"'Ere, 'ave yer seen them new lot what's moved into Whiteford's old cottage yet?" Uncle Hobart clicked his dentures, crumpling his empty beer can with gnarled fingers. Picking up another, he pulled the tab with a hiss then dropped it back inside the can, taking a long deep pull. I waited expectantly for him to choke on the tab, but instead he jerked his head towards the window, saying, "I bet 'e's one o' them ponced-up city buggers what's come down 'ere ter mix with the yokels and show off to 'is mates."
Wiping stray beer from my chin with the back of my hand, I raised my eyebrows. "It wasn't that long ago that I was one of those ponced-up city buggars Uncle Hobart, don't you forget that."
He looked at me with his faded blue eyes, a smile hovering about his lips. "Aye, yer right," he agreed, "but that's different, ain't it?"
"So, what're they like then, our new neighbours?"
Uncle Hobart shrugged. "Ain't seen 'em yet, but the postie reckons she sunbathes topless in 'er garden. 'E walked in on 'er t'other day when 'e were delivering the post."
Things suddenly slipped into place and I clicked my fingers. "So that's why you were so keen to clip the hedge yesterday." I poked him in the shoulder, barking a short laugh. "You've been trying to get a crafty look-see, haven't you? You dirt old sod!"
"Well if she shows 'em off, who am I to look t'other way?" Uncle Hobart muttered self-consciously, moving his can back and forth across the table, pursing his lips. "What yer expect. I'm only 'uman ain't I?"
"That's debatable," I replied with a laugh. "And just because she sunbathes topless doesn't give you the right to invade her privacy," I chastised him.
"Weren't doing no 'arm," he muttered. "Just cutting the 'edge. I mean, if I accidentally saw 'er thingees when I were doing it, it would 'ardly be my fault, would it?"
"And did you?" I asked.
"Did I what?" he countered.
"Accidentally see her thingees?"
He smiled, shaking his head. "Nah, the bleedin' 'edge were too thick, weren't it?" He rubbed his shoulder, grinning mischievously. "Fell off the ladder though. Nearly broke me bleedin' arm, didn't I?"
"Serves you right," I said, opening another can and joining his laughter.
*
Uncle Hobart clicked his dentures in annoyance, pointing his tankard at the television. "If it were up ter me I'd send the bleedin' SAS in. They'd soon sort that lot out," he commented.
We were watching the latest broadcast from France about a group of terrorists who were holding fifty people hostage in an old chateau. The situation had been stalemated for a couple of months and it didn't seem likely that anything would change in the near future.
"Sorted them lot in the Iranian Embassy out quick enough, didn't they?" he muttered.
Balancing my can on the arm of the chair, I rose to the bait, falling into the trap of arguing with him. "But that was different," I reasoned. "That was in this country. You can't go sending troops into another country without being invited first. You'd start a bloody war."
Uncle Hobart pointed the remote control at the television, switching it off. Then leaning forward in his chair, he shook his head. "Course yer bleedin' wouldn't," he argued.
"Yes you would," I replied.
"Nah," he said.
"Yes," I insisted.
"Balls!" he replied. "Anyway, ain't it time yer were doing the milking?"
"That's right," I said, standing up. "Start swearing. That's a really intelligent way to win an argument, isn't it."
"Give us that can if yer off ter do the milking," he ordered. "We don't want it falling down the side o' the chair and getting wasted, do we?"
*
Standing hands on hips, shaking my head at Uncle Hobart, I told him, "You're bloody nuts, do you know that?"
Removing his cloth-cap, Uncle Hobart wiped his hand over his head. Even in the height of summer his cap seldom left its perch. I often wondered if he wore it to bed, which wouldn't have surprised me one bit, because I knew for a fact that he wore it in the bath. "It'll work. Trust me," he said. "I know what I'm doing."
"Yeah," I answered. "Like the time with the gas-car. And the time before that with..."
"Alright, alright," he snapped, holding up a hand. "There's no need ter go on."
Pursing my lips, I studied the two large weather balloons. "Where'd you get them from, anyway?"
Deftly flipping his cap onto the back of his head, Uncle Hobart squinted his eyes against the sun, hooking his thumbs in his wide leather belt. I knew then that I'd made a mistake, I should have kept quite. "Got 'em from old Major Ricketts, over in High Meadow," he answered, nodding at the silver spheres. "Swapped 'em for a couple of lambs, didn't I? And 'e slung in a bottle o' helium too."
Uncle Hobart had tied one balloon to each arm of our cast iron garden bench and now it was floating a few feet off the ground, held in place by a mooring rope attached to the back of the tractor.
"And you're going to risk your neck on that contraption?" I asked him, incredulity hanging heavily in my voice. "Just so you can get a peek at our neighbours thingees? Wouldn't it be safer to buy a girlie magazine?"
Uncle Hobart's eyebrows shot up and a look of disgust crossed his face. "Waste me money on a bleedin' magazine when the real thing's on display next door!" He shook his head vigorously in mock rage, then laughed. "Anyway, I ain't doing it fer that, am I?"
"Oh?" It must have been obvious from my tone that I didn't believe one word.
"I thought it might be fun ter be like that Branson bloke and do a bit o' ballooning. Not too far like, just a little way up." He tapped a neatly coiled rope that was lying on the bench. "Reckon this is about a 'undred feet long. That should do it nicely."
I shook my head, slowly backing away, holding both hands palm out as though trying to ward off something evil; which of course I was. Uncle Hobart. "You really are crazy, aren't you?" I whispered.
"Come on, Peter boy. I can't manage it on me own, can I?" He held out his hands. "Look at me poor old 'ands. They just wouldn't manage the rope." His large, sad eyes beseeched me. "Just a couple o' feet. Come on, please." My expression must have softened a bit because he plunged on. "Where's the 'arm anyway? And I've always wanted ter go up in a balloon. It'll be fun. It will. And it'll be me last chance ter do anything like this before I die, won't it?"
"But that thing isn't a balloon," I reasoned, pointing a shaky finger at the floating garden bench.
Dropping an arm around my shoulders, Uncle Hobart gently squeezed my upper arm. "Course it ain't. I know that. It's better. It'll be like riding one o' them Ferris Wheels thingees at the fun fair. You'll see. Come on, what do yer say?"
Yet again I allowed myself to be talked into something that was bound to go wrong and, climbing onto the bench, trying to hide my fear, I tied myself firmly to the wooden slats with a couple of lengths of bailer twin. Uncle Hobart climbed up beside me, poking me in the ribs with a sharp elbow and laughing. My mouth went dry when his movements caused the bench to gyrate wildly. "Let go some o' the rope then," he ordered, like an excited child on his first trip on the Big Dipper. "I've been looking forward ter this fer ages."
I tentatively began paying out the rope, holding my breath as we began to rise higher. Then, to my astonishment, I began to enjoy the sensation of floating quietly above the ground. I quickly let out the rest of the rope and we rose steadily upwards.
I was brought back to reality by Uncle Hobart's exclamation of annoyance. "Just my bleedin' luck," I heard him mutter.
"What is?" I asked.
Following his pointing finger, I spotted our next door neighbour laid out in all her splendid glory below us, her well oiled body fully exposed to the sun for all the world to see, and I couldn't help but chuckle. She was seventy if she was a day! Serves the randy old sod right, I thought, laying back in the seat, relaxing in the warm morning sun.
Sometime later I heard Uncle Hobart sigh heavily.
"What's 'e bleedin' want?"
Opening my eyes, looking down, I spotted Alistair, our neighbour from the next farm, striding purposefully across the yard, and when I saw the direction he was heading, I began frantically pulling on the rope. "Will you give me a bloody hand!" I snapped at Uncle Hobart as he just continued to sit there.
"What's up then?" he asked, looking confused.
"I told Alistair that he could use our tractor while his was being serviced," I said, pulling the rope all the harder. "But I didn't think the idiot would want to borrow the bloody thing today!"
As he suddenly realised the implications, a look of horror crossed Uncle Hobart's face. "Fer Christ's sake, do some’at!" he shouted at me in a panic.
Gritting my teeth, I gave the rope another hefty pull but only succeeded in tipping the bench over at a dangerous angle, forcing me to give up the progress I'd already made. The bench floated upwards again, spinning on the end of the rope.
"Will yer stop doing that!" Uncle Hobart cried out, clutching hold of my wrist.
Alistair climbed into the tractor and a grey cloud of smoke billowed from the exhaust as he started it up. We began shouting at the tops of our voices but couldn't make ourselves heard above the noise of the throbbing diesel engine. As the tractor moved off, the bench jerked sideways and we were pulled along behind it. My knuckles turned white as I clutched the bench, praying that Alistair would look up and see what was happening. But he didn't and we continued to bob our way across the yard in the summer breeze, two white faced, voiceless lumps of quivering humanity, suspended a hundred feet in the air on an old garden bench.
The tractor swept around the end of the house, pulling the rope along the ridge of the roof until it snagged on the chimneystack. Then, as the tractor continued towards the farm gate, it dragged the rope around the stack, pulling us down towards it. On reaching the lane, Alistair put his foot down and the tractor accelerated away, smashing us into the chimney with a sickening thud. The stack tottered for a moment, as though trying to make up its mind which way to fall, finally crashing through the roof of the house with a roar that sent clouds of dust billowing up into the sky. A jagged piece of slate sliced through our mooring rope and I gulped as we suddenly found ourselves staring down at the rapidly receding ground. In just a few minutes we had soured hundreds of feet up into the air, the fields spread out below us like a green-chequered chessboard. By the time we had levelled out, Alistair and our tractor looked like a tiny ant, which at that moment I fervently wished he was; I so desperately wanted to stamp on him.
*
It was late afternoon when we finally spotted land again and it looked very much like the French coast.
"'Ere, want another one?" Uncle Hobart asked.
I shook my head and he put the can back into his copious pocket. I'd sunk four pints over the past couple of hours and was beginning to feel a pressing need to use the loo, but unless I let it all hang out, so to speak, I didn't see much chance of that happening too quickly. As the afternoon wore on the temperature fell and we dropped nearer to the ground. Passing over a small town, I tried to read the street names but the nameplates were too small.
"What's that over there?" Uncle Hobart asked, pulling another can from his pocket.
It took some time for me to recognise the building, even though I'd seen it from exactly this viewpoint only yesterday on the television. "It's the chateau," I told him. "You know, the one where those terrorists are holding all the hostages." I pointed off to one side. "Look at that lot." Hundreds of soldiers were camped around the building, their armoured carriers lined up in neat rows. By now we were lazily edging our way over the building and I nudged Uncle Hobart in the ribs. "Look there goes a helicopter," I shouted excitedly.
"Christ, now look what yer've bleedin' done!" he exclaimed, pointing at the falling can that I'd knocked from his hand.
I followed the slow arc of the beer can as it fell end over end towards the chateau below, where it hit the roof with an explosion that sounded exactly like a gunshot. Immediately the soldiers surrounding the chateau opened fire and the sky was suddenly filled with the whine of bullets. I stifled a scream as a stray flew up between my legs, skimming my chin. It hit one of the weather balloons, which burst with a loud explosion, causing us to plummet earthwards, my mind filling with images of falling beer cans and bursting bodies. Crashing through a large skylight, the remaining balloon caught on the window frame, ending our fall, leaving us dangling above a large, very ornate, four-poster bed. Just as I opened my mouth to thank my guardian angel for saving our lives, an ominous tearing sounding from somewhere above and the balloon tore free, allowing us to crash down onto the bed below.
The bench, with us still tightly tied to it, ripped through the thin material covering the upper frame of the four-poster and we smashed into the middle of the mattress with a thump that forced the air from my lungs. Bouncing off the mattress, we hit the ceiling with a sickening thud that nearly drove my head down between my shoulders, then back down onto the bed, to be catapulted off again. A short silence followed, then the sound of creaking and splintering, as the legs of the bed splayed outwards and the whole construction slammed down onto the floor. As the bed disappeared through the floorboards into the room below, we continued sailing across the room, landing in a cloud of dust.
Uncle Hobart shakily opened a can and passed it to me. I saluted him with it and took a long gulp, glad to be alive. And that's where the soldiers found us, after they had stormed the chateau, tied to an old garden bench, precariously perched on the top of an antique wardrobe, both snoring loudly in an alcoholic stupor.
*
We were celebrities for the next few days as our story was told and retold by the news media. How we had flown across the channel on a hand-built balloon. How we had dropped an enormous bed on the terrorists as they played cards in the room below. How we had received a commendation from the French President. The soldiers had made a big fuss of us and suggested that we go out and celebrate with them. They wanted to take us to the Follies Bergre but Uncle Hobart turned that idea down flat, insisting that he'd seen enough thingees to last him a bleein’ lifetime.