All stories

Nicky entered the pub. He bought himself a pint and then began to make his way to their table. He was walking slowly, moving with a carefully orchestrated wide gait, as though he was a cowboy who had spent a long day in the saddle. He was trying to play it cool but there was no way he could hide his big cheesy grin.

‘You alright, mate?’ Martin said. ‘You look like you’ve been riding a bike with no seat.’

Nicky didn’t lose his grin. ‘Riding’s the word. Hard at it, I’ve been. Oh yes.’

He eased into his chair with great care, and then spent some time shifting around until he was comfortable. He looked up at them and said softly, ‘Chafing.’

Johnny snatched up his own pint and took a big gulp to stifle a giggle.

Nicky reached across the table and chinked his own glass gently against Johnny’s.

‘Mate,’ Nicky said. ‘You are the best. The absolute best. You are the world’s hero.’

Martin was looking confused. ‘I don’t…what?’

Nicky chinked Johnny’s glass once more.

‘This guy,’ Nicky said. ‘He only went and got me set up on his Aunt Irma’s Magical Mystery Tour.’

Nicky waited for the penny to drop.

Martin turned slowly to Johnny who had at last managed to pull himself together and no longer needed to hide behind his pint glass.

‘Your Aunt Irma,’ Martin said. ‘Who rents the rooms above the heavy metal club. Who was in the paper after the club served her with a noise abatement order?’

Johnny nodded.

Martin said, ‘The same Aunt Irma who runs the bridge club whose slogan is “Come one, come all”?’

‘Oh yeah, baby,’ Nicky said.

‘Yeah, that Aunt Irma,’ Johnny said. ‘Once a year she rents a row of cottages in the country to allow some of her more discerning clients to take a little tour, cottage to cottage. She calls it the Magical Mystery Tour. There was a spare space, so…’

Martin stared.

Nicky grinned some more. He drank some drink, and then winked smugly at Martin.

Martin was looking faintly stunned. ‘I had a date on Friday. Peck on the cheek goodnight, and nothing else since.’

Johnny said, ‘Sorry, mate.’

Nicky said, ‘No cheeks, and definitely no pecking. Though their mouths were involved, know what I’m saying?’

Martin’s shoulders were slumped. He would not look at Johnny, and definitely not at Nicky, whose face was nothing but gloating leer.

Nicky said, ‘Five cottages, five bored housewives.’ He looked at Johnny. ‘Ask your aunt for me, is that some kind of record?’ Nicky drained his pint, then eased slowly out of his chair. He pointed with his glass at Johnny. ‘I had another idea, branding wise. She could call it the M & M tour, because all the colours of the ‘bow, man.’ He sighed. ‘Cottage number three. She was a tall glass of hot nymph coffee.’

Nicky took himself carefully away to the bar.

Martin muttered, ‘That’s Skittles. Twat.’

Martin turned to face Johnny. ‘Speaking of twats…’

‘Mate,’ Johnny said. ‘You wouldn’t have liked it.’

‘Bored housewives handing out blowjobs? Don’t you know me at all?’

‘Mate,’ Johnny said. ‘I seriously doubt they were housewives. But Nicky was right about the M & M thing. You know how M & M’s sometimes are chocolate, but sometimes they have peanuts in them?’

The bus drives out of town leaving Tommy behind it in a cloud of dust. He shoulders his rucksack, hoists his new trademark half smile onto his face and strides towards mum’s. It is the beginning of summer and he’s here again, home again, back to rule the roost again.

When mum opens the door he doesn’t notice the faint trace of alarm behind her surprise, seeing only delight. He stoops to wrap her in a distracted hug then throws his rucksack onto the hall floor and pours himself a hot coffee from the pot.

Mum watches from the doorway as he drinks her coffee and sprawls his adolescent bulk across her breakfast bar to read her newspaper.

“Aren’t you pleased to see me?” he smiles, not noticing that she doesn’t answer.

Larry and Jake will finish work by five and will be dying to hear about his adventures. His conquests. He runs through the girls in his head, choosing which to share, anticipating their envy and admiration. He has done it. He has broken free. He won’t be working in the petrol station for the next 50 years like Jake, or be chained to one of the town’s six girls his age like Larry.

It’s a whole world they have never known and Tommy has sampled it. A world of late nights and later mornings. Of beer and dancing with girls whose families you’ve never met, girls who were soft and warm and willing. And if they weren’t willing, why worry? They never mattered in the morning.

He goes to meet the boys at seven and, passing the river, he sees a girl he doesn’t know.

Tommy’s feet lead him to her. She is pretty, maybe fifteen? Old enough anyway. She smiles at him with full lips and lowered lashes. He sits beside her and asks her name, but she doesn’t answer. Tommy is excited by her coyness, by the challenge of her.

The girls on campus were all like this. Smiling and savvy at the start, then playing hard to get when it came down to it. He hadn’t met a girl who didn’t want him. Even if she said she didn’t at first, he always managed to make them see reason with a little gentle pressure. This little hick girl is gasping for the taste of a real man, even if she doesn’t know it yet.

To his surprise she doesn’t resist his fumblings, not even at first. Instead she sinks willingly into the mud under his weight, accepting his advance and matching it, hips rising to meet his. It is smooth and almost graceful. Those full lips part softly for his ravenous tongue.

So when she slips deftly from under him and beckons for him to follow Tommy doesn’t think twice. He stands, mouth open, eyes staring, jeans bulging and follows the lithe figure into the shadows of the bridge.

It’s three days before anyone sees Tommy again. When they do he’s sitting on the riverbank staring blindly into the shadow of the bridge, his eyes fixed on some invisible horror. He’s wearing nothing but his underwear, soiled and bloody, his mouth a perfect, slack O.

When mum reaches a gentle hand to touch his shoulder. He turns to look and when Tommy sees her he opens his mouth and begins to scream.

Rollo Saint-Michael, sat in the driver’s seat of his 1955 Triumph TR3 and looked around.

No water had entered the cab and nothing was broken- bit of a miracle really. He took a tot of Talisker from his hipflask and lit a sobranie from his silver Cigarette case. Dashed Silly bridge! Bloody stupid haywain! Cursed memory of Samantha Woostenhulme (Helluva girl, legs up to her neck)!, all contributed to his swerve into the stream.

Just then through the fag smoke emerged very pretty Nymph dressed in a polo shirt, with a Nike swoosh on her wings. Printed on the polo shirt was the legend “Bettanymphs-Happy to help!” she fluttered beside him for a moment.

Her name badge told him she was called Kaycee.

She recited her motto in a bored, monotone scouse, accent.

“I’m the nymph of Witley Brook

And you have found my magic nook

This means that I must now invite

Your presence on a mystery flight!

Now which do you want? Basic induction or full magical mystery tour?”

“Hmmmm” said Rollo who knew a good innuendo when he heard one, “the latter please! Coocoo-Cachoob!”

“Before we take this magic ride

Read yon Health and safety guide” said Kaycee, tossing him a red plastic folder full of laminated rules.

He glanced at the pages but didn’t take them in. Such things were for bores. He particular neglected to look at section 12b “Distraction of flight staff”.

He handed the folder back to her.

She took his hand and, with a lightness he had never felt before, they ascended into the blue sky above the tree canopy. Within seconds they were swooping like swifts over a patchwork of fields and moorland. Rollo felt a huge surge of attraction for his flying partner.

“I say” Said Rollo, wishing he had some Pimms to hand, “You are a most fascinating creature!” She hadn’t heard him though, she was posting a selfie on nymphagram with the caption “Still at work- YAAAAWN!!”

“I SAID, I SAY!!!!” shouted Rollo. She looked round angrily and told him to shut up.

“Never mind” He thought “Faint heart never won fair lady!” and manoeuvred himself closer to her where he could gently begin fondling her breast with his hand.

The ensuing scream of “fuck off” was followed by a mid-air scuffle and a very painful plummet through a copse of particularly pointy trees. Rollo, who magically landed back in the driver’s seat of his car, sustained a broken leg and dozens of bruises and scratches.

Though he had no idea how it had happened, his “accident” changed Rollo. From this point on, his reputation as a minor sex pest reduced and he became noticeably more timid around fairies in school plays and leisure centre staff. People said he was also kinder and more thoughtful.

So perhaps it was for the best that Rollo never read the motto in the Bettanymph health and safety manual which stated

“Whosoe’er distracts our nymphs

Will walk forever with a lymp!

And from that day will never see-

How they received this injury.

But he who acts with calm restraint

And gives his pilot no complaint

And does not shout things out too loud

Will get a blow job on a cloud!”

“Dolly….DOLLY!”

Dolly ignored Arthur bellowing from the kitchen, he wasn’t going to upset her today. She put the last few pins into her hair and powdered her cheeks before going to see what he wanted.

“Bloody hell Dolly, where have you been?”

“Arthur, have you made the flask up? I’ll be wanting a nice cup of coffee when we get there”

Arthur had tried to make a flask of coffee, but in all honesty he didn’t know how. He looked at the kilted soldier on the Camp coffee label, who was being delivered his beverage by a turbaned gentleman. Arthur thought perhaps a fella in a turban should be making it for him too.

Whilst Arthur was pondering his apparent lack of servants, Dolly mixed the brown chicory liquid with some full fat milk in a jug, added 5 spoonful’s of sugar and some water just off the boil, stirred it and decanted it into the plaid Thermos standing on the worktop.

Whilst doing this Dolly envisaged herself pouring a cup of the steaming hot liquid and enjoying it with a slice of the Battenberg she was taking with her. Missing from her vision was the location. It being a Mystery tour she was embarking on today, she couldn’t be sure where she would end up. Chances were it would be over the bridge to the North Devon Coast, it usually was as the Mystery Tours arranged by Barrett’s Coaches had a very narrow menu of destinations. She had been to Weston Super Mare 3 times since 1965.

Dolly and Arthur had met on a coach tour in 1953. That one had been to the New Forest. Dolly had been 35 at the time and was with her mother. Arthur sat across the aisle dressed in a 3 piece suit made of heavy wool, even though it was June. On their stop in the forest Arthur rolled up his trousers and paddled in the cool shallow forest brook, pointing out to Dolly the different types of insect nymphs and larvae, while the ponies munched on spikey grass nearby. Later they had enjoyed an ice-cream in Mudeford, where it was Dolly’s turn to paddle in the sea in her tights. A year later they were engaged and had been ever since.

When Dolly’s mother died she and Arthur moved into the bungalow he had built. It had a room specially decorated to Dolly’s tastes, where everything was pink and gold. Only Dolly and the vicar ever used that room, Arthur spent all of his time sitting by the Rayburn in the kitchen. They had separate bedrooms and nothing very biblical happened, apart from one Christmas Eve in 1961 of which they never spoke.

Arthur still wore the same suit, with the trousers hitched up high above his paunch. Dolly had looked after him well, so well that he couldn’t be relied on to make a flask of coffee.

“Ready Arthur? I don’t want to miss the coach”

” It won’t bloody go without us” said Arthur doing up his shoes.

“Where do you think it will be today Arthur?”

“How should I know, it’s a bloody mystery tour!”