"BY GEORGE,I THINK I'VE GOT IT!" by Anthony Durrant Anthony Durrant 1 "By George!"Anthony Durrant 1st N.A. Serial Rights 572 Westminster Avenue © Anthony Durrant, 2001 Ottawa, Ontario, Canada June 10, 2001 K2A 2V3 All Rights Reserved. "You have impressive references," Sergeant Clapton said, "and I see your name's Barry." "Yes, sir," the young dark-haired man said, "Barry Burton. I've been a delivery boy, a li- censed prospector, a poet, and a football player. But now my mama and I wish to find a peaceful life in this quiet english village and I want to settle down to a quiet life as a bobby." Burton spoke flawless English, the sergeant noticed, and seemed to be very bright. With some relish, he handed an application to Barry who pulled out a pen and filled out the document, then handed it back to the sergeant, who asked: "Do you swear to uphold the principles of law and order as an officer of the law?" "I do so swear!" Barry cried so loudly the sergeant nearly fell off his chair. "Welcome to the force!" Clapton shouted. "Rest for today. You'll get your uniform and duty assignment tomorrow." "Thank you, Sergeant!" Barry cried, shaking his hand vigourously. Later that day, Barry walked into the village pub. "So this is what an English pub looks like!" he cried. Lila, the pretty red-haired Irish girl behind the counter, laughed. "Have ye really never been in a pub before, lad?" she asked. "Not in England," Barry admitted, "but I was in a few in Paris - where I ordered water." She reminded him of mama before the horror - happy, laughing, sweet. She hadn't been the same since papa died - now she was quiet, morose and sad. When he gave her her insulin in- jection every day, she would look at the pictures of her husband and smile to herself. "Would ye like a drink?" Lila asked. "Certainly!" Barry said. "Get me some water, please." When Barry came home later and went up to his mother's bedroom, she threw her arms around him and said in Greek: he snapped, then said in English, "And speak English, please! This is a quiet English village and in England they don't speak Greek." "I'm so afraid I'll lose you the same way I lost your papa!" mama cried. "You'll never lose me, Mama!" he said, drawing her to his breast and hugging her warmly. "I'll make sure you never lose me. Remember, I loved papa too." Now that mama was happy again, Barry went to bed himself. When he collected the mail the next morning, Barry found a white envelope on the floor addressed to them and with no return address. Taking it into the kitchen, he left it on the table, then went up and injected his mother with her insulin. He noticed that the bottle was empty and that he'd have to get her some new insulin - her life depended on it. Leaving her breakfast in her room, Barry went downstairs and poured some cereal for himself. As he was eating the cereal, Barry opened the envelope with a butter knife and pulled out a heart-shaped amulet with three rubies in the middle, one of which had been ripped from its socket and was missing. Clasping the chain of the amulet in his left hand, Barry raised his head and screamed with rage. On his way to the police station Barry walked into the apothecary to buy some insulin for his mother. There he saw the druggist inject something into a dying plant, which immediately grew larger and greener and stronger. "Excuse me," he asked the druggist, "but do you have any insulin?" "Do you have a prescription, young man?" the druggist asked. Barry handed it to the druggist, keeping his eyes on the plant. "What was that you injected?" he asked. "It's a new type of plant food," the druggist said, "meant to revitalize ailing plants." He put a small box on the table in front of Barry. "That'll be five quid, please!" he said. Barry paid him the money and, keeping his eyes upon the plant, took the other box of the new plant food by mistake without the druggist realizing it was gone. He thanked the druggist and went immediately to the police station, where he was officially issued his new uniform and assigned to desk work behind a computer. For most of the day Barry sifted through the files and deleted the ones that were no longer necessary. When he was finally allowed to leave the station Barry went home and slammed the door shut on his way in. He found a tall woman standing in the kitchen of their house; she had long dark hair and wore a dark blue dress. "Excuse me," he said, "but who are you?" "Mrs. Bradshaw," the woman said, "and I'm here to see Hannah Burton?" "Mama's upstairs in her room," Barry said, "but I didn't realize she wanted a lawyer?" "She called me," Mrs. Bradshaw said, "and thank you for telling me where she is." Jackie Bradshaw walked up the staircase to the second floor, then turned right and went into the main bedroom. There on the right side of the bed lay a small dark woman about twice her age who was thin and gaunt. Her eyes, the same odd colour as her son's, were full of sadness and pain. This was the woman, Jackie realized, who had given birth to Barry. "Good morning, Mrs. Bradshaw!" she said in a soft voice. "I have called you here to up- date my will. You see, I am preparing to die - I want to be with my Eduardo in Heaven - and you are to help me make sure that everything goes to Aleja - to Barry." Barry, meanwhile, walked over to the pub to avoid disturbing Mrs. Bradshaw and mama. He was so upset that he ordered a tall glass of root beer and spilled his guts to Lila, telling her about the amulet he'd received in the mail, showing her the missing ruby. By the time Barry had finished his fourth root beer and come home, Mrs. Bradshaw was gone. Barry walked up to his bedroom and slipped into his pyjamas, then made supper for mama and brought it up to her; she was very happy to see him again and he was just as happy to see mama. "Do you hate being out of our homeland, Alejandro?" mama asked Barry. "Mama," Barry said, "you know we can never go back there. And please - call me Barry. This is England now, not Greece." "Don't you hate using a name that is not your own?" "More than you can imagine." Barry said. "Mama, I will tell the world!" He rushed to the open window and threw open the sash, surprising a nurse walking home. "Hey, world!" he cried. "I am Alejandro Archipeligo!" Closing the sash, he rushed back to mama's bed, where she was laughing her head off. "You're just like your papa, Alejandro!" mama cried. "Always impetuous." Leaving her dinner on the table by the bed, Barry went down and made his own dinner. After he finished eating, he went upstairs to bed. When he woke the next morning, Barry walked up the stairs with mama's breakfast and what he thought was her insulin. Opening the small box without looking at the label, he pulled out a tiny jar and inserted the newly boiled needle's point into the jar, then injected what he thought was mama's insulin into her arm. Instantly new vitality surged through her and she felt herself getting stronger. As Barry watched in horror, her body began to expand and grow before his eyes and her nightie shredded to pieces. Spiders appeared before Barry's eyes and he felt his vision fading as he fell to the floor. Some time later, Officer Mike Bradshaw arrived and found Barry lying on the floor among the pictures of his father. Old Hannah Burton was nowhere in sight and the sashes had been thrown open. Prostrate in the hospital bed, Barry was speaking over and over again in Greek. With him was Officer Mike Bradshaw; the older man was listening to every word he said. "What's he saying?" Jackie asked. " 'Look, Mommy!'" her husband said. " 'Look what I can do!'" "Is he hallucinating?" "No, Jackie," Mike said, "he's not seeing things. And his name isn't Barry Burton either. We were able to identify him through a fingerprint check. He's really Alejandro Archipeligo, an officer's son indicted along with some other people for causing the explosion that blew several officers attending a meeting apart, including his own father." "An officer of what?" Jackie asked. "Eduardo Archipeligo was an officer of the Athens police force." Alejandro had asked. she had cried as her body expanded and her muscles grew bigger; as her son collapsed, she'd jumped out the window. She felt like all her old wounds had healed, like she could do anything! Grabbing a tree branch, she lifted herself up and swung her legs above the branch like a gymnast, then spun her- self around on the branch before letting go and dropping to the ground. Breathing in the fresh air for the first time, Lucrezia Archipeligos smiled and laughed out loud. Why should I be preparing to die, she thought, when I have a new life in front of me? She felt power surging through her - super power! She beat her breast like a gorilla. "How do I feel, Alejandro?" she cried. "FULL OF LIFE!" Still laughing, the 7-foot Amazon cartwheeled up the hill, happier than she'd ever been. "Is Barry still prostrate?" Officer Gary Brady asked Bradshaw at the pub. "He's asleep now, Gary," Bradshaw said, "and should be his old self again tomorrow." "I wonder what could have frightened him into such a state?" Brady asked. "We found a small jar on the floor beside Barry, alongside a smashed needle. It wasn't a jar of insulin - it was a jar of Monty the druggist's new plant food. Both were empty." "What about the amulet you found in his pocket - the one with the missing stone?" "We found a thumbprint on the amulet and have sent it to headquarters for analysis - but I bet the print will belong to Umberto Castilio Duarte, the sole survivor of the explosion. Duarte was also one of the ones blamed, and he lost both his legs as a result of the explosion." Neither man was aware that they were being overheard. Lucrezia was watching them intently through the window, her large hands on the window sill. She moved slightly to hear more and the sound of her nails on the window attracted Lila's attention. When she saw Lila begin to move toward her, Lucrezia curled herself into a ball under the bushes and when Lila looked out and saw no one there, she uncurled her nude body and stood up again. "I thought I heard someone at the window," Lila told Gary, "but I guess I was mistaken." Lucrezia chuckled as she listened to Bradshaw say: "Umberto also fled Greece and is living here now, under the name of Michael Collins." Her eyes widened as she heard the name and she was filled with rage as she spun from the window to face the bushes around the outside of the pub. "So Umberto is the one who is blackmailing my son, is he?" she cried. "He'll pay very dearly for even considering such a thing. I will avenge myself upon him!" Umberto Castilio Duarte was walking up the hill to his greenhouse with a bag of loot on his back - loot from the police station, which he'd just broken into thanks to information given to him by young Alejandro. He opened the greenhouse door and threw the loot inside, then walked into the greenhouse and began watering his various flowers. "How are you doing tonight, my pretties?" he asked them. a voice shouted in Greek, Umberto wheeled around on his artificial legs and met the stare of an Amazon. She was standing at the back of the greenhouse with her hands above her head on the bent frame and her nude, powerful body completely exposed. She towered over him, her arms and legs bulging with solid muscle, looking twenty years younger with large erect breasts and a muscled tummy. she cried. Umberto asked. Lucrezia cried. Lucrezia shouted. Umberto cried. Enraged beyond words, Lucrezia flexed her biceps - which bulged to an obscene size - in her anger and then began pressing on the metal window frame with each powerful hand. She'd kill the monster who was blackmailing her son . . . she'd bring his greenhouse down on him! She . . . she . . . she loved Alejandro far too much to ever kill another human being. Falling to her knees, she began to sob and Umberto - driven over the edge by the shock of seeing her almost kill him - collapsed into a sobbing ball. A few minutes later, Mike and Cary came to the Duarte greenhouse, and Umberto literally threw himself into Mike's arms. "I did it! I did it!" he cried. "I stole the records! I stole the records! Get me away from that she-devil - don't let her come near me! Don't let her come near me!" "Don't let that blackmailing liar come near me!" Lucrezia shrieked as Gary pulled off his jacket and draped it over her broad shoulders as Mike arrested Umberto. After waking up from his sleep, Barry was told by Mike of Umberto's arrest. "Yes, I am Alejandro Archipeligo," he told Mike, "and years ago my father was meeting with other detectives at a spot in Athens when an explosion took place. My papa was blown into little bitty pieces and mama hasn't been the same since. She and papa were lovers for over thirty years and all the fire seemed to go out of her when we learned of papa's death. We were among the ones blamed for the explosion and had to flee Greece. We were later cleared in absentia but the damage had been done - we could never return to our beloved homeland. Having survived the explosion put Umberto in a position to blackmail us. He spent years in a hospital, was let go a few years ago and began to plot his revenge at that time. By coincidence, we came to live right in the village where Umberto was living under an alias and he sent us the amulet with the stone gouged out at the bottom to represent my father. Then he contacted me on the Internet and I was forced to give him the information he requested via e-mail." "Your mother called him a 'blackmailing liar,' Barry. Why was that?" "My father and Umberto were once up for a promotion. Umberto, a brilliant detective of the old school, and papa - a fisherman who had joined the force some years earlier - were given the same case to solve; whoever caught the killer first would get the promotion. Using the skills taught him by his own father, also a fisherman, papa traced the killer to a houseboat on the jetty and captured him before Umberto did, thereby winning the promotion. Umberto was incensed and vowed vengeance on the 'stupid fisherman' who'd stolen his thunder. They were together at a meeting of detectives from all the cities of Greece when the building blew up and my papa . . . my papa was blown apart. Somehow, Umberto managed to survive and plan revenge upon both of us, as he blamed papa for the loss of his legs." "Well, he's not going to be planning anything now - he's in an asylum, totally mad." the older man told Barry. "You won't have to worry about Umberto anymore." "That must be quite a relief!" Nurse Patterson said. "Oh, it is. I still can't quite believe we're free of that maniac." Mama entered the room, still wearing Cary's coat, which she clasped around her broad shoulders. There was a smile on her face - the first one Barry had seen in a long time. Although she would probably have to remain an Amazon forever due to the lack of an antidote to the plant food that had affected her, she was happy to be reunited with her Alejandro. J. Carl Blacksheep, a local odd-job man and scam artist, arrived with flowers which he put in Barry's arms. "So you're candy-striping now, are you, blacksheep?" Barry asked. "So wha' if I am, Burton?" Blacksheep asked, adjusting his dirty brown suit. "Constable Burton!" Barry said. "And I'll arrest you if you're not careful!" Everybody laughed. Everybody, that is, except Umberto who now sat in the garden of an asylum, still babbling out his guilt. Meanwhile, everybody in Barry's hospital room was heartily laughing at Barry's impishness. He knew now they were friends and everything was fine. "And you still have me to look up to, Alejandro!" mama cried. "I know know that Eduardo would have wanted me to live life to the fullest, darling. I don't want to die anymore. I want to walk along the road and listen to the breeze rustling through the trees and enjoy the fresh air in the forest, while the birds sing a lovely song for everyone to hear." "I will have to look up to you from now on, Mama!" Barry said, smiling. "Literally!" "If you say so much as one word about my size, Alejandro," his mother said, "you'll look up at me, all right - I'll tie you down to your bed with my bare hands myself!" Everyone broke into hysterical laughter, including mama, who cried: "By George, I think I've got it! I've got the knack of the play on words!" "I think you've got it too, Mama!" her son said. "And it's still Barry!" THE END