Page 18 of Lost Souls

He is halted by a massive carrot, as it is deftly withdrawn, like a rabbit from a magician’s hat, out of the none-too-pristine top pocket of Noreen’s second-most uppermost cardigan.

“Here,” she offers.

Arnie stares down at it in disgust. “Hey, sister, now Arnie Garth enjoys a good carrot as much as the next man – if the next man is a friggin’ vegan nut job! But I was thinking that maybe we’d go someplace fancy. Y’know, with chairs and stuff. And electricity. Then we could kinda get to know each other.”

“I really don’t think so,” says Noreen. “You see, Mr Garth, I have to be up bright and early in the morning to clean out the bedpans at the local old peoples’ home.”

“Boy, you musta done somethingreallybad to get that,” says the appalled producer. “How many hours did they sentence you to? You have to wear a tunic or—”

“You do talk such rubbish! It’svoluntary, Arnie. I do it out of love. And then in the afternoon I’m giving blood at two, plasma at three and bone marrow at four. Nowcome on. Chop chop. I shall give you a lift back to your hotel.”

“You drive a car?” says Arnie Garth.

“Not exactly,” says Noreen Millburn.

Bouncing up from her rock, as if all the damp and saturated knitting encasing her muscular body weighs nothing, Noreen starts back towards the house at a brisk, no-nonsense pace, leaving Arnie with his carrot. And Geoffrey. When he stares after her, Noreen Millburn is backlit by that huge, unblemished moon. For a moment, his two-souled Lady of the Lakes appears to emit an unearthly glow. It reminds him, to his horror, of a halo. He suddenly recalls one of his more spiritual movies,Thong of Bernadette.

“Jesus Christ!” he says. Turning to follow her, he sees a sleepy sheep looking up at him. Arnie chucks him the unbitten carrot. “Wanna put in a good word for me?” At which old Geoffrey, barely continent at the best of times, simply adds his toxic contribution to the Cumbrian wind.

Chapter Nine

Faint heart never won fair lady.

(English proverb)

Arnie has neverseen a 1950s BSA motorcycle and sidecar, let alone been transported in one.Mad Maxsprings instantly to mind, but he senses that this journey could be infinitely more deranged. He doesn’t believe thathe would be feeling any more uncomfortable if he had simply been parcelled up in cardboard, secured with twine and mailed back to the dismal village in whose environs he has unfortunately found himself.

Our benighted passenger has no illusions that Noreen Millburn, in her World War Two helmet and goggles, can evenhearhis screams over the engine’s angry yet oddly asthmatic roar as the rusty contraption bumps and rattles over what apparently pass as roads in the wilder reaches of England’s celebrated Lake District. Arnie sees absolutely nothing to celebrate, as the same black, blue and balding American head that had struck every low-slung Tudor beam just hours before is yet again finding something brain-damagingly unyielding with which to connect.

So, it comes as no surprise to the beery regulars of the Wordsworth Arms to be witnessing their village’s (and indeed the entire region’s) most eccentric resident enter its local hostelry with a scrunched-up fellow traveller cradled like an oversized infant in her burly arms. But they still keep their distance. (And ‘eccentric’ is my word, not theirs.)

Arnie is in too much pain to notice the communal recoil on his and Noreen’s arrival. But he just catches a muttered, “It’s alright, lad – no cans,” a remark he misinterprets on first hearing as being mysteriously sexual, until he realises that the crowd is simply expressing its relief that for once in a millennium, Noreen Millburn is not collecting. She is, in fact, doing quite the reverse. The laden woman is clearly delivering.

The universal sigh follows them up the stairs as they hear Noreen’s helmet crash into every beam going,alongside Arnie’s yelps as one after another rarely used muscle goes into spasm.

“How’s the stiffness?” asks Noreen as they reach the top of the stairs, where she has been informed that Arnie’s room awaits.

“I’m working on it,” says Arnie instinctively, employing lines from his old movies to centre and calm him, much in the manner decent people use mantras or affirmations.

She sets him down on the worn carpet outside his room, although his posture remains much the same as when he was in the sidecar. To an observer, he would resemble an oversized foetus with a tan.

Noreen gives the heavy but low wooden door a tiny push. It creaks open.

“I musta forgot to lock it.” He smiles in what he considers a charming manner. “In my excitement at meeting you after all these years, cousin.” A thought suddenly strikes him. “But not such a close relative that we can’t…”

“Can’t what?” asks a genuinely mystified Noreen, at the doorway.

“Y’know.” His mind is racing. “Obviously, the way I am now, the pain I’m in, I’ll need your help, Noreen, sweetheart. Undressing. Getting into bed. Ordering breakfast…”

Arnie leads the way, managing to straighten up slightly into what he might consider, were he in a classical frame of mind, a sort of Richard III configuration. Moving round the door, in this summer of his discontent, he can’t help but notice, in the dusty, moonlit room, that there is aperson already in his bed.

Waving.

He has a pretty good idea who it is. And what she isn’t wearing.

Instantly, he straightens up and cracks his head on the doorframe. Ignoring the shock and the dizziness, he backs out of the room – right into his deliverer, almost knocking her down the stairs.

“Mr Garth!”exclaims Noreen.“What is it?”