As my old Scottish Grandma Dorothy would habitually say long ago to us young cousins in a thick Glasgow intonation: “Don’t you bairns count your poultry prior to its chicks starting to hatch”. Although in making that point with a total ABC capability, my granny did not proclaim it strictly with this group of words!
Busily making up my picnic lunch for taking to work last Thursday morning I had a nagging worry on my mind. It was a strong conviction that I would again today find it difficult to concoct anything original about my work in any dispatch to Doctor Smith. This was in fact my fourth day of diarist’s block.
In various accounts this past month, I had told my psychology consultant all that I could find to say about my linguistic capability and my job—about our dynamic administrator, our organisation, our parkland, its history, its layout, its floral displays, its buildings, our cosmopolitan staff, my good chum Dimitri and his shady past. I had, I thought, shown in all such accounts, a growing skill in communicating a host of goings-on straightforwardly and promptly. My vocabulary was growing day by day, as I was constantly looking for virgin words and phrasings. But what’s original today, pussy cat?
To put it bluntly, my mind was numb and I was dumb. Could I simply limit my composition to putting down what I was making for my lunch? Food is a thought-provoking topic to go to town about and it had not shown up as a topic in my submissions for many days. Would this trivial contribution do? “Today’s picnic will consist of a brown loaf sandwich full of luscious thin cuts of Parma ham, tomato and chicory salad with a good coating of hot grainy mustard. Also a banana, a Kit-Kat bar and a can of sparkling H2O. (I don’t go in for any sugary soft drinks. Nor any alcohol, if I’m at work!).”
But I could hardly call this ‘world-ranking tidings’. I had to discard such banality and with no backup inspiration, to start out glumly towards my bus stop, whilst still wracking my brains for any original thought to put down in writing that particular night…
Sitting moodily on my usual public transport, I was not obviously privy to such an astonishing commotion as was to occur to both of us during our work in our woods from around midday that day, providing not only a fascinating story which I could impart to my doctor, but also which would radically transform both of our individual situations for good. It was a traumatic affair involving a historic hoard of gold coins, two squad cars from our local constabulary in an almighty crash, a wild fight with a raving bunch of journalists, our parkland closing to all visitors for a fortnight and D and I both out of a job and out of town.
I will just wind our clock back to my arrival at work two days ago. First, it was particularly important for us all to consult our individual job lists point by point on our visual display unit as our gallant principal was, unusually, away all day. Virginia had to go to London to pick up a major National Trust award for outstanding horticultural activity and to savour a first class lunch with various big wigs. All our staff had a plan to assign half an hour around four thirty p.m. that day to adorning Virginia’s “control room” with balloons and bunting and various floral sprays. Jokki would cook and bring in a gigantic fruit tart with fairy lights and also many magnums of Jacquart Brut Tradition NV for a loyal toast to our champion, back with us at that point.
Dimitri and I had a vast four day task to accomplish in our woodland, right down by our park’s south boundary. Originally a part of our job allocation for this coming May, our top botanist had brought forward plans for us to start tackling straightaway what was a major affliction of oak root fungal attack—a hazard to our public now as many a bough or big branch could fall down without warning. It was also part of a basic tidy-up in that locality. Both of us had a hard job to do, digging up or sawing down or uprooting ailing birch and willow and slicing back sick oaks and ash. In addition it was no comfort to find a surprisingly warm sun shining down on us, as soon as trunks and branch following branch had had a chop.
Support from additional park staff was constant—driving up on tractors or pulling carts and taking away vast mounds of sprigs and boughs as it was all cut away. Work was slow as much of our wood was old and clad in thick climbing plants—many worth saving.
Around noon, our calm world was to fall apart. Dimitri was slaving away, digging down and chopping at a big clump of roots and lifting out chunks of wood and clods of clay, whilst I was dumping all that rubbish into a cart. Abruptly a mighty roar sprang out from our Russian navvy as I saw him lift, not without difficulty, a curious box from a big cavity just dug out.
His find was a small oblong trunk, as old as hills and about a foot and a half across, built of wood but with a sort of animal skin casing full of splits and cracks all around it. Grinning broadly, Dimitri took up his find in his arms and put it down slowly in front of us both. It had a rusty lock of sorts on its front, which Dimitri painstakingly took apart, to lift its lid cautiously upwards.
What both of us saw had us whistling in both shock and jubilation. Within that shabby box was a prodigious hoard of old gold coins, chains and rings, shining up at us. Dimitri, laughing madly, was dipping his hands into this glinting king’s ransom and holding an array up to his chin, watching it all fall trickling through his digits and shouting. “Look, gold… zoloto . . . a gift of God… a jackpot, at last. I’m rolling in it! And you too! Just look at all this!” (D was taking up coin by coin, twisting it from front to back, focusing on kings’ portraits and coats of arms.) “It contains florins, half-florins, crowns, ryals, farthings, groats, dinars and marks. A mountain of bullion, worth thousands and thousands.” I was struck dumb, not just by this find, but also by Dimitri as such an authority on numismatics.
Nobody apart from us two was in our vicinity to watch all this animation at that particular instant. But my Russian conspirator was suspicious and took a rapid look all around, saying in a low murmur: “Quick. It’s just us two right now. You and I must stash this all away from anybody from our gang who is bound to show up soon. This find is strictly ours. It will turn us both fabulously rich.”
I found it awkward to say anything back in support of his claim as I was thinking that our parkland probably had rights apropos any long lost bullion which might turn up in this way and I said so. In Boy Scout fashion, all I could grunt was: “You do it, if you want to, Dimitri, but I can’t join in. It’s probably unlawful. But I will stay mum and not say a word about it.”
Dimitri, laughing uproariously, was now hastily stuffing his prodigious find back down into its original cavity, piling soil on top and stamping down on it all.
At that instant, both of us saw two of our parkland companions arriving in a truck to pick up our cuttings and rubbish. Dimitri instantly took hold of a fork and turning his back was starting to attack a mass of roots in a contiguous clump of sick poplars, singing a lullaby, a good way away from his burial plot.
“Lots of shouting in this part of our woods” said Jimmy, our parkland’s Australian navvy, a touch suspiciously. “Found anything unusual?”
“Not in this spot, chum. Just roots and shoots, sticky clay and bits of rock” Dimitri told him firmly. “But an instant ago, I got an SMS from my girl Barbara to say that I had just won a thousand pounds in our local hospital’s grand tombola. So it’s off to Brighton for us on Saturday for a saucy stay. Yum yum! That’s what I was crowing about”
“Lucky individual” was kangaroo man’s opinion, although not looking totally happy with that slightly suspicious account. With his cart now full, this unsought infiltrator got out of our way, driving his load slowly back towards HQ.
What to do from that point on? Dimitri had his own smart plan. It was for us to carry on labouring as normal in that distant part of our park until four thirty, as our work was to finish around that hour for Virginia’s party. At that point, my companion would dig out his find, climb up our parkland back wall with it, jump down into a narrow country road which ran along our boundary, and find his paramour plus car waiting for him for a rapid withdrawal. I said I would act dumb, join our group for a glass of bubbly and not say a word to anybody about his find. To anybody asking why Dimitri had had to abscond, I would say our companion had a throbbing pain in a back tooth and was in town having it out.
I was awkward and anxious, split twixt loyalty towards my Russian companion who probably did warrant part of that bounty for finding it, but also with a misgiving that our parkland would find out all about it and claim its rights, putting us both (not just him) in a dubious position for such a blatant act of misappropriation. In short, I could not simply say I was in no way party to that shady act.
What I did not fathom at that instant was that a spotlight was now firmly on us both, thanks to a group of our parkland companions, spying on all our actions from afar. A rumour was starting to fly around our organisation that a man on our payroll had found a costly historic curio four foot down in our woodland. Our administration, without Virginia taking things in hand, had found it all a tall story—an annoying distraction at such a busy point in our workload and had thrown out any thought of following up on it, instructing all informants to avoid such distractions and go back on duty forthwith.
But what put a cat among that bunch of cooing birds was that this talk of our town did prompt a park assistant, hungry for a financial pay off, to contact a small tally of journalists who would probably find it a good story to look into. And so it was that at that climax of our working day, just as Dimitri was frantically digging down again into that all important spot for his stash, six staff from two lurid tabloids paid us a visit, taking flash photos and fighting for copy.
“Hi folks! I’m a Sun columnist. From Britain’s top daily. You must talk to us. And only us. About all that lost gold and stuff. Do us that big favour and I’ll warrant it will turn out worth it for you. Got it?”
“No, look this way. I’m from your Daily Mail, this country’s paramount journal that all our population trusts. It will print a truthful account. Sign us up and you will profit.”
Dimitri’s irritation was obvious. “This story of lost gold is rubbish. All that was dug up at our lunch hour was a pair of old boots which I had to bury back. Sorry to disappoint you. Why don’t you hacks just withdraw and all go back to your own individual factory of scandal and half truths?”
But that flock of outlandish paparazzi was not going to pull out willingly. Dimitri put a stop to his digging and striding right up to that group, said indignantly. “Look, you lousy bunch of propagators of lurid fiction, just grasp this plain fact, would you? This is simply a tidy up job in an ordinary calm bit of woodland. I did not find, nor will you find, any outstanding historic loot in or around this spot, so buzz off and say to Murdoch and all your top brass that this story of lost booty is total fiction”.
Without warning, additional bursts of flash photography lit up our woodland. From that point, things got rapidly out of hand. By now, Dimitri was livid. In an instant my companion was hitting out with his fists among all that intruding group, drawing blood, smashing photo apparatus and causing this scribbling bunch to withdraw hotfoot.
Straightaway four hoots on a car horn rang out, a sign to Dimitri that his paramour Barbara was, according to plan, waiting for him in that narrow road backing on to our domain.
Prior to my saying “Jack Robinson”, Dimitri had dug down into his original cavity, drawn out that historic box, pulling off its lid and saying: “Look Paul, my faithful pal, I must now run away for good and so you and I must say da svidanya. But I still want to split my find fifty-fifty with you. It’s only fair and I find you a star. Go on. Dip in.”
But I stood still, shaking my cranium vigorously. I was no crook. I could not join in.
“Thanks anyway, but no thanks… And good luck to you, old buddy” was all I could mouth. About to vanish, Dimitri shook my hand firmly, dropping into my palm a small handful of gold from his bountiful find. “Lucky charms for my kind droog. So you can always think of your horticultural chum. And with a giant hug, my companion was off… for good… or almost.
Stuffing his box of bullion way down into his anorak and zipping it up tightly, Dimitri was bounding upwards to grasp thick strands of ivy growing abundantly across our high back wall. I could only watch him in admiration, scrambling upwards with his plimsolls gripping onto protruding bricks and small gaps of mortar and swinging across its top, avoiding ugly shards of glass stuck all along, prior to jumping down to join his girl waiting for him on that back road. In an instant I got wind of a sound of a car starting and driving off rapidly. Could Dimitri possibly avoid that journalistic hoard (and any local constabulary) who, without doubt, would now try finding and trapping him? Smiling inwardly and calling to mind his constant ability in past days as a communist spy to mask his trail, I was adamant my crony would win out.
I did not find out if Virginia’s party saw light of day in such a turmoil that was to follow. That is of no import. In contrast, I must first talk about how that runaway duo got on in what was an amazing vanishing act by shaking off a vast cross country pursuit. (Much of this I was to find out about that coming night from national TV and my good doctor).
I am finding all this turmoil a knockout and so I must stop for a hiatus at this point. But I will inform you, first thing tomorrow, how my situation was to turn from critical to catastrophic.