3. FIG LEAVES OR TUNICS

THE FANCY DRESS BALL (3)

“Roger? Is that you, Roger Peterson?” called a voice from across the main street of Brumpton. I turned and recognised the woman at once: it was Millie Bywater, a truly attractive woman in her fifties who lived a few doors down from where I’d once lived before my troubles exploded, in Swanspottle.

More than once in recent times we’d shared a bottle of good red wine on dark evenings, and from enjoying the liquid had allowed nature to take its course, which it invariably did, meaning I stopped the night. She was a widow so I could see no reason to feel guilty if nature taking its course took the whole night long, and she felt the same way, me being divorced since the Tiffany scandal had rocked my boat and sent my ex-wife off into more peaceful waters where she met an unmarried politician and learned the advantages of avoiding the truth at all costs. I couldn’t blame her, not really. It’s often the bearer of the message who gets more blame than the message he’s bearing, so to speak. It might be a bit of a cliché, but that seems to be the way life works out.

“Millie!” I shouted back, and as it was raining and she seemed to sheltering under a shop’s blind I wove my way across a road of traffic to join her.

The first thing she did when I reached her was kiss me on the cheek. Not a passionate kiss, but meaningful none-the-less, and I responded in kind.

“I thought I’d pop into Ballses,” she said, “and see whether there’s anything in there that’d suit me for the fancy dress do, though if the weather carries on like this it’ll be a bit of a wash-out!”

I hadn’t even been thinking of attending the ball, but if Millie said she might be going I was becoming tempted. As you may have gathered my life was largely at a loose end since my retirement and I knew full well what would happen after the ball if she invited back to her place, which shr was bound to do.

“What are you thinking of going as?” I asked, “some Eastern harlot in a diaphanous frock?”

“I should coco at my age!” she laughed, “what is it about you and diaphanous frocks anyway?”

“They appeal to my sense of beauty,” I told her, “not that you need to wear any sort of frock to do that! You’re beautiful the way nature made you.”

“Now come on, at my age!” she replied, though I could tell she was pleased. “But,” she added, “I won’t display my ageing flesh for you or anyone else to perve at!”

“So what?” I asked.

“I’ll tell you what. If you go as Adam then I’ll go as Eve,” she said, “complete with fig leaves, of course!”

She looked at me with what I’ve come to see as a special look, and so I replied “You're on. Let’s go and see if the Ballses shop has got fig leaves to fit!”

The theatrical costumiers shop was on a side street that led off the one we were on, and we scuttled to it on account of the rain, which was coming down in buckets, as my late mother would have said. The consequence of that was the simple fact that we were both drenched by the time we reached our destination.

I pushed open the door and collided with the familiar figure of farmer Jack Muggins, with his smiling wife in tow.

“Well who would have dreamed we’d bump into any other folk from t’other side o’ the Swanspottle tracks in a place like this!” he grinned, “and a mite damp to, by the look of it! What you callin’ ‘ere for? Let me takr a guess… I’ll bet you’re hankerin’ after bein’ a Roman centurion in a short skirt, or something tastier...”

“What a good idea!” exclaimed Millie, giggling, “at least we’d see your knees!”

“And they wouldn’t get soakin’ on a wet day like this,” chortled the farmer, “and the good lady Millie wouldn’t look our place in one of then silky gowns they wore back in them days.”

“But I’d get wet,” said Millie, “and I don’t like getting wet!”

“Your man could have the benefit o’ towelling you down!” continued the farmer.

“Now you can cut that out, Jack my boy,” cut in Sophia, “we’ll have no smutty talk here!”

“Quite right too!” came Cedric Stitch’s voice from the back of the shop, “or I’ll have to set my mate’s wife Winnie onto you, and her tongue can come keen, believe you me!”

“Anyway, we’re off,” replied Jack Mullins cheerfully, “best of luck with your sexy miniskirt!” And he and Sophia made their way into the rain.

“So what can we do for you?” asked Cedric, delighted to have two customers so close on each other’s heels.

“Fig leaves!” said Millie before Roger could make a sound, “three nice ones for me and an itsy bitsy teensy one for him!”

Cedric frowned and then noted the amused light in her eyes.

“Just a minute!” protested Roger, “did you say itsy bitsy teensy?”

“Well, it’s not right to hide your light under a bushel!” she laughed.

“Now what on Earth does that mean?” demanded Roger, “and who’s got a bushel, and if somebody has, what is it a bushel of?”

“There’s no need to get complicated,” said Millie, “and I’ve changed my mind anyway. I liked the farmer’s idea, I rather fancy him as a Roman soldier rather than a nearly naked Adam. Yes, a brave warrior from way back when Roman soldiers were handsome and daring, and I’ll be a lady from Rome in a fine gown and strings of pearls, waiting for my brave man to come back home in his tiny skirt ready to ravish me after months in the wilds with only male company!”

“Lucky him,” snorted the shop keeper.

“Anyway a short Roman mini, if you please,” ordered Millie.

Cedric frowned a second time. “In reality, they weren’t that short,” he said, “your average Roman soldier’s tunic went down to his knees, but we have some much briefer garments used in a comedy show a year or two back. I’ve tried one on, and Tony, that’s my partner, liked it so much that he insisted I wore it all day!”

“One of them then, please,” demanded Millie, “and I’ll have the most diaphanous Roman lady’s gown that you’ve got. I want us to look quite the couple at the fancy dress ball!”

“Tell me,” asked Roger, “if it’s not a secret, but what’s the farmer wearing?”

“There’s no secret. He’s going as a pirate from the good old days of sail and parrots on shoulders and his wife’s going o be a damsel kidnapped and carted off across the high seas to be sold on a white slave market in the mysterious east! Now, if you’ll allow, I’ll measure you up. You need a reasonably decent fit, though they must have been virtually one size fits all in the good old days of Empire and conquest.”

“I’ll measure his inside leg if you want,” smirked Millie.

“No need for that when it’s tunics,” murmured Cedric, “but then, I guess you knew that, didn’t you?”

“Of course she did!” I said.

© Peter Rogerson 19.07,20