The Thing in the Teapot

Chapter 1 : The Clearing

Catherine Morland sat on the dead tree and thought to herself what a lucky girl she was. Mere days ago she was a nobody, an unknown in Bath with nobody to dance with or take the water with, and now, here she was sitting in a woodland dell in the countryside surrounding Bath, and not alone, but accompanied by the man of her dreams. Things, she thought, couldn't get much better than this. Well, of course, she continued, for she was an honest girl, she could actually be married to the man of her dreams, or discovering what the 'mysteries of the marital chamber' that her mother often hinted about actually were, for though it had been made clear that, whatever they were, they were hot stuff, unfortunately Catherine's mother hadn't seen fit to give any further information on the subject other than 'You'll find out soon enough when you're married.'

So, this wasn't the best time a girl could have, but, Catherine, continued her briefly interrupted train of thought, sitting here chatting with Henry Tilney was pretty good, and she was prepared to list it as one of the best things that could happen to her until the time came when she managed to persuade him to actually propose to her. But that, unfortunately, was not yet, so she stuck to discoursing on her favourite subject, other than Henry – gothic novels.

She was, as usual holding forth on the superiority of 'The Mysteries of Udolpho' to all other works of that genre, and while Henry made a brave effort to speak up in favour of 'The Castle of Otranto', she was having none of it, for as she put it,

'But Henry, all that the villain in Otranto does is to try to marry his not-quite daughter-in-law. I'll grant you, he's incestuous too, but that's not very exciting. Even the Greeks did incest. Look at Oedipus, he . . .'

'And how,' asked Henry, 'Does a nice, well-bred, girl like you know about Oedipus, may I ask?'

'Oh I threatened my brother until he promised to tell me of any particularly nasty or vicious stories that were missed out of "Classical Mythology for Young Ladies". Now, Oedipus . . .'

'And what did you threaten them with?'

'Well,' said Catherine conspiratorially, 'I saw what he was doing in the potting shed that day with Elizabeth Jenkins, and I was sure my parents would be angry if they found out, not to mention hers, and as I put it to him, as a good girl I had a duty to tell.' She smiled. 'He'd have promised anything. Anyway, Oedipus . . .'

'I feel,' said Henry, 'As a clergyman, I should be much concerned with the elasticity of your morals, and that you did not tell your parents of this shocking deed. It is not the deed of a moral soul.'

'Yes,' said Catherine, smiling in a surprisingly come-hither manner for so ostensibly innocent a girl, 'But it's very charming for a heroine to have a weakness isn't it? What I need is somebody to protect and guide me.'

And who knows, Henry might well have proposed there and then had not Catherine seen, or thought she saw, something moving in the woodland surrounding the clearing in which they were sitting. She shivered, and not because of the cold, because it wasn't. When they had settled on this place to have a nice coze (and maybe the odd propose if only Catherine could wind him up to the point of no return) it had seemed so charming to sit in a little woodland clearing. With something mysterious, unclear, but obviously very large moving in a manner filled with vague menace within those woods it no longer seemed so charming, instead it seemed culpably stupid. And so, just as Henry was struggling along the lines of,

'Miss Morland – Catherine, that is – I am – I mean – I would be most . . .' Catherine interrupted, inwardly cursing at the circumstances that forced her to nip in the bud what sounded like the best candidate for a quick 'Yes Henry, of course I do, now let's get married' yet, said,

'Hold that thought for a moment. There is something moving in the trees.'

'A squirrel, my dear. Oh, I should not have said that, though you are dear to . . .'

'Something large?'

'A badger then. Anyway, as I was saying, it would be a matter of great joy to me if . . .'

'Something very large?'

'Perhaps a stoat or weasel. I am not much interested in natural philosophy. What I am interested in is . . .'

'Something enor – aaaaaaargh!' Which scream was enough to persuade even Henry that his Catherine might have something on her mind other than the peregrinations of woodland mammals. Seeing her pointing frenetically at something behind him, and the frozen horror of her expression, he turned, expecting to see a cow escaped from its byre or something equally unthreatening.

Instead something large and pinkish, like a giant crab was making its way towards them from the woods. Even Henry, with his disdain for natural philosophy, knew that it was nothing of this world, for though he had heard vaguely of land crabs, he was pretty certain they inhabited faraway places in the Pacific, or somewhere like that, and not Somerset. And also that they were, well, small, whereas this was gigantic, rearing in front of them like, like, well like a giant crab. Which was all very well in foreign parts, but not here. But it was here, and it seemed to be making for them, which was not good news, given the size of those claws. It occurred to Henry that it might be a good idea to run away, but Catherine seemed rigid with fear, and he doubted his ability to run and carry her at the same time. What was he to do? He was vaguely aware that one was mean to slap people in the face when they had gone catatonic like this, but he didn't think he could bring himself to do that to his Catherine. Which left only one thing: a technique he had learned from his brother which was apparently (for he had never tried it himself, you will understand) guaranteed to get the attention of any female. But it was terribly embarrassing. And then again, what would be worse: to be eaten by a giant crab, to leave Catherine to be eaten by a giant crab, or to be embarrassed? After some thought he decided to go with being embarrassed, and so, glad that Catherine was so glassy-eyed that she could not see what he was doing, he reached down and pinched.

Catherine's reaction was not quite what he had expected, given that he had expected outrage, and not for her to sink into his arms and say,

'Oh Henry, so you do love me after all.'

'Yes my dear,' he admitted, 'But now is not the time for love. Let's get out of here.'

'You mean away from that thing?' she said, pointing at the giant crab thing.

'Yes!'

'But there's another one over there', she pointed in the direction Henry had been intending to run. 'And over there, and there and there and there. In fact,' she said, as one satisfied to be answering a tricky sum, 'They're all around us. What are we going to do, Henry?'

Henry could think of only one thing to do, and before my reader judges him, let us remember that he was a man of the cloth, and most definitely not a man of action. So it is regrettable, but not perhaps surprising, that his reaction was to say,

'I shall pray for deliverance.' Catherine looked at him as if he had lost his mind.

'You're going to what?'

'Pray. To God. For deliverance from these, whatever they are, things.'

'He's going to pray,' she said to herself in a rather overwrought kind of way, 'I fall madly in love and it's with a man who thinks the way to deal with a bunch of crab monsters is to pray at them. Well screw that,' she picked up a large piece of dead wood and hefted it as a weapon, 'What I say we need to do is – attack!' with which she rushed at the nearest crab monster and hit it hard with her improvised club.

The crab monster looked affronted, as well it might. The things from beyond the outer darkness were used to a somewhat more passive approach on the part of their prospective victims. In particular, they were used to young women having fits of the vapours, and therefore being among the easiest of humans to carry off for the purpose of having their brains extracted. It felt it was rather unfair that it, out of all the crab things currently infesting this god-forsaken planet, had to be the one to finally come across an example of that mythical beast the Amazon. Why wasn't this annoying young woman doing what she ought to, and what the man apparently was, and waiting passively for her hideous fate to overcome her? That, the monster thought, is the way things ought to be. And apart from that, the club hurt. Quite a lot. In fact, the crab thing thought that she had managed to damage one of its more delicate and precious tentacles. Well it wasn't having that, so it reared up on its hind legs with the intention of terrorising her into submission. Instead it suddenly felt a terrible stabbing pain in its underbelly – the damned woman must have run underneath it. Well that was enough. The crab thing took a unilateral decision that its people really didn't care about her brain all that much and lowered itself, hoping to crush her to a pulp. And instead came agonising pain as it felt itself impaled, the club, which she must have somehow fixed into the ground, pushing up into and through all its most vital organs. There was nothing else to do: the crab thing gave a final shudder and fell to the ground, dead.

Catherine allowed herself a moment to look on her work and feel smug, but that was one crab thing down, and who knew how many to go. However, she couldn't see any more coming up behind the one she had dispatched, so grabbing Henry, who was droning on about,

'And save those in peril on the sea while you're at it, I always feel sorry for them', she shouted,

'Forget the prayers. We've got to get out of here. Run!' and hot-footed it out of the clearing, leaving the crab things to gather round the corpse of their colleague and wonder at having finally found one who could outfight and outwit them. They had a brief conference and agreed that this was one brain that they must make their own.