23. The Towel that Slipped

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

THE POETESS Part 23

Arthur was never going to last long in Miller’s Cottage with me, but he did manage a few weeks during which I got to know a sensitive man who, from what he told me of himself, had grown up in appalling poverty. His father had passed away at a young age, he didn’t know what of, and although she cared there was a chasm between himself and a mother who had probably done her best for him in difficult times.

But there had been a gap in his education even though he had achieved sufficient qualifications on paper to get the job of library assistant at Brumpton Public Library. It wasn’t, however, paper qualifications he was short of but the simple sort that come with a more normal childhood and mostly to do with personal hygiene. The truth is, I even had to virtually shame him into having a shower!

The ginger Tom put in almost daily appearances and I called him Bastet because if I was shouting a more offensive name at him I could convert it to Bastet before anyone noticed! Bastet was an Egyptian deity with the head of some kind of cat, more like a lion than a domestic moggy, however. But Bastet stuck and, believe it or not, the ginger fellow that haunts me to this day the best part of half a century later I also call Bastet!

Life with Arthur was never going to be a bed of roses and I would have given him his marching orders long before he went had I not a sense of sympathy for the man his childhood had created. In particular I discovered that he had grown used to spending his evenings at a town centre pub where he usually imbibed more than is healthy before, sometimes, staggering back down Strong Lane and taking occasional excursions into the hedgerows and ditches, sometimes to relieve his bladder and other times because he lost control of his legs.

The fact that he held down his job at the library surprised me because there must have been mornings blighted by the dreaded hang-over, but he did and the librarian, who went by the name of Constance Bingley, cast withering looks at him but did nothing. It was after one particularly bizarre drinking bout that I decided that enough was enough and to have words with him, in the early evening before he went back out to recharge his alcohol batteries.

“Can I have a word, Arthur,” said Rosie, and it wasn’t a question so much as a statement of intent.

“Go ahead,” he muttered, guessing that something unpleasant might well be on its way to him.

“Don’t you like your job?” she asked, and he looked surprised by the question.

“It’s all right, though the Bingley woman sometimes looks at me as if the dog brought me in and dropped me at her feet,” he replied, trying to sound sufficiently abused to gain Rosie’s sympathy.

“It’s maybe the smell,” suggested Rosie, “but maybe you haven’t noticed?”

“The smell? What smell?”

“Let me put it like this. When you go to the pub at night and spill half your beer down your chin, it trickles into your jacket and accumulates what can only be called a beery, nicotine smell which is obvious to those of us who haven’t numbed our nostrils as a consequence of over-familiarity with stenches,” she murmured, trying not to sound too old fashioned and dictatorial.

“I’ve never noticed,” he replied, sighing as if he was about to hear something he’d heard before and thought was false criticism.

“Don’t you ever sniff your things before you go to work?” she asked, “after all, there’s sometimes other stuff on you besides last night’s stale beer, stuff you probably need to trip over a pile of dog mess before you get it on you…”

“What are you saying?”

As if it wasn’t obvious!

“That it’s a miracle you’ve still got that job, and if Constance wasn’t the decent sort everyone knows her to be you’d probably have been sacked by now.”

“I’d get another job.”

“Look, I don’t want to nag you but you’re a nice guy who’s making a stupid mess of his life,” she replied, “and jobs don’t grow on trees, you know.”

“You say I’m nice?”

She nodded, not daring to use words because for no discernible reason she could detect a build up of moisture in his eyes.

“Can I taken a shower now?” he asked

She nodded, and he almost ran up the stairs.

Half an hour later he returned, shining and clean and with a towel wrapped loosely round him.

“I’m really very sorry,” he said, “I sometimes need … I know I do, it’s as if there’s something missing in my head and I need someone to tell me.”

“You really do look quite nice when you’re clean,” she told him, “look: I’ll make a cup of tea if you’re thirsty, and you can explain anything you feel you need to explain to me, and I’ll try to help.”

It was when she said the word nice that she noticed tears welling up in his eyes again, and he raised one hand to rub it away. But the hand had been holding the towel and it fell away, revealing his naked self in all its sparkling well-soaped glory.

“My, that’s a big one,” she couldn’t help saying.

I mean, me making such a personal comment, but I meant the bruise on his thigh and not anything more intimate than that! But it was one hell of a bruise and he must have had quite an accident collecting it. However, he may have forgotten it because his hand fell back swiftly to cover his maleness and he blushed so brightly I thought he might be going to explode.

“How did you get it?” asked Rosie.

“All men have got them,” he replied, shaking, and not with laughter, “you must know that!”

“What? Gigantic football-sized bruises?” she asked.

The penny must have dropped because “Oh, that,” he said, “I tripped over down the lane and it did hurt for a while. But it’s nothing really. Not important.”

“What did you think I meant?” asked Rosie teasingly.

“This,” he said, and he removed the hand that was sheltering his genitals, “I thought you meant this was big!”

I was no expert then, nor am I now, but compared with some of the pictures I’ve seen over the years he was a pretty ordinary man with pretty ordinary equipment. One might call him Mr Average.

I wanted to say all sorts of things, like ‘let’s go upstairs and I’ll take a closer look if you like,’ but I didn’t.