THE AILING WOMAN

Three of the passengers on a coach have very different opinions

THE COACHMAN'S HOLIDAY - 1

THE AILING WOMAN.

Driver David Wasp was proud of his coach. And so he should have been: it was a mighty six horse-power luxury vehicle in which he conveyed his passengers in unbelievable comfort as they went about their business or to the coast for a day or a week or a month’s play with or without their loved ones.

He loved his job, and was good at it, and consequently he earned a goodly wage for the times during which he lived, and also received the odd sovereign as a gratuity from grateful travellers.

His shining and polished coach had been built by the finest and most talented artisans anywhere in the land and maintained to the highest possible standards, and he believed that there was only one thing that could go wrong on any day of any year. Highwaymen. They were the worst that could happen if he encountered one, which is why he was well armed with a blunderbuss. The angry yet caustic cry of your money or your life was something he had echoing somewhere in his mind as he urged his six stallions to do their best on roads that were rarely straight and true and which had hidden corners, clumps of this or that hedgerow and allied shrubbery, trees in clusters, and any one of these obstacles could have concealed Dick This or Thomas That with their muskets and cruel cries threatening death and more to those who would not obey their grim commands

Yes, David Wasp was a coach driver, and he had an unblemished record.

Even when, that is, one day in May a strange and lonely woman came his way.

He was guiding a party of eight revellers to a part of England’s coast that would probably one day become a significant destination for holidaymakers. But when David Wasp in his smart blue and gold uniform drove his coach along the rough roads that were all the network of routes across England had to offer, Skegness was less than a village, it’s population being little more than a hundred souls devoted to their fishing boats and its church being barely filled on saints’ days and Sundays and even quieter on Michaelmas.

But it had its attractions, for the lurid and somewhat infamous Countess Hope had an establishment there, and anywhere that Countess Hope had an establishment was bound to attract visitors, mainly of the male persuasion though it wasn’t completely unknown for curious spinsters to tag along as well.

Countess Hope of the Maison de L'amour was a woman in possession of both the highest and the lowest moral principles, and she possessed a teasingly inaccurate Continental accent in which she produced many extreme nasal sounds, some of which were accompanied by the discharge of rhinal matter. Driver Dave didn’t particularly appreciate the nuances inherent in a trade he didn’t begin to understand, but his paying passengers did, and that was all that really mattered.

On the particular occasion of this tale there was, on board his coach and occupying a seat squashed between two gentlemen from the City who were anticipating a few days of elevating and refreshing activities at the Maison de L'amour, was a little lady by the name of Annie Anon in a dark pink cloak and clearly of no great youth. And being seated between two excitable gentlemen, both of whom were considerably weightier than herself, she found herself being squashed.

“Excuse me, sirs,” she croaked, “but I’m squashed and getting bruised.”

“Then you should grow more flesh!” snapped one of the gentlemen.

“A woman needs must have adequate padding round the chuntles,” added the other.

“What are chuntles, sir?” she asked, clearly admiring the depth of his vocabulary.

“Wedges of flesh, madam, wedges of flesh,” nodded the second gentleman who appeared to have more knowledge of what chuntles might be than anyone else on the coach.

“I’m sorry, sir, but my chuntles are half starved on account of both an ailment and poverty, and I am to the coast on orders from the wise woman in our village, for sea air and maybe a taste of the briny,” she sniffed. “I’ve saved for ten years for this ride, and was crowd-funded by my equally impoverished neighbours as well.”

“You have an ailment, you say?” barked the first gentleman, and he banged on the roof of the coach with his silver-topped cane. This caused driver Dave Wasp to draw the coach to a standstill and appear at the doorway.

“Yes, sir?” he asked.

“This wretched woman whose very flesh is touching my pantage has just informed us that she has an ailment, and I protest most strongly and insist she takes a seat on top lest I catch her lurgy,” grated the first of the two who were sandwiching the fragile woman.

“It is unheard of for a creature such as this to occupy so close a seat to a gentleman of my standing,” added the second gentleman, “It is, in fact, an outrage, and your coach masters will hear of it!”.

“It is my chest, sir, working as I does in the sewage works,” coughed Annie Anon, waving a blood-stained rag that she had just hacked into, for all to see and admire.

“The biddy’s not well, sir,” said a couragous Dave Wasp, “and it would be tantamount to executing her in her fragile state to put her up on top, where the winds are mischievous with a bite to them and the rain starts to sprinkle onto all who are up there with me, freezing us to the bone.”

“She must go there, or I will report your insolence to the owners of this charabanc!” protested the first of the well-fleshed gentlemen, “and then you will know what it means to gainsay a man of means such as myself.”

“But the dear old lady may well expire up there!” argued the driver, a gentle soul with a pure heart.

“Then she will be dead, and the world all the richer,” sneered the first gentleman, the one, David Wasp noticed, with a huge red boil on his nose.

“The wench is more likely to contract something from that nose of yours than you from her frailty,” he said pointedly.

“Take her up!” snapped the second gentleman, and David Wasp noticed that he had unpleasant pock marks all over his face, clearly the remnants of some dire ailment of the French variety.

“She will, perhaps, be better off aloft,” he decided, and he helped the fragile old woman from her own squashed seat and up the steps to the empty seats on the roof.

“That’s better!” scowled the first gentleman as she disappeared from sight

“Much!” agreed the second.

“But be careful,” called the first after Annie, “don’t get too cold up there, mother, or you’ll catch your death!”

“And make sure you wrap up warm,” added the second, “we don’t want folks to say we didn’t look after our own mother properly!”

The driver, David Wasp, shook his head, wrapped his own cloak about the shoulders of Annie Anon and whipped the horses into reluctant motion.

Then the coach carried on towards Skegness and the Maison de L'amour, six horses snorting and an old woman coughing.

TO BE CONTINUED

© Peter Rogerson 23.05.18