Tuesday, March the 28th, 2006

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Fear Eats the Soul

There is a story told that one night Tiny Enid awoke from troubled dreams, went downstairs to get a glass of milk, and was amazed, when looking out of the kitchen window, to see the Burning Wheel Of Doom in the fields beyond the bottom of her garden. It was turning slowly, with hideous creaks, its huge flames licking the sky. Tiny Enid drained her glass, draped a shawl over her dressing-gown, slipped into her Uruguayan Mountain Ranger boots, and unlocked the back door. She walked down to the wicket gate, marvelling that the fierceness of the fire was such that night was banished, and the sky as bright as day.

As Tiny Enid unlatched the gate, her pet crow hopped along the path to follow her. He could not fly, for he was a crippled crow. Hearing the tap tap tap of his talons on the paving, Tiny Enid turned, and whispered, “You must stay indoors, Ilya Kuryakin, it is not safe for you”. No sooner were the words out of her mouth than a snaggle-toothed ruffian stole out of the bushes and hoisted Tiny Enid over his shoulder, cackling as he carried her off towards the Burning Wheel Of Doom.

Let us not judge the snaggle-toothed ruffian too harshly. He was a poor half-witted hobbledehoy whose moral compass had been skewed, growing up as he did during the sorry years of the John Major government, in which his father had served. Have compassion for him, children, for he had no Hoons nor Blunketts to swaddle him against a cruel world. Indeed, have more compassion for him than Tiny Enid showed on that wild and strange night. Reasoning that she may as well take advantage of being carried across the mud-splattered fields, she waited until they were three quarters of the way to the Burning Wheel Of Doom before reaching up, pushing aside a greasy strand of hair from the snaggle-toothed ruffian's ear, and saying loudly “Unhand me now, sir, or I shall wring your neck”.

The snaggle-toothed ruffian cackled again, and plodded onward, so Tiny Enid swung herself off his shoulder and wrung his neck. Dusting off her hands, she looked back towards the house to make sure her pet crow had stayed indoors, and then turned to face the Burning Wheel Of Doom. The creaks were that much louder now, the flames higher and more terrible. Imagine you were at her side, clutching her hand in your fright, and you asked her “What do you see, Tiny Enid?” This is what she might say:

“This is a strange night, and grows stranger still, for I do not see what I thought I would see at the base of the Burning Wheel Of Doom. I have heard many tales of it, and always there are peasants dancing in a circle around it, their brains bedizened by ergot poisoning, and as they reel, they pass from hand to hand a flagon filled with the blood of ducks, and they each drink of it, and they babble and screech and wail. And over to their left should be a band of other peasants, tooting pipes and horns and plucking harps and beating drums. Yet there is no peasantry here, just the creaking Burning Wheel Of Doom, ablaze in the night, in the field by the lake.”

Tiny Enid would pause for a moment, taking a few steps forward, and then add, “Yet someone must have sent the snaggle-toothed ruffian to abduct me. Who could that be?”

She reached under her shawl to the pocket of her dressing-gown and took out a box of matches and a cheroot. Disconcerted to find all the matches in the box spent, she squelched back through the mud to where the lifeless body of the snaggle-toothed ruffian lay, and rifled through his pockets. She found not only a surprisingly expensive cigarette lighter—with which she hastily lit her cheroot—but a calfskin wallet containing cash, a bus pass, creased and crumpled receipts from sordid shops, an asbo, and a photograph of the snaggle-toothed ruffian's father. Discarding the rest, she gave the snaggle-toothed ruffian a kick with her Uruguayan Mountain Ranger boot, and studied the snapshot carefully.

As the wind blew across the muddy field, Tiny Enid stood in her shawl, looking now at the photograph, now at the Burning Wheel Of Doom, from one to the other, at first perplexed, then gradually putting two and two together, until her eyes lit up with the gleam of certainty. The snaggle-toothed ruffian's father's face was unclear in the picture. He was turned sideways on, shaking hands with John Major, who was instantly recognisable of course, with his tidy grey hair, his spectacles, and that curiously distended upper lip area. They had been photographed in front of a hoarding emblazoned with words which, though only partly visible, suggested something triumphant about milk. Other clues indicated that the picture had been taken in the snaggle-toothed ruffian's papa's parliamentary constituency, on a Thursday, in winter. The penny dropped.

Tiny Enid ran pell-mell back to the house, the Burning Wheel Of Doom blazing furiously behind her now. Stopping only to check that Ilya Kuryakin the crow was nestled safe and sound in his basket, she grabbed her address book and flicked through the pages until she found the name she was looking for. Glancing at the clock in the hallway, she picked up her metal tapping machine and dialled the number, hoping that she would not be too late. He may have had to resign twice, in disgraceful circumstances, but she still owed undying loyalty to blind David Blunkett, and she would save him if she could…

When, hours later, dawn broke, the Burning Wheel Of Doom over by the lake in the fields was sputtering and dying, extinguished by a fresh fall of morning drizzle. Ilya Kuryakin slept peacefully in his crow-basket. Tiny Enid sat at her kitchen table, having kicked off her Uruguayan Mountain Ranger boots and hung her shawl on the radiator. She was smoking another cheroot and drinking another glass of milk, waiting patiently for the squeak of the newspaper delivery boy's bicycle wheels, for the thud of the Daily Manacle on her doormat, anticipating the glow of pleasure she would feel when she saw her name once again, as bold as she, in banner headlines, the heroine of the hour.

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