AMP: Artists' Meeting Place and Resource Collective

WARNING: This novel contains fake Welsh.
In the last episode, S. Panther and Lassie emerge in the George Walker home as a busload of returnees returns and the embarrassing secret of the black gold is buried. Now, the return of everyone else.
The Cardiff Grandma Chapter 70

The shallow old Bangladeshi was profoundly unmoved by the doom of the gentleman who’d just been seen sliding into the drink outside the starboard porthole of the [haven’t thought of a name just yet]. And speaking of drink…he couldn’t see the sun, but surely it was over the yardarm, unless the yardarm were upside down. He would never know that the man drowning so ironically to death in a secret subterranean submarine tunnel was the famously scifictitious geology professor, Otto Lidenbrock, explorer of a secret passageway to a place once unreachable by public transportation but now apparently accessible to any old inmate at the George Walker Home for the insanely demented and luxuriously deceptive.

‘Mine’s a large one’ the VC reminded everyone else as she fixed him another cocktail. (So there she was all along!) This was no time to switch plot lines, she thought to herself. How’s a woman supposed to keep up with all the goings and comings of such a random tale if he’s going to keep on coming up with silly remarks like that, she further thought. And she was right.

Still, there was something in what he said that made her stop and think. Mine’s… Mines…

Deep down in the lower sub-basement something was stirring. The foundations upon which the deceptively luxurious abode had long since been built had begun to shift more and more recently, recently. Several small holes, almost shaft like conduits, had appeared. Oddly, through some of them, light could be seen. Could be seen if anyone had been there at the time and been inclined to look down into the holes. But no one was there, no one was looking - and still the light shone upwards. Incredible! Just for good measure, in the vast, but sinking, grounds of the luxuriously deceptive mansion, a tree fell silently to the ground. Several people were close enough to hear it but it still never made a sound.

Across town, in the main kitchen of Wong’s Authentic Kebab and Pie shop on Rhodri Avenue and 23rd Heol (lower south-west east Cardiff), someone was stirring. Someone was stirring the large vat of what looked like curry. What looked like curry didn’t smell like curry. Wong was never a chef in any sense of the word, especially not in the strict culinary sense, and this was not one of his better concoctions. It was a stress relieving exercise. His analyst had suggested that, since running a major international rug, ferret and second hand outfit smuggling outfit was a cause of great anxiety, he ought to utilize his legitimate assets and take up cookery as a means to control his emotional turmoil. It was a rubbish idea and the last time Wong had taken psychiatric advice from a financial risk analyst. But then it was also the last time the man had given any advice, what with his subsequent supporting role in the foundations of new office complex Wong was developing.

Nevertheless Wong was anxious. He had not heard from Samantha for what seemed like a long time now. She was always good at reporting in and letting him know when he could expect her back. It was very unlike her to do something so unlike her. All he could do was worry, worry and stir the curry-like liquid. The large clock above the saloon style kitchen doors ticked contentedly to itself. This only added to Wong’s sense of worry: why the hell was his digital clock ticking? …

That couldn’t be it? The end of the chapter so soon? It hardly seemed right, not with all the many things going on that were still ongoing. How could events elsewhere not even be mentioned?

Wong tried to ponder the ticking digits on the bright segmented display. He tried but he really found he couldn’t be bothered to stick at it for very long. If ony there were some dramatic event transpiring nearby that could grab his attention. If only…

‘Mines’ mused Everyone else as she swept the ARCORGI members from the room and stripsearched the next batch of petitioners, allowed them into the VC’s environs and showed them to their hard uncomfortable stools. ‘Mines’ she ruminated. She wandered over to the window. Maybe she could just go slide down the drainpipe and have a look round town for Schumacher. But, no. She would have to slide up the drainpipe. There was dirt up to the sash. The lower half of the window looked out over treeroots, grubworms, an ant colony filled with panicky ants trampling each other to get out, long buried cigarette butts and the inevitable odd body part. Unable to see through the top pane as her eyelevel was inches below it, she stood on a chair to get a better view.

‘Mines’ – she was unable to shake the phrase from her thoughts. She’d seen an item on the Channel 12 news about mines recently. Some odd looking student jabbering on about myths and legends of Cardiff being underrun with a myriad of tunnels and pasageways. Students! Who listens to them. And yet… Everyone else recalled a story her old grandma used to tell: a story of castles and tunnels and secrets… so many secrets. Wasn’t her own life now so very full of secrets. Doing the Vice’s bidding… oh, how she hated eBay‚. Those endless meetings the VC would call, the terrible mess to clean up afterwards. The shouting, the abuse, the tears. It really was an Awful BusinessTM.

In a moment of startling clarity Everyone else leapt from her chair, landing with both feet on top of the Vice’s desk. Such was the suddenness of her actions that it caused everyone else in the room to leap from their chairs too.

Everyone else slowly sat down, trying to conceal their embarrassment at such a knee-jerk reaction. Meanwhile Everyone else remained standing. ‘Liar!’ she cried. Her face was flushed bright red with rage. ‘You dirty liar!’ Everyone else in the room looked sheepish. They were all liars to a one. But her accusing shouts were directed at just one person. The one person she had so long worked for, made coffee cocktails for, covered up for, taken notes for, cleaned up after. She’d finally worked it all out. Pieced together the final pieces of the pieces of the puzzle…

‘I can explain…’ The VC began. He knew enough to know when he was facing a furious female, he just didn’t know quite how to handle this one.

‘Explain!’, she yelled interuptingly. ‘EXPLAIN!’ she repeated indignantly.

‘Now, now my dear, do calm down’, he patronised in his most condescending tone.

That was it. In his flustered state he’d said the wrong thing. It was so wrong a wrong thing that as soon as he heard himself say it he knew it was the wrong thing to have said.

‘Calm down!’ she hollered. ‘Calm DOWN! How dare you…’. Her rage intensified. No more. She had put up with being put upon for too long. That was the final cylindrical drinking tube. She would not be down trodden again. She would have her say and he would hear her and then… and then … and then …

In the Kerfuffle© everyone else scrambled desperately to leave the room. Everyone was still focused fully on the Vice. She allowed them to depart, she had no beef with them. The VC watched jealously as one by one the others made good their escape. He wondered if he could talk her down. Calm her a little… just enough to put her off and buy himself enough time to inconvenience her. Yet inside he knew that was unlikely. Maybe he could have tried that in the past but there was something different this time. A look in her one good eye that he recognised in his own soul. She was bent on revenge and was looking straight at him.

As the last of the others threw themselves at the only exit a few of them tripped over each other and collided painfully with the floor. Briefly she was moved to glance sideways at the scene now unfolding. While she was distracted he seized the moment to act. Too slow. She anticipated such a move and she seized a large ornate lance from the display against the stone wall. Deftly she brought the sharp pointy end of the pole down to his throat. He was stopped in his tracks. In a panic now the room began to spin. Lights flashed off and on and off again. His vision became blurred. A fog briefly misted his view of events. A whole series of lives flashed before him, or was that just everyone else in the room running for the door? His mind was in a whirl. He must be seeing things. His mind was playing tricks on him. ‘Pick a card’ it said, ‘any card.’

‘Not now!’ he thought out loud. He needed to concentrate. To think straight. To come up with a way out of this mess.

‘Pick a card’, Everyone else demanded as she tossed a pack across the room towards him. ‘Any card.’ With a flop the cards landed on the floor by the desk by his feet, his feet clad in Italian red leather, size 9. The formerly meek and mild mannered personal assistant was gone for good. Years of being taken for granted had taken their toll. She was calling the shots now. She kicked out at the desk that sat between her and the VC to reveal the strewn pack of cards. Such was the force of her kick the desk spun away to the dark side of the room. The tables had truly turned.

She gestured and relaxed the pressure against his windpipe allowing the panic stricken VC to begin to bend down. ‘Slowly now’, she warned. Keeping his eyes fixed on her as he dipped, he fumbled at his feet for a card. Eventually he got his now sweaty fingers on one.

‘Now stand up again’, she commanded. He moved with great care with the sharp pole against his flabby neck. ‘Show me’ she demanded. As he went to turn the card he paused to take a look himself. It couldn’t be?

‘Well, well,’ she amused herself by saying, ‘The Cardiff Grandma.’