Chapter 14

Mrs Patterson, for this was the jealous lady's name, brandished the high denomination note before Julia's horrified eyes.

"I suppose you know how many blows I get to give you with this much money?" she asked with a nasty smile.

"Meaning you're too thick to work it out yourself, I suppose, you half-wit. Well, I don't make a habit of helping low-class idiots like you with their sums, but I'm in a good mood today, luckily for you! You get twenty, but as you're a bulk buyer, so to speak, you get a bonus of five. Listen very carefully you turnip brained lump of lard, twenty plus five equals twen-ty fi-ve - got that, bird brain? Twenty five. I'll count them out as you deliver them to me, since you almost certainly can't count higher than five! Shall we get on with it? I've things to do."

Julia bent over again, thankfully for the last time that afternoon and began counting off the strokes in a clear and unwavering voice which faltered not once until all twenty five soundly delivered slashes of the leather strop had inflicted yet more agony to her already sore bottom.

It had been a painful hour already. Most of her customers had been pretty gentle, especially the boys of the village and the visitors, and had only delivered lightly stinging blows which had not bothered her a lot, but some of the village women in the queue had scarcely been able to believe their luck as they laid viciously into that beautiful and hated bum, about which they had heard with increasingly jealous rage, their husbands and boy friends rhapsodising for so long.

Some of the other women had hurt her, but Mrs Patterson's strength and fury were a revelation both to the by now silent onlookers and to the suffering Julia. Everybody expected the poor girl, whose incredible and defiant bravery had captured their absolute and unstinting admiration by this time, to faint away at any moment. Finally the ordeal was over. Mrs Patterson laid down the strop, breathing heavily after her exertion, into which she had thrown her all.

"How did you loike that you dirty, stuck up, toffee nosed little tart?" asked this far from amiable lady as soon as she had sufficiently recovered her breath.

"I hardly felt a thing, you feeble cripple. And how do you like THIS?"

Those who witnessed what followed were to talk it over among themselves for years afterwards. So much seemed to happen in such a minuscule atom of time, that nobody could ever take it in or call it back to mind in any but the sketchiest of detail. The bent over Julia straightened up and wheeled round. Before anybody was aware of any movement taking place, Mrs Patterson was reeling back senseless into the arms of the onlookers after Julia's expertly and shrewdly aimed fist had flashed out and crashed solidly into her jaw, fracturing it in three places with a loud and sickening noise which all who had heard it would remember until his or her dying day.

Mrs Patterson's long-suffering husband was to become an even greater admirer of Julia after this, even than he been before, since it was for several blessed and peaceful weeks that he was to be spared the hated sound of his wife's unmelodious and incessantly nagging voice, as she lay in hospital with her jaw wired up, only able to take liquid nourishment through a straw. There was nothing that was too good for Julia in his view - he was to worship her from afar for the rest of his days!