Angels and Ministers
Page 33
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kGGIE'S brother Cromwell carefully fitted the Kittom of his glass into the wet ring he had left vhen he picked it up. " I think I have found just t present for Lottie," he said, and with a niece that really is something. She is such a diehard at she refuses all imitations, as they say in the .ments," understand what you mean," I said. "One thing ottie is that she has always had a strong sense of right and what is wrong. I remember taking her inderella some years ago, and she complained all home because the vehicle that took Cinderella to had not been properly registered, licensed and the year after that, we took her to see the Babes food," said Maggie. "There was a very sad little Len they wandered off down the road hand in hand. a lump come in my throat. But all Lottie said : the babes had not done their kerb drill, and whatever was coming to them."
heaven's sake keep her away from Dick Whittingd Cromwell, "or she will be asking how he can ted to turn again in a one-way street," east she is on the side of the angels and Mr. " I said.
might well have contributed, a foreword to my d Cromwell.
>Lands as though your present is a book," said "in which case I ought to warn you that Lottie ough every book she receives with a fine tooth spot the errors.
things she came up with after reading Lady y's Lover certainly surprised me," added Maggie_ sort of thing will not happen in this case," said I."So far from making mistakes, the book I >sen is dedicated to putting them right. It is a I version of the old Arabian Nights."
PE the opportunity has been taken to put the moral -ight at the same time," I said. " My version, or emember of it, condones and even approves of r that would certainly call for a good deal of rig down at Scotland Yard."
use to believe it," said Maggie. "I have always Lrm spot for the Arabian Nights and All Baba is ante character in fiction."
if you look into the matter closely," I said. "All ; certainly not a wholly admirable character, For his reaction to the discovery of a cave-full of alas to take away as much as he could carry. Not ural thing to do perhaps, but hardly a shining to the young."
stuff had clearly been pinched," Cromwell agreed. li Baba's plain duty to go to the police."
mother thing," I continued. "What sort of security it that can be broken down merely by repeating hree words?"
just the three words that you would expect any to use," said Cromwell. "'Open sez me,' indeed." ose you tell us how Lottie will find the story when 3 it in the book you are giving her," Maggie
e first-place, the events are brought up to date," Cromwell explained. "All Baba is a poor but honest owner-driver, carrying hardcore on a short-term B, with a tipper bought on the never-never."
"In other words, one of the new-style industrious destitute," I said.
"They do not work any harder or come any poorer these days," Cromwell agreed. "Au Baba's story can be put in a few words. He stumbles on a warehouse crammed with loot, tips off the law, and receives a reward from the Road Haulage Association, plus a further sweetener from a grateful insurance company."
" He does not sound a bit like the Ali Baba I used to know," said Maggie. "Now if you could do the same thing with Aladdin I should not care at all. He has never seemed a very sympathetic character. Everything comes to him too easily."
OU may safely take it in any case that the clause about living happily ever after did not apply to him," I said. "He may have been a teenage tycoon, but he was riding for a fall. For one thing, there was union trouble for him, what with slaves who seemed to wait on him all day and all night, in flat defiance of the Catering Wages Act, and what with the disputes between them on demarcation and restrictive practices that seemed likely to arise any time."
"Then you will like the story in Lottie's book," said Cromwell. "It gives a far more balanced picture of his career. Aladdin—of the Twankey Removal, Storage and Chinese Laundry Company—has the outsize job of moving an entire palace as an abnormal and .indivisible load. Whatever form of propulsion he uses, he certainly does not keep to the appropriate regulations. But fate catches up with him before too long."
"1 cannot wait to hear it," said Maggie.
" No sooner has the palace arrived at the appointed place," said Cromwell, "than Aladdin receives a visit from an official asking whether he has planning permission to build there; from a second official who hands him an assessment for rates; from a third official with a summons requiring him to show cause why he should put up a palace right across the MI; and from a fourth official wanting to know whether he received permission to carry the traffic either from the Licensing Authorityor from the Air Transport Licensing Board."
"And in the end," I said, "I suppose he decides that it is best to stick to dry cleaning and let somebody else marry the princess."
"Are all the stories in your new book like that?" asked Maggie.
"There are no end of them," said Cromwell. "After all, they were supposed to last for a thousand and one nights. Unfortunately, we have only a few minutes more to closing time. Otherwise, I should love to tell you in detail about the wonderful international advenuires of Sinbad the Haulier, and especially his thrilling encounters with those mythological creatures the Infrastructure and the Fourchette. And I can think of nothing better I should like to do after that than narrate the story of the dreadful consequences that followed when the Transport Tribunal released the Lebus djinn from the bottle, and how it took three grave justices with bell, book and candle to get it back again."
"Talking of gin in a bottle," I began....