Jimmy,
The Glue Factory and Mad Mr Viscous, chapter
eight
Chapter
Eight
The Glue Factory
“Where are they, the horses?” Eric asked.
Pointing to the huge factory and its many tall chimneys billowing acrid black smoke into the atmosphere, Jimmy said, “In there, they are in there.”
“What are they doing in there?” Eric replied, all in a tizz.
“ I dunno,” Jimmy replied, “But I do know they’re not happy, not at all happ...” He began walking towards the factory, all the way up to the front door, a huge, shiny steel affair that made the door of the mansion pale into insignificance.
“What are you doing?”
“I’m going to find the owner of this ‘establishment’ and ask him what’s wrong with those horses, of course,” Jimmy replied, “Are you coming?”
Put on the spot, Eric mumbled a yes.
“In that case,” Jimmy continued, “will you let me do the talking? You do the listening.”
BANG, BANG; the metal door boomed, amplifying Jimmy’s raps upon it a hundredfold, but no one answered, nothing happened, no one came anywhere near, to see who was making so much noise. The boys listened; from deep inside the building, they heard the sound of machinery, machinery that was whirring, buzzing, slashing, chopping – and munching.
“This place gives me the creeps,” Eric whispered. “It’s spookier than next door.”
I have already told you that Jimmy was a little battler, and being of that particular disposition, he had no intention of accepting defeat that easily, so clenching his two fists, he rapped the metal door all the harder. BOOM! BOOM! BOOM! The noise was so loud Eric feared every person inside the factory would come running to see who was making the terrible din, but nobody came, not one solitary soul.
“This is odd,” Jimmy muttered under his breath, “most odd indeed.”
“If you ask me,” Eric whispered, “I think we should forget all about it, and makes tracks, pronto.”
Jimmy had no intention of answering such a defeatist statement, as he raised his clenched fists, ready to bang on the door for a third time. Then he heard something, the sound of something moving behind the door. “There’s somebody there!” he whispered.
Standing away from the door, the boys listened as bolt after bolt slid back in their shafts. There were four of them in total, and Jimmy wondered, ‘Why so much security – why, why, why?’
Creaking, groaning, grating its disquiet, the steel door opened before them, it opened a deep yawning chasm, leading their inquisitive eyes all the way through to the deeply, darkly mysterious factory interior. “Yes, can I help you?” an insipidly toned voice enquired. It was a man, a small and terribly miserable looking individual, with a thin sliver of hair combed across his shiny baldhead. Surely, the boys wondered, he couldn’t be the owner of the factory.
“Are you the owner?” said Eric blurted, without even thinking about introducing himself, first. Coughing his annoyance, Jimmy reminded Eric that it was he who was supposed to be doing the talking.
“Sorry,” Eric apologised.
“Are you the factory owner?” Jimmy asked, also forgetting to introduce himself.
Pointing at himself, the miserable looking man, replied, “Me? No, I am not the owner. Mr Viscous is the factory owner … Do you want to see him?”
“Yes, yes we do,” Jimmy replied.
“You do have an appointment?” he asked, an eyebrow rising inquisitively.
Coughing again, clearing his throat this time, Jimmy said they hadn’t. “But the matter is terribly urgent!” he insisted.
“Wait here,” said the man. “I will see if Mr Viscous can see you.” After closing the door, he slid each bolt shut again. The boys, their ears pressed hard against the cold steel of the door, listened as the sound of his footsteps disappeared into the distance
“Did you hear that?” said Eric, in disgust at how the insipid little man had treated them. “The little beggar’s gone off and left us.”
“Hmm,” said Jimmy, “perhaps we should have told him who we were...”
They waited and they waited and they waited some more, for the miserable looking man to return with the owner of the factory. Eric became so tired of waiting he felt like giving up. He wanted to give up. He was about to give up. “Listen,” he said. “The little beggar’s been gone for ages. Do you really believe that he’s coming back?”
“He’d better!” Jimmy replied, pressing his ear against the door, again. “Listen, what’s that?”
Pressing his ear hard against the door, Eric joined in with the eavesdropping, and he heard the unmistakable sound of footsteps returning. True to his word, the man, the door opener, had returned. Sliding the bolts back, he pulled the door open, and poking his head out, he droned, “Mr Viscous will now see you. Please enter.”
Stepping into the factory, onto the red-painted floor, the boys were told go into a small office just behind the door.
“Yes? What is it? What’s so important that I have been dragged all the way down here?” a fat, moustached and bald-headed man with piggy eyes, sitting behind a desk, asked.
Eric, relieved that Jimmy wanted to do all the talking, said nothing.
“Well?” said the owner, “Or has the cat got your tongues?”
Stepping forward, Jimmy began speaking, and he said, “Mr Viscous, sir, my name is Jimmy and this is my best friend, Eric...”
“Yes, yes, get on with it, child,” the factory owner replied tersely. “What do you want?”
“We were wondering...”
“Yes?” the owner bellowed, “What were you wondering about? Come on, spit it out!”
“We were wondering about the…”
“Hurry up, boy. I haven’t got all day, you know!” he barked gruffly.
“THE HORSES!” Jimmy cried out at the top of his voice. “IT’S THE HOURSES!”
The factory stared at Jimmy, his piggy eyes burning into him, and when he spoke again, it was strangely calm, he said, “The what?”
“The horses,” Jimmy replied in a much shakier voice than before, “the horses…”
After twiddling with his moustache, the factory owner, lifting his hands with the palms facing upwards, said ever so quietly, “What horses?”
“The horses, they’re outside!” said Eric, suddenly feeling braver. “We heard them!”
For a second time Mr Viscous became silent, but this time he aimed his piggy-eyed stare at Eric.
Poking his head into the office, the insipid man asked, “Mr Viscous, shall I show these,” cough, “boys to the door?”
Nodding that he should, Mr Viscous stood up from his chair, and leaning across his desk, he whispered, “Leave.”
“Leave?”
“Yes,” he replied, his voice rising. “Go! GO! – GO!”
Running, darting out from the office, Eric did not have to be told a second time. Jimmy, however, standing his ground, folding his arms defiantly, said, “I will go, but only when you have told me the truth!”
Studying him with bemused interest, Mr Viscous said, “You are either incredibly brave or unbelievably foolhardy.”
His goat being up, feeling braver by the second, Jimmy, stamping his foot in defiance, said, “Well?”
“For the moment I will give you the benefit of the doubt, I will accept that you are brave,” said the factory owner. Laughing slightly, quietly, he continued, he said, “The truth it shall be…” Then he added, “I hope that you are prepared for it…” Clicking his fingers, calling his assistant, he said, “Mr Gaunt!” The insipid man poked his head round the door, into the office. “Please ensure that we are not interrupted. Nodding, he pulled the door closed behind him.
“Well...the truth... Where shall I begin?” said Mr Viscous, in mock concern that he might miss something out.
“At the beginning?” said Jimmy, his arms folded tightly.
Twiddling his moustache, Mr Viscous said, “The beginning? How novel! So be it, the beginning it shall be. “My story,” he said, “begins a long time ago, when times were even harder than they are now…”
“Harder?” Jimmy barked, thinking it impossible for times to be any harder than they presently were.
“Yes, much harder,” he replied. “Back then, everyone was poor.”
“An eyebrow rising, Jimmy asked, “Were you poor, back then?”
“I wasn’t as rich as I am today, if that’s what you mean,” he said, “Now where was I?”
“Hard times?”
“Yes, yes, times were indeed hard. But one day, I saw – an opening.”
“An opening?”
Has anyone ever told you that you have an uncanny resemblance to a parrot?”
“A parrot?”
“Oh, never mind,” said the factory owner. Then speaking under his breath, he whispered, “Perhaps I was wrong...foolhardy fits you better.” Returning to his story, he said, “Times were indeed hard, and with the dawning of each new day more and more businesses were going to the wall – bust.”
Jimmy, watching, waiting, listening intently, wanted to hear more, he wanted to know what happened next, and what connection, if any, it had with the horses.
“I see that I have caught your interest,” said Mr Viscous. “That’s good, because I am getting to the interesting part…”
“And that is?”
“There was a shortage of glue…. The recent Great War had used up what little reserves there were. There was a national shortage of glue – there was an international shortage of glue. Everyone wanted it, yet no one had any to sell,” he said, getting increasingly excited as his story progressed. “And so I pounced!” he said, whacking one hand into the other.
“You pounced?”
Yes, I pounced,” he replied. “I pounced – I made a killing, and in more ways than one, Hah, hah!”
Mr Viscous, the factory owner, was mad in more ways than one, Jimmy thought, but wanting to hear more, and never for one minute forgetting about the horses, he said, “You began to make glue, right?”
“Hah, hah, that I did, that I did,” the factory owner cried out, laughing even more. “And do you have any idea how I was able to do it, to make all that glue, when no one else could, huh, huh?”
“You found some new, secret ingredient?” said Jimmy, speaking the first thought that entered his head.
Frowning, pointing at Jimmy ever so suspiciously with a quivering finger, Mr Viscous said, “Are you sure you haven’t heard this story before? Then leaping across the desk, he roared, “Did old Frosdyke, my competitor, send you here?” Well, did he?”
Reeling in shock that he could ever be considered a spy, Jimmy protested his innocence, saying, “No, no, I’ve never even heard of him – never!”
Then what are you really here for?” he asked, returning to his side of the desk by the more traditional route.
Gulping hard, Jimmy said, “It’s those horses – we heard them, out there, somewhere… I think they were scared, even frightened! They… ”
“They – what?” said Mr Viscous, plopping down hard into his chair. “Come on, what about them?” It was no good, though; Jimmy’s case had run out of steam, he didn’t know what to say next…
Opening the office door discreetly, Mr Gaunt asked if he might show Jimmy the front door.
“Yes, yes, you do that, Mr Gaunt, show him out,” the factory owner replied. “I have more important things to be concerned about than two interfering children telling me what I should or should not be doing!”
“But, I – we, we never said anything like that!” Jimmy protested.
Turning his back on him, the factory owner opened a window, and staring out of it, he roared, “SHOW HIM OUT. GET HIM OUT OF HERE!”
“Come on,” said Mr Gaunt, “your friend is waiting for you.”
Turning to leave, Jimmy suddenly heard the sound of horses whinnying, coming in through the open window. Running to it, standing on tiptoes, he looked out and saw a yard below, a yard jam-packed full of horses. There must have been fifty of them, perhaps more. “What are they, then!” he roared at the factory owner. “Plum puddings?”
Pulling the window shut and then closing the blind, Mr Viscous smiled; he smiled gloatingly, bloatingly, and replied, “They are glue! They are, as you so aptly described, my secret ingredient. Soon they will be gone, rendered into my next batch of glue, hah, hah! And there’s nothing you can do about it, nothing at all!” Motioning to his assistant, he said, “Now get him out of here!”
Outside, on the path leading up to the factory building, the two boys watched as the huge door slammed shut, and the four bolts returned to their closed positions. “Well,” said Eric, walking away walking from it, “a fat lot of use that was.”
“What are you doing?” said Jimmy.
“Going to the shop, to spend my penny, of course,” he replied. “Are you coming?”
Jimmy wanted to give Eric a piece of his mind, to tell him there were more important things in life than sweets, but holding his tongue, thinking it was perhaps better not to, at least until he had worked out a plan, he said, “Okay, I’ll race you there!” They sped away from the factory, down the street, heading for Mr Smith’s Wonderful Emporium.
