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'Quite well,' I assured her, passing her the Marmite, Mintolas and AA batteries
I had promised her from my last visit. 'Will you make sure these get to your sister and mother?'
She clapped her hands with joy and took the gifts excitedly.
'You are a darling!' she said happily. 'What can I do to repay you?'
'Don't let Lola Vavoom play you in the movie.'
'Out of my hands,' she replied unhappily, 'but if you need a favour, I'm here!'
We made our way up the servants' staircase and into the hall above where a much-bedraggled Bellman was walking towards us, shaking his head and holding the employment demands that Humpty Dumpty had thrust into his hands.
'Those Orals get more and more militant every day,' he gasped. 'They are planning a forty-eight-hour walk-out tomorrow.'
'What effect will that have?' I asked.
'I should have thought that would be obvious,' chided the Bellman. 'Nursery rhymes will be unavailable for recall. In the Outland there will be a lot of people thinking they have bad memories. It won't do the slightest bit of good – a story book is usually in reach wherever a nursery rhyme is told.'
'Ah,' I said.
'The biggest problem,' added the Bellman, mopping his brow, 'is that if we give in to the nursery rhymsters everyone else will want to renegotiate their agreements – from the poeticals all the way through to nursery stories and even characters in jokes. Sometimes I'm glad I'm up for retirement – then someone like you can take over, Commander Bradshaw!'
'Not me!' he said grimly. 'I wouldn't be the Bellman again for all the Ts in Little Tim Tottle's twin sisters take time tittle-tattling in a tuttle-tuttle tree – twice.'
The Bellman laughed and we entered the ballroom of Norland Park.
'Have you heard?' said a young man who approached us with no small measure of urgency in his voice. 'The Red Queen had to have her leg amputated. Arterial thrombosis, the doctor told me.'
'Really?' I said. 'When?'
'Last week. And that's not all.'
He lowered his voice.
'The Bellman has gassed himself!'
'But we were just talking to him,' I replied.
'Oh,' said the young man, thinking hard, 'I meant Perkins has gassed himself.'
Miss Havisham joined us.
'Billy!' she said in a scolding tone. 'That's quite enough of that. Buzz off before I box your ears!'
The young man looked deflated for a moment then pulled himself up, announced haughtily that he had been asked to write additional dialogue for John Steinbeck and strode off. Miss Havisham shook her head sadly.
'If he ever says "good morning",' she said, 'don't believe him. All well, Trafford?'
'Top hole, Estella, old girl, top hole. I bumped into Tuesday here in the Well.'
'Not selling parts of your book, were you?' she asked mischievously.
'Good heavens, no!' replied Bradshaw, feigning shock and surprise. 'Goodness me,' he added, staring into the room for some form of escape, 'I must just speak to the Cheshire Cat. Good day!'
And, tipping his pith helmet politely, he was gone.
'Bradshaw, Bradshaw,' sighed Miss Havisham, shaking her head sadly, 'soon Bradshaw defies the Kaiser will have so many holes we could use it as a colander.'
