journey to the outer islands - XOXO

‘What on earth is the good of you, man, when you bottle this knowledge up and don’t use it for the good of others?! All my life, I have sought to instruct and inform on the appropriate way of doing things. Rogers, now is the appropriate time to put that brake on. Now is the time, Rogers, and even one so servile and submissive as yourself should see that, in truth, you perhaps need not even ask me whether you are allowed to put the brake on, when it will quite surely save our lives, or at least – for we may become compressed into cardboard-thin wall-hangings in our own shape and appearance suitable only for scientific investigation – save a rather beautiful piece of modernist architecture designed especially by Mies van der Rohe for the Lax family, and worth millions.’

We sat in aggrieved silence as he mulled this outburst.

‘So may I, Ma’am?’ he finally asked.

‘May you what?’ I harrumphed.

‘May I apply the brake, Ma’am?’

‘Gammon! Confound the man. Yes, please, if you would be so kind Rogers, apply the brake.’

He did so, and we stopped at the glass door of Lax Lodgings in precisely the nick of time.

Overcome with relief at seeing what a hideous fate we had been spared from of, I did something I must admit I was rather not expecting. I fell on Old Rogers, my man who ‘does’, weeping. ‘Rogers,’ I cried. ‘Rogers.’

‘Ma’am,’ he responded, as is his wont, usually.

‘Rogers,’ I said. ‘We’re safe.’

‘Don’t thank me,’ he said. ‘I simply asked moiself, what would Jesus do? And of course, Jesus would ask your permission to apply the brake, Ma’am.’

‘Yes!’ I laughed, ‘Yes, Rogers, I do believe he would!’ I patted him fondly on the cheek, as though he were a person of my own standing, an action which I think surprised both him, me and you, my reader, who knows that in general, I am prone only to appropriate behaviour, rather than the inappropriate behaviour that this action signified. I gathered my wits, my Wad, and my knitting and stepped down from the carriage.

‘Rogers,’ I now stated, firmly and back in my familiar stentorianness, ‘I am glad we arrived here in good time. Well done, man. Please attend to unpacking Carlo, and then we will inspect the kelp processing works, if you please.’