5. THE FIFTH KISS

THE TALE OF SEVEN KISSES (5)

PROLOGUE

Sir Toby Bumblegum was a self made man, and proud of it. It was something, he believed, anyone should be able to do at times like these, and times like these were like none other. It was a new century, George the Third was on the throne and all was well with the world, and if it wasn’t well with the rest of the world it was well with England.

Sir Toby had a fine country house, an almost as fine town house and a garret one-room pleasure house for his mistress. That was his chief mistress, the one he thought he sometimes loved, because he had others - any pretty young thing with a pulse, really.

That chief mistress was Edith Gowery and she was seventeen going on forty. She had already seen one more delights than the average mature woman when it came to amour because Sir Toby had sought her out and decided he loved her above all others when she had only been thirteen, which was ages ago. So he had installed her in her garret room, furnished minimally so as to cut down on expense, and called on her whenever the mood took him.

Her parents, God bless ‘em, had both been dead by then and she was alone in the world, or as alone as any lass endowed with pleasing features and possessing no pox marks to mar her beauty might be in such happy times.

And here she was, in her attic garret, and when she was alone she spent far too much time dreaming of Toby Bumblegum because he had raised her up in the world and liked her to call him DAD.

Her garret could have been prettier, though. It contained a bed, big enough for two because Sir Toby occasionally found himself staying the night when the gout got at him and the stairs down to street level seemed too steep and long. It was then that he’d snuggle up to her and dream the most wonderful dreams in which his works, he was in publishing, took over the world of print and he was honoured by the King himself for his industry, which he never considered was properly the industry of others whom he might have paid more highly, but didn’t.

Everything was fine. Everything was, in fact, just right, and then one night what some might call the inevitable, happened.

Sir Toby’s gout was playing him up, as was his digestion, and the physical way he liked to demonstrate his affection for the young Edith Gowery proved to be one heave too many for his labouring heart.

The pain was intense as he blew one last, one very final, kiss at the temptress of his life before slumping down partly on top of her, and giving up the ghost.

And she, hearing the kiss, blew one back.

“Oh dad,” she breathed, thinking he was alive in the world when he wasn’t.

THE TALE

I’m worried about Cyril.

He’s the elderly man who lives in the flat above mine, and he’s been very quiet of late. I usually hear him walking about, not stomping, you understand, not deliberately ill-mannered and noisy, but gently as if he was shuffling in soft slippers. These flats are not so sound-proofed as they might be and I have complained, but nothing was done.

The thing is, I feel I ought to call on him, to check that he’s all right. It would be so easy for an elderly person on his own to pass away, and nobody be the wiser until they smell his decomposing flesh and see hoards of black flies fighting against the glass in his windows to get out. I know this is the case. I’ve seen it on the television, though I don’t usually enjoy programmes with corpses in them. I can be squeamish that way.

So up the stairs I go. They’re concrete steps leading up to Cyril’s front door and he must find it a bit of a struggle when he returns from the shops with his bags filled with goodies.

I arrive by his door and think for a moment. What am I doing here, really? Being a good neighbour or just a nosey old trout?

Nobody’s ever called me a nosey old trout before! But there’s always a first time even if it is me calling names to myself!

Well, no point in waiting! Doors that are unknocked are rarely opened. Mine down stairs isn’t.

There’s a bell push, so I press it and I can hear the doorbell ringing inside the flat. I pause. Can I hear anything else? But no, the inside of the flat is filled with almost uncanny silence and that troubles me.

Then I hear the last thing I expected. I hear the slow trample of shoes on the stairs that I’ve just climbed! Cyril must be a popular man after all, because I’m here ringing his doorbell and there are shoes scraping their way up the stairs.

“He’s not in,” said a voice, and I turned out of politeness to see who’s talking to me and to my surprise it’s Cyril himself!

“Well well well,” he continues, “if it isn’t the pretty lady from down stairs actually ringing my doorbell! Imagine that! I wonder what the dear soul wants!”

I had to say something. I really did. After all, there I was with a finger half an inch from his bell push and there was he looking enquiringly at me.

“I thought there might be something wrong, and wanted to make sure you were all right,” I said to him, speaking clearly because I didn’t want him to think I was some feline flibbertigibbet after something I shouldn’t be after at all, because I wasn’t.

If I’d thought more before I opened my mouth I would never have used the flibbertigibbet word, never in a million years. There’s too much false familiarity in words of more than three syllables, I always think.

Or do I? I don’t know!

“Well, I’m all right,” he said, and he smiled at me, and chuckled, “and seeing as you’ve fought your way up the concrete mountain it would be churlish if I didn’t offer you something hot and wet for your trouble.”

“There’s no need,” I said, rather sharply, I think, “I wasn’t after anything more comforting than peace of mind when I found I couldn’t hear the tread of your feet like I sometimes can.”

“It’s the sound-proofing in these dens of iniquity,” he agreed with me, “but come in anyway. I could do with the company of a fine lady like yourself, and I don’t mean anything depraved by saying that!”

So I went into his flat, the exact same layout as my own. But then, they’re very small, intended by the council as homes for single people.

“Welcome to my garret!” he said with a grin as he took off his coat and went into his kitchen in order to fill his kettle. “What will it be? Tea or coffee, though the coffee’s only instant?”

No sooner were those words out than my mind was flooded with another time and another place as if I was and always had been a different person. And the feelings were so powerful that I know that I staggered.

“Here, dear lady, take a seat,” said Cyril, obviously aware of my sudden discomfort and possibly afraid that I might collapse in front of him. “I call you dear lady,” he added, “because I don’t seem to know your name.”

And then it happened. I don’t know how it happened, or why but it did.

“Me?” I said, quietly, “I’m Edith. Edith Gowery.”

And I knew as I said it that my name was completely different from that, so why did I say it?

“I mean Gwennie,” I stammered, “Goldfast,” I added.

“Now what do I call you? Edith or Gwennie?” he asked, smiling at me with the broadest smile I’d ever seen.

“You … you said garret, and it brought it to mind,” I stammered, “excuse me, sir, but I must go. I must go back down the stairs to my own place...”

And I stood up despite a certain weakness in my limbs, and went out of his flat as quickly as I could, out of his front door and to the staircase leading down.

“I didn’t mean anything...” he called, “I mean, garret is such an ordinary word...”

I went down slowly, and when I got to the landing outside my door I paused, maybe a little breathless. Outside on the street the cars and other traffic went slowly by, headed by a shiny black hearse with a floral display on its cargo, set out ornately and reading the word DAD, and because something inside me said I should, I blew it a kiss.

© Peter Rogerson 14.03.20