24 The Reverend Boniface

THE POETESS Part 24

'Cover that thing up!’ I hissed at Arthur Bonecott as he stood there with the bath towel like a pool at his feet and his naked manhood swinging freely. I went to the door, assumed an angry scowl, and opened it.

An angry scowl, even a manufactured one, can sort quite a few issues out before they actually become problems. This time it didn’t.

It might have been the best part of fifty years ago, but I can remember the scene, and particularly the woman who had hammered on my door, with more clarity than I can remember some of the things that happened last week.

To say she was ugly would be unkind because underneath a mask oif fury she was probably quite good looking, but to suggest that she was fierce might well be hitting the nail firmly on its head. For a moment the scene became frozen in time. Me opening the back door, Arthur in the altogether with just a hand hovering over his privates and a fierce woman glowering, firstly at me and then at him.

“Oh dear,” mumbled Arthur, “Angela,”

“So this is where you’ve been lurking!” snapped the woman who apparently rejoiced in the name of Angela, “in this den of sin and iniquity at the beck and call of that w***e!”

“Just a minute!” snapped Rosie, “I’m not being called that by anyone!”

But the woman ignored her and stomped up to Arthur until her quivering chin was threatening to batter against his.

“Where are your pants!” demanded Angela, “standing there with the entire world staring at your wedding tackle and no sense of shame about you! So where are your pants?”

“Shower. I’ve just had a shower,” he stammered, adding, “Angela, please, things aren’t always what they might seem to be…”

“And where have you been this last few weeks if it hasn’t been in her bed?” demanded Angela.

Rosie had had enough. It wouldn’t have been so bad had the accusation been even bordering reality, but it couldn’t have been further from the truth.

“He’s just my lodger!” she said as sharply as she could, “and that’s the sum of it.”

“Well, he might be your lodger, and that’s a fancy name for it if ever I heard one, but he’s my husband, and he’s left me for another!” snapped Angela. “They told me at the library, so I know the truth because they don’t tell lies in there!”

I might have mentioned the fiction section, but it didn’t cross my mind at the time, or if it had I was in possession of enough common sense to ignore it.

“But…” stammered Rosie, trying to think on her feet and coming up with no sensible answers. Then; “he told me was divorced and if you’re the woman he is divorced from I can easily see why!”

“And what might you mean by that?” demanded Angela, threateningly.

“Just listen to yourself,” snapped Rosie, “barging into a stranger’s house and making all sorts of assumptions based on nothing but a loose towel and your own filthy imagination!”

“He said we were divorced?” challenged Angela, back-tracking on what had swiftly become a slanging match, “chance would be a fine thing! So where has he been this past few weeks if it hasn’t been between your silken sheets, madam?” she demanded.

“He’s just had a shower because I told him he needed one on account that he smelt vile,” replied Rosie, “and he came down dressed only in a towel because he wanted me to look at that bruise!” She pointed at the angry sore on Arthur’s thigh.

When she saw what Rosie was pointing at a change of such a magnitude came over the angry Angela that Rosie felt like laughing out loud.

She ran up to him, still naked, and put her arms round him. Then she rubbed the bruise gently and blabbered, “you poor darling, what have they done to you? How come your precious body has been wounded in such a way? Has this evil tart done it to you? Is she the kind of woman who would take a weapon to my darling Arthurkins and batter his innocent flesh?”

“Just a minute!” snapped Rosie, ineffectually.

“You’ve got it wrong, sweetheart,” murmured Arthur “Rosie saved me from myself! I was in a rotten place, sleeping at night in the car because you had our bed and with nowhere to wash or shave properly, and she saw the state I was in and gave my a tiny bedroom so that I had somewhere to sort myself out. Then I turned to drink, because I didn’t have you. Can you believe it, sweetheart, me turning to drink! Of all people!”

“Oh, the blackness of the hole you must have been in, and it’s all my fault, pestering you for babies! Now just you come out to your car and get in. I’ll drive while you tell your loving Angelakins all about it!”

And Rosie couldn’t believe her eyes as Angela took the naked Arthur Bonecott by one hand and led out of her kitchen, through the back door and out into the wilds of an autumn early evening as he said “I’ve been thinking about it, darling, life’s too short by far and we mustn’t waste a moment of it! You can have your babies, of course you can…”

“We’ll fetch my car tomorrow,” called Angela to Rosie as she started the engine in Arthur’s car and very slowly drove off, with him naked as the day he’d been born in the passenger street, trying to look to any casual passer by as if nothing unusual had happened at all, and of course he was fully dressed.

“Well I never!” muttered Rosie to herself, “and of all the cheek, calling me a tart!”

I spent the next half hour clearing Arthur’s few things from the spare room and piling them onto the back seat of Angela’s elderly Ford, which fortunately she hadn’t bothered to lock. The last thing I wanted was another confrontation with her, if I could avoid it.

So the tale he had told me, of being divorced, of a harridan of a wife, of the complete collapse of any domestic bliss he might have had, all was a fabrication, and I’d just witnessed him pliable and loving and hand in hand with a woman who seemed to equally love him.

By the time I had finished and put clean sheets onto the spare bed I was ready for a nice cup of tea. I know that it sounds old-fashioned, but there’s nothing more calming than a nice cup of tea…

I was just settling down to enjoy it when the doorbell rang.

“Now what?” muttered Rosie to herself, “I’ve had enough of other people for one day.”

She opened the door to see the Reverend Saint John (pronounced Sinjun) Boniface standing there, smiling and trying to look as if he wasn’t wearing a dog collar at all.

“Good evening he said with an oily pulpit voice, “I wonder if you might be able to help me?”

© Peter Rogerson 30.03.21

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