Just another little tale I tossed off, if you’ll excuse the phrase. Don’t read if you’re offended by silliness.
Code-talkers
“Emily!”, Alison squealed with pleasure. “Why it’s been…well, I don’t know! It must be three years – didn’t we last meet
at Jerry’s wedding?”
Her cousin shook her head, laughing.
“No – I couldn’t make it.
Don’t you remember? Mark had
messed up that business with the plumbing, and we had a flooded cellar. We had to stay at home to get it sorted out –
I emailed you all about it.”
“Oh, that’s right!” Alison replied. “I’ll bet you gave Mark a right good thra – “
–
and she broke off, glancing nervously at the
third member of their party, their aged Great Aunt Maggie, who was sitting
bright-eyed between the two of them, nodding happily.
“I mean – errr – well, you must
have had a few stern, errr, words
with Mark after that one.”
“I certainly did”, Emily nodded,
grimly. “Lots of words – three dozen that first time around, and then another
session a week later when the plumber’s bill arrived.”
“And how’s Mark now?” Emily
enquired casually. “When you last
emailed me, you said he was playing, errr, playing ‘golf’ rather too often and
you were thinking of putting a stop to it.”
Her cousin laughed.
“Oh, he won’t be playing ‘golf’
any more. Well…only when I say
so. I’ve got his ‘clubs’ all locked
away, safe and sound.”
“But you let him play
occasionally?”
“Oh yes. When he’s been good. But no more than once a month or so. Just so he doesn’t get completely out of
practice, you know. I’ve heard that
‘golf balls’ have to be used every month or so, otherwise they can get damaged.”
“Never seen the point of golf
myself!” Great-Aunt Maggie burst in unexpectedly. “Just grown-ups playing marbles if you ask
me. And snooker – that’s just as
bad. Tennis. I used to like watching tennis.”
“That’s nice Mags”, Emily said,
encouragingly. “Did you watch Wimbledon
this year?”
Great-Aunt Maggie looked
puzzled. “I’m not sure, dear.” She
replied. “Was that nice Mr Borg
playing? I’m sure he won something,
didn’t he?”
“Errr…I think that might have
been a year or two earlier, Mags” Emily said, uncertainly and the three sat in
silence for while.
“So how’s David?” Alison
prompted, after a while. “I expect you
still keep his ‘golf clubs’ locked away, mmm?
With spikes, if I remember rightly.”
“Oh no” Emily giggled. “David had the operation – I’m sure I must
have told you about it?”
“Operation, dear?” Great-Aunt
Maggie butted in, apparently pleased to be on her home turf of ailments and
remedies.
“Yes Mags. I took him in last year to have his errr” –
and she caught her cousin’s eye – “to have his ‘tonsils’ taken out.”
“That’s good”, her Great-Aunt
replied. “Much better off without them.”
“Oh yes”, Emily laughed. “He’s a changed man, without any ‘tonsils’
any more.”
“Did you get to watch the
operation?”, Alison asked with interest, as she had been thinking about arranging
for Mark to have his ‘tonsils’ removed too.
“Oh yes” her cousin replied
breathlessly. “It was great! They strapped him dow – I mean, they bandaged
him up tightly, and then they let me watch as they removed each of them in
turn. They even let me do the final
little snip. Gosh, it was so
exciting! I had a – errr – hot flush right there in the operating
theatre!”
“So was Mark under anaesthetic?”
Alison asked, beginning to feel the stirrings of a ‘hot flush’ herself, and
wondering whether Great-Aunt Mags would mind if the two excused themselves and
went upstairs to visit their old bedrooms.
“No – not even a local, not if
you don’t want it” her cousin replied, giggling. “He made quite a fuss, especially just before
the first ‘tonsil’ came off – I mean, ‘out’.”
“And they even let me keep the
tonsils afterwards” she added, casually.
“They’re in a little jar in my bedside drawer.”
“How lovely”, Emily
breathed. “So is David much more obedi –
I mean, is he a bit more co-operative now?”
“Oh yes”, her cousin smiled. “He does anything I want. And the housework’s all done, spic and span
every time. And he also – ”
“Itr was the electric that did
that!” Great-Aunt Maggie broke in.
“You what, Mags?”
“The electric. For housework. Made all the difference. Oh, before that it was impossible to get the
place clean. Cos before that we’d just
had gas, and that wasn’t the same, not at all.
Your Great Uncle Bert liked the gas, but I said, ‘no – we’re moving with
the times, Bert, we’re going electric.”
“That right, Mags?”, smiled
Alison, indulgently.
“Ooooh yes. I’ll tell you, as soon as we got that
electric installed, I said ‘Right Bert, this is how it’s going to be from now
on. This is the future, this is.’ And he
didn’t know the first thing about it! He
said, what’s it do then, Mags? That’s
what he said.”
“Didn’t he know about electricity
then, Mags?”
“Oh no, dear. This was 1938, and he was never very
technical, wasn’t Bert. So I showed
him! I plugged a cable into that socket
– we only had the one socket when we first got the electric put in – and I
attached one wire to the tip of his willy, using a hairclip, and shoved the
other up his arse and switched it on! Oooh,
he found out what it did then! You
should have seen him jumping about screaming ‘Switch it off, Mistress, I’ll be
good Mistress!’ Never had a moment’s
trouble from him after that – housework all done, all my meals served in bed
and a lovely bit of oral every Sunday morning before church. Oh – and when we needed a bit of extra money,
to buy a telly for the coronation, it just took one little dose of the electric
and he was off giving hand jobs to demobbed soldiers for two bob a time, just
to get a bit of extra money in.“
“Oh, it
used to scare the willies out of him, the electric, old Bert! Even worse than
the birch. He used to say ‘Oh please Mistress, give me two dozen with the
birch instead! Anything but the
electric, Mistress!’ ‘Course, I always
gave him double voltage when he tried to argue like that! And I’d sit on his
face while he was taking it, too!
Lovely, that was. Dear me. Happy days.”
She paused in contented
contemplation of times past, as her two great-nieces sat in shocked silence.
“Anyway, speaking of a bit of
oral, dears, I’ve got a lovely 24 year-old strapped to my bed upstairs –
Polish, or Czechyslovenian or one of those places. Doesn’t speak a word of English, but he goes
like a train and he knows what to do with his tongue when you take a flogger to
him. And I’ve got a brand-new strap-on
that’s going to make him squeal a bit too!
So I’ll leave you young people to natter about your golf and tonsils,
and I’ll take myself off for an early night and a good hard fuck. See you in the morning, dears.”
And with that, the ninety-seven year old eased herself up from her chair and slowly hobbled over to where the chairlift was waiting to carry her upstairs, leaving her younger relatives to wonder what else they might have been missing all of these years.
THE END
