Mark Dunn - Under the Harrow

he Parliamentary Palace of Dingley Dell had only a fraction of the majesty and the august appointments of its stately and far more legitimate British inspiration. Nor would the palace (that word being largely a misnomer, given the fact that the building was less a palace and more of a capacious townhouse) hold its own when set against any of the other more venerable (and legitimate) legislative and governing bodies of the world. There were times that the place was thought little better than a parish meeting hall.

But it was never an M.P.P. who thought it. To each of the members of the Dingley Dell Petit-Parliament, the palace was quite sufficient to its purpose of maintaining preeminent authority in the Dell. It had served quite well the legislative and executive needs of the valley for over a century, and some of its judicial needs as well, for Dinglian judges and magistrates by historical tradition also had a voice and a vote in the Parliamentary chamber — in clear conflict with the generally-held doctrine of separation of powers. The palace was also sparingly furnished for another reason. Whatever money might go into the exquisite furbishing of the hall was thought better allocated for the exquisite furbishing of the individual homes of its constituent members.

There had never been so many men and women squeezed into the sessions chamber as had put themselves into that room by the necessity of circumstances this pre-dawn hour. All of the M.P.P.’s were present with one exception, and most of their families as well, along with those other Dinglians who worked in league with the Petit-Parliament and so had also been blest with invitations to the July 15 festivities — men such as Montague Pupker and William Skettles and Dr. Arthur Towlinson and Dr. Egbert Fibbetson.

But no one was in a festive spirit at this early morning hour. There was fear to be discerned upon nearly every face, for the turmoil, though it had partially subsided — the angry East Enders having retreated back to their sleeping hovels across the river — was still manifest to some degree within the breasts of members of the working class and the merchant class, who milled about in the lanes and met behind closed doors of their own and shook their heads and gnashed their teeth over the impotency of the Parliament and its subordinate constabulary. Members of the working class and the merchant class wondered why the general state of unrest had been permitted to escalate to such point that their shops should be vandalised and their livelihoods placed into serious jeopardy. And was anything to be done about it? Would the Parliament assemble a militia to restore order? There was no doubt that the Petit-Parliament had gathered itself into some sort of emergency session, but why were members’ families shuttered in as well? Who would step up and return things to the way they were a mere twelve hours earlier? How could the time-revered institutions of the Dell — the pillars of Dinglian government and society — become so fragile as to bend and break so dramatically and with such frightening expedition?

Montague Pupker stood at the window and peered through the Venetian blinds. He could hardly count the number of belligerent West Enders who, not yet wishing to retire, now shuffled and loitered just outside the Palace, demanding with their shouts and their intermittent chants that the M.P.P.’s start to earn at last their long exorbitant salaries and prove at last their longboasted mettle, by putting an end to this crisis without further delay.

“Is he out there? Has he returned?” asked Pawker, the Minister of Trade, a gawky, asthenic man who even in his middle years had not filled out his skeletal frame no matter how many dollops of clotted cream his wife spooned upon his scones.

“I don’t see him.”

“Should we proceed without him?”

Pupker shook his head. “Feenix hasn’t been gone that long. Give him a little more time.” To Dr. Towlinson: “You should not have left him there to make the call by himself. Now he must go the gauntlet to get himself back here. What a foolish place for the Project to have put that cellular telephone tower at all events. I have always advocated that it go atop this very building.”

“Montague,” said Towlinson in his wonted imperious manner, “I’ve had much greater cause to be in telephone communication with the Project overseers than you, especially when one considers my superintendance of all of those Returnees and Limbo Returnees and legitimate lunatics who must be warehoused in my hospital like so many sardines in a tin. Where is your need? Where is Pyegrave’s and Feenix’s? You are businessmen. You concern yourselves only with commerce — improving it and improving your own lot by acquisition of your Outland trinkets. And as to the matter of where the cellular tower should have been placed, it has worked quite well on the Bethlehem grounds up to now, and I cannot help it that there are rioters and revolutionaries who may block Feenix’s path back to this building. If there is blame to be assigned for what you currently see out that window, you , Pupker, should be its recipient. All of this started with your inability to keep your sub-cellar secure, and I knew that your daughter would talk, and obviously she did, and if I were not a Christian I should have placed her into a permanent coma when she was first admitted to my hospital.”

Towlinson glanced over at Dora Pupker, seated upon a banquette between her daughter Cecilia and her newly adopted daughter Alice (formerly of the Trimmers family). Mrs. Pupker raised not even an eyebrow at the suggestion that her older daughter Hannah should be deserving of such extreme treatment by Towlinson.

“There is a great deal of blame to go round, Towlinson,” retorted Pupker, giving Richard Pyegrave a passing but penetrating look. “We are all become careless and lax as the day of our delivery grows near. Fibbetson confided to me just to-day that Trimmers and Dabber and the Pilkins mother and daughters could not possibly have missed seeing the Outland calculator that you stupidly left exposed upon your desk.”

“Fibbetson, you low scoundrel!” bellowed Dr. Towlinson. “I told you that in absolute confidence.”

“And in absolute confidence did I tell it to Pupker. It isn’t my fault that he has decided to share it with everybody else.”

“We are being ridiculous, every one of us,” struck in William Boldwig, who was pacing at nearly the same rate as Judge Fitz-Marshall, the two men walking up and down a narrow cleared path in the crowded room, all four of their hands clasped behind them like robed, cogitating professors. “As we sit here casting blame all about for not keeping a better lid on things before our impending departure, my son is out there doing everything he can to extinguish the violence and restore some degree of calm that will allow us to make our way to the Summit without assault or molestation.”

“And has he hired the extra deputies as we have asked?” enquired Judge Fitz-Marshall, stopping in his own turn to face the worried General Agent.

“As many as he has been able. It is not so easy a thing to do as you would think, and I should know, for it is my business to put people into professional situations.”

Pupker drew his watch from his fob, opened the clasp and gave it a look. “I will give Feenix five minutes more to come back with word from the Project as to what we are to do. Then we will have to make a decision for ourselves.”

“If any of you were any manner of real man,” offered William Skettles, “you would form a party of escort to conduct our Lord Mayor and Minister of Health and Justice safely to this chamber.”