Bluebells

Badbury Clump, near Faringdon, Oxfordshire.

 

HINGEFINKLE'S LOGBOOK (Twelfth Instalment)

 

The Ways of the Wodehouse

 

Were I to describe every single adventure which Gladys Sparkbright and I experienced on our northward journey from I-slip, I fear I should rapidly run out of parchment. But these were adventures of a rather different order from those I have chosen to relate in this little tome, mainly on account of the homeliness of the landscape in those parts. Although there are great heathland “forests” and wonderful, windswept moors, there is little woodland, and there are very few swamps, so that the monsters which have been my lifelong specialism, being deprived of their natural habitats, are comparatively scarce. One day in early Beltane, as we came down from the moorlands and entered a pleasant, green valley inhabited by nothing but cows, sheep, cowherds and shepherds, I remarked as much to Gladys.

“Hum,” I said, munching on some of the local bread and cheese as we sheltered from the summer sun in a cleft in the hillside, “I must confess to being a little disappointed. The local fauna seems to be prosaic in the extreme. No Hydrus hingefinklii; no Draco terribilis pyromanicus! And no sign whatever of cockatrices or harpies. Fiddlesticks!”

 

And then, as I should have predicted, Gladys cast aside her pickle-pot, threw her hands up in despair at my ignorance, dug about in her little black bag for her latest miniaturised short-range telescope, and dragged me by the forearm to the bank of the stream.

“Raht,” she ordered, “shut yer gob a minute an’ look at them thare damsel-flies. Thar be nowt prosaic abaht them!”

I spent the remainder of that balmy afternoon pursuing various airborne invertebrates through the marginal vegetation, with Gladys’s telescope clapped to my eye. Twice I fell into the river whilst attempting to get a good view of an iridescent member of the genus Agriidae as it perched like a black-bewinged sapphire on a yellow-flag iris. Three times, I fell over backwards with surprise among tufts of Potomogeton and aquatic Ranunculii as I found myself confronted by the magnified compound eyes of a Coenagrion, gazing insolently at me through the lenses of the telescope. Once, I waded out up to my knees to watch a great, green-eyed Cordulegaster as it hovered above the surface of the stream, depositing eggs with its elongated, gold-daubed abdomen. And all around me, members of the aptly-named order Ephemeroptera undulated obsessively in mid-air like a thousand miniature marionettes on invisible strings.

 

It was dusk by the time I returned, caked with mud and dried algae, to where Gladys was perched with a cup of tea in her hand, on a high knob of rock overlooking the dale.

“Eee,” she said with a satisfied air, “This’d be a raht good spot ter build a castle, me duck. An’ a nahce wee village dahn on t’ banks o’t’stream. A good place fer Gnomes, Ah reckon. No disturbances, lahk - just peace an’ quiet. Perfect fer thinkin’ an’ inventin’.”

“Hum,” I said, lighting my pipe. “What would you call it?”

Gladys looked at me quizzically. “Why - Ah suppose Ah’d call it Castletown, if it ‘ad a castle. Wot else?” Then she paused and looked towards the north. “But it’ll ‘ave ter wait. We’ve got more travellin’ ter do.”

I found myself reflecting, not for the first time, that the determination with which Gladys had pursued our northward course, and the meticulousness with which she had kept us walking along the Zeroth degree of longitude in spite of all meanderings, suggested that she had some kind of premonition about what lay ahead of us - but as always, something in her eyes prevented me from asking. Not knowing what to say, I handed the miniaturised short-range telescope back to her, and was about to begin enthusing about the glories of the Odonata when she tucked the little contraption back into my pocket.

“Ah won’t be needin’ that ol’ thing any more,” she chuckled with a dismissive wave of her hand.

“Hum, whyever not?” I asked, unable to conceive how one could do without such a fine piece of apparatus once one had tried it.

“Wot d’yer think Ah’ve bin doin’ fer t’last six hours, ‘Ingefinkle?” she said with an exasperated look. “Ah’ve been makin’ a new improved model, that’s wot. Twahce th’ magnification, an’ nowt by way o’ colour fringes! Wot else is a woman ter do while t’ol’ codgers’re off chasin’ damsel-flies? Twiddle ‘er thumbs?”

 

*

 

Since I was afraid of appearing stupid, I refrained from asking Gladys how that little black bag of hers could possibly be capable of carrying all her provisions, the perfect pocket-watch, and all of the equipment required for the making of a telescope. We spent the night in the great stone cleft above the valley, before moving on with the rising of the sun.

“Tha’ll be gettin’ yer monsters soon enough,” said Gladys as we climbed the opposite hillside. “Tha knows what’s beyond these ‘ills, Ah suppose?”

“Hum,” I said. “No indeed. I have never been this far north before, so how should I know?”

“Eeee,” said Gladys, “tha’s nowt but a great daft owd bugger sometimes. Call yerself a monsterologist, duss tha? Well! We’ve an ‘undred mahles ter go t’th’Arp River, an’ between ‘ere an’ there - thar’s nowt but Wild Lands. Thar’ll be monsters starin’ at yer from every dark corner, you mark mah words, an’ yer won’t see nowt of ‘em but their eyes, glarin’ in t’ darkness! An’ it won’t do no good ter use yer astrolabe; yer won’t be able ter see t’stars fer vegetation!”

I was about to express my enthusiasm in response to this description, but my breath was quite taken away, for at that moment we cleared the brow of the hill, and I saw at once the truth of Gladys’s claims. The Wild Lands stood before us, a countless army of oak and hazel trees, stretching as far as the eye could see to east and west. Wind whistled mournfully through the gnarled branches, and a great flock of rooks soared into the air and circled mournfully above our heads. Before the woods there was a great ditch and rampart, and I could not avoid the impression that the people of those parts had dug the earthworks as a first line of defence against whatever lurked beyond. The first few rows of trees had been pollarded or coppiced some time in the past, but as Gladys tugged me by the sleeve and led me beneath the gnarled oak boughs, I perceived that, not far beyond the rampart, the trees were wild and untended, their trunks swathed at the base, where light permitted, with impenetrable brambles and nettles. The branches hung thick with grey-green lichens, and the fallen timbers were encrusted with fungi, spewing their black spores into the musty currents of air which swept across the forest floor. And as we walked deeper into the Wilds, there was nothing to be heard but the creaking of ancient bark in the wind, and our own footsteps seemed like distant echoes in the dank and mouldering semi-darkness. There was something unnatural about that darkness, but to this day, I would be flummoxed if you asked me what it was.

 

As Gladys had predicted, creatures watched us from the shadows as we pressed onward hour after hour. Or at least, I presumed that they did, for I would only ever see them in the corner of my eye - a movement in the undergrowth or the glowing of a slitted pupil - and then, when I swung around to face whatever it might be, there would be nothing there, and Gladys would tut and grab me by the arm once more, dragging me further into the spreading blackness. Sometimes, I could have sworn that we were surrounded on all sides by little pinpoints of light, but wherever I directed my gaze, they would extinguish themselves, leaving me confusedly rubbing my eyes.

“Gladys! Wait!” I whispered hoarsely. “I think I see some tracks!” They were quite unmistakable in the light of my lantern; the naked footprints of a large hominid, freshly impressed on the mould. I observed with some dismay that the prints culminated in deeply-scored grooves, suggesting claws of considerable ferocity. “Fiddlesticks! It’s not Goblins, is it? But I can’t smell them!”

 

Gladys stooped over the great footprints - which, as I noted with some alarm, were roughly twice the size of my own - first looking through her spectacles and then squinting above them. “Nay!” she said at last. “Tha’s got no need ter get all aeriated. No Goblin were ever that big! That thare is a wodehouse footprint. Daft owd clumsy buggers, they be, but they only ever kill people by accident. Nowt ter worry abaht at all!”

“This is - this is absolutely fascinating!” I cried, and realised with a start that my voice seemed to be echoing throughout the entire forest. But I must confess that enthusiasm had quite driven away all fear. The wodehouse is described in great detail in the bestiaries (though some are marred by their erroneous insistence that wodehouses only live in the Indies, where they do battle with centaurs - a quite ridiculous assertion, since centaurs are the purely mythical products of the over-indulged and under-utilised imaginations of Keltia’s former oppressors). It would seem that a far better summary is that contained in the bestiary owned by Druid Agrimony - admittedly not always a reliable source, but in this case at least, well deserving quotation:

 

Beware the wodehouse of the woods

Who pilfers packs and steals the goods

Of unsuspecting passers-by,

In lands where none may hear their cry

Of disgruntled, dread dismay!

A wodehouse pelt is grizzled grey,

It dangles down about his knees

And oft is thick with grime and grease.

Hairy too his feet and paws

All four of which do end in claws.

His face is fit to curdle milk

For all creatures of his ilk

Possess a most upsetting scowl.

He slobbers oft, his breath is foul,

And gutteral his gurgling gripe.

He may be caught with bits of tripe

Hung upon a simple trap -

Or failing that, a piece of crap

Will entice him just as well

(But once he’s caught, he’ll give you hell).

A wodehouse walks on his hind feet,

His hands reserved to choke and beat,

Batter, bruise, belay and belt:

The fight’s not worth it for his pelt.

You fool! Flee faster while you can!

Don’t rouse the wrath of the wild man!

 

I was not, needless to say, particularly interested in the wodehouse’s pelt - unless perhaps to determine whether the proverbial greasiness of wodehouse hair is the product of some uropygial gland, or merely a consequence of unrefined eating habits - but the opportunity to observe the creature at close quarters was enticing for other reasons. There was the question of auricles and ventricles, for a start; by means of my stethoscope I hoped to learn something of the relationship between the wodehouse and the other hominid races. I also hoped to be able to determine whether, in addition to walking on its hind legs, the creature was capable of swinging from overhead branches with its hands. My mind reeled with questions: does the wodehouse possess a tail; does its dentition suggest an omnivorous diet or one composed entirely of tripe and manure; does the creature have recourse to the use of tools; does it recognise archetypal gestures such as laughing, frowning or weeping; is its “gurgling gripe” savage and inarticulate - or does it contain the rudiments of language? In short, I could not contain my excitement - and indeed did not attempt to do so, but instead poured all my energies into communicating that excitement to Gladys Sparkbright, inventor of the Humane Hydra Trap.

 

“Eeee - Ah don’t rahtly know whether Ah should encourage you, ‘Ingefinkle. Ah’m able ter invent a pocket watch wit’ no friction, a high-resolution oil-immersion mahcroscope, a miniaturahsed short-range telescope - an’ all tha wants from me is traps. Rahtio, then - but this trap’ll be t’ trap ter end all traps - you mark mah words!” And with that, Gladys industriously set about building a wodehouse trap. In the meantime, since our provisions did not appear to include any tripe, I went about the business of procuring a stool (and the means by which I did so must remain my secret). I returned in time to be thrown to the ground by a large explosion which hurled earth up from the forest floor to a height of seven ells. By the time I had staggered to my feet, Gladys was walking towards me, dusting off her hands and cramming her hair back into place with a knitting needle.

“Raht. ‘Ast tha got t’ bait? Eeee! Well done, ‘Ingefinkle - but Ah think Ah’ll let you attach it - to that wee ‘ook hangin’ from that thare bough.”

As I impaled the bait on the hook indicated by Gladys, I surveyed the scene with amazement. Never was a trap so complex, nor so fail-safe: any one of the multitudinous mechanisms of Gladys Sparkbright’s Wodehouse Trap would have been sufficient to secure our quarry. My eyes boggled at the formidable array of trip-wires, bent boughs, greased tree-trunks and divers other contraptions made of chiselled oak-boughs and held together with pieces of knotted string. I deduced that the trap was triggered by the trip-wire, which would cause a piece of twined ivy to wrap itself around the wodehouse’s legs in response to the merest vibration. This in turn would cause one of the bent boughs to swing into the air, carrying the wodehouse with it, where the creature would dangle upside-down above the large, circular pit which had been formed by the explosion.

“Hum,” I said. “An admirable trap, Gladys. If the wodehouse escapes from the ivy rope, it will promptly drop into the pit, which, I perceive, you have smeared with dripping. Well, I doubt whether the dripping will damage the pelt. But you don’t think, do you, Gladys, that the wodehouse might have been frightened away by your explosion?”

“Nay!” Gladys waved her arm dismissively. “Wodehouses’re as deaf as posts. ‘E’ll be in t’ trap bah mornin’, raht as rain!”

 

*

 

We retreated into the forest until we were sure that our movements would not frighten our quarry, and then, oblivious to the gaze of a thousand elusive eyes, we sat down and waited. Gladys rummaged about in her little black bag, rearranging things until her ball of string would fit inside. I fiddled with my tinder-box and lit my pipe, and Gladys remarked that she ought to invent an improvement on flint-striking for the making of fire. My smoke rings curled into the darkness; I emptied my pipe and refilled it - once, twice - I know not how many times. Now, the darkness was total, and lighting my lantern, I perceived that Gladys had fallen asleep, exhausted as she was from her exertions.

“Hum,” I said to myself. “I wonder if we’ve caught the wodehouse yet?” and raising my lantern, I wandered off to check the trap.

 

My dear little Alias - if ever you should find yourself in the environs of the Harp River, do not underestimate the power of the darkness to distort one’s sense of direction. I wandered this way and that, groping on the forest floor in search of the pegs which held the trap, but all I found was mould, mushrooms, and the grooved and pitted bark of ancient treetrunks. At last, I gave up hope, and had just set my mind to finding Gladys again, when there was a loud twang, and my sense of disorientation was magnified by the fact that, so far as my befuddled mind could deduce, I appeared to be hanging upside-down somewhere in the middle of the Wild Lands, my eyes staring into pitch-darkness. To make matters worse, the myriad glowing eyes appeared to have abandoned their furtiveness, and were now gazing hungrily at me to the accompaniment of the licking of a multitude of lips.

 

“Gladys?” I called, somewhat forlornly at first, but as the eyes increased in diameter, more loudly and with greater urgency. “Gladys? I appear to have met with a mishap. Gladys? Oh fiddlesticks, do wake up!”

But it seemed that Gladys was slumbering blissfully on, and as time crept by and the creatures crept closer, I could feel the blood slowly accumulating at the top of my cranium until my feet felt as though they were encased in ice. Water dripped on me from an overhanging branch, and its inexorable rhythm was driving me to distraction. “Gladys!”

 

“Eeee! ‘Ingefinkle! What hast tha been up to?” came Gladys’s voice from the darkness. “Yer’ve missed t’ wodehouse, tha knows!”

“What do you mean, I’ve missed the wodehouse?” I cried, feeling quite dizzy and not at all myself.

“Well,” said Gladys, “Ee were with me just now, plain as t’ nose on yer face!”

“Hum. You mean - you caught a glimpse of him?”

“Glimpse? Nay, ‘Ingefinkle, Ah ‘ad meself a nahce long chat with ‘im.”

“You chatted with a wodehouse?” I squeaked. “What did he say?”

“Oh, nowt as could be understood,” replied Gladys consolingly, “an’ ee were a bit deaf - Ah ‘ad ter shout down ‘is lug ‘ole ter make ‘im understand me.”

“I see,” I said, gallantly maintaining my composure, “and what precisely did you do with this wodehouse?”

I could hear Gladys rolling up the sleeves of her cardigan in the darkness. “We ‘ad a nahce ‘ot cup o’ tea, that’s wot!” she said.

“Oh,” I said, because there was very little else worth saying.

“Raht, then,” laughed Gladys. “Well, we’d best be off. Tahme ter be headin’ north again.” The blood at the top of my cranium pounded as I realised that she was walking back the way she had come.

“Gladys!” I blubbered, for I confess that by that stage I was feeling a wee bit of vertigo.

“Eh?” said Gladys’s receding voice. “Wot’s tha gettin’ all aeriated abaht, ‘Ingefinkle?”

“Hum,” I replied. “I don’t suppose you could start inventing a way of getting me down from here, could you Gladys?”

 

It is at times like those that I wish I had been less ambitious, and chosen to specialise in the Odonata.

 

Done