AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

For earlier Chapters and an explanation of this dreadful story, see blog: The Cardiff Grandma. WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the previous episode, The entire student body of Welsh University, tragically inconvenienced and then killed twice, Sunny Quito had truly been the heart and soul of the programme. Next, Samantha Panther, star reporter, in Luxembourg…

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 34

The Jeep bounced along the narrow, undulating roads in what seemed to be the north of the country. She’d never been here before but it was certainly a lot more contoured than she had remembered it. They’d been traveling for almost about twenty minutes before Samantha felt she ought to start being more professional and remember her journalistic training.

‘Where are you taking me?’ she enquired in her best ‘don’t forget I am a journalist’ voice.

‘To my office my dear’ grinned the old man in his best ‘I’d like to have my wicked way with you young lady’ voice. ‘Just enjoy the ride my dear. We’re nearly there.’

‘And where is ‘there’ exactly?’

‘Oh, I don’t know exactly,’ he smiled, trying to be as charming as possible. ‘It’s near Troisvierges someplace’, he added.

‘Troisvierges? Not Mertert?’ He ignored her remark. She had somehow expected they would be going to Luxembourg’s river port. In the little time she had had, she’d done what little research she could; she thought that would suffice, it was only a little country after all. There was no time to ponder the destination, the road became more undulating as they drove. It was like one long rollercoaster ride.

‘It’s like one long rollercoaster ride!’ she screamed as the jeep hurtled upside down through another gravity defying double loop.

‘Yes! I am glad you like it’ he smarmed. She hadn’t said she liked it!

As they drove on up and down the ever more rippled landscape, the old man at the wheel crooned to himself. So did the Bangladeshi, but he was much better at it.

‘What’s that you’re crooning?’ inquired Samantha, shoving something that looked like a dead ferret on a stick into his face.

‘Tell me, dear, are you lonesome tonight?’

What the hell?! thought Samantha Panther. If he thought she was going to sleep with him just to find out the name of a song, he was mistaken. She’d only interrogated him to be polite anyway. She withdrew the ferret and returned her gaze to its assigned place at the landscape. So this was the fabled Luxumbourgh! she thought. They’d been traveling for six hours now -- had they been traversing an American state of about the same size, they would have been in . But they weren’t. They were stopping. They would still have been in but they would have been stopped. The old man turned off the engine and died peacefully in his sleep. The Bangladeshi covered him with some tree branches, possibly birch, and taking Samantha gently by the elbow situated conveniently mid-arm, he steered her towards a path through the woods that enveloped them. Glancing back at the road, Samantha glimpsed a milepost in the waning sunlight: Terre de Grace. Was that French? Or Belgian? Or Luxhumbuggian? She clutched her ferret to her more tightly. If they’d been in an American movie, they wouldn’t have been in Kansas anymore, that much was probable.

Soon they came upon a little clearing wherein they beheld a small house all made of gingerbread and sweets. Samantha gasped in delight and breaking free she fairly danced over to it.

It was on a long folding table along with other fancy cakes and elaborate tarts. One of them jiggled up to where Samantha stood clasping her putty-gloved hands in delight, unmindful of the choking ferret.

‘Are you being served?’ the tart asked sweetly.

‘What is this thing called?’ Samantha was suddenly all reporter again, thrusting the ferret under the tart’s heavily powdered nose.

‘Why, that’s what we refer to as a weasel.’

‘Not him!’ said Samantha, following the tart’s stare over to the Bangladeshi, ‘What’s this?’ She gestured at the little house.

‘21.57.’

‘Indeed? And how did it come by this curious name?’ Samantha smiled brilliantly.

‘We named it after the price.’

‘Price?’ Samantha Panther looked up sharply, her keen catlike reporter’s eye quickly noting details others would have overlooked: the canary hidden in the gilded birdcage adorning the Madame Pompadour hairdo, the rococo tattoo on the ornamental left buttock, the sign reading ‘Bake Sale Today for the Benefit of Mr. Kite’.

Robbed of hope that she’d died and gone to heaven where really good pastries are free, Samantha lost all journalistic interest in the scrumptious 21.57 and the powdered tart, and allowed herself to be guided gently away by the Bangladeshi to the palatial mansion looming on the steep hill overlooking the Black Forest cake.

Having negotiated together the broad shallow stairs made of a super-hard durable substance, the Bangladeshi released Samantha’s elbow and strode hobbling across the marble terrace with its full scale replica of the Colossus of Rhodes and touched a finger to a spot just to the right of the massive handtooled leather door. Samantha smiled to herself. Nobody could resist a ‘Wet Paint’ sign. It was as though there were some innate inborn genetic compulsion to do a tactile verification of the claim. Few people would bother to do so without the impetus of a sign, and the Bangladeshi was apparently one those few. Samantha was lost in these thoughts when without warning the door began to open. Someone knew they were there….