The Laddersman
Terry Bingrove of number 36 Bilge Street had a lot of ladders. An awful lot of ladders, in fact, but not a lot of awful ladders; his collection was predominantly of middling-to-high quality, as befits such a collector. You might be forgiven for thinking that a fire station houses a lot of ladders, or that a tool shop would stock many rung-based items, but both of them paled into insignificance compared to Terry’s collection. Bingrove was his name and ladders were his game as he often said, generally without prompting or context.
In his capacity as a self-declared man of the rungs, any time a friend or family member had need of operating at a moderate height above ground level he could be, all too willingly, called upon. While he had no interest in the realm of the cherry-picker, too high and flat for his taste, rooftops throughout his social circle had been visited in order to rescue hanging tiles, bend neighbours’ aerials, and deposit bag after bag of coarse salt into the gutter. Terry’s was not to question why; he simply followed the Ladderman’s Creed. It is worth, but perhaps redundant, mentioning that the Ladderman’s Creed was a creation entirely of Terry’s. It ran as follows:
Where ascension is required we shall be there
Sub-cherry-picker only and never the stairs
Ours is not the right to question, only to climb
We answer the call of any in need unless we don’t have time
Saturday afternoons generally tricky but weekday mornings fine
Terry Bingrove was not a Laureate in the making, but he did own a lot of ladders. An awful lot of ladders.
Despite his utility when it came to reaching high places, being Terry’s friend or relative came with its own set of challenges. Quite aside from his inability to pass by a flat roof without specifying which of his two-stage roofing ladders he’d use to get up there, and regardless of his scoffing and tutting every time he was forced to use the stairs, the major hurdle to knowing him was his insistence on carrying a stepladder with him at all times, even when visiting the homes of others. A chair, he claimed, left him feeling too low and vulnerable. Only a position of clear vantage, such as that afforded by a seat atop a stepladder, was suitable for a laddersman. Not one to impose on those he cared about with demands to supply a stepladder he simply brought his own. Accusations of stepladder snobbery, implying that he brought his own because he looked down on those his associates might own, were answered with very little commitment.
Through years of having to deal with such idiosyncrasies, Terry Bingrove’s close peers had learned to live with him and his travelling stepladder. They left space for it at the table, placed his meals on a high shelf, and ensured that anti-slip flooring was procured for his safety. They even tried to leave parking space for his ladder-laden van, which drove everywhere ‘just in case a tile should slip during dinner’. The local establishments he tried to visit for meals, drinks or office supplies, however, were typically less prepared.
Many assumed, upon seeing his stepladder-in-arms, that he was a tradesman there to work on something or other in the building, and didn’t greet him as a welcome customer. He called this the Laddersman’s Burden. To always be directed to the loading bay, or the staff entrance, or a broken window was his lot in life. Clutching a stepladder and explaining to receptionists, concierges and maître d’s alike that this was a recreational or emotional support ladder had long since grown tiring.
Such, it is a shame to say, was the circumstance under which Terry Bingrove found himself when arriving at the Tabitha the Bear Memorial Museum and Laundrette on one of his many days off, in the company of his dear friend Beth.
“No, you misunderstand.” He said with practiced patience. “I’m not here to do any work on the museum. I’m a visitor.”
“You’re carrying a stepladder.” Observed the ticket office enforcement agent, with the air of one who had formed their own conclusions on what a visitor might look like based on what they had or had not brought with them.
“Yes. I’m a laddersman; a recreational laddersman using a recreational stepladder, just as one might carry a handbag.” Terry explained, as if the analogy held even slightly.
“Give it up, Terry.” They’re not going to let you in with it.” Pleaded Beth. She’d seen this scene play out dozens of times before. From the porcelainware shop to the ladder-phobic society’s clubhouse (visited out of curiosity alone) it had ended the same way; no personal ladders permitted. It never stopped Terry trying though. Such was the nature of obsession, she supposed. With one hand in her pocket she turned over a radiator bleeding key. Being a rad-keyswoman was totally different, she assured herself.
“Your friend is correct, sir. We cannot allow large personal items into the museum. It poses too much risk of breakage, and unknown miscreants may use them to pilfer lightbulbs from the fittings.” The executive of ticket distribution pointed to a sign in the window of their booth which stated ‘No lightbulb theft except under very exceptional circumstances. Anyone caught doing so will be laboriously found in the dark and put in the bin.”
“Ah.” Said Terry. “I see that you’ve been burned before and I understand your concern, but I am a laddersman! We have a creed and never use our steps or rungs for evil. You must have been dealing with the unsavoury characters before.”
“They were far from sweet, sir, and I respect that you claim to have no ill intentions, but accidental damage and unintentional lightbulb theft are too risky. We can’t allow a stepladder in. You can leave it with us and pick it up from stepladder returns when you’re ready to leave.”
Terry frowned in great emotional turmoil. Roving without a ladder of any sort in his possession was anathema to a laddersman, as was leaving one of his own in the care of a stranger. Temptation to leave reared its gorgeous head, whispering promises of 100% ladder-time if they abandoned the museum, and under normal circumstances those promises would have enticed Terry away. This time, however, there was an equal and opposite force to try him.
“You’ve been itching to see Mr. Climby for ages. Don’t lose your chance now.” Beth reminded him with a gentle hand on the shoulder. It put him in mind of when his ladders were carried there; a soothing memory. Behind Beth there entered a group of students with bags full of dirty clothing and their favourite Tabitha the Bear sightseeing cards. In time, Terry speculated, they might become impatient to see the exhibits and put on a load of delicates, so he couldn’t dally.
“Sir?” The admissions gatekeeper prompted.
“Oh… alright. I guess. Here.” He said, reluctantly posting his butter-yellow travel stepladder complete with rubber step-grips, safety catches and cup holders, through the office’s small window. “Where is the stepladder returns desk? Please?” He added, remembering himself.
“It’s right here, sir. I’ll have a sign printed up by the time you’re done.”
“OK.” He said, concerned. “Thank you.”
“Will either of you be making use of our laundry facilities while exploring the exhibits today?”
“I don’t think I need to… Terry?”
“Hm?” He replied, his gaze still on the confiscated ladder.
“Are you going to do laundry while we’re here?”
“Oh… erm…”
“You get a free token each with your tickets, if that helps?” Reminded the disseminator of entrance permissions.
“Oh, go on then. We’ll take them. I can always wash my trousers while we’re here.” Beth decided. Terry gave her a quizzical ‘are you going to streak through a museum, again?’ look. “I can pull my socks up and my shirt down if I do decide to put the wash on. It’s fine.” She dismissively waved, accepting the tokens gratefully.
“Have a great time with Tabitha and be sure to separate your launderables appropriately.”
Terry and Beth mumbled some thanks towards the office, its occupant become a part of the furniture now that their transaction was completed, and strode on their way through the entrance, the scents of detergent and preserved memorabilia wafting over as they went. Through a dimly lit corridor, presumably related to the lightbulb theft against which they’d been warned moments earlier, they walked side by side. Terry’s excitement to see Mr. Climby and Beth’s anticipation of witnessing the world’s largest collection of Tabitha the Bear items spurred them ever onwards. The promise that they’d be able to clean up after any museum-related spillages only added to their confidence that the day would be a good one.
Exhibit One, cannily named after the museum’s founder, Dr Larry One, came coincidentally first in the path around the building. It was an almost brutally bare room for something that was supposedly intended to attract visitors, featuring a large poster on one wall with an inordinately long information board next to it, and a row of vending machines on the wall opposite. Detergent, fabric softener, rolls of coins, bleach and old magazines stocked the vending machines for the sake of the laundry enthusiasts, along with museum audio-guides and an array of souvenir keyrings.
Neither Terry nor Beth had any use for the vending machines; they already owned all the Tabitha the Bear keyrings they needed, and the audio-guide was famously inaudible over the din of washers and dryers deeper into the building. They instead stood at the poster and dutifully read the whole information board, because they’d paid their entry to the museum and were gosh darn well going to make the most of it. It covered the hallowed origins of Tabitha the Bear herself.
Tabitha the Bear, as every school child of a certain generation knew, was a beloved cartoon bear of considerable prominence. Her beginning, unlike her end, was decidedly inauspicious, conceived as she was as a side character in ‘Poppy Prey’s Nightmare Existence’, an ill-conceived attempt at making a cartoon for 3 to 4 year olds about the plight of prey species in the wild. Each episode would see Poppy Prey, a nauseating chimera of all the most famous prey species in the world, trying desperately to escape the attention of a famous predator such as a wolf, an eagle, a shark, or a door-to-door glazing salesperson. During early focus groups this concept was labelled as ‘unnecessary and frightening; an assault on our nation’s youth and their innocence’, and it was clear that some minor modifications were necessary. Consequently the decision was made for all the characters to be given anthropomorphic livelihoods, and that they should live in the same quaint township as Poppy Prey. Poppy herself then became something of a wandering vagrant, subsisting off the kindness of her friends to enable her to get into mishaps all over town with the various carnivores therein.
Over the course of a surprisingly successful series Poppy managed to use her grasshopper legs to evade Pecky Tina the Raven Cleaner, her burrowing claws to hide from Lumberjack Max the Fox with an Axe, and her natural camouflage to hide in trembling, sweating fear from Postman Jake the Archery Drake. The greatest of her foes, however, would transpire to be Tabitha the Bear who Chokes out the Air.
In her vocation as a builder, Tabitha the Bear came across Poppy Prey during a house-hunting trip. Recognising an easy meal when she saw it, Tabitha used all of her construction nous to seal Poppy Prey into a confined crawlspace and flood it with dangerous aerosols. When that asphyxiation attempt failed due to adequate adherence to ventilation codes, Tabitha laid a nail-gun trap to pin Poppy against a spare sheet of plasterboard. Poppy’s excellent peripheral vision saw the nails coming and allowed her to dodge out of the way, but the savvy bear had already prepared a contingency; she lurked atop Mr. Climby, her faithful stepladder friend, and delivered a devastating elbow drop from atop the makeshift turnbuckle. Rendered breathless on the ground, Poppy would have been finished if not for an unfortunately timed phone call that Tabitha had to take, regarding a concrete delivery. Distracted by the impending arrival of materials, the builder bear failed to notice Poppy Prey making good her escape, and was forced to eat her sandwiches for lunch instead.
Despite the utter failure of Tabitha to finally catch and eat Poppy, something that the viewing public were incessantly screaming out for thanks to her inherently unlikable nature and harrowing appearance, the bear builder captured a nation’s heart. She would not be forgotten.
Poppy Prey’s Nightmare Existence came to an abrupt end, cancelled outright after a featured predator, the human, seeded nightmares in child and adult alike by chasing Poppy down using their signature move: the ‘whirlwind of hammers’. No-one was ever treated to the glorious end of Poppy, but Tabitha the Bear’s story was just beginning.
“I still remember it.” Terry muttered.
“As if it were yesterday.” Agreed Beth. “The sight of those white-knuckled fists clasped around wooden handles. The way he pirouetted on the spot. How the hammerheads crunched through windows and masonry as he closed in on Poppy Prey…” On her face was the characteristic thousand-yard stare of one who witnessed Poppy’s final hunt.
“Hey, it’s alright. Tabitha could fix that damage in no time thanks to Mr. Climby. No-one’s in any danger as long as they have their trusty stepladder on their-“ Terry patted at his shoulder instinctively but found only clothing, flesh and bone. “-oh. Oh yes.”
Silence fell between the two visitors staring at the Poppy Prey’s Nightmare Existence poster behind its protective glass. Was it there for the protection of the poster from angry viewers who remembered the programme all too well? Or was it there to give the guests reassurance that the whirlwind of hammers couldn’t get them? None knew for sure but the installers, and they’d long since stopped answering calls on the matter.
“We should push on. You’ll feel better when you see Mr. Climby, and I’ll feel better when I forget about Poppy for a while.” Beth decided, placing her hand on Terry’s for comfort. Her fingers felt like the rungs of a tiny ladder, and he felt them slow his racing heart almost immediately.
“Yes, you’re right. Thanks. Maybe we’ll find a general use ladder in there as well.” He added, brightening up a little.
“Er, yeah. Sure. Whatever you need to hear.”
Between most rooms of most museums there would be a door. It might be a push door, it might be a pull door, or in particularly fancy establishments it might be a sliding or concertina door, but it would be a door nonetheless. Tabitha the Bear Memorial Museum and Laundrette was not most museums.
“Do we wait until the cycle’s done?” Beth asked worriedly. Ahead of her the enormous washing machine drum that separated Exhibit One from the unrelatedly named “exhibit two (no capitals)” was rotating at tremendous speed.
“Surely not! Look at the display up there; it’s on a forty degree cottons program! We can’t be expected to stand here for that long.” Pointed out the laddersman, whose eyes were turned up more often than not, just in case there was a need to use a ladder to access something.
“Then we just… try to run through it?”
“I reckon so. I don’t see any fins on it so it’s not like they’ll sweep our feet out from under us.”
“Oh, yes. Very reassuring. It’s perfectly safe to walk on something spinning at 1200 rpm if I doesn’t have fins.” Snapped Beth, toying nervously with the radiator bleeding key in her pocket. If she were to fall, and it were to come out, and there were to be holes in the drum, and those holes were to be large enough for a radiator bleeding key to fall through, then she’d never cope with it. It was just too immediately risky.
“While a laddersman always seeks solid, stable ground in which to plant their friend of the rungs, sometimes we must take more extreme measures in order to complete our job. And I… I find myself rungless. There is therefore no danger from moving ground.” He incorrectly rationalised. With the undeserved confidence of a man who ‘reckons’ a lot but is unburdened by either knowledge or experience, Terry sprinted from a standing start into the spinning drum.
With some considerable curiosity Beth watched as Terry’s first two footfalls held true. Unfortunately they also saw him transported a significant way to the left, tipping him to a rather extreme angle before footfall three. Down Terry went towards the rotating surface of the drum, but where there should have been a hard impact there was a bounce instead. Heels over head he tumbled, juggled by the spinning corridor like a kumquat in a hamster ball as it rolls towards the sea. Seeing this display didn’t fill Beth with confidence regarding her radiator bleeding key. If anything it made her think that it would be even more likely to fall out. Every time Terry crashed into the rubbery, sprung drum and flew high into the air again she grew more convinced that she’d need to zip her pocket up for safety. By the time Terry had been shaken out of the other end of the drum, looking a little battered and disoriented for the pleasure, she’d taken the precautionary zipping measure and launched into a surprisingly athletic long-jump. With only a couple of additional bounces, and comparatively little ricocheting, Beth made it out of the other side, smiling innocently at Terry.
“Good thing you weren’t carrying a stepladder then. You could have been rather hurt.”
“On the contrary, Beth. A ladder can be laid across such perilous obstacles and act as a bridge, much as one might use for roofing tiles or over the canyons of West London.” Panted Terry, rubbing at near enough every part of his body in turn to soothe the impact wounds. “If I’d had a ladder with me then that whole thing would have been perfectly safe; I’ll be sure to recommend that they install some safety ladders at either end of this doorway and a few other dangerous locations that I’ve noticed.”
“They’ll get right on it, I’m sure. Are you alright to push on?”
“Of course. A laddersman should be accustomed to recovering from falls when it’s such a natural risk of the lifestyle.”
“Great, because I can already see some original Tabitha sketches!” Beth squealed excitedly, dashing towards a vibrating display cabinet. As Terry followed along, moving more slowly on account of the severe blows his knees had taken during the drum incident, he took stock of the room in case anything might need to be climbed. To his great satisfaction, he noticed that most of the displays in this exhibit were raised to at least chest height, before the unfamiliar sensation of roaming without a ladder reasserted itself in his mind. Finding a way to rise was normally so easy. He was normally so prepared. But not now, thanks to the gatekeeper of entry. Distressing as it was, he resolved not to let such deprivation stand in his way. A laddersman always finds a way to climb to their goal, he decided.
“Look at this Terry! You might need to wait for the spin to stop so that you can focus on it properly, but it shows the plans for Tabitha’s pilot episode!” Beth cried excitedly, beckoning him over. He didn’t really understand what she meant about waiting for the spin to stop until he got a little closer.
There was, it transpired, a reason that all of the displays in this room were so high up. Most laundrettes had rooms full of washing machines in neat rows that ran from one end of the room to almost the other, with a walkway permitted to exist at one end for reasons of access and good fashion. In most museums the displays were divided between the external walls and a series of islands in the middle to maximise the surface area from which visitors could view them. In this unholy fusion of laundrette and museum, however, they’d taken the approach of merging the two ideas. Enormous industrial washing machines were scattered around the room, not so much in rows as clusters, atop which the museum displays had been precariously perched. Clearly enough the curators had no interest in making sure that the display cases didn’t overhang the edges of the machines, leaving plenty of sharp edges and outcropping corners into which the public could walk.
It was in front of one such poorly-balanced cabinet that Beth stood, gawping at its contents, while the washing machine underneath screamed like a jet engine during its spin phase. From what Terry could see through the door in the dim room lighting, it appeared to be a towel wash, and the large mass of the load was making the display dance violently. Nearby a patron with an empty washing bag watched on anxiously as two strangers stood by their machine.
“See! It’s the original sketch of Tabitha’s Flatbed. They hadn’t decided to add the yellow paint around the wheel arches yet but they’ve got Mixey Matey on the back and there’s Tabitha’s trademark chisel on the passenger seat.”
“Oh yeah! Would you like for us to see it more at eye level though? I mean, we’re a bit low down right now don’t you think?”
“It would be better I sup-” was as far as Beth made it before Terry yanked open the detergent drawer and started to clamber upwards.
“The first step upwards! A laddersman’s favourite!” He yelled joyously, full of the thrill of the climb.
“I don’t think that’s load-bearing.” Observed Beth, watching the plastic drawer bend underneath his weight.
“A laddersman always knows whether or not his footing is secure.” Dismissed Terry, pushing upwards to look for another foothold. There was no such further foothold, but Terry was spared this disappointment by the cracking and breaking of his drawer. Along with some heavily diluted detergent and fabric softener water, the laddersman hit the floor underwhelmingly. “My footing was not secure.”
“Nor is the future of my towels!” Cried the attending client. He’d leapt up from his seat and was rushing over to assess the situation. “I hope that all my detergent made it in before you stamped the drawer off!”
“It’s on the spin so you’re fine, mate. Sorry that my friend is behaving so irrationally. He’s a laddersman without a ladder so… you know…” Explained Beth, a natural mediator when it came to public concern over Terry’s antics.
“A laddersman? Ah, here to see Mr. Climby no doubt. That checks out. And I guess this climbing lark is because his own ladder was checked in at the ticket office?”
“Got it in one.” Terry confirmed. “See, it was a reasonable course of action.” The latter remark was addressed to Beth, as if she hadn’t just stood up for him.
“I’d still prefer it if you didn’t make your lack of ladder the problem of my towels, but I get why you did it, sure. Just please be careful with the laundry of people you don’t know, alright? You don’t need to be high up to read the plaque about these sketches. I read them just fine from down here.”
With one hand the patron indicated towards the display cabinet as if that needed to be clarified. The other hand was narratively unimportant.
“Understood, citizen. The path of the laddersman is often fraught with danger and tough decisions, and any feedback we receive is graciously integrated into our future,B as we ascend the ladder of life.” Said the only person who would ever say that. Beth nodded sagely in agreement.
“Alright then, no problem. Enjoy your visit.” The patron said, quite satisfied with the responses received, before returning to their seat.
“We’ll just look at it from this height, Terry. It’s fine.”
The laddersman writhed uncomfortably, although how much of that was from the detergent water soaked into his trouser leg was unclear to all witnesses.
“We could really get a better view from altitude if we just grabbed the general purpose ladder.” He said, looking around desperately. “There must be one in here.”
“Terry there has never been a general use ladder anywhere. Ever. For any reason. There are just normal, owned ladders that you take it upon yourself to use.” Beth reminded him. “Just stand here next to me like a respectable laddersman who doesn’t need to always be on a ladder to function as a human being and read about this display.”
“Can’t we just get to Mr. Climby and get out of here?”
“No! We came here for me as well, Terry, and I want to read all about Tabitha!” Beth snapped at him. “And seeing how you’re behaving right now makes me feel like you’ll benefit from some time without rungs. You need to prove to yourself that you’re capable.”
“Of course I’m capable! I just don’t like doing it.”
“Do you take a stepladder to the shower with you Terry?” She asked flatly.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Do you, though?”
“What does that have to do with anything? Where did it even come from”
“Answer the question, laddersman.”
Terry’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed, but despite that impressive display of intimidation Beth’s gaze held firm on his own. He backed down, like one descending a ladder that has reached a height no-one needed to see.
“Yes.”
“There we go then. You need to learn that not every situation requires ladder enhancement. In fact, you need to learn that ladders don’t enhance every situation. And don’t you roll your eyes at me as if I’m talking nonsense, either. Just read the ruddy sign.”
The eyes ceased their spurious rotation and settled down on the information board as instructed.
In the power vacuum that Poppy Prey’s cancellation had left, many other shows vied to become the top of the pile. ‘Billy Bracken and the Forest Floor Life’ only managed a short run, thanks to the writers finding very few compelling stories to tell, or convincing sources of conflict, when all the characters were literally rooted into the ground. Slightly more successful was a game show for school aged children called ‘VerifiNation’; it required contestants to find errata in a several-page document about the history of the country, focusing on some minutia of local politics, agricultural policy, or blacksmithing techniques. Despite its calamitously dull core experience of watching children silently reading a tea-stained scroll of paper for a full thirty minutes, it ran for a complete season and attained viewership comparable to a village fete on a rainy day. Only upon reviewing as ‘a real and present threat to the wakefulness of those who so much as hear about it second hand’ was it finally cancelled, but tragically not before a whole second season had been filmed. Those children were not quick to forgive, but forgot what they had been reading almost immediately.
For just over a year this piteous struggle raged on, before a worthy successor entered the spotlight and shook up children’s after-school television in a way that would not be felt again for several days. Lobbying by people with nothing better to do, and an enormously misplaced sense of priority, had been heard loud and clear by the production network behind Poppy Prey, and Tabitha the Bear was finally the star of her own cartoon.
Still working as a builder but no longer shackled to just the one town, Tabitha the Bear roamed the whole world in search of unique construction problems to solve with her crew of sentient tools and a total lack of discernible ethics. Although senior executives had argued against having a morally bankrupt predator as the face of a children’s show, the writers had doggedly refused to introduce any kind of contradiction into the character of Tabitha as presented in Poppy Prey. She’d started life by setting traps for an innocent aberration of nature, and any deviation from that would make the audience riot, they maintained. Too disinterested to have two conversations on the matter, the executives gave up and went for an expensive lunch instead, leaving Tabitha to exercise her cruelty uninterrupted.
Airing three afternoons a week without repeats, Tabitha the Bear was an episodic epic of educational material on the architecture of the world, useful DIY techniques for repairing an array of structural problems, and inventive uses of building supplies to ensnare unsuspecting people. Windy MacGuire the Spool of Wire was often used to create trip hazards as the first stage or even the trigger for a trap, normally after explaining what gauge of wire was most commonly used for lighting rings in that episode’s location. Billy McClucket the Ten Gallon Bucket had many roles to play, but the fan favourite was his tag-team with Danny Gringes the Door with Hinges, whereby he’d hide on Danny’s head while full of quick-setting cement and wait for some goon to make him drop. There was even a sense of inter-cast tension courtesy of Ted Brammer the Club Hammer and Nervous Gail the Three-inch Nail, for reasons that were both obvious and only ever implied. Although nearly everything Tabitha did was dangerous, the writers drew the line at showing hammer-on-nail violence. No-one ever received a satisfactory justification as to why the arbitrary line was drawn there.
For Terry Bingrove, Mr. Climby was the shining star of the whole series and stood head and shoulders, quite literally, above the rest of the cast. When Billy Mclucket Bucket needed to get up high, Tabitha took him there using Mr. Climby. Whenever Windy Macguire was to be strung from a curtain rail to a floorboard for inadequately explained reasons, Mr. Climby would bring the rail within reach. Nervous Gail would even hide atop Mr. Climby’s top step when Ted Brammer was present, although that often ended in disaster for the much-abused feet of Derrick O’Klater, Painter and Decorator. The laddersman couldn’t remember whether his love of ladders in general or his love of Mr. Climby had come first, but the two were so inseparable in his head that it didn’t matter any longer. For years he’d dreamed of being able to set foot on those brightly coloured rungs himself, carrying up Sandra Law the Floorboard Saw to cut someone’s floorboards out from underneath them, or lugging Ballast Jack the Gravel Sack up high for a terrible drop attack. The prospect of seeing his hero, or at least a promotional version of him, in real life was enough to make him check in a stepladder at the ticket office. As is presumably clear by now, Terry did not make such a concession lightly.
“I’d forgotten the time they used a curtain rail for Windy.” Smiled Beth, remembering how the home’s owner had come back into the room and pivoted over Windy’s distended limbs, plummeting through some tactically removed floorboards and into a waiting pot of broth. “I think I liked it most when the tripwire was put in front of the toilet and that week’s victim landed in the cistern.”
“Oh yeah!” Terry cried happily as the memory came back to him. “Tabitha slapped him over the back of the head with the basin, right?”
“Exactly so.” Sighed Beth, wistfully. “Exactly so.”
“My favourite is when everyone went leapt off the top of Mr. Climby and body slammed Larry Buster the Loss Adjuster in the Zurich episode.” Revealed Terry. “Remember how Larry was going to get back up again when Mr. Climby cleverly snapped shut on his waist? No other character in that show could pull off a move like that. Mr. Climby was amazing, as are all stepladders. I suppose that kind of lethal military application is a part of why they didn’t want me bringing mine in here with me.”
“Undoubtedly so, friend. Put a replica of Mr. Climby in the hands of someone who’s versed in the history of Tabitha the Bear and there’s no end to the destruction they might cause.”
“Fair. But to suspect that a laddersman might do that? We have a creed and we are terribly responsible with our ladders.”
“I’m sure they realise that you’re more responsible with your ladder than the layperson, but how could they ever discriminate when there’s still no accrediting body to verify that you’re a responsible laddersman, hm? If you can’t prove it then their hands are bound.” Beth surmised diplomatically.
“I’m still trying, Beth, it’s just that there don’t seem to be many other dedicated ladderspeople. Without more members, no-one’s ever going to takes the Institute of Chartered Ladderspeople seriously.”
“One day, Terry.” Beth said, patting him on the arm. “One day. But until then, shall we take a look at some more of the exhibits in here? I can see a picture of Tabitha using Mr. Climby to replace a cracked lintel and use the pieces to make rock-drop trap for an estate agent over there.”
Naturally, as soon as Terry heard the words Mr. Climby he had dashed off in the direction of Beth’s pointing. That episode was a firm favourite of his.
Between various pages of concept art for Tabitha’s first series, numerous trinkets from the production and a few moments spent helping someone to set up a thirty degree cotton wash, Terry and Beth spent almost an hour in exhibit two. Not one to control his impulses for long, Terry had taken to scaling some of the more climbable display cases before long, using locks, handles, and even minor imperfections in the framework as impromptu rungs whenever Beth was distracted. Eventually she just stopped caring; either the museum staff would intervene or they wouldn’t, but it didn’t need to distract her from learning about how the ultra-realistic claw animation was achieved by the showrunners. By the time they were both done, even their previously harangued launderer had unloaded the machine with the broken detergent drawer and made their way through to exhibit three.
Perhaps as a lesson learned from the previous doorway, or perhaps just as a crackpot idea that happened not to be terrible, the doorway between exhibits two and three did not rotate. It did not spin, nor did it roll. It was a nice, simple solid piece of static flooring in a rectangular aperture that also had quad jets of hot, dry air blasted into the centre. It’d have done wonders for Terry’s trousers immediately after the original climbing incident, but an hour of perusing interesting Tabitha trinkets had already done the bulk of the drying work. The tidemarks of precipitated detergent stood as a monument to his foolishness.
Warmed, thoroughly dried and a little windswept the two companions entered exhibit three and Terry’s world faded almost to black. The walls were lost in darkness, everything was silence, the floor existed only as a straight line leading up to a spotlight, and in the centre of that void, that abyss of the exhibit, stood a single spotlight of radiance. It surrounded a life-size rendering of Mr. Climby in all its polychromatic, multi-runged, slip-proof glory.
“It’s even more beautiful than I imagined.” Terry mumbled. Indeed was a becoming example of a stepladder; even the staunchest ladder-agnostic would have to admit that much.
“To be fair, it’s very cool. And big! I think you forget that Tabitha is a fully grown 8 foot bear in the show, so all her tools are scaled up to match.”
“Yes! Definitely! That’s way bigger than the standard step size. Think of the efficiency for getting up to a roof… your height gain per stride would be phenomenal.”
“Probably so, I suppose.” Beth replied, dutifully but disinterestedly. “You can make a custom one to the same measurements and give it a go once you’re home. But go on, get close up to it, it’s why we came here!”
With a beaming grin, much like that of a child who has just been given the opportunity to guard a bathtub full of sweets without witnesses, Terry scampered his way over to the central display. Mr. Climby, as befitted a ladder of his importance, was on a raised dais that allowed his already enormous height to tower even further above the milling crowds. Everything about it, from the colours to the shapes to the googly eyes on either strut, matched perfectly with both Terry’s recollection and the swathe of memorabilia elsewhere in the museum. Whoever had made this was a real master of the art, and Terry resolved that he must make the artificer’s acquaintance. A Mr. Climby of his own would make him the greatest laddersman in the world.
A realisation struck him.
“There’s no glass, Beth! We can look at it directly, unobscured by reflections or smears. No condensation distracts the gaze.”
“There’s also a sign that says not to touch the exhibits, Terry. We passed it on the way in, remember?” She called from behind him.
“Who said I was going to touch it?”
“Your extended hand that’s currently resting on the bottom rung...”
Terry snatched it back.
“Oh, yes well… I mean… it’s not really an exhibit is it?” Terry said, his gaze locked on the step grips.
“Oh?” Beth replied. Something in her voice spoke of real fascination for the first time since they’d entered the museum and it warmed the laddersman’s heart.
“I’m glad you’re finally as taken by Mr. Climby as I am!” He said, staring at the rubber grips on Mr. Climby’s feet. “What I’m saying is that this isn’t an exhibit because it was never part of the show. It’s a replica placed here for the entertainment of the visiting public. It’s left open without a display case for a reason, and that must be because it’s a general use ladder…” Slowly the focus left Terry’s eyes and he found himself staring into the boundless void of his own delusion.
“Yeah… yeah…” Beth’s voice echoed loosely through his head. It was more agreeable than he’d expected her to be, but there was no sense in questioning that.
“And this small sign here that says ‘Please do not climb the ladder’ is clearly a joke, because Mr. Climby is a stepladder. Totally different. Good one, proprietors of the museum. Yes, this must be here for us to climb! I’m finally going to climb Mr. Climby!”
“Yes!” Cried Beth. It was far more encouragement than the laddersman needed, and with a two-footed jump he launched himself onto the dais. He stood at the base of Mr. Climby for a just a moment, grateful for the bounty of ascension he was about to take. The faint sound of footsteps on the flooring below him barely registered as he grasped the struts and lifted a foot. The step was so high! He engaged muscles that no standard laddersman could ever hope to use in their professional career, and with just that one motion he suddenly loomed over the whole room. The feeling was sublime.
“Hey! Stop that!” An unknown voice shouted, but Terry was too far gone. Fearing rebukes from other patrons, those who were thirsty to climb Mr. Climby and didn’t want to be shown up by such a talented laddersman, Terry redoubled his efforts. With the legs of a gazelle who’d received their ‘working at height’ training the laddersman climbed at ferocious speed, Mr. Climby holding rock solid and steady beneath him. It was just one more sign of a quality piece of equipment, the exact thing he’d expect of Tabitha’s second in command. The hierarchy of tools had never been explicitly outlined in the show, but Terry knew instinctively that Mr. Climby answered to no-one but the bear herself.
“I said stop!” The voice repeated, but Terry heeded it not. His feet were so sure and secure wherever they landed. No matter the angle or step coverage by the foot, the step-grips held him firm. It was a beautiful symphony of climbing equipment, and tears started to well in his eyes at the magnificence of it all.
“You’ll be burned! There’ll be scorching hot water everywhere, stop!”
Terry jolted to a halt, putting all his momentum into Mr. Climby. It held firm as if the grown man’s weight had been nothing more than a feather on the breeze. He supposed these hallowed rungs had been designed to carry the weight of Tabitha and her traps, and therefore he should be as nothing to them. But appreciation of good ladder build quality aside, the words had pulled his attention back to the museum. No-one had ever mentioned hot water to him whilst laddering before.
From his position of height and vantage, the laddersman looked down at the exhibit room around himself. Finally, now that his ladder-frenzy symptoms were fading, he could take it all in and appreciate where he was. As was to be expected from the general flow of both the museum and laundry in general, this room was a cataclysm of tumble dryers. Some of them were left for the banal pursuit of drying clothes, but many more had been used as the hottest, driest display cabinets that the museum could afford. Only the most robust items had been placed in this room and subjected to the hot, tumbling abuse of such a display technique, of course, but even so it fell short of making them easy to view or particularly ecologically friendly. Fortunately for Mr. Climby, he was the only display which hadn’t been stored inside one of the hot, rotating drums, presumably for logistical reasons. It had certainly made Terry’s job of climbing it that much easier.
Terry Bingrove, the laddersman, hadn’t stopped to admire the layout of the museum, however. He’d stopped to check what on earth the shouting was about, and to see if he was on the cusp of being scalded for his sins. What he discovered on that subject was only partially good news.
The good part, with which it’s often nice to start, was that nobody had any intention of dousing Terry in boiling liquid. It very much seemed like the declarations involving that particular temperature of that particular fluid were earnest warnings. What made that goodness so partial, rather than complete, was its relation to Beth.
“Look at it! There’ll be so much air in there; the water evaporates and gets carried away through these tubes. Can you imagine how much more efficient it’ll be when there’s just condensed water carrying all that heat?” She cackled. Terry spotted her standing atop a bank of tumble dryers, clutching a radiator bleeding key in her hand and staring hungrily at a set of pipes which ran along the wall. It was a very familiar kind of stare, but in his experience it was normally directed at unusual ladders, or the high places that they might be used to reach.
“What’s happening in here?!” A new voice demanded, with as much hot air as the doorway through which it entered. Terry briefly turned away from Beth to see an official-looking man in a museum uniform, striding forwards angrily. By his bearing and demands, the laddersman assumed him to be some kind of marshal or security guard. Instinctively Terry took another step up Mr. Climby. The appearance of officials often heralded the end of his laddertime, so he had to make the most of it.
“This woman’s trying to bleed the waste pipes from the active dryers.” Complained the original voice. It was only then that Terry acknowledged the loud, persistent humming and knocking sounds that only a room of tumble dryers could hope to produce, acting as a strangely soothing sound bed for the room.
“So you’re not calling me in here because of this berk on Mr. Climby?” The marshal asked.
“For who- oh for goodness sake.” Complained the original voice, having now witnessed Terry’s achievements.
“I’m laddersman, it’s alright!” Reassured Terry. In all the times he’d shouted that down during a ladder trespass it had worked precisely never. You didn’t get to be an esteemed laddersman like Terry by giving up on optimism however.
“What is the bloody matter with people! There are signs saying not to climb the ladder and not to tamper with the pipework! How is that so hard?!” Raged the marshal. “I don’t have time for you right now, so just get down from there while I deal with this lunatic on the dryers. I swear to goodness we are putting up those barriers whether the curator likes it or not.”
Wide eyed and fearful, the laddersman gripped Mr. Climby tightly. He was only two steps away from the top, from the pinnacle of what his childhood hero of a stepladder could offer to the world. Up there at the heady heights of his top step, from which Tabitha herself dropped a Billy McClucket full of scrap iron on a passing cyclist in episode 5, he would have command of the whole exhibit. Like impressive city tower blocks threatened to graze the sky, Terry Bingrove the Laddersman would threaten to graze the polystyrene ceiling tiles if he finished his ascent. Looking upwards, Terry saw a flickering light fitting directly above Mr. Climby’s apex. The bulbs therein were so tantalisingly close, so ripe for the stealing. If he took them out then it would cover for Beth’s actions down below, or at least make them more inconvenient to stop, and it would be just the kind of mischief of which Tabitha herself might feel proud. If he got down now, and the marshal followed through on their threat of raising a barrier around Mr. Climby’s dais, then he might never get this chance again. Terry reached out a hand to grasp higher on the strut and take his next step.
“What even is a laddersman? Trespass is trespass.” The marshal seethed to himself as he moved towards Beth. Terry’s hand stopped.
What was a laddersman? Seeing himself there, on another person’s ladder, reaching up to climb despite being asked not to, thinking of stealing lightbulbs for no reason other than being able to do so… was this what he wanted his order to stand for? Was this what it meant to be a man of the rungs? He’d been expressly told that lightbulb theft was not permitted, and he’d even let himself be de-laddered in pursuit of adherence to that rule. To commit such abhorrent acts now would be to spit in the face of his faithful companion, locked away behind the gate of stepladder returns, and to break his own word; neither one of those things was permissible.
Mr. Climby’s spell faded. Terry looked down at Beth, slotting her radiator bleeding key into a brass fitting with a gleeful squeal, and saw the horrifying face of obsession reflected back at him. She’d tried to keep him safe from the same thing that was about to bring her low. He wouldn’t let that happen.
“A laddersman is a man of honour. One who lives by the Laddersman’s Creed and one who respects the property of others, as well as the safety and wellbeing of their friends.” He bellowed from his vantage point. “Beth! Stop! For the love of Tabitha the Bear and Richard Radiator the Heat Disseminator, stop!”
“Richard loved to be bled!” She cried back, bringing back memories of the surprisingly dark episode in which that very line had been spoken.
“Does a rad-keyswoman not have a duty to keep their workplace safe?” He asked, sliding down Mr. Climby with deft agility and leaping athletically from the dais. A pang in his lower back told him that he’d come to regret such showboating later. “You know never to bleed a rad when the system is heated, Beth.”
“This is probably fine. I can’t see a thermostat set to high anywhere.” She argued, giving the key a quarter turn.
“There’s no stat on this system, Beth! It uses a simple timer system and it’s currently on. Look around you; the dryers are running. The water will be red hot. Now is not the time for bleeding.”
“The ladder maniac is right. He’s come down, so you should also stop your nonsense.” The marshal added, rather less diplomatically.
“Terry’s off Mr. Climby?!” Beth asked in shock. Her focus on the radiator bleeding key was broken, and she turned round to face her surprisingly grounded friend. He was dashing towards her with a recognisable limp. He’d clearly leapt off something or other again. “But you… you’d never dismount that…”
“It wasn’t appropriate for me to climb him.” The laddersman wheezed, the words themselves hurting him as they came out. “Sometimes being a laddersman means knowing when not to climb. The same with a rad-keyswoman.”
“Rad-keyswomen never have to climb anything.” She shot back immediately.
“You know exactly what I meant!”
“I do…” She conceded softly. Her hand was still on the key but the muscles had relaxed. Terry dared to hope that she might have been won over.
As it transpired, his hope was totally irrelevant, because the marshal reached Beth at that moment and bodily hauled her away from the pipework.
“You two are both out of here right now! Never set foot in this place again; you for climbing all over the exhibits and you for trying to bloody well burn everyone.”
“Yes, yes sir. We’ll go quietly.” Accepted Terry. Beth was in no position to argue, on account of finding herself on the marshal’s shoulders.
Swiftly and firmly they were led out of exhibit three, past stepladder returns with much reluctance and huffing, and then back out onto the street. The late morning breeze was brisk against their cheeks after the hot humidity of the dryer room. A cloud drifted past the sun, casting dappled shade over them as it went.
“I’m proud of you, Terry. You managed to pull yourself away from Mr. Climby, even without my help. I… I apologise for my own indiscretions.” Beth said quietly.
“Not at all, Beth. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.” The laddersman said, shifting his stepladder onto his other shoulder. “I think this was a rite of passage for me, you know? Being able to resist the lure of the rung.”
Beth sniggered.
“What?” Terry demanded. She had a horrifyingly ‘after-school special’ look on her face.
“You gained height after all, in there. But instead of climbing, I guess you just grew.”
In his capacity as a self-declared man of the rungs, any time a friend or family member had need of operating at a moderate height above ground level he could be, all too willingly, called upon. While he had no interest in the realm of the cherry-picker, too high and flat for his taste, rooftops throughout his social circle had been visited in order to rescue hanging tiles, bend neighbours’ aerials, and deposit bag after bag of coarse salt into the gutter. Terry’s was not to question why; he simply followed the Ladderman’s Creed. It is worth, but perhaps redundant, mentioning that the Ladderman’s Creed was a creation entirely of Terry’s. It ran as follows:
Where ascension is required we shall be there
Sub-cherry-picker only and never the stairs
Ours is not the right to question, only to climb
We answer the call of any in need unless we don’t have time
Saturday afternoons generally tricky but weekday mornings fine
Terry Bingrove was not a Laureate in the making, but he did own a lot of ladders. An awful lot of ladders.
Despite his utility when it came to reaching high places, being Terry’s friend or relative came with its own set of challenges. Quite aside from his inability to pass by a flat roof without specifying which of his two-stage roofing ladders he’d use to get up there, and regardless of his scoffing and tutting every time he was forced to use the stairs, the major hurdle to knowing him was his insistence on carrying a stepladder with him at all times, even when visiting the homes of others. A chair, he claimed, left him feeling too low and vulnerable. Only a position of clear vantage, such as that afforded by a seat atop a stepladder, was suitable for a laddersman. Not one to impose on those he cared about with demands to supply a stepladder he simply brought his own. Accusations of stepladder snobbery, implying that he brought his own because he looked down on those his associates might own, were answered with very little commitment.
Through years of having to deal with such idiosyncrasies, Terry Bingrove’s close peers had learned to live with him and his travelling stepladder. They left space for it at the table, placed his meals on a high shelf, and ensured that anti-slip flooring was procured for his safety. They even tried to leave parking space for his ladder-laden van, which drove everywhere ‘just in case a tile should slip during dinner’. The local establishments he tried to visit for meals, drinks or office supplies, however, were typically less prepared.
Many assumed, upon seeing his stepladder-in-arms, that he was a tradesman there to work on something or other in the building, and didn’t greet him as a welcome customer. He called this the Laddersman’s Burden. To always be directed to the loading bay, or the staff entrance, or a broken window was his lot in life. Clutching a stepladder and explaining to receptionists, concierges and maître d’s alike that this was a recreational or emotional support ladder had long since grown tiring.
Such, it is a shame to say, was the circumstance under which Terry Bingrove found himself when arriving at the Tabitha the Bear Memorial Museum and Laundrette on one of his many days off, in the company of his dear friend Beth.
“No, you misunderstand.” He said with practiced patience. “I’m not here to do any work on the museum. I’m a visitor.”
“You’re carrying a stepladder.” Observed the ticket office enforcement agent, with the air of one who had formed their own conclusions on what a visitor might look like based on what they had or had not brought with them.
“Yes. I’m a laddersman; a recreational laddersman using a recreational stepladder, just as one might carry a handbag.” Terry explained, as if the analogy held even slightly.
“Give it up, Terry.” They’re not going to let you in with it.” Pleaded Beth. She’d seen this scene play out dozens of times before. From the porcelainware shop to the ladder-phobic society’s clubhouse (visited out of curiosity alone) it had ended the same way; no personal ladders permitted. It never stopped Terry trying though. Such was the nature of obsession, she supposed. With one hand in her pocket she turned over a radiator bleeding key. Being a rad-keyswoman was totally different, she assured herself.
“Your friend is correct, sir. We cannot allow large personal items into the museum. It poses too much risk of breakage, and unknown miscreants may use them to pilfer lightbulbs from the fittings.” The executive of ticket distribution pointed to a sign in the window of their booth which stated ‘No lightbulb theft except under very exceptional circumstances. Anyone caught doing so will be laboriously found in the dark and put in the bin.”
“Ah.” Said Terry. “I see that you’ve been burned before and I understand your concern, but I am a laddersman! We have a creed and never use our steps or rungs for evil. You must have been dealing with the unsavoury characters before.”
“They were far from sweet, sir, and I respect that you claim to have no ill intentions, but accidental damage and unintentional lightbulb theft are too risky. We can’t allow a stepladder in. You can leave it with us and pick it up from stepladder returns when you’re ready to leave.”
Terry frowned in great emotional turmoil. Roving without a ladder of any sort in his possession was anathema to a laddersman, as was leaving one of his own in the care of a stranger. Temptation to leave reared its gorgeous head, whispering promises of 100% ladder-time if they abandoned the museum, and under normal circumstances those promises would have enticed Terry away. This time, however, there was an equal and opposite force to try him.
“You’ve been itching to see Mr. Climby for ages. Don’t lose your chance now.” Beth reminded him with a gentle hand on the shoulder. It put him in mind of when his ladders were carried there; a soothing memory. Behind Beth there entered a group of students with bags full of dirty clothing and their favourite Tabitha the Bear sightseeing cards. In time, Terry speculated, they might become impatient to see the exhibits and put on a load of delicates, so he couldn’t dally.
“Sir?” The admissions gatekeeper prompted.
“Oh… alright. I guess. Here.” He said, reluctantly posting his butter-yellow travel stepladder complete with rubber step-grips, safety catches and cup holders, through the office’s small window. “Where is the stepladder returns desk? Please?” He added, remembering himself.
“It’s right here, sir. I’ll have a sign printed up by the time you’re done.”
“OK.” He said, concerned. “Thank you.”
“Will either of you be making use of our laundry facilities while exploring the exhibits today?”
“I don’t think I need to… Terry?”
“Hm?” He replied, his gaze still on the confiscated ladder.
“Are you going to do laundry while we’re here?”
“Oh… erm…”
“You get a free token each with your tickets, if that helps?” Reminded the disseminator of entrance permissions.
“Oh, go on then. We’ll take them. I can always wash my trousers while we’re here.” Beth decided. Terry gave her a quizzical ‘are you going to streak through a museum, again?’ look. “I can pull my socks up and my shirt down if I do decide to put the wash on. It’s fine.” She dismissively waved, accepting the tokens gratefully.
“Have a great time with Tabitha and be sure to separate your launderables appropriately.”
Terry and Beth mumbled some thanks towards the office, its occupant become a part of the furniture now that their transaction was completed, and strode on their way through the entrance, the scents of detergent and preserved memorabilia wafting over as they went. Through a dimly lit corridor, presumably related to the lightbulb theft against which they’d been warned moments earlier, they walked side by side. Terry’s excitement to see Mr. Climby and Beth’s anticipation of witnessing the world’s largest collection of Tabitha the Bear items spurred them ever onwards. The promise that they’d be able to clean up after any museum-related spillages only added to their confidence that the day would be a good one.
Exhibit One, cannily named after the museum’s founder, Dr Larry One, came coincidentally first in the path around the building. It was an almost brutally bare room for something that was supposedly intended to attract visitors, featuring a large poster on one wall with an inordinately long information board next to it, and a row of vending machines on the wall opposite. Detergent, fabric softener, rolls of coins, bleach and old magazines stocked the vending machines for the sake of the laundry enthusiasts, along with museum audio-guides and an array of souvenir keyrings.
Neither Terry nor Beth had any use for the vending machines; they already owned all the Tabitha the Bear keyrings they needed, and the audio-guide was famously inaudible over the din of washers and dryers deeper into the building. They instead stood at the poster and dutifully read the whole information board, because they’d paid their entry to the museum and were gosh darn well going to make the most of it. It covered the hallowed origins of Tabitha the Bear herself.
Tabitha the Bear, as every school child of a certain generation knew, was a beloved cartoon bear of considerable prominence. Her beginning, unlike her end, was decidedly inauspicious, conceived as she was as a side character in ‘Poppy Prey’s Nightmare Existence’, an ill-conceived attempt at making a cartoon for 3 to 4 year olds about the plight of prey species in the wild. Each episode would see Poppy Prey, a nauseating chimera of all the most famous prey species in the world, trying desperately to escape the attention of a famous predator such as a wolf, an eagle, a shark, or a door-to-door glazing salesperson. During early focus groups this concept was labelled as ‘unnecessary and frightening; an assault on our nation’s youth and their innocence’, and it was clear that some minor modifications were necessary. Consequently the decision was made for all the characters to be given anthropomorphic livelihoods, and that they should live in the same quaint township as Poppy Prey. Poppy herself then became something of a wandering vagrant, subsisting off the kindness of her friends to enable her to get into mishaps all over town with the various carnivores therein.
Over the course of a surprisingly successful series Poppy managed to use her grasshopper legs to evade Pecky Tina the Raven Cleaner, her burrowing claws to hide from Lumberjack Max the Fox with an Axe, and her natural camouflage to hide in trembling, sweating fear from Postman Jake the Archery Drake. The greatest of her foes, however, would transpire to be Tabitha the Bear who Chokes out the Air.
In her vocation as a builder, Tabitha the Bear came across Poppy Prey during a house-hunting trip. Recognising an easy meal when she saw it, Tabitha used all of her construction nous to seal Poppy Prey into a confined crawlspace and flood it with dangerous aerosols. When that asphyxiation attempt failed due to adequate adherence to ventilation codes, Tabitha laid a nail-gun trap to pin Poppy against a spare sheet of plasterboard. Poppy’s excellent peripheral vision saw the nails coming and allowed her to dodge out of the way, but the savvy bear had already prepared a contingency; she lurked atop Mr. Climby, her faithful stepladder friend, and delivered a devastating elbow drop from atop the makeshift turnbuckle. Rendered breathless on the ground, Poppy would have been finished if not for an unfortunately timed phone call that Tabitha had to take, regarding a concrete delivery. Distracted by the impending arrival of materials, the builder bear failed to notice Poppy Prey making good her escape, and was forced to eat her sandwiches for lunch instead.
Despite the utter failure of Tabitha to finally catch and eat Poppy, something that the viewing public were incessantly screaming out for thanks to her inherently unlikable nature and harrowing appearance, the bear builder captured a nation’s heart. She would not be forgotten.
Poppy Prey’s Nightmare Existence came to an abrupt end, cancelled outright after a featured predator, the human, seeded nightmares in child and adult alike by chasing Poppy down using their signature move: the ‘whirlwind of hammers’. No-one was ever treated to the glorious end of Poppy, but Tabitha the Bear’s story was just beginning.
“I still remember it.” Terry muttered.
“As if it were yesterday.” Agreed Beth. “The sight of those white-knuckled fists clasped around wooden handles. The way he pirouetted on the spot. How the hammerheads crunched through windows and masonry as he closed in on Poppy Prey…” On her face was the characteristic thousand-yard stare of one who witnessed Poppy’s final hunt.
“Hey, it’s alright. Tabitha could fix that damage in no time thanks to Mr. Climby. No-one’s in any danger as long as they have their trusty stepladder on their-“ Terry patted at his shoulder instinctively but found only clothing, flesh and bone. “-oh. Oh yes.”
Silence fell between the two visitors staring at the Poppy Prey’s Nightmare Existence poster behind its protective glass. Was it there for the protection of the poster from angry viewers who remembered the programme all too well? Or was it there to give the guests reassurance that the whirlwind of hammers couldn’t get them? None knew for sure but the installers, and they’d long since stopped answering calls on the matter.
“We should push on. You’ll feel better when you see Mr. Climby, and I’ll feel better when I forget about Poppy for a while.” Beth decided, placing her hand on Terry’s for comfort. Her fingers felt like the rungs of a tiny ladder, and he felt them slow his racing heart almost immediately.
“Yes, you’re right. Thanks. Maybe we’ll find a general use ladder in there as well.” He added, brightening up a little.
“Er, yeah. Sure. Whatever you need to hear.”
Between most rooms of most museums there would be a door. It might be a push door, it might be a pull door, or in particularly fancy establishments it might be a sliding or concertina door, but it would be a door nonetheless. Tabitha the Bear Memorial Museum and Laundrette was not most museums.
“Do we wait until the cycle’s done?” Beth asked worriedly. Ahead of her the enormous washing machine drum that separated Exhibit One from the unrelatedly named “exhibit two (no capitals)” was rotating at tremendous speed.
“Surely not! Look at the display up there; it’s on a forty degree cottons program! We can’t be expected to stand here for that long.” Pointed out the laddersman, whose eyes were turned up more often than not, just in case there was a need to use a ladder to access something.
“Then we just… try to run through it?”
“I reckon so. I don’t see any fins on it so it’s not like they’ll sweep our feet out from under us.”
“Oh, yes. Very reassuring. It’s perfectly safe to walk on something spinning at 1200 rpm if I doesn’t have fins.” Snapped Beth, toying nervously with the radiator bleeding key in her pocket. If she were to fall, and it were to come out, and there were to be holes in the drum, and those holes were to be large enough for a radiator bleeding key to fall through, then she’d never cope with it. It was just too immediately risky.
“While a laddersman always seeks solid, stable ground in which to plant their friend of the rungs, sometimes we must take more extreme measures in order to complete our job. And I… I find myself rungless. There is therefore no danger from moving ground.” He incorrectly rationalised. With the undeserved confidence of a man who ‘reckons’ a lot but is unburdened by either knowledge or experience, Terry sprinted from a standing start into the spinning drum.
With some considerable curiosity Beth watched as Terry’s first two footfalls held true. Unfortunately they also saw him transported a significant way to the left, tipping him to a rather extreme angle before footfall three. Down Terry went towards the rotating surface of the drum, but where there should have been a hard impact there was a bounce instead. Heels over head he tumbled, juggled by the spinning corridor like a kumquat in a hamster ball as it rolls towards the sea. Seeing this display didn’t fill Beth with confidence regarding her radiator bleeding key. If anything it made her think that it would be even more likely to fall out. Every time Terry crashed into the rubbery, sprung drum and flew high into the air again she grew more convinced that she’d need to zip her pocket up for safety. By the time Terry had been shaken out of the other end of the drum, looking a little battered and disoriented for the pleasure, she’d taken the precautionary zipping measure and launched into a surprisingly athletic long-jump. With only a couple of additional bounces, and comparatively little ricocheting, Beth made it out of the other side, smiling innocently at Terry.
“Good thing you weren’t carrying a stepladder then. You could have been rather hurt.”
“On the contrary, Beth. A ladder can be laid across such perilous obstacles and act as a bridge, much as one might use for roofing tiles or over the canyons of West London.” Panted Terry, rubbing at near enough every part of his body in turn to soothe the impact wounds. “If I’d had a ladder with me then that whole thing would have been perfectly safe; I’ll be sure to recommend that they install some safety ladders at either end of this doorway and a few other dangerous locations that I’ve noticed.”
“They’ll get right on it, I’m sure. Are you alright to push on?”
“Of course. A laddersman should be accustomed to recovering from falls when it’s such a natural risk of the lifestyle.”
“Great, because I can already see some original Tabitha sketches!” Beth squealed excitedly, dashing towards a vibrating display cabinet. As Terry followed along, moving more slowly on account of the severe blows his knees had taken during the drum incident, he took stock of the room in case anything might need to be climbed. To his great satisfaction, he noticed that most of the displays in this exhibit were raised to at least chest height, before the unfamiliar sensation of roaming without a ladder reasserted itself in his mind. Finding a way to rise was normally so easy. He was normally so prepared. But not now, thanks to the gatekeeper of entry. Distressing as it was, he resolved not to let such deprivation stand in his way. A laddersman always finds a way to climb to their goal, he decided.
“Look at this Terry! You might need to wait for the spin to stop so that you can focus on it properly, but it shows the plans for Tabitha’s pilot episode!” Beth cried excitedly, beckoning him over. He didn’t really understand what she meant about waiting for the spin to stop until he got a little closer.
There was, it transpired, a reason that all of the displays in this room were so high up. Most laundrettes had rooms full of washing machines in neat rows that ran from one end of the room to almost the other, with a walkway permitted to exist at one end for reasons of access and good fashion. In most museums the displays were divided between the external walls and a series of islands in the middle to maximise the surface area from which visitors could view them. In this unholy fusion of laundrette and museum, however, they’d taken the approach of merging the two ideas. Enormous industrial washing machines were scattered around the room, not so much in rows as clusters, atop which the museum displays had been precariously perched. Clearly enough the curators had no interest in making sure that the display cases didn’t overhang the edges of the machines, leaving plenty of sharp edges and outcropping corners into which the public could walk.
It was in front of one such poorly-balanced cabinet that Beth stood, gawping at its contents, while the washing machine underneath screamed like a jet engine during its spin phase. From what Terry could see through the door in the dim room lighting, it appeared to be a towel wash, and the large mass of the load was making the display dance violently. Nearby a patron with an empty washing bag watched on anxiously as two strangers stood by their machine.
“See! It’s the original sketch of Tabitha’s Flatbed. They hadn’t decided to add the yellow paint around the wheel arches yet but they’ve got Mixey Matey on the back and there’s Tabitha’s trademark chisel on the passenger seat.”
“Oh yeah! Would you like for us to see it more at eye level though? I mean, we’re a bit low down right now don’t you think?”
“It would be better I sup-” was as far as Beth made it before Terry yanked open the detergent drawer and started to clamber upwards.
“The first step upwards! A laddersman’s favourite!” He yelled joyously, full of the thrill of the climb.
“I don’t think that’s load-bearing.” Observed Beth, watching the plastic drawer bend underneath his weight.
“A laddersman always knows whether or not his footing is secure.” Dismissed Terry, pushing upwards to look for another foothold. There was no such further foothold, but Terry was spared this disappointment by the cracking and breaking of his drawer. Along with some heavily diluted detergent and fabric softener water, the laddersman hit the floor underwhelmingly. “My footing was not secure.”
“Nor is the future of my towels!” Cried the attending client. He’d leapt up from his seat and was rushing over to assess the situation. “I hope that all my detergent made it in before you stamped the drawer off!”
“It’s on the spin so you’re fine, mate. Sorry that my friend is behaving so irrationally. He’s a laddersman without a ladder so… you know…” Explained Beth, a natural mediator when it came to public concern over Terry’s antics.
“A laddersman? Ah, here to see Mr. Climby no doubt. That checks out. And I guess this climbing lark is because his own ladder was checked in at the ticket office?”
“Got it in one.” Terry confirmed. “See, it was a reasonable course of action.” The latter remark was addressed to Beth, as if she hadn’t just stood up for him.
“I’d still prefer it if you didn’t make your lack of ladder the problem of my towels, but I get why you did it, sure. Just please be careful with the laundry of people you don’t know, alright? You don’t need to be high up to read the plaque about these sketches. I read them just fine from down here.”
With one hand the patron indicated towards the display cabinet as if that needed to be clarified. The other hand was narratively unimportant.
“Understood, citizen. The path of the laddersman is often fraught with danger and tough decisions, and any feedback we receive is graciously integrated into our future,B as we ascend the ladder of life.” Said the only person who would ever say that. Beth nodded sagely in agreement.
“Alright then, no problem. Enjoy your visit.” The patron said, quite satisfied with the responses received, before returning to their seat.
“We’ll just look at it from this height, Terry. It’s fine.”
The laddersman writhed uncomfortably, although how much of that was from the detergent water soaked into his trouser leg was unclear to all witnesses.
“We could really get a better view from altitude if we just grabbed the general purpose ladder.” He said, looking around desperately. “There must be one in here.”
“Terry there has never been a general use ladder anywhere. Ever. For any reason. There are just normal, owned ladders that you take it upon yourself to use.” Beth reminded him. “Just stand here next to me like a respectable laddersman who doesn’t need to always be on a ladder to function as a human being and read about this display.”
“Can’t we just get to Mr. Climby and get out of here?”
“No! We came here for me as well, Terry, and I want to read all about Tabitha!” Beth snapped at him. “And seeing how you’re behaving right now makes me feel like you’ll benefit from some time without rungs. You need to prove to yourself that you’re capable.”
“Of course I’m capable! I just don’t like doing it.”
“Do you take a stepladder to the shower with you Terry?” She asked flatly.
“What kind of question is that?”
“Do you, though?”
“What does that have to do with anything? Where did it even come from”
“Answer the question, laddersman.”
Terry’s nostrils flared and his eyes narrowed, but despite that impressive display of intimidation Beth’s gaze held firm on his own. He backed down, like one descending a ladder that has reached a height no-one needed to see.
“Yes.”
“There we go then. You need to learn that not every situation requires ladder enhancement. In fact, you need to learn that ladders don’t enhance every situation. And don’t you roll your eyes at me as if I’m talking nonsense, either. Just read the ruddy sign.”
The eyes ceased their spurious rotation and settled down on the information board as instructed.
In the power vacuum that Poppy Prey’s cancellation had left, many other shows vied to become the top of the pile. ‘Billy Bracken and the Forest Floor Life’ only managed a short run, thanks to the writers finding very few compelling stories to tell, or convincing sources of conflict, when all the characters were literally rooted into the ground. Slightly more successful was a game show for school aged children called ‘VerifiNation’; it required contestants to find errata in a several-page document about the history of the country, focusing on some minutia of local politics, agricultural policy, or blacksmithing techniques. Despite its calamitously dull core experience of watching children silently reading a tea-stained scroll of paper for a full thirty minutes, it ran for a complete season and attained viewership comparable to a village fete on a rainy day. Only upon reviewing as ‘a real and present threat to the wakefulness of those who so much as hear about it second hand’ was it finally cancelled, but tragically not before a whole second season had been filmed. Those children were not quick to forgive, but forgot what they had been reading almost immediately.
For just over a year this piteous struggle raged on, before a worthy successor entered the spotlight and shook up children’s after-school television in a way that would not be felt again for several days. Lobbying by people with nothing better to do, and an enormously misplaced sense of priority, had been heard loud and clear by the production network behind Poppy Prey, and Tabitha the Bear was finally the star of her own cartoon.
Still working as a builder but no longer shackled to just the one town, Tabitha the Bear roamed the whole world in search of unique construction problems to solve with her crew of sentient tools and a total lack of discernible ethics. Although senior executives had argued against having a morally bankrupt predator as the face of a children’s show, the writers had doggedly refused to introduce any kind of contradiction into the character of Tabitha as presented in Poppy Prey. She’d started life by setting traps for an innocent aberration of nature, and any deviation from that would make the audience riot, they maintained. Too disinterested to have two conversations on the matter, the executives gave up and went for an expensive lunch instead, leaving Tabitha to exercise her cruelty uninterrupted.
Airing three afternoons a week without repeats, Tabitha the Bear was an episodic epic of educational material on the architecture of the world, useful DIY techniques for repairing an array of structural problems, and inventive uses of building supplies to ensnare unsuspecting people. Windy MacGuire the Spool of Wire was often used to create trip hazards as the first stage or even the trigger for a trap, normally after explaining what gauge of wire was most commonly used for lighting rings in that episode’s location. Billy McClucket the Ten Gallon Bucket had many roles to play, but the fan favourite was his tag-team with Danny Gringes the Door with Hinges, whereby he’d hide on Danny’s head while full of quick-setting cement and wait for some goon to make him drop. There was even a sense of inter-cast tension courtesy of Ted Brammer the Club Hammer and Nervous Gail the Three-inch Nail, for reasons that were both obvious and only ever implied. Although nearly everything Tabitha did was dangerous, the writers drew the line at showing hammer-on-nail violence. No-one ever received a satisfactory justification as to why the arbitrary line was drawn there.
For Terry Bingrove, Mr. Climby was the shining star of the whole series and stood head and shoulders, quite literally, above the rest of the cast. When Billy Mclucket Bucket needed to get up high, Tabitha took him there using Mr. Climby. Whenever Windy Macguire was to be strung from a curtain rail to a floorboard for inadequately explained reasons, Mr. Climby would bring the rail within reach. Nervous Gail would even hide atop Mr. Climby’s top step when Ted Brammer was present, although that often ended in disaster for the much-abused feet of Derrick O’Klater, Painter and Decorator. The laddersman couldn’t remember whether his love of ladders in general or his love of Mr. Climby had come first, but the two were so inseparable in his head that it didn’t matter any longer. For years he’d dreamed of being able to set foot on those brightly coloured rungs himself, carrying up Sandra Law the Floorboard Saw to cut someone’s floorboards out from underneath them, or lugging Ballast Jack the Gravel Sack up high for a terrible drop attack. The prospect of seeing his hero, or at least a promotional version of him, in real life was enough to make him check in a stepladder at the ticket office. As is presumably clear by now, Terry did not make such a concession lightly.
“I’d forgotten the time they used a curtain rail for Windy.” Smiled Beth, remembering how the home’s owner had come back into the room and pivoted over Windy’s distended limbs, plummeting through some tactically removed floorboards and into a waiting pot of broth. “I think I liked it most when the tripwire was put in front of the toilet and that week’s victim landed in the cistern.”
“Oh yeah!” Terry cried happily as the memory came back to him. “Tabitha slapped him over the back of the head with the basin, right?”
“Exactly so.” Sighed Beth, wistfully. “Exactly so.”
“My favourite is when everyone went leapt off the top of Mr. Climby and body slammed Larry Buster the Loss Adjuster in the Zurich episode.” Revealed Terry. “Remember how Larry was going to get back up again when Mr. Climby cleverly snapped shut on his waist? No other character in that show could pull off a move like that. Mr. Climby was amazing, as are all stepladders. I suppose that kind of lethal military application is a part of why they didn’t want me bringing mine in here with me.”
“Undoubtedly so, friend. Put a replica of Mr. Climby in the hands of someone who’s versed in the history of Tabitha the Bear and there’s no end to the destruction they might cause.”
“Fair. But to suspect that a laddersman might do that? We have a creed and we are terribly responsible with our ladders.”
“I’m sure they realise that you’re more responsible with your ladder than the layperson, but how could they ever discriminate when there’s still no accrediting body to verify that you’re a responsible laddersman, hm? If you can’t prove it then their hands are bound.” Beth surmised diplomatically.
“I’m still trying, Beth, it’s just that there don’t seem to be many other dedicated ladderspeople. Without more members, no-one’s ever going to takes the Institute of Chartered Ladderspeople seriously.”
“One day, Terry.” Beth said, patting him on the arm. “One day. But until then, shall we take a look at some more of the exhibits in here? I can see a picture of Tabitha using Mr. Climby to replace a cracked lintel and use the pieces to make rock-drop trap for an estate agent over there.”
Naturally, as soon as Terry heard the words Mr. Climby he had dashed off in the direction of Beth’s pointing. That episode was a firm favourite of his.
Between various pages of concept art for Tabitha’s first series, numerous trinkets from the production and a few moments spent helping someone to set up a thirty degree cotton wash, Terry and Beth spent almost an hour in exhibit two. Not one to control his impulses for long, Terry had taken to scaling some of the more climbable display cases before long, using locks, handles, and even minor imperfections in the framework as impromptu rungs whenever Beth was distracted. Eventually she just stopped caring; either the museum staff would intervene or they wouldn’t, but it didn’t need to distract her from learning about how the ultra-realistic claw animation was achieved by the showrunners. By the time they were both done, even their previously harangued launderer had unloaded the machine with the broken detergent drawer and made their way through to exhibit three.
Perhaps as a lesson learned from the previous doorway, or perhaps just as a crackpot idea that happened not to be terrible, the doorway between exhibits two and three did not rotate. It did not spin, nor did it roll. It was a nice, simple solid piece of static flooring in a rectangular aperture that also had quad jets of hot, dry air blasted into the centre. It’d have done wonders for Terry’s trousers immediately after the original climbing incident, but an hour of perusing interesting Tabitha trinkets had already done the bulk of the drying work. The tidemarks of precipitated detergent stood as a monument to his foolishness.
Warmed, thoroughly dried and a little windswept the two companions entered exhibit three and Terry’s world faded almost to black. The walls were lost in darkness, everything was silence, the floor existed only as a straight line leading up to a spotlight, and in the centre of that void, that abyss of the exhibit, stood a single spotlight of radiance. It surrounded a life-size rendering of Mr. Climby in all its polychromatic, multi-runged, slip-proof glory.
“It’s even more beautiful than I imagined.” Terry mumbled. Indeed was a becoming example of a stepladder; even the staunchest ladder-agnostic would have to admit that much.
“To be fair, it’s very cool. And big! I think you forget that Tabitha is a fully grown 8 foot bear in the show, so all her tools are scaled up to match.”
“Yes! Definitely! That’s way bigger than the standard step size. Think of the efficiency for getting up to a roof… your height gain per stride would be phenomenal.”
“Probably so, I suppose.” Beth replied, dutifully but disinterestedly. “You can make a custom one to the same measurements and give it a go once you’re home. But go on, get close up to it, it’s why we came here!”
With a beaming grin, much like that of a child who has just been given the opportunity to guard a bathtub full of sweets without witnesses, Terry scampered his way over to the central display. Mr. Climby, as befitted a ladder of his importance, was on a raised dais that allowed his already enormous height to tower even further above the milling crowds. Everything about it, from the colours to the shapes to the googly eyes on either strut, matched perfectly with both Terry’s recollection and the swathe of memorabilia elsewhere in the museum. Whoever had made this was a real master of the art, and Terry resolved that he must make the artificer’s acquaintance. A Mr. Climby of his own would make him the greatest laddersman in the world.
A realisation struck him.
“There’s no glass, Beth! We can look at it directly, unobscured by reflections or smears. No condensation distracts the gaze.”
“There’s also a sign that says not to touch the exhibits, Terry. We passed it on the way in, remember?” She called from behind him.
“Who said I was going to touch it?”
“Your extended hand that’s currently resting on the bottom rung...”
Terry snatched it back.
“Oh, yes well… I mean… it’s not really an exhibit is it?” Terry said, his gaze locked on the step grips.
“Oh?” Beth replied. Something in her voice spoke of real fascination for the first time since they’d entered the museum and it warmed the laddersman’s heart.
“I’m glad you’re finally as taken by Mr. Climby as I am!” He said, staring at the rubber grips on Mr. Climby’s feet. “What I’m saying is that this isn’t an exhibit because it was never part of the show. It’s a replica placed here for the entertainment of the visiting public. It’s left open without a display case for a reason, and that must be because it’s a general use ladder…” Slowly the focus left Terry’s eyes and he found himself staring into the boundless void of his own delusion.
“Yeah… yeah…” Beth’s voice echoed loosely through his head. It was more agreeable than he’d expected her to be, but there was no sense in questioning that.
“And this small sign here that says ‘Please do not climb the ladder’ is clearly a joke, because Mr. Climby is a stepladder. Totally different. Good one, proprietors of the museum. Yes, this must be here for us to climb! I’m finally going to climb Mr. Climby!”
“Yes!” Cried Beth. It was far more encouragement than the laddersman needed, and with a two-footed jump he launched himself onto the dais. He stood at the base of Mr. Climby for a just a moment, grateful for the bounty of ascension he was about to take. The faint sound of footsteps on the flooring below him barely registered as he grasped the struts and lifted a foot. The step was so high! He engaged muscles that no standard laddersman could ever hope to use in their professional career, and with just that one motion he suddenly loomed over the whole room. The feeling was sublime.
“Hey! Stop that!” An unknown voice shouted, but Terry was too far gone. Fearing rebukes from other patrons, those who were thirsty to climb Mr. Climby and didn’t want to be shown up by such a talented laddersman, Terry redoubled his efforts. With the legs of a gazelle who’d received their ‘working at height’ training the laddersman climbed at ferocious speed, Mr. Climby holding rock solid and steady beneath him. It was just one more sign of a quality piece of equipment, the exact thing he’d expect of Tabitha’s second in command. The hierarchy of tools had never been explicitly outlined in the show, but Terry knew instinctively that Mr. Climby answered to no-one but the bear herself.
“I said stop!” The voice repeated, but Terry heeded it not. His feet were so sure and secure wherever they landed. No matter the angle or step coverage by the foot, the step-grips held him firm. It was a beautiful symphony of climbing equipment, and tears started to well in his eyes at the magnificence of it all.
“You’ll be burned! There’ll be scorching hot water everywhere, stop!”
Terry jolted to a halt, putting all his momentum into Mr. Climby. It held firm as if the grown man’s weight had been nothing more than a feather on the breeze. He supposed these hallowed rungs had been designed to carry the weight of Tabitha and her traps, and therefore he should be as nothing to them. But appreciation of good ladder build quality aside, the words had pulled his attention back to the museum. No-one had ever mentioned hot water to him whilst laddering before.
From his position of height and vantage, the laddersman looked down at the exhibit room around himself. Finally, now that his ladder-frenzy symptoms were fading, he could take it all in and appreciate where he was. As was to be expected from the general flow of both the museum and laundry in general, this room was a cataclysm of tumble dryers. Some of them were left for the banal pursuit of drying clothes, but many more had been used as the hottest, driest display cabinets that the museum could afford. Only the most robust items had been placed in this room and subjected to the hot, tumbling abuse of such a display technique, of course, but even so it fell short of making them easy to view or particularly ecologically friendly. Fortunately for Mr. Climby, he was the only display which hadn’t been stored inside one of the hot, rotating drums, presumably for logistical reasons. It had certainly made Terry’s job of climbing it that much easier.
Terry Bingrove, the laddersman, hadn’t stopped to admire the layout of the museum, however. He’d stopped to check what on earth the shouting was about, and to see if he was on the cusp of being scalded for his sins. What he discovered on that subject was only partially good news.
The good part, with which it’s often nice to start, was that nobody had any intention of dousing Terry in boiling liquid. It very much seemed like the declarations involving that particular temperature of that particular fluid were earnest warnings. What made that goodness so partial, rather than complete, was its relation to Beth.
“Look at it! There’ll be so much air in there; the water evaporates and gets carried away through these tubes. Can you imagine how much more efficient it’ll be when there’s just condensed water carrying all that heat?” She cackled. Terry spotted her standing atop a bank of tumble dryers, clutching a radiator bleeding key in her hand and staring hungrily at a set of pipes which ran along the wall. It was a very familiar kind of stare, but in his experience it was normally directed at unusual ladders, or the high places that they might be used to reach.
“What’s happening in here?!” A new voice demanded, with as much hot air as the doorway through which it entered. Terry briefly turned away from Beth to see an official-looking man in a museum uniform, striding forwards angrily. By his bearing and demands, the laddersman assumed him to be some kind of marshal or security guard. Instinctively Terry took another step up Mr. Climby. The appearance of officials often heralded the end of his laddertime, so he had to make the most of it.
“This woman’s trying to bleed the waste pipes from the active dryers.” Complained the original voice. It was only then that Terry acknowledged the loud, persistent humming and knocking sounds that only a room of tumble dryers could hope to produce, acting as a strangely soothing sound bed for the room.
“So you’re not calling me in here because of this berk on Mr. Climby?” The marshal asked.
“For who- oh for goodness sake.” Complained the original voice, having now witnessed Terry’s achievements.
“I’m laddersman, it’s alright!” Reassured Terry. In all the times he’d shouted that down during a ladder trespass it had worked precisely never. You didn’t get to be an esteemed laddersman like Terry by giving up on optimism however.
“What is the bloody matter with people! There are signs saying not to climb the ladder and not to tamper with the pipework! How is that so hard?!” Raged the marshal. “I don’t have time for you right now, so just get down from there while I deal with this lunatic on the dryers. I swear to goodness we are putting up those barriers whether the curator likes it or not.”
Wide eyed and fearful, the laddersman gripped Mr. Climby tightly. He was only two steps away from the top, from the pinnacle of what his childhood hero of a stepladder could offer to the world. Up there at the heady heights of his top step, from which Tabitha herself dropped a Billy McClucket full of scrap iron on a passing cyclist in episode 5, he would have command of the whole exhibit. Like impressive city tower blocks threatened to graze the sky, Terry Bingrove the Laddersman would threaten to graze the polystyrene ceiling tiles if he finished his ascent. Looking upwards, Terry saw a flickering light fitting directly above Mr. Climby’s apex. The bulbs therein were so tantalisingly close, so ripe for the stealing. If he took them out then it would cover for Beth’s actions down below, or at least make them more inconvenient to stop, and it would be just the kind of mischief of which Tabitha herself might feel proud. If he got down now, and the marshal followed through on their threat of raising a barrier around Mr. Climby’s dais, then he might never get this chance again. Terry reached out a hand to grasp higher on the strut and take his next step.
“What even is a laddersman? Trespass is trespass.” The marshal seethed to himself as he moved towards Beth. Terry’s hand stopped.
What was a laddersman? Seeing himself there, on another person’s ladder, reaching up to climb despite being asked not to, thinking of stealing lightbulbs for no reason other than being able to do so… was this what he wanted his order to stand for? Was this what it meant to be a man of the rungs? He’d been expressly told that lightbulb theft was not permitted, and he’d even let himself be de-laddered in pursuit of adherence to that rule. To commit such abhorrent acts now would be to spit in the face of his faithful companion, locked away behind the gate of stepladder returns, and to break his own word; neither one of those things was permissible.
Mr. Climby’s spell faded. Terry looked down at Beth, slotting her radiator bleeding key into a brass fitting with a gleeful squeal, and saw the horrifying face of obsession reflected back at him. She’d tried to keep him safe from the same thing that was about to bring her low. He wouldn’t let that happen.
“A laddersman is a man of honour. One who lives by the Laddersman’s Creed and one who respects the property of others, as well as the safety and wellbeing of their friends.” He bellowed from his vantage point. “Beth! Stop! For the love of Tabitha the Bear and Richard Radiator the Heat Disseminator, stop!”
“Richard loved to be bled!” She cried back, bringing back memories of the surprisingly dark episode in which that very line had been spoken.
“Does a rad-keyswoman not have a duty to keep their workplace safe?” He asked, sliding down Mr. Climby with deft agility and leaping athletically from the dais. A pang in his lower back told him that he’d come to regret such showboating later. “You know never to bleed a rad when the system is heated, Beth.”
“This is probably fine. I can’t see a thermostat set to high anywhere.” She argued, giving the key a quarter turn.
“There’s no stat on this system, Beth! It uses a simple timer system and it’s currently on. Look around you; the dryers are running. The water will be red hot. Now is not the time for bleeding.”
“The ladder maniac is right. He’s come down, so you should also stop your nonsense.” The marshal added, rather less diplomatically.
“Terry’s off Mr. Climby?!” Beth asked in shock. Her focus on the radiator bleeding key was broken, and she turned round to face her surprisingly grounded friend. He was dashing towards her with a recognisable limp. He’d clearly leapt off something or other again. “But you… you’d never dismount that…”
“It wasn’t appropriate for me to climb him.” The laddersman wheezed, the words themselves hurting him as they came out. “Sometimes being a laddersman means knowing when not to climb. The same with a rad-keyswoman.”
“Rad-keyswomen never have to climb anything.” She shot back immediately.
“You know exactly what I meant!”
“I do…” She conceded softly. Her hand was still on the key but the muscles had relaxed. Terry dared to hope that she might have been won over.
As it transpired, his hope was totally irrelevant, because the marshal reached Beth at that moment and bodily hauled her away from the pipework.
“You two are both out of here right now! Never set foot in this place again; you for climbing all over the exhibits and you for trying to bloody well burn everyone.”
“Yes, yes sir. We’ll go quietly.” Accepted Terry. Beth was in no position to argue, on account of finding herself on the marshal’s shoulders.
Swiftly and firmly they were led out of exhibit three, past stepladder returns with much reluctance and huffing, and then back out onto the street. The late morning breeze was brisk against their cheeks after the hot humidity of the dryer room. A cloud drifted past the sun, casting dappled shade over them as it went.
“I’m proud of you, Terry. You managed to pull yourself away from Mr. Climby, even without my help. I… I apologise for my own indiscretions.” Beth said quietly.
“Not at all, Beth. I couldn’t have done any of this without you.” The laddersman said, shifting his stepladder onto his other shoulder. “I think this was a rite of passage for me, you know? Being able to resist the lure of the rung.”
Beth sniggered.
“What?” Terry demanded. She had a horrifyingly ‘after-school special’ look on her face.
“You gained height after all, in there. But instead of climbing, I guess you just grew.”