Chapter 5

For some unfathomable reason, apart from the fact that it was Charley’s day off, it was my turn to get supper. I am convinced that nine times out of ten when she is off it is my turn. I was attempting to relieve some shallots of their skins which was taking me rather a long time.

“I’ll bet Raymond Blanc has a clever way of doing this, he just calls over a skivvy and says ‘‘ere peel ziss you miserable underling’.”

“You heard that on the box this morning, and it wasn’t Raymond Blanc, it was Michel Roux.” HL helpfully informed me.

“They all sound alike to me.” I replied as I finally got the thing out of it’s brown skin.

Now I don’t want either ‘sound alike’ and ‘brown skin’ to be taken as racist, well, okay, the bit about Les Grenouille all sounding alike is fair, but shallots, being little onions do have brown skins. I suppose I do have a bit of a thing about our European neighbours, not that I am in favour of leaving the European whatever, I’m a firm believer in keeping your friends close ... and your enemies even closer, but some of them can be intensely irritating. The Swedes for instance. Who on earth needs flat packed furniture I ask you? If we had been meant to assemble furniture ourselves, unless like me it’s your job, we would have a screwdriver bit on the end of our finger. Don’t be silly of course I haven’t.

And then there is a certain Mr Rausing, yet another Swede with a ridiculous idea, and who, in my not in the least humble opinion, should be dung up and shot. You may well ask what this fellow did – past tense since he has shuffled off this mortal coil – to upset me. He was the inventor of the tetra pack, the progenitor of fruit juice in boxes. This ludicrous idea has caused me and I’m sure many of you, no end of trouble. Every time you open one the chances are extremely high that you will transfer a good deal of the contents to the kitchen floor. You grasp the pack firmly, because the seal always requires some effort to open, and then as soon as it gives way, some of the contents will come gushing out before you can release your grip.

I will not go into their strange taste in root vegetables.

But enough, you’ll get the impression that I am a whinging old git.

Anyway, all I was doing was frying of some chopped bacon and shallot in some butter, adding oregano and black pepper, then flour and milk to make a pasta sauce. Heavens, if I do much more than that the ladies will decide I can do it all the time, and I do have better things to do as I demonstrated to Joan later that evening in my office.

“Have youuu ooh ... been up tooo some ... thing?”

Why she always had to have a conversation, punctuated by her admittedly appreciative noises, whilst we are engaged in making love I’m sure I don’t know, but we always seemed to end up with me trying to answer questions when I would have preferred not to. Both time and subject wise

“What are you talking about?”

You’ll see that I don’t need to make the same noises.

“Vicar see eemed happier when ... oooh ... I saw her urrr lier. Sa ... id yoooou’d sorted out the wwwitches.”

“Can’t imagine. Did have a word with Edie Maitland. Might’ve been that.”

“Edie? Edie? That sounds very intimate. You’ve been up to something.”

By which you can tell that the focus of her concentration had changed, not one appreciative noise.

“Don’t tell me you’ve shagged that old bag. How many others are there? Is there a woman in this area that is safe?”

Probably not, but I wasn’t going to admit that.

I received a call from Miss Constance requesting that I visit. She wanted, she said, to consult me about something in her bedroom. There’s an invitation!

A couple of days later I went up onto the west cliff to visit Miss Constance. I rang the bell on the side door which was promptly answered by Rosina. Without so much as a hello she grabbed me with a hand around the back of my neck and kissed me. Her other hand grabbed my crotch and squeezed. Painfully. She broke off when she heard Miss Constance call out from the kitchen to tell her to put me down.

“Next time I’m waiting for you at least say you’re sorry you couldn’t come. Otherwise you may not be able to for some time.”

This was, of course, when she had been baby sitting, expecting Ruth and Louise to bring me back.

She then pulled me in, turned, and shoved me into the kitchen.

“Good morning Miss Constance.”

She was wearing a frilly pinny, a wisp of hair out of place and a smudge of flour where she had tried to push it back.

“Good morning Roger. Rosina, would you make some coffee please.”

Rosina said ‘yes miss’ and busied herself doing that.

“Well, now Roger,” she continued, “what have you been up to recently?”

It was her sister, Miss Patience, who did the full dominatrix routine, but nevertheless Miss Constance had that presence that made you feel like a small boy.

I explained some of the things I had been doing, keeping it scrupulously above board.

“And how are you getting on with my niece?”

There was a snort of stiffled laughter from the area where coffee was being made.

“Umm ... your niece?”

A further snort, which occasioned a rebuke from Miss Constance.

“Behave yourself Rose!”

And then:

“Yes, Charlotte, Charley.”

“Oh!” pause, “Ohhh, right, yes, Charley. Charley is your ... niece. So that would make...”

“Patty, her mother. Yes.”

Blow me!

“I see. Well we’re getting on very well.”

At this point Rosina just exploded into laughter. Miss Constance was not pleased and said so.

“Honestly mother, do you know what you are asking? Charley worships the ground Roger walks on. You’ve even given her a kiss, haven’t you Roger? And felt up her little titties.”

I’m sure I was glowing bright red. But hang on a moment.

“Mother? Miss Constance is your mother? I thought you were the maid.”

“Oh, she likes to pretend, almost as though she’s ashamed of her mother.”

“And why shouldn’t I be? What is it you do for a living mother?”

“What I do for a living is earn enough money to keep you in a very good style. I don’t think you’ve had any kind of gainful employment have you? And you couldn’t wait to get Roger into the maid’s room, What does that make you?” she turned to me, “ That’s how far she’ll go to embarrass me. I’m sorry Roger, children are so ungrateful.”

There was meanwhile an explosion on the other side of the room.

“Me, embarrass you? And why are you taking him to your bedroom? He can’t afford your services.”

“Just a minute ladies,” I interrupted with a raised voice. “if you want to have a row, would you mind waiting until I leave? Or perhaps we could have a reasonable discussion about this.”

Rosina ran out of the kitchen and Miss Constance burst into tears. I put an arm around her and she leant into me, but after a few seconds she recovered.

“Oh bother, my cakes will be burning.”

A moment later the buzzer on the oven sounded, and things returned to normal. Almost.

She poured coffee and offered some fresh cakes accompanied by a general chat which showed that she had a lively mind and took an interest in current affairs and almost any subject that we covered.

“Right, we’d better have a look at what I want.”

We went upstairs to Miss Constance’s bedroom, through and into a large dressing room and built in wardrobe.

“The problem is that I’ve no where to put all my shoes.” she laughed. “What do you think you could do?”

Imelda Marcos eat your heart out, she had more pairs of shoes than you’d need to stock a good sized shoe shop.

“No, Imelda had far more, still, I might get there one day,” she giggled.

Had I said that about Imelda Marcos out loud?

“Your face showed your thoughts.”

I took some dimensions and discussed what sort of thing she needed. After I had sufficient information I told her that I’d draw something and work out a price.

Miss Constance showed me to the door.

“You’ve got a passenger.” she said.

I looked across at the van and saw that there was indeed someone in the passenger seat, and I looked quizzically at her.

“I really don’t think I could cope with her at the moment so perhaps you could just drop her in town, hopefully she’ll be more liveable with when she gets back.”

Of course it didn’t work out like that. Nothing ever does, does it?

As I drove off I asked her where she wanted to be dropped.

“Oh I don’t know. Over the cliff. I’m not much use for anything else, I’m only trained to be a whore.”

“What on earth do you mean?”

“Look, I was sent to a private school where they trained us to become ideal wives to rich men.”

“Really?”

“Wife, whore, what’s the difference? One gets paid with a comfy life style in exchange for lying on her back with her legs open, the other takes cash and makes her own life. Like my mother and my aunt.”

“Yes, that’s a point of view, although I think love is supposed to come in to it somewhere.”

She blew a raspberry. “Yeah, right, all an act.”

“But your mother has never tried to get you into the family business, has she?”

I was thinking back to our first encounter where she had stripped and tried to get me to enter her straight away. I had put this down to inexperience, but...

“No, nothing like that, the only experience I had before you was one of the teacher’s sons at school and he didn’t know what he was doing any more than me. Mother certainly hasn’t wanted me to get involved, just the opposite. ‘Got to get the best man you can dear’ as if she did! Anyway I certainly don’t want that. I’m bored now, and I’ve no qualifications for a job, just being a wife. I want something more than babies and tidying up after some asshole who’ll go out and jump on some other woman given half a chance, while I stay home and look after his snotty brats.”

“Hmm ... Do you want a coffee?

“Not at the Perk, too many people and I don’t want to see Ruth and Louise at the moment.”

“But you look after their babies for them, don’t you? Anyway they don’t spend their lives there.

“Seems like they do spend their lives there, but I think they can see the place from their back bedroom. I do like babies, it’s just the whole marriage thing. P’raps I’ll have my own one day, but no husband thank you.”