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, a murderess philosophized. Now, for something completely.

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 43a

43a Cwrt Roy Jenkins was one of a series of residences that constituted the modest property empire of Mrs Napkins. Amongst her numerous tenants she was generally regarded eccentric. Perhaps her most eccentric feature was her hair. White, long and curlier than a camels eyebrow, it seemed to almost have a mind all of it’s own, unlike the head it grew from. She was not shy of expressing her opinions and would delight in any opportunity to expand and expound on almost any topic she’d care to bring up with you. Fiercely proud of her liberal and inclusive outlook on life and humanity she took great pleasure at telling all of her current and prospective tenants this fact. One of the things she hated above all else, she would recount to whoever may be present, was xenophobic people. Mrs Napkins prided herself on being able to instantly identify such people and would make sure they never got to stay in one of her properties. She had absolutely no time whatsoever for bigoted and narrow-minded racists. Racists and Chinese people.

43a Cwrt Roy Jenkins was what estate agents would call a ‘barn conversion’, just not very typical of the genre. It was in fact a former art studio, lovingly converted into an authentic farm outbuilding. The rustic look was all the rage with the young professional clientele that Mrs Napkins liked to have as tenants. The interior had all been sourced from a local farmer. He’d sold most of his land the to government soil export company and was left with various items around the (former) farm that he had no use for. The floor of the ‘barn’ was covered with mud encrusted straw and small twigs. There were no windows as such (not even revolving© ones), just an opening in the wooden wall, occasionally covered up by a flap of old sack cloth. The walls had assorted pitchforks, shovels and pieces of thick antique cord hanging from them. When Mrs Napkins had come along looking to furnish her latest property development the farmer had been more than happy to oblige. As far as he was concerned it was money for old rope.

43a Cwrt Roy Jenkins had been home to Schumacher for approximately six months now. He liked living there, it reminded him of his youth back in rural western Germany. Helga was her name, she lived in a barn too. Schumacher tolerated the seemingly constant pestering of his mad-haired landlady with growing disquiet. At first having her call round, unannounced, letting herself in, making herself cups of coffee and using the toilet…at first that had been a quaint esoteric trait that he’d managed to overlook. But as the weeks and months passed he grew more and more tired of the visits. And it wasn’t as if the visits were the worst if it: she’d insist on talking at him whenever she could. You didn’t, he concluded, converse with this woman. Mrs Napkins spoke, you listened! Her tales appeared to be totally random, unconnected and pointless – and so they were. She was very lonely and didn’t get much human contact. Schumacher knew this to be the case as she told him as much on a daily basis. There was little evidence of a Mr Napkins, one was never mentioned at least. It was often suspected that there was indeed a Mr Napkins, or at least had been one at some stage. It was also often suspected that if there were a Mr Napkins at some stage he’d probably either gone mad from having to live with a wife like that or, given that she would obviously be the ‘trouser wearer’ of any household, he just wasn’t allowed out! Mrs Napkins would hand out seemingly endless stories about her lonely existence and how empty and desperate her life was from day to day. Schumacher wondered whether she had just assumed the title ‘Mrs’ for some random reason – though it was probably something related to tax efficiency. Partly from politeness and partly from fear that to do otherwise may further unhinge her sanity, Schumacher would just sit there impassively as she rambled on and on and on. Libya, Belgium(!), Iceland, the Far East, the near North, Teaching French to Polish immigrants in the former Yugoslavia, teaching polishing to Yugoslavian immigrants in French car factories, her time in the ‘services’ which she ‘couln’t talk about’, pedalling donkeys in Peru, selling pedals in China, smuggling drugs into Afghanistan, being a production assistant on Sesame Street, working as a dental nurse for two American presidents, working as a mental nurse for three South American dictators, being a masseur in Milan, a call girl in Karachi, an Escort in Estonia and one summer spent strawberry picking in a south Devon village with a distinctive name. There wasn’t much she didn’t say she hadn’t done. So involved was she in her own endless tales that she completely failed to even notice, let alone comment on, the fact that one day recently Schumacher had returned home out of breath and wearing the uniform of a female maintenance worker!

43a Cwrt Roy Jenkins didn’t get many other visitors aside from Mrs Napkins. So, when there was an apprehensive knock on the barn door Schumacher was surprised. His first instinct was that maybe Mrs Napkins had in fact forgotten her master key and was wanting to come in and regal him with further depressing tales of her own particular human condition. This instinct was immediately, if not sooner, quashed as he remembered that Mrs Napkins was in fact already present and had been for the last three and a half hours. In reaction to the lengthy onslaught of despondent and dejected tales of dejection and desponse his mind had clouded over in a fog of self-protective mist. This was only cleared by the faint knocking at the barn door previously alluded to. If only he had some kind of low-voltage electric-powered wired-remote alerting-device linking a buzzer inside to a button of some sort located outside of the barn? Schumacher was both surprised and relieved when he opened the badly nailed together pieces of wood that stood in for a more formal door. Before him, during him and after him, stood everyone else in the room.

‘43a Cwrt Roy Jenkins?’ she asked enquiringly.