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Driving Lessons Chapter 94 - Thieves Like Us
"Mr England! I mean you're high!" Italy exclaimed. He recognised 'high' when he saw it. Romano was a frequent flyer when it came to weed - usually alongside Spain. The two were often to be found laid on the floor passing a spliff between them and ruminating on Joan the Mad whoever she was. Italy had tried it once but had felt no difference.
But England swept past him. "You're a lovely lad, my boy, but I need to find my sword." England told him and halted when he saw the Lady Diana tea towel. "Scoundrel!" He said. "I knew it!"
"Yes that was me." Romano said. He suddenly appeared from behind the door.
"It doesn't look like you, dude," Den said. "It looks like Lady Di."
"She was cute. She wouldn't marry me though. And that was her downfall," Prussia said incomprehensibly.
"Why did you steal it though? And speak a bit slower, you sound like you're on speed," England said and without waiting for an answer he went past.
"I want my ransom money!" Romano shouted after him. "Come back England!"
"You're a rubbish kidnapper," Prussia told him. "I was a way better kidnapper than you."
"Ja, where's your kidnapping victim?" Denmark asked, rummaging through Germany's fridge.
"You can't go in there! Luddy will not be happy. And you need to get out! You're not allowed here. He already wants you to pay for the new flooring in the ballroom!" Italy told them.
"Are you high?" Romano asked them.
He had reason to ask. Denmark's pupils were dilated and he was grinning widely. This was not usually unusual for him but he was also stuffing a whole pizza in his mouth and telling Prussia how 'amazing' the world was.
"We could be," Prussia replied.
"Give me some." Romano said.
"Weed brownie, dude," Prussia said. "Francis baked them."
"Damn. You should do that, fratello," Romano said to Italy.
"You know we're not allowed anything stronger than aspirin or anti-histamines here," Italy replied.
"Ah yes… How is tight pants Austria?" Romano said, bored now.
"He's asleep upstairs. He doesn't know the full extent of his disgrace yet," Italy said. "That's what Luddy said."
"We could tell him!" Prussia said. His eyes wide.
England was already on his way upstairs. King Henry was telling him where the sword was. He was pocketing things as he went, a duster left behind by a cleaner, an ashtray, a packet of wine gums… He stopped at the top of the stairs and looked at the curtains and considered that they were far nicer than the ones in his front lounge and decided to nab these as well. In his normal state he would not have countenanced anything in Germany's abode as being better than his stuff, but this was different. His brain whirred dully and he pulled at the curtains, looked around for a step ladder and then shouted down to Denmark.
"Do you have a step ladder, Den?"
Denmark looked in his pockets, having put down his bottle of lager. He found a packet of gum and a broken custard cream. "Nah man!" He shouted back.
"Why does he need a step ladder?" Romano asked. He didn't wait for the replies. They wouldn't have been able to enlighten him if he did. He shouted up, "You owe me ransom money, England!"
England wasn't answering. He shrugged to himself. "Curtains…" he said. He nabbed a man going past. "I say you there!"
"Me?"
"Are you a butler?"
"I'm just Mr Beilschmidt's secretary, Sir."
"Ah… like Pierre?"
"What? Who are you? Who allowed you in?"
"Mr Veneziano thingy," England replied.
"Signor Vargas?"
"That's the one! Have you a step ladder?"
"Well I could get you one… erm are you sure you should be up here?"
"Of course I am! Go to it, man. Chop chop!"
"Right…"
"Bloody Germans…" England said as he watched the man hurry away.
"Erm Arthur? I think we should get on, get the sword and go." King Henry said.
"Do you know, Henry my dear old friend I think you are wrong."
"Oh."
Back at England's house...
Romano's kidnapping victim was at that moment laid on his bedroom floor in his Spiderman costume gazing at the carpet.
"Mr America, Sir? Do you want a cup of tea?" Turkmenistan asked him apprehensively.
"Come and see this, Turkman dude," America replied still lying prone on the floor. His face pressed against the carpet.
Turkmenistan had only spent a few days in England's house but as he'd told his fellow Stans it had often resembled the days of the Mongol Hordes. He didn't tell 'Big Brother Russia' this.
"What am I looking at?" Turkmenistan asked.
"The universe, man! The universe! I can see stars behind stars behind stars behind stars… the whole universe unfolding before my eyes!" America said. (The weed brownies had made him unusually lyrical.)
"I can see a stain on your carpet, Sir. I'll get the stain remover. Perhaps it's that mayonnaise you had on your burger yesterday whilst you were playing with your Lego?" Turkmenistan replied. He didn't admit that he couldn't see any stars. But then again he was used to idiocy now in England's house.
It was another thing to tell his brother Stans.
In the next room, 'Big Brother Russia' was asleep sprawled on England's bed snoring with Charlemagne asleep next to him. The child holding one of Russia's huge fingers. Russia had rocked the child to sleep telling him that Russia was bigger than Pluto.
One of the cats was asleep on Russia's head.
Downstairs France was waxing lyrical to one of his bottles of wine and cooking something smelly and garlicky and wondering where England was.
At the German Embassy...
"You take that end and I'll take this," England said to the German butler. Obviously German butlers weren't a patch on butlering as English butlers. England thought about teaching the man how to butle but taking down the curtains was taking up all his time and then he forgot as soon as they were down. He dumped them in the man's arms. "Now go wash and press these and have them put in my motorcycle sidecar while I go and find my sword!" He said and then went the wrong way down the corridor.
"You! England!" Germany's voice rang out.
"Wrong way!" England said - even though he was actually heading away from Germany and headed the other way towards him. "Yo!" He said. Wondered why he said 'yo', he'd never said the word in his life and then stopped, leaned against the wall which wasn't where he expected it to be and fell over.
"What's wrong with you?" Germany said. "Mein Gott! You're drunk!"
"Not as much as you are!" England said from the floor. "I like your carpet."
"Get out of my embassy! I've not completed the repairs from the last time you were here."
"God you're really tall aren't you?" England said from the floor.
"Absolute moron. You're not funny!" Germany yelled and slammed down the stairs. He was further enraged to find Prussia and Denmark in his kitchen eating a strange combination of bratwurst dipped in a tin of baked beans.
"Why are they here?" He asked Italy.
"I didn't let them in," Italy lied.
"Bruder, you should really try this. It's brilliant. You use the sausage as a kind of spoon for eating the beans," Prussia told his brother.
"You are not allowed here. Now go back to England's house and take him with you." Germany told them.
"This is just the best invention ever!" Denmark was saying, gazing in wonderment at the tin of Heinz baked beans.
Germany shook his head. "I'm surrounded by morons."
"They're high," Romano told Germany. Knowing full well that Germany had, like England, a zero policy on drugs.
Germany wasn't listening. He always zoned out Romano's voice. He'd never had any wish to know what the Italian was saying. If it wasn't about his membership of the Mafia, it was about some 'pretty girl' he'd romanced with his pizza. Germany severely disapproved of romancing pretty girls with baked dough products. "Get out of my way. Have my workmen finished repairing the ballroom floor yet?" He asked Italy.
"Si? No?" Italy had no idea. He had no idea what Germany was talking about and panicked, wondering if he was supposed to be supervising anyone. He'd never supervised anyone in his life, much less German workmen.
"Get out!" He told Prussia and Denmark. Again.
Italy hurried out.
"Not you!" Germany said, grabbing him.
"Yeah! I mean we'd go but we can't because we have to stay here cos we're burglarising you," Denmark said.
"Us? Or him?" Prussia asked.
"What?" Den asked.
"We're burglarising or you're burglarising? Are we both doing it?"
"I can't remember. I think we're both being burglarerers."
"Are we burgling something?"
"Ja but I forgot what."
"Right."
They both continued eating baked beans.
For anyone who was more 'street smart' or open-minded, perhaps even someone who had had experience or even a brush with drugs, it would be obvious what was happening and that Prussia and Denmark were more than just under the influence of alcohol. But Germany thought they were just being their usual selves.
"Idiots!" He exclaimed loudly and stomped out.
Clearly the burglarising would have to wait according to Prussia and Denmark.
Upstairs on the landing, England was still laid on the floor, considering how tall Germany had suddenly got. "He's become a giant."
Austria sneezed into view. His own drugged up state had eased off. He'd come round on a piano stool with a dozen workmen taking up the ruined parquet floor around him. However, the resulting 'downer' he had from taking so much valium and anti-histamines and left him with a sneezing fit and a headache worse than the one he'd suffered after Prussia had taken his Silesia.
"Wow! You're tall as well!" England said when he saw Austria.
"Why are you down there?" Austria said and sneezed.
"I'm not down here. You're up there."
Austria frowned, which made his headache worse. He couldn't see King Henry as he had no English at all in his blood and had drunk no tea (the reason Prussia, Denmark, Russia and France could see King Henry was because they all had a little Olde English blood in their veins - only a little in the case of Russia - and all had been drinking Yorkshire Tea). Therefore, the Austrian frowned again when England said:
"Henry old boy, go and get the sword for me."
"I can't. I'm ephemeral. I can't pick anything up."
"You held the bloody crown the other week."
"Yes but that used to belong to me."
"No it didn't. You're thinking of good old King Edward's crown."
"Yes but it was kind of that one. A replacement… I can't explain how it works. I could get someone who can explain…"
"Who?" England, in his high state was thinking of King Alfred.
"King Richard II. He might know. I text him sometimes."
"You what? No, don't tell me. He was a worse king than you and that's saying something."
King Henry looked upset. He knew he didn't stand up to his father or grandfather's achievements but that wasn't his fault he felt.
Austria had only heard one side of this conversation and would add it to his scientific paper later on 'Arthur Kirkland - A Study in Personality Disorders' and was still looking at England. "Why are you here? You do realise Germany will throw you out as soon as he looks at you."
"He's already seen me." England said still on the carpet. He got to his feet. If Henry was in touch with Richard II, he really didn't want that colossal idiot seeing him on the floor. "Do you get visited by your dead kings?" He asked Austria. "Do your feet feel rubbery? Feel my feet." He added and lifted one leg up and proffered a foot to Austria.
"I have emperors not kings," Austria said stiffly. "I would advise you to leave."
"Oh bugger off. You played at being an empire. I was an empire. My feet have disappeared," he said and the only word that could describe how he walked down the was corridor was fobbled - a cross between hobbled and fumbled. He held onto the wall. "Are we on a ship?"
"Idiot."
"Bloody Germans," England muttered.
"I'm Austrian! Austrian!" Austria shrieked.
Downstairs, Italy shuddered when he heard Austria yelling. He was still trying to get Prussia and Denmark to leave. He couldn't imagine how Germany would react if he realised that the two were high. "He doesn't believe in fun. He says he had fun once but he didn't like it," he explained sadly to Denmark who was gazing in rapture at Italy's spatula.
"That's beautiful that is. I bet you can make awesome bacon sandwiches with it."
"You should both leave before he comes back."
"Yes and take England with you!" Romano said.
But Prussia had found Italy's soda stream (Italy had actually bought three of things after he and Germany had found themselves stuck in a lift with a soda stream salesman leading to Germany ruining a perfectly good suit and Italy having so much fun the lift was covered in brightly coloured carbonated water). "This is brilliant!" Prussia said, having filled another bottle with pink bubbles. "I need to show bruder!" He said.
Unfortunately, Italy didn't hear him but was wrestling with Denmark who was trying to cook spaghetti with a spatula. Which was all kinds of wrong in Italy's eyes. "No no no! What are you doing you big Dane you!" He said, hitting the Dane with a spoon.
"I'm going. I have pizzas to deliver," Romano said to no-one in particular.
"You mean, you're running your pizza business from here?" Prussia asked.
"Might be."
"Cool. Can I come with you?"
"No."
But Romano found himself in the passenger seat of his own van with Prussia as the driver. "I love vans. I used to have an ice cream van," Prussia told Romano and proceeded to drive out of the Embassy driveway very very slowly. Prussia thought in fact that he was driving fast - he was going 10 miles an hour. Romano was distracted by several text messages on his phone telling him that the revenge planned on England would happen 'soon'. He smiled enigmatically to himself and then screamed girlishly when Prussia turned the van back round and headed back towards the German Embassy's front window, telling the Italian - his face turned towards him - that he'd forgotten his soda stream.
"This looks almost like new," Germany said to the workmen who had just finished the flooring in the ballroom previously ruined by the sledge pulled by a pack of wolves - just as a Vargas Pizzeria van ('We Deliver 12-7' - the two Italians couldn't work out how many hours were in the day) plunged through a window and slid onto the new flooring.
Germany looked like he was having a spasm or being electrocuted or that his paperwork had been shredded by some baboon-like Nation (America had discovered the joy of unfettered access to a shredder). He was speechless. Utterly speechless.
"Is this where we had that party the other night?" Prussia asked, climbing out of the van, totally unhurt.
Romano, although stupid, wasn't that stupid and wisely just stayed in the van. A sizeable chunk of wall fell onto the van roof as if in an encore.
Prussia looked at what remained of the room. "Wow. Do you know what? I blame Miss Ukraine and her wolves for this."
"You! Miss Ukraine?!" Germany spluttered. A vein in his forehead throbbed.
"No! I'm your big bruder, Gilbert!" Gilbert said. He looked around him. "You really need to get the decorators in!"
"GET OUT!" Germany yelled finally.
England, who was upstairs, had finally found the room that King Henry had told him contained the sword. His sword. But he was distracted by the sound of Germany's ranting. And his feet. That weren't his feet. Or didn't feel like his feet. "My shoes are all rubbery," he told King Henry.
"Let's get the sword and get out, Arthur," King Henry said.
But the sword was in Germany's bedroom and England had an urge to rifle through Germany's wardrobe. "Wow! He's nearly as boring as I am," England said and proceeded to try on Germany's suits.
Meanwhile, if Germany thought things were bad, they were about to get worse.
Denmark threw open the doors of the ballroom and marched in, "SODA STREAM!" He yelled. Two words that had haunted Germany ever since that fateful day he and Italy had spent tortuous hours stuck in a lift with that salesman (poor man had had his most productive day in sales ever but had subsequently ended up in a lunatic asylum).
Pink bubbles cascaded from the contraption.
If that wasn't bad enough (It was for Germany), England entered the room close behind him.
He was brandishing a sword and he would have looked like King Arthur himself come alive if he hadn't been wearing every single piece of clothing owned by Germany.
"Begone foul beasts!" England yelled, waving his sword about and compounding the destruction by knocking over and breaking a priceless (but ugly) vase from the reign of Otto IV.
Germany, now covered in pink bubbles and utterly enraged, launched himself at England.
"Grab the Austrian and save yourselves!" England yelled from underneath the German.
To be continued…