268. Many screamers, many screams

268. Many Screamers, Many Screams

Alpin wanted me to take the letter to Betabel. I didn’t want to do that, so to dissuade him from sending me  to her, I told him the story of Longfellow’s The Courtship of Miles Standish. In case you don’t remember what this is about, or have never heard of it at all, I will explain that Mr. Standish, who wanted to marry a lady called Priscilla, asked his friend John Allen to be go-between. Mr. Allen approached Miss Priscilla and told her that Mr. Standish was proposing through him. Priscilla spoke some famous words. “Why don’t you speak for yourself, John?” she said to Mr. Allen. And Mr. Allen ended up marrying Priscilla instead of Mr. Standish.

“Traitor!” hollered Aplin. “You’re telling me you want to marry Betabel? I spoke out first! Not to her, but to you, yes! So you can’t want to marry her too! You are my friend, and I told you I wanted her, and you are being traitorous!”

“I don’t want her!” I was quick to reply. “I wouldn’t marry her even if she asked me to, which she won’t do!”

“Why?” asked Alpin indignantly. “What is wrong with the woman I love, hey?”

“Nothing. I just don’t want to marry anyone just now. And you saw her first. No, I saw her first, but you said you wanted her first. I respect that.”

“You had better,” threatened Alpin, “or I will let all Hell loose on you!”

“I will, yes indeed, but I am not delivering this letter. I don’t want to do this and I won’t.”

Aldegundus finally delivered the letter. Aldegundus is a messenger pigeon from my mum’s dovecote.

And the next person who screamed was Malrose.

At me. Aldegundus returned with a message for me, not for Alpin. It said that Malrose wanted to speak with me immediately and that I was to head for his home the minute I got the message.

He didn’t speak, he shouted. I kept telling myself I shouldn’t have dropped by Malrose’s ait at all. I should have answered with a return message saying I had nothing to do with Alpin’s proposal and wanted to be kept out of what was none of my business.

“She’ll have to leave the island! I can’t have Alpin living here and devastating it! I’m already behind schedule with the fruit I have to deliver, and Uncle Richearth won’t come to help me till next week. He has a list of people who need his help because of the storm and my turn to be aided won’t be till next Friday. And we are not growing everything back so that monster can devour it!”

Malsore ranted and ranted. When he was done shouting about the fruits, he began to yell about his problems with Sweet Cecily.

“Cecy has snapped! Literally. She says that if I allow Alpin to live with Betabel she will dump me! Because that will mean that I am a good-for-nothing pushover, unfit to protect a family!”

“What about Betabel? Is she for or against living with Alpin?”

“I don’t care a fig what the shepherdess does, as long as she doesn’t bring the monster here,” said Malrose. “Cecy might dump me any of both ways, but I am so sick of all this trash that I don’t think I even care anymore if she does or not!”

“I asume that Betabel isn’t hostile to the idea of living with Alpin, because if she were, we wouldn’t be having this conversation, would we? What do her people say? Aside from her sister Cecy, who is obviously opposed to the match.”

“Her family are a bunch of hicks who don’t know a thing about a thing that exists out of the boundaries of the top of their hill. I don’t think they could even understand what the problem is. Betabel left home and is on her own. Except for Cecy. But Betabel won’t be able to count even on Cecy if I have my way. Keep him away from my ait, that’s all I ask of you! If Betabel wants to go off with him, I say  good riddance! She’s brought nothing but trouble to me!”

“I suppose she can go live with Alpin instead of bringing him to live here,” I said. “But I have misgivings about that too. Because Alpin’s mother might not like Betabel. And Mrs. Dullahan is a formidable adversary. Even Uncle Gen is scared of her.”

“I want these f****** weird people out of my f******  miserable life!” bellowed Malrose. “What have I done to deserve this? Get them out of my life, Arley!”

“I’ll see what I can do,” I said. And I left, heading for the Dullahan home, to consult with Alpin.

At the Dullahan home, the screaming  was even worse than I imagined it would be. Someone was in the kitchen breaking dishes. One of the plates flew out of a window and I wasn’t struck by it because I was able to jump aside in time. I jumped behind an oak tree, and who did I find seeking refuge there too?

“They are both screaming, aren’t they?” Great Aunt Cybela asked me, peeking from behind the oak tree. “Alpin and his mother?”

I nodded and asked, “Why are you here, Aunt Cybela?”

“Aislene called me. You should have heard the sobbing and the screaming and the my poor hearting the woman went on about on the crystal ball!”

“I can imagine,” I said. “What did she want from you?”

“She wants me to find a better match for her youngest son. She thinks Betabel is too stupid to be a good wife for him. She believes they will have mentally weak children.”

“I think she’s too good for him. Betabel doesn’t deserve to be Alpin’s victim.”

“I could find her someone else in a twinkling. If she weren’t desperate, she wouldn’t have encouraged Alpin. And what his mother wants is for me to find him someone better than the little shepherdess. Now, that may be too large an order.”

“When I wasgoing steady  with Rosina Redhood, who my mum couldn’t stand the sight or the sound of, I heard my dad say that mothers always clash with and deeply abhor a son’s first girlfriend. They don't rest until they have broken that first relationship up. And then they feel so guilty because they have, that they accept the next candidate immediately, no matter who or what this second fiddle  is like. If Dad is right, you might not have as serious a problem as you think, because Aislene will beam and smile on anyone but Betabel, won’t she?”

“It’s Alpin that I’m scared of,” said Aunt Cybela. “He is as stubborn as a pack of wild mules and might not accept a substitute for Betabel, even supposing I could find one, which won’t be easy.”

“Well, you found Mr. Right for the Demon Bride, Auntie. That can’t have been easy,” I said to encourage her. 

“Ah, but it was! You see, when Death’s Coachman asks someone to follow him, no one can refuse. All I had to do was get him to ask Aislene to follow him to his house. You follow me?”

“I see. It’s quiet in there now. Miss Aislene must have fainted or there is no tableware left to break. Shall we try to enter the house?”

I was right to think Miss Aislene had fainted. When we entered the house, Mr. Dullahan and Darcy were propping her up in an armchair in the living room. She was pale as death and her emerald eyes were shut tight. I noticed there were bits of Galway crystal clinging to her wedding veil, and twinkling on the lace on her neckline as her breasts heaved softly. So she must have destroyed her cups and glasses too.

Aunt Cybela went directly to her and took hold of her wrist and tried to find her pulse. Aislene began to breathe heavily through her mouth, making panting sounds.

“I’m here, dear,” said Aunt Cybela, “I’ve come at your beck and call. All will be well.”

Mr. Dullahan and Darcy remained in silence even when Aislene suddenly clutched Aunt Cybela with all her might and screamed, “Help me! Oh, help me! You’re my only hope!”

“Of course I will, dear,” said Aunt Cybela calmly, “you know I always have. There’s a someone for an anyone. I’ve already been calculating who on my way here.”

“Would you believe these cruel fools?” shouted Aislene, suddenly pointing at Darcy and Mr. Dullahan with an accusing finger. “Darcy won’t ask Alpin to forget Betabel! He won’t do me even that one little favor! And he knows as well as I do that this is for the best! What’s best for both these children! He wants them to ruin their lives and mine!”

“I can’t interfere, Mum!” cried Darcy, making faces of desperation. He is rather softspoken, often speaking in whispers, as if to his horses, and if he was now raising his voice it was likely he had been much vexed. It was quite weird to hear him now shout and whisper alternately. “You know that! I can’t go about asking people to do what they don’t want to. How would you feel if I asked you to accept Betabel and end this scandal? Well, I’m not asking Alpin, nor am I asking Betabel, and I won’t even ask you to do anything.That’s that!”

“And my husband won't do a little thing like this for me either!”

“I can only ask people to follow me,” Mr. Dullahan excused himself mildly. “If I ask Betabel to follow me, she will end up living here with us, unless I take her to Fiddler’s Green and have her imprisoned in there. That would kill her. It´s like being dead. I don't decide who lives and who dies. I only follow instructions.”

“Better dead…” Miss Aislene began to mutter, but even she didn’t end that sentence.

“What is your problem, Mum?” Alpin suddenly asked. “Betabel's not going to live with any of you. She’s going to live with me in my palatial mansion. I need a cleaner, anyway. It´s so large she’ll never get to stop cleaning and leave the place. What I decide to do there is none of your business. It’s my life! I want to live it my way!”

“How I hate that phrase!” muttered Aislene, shouting through her teeth. 

 “But he’s right about that,” said the Dullahan weakly. I could tell he would have loved for Alpin to leave his house and go live on his own. Practically anyone except Alpin’s mother would love that.

 “To live in that house, my boy will have to shrink to the size of an insect. I don’t want no insect for a son! I want my beautiful son to be his wonderful right-sized self!”

Alpin’s ideal home, I will remind the reader, was really as large as the grandest of palaces,  but it had been shrank to size so it could be placed in the violet patch of his mum’s garden. The grounds of the Dullahan home did not allow for a huge palace to be set in them.

“I can expand my home if I take it somewhere else,” said Alpin.

That would be somewhere like the Gobi Desert, if I remembered the terms on which he had received his monster-sized ideal home.

Aislene began to scream again, shaking convulsively.

“They’ve all left me! No mother should lose all her children! This one at least has to stay and care for me!”

“What?” scoffed Darcy. “Alpin couldn’t care for anyone if he tried. And he never even would try! It’s you who are looking after him to the point of exhaustion. And consequent madness! Nobody else can put up with him!” Darcy then saw me and said, “I don’t know how even Arley can! Of course, it was because I asked him to. I shouldn’t have done that!”

Everyone looked at me to see what I would say, but I had no idea what to say and Aunt Cybela finally broke the silence.

“Look Alpin, darling,” she said laying a soft hand on his shoulder, “I’m here to find someone better for you than Betabel. You just let me do my job, will you, sweetie?”

“She’d better be better! I’m warning you now, there is no way I will have anyone that isn’t!”

“Of course she will be,” said Aunt Cybela in her sugary and reassuring voice. How it contrasted with all the yelling that had been going on! She was a charmer, she was. That one could tell. “Listen, dear. At the Halloween party. Fourth fairy ring. I’ll introduce you to a garland of beauties.  You take your choice of flower.”

Darcy glanced at me, frowning and shaking his head and biting his lip so as not to say that couldn’t be possible. In answer, I could only shrug.