Once upon a time there was an island called Sgarba and on this island lived a little girl called Nancy and when she was five she was writing
Dear Father Christmas, I don't want a doll, and I
don't want a big red ball. What I want is a pair of silk stockings, and I mean
silk, not artificial.
 |
I know where I’m going (1945) |
Time passed on this rather solitary island.
At 18, she's a working girl and still knows what she
wants. A boy wants to take her to the movies, twice a week, if she'll let him.
She would rather dine at the best hotel in town, even if it's only once a
month.
Perhaps it is for this reason that she set her heart
on marrying a prince. Sgarba may not have been a large island. The Norse called
it pointed because it looked all jagged, but that didn’t mean it couldn’t be a
kingdom all on its own ruled by Nancy and her prince, or at least it could join
Norway.
It is true that the island was once called Skarpoe,
which no doubt has the same linguistic root as sharp, but that didn’t make it
at all English even if Nancy couldn’t speak a word of any Scandinavian language
and no one else on the island could either. The mere fact that it had once been
called something by a Viking was enough to separate it from anything that spoke
English, not including her of course.
Besides when she married Prince Pål the
Scandinavianess of Sgarba would be reestablished even if only Pål spoke
Norwegian and everyone else eat Pedigree Chum.
But Nancy’s father set a condition for Prince Pål. He
had to anchor his ship in The Corryvreckan Whirlpool for three nights running. But
Nancy told Pål how to pass the test. He needed three ropes, one of hemp, one of
wool and one from a maiden’s hair. Nancy would be the maiden.
On the first night the hempen rope broke, but Pål was
just able to survive the night. On the second night the woollen rope broke but
again Pål’s whirlpoolmanship was enough to save his ship. On the third night
the rope made from Nancy’s virgin hair held firm. Not a single hair broke and
next day they were married.
As well as being King and Queen of Sgarba Pål and
Nancy were in charge of the Sgarba Norse Party and every year the people of the
island dressed up as Vikings with wings on their helmets even if the Vikings
never wore wings or indeed any other feminine sanitary products. Each winter
evening, they tried to learn Norwegian, but Pål was a terrible teacher and all
of that grammar and vocabulary was so dull. Anyway no one wanted to speak
Norwegian, they just wanted a share in the oil fund. It’s Sgarba’s oil was the
party slogan.
But unfortunately, when a council meeting of the
Sgarba Norse Party voted to become a crown dependency or otherwise to join
Norway, it was told that there was no mechanism for its leaving and anyway
Norway wasn’t interested in annexing bits of other countries as it reminded it
of some of the darker aspects of its own past when it had been annexed.
Nancy was furious. Sgarba was a country. She was
Sgarbian, but Pål calmed her down. “My dear” he told her. “We are never going
to become a Crown dependency nor are we going to achieve independence, nor are
we going to join Norway, but the surfs of Sgarba love you. They worship you as
a saint. They will do anything for you. We needn’t tell them that their cause
is hopeless. We can just take advantage of it.”
“But my father fought for independence within Norway”
said Nancy and he nearly won it.
“And look at him now, a bitter old fundamentalist who
has achieved nothing. I can provide you with all the things you dreamed of when
you were a child”.
There was no one else in the Sgarba Norse Party that
knew anything about the two who ruled it. The money from the surfs kept hitting
the beach and spraying onto the jagged rocks. And round those rugged rocks the
ragged rascals ran, picking up all the coins.
Nancy realised that it was important to keep the surfs
excited. So, each year she promised that next year they would be joining
Norway. It wouldn’t be on rugged rocks that the surfs would wash up but on
fjords with tall mountains on either side.
Each year just a little bit more of the coins dropped
by the surfs on the steep sides of Sgarba fell into the pockets of Pål and were
buried in the back garden of the palace they shared at the top of the island’s
highest point.
“Don’t worry” said Pål “Poileas Sgarba” has now been
centralised and won’t notice that the Sgarba Norse Party has become the Sgarba
Nancy Party for the benefit thereof. If there is anything you want don’t worry,
you won’t have to spend any money for it. I have a new Sgarba Norse Party
credit card and whatever you order will arrive the next day. Of course, larger
items like an ocean liner, an executive jet or any other large means of
transport may take a little longer. We might have to hide them too at my
mother’s just in case someone gets suspicious, but don’t worry, you are loved,
you are respected, you are trusted, even by those you want us to separate from. We have free money for life.
But there was one man on Sgarba who didn’t trust
anything about Nancy, not since the virgin’s hair rope had held all night long
with Pål's ship in the middle of Corryvrecken.
This man Alan was the former leader of the Sgarba
Norse Party, and he knew for certain that a fraud had taken place right from
the beginning. You see he had inside information. Right inside.
Nancy and Pål thought that they would be King and Queen for ever. There was no need to join Norway. That would just mean being
ruled by someone else. But suddenly Nancy abdicated.
Nancy told everyone that she wanted to read more books, that she was tired of the tensions of being Queen and how she looked forward to fostering, keeping pets with Pål or else Pedigree Chum and having an important job with the Partitioned Nations.
Soon after Pål too resigned because he didn’t know how
many people had joined the Sgarba Norse Party and how much they had been
charged for doing so nor where the money had been spent or indeed where it was. Better not to tell them it was in the back garden.
The accounts were a mess, and someone had recorded
Nancy telling everyone not to go on about the accounts because they were fine.
They were fine alright. They had paid for the gold bathtub, the silver toilet
and the platinum bidet.
It might have been Alan that caused the original
abdication. It might have been Jake who harried Nancy, because Nancy thought
you could be Arthur or Martha with only three months’ notice between and no
need to cut off the ball cocks from the silver toilet and no need to add fake
ones either. It could even have been the modern incarnation of Varina Davis who
so believed in secession as long as it allowed her to keep her slaves that she
was willing to fight a war about it with her husband Jefferson as president. But who could imagine slavery in Sgarba?
Let alone that Agnes Grey was importing them. No surely that was the worst lie
of all. No wonder Agnes wanted to bring Nancy down.
But whoever caused the resignation was also
involved in the investigation. There might only have been a single help ma
Boabby on Sgaba, but he knew he had a boab and it wasn’t a matter of waiting
three months to demonstrate how to use it.
Poileas Sgarba turned out to be rather outwith Pål’s
control, rather like a particularly bad storm or Act of Nancy, whose path to saintliness she hoped would lead to deification. Perhaps the sole
member of Poileas Sgarba had never been a member of the Sgarba Norse Party or
perhaps he had been enthusiastic about the Sgarba Nancy Party but saw his duty
to truth as being more important than his duty to either Sgarbaian nationalism
or Nancy, but first he erected a yurt in front of Nancy’s palace, then he dug
in Nancy’s back garden and then he arrested Pål.
Arresting in Sgarba meant that Poileas Sgarba thought
that they had evidence that Pål may have committed a crime and that it was
reasonable to suspect this. You cannot just arrest anyone in Sgarba. You have
to have evidence that a crime was committed and that it was committed by this
person rather than that person. So, when Nancy too was arrested, her continual
reiteration of her innocence was in a way reasonable, after all everyone is
innocent until proven guilty, but also unreasonable, because if she really were
innocent there ought not to have been any evidence that would lead a reasonable
member of Poileas Sgarba to think that she might even possibly be guilty.
Being charged is different again. If being arrested is
a step on the way to being convicted, being charged is a still greater step,
because Poileas Sgarba wouldn’t charge either Nancy or Pål unless they thought
there was sufficient evidence to convict them. The investigation needed
embellishment. It needed to be properly embedded. The embers of evidence needed
to be embarrassingly evident. What was the word the procurer fiscal was looking
for?
Yes, that would be naughty. That would be enough.
But who first suspected the dishonesty of Nancy when
all around were telling about her purity and her saintliness?
Well, there was one who knew that the rope that held
Pål’s ship should have broken on the third night in Corryvrecken. There was one
that knew that Nancy was no maiden, and her hair should have broken one strand after another as the storm blew round the whirlpool.
How did Alan know? He knew by direct experience. He
saw through the plastic saint with its eyes moving from side to side with the
viewer. He knew that she neither cared about Sgarbian independence nor
rejoining Norway. He knew because even if Pål had been willing to endure three
nights in the whirlpool it had little to do with desire for Nancy and rather
more for how he might use her to gain platinum bidets. And just as the platinum
bidet was for one hole, Alan knew that he had been first into another and that
is why the rope should have broken.
Alan discovered that the rope of virgin’s hair had a
steel core made from the finest strongest wires that Sheffield had to offer.
From then on, he knew that Nancy was in an agent of Sasainn (a toruidhe or
toruighe) and that everything about her was fake. He knew that the cause of
Sgarbian independence or even rejoining Norway was hopeless. It was as lost a
cause as that of Varina Davis, but he also knew enough to
bring down Nancy and Pål as they had tried to bring down him. He was 5 times MIffed by their treachery and betrayal of
And it occurred to Alan that Nancy might be singing
this song.
I know where I'm going,
And I know who's going with me.
You’re going to jail Nancy, perhaps for 5 years,
perhaps for more and Pål is going with you.
I have stockings of silk,
And shoes of bright green leather,
Combs to buckle my hair,
And a ring for every finger.
Was it worth it for the silk stockings rather than the
woollen? What did you need of combs when you gave all your hair to make a fake
virgin’s rope to trick your fake husband? What did you need for rings on all of
your fingers when the only one that mattered was dishonest? We have all had
enough of your greens, including your green leather.
It is hard to think of a greater deception in all of
human history. Nancy had reached the heights of Anna Anderson in her pretence
that she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia. Her scheme would not merely have had
Ponzi cheering it would have had Fonzie giving two thumbs up on his motorbike
as he made Marion Cunningham swoon with 1950s fantasies of infidelity.
What would the Jura say when the case went to trial?
Well Jura was on the other side of the Corryvrecken whirlpool, so it knew all
about the deception.
I know where you’re going,
And I know who's going with you.
The deil knows when you’ll get out.
