1. THE MAN OF LAW'S TALE.

The first of the strangers recounts an episode in his life

The landlord of The Westminister Arms, a charming little wayside Inn on the way to London, had managed to provide a circle of easy chairs for the gathering of strangers to lounge in, pints of this or that, bitter, lad’s watter, that sort of thing, and the odd and more fragrant and considerably smaller glasses of gin or fire water for the ladies, on a huge table before them.

“This is cosy,” said the midwife, “to think that a gathering of strangers could be so much at ease with each other.”

“It’s as if it has been ordained by a power greater than any I know of,” suggested the schoolmistress.

“You can say that again,” nodded the librarian.

“But I’ll not,” quipped the schoolmistress.

“It’s as if we were pilgrims,” sighed the pastor.

“Less of that kind of talk! As far as you know there might be atheists here!” snapped the butler, “I haven’t worked half my life in the Manor at Buckleyham to not sympathise with atheists!”

“That’s enough bickering,” admonished the policeman.

“I’m not so keen on confrontation,” put in the prostitute, “I much prefer life lying on my back with my legs wrapped firmly round a punter!” And her eyes twinkled as she spoke.

“You’re a card!” grinned the gambler.

“If I read things right we might all have a story to tell,” suggested the policeman, “it seems there might be an order in things, in the way we met in this cosy little Inn, especially after the sad demise of the Minister of Publicity so recently.”

“Dear Mrs Tomkins,” sighed the midwife, “I knew her when she was born, you know.”

“Crikey! Then you must be knocking on a bit!” blurted the prostitute.

“I’ll be eighty-nine next birthday, thank you very much!” replied the midwife.

“Maybe you might start the story, then?” suggested the policeman.

The midwife shook her head. “No, it’s not for me to begin. I’m too old to have sorted my thoughts out so swiftly. You have a go, Mr Man of Law, seeing as it was your idea!”

“Here here!” applauded the librarian and the schoolmistress in unison.

The policeman puffed his chest out and grinned at his fellow pilgrims, if that is what they were.

“Then I will, to set the ball rolling,” he smiled.

“Go on then!” urged the rest in a chorus of mixed voices.

He sighed, and began.

“It was like this,” he said, rather pompously, “I was a mere constable when this happened, and my beat was sort of half country and half council estate. So I’d walk the council estate and pat the little children on their heads if they were at play under the sun during the summer holidays...”

“You’d be in trouble if you did that these days,” growled the pastor.

“Ah, but times were different back then,” sniffed the policeman, “and I’ll continue if you please! I was walking my beat and part of it took me away from the estate and into the most beautiful country this side of the Lakes! There were rolling fields and a little river, more like a crystal stream, really… I loved walking there and because it was the country there weren’t many other souls out and about, and not much in the way of crime being committed.

“And on one such occasion I heard voices. Young voices, laughing and jesting and having such a good time it took me back to when I was knee-high to a grasshopper myself! I used to run and play in the fields near where I lived just like they sounded as if they were, but that’s another story and I’ll not have time to tell it here.”

“Get on with it,” urged the butler.

“When I got them into my sights I saw there was this group of girls, about ten years old they were, in a pretty but small neglected orchard in an area of land that nobody claimed to own back then, and it being the autumn season I guessed at once what they were up to. In between jesting and joking and shouting and screaming they were picking apples. Not very good looking apples, mostly scabby, and green where there weren’t any scabs, and not at all the sort you’d fancy eating. And they were tossing them at each other, not hard so that they’d hurt if they landed on soft young flesh, but gently so they weren’t any danger to life or limb, if you get my meaning.”

“Get on with it,” grumbled the physician.

The policeman eyed him suspiciously. “When I’ve watched them there Agatha Christie detective stories on the telly it’s often the doctor who turned out to be the killer, so you be warned,” he growled.

The physician blinked and remained silent.

“Back to my story, then,” continued the policeman, “I was perfectly happy that no offence was being committed by the young girls, about four or five of them there were, when an apple flew from one of their hands and came towards me with such force that it knocked my helmet askew! And, because that was my regular beat I knew the faces of most of the kids, and their names.

“’Edna Tomkins!’ I shouted as threatening as I could, because no young copper wants his helmet being knocked askew, and I walked right up to her and swiped her bottom with my gloved hand! Swiped it, I did, and good and hard at that!”

“You slapped a child’s bottom?” gasped the pastor, “you actually forcefully places your hand on a child’s backside? Why, if you did it these days you’d be up before the beak before you could say Jack Robinson!”

“Ahem,” spluttered the judge, “ahem!”

“Those were different days,” acknowledged the policeman. “Anyway I turned her right round to face me and the defiant little madam was pulling such a face at me it’s a wonder I didn’t turn to stone at the sight of it! “Edna Tomkins,” I said as threatening as I could, “I’m off to tell your father what you’ve just done and it’s a pound to a penny that he’ll give you a bigger dose of sore bottom than I have when he sees you!”

“He wouldn’t!” she spat back at me, “he’d report you for assaulting me! Anyway, he says that once, when he was marrying my mum and was having a stag party, he pinched a copper’s helmet right off his head when he wasn’t looking and weed into it! If he could wee into a helmet like that he wouldn’t smack me for accidentally knocking your helmet with a crabby old apple!’”

“And, you know, I guess she was right. Anyway, being a sensible young constable I took my notebook out of my pocket and pretended to write her name into it. Edna Tomkins, I pretended to write, and said it nice and slow so that she’d get the message. And then I was most prophetic.

“Edna Tomkins, if you carry on like this with the sort of lies you’re learning to tell you well might end up as a politician!”

The librarian nodded. “And she did,” he said quietly as if he was in a library, “if I’m right in assuming she grew up to be the same Edna Tomkins who impaled herself on a spike the other day!”

The policeman nodded. “She did,” he confirmed, “the woman came from quite humble circumstances, that’s for sure, and look where she ended up.”

“Impaled...” whispered the judge.

“But dislodging a policeman’s helmet … that’s got to be fun!” giggled the prostitute.

© Peter Rogerson 20.09.18