A Stroke of the Pen, page 9
‘Fireworks,’ he thought. ‘Funny, it’s only January.’
The whistling noise rose to a jet scream.
‘On the other ’and it may be an aircraft,’ thought PC Biddle.
Now flames could be seen around the dot, which was hurtling towards Grumble’s Wood just outside the town.
‘Or a rocket or a balloon,’ PC Biddle thought.
CRUMP!
Dogs barked. Dust fell down from mantelpieces all over Blackbury. Several bats fell out of a belfry and the Town Hall clock struck seventeen.
There was a great glow over Grumble’s Wood. Within minutes the constable was pedalling furiously along the darkened lanes towards the wood, in a perfect hail of leaves and splinters.
When he got there most of the wood was just a great big hole, full of smoke and steam. At the bottom of it—
PC Biddle squinted through the haze. There was a large glowing object in the bottom of the crater. He stared at it.
Behind him he heard the felonious sound of an official police bicycle being stealthily stolen. ‘Oi!’ he bellowed, turning round.
But by now the mysterious thief was well on his way into Blackbury.
Next morning there was a very different scene round Grumble’s Wood. For one thing it was snowing. There were several police cars and a Land Rover from Blackbury University. There was a lot of commotion around the hole.
‘Whatever it was, it was spotted by astronomers all over the world,’ Dr Jasper Blot was saying.
‘Funny to think it came all that way just to drop on old Grumble’s Wood,’ said Chief Inspector William Jones. ‘Er, just what job have you got at the University, Doctor?’
‘I lecture in knitting and domestic economics, actually. All the science staff are away, so they sent me. Blowed if I really know why.’
The thing was, the object in the hole was still red hot. There were some rather odd markings on it.
‘Did you see The Ghastly Thing From Dr Death’s Horror Plane that was on at the Odeon last week?’ asked Jones. ‘This thing came out of a spaceship, see, and it ate—Oh well, anyway, the film started just like this. I think I shall lock my greenhouse tonight. Do you think something came out of that and stole PC Biddle’s bicycle?’
Before Dr Blot could answer, there was a buzz from the radio in Jones’s police car. He switched it on.
‘We’ve found something very odd out on the East Slate Road,’ said the radio. ‘Something’s broken into a greengrocer. We think you better come and look, sir.’
Something had smashed the window of the shop and had stolen twenty-three cabbages. But that wasn’t the strangest thing. In the snow outside the shop there was just one very large, long footprint. There was another several yards away. And another further on still.
‘Oh dear,’ said Chief Inspector Jones. ‘Oh dear, oh dear, oh dear.’
All that day police tramped after the giant footprints, until they lost them in the bushes on Blackbury Common.
Next day the morning papers were full of headlines like: BLACKBURY OUTER SPACE HORROR SHOCK!
And on Friday even the Blackbury Gazette, Journal and Weekly Post* had a headline between the auction notices on the front page which said: ‘Curious Mystery of Giant Footprints Puzzles Police’, which was about as excited as the paper ever allowed itself to be about anything.
The police station started getting telephone calls from people who said they’d seen strange green men wandering around. Or purple men. Or big blue spiders.
‘It wasn’t a big blue spider that stole PC Biddle’s bicycle; its feet would never be able to turn the pedals,’ thought Mr Jones.
Then a patrol car was called round to the home of Mrs Edna Bucket, who said she’d been frightened by a ‘great hairy monster’.
‘It came leaping over the fence just as I was putting out the washing,’ she said.
The chief inspector called in Dr Blot. ‘This is the first full description we’ve got of the Thing,’ he said. ‘It’s large and hairy, with long ears and one leg. And a tail.’
‘And it must eat cabbages,’ said Dr Blot.
‘And according to Mrs Bucket it can jump over a clothesline. Perhaps it comes from some low-gravity planet with a lot of cabbages on it.’
That night something large and hairy bounded along a dark street and knocked a policeman’s helmet over his eyes.
Next day the army was called in, and a lot of experts from the Ministry of Defence started poking at the mysterious thing in Grumble’s Wood. A lot of reporters came up from London.
And that afternoon PC Biddle discovered his bicycle. It was leaning against a fence on his beat, and someone was pumping up the tyre.
‘What’s all this then?’ he said in his regulation voice. ‘Soapy Fred, I do believe.’
Soapy Fred was a well-known Blackbury poacher. He straightened up and – seeing a glint in PC Biddle’s eye – nodded his head.
‘All right, Ron, I snitched it,’ he said. ‘I just wanted to get out of that wood quick.’
‘Grumble’s Wood? What were you doing there?’
‘Watching pheasants, in a manner of speaking. And then that thing landed not a hundred yards away.’
‘In that case,’ said PC Biddle slowly, scratching his chin, ‘what’s this Thing that’s terrorizing the town?’
Already the soldiers that were patrolling Blackbury had found some more giant footprints in the snow. They led again to the thick bushes on Blackbury Common, which were soon surrounded by tanks and guns.
At about the same time a very worried lady was in the little village police station in East Slate, ten miles away.
‘I run the Retirement Home for Sick Performing Animals in Grubbs Lane, and I want to report a stray animal. I can’t find him anywhere,’ she said.
‘And what would be the nature of this said animal?’ said the policeman, licking his pencil.
‘It was the big bang over towards Blackbury the other night that must have frightened him. He jumped right over the wall,’ she went on. ‘He’s a kangaroo. His name is Babo. But the poor thing has only got one leg. He had an accident when he was just a little—’
The constable was having a quick think. ‘Excuse me, madam. I think I’d better make a telephone call,’ he said.
About an hour later the lady came out of the bushes on Blackbury Common leading a rather small and sorrowful kangaroo. Very quietly, without catching each other’s eyes, everyone else went home.
And up in Grumble’s Wood, late that night, a large tentacled Thing with purple skin and three eyes climbed down from the tree where it had spent the last few days. And sidled over towards the globe in the crater. It pressed a few lumps on the outside, and when a hidden door opened it climbed in.
‘I shan’t come here for my holidays again,’ it thought. ‘These human beings are crazy.’
A few minutes later there was the sound of a motor starting up, and, just as the sun came up, the little round spaceship rose out of Grumble’s Wood and very soon disappeared into the clouds.
Mr Brown’s Holiday Accident
It was a fine summer morning, and Mr John Brown was off on his holidays. Well, half-off really, because he was stuck in a traffic jam halfway to the coast.
‘Fourteen whole days without having to work for Trouser, Trouser, Middling and Fedge,’ he thought. ‘Blowed if I’m going to spend them stuck in a queue!’
Then he did something which, in view of what happened later, was really terrible and upsetting. He drove off the main road and down a little tree-lined lane. He was quite surprised at himself, because he’d normally never dream of such a thing. Still, the birds were singing and the blossom was out, and the car bowled along happily.
Until he hit something, in the middle of an empty road. There was a horrible tearing noise.
When he opened his eyes, the orchards, hills and sky were gone. Ahead of the car stretched a concrete plain, littered with piles of wood, lights and lorries. Small men were running towards him.
It was as if the car had gone straight through a tall thin wall.
‘It must be a builder’s yard – perhaps I’d better just carefully go away,’ he thought, putting the car into reverse. He looked over his shoulder, and then saw the wall. The sky, hills and orchards were painted on it. It stretched away for miles on either side.
‘Why, it’s nothing but scenery!’
A dozen little men in blue overalls grabbed the car and pulled it back through the hole. John was dragged screaming from the driver’s seat, while a couple of the men hurriedly set to work to repair the hole in the landscape.
Mr Brown was carried into a wooden hut and dumped in a chair. Then the door was locked.
It was a fairly normal hut. An iron stove was burning in one corner, and the walls were covered with maps and plans. A small worried-looking man with his shirt sleeves rolled up sat behind a desk groaning with paper.
‘I don’t know, why can’t you people do what’s expected of you?’ moaned the worried man, shuffling through the paper. ‘Let’s see, now – you’re John Brown, off on holiday. Why didn’t you stick to the main roads? We’ve done the scenery for that. No one was expected down this lane for years.’
‘Scenery—?’
‘You don’t think all these trees and hills just grew, did you? You’re the first person to come down the lane for six months. Good heavens, think of the maintenance if we had to keep real landscape going all that time! My name’s Snigsley, by the way. I’m the props manager for this stage.’
There was a furious banging at the door, and Snigsley opened it to see a workman.
‘Yellow alert, sir! The vicar at St Not’s has gone for a walk up to Hangman’s Wood!’
‘Well, that’s all right.’
‘No, sir. ’Cos, don’t you remember, we took down the Hangman’s Wood scenery and painted a buttercup field on the back – there’s nothing there!’
Snigsley grabbed his cap.
‘Come on, this is an emergency – he’ll walk backstage unless we do something!’
Snigsley, the props manager, dashed out of the hut, with John Brown in tow. A lorry pulled up. It was full of little men in blue overalls. Snigsley pushed Brown aboard and leapt on as the vehicle shot away.
‘It’s like this,’ he said, as they rushed past piles of studio lights and old scenery. ‘There is so much scenery that people never get close to, so really, it’s much cheaper to paint it and shift it around. Take a forest. People mostly only walk through it on the paths, and only look at the trees near them. The others we make out of cardboard. There hasn’t been really what you might call natural scenery in this country for about two hundred years.’
‘But why?’ asked Brown, goggling as they drove past a neat stack of cardboard hills.
‘Well, they wanted an economy drive. Only use the least amount of scenery, they said. So we have to work our fingers to the bone shifting all the trees and mountains and plastic sheep and hedges and balsa-wood fences around so that none of you actors notices a big hole in the landscape.’
‘Actors? I’m not an actor – I’m a chartered accountant!’
‘That’s right, that’s your part. You act being a chartered accountant, and now something’s gone wrong and you’re backstage. It was the prompter’s fault, probably. How do they expect us to work efficiently with the stuff they give us?’
‘Who are “They”? If I’m an actor, what’s the play?’
‘“They” are – the management. And the Play is The Absolute and Complete History of Earth, in 3,982,611,037,278,901,777,690,535,016,152 Acts (and a fifteen-minute interval).’
The lorry pulled up with a screech, and the sceneshifters piled out. Snigsley moaned and picked up a megaphone.
‘The parson should be in the vicarage, not taking a walk! The scriptwriters have slipped up again. Okay, boys, grab them trees! One, two – that’s right! Clompers, you sprinkle some dead leaves around – faster, man, that’s it. Okay, now ferns, ferns where— FERNS. Right, birdsong, switch on the birdsong – more fungus over there, Blimpo – path, quick, puddles. Okay, get those flowers growing, bring in a few bees. BEES. Man, put that squirrel in that tree, okay, right, fine, marvellous – BEAT IT! Here he comes!’
While Brown watched in amazement the bare backstage plain was covered in earth. Trees appeared, grass sprang up, birds started to sing, and the parson ambled past, smiling pleasantly. He didn’t appear to notice anything wrong. Immediately behind him the scenery was disappearing again.
Snigsley took out a red handkerchief and mopped his brow.
‘That was close! One day someone’s going to turn a corner and find nothing but a couple of stagehands having their tea. Right, boys, let’s get back.’
‘What about me?’ said Brown.
‘You? Oh, you’ll have to be written back into the play. You’ll have to have a word with the scriptwriters. Go through that door over there.’ He pointed to a door standing all by itself in the middle of the plain.
‘It doesn’t lead to anywhere; I can see behind it.’
‘Have it your own way,’ said Snigsley. ‘I’m just Jimmy Muggins around here. You run along and don’t bother me, that’s all.’
Brown walked around the doorway once or twice, and then decided that it was worth trying. He pushed it open, there was a flash of light and he was standing in a corridor. It was painted in brown and cream, stretched away into the distance, and was lined with doors. He peered at the untidy notice scrawled on one of them.
‘Scriptwriters: Corridor 1, Room 1. Oh well, here goes.’
‘All right, come in.’
Brown saw a small man sitting behind a typewriter. The room was full of tobacco smoke and sheets of paper were lying in drifts on the floor.
‘Please, I want to get back into the play . . .’ began Brown.
‘What’s your name – Brown? Speak up man, don’t mumble! You’re in the wrong corridor – go to the end and turn left. The man’s an idiot, an idiot—’
Brown closed the door quietly and set off up the corridor. Several hours later he turned left into another one and after several more hours he came to a door with his name on it. In fact, there were 8,979 doors all with the same name, but before another day had passed he was level with the one that said: ‘John Trevor Brown, aged 29, Chartered Accountant. 12 Windmill Place, Blackbury. Scriptwriters: Parsnip, Bagel and Blintz’.
‘I’m blowed if I’m going to knock!’ he thought, pushing the door open.
Parsnip, Bagel and Blintz were standing around a typewriter with their backs to Brown. They were laughing and Bagel was slowly tapping at the typewriter.
‘Right, so we’ve got him on the beach,’ he was saying. ‘How’s about his trousers falling down? Or couldn’t we get his deckchair to collapse?’
‘Get him to buy an ice-cream, then drop it in the sand,’ suggested Parsnip.
‘Hey, that’s good; that’s very funny,’ said Blintz.
‘Ahem,’ said Brown. They all turned round.
‘Who are you?’ said Bagel.
‘I’m the man whose name is on the door,’ said Brown, ‘and you are my scriptwriters, I suppose . . .’
Blintz rushed forward and shook his hand.
‘I’ve always wanted to meet you,’ he said. ‘You know, I’ve been writing your life for years, Mr Brown. Well, I never. But how did you get here?’
‘I sort of got behind the scenery,’ said Brown. ‘I was going off on holiday at the time. Is that what you were writing? I can’t say I like the sound of it!’
‘Oh, it’s real funny,’ said Bagel, ‘a barrel of laughs. You’re a natural comedian, though we say it ourselves. The audience really love you.’
‘But there’s billions of people in the world! How’d they see me?’
‘They do, that’s all,’ said Parsnip hurriedly. ‘Well, well, who’d have thought it? Fancy an actor coming backstage!’
‘I’m not happy about my part: it’s hardly a starring role,’ said Brown, who was getting quite used to the idea.
‘Nonsense, it’s a first-class piece of character acting,’ said Parsnip. A small green telephone, half hidden under a heap of paper, rang. He picked it up and his face went white.
‘Yessir. He’s here, sir. Yes, sir, I understand, sir. We’ll send him right up, sir. Goodbye, sir.’
‘It’s the Director,’ he said. ‘He wants to see you in his office. My word, you’re probably in for k— You’ll be lucky if you don’t get the sack!’
‘I’d like to see him try!’ said Brown. ‘I’ve had enough, I want to go back!’
‘Goodbye!’ chorused the scriptwriters. There was a blue flash, a little clap of thunder and he was tumbling over and over on a very thick, red carpet.
He staggered to his feet and found that the carpet came up to his ankles. He was in an office, but the walls were so far away that they were misty. There was a large desk about half a mile away and he started to struggle towards it.
A large man in a blue suit was sitting with his feet up on the desk. He was smoking a cigar and wearing dark glasses, and when Brown approached, he was reading a newspaper.
Brown stood by the desk for five minutes, and then pointedly coughed.
‘Oh, it’s you, is it?’ said the Director, peering over the paper. ‘Have a cigar? I can’t understand you actors. Troublemakers, the lot of you. What’s all this about?’
Brown told him his story.
‘Through the scenery, eh? Oh well, it wasn’t your fault. The question is, though, Brown, the question is: what shall we do with you now?’
‘Look,’ said John Brown. ‘All I want is to be back in my little car. Stuck in the middle of that traffic jam. I just want to forget all about this.’
The Director puffed at his cigar.
‘Okay,’ he said. ‘It’ll mean rewriting the plot a little bit. Abracabazomah!’
There was another blue flash, and Brown found himself standing by the Director on a high platform overlooking the biggest room he had ever seen. It stretched away on all sides and was full of giant bookshelves. Thousands of little men were crawling over them, and narrow-gauge electric trains were shuttling between the massive shelves, laden with volumes.
