by Chris "Childe Harold" Oakley
"That's it!" I said, "Finished. The Proceedings of
the Byron Society are now ready for publication. Blackwell's deadline
is 5 p.m. today, so that gives us ... uh ... twenty minutes to get back
to Oxford."
"No sweat." said Prometheus Hoey, doing the straps up on
his WW I flying helmet.
"No problem at all, I'd say." corroborated Don Juan Henrey,
putting his skis on.
We left the Swiss hotel and zipped quickly down the slope, unaware
that we were being followed. The track passed by a wood, and when we were
about half way down, we were startled to find the way blocked with fallen
trees. Suddenly the air was thick with a deadly hail of machine-gun bullets.
I just remember seeing Don Juan lurch sickeningly forward - then everything
went black.
"Enggleeesh schweine! You are vorse zan ze bluddy Chermanns! I
vill end zis now vunse and for all!" a voice screamed. I could not
understand how I had survived the earlier incident, but decided to put
that to one side for the time being. We were all strapped face down on
a sawmill. Don Juan seemed to know what the man was talking about and piped
up, "Look, I can explain everything, you know! Your wife led me on!
It takes two to tango, you know!"
"My vife?!" said the man, taken aback. Don Juan decided to
change his tack.
"Look, your daughter is a very beautiful young lady, and we English
graduate students don't live like monks - and in any case, this sort of
thing goes on all the time, you know!"
"My daughter? Vot are you on about? I'm not vorried about my vife
and daughter, Engleesh schwein, but my byoo-tiful, byoo-oo-ootiful Helga,
who was a finalist in the All-Svitzerland Sheep Show. How could
you. How could you!" He was sobbing now, but suddenly his face
hardened: "Zis is it!" he shouted, "Zo zis is really
too good for scum like you!"
He started laughing, manically, insanely and then switched on the saw.
The air was filled with the sound of screaming steel.
Suddenly, in the moment before blacking out once more, I understood
the meaning of the inscription on great-uncle Ebeneezer's gold and emerald
snuff box, though this moment of enlightenment went, as I have never been
able to understand it since.
"Phew," said Prometheus, "that was a lucky escape!"
He was lying on a balsa wood raft, floating in a swimming pool filled with
asses milk, surrounded by nymphs wearing orange robes, with large, orange
circles on their foreheads. We were in a cool, richly ornamental room in
an Egyptian palace. Don Juan was kneeling on a huge silk cushion being
ceremoniously spanked by a beautiful maiden with jet black hair and almond
eyes wearing all manner of golden and turquoise necklaces, rings, bracelets
and bangles, the lightest possible gauze dress, and nothing else.
"Come on, chaps!" I said, "We're going to be late. I
promised Basil we'd give him the manuscript today on Scout's Honour!
It's ten to five now!"
"On Scout's Honour!" said Prometheus and Don Juan in chorus,
suddenly attentive (actually, it was not quite in chorus: with Don Juan
it was more like, "On" - spank - yelp - "Scouts"
- spank - yelp - "Honour!" - spank -yelp).
"Get Hatchback!" said Prometheus. Don Juan called up his
valet on his wrist radio.
"Ah, Hatchback old chap ... need a Tornado ... have to come from
Cyprus ... yes, we'll parachute in ... no time for anything else."
"Dash it, Childe Harold," said Don Juan later in the aeroplane,
"I rather fancied that dark-haired piece. Do we always have to rush
around like this?" As if in consolation, he produced his Albanian
Pig's Bladder hip flask, and poured himself some laudanum - into his silver-lined
skull cup.
Prometheus was painstakingly cleaning his antique pistols. He was looking
tense, and said, "I've got two pistols - I'll take one, and you, Childe
Harold, take the other. We must arrange it so that we land close
together." Don Juan was perplexed by this.
"What are you talking about?" He said, "We're going
to land in Oxford, not Turkey. We don't need any weapons." But as
he said this, the horrible thought dawned:
"Ah - but what if we land in Balliol!" said Prometheus
in a low voice. I suddenly felt a sick feeling in my stomach.
"Can't we steer our parachutes away?" I said. No-one answered.
A dark gloom had settled on the company. At length, Don Juan suddenly burst
out:
"Damn it! There must be a way out of this! Can't we paint our
faces black, or carry spears so that we can pass unnoticed, or make grass
skirts out of the seat linings?"
"That's a thought." said Prometheus. He drew a knife and
started cutting the seat covers. "Yes, this'll do the job - and there's
tar here, for blacking our faces also."
Thus disguised, we leapt out of the aeroplane, glimpsing the spires,
quadrangles and cupolas of our Alma Mater far, far below. It turned out
not to be so difficult to steer our parachutes, except that we were caught
by a gust of wind at the end, which smartly deposited us in Parson's Pleasure.
"Get off!" said Prometheus as aged hands reached under his
grass skirt .........