3. SEDUCTION UNDER THE SUN

3. SEDUCTION UNDER THE SUN

A Chapter by Peter Rogerson
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It's not quite a chance meeting, and the sun is out...

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Ursula decided there never had been such a heat wave. She was a teenager in the mid-thirties and enjoying a Sunday, a day when she wasn’t expected to work in the village store, which Old Aunty Emmett closed for the day.

There was church in the morning, of course, always on a Sunday with the Joneses and the Smiths, the Taylors and the Pumpkins all neatly hatted and dressed in what they called their Sunday best and smelling of moth-balls. Then, after church, there was Sunday lunch at home, which involved she and her parents sitting round the table with roast something and cabbage. Always cabbage! Then there was the afternoon, and that was hers. Her free time of all the time that goes to make up a week: Sunday afternoon.

She could stay in and read a book, even listen to the wireless if there was something on that might interest her, but now there never had been such a heatwave and she was fifteen and too wide awake to loll around listening to violins and harps or old men reading from old books, or even reading from books herself.

She needed to be out in the sun!

After cleaning away the Sunday lunch things, and drying the pots while mum washed up and dad snoozed in his chair, she announced she was going out.

Watch yourself,” advised Mrs Spandex, not saying what might be a threat that needed watching.

And remember it’s the Lord’s day,” muttered Mr Spandex from the middle of a dream.

She hadn’t always been allowed out on her own on Sundays. The Spandexes were a very religious family and it was their firmly held belief that their god wouldn’t like youngsters making free with Sundays. Life was work during the week and cow-tow to a deity nobody could see on the Sabbath in the hope that some time after death there might be a reward. That Sabbath, Ursula had got to believe, was a punishment, though she wasn't quite sure what humanity was being punished for. Maybe the war, which was a fading memory, or too much dancing. Not that she danced very often. Swanspottle was small and didn’t have a dance hall.

So this Sunday afternoon, out she went, down the lane, and walking towards Snooty Manor because, well she was shy even to herself when she thought this, but there was something about the boy. The Snootnose one.

It was a cheek thinking of him as a boy because he must have been the best part of ten years older than, her, which made him a man. But he didn’t look like a man, not any man she’d known anyway, and he behaved in a boyish way, riding his horse through the village on Sundays when everyone knew that horses needed a Sabbath too. And he was single. Some said he always would be, what with those eyes and that chin, but she thought maybe wait and see...

Swanspottle was too small a village to be raided by even a single horse rider. Even a bachelor one. Everyone said that.

She wasn’t going all the way to Snooty Manor, just down the lane until she could see its iron gate, painted black but starting to rust because only one person lived there and he couldn’t be bothered to do things like paint gates. He didn’t know how. Servants were meant to do that, and as far as she was aware he didn’t have any servants, which was mighty odd.

Who, she wondered, helped him dress in the mornings?

That thought made her blush and hope there were no mind-readers anywhere near.

There were tales about his laundry, though. Plenty of them. It was done for him by the co-op laundry and some of the things said about his intimate wear made the tellers of those tales blush beetroot red as they told them.

They say there are stains,” muttered Gwyneth Jones who worked at the co-op laundry, “and we all know what that means.”

Not enough roughage in his diet,” agreed Lizzie Smith.

Or evil,” breathed Gwyneth, “touching himself. Evil.”

May the Lord strike him dead,” nodded Lizzie, not really meaning it, but it just had to be said.

So Ursula, on a torrid sunny Sunday, was sauntering down the lane that lead towards Snooty Manor, well aware of the dreaded rumours but for some reason liking the boy. Or man. Maybe she should have thought of him as a man.

The beans and bread purchase had been made several times since that first time last year and she began to wonder if that very limited diet might explain some of the laundry rumours. But the lad was shy. Maybe a diet of baked beans on bread made a man shy.

And here she was walking towards his big house. There was still discolouration where smoke had billowed out from the fire that had driven all but Charles Snootnose away. It had darkened the brickwork as if an airborne deity had poured a pot of charcoal paint over the place.

Is that you?” came a nervous voice from behind a hedge.

She knew the voice straight away because it was usually heard asking for a tin of beans.

Mr Snootnose? Sir?” she responded, knowing her place. That was something that had been impressed on her since birth, her place and the importance of knowing it. Young ladies, her mother had insisted, who don’t know their place end up getting taken advantage of by young gentlemen with too many urges in their loins… it’s the way young gentlemen are...”

She remembered that, and knew her place.

Are you…?” The question was incomplete but it didn’t seem that he was going to add to it. He just stared at her squintily from just behind a hedge with just the top half of his head with a riding hat atop it showing.

Am I, sir?” she asked gently.

Er … yes, sorry,” he stammered. She wasn’t to know it but he felt worse about this chance meeting than she did because as far as she was concerned it had been something she had dared to hope for, but to his mind the sort of thing best avoided until it had been planned in the most minute detail by Charles himself. And here he was behind a hedge where he’d been doing … better not even think that, it might show in his squints and give his dirty secret away.

And, being behind that hedge and going about what he had been going about with his trousers round his knees was behaviour that was clearly totally divorced from planning in any kind of detail.

He emerged into the light of day, the sun shone onto his face turning it from being ordinary to being, in her eyes, beautiful, and he was pulling the braces that held his trouser up until those trousers were actually up.

You’re the g-girl from the sh-sh-shop?” he mumbled, stammering over the first noun and almost obliterating the second.

Beans and bread,” she smiled, nodding, and adding “sir,”

By golly, you’re a corker!” he gabbled.

Five words, just five rather senseless, meaningless words that together didn’t add up to very much at all, and something deep in side Ursula started melting in much the same way as, on a day like it was, strawberry sundae might melt into goo.

You’re … nice,” was all she could say in reply, before adding “sir.”

Do you … would you … I mean, I’ll be the spider and you be the fly, would you like to come into my parlour,” he gabbled, and added “please”.

What for, sir?” she asked innocently, knowing the answer but wanting to hear it said.

Lemonade,” he replied, “freshly squeezed...”

Lovely,” she sighed.

And what was never meant to be a trap was set and the victim, who was never meant to be a victim, was walking straight into it.

And Charles’ trousers were having the time of their life.

© Peter Rogerson 05.07.18



© 2018 Peter Rogerson


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Added on July 5, 2018
Last Updated on July 5, 2018
Tags: manor house, walking, heat wave, Sunday, Ursula

A WOMAN OF EXCELLENT TASTE


Author

Peter Rogerson
Peter Rogerson

Mansfield, Nottinghamshire, United Kingdom



About
I am 80 years old, but as a single dad with four children that I had sole responsibility for I found myself driving insanity away by writing. At first it was short stories (all lost now, unfortunately.. more..

Writing