Captain Bennett's Folly by Berry Fleming

Author:Berry Fleming
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781453293959
Publisher: The Permanent Press

5

Of course many details of the disaster only came to me later but I think it makes more sense if I run them in where they belong, what sense there is to be made. Many of them, now that I look back, must have been planned, whipped into shape, in beds of one description or another in which I naturally wasn’t present: I don’t doubt that Mrs. L’s exit or incarceration was discussed in Stacy’s and Mamma’s bed (or beds—vide supra), and I am quite certain that the Vidrine-Mollenbrink-Williams-(Bennett) exit from Pelican was discussed with Mrs. L in Nolan’s (or from Nolan’s—I don’t really get the picture of whether Mrs. L was seated or flat), and it is more than likely that Mr. and Mrs. Ship-n-Shore continued to kick us around when they went to bed or beds, and it is possible, if not so likely, that Nolan’s exit, the putting-away-for-his-own-good one, was discussed by the son-of-a-bitch and the bitch herself in the motel bed of Room 18 which in spite of myself I shared in about the same nightmarish way Nolan shared for a time Mr. C’s hypothetical office. I mean, if you get right down to the grass roots they look very much like the coils in an innerspring mattress.

As I put it together, back together, at just about the minute Mamma was raising her voice at Stacy to ‘Get rid of her’ (as if he could), Nolan was saying to ‘her,’ ‘I’m wondering if Donald can’t think of some way to get rid of these people maybe, or Ashalom, pack them off I don’t care how, they bother me I don’t know exactly why, something about them’ (Donald Dudo, franchisee-in-law of the Ship-n-Shore by marriage to Mrs. Maple’s widowed sister who held the franchise), ‘do they bother you? I think they bother Delia.’

‘Bother me?’ noncommittal, always noncommittal.

‘I’d really rather you had nothing to do with them, I—’

‘But certainly.’

‘I have a feeling something has gone wrong with their sense of beauty—dear me!’

‘Yes? What is it?’

‘I overlooked telling Schurz about when Mr. C said to me, “A sign something has gone wrong with the Experiment, Nolan, is if something goes wrong with the sense of poetry,” dear me.’

‘I’ll tell him, I’ll see he puts it in,’ giving the old apple a little higher polish. ‘Thank you, my dear, thank you. Now I think I’ll call Donald, see what he can do, ask him to come over, he’ll be glad to help.’ ‘I’ll call him for you.’ ‘I don’t like to trouble you, Helga my dear.’ ‘No trouble.’ ‘You’re too good to me.’ ‘My pleasure.’ And on into the dovecot routine that I wouldn’t inflict on anybody if I knew the exact words which I’m glad to say I don’t.

I’m not sure whether they invited Dudo or not or even tried to call him, it’s all a little indistinct and cryptic in here like crab-shapes under the bridges when you can’t be certain you see crabs or water-shadows, can’t be certain of anything except that whatever it is is not where you think it is.

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