Playing Out by Paul Magrs (books for 5 year olds to read themselves txt) 📕

Adele hissed when the camera went on her near the start of the programme. From where we sat we could see only the back of her head, but her voice rang out, defending her rights, filling the studio.

‘Do you wear leather shoes and eat meat?’ Monica asked someone dressed just like Adele. The other campaigner shook her head violently, looking ill. ‘Well,’ added Monica, ‘I bet you have a dog. I bet you have an Alsatian. Do I infringe your right to have a dog? How is your Alsatian different to my coat?’

Beside me Adele burst into tears.

I was comforting her and wishing I’d stayed at home when I saw that the microphone was being waved under our noses again. They wanted Adele’s sobs for public consumption. At last I was irked enough to vent a little spleen. I suppose I came on as exactly the kind of annoyed boyfriend that gets up any woman’s nose, defending his tearful girl. But what else was I meant to do? I said that Monica was a heartless bitch and I’d like to see someone wearing her.

She threw back her shiny head and laughed fit to make the microphone feed back.

‘And another thing,’ I ranted. ‘You lot think you’re so smart with your bloody mink farms and leopard-hunting and God knows what, but where I live I see something unique in its natural habitat. Every day I see fur that you’d spit feathers for.’

It was a hideous mistake. Monica stopped laughing and turned to look straight into the camera. Disconcertingly, she was smirking from the monitor right above Adele and me. Adele, too, stopped sobbing and looked at me.

‘What are you on about, Terry?’

And, still going out to the nation, I announced, ‘Great big bloody hairy crocodiles on my little island!’

Then came a swift commercial break and I was mobbed by a flurry of furry grandmothers.

By the time I had fought past those liver-spotted claws and their brandished chequebooks, I was back in hospitality and Adele had been whisked away by the man who accused her of being evil.

Monica advanced slowly from the opposite corner of hospitality, slugging back the free wine with a Sobranie decorously on the go. Recognising her elevated rank, the others drew apart, giving her access to me. Monica’s green eye-shadowed eyes narrowed with indistinguishable lust and menace.

Oh, dear! I don’t want this to sound misogynistic. Here I am making Monica a vamp, Adele just dopey, espousing the virtues of living in a phallic monstrosity, my own terror of crocodiles in fur. But I’m sorry. This is social realism. The seals were all ladies and I thought they were lovely. Until the crocodiles got them.

So Monica came up and plied me with drink and vile smelling gold-tipped cigarettes. She explained that she’d been longing to meet me and had known that one day she must.

I was, I admit, quailing. And the floor manager kept appearing, wanting to shoo us out of hospitality. ‘How did you know about me?’

‘Why!’ She smiled. ‘You’re the strapping young man who works my darling husband’s lighthouse, aren’t you?’

I was dumbstruck.

‘What a coincidence we should meet here today! Was that your little friend making an emotional display of herself? You see, I was hoping to meet you soon anyway, because I already knew about your crocodiles.’

‘You did?’

‘Genetic engineering, dear. I have a contract with some industrialist chaps. They’ve been running this little number up on my behalf for a few years now. You’re ideally placed to fetch them up for me. Honestly, my dear, you’ve no idea what it cost me. Chanel looks positively off the rack compared with paying off the big boys.’

‘You paid someone to make hairy crocodiles?’

She blew smoke at me. ‘Darling, it’s called postmodernism. You may literally live in an ivory tower, but you must have heard. It’s all the rage, dear.’

And then she bunged me a wad of notes to round up her precious mutants.

For once I was under no illusions. The phone in hospitality rang at my elbow and I snatched it up as she went on smoking. It was Max, my unctuously superior boss and—as I had discovered—her husband. He purred into my ear as she watched, telling me I had to give her what she wanted. It was more than either of our jobs was worth. Then he was gone.

‘I’ll send a whopping great helicopter over tomorrow night, when it’s dark,’ she continued smoothly. ‘It’ll have to be under cover of darkness in case the papers are watching.’

‘But…’ I stammered.

‘What?’ she snapped.

‘Adele’s taken my tickets, my money… I can’t get home anyway, until I find out which hotel she’s gone to.’

‘Oh, you are tiresome!’ She glanced around quickly. ‘Luckily I enjoy sailors.’

‘Pardon?’ But I’d never been a sailor. I dressed that way, but it was a pure affectation for the sake of wandering about on my rock.

She looked at me as if my stupidity turned her on. ‘I’ll pay your fares and things if you fuck me in my furs on that settee. Max can’t bring himself to do it with a wild beast.’ She wasn’t particularly wild. But the fur got up my nose and made me sneeze all the way through. It was bizarre, like fucking a strategically shaved bear. And I, poor, bereft, isolated lamb, hadn’t done anything of the sort since the days of Adele. Being clasped between shiny thighs as I screwed by rote and stared at that forehead, I was stunned.

Into submission and I was sent out on the streets to return to my rock and dutifully round up the crocodiles.

The next day darkened and waned on my rock sublimely as always, though I wasn’t to know this was my last night there. I was busy at work, getting ready for the distant whirr of helicopter blades.

In my befuddled state I had dreamed of what I thought of as an infallible plan. At least it had seemed that way on the queasy ferry trip, during which my prick had throbbed in