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.
Did wolves invent a perpetual motion hydraulic sytem in the previous episode? Now back to Wolfcastle and the cherry-lipped assassins.

The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 53

‘You can call me Laytah’, she announced with a brief smile.

‘Yeah, I might just do that’ Wolfcastle winked in a manner that would have pleased any aging Bangladeshi diplomats who may have seen it. (None did).

‘Oh good grief! Take a look at yourself will you!’ The Librarian was looking directly at Wolfcastle. ‘You look…you look…’ she was trying to think of something mean to say, something cruelly cutting and hurtful, but couldn’t get the word out. It frustrated her greatly. She ought to be able to insult the man, she’d been on all the Librarian training courses at the Welsh University. She’d passed the ‘Bullying in the Workplace’ course with amazing speed (after she violently threatened the course leader with violence). She’d completed all three ‘Contempt for Others’ modules in her first two weeks in the job. She’d even authored the ‘Advanced Ignorance and Condescension For Non-Academic Staff’ course. Yet despite all that she still couldn’t manage to insult the man. She just couldn’t do it. For once she found herself unable to be rude and impolite on demand. What was happening to her?

The Librarian decided to change the subject. ‘Shouldn’t we get going? Unless you’ve forgotten we were being shot at just a few minutes ago!’

Laytah started to shuffle from foot to foot and looked down at the ground upon which she was shuffling. ‘Ah! Mmmm… Yeah, um… about that…’ began.

‘What?’ the Librarian asked. ‘That… That was YOU?’

‘I can explain.’ Shit, why had she said that! Now she might actually have to explain.

‘I see, well this should be good… Go on then… explain away.’

‘It was the case… a case… it was a case of… a case of… um…’ She was used to thinking fast but thinking this fast was hard going. ‘… of… mistaken identity. Yes, that’s it.’ Phew, she was starting to get going now. ‘A case of mistaken identity when I mistook you for… for someone else.’

‘What BOTH of us? You mistook the TWO of us for some ONE else?’ demanded the Librarian. ‘Boy this woman was something else, the nerve to cook up such a limp excuse at that’, she thought to herself. She glared at Laytah and her thoughts continued, ‘It’s lucky for her we’re in the basement… and that there are no busses nearby!’

Regaining his senses once more Wolfcastle became aware that the two women were not exactly hitting it off. Though he suspected they’d be hitting bits of each other off before long. The tension between them, he guessed, was so thick you could cut it with a wooden spoon. ‘Ladies,’ he began only to be quickly silenced upon receiving harsh looks from both females - the kind of looks that could stop clocks. Satisfied, they returned their attentions to each other.

‘Look,’ Laytah continued, ‘I’ve said I’m sorry!’

‘No you haven’t!’

‘Haven’t I? Oh, sorry.’

‘What sorry that you haven’t said ‘Sorry’ or sorry that you just had a bloody good go at killing both of us?’

‘Well both I guess.’ She shrugged.

‘What both that you tried to kill us and that you didn’t apologize or sorry that you you had a bloody good go at killing both of us?’ The Librarian was enjoying this. She hadn’t had a good go at someone like this since that German student had asked her for change for the photocopier… that must have been hours ago now.

‘Neither, to tell you the tru –‘

The Librarian cut her off. ‘The what?’ she demanded. ‘You might have the courtesy to at least complete your words.’ She looked her interlocutor up and down sententiously. ‘And look at your end quote! Is it the fashion to where them backwards these days.?’

‘I believe you mean ware,’ said the other smugly. ‘Oh – and I’d watch that full stop if I were you.’

The Librarian was struck dumb. If the woman standing opposite her was the other smugly – where was the first?

The situation was clearly getting more and more fraught. Even though he was a man and generally unable to detect anything ‘emotional’, Wolfcastle was picking up the bad vibes. Dare he risk another intervention?

He dared. ‘Ladies, please!’

‘Shut up!’ one female voice yelled, rounding on him.

‘Yeah, shut up!’ the second voice added, squaring up to the startled Wolfcastle.

‘Yes do!’ triangulated a third voice. Not a female voice. A male voice. A voice that sounded like it ought to sound familiar to at least one of those present.

Wolfcastle shut up.

‘Thankyouverymuch.’

(to be continued...)