‘Doesn’t necessarily mean beautiful, either,’ Eugene whispered to Julian behind his trotter. ‘It could mean all sorts of things besides that. Gould just mean the one with the most mouse-coloured hair.’
Julian made a noise that eloquently if somewhat vulgarly communicated his scepticism by blowing air through his snout. ‘Just because she’s the fairest,’ he muttered, ‘I still don’t see why that gives her the right to boss us around. That’s twice this week she’s stopped my choccy bicky allowance for treading mud on the carpet, and it wasn’t even me that did it.’
Eugene drew his trotter along the point of his chin thoughtfully. ‘You know what,’ he said, ‘I’ve been thinking, wouldn’t it be nice if we had a place of our own? You know, a nice little house just for the three of us.’
Julian considered the proposition, then dismissed it. ‘Face facts,’ he said. ‘With none of us working we’d never get a mortgage.’
‘I wasn’t thinking of buying,’ Eugene replied. ‘How’d it be if we built it ourselves?’
‘What, us? Just the three of us?’ Julian’s nostrils twitched. ‘What the hell do we know about building houses?’
‘We could learn,’ Eugene said. ‘Can’t be all that difficult, can it? We could build it out of— oh, I don’t know, how about straw?’
‘Straw,’ Julian repeated, a thoughtful expression on his face. ‘Actually that’s not a bad idea. I mean, it’s cheap, it’s good insulation, it’s no bother to move about. And if hayricks and stuff stay up, why not a house? The only problem I can see is spontaneous combustion in the hot weather, when the residual moisture content starts to ferment. I gather that’s the cause of seventy-nine-point-three per cent of all hayrick fires.’
Eugene chewed his lip. ‘All right,’ he said. ‘How about sticks? Sticks are really cheap.’
‘True,’ Julian said, as he unearthed a truffle. ‘And you avoid the spontaneous combustion problem quite neatly. But then you run into your strength-of-materials hassles. You’d have to get the equations just right, or you’d end up with the whole lot around your ears.’
‘Okay,’ Eugene said, with just a hint of exasperation. ‘Forget straw and sticks. What about brick? Plain, honest-to-God bricks and mortar? You can’t go wrong.’
Julian shook his head. ‘Don’t you believe it,’ he replied. ‘The ground’s way too soft around here, you’d never be able to get proper foundations. You’d come home one evening and find the whole thing on its side, like a stag beetle that can’t get up again. Sorry, but bricks are a definite no-no in these parts.’
Eugene closed his eyes. ‘Just a minute,’ he said. ‘Dammit, the answer’s as plain as the snout on your face. How about straw and sticks and bricks? Thatched roof to reduce weight, wooden rafters, lintels and floorboards, the rest of the fabric in brickwork? Though I say so myself as shouldn’t, it’s bloody brilliant. Well?’
Grudgingly, Julian nodded. ‘Can’t see much wrong with it myself,’ he replied. ‘Taken at face value, of course. We’d have to draw up proper plans, do the maths—’
‘You could do that. You’re ever so good at that sort of thing.’
Julian nodded to acknowledge the self-evident truth. ‘And I reckon I know where I could lay my trotters on a supply of brick, definitely at trade, maybe cheaper.’ Already he’d started tracing sketches in the dust with his nose. ‘Of course, we’d have to get someone in to lay the damp-proof course…’
While he was talking, something moved away in the distance, nearly out of sight of the cottage, over by the patch of marshy ground where the old cesspit had been. At first it was just a quiver on the surface of the slime; then there was a deeply resonant glopping noise, and a long, thin canine muzzle forced its way to the surface into the air. It sneezed; then the rest of a wolf’s head followed it, and finally the rest of the wolf. It was, of course, filthy dirty, its fur plastered to its skull with creamy black yuck, and the smell was somewhat distressing.
‘Woof,’ muttered the big bad wolf; then he sneezed again. How long he’d been down there, he had no idea. Fortuitously, he had fallen into a large air-pocket, just enough to keep him going while he gathered his strength for the monumental effort of forcing a way out. Now he was hungry and thirsty, he felt horrendously squalid and he had a doozy of a cold. His priorities were revenge and a nice hot bath, in no particular order.
As soon as he’d shaken the loose stuff out of his coat he looked round and saw the cottage. It looked good. There’d be all sorts of useful commodities in there; things (or people) to eat, hot water, clean towels, maybe even a basket lined with an old blanket where he could get a good night’s sleep. And what was more, someone had been up on the roof putting back a fallen roof tile and had left a ladder leaning up against a wall. It’d be a piece of cake, climbing (a-a-a-CHOO!) up on the roof, sliding down the chimney, in like Flynn before you could say pork teriyaki. Having wiped further crud out of his eyes with the back of his paw, he set off across the clearing at a loping run.
Inside the cottage, an argument was raging. Mr Nikko was trying to get Baby Bear to understand that no, he hadn’t been sitting in her chair, it was too small for him and he simply wouldn’t fit; Mummy Bear was complaining loudly that the damned mice had been nibbling the cheese again and since there were seven grown men with blasted great swords around the place, couldn’t something be done about it, because if not she was going to commandeer one of said blasted great swords and cut the little perishers’ tails off. Dumpy the dwarf, meanwhile, was protesting that his back was killing him and there was no way he was going off to work today, not for all the cocaine in Nicaragua. The only sound that could be heard above all these discordant voices was Snow White, announcing that she wanted a nice warm bath and it was Mr Miroku’s turn to light the fire under the copper. This did at least have the effect of ending the civil disturbances like a volley of rubber bullets; and Mr Miroku, grumbling softly under his breath, got up out of his comfy armchair and did as he was told.
‘And mind you make sure the water’s piping hot,’ Snow White added. ‘And then the lot of you can clear off and let me have a couple of hours’ peace and quiet.’
Alone at last, Snow White pulled the cork out of her bottle of bath salts and poured copiously, until the tub overflowed with foam. She was just about to get undressed when there was a frantic scrabbling from somewhere up the chimney. A cloud of soot came billowing out, engulfing Snow White to the extent that her name suddenly ceased to be even remotely appropriate. Then there was a colossal splash, and the hot tub was suddenly and unexpectedly full of large, mucky wolf.
‘Woof,’ sighed Fang contentedly. ‘Woof!’
For once, Snow White was utterly speechless. Forget the soot for a moment; the whole of the living-room floor was awash with suds, scores of cubic feet of the stuff. Obviously she’d put in too much bath salts, because the foam was still oozing out over the sides of the tub, glugging across the floor like a self-propelled predatory carpet. At this rate, it wouldn’t be long before the whole room was flooded in the stuff…
In consequence, she was not pleased; and when she wasn’t pleased, she tended to express herself freely. This occasion was no exception.
For all that he was back in lupine form again, Fang had been a human being for so long that, when he suddenly became aware that he was lying in a bathtub with no clothes on in the presence of a young girl, he immediately began to feel markedly self-conscious. As it happened, there was a change of clothes handy; true, they’d once belonged to the wicked witch, and consisted of a thick, baggy black dress, a shawl and a bonnet that looked like something left over from the last BBC Dickens serialisation; but Fang was scarcely spoilt for choice. Quick as a flash (as you might say) he was out of the bath and into the clothes and out of the door and up the stairs, a part of the house that had the all-important feature in his eyes of being Snow White-free.