The Anchovy Tree Chapter 3 (Ch 1 is posted in two parts below this post)

The first Vanilla knew of a strange presence was when she passed one of the guest bathrooms at three o'clock on Saturday afternoon and caught a loud rendition of 'Rule Britannia.'  She looked aghast at black shoe prints on a peach carpet and immediately jumped to the conclusion that the chimney sweep, who had visited the day before, had found his way upstairs.  But she couldn't understand why he was still in the house.

'Fran!' she cried, thinking her companion would have the answer. 'Where are you?'

Fran scurried from the conservatory wielding a pair of pruning shears. 'Whatever is it?' she answered from the hall.

Vanilla leant over the gallery rail. 'Who's in the bathroom?'

Fran looked blank, so Vanilla added, 'Can't you hear the singing?  Come here quickly and have a listen.'

Far from being concerned, Fran climbed the stairs with a smile and started to sing along, 'RULE BRITANNIA! BRITANNIA RULE THE ...'

'Stop it!' ordered Vanilla. 'Don't you realise the chimney sweep is having a shower?  The nerve of it.  And I thought he went home yesterday.'

'It's not the chimney sweep,' Fran's eyes twinkled. 'It's Mr Elpreto.  He's a little ex... expentric.'  She pushed open the bathroom door. 'Orinoco, my dear.  How fine you look.  How well you sing.'

Little's the word, thought Vanilla, eyeing his slight frame and puny, bare chest.  To her annoyance, he'd wrapped one of her best cinder grey towels round his waist.  She would have snatched it away, but for the fact that it concealed his manhood, not that she imagined there was much to hide.   He only had eyes for Fran and hugged her tightly, kissing her passionately on the lips.

'Mind the shears,' Vanilla called, startled by Elpreto's behaviour and when, without warning the towel dropped exposing his rapidly inflating genitalia, she fainted.

A short while later she came round on the bed.  A big anchovy sporting Elpreto's erection was sitting next to her waving Olbas Oil in her face.  It took a few seconds to blink away the image and in its place was Fran.

Olbas Oil was a remedy for fainting that Fran swore by.  She said it worked quicker than sympathy and helped clear your nose at the same time.  What she didn't realise was that it seemed to enhance hallucinations.

As Vanilla's focus steadied, her eyes strayed towards a shadowy figure on her left and she heard Fran announce proudly, 'This is Mr Orinoco Elpreto.'

Vanilla tried to say hello, but the word wouldn't arrive.  She couldn't help staring.  Eventually she put her hand out to touch him and make sure he wasn't a figment of her imagination.

He was no more than five feet tall with spiky, white eyebrows, boot black eyes, an oversized Roman nose and lips so plump and shiny, she was sure he had used a tub of her lip gloss to buff them up.  His hair, hastily toweled, fluffed out round his head like a white, woolly pom-pom and though his skin was smooth, almost wax-like, Vanilla put him in his late seventies.  She attempted another hello, but a vision of him with strings attached to his hands and feet popped into her mind, for he could easily have been a puppet.  If it wasn't for the fact that she'd seen his overactive penis, she would definitely be thinking he was a puppet.  Instead of speaking, a rude sound gurgled from her nose.

'Is there something wrong?' Fran said, and her whole face seemed to turn into a question mark.

'Strings,' blurted Vanilla feeling her cheeks pink. 'I need some necklace strings.  I feel naked without them.'

Fran shook her head, looked at Elpreto and shrugged.

Vanilla meanwhile was casting Fran's integrity into doubt - how could a puppet ever untangle an anchovy dream?  The question itself was bizarre.

'Leave me alone,' she burbled. 'I'll join you soon.  When I've got my necklaces on.'  With that she rolled onto her side and bit hard into the pillow to diffuse the laughter that forced its way out of her heaving chest.  How, oh how was she ever going to face Mr Elpreto, puppet impressionist, again?

Not ten minutes later there was a knock on the door.  'Can I come in?' said Fran.

Vanilla was sitting at the dressing table swamped in necklaces and practising the art of concealing a laugh with a wide smile.  It worked better when she stuck out her bottom jaw and though it looked odd, she decided it was worth the effort.

'Are you alone?' she said, relieved to discover she could speak almost normally in bottom jaw mode.

'Yes.'

'I'm nearly ready,' Vanilla said, squirting anti-frizz over her hair and thinking Fran had come to hurry her along.

'I'd like a word,' Fran insisted.

'Oh, all right,' Vanilla's jaw ached like mad and she tried to return it into place, but it was stuck.

Fran opened the door and walked in. 'What's happened?' she rushed over.

Vanilla had both her hands round her bottom jaw and managed to prize it into position.  'I'm fine,' she gasped with relief. 'I was just doing a few facial exercises.  Denita at the salon taught me how to do them, but I don't think I'll bother again.'  Feeling foolish, she champed her mouth up and down to make sure it was working.

Fran watched in silence, a purposeful look creeping over her face.  She was about to speak when Vanilla, not wanting an inquisition, barged in first. 'How did he get into my bathroom?'

'For some unknown reason,' said Fran, 'he accidentally fell down the coal chute.  Nobody's ever done that before.  Lucky he didn't hurt himself or he may have had reason to sue you.'

'Sue me!  For his own stupidity.  How dare he?'

'Calm down.  He's not going to sue.  I only said, if he'd been hurt, it may have given him reason.  As it happens, he got covered in dust and wanted to clean himself off before meeting you.  He's a little ex... expentric.  I did mention that.'

'Eccentric,' corrected Vanilla, wondering how this idiot of a man could possibly help her.  'Accident or no accident, I am not sure I can allow him to stay, darling.  Whatever might he do next?'

She got up rattling with necklaces and straightened her blouse wondering why Fran had ever thought Elpreto would be welcome in her luxurious house in Guildford.

'Don't you like him?' Fran demanded, crowning the roll of her hips with her hands.  She looked like she was about to do an Irish jig.

'I don't like the way he goes about his business - using other people's bathrooms and singing like he owns the place.  Surely he should have spoken to me first?  How well do you know him exactly?'  She half expected Fran to confess that she'd found him on Yell.com, and the deep silence that followed made Vanilla even more determined to find out.

'I said, how well do you know him?'

'Quiet well.'

'How well is quite well? I know the lady who serves behind the counter at the cake shop quite well.   It doesn't mean I would give her the freedom of my house.'

'Intmtly.'

'I didn't catch that,' Vanilla said, hoping she hadn't heard right.

Flustered, Fran fished for a phrase, 'Intimately.  I know him intimately.  He's an intimate friend.   We were to be married.  At the last moment, I called it off.  Orinoco has never forgiven me.' 

Vanilla was astounded.  Despite the big gap of missing years, she thought she knew Fran inside out and upside down. 'When was this?' she said with a big swallow. 'You never told me.'  She couldn't hide the fact that the revelation hurt and she didn't really know why.  Fran wasn't her own personal property, yet an intimate relationship that she had no knowledge of seemed a sudden and unbearable invasion into their circle of trust.

Reading her expression, Fran made light of the situation: 'It was an awful long time ago.  Exact date slips me mind and I forgot about it until now.  Never saw the need to tell anybody.  Anyway, it seems he's carried a torch for me ever since.'

Comforted to know the relationship had happened so long ago that Fran had forgotten about it, Vanilla's thoughts rested on her final sentence.  She couldn't imagine anyone carry a torch for her wizened old nanny - there again, she'd never understood anyone wanting to marry Andrew Lloyd Webber, but it had happened.

'And how do you feel about him now?' she probed.

'Same as I did all them years ago.  I love him, but I wouldn't want to be his wife.'

'Why?' Vanilla itched to know the answer and wondered if the man had foul habits.  Perhaps he was the sort who cut his toenails at the breakfast table and shot them into the marmalade.

'Can't say.' 

'Between girls.  Go on tell me.'

'Well... you see... Oh, I can't say.  You'll laugh at him and I don't want that.'

'Of course I won't.  I'll treat your secret, no matter what it is, with the utmost respect.  It will be safe with me.  Girl Guides' honour and all that stuff,' Vanilla bluffed.

'You never were a Girl Guide.  Not to my knowledge.'

'Wasn't I?  Cross my heart then, lots and lots of times,' Vanilla could see Fran weakening.

'All right then.  Here goes,' Fran gathered herself to full height, which wasn't much over four feet ten and said, 'The thing is... he... he... oh heck."

'He what?'

2nd part of Chapter 1 (read previous blog for first part)

'My panties fell down.  Dropped straight to my ankles and tripped me over.' Vanilla tensed. 'The anchovies surged nearer and nearer until they were slithering up my legs with those horrible big mouths snapping.'

'Nasty,' Fran sounded concerned.

Vanilla was on a roll. 'I'm cracking up,' she plunger her fingers into her temples. 'Can't you see what these dreams are doing to me?'

'I can that,' came a distinctly punctuated reply followed by, 'Now just look at this.' 

Vanilla stared in disbelief.  Fran was pulling at a thread on her gown.  Surely her companion should be giving her sympathy, barrows of it, like she would have done years ago, not making adjustments to disgusting items of clothing that were only fit for the rubbish bin.

'They're killing me!' Vanilla shouted.

But Fran would have none of it.  She broke the thread and sighed, 'Killing you?  Get away.  Dreams can't kill you.' Her voice dropped reassuringly, 'Anyway, Nilla, I'll be gone long afore you.  You mark my words.'

Her wizened exterior called Vanilla's bluff and an aggrieved silence followed.  It was interrupted by, 'What's this 'ere?' as Fran noticed the bottle on the bedside table.

Vanilla glared at it with reprehension. 'Doctors.  Doctors,' she despaired, seizing the opportunity for melodramatics. 'Are they the same the world over?  You put all your faith in them, believe everything they tell you and what happens?'  She made to pick up the bottle, but with the reflex action of a youngster, Fran got there first and scrutinized the label.

'Typical,' she said, taking a large breath and launching into a serious speech. 'You don't want no sleeping pills.  That's no answer.' Her face was as stern as her voice was deafening and she looked like a squat version of Bette Davis in a Fifties' horror movie.

At last, thought Vanilla, now we're getting somewhere. 'So, darling.  What is the answer?'

Fran's voice fell unexpectedly and she said, 'Them dreams is telling you something, plain and simple, and...'  But she went no further.  Her eyes dimmed and a great sadness flowed from her storybook of wrinkles.  As if in a hurry to obscure the pages, she made her way to the window and vanished between the floor length, tangerine velvet curtains, arousing more than a thimble of curiosity in Vanilla, who plumped her pillow and demanded: 'It's something from my past, isn't it?  And you know what it is.'

There was a silence.  A nothing.  A hidden Fran and an aching void.  There was no embarrassed cough, or quick change of conversation.  It was as if the air had died and from it an answer sprouted.  It seemed so obvious that Vanilla couldn't begin to think how she'd missed it.  Her heart beat so thunderously, she thought the whole neighbourhood would hear it.  Without further hesitation, she stated boldly: 'I was attacked by a mob of people dressed as anchovies when I was young, wasn't I?  I suppose they broke into the house when I was asleep and... and... That year you up and left.  That fateful year than on one ever mentions. That was when it happened, wasn't it?  I always knew Daddy blamed you for something.  I suppose he came home and found you trussed up in the cupboard.  Well, you'd have been no match for a gang of anchovies.  Did he fly into a rage?  What an ogre he was.  He could terrify a mountain.  I'm not surprised you left.  But tell me, Franny darling, was I badly beaten?  Did I nearly die from the dreaded attack?  Is that why I don't remember a thing?'

'Where have you got such an outrageous idea?' a voice boomed, clandestine in tangerine.

'It was a wild guess,' Vanilla lied; too ashamed to admit she thought it to be true. 'What else am I supposed to think?  I'm verging on insanity and I need to know why.'

Broken by frustration and embarrassment, she pretended to cry.  But still Fran stayed behind the curtains and Vanilla wondered if the insanity bit had hit a nerve.

She remembered her grandfather had done several strange things in the month before he died, like flushing his false teeth down the lavatory.  Could that be judged as insanity?  Perhaps he was a lunatic and Fran knew it.  Vanilla decided to exaggerate to provoke an admission, 'Grandpops had a mental breakdown,' she blurted. 'Soon after you left, the poor old boy ended up in St Anne's.  Ranted and raved day after day.  They had to put him in a strait jacket.' She notched up a gear into blackmail mode, 'It's time for the truth, otherwise I will assume madness runs in the family and end it all.'

A string of muffled sentences was followed by an indignant, 'You wicked girl.  You're making it up and don't you dare tell me you're not.'

Fran's uncanny way of detecting lies came to the fore - but things were different now - Vanilla was no longer a silly child who owned up when the pressure was on.  She was an adult on an even footing with her accuser.  Deceit and self-pity turned to anger and she was about to get out of bed and physically drag Fran out of her hiding place and fabricate proof of Grandpop's grim demise when a sorrowful voice wafted from the window.

'I know for certain you're not going mad.'

Vanilla's heart skipped a beat and seconds later Fran ploughed through the curtains with a tint of fuchsia marking her cheeks.

'It's time you saw Mr Elpreto,' she announced. 'He'll give you the answers.'

Confused, but relieved that details of Grandpop's death were no longer under scrutiny, Vanilla barked, 'Answers? Elpreto?'  She sat alert at the sound of such an interesting name and gathered the duvet about her chin.  Previous conversations forgotten, she imagined she was a child.  A little girl sitting agog, listening to that very special story that her nanny kept in her head.  It was about the Snozzle and she was waiting to find out if the Snozzle was a wicked wizard or a good goblin because he could be either, depending on the story.  Her eyes grew big, her voice fell away to a whisper and she said, 'Does he wear a cloak?'

Fran laughed, then folding plump arms over a saggy bosom, she said, 'Cloak?  Funny word that.  Cloak.  I've never seen him wearing one as such, but he is definitely cloaked in mystery.  He analyses dreams and has special ways of unlocking the sub... conscience, subconscienceness.'

'Subconscious,' helped Vanilla.

'That's what I said.  The subconscienceness.  I've known him a great many years and have recently taken the liberty of speaking with him on the telephone.  He's available for constult... constultitation at this very moment, but his schedule is tight.  He flies to Hels... slinki in three weeks.'

The errors passed.  Fran's mispronunciations could be annoying, but were best ignored.  Anyway, Vanilla was far too busy imagining herself reclining on a couch with Elpreto at her side to bother with language hiccups.  At last, she thought, the anchovy dreams will be unravelled.

But Fran's next suggestion came as a big shock, and if it wasn't for the fact that Vanilla was already in bed, she would most certainly have fainted.