She is more than a woman...
Laugh lines
By Amrita Dhingra

IT does not take a flight of fancy to imagine how Tom took the news that Amanda expected to see him in the play. After a long while of vehement protesting he resigned himself to his fate. Much as you hated it, it was now your duty to bundle Tom into the company limo and drive him down to his school.

"I expect I shall be able to run away again after Amanda leaves," said the ever ambitious Tom. "You must call their ship and ask them to visit to wait for me. Tell them I am an expert on dragonflies and black butterflies — they mustn’t leave without me!"

You wisely refrain from mentioning that dragonflies and black butterflies are rather rare in Antarctica. The 45-minute drive passed with Tom informing you about his plans for Antarctica and you trying to bring up the topic of the play. It was your endeavour to extract some sort of promise from Tom that he would behave himself at the play. For though you fully sympathised with him on having to play the fairy queen you wanted to avoid an altercation with Amanda. In some ways Tom is just like his sister — slippery as an eel and twice as clever.

As your limo swept up to Cromley’s headquarters, you found yourself face to the same gentleman who was just coming out of the front door. Eager for Tom to escape undetected, you did the only thing that came to mind. "Hullo, Hullo, Hullo Cromley! How good to see you!" You took his hand and shook it vigorously.

Cromley looked down his nose in that distasteful way school masters have. However, the limo ensured a lukewarm welcome.

"I am sorry I can’t place you..."

"Of course not, terribly sorry. Only I have heard so much about you that it seems you’re an old friend," you place an arm around his shoulder and propel him back in the direction of the house, "Miss Spence talks about you all the time."

"Miss Spence!" His face which usually resembles a blot on the horizon, lights up. You thank God for those magic open-sesame words "Miss Spence". Sometimes you think you could go to any bank in town and walk away with a bag full of hard currency just by saying "Miss Spence".

"Yes, Miss Spence, she is here isn’t she?"

"Oh yes she arrived this afternoon. You missed her by about 20 minutes, she’s visiting an old friend right now, but she’ll be back soon".

"Ah!" Cromley doesn’t know it but you are rather relieved to hear that Amanda is absent for the moment. Gives you time to think of an excuse for being there in the first place.

So you sit in old Cromley’s study for the next hour while he talks about school project’s that need funding, with particular emphasis on the new headmaster’s lodge. A maid with hair the colour of straw and oversized spectacles dusts the room in a desultory fashion. Time and again it occurs to you that somehow she is familiar. Then you think you must be going out of your mind — she is probably some young woman belonging to the village next door, whom you have never seen before.

"You really must look at my collection of miniature china." Cromley decides to lighten the conversation with a topic which is about as light as lead. No doubt he will now expect you to contribute something meaningful in the way of appreciation of miniature china.

"Aha, yes. Marvellous! Quite splendid!"

"Look at this one," he picks out a particularly hideous specimen from the collection, "lovely isn’t it! Worth a lot of money too."

Taking a closer look you realise that the miniature features a pig which is sticking its tongue out at the rest of the world.

"I have set up a special alarm system just to protect this priceless collection." He flicks few switches on the electronic panel and activates the alarm.

"Wonderful" you are heartily glad that this demonstration is coming to an end.

"You are a close associate of Miss Spence, right?"

"Very close. We are the best team in Mr Spence’s conglomerate!"

"Then you will think about the new projects, won’t you? A new headmaster’s lodge is just what the school needs right now."

"Of course. We’ll put the proposal up as soon as I get back to the office."

You couldn’t help but enjoy yourself. If old Cromley could read your mind at that moment he would not be going out of his way to be so polite to you. He would no doubt be throwing you off the premises at the earliest possible. Still he had no idea you hadn’t the slightest intention of giving him the new headmaster’s lodge. And that as far as Amanda Spence was concerned, she would rather associate herself with a terrorist state than you.

Sometime during this conversation the maid had finished her work and slipped out unnoticed. It is, you believe, what reflects the quality of a good servant. Presence felt, seldom seen, seldom heard.

She was replaced by a person whose presence is always felt, who you would have to be blind to net see and who is always heard, Amanda breezed into the room.

"Hello Mr Cromley... You!" Good as she is at disguises, even she slips up sometimes, then in a tone dripping with nonchalance she continues, "all well, I hope." The implication being that she hopes you haven’t burnt up the company in her absence.

"Absolutely! I was just telling Mr Cromley here what good friends we are," sometimes you can give as good as you get.

"Yes," she smiles guilelessly at Cromley, automatically wrapping him round her little finger, "we’re terribly good friends!"

"Capital! Miss Spence I’ve just been telling him about the new headmaster’s lodge."

Cromley, you think, missed his calling. He ought to have been a salesmen.

Amanda does nothing to discourage him from climbing on his favourite hobby horse, but you can tell what she’s really thinking is just why you’re there. You’re not for wrong too. The first chance she gets, she pounces on you.

"Just what do you think you’re doing here? Can’t I go anywhere without you being underfoot?"

"No."

"What do you mean ‘no’?" she hisses.

"Being jointly responsible for charitable projects makes it imperative for me to be here," you cleverly duck behind your official capacity.

"Ha!"

While going up to dress for dinner you can’t help but think something’s gone wrong with your brain. For far from resenting anything she says to you, you can’t help but admire the way she says "Ha!". You make a mental note to ask Fiona to recommend a good shrink.

Dinner is a lavish affair with 60 people, teachers and important townsfolk, milling around which leaves you plenty of time to mull over the problem of Tom and his upcoming debut as the fairy queen. You go up to your room with no solution on the horizon and a sense of dread about the approaching morning. And then to top it all you can’t sleep — partly because you’re too busy worrying yourself into premature old age and partly because you neglected to eat properly at dinner and now your stomach is growling loud enough for a lion tamer to sit up and take notice.

At this point there is a terrific crash and a projectile hurtles towards you. You duck just in time to avoid being beaned. Dazed you sit on the floor and realise you have a broken window on your hands. Pulling yourself together you stagger to the window sill. Who else could it be but Tom?

"Good shot, what?" He grins at you through the darkness. Refraining from telling him exactly what you think of redheaded menaces who bung bricks through your window, you tell him to wait for you downstairs.

Owing to the fact that you’re already like a cat on hot bricks, wondering when Cromley is going to come to investigate that matter, you decide not to switch on any lights on the way down. Groping your way down the stairs, you stub your toe on the last step and as a result spend the next minute hopping around in mad, silent agony. As a natural consequence of which you upset a small table which belies its appearance and makes a loud crash.

"Stop that you fool!" You freeze in mid-air.

"Amanda?"

Upstairs you can hear the sounds of the household coming to startled life. Any minute now you expect Cromley to appear complete with a shotgun.

"Here hold this," she thrusts something in your hand.

"What are you doing here?"

"No time for all that. Hide behind those curtains!"

Before you know what’s happening, you’re hiding behind the curtains. Through the chink in the same you can see Cromley appear with a vicious looking gun.

"Where, where is he? Where is the thief? My collection!!!" Somehow you can’t help thinking that this is the day Cromley has been waiting for all his life. The day somebody filched his precious collection and certified its worth.

"I came downstairs for a drink of water and startled the thief, he shoved me out of the way and tried to escape.

"My pig, wailed the principal of Tom’s school.

"Wait a minute, I think I saw something move behind those curtains," your blood froze at the sound of her words. Though you had no reason to feel guilty, you suddenly wondered just why you were hiding behind the curtains.

"Maybe the thief is still in the house!" The voices came closer. With a sinking feeling you realised what was about to happen. You couldn’t walk, you couldn’t run, your legs seemed to have forgotten how to function. And then you found yourself staring down the wrong end of a shotgun.

"Put your hands over your head and come out," Cromley snarls.

"You?" Amanda looks aghast.

"Look here there’s been some mistake. Amanda, you tell them. I didn’t steal the blasted pig!" Even as you gesture defiantly you realise the object you are holding in your hand is the pig-who-stuck-his-tongue-out-at-the-world.

"I thought that you had long been cured of kleptomania. Maybe it’s recurred."

You’re so bamboozled you can do nothing but stand there.

"He used to have this problem but I had no idea he was still at it!"

"Hang on a minute!! What problem? I did not steal the bloody pig!" There is a time for standing and a time for acting.

"Oh dear he still gets violent," Amanda turns away in despair.

Cromley heads for the telephone while you make an impassioned case in your defence. All to no avail because at the end of 10 minutes, you leave the house in the company of the local constabulary.

"I am so sorry this happened," you hear Amanda telling Cromley, "Such an unpleasant incident! I am quite shocked!"

As the door of the clanger slams shut after you don’t know whether to laugh or cry. There is after all a school of thought that holds that the best vacations are those spent in the cooler.

"I am rather happy to be here, you know" you call to the retreating constable.

"I’ll bet!" The constable is a man with a lavish soupstrainer and a burning desire to become head constable. No doubt catching a pig-pinching international kleptomaniac like you will further his career.

"Yes," you call after him. "I feel safe here!"

Safe because Amanda Spence can’t take pot-shots at you while you are in the custody of the law. You remember the contents of the note you sent her via the constable.

"Dear Amanda,

You’re more than a woman.

More than a woman you’re thief to me."

Safe at least for the moment.