give too much credence to experience.” This was a thought of such weight that it hung, silent in the air, like a ham.
“Moving on,” continued Todd, “the question that now burns my brains is why it was you were so desirous to ride upon this infernal donkey.”
“Did I not perform in the role of Mary in the nativity play last season?”
“You did.”
“Did not Mary ride upon a donkey?”
“She did. But now,” said Todd, “be so kind as to place those two statements in some kind of conjunction such that sense blossoms.”
“If it is explanations you crave, assume that I was,” said Poppy, “taken with the need to experience Mary's travails with enormous intimacy.”
“I see. So you took it upon yourself to research your role?”
“That I did.”
“Even though your moment in the spotlight has passed?”
“I live for the theatre.”
“I commend your dedication.”
“You are too kind. But to be honest with you, I think the explanation for my action came a good while after the action itself.”
“Post hoc?”
“If I knew what that meant, I might be able to agree. But in fact, as the moments wear on, the action and its explanation drift apart. They are becoming perfect strangers and I am given to wonder what the explanation is an explanation of.”
“Nevertheless,” said Todd, “are you in a position to relate to me what it is you have discovered by means of this research?”
“In summary, I have uncovered a deep distaste in myself for equine realism and its associated discomforts.”
“Furthermore,” said Todd, “curiosity emboldens me to enquire,” enquired Todd, “why it is that I am also sat upon this infernal donkey?”
“I presumed,” said Poppy, “you were the shepherds.”
Todd thought awhile and said: “I cannot turn those words into any kind of explanation at all.”
“Me neither,” said Poppy, “this is exactly what I mean. But this is the theatre, and we must therefore enter into the spirit of the occasion without letting our brains become infected with troublesome details and arguments.”
“Accepted. And such is why I refrained from pointing out that Mary was not dressed as Little Red Riding Hood.”
“Perhaps not,” said Poppy, “but the dramatic parallels are fascinating.”
“Perhaps,” said Todd, “and while I long for nothing else than the leisure to entertain a heavyish discourse on those parallels, I fear that time will not be in sufficient quantity for us. There is, I note, a train approaching.”
There was, I concur, as Todd just said, a train approaching. The driver of the train, a man some months shy of 34 constant years service, and the least crapulent amongst his colleagues, was, though, not in the prime of his attentiveness. His thoughts, insofar as he had any, were caught up with monitoring the pains in his feet. His shoes, you see, were of recent acquisition and had not yet, as the phrase goes, been “broken in” and a struggle was taking place in the environs of his achilles tendon betwixt flesh and shoe: the leather, not of the finest – I would say it shamed the art of the tanner – was in the ascendant and it refused to yield to the pedestrian demands made upon it. With near mathematical certainty, the outcome was barely tolerable blistering and a muchly soured disposition. Given all the above is accepted and deemed credible, I am pleased to add that such was the unusualness of the image which, at that very moment, was being conveyed by his optical nerve into his visual cortex (I allude to no more than the picture of a rampaging donkey encumbered by two children, one in peculiar and inappropriate garments, bounding towards the wheels of his train and their certain death) that all thoughts of foot agony were set aside and he, with the fluency of a man of half his years, made a series of blasts on the train's horn thing.
The train's powerful and sudden presence in the donkey's asinine sensorium was such that it arrested its forward flight towards oblivion and it came to an abrupt halt. Because of the incorrigible laws of physics, the two riders halted also. A certain amount of breathlessness and relief was palpable.
“There,” said Todd, “events have taken their course. One avenue of awful injury has been closed off.”
“I am,” said Poppy, “inclined to agree.”
“A victory for sober analysis, I'd say.”
“What rot,” said Poppy.
“Is it,” said Todd, undeterred, “too soon to look for the moral of this episode?”
“Every inch of me,” said Poppy, “says that it is.”
“And yet we must,” said Todd, “as a rule, bring our best thoughts to bear upon circumstances when the moment is ripe. And what I take away from this farce is the dictum: In case of emergency, do nothing.”
“I am aghast at your hubris,” said Poppy.
“Perhaps,” said Todd, “but my intellectual triumphs are so few, I should be permitted to enjoy this one without sniping from you.”
“Well, since we are about it, and while I am of course delighted that our train embarrassed steed has returned to its traditional inertia and our immediate peril has subsided to a mere scruple, I note that something wholly boring has materialised: as well as frightening us nearly half to death by its lunatic rampage, the beast has transported us to the yonder end of this vast field and we are quite stranded. Where is thy victory now?”
“Indeed,” said Todd, “the rate of knots at which the thing flew led to quite some distance intervening between where we were when we started, and where we are now. How would you estimate the gap?”
“Metric or imperial?”
“Imperial, please.”
“An unkindness of furlongs,” said Poppy, “bleak acres of mud and grass...”
“Into which,” said Todd, “my love for things bucolic disappears.”
“Think,” said Poppy, “what drudge awaits us. Think of the filth that will append our garments.”
“Each footstep,” said Todd, “heavier than the last.”
“Torment upon torment.”
“A Sisyphean labour.”
“You do not,” said Poppy, “say too much. And do not overlook the weakness of my stamina; neither my ankles, my limbs. Limps, sprains and hobbles will abound. I think you should leave me here upon the grassy place and fly for help. Our dear mother and our dear father will draw themselves up with charity and speed hither.”
“Dear me,” said Todd, “what pox. Father will be grumpier than a stung goat. He'll pour wrath upon me, and my ears will burn with obedient lectures on the topic of misadventure and the ruination of picnics.”
“Can we say,” said Poppy, “with some confidence, that a dilemma has us in its armpits?”
“Yes, yes, but I am certain,” said Todd, “that deeply considered philosophy holds all our answers.”
“Argh!!” said Poppy (exasperatedly),“why say such tosh?! What of new born adventure, unmarked by your windy prolongations?! Oh a dozen spites upon the lightless, will-deflating shadows cast by aged books and verbiage! Let life be life, undirected by thought! Let us be strangers to cold caution! Save withering analysis till we have attained the age of eight, whereupon all gaiety can die of itself, and we can stare at the joyless wastes of existence like loads of owls.”
“You are not,” asked Todd, “suggesting we act recklessly?”
“So much so,” said Poppy, “I am not even prepared to give our actions and their quality a name.” (She made a swooning motion at this point.)
“You are not,” asked Todd, “suggesting we do something?”
Poppy issued a black look at this.
“Very well then...” said Todd, “but can we at least agree that my previous maxim still has some validity?”
Poppy crossed her arms and made a “whatever” type face.
“Very well then,” said Todd, “I propose to use the problem against itself.”
“Go on,” said Poppy.
“The poison is also the salve.”
“Go on,” said Poppy, “but less of the guff.”
“In a word,” said Todd, “I propose that we commandeer this donkey, though this time, appraised as we are of its wanton truculence, we assert ourselves against its contrary intentions and incline it to carry us to a gallant return to the car park. If luck is with us – though I feel thoroughly deserted by her largesse – our parents will still be larded up in sleep. They won't know a thing.”
“And I,” said Poppy, “shall insist that the wreckage done to my clothing was the result of mischance and the general falling-over something smeary. I'll turn on the tears and beg a new frock on the insurance.”
“Capital,” said Todd. “Now do what you must do and apply the wand.”
That she did.
The donkey, overwrought with aimless running, was compliance itself, and it ambled without drama in the direction desired. A passing provincial religious studies teacher, some way off, and who needed a stronger prescription on her glasses – but she hadn't quite got around to it because of all the geese she had to look after – thought that the three of them together, the two children and the donkey, and at that great distance, did indeed resemble something somewhat biblical in its tone and proportions, a judgement that warmed her bosom and would have lent weight to Poppy's earlier assertions, had either of the parties known of the other's thoughts.
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