“We never received the bottle,” said Paddy Deluxe.
“Yes you did,” stated Castor.
“I assure you we didn’t. No message at all!”
Castor pursed his lips. “The ocean is wide and one might think that messages in bottles just drift around forever, but in fact there’s an organised system at work to ensure they reach the persons they are intended for. A secret place exists where every bottle with a message is kept until it can be delivered properly. I learned this from a fellow who interviewed me after I escaped the island; he calls himself the Postmodern Mariner, an investigative journalist who specialises in the mysteries and dramas of the sea. Anyway, to return to the point, my two best friends did receive my message, and they acted upon it too, which is how we are able to have this conversation right now.
“Confused, are you? Let me explain that I dwelled with Charlotte and my son on that island for years and years. An oil tanker eventually picked us up. I worked our passage back to the mainland but I never returned to Wales. I married Charlotte and we lived in relative happiness, with only one argument, until I was accidentally killed by a thrown saucepan, which is how that argument ended. After my funeral, my son went on a touching quest. I had already told him everything and he planned to seek out my two dear friends and settle my debts with them. He searched the pubs of Porthcawl for a long time.
“Finally he entered the pub where that card game had taken place all those decades previously. And here I am! Yes, I’m not the first Castor Jenkins but the second, his son, grown to the precise age my father was when he left to use the cash machine. Remember that I was brought up to exactly resemble him in every way!”
“You are him!” blurted Paddy.
“You left one hour ago, not fifty years,” added Harris.
Castor sadly shook his head. “I have some sad news. Paddy Deluxe and Frothing Harris are dead and buried. They were your fathers and they raised you in the way my message urged them to do, with the same names and identical thought processes. That’s the reason for your identity confusion. It was my father who left this pub to obtain money for your fathers, but it is the son who returns to pay the sons. The time difference also explains why you’ll find no evidence of a pirate raid when you walk home tonight: that incident happened a generation ago and the damage has long since been repaired. Now to more pressing matters! How much was owed in total?”
“One hundred pounds,” answered Paddy and Harris together.
“Would you like that sum in today’s money?”
“Of course!” came the roar.
Castor reached into his pocket and withdrew a single coin, a tarnished penny, which he slapped down on the table. “There you go. That penny was in my father’s possession during the original card game. Because of inflation over half a century it is worth £100 in today’s money.”
Paddy Deluxe and Frothing Harris were speechless.
“I’m glad everything is settled,” said Castor. “By the way, the machinery in the calendar factory was never fixed and the wrong year has been printed on every calendar since. Curious, don’t you think? Don’t trust dates from now on, whatever you do. I’m off to the bar for a drink. Then we can toast our ancestors. Come now, my friends, restrain yourselves! Are we not gentlemen? Fighting over a penny is most undignified!”
Canis Raver
Do glove puppets ever go travelling on their own? Castor Jenkins is probably the only person able to answer this question convincingly. Nobody else seems to know for sure. Maybe somewhere among the numerous pubs, bars and clubs of the world is another man who can give a straight answer without too looking nervous about it. Maybe not.
But it’s no good talking about Kelvin as if he’s any old glove puppet. The moment you hear his story you’ll know he’s different – and even though you have never seen him, you’ll still feel certain there will be an instant connection if you ever accidentally meet up.
But anyway… Glove puppets and travel…
Can they do it at all? Real travelling, that is, not merely being carried from one place to another in a bag or a pocket, but setting off with their own bags and pockets and passports and whatever else they need, or prefer, to go with: maybe a toy hand or a book of international gestures or a wad of monopoly money or a bottle of gin for the cold lonely times.
Castor has travelled a fair bit himself but never as far as Kelvin is rumoured to have ventured. Kelvin was sighted all over South East Asia in many different locations – cities, the jungle, on the coast, up mountains, in the ocean. He didn’t really have a favourite haunt and was happy to drift along and try anything new, but please don’t think he was reckless.
Castor explains his involvement with Kelvin like this:
* * * *
It was Catherine who first tried to convince me that glove puppets are capable of going on adventures without needing an owner. I was staying in her house in Swansea at the time and I spent every day sprawled on her sofa before she came back from work, at which point I usually roused myself enough to engage her in conversation. During the course of my stay, we discussed some pretty profound things and she told me stuff about her adventures with Kelvin in Malaysia. Then she turned to me with a question.
“Have you heard of the writer Flann O’Brien?”
“You gave me his books, I think.”
“So I did. Do you remember his theory about how men and bicycles are in danger of exchanging identities?”
“I think I’ve forgotten,” I confessed.
“When a bicycle is ridden down a bumpy road, the vibrations can cause an interchange of molecules between man and machine. The damage is cumulative and in extreme cases the bicycle takes on human characteristics and the human starts adopting the ways of a bicycle. This phenomenon is creating all sort of havoc in Ireland right now.”
I was sceptical. “Is that so?”
She brushed her fair hair back over her ears. “Many of the people I met in Kilkenny looked like they needed handlebars growing out of their shoulders to keep them steady.”
“But how does this apply to Kelvin?”
“Don’t you see? He’s a glove puppet and so probably has had lots of hands up him – no crude jokes if you please! – and those hands moved around inside to make it seem he was alive.”
“I still don’t comprehend what you’re getting at.”
“If we accept the molecule interchange theory, he must have picked up traces of all the people who ever controlled him, absorbed some of their personalities, mannerisms, even their essential life force!”
“We’d have to track down every one of his previous owners to work out his average personality,” I speculated.
Catherine pouted. “Yes and no. Kelvin has his own sense of self that is unique and greater than the sum of its parts. I don’t accept he’s just an amalgam of his operators. Besides I don’t know exactly how many people have ever played with him in that way.”
“You might be the only one?” I ventured.
She shook her head. “There were others, but I can’t specify an exact number. Maybe two or three, maybe a hundred.”
“Do you believe he’s genuinely alive?”
Catherine shrugged. “I don’t know, but he’s certainly capable of sentient thought and behaviour. That’s why he’s so independent and hates being stuck in the house all day.”
“Where is he now?” I wondered.
“Travelling again. Who knows where? He’s probably taking part in a week long rave on some exotic beach. That’s his scene sure enough, mixing it up with the other alternative puppets.”
“Surely