Just a Bit Touched: Tales of Perspective

Other Works by Roy Holland

Poems:

Twelve Poems, Gabriall Press, 1973

Insights and Outsights, David Philip (Pty) Ltd, 1989

Short Stories (published by Writers Club Press, 2000):

News from Parched Mountain: Tales from the Karoo in the new

South Africa

Flakes of Dark and Light: Tales From Southern Africa and Elsewhere Pivot ofViolence: Tales from the new South Africa

JUST A

BIT TOUCHED

♦

Tales of Perspective

Roy Holland

Writers Club Press

San Jose New York Lincoln Shanghai

Just a Bit Touched Tales of Perspective

All Rights Reserved © 2000 by Roy Holland

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping, or by any information storage retrieval system, without the permission in writing from the publisher.

Writers Club Press

an imprint of iUniverse.com, Inc.

For information address:

iUniverse.com, Inc.

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Lincoln, NE 68512

www.iuniverse.com

These stories are the product of the author’s imagination.,

as are the names, characters and places. Any resemblance to persons living is entirely coincidental

ISBN: 0-595-15874-9

ISBN: 978-1-4620-9105-8 (ebook)

Contents

Foreword

The Arcadian

Yours Ever, Mary

Our Kid

The Face

A Very Sad Case

The Efelant

Egging On

Victims

Cyber Island

About the Author

For Lynda, Susan, Jane and Neil

Foreword

The title for this volume was suggested by a remark of the narrator in the opening paragraph of the first story, ‘The Arcadian’: They’re just a bit touched, bonkers-like.

In a sense, what is peculiar to Roy Holland’s vision as an artist is that so many of the characters or the people he portrays seem to be a bit touched. That’s why, of course, his tales are so colourful and absorbing, if not amusing.

Furthermore, each tale is touched by its own perspective, since each reflects the point of view of its unique narrator. So often the England of the Thirties or Forties is seen through the eyes of a child so that, Dickens-like, the foibles and characteristics of the adult world seem larger than life. These early stories are interesting, too, for the historical perspective they give us—of an Andy Capp industrial society long since gone. There are other stories written from the perspective of the Fifties: the two stories dealing with motor cars (‘The Efelant’ and ‘Egging-on’) add a more amusing perspective—of a time when petrol was dear and neighbours more than a bit touched by curiosity! The stories written in Africa with its latent social change—’Victims,’ for instance—add a more violent perspective, though hilarity is introduced by the expatriot (in ‘It Was A Very Sad Case’) who seems more than a bit touched by his paranoia.

A dimension of fantasy is introduced by the imaginative perspective of ‘Cyber Island’—an anti-utopian tale that uncomfortably reminds us of the illusionary implications of our modern technological world with its ready substitution of real values with virtual reality.

Whatever their perspective, these tales provide excellent reading and thoughtful reflection.

C H Muller

MA (Wales) PhD (London) DLitt (OFS) DEd (SA)

The Arcadian

All our tribe, if you look at them, really look at them, I mean—well, you can see they’re a bit queer. They’re not puffs, or nancy-boys, and open-at-all-hours, not that sort of queer. They’re just a bit touched, bonkers-like. I woke up one day when I was a nipper, and it just dawned on me. They’re like those poor buggers you see out for a walk on Saturday mornings from Manyhall Colony, in their navy-blue berets pulled down right over their ears, and their print dresses, and their big black shoes about six sizes too large. They walk down the road in a long crocodile, and if you stick your tongue out at them they just pull faces and laugh. Just like my folks; inmates—only outside the bin. Ever since that morning when I was eleven I’ve always thought of our house like a sort of annexe to the Colony up the road. Don’t get me wrong! We’re all harmless. But right round the twist.

Take my Dad. Just before the last war, when he’d got brassed off with walking his feet down to the ankles looking for a job, he went and signed on with the Army. He got ten quid, just for signing his name. He hadn’t had a square meal for weeks, its true, and he must have been feeling a bit weak in his attic, or he’d never have done it. It’s not much of an excuse, I know. But he wasn’t really daft enough to do it in his right mind. Anyway, six weeks after he got the ten quid, Neville Chamberlain, his fellow-citizen, gave him a new suit, and our Dad went off to Bury St. Edmund’s to polish the buttons. When he came back on leave, he said:

I’d a bin better orf in the Foreign Legion—sixpence a day and no socks—then in this bloody mob!

But he wasn’t down for long. He used to tell us kids funny stories until we pissed ourselves.

Hey! he said. You should see the food. The best-cooked horse-meat money can buy. Three square meals a day, and all found. It’s nearly as good as being in the jug. And the cat! You should see our cat. A great big ginger bastard, big as a dog. It weighs one stone fourteen ounces. The sergeant had to put a notice round its neck that said, ‘Do not feed me!’ Feed it! Christ! It only has to brush up against your leg and you spend the next week or two on sick leave.

What’s its name? I asked.

Tiny, he said.

Why? You said it was a socking big thing.

Who did?

You did, our Dad.

I didn’t, did I, Mother?

You know your Dad’s as daft as a bat! Don’t listen to his stories, said our Mom, and she gobbed on the iron, and it sizzled and spat like a wild moggy. We sat stuffing our jumpers in our ovens because of the Stan Laurel face our Dad was pulling.

When he’d finished telling us his whoppers, we’d all get a doorstep of utility bread to toast on the breadknife by the kitchen fire as a special treat because he was on leave. And then we’d get sent off to kip-down in the cupboard under the stairs on account of the air raids. Have you ever scoffed toast in bed in the dark? Charred crust stuck up your jacksey in the middle of the night is not funny, I can tell you.

Those nights were just great. They made you feel like a dog with two tails.

Even now, twenty odd years after the war, he’s still the same. What a performance when he had to have all his teeth out—his choppers, as he calls them. He squealed like a stuck pig for weeks before he’d even set foot in the waiting room. In the end he got two sets of teeth: one set he called ‘smilers’, for when he’d got company, and the other set ‘eaters’. Not that he used them for eating. When he sits down to a meal, he takes his smilers out and wraps them in his handkerchief, and he doesn’t bother to put in his eaters.

Can’t get used to the damn things, he says. Easier to chobble away like this. But what a performance when he’s eating a pickled onion! There’s nothing more he likes better than a bit of Chedder, a handful of pickled onions, and a pint of wallop. Have you ever seen a dog chasing a football round the backyard, trying yo get his teeth into it? That’s what its like watching our Dad trying to eat a pickled onion without his choppers. By the time he’s got one down he’s so fagged-out and thirsty he just downs the wallop and leaves the onions on his plate.

He’d always got some crack-brained scheme on for making a copper or two. I remember once, in one of his out-of-work spells, he said to our kid and me, just as we were having our elevenses in the kitchen, the menu being a glass of water and a run round the kitchen table:

I’ve been scratching me noddle, and I’ve come up with a good ‘un.

It was Saturday morning, and Mom was cleaning out the gas-oven, just in case one of us might want to use it in a weak moment.

What? Again? she said, and blew a raspberry down the jets.

This one’s a cert.

Ah, I’ve heard that before. Now pull the other one.

Who’s talking to you anyway? I’m telling Ted and Miffer here.

Twisting the minds of innocents, that’s what you’re doing.

It’s like this, Dad said to Ted and me. If you want to make any money you’ve got to go where the money is. That’s common sense, ain’t it? Now, where is it today?

Ted looked at me and winked.

Where? he said.

I’ll tell you where. In fags, that’s where.

Mom made a wet sloshing sound with the cloth in the gas-oven.

You’re a bleeding marvel, she said. You ought to be advising the Government. Drop ‘em a postcard and tell ‘em about it. They can’t have twigged it.

Can’t afford the stamp, said Dad.

So that’s how the Patent Unspillable Fag-packet started. He got me and our kid going round collecting empty ‘uns. He spent hours cutting them up with a razor blade. out of two or three Woodbine packets, or Players, or Kensitas, he’d make a new one. When he’d finished he’d put a couple of fags in and demonstrate.

See, he’d say, acting out the part. S’posing I was a copper on night-duty wanting a spit-and-a-drag after a hard shift trying shop-door handles. Where’d I go? I’ll tell you. Up some dark alley or down by the cut. There’d be no lights, see? And what happens when you want to open a packet of fags in the dark? They all fall out and get trodden on. Like this.

And he demonstrated with an ordinary Woodbine packet, keeping