By Martin Pearson
“From henceforth,” declared Brigadier Reginald Fitzhugh Hawkesbury-Upton, “I wish to be known simply as Reggie Upton. The double-barrel business is totally inappropriate on this island; besides, the Hawkesbury branch of the family were bounders to a man. I’ll be happy to be shot of the lot of them.”
If it suited the old soldier to slough off his former appellation, no one was going to argue with him. The fact of his full name had never been an issue to others on Hopeless; most had only ever known him as ‘Reggie’.
“I’m off now for a spot of flâneuring,” he announced.
“Well, be careful” warned Philomena Bucket. “You know what happened the last time you went flannelling.”
Reggie brandished his silver-topped cane.
“Fear not, dear lady. I am always well prepared. Anyway, I thought that Drury might like to come with me.”
Flâneuring, you will recall (or possibly indulge in, upon occasion) is the pastime of sauntering aimlessly, and taking in the ambience of a place. On his previous excursion Reggie had been accosted by young Roscoe Chevin, who villainously demanded his watch and cane. Reggie had responded by demonstrating that the cane was, in reality, a sword stick. With a deft swish of his blade he severed Roscoe’s belt, causing the youth’s trousers to fall down, at the same time greatly amusing a group of orphanage girls, who happened to be passing.
Drury did not need telling twice. He clattered to his feet, shook himself noisily, and followed Reggie through the large oak door of The Squid and Teapot, and out into the vibrant, pulsating street-life of Hopeless, Maine. At least, it might have been vibrant and pulsating but, as usual, there was no one around. When the weather was inclement, or threatened to be less than clement, people tended to stay in. Today it was unusually clement, save for the swirling mist, but nobody thought it wise to venture abroad, on the basis that one can never be too careful in matters of climatic clemency. And so it was that Reggie and Drury wandered about in amiable silence, Drury sniffing the air, and Reggie showing off yet another bespoke suit (purchased from Huntsman & Co. of Saville Row, est. 1849), which he had plucked from his seemingly bottomless travelling trunk.
After half-an-hour or so of uneventful strolling, the pair found themselves by the rocks at the water’s edge. Reggie, ever mindful of his appearance, made certain not to get seawater anywhere near his expensive leather shoes. Drury had no such qualms and leapt into the shallows, hoping for the opportunity to terrorise an unsuspecting cephalopod or two. Instead he was surprised to find what appeared to be a five-legged creature with a strange, plaid-patterned body, floating on the surface of the water. It looked very dead and gave no resistance when Drury, who was an inquisitive hound, proceeded to pull its corpse ashore, where he proudly presented it to Reggie.
“Well I’m jiggered!” exclaimed Reggie. “Dashed if you haven’t found a set of bagpipes. I wonder if they still work?”
Despite his curiosity, he was not inclined to blow into any of the tubes to find out, but instead encouraged Drury to bear the dripping bagpipes back to The Squid and Teapot in his bony mouth, for later inspection.
“I’ve no idea what it is,” said Seth Washwell, studying the thing on the table, “but I reckon it’s dead.”
“Not dead, old chap,” said Reggie, clapping him on the shoulder. “It is a musical instrument, and just a little bit water-logged. It needs somewhere warm to dry out.”
“I’ve never seen an instrument that looked like that,” mused Seth.
“I was wondering,” said Reggie, tentatively, “if there might be a little corner of the foundry in which it could recover, as it were. It wouldn’t take up much room.”
Seth rubbed his jaw ruminatively.
“Can’t see why not,” he said, after a few moments. “I’ll even carry it there for you. It would be a pity to get your nice suit mucked-up.”
The bagpipes took more than a week to dry out. Even then they did not play immediately. It was only after some subtle prodding with a wire coat-hanger, and the removal of several yards of seaweed, that they were capable of emitting a noise, of sorts. Reggie beamed with pleasure.
“Are you really sure it’s an instrument?” asked Seth dubiously. “When you blew into it, it sounded as though it was in pain.”
“Oh, don’t worry about that,” said Reggie, “this will be the beginning of a whole new pastime for me. Why, I imagine I’ll be playing these bagpipes properly in no time at all. When is the next musical event on the island happening?”
Seth confessed that he had no idea, but made a mental note to avoid it at all costs, if the agonised groans that the pipes had made earlier were anything to go by.
True to his word, Reggie practiced on the pipes every day. He would take himself to a quiet spot and give it his best shot. His best shot, however, fell far short of anything resembling a melody. And so it was, after a month of fruitless effort, he lay the bagpipes down, half-hidden beneath a settle in the snug of The Squid and Teapot, and admitted defeat. No one else had any interest in the instrument, and there they would be still, had it not been for Drury.
The osseous hound had never been convinced that the bagpipes were not alive. It occurred to him that all they required to be happy, and not make that dreadful sound, was to have a little fun now and then, and who better to provide fun than Drury himself?
For the next few days the bony old dog could be seen running around the island with the bagpipes firmly gripped between his jaws. To his great surprise they did not appear to respond to his attentions, and, in true Drury-style, he lost interest, abandoning them outside the Night-Soil Man’s front door. He was sure that Rhys would know what to do.
Rhys Cranham had never seen a set of bagpipes before. In common with most other folks, he imagined that they were a dead creature of some description or, at least, the remnants of one. He had seen some odd things on Hopeless, and the insect-like shape of the bagpipes was no weirder than many other sights he had witnessed.
Gingerly, he lifted the limp instrument with a long pole, and carried it to the sinkhole at the edge of his property. Rhys gazed down into its bottomless depths, and wondered, as he had always wondered, what the meaning was of the swirling green mist, hundreds of feet below.
“Goodbye then, whatever you were,” he said to the bagpipes, and pitched them unceremoniously into the sinkhole.
It was the night of the full moon, almost a week later. Rhys was on his rounds, servicing the privies on the far side of the island. There was no one to see the strange, spidery creature that heaved its bloated, tartan body out of the dark hole at the end of the garden. After a plaintive howl, which sounded uncannily like the first few bars of ‘Flowers of the Forest’, it stretched its thin, disparately-sized legs, and scuttled awkwardly away into the misty shadows.
