Once, upon a hill

Once upon a time....

Do people say that anymore in the UK? Times change, and manners with them. They certainly changed for Larry, the Snakey Hill Man.

Once, upon a hill, in a town not far from here, Larry Munnery was buried face down in a ditch originally designed for a gas pipe. This rather annoyed the people who made it, having spent all day in the rain hoicking out lumps of clay and stones, only to find when they huffed back up the hill the following morning in their donkey jackets and steel-caped daisy roots it had all been filled in again, mainly with Larry, leaving a few lumps over.

In those days it was all black and white tv and not so many clever little machines. You didn’t just sit and watch while someone in a warm, dry cab pulled little levers and took it all out with a mini-digger. It was more muscle and spade work. So it took a while to get him out. By then he was pretty flattened, and not easy to recognise. It looked as if he had fallen fairly heavily, face down, onto a sharp flint. For a small man, he had fallen with surprising heaviness. But, as luck would have it, he had his rent book in his pocket, so they knew who to contact.

His widow looked shocked, then grief-stricken, then closed the door and started packing. The day after the funeral, she moved to Arcos de la Frontera, in Cadiz. That was surprising, as she had never been abroad before, didn’t like foreign food and found it hard walking up hills. Even Snakey Hill would have taxed her dodgy legs, let alone a hill-top fortress in a foreign land. Also, as far as anyone knew, she had no brass. Larry never did. Which made it more surprising that in his jacket pocket were a pair of ruby ear rings, worth a few months' holiday in any currency. And not at all suitable for the widow Munnery, who had red ears and preferred clip-ons.

Investigations moved slowly to conclude that foul play was probable. He might have stumbled in but would hardly have tidied up after himself. And even council workmen would have seen him there if they’d started shovelling. Official sources further concluded the ear rings were linked to a robbery several counties away and some months previous. No prints on the rubies. No clues on the deceased. A few weeks later, £2.6 million was disappeared from a passing train and all local resources took to the Great Hunt. Ronnie Biggs was all the rage; Little Larry was filed under “Maybe Later.”

The grieving widow, with her dodgy legs, had no bank account and seemed to live on handouts from old friends, stuck on her foreign protrusion.

Being as how everyone was out chasing Ronnie and his mates, nobody official bothered to attend Larry’s funeral so nobody noticed that his brother turned up. Which was quite odd, seeing as he never had a brother, as far as anyone knew. Certainly not a twin. He did have a close friend, Willie Masters, who wasn’t at the funeral. In fact, nobody’d seen him for ages. Especially not Larry’s widow, who couldn’t remember when he’d last run into him, no matter how many times you asked her. Although she did once mention a disagreement about a card game, leading to an estrangement, without giving any details. It used to be rumoured that Willie was such a close friend Mrs Larry couldn’t tell the difference, especially when Larry was out getting stuck in windows, but you don’t mention that at a funeral. So the twin came and went, without saying much, and Willie stayed away and wasn’t really missed. His passport was later found on a beach in Malaga, next to a gold bracelet from guess where. Records were amended, life went on, for us if not for Larry, and we all got colour tellies, even those giving her Majesty pleasure for various reasons.

When I retired to Spain I took a few trips about the place.. I called in on Mrs Larry, had a cup of tea. We reminisced, about the way music was better in those days and you could leave your back door open, if Larry wasn’t about. About the day they dug up half her road to fix some gas leak and Willie disappeared, never to be seen again. Then I admired her necklace and her fine garnet ring, took the bundle of currency she’d been keeping for me and waved to Larry as I Ieft. He was cleaning the back window. He could see through it, if nobody else could. 

by Paul Eustice 

After several decades in Further and Higher Education, encouraging other people to express themselves in various ways, Paul switched to training, consultancy and interim management then to full-time editing and commercial writing, before deciding to try proper retirement. This led to a novel, short stories, poems and text books then, most recently, to a history of allotments in Worthing, and a few web sites. The devil finds work for idle hands, apparently. Most are available from www.bpfe.eu. Next year, he intends to do less. Once the second novel is finished.