6. THE FRYING PAN AND THE FIRE

The weather has changed, but young men stay the same....

The weather had changed. The sun had, much to the relief of those beginning to become over-tanned by it, decided to seeK refuge behind an increasingly dark and glowering cloud.

Charles Snootnose was rambling despite the threat of rain, but as insurance against what might come plummeting from the skies he was carrying an umbrella as well as an artist’s easel and an assortment of clean paper in a folder.

He wanted to do some more etching but lacked inspiration. He thought, probably quite correctly, that if he sketched a few of the more rural scenes in the neighbourhood of Swanspottle he might, on a wet day, be able to convert them into tasteful etchings and thus keep his mother quiet.

She had started to suggest that he might be a wastrel. That he might be squandering his life away, doing nothing and contributing nothing to the good family name which, she reminded him several times a day, went back to ancient times.

She wasn’t sure what ancient times she meant because even though her own background was closely related to the Snootnoses, she wasn’t actually one herself. Born Patience St Clement, she was merely a second cousin of the Snootnose she had married and to whom she had presented three offspring, all of whom bore heavily the stain of their inheritance on their faces, particularly on their chins.

But Charles, for we are following him, was out on a cloudy day. As was Ursula Spandex, still a few days short of her sixteenth birthday and still as gloriously beautiful as Charles thought that she was.

But he was looking for a more rural beauty, probably in the form of a cowshed that was falling down on one of Farmer Bismuth’s fields. Ursula was making for that same field because her father was fiddling with the fencing, making sure it was secure, and as he knew a bit about the weather and hated the idea of getting a good unexpected soaking he was fiddling as quickly as he could and had arranged with her to bring sandwiches at lunch time.

It was some approximation of lunch time, and the sandwiches were duly delivered and after a joke with her father she started to make her way back to her home in the hope of beating the glowering cloud that was edging towards Swanspottle with the determination of all good storm clouds.

And Charles was perched on a tussock of earth that had probably started off as a molehill and got to be grown over several times since the mole had first worked it. His easel was in front of him and he was gazing with rapt adoration at the partly demolished cowshed and marvelling at the acute angle a cracked old door could maintain without actually falling down.

“Why, hello there,” he called, out of the blue, when he noticed her before she noticed him.

“Oh. Hello, sir,” she replied, picking up her pace in order to look as if she was in a hurry.

“Would you like to be in my picture?” he asked, indicating his easel. “I’m going to do an etching of that shed over there. Beautiful, isn’t it?”

“But it’s falling down!” she protested, “Farmer Bismuth wants it gone but it’s too much for my dad, what with his arthritis. Sir.”

“That’s sad,” he said, grinning in such a way that his receding chin looked as if it might have melted into his bottom lip.

“He wants to build a new one,” pointed out Ursula, “because the cows don’t feel comfortable in that one any more.”

“Well, would you?” he persisted when it looked as if she was going to continue on her way without giving him time to exercise his somewhat limited vocabulary.

“Would I what, sir?”

“Like to be in my picture. You can keep your clothes on if you like...”

“I do like!” she flashed back at him.

“I always think that girls look better if you can see them properly,” he sighed, “I mean, they always have done. Look at Adam and Eve.”

“You mean, the two characters who never actually lived?” she asked, her voice suddenly dribbling with sarcasm.

“Of course they did! What do they teach you in those ordinary schools, for goodness’ sake? They were the first man and the first woman, and they were, how shall I put it, naked… Heavenly, don’t you think?”

“I know the story, silly! But that’s what it was, a story, and only daft people believe it,” she told him, and deliberately omitted the sir. There was no way she wanted to show deference to him any more, not since the absent lemonade debacle and now this fresh reference to nakedness.

“But they preach it in churches everywhere, so it must be true,” he persisted, and she sighed and started walking away.

“You could take your clothes off anyway,” he called, as if to tempt her. “I bet you look corking in the flesh!”

“Never in a million years!” she retorted, and strode off, ignoring his last call of or you can keep them on before she was out of earshot.

“That was a close call!” came another voice from beyond a thicket which was mostly brambles and nettles that bordered the lane she was now on.

“Mr Nonesuch,” she sighed, “I think that’s who the voice belongs to!”

“Tony. You can call me Tony,” he replied. “I was just taking a leak, begging your pardon, where no-one could see me and I heard that tête-à-tête with Charlie boy,” he replied, and she heard the rustling as he fought his way back to the lane. Then he appeared, struggling to button his trousers before she could see him, and almost succeeding.

“He’s a cheeky bugger, if you don ‘t mind the Welsh,” he said, grinning. “Fancying you in a mucky old cowshed...”

“It was just for a picture...” she told him, “he’s got paper and some pencils and he’s trying to draw the cowshed.”

“I know what he’s got all right,” confirmed the chauffeur, “you see, I was following him.”

“Why one Earth would you want to do that?” asked Ursula, frowning.

“I’m acting on orders,” admitted Tony, “the mistress, she don’t trust that lad of hers. She reckons he might be up to no good, going out on his own like he does. She reckons he’s got a dairy maid or someone and he’s likely to put her in the family way and she don’t want that to happen. So she sent me to spy on him.”

“That’s awful!” said Ursula, shocked.

“I reckon it’s a bad job too, but what can I do? Lose me job if I don’t do as I’m told? And Charlie boy’s no angel, I can tell you...”

“He isn’t?”

“You know Daisy at the King’s Bullocks? You know, the old pub on Goosedown Road?”

Ursula wasn’t sure. “I might,” she conceded.

“Well, if pop into the Bullocks any time and ask for Daisy, she’ll tell you. She’d be pushing a pram around if Old Ma Pumpkin hadn’t held her out of a problem she was having...”

“I know Old Ma Pumpkin and what she does,” said Ursula.

“Have you … you know, called on her for business?” asked Tony.

“What? Me?” Ursula shook her head determinedly. “I’ve never been taken that way because I’ve kept myself to myself, if you get my meaning,” she said.

The conversation might have carried on with Old Ma Pumpkin’s skills and morals being discussed at greater length, but at first one, then a second and sudden cascade of many more raindrops splattered onto them with an awe-inspiring suddenness.

“Quick! This way! It’s only a few yards!” shouted Tony, and he dragged Ursula by one hand into a disused farm entrance where he had parked the Snootnose limousine.

“Just in time!” he grinned at her when they had climbed in and the door was shut. “Oops, here comes the squire’s laddy! We haven’t noticed him, right?”

Ursula smiled, and nodded.

And with the push of a button the engine roared into life and Tony roared off, leaving a suddenly bedraggled young Snootnose yelling at them for all of his might.

“If they ask we never saw him here,” grinned Tony, “serve the young twonk right for what he did to Daisy! And other lasses, I’ll be bound. Look, shall I take you back home, or do you want to find a quiet place to have a chat before it’s time for tea?”

© Peter Rogerson 14.07.18