“I will, love. Now, hold on a mo’, there’s something coming through … ”
And then something came through. It sat in Madame Tracy’s head and peered out.
“Sprechen sie Deutsch?” it said, using Madame Tracy’s mouth. “Parlez-vous français? Wo bu hui jiang zhongwen?”
“Is that you, Ron?” asked Mrs. Ormerod. The reply, when it came, was rather testy.
“No. Definitely not. However, a question so manifestly dim can only have been put in one country on this benighted planet—most of which, incidentally, I have seen during the last few hours. Dear lady, this is not Ron.”
“Well, I want to speak to Ron Ormerod,” said Mrs. Ormerod, a little testily. “He’s rather short, balding on top. Can you put him on, please?”
There was a pause. “Actually there does appear to be a spirit of that description hovering over here. Very well. I’ll hand you over, but you must make it quick. I am attempting to avert the apocalypse.”
Mrs. Ormerod and Mr. Scroggie gave each other looks. Nothing like this had happened at Madame Tracy’s previous sittings. Julia Petley was rapt. This was more like it. She hoped Madame Tracy was going to start manifesting ectoplasm next.
“H-hello?” said Madame Tracy in another voice. Mrs. Ormerod started. It sounded exactly like Ron. On previous occasions Ron had sounded like Madame Tracy.
“Ron, is that you?”
“Yes, Buh-Beryl.”
“Right. Now I’ve quite a bit to tell you. For a start I went to our Krystal’s wedding, last Saturday, our Marilyn’s eldest … ”
“Buh-Beryl. You-you nuh-never let me guh-get a wuh-word in edgewise wuh-while I was alive. Nuh-now I’m duh-dead, there’s juh-just one thing to suh-say … ”
Beryl Ormerod was a little disgruntled by all this. Previously when Ron had manifested, he had told her that he was happier beyond the veil, and living somewhere that sounded more than a little like a celestial bungalow. Now he sounded like Ron, and she wasn’t sure that was what she wanted. And she said what she had always said to her husband when he began to speak to her in that tone of voice.
“Ron, remember your heart condition.”
“I duh-don’t have a huh-heart any longer. Remuhmember? Anyway, Buh-Beryl … ?”
“Yes, Ron.”
“Shut up,” and the spirit was gone. “Wasn’t that touching? Right, now, thank you very much, ladies and gentleman, I’m afraid I shall have to be getting on.”
Madame Tracy stood up, went over to the door, and turned on the lights.
“Out!” she said.
Her sitters stood up, more than a little puzzled, and, in Mrs. Ormerod’s case, outraged, and they walked out into the hall.
“You haven’t heard the last of this, Marjorie Potts,” hissed Mrs. Ormerod, clutching her handbag to her breast, and she slammed the door.
Then her muffled voice echoed from the hallway, “And you can tell our Ron that he hasn’t heard the last of this either!”
Madame Tracy (and the name on her scooters-only driving license was indeed Marjorie Potts) went into the kitchen and turned off the sprouts.
She put on the kettle. She made herself a pot of tea. She sat down at the kitchen table, got out two cups, filled both of them. She added two sugars to one of them. Then she paused.
“No sugar for me, please,” said Madame Tracy.
She lined up the cups on the table in front of her, and took a long sip from the tea-with-sugar.
“Now,” she said, in a voice that anyone who knew her would have recognized as her own, although they might not have recognized her tone of voice, which was cold with rage. “Suppose you tell me what this is about. And it had better be good.”
A LORRY HAD SHED its load all over the M6. According to its manifest the lorry had been filled with sheets of corrugated iron, although the two police patrolmen were having difficulty in accepting this.
“So what I want to know is, where did all the fish come from?” asked the sergeant.
“I told you. They fell from the sky. One minute I’m driving along at sixty, next second, whap! a twelve-pound salmon smashes through the windscreen. So I pulls the wheel over, and I skidded on that,” he pointed to the remains of a hammerhead shark under the lorry, “and ran into that.” That was a thirty-foot-high heap of fish, of different shapes and sizes.
“Have you been drinking, sir?” asked the sergeant, less than hopefully.
“Course I haven’t been drinking, you great wazzock. You can see the fish, can’t you?”
On the top of the pile a rather large octopus waved a languid tentacle