A Twist in the Tale

I could anticipate almost to the second when breakfast would be ready. First I would hear the kettle boil, a few moments later the milk would be poured, then finally there would be the sound of a chair being pulled up. That was the signal I needed to confirm it was time for me to join him.

I stretched my legs slowly, noticing my nails needed some attention. I had already decided against a proper wash until after he had left for the office. I could hear the sound of the chair being scraped along the kitchen lino. I felt so happy that I literally jumped off the bed before making my way toward the open door. A few seconds later I was downstairs. Although he had already taken his first mouthful of cornflakes he stopped eating the moment he saw me.

“Good of you to join me,” he said, a grin spreading over his face.

I padded over toward him and looked up expectantly. He bent down and pushed my bowl toward me. I began to lap up the milk happily, my tail swishing from side to side.

It’s a myth that we only swish our tails when we’re angry.

THE STEAL

CHRISTOPHER AND MARGARET Roberts always spent their summer holiday as far away from England as they could possibly afford. However, as Christopher was the classics master at St. Cuthbert’s, a small preparatory school just north of Yeovil, and Margaret was the school matron, their experience of four of the five continents was largely confined to periodicals such as the National Geographic and Time.

The Robertses’ annual holiday each August was nevertheless sacrosanct and they spent eleven months of the year saving, planning and preparing for their one extravagant luxury. The following eleven months were then spent passing on their discoveries to the “offspring”: the Robertses, without children of their own, looked on all the pupils of St. Cuthbert’s as the “offspring.”

During the long evenings when the “offspring” were meant to be asleep in their dormitories, the Robertses would pore over maps, analyze expert opinion and then finally come up with a shortlist to consider. In recent expeditions they had been as far afield as Norway, northern Italy, and Yugoslavia, ending up the previous year exploring Achilles’ island, Skyros, off the east coast of Greece.

“It has to be Turkey this year,” said Christopher after much soul-searching. A week later Margaret came to the same conclusion, and so they were able to move on to phase two. Every book on Turkey in the local library was borrowed, consulted, reborrowed and reconsulted. Every brochure obtainable from the Turkish Embassy or local travel agents received the same relentless scrutiny.

By the first day of the summer term, charter tickets had been paid for, a car hired, a slightly larger hotel room booked and everything that could be insured comprehensively covered. Their plans lacked only one final detail.

“So what will be our ‘steal’ this year?” asked Christopher.

“A carpet,” Margaret said, without hesitation. “It has to be. For over a thousand years Turkey has produced the most sought-after carpets in the world. We’d be foolish to consider anything else.”

“How much shall we spend on it?”

“Five hundred pounds,” said Margaret, feeling very extravagant.

Having agreed, they once again swapped memories about the “steals” they had made over the years. In Norway, it had been a whale’s tooth carved in the shape of a galleon by a local artist who soon after had been taken up by Steuben. In Tuscany, it had been a ceramic bowl found in a small village where they cast and fired them to be sold in Rome at exorbitant prices: a small blemish which only an expert would have noticed made it a “steal.” Just outside Skopje the Robertses had visited a local glass factory and acquired a water jug moments after it had been blown in front of their eyes, and in Skyros they had picked up their greatest triumph to date, a fragment of an urn they discovered near an old excavation site. The Robertses reported their find immediately to the authorities, but the Greek officials had not considered the fragment important enough to prevent it being exported to St. Cuthbert’s.

On returning to England Christopher couldn’t resist just checking with the senior classics don at his old alma mater. He confirmed the piece was probably twelfth century. This latest “steal” now stood, carefully mounted, on their drawing room mantelpiece.

“Yes, a carpet would be perfect,” Margaret mused. “The trouble is, everyone goes to Turkey with the idea of picking up a carpet on the cheap. So to find a really good one…”

She knelt and began to measure the small space in front of their drawing room fireplace.

“Seven by three should do it,” she said.

Within a few days of term ending, the Robertses traveled by bus to Heathrow. The journey took a little longer than by rail but at half the cost. “Money saved is money that can be spent on the carpet,” Margaret reminded her husband.

“Agreed, Matron,” said Christopher, laughing.

On arrival at Heathrow they checked their baggage onto the charter flight, selected two nonsmoking seats and, finding they had time to spare, decided to watch other planes taking off to even more exotic places.

It was Christopher who first spotted the two passengers dashing across the tarmac,

obviously late.

“Look,” he said, pointing at the running couple. His wife studied the overweight pair, still brown from a previous holiday, as they lumbered up the steps to their plane.

“Mr. and Mrs. Kendall-Hume,” Margaret said in disbelief. After hesitating for a moment, she added, “I wouldn’t want to be uncharitable about any of the offspring, but I do find young Malcolm Kendall-Hume a…” She paused.

“‘Spoilt little brat’?” suggested her husband.

“Quite,” said Margaret. “I can’t begin to think what his parents must be like.”

“Very successful, if the boy’s stories are to be believed,” said Christopher. “A string of secondhand garages from Birmingham to Bristol.”