Page 27 of Lost Souls

Sensing that I probably wasn’t there in the original edit, my current favourite unfavourite person smacks the off button on the remote control. With a long sigh, he flops mournfully onto the clean, cost-an-arm-and-a-leg, yet sadly under-occupied, king-size bed.

Chapter Fourteen

Listen to the sound of the river and you will get a trout.

(Irish proverb)

“Owwww! Ow! Shit!Fuck! OY!”

By the time Arnie has once more braved staircase-hell and sourced his table for breakfast, Rosie is right there beside him, holding a steaming pot of coffee. She pours a healthy amount into his awaiting cup and an equal amount onto his lap.

“Breakfast bar’s over there. I’ll take your order for cooked items when your nuts dry.” With this, she walks back towards the kitchen.

Arnie, confused as to where one pain starts and another ends, rises gingerly from the table and pursues her as best he can. He wonders briefly whether insanity actually runs in Rough Fell (or more likely gallops), perhaps as a result of centuries of local inbreeding or simply as a side effect of being British.

“Still mad about the other night?” he hazards.

“The other night?” puzzles Rosie. “Did something happen? Things tend to blur.”

She turns away from him and rearranges the individual cereal boxes so that the already opened ones are at the front.

Arnie offers her his most contrite look, although contrition isn’t high on his CV.

“Hey, look, kid, you caught me at a bad time, okay?” He shakes his head ruefully. “I… well, truth is, Rosie, I can’t afford to get involved right now. It’s complicated.”

“I’ll bet,” says the young waitress/barmaid/chambermaid/testicle-scalder, as she buries a browning piece of sliced apple under a just-turning tinned pineapple ring.

“However,” says Arnie, in a spasm of inspiration, “Iwouldlike to hire you in a professional capacity!”

A ring of pineapple with the flat of a dainty but powerful hand behind it hits him square on the cheek.

The guest stares at her, hurt in so many ways. “Why do you people keepdoingthat? I need your help, Rosie! That’s all I meant. Your wisdom. Advice. I need it badly. And now would be good.”

Naturally, the young woman is sceptical. Wouldn’t you be? “And what’s in it for me?” she demands, narrowing her fetching but shrewd hazel eyes.

Arnie snaps his fingers. Which, in reality, is the action he employs when he needs time to think, although more usually the thought process relates to the optimum camera angle for something unspeakable.

“Er… well, I decided to get the rights to makeWill & Sam Redux.”

She stares at him, her face wavering between suspicion and excitement. But he is on a roll.

“The sequel – yeah. Bigger and even more poetic than the one before. And get this – I’m gonna make it a musical! And you, my little undiscovered diva, you get two songs!”

“Yeah, yeah, I wasn’t born yesterday. Two songs?”

“It’s what I said. I know people – I been making some calls. We’ve got Lloyd Webber!”

“I don’t care!Two songs!So, what do you want me to do?”

“Not much. I just need you to answer a very important question, as a prominent young woman of the areaanda major local talent. How do I get someone like, say, for example, picking a name at random outta thin air, Noreen Millburn, to sorta fall in love with me?”

Rosie stares at him in abject disbelief. “Thereisno one like, say, for example, random Noreen Millburn.” She walks towards the kitchen. “I would really stop bashing that little baldy head of yours, if I were you.Two songs!”

***

There is something about an olde English village tea room that distinguishes it from anything else in the world. The moment Arnie Garth enters the Dilly Doily on Rough Fell’s historic high street, he feels that he has been transported either back in time or to an alien planet.

Wondering for a moment if you can physically OD on chintz, he reckons to himself that if the expression ‘bull in a China shop’ derives from anywhere, it is right here in town. There are more fancy plates on walls, cupboards, pine dressers and tables than he has ever seen all in one place in this life. The unnecessarily lacy tables appear to have been set close together not simply to maximise covers and avoid turning anyone away but also, as a bonus, to afford the tea-slurpers, china-clinkers and scone-scoffers the opportunity of having their faces squashed bythe apologetic backsides of each passing customer, not to mention the more harassed buttocks of the overworked and rather large waitress/proprietor as she struggles to cut a clotted-cream corridor to her destination.