22: The end

Not all stories are happy. Some are. Others are very sad. Most are a bit of a mix. Most lives, like stories, are a bit of a mix.

The members of the Potting Shed Committee quickly agree to Chairman Alcock’s plan. They can always save up more money, later, for happy future breakfasts of marmalade, fine coffee and fruit juice.

Alcock takes the rest of the savings to address the cause of Masongill’s sadness, although he will never tell Masongill what he has done. From the PO Box in London, he buys the very expensive ‘ordnance’, which ticks as he posts it, cunningly disguised, to an address in the town just ‘down the road’ from Masongill’s home village. Masongill’s life has been made very unhappy because of a Bad Thing and Alcock, his friend, cannot let that pass. Something must be done.

In doing so he brings our story to an end in what we might call ‘moral ambiguity’. Was it right to do - or at least to try to do - a bad thing to balance the other, previous, Bad Thing? I do not think we can say for sure. But in doing this, the Potting Shed community has supported and loved one of its own, even though he will never know what has happened. 

No one will ever again say they preferred the chipper Juggins to the melancholy Masongill but should he ever in the future retreat - or is it in fact advance? - again into Juggins, with his sponge and very fine hat, neither will they rush to call him ‘False’. In the meantime, they will look after Masongill in his sadness.

Afterwards, Alcock goes outside to look at the night and to wonder.

The End.