CONSTANCE AND A TALE OF WOE

Constance needs to go home, ill.

Constance was feeling woozy.

Before coming to work that day she’d had a nightmare that had tortured the previous night, one in which she’d almost accepted her own death and during which a sadistic clergyman with the name of Brownadder had cursed her last remains from his pulpit, and now here she was, confused and feeling very grey, and facing a personable youngish man who also said that his name was Brownadder.

She had fainted, of course, but managed to pull herself round before her assistant Janet had done something irreversible like phoning for an ambulance because she had looked almost as dead as she had in her terrifying dream.

“I’ve never heard of a Barley Brownadder, certainly not in my family,” the young man said when she had explained the thought processes that had led to her collapse, “and there’s no little old lady called Constance in a wheelchair either! And I don’t think (and I have sort of checked) that there are any more Brownadders anywhere near Brumpton. It’s a name I wish I’d never been blessed with. I didn’t half get teased at school when the teacher called out my name. Some kids even called me poosnake!! Even being called Frank was looked on as old fashioned.”

“I think I’ll sign off sick for the rest of the day,” muttered Constance, “I feel wretched and it’s not all down to that vegan pie.”

“I’ll take you home if you like,” offered Frank, “it’s the least I can do.”

“I’ve got my car. I’ll be all right,” muttered a very wobbly Constance.

“Are you sure?” asked Janet. “You look far from all right and not really fit to drive.”

“Look,” said Frank Brownadder, “I guess your fainting and all that was down to me, or rather down to my name, so with your permission I’ll drive you home. I’m not at work today, which is a bonus, and unless your car is a military tank I can drive it.”

Constance saw through the stars that were revolving behind her eyes to the sense in his words, and nodded. “Thanks,” she said, quietly, and he escorted her out of the library in what could only be described as a caring manner.

“Let me see you safely indoors,” he said when they arrived back at Constance’s home. “I like the caravan,” he added as they walked to the front door. Constance had a neat little caravan pulled up onto her front garden and once or twice a year she would attach it to the tow-bar on her car and disappear for her holidays, never going far and always enjoying the change from her usual routine.

“I’m all right now,” she said, unconvincingly.

“Come on! I won’t hang around if you don’t want me to, but at least let me see that you’re settled. Would you like me to ring your doctor? You still look a bit green round the gills.”

She shook her head. “I don’t need a doctor,” she said as firmly as she could muster, and “Aren’t you supposed to be finding the love of your life on the Internet?” she asked.

He shook his head. “It was only a spur of the moment idea,” he said. “To tell you the truth, I don’t really trust ladies. Women. I’m sorry.” he blushed. “I had a bad experience,” he added weakly.

“Come on in and tell me about it,” suggested Constance, thinking that Frank’s problems, whatever they might be, might take her mind off feeling sick.

“There was a woman once...” he said. “Look, I think I’d better explain about me. I haven’t had much to do with what they call the fair sex, or anyone really. I didn’t mix with other kids when I was young. I just wasn’t popular and I hid inside myself instead of being outgoing. Anyway, when I was, what, sixteen or so, a girl, a few years my senior, someone I hardly knew, got pregnant and she accused me of being the boy who’d done it to her! I hadn’t. I promise you. I didn’t even know what it was I was supposed to have done to make her pregnant. But she spread the story far and wide. I’d lived a sheltered life, and there was no sex education at my school unless you count the reproduction of pansies, and I was lost!”

“I understand,” said Constance, because she did.

“Anyway, nobody would believe me and my dad disowned me. He said if I couldn’t keep myself to myself then he didn’t want to have anything to do with me. And I had no idea what he meant...”

“What a mess,” nodded Constance, hoping that the story she was listening to was true and not a fabrication meant to hide a sordid past.

“I went to live with my granny who was a lovely woman. My granddad had died and she said it would be nice to have a man about the house, not that I was a man yet. I’d only just left school and got a job at the Brumpton Courier, you know, the local paper, as a trainee reporter covering such things as cat and dog shows and little kids’ school sports days. It wasn’t much of a job, but it kept me busy.”

“I probably read some of your stuff then,” smiled Constance, beginning to feel a great deal better.

“I didn’t use my own name. I was fed up being mocked for being a poosnake! Instead I just called myself Smith. Frank Smith. It was a nice, anonymous name.

“I don’t think I blame you for that,” ventured Constance. “Would you like coffee?”

“That would be nice, but let me finish first while I’ve got the bit between my teeth!”

“That’s all right.”

“I wouldn’t have discovered the truth if I hadn’t worked there,” he said, smiling suddenly. “I was cutting and pasting things on an unimportant inside page when I spotted an announcement in the births column that caught my eye, and a small photograph. It was of the woman who’d wrecked my entire life unless there were two identical women with identical names, the one who’d put a chasm between me and my old man and made me afraid to even think of looking at a girl in case the same thing happened again. And she was holding her baby. Her lovely, beautiful black baby! And I’m, you might have noticed, white!”

“That’s quite a story,” murmured Constance. “What did your father say?”

“I told him and he laughed! He said working at the Courier as I did would have made it easy for me to fabricate a news item! And this was years before Donald Trump and his fake news!”

“Have you made it up with him yet? Or, I mean, has he made it up with you?”

“He’s dead,” Frank told her bitterly, “he got killed in one of those million to one accidents, playing golf on the corporation golf course, and someone hit a ball at him quite accidentally. It hit him on the head with huge force and he died soon after. It turned out that his skull was easily fractured because it was super-thin and had never grown properly. The golfer who hit him felt awful, but it wasn’t his fault. My dad was standing where nobody would expect a man to be standing, behind a bush and taking a leak! His own fault, you might say.”

“So you never made it up with him … how sad,” sighed Constance, “how dreadfully, dreadfully sad. So would you like a coffee if you’ve got a few more minutes spare?”

“I’ve got the rest of the day, and I’d love one,” said Frank, smiling.

What beautiful white teeth, thought Constance as she made her way slowly into the kitchen.

© Peter Rogerson 22.01.18