Page 71 of The Cake Fairies
“S’only me! Quick: put it on.” Polly’s frantic voice had Annabelle wriggling into the overcoat without question. At least it wasn’t another portable sleeping bag trying to be a winter coat. At least there weren’t any continental lilts pervading the sea-spray of the Welsh waves, hinting at subterranean witchcraft and torture. But Annabelle sensed these would soon be small mercies.
Polly pointed at the childish logo sewn into the bust pocket, edged with a string of most unappealing sausages.
“Oh, so now we’re Llandudno’s official puppet show. What’s that going to achieve?”
Polly pulled out a puppet from her deep pockets. It had to be the tattiest example of police constable puppetry on the planet; its face somehow reminiscent of a pensive Shakespeare, with a considerably rugby-weathered snout and a wonky thatch to boot. She had to be kidding.
“It’s now or never,” Polly whispered, dragging a reluctant and petrified Annabelle behind her. She watched on in astonishment as Polly made immediately to break up the perilous parkour moves that were luring the beat-bopping opponents onto benches and bins. A snowy-haired couple had already scrambled from their peaceful retreat a bench away, towing their candyfloss reconstructions of their windswept hair-dos with them; their harried expressions no doubt carrying them back to the more dignified surroundings of their seafront guest house, Teasmade, and custard cream biscuits.
“Break it up, break it up,” the puppet bellowed with authority. “Nothing to see here,” it lolloped sideways at the gathering crowd of youths, appearing to take on an energy of its very own. Eyes and mouths contorted, jaws dropped, moves dried up.
“Right then, young gents. PC Plod has handcuffs at his disposal, and he isn’t afraid to use them,” Polly continued in a rather accomplished and gravelly voice. Evidently, those felt puppet animals Annabelle had gifted her cousin for her eighth birthday, had proven rather useful.
The fight dance fizzled out completely within seconds, as if the puppet were dousing its remaining embers with a hosepipe, and a boom of laughter ensued until faces fell deathly serious.
Oh, shit. Polly… what have you done?But there was no stopping the puppet now. It came into its own again, its inner Will Shakespeare shining through, just not quite so lyrically.
“Now then: here’s what’s going to happen if you want to avoid a night in the cells. I’m an official employee of Llandudno pier, as well as an officer of the law. Drop your phones into my basket,” the puppet PC head butted the wicker example Polly must have ‘borrowed’, breaking and entering the back door of the little red-and-white striped theatre. “And you’ll be rewarded with a chocolate caterpillar cake.”
“What? Like those Marks and Sparks ones?” a cocky voice challenged.
“Better than those M&S ones, mate. Follow me. And be nice to one another. Dance like… like…nobody else is watching,” Polly continued, and Annabelle couldn’t help but cringe at the cheesy positivity quote which seemed to be everywhere in the new millennium, while the puppet expressed himself with some rather questionable drunken uncle dance moves of his own. “Not like ITV is filming you, or Ant and Dec are interviewing you for your eye-watering backstories as ‘Flying Without Wings’ plays in the background, or millions of people are judging you along with Simon Cowell and his cronies,” Polly went on.
Red-cheeked, perspiring heads turned from one to the other as if in search of an even deeper meaning.
“Your lives are here… in the now, are they not?” Plod reminded them. “So dance if you want to dance,” the haggard puppet continued on with its crusade. “But jig for yourselves, not any potential audience. And play fair. Banana skin-style pranks are for the exclusive use of me and my friend Punch.”
Annabelle dug into her own pocket then, discreetly affixing a most scaly example of puppetry to her hand; her hand which seemed to have adopted an embarrassing mind of its own.
“He’s right. Else you’ll have me to deal with.” She let out a great chortle and gave chase with her crocodile, her right hand snapping its newly acquired jaw open and shut. This had approximately thirty teenage boys screaming and darting for their lives, eventually regrouping themselves to form a neat and orderly queue behind Polly and the puppet.
“That’s the way to do it!” Annabelle simpered to the crocodile, trailing behind her cousin, and wearing the biggest smile she’d worn in weeks.
***
“Welcome to Cheltenham, possibly the UK’s most splendiferous spa town.”
“I’ve heard it all now.”
And yet Annabelle couldn’t deny the swanky town’s obvious scenic delights; Pittville Park full of bubble-gum-pink May blossom and enough ducks to rival even the Royal Tunbridge Wells’ Dunorlan offering; the Regency pump room, the velvety green borders of the Cotswolds hills which seemed to scoop the town in a gentle embrace in its little valley. And then there were the shops.
“You may think you’ve been there, done that, and got the T-shirt with the cake drops, but Cheltenham offers up some marvellous, hitherto never seen possibilities.”
That was as maybe, but in the surprise stakes, Annabelle felt sure she’d seen it all now. Nothing could rattle her. She feigned interest anyway as Polly wittered on. She’d much rather dive into the emerald waters of the indoor pool at the grand country hotel that Amber Magnolia had put them up in, followed by day after day of sheer indulgence in its programme of spa treatments to counteract the stresses of 2020. Maverick Manor was a revelation, although she wasn’t so sure its Michelin-starred chefs would be keen to share their kitchen if The Cake Fairies were asked to whip up anymore rainbow cakes. The mess they’d left behind in Norwich had been monumental.
But the days had turned reliably into weeks, Polly’s thirtieth coming and going in the (mostly) muted style of her cousin’s birthday; the town’s red postboxes, banks, and building societies, and the posh villages dotted around Cheltenham’s outskirts, festooned with cake – donations which the latter certainly didn’t need; this was a far cry from Middle Ham with its expensive Land Rovers, Barbour jackets, and honeyed (minted) walls. So that tonight, here they were embarking on something quite different, and a whole lot more challenging than many of the month’s incognito-style deposits.
The school play.
“This is unbelievable,” Annabelle screeched, getting a loud tut from the row in front where a doting grandpa’s darlings were warbling through the opening to Bugsy Malone. Although at least he was without a gadget. Probably because he wouldn’t have been much younger than Polly and herself back in 1969. God, she missed the straightforwardness of that year by the hour. “They’ll never capture the memory in the same way through their lenses, no matter how many times they watch it over and over. What are people doing? How ridiculous!”
Grampie darted her another furious glance and she bit back her urge to get her own phone out and ask him if he’d like a souvenir selfie.
The Williamses found themselves helplessly cast adrift in a swooning, swelling sea of poised rectangular screens. They shimmered in ripples over the heads of the audience to the front, to the back, and on each side of the cousins’ own seats, blocking the view most ignorantly and annoyingly.
“I get that parents might want to see the production again, but not at the cost of watching it through a ten-inch screen the first time. This is plain stupidity,” whispered Polly in agreement.
“I’m astonished that the head, or whoever the evening’s compere is, hasn’t blanket-banned this.” Annabelle did her best to hush her own voice lest civil unrest break out.
