A Little Inconvenience

A resounding crash drew their attention. Cynthia sprang upright, sending her bee hood and veil askew. Straightening it with one hand, the smoker forgotten in the other, she hurried to join her husband at the other side of the garden where he was peering through the robust hedge that protected their property from Honey-pot Lane. Sammy moved gingerly among the close-knit branches. Cynthia joined him in trying to see through the bushes, seeking the source of the awful noise. Cynthia squirmed her ample form as close to Sammy as the branches would allow.
“What is it? What can you see?” She asked.
“It’s a lorry.” Sammy answered, grasping at a piece of privet that threatened to impale him.
“What’s it doing?”
“I don’t know, I can’t see properly,” He had managed to get his body into the middle of the privet hedge where there were fewer leaves but the twigs and branches were harder and scratchier. Easing the branches at the other side of their hedge apart he squinted through a gap to see a large grey lorry, at the opposite side of Honey-pot Lane. Two workmen were throwing tools off the back into the road. The crash had been a rusty wheelbarrow, which now lay on its side with the dust of old concrete settling around it.
“What’s going on Sammy?” Cynthia insisted as she struggled to get nearer.

“There are two workmen unloading tools. They must be going to do some work on that piece of wasteland opposite.” Sammy replied.
“I didn’t giving planning permission.” Cynthia was a member of the town council. She was just an ordinary member but when she spoke, the council took notice. Her personality and her physical presence meant that she usually got things her own way. She had not granted permission for building work, certainly nothing that would take place opposite her house.
“We’ll soon see about this!” When she emerged onto the lawn scratched and dirty, her slacks grimed green, she threw down the smoker and waddled into the house.
An hour later, Cynthia and Sammy Turton-Smythe were sitting amid the splendour of floral print, drinking tea. Cynthia was fuming. The news was not good. They had taken an early holiday to Minorca over a month ago, and it seemed that while they were away there had been a special meeting of the town council. At that meeting, decisions had been made about the council’s Millennium celebrations. It had been decided that what Popington Magna needed was a new Public Convenience. It came as no surprise to Cynthia that this decision had been made when they were out of the country. The idea of a Public Convenience was bad enough, but to place it in her Honey-pot Lane was anathema.
“They won’t get away with this!” Cynthia snarled.
“But my dear, I rather think they have,” Sammy muttered.

“I’m not finished with them yet. They’ll regret this decision. They’ll regret having a meeting. They’ll regret being born.” When Cynthia finished with them there would be nothing but regret.
She bided her time. Each day she spent most of the day with a pair of Sammy’s binoculars watching building progress through their hedge. Sammy had had to cut away part of the hedge to allow Cynthia her observation hide. She watched the work in progress and laid her plans. The weather was warm and the workmen opposite laboured and sweated. Cynthia watched and recorded. The outer walls of the toilets were three feet high and Sam, one of the workmen, bent down to pick up another brick. From her vantage point Cynthia could see that Sam had a cleavage that could rival hers. Her eyes were riveted on the wide brown belt that almost held up his filthy jeans and the binoculars bobbed up and down to the rhythm of his bricklaying. Sam laid bricks to the music of a grubby transistor radio, which blared out pop music all day. When a voice from the radio screeched, ‘I’m going to blow your mind.’ an idea began to form in Cynthia’s.
Sammy was the owner of a small, but productive, chalk quarry. Its products were renowned in the county.
“Sammy, what do you call that stuff you use to break up the chalk in the quarry?” Cynthia asked innocently.
“You mean dynamite,” said Sammy.
“Yes, that’s it, dynamite,” Cynthia repeated and a dreamy look came into her eyes. “Could you get me some of that?”
“What on earth for?”
“Don’t be silly, darling, what do you think I want it for?”
“Cynthia dear, you can’t seriously plan to blow that thing up.”

“I’m perfectly serious, Sammy. You get me some dynamite and I’ll show you how serious I am.” Cynthia smiled sweetly at Sammy and walked her fingers up the buttons of his shirt. Sammy sighed. When Cynthia started being nice he knew he was in trouble.
Alfred Stimpson Esq. Chair of the town council officially opened Popington Magna’s Millennium Public Convenience. As he zipped up his fly and walked to the gleaming washbasins he smiled. Not only had he caused this public amenity to come into being, but he had at last outwitted that fat, pompous, overbearing piece of blubber, Mrs Turton-Smythe. He had had the last laugh. Every day when Cynthia stuck her stupid nose out of her house she would remember him. He dried his hands under the super hand drier and sauntered into the sunshine.
Later that night Cynthia crept out of the back door as stealthily as her fifteen stone would allow. She wore camouflage clothing; black slacks that were slack in name only, and a dark green sweater. Her hair was covered with a black headscarf last worn at her dear mother’s funeral.
Sammy bumped into her in the darkness. He was dressed completely in black, including a balaclava that smelled vaguely of camphor.
“Be careful,” she hissed, “have you got everything?”
“I think so.” He checked the contents of the dark duffle bag; torch, wire cutters, wires, detonators, timer, tape and last of all, two sticks of dynamite.
“Everything is here,” he muttered. But I wish I wasn’t, he added silently.
Two shadows floated from the back door, noiselessly drifting across the garden until the second shadow came into painful contact with the wheelie bin. A muffled yelp, a sharp hiss, a ruefully rubbed forehead and the shadows drifted on through the garden gate and into Honey-pot Lane. The dark shapes paused in the middle of the road. The former yanked the latter forward into the deep shade of what local wags had named Popington’s Piss Spot though they seldom enunciated it carefully.
“It’s locked,” Sammy’s voice sounded relieved.
“Of course it is,” Cynthia snarled, “that blister, Stimpson, locks up personally after his evening stroll. He says he finds it a convenient halfway point for his walk. Break the lock!”
“I haven’t brought a crowbar.” Sammy bleated beginning to creep back across the Lane. He didn’t need telling to go for a crowbar; compulsion came from Cynthia in silent waves.
When he returned, perspiration was dripping into his eyes and the bar felt slippery in his hands. The sharp crack as the hasp of the padlock broke reduced him to a quivering wreck and it was all Cynthia could do to get him to cross the threshold and ease through the door to the Gents. “Why not the Ladies?” he murmured almost to himself.
“Don’t be ridiculous Sammy, even in this disgusting monstrosity there must be standards.”
“Oh, so it’s all right for you to go into the Gents.”
“What’s that?” She said.
“I didn’t mean it,” he whimpered.
“No. that.” An extended finger, pointed to where faint moonlight glimmered on polished metal.

“It’s a urinal.”
“What’s it for? No don’t tell me. I’ve worked it out.” In the darkness Sammy could sense her nose wrinkling with distaste. “Let’s get on with it, I don’t want to be here a moment longer than necessary.” Stealing into the nearest cubicle, Sammy switched on the torch and carefully laid out the equipment on the toilet seat. He inserted a detonator into one of the dynamite sticks and connected wires to the timer. Cynthia had been very specific about the time that was to be set. The explosion must happen just as Alf Stimpson entered Honey-pot Lane. He must witness the destruction of his demonic works.
Sammy was replacing the other stick of dynamite in the duffle bag when Cynthia hissed in his ear. “What are you doing?”
“We don’t need both sticks, one will do.” Sammy whined. “Better safe than sorry. Use both.”
“Really, it’s not necessary.”
“Do it!” Cynthia spat the words through clenched teeth. Sammy complied.
They returned home for a restless night, Sammy tossing nervously, Cynthia tense with the anticipation of her morning coup.
She was dressed and ready, bright and early. Sammy was early but not particularly bright.
Just before the appointed time, Cynthia took her place in the observation hide. Sammy hung back, not wanting to be in the garden at all. He’d had troubled dreams of violent destruction, with body parts, some of them recognisably his, flying in all directions. Today was not the day to hope his dreams came true.
Punctual as ever, Alfred Stimpson Esq. Chair of the Town Council, strode whistling into Honey-pot Lane. The sun was bright, the sky was blue, and all was right with his world. He paused in his stride to feel in his pocket and remove a shiny key. He especially liked the key ring. A little plastic toilet complete with low flush cistern. Laughing out loud, he tossed it into the air.
The detonation occurred as the plastic toilet reached the zenith of its climb and, for a second, Alf saw two toilets at the same time as a life-size version whizzed past his head to shatter in the road. He did not catch the key as he, too, was flying through the air, landing amid the fragments of his Millennium dream.
Cynthia leapt in triumph as the toilet block dissolved in flame, then the blast shredded the hedge and flung her across her beloved garden. Sammy, flat on his face in a bed of petunias, escaped most of the blast, but a piece of the debris raining around him, landed on his foot and as he lost consciousness his last thought was, I told her one was enough.
They found Cynthia Turton-Smythe among the shattered remains of her beehives. She was liberally coated with honey and beeswax, among other substances. The bodies of many bees lay around her. The hive destroyed, they had taken their fury out on her and having stung, they too died. Her resting place was almost entirely concealed beneath the shining, stainless steel urinal, hardly used.
Nurse Hardwick plumped the pillows behind Sammy and was careful not to disturb the foot, with its enormous bandage, that rested on a stool. Sammy sighed contentedly at the garden in the late autumn sunshine. The gardeners were making a pretty good job of restoring it and it was pleasant to be out of doors again. Nurse Hardwick returned to her book and the sun-lounger, her white bikini starkly contrasting her bronzed skin.
“This would be a very private garden if it weren’t for that hole in the hedge.” She smoothed lotion onto her shoulders and smiled at Sammy. “I really prefer an all over tan you know. It could be very private here.” Sammy’s eyes rested on the sleek form of the nurse, her long legs, flat stomach, pert breasts.
“I’ll have the gardeners put up a fence tomorrow.”
“I wouldn’t want to inconvenience you.”
“Oh, it’s no inconvenience, Nurse Hardwick, Laura, no inconvenience at all.” He closed his eyes and smiled.