‘CARMEN’

Another figure now emerged from the undergrowth. Imagine my surprise when I recognised Cameron MacLarken .

‘Cameron!’ I exclaimed. ‘What are you doing here?’

‘Carmen … if you don’t mind!’ Cameron responded testily.

‘Yes … Carmen!’ affirmed Viviana, wrapping a protective arm around the little fellow’s sequin-spangled shoulders, ‘La mia piccola Bomba Brasiliana!’

‘Of course,’ I said  ‘Sorry, I was forgetting. So, Carmen, how are you?’

‘Look at me and tell me if I don’t have Brazil een every curve of my body?’ swaggered ‘Carmen’, tossing his fruit-laden head with such overweening pomposity that a banana fell off. I laughed cruelly. Then instantly regretted it.

Cameron MacLarken, like me, had once been a perfectly normal little boy. However, he had recently undergone a shocking  metamorphosis. On the morning of his fifth birthday, Cameron’s doting, and patently dysfunctional, mother, Cornucopia, whom I am convinced was suffering from myxamatosis contracted from the multitude of lop-eared rabbits which scampered around the MacLarken’s master bedroom, said to him, ’Cameron, it is your birthday, you may wish for anything, anything at all!’

To which he, quite reasonably I thought,  replied, ‘I would like to be allowed to drink the left-over vinegar from Father’s pickled onions!’

Well, in the MacLarken household, of that commodity, there was plenty! Cameron’s father, Vulcan MacLarken, a long-serving fireman, had an unshakeable belief in the potency of pickled onions as a flame retardent. Consequently, prior to a shift, deaf to the catcalls and jeers of his fellow smoke-jumpers, he would consume an entire jar, or even two jars, of these spicy comestibles, jauntily tossing them into the air then catching them between his teeth and masticating them noisily, a trick taught him by Cornucopia’s grandfather, a trainer of circus dogs. 

‘Of course you can darling,’ cooed the egregious Cornucopia as Vulcan, diligently worming a lop-eared doe, grunted his  affirmation.

And so began Cameron’s calamitous downward spiral of rampant vinegar-abuse. In no time, his circulatory system was awash with the stuff, so much so that his skin took on warm copper glow, like that of an aged sculpture, but without the unpleasant green patina. But this wasn’t the worst of it. For his peculiar addiction triggered a pernicious and altogether far more disturbing side effect. Quite alarmingly, Cameron developed an altogether unhealthy obssesion with the aforesaid Bomba Brasiliana! Or Carmen Miranda, as most call her. In no time, he was endlessly pestering his parents to take him to see her films, filling jasmine-scented scrapbooks with her photos, writing her countless fan letters, and even creating a candlelit, fruit-themed, Carmen ‘shrine’ in his bedroom, before which he would kneel, obsessively chanting the words, ‘E o Mundo Não Se Acabou’. 

Soon this terrifying mania reached a crisis point. One fateful morning, to his parents utter horror, he adamantly refused to leave for school unless resembling his heroine in every detail. However, his woefully biddable and, to my mind, criminally inadequate, parents instantly and abjectly capitulated to this outrageous demand. And so began the daily ritual of rendering Cameron, ‘all-things-Carmen’. School mornings, I would call for him, to find a soot-stained Vulcan, rubber trousers still smouldering after a busy night’s extinguishing, dutifully painting his son’s toe nails as Cornucopia meticulously arranged the mangos, plums, clementines and runner-beans which bedecked his ‘Tutti-Frutti’ headwear. Of course, this being the early 1950s, such luxuries were in short supply (hence the runner beans). But, as luck would have it, Cornucopia MacLarken worked at a local fruit and vegetable wholesalers and unfailingly left work with a huge assortment of grapes, lemons, bananas and kumquats stuffed inside her capacious knickers.

Only when he was satisfied that he was ‘Miranda-to-the-max’ would little ‘Carmen’ sashay off to school, cheerfully humming ‘Down Argentine Way’ and flirtatiously blowing kisses to lollipop ladies, rag-and-bone men and furiously cavorting whippets alike, of which, round our way, there were many. 

But, I must admit, his transformation did enliven our school days. One morning, us five-year-olds were droning our way through ‘All creatures great and small, the Lord God made them all’, me thinking, “Tapeworms? Adolf Hitler? Tongue-eating bacteria? Surely not!” when, without warning, ‘Carmen’ leapt from our ranks and began samba’ing furiously around the hall, belting out his unique (and strangely haunting) rendition of ‘Chica Chica Boom Boom’. Alas, he had just reached that memorably enigmatic line, ‘Skip-ska-skoodle-doot Flip-flop-flee! Everybody running to the coconut tree!’ when he was wrestled to the ground by Miss Brunhilda Dainty, our tweed-clad Velociraptor of a headmistress. I can still recall the clack-clack of her fighting-brogues and the thump-thump-thump of her steam-powered pacemaker as, snorting triumphantly, she dragged her prey back to her burrow.

So, you may ask, how had Carmen ended up with Viviano’s Teatro Itinerante? Well, even a pair of fawning boobies like Cornucopia and Vulcan MacLarken had their limits. So when little ‘Carmen’ insisted that they not only cover his bedroom walls, stuffed toys and train-set with scarlet flocked velvet, but the entire house too, inside and out, it was the last straw. Or should I say, the last velour? This bizarre request particularly affected Vulcan who, having been once trapped in an inferno so intense that, despite the pickled onions, he feared he would instantaneously self-combust, simply could not contemplate the thought of spending his evenings-off entombed in crimson plush. So, that night, as ‘Carmen’ slept the sleep of the celebrated, snug behind the framboise and frangipane silk of his mahogany four-poster, clutching an oversized pineapple and dreaming of palm trees, Grauman’s Chinese Theatre and Perry Como, his wretched parents hatched their vile plot. 

The next morning, telling the poor deluded lad that they were taking him to a ‘fashion house’ to be measured for a ‘new gown’, they bundled him into their new Ford Poplar. Then, with ‘Carmen’ swigging happily from a half-finished jar of Bramwell’s Balsamic Extraordinaries, he was driven to a remote corner of Sherwood Forest where wild boar, wolves, horned-toads, Mothmen, and even Himalayan snow leopards, were rumoured to still lurk. Here they tied him to a tree (albeit  loosely) then drove away, assuring him that his couturier would arrive shortly. 

Twenty minutes later, they were tootling along the B600, ecstatic at their new-found freedom, a much-relieved Vulcan contentedly sucking on his bent bulldog and humming, ‘I Don’t Want To Set The World On Fire’, while Cornucopia playfully flicked grapes into the air, expertly catching them between her yellowing canines, a trick taught her by her grandfather, a trainer of circus dogs, who I think I may have mentioned earlier. But then, disaster struck. As the two of them revelled in blissful fantasies involving their intensely-irritating child being mercilessly torn asunder by assorted wild boar, horned toads and Mothmen, a misflicked grape eluded Cornucopia’s snapping choppers and firmly wedged itself in the area of soft tissue just behind her epiglottis. Sensing imminent asphyxiation, she began to flail her arms wildly whilst furiously headbutting the dashboard of the, as yet unpaid for, Ford Poplar. At this exact moment, a Bedford lorry carrying several tons of high-grade anthracite, driven by lop-eared rabbit fancier, Dougal Savage, emerged from a side street. Dougal was out-of-sorts that day as, at the previous week’s Mexborough Rabbit, Pigeon and Fancy Rat Show, his cherished Tyrone Aubergine Nightshade 3rd, odds-on-favourite for the much coveted Lapin d’Or prize, had been pipped to the post by none other than the Roxana Lily Balderdash MacLarken, Cornucopia having surreptitiously ‘gussied up’ her pet with some hair dye, intense-volume mascara and probiotic anti-ageing serum, thus giving her the crucial advantage. But her rabbit was about to come home to roost!

The emergence of the coal lorry from the side road coincided with Cornucopia’s flailing arm hitting Vulcan’s jaw with such force

that his bent bulldog flew out of the car, a wodge of incandescent St Bruno landing amidst the anthracite. A split second later there came a sickening crunch. Such was the intensity of the inferno which followed that Cornucopia violently regurgitated her grape only to get her head jammed in the glove compartment as she desperately searched for the St Christopher bracelet she’d stowed in there for fear of losing it in the forest. Which is how the fire-brigade found her, now uncannily resembling a lovingly-prepared bistec encebollado, but without the onion rings. In the meantime, Dougal Savage was a more of a kebab, having been firmly impaled on his steering column. As for Vulcan, his survival was nothing short of miraculous. A firefighter pal, helping him from the still-burning wreckage, naked, but unscathed, his clothes having been completely burned off, now let out a long, low whistle. At first Vulcan took this to have sinister homo-erotic connotations and approached the man with raised fists, bared-teeth and a frightening snarl, but then his astounded colleague said, ‘Was it the pickled onions, Vulcan?’

‘Not this time,’ Vulcan replied, matter of factly, finally getting his gist. ‘Marsdens was sold out. So I had to make do with these.’ 

He held out a scorched, half-empty jar of gherkins, adding, ‘But they seem to have done the trick!’

A week later, Cornucopia’s bunny-shaped sarcophagus was taking shape as Vulcan hewed, chipped and hacked long into the night, only breaking off to shift yet more shovelfuls of earth from the burial chamber he was excavating inside the MacLarkens’ former pride and joy, a Gothic folly in the shape of a ruined Cistercian abbey, originally purchased from the local garden centre to house their bar and multi-gym.

However, over in Sherwood Forest things were looking bleak for ‘Carmen’. Having freed himself from his bonds, he’d wandered through sunlit glades and gloomy thickets sobbing pitifully while sustaining himself with fruit from his headdress (but drawing the line at the brussel sprouts). Frequently, he would catch sight of Hansel and Gretel, Little Red Riding Hood, Snow White and, on one occasion, Winnie the Pooh, desperately rushing up to them and pleading to be taken home, only to be met with a stony silence. This was quite understandable, as they were simply no more than apparitions, brought on by his increasingly acute vinegar deprivation. 

On Carmen’s eighth day in the forest the snow leopard struck. Letting out a savage roar (having just made up its mind not to let out a compassionate one), it raced across the clearing where the lost child was disconsolately sucking his last satsuma. However, a split second before the leopard pounced, a diminutive figure, attired in racing silks and clutching a riding crop, leapt astride it, intent on giving it a sound thrashing . 

‘No, Lorenzo!’ cried Viviana.  ‘You must not! It eez endangered speeshee!’

Ceding to his wife’s better judgement, Lorenzo now began to tickle the creature’s ears and soon it was purring ecstatically, all thoughts of eating Carmen forgotten.  

But it was now that the Mothman struck, silently swooping from a branch and sinking its fangs into Viviana’s moistly al-dente neck. 

‘Mamma ti salverò!’ screeched a somewhat demented-sounding voice.

Well, the Mothman was no match for Romulus. A child as doolally as he was rumoured to be, may well have possessed the strength of ten. But, contrary to popular belief, Romulus was no mooncalf. Behind that carefully synthesised facade of unchecked battiness lurked a remarkably perspicacious and gifted boy, who certainly did not need brute force to subdue the Mothman. From behind his back he now produced a large scented candle, imbued with the essential pheremones he knew the mothman would be unable to resist. Extracting a Lucifer from his duffel bag, he lit it. Instantly, the Mothman was spellbound. Glittering, red eyes fixed on the flame, he followed, meek as a lamb, as Romulus led him away from the clearing. As the two of them disappeared into the trees, Viviana now commenced her appraisal of ‘Carmen’, eyes aglow with excitement. It didn’t take her long to make up her mind.

‘Mia carra bambino.’ she purred, tweaking his ear coquettishly. ‘Wudda you like to join ma Teatro Itinerante?’