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'Are you taking a bath after me, Graff?'
'I didn't get that muddy,' I said 'How fussy of you,' said Siggy.
'The police are here, Sig,' I told him.
The green Volkswagen with the bar of blue lights had some trouble getting through the gate and past the milk-cart. There were two policemen, high-booted and in immaculate uniform, the collars of their rain slickers identically curled to a sneer; and perhaps there was a third one, out of uniform - in a long coat of black leather, belted, and under a jaunty black beret.
'They've brought an assassin,' I said.
'The police?'
'With a secret agent.'
'It's probably the mayor,' said Siggy. 'A small town, a rainy day - what has a mayor got to do?'
The three went into the castle; I could hear the man who was being sponged, creaking his chair and raising his voice to greet them.
'Siggy?' I said. 'How many kicks would it take to start that good motorcycle?'
But he sang me a bathtub song: Disaster, disaster,
We're having a
Disaster.
If we try to
Get away,
Disaster
Will run faster.
'Oh, frot your damn rhyming,' I said.
'You should have a bath, Graff,' said Siggy. He splashed for me.
And one of the uniformed policemen came out in the courtyard, carrying some large hedge-trimming shears. He straddled the horse and squatted on the poor animal's back; then he snipped along the hitchmast, freeing the harness. But the horse just lay there, dizzy, with his old blinky one-eye; the policeman hissed and turned back for the castle.
It was then he saw a mudclot come spinning out of the forsythia and heard the stamping, battering sounds of the milkman in the garden.
'Hello?' said the policeman. 'You! Hello!'
And the milkman spattered handfuls of mud and sticks in the air.
'You!' the policeman shouted. And he advanced on the garden, with the hedge trimmers held in front of him like a water douser's rod.
I could see the milkman darting from bush to bush - crouching, scooping mud and twigs and hurtling them in the air; he lurked watching his little bombs fall; and with cartoon stealth, he darted on.
'Sig, the milkman's lost his head,' I said. And the policeman tiptoed into the forsythia, the great, vicious beak of the hedge trimmers held before him.
Then I heard them gathering in the hall outside our door. The light slot under the door was patched and blurred by sneaking feet; an elbow, a hip or a belly brushed the wood. They were milling, their voices thin and whispery - now and then a word, a phrase, would stand out clearly and be hissed, be hushed: 'as the day he was born'
'there should be'
'live together'
'hoe'
