12. RULING HALF THE WORLD

THE FANCY DRESS BALL (12)

There was only one thing that could possibly make the day any worse and that was an unexpected arrival of rain, and despite the fact that it had been a glorious late-summer day the gods of the weather decided it was time to give us a drenching, and rain it did, starting with huge drops that seemed to freeze my skin where they landed.

Now remember, besides wearing the rather tatty theatrical and cheap imitation Roman hauberk, Lady Godiva was wearing nothing, and with my coarse cotton tunic cut short to display, I suppose, the wonder of my thighs, I wasn’t wearing much more. The rain came down as if the gods had lost their temper with mankind, battering down, hurling like demented demons straight at us

And I was sitting behind the near-naked woman on her horse and we were clopping along sedately on a tarmacked road as the rain decided to thrash down. Even the horse protested, and stopped.

All might have seemed lost, but I knew exactly where we were. Swanspottle’s not much of a village and our end, the end cut off from the larger part by a railway line and its accompanying level crossing, is even less. I knew straight away in the dark that we were very close to the home I had started sharing with Millie.

“Quick!” I urged her, pointing to a road leading off the main road just ahead and to the right, “down there. Let’s see if she’s home!”

“Who?” she asked over her shoulder.

“Millie. We live just down here. That’s it: over there.” I pointed in the direction of my home, and it was in darkness. The rain was still hammering down and I felt for Cynthia in her non-outfit of Lady Godiva. I led the way round the back where I’d erected a gazebo earlier on in the summer as protection from the weather during such summery activities as barbecues And Trigger saw it gratefully, I thought, and stood still under it.

“Get down and come into shelter,” I ordered her, and she did just that.

“Where are we?” she asked. I might have spent a lot of time at the Manor House, but it’s occupants never spent any time at the more lowly homes f people like me. She had no idea where I lived.

“My place,” I replied, “Come on now, into the dry before you catch your death!”

I found the back door key where I’d hidden it, under a house brick that doubled as a door stop when we were in the garden, and within seconds we were in the dry.

“Now what’s going on, Cynthia?” I asked her as she pummelled herself dry with a towel that I handed her.

“Just a mo,” she said, “I’m not just wet: this rain’s freezing. Give me time to think.”

“Then I’d better find you something to wear,” I suggested, “you’re nowhere ear as plump as me, so my tee-shirts would look silly on you.”

“You’re not that overweight,” she said, probably out of kindness, “and I wouldn’t mind wearing a pair of your knickers, big boy!”

“My boxers would drown you,” I laughed, admiring the way she so expertly went about drying the very long locks of hair that always looked that near exciting mixture of coiffured and unkempt.

“But they’ll have to do,” she said, “I don’t think Millie would think very highly of me if I pinched a pair of her smalls!”

“She wouldn’t mind,” I said, smiling, and I found a few pairs in a pile fresh from the wash, and slung her one. “Here,” I said, “I should think these will fit, but I don’t know about bras!”

“I don’t bother, not since the lock down,” she grinned at me, “and Jeffrey says my bazooms are far from sagging,” she added, grinning.

“I can’t help seeing that,” I smiled.

Within minutes she was dressed and my tee-shirt, also from the washed pile, didn’t look odd on her, and neither did a pair of shorts I’d only worn once which she looked at doubtfully before pulling them on.

“Right then,” I said when she hung the towel over the back of a chair, “what’s going on?”

She looked innocently at me. “I was going to ask you the same question,” she said.

“Well, it was your fancy dress do where it all kicked off, I was shot and a poor bloke looking like me was badly injured. Then you came out of the blue and did the impossible and unthinkable and grabbed hold of me and dragged me off on your horse, and you not wearing a stitch and me with a dent in my head!”

“I was wearing my hair!” she said, a tone of injured pride in her voice, “I thought I made a rather convincing lady Godiva!”

“Maybe you did, but that doesn’t tell me what was going on?” I insisted.

“I overheard the twins talking,” she said after a while, “in fact they were more than talking they were having a row and that’s something they never do! But I got the idea that Jessica was up to something that Dakota didn’t approve of...”

“You mean, killing people?” I asked.

She looked horrified. “That wasn’t Jessica!” she almost shouted, “I know it’s only natural for a mother to want to protect her daughter, but she would never do anything like that!”

“Then who did?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I’ve no idea, and you’ve got to believe me when I say that,” she said, “but from what I overheard Jessica has been recruited into a shady group with the promise that it’ll lead to a good job after University, and she looks around herself these days, what with the virus pandemic causing all sorts of economic problems, and she thinks a leg up wouldn’t do her any harm when she leaves university and tries to make her way in the grown up world.”

“What sort of shady group?” I asked.

“You won’t want me to tell you,” she said, quietly, “but I will. They call themselves Jessica, the same name as my daughter, and Jessica, that is my lass, told me that they will rule half the world within a decade. They have the sort of plans that can’t go wrong.”

“I’ve heard that before,” I whispered, “Just like Tiffany, and look at the damage that did, and the people who were ruined, not to mention the girl herself. Nobody knows where she is, even now, and I reckon it’s odds on favourite that she’s dead!”

“Only because you interfered, you devil!” said a voice I wasn’t expecting, one that was neither Cynthia’s nor mine.

It was Jessica, still in her saucy nurse uniform, and she was standing in the doorway holding a gun steadily in her hand and pointing it straight at me.

© Peter Rogerson 28.07.20