CONSTANCE AND THE BLONDE

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson

Constance works in a public library and sees part of her job as being responsible for public morals.

Constance Bingley had worked at the public library in the small town of Brumpton since she’d left school, and now, aged thirty, she was the solitary employee there in economically stringent times. So she was both the senior librarian and the most junior, and in both positions she liked to keep a stern eye on her domain.

And it was needed.

Wet weather sent school holiday students as well as school children in their droves looking for somewhere dry, where they might giggle and shuffle about and eventually be asked to either shut up or get out. Constance was careful to tread the path between encouraging learning and discouraging rowdyism. And there were other things to trouble her.

Books should be kept in exactly the right place according to the dictates of Saint Dewey or how would the casual reader find them?

And when there didn’t seem to be much more to be done, shelves arranged, new stock catalogued, anything pertaining to the task of the diligent librarian, there was always people-watching.

And today there was the attractive blonde woman. Maybe in her forties, she seemed to be an enigma.

She was sitting at one of the computer monitors in an almost furtive way, occasionally glancing around to see that she wasn’t being spied on.

Who, thought Constance, would want to spy on an attractive well-dressed woman like this one? Who would be remotely interested in what she’s looking at on that computer? Constance frowned and moved to a spot she had devised ages ago, when there had been a real need for her to keep an eye on the material being giggled over by an untidy tramp dressed in rags and bearing the stains of ages on his flesh.

The judicious placing of a mirror in which she could see the three computers belonging to the library from one special spot was enough. The Gentleman of the Road had found a few pages of local history complete with faded photographs of the neighbourhood around Swanspottle, and for some reason he found them amusing. She had decided his research or whatever it was he thought he was doing was innocent enough and had kept her own counsel.

But the mirror was still there and now she found her spying-spot, as she called it.

The blonde lady was staring at the screen in front of her and on that screen was what Constance thought might be the most provocative and probably the dirtiest photograph that she’d ever seen. The screen wasn’t being scrolled and the image wasn’t being changed for another and the woman was simply gazing at it intently.

Constance was troubled, but more than that she was curious.

She had, in the past, had to warn young lads who mischievously tried to find the kind of images that a considerate council had made sure were blocked from their computers. Lads in their testosterone years seemed to delight in a certain genre of images and it was up to her to notice if the council blockade was ever breached.

And here was a blonde woman, nicely dressed, maybe even expensively so, with a tidy and well-tended head of hair and the subtle make-up of the well-to-do, and she was gazing at an image of what was unmistakably a totally naked female sitting on a golden beach, cross-legged and facing the camera.

“Disgusting,” muttered Constance to herself, and she eased herself from her position behind the librarian’s counter and looked around.

The only other person in the entire library (which was small enough not to have the kind of alcoves behind which people might get lost or deliberately lurk) was the woman at the computer monitor. So Constance moved towards her.

She was not going to have this kind of thing in her library! There were standards, weren’t there? There was decency? There was the need for modesty, wasn’t there? The good Lord wouldn’t have invented swimsuits if he hadn’t meant people to wear them, would he?

She moved silently until she was just behind the blonde and close enough to see the image on the screen.

It left nothing to the imagination and the expression on the face trapped inside a photograph was one of almost complete happiness. The nude girl was content to show her everything to a cameraman! And everything was the right word! And from her position it seemed that this older woman was gazing at it with the sort of thoughtfulness that was usually reserved for gazing at a family member or well-loved pet and not a dirty, filthy picture that should never appear on a council computer.

“Ahem,” muttered Constance, and the blonde woman visibly jumped and then, with a flick of one hand, turned the monitor off.

Aha, thought Constance, she knows she’s done wrong! I wouldn’t be surprised if she was a teenage lad with too many hormones floating about his system, but she’s an adult woman! Still, there’s no accounting for folks and that’s a fact, and there’s one thing that’s surer than sure: that kind of filth isn’t allowed in this library!

The blonde woman turned in her seat and Constance was shocked.

Rather than the wistful expression she’d expected there was a deep sadness in her haunted eyes, and a trail where tears must have flowed down her face.

“What?” she asked. Not imperiously, not as if from a superior moral height but timidly, quietly, sadly.

Constance was at a loss. How would she tackle this? She wasn’t quite sure.

“I couldn’t help noticing,” she said, maintaining her authority by moving from one foot to the other and frowning slightly. The woman had been weeping and here she was looking severe and frowning, but what else could she do?

“It’s private,” said the woman.

“It’s just that we don’t allow … we don’t like … it isn’t allowed...”

“I was looking at a photograph,” explained the woman, “it’s my photograph, taken before I lost the edge of my youth around twenty years ago, by my husband on the beach. We had only just got married. It was our honeymoon, and he said he wanted a picture of me so that, when we were apart, he had something to remember me by.”

“The picture is of you?” asked an unbelieving Constance.

“Of course it is. Why else would I be looking at it?”

“I don’t know. For some other reason,” replied Constance vaguely, wishing she’d kept her eyes to herself in the first place.

“You’re not a very nice person, are you?” asked the woman, and there were more tears on the way, Constance was sure of that as she saw the moisture edging out of her already red eyes.

Constance knew one thing about herself and that was the indisputable fact that above all things she certainly was a very nice person. There were, she believed, few nicer and truer than herself. She even went to church most Sunday mornings, one of the very few that did, and that must stand for something.

“I’ll show you,” said the woman suddenly as if she’d made a mighty decision, and she switched the monitor back on. Irritably, as if the intrusion was painful.

The image reappeared on the screen. A young, beautiful and blonde woman, maybe late teens or early twenties sitting on a towel on a sandy beach, cross-legged with every anatomical detail of her near-perfect body in plain sight, and smiling up at whoever was taking the photograph. And there was love in her eyes. Nothing perverse. Nothing nasty. Just pure adoration.

“This,” she said, her voice breaking, “was taken on my honeymoon. And that was twenty years ago and he died yesterday … my Thomas is dead...”

And her tears flooded uncontrolled as she stood up suddenly, whipped a memory stick from the computer and ran towards the door of the library.

“The thing is,” she said as she paused at the door for a moment, “he took this picture of me so that he would always remember me, but I want, I really bloody want … a picture like this of him and now I’ll never have one!”

And then she was gone.

next chapter

© 2018 Peter Rogerson

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Coyote Poetry

I loved this story. Next week I'm on vacation. I will read completely. I loved the people and the conversation. I wanted to read and know more. Thank you Peter for sharing your worthwhile and powerful chapter.
Coyote