26. The Perfect Couple

THE POETESS, Part 26

I’ve never understood why I did it, but I agreed to meet the rapist the next day. I couldn’t go to the jail to meet him because I was at work, but the Reverend Saint-John Boniface, smiling as if he’d just won a massive jackpot on the lottery, said he’d bring him round to meet me, and if I found him decent and inoffensive I might consider offering him my spare room for a night or two, until something more permanent was sorted out.

He also said, and this troubled me, that he’d bring Annie as well.

“Is that wise?” I asked.

“She loves him,” was his explanation, as if any girl could love the man who made her pregnant in her early teens.

“There’s only space for one in the spare room,” Rosie told him, “even with one in its a snug fit.”

“Don’t misunderstand me, Miss Pinkerton,” he said in a voice into which he injected an increased dollop of pulpit oil, “she must not under any circumstances live with the ex-reverend Anthony Descartes without responsible adults being present. He’s being released early and that’s the main condition.”

“Oh,” murmured Rosie.

“You’d better show me the room,” suggested the Reverend, “so that I can prepare him for the worst!” he added with a twinkle.

“I hope there’s nothing worst about it!” exclaimed Rosie, “it may be bijou, but it’s clean and cosy.”

When he’d gone Rosie washed the cups and then sat in the room that was, in the twenty-first century, to get the almost offensive name of pandemic parlour. But back then when she thought of it, it was merely her living room, and she could see from where she’d positioned her most comfortable chair the whole of the long lawn as it led down towards a gurgling stream. To the left and close enough to the cottage to be looked on by her as part of it was the flower bed that marked the last remains of Harry Smithson.

“What do you think, Harry?” she whispered, “what kind of fool am I?”

But the voice that sounded in the silence of her head was ‘you were never a fool, Rosie Pinkerton.’

Next day was a busy one at work, being a Saturday. She rather liked busy days because they passed all the more swiftly, but even so she had time to cast her eyes over the girls working behind the quieter counters where the newer staff were, as they put it, trained, though basically it involved being thrown in at a less deep end.

She wondered if one of them was Annie. The girl on her own first counter, the one that sold batteries and bulbs to ten year old boys who were doing all sorts of imaginative things with lengths of wire and switches, looked to be much too pretty to have had Annie’s experiences, with the most beguiling smile and two rows of perfect white teeth. She couldn’t be Annie, but neither could any of the other girls she saw, but being busy herself she knew she can’t have spied on everyone.

That evening, before going home, she had a driving lesson. She had long ago decided not to have to walk the length of strong Lane in the snow and ice! So she had resolved to pass her driving test and join the army of motorists on the roads. So she was about an hour later than usual arriving home.

The net result of that was the fact that there was a car parked in what she liked to call her spot even though she didn’t yet have a car to put there. She thanked the driving instructor (who informed her that she was a natural and would sail through her test when it came along) and went in search of the people from the car. They were standing in a group, two men and a woman, by Harry’s grave.

The Reverend Boniface detached himself from the other two and strode, hand outstretched, towards her.

“We beat you, I see,” he boomed.

“I had a driving lesson,” she replied, “is that him?” she added, indicating the back of the stranger.

“Of course. And he’s with Annie.”

The girl turned round and smiled wholesomely, beautifully, at her.

“Why, it’s batteries and bulbs,” she said, recognising her straight away, “to think we worked so close together today! You certainly are a beauty.”

“And this is my man,” smiled Annie, and the ex-reverend Descartes turned nervously to face her.

‘If Annie was a beauty, he was about as good looking as a bloke can get,’ she thought, ‘In the Roy class, that’s for sure. And he doesn’t look bad or evil. If anything he looks a bit timid.’

“I know you’ve been told our history,” he said, his quiet voice tinged with humility, “and I only want to say one thing, and that is that Annie is and always will be the love of my life and she and she alone lives in my heart.”

I could see that! I’ve never believed that body language can tell the whole story, but this time it seemed to be doing just that. Both he and the younger girl had what could only be a deep and enduring love shining in their eyes.

“My name is Anthony Descartes, but if you think I’ll do, you can call me Ant. I’ve always respond to that, since I was a little tacker in the infants’ school.”

“And I’m batteries and bulbs!” laughed the girl, “but most people call me Annie.”

“There’s one thing about preconceptions,” Rosie said to her, “when the vicar here told me your story I pictured a very different young woman. Why, you look really grown up!”

“That’s what I thought,” sighed Ant, “when I first met her, in church. But then, I’m no judge of ages, especially in the fair sex.”

“Tell me,” interrupted the reverend Boniface, indicating the flower bed they were still standing by, “this bed looks to be special, somehow, as if it had more significance that just the flowers growing in it. I particularly like the poppies.”

“It’s a long story,” said Rosie, “come in, and I’ll tell you over a cup or two of tea and a bite to eat.”

She led them into the kitchen and they sat down while she made a pot of tea and a plate of sandwiches.

“At work today I was trying to work out which of my fellow workers was Annie, and I rejected you straight away,” she said to Annie, “it would be just too much of a coincidence if the Annie the reverend told me about last night just happened to be on my old stall, and anyway you were far too pretty! But you were she!”

“Well,” said the vicar Boniface, “before we form a mutual lovey group, what do you say, Miss Pinkerton. Can Ant stay here, at least until we can sort out something a bit more permanent?

Rosie looked at him, and frowned.

“As blokes go he’s a darned sight too handsome,” she said, “and next time trouble rears its ugly head it might be me that is the guilty party.”

“You’d better not!” snapped Annie, and Rosie smiled at her.

“Of course he can,” she said, “and have no fear, Annie, I don’t go around stealing the lovers from under pretty girls’ noses. I never have and I never will. When I get a man to share my life with, if I ever do, I won’t go snatching him when some other woman’s distracted for a moment!”

© Peter Rogerson, 01.04.21

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