15 Fire in the Theatre

PART FIFTEEN: Fire in the Theatre

The Fly landed with a wet thud and found herself inches from the edge of the green pond, half submerged in mud and with the breath knocked out of her. She tried to cry out but nothing but a feeble croak issued from her empty lungs. Thrashing about in a panic she lifted herself from the clinging muck, gasped for air and took a long deep breath. As she did so the croak swelled until it shrieked out with the piercing shrillness of Mr Punch’s swazzle and raked the still surface of the pool with menacing reverberations.

Precisely then, looking about her, she became aware of a thousand small eyes. Up to this moment they had been fixed upon her with the innocent curiosity of spectators at a gladiatorial contest. At the sound of her croak they became pop-eyed with terror.

A terrible moan went up from the ticks and water boatmen, the bugs and beetles, the cooties and the keerogs, the grubs and the caterpillars and the maggots and mayflies and the whole pondular universe of sliding wriggling creeping floating piggybacking backbiting slurping voyeuristic inhabitants of the rush pool.

-Toad! shouted a lone voice. It was as if a maniac had shouted FIRE in a crowded theatre.

-Toad! shrieked the water boatmen in unison and began to row in all directions at once as if the continuation of the Boat Race, the British Empire and the Irish Republic itself depended on their muscle power alone.

-Toad! chirruped the bugs –Toad! chorused the beetles. –Run for your lives! screamed the keerogs. –scratch the match! yelled the cooties. And everyone began a commotion that made the surface of the pool look like a dodgems arena at the fairground as they collided one with another and with everyone else as well in their eagerness to be gone.

-Toad! Toad! Toad! beeped the water hoppers and jumped out of the pool pretending to be grasshoppers, falling flat on their faces when they discovered that land legs were a habit that took days to acquire.

Toad! Toad! Toad! You would have thought that an invasion of Long-tongued Chameleons from outer space was underway. The exodus was inclusive and immediate. Fleas fled, bugs bolted, slime slithered, glop galloped, worms wiggled away and even the amoeba divided at breakneck speed murmuring furiously –time to split! Time to split!

As suddenly as it had all started the Fly was alone.