35

Mr Franklin D. Huff

I don’t think I could be accused of over-dramatizing my situation when I say that the circumstances of my return to Mulberry Cottage, Pett Level, were not only bizarre, perilous and profoundly uncomfortable, but also humiliating in the extreme. The monks had taken it upon themselves (while I was still incapable of coherent speech/movement/thought) to go through my notebook and contact Alys Jane Drury (of all people?!) to ask for her assistance in transporting me back home again (a sudden outbreak of mumps at the school had raised questions over my ongoing presence in the sanatorium). But obviously I couldn’t yet move or even sit up, so Alys (in her turn) called upon the considerable goodwill of her son-in-law, Fergal Kemp (the proud owner of a small window-cleaning business in Deal), to ask if she might possibly borrow his van for this purpose.

So it was that I found myself being puffingly deposited (they puffed, I puffed), flat on my belly, like a … an animal carcass being casually transported from a poorly managed abattoir – or a great alligator, the giant quarry of an illegal Rhodesian game hunt – or (still more aptly) a partially folded old ladder – into the back of this somewhat dilapidated vehicle. I suppose I should just be grateful that they didn’t tie me to the roof.

I was laid out on two sleeping bags. But I was slightly too long to fit. There was discussion (I kid you not) of roping together the back doors (perhaps this was only a joke), but in the end they pushed forward the front passenger seat and I was slid (slud? Slidded?) in on the diagonal, my head resting, uncomfortably, on an old blue sheet rolled up in a large plastic Woolworth’s carrier bag which was crammed into the resulting gap and exuded the heady aroma of cheap detergent, bad taxidermy and lactating cats. I then waited a full fifteen or twenty minutes for Miss Alys Jane Drury to reappear and take charge of her steed. According to Brother Linus she had ‘gone to pray in the abbey’.

Well, that’s great! That’s terrific! Why don’t I just lie here (in unseasonal heat) crammed (diagonally), into the back of your son-in-law’s window-cleaning van on a couple of filthy sleeping bags for an indefinite period while you saunter off to commune in – I don’t doubt – a suitably heartfelt manner with the Lord Almighty?

That’s absolutely fine and dandy! That’s great! Please don’t hurry yourself on my account! Only when you’re completely fit and ready, Miss Drury!

Eh?

Resentful, you say?

Resentful?!

Me?

Then (can I start a new paragraph with then? Why ever not? This is meant to be a chapter about change and insecurity and … and ‘transition’, after all), once she did finally turn up, Miss Drury seemed to be behaving in a manner that could only be described as ‘capricious’, ‘vacillating’, ‘dithery’. To start off with she called me ‘Mr Puff’, which I found disquieting. Then she confessed that she hadn’t really ‘got to grips’ with the van’s antiquated gearbox. Then she slammed her seat belt in her door (Brother Linus was running up the gravel path behind us gesticulating wildly – this I only imagined, since I was unable to see anything from my obscure angle in the back). Then, once the seat belt had been properly retrieved and applied (‘Thank you, Brother!’ she bleated, and, ‘I’m so very sorry, Brother!’ Brother Linus, meanwhile, could be heard opining dryly that, ‘The metal tip was sparking against the pebbles on the driveway – I thought the whole van might suddenly ignite!’), Miss Drury slammed the car into first gear and applied the accelerator (with some considerable force), only to discover (as we shot off the driveway and up on to the grass verge, knocking over a temporary fence which had been constructed by the monks to protect an area of newly laid turf) that she had accidentally placed it into reverse.