Picture
a man, pleasant, quietly spoken, of middle-age and average build. Add a
good head of dark hair tinged with silver at the temples, a ready smile
and dressed as becomes of man of quality, if not of wealth, and you
have a man whom many women wish to take into their arms and cuddle to
bits.
I know such a man. Ben Norwood is his name.
I know
too, that he's unaware of the qualities he embodies. He appreciates the
few women in his small circle of friends. They live some distance away
and, cluttered as they are with family concerns of their own, seldom get
under his feet. His understanding daughters love him and keep an eye on
him since the death of Susan, his wife, some six months back.
Glenda
Thorpe, an admirer, appears at Ben's door quite often these days. He's
still at the vague, penny-hasn't dropped stage and you can be sure that
Glenda is neither treading carefully nor is easily put off. As his
friend and neighbour she says she has no ulterior motive in visiting him
round the corner, it's just that his delightful ways have grown on her.
After
visiting long enough recently to allow her perfume to linger, Glenda
departed, Ben promising to call at her place around 10.30 the following
morning with some things of Susan's gathered together by his daughters
for the Salvation Army. The fine weather after four days of late winter
rain helped as he appeared at her front door with some colour in his
cheeks and was soon seated at the table enjoying the assortment of
Glenda-made encouragers. The enticing smell which greeted him just
before he entered was a pre-emptive strike on Glenda's part, making sure
the savouries came out of the oven as he'd turned the corner. A
pleasantly satisfied tummy would help things along she thought. You know
she was right.
That was a few months back now. They're not
exactly going steady, but the relationship is building, Glenda quietly
purring to herself that she’d been successful in encouraging him to
spend more time at the local library. It got him out of the house and
into circulation again. Italy, in the travel section took his interest;
she had a relation who'd come from there and probably accounted for her
delightful come-on looks. Ben's mind hadn't progressed that far but he
was humming Italian tunes he'd heard her singing and it was to that
section he gravitated.
A few weeks later, Ben's mind was
proceeding in the Glenda induced direction but still at the unset jelly
stage. The cost of a holiday for two according to some travel brochures
he’d picked up was well within his reach. Glenda knew, she had the very
same holiday brochures, with close friends in the local travel agencies
there wasn't much going on in the affairs of the town she didn't know
about, and I mean that in the kindest possible way. She is altogether a
warm hearted and warm-bosomed woman, which I'm assured by those in the
know, do go together nicely.
Then something chanced along that
threw a spanner in the works. Isn't that typical? Where do all these
‘somethings’ and ‘spanners’ come from? Ben found this 'something' tucked
between the pages of a book in the travel section. He'd worked along
from things Al Fresco to Dolce Vita when he found the book in question.
It had slipped or been pushed behind the others.
Travels in Italy,
by Cicerone, was not attractive on the outside. It was not attractive
when opened and had been taken out only three times since its accession
date, yet it gave evidence of more handling than that. He was about to
pop it back into place when the something slipped out into his hand, an
envelope of clear plastic containing a quantity of white powder. Ben
whispered something then that would have warmed Glenda's heart. Just
the two words: 'Mama mia', but in the most convincing of Italian
accents. In plain English they meant: ‘Bloody hell,’ or in the dawn of
millennium lingo: ‘Bugger me.’
Now while Ben might have been
something of a push-over for the Glendas of this world, and he was, he
still had the correct number of marbles. He slipped the envelope back
into the book and the book back into place and left as if nothing
untoward had happened. The local police were amused at his story, they
had an exercise book full of such; it helped keep them sane when the
going got tough. Ben persisted. They grew less amused and showed him the
door. Checking the government departments in the phone book he found
and rang the local superintendent, who sounded only mildly interested.
His immediate superior who was into amateur dramatics and cross-dressing
didn't fool Ben either. A chief inspector's ear at divisional HQ was
next in line. He sounded tight-lipped as if prone to haemorrhoids but
things got moving after Ben hinted that his next call would be to the
media with the tape of all the calls he'd recorded thus far.
Glenda's
nose was out of joint for a day or two when he declined her offer to go
fishing with him, he was fishing for a more interesting catch. He'd
left the gear with his best mate Ted and took a round-about route down
to the nearby city where he paid a visit to the Police HQ there. He was
greeted by a nondescript person of indeterminate gender with voice to
match, and was shown into a small room on the fifth floor. At this
point, Ben had a feeling that a small cog in his brain had slipped into
gear, upgrading his brain power so that his thinking was sharp and
crystal clear. The wall in front of him contained a two-way mirror and
knew he was being observed but his body language said nothing.
Enter
nondescript number two followed by a uniformed person introduced as a
chief inspector CIB, his identity tag with photograph whisked away with a
well-practised flourish, leaving Ben no wiser as to who the chappie
was. However he sat up and began to take notice as Ben outlined how he
found the small packet of white powder in the library.
In the
flurry of activity which followed, Ben mentioned his holiday plans and
was co-opted onto the investigating team set up that very day. It seemed
his personality made him a natural when it came to fitting into the
background, to observe and report. They drew the line at Glenda though.
She had a few connections too many.
The following day seated in
the rear of an unmarked police car with a uniformed driver they headed
for the airport and the plane that would take him to Italy within a
couple of hours. He knew he was going to enjoy the next round in the
game of playing silly beggars, and the broadening of Ben Norwood’s mind
was underway, with a flourish.
Dennis Crompton © 1998
(first published www.denniscrompton.wordpress.com 2013)
