Stories: All-New Tales

I got through to him eventually. He was, as ever, sweet about it all. “Isn’t that just like your mother!” he said. “I know Franz Dodeca slightly. He’s a total obsessive, too rich for his own good. Come here to Bali and I’ll undertake to keep him off you.”

Well, I couldn’t do that. It strikes me as incest. Instead I asked him to lend me the garden of his house next door. He agreed like a shot and gave me the entry code at once. But he warned me that his caretaker gardener might not be pleased. He said he would phone this Mr. Wilkinson and explain. “And keep me posted,” he said. “Nothing happens here in Bali. It suits me, but I like a hit of distant action from time to time.”

January 2, 2234

JUST AS WELL I made that arrangement with Stepdaddy Five. They brought yesterday’s swans et cetera today, plus today’s lot, making fourteen inert, heavy floppy swans and twelve more geese. I showed the lot through Stepdaddy Five’s front door and out to the lake in his garden. The geese seemed to like it there. When the trees and the pigeons and the hens came, I showed them out there too. But the parrots had to stay with me because they were not hardy enough, they said. At least I got ten more gold rings.

We are getting seriously short of bird food. I went round to the corner shop, but they don’t open till tomorrow. Avian Foodstuffs are on holiday for the week. Again.

I don’t believe this! The swans were not all. I was just about to cross the road from the corner shop when I saw, trudging and bawling down the street, a whole herd of cows. Eight of them anyway. They were being driven by eight young women who, to do them justice, were looking a bit self-conscious about it. People in cars and on the pavements were stopping to stare. Some folk had followed them from Picadilly, apparently. You don’t often see cows in London these days.

My stomach felt queer. I knew they were for me. And they were. Honestly, how can this Dodeca even imagine I might want eight cows? Cows are not in the least romantic. Their noses run and they drop cowpats all the time as they walk. They dropped more cowpats through Stepdaddy Five’s nice hallway as I showed the lot of them out into his garden. I said to the girls, “If you want to stay, this house has fourteen bedrooms and there’s a pizza takeaway down the road. Feel free.” I was feeling more than a little light-headed by then. The parrots don’t help.

Now it’s got worse. Mr. Wilkinson arrived half an hour after the cows and bawled me out for allowing a herd of cows to trample his lawn. I said I would get rid of them as soon as I could. I was going to phone Mother and extract this Dodeca’s phone number from her and then phone him and tell him to come and take his livestock away. And see how he liked it. Before I could, though, a severe woman with a mighty bosom turned up on the doorstep, saying she was from the Bird Protection Trust and that my neighbours across the street had reported me for cruelty to birds. They had, she said, counted one hundred and seven various birds being delivered to my flat—busybodies!—where they were certainly overcrowded. I was to release them to better quarters, she said, or be liable for prosecution.

After Mr. Wilkinson, she was the last straw. I told her to get the hell out.

January 3, 2234

NO, THE LAST STRAW was today. I did phone Mother last night and she did, after a lot of squirming, give me Dodeca’s private number. The trouble was that I didn’t know what to say, and all these parrots make it so difficult to think—not to speak of yet another swan versus goose fight erupting every five minutes. My God those birds can be vicious! Then I sat on an egg when I started to phone Dodeca and gave up. I said I’d do it today.

Today started with those cowgirls coming round here whining and whingeing. There were beds but no sheets or blankets next door, they said, and it was not what they were used to. And where did they put the twenty gallons of milk? I said pour it away, why not? And they said it was a waste. Anyway, I got rid of them in the end, but only by ordering a stack of sheets and blankets online, which cost a bomb.

Then the bird deliveries began. By then we were almost out of bird feed, so I ushered this lot, swans included, into Stepdaddy Five’s garden and raced off to the corner shop. They only had canary food, so I bought all they had of that. I was staggering towards my flat with it when I saw an entirely new sort of van drawing up and Housebot, that traitor, blandly opening my front door to it. The men in it began unloading and putting together a large number of frameworks. I crossed the road and asked them what the hell they were doing.

They said, “Out of the way, miss. We have to get all these into this flat here.”

I said, “But what are they?”

“Trampolines, miss,” they said.

This caused me to bolt into my flat and race about scattering canary food and looking for that list Liam gave me. I found it just as they manoeuvered the first trampoline in. There were supposed to be nine of them. How they thought they were going to fit them in I have no idea. As I opened the list, one of the men got attacked by the broody goose on the sofa and they all went outside to let it settle down. Liam had written, “Ninth day: Nine lords a-leaping; Tenth day: Ten ladies dancing; Eleventh day: Eleven pipers piping…”

I didn’t read any more. I gave a wild wail and raced into my bedroom, where all the parrots seemed to have congregated, and to shrieks of “I love you, Samantha,” I packed all the parcels of rings into my handbag for safety and raced out again to the nearest public phone, praying it wouldn’t have been vandalised.

It wasn’t. I got through to Liam. “What is it now?” he said grumpily.

“Liam,” I said, “I’ve got nine trampolines now. Is it really true that I’m going to get ballet dancers and skirling Scotsmen next?”

“Pretty certainly,” he said, “if you got milkmaids yesterday. Did you?”

“Yes,” I said. “Liam, I have had enough.”

“What do you expect me to do about it?” he said.

“Marry me,” I said. “Take me away from all this.”

There was a dreadful, long silence. I thought he had hung up on me. I wouldn’t have blamed him. But at length he said, “Only if you can assure me that I’m not just an escape for you.”

I assured him, hand on heart. I told him that the mere thought of Franz Dodeca had made me realise that Liam was the only man for me. “Otherwise I’d get on a plane and go to my sister in Sweden,” I said. “Or maybe to Bali, to Stepdaddy Five.”