There are voices. And then there are VOICES and then there is SOMETHING MORE. It doesn’t happen often, but when it does, well, when it does, IT DOES.
Jack’s champagne glass was almost at his lips. And that is where it stayed, unmoving, throughout Dolly Dumpling’s first song. And it never reached Jack’s lips at all even after that, because at the conclusion of the song Jack set it down to use his hands for clapping. And this went on, again and again and again.
How she reached the notes she did and how she held them there were matters beyond discussion and indeed comprehension. How she achieved what she achieved may indeed never be known. And when she breathed, ‘Please do all get up and dance,’ then all got up and danced.
The dancefloor wasn’t large but now it filled and as Dolly Dumpling’s voice soared and swooped and brought notes beyond notes and sensations with them that were beyond, the crowd swayed and shimmied, trembled and danced. How they danced!
Jack took Amelie in his arms and although having no skills at all as a dancer, shimmied and swayed with the rest. And waltzed, too. And then did that jazz-dance sort of thing that can’t really be described and which you either can do, or can’t. And Jack couldn’t. Dinner suits and crinoline. Slicked-back hair and coiffured coils. Menfolk and women-folk. Jack and a dolly. Around and around and around.
Love and magic in the air, enchantment and wonderment and joy, joy, happy joy.
And.
‘I say, chap, careful where you’re treading.’
‘Sorry,’ said Jack to his fellow dancer. Then he did a bit of a dip and a flourish and then had a little kiss with Amelie. ‘Isn’t this wonderful?’ said Jack as he twirled the dolly round. And Amelie shook her preposterous front parts and blew some kisses to Jack.
And Dolly Dumpling’s voice rose and fell and the band was pretty good, too.
And ‘Careful, chap, what you’re doing there,’ said that fellow again.
‘It’s crowded,’ Jack called to the fellow that he had just stepped upon for a second time. ‘Sorry, just enjoy.’
‘Lout,’ said the fellow’s partner. Loud enough to be heard for a fair circle round. ‘Disgusting, coming in here with that thing.’
Jack stiffened in mid-second dip and approaching kiss and said, ‘What did you say?’
‘She said, “Disgusting”,’ said the fellow, ‘lowering the tone of this establishment.’
‘What?’ went Jack.
‘Leave it,’ said Amelie.
‘No, I won’t leave it.’ Jack turned to confront the fellow. A very dapper fellow, he was, probably some son or close relative of a prominent P.P.P. ‘What is your problem?’ asked Jack, in the manner of one who didn’t know.
‘You know well enough,’ said the fellow. ‘Bringing that thing in here and flaunting it about.’
‘That thing,’ said Jack, ‘is my girlfriend.’ The words ‘is my girlfriend’, however, were not heard by the fellow Jack had spoken to, because, at the conclusion of the word ‘thing’, Jack had thrown a punch at the fellow, which had caught him smartly upon the jaw and sent him floorwards in an unconscious state. Most rapidly.
‘Monster!’ screamed the fellow’s partner, and screaming so set upon Jack.
Most violently.
6
At least in a bar brawl you know where you are.
There are so many moments in life when you really don’t know where you are. Where you stand, how you’re fixed, what you’re up against and so on and so forth and suchlike. Life can be tricky like that. It builds you up and it knocks you down. The build-up is generally slow, but it leads to overconfidence. The knocking down is swift and it comes out of nowhere. And it hurts.
But at least in a bar brawl you know where you are.
You generally have a choice of three places. Right in the thick of it, getting hammered or doing the hammering. Just on the periphery, where a stray fist or flying bottle is likely to strike you. Or right on the edge, at the back of the crowd, which is the best place to be. You can always climb up on a chair and enjoy the action without too much danger of taking personal punishment.
Back of the crowd is definitely the best place to be in a bar brawl.
In life, well, that’s another matter, but in a bar brawl, it’s the back. You know where you are at the back.
Jack was not at the back. For Jack was indeed the epicentre. And when it came right down to it, Jack was not a fighter. He was rarely one to swing the first fist and why he had done this now troubled him. But not so much as the other thing troubled him. This other thing being the handbag that was repeatedly striking his head. The partner of the fellow Jack had floored was going at Jack as one possessed. And possessed of a strong right arm.
Jack sheltered his head with his hands and yelled, ‘Stop!’ But the violence ceased to do so. And Jack’s shout of, ‘Stop!’ echoed hollowly through the air, for the music had ceased and the dancing had ceased and all conversation likewise had ceased and all eyes were upon Jack.
And then Amelie swung a handbag of her own and floored Jack’s attacker.
Which somehow increased the sudden silence, made it more intense.
Jack uncovered his head and glanced all around and about himself. Stern faces stared and glared at him, eyebrows and mouth-corners well drawn down. Fingers were a-forming fists, shoulders were a-broadening. Jack now glanced down at the two prone figures on the dancefloor. A little voice in Jack’s head said, ‘This isn’t good.’
‘Right,’ said Jack, now squaring his narrow shoulders. ‘We’re leaving now. No one try to stop us.’
The sounds of growlings came to Jack’s ears, and not the growlings of dogs. The crowd was forming a tight ring now, a very tight ring with no exit.
Jack stuck his right hand into his trenchcoat pocket. ‘I’ve a gun here,’ he cried, ‘and I’m not afraid to use it. In fact I’ll be happy to use it, because I’m quite mad, me. Who’ll be the first then? Who?’
The ring now widened and many exits appeared. Jack’s non-pocketed hand reached out to Amelie, who took it in the one that wasn’t wielding her handbag. ‘Come on,’ said Jack. ‘Let’s go.’
And so, with Jack’s pocket-hand doing all-around gun-poking motions, he and Amelie headed to the door. And well might they have made it, too, had not something altogether untoward occurred. It occurred upon the stage and it began with a scream. As screams went this was a loud one and coming as it did from the mouth of Dolly Dumpling it was a magnificent scream. Exactly what key this scream was in was anyone’s guess, but those who understand acoustics and know exactly which pitch, note, key or whatever is necessary to shatter glass would have recognised it immediately. For it was that very one.
Behind the bar counter, bottles, optics, glasses, vases, cocktail stirrers and the left eye of the barman shattered. Champagne flutes on tables blew to shards and next came the windows.
Jack turned and Jack saw and what Jack saw Jack didn’t like at all.
The stage was engulfed in a blinding light. Dolly Dumpling was lost in this light, as were the clockwork musicians.
Dolly’s scream went on and on, if anything rising in pitch. A terrible vibration of the gut-rumbling persuasion hit the now-cowering crowd and signalled that mad rush that comes at such moments. That mad rush that’s made for the door.
Screams and panic, horror and bright white light.
Jack should have run, too, for such was the obvious thing to do. He should have taken to his heels and fled the scene, dragging Amelie with him. But Jack found, much to his horror, that his feet wouldn’t budge. The expression ‘rooted to the spot’ had now some definite meaning to him, so instead he gathered Amelie to himself and as the crowd rushed past did his bestest to remain upright and in a single piece.
The crowd burst through the doors of Old King Cole’s, tumbling over one another. Unshattered glass erupted from these doors. It was a cacophony of chaos, a madness of mayhem, a veritable discord of disorder. A pandemic of pandemonium.
And worse was
yet to come.
‘And worse was yet to come,’ said Tinto to Eddie Bear, in Tinto’s Bar, some way away from the pandemic of pandemonium and even indeed the tuneless tornadic timpani of turbulence.
‘Worse than what?’ asked Eddie, who hadn’t been listening, but had been getting drunk.
‘The mother-in-law’s pancake-cleaning facility burned to the ground,’ said Tinto, ‘so we had to release all the penguins and Keith couldn’t ride his bike for a week.’
‘You what?’ Eddie asked.
‘I knew you weren’t listening,’ said Tinto. ‘Nobody ever listens to me.’
‘They listen when you call time,’ said Eddie. ‘Though mostly they ignore it. But they do listen, and that is what matters.’
‘That’s some consolation,’ said Tinto. ‘But not much.’
‘Take what you can get,’ said Eddie. ‘That’s what I always say.’
‘I’ve never heard you say it before.’ Tinto took up a glass to clean and cleaned it.
‘Perhaps you weren’t listening,’ Eddie suggested. ‘It happens sometimes.’
‘Well,’ said Tinto, ‘if I see one of those spacemen, I’ll tell them that’s what I think of them.’
‘You do that,’ said Eddie. ‘And you can tell them what I think of them, too. Whatever that might be.’
‘Should I wait until you think something up?’
‘That would probably be for the best.’ Eddie took his beer glass carefully between his paws and poured its contents without care into his mouth. ‘And by the by,’ he said, once he had done with this, replaced his glass upon the counter top and wiped a paw across his mouth, ‘which spacemen would these be?’
‘I knew you weren’t listening,’ said Tinto.
‘You know so much,’ said Eddie, ‘which is why I admire you so much.’
‘You do?’ Tinto asked.
Eddie smiled upon the clockwork barman. ‘What do you think?’ he asked in return.
‘I think you’re winding me up,’ said Tinto. ‘But not in the nice way. I hope they get you next, that will serve you right.’
‘Right,’ said Eddie. ‘What are you talking about?’
‘The spacemen with the death rays,’ Tinto said.
‘Ah,’ said Eddie, indicating that he would like further beers. ‘Those spacemen. I was thinking about the other spacemen, which is why I got confused.’
‘Are you drunk?’ asked Tinto.
‘My feet are,’ said Eddie. ‘You might well have to carry me to the toilet.’
‘Now that,’ said Tinto, ‘is not going to happen.’
‘I rather thought not, but do tell me about the spacemen.’
‘You’re not just trying to engage me in conversation in order that I might forget to charge you for all of those beers?’
Eddie made the kind of face that said, ‘As if I would,’ without actually putting it into words.
‘Good face,’ said Tinto. ‘What does it mean?’
‘It means what spacemen?’ said Eddie.
‘The spacemen,’ said Tinto, ‘who blasted the clockwork monkeys with their death rays.’
‘Now this is new,’ said Eddie.
‘Not to those spacemen.’ Tinto took up another glass to polish, without replacing the first. Eddie looked on with envy at those dextrous fingers. ‘I’ll bet those spacemen blast clockwork monkeys all the time.’
Eddie Bear did shakings of his head, which made him slightly giddy, which meant at least that the beer was creeping up.
‘Tinto,’ said Eddie, ‘please explain to me, in a simple and easy-to-understand fashion, exactly what you are talking about.’
‘The clockwork monkeys,’ said Tinto, ‘the ones that got blasted. They got blasted by spacemen.’
Eddie sighed. ‘And who told you that?’ he asked.
‘A spaceman,’ said Tinto.
‘A spaceman,’ said Eddie. ‘What spaceman?’
‘That spaceman.’ Tinto pointed, glasses still in his hand and everything. ‘That spaceman over there.’
Eddie turned his head to view this spaceman.
And Eddie Bear fell off his stool.
‘Drunk!’ cried Tinto. ‘Out of my bar.’
‘I’m not drunk.’ Eddie did further strugglings and managed at least to get to his knee regions. ‘It’s your responsibility. Where is this spaceman?’
‘You are drunk,’ said Tinto. ‘You drunkard. Over there,’ and Tinto pointed once again.
‘Ah,’ said Eddie, rising with considerable difficulty and swaying with no apparent difficulty whatsoever.
Across the bar floor at a dim corner table sat a spaceman. He was a rather splendid-looking spaceman, as it happened. Very shiny was he, very silvery and well polished. He was all-over tin plate but for a tinted see-through plastic weather dome, which was presently half-raised to permit the passage of alcohol.
Eddie tottered and swayed in the spaceman’s direction. The spaceman looked up from his drink and wondered at Eddie’s approach.
Before the spaceman’s table Eddie paused, but still swayed somewhat. ‘Ahoy there, shipmate,’ said Eddie Bear.
‘Ahoy there what?’ The spaceman’s voice came as if from the earpiece of a telephone receiver, but in fact came from a grille in his chest similar to Tinto’s. The spaceman raised a rubber hand and waggled its fingers at Eddie.
‘Might I sit down?’ asked the bear.
‘Your capabilities are unknown to me,’ said the spaceman. ‘Was that a rhetorical question?’
Eddie drew out a chair and slumped himself down onto it. He grinned lopsidedly at the spaceman and said, ‘So, how’s it going, then?’
‘I come in peace,’ said the spaceman. ‘Take me to your leader.’
‘Excuse me?’ said Eddie.
‘Sorry,’ said the spaceman. ‘That one always comes out if I don’t control myself. As does, “So die, puny Earthling,” and, curiously, “I’ve done a wee-wee, please change my nappy.” Although personally I believe that one was programmed into me by mistake. Probably Friday afternoon on the production line – you know what it’s like.’
‘I certainly do,’ said Eddie, ‘or would, if it weren’t for the fact that I am an Anders Imperial, pieced together by none other than the kindly, lovable white-haired old Toymaker himself.’
‘I come from a distant star,’ said the spaceman.
‘I thought you said production line.’ Eddie Bear did paw-scratchings of the head.
‘Perhaps on a distant star,’ the spaceman suggested.
‘Perhaps,’ said Eddie, ‘but then again—’
‘Let’s not think about it.’ The spaceman took up his glass, put it to his face, but sadly found it empty. ‘I was about to say, let’s just drink,’ he said, ‘but I find to my utter despair that my glass is empty. Would you care to buy me a drink?’
‘Not particularly,’ said Eddie. ‘But thanks for asking.’
‘In return I will spare your planet.’
Eddie shrugged what shoulders he possessed. ‘I would appear to be getting the better part of that particular deal,’ he said. ‘If I possessed the necessary funds I think I’d buy you a drink.’
‘Perhaps you could ask the barman for credit?’
‘Perhaps you could menace him with your death ray and get the drinks in all round.’
‘Perhaps,’ said the spaceman.
‘Perhaps indeed,’ said Eddie.
The spaceman sighed and so did Eddie.
‘I wish I were a clockwork train,’ said the spaceman.
‘What?’ Eddie said.
‘Well,’ said the spaceman, ‘you know where you are when you’re a train, don’t you? It’s a bit like being in a bar brawl.’
‘No, it’s not,’ said Eddie.
‘No, I suppose it’s not. But you do know where you are. Which line you’re on. Which station you’ll be coming to next. It’s not like that for we spacemen.’
‘Really?’ said Eddie, who was losing interest.
‘Oh no,’
said the spaceman, ruefully regarding his empty glass. ‘Not a bit of it. We could be anywhere in the universe, lost in space, or on a five-year mission, or something. Drives you mad, it does, makes you want to scream. And in space no one can hear you scream, of course.’
‘Tell me about the monkeys,’ said Eddie, ‘the clockwork cymbal-clapping monkeys. Tinto tells me that you know who blasted them.’
‘I do,’ said the spaceman.
‘I’d really like to know,’ said Eddie.
‘And I’d really like to tell you,’ said the spaceman, ‘but my throat is so dry that I doubt whether I’d get halfway through the telling before I lost my voice.’
‘Hm,’ went Eddie.
‘ ,’ went the spaceman.
‘Two more drinks over here,’ called Eddie to Tinto.
‘Dream on,’ the barman replied.
‘Two then for the spaceman and in return he promises not to reduce Toy City to arid ruination with his death ray.’
‘Coming right up, then,’ said Tinto.
‘I need a gimmick like that,’ said Eddie, but mostly to himself.
‘Who did you say was paying for these?’ asked Tinto as he delivered the spaceman’s drinks to his table.
‘You said they were on you,’ said Eddie Bear, ‘because it’s the spaceman’s birthday.’
‘Typical of me,’ said Tinto. ‘Too generous for my own good. But you have to be cruel to be kind, I always say. Or something similar. It’s all in this book I’ve been reading, although I seem to have lost it now. I think I lent it to someone.’ Tinto placed two beers before Eddie and Eddie shook his head and thanked Tinto for them.
‘So,’ Eddie said, when Tinto had wheeled away and the spaceman had moistened his throat, ‘the clockwork monkeys.’
‘What a racket they make,’ said spaceman. ‘Or, rather, made. Tin on tin. If I had teeth, that noise would put them on edge. I don’t approve of willy-nilly blasting with death rays, but I feel that in this case it was justified.’