Party Time

Henry’s mum was aghast.

“The viper,” she gasped, “the reptile, the slimy little…”

Ellie thought it best to let her anger run its course. She would not have used such language to describe her child and this was not the time to point out the inappropriateness of “slimy” with regard to…or to remind her that her son was nearly nineteen.

“How did he..? Is it too..?”

She waved the invitation list below Ellie’s nose as if to imply that it must be her fault.

“Both of them! That Viking! That Thor!”

She had begun to run out of punctuation, first question now exclamation marks.

“And that unspeakable, that sanctimonious pirate, that Nigel!”

It served her right, she had no one else to blame. Who but she had said out loud and in the presence of witnesses that arrangements for the mother of all parties, the party to end parties, The Party at the End of Time were proceeding swimmingly? What more could she have said or done to provoke the rain god? And how s/he had risen to the challenge! Rain for forty days and forty nights, the stream overflowing its banks and running inches deep over the bridge and reports that the dam upstream was straining fit to burst.

“Look on the bright side,” suggested Ellie, “chances are their invitations will be lost in the post;”

Thor spotted the postman as he laboriously paddled his kayak the length of the fjord.

“Invitation for ‘e,” he shouted through teeth seamed with seal blubber.

“Thunder and lightning,” said the recipient, “nobbut a week’s notice, evenin dress optional.”

He hastened off to hire a longboat and assemble a crew.

Nigel was walking the plank testing it for resilience and spring, virtues that its designer thought incompatible but dared not admit it. Nigel was tormenting the sharks who assembled in eager anticipation whenever his ship found itself becalmed and he had a captive or two to test his planks for real to the delight of captain and crew.

“At least that wretched pirate…”

Henry’s mum clung to a faint sliver of hope. He would be terrorising far from lines of communication. No postman would venture within a nautical mile of such a notorious villain. Fond illusions! Far from bringing mayhem to shipping on the Spanish main or robbing Barbary traders going about their business Nigel was pursuing a course of enlightenment and wellness at a seminar based in an hotel on Gibraltar. He was as always in touch with his ship and crew. His flock of trained, devoted pigeons meant that he had received his invitation and that his crew had readied the ship for the voyage north the instant he gave the word.

Pirate Captain Nigel gave the word.

In more expansive circumstances Thor and Nigel have been described and portions of their lives documented by a talented though as yet undiscovered writer who modesty forbids me to name. For the purposes of this brief account the most pressing salient factor is their rivalry but some brief biographical details are essential to an understanding of subsequent events.

Thor has been described as the striking Viking. It is not clear whether this is intended to apply to his physique or to the strength and aplomb with which he wielded his battle-axe, most likely and appropriately, both. In the matter of pillage he was without peer. Whole villages had been laid waste beneath his battle-axe and as for his appearance, ladies who should have known better liquified in his many presence all six feet five of him, blonde windswept hair, craggy chin and as for that chest! Too easy to imagine nestling up to that vast and hairy chest while enfolded…usually by this time imagination got the best of all but the most resilient of maidens  and they passed out.

Needless to say much the same could be said of Nigel but he was as black as Thor was blonde. His height had caused a significant trauma having encountered his ship’s cross beam when he was in a hurry. Such was the trauma that he has never been able to remember what he was in such a hurry about but, as has been recounted elsewhere, recovering in a convent, freshly washed, fragrant as never before and waking from deep unconsciousness surrounded by nuns in spotless white habits Nigel was convinced that he had been vouchsafed a vision of Paradise, of the life hereafter, and being philosophically inclined he rationalised his equal and opposite delight in feeding sharks from the end of a quivering plank.

“I am,” he announced, “doing them a favour.”

Not the sharks he went on to explain but his hapless victims who would after an instant or two of appalling suffering (one only has to examine the glint in a shark’s eye to recognise the truth of this observation) be transported to Paradise. 

Nigel was incapable of coping with any ethical problems raised by his attitude but Thor’s mother indubitably was, a fact that limited her son’s activities severely. Pillage is all fine and well and Thor was permitted, even encouraged, to participate to the full but Greta, his mother, was a pioneer feminist and as fierce and adamant in her views on the subject of rape as a full grown Viking is entitled to be.

“If any son of mine so much as lays a finger on anyone of my sex out of wedlock…”

She need go no further. All six feet five of him trembled at the thought of that Valkyrie arm laying to with the business end of her late husband’s oar. After a single transgression Thor had been forced to row standing up for the entire pillaging season. Curiously though Nigel was in no way related his encounter with the white garbed nuns had ruined his appetite for forced submission though he kept it secret and taunted his Viking rival for his abstinence in this regard.

“You Thurnbergs,” he mocked, “only good for a pillage or two but when it comes to the action.”

Was he aware of the discrepancy or merely concerned with a jibe? Does nationality mean anything to a pirate, even one notorious for philosophical inclinations?

Henry’s mother sighed, the boy had proved as devious as any girl of an equivalent age. The invitations must have been sent months before the lists had been finalised. Too late now to rescind them, besides who has ever rescinded invitations sent to pirates and/or Vikings and lived to boast about it.

“The little stoat even arranged for delivery. I blame the father.”

Was this fair? We shall never know. Henry’s father had drowned in an appalling parachuting accident a year or two prior to her decision to go ahead with The Party at the End of Time. How long can a father be held responsible for the misdemeanours of his son?

Ellie was inclined to look on the bright side.

“They will,” she asserted, “cancel each other out.”

“If only,” Henry’s mother sighed.

The fact is that she was right to worry. Thor and Nigel had been rivals since they had risen from early childhood experiences as cabin boy in Thor’s case, ship’s mascot in Nigel’s, to captaincy, leaders of maritime ferocity on a scale never seen before. They were avid consumers of the latest news of each other’s exploits, liable to plunge into depression and excess if one felt outdone by the other but whether by fickle wind, fate or deliberate avoidance they had never  come within striking distance of each other but this was about to change. Both had received and accepted their invitations; both had set sail, determined to make landfall on the same beach in the same bay as suggested by Henry.

“As if that is all I have to worry about.”

If Henry’s mother was losing confidence it was time for Ellie to come to the aid of the party. She was just as concerned that pirates are bad news, Vikings as bad possibly worse - in combination they are, inevitably, dire.

“Look,” she advised, “on the bright side. They have a long distance against the prevailing winds. They may never make it.”

In the meantime they combed the invitation lists for further hints of disaster: the Modbury Conservative Association, Ivybridge Socialist ditto, Devon Farmers’ Cooperative, Cornwall ditto, Devon and Cornwall Young Farmers (OMG sighed Olivia) the list continued for several pages.

“The poets,” despaired Olivia.

“They invite themselves at the first hint of free booze,” Ellie pointed out.

“The little old ladies?” further despaired Olivia.

“When they heard about the poets.”

“Are you sure the pirates and Vikings won’t make it? What was that? I thought I heard something.”

What the sharp-eared Olivia had heard as Thor hit the beach just a mile of meandering stream a mile away was the striking Viking, lately enamoured of Brunnhilde, practising his newly adopted war cry.

“Heiaha! Heiaha! Hohotojo! Hotojoho,” he cried by way of announcing his arrival.

 His boat skidded to a halt on the sand and giving his exhausted crew a forty eight hour furlough he leapt ashore and, guided by the stream, headed for the party. Twenty minutes later he was followed by Nigel who was sorely tempted to make a lightning raid on his rival’s vessel but his crew was as exhausted as were the Vikings besides which a summons from Henry does not allow for prevarication.

The scene that Thor beheld as he raised his head above the parapet had not yet begun to disintegrate significantly. Though by this time reduced to its bones an ox turned laboriously on a spit over glowing coals as did the pair of rams that Olivia, knowing the  farmers’ capacity for consumption, rivalled only by that of their wives, had ordered in addition and to provide for those allergic to ox. The remains of a paella bubbled in a pan large enough to double as a birthing pool. The salad bar was untouched.

In the main venue, the larger of the two paddocks, the magnificent marquee was as pristine as it was at the moment of its erection, both were as yet free from the mud that was to feature so tenaciously before evening brought festivities to a close. Predictably there were clusters of folk around the bowsers that the farmers had tractored in from their cider orchards and there were bursts of song, Nellie Collum’s got no drawers will you kindly lend her yours proving popular but as yet mayhem was contained. 

As Olivia had predicted it could not last, what with Henry’s school and college chums, the farmers, wives, children, dogs, football, rugby and cricket club players and sandwich ladies, poets, peasants and a vast herd of gatecrashers; someone was bound to set fire to something sooner or later and true to form someone tossed a cigarette end into the horses’ forage. As the stable burned merrily Oliva congratulated herself on having sent the horses up the hill to renew their acquaintance with Mrs. Fellowes delightful little donkey but when Ellie suggested  sending for the fire brigade Olivia forbade her to do so.

“As if,” she said, “we don’t have enough problems, besides,” she continued with a hint of sarcasm directed at her right hand lady, “look on the bright side. It needed rethatching.”

Nothing excites a Viking or a pirate more than the sight of a healthy blaze. Thor began to “Hohotohoyo” with all the force of his bellow-like lungs fortified by a massive draught of scrumpy pillaged from a startled gate crasher who had not been warned about Vikings. He stumped to and fro not quite sure of which direction to focus his energy and looking over his shoulder not, as you might think, for fear of being ambushed by his pirate foe (of whom as of now he remained blissfully unaware) but of informants who might convey wholly inaccurate and malicious assessments of his behaviour back to his mother.

Other chroniclers have written fulsome accounts of the next events but they (he to be more precise) had the expansive advantages of a novel. On this occasion your writer is limited to at best three thousand words in which to describe how Nigel, our fellow hero, took his turn to peer over the parapet. He had the advantage of knowing that the enemy was somewhere amongst this confused and confusing horde the like of which he had never seen in his life to date and he could hear the curious battle cry that rattled the pine trees on either side of the valley. There are many sides to our pirate captain but whether a partiality to Wagner is one of them we may never know, he was, however, inclined to follow his hunches.

This was easier thought than accomplished; his path directed him across a paddock that though it had partially dried after the rain fall was by this time ankle deep in mud as cider seeped from the bowsers and champagne from discarded bottles. As was to be expected fights had broken out and as a result the ground was littered with bodies in varying degrees of consciousness and distress. These Nigel did his best to ignore, apart from those who insisted on grabbing his ankles. It was an exhausting procedure and he scuttled along afraid of losing his boots.

Then! Lo and behold! A striking Viking bent over. 

For all Nigel the Pirate knew he might have been ministering to the needs of a little old lady in distress but piratical ethics do not take such niceties into account. Nigel took the curving balletic strides of a high jumper and with the flat of the blade of his scimitar he opened hostilities. The whack might have been heard at either end of the valley had there not been such a rumpus. He could not have chosen a more sensitive spot. Was Nigel aware of the enormity of this form of assault, of adding injury to insult?  Did Thor in the instant of that blow take seriously the possibility that his mother had received fallacious reports and tracked him down? Fruitless conjecture but as in any Bond film worthy of the name the proof is in the pursuit.

How they went at it! No pause for battle cries or declarations of war; this was hammer and tongs, more accurately battle axe and scimitar time, across the stream, into the house and up the stairs, across the paddock and back for laps two and three until they lost count. The pursuit had begun but there is nothing more exhausting than terrain that has become more like that designed to test the fittest of commandos to their limits. There was an additional hazard .

Nothing compares with the ability of little old ladies to complicate situations. They have had decades of experience. Many of them have had husbands on which to hone their skills and how they joined in! With what squeals of delight they struck out at the passing protagonists with whatever came to hand, gobbets of mud, champagne bottles, bones salvaged from the carcasses of the roasted animals, even barbeque pokers.

“It has all,” the Viking, gasping to fill his capacious lungs, complained, “become grossly unfair.”

“That lot against us two,” whispered Nigel, by now so distressed that even his grammatical credentials were in doubt. “Just you wait til I get my hands on that young Henry.”

“Think he led us into a trap?”

It was a distressing thought. No one had ever suspected Henry of such devious behaviour but Nigel, the philosopher, smiled. They had managed to evade the screaming hordes and were now settled on a mossy bank side by side, weapons sheathed or discarded.

“Could be,” he ventured, “we should unite against a common enemy.”

“What young Henry? Well, I’ll be buggered. ”

They snoozed. 

Nigel had one last thought.

“Word of advice my friend. Don’ee ever use that form of language on a pirate barkie, you might live to regret what you wished for as the Chinese say.”

With that thought the ancient enemies, heroes of might and main, snuggled down, black and blonde beards entwined, arms round each other to stop slipping down the mossy bank and they slept like the babes in the wood.