A Bridge Too Few Read online

  “But we’ve got this place now,” said Penelope. “An’ you to look after us.”

  “We might need to find a way for you to support yourselves,” said Epiphany diplomatically. “I wonder if I can ask you whether you’ve had any jobs at all in the past?”

  Ek Midek sat up and thumped his chest with pride. “I’ve ‘ad jobs! Scrapyard basher fer a while. I was good at that, but they got mad when I bashed some stuff that wunt fer bashin’.”

  “How unfortunate,” said Epiphany. “Anything else?”

  “Yeah! I worked at the dump. I liked it there. Gettin’ the stuff out of cars fer people and puttin’ it in the skips. Was confusin’ though. Sometimes people dint want me to put stuff in the skips, like their kiddies an’ whatnot.”

  Penelope put a hand on Ek Midek’s arm. “He’s so good wiv his hands, but he gets carried away. Maybe he could make these bridges for people?” She indicated the structure that surrounded them.

  Epiphany did not want to comment on the quality of the construction. “It sounds as though you might need some training, to channel your skills,” she said. “And you, Penelope?”

  “Oh, if I was to take up a job it would ‘av to be sumfink genteel. Suitable for a lady, you know? I could work in a cake shop, I reckon.”

  Epiphany tried to picture it but her powers of imagination would not bend to her will.

  “And you Skakky?”

  “If I ‘ad a job in a park I could eat ducks whenever I wanted!” Skakky said. “Mum says that I should find a job that I’ll love. Can I be a park keeper, mum?”

  “You can be whatever you want to be, my sweet,” said Penelope. “We’ve got ‘elp now, so we’re all gonna get sorted, aren’t we?”

  Epiphany nodded weakly. “Oh, indeed.”

  “An’ you’ll be able to find jobs and bridge ‘omes for the rest of them an’ all.”

  “Absolutely,” she said and then stopped abruptly. “The rest of them?”

  “Epiphany?” came Smutcombe’s voice from outside. His tone was high, querulous.

  Epiphany pushed her way outside. Smutcombe’s lined face was pale and panicky. He raised a finger and pointed. “The house…”

  Epiphany dash inside her home.

  The kitchen had been ripped apart. An eight foot troll had kicked out all the cabinet doors and squatted, curled up under the kitchen sink.

  “I can spy anyone crossing my bridge through this ‘ere peepin’ ‘ole,” he said and shoved a massive digit up through the plughole.

  “Oh, my,” said Epiphany.

  The floorboards in the lounge had been ripped away and Epiphany could see at least half a dozen trolls lying in the crawlspace under the house, eyes and noses visible around the rim of the ragged hole.

  “Who’s that trip-trappin’ over my bridge?” said the quickest of them, narrowly beating three others.

  “It’s not a bridge!” snarled Epiphany. “It’s my living room floor!”

  “You’re not menna say that,” a troll whined and Epiphany gave him such a vicious look that he fell quiet.

  There was a troll in her bath. There was a troll in the airing cupboard. In her bedroom, she found the legs of two trolls sticking out from under her bed. They were giggling and shushing each other.

  “She’ll never notice,” one whispered loudly to the other.

  “Feel this ‘un,” whispered the other, just as loudly. “It’s all soft an’ frilly.”

  Epiphany gawped.

  “You two had better not be touching my…” She could barely herself to think it, let alone say it. “… my underthings!”

  “Shh! She’s here,” whispered one.

  “Be quiet and she’ll go away.”

  “I tole you they weren’t hanky-chiefs.”

  The indignities of the troll invasion did not end there. There were more of them in the box bedroom at the back of the house and even more in the attic. A trollop had smashed her way through the rooftiles and Epiphany could hear the creature interrogating a pigeon.

  Horrified, she shakily made her way downstairs and met Smutcombe in the hallway, where a troll was trying to inconspicuously squat under an open umbrella.

  “They’re everywhere, Westerby!” she said.

  “How many did you count?”

  “I wasn’t counting them!”

  There was a rumble and a crash from upstairs, as of something enormous falling through a ceiling. Epiphany snapped.

  She felt the burning sense of injustice, the kind she hadn’t felt since childhood, that deep-rooted hatred that only came from the certainty — right or wrong — that things should not be like this.

  And, not caring if she sounded like a spoiled child, she gave voice to that injustice.

  “Pak Choi!”

  The fairy was suddenly there, leaning against the living room doorframe and munching on a plum.

  “Windfall fruit is only good for wasps and worms,” he said.

  “I am not in the mood for nonsense!” she hissed bitterly.

  “I’m merely saying that you should harvest your plums,” grinned the raggedy fairy. “Our deal is done and you have a task to perform for Carabosse.”

  Epiphany was agog.

  “Done? Done?! There’s at least twenty flipping trolls living in my house and playing with my unmentionables!”

  “Lucky trolls,” said Smutcombe drily.

  “The terms of the deal have been met,” said Pak Choi.

  “They have not!” said Epiphany.

  Pak Choi sucked the flesh from the plum and then crunched the pit beneath his teeth.

  “They have a home that is safe and no one will evict them without your say-so.”

  “But this is my home!”

  “Carabosse promised that the trolls’ home would be your property.”

  “But this house is already mine!”

  “And now they live here,” smiled Pak Choi.

  Epiphany could have screamed but she was unwilling to give the fairy the satisfaction.

  “Now,” said Smutcombe, suddenly at her elbow, “might be the time for me to take you away from all this chaos and treat you to a late lunch.”

  In other circumstances, Epiphany might have reacted negatively to Smutcombe’s continuing attempts to take her out for dinner, the naïve assumption that life’s problems could be forgotten or momentarily filed away with fine dining and drink but Epiphany had reached the limits of her mental endurance and was only too happy to give up.

  “Yes,” she said wearily.

  “You could sound more enthusiastic about it.”

  “Yes,” she peeved. “Take me to dinner, Westerby. I surrender.”

  “I didn’t realise that taking you to dinner was a battle.”

  “This,” she said and waved her hand at the ruin of her home. “I give up. The trolls can have it. The fairies can have my services and my soul. Everything. Maybe things will look better after a quality lunch or maybe I will just cry into my tiramisu.”

  He steered her gently out through the front door, side-stepping the troll, using an umbrella as a make-shift bridge.

  “How many?” she said, wearily. “Trolls.”

  “Twenty-five,” he said. “I counted.”

  “We’re never going to find a home for them.”

  “We did before,” he said. “Your grandfather always found a solution to problems.”

  “Well, I am not my grandfather.”

  “Makepeace Alexander was one of a kind. But we just need to find a bridge.”

  “A big bridge.” She laughed, a little giddy. “Do you think we could get them to all live under a large suspension bridge?”

  “Take them all to the Humber Bridge, eh? And have them threatening every car that tries to cross?”

  “Maybe we could get them to work the toll booths.”

  “They want goats not coin.”

  She shrugged. “As long as we could get them to understand that money can be exchanged for goats. Could we?”

  Yo
u know,” said Smutcombe as they stepped towards his car, “although they are simplistic in their desires, they are indeed intelligent in their own way. Ingenious even.”

  Epiphany looked at his Hillman Imp car.

  “Did that mechanic troll —”

  “Grak-Ak.”

  “Grak-Ak. Did he really repair your car using pixies instead of proper components?”

  Smutcombe dangled his keys with the pixie-stone orb hanging from it.

  “Some might think enslaving dozens of pixies to just run your car is a little… cruel,” she said.

  “Oh, they love it,” Smutcombe assured her. “There’s a veritable pixie village under that bonnet. And the most cosy of sleeping chambers in the soft furnishings.”

  Epiphany thought of the bottom-pinching properties of the passenger seat.

  “I’m not sure there’s much sleeping going on in them.”

  “The point is, it works,” said Smutcombe, “and it doesn’t matter how it’s achieved. No one realises what wizardry goes on under that bonnet.”

  His words chimed with her oddly and she couldn’t be certain why.

  “Hop in,” he said. “I shall phone ahead and ask Carlo to dig out a bottle of Rosso di Montalcino.”

  Epiphany was about to climb in when a voice called to her across the street.

  “Dr Alexander?”

  It took her a moment to place the face of the owner of a cat and a demolished ornamental bridge and former unwitting host to a family of trolls. He was wearing a dark blue suit with brass buttons that made him look somewhat like a sea captain, and he was carrying a large bunch of pink lilies and white gladioli.

  “Good afternoon, Mr Clegg,” said Epiphany and offered him a politely quizzical smile.

  “Perry, please,” he said and — gosh! — did the older gentleman appear to blush?

  “To what do I owe this honour?” she said.

  Professor Smutcombe made a meaningful noise and opened his car door.

  “Yes,” said Mr Clegg uncomfortably. “I can see that you’re in the middle of something with your, er, father?”

  Smutcombe harrumphed.

  “Grandfather, sorry,” said Mr Clegg. “And I won’t keep a lass from her business. I just wanted to offer these as a thank you” — he pressed the flowers into her arms — “and ask if you’d care to come for dinner with me some time.”

  “Get in line, granddad,” muttered Smutcombe.

  “I don’t mind waiting,” said Mr Clegg. “I’m used to that. You’re a lass of good character and it fair turns a lonely man’s head.”

  And he blushed again.

  “I don’t know what to say,” Epiphany said, honestly.

  “‘Goodbye’?” suggested Smutcombe.

  “Who is this man?” said Mr Clegg.

  “Her current beau,” said Smutcombe.

  “A colleague!” said Epiphany. “At best!”

  “I think we’re beyond that,” said Smutcombe. “We’re about to break breadsticks together.”

  “Hold your horses, sir,” said Mr Clegg. “I do believe the lass can decide for herself. Women’s lib an’ all that.”

  “And, while I thank you for that,” said Epiphany, “Professor Smutcombe and I were about to go out for an Italian.”

  “Yeah,” sneered Smutcombe. “Don’t plough another man’s furrow, sunshine.”

  “I beg your pardon?” said Epiphany.

  The old goat of a professor looked immediately contrite. “Not the best analogy in the circumstances, my dear. Sorry.”

  “Oh, a cultured lass like you doesn’t want to have an Italian,” said Mr Clegg. “There’s a fine French restaurant in Crookes where the beef bourguignon practically melts on your tongue.”

  “She’s going for an Italian!”

  “I’m offering her choices,” said Mr Clegg forcefully.

  “And she’s not going to pick you, you twerp.”

  Mr Clegg held up his fists like a Victorian boxer. “I shall invite you to step outside!”

  “We are outside!” Smutcombe scoffed. He fingered his car keys. “One word and I will have a thousand pixies descend upon you.”

  “You’re blathering man!”

  “Twenty-five lanes!” Epiphany exclaimed with sudden energy.

  “Eh?” said Smutcombe.

  “Your bowling alley!” she said to Mr Clegg.

  “I don’t follow, my girl,” said Clegg. “We were talking about beef bourguignon not —”

  “You own a bowling alley,” she persisted.

  “Closed.”

  “Because the machines have broken down.”

  “I can’t afford the maintenance costs. It’s complex.”

  “And no one knows what goes on behind the scenes when the pins get knocked down and the ball disappears into the dark.”

  “That they don’t.”

  “And you’d need a fairly ingenious solution to get it up and running again.”

  She looked at Smutcombe standing next to his orange pixie-powered car. There was a grin growing on his lined face.

  “Do you think it would really work?” he said.

  She thought about it for a long time, shushed Mr Clegg when he was about to interrupt and thought about it some more.

  “You know,” she said carefully, “I rather think it might.”

  Chapter 10

  “Fairy tales give us the convenience of a neat ending, of justice done and of a ‘happily ever after’ but life is rarely that convenient.”

  Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow: What happened to Rapunzel once her tale was told?

  Epiphany Alexander, Sheffield Academic Press

  The hardest parts of the transition were not what Epiphany might have expected. She had recently become the owner of a van which permitted the transport of two to three trolls at a time and all were keen to take their turn in the ‘travelling bridge’. It was not hard to convince Mr Clegg of the purpose of the endeavour. With the blithe distracted air of many human encounters with the magical, he accepted the notion of installing twenty-five trolls in twenty-five bowling lane holes as perfectly normal.

  In truth, over the coming days, the biggest challenge for Epiphany was fending off the romantic advances of two gentlemen who were each old enough to be her father. During the troll installation period she permitted each of them one lunchtime date and one evening meal. She made sure that she did not ‘lead them on’ as Professor Smutcombe put it and made it perfectly clear to both that there would be no hand-holding, no kisses, no saucy talk and no footsy under the table. This last rule was inadvertently broken by Mr Clegg during a quite delightful Greek lunch when his leg was gripped by a spasm of cramp. Other than that it appeared that the two senior gentlemen were simply happy with a slice of female company.

  Epiphany inspected the bowling alley once all was in place. The large venue had opened its doors to the public once more and, though the initial number of visitors had been few, word was out that the bowling alley in Firth Park was open once more.

  Mr Clegg met her in reception to show her around.

  “Very formal today, dear,” he said, noting her dark skirt and jacket.

  “A funeral to attend this afternoon,” she said. “Elsa Frinton. A former student.”

  “I’m sorry to hear that, lass.” Mr Clegg nodded in an overtly sombre manner. “If you’d rather do this another time…”

  “No time like the present as they say.”

  Mr Clegg gestured for her to accompany him.

  “They have settled in well?” she asked as they strolled along the lanes. There were a number of daytime bowlers in and the place was filled with the thump of bowling balls, the thrum of plastic balls on wooden lanes, the clatter of pins and the mechanical ‘ker-chunk!’ of the ball-return stations.

  “Each individual has been given their own space behind one of the lanes,” said Mr Clegg.

  Epiphany looked to the shadowy cave areas at the end of each lane. These connected together behind-the-scenes but e
ach individual troll had a space they could call their own.

  “Sufficiently bridge-like to appeal to them?” she asked.

  “Oh, indeed. I’ve never had such a happy workforce.”

  “And feeding them?”

  He waved at the food counter and the fast food snacks. “We sell a lot of hotdogs and nachos to the punters. What they don’t eat…”

  “The trolls get the leftovers from the kitchen.”

  “Oh, no,” he said. “They are much happier coming out after hours and raiding the bins and the crumbs under the tables. I’ve even had to tell the cleaners to ease up on their hoovering. One of your fellers — big tall chap — ripped open a vacuum cleaner to get to the morsels inside.”

  “As long as their needs are met,” she said.

  “They’re right happy, for now at least,” Mr Clegg assured her.

  He opened a staff only door and led her along a corridor that ran round to the back of the alleys. Here there would normally have been complex machinery but this was gone (helpfully removed by the trolls). Epiphany greeted each troll as she passed. They were a courteous folk and with each ‘who’s the trip-trapping behind my alley’ she assured them that she was only the smallest of university academics and a larger one would be along soon. Many were engrossed in their work and she was impressed by the speed and skill with which their long arms snaked out to scoop up fallen pins and put them back in the triangular support to load the next frame.

  A troll picked up a bowling ball that had come through.

  “Who’s that rumble-rambling down my lane?” He put the ball to his ear. “What’s that? There’s a bigger ball comin’ along soon? As long as you say so.” He then propelled it with force back up the return track.

  Further down the wall, the troll family who had first made home in her garden were happy in adjoining aisles. Ek Midek and Skakky competed to the be fastest with the setting up of fresh pins while discussing the relative merits of ‘bin hotdogs’ versus ‘carpet hotdogs’.

  “An’ do they ‘ave goat in ‘em?” Skakky asked.

  “I believe they do,” said his dad with a sage nod.