His pruning was interrupted.
It was late in the afternoon when the nice old gentleman from number twenty-seven was half way up his ladder, sawing through a dead branch. As it fell to the ground he glanced across his rear fence and couldn’t fail to notice that the old lady that lived there, dressed in what looked like a nightie, was tip-toeing across the sloping roof of her back lean-to.
Transfixed by this bizarre sight and at the same time wondering what she was up to, he was abruptly woken out of his speculation when she fell. He watched in horror as she did some sort of pirouette, fall over and tumble off the end of the slanting roof, landing with a crash somewhere out of sight.
Although thoroughly shaken by what he saw, he immediately climbed down and ran to the fence. There, he soon realised there was no way of climbing over it. Instead, he ran out into the street and raced around the block. When he reached the house, he found the front door closed. He then ran down the side, only to find a locked gate barring his way. Moving back a few paces he ran at it. He injured his shoulder badly doing this, but the gate broke open.
As he rounded the house he found the old lady lying unconscious. He could see blood trickling down her cheek. He knew it was best not to move her, so he went into the house and found a telephone. He called for an ambulance, then sat down next to her, nursing his painful shoulder. Within minutes the ambulance arrived and they were both taken to hospital.
Over the following days the newspapers pronounced the man a hero. He was thanked by local dignitaries, appeared on the TV news, had articles written about him, and was waved and smiled at by his neighbours. He was privately bathing in the unaccustomed glory of it all, while maintaining an air of modesty.
Meanwhile, in hospital, the old lady who had remained unconscious for the first couple of days, finally woke up. When she came to, very much to the amazement of the doctors and nurses, she had her own version of the events that put her there. She claimed, with great passion, that the man from number twenty-seven was, in fact, Gregory Peck, who in cahoots with a gathering of conspiring warlocks had contrived the whole affair. This, she said, was particularly upsetting for her, as she thought Gregory was absolutely splendid in ‘The Omen’.
Naturally enough, little heed was payed to this, or passed on in any way by hospital staff. This meant that our rather elderly knight in shining armour knew nothing of these allegations.
It can be said that in a fairly humble way, on learning that she was awake and recovering, he was certainly looking forward to visiting the patient. As he approached her bed, she sat up, pointed and screamed, “That’s him!”
Thanks was sometimes something you just didn’t get.