Maurice

For an imp, Maurice was remarkably adaptable and so well dressed in his claret blouse and blue pantaloons. Yes, he was only as tall as a Big Person’s little finger but give him an ear to play with and he was in his element. He could produce a ladder with a snap of his fingers, tall and sturdy enough to reach up from some gormless Big Person’s shoulder to their innocent auris externa, the outer ear to you and me. And once there he would do what he could not resist doing.

It had always been this way, a germ that flowered every time he came close to a listening apparatus. Even as a baby imp, when he had no true idea what or even how he was actually doing it, still he would persevere, never able to stop when he felt he should yet never quite unwilling to continue. The truth was simple. Maurice was proud of his unique ability. He enjoyed being able to reach into the shadowy side of other minds and whisper. And, at first, the Big People enjoyed it too. But only at first and that was something he had never been able to puzzle out. What caused the sudden about face? Every time! He had bruises all over his perfectly formed body where he had been hurled away mercilessly to splatter on the floor or bounce against some handily placed wall. Luckily, imps’ bodies are resistant to serious damage, something to do with mass versus gravity times velocity or some such scientific gobbledygook. Imps don’t do science, they do magic. That is one reason they live so long. Which was just as well.

When his latest conquest had changed her mind, plucked him from his comfortable spot at her ear and turned on him, the resulting throw had seen him flying. Not just a short haul flight to the floor but through the open window. Yes, open! And so he really was flying, fourteen floors spiralling down. Even that was not dangerous enough. O no! A seagull decided to take a fancy to him, thinking he was food. And he might well have been if a sudden gust of wind had not been so strong that it caused the bird to miss when it snapped at Maurice. The imp laughed. And then gulped as the seagull swung effortlessly round for another pass. But Maurice didn’t have time for his whole life to pass in front of his eyes, not even a miniscule frozen-frame part of it because, at that moment, he landed on the bonnet of a parked Volvo. No problem, his size left no dent and the gull was forced to wheel away, squawking its frustration. But Maurice’s backside? Ouch! And suddenly he was soaked.

The sky was a pastel shade of eggshell blue. So, no clouds there and the imp, although he didn’t know an awful lot about the big wide world, did at least know about every clouds’ teenage love affair with rain. Get together, split up, get together again. He was confused. And then soaked again. Something large and rubbery whistled past his head clearing an expanse of glass. A Big Person Woman was sitting inside the car, fingers dancing over her mobile phone. She looked up, straight at the imp and did not see him. There was another jet of water. Maurice, soaked again, leapt to his feet, waving his arms to attract the woman’s attention.

“Turn off the water…” he cried as he slid unceremoniously off the bonnet and onto the welcoming concrete of the pavement. Ouch again! You can guess where…

Taking a deep breath and mumbling about the vagaries of luck, he set off along the pavement. The imp didn’t like being wet, no imp does. It’s just a racial peculiarity like Big People being upset by friendly snakes or helpful-about-the-house spiders. So he wanted somewhere safe and preferably quiet in order to dry off. Bethany Hindsight Miracle III had other ideas. As dogs go she was shorter than the length of her name, hairy and very yappy. Really, really yappy! Painfully so! But she was a pedigree dog and that made it alright, didn’t it? Not as far as Maurice was concerned. He could survive falls and various other blunt nosed attempts on his wellbeing but, he wondered, could he survive being eaten by some hairy dog. Worse, if he did survive passing through the stomach, the realisation of what would come next disturbed him immensely. As Beth, for short, came sniffing towards him, trying to decide what flavour he would be when she caught him, Maurice panicked as he had never done before. He ran, trailing a river of water droplets behind him. But he stood no chance. Despite its collar and restraining lead, the dog was always going to win that race. Except, it didn’t.

Did I tell you that Maurice was adaptable? I did, didn’t I? Well, here’s an example. As the dog closed in, jaws apart, gobbets of liquid flying every which way in sheer excitement, Maurice, with a mighty leap, clutched at a nearby straw. Not really. It was one high heel from a passing pair of shoes. But he did clutch and then hung on grimly. He had no desire to be flavour of the month even if the dog was a pedigree. The thought returned about the probable ending to that scenario. He shuddered again and tightened his grip. The heel was tall compared to an imp but the owner was a giant, even for a Big Person. So it seemed to Maurice. But he didn’t care. It just meant the shoe was rapidly leaving Bethany Hindsight Miracle III behind. Thanks to the shoe’s giant owner, of course. Bye-bye, Yappy!

They were out of the nondescript daylight and suddenly everything was shining. The shoe and its hitchhiker had entered a shop but not just any shop. This one was huge even by Big People standards and there were lights and banners, streamers and balloons and lots of Big People staring at lots of Big People things. Maurice was almost overwhelmed. Only almost though, because something else had caught his eye. Something truly spectacular. He slipped down the high heel as expertly as a fireman down a pole and then ran, dodging and weaving between the clumping, dangerous forest of shoppers’ careless feet.

And there it was! In one corner, a man in a red outfit with a white beard sat surrounded by colourfully wrapped presents but he was not important. O no, not him!. It was his assistant. A lady imp! A miss imp!

The imp sidled across to Miss Maurice. She looked down the extraordinary length of her aquiline nostrils at this interloper.

“What ith thith?” she squeaked.

“My name is Maurice, madame,” he replied, with an elegant edge to his voice so that he did not have to comment on her lithp. Lisp.

“Well, weerly. So what?”

Two speech impediments but what did he care? She was stunningly beautiful in an impish sort of way. Haughty, yes, but o so lovely.

Lightbulb time! (Yes, some imps do know what lightbulbs are! Maurice may be an imp but he’s not thick! Well, not all the time.)

“Miss Maurice,” Maurice began.

“Cathandwa,” she corrected him, “Cathandwa Wibbentwop, if you don’t mind!”

“Miss Wibbentwop,” he began again.

“No. It’s not Wibbentwop, it’s Wibbentwop. With a W. But you can call me Cathandwa.”

He wasn’t sure but thought she was either remarkably lonely or warming to him and so he took that thought as sort of reassuring.

“Milady,” he murmured, affecting a slight bow from the waist, “if I can say something to please you, would you do me the immense honour of accompanying me to dinner this evening?”

He had an incredible store of chat up lines that he had spent many a lonely evening inventing. Sadly, he had just never met any female imps mature enough to use them on. Until now, so, fingers crossed.

“Milady?” she repeated softly, a faint rose tint covering her cheeks. “Ok then, you may pwotheed.”

Maurice leaned forward, readying himself to whisper in her ear. He wanted it to be soft and subtle, to slide like the richest cream on expensive coffee. He gazed at her profile and so desperately wanted it to be his best ever whisper. She deserved nothing less than perfection. And he swallowed.

Then gulped.

A tear started in his left eye. It sparkled as it tiptoed down his cheek. He could not do it. Could not…defile…such beauty. Against his will and experience, against every fibre of his tiny being, Maurice suffered the humiliation of an unwanted sob. He had been defeated.

“We’we not alone!” murmured Cathandwa, without turning her head. “Look, Mawithe!”

Maurice turned slowly. Across the aisle, half hidden by some unpacked boxes of goodies, were two malevolent green eyes.

Cathandwa grasped the young imp’s arm as she burst into tears.

“O Mawithe, thave me, pleathe!” she wailed.

Fate had thrown Maurice a lifebelt. He grabbed it with both hands.

With a suitably heroic smile and a stance of pure panache, he stepped in front of Cathandwa, so shielding her from the danger. The ginger brute licked its lips, stilled its tail and thanked the big Tom Cat in the sky for this delectable looking dish. But something rather strange occurred. The imp raised his arm and crooked one finger in the universal symbol of,

“Here, pretty pussy cat!”

The green eyes blinked very slowly, almost as shadows of an afterthought. Food did not offer itself up to be eaten. Therefore it was a trap. Wasn’t it? The brute concentrated. The food was so small. What could it do against something as huge and fast and powerful as the cat knew itself to be? Nothing! So dodging a couple of pairs of legs and a child’s grubby hand reaching down to stroke it, the cat slunk forward, crossing the aisle towards the friendly, if foolish, meal.

Maurice took a deep breath. This plan, he reasoned, would either work or it wouldn’t. For one awful moment he thought his heart had stopped beating but it hadn’t so he smiled at the cat instead, a huge cheesy smile full of tiny teeth. The ginger brute paused mere inches away. There was that uneasy feeling once more. Then the imp crooked his finger again. Closer, it meant, come closer. The cat trembled in anticipation as he readied himself to pounce. But Maurice moved first. He grabbed hold of the cat’s ear and, using the stiff nose whiskers as a makeshift ladder, hauled himself up to settle on the edge of the ear canal. Softly, he began to whisper. The brute relaxed. If a cat could smile, it smiled. At first.

The only difficulty Maurice discovered in translating the patter he used so effectively on humanoids, including imps of course, into Catspeak was the substance. But, as I keep saying, Maurice was adaptable. When working on Big People, the ‘about face’ often occurred when he started talking dirty, injecting a bit of honest pornography. They would always give a shiver of excitement and then, realising they shouldn’t be listening, after all it was immoral, wasn’t it, they would cast the imp aside and leave. Maurice wondered if cats had a similar sense of morality, a feline form of guilt. He was praying so, relying on it. The plan absolutely depended on it. And so did the two imps’ lives.

When he got to the raunchiest part, the ginger brute squealed in a most un-catlike fashion, arched its back, leapt several feet into the air and then ran, streaking like light bending round a black hole, between several scared shoppers. Maurice somersaulted away, landing gracefully in front of Cathandwa.

“My hewo, my hewo, my hewo!” she cried as she folded him into a magnificent embrace.

His lips ended up a brush of the gentlest air away from her ear. He couldn’t stop trembling as he closed his eyes and desperately fought back the urge to whisper. He always whispered but some things on imp’s earth were not meant to be. This was one of them.