starting a conversation

Starting a conversation is a dirty, desperate business. The upper classes, to which I am a belongant, have their own interests and conversationaries; for all I know, the other classes do too, probably talking about forks in tree trunks or newts’ eyes. But I am fairly sure the best way to find people to talk with is to join a club. Even children can be clubbists: my old friend Lord Baden-Powell started a movement, which started the whole world scouting; his lady pal Lady Browen-Owell set up something similar for young gels.

In our village, the Egyptian-style Domestic Snake Club is very popular, as is the make your own crisps club, and the Pickling Society, the Let’s Arise Against the Coloureds Now Club and the Get Fat Quick club. There is, of course, the usual range of Colonel de Groot Courage clubs and the increasingly popular Colonel de Groot Transvestites-for-a-laugh-it-doesn’t-mean-anything Clubs. Mr. Lax is of course very prominent and popular in the Lego… only joking, Meccano club, representing as he does the maximum possible percentage of the membership. You might also wish to be a part of amateur theatricals, or if your constitution is up to it, the Noughts and Crosses Club. I was going to join what I thought was the chest club, owing to my own rather spectacular chest which I assumed would win all the competitions both in the club itself and with other units in the county. However, I peeked through the window of the clubhouse out on Pleaseck’s Plain one night and was simply bewildered to find the room packed with people I knew from my day to day village life, pushing small and odd-shaped pieces – idolatrous representations of horses, castles and other unidentifiables – around a checquered board. OMG, I thought in italics, it’s a chess club! All was silent, then I stepped on a twig, sneezed, a dog barked and I unthinkingly shouted loudly ‘I’m out here!’ and golly! I was rumbled! Lopey Barnstorm, the village lawyer, turned and stared straight into my eyes. ‘Mrs. Lax!’ he gasped. I ducked down instantly I wondered what I should do. Spying on the chess club like a commoner! To be discovered doing so would have been enormously embarrassing and might cause unseemly comment!

I looked to my left and to my right. Pleaseck’s Plain is a vast, empty and huge place of about fifty square miles square, a few square miles out of the village on the west road. It looks something like the moon, but not very romantic. I had, you see, driven out there in my coach and four, and really, there was nothing around but my horses, the golden coach, and a few rocks. I could hear the chess club clan moving around in the hut, as if they had every intention in the world of coming outside to discover who it was who looked so much like me peering in the window. I could hear them talking:

‘I’m sure I saw Mrs. Lax at the window!’ came Barnstorm’s wheedly, anxious voice.

‘Any other human being I’d believe it.’ That was St John Whiskers, the town’s mayor, always a loyal supporter of mine. ‘But Mrs. Lax is the most correct user of appropriate behaviour and she would rather pop her eyes onto skewers like picked onions and cook them on a barbecue rather than peer in windows. It must have been someone in a humorous Mrs. Lax mask, as are sold respectfully in the village gag shop.’

‘There’s only one way to find out,’ came a high, stupid voice. It was that of Horry ‘Jammy’ Smears, the town publican. ‘We must go out and see.’

There seemed to be some general agreement signified by repeated uses of the word ‘yes’, and the sounds of chairs being pushed back from tables and shoes on the floor of the wooden floor of the hut were heard. My heart was in my mouth! I would be discovered any second!

‘Psst!’ A voice at my elbow but there was nothing there but… a bush!

‘But there are no bushes here on Pleaseck’s Plain,’ I gasped to myself. ‘There are literally none whatsoever!’ and you must be made aware, I rarely use word ‘literally’ without meaning it.

‘Psst!’ A grizzled potato of a ruddy ugly white coconut face peered out from between the bush’s leaves. I think it was a rooibus, actually, as is found in South Africa. We used to boil the leaves up to make tea and kill things when I was a girl on the veldt. ‘Psst!’ it was saying. ‘Ma’am!’

Only one person calls me that, aside from all the other servants.

‘Good lord!’ I said. ‘Old Rogers! Is it really you?’

‘Yer, ma’am, it’s me in the bush!’ histed Old Rogers hoarsely. ‘Climb aboard, no-one will suspect a four-legged bush fleeing the scene of a suspected sneak-peaking!’

‘I see your reasoning, Old Rogers,’ I mused. ‘But is it really proper for me to share a bush with a man who ‘does’?’

‘What are your options, ma’am?’ wheezed Old Rogers. ‘You’re rooted otherwise.’

I could hear the chess men inside the hall, and the sound of the doorknob turning. Then the sound of the door opening, and the noise people make when passing through a doorway on their way towards you.

The suspense was appalling. I could hear a lungy wind whistling up out of throats and through the hairs around their nostrils. I could hear their eyebrows furrowing as they wondered, pondered and thoughtened about who the person with Mrs. Lax’s face, height and peering nature actually was.

Still I stood stock still, uncertain which of the two courses of action were more proper.

I could see the hazed air preceding the gentlemen as they came around the corner, the moonlight practically prismed around their skin. I looked behind me: the friendly face of Old Rogers beckoning (oh, how his wrinkled, fuzzy, wizened aged face can beckon! His knuckled nose is so expressive) from within the portable vegetation. I looked ahead of me: the eyelashes of the chess men were visible around the building’s brickwork. I looked behind me: Old Rogers’ lips whispering quick! They’re coming! Get into the bush and hide! I looked ahead of me: the tips of the shoes on the chess-playing men were becoming surely visible as they emerged from the fronts of those very same men’s shoes. And I looked behind me: ‘Ma’am!’ urged Old Rogers. ‘Please come with me back to the ‘ouse! Remember you’ve got your Advice for young ‘uns wot are leavin’ ‘ome book to write!

‘My goodness,’ I thought. ‘So I do.’ And I do.

I could see, by this stage, the full feet of the chessthusiasts as they were racing to turn the corner. I could see the cuffs of their jackets as they swung their arms to aid their swift walking. And then suddenly… it was too late! They were upon us!
Seven sturdy men from the village. Lined up in a line, they linishly faced us. Finally someone spoke. ‘Mrs. Lax!’ gasped Whiskers. ‘It is you!’

‘Now I come to think of it,’ added Barnstorm, ‘you are the person round here who looks most like you. I don’t know why I didn’t consider that as a possibility. Why, you’re not even wearing a Mrs. Lax mask.’

‘Mrs. Lax,’ said one of the men, one whose name isn’t silly, ‘since we’re all in here playing chess, and you’re out here looking in through the window, why don’t you come in and play with us?’

And do you know what? I can’t remember if I did or not! But I do seem to recall a funny old white monkey head fringed by leaves and with little tears in its eyes, squinting to watch me play chess through a window while it rained briskly around. And do you know, it was a kind of chest club after all – everyone pushed the pieces around the chessboard with their bosoms! And then they’d go off to a side room and manufacture cabinets.

I must say, I got some extraordinary conversation practice on your behalf, not needing any myself. When you’re doing something entirely meaningless, like playing of chessery, you are often able to make much useful discussion. ‘I say, why do they call them pawns? Are you a bit of a pawn, in life?’ Or ‘They call this one the bishop. Do you know a real-life bishop who always goes diagonally? Or not? Yes or no? No? Answer me!’ is another one. Or, ‘The white ones go twice as fast as the black ones, you know.’ And the so on. And if there is any lull in the conversation, just knock the board over: ‘Oh my goodness, I knocked the board over! What must you think of me?!’ St John Whiskers tried that one a few times, until I told him.