Chapter 5: Choosing A Target

In the coffee session after the service David surveyed the members of the congregation and was pleased to see that there were several he remembered, and among them were some who had helped with his wife’s last illness. The churchwarden and the Vicar arrived as he was still standing in the church hall doorway.

“Of course many of the congregation have rushed off home for Sunday lunch,” Martha remarked, desperately trying to ingratiate herself, “So I have started a regular coffee morning on Saturdays here from ten o’clock. I hope we may see you there from time to time.”

“That sounds interesting,” he replied, But not for the reason you think.

Predictably, the arrival of a personable, solvent, house owning widower caused a flutter among the ladies present. Those who had known June Ransome explained the background to the newcomers, and those who were divorced or widowed viewed him with varying degrees of interest.

For himself, David surveyed the company and mentally dismissed the idea of chasing any of those present. Perhaps I’ll have better luck on Saturday, he thought, as most of these are with husbands or with very young children. I’ve had enough of married women and I really don’t know how to get on well with infant school children. And the ones who have neither are either geriatrics or total nonentities.

Out of idle curiosity he asked who the contralto was. It seemed that she had arrived in the area at the same time as the new Vicar, was a lodger in the vicarage, and hints were dropped that she was in fact the Vicar’s lesbian lover. David discarded that notion as a bit far-fetched. Such rumours always abounded when two people lived at the same address.

Saturday morning coffee was a different matter he could see at once. Arriving at about quarter past ten he was greeted effusively by the organist, who apologised for not speaking on the Sunday. Clearly this man needed something, and David wondered, based on what he had heard the previous Sunday during the service, whether it was organ playing lessons or whether the instrument was on its last legs. Out of sheer politeness he did not ask which was the problem.

Several of the ladies who had known David, and his late wife June, spoke to him and he noticed that at least one whose husband they had known no longer wore a wedding band. One or two others were divorced or widowed when June had been a regular at All Saints and were within five or so years of David’s age.

By the end of the morning David had selected three possible targets for his next foray into the enjoyable hobby of dominating a woman. Penelope Huxtable was a divorcée of about his age, but the women who had been June’s friends really did not seem to like her. This intrigued him, and she also had the advantage in his eyes of not having known June.

Julia Gore was a widow some five years older than himself, but who looked after herself very carefully. She had been most attentive to June in her dying months and in casual conversations seemed most solicitous of David’s well being, and especially of the physical exercise and healthy eating aspects.

Anne Lucas, the third possibility was a divorcée but he had several minor reservations about her. The most prominent of these was that she was some five years younger than him, and therefore might still be capable of child bearing. While this did not rule her out entirely, David really did not want the bother of nursing her through the menopause, nor the bother of what he thought of as a bloody waste of fucking time. The effect of starting a second family over twenty years after the first one did not unduly worry him, but he thought it might be unwise.