Three Dont Tango 3

The hero gets a refund on the travellers cheques he lost in Ethiopia and promptly goes out to buy a car.
What fun to own a nice shiny automobile. We can travel wherever we like with the windows down. The breeze is ruffling shirt sleeves as we turn corners, disappearing into sleepy villages, and then we drive off to towns miles away.
This is our first family car. There is something silly, funny, and very gratifying about getting that first car. We are climbing steps up towards some plateau of achievement. We have a home, even if we do share it with mother. We also have a child, and Annabel has a job. And now we own a car. What's next?
Annabel sits in front with a wide smile on her face as we whizz up to London at seventy miles an hour, and our new motor just bounces along. We stop for an Indian meal in Leicester Square, and glide serenely back through the night. We stop in a field gateway, and cuddle, laying back watching the stars, watching the dark, and the future, and our dreams.

Just for fun
sitting in the car
your head inside my shirt
my arms like the world around you
I feel the woods and
warm grass of your hair
just for fun
And you
run your fingers along the
flesh and bones of metaphors
We watch the stars
the dark
and the distant street lights
the future and
so many perfect dreams

Life is simple, perfect, with everything just right. Every day starts with a smile and ends with a hug and a kiss.
Just for fun, we drive to another town simply for a drink in a distant pub.
Just for fun, we drive into the country and have a picnic, while our son runs around the fields.
Jerome, a friend from college days, comes to stay, and just for fun we drive a few miles out of town simply because we can.
Our son runs off to chase cows. There are squirrels to watch, and birds to listen to. It is a glorious day, and nobody cares about anything, because there is everything all around us, and it is all ours to play with, and the performance is there for free, and everything is good.
Except in a gully by the far hedge is a rabbit with hard cases over its eyes and puss running down its face. The animal is silent, squatting in the grass by the ditch. It is waiting to die of myxomatosis. Jerome calls me over.
"What is it?"
"Why don't you put the poor thing out of its misery?"
"Why don't you?"
"It's your find. You kill it."
"What we need is a good hefty stick."
Annabel is meandering around some way off suggesting we are weeds and ought to put the animal out of its agony.
"Yes indeed," says Gerry.
Annabel bobs about looking serious, and gives us a lecture about beastly farmers doing such un-friendly things to the beautiful world, and uses long words of great moral import, and short words of great vernacular emphasis, after which she hops over a couple of tussocks of grass, and skips down to the wood.
Gerry and I stand and watch her legs sheathed in white tights as they finally disappear into a tiny red miniskirt. She bends over to examine some minute field life in a scientific manner. Gerry and I watch in a scientific manner, her legs like gazelle legs, full of energy, full of vitality, taut like a spring. She is wearing black frilly panties. Why should it matter? What is it all about? Some series of drapes and things covering some holy of holies, covering some spring of magic.
Somewhere is the formation of subliminal forces, where volcanoes erupt. Somewhere are the beginnings of life and the creation of dreams.
She stands up and turns round. "Haven't you done it yet?"
"We are just looking for a stout stick," says Jerome. "I'll look along this side of the hedge; you take that side."
But the odd thing is, there aren't any sticks.
"Look, there's a whole bloody wood over the other side of the ditch, there must be some lumps of wood suitable for cracking down on the head of a seriously damaged rabbit."
We jump across the ditch, and start hunting for a suitable murder weapon. It is absurd to find that a wood contains virtually no pieces of wood. There are plenty of living trees. There is a great mass of undergrowth, but the only fallen timber is completely rotten. One quick whack and it will crumble to nothing.
Eventually I find a good tough stick and go back to the stile.
The rabbit has moved. I hunt around for it in desperation, secretly hoping it has vanished. Eventually I discover the animal has crawled in amongst some brambles. How the hell can I wallop it while it's hidden in a tangle of brushwood?
I crawl under the bushes and into the ditch and shove the rabbit, but it won’t move. It just crouches lower into the ground. I flex the stick, and catch it on a branch above, which promptly lets go of all the creepy-crawlies that were living up there, and they tumble down my back. I lose my balance, and lurch into the brambles, while the rabbit hops nonchalantly into the field.
No doubt from the rabbit's point of view everything is different. Here is this five legged animal charging into the undergrowth, then there is a thunderstorm followed by a volcano, all seen through painful blinkers grown right over the eyes.
I crawl out of the brambles and measure up the distance. I feel very nervous, not wanting to kill the poor thing. I want to funk the entire business. Instead I reach up, for all the world like some golfer taking a mighty swing for a hole in one. There is a soggy contact, and the rabbit keels over, does a sort of leap, and lies on its side, a back leg working like a bicycle peddle.
I am about to hit it again but realise the back leg is just some nervous energy running down.
I throw the stick high over the hedge into the next field. I don't want it. It has become a murder weapon, accusing me.
Jerome comes up through the trees and leans over the style. "I cant find a suitable stick. Er …have you done it?"
"Yes."
"I don't believe you. Where is the thing?"
"Don't believe me then, I don't care, but it's done. While you were hiding down the bottom end of the wood."
"Hiding? I was not hiding. I was looking for a suitable stick." He comes over and inspects the corpse. "One hit?"
"Yes," I say dully, and walk away.
Annabel climbs over the stile. Far in the distance is a little boy whizzing about the field chasing the cows, which are dodging back and forth, with their heads lowered. It all looks like jolly good fun.
The sun is shining. The world is wonderful, and brim-full of sheer abundant vitality. We drive Gerry to the station, and then come home for another session in bed.

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