Filed under: The Moustachioed Gent
The dayboat surged along the river, ripping through the water and the winter fish like a zipper making its way up a long coat. There were a lot of fish in the river, and the water seemed to offer thick resistance to the dayboat. A Moustachioed Gentleman stood at the back of the boat and tried to remember a statistic he had read – it concerned the percentage of which the river consisted of fish and the percentage of which it was water. It was something along the lines of – 34% fish, 65% water, 1% miscellaneous. The Moustachioed Gent did not know much about rivers but he assumned that 34% was a lot of fish.
“You know, you should never fall in love with a sailor,” the tall, dark, handsome woman advised him from behind a sombre-looking veil. She had sidled up to the Moustachioed Gent as he stood at the back of the dayboat and watched the river, and now she was so close that he could taste every cent of her hundred dollar cigarette. “I did once,” she continued, staring at the water.
The Moustachioed Gent was unsure of what to say to that and so merely noted: “I think I read somewhere that the river here is actually around 33% – no, 34% fish.” Silence. “Well, something like that anyway.”
The pair stood in silence again. “Yes, never fall in love with a sailor, that’s what I say…”
The Moustachioed Gent excused himself and headed inside. There were not many people on the dayboat, it being a gently cold winter’s day and mostly the cabin was alive with the shouts and movements of the dayboat crew as they made sure that everything was shipshape and going in the right direction. They also made each other cups of tea and coffee from a comically small kettle.
The dayboat crew, it should be explained, were an offshoot from a biker gang which had started out some decades earlier. They started out as a biker gang but had since diversified into van hire and dry cleaning and dayboatery. The crew of the dayboat had probably never ridden bikes before in their lives but nonetheless they chugged up and down the river every day under the banner of the biker gang. The Moustachioed Gent wondered whether if they ever left the boat or just lived their, going back and forth, back and forth forever.
The Moustachioed Gent himself was no part of the biker gang, though this may have been different had the biker gang ever diversified from biking, van hire, dry cleaning and dayboatery and included pest control on the list of services they could provide. The Moustachioed Gent thought how this could have been of benefit to him, could have given him some authority because, it should be explained, he was a very young Moustachioed Gent and this lead to a number of his clients disbelieving that he could be proficient at pest control. They always seemed to expect someone older, as if the young pest controller would fall for the first trick the pests tried. Yes, inclusion in the biker gang would have assuaged the doubts of his clients.
Still, the Moustachioed Gent was confident in his ability and knew that he had all the necessary tools of the trade in his satchel. He sorted through them now – torches, traps, bait, even a catalogue of equipment just in case he required anything further. He would see.
Just then a shout went up from one of the dayboat crew and the Moustachioed Gent made his way to the front of the boat to see their destination hove into view. The great factory surged up towards the sky, all fake-stone steel walls and plumes of pink smoke billowing up into the clouds. A fine building.
“Sponge Industry,” noted the Moustachioed Gent to no one in particular.
It was not much longer until the boat reached the factory and the Moustachioed Gent and a few other passengers disembarked. He noted that the widowy figure with the hundred dollar cigarettes did not leave the boat and he watched as the boat turned and then headed back down the river, through the thick and fishy water, the widow’s cigarette smoke and thousand yard stare heading back from whence it came.
He shuddered.
It was a short walk from the disembarkment point to the Sponge Industry factory and whilst the Moustachioed Gent trudged uphill, bearing the weight of his pesty satchel, he thought about cakes and about Sponge Industry’s gift to the world. For who had not eaten a Sponge Industry sponge cake at least once in their lives? Of course they had, everyone had. They were available in every shop on every street in every city in everywhere. They were the people who made the cake and the citizens of these cities would be lost without them. It was as though the Sponge Industry had made a promise – a commitment – to supply cakes now and then and forevermore indefinitely. And this is what troubled the Moustachioed Gent.
At the gate to the factory the Moustachioed Gent was met by a tall and worried-looking man who shook him by the hand, invited him in, eyed him warily – as if, thought the Moustachioed Gent, he was unsure of why such a young pest control man had been sent – and offered him some cake. The cake was a classic Sponge Industry cake, one of their best sellers – the sponge cake. The Moustachioed Gent ate it up quickly whilst he listened to the man.
“And there is definitely something, we can hear it, getting in under the butter ducts. We have no footprints or anything but we can hear them. In the sugar vats there have been problems for many years but we thought we had seen off the last of those pesty pesks – they seem to be back, unfortunately and… Are you sure you are old enough to be pest control?”
The Moustachioed Gent sighed and assured him that he was plenty old enough. He was sharp, he was on-the-spot, he knew every trick in the book and if he saw a new one he wrote it down in his trick book and it never caught him out again, yes sir he was old enough and clever enough. Don’t you worry. He was the man for the job.
The worried-looking man nodded to show that he accepted this statement, though he kept his eyes narrowed as if holding back some of his reservations for later. It would all depend on whether the Moustachioed Gent did a good job or not. “Come on, I’ll show you where the problem is,” and the worried-looking man led him through the factory, past the sugar vats and the flour halls. As they passed these areas the Moustachioed Gent thought about the possibilities for problems as regards wasps and weevils and was already thinking about what kind of pest might be tempted to cause trouble in butter.
The butter ducts ran in helter skelter spirals around a circular room, starting at the top and making their way down to the bottom of the room where the butter was pumped into the mixing station. The Moustachioed Gent scurried around the room like an inquisitive mouse, examining the duct with his eyes and his fingers, shining his torch and looking through his magnifying glass. He did not know exactly what he was looking for, but looking for it seemed like a good way to start. Once he saw it, he would know what it was.
But he could not see anything – no cracks or nibbles in the pipework, no footprints or messes, none of the usual tell-tale signs. Usually there would be something to show who or what had managed to get in, something not too obvious – not so obvious that a civilian would notice – but something there all the same. Perhaps were he an older and more experienced pest control officer he would be able to find something… He pushed the thought from his mind. In the butter duct – maybe he needed to look inside the butter duct?
He peered into it.
“Be careful not to dribble into it, we don’t want anything contaminating the butter,” the worried-looking man worried. The Moustachioed Gent knitted his lips together and continued to monitor the yellow substance. He was careful to step back before asking, “Do you put anything else in here?” At this point the worried-looking man began to look affronted, becoming the affronted-looking man. “What are you suggesting?” “Nothing,” replied the Moustachioed Gent.
But then he saw it – some movement in the duct, thick yellow ripples breaking out across the surface of the butter. He shone his torch in it’s direction and exclaimed, forgetting all about the non-dribbling rule and causing a spray of saliva to splash into the butter. “There it is!” And now he began to chase it around the room, following the butter-drenched pest as it made its helter-skelter way around the room, the worried/affronted man chasing him round and round in worried/affronted circles.
At the point where the butter left the room the Moustachioed Gent, realising that this was his last chance, stuck his hand deep into the butter duct – much to the disgust of the worried/affronted/disgusted man – and fished out the pest with one quick movement of his highly-trained pest control arm.
The pest turned out to be a fish. A fish with scales and fins that flapped and squirmed and struggled in his grasp. A fish. Which raised all kinds of questions.
“How would a fish get in there?” asked the Moustachioed Gent. “You’re asking me?” squealed the man, still fussing over the butter into which the Moustachioed Gent had plunged his arm. “We’ll have to suspend production immediately – fish and arms in the butter!” But now it was the turn of the Moustachioed Gent to be affronted and he countered with, “What else goes in the butter? Answer me that – what else goes in the butter?” At which point the worried/affronted/disgusted-looking man put up a defensive silence and simply walked off into the mixing station to bring production to a halt.
But the Moustachioed Gent was already formulating a hypothesis, detecting a new trick which he would have to write down in his trick book. Fish in the butter + Fish in the river = River water in the butter? For a moment he dared to think the unthinkable: Sponge Industry were watering down the butter they put in their cakes.
He shuddered.
His mind tried to hold that thought for a moment and then it cracked and a tide of disbelief broke through and he could feel himself losing everything he had previously believed in. Sponge Industry and all the values with which he associated them – integrity, responsibility, tastiness – had been a part of his life for as long as he could remember.
The Moustachioed Gent followed the man into the mixing station, the fish still flapping about in his hands. The man that he found was now worried, affronted, disgusted, furious and accompanied by a group of hefty henchman in corporate-branded Sponge Industry suits. “Oh,” said the Moustachioed Gent. It did not look good for him.
=+=+=+=+=
Back on the dayboat, the Moustachioed Gent watched the thick, fishy water as the factory of Sponge Industry disappeared from view. He cursed the fish but also sympathised with them – it was not their fault. They had only been unwitting partners in his downfall.
So there he was, standing on the back of the dayboat, smoking a cigarette and thinking about fish and mice and Sponge Industry values. One of his own values was persistence. Many were the times on which he had lain in wait outside a mousehole, a piece of cheese in one hand and a hammer in the other. Perhaps what Sponge Industry had been looking for was a more discreet service, a pest control man who would fish out their problems and not ask any questions. Maybe they were not looking for someone who would pursue the truth so persistently. Maybe he did still have a lot to learn.
He thought about how he would write it down in his trick book when he got home, but soon realised that there would probably be no need for it any more – there was little hope that his career could survive the blow to his reputation that Sponge Industry would surely strike.
Perhaps if he had been a part of the biker gang’s van hire/ dry cleaning/ dayboatery empire, things could have been different. Someone from the empire could have explained to Sponge Industry that he was a young and talented pest controller – and very persistent – albeit it a little indiscreet. They could have saved his reputation and then explained to him that all he had to do was catch the vermin, that he did not have to ask such pertinent questions.
That was the way things could have gone, but this was the way things did go: the Moustachioed Gent had been escorted from the premises and marched back to the dayboat. His life fell a different way, and there was no going back.
“You know, they put water in their cakes… and… and the fish get in and so you’re really eating fish,” he said to no one in particular, announcing to the dayboat at large a change of career.
“Yes,” said a tall, dark, handsome woman from behind a sombre-looking veil. “And you should never fall in love with a sailor.”
The dayboat surged back down the river, ripping through the water and the winter fish like a zipper making its way up a long coat. And all along the way the two uttered their truths to each other. They continued as the boat set off on another length, and they continued as it journeyed back and they continued the next day, and they continued on forever.
… and h
ere is the final moustache, up close and creepy (and a little delayed since we are now well into December). Thanks to everyone who sponsored me for Movember – and if anyone out there is reading this who hasn’t done so, and would like to do so, please do do so. Thanks.
Filed under: The Moustachioed Gent
Once he had finished waxing his moustache into the crescent shape of a waning moon, The Moustachioed Gentleman put on his top hat, checked his suit for lint and then went to see how the animals were settled.
The owl was perched on light fittings high in the ceiling, looking down through eight mezzanine storeys to the living room where the orang-utan sat in an arm chair, half-covered in sacking and watching the beginning of the evening film with eyes wide with widescreen interest. It was eating roasted peanuts out of a bowl using a teaspoon as it had seen some human do, once upon a television program.
The Moustachioed Gent pulled on his coat, opened the door and stood on the front step, looking out into the snow. “Well, I’ll see you later,” he told the animals. “I’ll be very interested to see what he says… It should be very interesting.” He was not sure if the animals every really listened to him but he carried on talking anyway. “I expect that the Philanphropist will be there and the Gamekeeper and the Lumberjack and more gentlemen as well.”
He gave the ends of his moustache one last careful tease. “Yes, I shall be very interested to hear what the Explorer has to say.”
He left the house and scurried through the froze-cold cobble streets, avoiding the dollops of snow pitched around the sides of the road. The evening sky was starless under the heavy cloud which covered the town like benevolent alien ships above the earth.
A few streets away from the Explorer’s house, the Moustachioed Gent met the Lumberjack lurching woodenly along in the same direction. The two men exchanged pleasantries and with silent hirsute manners the Gent’s moustache cautiously greeted the Lumberjack’s beard. It was a bearded copse which cut across the whole of his face and was forged out of necessity in the long, cold days of forestry management. In contrast the Gent’s moustache was a finely drawn thing raised on the comfort of fireside chaise-longues and lunchtime brandy, so when it greeted the Lumberjack’s beard it was with the wary regard of a Jack Russell encountering an Alsatian in the street.
The Moustachioed Gent and the Lumberjack chatted as they walked together saying things like, “I really am very interested to see what the Explorer has to tell us this time,” and, “Yes, he’s been gone a long time in adventure and dangerous travel,” and also, “But I do not think that he will be without appetite, I hear that he is serving roast lamb and a dangerous number of parsnips.”
When the two men reached the Explorer’s house he welcomed them with words like, “Welcome, welcome, please do come in,” and, “let me take your coats,” and also, “your beard always looks magnificent at this time of year.” The Explorer himself was clean-shaven as he became so often upon returning from an adventure. It had something to do with the process of acclimatising back into the way of the city and shedding the past, at least that was it as far as the Moustachioed Gent understood it.
The Explorer’s house was surprisingly conventional. The hallway was not a maze of labyrinthine corridors and the doors to other rooms were not secretly obscured in the walls, nor did they require the completion of a puzzle in order to enter. The three men progressed through the welcoming hall and into the sitting room where another four men were already seated. Beyond the sitting room was the dining room with its olfactory promise of roast lamb and parsnips. But that was for later.
The four men who had arrived early were: the Philanthropist and the Gamekeeper (as predicted by The Moustachioed Gent), as well as the Wax Man (in the business of candles) and the Fax Mechanic (in the business of faxes). They became seven men with the addition of the Moustachioed Gent, the Lumberjack and, of course, their host the Explorer. Seven smart men in modern suits with the promise of roast lamb and parsnips to come. They sat together and took an aperitif and said things like, “how are you keeping?” and, “of course, this weather is no good for the wood,” and, “so when I woke up it had melted all over my arm.” Next they said things along the lines of, “that’s the place that does the boullabaise isn’t it?” and, “I’ll tell you more about the mountains later,” and also, “well, if it is broken I could do you a very good deal on a new machine, faxes are very important nowadays.” And they said some more things besides.
Then the Explorer stood up amongst them and cleared his throat and announced to the gentlemen that they should all pick up their glasses and make their way through to the dining room, in which would stand a large oak table and seven fine chairs. They were to be seated and soon there would be roast beef and a lot of parsnips and tales of adventure and derring-do.
As the gentlemen moved through to the dining room, they said things like, “oh no, after you,” and, “did he say roast lamb or roast beef?” and, “anyway, I’ll finish telling you about that later.” They took their seats, with the Explorer at the head of the table and the other gentlemen set out with three of them down each side. The Explorer’s staff soon arrived with roast beef and a towering pile of parsnips for everybody. They busied around the gentlemen, making sure that they all had sufficient in the way of food and that they were all ok for drinks. The gentlemen ate and drank and there was some small conversation whilst they did, but not enough for it to be worth reporting.
When they had mostly finished, the Explorer spread a map across the table and began the tale of his latest adventure. He said things like, “I was absolutely tired by the time I got to the top of that hill,” and, “then I had to abseil down the ravine using a spare pair of trousers,” and, “I looked at the jellyfish, the jellyfish looked at me.” Some of the gentlemen still had some scattered remains of their dinner on their plates and they picked with their fingers as they listened.
The Moustachioed Gent sat back in his chair, full of beef, parsnips and a feeling of disappointment that the roast had not turned out to be lamb. It was not that he did not like beef, on the contrary he was very fond of it. But he had been looking forward to eating lamb – which he considered to be an under-appreciated meat and one which was not served enough at gatherings such as this. He had found it very interesting when he heard that the Explorer was going to be serving lamb because he knew that there were often people who disliked it and he wondered what had happened to inspire this brave decision by his friend. In the end it turned out that he had been misinformed, and the roast had been beef and had been served with a sauce marked ‘disappointment’ when it should have been ‘mint.’
Meanwhile, on the other side of the Moustachioed Gent’s skull, away from his roast lamb fantasising, the Explorer had begun to tell the group of diners further tales, saying things like, “but that was when I came across a most strange group of people,” and, “out there in the wilderness they had made their own rules,” and, “it seemed that they had taken a strong dislike to the humble moustache.”
He carried on: “The first I knew of them was when I heard the sound of snapping twigs from somewhere beyond the fronds. I turned and – in hindsight – left myself at the perfect angle for the shot. For before I knew it a bullet was passing under my nose and – whoosh – it had taken my moustache with it. The rest of my face remained completely unscathed, they had barely touched a hair on my head, but my moustache was gone. Utterly gone. A remarkable piece of marksmanship.”
The Explorer went on to explain that he had accidentally wandered into the territory of a tribe of people who strongly disliked moustaches and had begun a campaign to rid the whole world of them. They had perfected the art of shooting a moustache right off somebody’s face, for they had no intention of killing – and thus martyring – the moustachioed in the act of removing the moustache. They had also managed to train some of the more intelligent members of the animal kingdom in the art of creeping into the bedrooms of Moustachioed Gentlemen and shaving their moustaches without waking them.
All of this would have been of great interest to the Moustachioed Gent had he not still been brooding on the whole lamb/ beef palaver. Was it a palaver or a rigmarole? He preferred palavers but knowing the Explorer he would probably promise to serve up a palaver and then change it to a rigmarole at the last minute. Perhaps , he thought, he should mention the whole lamb situation to their generous host. Hey Explorer, I thought you were serving lamb tonight? Where’s the lamb? Where is it? Best not – the Explorer was talking about something else. What was it he was talking about?
The Explorer had by now concluded the tale of his adventures and invited his guests to ask any questions they might have about his tale. They took him up on this offer and were now asking him things like, “What kind of wood were the trees made of out there?” and, “Was it a very deep ravine?” and, “What is your favourite colour?” The Explorer sat through the barrage of questions patiently, giving concise yet satisfying answers to all.
Once this stage of the gathering was over, it became clear that this was around the time that everyone should really be making their way home to their warmed beds, and they began to say things like, “well, thank you very much for a lovely dinner and most interesting talk,” and, “well, I don’t think I’ll be able to eat tomorrow – those parsnips were lovely,” and, “well, I’m glad you enjoyed your travels but stick around here for a while won’t you Explorer?” And soon the Explorer was showing them out of his house and onto the cold cobbled streets of the wintry night, telling them things like, “I’ll be in touch about the fax machine,” and, “tell your housekeeper I say hello, won’t you?” and, “you’ll be careful around any intelligent animals won’t you Moustachioed Gent?”
The Moustachioed Gent, glad to be heading back home to a house where he could choose which meat he ate and when, assumed that the Explorer’s final comment to him referred to a joke he had missed at some point in the evening so gave a little laugh and a wave and headed off into the night. From behind him he could hear the sound of the wooden lurching step of the Lumberjack and exclamations like, “wait up!” and, “hang about, lets walk a way together,” and so the Moustachioed Gent slowed his pace a little and let his friend catch up with him.
As they walked they said things to each other like, “what a disappointment, I thought you said there was going to be roast lamb?” and, “what interesting stories though – you will be careful with your moustache won’t you?” and, “yes, my moustache is very important to me – I have three showings tomorrow alone.”
They watched a drunk stumble backwards and land sprawled in a dollop of snow by the side of the road. The Moustachioed Gent began to laugh, but the Lumberjack had noticed what the drunk had been looking at and pointed up into the night sky where the cloud had cleared a little and there were now stars visible in the sky again.
The Moustachioed Gent, previously eager to hurry home to his abode, found himself pleased to have found this distraction. He had suddenly been gripped by an eerie feeling that some great disaster was soon to befall him. One – the owl and the orang-utan had been behaving very oddly recently. Two – the whole palaver with the beef and the lamb had affected him more than he should have allowed. Three – the Lumberjack’s concern for his moustache had chilled him. Had he missed something?
He stared up at the stars in the sky and the stars stared back at him. And then the Moustachioed Gent turned his gaze back to the earth and rubbed his hands together. It was cold and it was late and the street lamps were beginning to go off. It was time to go home.
He and the Lumberjack continued on their way through the frozen streets whilst the narrator scrambled desperately for more distractions to stand between the Moustachioed Gent and his inevitable demise.
Thanks to everyone who has sponsored me for Movember so far. If anyone else would like to, please visit my Mo Space Page. I will hopefully be putting up another Moustachioed Gent story before the end of the month, if that is any incentive. Or you could sponsor me not to if you would rather. Thanks either way!
