Goin’ Berserk
by Robert Garnham
“What’s that?” he asked.
“It’s a carpet sweeper,” I replied.
Josh looked at it.
“What does it do?”
“It sweeps carpets.”
The Other Josh stood at the bottom of the grand staircase and laughed.
“Clue’s in the name, dude.”
The foyer of the hotel was all ancient, stone brick and elegant, modern glass. A wide reception desk and the rather opulent, carpeted staircase had been designed specifically to blend old and new. The glass doors had a good view of the mountains, when the weather would let you see them. You could see them on a good day. This wasn’t a good day. The snow, blown by icy winds, was almost vertical. The whole island was cut off.
Josh kept on looking at the carpet sweeper.
“So, I’m guessing you want me to wave this doodah up and down this staircase?”
Other Josh laughed.
“Doodah!” he repeated.
The two Joshes exchanged a high five. Like you sometimes see on the television.
“You’ve got to find your rhythm with it,” I told him.
“We’ve got rhythm!” Josh replied.
And together, they both started dancing, right then and there in front of me.
“Sweep it back and forth! Sweep it back and forth!”
“Very good. Very good,” I said, and waited for them to stop. “Your manager said that I should give you basic chores because. . . He said that neither of you were really good at anything much.”
“Clive said that?”
Clive had been gone for six days now, and it didn’t look like Clive was coming back.
The broken down minibus was still in the car-park of the hotel, parked underneath a snowdrift. The hotel was closed, officially. Clive had apologised about the lack of money, but he said he would be back with a mechanic and some hard cash. Clive probably didn’t realise that the nearest town was over ten miles away.
“Right, right, it’s like this?” Josh said, because something had just occurred to him. “What’s wrong with a vacuum cleaner?”
“Boom,” Other Josh said, like it was a quiz and he’d just dealt the killer blow.
“That carpet is two hundred years old. A vacuum cleaner would cause untold damage.”
Josh took the carpet sweeper, rolled it forward once, and fell over, he and the carpet sweeper bouncing off a couple of steps and landing in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the staircase.
“Ha ha!” Other Josh yelled, almost dropping his feather duster.
“You nob!” Josh said, picking himself up.
“Has Clive ever done this before? Just left you somewhere? I find it hard to believe that with all of those records sold, all of those downloads, you could have no actual money...”
“I’m bored!” Other Josh yelled, which didn’t exactly answer my question.
He thrust his feather duster at the marble bust of the hotel’s founder, Lord Stichinthem. The marble bust toppled over and shattered to pieces on the tiled floor.
All three of us stood there and looked at it for a bit.
“Clive will pay for it,” Josh said.
“Can’t we keep him?” she asked.
I was bent over, cleaning the main oven in the kitchen at the time. She always used that same tone of voice when she wanted to get something off her father. That plaintive lilt, like she had suddenly become a character in an adaptation of an Austen novel.
“Lily, you don’t know where he’s been...”
I was only half-joking.
“But he was looking at me with those puppy dog eyes...”
“That’s not the basis of a deep relationship.”
“Dad, I’m twenty years old.”
I got up from the floor and looked out of the old, leaded windows, the snow piling up even higher.
“I wish your mother were here, of course... I never really know what to say at times like this, and I, er... You know, motions of the human heart, and all that.”
She said nothing.
“Souls, entwined as they are through the prism of deep affection, still pine for that human connection, of personalities waltzing through life, the chasm of that unknown which awaits us all, the future, so timeless and deep...”
She still said nothing.
“I’m trying my hardest here and you’re not even listening.”
She was looking at her mobile phone.
“Still no signal,” she said.
I cleared my throat.
She laughed, “We’re both adults,” she said. Her features relaxed and a big smile broke out on her face. “Last night, he said he would give me a present. He wanted to give me flowers. I told him that was cute, but there was nowhere on the island to buy any flowers, and what with the snow... So he did something even better, he gave me unlimited access streaming to their latest album. You don’t understand, in these modern times, what that means to a girl.”
“Is the album any good?”
“No.”
I sighed, then used a dishcloth to work away at an imaginary stain.
“And which Josh is it?”
“Josh Josh. Not Other Josh.”
“They both seem the same to me.”
“Can’t you tell? Other Josh is as camp as Christmas.”
“Lily, it’s nasty to say things like that...”
“But he is!”
“I can’t tell, these days.”
She smiled.
“So, can I?”
I worked away at the imaginary stain, again.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
One of the biggest jobs of the off-season was fluffing the badgers. The owners had placed stuffed badgers throughout the grand dining hall and throughout the summer months these would gather a significant amount of dust. The badgers were fashioned in all kinds of different poses, anything from fierce attack mode to something more subservient, and a badger asleep with its legs in the air formed the basis of one of the low coffee tables near the fireplace. Fluffing the badgers could only be done successfully with a face mask and a delicate vacuum cleaner with a very fine nozzle. Sometimes, the nozzle got bunged up. This is what I was doing when the two Joshes came into the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Fluffing the badgers.”
“Oh.”
The badger I was working on was mid-pose in an imaginary game of tennis. It held a little racquet in its paw and had a headband around its head. It was baring its teeth in anger.
“So...” Josh said.
Other Josh went off and started fingering the ikebana.
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s like this...”
“Go on.”
“You know what it’s like when you go in the shop and you want Haribo, and all day long you’ve been thinking of Haribo, and the only thing you want is Haribo, and you’re in this shop and then you see all this Haribo?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Well, Lily is like… Haribo.”
“I see...”
I switched the mini vacuum cleaner off and put down the tennis badger.
“Other Josh!” I shouted, “Stop fiddling with the pot pourri!”
“I mean, no offence or nothing, but she’s well hot.”
“And does she know that she’s… your ideal Haribo?”
“Normally,” Other Josh yelled over, “I like gummy fangs.”
“What?” Josh said.
“Ain’t you ever seen them? Gummy fangs. You put them in your mouth and you pretend you’ve got fangs.”
“And then?”
“And then you eat them.”
“I like drumstick squishees.”
“All right, you two, back to the main talking point. So, basically, you’re telling me that you’ve got the hots for my daughter.”
“Yeah, no offence.”
“And stop saying no offence!”
“So, I was wondering? If it was all right with you? If I could take her out for a date?”
“Take her where?”
“The… Yeah, you’ve got a point.”
“I like fizzy, twin, fruity frogs, too,” Other Josh said.
I didn’t say anything for a couple of moments. I walked over to the sideboard and I picked up the supine badger, placed it next to the Badger Leading His Troops Across the Alps.
“I’ll have to think about this,” I told him. “I know she’s a grown woman, but… she’s my daughter. And you’re just passing through, teenybopper pop stars temporarily stranded, here one minute, gone the next, no offence... What are you called, Goin’ Berserk? That’s no basis for a serious relationship. But I could be wrong. Modern life is hard enough as it is. I’ll need to think about this, and perhaps seek some advice. OK?”
Josh grinned.
“Boom!” he said.
And then he and Other Josh started one of their dance routines, all hips and fancy footwork and a strange, pelvic pulsating.
“For goodness’ sake,” I whispered.
The owner of the hotel had amassed a fine and considerable collection of moustaches and these were held in glass frames and displayed in the corridors on the second and third floors. I’d asked the Joshes to dust each one but, invariably, the bastards kept taking the framed moustaches off the wall and holding them up to their faces and saying crazy things like, “Look at me, I’ve got a moustache.”
That night we all had dinner at a table in the dining room and the Joshes were telling Lily about their adventures with the moustaches.
“Big, droopy one,” Other Josh was saying. “He looked a right clown. Even more than he normally does. It suited him.”
“Cheers, mate.”
“What with his big, puppy dog eyes.”
Other Josh looked over at Lily, and Lily visibly blushed.
“Leave him alone,” she said.
“Ooh! Someone’s being a bit defensive!” Other Josh laughed.
“Pack it in,” Josh said.
Josh pushed Other Josh in the side. Other Josh hit Josh – bap! – right in the middle of his forehead with the underside of a dessert spoon.
“Bastard!”
Josh threw a crusty roll at Other Josh. Other Josh ducked and the crusty roll hit the medieval suit of armour with a noticeable clang. Other Josh pinched Josh’s nose very tightly with the serving tongs from the cauliflower cheese.
“All right, all right, that’s it, you two! Just stop it!” I yelled.
“He started it.”
“I don’t care!”
The windows were dark. I could see flecks of snow falling again. The cold wind moaned around the ancient building and down the grand fireplace.
“Everything has to be different,” Other Josh said, “Just because he’s in love.”
“Shut up!” Josh said.
“He’s in love, he’s in love, he’s in lo-ho-ho-ho-ove!” Other Josh sang, which was apparently from one of their singles.
“You’re just jealous,” Josh said.
“Jealous of who?”
“Of Lily,” Josh snapped. “Because you wish that she was you and you were her and then I’d like you and not her.”
“For God’s sake!” Other Josh said. “I wouldn’t want to go out with you!”
“Why not?”
“Boys!” Lily called. “Other Josh... Please... I really like him... And you’ve made the poor lad embarrassed.”
Josh smiled in a smug sort of way.
“Well, then,” Other Josh said, folding his arms like a petulant toddler. “Why don’t you two just get it on, if it’s like that?”
“Fine,” Josh replied. “In fact, how do you know that we haven’t alread...y?”
The room went very quiet. After a couple of seconds, both of the Joshes looked at me.
“Lily is my daughter,” I said, in a very calm voice.
“I’m sorry… Sir,... I thought... I forgot...”
“And we do not have any secrets. But what I cannot abide is the lack of respect. You’re guests here at the hotel, but even so, you must remember that I am doing you both a favour. My daughter is not a plaything. She’s not here for your amusement, and neither are her emotions and the workings of the human heart. If I had my way, I’d throw you both out into the cold, but that’s not how things are done up here, on the island. To be honest, I’ve never been in a situation like this, and tomorrow I shall be going out to seek advice from a very wise man who lives a short distance from here. Until then, please act with at least some decorum. This is new for all of us.”
It was still very quiet by the time I finished. The wind just kept on moaning and groaning.
“Mister,” Other Josh piped up. “Just one more thing...”
“Yes?”
“Why have they got loads of moustaches upstairs?”
“I don’t bloody know!”
The moment I stepped out of the front door of the hotel I was hit by an icy blast of Arctic air which gnawed my face and made my nose go all numb. The snow was almost horizontal, blown by a vicious wind which subsumed all sense, all feeling. The landscape around the hotel was under deep snow and drifts. I took a sigh, wrapped my scarf around the lower part of my face, and started walking directly across the surrounding scrubland, made harder by the frost and snow. Every footstep was a halting crunch and required more energy than would normally have been the case, wading and judging each tread. But I was motivated by a need to get to the bottom of my predicament and I knew that Snorri would help me. He helped everyone. It’s what he did. His wisdom was known for miles around, and many of the locals had asserted that without Snorri, their lives would be in much worse shape. That’s how good he was, apparently.
Within a hundred metres, I started to realise that the journey would not be straightforward. The fallen snow had levelled the landscape which, in summer, was a boggy, mosquito-riven wasteland of ditches, hillocks, and hollows, but now seemed to be deceptively uniform. Straggly, hardy bushes and scrub tripped me often, forcing me to tread awkwardly, and at one point I’m sure I felt the crack of a frozen sheep carcass. I turned around and looked at the hotel, its gothic, grey towers ominous and silhouetted against the dull, overcast sky, its leaded windows holding within them an imaginary warmth. The Joshes had wanted a Pot Noodle in my absence. I said sure, they could have a Pot Noodle. And then they told me they didn’t know how to cook a Pot Noodle.
More determined than ever, I carried on my way, and as I walked, I thought of Lily. I was doing this for Lily. I know I’d done a good job raising her, under difficult circumstances, and she had become a fine young woman, interested in the minutiae of hospitality and the leisure industry. Her wayward days were behind her, and in truth, they hadn’t really lasted that long. But she could still be misled. Her attraction to Josh, I thought, was just an extreme symptom of cabin fever. She liked him only because he was there, though I could see no reason that anyone would regard him as a specimen of masculinity. He had been wearing odd socks that very morning.
I don’t know how I managed to walk the distance to Snorri’s farmhouse. I could feel my extremities becoming numb, and the wind whipped and froze my face until I felt like crying with the pain of just existing. It took almost two hours, but eventually I passed the dry, stone wall of his enclosure and saw his single-storey cottage shivering under the snow, his modest timber door, on whose rough surface I knocked with numbed fists. One. Two. Three.
The door opened.
“Come in,” Snorri said. “I have been pondering your problem... and I believe I have found a solution that will rectify the situation. Come in, my friend, come in.”
The lads didn’t look too pleased.
“We’ve done everything you’ve wanted us to do so far!” Other Josh complained.
Only that morning, he had picked up a dustpan and brush and asked where you plugged it in.
“Yes, and you’ve done very well,” I replied. “And this is just another chore that needs doing.”
“But... Building a sauna?!”
“Yes.”
“Outside?!”
Obviously, Josh had a point. It was snowing again and bitterly cold out there. But the sauna was currently flat-packed in a shed and the concrete base had already been constructed over the summer. It wasn’t like I was asking them to do a lot. All they had to do was erect the walls, fix them together, build the roof and lift it on, construct the benches, install the heater, make sure the appropriate power was connected, test the equipment, and follow all the usual health and safety requirements and guidelines, assuring that the finished product was in line with the latest government safety regulations. It really wasn’t too much to ask at all.
“Are you crazy?” Josh asked.
“No. Sane.”
But then, he obviously remembered how he would benefit from the agreement.
“So, we build this sauna doodah...”
(“Doodah!” Other Josh laughed).
“...And then I’m allowed to go out with your daughter?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“No questions asked?”
“Nope.”
Josh was quiet for a few seconds.
“Cool!” he said.
“Hey… What do I get out of this?” Other Josh asked.
He had a point.
“Free use of the sauna,” I replied.
“Cool!” he said.
They both did one of those high fives again, like you see on the television.
“Imagine how fun it will be to work out of doors,” I said, looking out through the library window at the latest blizzard, “It’s got to be better than being cooped up in here all that time, hasn’t it?”
It was amusing to watch them work. In their heavy coats and gloves and boots, they looked like spacemen bouncing across an alien landscape. They started by shovelling snow from the prepared concrete base, then they went to the shed and looked at the flat-pack sauna and the bundles of timber that would soon form the basis of the structure. Then they had to go back to the concrete base and shovel the snow from it again. They unwrapped the bundles of wood and read the instructions, before going back to the concrete base and shovelling the snow from it. They began laying the different planks of wood in some kind of order, though the blizzard intensified at this point and I couldn’t see what was happening because of the horizontal snow. The moment it cleared sufficiently, I saw them shovelling snow away from the concrete base.
“Aren’t you being a bit cruel to them?” Lily asked.
“They didn’t have to do it. And to be honest, it looks like they’re having fun.”
Other Josh had his hands under his armpits, evidently having lost all feeling in his extremities.
“They might get frost-bite.”
“They’ll be fine as soon as they’re in that sauna.”
Lily smiled.
“Naked...”
“For goodness’ sake!”
They tried to erect one of the walls, but the wind caught it like a giant sail just as they were carrying it from the shed, and they did a strange dance around the rear of the hotel with it as they tried to hold the whole thing upright. Then they started shovelling snow away from the concrete base before another blizzard obscured them from view.
“Watching them do their work is making me feel quite chilly,” I said. “Do you fancy a hot chocolate?”
“You’ve twisted my arm.”
We sat at the fire in the grand drawing room.
“So, this is Snorri’s doing,” she said, “isn’t it?”
“We had a good chat. And yes, he has it all planned out. This is exactly what he told me to do. He said that the way through this situation is to think one or two steps ahead at every turn. He’s a wise man.”
“He can’t be that wise,” Lily said. “I got stuck behind him in the queue at the supermarket. He was trying to use out of date coupons. I’d never seen such a fuss.”
“Don’t underestimate Snorri.”
At that moment, we both heard a loud crash in the rear of the hotel accompanied by some quite inventive swearing.
“That will be one of the walls falling down,” I said. I leaned back and stirred my hot chocolate.
They must have worked hard over the next three or four days. And not once in all that time did the storm let up. They would return to the hotel at night, tired and weary from their efforts, and they’d sit in front of the fire for a while, shivering together. Indeed, their exertions in building the sauna made them somewhat less energetic at dinner time. I made a mental note to call Snorri and thank him for this extra and highly welcome by-product of his plan. The fact that the lads were full-on and, to use a modern term, in your face, made for a very pleasant meal that we could all enjoy. Indeed, Josh barely had time to acknowledge the sly smiles Lily delivered across the candlesticks.
It was the fourth day. Lily and I were counting the jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with the mother-of-pearl duck-billed handles. The owner of the hotel insisted that every dining-place be accompanied by a jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoop with a mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handle. Inevitably, during the summer season, some of the jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with the mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles would go walkies. This year the deficit was six. We had these things laid out on the floor of the library before the fire, lined up in rows with the mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles all in the same direction for easy auditing purposes, when the door crashed open and in ran the two Joshes.
“Big news!” Josh yelled.
“I wanted to tell them!”
“Well, I was here first!”
The two Joshes stumbled on this field of jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles. They went flying, the lads, the poop-scoops, the lot.
“You idiots!” I yelled.
They picked themselves up from the floor, then slipped on more of the jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with the mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles, and picked themselves up again.
“That’s it! Just stand still. Don’t make a move!”
“It’s done!” Josh said. “The sauna… Done!”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“All of it?”
“Every last bit of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“There’s nothing left to do. There’s not even any bits left.”
This was amazing. I’d built plenty of things over the years, from greenhouses to sheds and central heating systems, and there was always something left over.
“Come and look!”
“Oh, fantastic!” Lily said, and flung her arms around Josh’s neck. “Well done, lads! Well done!”
We put on our coats and went outside. Sure enough, the sauna was complete. It loomed there in the murk, its wooden sides covered in creosote, protecting it against the weather, its walls solid and impressively strong against the biting wind. The two Joshes were almost jumping up and down as they held the door open, and I must admit I let out a gasp as I went inside. The warmth hit me immediately, a barrage of heat pumping out from the stove in the corner. The walls, lit subtly by mood lighting, oozed a pleasing pine smell, as did the benches around three of the walls. It was a magnificent achievement.
They’d done it. They’d actually done it.
“Let’s have a sauna!” Lily said, “Together! All four of us, as a celebration!”
“I think the honour of the first go belongs to the boys,” I replied. “They’ve earned it. What do you say?”
“Boom!” Other Josh said.
“Wicked!” Josh added.
And they did one of their annoying high fives again.
“Go on, lads,” I said to them. “It’s all yours. I see you’ve already got towels. Lily, we must go back and continue the audit of jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with the mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles. Unlike these two very industrious lads, we still have work to do.”
Excitedly, the two Joshes began to remove their coats and then their clothes.
“They’ve done it!” Lily said, as I closed the door and we stepped into the blizzard once again. “I can’t believe they’ve actually done it!”
“People will do anything for love,” I replied.
Surreptitiously, without Lily noticing, I snapped the lock on the sauna door and sealed them to their fate.
The moment I got inside, I made a phone call.
“Snorri. It’s done. Exactly as you said. They’re in there right now.”
“Righty-ho, then,” Snorri replied. “I’ll be over as soon as possible.”
“They’re dead,” the paramedic said.
“Crikey.”
“Both of them. Very dead indeed.”
“Bloody hell.”
“It’s something we see a lot.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“We picked up one this morning, from a ditch by the side of the road,” she said. “A record producer. Maybe we should have thawed him out in your sauna.”
“Ha ha.”
“Haven’t I seen them somewhere before?” she asked.
“You might have done, they’re in a band, or something. Cup of tea?”
“I’d better be off. This weather’s setting in, and now I’ve got to take these two stiffs to the morgue, so...”
“Well, thanks for trying, anyway.”
“No problem. It’s what we’re here for.”
I watched the ambulance pull away from the front of the hotel. Its tyres crunched over the frost that had already started forming on top of that day’s snow. The ambulance passed the minibus, which was little more now than a giant blob of snow.
I breathed a sigh of relief and closed the door. I walked slowly up the steps towards the bedrooms and decided I should really check in on Lily. She hadn’t taken the news too badly, though I worried that perhaps there might be some kind of delayed reaction.
“Lily?” I whispered, knocking softly on her door.
I mentally told myself that now, oh yes, now some parenting skills would come in to play, and I was even congratulating myself in advance for how, once again, I would be there for her.
“Lily,” I said, as I opened the door, “I just thought I’d come in and check and...”
She was in bed. With Snorri.
“Dad! Erm… Hi. Listen, I hope you don’t mind, but we’ve just got engaged.”
“It’s a carpet sweeper,” I replied.
Josh looked at it.
“What does it do?”
“It sweeps carpets.”
The Other Josh stood at the bottom of the grand staircase and laughed.
“Clue’s in the name, dude.”
The foyer of the hotel was all ancient, stone brick and elegant, modern glass. A wide reception desk and the rather opulent, carpeted staircase had been designed specifically to blend old and new. The glass doors had a good view of the mountains, when the weather would let you see them. You could see them on a good day. This wasn’t a good day. The snow, blown by icy winds, was almost vertical. The whole island was cut off.
Josh kept on looking at the carpet sweeper.
“So, I’m guessing you want me to wave this doodah up and down this staircase?”
Other Josh laughed.
“Doodah!” he repeated.
The two Joshes exchanged a high five. Like you sometimes see on the television.
“You’ve got to find your rhythm with it,” I told him.
“We’ve got rhythm!” Josh replied.
And together, they both started dancing, right then and there in front of me.
“Sweep it back and forth! Sweep it back and forth!”
“Very good. Very good,” I said, and waited for them to stop. “Your manager said that I should give you basic chores because. . . He said that neither of you were really good at anything much.”
“Clive said that?”
Clive had been gone for six days now, and it didn’t look like Clive was coming back.
The broken down minibus was still in the car-park of the hotel, parked underneath a snowdrift. The hotel was closed, officially. Clive had apologised about the lack of money, but he said he would be back with a mechanic and some hard cash. Clive probably didn’t realise that the nearest town was over ten miles away.
“Right, right, it’s like this?” Josh said, because something had just occurred to him. “What’s wrong with a vacuum cleaner?”
“Boom,” Other Josh said, like it was a quiz and he’d just dealt the killer blow.
“That carpet is two hundred years old. A vacuum cleaner would cause untold damage.”
Josh took the carpet sweeper, rolled it forward once, and fell over, he and the carpet sweeper bouncing off a couple of steps and landing in a crumpled heap at the bottom of the staircase.
“Ha ha!” Other Josh yelled, almost dropping his feather duster.
“You nob!” Josh said, picking himself up.
“Has Clive ever done this before? Just left you somewhere? I find it hard to believe that with all of those records sold, all of those downloads, you could have no actual money...”
“I’m bored!” Other Josh yelled, which didn’t exactly answer my question.
He thrust his feather duster at the marble bust of the hotel’s founder, Lord Stichinthem. The marble bust toppled over and shattered to pieces on the tiled floor.
All three of us stood there and looked at it for a bit.
“Clive will pay for it,” Josh said.
“Can’t we keep him?” she asked.
I was bent over, cleaning the main oven in the kitchen at the time. She always used that same tone of voice when she wanted to get something off her father. That plaintive lilt, like she had suddenly become a character in an adaptation of an Austen novel.
“Lily, you don’t know where he’s been...”
I was only half-joking.
“But he was looking at me with those puppy dog eyes...”
“That’s not the basis of a deep relationship.”
“Dad, I’m twenty years old.”
I got up from the floor and looked out of the old, leaded windows, the snow piling up even higher.
“I wish your mother were here, of course... I never really know what to say at times like this, and I, er... You know, motions of the human heart, and all that.”
She said nothing.
“Souls, entwined as they are through the prism of deep affection, still pine for that human connection, of personalities waltzing through life, the chasm of that unknown which awaits us all, the future, so timeless and deep...”
She still said nothing.
“I’m trying my hardest here and you’re not even listening.”
She was looking at her mobile phone.
“Still no signal,” she said.
I cleared my throat.
She laughed, “We’re both adults,” she said. Her features relaxed and a big smile broke out on her face. “Last night, he said he would give me a present. He wanted to give me flowers. I told him that was cute, but there was nowhere on the island to buy any flowers, and what with the snow... So he did something even better, he gave me unlimited access streaming to their latest album. You don’t understand, in these modern times, what that means to a girl.”
“Is the album any good?”
“No.”
I sighed, then used a dishcloth to work away at an imaginary stain.
“And which Josh is it?”
“Josh Josh. Not Other Josh.”
“They both seem the same to me.”
“Can’t you tell? Other Josh is as camp as Christmas.”
“Lily, it’s nasty to say things like that...”
“But he is!”
“I can’t tell, these days.”
She smiled.
“So, can I?”
I worked away at the imaginary stain, again.
“I’ll have to think about it.”
One of the biggest jobs of the off-season was fluffing the badgers. The owners had placed stuffed badgers throughout the grand dining hall and throughout the summer months these would gather a significant amount of dust. The badgers were fashioned in all kinds of different poses, anything from fierce attack mode to something more subservient, and a badger asleep with its legs in the air formed the basis of one of the low coffee tables near the fireplace. Fluffing the badgers could only be done successfully with a face mask and a delicate vacuum cleaner with a very fine nozzle. Sometimes, the nozzle got bunged up. This is what I was doing when the two Joshes came into the room.
“What are you doing?”
“Fluffing the badgers.”
“Oh.”
The badger I was working on was mid-pose in an imaginary game of tennis. It held a little racquet in its paw and had a headband around its head. It was baring its teeth in anger.
“So...” Josh said.
Other Josh went off and started fingering the ikebana.
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s like this...”
“Go on.”
“You know what it’s like when you go in the shop and you want Haribo, and all day long you’ve been thinking of Haribo, and the only thing you want is Haribo, and you’re in this shop and then you see all this Haribo?”
“Where are you going with this?”
“Well, Lily is like… Haribo.”
“I see...”
I switched the mini vacuum cleaner off and put down the tennis badger.
“Other Josh!” I shouted, “Stop fiddling with the pot pourri!”
“I mean, no offence or nothing, but she’s well hot.”
“And does she know that she’s… your ideal Haribo?”
“Normally,” Other Josh yelled over, “I like gummy fangs.”
“What?” Josh said.
“Ain’t you ever seen them? Gummy fangs. You put them in your mouth and you pretend you’ve got fangs.”
“And then?”
“And then you eat them.”
“I like drumstick squishees.”
“All right, you two, back to the main talking point. So, basically, you’re telling me that you’ve got the hots for my daughter.”
“Yeah, no offence.”
“And stop saying no offence!”
“So, I was wondering? If it was all right with you? If I could take her out for a date?”
“Take her where?”
“The… Yeah, you’ve got a point.”
“I like fizzy, twin, fruity frogs, too,” Other Josh said.
I didn’t say anything for a couple of moments. I walked over to the sideboard and I picked up the supine badger, placed it next to the Badger Leading His Troops Across the Alps.
“I’ll have to think about this,” I told him. “I know she’s a grown woman, but… she’s my daughter. And you’re just passing through, teenybopper pop stars temporarily stranded, here one minute, gone the next, no offence... What are you called, Goin’ Berserk? That’s no basis for a serious relationship. But I could be wrong. Modern life is hard enough as it is. I’ll need to think about this, and perhaps seek some advice. OK?”
Josh grinned.
“Boom!” he said.
And then he and Other Josh started one of their dance routines, all hips and fancy footwork and a strange, pelvic pulsating.
“For goodness’ sake,” I whispered.
The owner of the hotel had amassed a fine and considerable collection of moustaches and these were held in glass frames and displayed in the corridors on the second and third floors. I’d asked the Joshes to dust each one but, invariably, the bastards kept taking the framed moustaches off the wall and holding them up to their faces and saying crazy things like, “Look at me, I’ve got a moustache.”
That night we all had dinner at a table in the dining room and the Joshes were telling Lily about their adventures with the moustaches.
“Big, droopy one,” Other Josh was saying. “He looked a right clown. Even more than he normally does. It suited him.”
“Cheers, mate.”
“What with his big, puppy dog eyes.”
Other Josh looked over at Lily, and Lily visibly blushed.
“Leave him alone,” she said.
“Ooh! Someone’s being a bit defensive!” Other Josh laughed.
“Pack it in,” Josh said.
Josh pushed Other Josh in the side. Other Josh hit Josh – bap! – right in the middle of his forehead with the underside of a dessert spoon.
“Bastard!”
Josh threw a crusty roll at Other Josh. Other Josh ducked and the crusty roll hit the medieval suit of armour with a noticeable clang. Other Josh pinched Josh’s nose very tightly with the serving tongs from the cauliflower cheese.
“All right, all right, that’s it, you two! Just stop it!” I yelled.
“He started it.”
“I don’t care!”
The windows were dark. I could see flecks of snow falling again. The cold wind moaned around the ancient building and down the grand fireplace.
“Everything has to be different,” Other Josh said, “Just because he’s in love.”
“Shut up!” Josh said.
“He’s in love, he’s in love, he’s in lo-ho-ho-ho-ove!” Other Josh sang, which was apparently from one of their singles.
“You’re just jealous,” Josh said.
“Jealous of who?”
“Of Lily,” Josh snapped. “Because you wish that she was you and you were her and then I’d like you and not her.”
“For God’s sake!” Other Josh said. “I wouldn’t want to go out with you!”
“Why not?”
“Boys!” Lily called. “Other Josh... Please... I really like him... And you’ve made the poor lad embarrassed.”
Josh smiled in a smug sort of way.
“Well, then,” Other Josh said, folding his arms like a petulant toddler. “Why don’t you two just get it on, if it’s like that?”
“Fine,” Josh replied. “In fact, how do you know that we haven’t alread...y?”
The room went very quiet. After a couple of seconds, both of the Joshes looked at me.
“Lily is my daughter,” I said, in a very calm voice.
“I’m sorry… Sir,... I thought... I forgot...”
“And we do not have any secrets. But what I cannot abide is the lack of respect. You’re guests here at the hotel, but even so, you must remember that I am doing you both a favour. My daughter is not a plaything. She’s not here for your amusement, and neither are her emotions and the workings of the human heart. If I had my way, I’d throw you both out into the cold, but that’s not how things are done up here, on the island. To be honest, I’ve never been in a situation like this, and tomorrow I shall be going out to seek advice from a very wise man who lives a short distance from here. Until then, please act with at least some decorum. This is new for all of us.”
It was still very quiet by the time I finished. The wind just kept on moaning and groaning.
“Mister,” Other Josh piped up. “Just one more thing...”
“Yes?”
“Why have they got loads of moustaches upstairs?”
“I don’t bloody know!”
The moment I stepped out of the front door of the hotel I was hit by an icy blast of Arctic air which gnawed my face and made my nose go all numb. The snow was almost horizontal, blown by a vicious wind which subsumed all sense, all feeling. The landscape around the hotel was under deep snow and drifts. I took a sigh, wrapped my scarf around the lower part of my face, and started walking directly across the surrounding scrubland, made harder by the frost and snow. Every footstep was a halting crunch and required more energy than would normally have been the case, wading and judging each tread. But I was motivated by a need to get to the bottom of my predicament and I knew that Snorri would help me. He helped everyone. It’s what he did. His wisdom was known for miles around, and many of the locals had asserted that without Snorri, their lives would be in much worse shape. That’s how good he was, apparently.
Within a hundred metres, I started to realise that the journey would not be straightforward. The fallen snow had levelled the landscape which, in summer, was a boggy, mosquito-riven wasteland of ditches, hillocks, and hollows, but now seemed to be deceptively uniform. Straggly, hardy bushes and scrub tripped me often, forcing me to tread awkwardly, and at one point I’m sure I felt the crack of a frozen sheep carcass. I turned around and looked at the hotel, its gothic, grey towers ominous and silhouetted against the dull, overcast sky, its leaded windows holding within them an imaginary warmth. The Joshes had wanted a Pot Noodle in my absence. I said sure, they could have a Pot Noodle. And then they told me they didn’t know how to cook a Pot Noodle.
More determined than ever, I carried on my way, and as I walked, I thought of Lily. I was doing this for Lily. I know I’d done a good job raising her, under difficult circumstances, and she had become a fine young woman, interested in the minutiae of hospitality and the leisure industry. Her wayward days were behind her, and in truth, they hadn’t really lasted that long. But she could still be misled. Her attraction to Josh, I thought, was just an extreme symptom of cabin fever. She liked him only because he was there, though I could see no reason that anyone would regard him as a specimen of masculinity. He had been wearing odd socks that very morning.
I don’t know how I managed to walk the distance to Snorri’s farmhouse. I could feel my extremities becoming numb, and the wind whipped and froze my face until I felt like crying with the pain of just existing. It took almost two hours, but eventually I passed the dry, stone wall of his enclosure and saw his single-storey cottage shivering under the snow, his modest timber door, on whose rough surface I knocked with numbed fists. One. Two. Three.
The door opened.
“Come in,” Snorri said. “I have been pondering your problem... and I believe I have found a solution that will rectify the situation. Come in, my friend, come in.”
The lads didn’t look too pleased.
“We’ve done everything you’ve wanted us to do so far!” Other Josh complained.
Only that morning, he had picked up a dustpan and brush and asked where you plugged it in.
“Yes, and you’ve done very well,” I replied. “And this is just another chore that needs doing.”
“But... Building a sauna?!”
“Yes.”
“Outside?!”
Obviously, Josh had a point. It was snowing again and bitterly cold out there. But the sauna was currently flat-packed in a shed and the concrete base had already been constructed over the summer. It wasn’t like I was asking them to do a lot. All they had to do was erect the walls, fix them together, build the roof and lift it on, construct the benches, install the heater, make sure the appropriate power was connected, test the equipment, and follow all the usual health and safety requirements and guidelines, assuring that the finished product was in line with the latest government safety regulations. It really wasn’t too much to ask at all.
“Are you crazy?” Josh asked.
“No. Sane.”
But then, he obviously remembered how he would benefit from the agreement.
“So, we build this sauna doodah...”
(“Doodah!” Other Josh laughed).
“...And then I’m allowed to go out with your daughter?”
“That’s about the size of it.”
“No questions asked?”
“Nope.”
Josh was quiet for a few seconds.
“Cool!” he said.
“Hey… What do I get out of this?” Other Josh asked.
He had a point.
“Free use of the sauna,” I replied.
“Cool!” he said.
They both did one of those high fives again, like you see on the television.
“Imagine how fun it will be to work out of doors,” I said, looking out through the library window at the latest blizzard, “It’s got to be better than being cooped up in here all that time, hasn’t it?”
It was amusing to watch them work. In their heavy coats and gloves and boots, they looked like spacemen bouncing across an alien landscape. They started by shovelling snow from the prepared concrete base, then they went to the shed and looked at the flat-pack sauna and the bundles of timber that would soon form the basis of the structure. Then they had to go back to the concrete base and shovel the snow from it again. They unwrapped the bundles of wood and read the instructions, before going back to the concrete base and shovelling the snow from it. They began laying the different planks of wood in some kind of order, though the blizzard intensified at this point and I couldn’t see what was happening because of the horizontal snow. The moment it cleared sufficiently, I saw them shovelling snow away from the concrete base.
“Aren’t you being a bit cruel to them?” Lily asked.
“They didn’t have to do it. And to be honest, it looks like they’re having fun.”
Other Josh had his hands under his armpits, evidently having lost all feeling in his extremities.
“They might get frost-bite.”
“They’ll be fine as soon as they’re in that sauna.”
Lily smiled.
“Naked...”
“For goodness’ sake!”
They tried to erect one of the walls, but the wind caught it like a giant sail just as they were carrying it from the shed, and they did a strange dance around the rear of the hotel with it as they tried to hold the whole thing upright. Then they started shovelling snow away from the concrete base before another blizzard obscured them from view.
“Watching them do their work is making me feel quite chilly,” I said. “Do you fancy a hot chocolate?”
“You’ve twisted my arm.”
We sat at the fire in the grand drawing room.
“So, this is Snorri’s doing,” she said, “isn’t it?”
“We had a good chat. And yes, he has it all planned out. This is exactly what he told me to do. He said that the way through this situation is to think one or two steps ahead at every turn. He’s a wise man.”
“He can’t be that wise,” Lily said. “I got stuck behind him in the queue at the supermarket. He was trying to use out of date coupons. I’d never seen such a fuss.”
“Don’t underestimate Snorri.”
At that moment, we both heard a loud crash in the rear of the hotel accompanied by some quite inventive swearing.
“That will be one of the walls falling down,” I said. I leaned back and stirred my hot chocolate.
They must have worked hard over the next three or four days. And not once in all that time did the storm let up. They would return to the hotel at night, tired and weary from their efforts, and they’d sit in front of the fire for a while, shivering together. Indeed, their exertions in building the sauna made them somewhat less energetic at dinner time. I made a mental note to call Snorri and thank him for this extra and highly welcome by-product of his plan. The fact that the lads were full-on and, to use a modern term, in your face, made for a very pleasant meal that we could all enjoy. Indeed, Josh barely had time to acknowledge the sly smiles Lily delivered across the candlesticks.
It was the fourth day. Lily and I were counting the jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with the mother-of-pearl duck-billed handles. The owner of the hotel insisted that every dining-place be accompanied by a jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoop with a mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handle. Inevitably, during the summer season, some of the jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with the mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles would go walkies. This year the deficit was six. We had these things laid out on the floor of the library before the fire, lined up in rows with the mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles all in the same direction for easy auditing purposes, when the door crashed open and in ran the two Joshes.
“Big news!” Josh yelled.
“I wanted to tell them!”
“Well, I was here first!”
The two Joshes stumbled on this field of jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles. They went flying, the lads, the poop-scoops, the lot.
“You idiots!” I yelled.
They picked themselves up from the floor, then slipped on more of the jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with the mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles, and picked themselves up again.
“That’s it! Just stand still. Don’t make a move!”
“It’s done!” Josh said. “The sauna… Done!”
“Really?”
“Yes!”
“All of it?”
“Every last bit of it.”
“Are you sure?”
“There’s nothing left to do. There’s not even any bits left.”
This was amazing. I’d built plenty of things over the years, from greenhouses to sheds and central heating systems, and there was always something left over.
“Come and look!”
“Oh, fantastic!” Lily said, and flung her arms around Josh’s neck. “Well done, lads! Well done!”
We put on our coats and went outside. Sure enough, the sauna was complete. It loomed there in the murk, its wooden sides covered in creosote, protecting it against the weather, its walls solid and impressively strong against the biting wind. The two Joshes were almost jumping up and down as they held the door open, and I must admit I let out a gasp as I went inside. The warmth hit me immediately, a barrage of heat pumping out from the stove in the corner. The walls, lit subtly by mood lighting, oozed a pleasing pine smell, as did the benches around three of the walls. It was a magnificent achievement.
They’d done it. They’d actually done it.
“Let’s have a sauna!” Lily said, “Together! All four of us, as a celebration!”
“I think the honour of the first go belongs to the boys,” I replied. “They’ve earned it. What do you say?”
“Boom!” Other Josh said.
“Wicked!” Josh added.
And they did one of their annoying high fives again.
“Go on, lads,” I said to them. “It’s all yours. I see you’ve already got towels. Lily, we must go back and continue the audit of jewel-encrusted, bronze, ornamental poop-scoops with the mother-of-pearl, duck-billed handles. Unlike these two very industrious lads, we still have work to do.”
Excitedly, the two Joshes began to remove their coats and then their clothes.
“They’ve done it!” Lily said, as I closed the door and we stepped into the blizzard once again. “I can’t believe they’ve actually done it!”
“People will do anything for love,” I replied.
Surreptitiously, without Lily noticing, I snapped the lock on the sauna door and sealed them to their fate.
The moment I got inside, I made a phone call.
“Snorri. It’s done. Exactly as you said. They’re in there right now.”
“Righty-ho, then,” Snorri replied. “I’ll be over as soon as possible.”
“They’re dead,” the paramedic said.
“Crikey.”
“Both of them. Very dead indeed.”
“Bloody hell.”
“It’s something we see a lot.”
“I’m sure you do.”
“We picked up one this morning, from a ditch by the side of the road,” she said. “A record producer. Maybe we should have thawed him out in your sauna.”
“Ha ha.”
“Haven’t I seen them somewhere before?” she asked.
“You might have done, they’re in a band, or something. Cup of tea?”
“I’d better be off. This weather’s setting in, and now I’ve got to take these two stiffs to the morgue, so...”
“Well, thanks for trying, anyway.”
“No problem. It’s what we’re here for.”
I watched the ambulance pull away from the front of the hotel. Its tyres crunched over the frost that had already started forming on top of that day’s snow. The ambulance passed the minibus, which was little more now than a giant blob of snow.
I breathed a sigh of relief and closed the door. I walked slowly up the steps towards the bedrooms and decided I should really check in on Lily. She hadn’t taken the news too badly, though I worried that perhaps there might be some kind of delayed reaction.
“Lily?” I whispered, knocking softly on her door.
I mentally told myself that now, oh yes, now some parenting skills would come in to play, and I was even congratulating myself in advance for how, once again, I would be there for her.
“Lily,” I said, as I opened the door, “I just thought I’d come in and check and...”
She was in bed. With Snorri.
“Dad! Erm… Hi. Listen, I hope you don’t mind, but we’ve just got engaged.”
