AN EARLY CHILDHOOD CHAPTER 27 PART 2: A VISIT FROM AN ARCH ENEMY?
Continued from here!
An Early Childhood by Paddy Flanagan is a mock surreal autobiography. Its first chapter is here. It parodies misery memoirs (such as Angela’s Ashes by the late great Frank McCourt), as well as science fiction, pop culture, and literature of various kinds.
After getting out of her wedding dress and back into her bra n knicks, Dyll pulled open the door.
"Allo, allo, allo!" boomed the voice of Colonel Coote Decker, First Earl of Mountwrath, a veritable Englander of Hiberno descent, and one of my mortal enemies. He stormed into the apartment, Barney and myself scrambling to get underneath the bed.
Dyll escorted him in, giving us enough time to hide. He was in a policeman's uniform - apparently his civilian job when he wasn't with the Terrorterrible Army, as was the name for the part timers in His Beardy Majesty's service, even if they were high ranking officers!
"I can't stay, lovvah!" Dyll insisted. "I have to go and get my shopping from the German discount supermarket."
German discount supermarkets were all the rage in England in the 1920s, due to the hyperinflation in the Weimar Republic. (You could get, like, a packet of noodles, and a box of four sachets of instant soup, for like, the equivalent of less than a euro in today's money. And you would still have a quarther groat and two thruppence hae'penny fartings left to play around with in your pocket on the walk home, or to feed to the coin-hungry, wish-granting goats on the banks of the local canal near the vicarage.)
Colonel Decker stood in his civilian clothes, taking off his helmet and unclicking his epaulettes, placing them beside the open fire to charge them, so that they would glow a glittery gold on their return to his shoulders.
"I can't stay, lovvah!" Dyll repeatered. "I have a shop to do!"
"Well, I can wait here. I've had a rough time of it, Dyll. I was in a castle back in Ireland, before the entire place blew up! Terrible nightmares during my stay at what became my headquarters. Honest to goodness, man! Errrr girl! We need to chat!"
"Nightmares?"
"The castle was blooming haunted! A woman, stalking the corridors, looking for her lost dead love from the rebellion of 1798!!! The poor bride, howling along the corridors, asking me - me! a blooming Englander - for help!"
"Look, I'm heading out, love. We can talk later!"
Colonel Coote Decker leapt onto the bed.
"I'm staying here!" he insisted, his childlike petulance echoing around the room, filling the hearts of myself and Cousin Barney with dread.
"It's your funeral!" Dylly Oblong declared, slipping into a pair of sans culottes and a blouson. "I'll be back in an hour!"
Colonel Decker threw his uniform on the floor before our very eyes, our hearts tumping. Dylly departered the apartment. Soon, there was snoring.
All of a whisper under the bed, I said:
"I thought Colonel Decker had been killed back before Ireland blew up, blasted by lightning."
Cousin Barney nodded, replying:
"But I heard he was revived through an unlightning procedure. And he had a couple of moles removed too."
The snores comprised a rich, buzzing, bed-shaking rumble, seismic in proportion and equally adept at being skull-boring. I scrambled out from under the bed, snatched Dyll's wedding dress off its hanger soundlessly, and ran into the next room. I put the dress onto the dog, Aijus Mite Eeetchyoo, Dyll's Larger Fokov Mastiff, from Russia. He took to the dress like a duck to water, even doing a bit of a dance. I slipped the veil over his head.
He bounded into the bedroom after I opened the door, got up at the foot of the four poster bed to look at his owner, and saw the face of Colonel Coote Decker, the Earl of Mountwrath. He howled. The Colonel looked up, saw the canine bride - and screamed.
"The bride from the castle has followed me home!" he roared.
The big friendly dog didn't appreciate that kind of talk, and bounded out of the room again. The colonel scrambled out of the bed, snatched his uniform, and fled the apartment, screaming down the street in his total and absolute nakedity.
To be continued in Part 3 of this chapter...
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