14 Further Self-examination

PART FOURTEEN: Further Self-examination. A Matter of Family Pride. A Plunge to the Depths.

The flattery had worked. That was clear. And at last the Fly was about to be reunited with the gallant Gadfly. Or so she had imagined.

But she could not understand his odd behaviour. At this moment he appeared to be running away from her as fast as his legs could carry him.

It had been her hope that his previous antics were just the outward and visible signs of an inward and invisible cardio-vascular problem often referred to as a hot crush. But suddenly all his hyperbolic smooth-talk, his coy references to matrimony and dead rats, his ogling cupidity, every one of his mooning amorous confabulations had been reduced at the mere sight of her to the penetrating eloquence of a scream.

Where was his swaggering bravado now? Had the chivalry shrivelled? Had the mask of masculinity dropped?

-Is this what men are? she thought. It was not, however, an idea she wished to entertain.

Like many a young female newly emerged into the outside world the Fly was possessed of the scarcely idiosyncratic tendency to doubt herself. It was not surprising then that her first reading of the situation was that she had done something wrong, that the fault was with her and that in the behavioural or in the beauty or fashion departments she had failed in some gauche and unacceptable way.

Had she used the wrong toothpaste? Should she be wearing red boots with high heels? Was she pheromonally challenged?

She cast her mind back to see if there was anything in the recent past which might have provoked the Gadfly’s sudden volte face and which perhaps it was not too late for her to rectify.

She remembered her tumble into the big cream cake in what seemed now to be almost a previous life, so much had happened since her first meeting with the Spider.

And the dead toad that topped the confectionary! At the time she had appreciated the Spider’s unerring sense of what might appeal to a lady Fly’s appetite. Cake and dead toad! What a delightful sweet and sour combination! It was certain to appeal to any member of her travelling race of scavengers. And the Maraschino cherry!

She remembered her struggle to emerge from that cake. She remembered looking up and seeing the Gadfly creep from behind the stem of a bulrush scarcely any distance at all from where she found herself in the centre of the Spider’s web.

She remembered heaving herself up out of the sticky layers. No time to preen and no point anyway this time. She had had little enough success earlier with the sticky unmentionable on her leg and now there was not a moment to lose. She remembered calling his name and realising that he had not heard her. She had begun to climb the bulrush.

As far as she could see there was nothing here to account for the Gadfly’s hasty departure.

And then with amazement she watched as his armour and his medals went tumbling through the air and vanished downwards rattling through the leaves.

That he would run away from her was one thing. That he would throw his family heirlooms to the wind was quite another.

-What terrible thing could have happened to the poor dear to make him lose his wits entirely, gasped the Fly, whose own sense of clan loyalty and ancestral pride was not at all to be sniffed at, and who knew what was the done thing when it came to heirlooms and what was absolutely not even to be thought of.

In a split second she had made her decision.

-I am already almost one of the family, she thought, and although this might have been wishful thinking on her part, she had no sooner thought the thought than it went down with a thunk like a penny in a slot machine and was acted upon.

-I shall retrieve our precious objects forthwith!

Quickly spitting out a mouthful of cake she took a deep breath, spread her wings and launched herself into space.

During all this the Gadfly was struggling with his cloak and the tangle of leaves around it, and at the same time doing his best to have already left the scene. He heard his name called but he was now much too pre-occupied with his immediate difficulties to do more than give a brief shudder. He did not therefore see the Toad-Thing unfurl its wings and prepare for flight.

The Toad-Thing for its part did not hear the Dragonfly’s noisy attack nor see the Gadfly faint and drop out of sight behind the bulrush stem, for the simple reason that the moment she opened her wings and stepped out into the air to fly she dropped like a rock towards the pool.

The Fly had failed to take into consideration that like the rest of her body, her wings were completely coated with cake and clotted cream and sticky icing. At the moment of wing-ignition there was no warm buzz as they revved into action. There was not even a weak flutter. There was instead a nasty wet flopping smack. The wings had failed to open and she was already tumbling downwards.