Chapter 1

The Parish Counselors of Little Sprewell-under-Fosse were having what they all gloomily suspected to be one of their last ever meetings as a corporate body. All of the members had good reason to be convinced that their days of elected office were numbered. The previous year had not been a good one for any of them. They had all been overwhelmed by various kinds of shame and threatened scandal.

The Honorable Counselor Colonel Foxe-Benson-Fortescue had not done his already dubious reputation a great deal of good by being discovered naked and indulging in intercourse with his wife’s buxom and educationally subnormal niece.

Counselor Evans-Foster was deeply troubled and fearful as a result of an affair of the heart with a psychopathic and vengeful ex-soldier who was now threatening to reveal all – with a wealth of documentary and photographic evidence, not only to the Counselor’s wife but to a very much wider public.

Counselor Mrs. Jenkinson, the only female on the Parish Council, was in daily fear that compromising photographs depicting her in the course of performing unnatural acts with an Irish Wolfhound were about to be distributed among the townsfolk.

The other two Counselors were also aware that their own

behavior, whilst by no means as luridly disgraceful as that of the above three, had, nevertheless, failed to live up to the high standards demanded by the electorate – an electorate whose members themselves consistently and resolutely declined to uphold such standards themselves.

They were meeting to discuss the arrangements for the forthcoming annual village Spring Fete.

This was an occasion that had become widely famous in recent years. Owing to judicious and highly unscrupulous marketing, it had been presented to the world as a relic of a bygone era – a link to the Merrie Englander of old, instead of the carefully devised piece of increasingly vulgar and tawdry show biz that, in reality, it was.

All members of the parish Council were determined to end their days of office on an appropriately high and sleazy note. If only they could exceed the total takings of last year’s event – who knows – they might even have a sporting chance of reelection!

“The ‘Spotted Lady’ tent went down very well last year,” said the Colonel. “I thought it a bit feeble, personally, but it’s amazing what a bit of exposed female flesh will do to bring in the money.”

The event to which the good and gallant Colonel was referring was a tent inside which was a platform, on which had reposed the homely, cheerfully smiling and buxom form of Dorothy Parrish, her ample young body covered with spots of black paint, which tended partially to conceal much of her strategic areas from view. Dorothy was a non-too-clever and sad to say, a not-too-pretty lady, whose good-natured willingness to allow all and sundry to experience the delights of her body more than made up for the said body’s imperfections. In any case, Dorothy was young and to the old and middle-aged, youth have its own beauty, particularly when freely available for a modest fee or in her case no fee at all.

“Maybe we could dispense with the tent this time round and have the display open for all to see. It would mean any passing tourist coaches might stop and take a closer look!”

This suggestion from the animal-loving Mrs. Jenkinson drew some approval, but the Colonel was not convinced.

“If people don’t have to queue to get into the tent, they will see all of Dorothy for

nothing – not that they can’t anyway, whenever they like! No. Not a good idea, I’m afraid. You know what the townsfolk are like. As tightfisted a bunch of skinflints as you’re ever likely to have the misfortune to meet.”

“We could always cordon off the town square so that nobody could get near the platform without paying an entrance fee and we needn’t have another ‘Spotted Lady’, but something more imaginative and daring, involving more than one lady. The Raynsford cousins are staying at the Hall – I dare say they could be persuaded to help in a good cause,” replied Mrs. Jenkinson.

At the mention of these two young ladies, the Colonel fell silent for a while. These were among the two most desirable young sirens he had seen at any time in the course of a long and sexually active life, a life that had taken him from the North West Frontier to the steaming jungles of Equatorial Africa, the Far East and many other exotic locations where many a sultry and dusky damsel had enlivened his leisure hours.

Julia Raynsford was a delight to watch as she walked through the little town, her firm and voluptuous breasts seeming to defy gravity as she strode around, her braless condition delightfully obvious to all. The gyrations of her generous and mellifluous young bottom as she went about her daily business had rightly been described by the Reverend Mr. Scott-Talbot, the town’s worldly-wise Rector, as “Poetry in Motion.”

Mr. Gregg, the local butcher had reacted in a less high-flown manner by describing her walk as, “a Fucking Fifteen-Jewel Movement.” He had further ventured to express the notion that there was no limit to the sum he would be prepared to pay in order to enjoy what he described as, “One lovely fucking night with that gorgeous little prick-teaser.”

In a word, Julia Raynsford was head-turning lovely, as old Josiah Hemlock had discovered to his cost on a famous occasion. Josiah had been emerging from the hairdresser’s one Saturday morning preparing to make his arthritic way to the Kings Arms for his lunchtime drink, when he espied the fair Julia’s splendid young bottom, attired as ever in close fitting Lycra shorts (it was high summer at the time, but this splendid young lady was always reluctant to cover too much of herself even when the weather was far from clement) and his head swiveled involuntarily around, the better to observe her progress as that splendid posterior wiggled its sinuously lovely way along the High Street.

Sadly for Josiah, his arthritic neck let him down at that point and his head remained obstinately stuck in the turned position for long afterwards. It was weeks before he was able to look straight ahead without having to engage his old frame in the most uncomfortable contortions, much to the amusement of the town’s ribald and unsympathetic youth. Despite all this, old Josiah remained one of Julia’s devoted admirers.

The other cousin was Beatrice Patterson. Why the two were always referred to as the Raynsford Cousins was something no one had ever satisfactorily explained. Where her fair-haired cousin was pneumatic and blonde, Beatrice was dark, tall and slender. Where Julia exuded crude sexuality, Beatrice was ethereally and distantly beautiful, seeming to glide along rather than walk. Where Julia was always scrupulously careful to wear the most scanty and figure-hugging clothes, Beatrice affected long, and loose-fitting attire, with skirts that swept along the ground as she walked. It was even rumored at one time that she didn’t actually have legs, but moved around on castors.

However ethereal her appearance, though, there was nothing else otherworldly about Beatrice! Her appetites were as determinedly materialistic and devoted to the single-minded pursuit of carnal pleasure as were her cousin’s. Where the one used her physical charm to knock men sideways with a full-frontal assault, the other was more subtle but every bit as devastating. Both girls exulted in the effect that they had on the men of the village although they were united in their contemptuous dismissal of these men as a bunch of rural yokels. They wanted admiration, but only from a safe distance. When it came to satisfying their healthy and voracious young carnal appetites, it was the bodies of a succession of well-connected and well-born young men from London, rather than the simple villagers, who gave them physical satisfaction.

The Colonel returned from his mental contemplation of these two lovelies and took command of the situation again in his brusque and efficient manner.

“Lovely girls both, but a bit standoffish. I can’t honestly see them making an exhibition of themselves to please our local mobbish tendency. Pity, though - they’re two gorgeous young ladies – they’d strip really well, especially Julia!”

“Maybe we could appeal to their sense of social responsibility,” said Mrs. Jenkinson, “tell them how big a contribution a successful fete would make to the new changing rooms”

This was a reference to the projected development at the local playing field. The existing facilities were primitive, with only cold showers and primitive toilet facilities. In the winter a cold wind whistled through the wooden and all-too-well-ventilated structure.

Those of a ruggedly Spartan disposition were well satisfied with this state of affairs and scorned any idea making the place more comfortable, but such hardy souls were an increasing minority nowadays. And they could always use an outside cold shower, as those advocating the improvements assured them.

“Why should those two care about a facility they are never going to use,” sighed Mr. Evans-Foster. “When they stay up at the Hall they have that superb gymnasium, the tennis courts and two swimming pools. I can’t say I blame them, though. Some of the village girls would love to have the chance of sorting them out on the playing field and making them look a bit less pretty for a while.”

“Those two could take pretty good care of themselves. They aren’t scared of anybody and they don’t need to be,” said Mrs.

Jenkinson. < “Anyone who took either of them on would pretty soon be sorry. They’re both into various martial arts and young Julia is a wonderful boxer, believe it or not, for such a sweet-faced kid. They were both tomboys as little girls and there’s still a bit of it in them now. No – it’s just social snobbery keeps them from joining in local events, but I think I might have a chance of talking them into doing something for us. I know for a fact that their cousin, the Brigadier thinks they need to come out of their shell and they would do anything to please him. I’ll go up to the Hall and have a word with them all.”

Julia and Beatrice were lying side by side in the Spring sunshine on the Hall’s extensive lawn, whence they had just taken themselves. Each lay with her chin propped up by her cupped hand and each was in a reflective mood. Mrs. Jenkinson had just left the Hall after a long and persuasive sales pitch in which that good lady had extolled the virtues of the new mooted communal facilities and the duties of those who are more fortunate in life’s lottery towards those upon whom Lady Luck had smiled less kindly.

“A little bit of harmless fun,” was how this good lady had described the forthcoming fete and carnival. The pair had heard about last year’s “harmless fun” and were none too keen to be bracketed with the equine-faced and unintelligent Dorothy as a source of amusement to the village’s drunken and lascivious youth.

“Aren’t there any other local girls who would bare a bit of flesh?” Julia had asked at one point in the conversation. “There must surely be a few presentable girls, even amongst that lot of inbred turnip-headed grotesques.”