CHAPTER THREE: A PINT IN THE 'CROWN' - AND A POLICEMAN

Wicked old Griselda fancies the tastes of a youth she never had with a nervous but good looking young policeman

Thomas the Greek, landlord of the Crown and Anchor, will probably go down in the annals of humanity on planet Earth as the scruffiest man of all time should there ever be a day of reckoning and such things taken into consideration before trumpets get sounded and the good are meekly led off to a purgatory of playing harps and sitting on clouds. But no such terminal hour had even suggested itself, so he stood behind his bar and gazed at Griselda Entwhistle, who was doing her best to avoid treading in a drying pool of Tom Coppley's vomit left over from the night before.

“So you're off to uni?” he asked, without even the barest hint of any accent that wasn't downtrodden British. “I wanted to go to uni once, but I didn't have the time. I wanted to study heady stuff and become a philanthropist, but time got in the way, so I learned to pull pints instead!”

“It does take quite a long time for normal folks, though I intend to get through it a bit quicker than most,” croaked the good witch as she waited for her favourite landlord to offer her a pint of something dreadful “on the house”. Dreadful didn't matter too much to her if it was also free. She liked free. She enjoyed being frugal.

“When I went to the uni I wanted to see some of the re-enactments,” moaned Thomas, wiping a smudgy glass with an oily rag he had last used to check the dip-stick on his geriatric motor car. “I wanted to see some of the fight scenes, with guns blazing and bodies littering the decks, but it all takes so much time, and a chap has to earn his living.” He spat on the glass to remove a blob of green Swarfega and rubbed it again.

“I haven't a clue what you're on about!” snapped Griselda. “For goodness sake, man, make some sense! After all, you might never see me again on this green Earth and if I die wondering what you've been waffling about then I'll probably come back and haunt you until you drop down dead yourself as punishment!”

“I meant the uni,” muttered Thomas. “You know, the Uni-versal studios where they do re-enactments of all their bloodiest films. I love westerns, I do, with all that blood and all them bullets and people screaming in agony, and red-Indians falling off horses as if there's goin' to be no tomorrow...”

“Thomas, I didn't mean a film studio I meant a university, a place of learning where bright old ladies like me might want to go for personal advancement and the fulfilment of dreams. The trouble with you is you're a nasty, nasty man who will only be happy when the day of judgement comes and you get selected for the flames of hell as a just reward for the talents you've developed during your pissed-up lifetime!”

“Calling me names when you're expecting me to offer you a pint of free on-the-house ale! I've never been so offended in all my life! Nobody else treats me like you do and expects drinks on the house afterwards! And just watch where you put your feet! Tom Coppley was on form last night, which was good for my till though not so good for my floor!” sniffed Thomas.

“Then I'll have a pint of best, and be grateful for your kind offer,” grinned Griselda. “And make sure it is the best and not the watered down and diluted beer your sell to poor old Tom!”

“Didn't you hear me, you old bat? I said....” he began.

“By the devil get him to offer me as many drinks as an old soul like me can quaff,” whispered Griselda behind her hand whilst pretending to pick her huge nose with a delicate but rather long finger.

“Okay, okay, you win,” whined Thomas, and pushed the glass he'd been wiping under the beer tap. Griselda would have insisted on being served in a more hygienic glass but a long life with some of it spent propping up bars in dubious establishments had taught her that the kind of beer Thomas called his best was usually improved by the addition of small quantities of the contents of his car's elderly and rarely replenished sump.

“Is that you, ma'am?” came a somewhat timorous voice from a dark corner. It was the local police officer, a constable long-overdue for promotion, but he had been involved in political activities that ran contrary to the ideas and ideals of the Chief Constable and was doomed to spend the remainder of his working life as a common-or-garden constable in backwaters like Swanspottle. He frequently bemoaned the power that such hoity toity men had, but all to no avail. A constable he was and a constable he'd stay.

“Constable Lockemup!” enthused Griselda when her fading eyesight determined who it was. “What a rare delight on a lovely morning like this! I was only saying to my niece a few moments before I arrived here that it would be nice for her to spend an hour discussing high matters with you on a rosy day such as this!” She turned to Thomas. “My niece thinks very deeply about things and the good officer has helped her on more than one occasion when it comes to philosophy and his trousers!”

Constable Lockemup winced when she mentioned his trousers. Unknown to him, Griselda's niece was in actual fact the old witch herself transformed into a nubile young delight, and he had spent many a fascinating hour doing all manner of things he thought the old woman at the bar would blanch at thinking about if the merest suggestion of them got out. Constable Lockemup was an innocent in the world, but an innocent with a huge appetite for carnal matters. The problem was his innocence, besides making him blind to the reality of things, rendered him doubly fascinating to Griselda, though she suspected he must have got close to seeing reality during her brief premiership at Number Ten a year earlier.

“Re-really?” he stammered.

“Shall I tell her to stop by your little police cottage?” asked Griselda, and then, wickedly, she added “I think she was wearing that tiny little tartan skirt you like so much, the one held together by a bright and shiny stainless steel kilt pin, so I'd be careful if I were you. A sweet boy like you wouldn't want to be exposed to too much, would he? It might be bad for his heart, especially when her underwear almost isn't...!”

“Almost isn't what?” demanded Thomas the Greek.

“Underwear,” she smirked, winking at Constable Lockemup.

The nervous constable blushed a deep red and hung his head, afraid to look her in the eyes, unaware that she found this the most endearing thing about him, because it reminded her of a time she'd never had in her life, a time of tenderness, a time of pleasure, a time of the delights and pains of young love. In fact, she blushed herself when she thought of it. You see, she wasn't all bad. In fact, she was hardly bad at all.

“My niece will be along to your cottage for elevenses, I think,” she said when she had disposed of her blush. She plunged a hand into a pocked under her black top where most women wear a brassiere “And my old pocket watch says it's ten to! It wouldn't do to keep the dainty young thing waiting too long!”

“I suppose not,” mumbled Constable Lockemup, and he drained his glass and walked awkwardly to the door.

“Is that something wrong with your leg?” asked Griselda, knowing perfectly well that any mention of her alter-ego to the young constable excited him in more than the cerebral way.

“I've got a bone it it,” replied the constable, and he hurried out.

“What's got into him?” asked Thomas.

“Ah, the brave wee soul! He's on the trail of a desperate band of counterfeiters and I was able to arrange a meeting for him with the leader of the gang, a woman of a certain age with wrong doings on her mind,” replied Griselda. “I think he's after promotion,” she added. “It would be good if he got it, don't you think?”

“Cripes! If he does then we'd all better look out,” moaned Thomas mournfully. He was the kind of man who found he always had to keep an eye on his back lest misdeeds from the past return to haunt him.

“Some more than most,” grinned Griselda. “Now it's time for me to be off. I need to prepare for study! I need to pack my pens and paper and get myself a laptop!”

Thomas watched her go, swiftly for a woman of such advanced years, and shook his head. Griselda Entwhistle was an enigma to more than him! But he didn't see what happened once she was out of sight. She muttered a few well-chosen words to nobody in particular and swifter than thinking she changed from a miserable old hag into the smartest, prettiest and undoubtedly most attractive young woman that Swanspottle had ever seen, and sauntered airily towards the small and rather cosy police cottage, where a certain Constable was already down to his boxer shorts and almost trembling with anticipation.