Free Ventriloquists by David Mathew Page A

nozzle. Then the pain launched. It was like he’d been struck across the chest with a bat. It was all he could do to hold on to the balustrade – and meanwhile the boat rolled and listed itself, a giant being bullied among other giants.
    His knuckles were pinched white: the cold, the fear, the chilling spray…
    I’m going to drown .
    This was what Connors both thought and dreaded at this moment.
    As the waves climbed again, he emptied his body of piss and vomit.

 
    Show and Tell
    1.
    The road must be closed, Branston deduced: nothing else would explain the queue. An accident up ahead, perhaps; an unexploded bomb…
    Sod it!
    The one day in the last month that he’d chosen to avoid the bypass! The one day he’d fancied a change of journey on his way to work!
    Fade in…
    Middle-aged man at the wheel of a small car. Anger on his face. Late somewhere. Shaking the wheel.
    Pullback.
    Car is one of a hundred pearls on a five-mile necklace of traffic out of Leighton Buzzard.
    Sod it!
    Branston chose this moment to shake the wheel for real; scripts in his head notwithstanding, he had a job to get to, and if the cars in front didn’t start moving soon he was going to be late for his class. And apart from the work ethic and the stratospheric level of professionalism at which he pitched his lessons, one of the things he took pride in was his punctuality. Those learners needed him! One of them, after all, might make it big in the film business in the future; and Branston had long since believed that in the void left by his own failures to direct an arthouse classic, the best he might hope for was a mention in an awards ceremony acceptance speech.
    Closeup.
    The starlet’s face basted in tears.
    STARLET: But most of all I’d like to thank Tim Branston. He was the one who saw something…
    No.
    …saw a spark of potential in my work, filming Samurai swordfights in Morrison’s car park.
    Branston laughed. Then behind him a horn squawked. ‘Oh wait your pissing turn ,’ he shouted, his eyes locked on his rearview mirror. With a brass pair of balls he’d be out of his car…
    Longshot.
    Man exits vehicle and strides back down the road he’s traversed. Points a finger at each driver in turn, expression quizzical.
    MAN: Was it you with the horn, prick? Was it you?
    Four cars back, a sweaty man at the controls. Honks the horn again. MAN bunches a fist and punches the driver’s side window to buggery –
    Branston shook his head.
    – to smithereens… to splinters . MAN reaches through the space and pulls the driver’s fucking head off…
    Another honking at the horn from a car behind, and Branston said, ‘Keep your hair on, squire’ – this time under his breath.
    A policeman was approaching, following the white dotted line in the middle of the road.
    Branston dabbed the switch and the window rolled down.
    ‘Officer? What’s going on?’
    ‘House explosion, sir, in Edlesborough. The road’s jammed. Where are you heading?’
    ‘Luton. Barnfield College. I’ve got a class to deliver at nine o’clock.’
    ‘Well, you won’t get there this way. If I were you I’d do a U-turn. Go up the bypass.’
    Branston nodded and shifted into first. ‘It’s the story of my live,’ he told the constable.
     
    2.
    He arrived at seven minutes to nine by the dashboard readout, and the possibility that this was not to be his day was swiftly validated: there was nowhere to park. Branston followed lane after lane, sharking for the unlikely chance of someone reversing out of a space. But the universe was not feeling kind this morning. In the end Branston parked half a mile away, at the very periphery of the premises, and halfway up a drainage verge – not a bona fide parking spot anyway, but sod it.
    In a dash he crossed the lot and entered the building. Given everything that had happened so far, he was of a mind that his swipecard would not allow him access; in this respect at least the universe was with him. He slipped through the