” He got to his feet and indicated to the others to do likewise. “Time waits for no man.”
“Don’t you want to know the bigger picture?”
But Pugh didn’t. He had his own bigger picture now. And it was a wonderful, beautiful picture, a blockbuster of a picture in wide screen 3D with Dolby stereophonic sound, or whatever sound wonderful blockbusters came with nowadays. It had come to him in a flash. A eureka moment. It was his good idea.
After ushering, almost pushing the Junior Ministers out of his office, Pugh took a moment to compose himself, then sat down and wrote out his good idea on a piece of paper so that he couldn’t possibly forget it. Well he couldn�
��t forget it, he knew that, for it was such a wonderfully good idea, such an unforgettable good idea, but he needed to have graphic, physical evidence of it, just to prove it.
It looked even better on paper. He wrote it out again underneath. It looked twice as good. He put it in the top drawer of his desk for safe keeping. Five seconds later he opened the drawer and looked inside. It was still there. He took it out and looked at it again. He pinched himself. Yes, he wasn’t dreaming. He folded it up, kissed it, put it back and locked the drawer so it couldn’t get out and no one could get at it.
For the next twenty four hours he didn’t do anything about his good idea. He had never in his life had an idea even half as good, and he might never have another one, so he wanted to drink it in for a while, bathe in it, luxuriate in it, wallow in it. For this was no ordinary good idea, this wasn’t his mobile massage parlour good idea, this was an idea on a much higher level, the very highest level, it was as good an idea as good ideas could come; a gold-plated copper-bottomed all-singing all-dancing good idea.
The first thing he did on entering his office the following day was unlock his drawer and take out the piece of paper on which he had written his good idea. He looked at it; the words were still there, all in the same order just the same as when he’d written them, they hadn’t mysteriously and heartbreakingly shuffled themselves around and formed themselves into a bad idea.
It was a nice day so he put the piece of paper in his pocket and took his idea for a walk round the block. The streets were busy with people going here and there about their daily business. Pugh smiled to himself. They didn’t know that in his pocket he had the best idea since sliced bread. On the corner of Page Street and Regency Street, suddenly realising the possible threat that people in the street might present, he took the idea out of his pocket, took his shoe off, put it in his shoe and put it back on; it would be safer there, you never knew, someone could quite easily pick his pocket, and his idea along with it, and there was a chance, even if it was a billion to one chance, that he might have some sort of brainstorm or be struck with amnesia and forget all about his good idea.
Inflatable Hugh Page 13
