(published ‘New Visions’ 1989)

Max Haze was on another assignation, plummetted into the wide open spaces of East Anglia by his agent Luke. Being an action man at heart, but a journalist by trade, he did not resent such trips, welcomed them in fact for unlocking the fetters of the mind, as travel often does. But, this place was bereft of any inspiration...

“Come in, Luke, come in, Luke.”

He tried out his car telephone, one that had only recently been fitted, following their invention by a no doubt clever busy-body who, in the main, thought that business men should be saddled with such so-called technical efficiency aids. Of course, the benefits of these devices for free lance journalists are obvious. But, Max could not help thinking, life would be so much simpler without them. He did not really want to speak with Luke right now as, surely, tonight would have been enough, after ensconcing himself in some back of beyond hotel, with scotch & american in his hand to steel him against any verbal onslaughts. In fact, he didn’t want to talk to Luke again ... ever.

“OK, Haze, I’m here, less of your pretence of being on war manoeuvres,” came a cracked voice on the phone’s loud¬speaker.

“I’m in the vicinity of the town, stammered Max, “But I’ve forgotten what it’s called and I’m finding the fingerposts difficult to read.”

“Haze, when did a mother of this Earth ever give body room to a greater nincompoop...?”

The telephone went dead. Thank God at least for that, he thought, as he made his seventeenth three point turn of the day.

Night was drawing in and he felt uncannily as if he had been driving round in circles for hours. The trees, plenty of which he could still see into the flat distances of the terrain, looked like knobby creatures, of a black darker than the sky, frozen in a flight from Hell. He didn’t usually think in those terms; he left that to the more “creative” journalists like rac¬ing tipsters and political columnists, but the atmosphere had done funny things to his mind. He was a scandalmonger and proud of it.

He couldn’t get off the roundabout; he could not bring himself to make a decision as to which exit to take. Suddenly, the telephone broke its silence.

Beep! Beep!

He tried to ignore it, but he could not bear it, for its beep grew louder, more insistent. He hadn’t realised that these damned machines had been given impatience facilities.

He finally took the exit along which he had originally come in upon the roundabout. He soon found himself driving into a small town. (The bleeping had stopped, thank goodness - whoever it was had given up.) In the market square, where the youths of the town seemed to be congregating round a tall clocktower, he spotted a likely looking hotel called the Churn Owl, but evidently no parking facilities. He straddled the car over pavement and road, so that he could pop in to see if there were any vacancies.

At Reception, a young lady told him there was a message from Luke: to ring him as soon as possible. No vacancies, for there was some sort of folk festival going on. No alternatives, the Churn Owl was the only hotel, but he could try Mrs. Tudd’s who sometimes did a bed at short notice.

He thanked the young receptionist, who as it happened was in a skimpy blouse, and, on returning to his car, found it surrounded by a large crowd of gits. Some toted guitars and others had harmonicas strung on blow-frames...

One of them, a bearded fellow in holey cardigan and skinny jeans, had evidently opened the car door and had the phone pressed to his ear.

“Hey! What do you think you are doing?”

“It was ringing. friend, so I thought I would answer it. There’s a hot geezer here, who wants to talk to you real bad. but the line went dead well before I could make much sense from what he was saying. Though I do think he said something about bewaring the Morris Dancers...”

Max snatched the handset from the fellow who was little better than a hippy throwback to the sixties.

He drove round and round, till he found Mrs Tudd’s. Hers was a little cottage with a rose trellis. There was a little space in her front garden where he could escape the double yellow lines, so he drove straight in and pulled up with a screech a few inches from the cottage door.

He rat-tat-tatted. As he waited, he could just hear the strains of tambourines and pipes, the rhythmic thud of jingle-jangling feet and clatter of wooden batons. They seemed to be getting nearer.

At last, the door opened, and a buxom-chested lady in her middle years was suddenly framed like an old Flemish painting.

“Yes?”

“I understand you might be able to put me up for the night. The Churn Owl is full, you see.”

“That be the festival.” Her voice had the same lilting drawl as the hippy and the girl with the skimpy blouse. “I always get oddbods rattling my front door, come the festival. But, you can have a bed, young man, if you don’t mind sharing.”

“I don’t know about sharing a room, because at night I sometimes...”

“No, no, not sharing a room, sharing a bed I do mean.”

The jingling feet were, without doubt, getting nearer.

Max cursed Luke under his breath. He was not sure whether he was in the right town anyway. But, who knows - dependent on the newsworthiness of the person sharing his bed, there might be some scandal to scoop...

Needing an early night, he tossed and turned, waiting for whoever was to be his co-passenger for the night; his mind suddenly bleeped and there entered it the inescapable message from all those he had pulled through the gutter in his column; followed by a troupe of prancing men with the stuffing coming out, clacking their own bared bones together; then merging gradually with those skeletal tree-creatures released from stasis by others’ nightmares, marching like shadows across the bedroom wall; which he saw as he was awoken by the arrival in the bed of one with large suffocating breasts; the last message he had was from Luke tearing him off a strip for never answering his earphone.

The jangling and clackering went on down the street, fading gradually into the night.