11. THE VARIETY OF LOVE

Trayda and Angela start their investigation

“So you two chicks have come back for a second go?” leered Bernie Elliott as Trayda and Angela approached a well-nigh deserted merry-go-round. It was approaching lunch time and the few families that had mooched their way between the handful of stalls that constituted a fairground had mostly vanished for a bite to eat or a splash in the sea.

“We’re here to find out about your competition, the sadly deceased ice-cream youth,” said Trayda, “Let me explain. I’m an ex detective, and we’re helping the police with their enquiries at their request.”

“So you want to find out about young Stokesey, do you?” grunted Bernie, “you want me to grass him up, maybe? Well I can’t because I know nothing about him because I guess there isn’t much to know.”

“Everyone’s got at least one secret,” suggested Angela, smiling as seductively as she could, which most men might find very seductive indeed. “I’ll tell you mine if you like.”

“A bird like you with secrets? I’ll bet they’re all … you know … scary!” he replied with an almost shy grin.

“What do you mean, scary?” teased Angela, “let me tell you this, when you reach my age very little is scary any more. Now tell us, what was David Stokesey’s secret, the one that nobody knows but you.”

Bernie looked uncomfortable. “It ain’t right to tell tales about a fellow when he’s dead,” he mumbled.

“Not even if it helps catch the devil who killed him?” demanded Trayda, “say it was you who was dead. Wouldn’t you want the creature who killed you found and punished?”

“Mebbe I would and mebbe I wouldn’t,” he replied evasively.

“It was a woman, wasn’t it?” shot Angela into the dark.

“How … who told you that?” blurted Bernie.

“A little bird. So what about this woman? Was she special? You must know her. Beautiful? Lots of women are beautiful, they say, though I wouldn’t know. Married? That kind of woman? Beautiful and married?”

“You seem to know all about her,” sighed Bernie, “and yes, I had seen the two of them before, together and … intimate. And I knew who she was. There’s a nudist place down the beach and she was the woman who runs it with her old man. And she’s a corker. Everyone says that! There’s not a bloke who wouldn’t, if you know what I mean.”

“Wouldn’t what?” grinned Angela, beginning to enjoy herself. Trayda let her because her amateur technique seemed to be producing results, and anyway it was almost educational watching her friend at her most flirtatious.

“You know. Do it with her,” mumbled Bernie, shyly.

“Do what?” whispered Angela, licking her lips.

“You know. On that bit of beach over there, where the sand’s nice and soft and you’ve got a towel to lie on and there’s nobody around to see what you’re doing. Do it.”

“So David Stokesey had sex with the naturist camp’s owner’s wife, and you saw?” put in Trayda.

“Didn’t he, and all! And you want to know the truth? She didn’t seem to mind one bit! She kind of liked it, if you see what I mean and from the noises she was making. In fact I’d say it was her idea.”

“Did anyone else see this?” asked Trayda.

“Not that I know of, but I weren’t there all the time! Depends on whether they were doing it again some other time when I wasn’t watching! I’m not a peeping Tom, you know, not that kind of pervert!”

“Of course you’re not,” breathed Angela, “you’re a nice young fellow. Everyone can see that. I’ll bet that woman’ll start looking at you when she finds her old love is a stiff down the mortuary and no longer up for it.”

“Don’t say that!” wailed Bernie, “he might come after me like he went after Stokesey! And I’m too young to die!”

“Too young and too handsome by far,” whispered Angela.

“Well, thanks for your word,” interrupted Trayda, “I’ll tell Inspector Richards what you’ve said and I guess he’ll want to have a chat to you as well. Just be open and honest with him like you have with us. Honesty can’t go far wrong.”

“And we’ll maybe see you later,” whispered Angela.

The two women wandered away from the Merry-go-round leaving Bernie wondering whether he should have mentioned the red hot session on the beach that he’d witnessed and whether it was because of that explosion of passion that David Stokesey had died.

oo0oo

The Reverend Arthur Candice sat on a front pew in his tiny church and gazed at the plaster image of a tortured and dying Christ on his wooden cross that was mounted, slightly crooked it was true, on the end wall of his church, and not so far away from him.

Dear Lord, he muttered audibly but in prayer, they say the man is dead and that his soul must be on its way to hell, for I know a thing or two about him, and I need to share them with you before you let him pass the pearly gates and enter your magical kingdom…

He waited for a reply from his Lord, and one came in the form of a sparrow chirruping in the rafters above his head. He prayed quite often, and always there was a reply, not always a sparrow, but he knew an answer when he heard one.

He is known to me, dear Lord, he continued, he is known to me as one who goes through the shadows with another man’s woman, who takes her to secret places and lies down with her… tell me, Lord, is that why you have taken him and battered his soul in Hell? And is that why you chose the instrument of your punishment so carefully?

His Lord replied again with the chirruping voice of an angel, and he smiled his contentment at the reply, stood up and slowly made his way out of the tiny Saint Chad’s church, and out into the sunlight.

Oo0oo

William Hampton knew a thing or two about his wife that she wasn’t aware that he knew. For instance, he knew she had a voracious carnal appetite, one that he would never be able to satisfy, not if he had eternity in which to do it. His love for her was a different sort of love to that.

He didn’t so much as turn a blind eye to her frequent affairs but let her know that he was aware of them and it would be best if she didn’t stray too frequently or too obviously. Not that he was going to tell those snooty women who reckoned they were working with the local police about her adventures. That would be letting Annie down, and that would never do. In his own way he was faithful to her. And, contrary to the way she perceived it, he loved her with a special intensity that was all in his mind if not in his flesh.

For he had eyes for only one person, and it annoyed him beyond reason that he did.

There was a man with a dog who walked along the beach and clambered over the rocks until he could see Happy Valley, and then he would lie down, almost hidden, and stare through binoculars at the people in the camp.

That wasn’t all that he did, though. Because William had seen him. He knew what excitement coursed through the veins and mind of the dog-walking man with his binoculars. He saw the way he abused his own body believing he was completely hidden from sight. But he wasn’t. Oh no. There was one viewpoint, one special corner of creation, where William Hampton could go and stare and stare and stare at the excited man and his excited antics.

That was his love, and he longed to join him, to take him into his arms and declare undying love for him. But he couldn’t.

Because the object of his adoration was peering at the naked women as they walked hither and thither across the grass, as they tossed balls in the air at tennis, as they rolled other balls along the ground at bowls, as they cavorted under the sun. He wasn’t remotely concerned about naked men, and that dismayed William.

The object of all that lust wouldn’t look twice at him, and he knew it. So he returned to the woman he called his wife, the woman described by many as the most beautiful woman for miles around, and tried so very very hard to love her.

But he couldn’t. At least, not in that way.

© Peter Rogerson 29.03 19