The front door was wide open. I was horrified. Perhaps there was after all some substance to the telephone call at 3.45 in the morning. Kamilla had demanded my immediate presence in a mixture of loud Polish and broken English. She had mentioned Holy Saint's and death in such a curious manner that I had assumed that one of the many Holy Saints that hung from every ceiling in the house had given up its malevolent watchfulness and had fallen, vengefully, and killed someone.
"Hello Mama," I said as I came in and walked towards Kamilla's mother sitting in her rocking chair. I tried not to look at the Kalashnikov Automatic Rifle standing in the corner nearby. The Old Lady was smiling up at me as if nothing was wrong.
"Where's Kamilla?" The snow-white head inclined towards the kitchen.
The kitchen door swung open. Kamilla came in wearing the long flowing dressing gown that I remembered from the beginning of our friendship, all of 20 years ago.
"Where have you been? It's four hours since I phoned."
I tried to explain how long it took to drive 100 miles, but she cut me short crossly.
"Come and see the body. It's in the conservatory."
I moved off after her, certain that as there were no Police cars at the front door, the body would turn out to be some poor Polish gentleman who had come to visit and had passed out in shock after a glass of Mama's home made communion wine.
Suddenly she whirled around, her hands outstretched. She was so quick that I bumped into her, winding myself. "Wait, Wait, Wait! You'd better have a cup of tea first."
A distinct chuckle came from Mama making the moment more bizarre.
Mama became quiet as the sound of marching men came to us through the open front door.
Then, to Kamilla's horror, the Mechanic marched in with the Russian. They slammed to a halt with military precision in front of the Old Lady. She clasped her hands together and laughed aloud.
"Leave the body and go and fetch Yolanda."
Kamilla rushed upstairs with a "Yes Mama."
Yolanda was dressed in white. Her black hair shone in the early light. Her tall slender figure shook slightly as she came down the stairs, pushed by an irritated Kamilla.
I had never seen Yolanda look so beautiful. Her splendid figure made me wish that I were young again. Memories of my wild youth flooded me.
The Russian saluted Mama with a raised fist. He clicked his heels together loudly. Mama seemed beside herself with merriment.
She watched carefully as the Russian counted out one thousand pounds in fifty pound notes onto the low table by her rocking chair. She rocked back and forth for a while and then nodded to Yolanda.
Yolanda moved timidly forward and placed a second thousand pounds next to the first. She looked at the Russian warily out of the corner of her eye and then stood by his side in front of Mama.
I looked at the Mechanic. He winked at me and pushed his black trilby hat to the back of his head. Mama took Yolanda's hand and placed it in the huge Russian's great paw. At once he gathered all the money from the table with his shovel like free hand. He tried to stuff it all into his trouser pocket. He bent down quickly, Yolanda's hand still held fast, making her body twist inelegantly and then sprang upright, thrusting some fallen notes into his pocket with two thick fingers.
"QUICK, QUICK, QUICK," Kamilla yelled, handing me the Kalashnikov rifle. "There's one over there!"
The Russian's hand jerked and some of the money fell on the floor. The Mechanic rushed past me, knocking the rifle aside in his hurry to get to the door. Yolanda screeched and tore out of the room. She was followed by the Russian in a flurry of bank notes. All of them pounded up the stairs to the front bedroom. Only Mama was laughing. She was delighted and rocked in her chair furiously.
I whirled around with the rifle. Kamilla was pointing to the large fireplace where a giant black rat was shinning up the mantelpiece. It sauntered along the top, in and out of a long line of plaster saints. St Barnabas fell to an untimely splintered end and the rat disappeared into thin air.
"Why didn't you shoot? All you English are fit for is drinking tea!" Kamilla said, and flounced into the kitchen.
Mama was in hysterics by now. I looked at her angrily and then quickly at the Kalashnikov rifle. It was jammed fast. Then the Mechanic came downstairs.
"Ye'll never get them with that", he said, his Irish brogue thick. "I told Kamilla to get rid of that thing when her father died. Half of it is not there anyway."
He bent down to retrieve the bank notes, strewn in a wide arc over the floor.
"The barrel's been welded up," I said. "And the bolt's been thrown away. It's fit for sweet Fanny Adams."
"Hang on to the bleddy t'ing. I t'ink it moight be useful."
He stumbled off upstairs with the Russian's money.
Before long he was back. He stood before a smiling Mama. A thoughtful suspicious frown creased his forehead.
Kamilla came out of the kitchen with mugs of tea on a tin tray.
"Drink this both of you and then we'll go and see the body." The Mechanic winked at me over the rim of his mug.
"Bloody women!" he said in a perfect imitation of my voice.
Kamilla hit me hard on the head with the tin tray. "Be quiet Mad One. How dare you? Haven't I made you some of your precious tea?"
I pointed at the Mechanic like a tale-telling schoolboy, but before I could speak a loud wail came from the bedroom at the front of the house. It sounded as if someone was torturing a sackful of tomcats. I looked upwards, puzzled.
"Yolanda is happy with the Russian?" Kamilla whispered to the Mechanic.
"As far as I know." He replied, his brogue thicker than ever.
The wail grew loud and pitiful. The Russian language was growling around it in bear-like outrage.
"We have no time for all that," Kamilla, said, impatient to get down to business. "Come!"
The body was bloody. It was horrible in its nakedness. Two huge black rats were trying to pull it out into the garden. It was the featherless body of a fowl that Kamilla had hoped would provide our evening meal. As far as I was concerned the rats were welcome to it. Last time Kamilla had cooked chicken, Polish Style, we were up half the night.
"Oh by all the saints that's Holy!" said the Mechanic, pushing me back into the kitchen. "We've escaped an uncertain fate, but Her Ladyship is so terrible angry, that she'll make us tear the nest asunder."
We shivered for several moments before Kamilla caught us and stamped her feet.
"Come on you two men get going. The rat's nest is in the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden."
We took as long as we could getting ready for the fray. The Mechanic bent down and tucked his trouser legs into his socks. He was lucky to be wearing his heavy industrial boots. I followed his example, but my shoes had suddenly become rather thin and nonprotective. I felt naked.
Kamilla flounced out and marched to the greenhouse at the bottom of the garden. She came back unharmed, carrying two spades.
"Dig the floor up. The rats are under there."
Shamed by a woman, albeit a tough one, the Mechanic and I crept down the garden to the greenhouse. We rushed back again as soon as we heard the delighted squealing coming from inside. We excused ourselves by stating the fact that in our eagerness we had forgotten the spades.
"If you're too frightened, it's O.K," Kamilla said sweetly. "Just take your boots off Joe, then both of you take off your trousers.
I expect one pair might fit me. One of you can hold my skirt for me and keep it off the mud."
The thought of Kamilla taking off her dressing gown and then removing her slip, which was her only undergarment, filled us with such fear, that we found ourselves back in front of the greenhouse without realising it.
"You hammer the floor and I'll lever the boards up, one by one. After all, I've got the boots." I realised again why I was fond of my friend the Mechanic. I had never learned to call him by his proper name, Joe. Kamilla had christened him the Mechanic, years ago, due to his constant efforts with her old car.
I hammered and he levered. Each board we lifted had no vicious rat hiding under it ready to bite us, or jump high and enter our trousers at the waist. At last, the end board was all that was left of the floor.
"They're all under that one board," the Mechanic said fearfully. "Get ready to hit them with your spade. No. Wait! Get the Kalashnikov and swing it like a club, it will be better."
I raced back and got the Kalashnikov. I grasped it by its blocked barrel and swung it high in the air. I waited terrified. The Mechanic levered up the final floorboard in a quick jerk. There was not a rat in sight, only a hole leading into the next-door garden.
"Thanks be to God for that!" The Mechanic blew out in his relief. "Make a lot of noise for the love of St.Michael, or Kamilla will make us dig down for t'bleddy t'ings."
We banged and crashed about for half an hour. Then we built a bonfire over the rat's escape hole. Soon long flames and blue smoke swelled out from the greenhouse.
Kamilla restrained us at last.
"Stop all that noise. Put that fire out! All the rats are frightened to death by now. Anyway, the Russian wants your Mechanic friend."
Sadly we left our playground and came indoors like two schoolboys at bedtime. The Russian was standing, huge and furious, money in hand, before Mama.
"Nickety crom debombitz", he said to the Mechanic.
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"The Russian refuses to marry Yolanda for forty thousand pounds", the Mechanic said. "Let alone a thousand. He says that six months with her would kill any man."
"But I saw two thousand pounds on the table."
"That was only to save Yolanda's pride. She was going to pay him one thousand pounds to marry her."
"I wish my Old Woman had paid me to marry her," I said, feeling aggrieved.
"Oh to be sure an' all. You married out of choice. This is business. He is a Naturalised British Subject and she has to marry someone like that to be allowed to stay in England. Otherwise the Home Office will deport her back to Poland."
"I thought these things meant that they went their separate ways afterwards?"
"No. Now our Russian friend would have to live with her for six months."
"Surely she can't be that bad?"
"Could you stand a woman who plays the violin all day and night, very, very badly? Imagine six months of that!"
"I could not stand it for one hour," I said smiling as the Russian bowed to Mama and left by the still open front door.
"Mama!" I said. "You knew, didn't you? You are wicked."
The Old Lady exploded with laughter and rocked back and forth on her rocking chair. She was counting Yolanda's thousand pounds that the Russian had dropped in her lap on his way out.
A saucepan full of boiling water and nettles, that Kamilla was heating for Yolanda's hair washing ritual, boiled dry and smelled so bad that we all rushed out of the front door. Mama started laughing again.
"Nickety crom de crapka," She said between bouts.
"What is wrong now?" I asked the Mechanic.
"Tis only t'at the Russian has kept fifty pounds for his trouble," he said contentedly.
By Richard Walker
All Rights Reserved
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Richard.K.Walker@btinternet.com