Gazooka by Gwyn Thomas Read Free Book Online Page B

but bend to the oar.’ And he had one bird, a very strong, loud performer which had learned the first two bars of the ‘Hallelujah Chorus’, but this had done something to the bird’s tail feathers and it had died. Ephraim’s cordial urges had been cooled long since by handling so much cold metal in a shop full of draughts, and he really didn’t see why the average human should want to eat, wander or love more than the average budgerigar.
    â€˜You know that Ephraim is moral adviser to the carnival committee,’ said Milton.
    â€˜Yes, we know,’ said Gomer. ‘Those two bruises on his brow he got from two faints he had when watching Georgie Young’s women’s band, the Britannias.’
    â€˜That’s it. He ranks nudity above war as a nuisance. I was at a short meeting tonight after tea. The regional carnival committee. Ephraim was there with a cutting edge. Most of what he said was about his visit last week to the Tregysgod carnival. If he ever gets the sight of Cynlais Coleman and his boys out of his mind his mind will go with it. As for the Britannias he says it’s time Georgie Young changed their costume to that of women in purdah so that they can operate from behind some kind of thick screen. But his main phobia is about Coleman, because Willie Silcox the Psyche kept interrupting that Ephraim’s obsession with the way the wind kept blowing the Union Jacks against the bodies of the Britannias and show ing up their shapes meant that Ephraim was working up to the sexual climax of the century, and that as soon as he caught the Britannias without their gazookas he would proceed to some act of massive ravishment and he would spend the rest of his life dancing on Calvin’s grave. At this point that lecherous and bell-like baritone, Dewi Dando the Ding and the Dong, said that if Ephraim did any dancing on Calvin’s grave after a session of roistering with those girls in the Britannias it would be strictly by proxy through four bearers. This enraged Ephraim and you could see from his face that his mind had been wallowing a bit in the notions sketched forth by Silcox so he changed tack and stuck to Cynlais Coleman. He’s convinced now that what Fawkes was to parliament Coleman is now to morals, a one and fourpenny banger waiting for November. That gave me an idea of how we might get Ephraim to help us.’
    â€˜Put a light to Coleman’s fuse and shock Humphries out of his wits, you mean?’
    â€˜No, no, no! Nothing like that at all.’
    â€˜But isn’t Humphries dead against the bands? Isn’t his task to morally advise them clean out of existence?’
    â€˜Not altogether. He says that while they strike him as pretty squalid, if they take people’s minds off class rancour, agnosticism and the Sankey award, he’s for them, always hoping for the day, he says, when the people generally will find the same release he does in a good funeral or a long argument about Baptism. So why don’t we approach Humphries and explain that Cynlais and his boys are puritans at heart and want nothing better than to get hold of some decent, God-fearing costumes so that they can turn out looking less repulsive and frightening to the pious. We could also add that Cynlais has given up his old promiscuity since he came across Moira Hallam and swallowed that draught of Caney’s cure. Then we can tap Humphries for some cash. He must have a soft side to his nature or he wouldn’t keep all those birds in his front room.’
    Teilo Dew and Gomer stared at the chessboard and the stagnant pieces as if they found this game as inscrutable as they had always found Humphries.
    â€˜Your mind’s just singing, Milton,’ said Gomer. ‘From what I know of Humphries he probably keeps those birds in his front room just to test for gas. When the birds die Humphries changes the potted shrubs and chalks up a new cautionary text on the wall. He was