(Loosely based on Andersen’s The Tinderbox)
A soldier came marching along the road one fine day; left, right, left, right, left, right. He had a kit bag over his shoulder and wore his cap all askew upon his head, because he was coming home from the wars and although not yet formally and officially de-mobbed, he simply didn’t feel like complying with dress regulations anymore. He had served his time and was now heading for London, where they said that money grew on trees. He didn't quite believe this, but nonetheless he fancied a change of career and scenery.
On the outskirts of the city he met an old woman with hideous, blotchy skin and a bottom lip that stretched all the way down to her chest. In olden days she would have been called a witch, but the soldier, being thoroughly modern in his outlook, just assumed that she had wandered off from her care home.
As he walked past the old woman she turned to him and said, "My, what a handsome boy you are. What a lovely cap and what a very big kit bag you have”. She winked at him suggestively as she continued, “I know where you can find lots of lovely money".
"Sure enough", said the soldier to himself, "she's escaped from the local nut house".
"Do you see that old tree over there?" asked the weathered woman pointing at a gnarled and ancient oak tree that stood in the middle of someone's front garden. "It's quite hollow. If you climb to the top and drop down inside, you'll find three magical money making machines in a great hall lit by a thousand fairy lights".
"Humour her", thought the soldier. He stopped and asked the old woman, "How will I get out of the tree after I've gone down to this hall of lights?"
"Oh, don't worry about that", she said, "I'll tie a rope around your waist and pull you back up".
"Right, of course you will", said the soldier pretending to be interested. You can imagine his surprise when the old woman produced a long length of coiled rope from under her voluminous purple overcoat.
Wide-eyed and somewhat taken aback, the soldier asked, "So, how do these magical money machines work, then?"
"I'll tell you", said the old woman. "You'll see three doors in the hall, all of them unlocked. If you go into the first room you'll find a Northern Bank cash machine guarded by a dog with eyes the size of compact disks. But you needn't worry about him. I'll give you my tartan shopping trolley. Just pop him inside, press one, two, three four and you can take as many ten-pound notes from the machine as you like. Of course, if you'd rather have twenty-pound notes you can go to the second room. There you'll find a dog with eyes the size of saucepan lids. Pop him into the shopping trolley, key in the same numbers and take as many twenty-pound notes as you like from the machine. On the other hand, if you'd prefer fifty-pound notes you should go to the third room. There's another dog, of course, with eyes the size of giant sparkling Catherine Wheels. Now he's a real dog, a real son of a bitch, but don't worry about that. Just pop him into the shopping trolley, key in the magic numbers and take as many fifty-pound notes as you like".
The soldier decided that he'd better do as she said, if only to keep her under surveillance until the search party arrived from the hospital armed with really strong sedatives and a straightjacket.
"Sounds like a good plan", said the soldier. "But I ought to get something for you as well seeing as you've been so kind".
"No, no, no", said the old woman. "I don't need any more money. All I want is my mobile phone, which I dropped the last time I was down there".
"Well, tie the rope around my waist", said the soldier, "and I'll hop up into the tree and take a look".
The old woman did just that and after the soldier climbed the tree and found the hole, she passed the shopping trolley up to him. The soldier then climbed down into the hollow tree, which was made more difficult than it ought to have been by the awkwardness of the trolley. To his amazement he found himself in a great hall lit by a thousand fairy lights and sure enough there were three doors set into the far wall of the hall, all of them slightly ajar. The soldier entered the first room, and sure enough, there sat the dog with eyes as big as compact disks.
"Bugger me, but you're ugly", said the soldier, but he steeled himself and popped the dog into the shopping trolley. Then he keyed the magic numbers into the magical money machine and watched in absolute wonder as the machine spewed out huge great wads of ten-pound notes. Needless to say he stuffed every one of his jacket pockets with the cash. Having filled every pocket the soldier popped the dog back in front of the cash machine and went on his way to the second room.
"Careful", said the soldier to the dog with eyes as big as saucepan lids. "You'll get eyestrain if you keep staring at me like that".
He popped this second dog into his shopping trolley, entered the magic numbers on the cash machine's keypad and proceeded to stuff his trouser legs full of as many twenty-pound notes as he could. With the second dog safely deposited in front of the cash machine the soldier waddled into the third and final room.
Hideous! There sat the dog with eyes as wide as sparkling Catherine Wheels.
"Afternoon", said the soldier, saluting, because he had never seen anything like it before. He looked at the dog. The dog looked straight back at the soldier. After a few seconds the soldier started to feel really freaked out, so he popped the dog into the shopping trolley, pressed the buttons and built the biggest pile of fifty-pound notes he had ever seen by the door. There was enough money in the pile to buy a small army all of his own.
Being thoroughly practical and having been trained to deal with difficult situations, the soldier put the dog back by the cash machine and proceeded to empty all of his pockets and his trouser legs of ten and twenty-pound notes. These he stuffed into the shopping trolley followed by the huge pile of fifty-pound notes. Then he wheeled his heavy load back to the base of the tree and shouted, "Pull me up now, old woman".
A faint voice replied, "Have you got my mobile phone?"
"Bugger", muttered the soldier, "I nearly forgot".
He searched for a while by fairy light and sure enough he found an old mobile phone on the floor in the middle of the hall. He pocketed the phone, called up to the old woman once again and she pulled him and his trolley back up through the hollow tree. Soon he was standing back out in the open air with a tartan shopping trolley full of ready cash.
"What do you need a mobile phone for, old woman?" asked the soldier.
"That's none of your business”, the old woman snapped. "You've got your money, so just give me my phone and I'll be off".
"Doesn't seem right to me", said the soldier. "There's something fishy going on here. Tell me what you want that phone for or I'll push you under a bus, you old crone".
"No”, shrieked the old woman, making ready to pounce on the soldier like a wounded lioness.
As luck would have it a red double-decker London bus turned the corner of the street at that very moment. Just before the old woman leapt at him with her hands bared like claws, the soldier pushed her under the wheels of the bus and ran off, pulling the tartan shopping trolley behind him like a demented go-cart running in reverse gear.
Later that night, when the coast was clear the suburban hiatus by the oak tree was just a distant memory, the soldier stood on Harrow hill and gazed out across his new world horizon. After his experiences in the dust and heat of war, the soldier looked at the steaming city and saw that it was beautiful.
The busy streets in the centre of the city were full of light and music and pretty young girls, and the soldier paid cash for a suite at the Ritz with room service on call twenty-four hours per day. He sent his old army clothes for dry-cleaning and the cleaners simply couldn't believe that someone so rich could dress so scruffily. The very next day, guided by the hotel concierge, the soldier went to the finest tailors and shirt makers in Saville Row. Overnight he turned into a fine looking gentleman and bought drinks for city whiz kids, rich bankers and portly brokers in the hotel bar. They told him all about their great city, its lights and music, and especially about their jobs and their wonderful bonus payments. They even told him about the great and majestic bank at the heart of the city, about its chairman and about the chairman's very pretty daughter.
"Where can I find this lovely girl?" asked the soldier.
"Oh, you can't see her", they replied. "Her Daddy keeps her working on mergers and acquisitions all day and every day. No one but the chairman sees her because it’s prophesied that one day she'll marry a common soldier. Her father thinks that's so last year."
"Even so", said the soldier, "I'd very much like to see her".
But, all things considered, and after the third bottle of shampoo, he supposed that it simply wasn't meant to be.
The soldier lived well in the city, going out for expensive dinners at the finest restaurants, attending the theatre regularly, spending pleasant evenings in the brightest of celebrity haunts and even doing a little work for charity when time permitted. He was particularly proud of his charity work, which was a good thing, for he well remembered being a poor squaddie. Now, though, he was rich, handsome, had fine clothes and he had a new set of friends, who were all eager to join with him in his good fortune. His great pile of cash dwindled slowly at first, but as the weeks progressed the pile seemed to shrink more and more quickly. For every penny that he spent he got nothing back at all until, at last, there was nothing left but two fifty-pound notes, and after the incident with the old lady he dare not return to the cash machines under the oak tree.
The soldier had to leave the Ritz that night and move into a tiny little room in a traveller's motel out by Heathrow airport. He saved every penny he could by washing his own clothes, eating in burger bars and buying cheap plonk from the local off-licence. He pawned his fine clothes, sold his gold wristwatch and hocked his patent leather shoes, until he had nothing left but his old army clothes. None of his new friends seemed to have the time to come and see him anymore, saying that business commitments were just too demanding. For a while he believed them when they said they would do lunch very soon, but the phone never rang.
A few weeks after his flight from the swanky city hotel, the soldier found himself in a dire situation, unable to afford a bottle of Chateau Maggot even. He was about to fall into the deepest, blackest depression, when he suddenly remembered the old woman and her mobile phone. He checked his army jacket and sure enough there it still was.
There was a pawnshop around the corner and he might get a few pounds for it, he thought, so he took the phone out of his jacket and gave it a cursory inspection. It was a very old model, more monolith than mobile, and the battery was as dead as a doorknob. More out of frustration than hope, the soldier started to press the buttons randomly, and as he did so the door to his meagre little motel room crashed open and in sprang the dog with eyes the size of sparkling Catherine Wheels. It lurched to a halt in front of him, panting and dribbling on the carpet.
"What”, ...pant, “doth”, ...wheeze, “my mathter want?" it lisped.
"Poke me sideways with a fish fork", said the soldier, "what a funny old world. Did the phone bring you here, dog?"
"Yeth, mathter"
"Right, well, can I really have anything I want?"
"Yeth", said the dog, "I am yourth to command".
"Right", said the soldier, "fill this tartan shopping trolley with fifty-pound notes. Oh, and pop in a lamb Madras, pilau rice, a mushroom bhaji, and a couple of bottles of Spanish brandy while you're at it".
The dog careered back out of the hotel doorway, pushing the trolley in front of him with his big, slobbery mouth. No more than a few moments ticked by before the dog and the shopping trolley crashed back into the door frame, spinning the dog into the room bottom first. The shopping trolley was full to overflowing with fifty-pound notes, some of them covered in curry sauce, and two bottles of cheap hooch.
The soldier began to understand what a marvellous mobile phone this was, and he thoroughly understood why the old woman had wanted it back so urgently. If he pressed one, then the dog with eyes as big as compact disks would come. If he pressed two, the dog with eyes as big as saucepan lids would come. If he pressed three, then the dog with eyes as wide as sparkling Catherine Wheels would come.
The soldier played with the phone all night long, until he was as rich as Croesus. He moved straight back into the Ritz, bought new clothes, bought a brand new sports car and almost immediately found that his fair weather friends, now that the rain had ceased to fall in the soldier’s life, all suddenly had sunny windows in their diaries.
With the magical phone and his team of wonder dogs at his command, the soldier rapidly became one of the richest young blades in the city. He spent every moment that he could collecting shopping trolleys full of ready cash and, when he finally had enough money to hand, he opened an account with the great and majestic bank that pulsed at the heart of London’s financial community.
This, of course, was all part of his plan and the soldier mused on this later that night; "Now, it's really too bad that no one is allowed to see the chairman's daughter. Everyone says she's a stonker, even if they do say she's also a bit of a ball-breaker. But there's no use in her being lovely if no one can ever see her. So..."
He pressed one on his mobile phone and with a whoosh, up popped the dog with eyes as wide as compact disks.
"I know it's late", said the soldier, "but I'd like to see the bank chairman’s daughter ".
The dog, by now on more familiar terms with its new master, raised a paw, licked its lips and waited. As soon as the soldier gave him a marrow bone biscuit, the dog rushed back out into the night. After about half an hour the dog crashed back into the soldier’s hotel room, panting and wheezing, with the chairman's daughter lying upon his back. She was fast asleep and she was, indeed very lovely to look at. Even her pyjamas smelled of silver spoons and the soldier simply couldn't resist temptation. He kissed her on the lips as she slept, proving, despite his newfound wealth and status, that he was a romantic old thing at heart.
When he eventually finished gazing at this vision in flannelette, the dog returned her to the penthouse apartment that she shared with her parents. In the morning, when she joined her father and mother at their seven A,M. power breakfast, she told them about her strange dream in which she had been whisked away by a large brown dog with weird eyes and that a soldier had kissed her. Her father smiled serenely without looking up from the business pages of his newspaper, while the lovely young woman's mother made a mental note to check her daughter's bathroom for signs of illegal drugs. The Filipino maid, however, believing in ghosts and witches, made a mental note to keep watch the very next night. Where she came from such things were not at all unknown, especially when they concerned beautiful young maidens.
The soldier really did want to see the young lady again, and so the dog was despatched the very next night to fetch her while she slept. The dog brought her as fast as he could, but the maid was waiting for him and she followed the dog and his package at a discreet distance in the back of her cousin's minicab. The maid followed the dog right up to the door of the soldier's suite at the hotel, where, so that she would remember things properly in the morning, the maid chalked a white cross onto the door. Then she went home to wait and see when the dog would bring her mistress back again.
When the dog left his master's room to take the girl home, he noticed the chalk mark on the door. Having eyes as wide as compact disks has its advantages. As soon as he delivered his package home, the dog returned to the hotel, made another piece of chalk appear by magic, and proceeded to mark a white cross on every door in the hotel.
Early the next morning a fleet of black limousines sped into the hotel car park and with much slamming of car doors and with the heavy echo of rushing footsteps reverberating off the marble walls, the chairman, his wife and various members of his personal security team crashed through reception. Moving like a well-oiled machine the security unit covered each other, took up positions, made sure that all was safe and beckoned the chairman and his wife forward.
"There it is", shouted the chairman, pointing at a door with a white chalk cross on it.
"No, there it is", shouted his wife, pointing at another door.
Having kicked open three doors with white crosses on them they had to admit defeat. With the best will in the world, they couldn't see how their daughter had been spirited into a broom cupboard, a conference room and an octogenarian couple's golden wedding anniversary suite. They soon realised that every door in the hotel had a white chalk cross on it and that their search had ended in failure.
The great bank’s chairman was ready to fire the maid for causing so much confusion and embarrassment, but his wife had extensive experience in the realm of hotels and subterfuge, and she persuaded him to go to work and that she would sort things out with the domestic staff. She had, after all, met her husband at a banking conference in Switzerland many years before and the sight of so many white crosses immediately made her smell a rat. Instead of firing the poor girl, the chairman’s wife asked the maid to sew a little bag of the finest silk and fill it with ground up Puy lentils. When her daughter, tired as usual after a long day at the coal face of international mergers and acquisitions, went to bed, her mother tied the bag to the back of her pyjamas. Then she cut a tiny whole in the bag so that the ground up lentils would leave a trail if she were abducted once again.
True to form, the dog came that night and took the sleeping young woman to the soldier, who by now was madly in love with her. He wished for nothing more than to be an international banker too, so that he could make her his wife.
Even with eyes as big as compact disks, the wonder dog did not notice the fine trail of lentils leading all the way from the girl’s bed to the soldier's suite at the Ritz. The very next morning, and much to the chagrin of the concierge and the paying guests, the chairman, his wife and their security team came crashing through the hotel once again. They followed the trail of ground lentils right up to the soldier's door, smashed their way into his room and had him arrested immediately. He was indicted for stalking, for abduction and for a host of other charges, which lead, with a nod and a wink and some party donations, to the minister responsible for such matters making stalking a capital offence. The soldier was tried, convicted and sentenced to hang by the neck the very next day.
The poor soldier sat on the bunk in his cell, alone and without shoe laces in his shoes or a belt to secure his modesty. He had been force-marched out of his hotel room in only his bathrobe, and now he wore the condemned man’s prison blue overalls. His army jacket, where he always kept the magic mobile phone, was still hanging in his hotel suite wardrobe, which meant that he was feeling very sorry for himself.
"If only I had my phone", he thought to himself sadly.
The very next morning the soldier watched through the bars of his cell as a huge crowd started to assemble in a public square outside the prison’s front gates. There was a brand new gallows standing there and the steadily growing crowd seemed very excited because there had not been a hanging in the City for years and years and years. Gantries, platforms and temporary grandstands surrounded the gallows where television crews were setting up and radio presenters were practicing their lines. The soldier sighed, resigned to his fate. Then he spotted a boy working his way down a line of parked cars, who was taking advantage of the crowds to steal the radiator badges from the more expensive sporting models.
"Psst", hissed the soldier. "You there, yes you. Do you want to earn five hundred notes?"
Although startled at first, the boy came over to the cell window when he heard mention of easy money.
"There's still an hour to go before they stretch my neck. If you can get to the Ritz and bring me my mobile phone, I'll give you the cash as soon as you get back".
Now the boy, while not an A grade student, was quick and cunning and he'd heard that the soldier was absolutely loaded. He spotted an opportunity to do himself a favour, wrote down the number of the suite and sped off in pursuit of serious wedge. He broke into the suite with little trouble, changed out of his Baggies into an Italian designer suit and a pair of hand made brogues, picked up some loose cash for good measure and pocketed the mobile phone.
With just five minutes to go before the soldier was due to be led out to the gallows, he heard a shrill whistle, and when he looked through his cell window a remarkably well-dressed young man threw an old and battered mobile phone into the cell.
The soldier pressed one, two and then three. There was a whooshing sound and a second or two later a bundle of fifty-pound notes was passed through the cell bars to the young boy. The soldier then composed himself and waited for his escort to come and lead him out to his place of execution.
Despite the chill air, the early hour and his impending death, the soldier cut a fine, bold figure as he accompanied his guards to the gallows, where he stood to attention on the raised platform and looked at the crowd. The best seats were on a dais to his left and in these seats sat the bank's chairman and his wife, their daughter, government ministers, the chief judge and the Superintendent of the Metropolitan Police. To great applause, the hangman placed the noose around the soldier's neck and made ready to pull the lever that would send the soldier to his death.
All went quiet. The director of the live television special whispered into his microphone and the cameras panned in on the hangman, on the judge and on the soldier. Through the latest audio communications wizardry, the director asked the hangman to wait. He then asked the judge to stand and ask the soldier if he might have any last requests. The director wanted to build both the atmosphere and his chance of a gong at the annual television awards ceremony.
The soldier responded to the judge by asking if he would grant a sinner one last favour. He wanted to phone his dear old mother to say goodbye and to say that he was sorry. The hangman reached into the soldier’s overall pockets, took out the mobile phone and pressed the numbers one, two and then three as instructed. In a blinding flash of light, accompanied by a deep roll of thunder, all three dogs appeared at once.
"Help me now so I won't be hanged", yelled the soldier.
The dogs flew to the right and to the left, up and down the aisles and rows, savaging all of the dignitaries with their massive fangs until there was nothing left of the government ministers, the judiciary and upper echelons of the police service but rags and bones. The hangman, fearing for his own life, immediately cut the soldier down and untied the ropes that bound his hands and legs. All of the policemen on crowd duty turned and fled the carnage, but the ordinary people in the crowd started to cheer and whoop with delight, carrying the soldier around on their shoulders and yelling and shouting that they'd never liked bankers at all.
Later that year, being the largest account holder at the great and majestic bank, and because of his newfound fame as a television celebrity, the soldier was unanimously elected as its new chairman. After a short but intense period of mourning, the soldier married the old chairman's daughter, which she liked very much because he made her Chief Executive Officer and together they cornered the world's markets in gold and oil, before retiring in their late thirties to live in Antibes and raise a gaggle of spoilt but happy children.
As for the dogs? Well, it took them a little while to get used to the sunshine in the South of France, but these days they can usually be found lounging by their master's pool, getting fat on the finest sirloin steak and freshly made marrow bone chews.