Bog Roll Battles (Clovenhoof: The Isolation Chronicles Book 1) Read online

  Table of Contents

  A word from the authors

  1: Venice

  2: Sutton Coldfield

  3

  4

  5

  6

  7

  8

  9

  10

  11

  12

  13

  14

  15

  Thank you from the authors!

  Clovenhoof – The Isolation Chronicles

  Episode 1: Bog Roll Battles

  Heide Goody & Iain Grant

  Pigeon Park Press

  ‘Clovenhoof: The Isolation Chronicles’ Copyright © Heide Goody and Iain Grant 2020

  The moral right of the authors has been asserted. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, except for personal use, without the prior permission in writing of the publisher.

  Published by Pigeon Park Press

  www.pigeonparkpress.com

  [email protected]

  A word from the authors

  Coronavirus is no joking matter but Jeremy Clovenhoof just can’t help himself.

  All author profits from this edition of the book will go to The Trussel Trust, a charity that supports 1,200 UK food banks and provides emergency food and support to people locked in poverty.

  1: Venice

  Nerys and Jeremy Clovenhoof strode out together across St Mark’s Square. His little hoofs clip-clopped on the white stone (with an occasional tap-dancer clippety-clop thrown in because he was in a good mood). The early spring morning was cool, but the sun was up and warm on their faces.

  Nerys gazed around at the tall white buildings lining the square, the arcades with cafes, restaurants and the kind of shops they could only pretend to shop in. The rounded self-indulgent domes of St Mark’s Basilica at the far end made it look like a cloud that had come into land to refuel.

  “I didn’t expect Venice to be like this,” she said.

  Clovenhoof nodded. “It’s the smell, isn’t it?” He wafted the faint sewer stink towards his nostrils. “I mean it’s fine now, but in high summer it’s something quite remarkable.”

  “I didn’t mean that,” she said.

  “Oh, I’m just saying it adds to the whole atmosphere,” agreed the horned devil. “The stink, the gaudy religious imagery, the sound of café owners rubbing their hands with glee as tourists wander by.”

  “No, not that either,” said Nerys. “I didn’t expect the place to be so empty.”

  Clovenhoof stuck out his bottom lip and considered the square. True, there were barely any tourists around and more than half of the businesses were shut. He shrugged.

  “Italians, lazy, What can I say? Now, when I was here last time, it was a different story. Market stalls, traders, wandering minstrels.”

  “Stop it,” said Nerys.

  “What?”

  She came to a halt and pulled him round to face her. “You do this bloody everywhere.”

  “Do what?”

  She pulled a silly face. “Ooh, this has changed,” she whined in a silly voice. “When I was here in fourteen-oh-bollocks it was wall-to-wall knights in shining armour. And everyone had the plague. Ooh, you don’t see a decent plague these days.”

  “Who’s that meant be an impression of?”

  “You, numpty. Everywhere we go, all you talk about is what it was like last time you were there. Rome, you kept going on about how hilarious it was seeing all those Christians fed to the lions. Florence, you gabbed on and on about the sexual antics of the Medici family. And what was it you said in Pompeii when we saw that petrified ash man?”

  “That I’d met him before,” said Clovenhoof.

  “See?”

  “But I had. One leg longer than the other. Probably couldn’t run away from the ash cloud.”

  “But it’s boring.”

  “Volcanic ash clouds are many things but they’re not boring.”

  Nerys punched him. “It’s tedious. If I knew this holiday would be three weeks of revisiting Satan’s old haunts, I’d have thought twice about accepting.”

  “Can’t knock a free holiday,” said Clovenhoof. “And it’s not my fault I’ve had a busied and varied career.”

  “There must be somewhere you’ve never visited in your former existence,” she said as they wandered on. “Next time, let’s go somewhere you’ve never been.”

  Clovenhoof thought about it. “Wigan,” he said eventually.

  “Okay, maybe not there.” Nerys looped her arm in his. Occasionally, they seemed to forget they were only a pretend married couple.

  “I’d have thought you’d be glad to have a person of my wisdom and experience with you,” said Clovenhoof.

  “Not particularly.”

  “Who else would be able to give you the lowdown on St Mark’s Basilica, even the lowdown on the ‘great’ man himself?”

  “What? St Mark?”

  “Spoiler alert: he was a tosser. You see the winged lion thing up there? That’s his symbol. When he died, he insisted on riding round the Celestial City on one, scaring the locals and lording it over everyone else.”

  “Sounds like the kind of thing you’d do,” said Nerys.

  “Except I’d do it with style. With me around, everything’s done in style and – with literally thousands of years of travel experience under my belt – I can speak any language like a native. Let’s see what this excitable local wants.” He nodded towards the Venetian police officer scuttling towards them.

  “I still don’t think you can speak Italian,” said Nerys. “You just put on a silly accent.”

  “You can’t spend fifteen centuries torturing Italian nobles without picking something up apart from the basic ‘please, no more anal spiders, signor!’” He wheeled to the approaching carabinieri officer. “Yo. What’s happening, dude?” he said in his best Italian.

  The little man waved his hands vigorously. “You cannot be here. You need to go.”

  “But we only just arrived,” said Clovenhoof. “We’re doing the grand tour.”

  “No, it is closed. All closed. You must leave.”

  “Is this a bribery thing?” said Clovenhoof. “If you’re trying to make me an offer I can’t refuse, you’re tangling with the wrong pony.”

  “Don’t antagonise him, Jeremy,” said Nerys.

  “No, it is closed. It is all closed,” insisted the policeman. “You and your girlfriend—”

  “Actually, she’s my wife,” said Clovenhoof.

  The policeman gave him a shrewd look, as if to insinuate that a woman like Nerys was out of Clovenhoof’s league. Clovenhoof could have taken offence at this. Sure, Nerys might superficially appear to be a decade or two younger than him, but Jeremy Clovenhoof was middle-aged sex god from skin to core. Whereas Nerys Thomas’s superficial beauty relied upon a constant and expensive maintenance regime, a bit like painting the Forth Bridge.

  “Okay, technically my wife,” Clovenhoof conceded. “I mean definitely, actually my wife. There was a ceremony and everything but only because I was going to be deported otherwise. It was a spectacular affair. Fireworks, bird costumes, even a passing visit from the Prime Minister. Tina – that’s Nerys’s best friend and arch enemy – submitted the wedding photos to a magazine ‘Wedding of the Year’ competition as a cruel joke but – joke’s on her – we won and got this free European honeymoon.”

  “Why are you doing all the talking?” said Nerys.

  “Because I’m intrinsically fascinating,” s
aid Clovenhoof.

  “You and your girlfriend have to leave,” said the policeman. “The city is being locked down due to the virus. Very dangerous. All tourist sites are to be closed at once.”

  “What did he say?” said Nerys.

  “He said the city was under lockdown,” said Clovenhoof.

  “Get on an aeroplane and go back to Britain,” said the policeman.

  “But we’re not due to fly out for another week yet.”

  “We have to leave?” said Nerys.

  “Take my advice,” said the policeman. “Take your wife—” He looked past Clovenhoof to give her a long look up and down. “Sure, she’s no oil painting but she’s young and experienced, no? Take her, get the vaporetto from Ospedale to the airport as soon as you can and go back to your English home. They’re already starting to cancel flights.” He made a violent shooing motion.

  Clovenhoof took Nerys’s hand and backed away. “Apparently, the holiday’s cancelled.”

  “But what did he say?”

  “That we need to try and get a plane home now.”

  “No. That bit when he was giving me the once-over.”

  “Oh, that. He was, um, comparing you to a work of art.”

  “I bet he was,” she muttered as Clovenhoof steered her back towards their hotel.

  2: Sutton Coldfield

  Ben Kitchen carried the last of the crates up the stairs to his flat. The white chicken inside flapped and leapt at his ungainly handling of the bulky box. “Woah there, Bucephalus,” he said, bringing the crate down on the dining table to join the others.

  “Bew-what-what?” asked Animal Ed, brushing muck from his hands.

  “Bucephalus,” said Ben, grinning broadly. “He was Alexander the Great’s favourite horse.”

  “Right,” said Ed. “These are chickens, you know?”

  “I know. Bucephalus, Marengo, Palomo and Copenhagen,” he said, pointing in turn. “I thought I’d name them after the most famous horses in military history.”

  “But they’re chickens,” insisted Ed.

  “I know that,” said Ben, “but since there aren’t any famous military chickens, I’ve had to do the next best thing.”

  “You know you’re not meant to name animals, particularly if you’re going to eat them—”

  “I’m not going to eat them.”

  “—and if you do, you’re meant to give them chicken names like … Mrs Cluckington.” Ed gestured at Copenhagen. “That one looks like a Mrs Cluckington.”

  “I’m not calling her Mrs Cluckington. And we’re not eating them. These fine specimens are going to aid our drive for self-sufficiency.”

  “Oh, it’s the Good Life for you, is it?”

  Ben pointed out of the window. “Everyone’s talking about the virus out there. China, Korea, Italy. I heard rumours that people are starting to panic buy the essentials. This—” He gestured to his tiny menagerie. “This is me getting ahead of the curve.” He directed Ed’s attention to the web browser on his laptop. “I’ve saved up my pennies for a hi-tech, hi-security luxury Premier Hen chicken hotel for these four ladies.”

  Ed peered at the futuristic pod on the screen. “Self-cleaning, fox-proof and … how much?!” Ed literally coughed at the sight of the price tag.

  This didn’t worry Ben unduly. Ed was a notoriously miserly man, an expert in the tight-fisted business deal. His opinion on what constituted expensive would be far adrift from the norm.

  “I’ve plundered all my savings,” said Ben. “I consider this to be a real investment.”

  Ed’s eyes flicked as he did a speedy calculation. “You could buy a dozen eggs every week for a decade for that price.”

  “An investment for the future,” Ben assured him. “Now, we agreed twenty pounds a bird, yes?”

  Ed stroked his chin. “Well, that was last week. A lot of grain has passed through these birds since then. Call it a hundred for the four of them.”

  Ben scowled but didn’t have the stomach for haggling. Haggling was very much against his nature. He took the view that if God had wanted humans to haggle, He wouldn’t have invented price labels. Ben gave him the cash out of his wallet and waved goodbye.

  “Drop by the Boldmere Oak later,” Ed called. “You can buy me a pint to celebrate.”

  Ben shut the door and looked at his new purchases with pride.

  “Some photos of you lovely ladies,” he said, “and then we’ll click next day delivery for your house, yes?”

  Ben took out his phone and attempted to get an excellent and characterful photo of each of his new charges. He felt he was instinctively seeking a wholesome and healthy look for each of them, a sort of I’m here, committed to work and ready to pump out eggs for the common good. A chicken equivalent of the Nazi housewife ideal (but without the actual fascism).

  “Oh, you’re definitely very photogenic, Mrs Cluckington,” he said, pleased with his last shot and then cursed himself. “I mean Copenhagen.”

  He sent the pictures to Nerys, knowing she’d appreciate some pictures from home while on her extravagant continental holiday. He was so pleased with some of them, he wondered if he should set the chickens up with a social media account.

  He turned to his laptop and, as he was adding the deluxe Premier Hen coop to his basket, his phone rang. It was Nerys.

  He chuckled, thumbing the answer icon. “They’re really cute, aren’t they?”

  “What?” snapped Nerys. There was the background echo of people across the line.

  “You at a train station?” said Ben.

  “Marco Polo airport. We need to get tickets home.”

  “You’re not still in Italy, are you?” he said surprised. “Don’t you know there’s a pandemic there.”

  “We do now!” she replied shrilly. “So we’re cutting things short and getting on any flight we can out of here.”

  “Wow,” he said. “It was good of the airlines to let you swap your tickets.”

  Nerys scoffed. “We’ve got to buy new ones and, as you can imagine, the sudden demand has pushed prices up. And it turns out we spent a lot more on souvenirs than we’d planned.”

  “Those tickets cleaned you out, huh?”

  “A lot more,” said Nerys with heavy finality.

  “Oh. You need some funds?”

  “We need some tickets!”

  “And they cost how much?”

  Nerys told him. Ben asked her to repeat it. Nerys told him again. He hadn’t misheard.

  He thought about his bank balance. He looked at the beautiful Premier Hen on the screen that he could no longer afford.

  “Where will Mrs Cluckington live?” he wailed.

  3

  There was an often-shared sentiment that, however nice holidays were, it was always nicer to get back home again. As the taxi pulled up outside four-hundred-and-something Chester Road, Nerys reflected on how untrue the sentiment was. A mere eighteen hours ago, she was strolling along the Grand Canal in Venice, admiring all the fine churches she could explore (she didn’t) and the fine bars she could frequent (she did). The cold, damp and sullen atmosphere of Sutton Coldfield did not compete at all.

  As she stepped from the taxi to the kerb, she pretended she was stepping from a vaporetto waterbus onto the romantic pavements of Venice. One last time. Nerys’s imagination wasn’t up to the challenge and the moment made her feel more depressed than ever.

  Ben was at the front door, Twinkle yapping around his feet.

  “Oh, I’ve missed you, sweetheart. Yes, I have,” she called.

  “Er, me—?”spluttered Ben, evidently relieved when the tiny Yorkshire terrier ran out to be scooped up in Nerys’s arms.

  The driver dumped cases and parcels on the pavement.

  “Oi, wazzock, you gonna help us with this or not?” Clovenhoof called over to Ben.

  “I had hoped time in Europe might have improved your manners,” said Ben.

  “Of course,” said Clovenhoof. “Now, you great wazzock, give us a hand with t
his, per favore.”

  As Ben came out to assist, Nerys fussed over Twinkle, putting the lightest and most delicate parcels aside for herself, while pointing out the heaviest cases for Ben.

  “That’ll be twenty-four quid,” said the driver.

  Clovenhoof looked at Ben. When Ben looked back blankly, Clovenhoof gestured for his wallet. “We’ve only got euros, and barely any of those.”

  Ben sighed heavily, drew the last three tenners from his wallet and gave them to the driver. The driver made to leave.

  “Don’t I get any change?” asked Ben.

  “Ain’t got none,” said the driver and drove off.

  “I’m going to be broke at this rate,” said Ben.

  Clovenhoof clapped him on the shoulder. “You know what I learned while I was away?”

  “What?” sighed Ben.

  “That, in life, you’ve got to take it easy and enjoy the simple everyday things: sunshine, the sounds of nature, the company of loved ones.”

  “That’s what you learned on your luxury, all-inclusive, five-star cruise and tour around Europe?”

  “Exactly,” said Clovenhoof. He patted the man’s cheek and carried the smallest items of luggage inside.

  Nerys and Twinkle, and a bag of delicate Murano glassware, made their way up the stairs. “Home sweet home, eh?” she muttered, eyeing the peeling wallpaper and the dusty carpet.

  It took a break from the old place to realise it had its own deep-rooted smells: not exactly unpleasant, but an unmistakeable reminder she shared the building with two not-particularly-houseproud men. She had, of course, taken Jeremy Clovenhoof’s unique personal fug with her on holiday. As the winners of a wedding magazine holiday, they had inevitably been booked into double rooms in every city. Nerys had been privy to the individual stinks of Clovenhoof’s hoof cheese, his three-day-old underpants, his old man BO, his morning breath and his post-dinner farting (and post-lunch, post-breakfast, post-everything farting). Plus the whimsical and invasive smells of clothes that had either never seen the inside of washing machine, or had spent the last decade mouldering at the back of a drawer, or in the back rooms of the grimier sort of charity shop. It was quite a nasal cacophony.