"The Collector" by Tansy A. H. Pye

The Collector
By Tansy Pye
magpyes@bigwig.net

All Albert Gordon Weissman the third, needed, were a pair of Silver, Regency Stamped, Ornamental Welsh Soup Tureens . He had searched nearly his whole life, or so it seemed to him, to find them; And now he had. He had finally tracked down both tureens in a strange little store, in an alley, just off the market street in a small Welsh village.

He couldn’t believe his luck. I mean there wasn’t anywhere in the world he hadn’t tried, and to think, he’d found it here in .... scle..... cle.... lle....?!...... Wales! In a back street shop in some village he couldn’t even pronounce. Still, he thought, he’d amused the shop keeper no end with his quaint English attempts at the name and the patter of sheep jokes. At least he thought he’d amused him, these welsh types?! You just can’t tell, what with their silly accents and such. A point which he felt sure he’d put across in a charming and witty manner in the shop.

Anyway, this nice Mr Jowanes, or Taffy, or whatever the hell his name was, had been awfully polite, and grinned in an odd sort of pained way, while Albert tried to put across what he required amongst the jokes and crude parodies of the Welsh language. Odd chap, but then he was foreign after all.

Albert fancied himself as a bit of a jet setter, he’d travelled most of the known world and not a small amount of the less well known bits, (Albert considered places such as Kenya ‘one of the less well known bits!’) He’d never tried any local foods, always preferring to take along his own English food and a good English chef to prepare it for him and he knew only the one language; English. He figured it was up to the locals to learn another language; After all if they didn’t want the tourism, he’d just go and take himself some where else, then see how they liked it. It was all the income they had, some of them. They really ought to make the effort.
Despite his cosmopolitan ways, Albert never felt more a stranger that when travelling to the less well known bits of his own country. Like Wales for instance.

It was because, he decided one day, they are so close. You expect them to be as civilised as your self, don’t you. After all, as he said to Mr Evans, or whatever, Wales is practically in England,

“Of course.” He said as if expecting the shopkeeper to be pleased with the information, “ It is only a matter of time, before Wales is accepted back into England, and there’ll be no more of this paying to get in rubbish then, Oh no.” Albert thought the shop keeper grinned especially hard at that piece of information.

The little shop keeper, had gone deep into the back of the shop then. He was gone for quite a while. Albert thought he heard him speak to some one on the telephone back there, but he was speaking in foreign, so Albert couldn’t understand what was said.

When he returned to the front of the store, he was carrying a ... thing, the like of which, Albert had never seen before. It appeared to be some sort of a taxidermist’s experiment; A sort of a rabbit with horns and large Magpie-like wings that stretched over its oddly elongated back, along which were spines like those of a hedgehog or small porcupine.

“What’s that?” Albert asked.

“I have no idea, see. I found it at the back of the shop when I went back for something else. I thought you should have it.” The shopkeeper smiled at him, the first real smile since Albert had walked in to the shop some hours previously. He put the poor stuffed creature inside one of the tureens Albert was holding.

If Albert was able to understand the subtleties of body language, this smile would have scared him.

If Albert had more than one brain cell he would have paid for his Tureens, given back the thing and left the shop in a hurry.

But Albert didn’t... So Albert made another joke.

“I know what it is.” He began, The shopkeeper winced and looked nervous, as if some fiendish plot had been unwittingly discovered; Albert mistook it for a smile. “It’s a Rarie!” He declared, the shopkeeper visibly relaxed. Albert misunderstood even this blatant clue that something was amiss. “Oh, have you heard it then?” He didn’t wait for an answer, but launched in to the full scale joke regardless.

The owner of the shop grinned at Albert and kept checking his watch as if waiting for some momentous event, or counting down the seconds till a bomb went off. He tried to manage a pained snigger at what he guessed to be the punch line.

“So Taffy, said.... That’s a long, long way to tip a Rarie!” Albert laughed heartily at his joke, and was pleased to see Mr Jowanes laugh too. The original joke hadn’t had any welsh people in it, he’d had to strain to put in as many as he had. He was quite impressed with managing to get the bit about the farmer in a compromised position with one of his sheep in it too. He was glad to see the Shop keeper, enjoying it as much as he had.

“Is that the time, then?!” The little welsh chap shouted gleefully.
“Closing time, already... How time flies see!?” Albert looked at his watch, it was almost Half past two in the afternoon. He pointed this out to Evans as he was ushered through the door.

“Well, you know us little backwater welsh villages, we’re a law unto ourselves, we are. Still, I’m sure it won’t be like that once we’re a part of England again, we’ll be civilised then see.”

The woman who owned the shop next door, was just locking up as Albert left, she waved at Evans and Albert, and said something in Welsh that caused the shopkeeper to smile thankfully at her and say something incomprehensible back. Awfully rude of them, Albert thought, but he wasn’t going to let it ruin an otherwise perfect day. There was hope for these yokels yet, he thought as he got into his car.

“Home, James.” He said to the driver.

The driver, whose name was Geoffrey, winced at the pun. Albert, said the same thing, every time he got into the car, no matter where they were going; And every time Geoff winced. He waited until Albert had told him the actual destination of the journey, then turned off the internal com and drove the rest of the journey home in blissful silence.

He had heard all the travel stories and chauffeur jokes before and did not require a repeat performance. He usually found that if he turned the music up in the front and nodded along to it, Albert seemed perfectly happy to sit back and assume he was responding to him. He never looked in the rear view mirror. As he tried to explain to the police afterwards, the sight of Albert prattling along to himself, was more than he could bear, he had learned to use the side mirrors for all manoeuvres.

It was because of this, Geoffrey, - the only person, other than Albert, in the car, - did not see, the strange, oddly formed creature, looking somewhat like a taxidermist’s experiment, climb out of the Silver, Regency Stamped, Ornamental Welsh Soup Tureen, where it had been hiding. And cruelly savage, Albert Gordon Weissman, the Third, to death.

Indeed, no-one even knew he was dead, until Geoff opened the car door for Albert back at his country estate in Sussex, and most of him fell out of the car on to the drive. The rest of him was attached to various internal car ornaments, or shoved into the drinks cabinet or ashtrays so didn’t fall out so much as it oozed out, or was picked out and baggied by the forensics team later.

A few miles back, on the other side of the Severn crossing, in a less well known bit of England, a small creature, stretched it’s magpie-like wings, cleaned the blood off it’s whiskers and contemplated the long flight home. Perhaps, it thought, it would travel a bit first. It was not often let out and Albert’s brain had given it the urge for adventure; Actually, Albert’s brain had given it indigestion, but it amounted to much the same thing, it certainly wouldn’t be flying home tonight.

It fancied itself as a bit of a jet setter. Perhaps it would travel to some of the less well known bits of it’s own country. (The Tizzle, considered England one of the less well known bits!) It flew over to a lay-by on the side of the M4 bound for England and settled itself down on the flat bed of a truck that was parked there. All the Tizzle needed now, it thought, were a pair of Silver, Regency Stamped, Ornamental Welsh Soup Tureens.

End.