23. BACK DOWN DURNLEY BOTTOMS

The end of the story

The clip-clop of the horse’s hooves echoed like a heartbeat rhythm as Chantelle and David, his arm round her, trundled on their wedding cart down Durnley Bottoms towards their new home, the bungalow they were going to rename Braxton after the old man who had died there. It was a fine day, as all days down the Bottoms seemed to be, and they were very newly weds.

It had been a long year since they had accepted the idea that they would become man and wife, and a huge relief when a DNA test showed that there was no close blood ties between them. It was amusing when David discovered that somewhen in the past he had inherited a drop of Turkish blood and a disappointment to Chantelle that her blood-line had hardly veered from where she lived for century after century.

The horse-drawn cart slowed as they passed the patch of ground where the precious keys had been hidden by Judy and discovered by Chantelle. “Stop for a moment,” David asked the driver.

The horse pulled up after a quiet word from the driver and Chantelle grinned at David.

“That’s where it all began,” she said, “when we were what? Twelve? Something like that, the time you kissed me that very first time.”

He smiled at her.

The moment had lived with him, too. He hadn’t planned it, it wasn’t the sort of thing a lad could plan, but in a moment culled from time that seemed to stand still he had pressed his lips against hers. Not for long, not like young lovers in a Hollywood film but briefly, yet within the brevity, the offspring of huge uncertainty, it contained a nearly heart-stopping intensity.

He remembered the day he had moved with his folks to another house, several miles from where Chantelle remained, and how he had missed her. Their friendship had been so close there was no chance he would form another, however beautiful that other girl might be. He had sometimes even considered absconding and finding her and suggesting a sudden elopement, but he had lacked the courage and know-how to do any such thing. He was a lad, a teenage lad, and he had kissed other girls, not many true enough, but none had been the close friend that Channy had always been, and other kisses had been almost totally void of meaning.

And now they were married. This is the way things were meant to turn out. But before they married they’d both done one important thing.

“Mr Penn got the shock of his life when you asked him to make donations to just about every charity you and I could think of, but I’m glad you did,” said Chantelle. “Those keys will have done a lot of people a huge amount of good.”

“It was a shocking amount of money, though,” admitted David, “even though some of it didn’t exist any more. The silly old fool had shares that at the height of their value were worth a mint but which had become worthless as businesses folded in the way that businesses do. He’d sat on worthless piles of paper, dreaming of goodness knows what! It was daft him paying banks to store them in secure boxes that really weren’t needed. But his father before him had done the same. I guess they were both miserable, for all the gold they owned.”

“That money, or at least some of it, brought us back together, though,” reminded Chantelle. “And it wasn’t until I saw you again that I realised just how much I had missed you. And I was a good girl, darling, during our years apart. I had saved myself for you!

“Come on! Let’s get on to our new home before we get all maudlin! Saved yourself indeed!”

The horse sensed they wanted to go, either that or the driver had a mental rapport with it, because it moved off, slowly down the Bottoms until their new home came into sight.

“I’m glad we’re going to live here,” murmured Chantelle, “and there’s room for your birth-mum without her getting under our feet when we want to be alone!”

“We’ve always called it a bungalow but it’s a great deal more than that,” laughed David, “and yes, poor old Judy seems to have undergone a metamorphosis. She even told me she’s given up the booze altogether.”

“The old man did a great deal of harm in searching for a male heir,” said Chantelle, “and it’s so unfair! I’ve always thought it odd that in every society you hear about it seems that things get inherited by the males yet it’s really only the females who can prove beyond any doubt that they’re the true custodians of a blood line.”

“I know,” grinned David, “and I’m not going to fall into that trap!”

“Why, do you think I might be unfaithful to you?” demanded Chantelle. “Do you think I might sleep with another man and tell you I’ve been sleeping with you!”

“Not you, darling!”

“But I dared say a lot of babies born on the wrong side of the sheets, as they say, have inherited the wealth of a bloodline they actually have no actual connection to. And down the centuries if all that was suddenly put right then it might end up in a titanic heave as thousands of mistakes are put right.”

“Let’s hope that doesn’t happen, then.”

The cart trundled on, finally, up to their new home. Braxton House down Durnley Bottoms, and they climbed out, he helping her, still in her white wedding dress. Their honeymoon was going to be spent at home!

When they reached the front door of their home he gently picked her up in his arms and carried her through into the elderly one-storey house that, over the past year, had been painstakingly brought up to date. Judy had an annex totally to herself, a place she could call her permanent home after a lifetime of homelessness, but she would be welcome, as they put it, to visit them whenever she liked.

And that was that. A circle had been drawn on the affairs of two young people

They had an early night and, as chance or passion or whatever else you might call it would have it, it was then that the next generation was conceived. And it happened in love, excitement, desire, and accompanied by a huge number of kisses. And, of course gasps, wonderment and even a bit of lust.

And that was how it should be.

THE END

© Peter Rogerson 23.12.19