DAVID BIRCUMSHAW

from THE CHRONICLES OF THE LATTER BONE

Prior to the declaration of perpendicularity but after the deletion of The Party, in the resuscitated summer of The Year Once Classified, as the calendar turned itself back, flipping over with joy at the alteration of authority and the liberation of spelling, and exiled nouns, dispossessed verbs, expropriated pronominals and very indefinite articles carolled and caroused in the capital, just before, although not very long, the return of the untoward, the True Bone was restored to The Land.
    After the Author's decision, in the freshly depopulated offices and corridors of Party HQ the first, curious and cautious adjectives peered. The liberation army emerged from under the ground and, led by Red Alf, Mr and Ms EE and jake the archivist, they declared the Disappearance of The State. All prohibitory pronouncements revoked. Free use of do-it-yourself. Drabness defunct. Dictionaries for all. Recycling camps closed. Travel warrants freely available for The Crossing. State Booths to become hostels for young and adventurous verbs. A vast throng of The Others and the Many-Headed milled around the Central Square, cheering the liberation army. The Statue of The Head Of State was pulled down to the ground and the Dome of its cranium lost all colour and, selfishly, disappeared. Its former supporter was broken, in effigy, and carted off to make rock gardens, crazed paving and unfathomable mantelpiece objets d'apart.
    Standing on the former HQ balcony, Ms EE, with, little HH in her arms, revealed the fabrication of The Hidden Bone and proclaimed the True Bone's return from Another Dimension. WHO LOVES YA BABY and NO HOME WITHOUT BONE banners waved in the square. Celebration lingered throughout summer. A new festival, The Author's Pen, replaced The Happy Days of Friar Economicus. Remarkably co-incident, on its first day the half-drowned bodies of the financial friar, Enamoricus Armoricon and WPC Grimbold were found on the banks of a lake of correction fluid. Humanely, they were received into intensive care. It was thought by many a sign of authorial mercy and searches began throughout the White Lakes for any other survivors from The Party. By the end of the week all but the Head Of State had been found in various stages of pitiable partial deletion and wretchedly hurried correction. Kind comparisons and careful similes nursed them through the difficult following of months.
    Meanwhile, after long debate and contained disagreements of tense, the army moved that the former State be given a noun of its own. Someone, it is not known who, suggested the reconditioning of the old title of the Company. Although it is not known precisely how, by a circuitous indecision and painful wringing of scruples, the Company won the day.
    Friar Economicus, after intensive caring, and an apparent vision, dispelled the cynical and delighted the enlightened by announcing his conversion to the True Bone and the first cause. He was accepted into the liberation on The Author's Word. His energy and attack were soon promoted onto a reformed Board. With communications iceing-up as winter loomed, he argued the need for a Director of Pulblic Relations. By a majority (8 to 4) vote his proposal was passed. Red Alf, in anger, resigned from The Board. Concerned, jake the archivist and Mr and Ms EE followed him from the room. Unperturbed, the good friar unveiled the rehabilitated Enarmoricus Armoricon, whom he pronounced fit for the post. With Police Dog Wendy Grimbold trailing on a lead, Ms EE's former would-be-lover was welcomed to the Board (8 to nil, 3 absent).
    Traffic was becoming a problem in the capital. Since the Recycling Camps were closed, multitudes of economists on bicycles had begun to clot the streets. All wore either Adam Smith or Karl Marx masks which they continually swopped with one another, constantly causing accidents as, owing to their lack of control in the saddle, they fell from their wobbling cycles.     Discontent, too, appeared. on the pavement, as indigent critics and unemployed police reviewers begged and pestered the noun in the street. The Others began to murmur and the Many-Headed-Throng looked this way and that. Some sixteen days before the former Drabness, at a cultural festival at the Crossing, in the middle of an exchange of lyrics, a devoweller detonated in the audience, leaving nothing but a few unrelated stumps of consonants of jake the archivist. In the subsequent nervous rumour, Mr EE, walking home, was set upon by a shadowy gang and, fatally, his initials were removed. By some means, and it is not known how, public relations machines started issuing leaflets and delivering lectures entitled "AIf's the man to blame". As angry lexicons of variants and nervous auxiliary tenses crowded the Central Square, Friar Economicus and Enamoricus Amoricon appeared on the Company HQ balcony. They spoke of the judgement of the Dome. They implied the villainy of Alf. They proposed full employment in the processing of waste. As the people cheered, Police Dog Wendy Grimbold ran through the streets, slavering at the scent of a Lancashire accent.
    Poor distraught EE, beside herself with grief, had taken both of herself and little HH to the Open House of Bone, which had been sited in a spare part of the former Central State Booth, now the Capital Hostel. Passing by the parties of back-packing verbs and provincial do-it-yourself societies, she was checked at the entrance to the room of the (still bound) True Bone by a melee of disturbed psycho-analysts, all striking each other with damaged parts of primal cycles, and lost without-directions migrant philosophers, who ran to her claiming to be searching for indecipherable addresses on scraps of paper which they ineffectually waved.
    At first losing herself in the confusion, EE was brought back by the cries of little HH, who, it has to be said, was getting rather heavy. "Good to see you again.", she told herself and lightly slipped the crowd. Moving quickly, she returned home. A hurried note lay by the door. "Scram - Alf", it said, rising to greet her. She thanked the note and, bowing, it left. Without hesitation, she packed necessities and fled.
    As she left the capital she began to skip and sing almost like a girl. Little HH, who was growing heavier by the second, had to be put down. To what should have been her surprise, he stood upright and took her hand. She giggled. This was like a cartoon, she thought. "Don't worry, Mom", HH said, "I'll look after you." These were his first words.
    All through the long day of trekking that followed, HH, no longer little, continued to grow, while his mother acted more and more the girl. She began to lose height. She would pause to scribble coded notes in a diary and it was only HH's patient urging that kept her going at all. She complained that she didn't like this game any more. As her long black hair turned into pony-tails she asked anxiously whether it was time to go to school. HH, by now a young man of twenty, and some eighteen inches taller than her, told her that this was a special holiday and they were on the trail of a mystery. She said she liked mysteries but did hope that none of the boys were in it as they made her head go round. HH smiled, and led her by the hand.
    They had arrived at a forbidding land. Rusting wire barbed its perimeter and aged signs, fading like boards outside an abandoned church, warned "GOVERNMENT WASTE LAND - KEEP OUT".
HH thanked the signs politely but, ignoring their reedy protests, cut the decaying wire and, with EE on his back, entered the unpromising land. EE cried because it was not a nice place. HH cuddled his six year old, telling her they'd be safe here and she mustn't worry, she was just suffering from stress. By an old leaning oak, he settled on a camp for the night.
    The night passed quickly, like an undetected ghost, for the tired, time- switched, pair. The morning found EE stable at six and still six as she slept at seven. HH woke and reconnoitred the scene. As far as he could see a smoky low mist hung on the inferior ground, surmounted by brownish mounds and tumps of almost vegetation. Intermittent ancient oaks leaned at unpleasant angles to the mist, that billowed and waved in slow motion like a sluggish sea.
    HH resolved on a bearing to the pale winter sun. Soon, he and his apparent daughter were crossing the ankling mist, EE laughing on his back like the morning's innocent queen. Unidentifiable in the distance, black silhouettes of birds flew and kree'd above, while the baying of a solitary dog prowled ever closer. EE said she liked bow-wows and her son smiled and increased his pace. A strange bird, yellow-beaked and bald, appeared on a mound like a messenger. " Rah-ti", it called to them, "Rah-tus". HH scrambled after it over the bank. The dog neared.
    The bird flew ahead over the brown land. HH breathed ever deeper. It seemed as though the hot panting of the dog touched his neck, he turned and almost stumbled as he saw a huge slavering beast not a hundred yards behind. "Ooh, Police Dog" his mother said. Void of its last threads of humanity, the former Wendy Grimbold snarled and fixed its red eyes on them. HH lifted EE into the arms of a leaning oak and braved outwardly towards a hopeless cause. The frothing Police Dog stood still and began to grow even larger, readying for a kill.
    " Don't worry tha head, lad", a Lancastrian voice intervened. At the sound of the dialect, Police Dog barked like a crazed dictator and from the sky above Yellow-beak dropped a grey mouse, right onto a clearing of the mist where Police Dog stood. Howling, snivelling, whining, the former Wendy Grimbold pawed and struggled and slipped, trying to climb with ungainly paws the nearest tree.,br>     "You see, lad, it were still human inside". A short, moustachioed man in a flat cap stepped forward. "As I like plain speaking and speaking plain, Alf's the name and what'll I call thee?" The mouse kept Police Dog at bay. "Hystericus Historicus", HH said, "or just H". And then he showed the little girl in the leaning tree, Alf's former comrade, EE.
    She cried because she wanted to play with the nice Police Dog. Alf lifted her down and told her not to mind because they were going to see someone very special. She brightened at this and mother and child followed Alf, and HH, into another paragraph.
    "Young sir and madam", boomed a firm voice from a dark patch on the side of a mound. It belonged to a short stocky gentleman who emerged from the dark patch as if it were a door. "Eric Wrathbone, brother of Alfred, student of human life and the Open University, at your service and that of humanity", drum-rolled Eric. He informed the "young students" that he was " fully apprised of the facts of their situation" having read up to this point during the torment of Police Dog. He welcomed them to the hospitality of his home within the mound and, pleading a necessity of animal welfare, entrusted them to the care of his brother, warning them , however, not to follow Alfred's example in Grammar.
    "What a nice strange man" said EE, as Alf led them through the shadow door into The House Within The Mound. They sat down at a table and, with a nod at " young aitch", Alf recounted how he and his brother had variously escaped the hound of Public Relations and imprisonment at the hand of The Author. HH felt a giddying shock of betrayal: wasn't The Author on their side? But he said nothing and, as Alf laid out the table, strange to relate, HH and EE began to look like brother and sister, both seeming about thirteen. EE said she felt safe here. HH seemed moody - hadn't he always believed in The Author? "Tha mustn't worry, aitch," counselled Alf, seeing the change, " Tha's at a difficult age". They settled down to tea and cakes and bread and jam, followed by a delicious pudding, rather like characters in a Victorian story.
    Suddenly, as EE was teasing HH about his spots and freckles, Eric returned. Mild as a kitten, but of another species, panted behind him Police Dog. Eric explained how, as a student of nature and philosophy, he had applied a balm of universal principles and a concentrate of trust to the unfortunate former human, and consequently she had recovered to the status of reliable domestic pet, safe alike to adult and child. Wagging her tail, Wendy sat down between EE and young aitch and begged for scraps from the table. "Shake a paw", said Alf and a new alliance was formed.
    That night all slept sound in The House Within The Mound.

(to be continued)

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