35. A WAKE TO AWAKEN...

A story that ranges over many years must see comings and goings...

“Swanspottle,” the people were saying, “will never be the same again.

And there was no doubt that it wouldn’t.

Police Sergeant Peter Plodnose had passed away in his sleep, and there would only be a young and possibly callow constable, P.C. Mountjoy, to keep the forces of evil at bay. Not that forces of evil were in any way plentiful or obvious, though Ursula Blocksley once caught a Pumpkin minor stealing a roll of Refreshers from her sweet counter because, he said, the Refreshers had medicinal qualities and his mum was ill. She tore a strip off him and threatened him with a long term behind bars, and he never stole anything from her again. Anyway, P.C. Mountjoy seemed to be up to the job, the way he boxed thirteen year old Dean Jones’s ears for riding his bicycle on the pavement.

An air of sombre quiet akin to misery descended on the village. Sergeant Plodnose, for uncounted years a constable before his promotion, was a popular figure and it was often told that he had taken on the Snootnoses when they had been big in the Manor, and won. It had been a war of words and threats, but his victory had marked the beginning of the end for the Snootnoses and everyone had said that the Constable (which he had been then) ought to be elevated to Inspector at least.

But he had remained a constable for a great number of years and was happy being a constable, though a rise in his pay to a sergeant’s pay packet would have helped in his younger years as a struggling husband and father..

Now he had been taken from them courtesy of him quietly passing in his sleep when nobody was looking, and when the news spread just about everyone had a quiet little tale to tell, of how he’d helped old ladies across the roads of Swanspottle, or guided small children on their way to school or, and this was apocryphal, had pursued desperadoes across the village Green.

At the same time Roy Orbison’s insistence that It’s Over added a puissance of sadness to the general atmosphere as his velvet voice surged from radios and record players. That song became a sort of anthem because, for Sergeant Plodnose, it was over. Very and finally over. His bicycle was left where he last rode it, gathering dust.

There was an assemblage at the Crown and Anchor on the evening oif his funeral. As many people as could comfortably fit into the place attended, and a few more squeezed in out of respect, standing, it seemed, on each other’s toes. Even Dolly Spandex ignored her arthritic joints and attended, leaning heavily on Bert. Farmer Bismuth, ancient now and as creaking as was Dolly, left his zimmer frame at the door and fell into a seat as close to the gentleman’s conveniences as he could manage. Eyes were raised when Angela Tightbottom made it from London where she still managed to find men wealthy enough to require a chauffeur with a more than adequate bosom. She had somehow got to hear the news and arrived with sufficient lipstick in place to satisfy any mourner who needed a kiss of comfort. She had always respected the deceased.

Ursula was there, of course, and so was Primrose with her beau. Only last week they had announced their engagement and Primrose went to great lengths to enthuse about Graham and his undoubted qualities. Susan Smith was all excitement at the prospect of being invited to be a bridesmaid at what would surely be the Swanspottle wedding of the year.

Drinks ran plentifully, which delighted the landlord for whom the sixties were turning out to be spectacularly profitable. Ursula was developing a taste for red wine and her closest friend Jane Smith said the colour didn’t matter as long as it was wet and went to the head before the night was over.

Talk ranged far and wide, mostly, to start with, concerning the better qualities of the late lamented and many of the little kindnesses her had shown to the villagers. And then it became more personal, Jane’s inability to find a man now she had fallen out with Bernie. Then, in a pause in the talk, Jane broached the subject of Ursula’s love-life, which made one of the two strangers sitting not a foot away, but behind them, seem to jerk.

“It’s a long time since he left you,” whispered Jane when the conversation somehow reached the subject of Ursula’s absent husband, Greendale.

The two men who were having a quiet discussion in seats that backed onto theirs seemed to pause, and one of them held up his hand to silence his friend.

“And good riddance,” replied Ursula, who didn’t mean it one little bit. Since he had vanished from Swanspottle she had looked around for a man to accompany her through life but there wasn’t one of any quality anywhere near good enough for her. Greendale had been her one and only love and she was beginning to think she’d end her life as a lonely old woman still yearning for that one and only love to reappear.

“I never could get my head round it,” Jane told her, “was he ashamed, do you think?”

“Of what, though?” asked Ursula.

“Firing blanks, of course!” said Jane. It hadn’t taken long for everyone in the village to learn that Greendale had problems in the fertility department. Rumour and part-truth soon merge to become a brand new story, married to reality though only partly of it.

“He wasn’t firing anything like blanks when we had Primrose,” pointed out Ursula.

Several people close enough to hear had stopped their own conversations and were pretending not to be listening to the wto women. One of the two men sitting just behind them laughed at a joke from across the room and the other hissed shush.

“And you’re sure Primrose was his? I mean, might you have, you know, what with him being away at the war and such, it would be understandable, anyone can see that...”

Ursula didn’t like it. Not one little bit.

“Look, Jane, you’re my very best friend and have been for years and you must know that the only man I ever did it with was Greendale! And what’s more I’ve not done it with anyone since he went. Primrose always was his, and there could never possibly be any doubt about that. I’m not a s**t, you know.”

“Sorry I spoke,” replied a chagrined Jane, “I didn’t mean to imply, and anyone would understand...”

There was the sort of silence you could touch from everyone within earshot of Ursula’s outburst, which was in tones that almost seemed to penetrate every corner. Even the two men sitting close behind them were still and quiet as if waiting for something to happen.

And something did happen.

“Well, you’ve heard it from the horse’s mouth!” snapped Ursula, “and if you don’t mind very much and if it won’t start your tongue wagging any more, I’m going back to my lonely bed on my own where there’s a fluffy teddy bear waiting for me! Goodbye Sergeant Plodnose and I’m sorry to leave your wake like this, but staying amongst so-called friends hurts me!”

The whole room seemed to be tuned in to Ursula, and then one of the two men sitting behind them turned and somehow managed to touch Ursula on one shoulder.

“I’m so sorry,” he said, “sorry because I didn’t try to understand, sorry because I was too filled with my own problems and so sorry for everything… Please don’t go, I want to buy you a drink.”

It was Greendale, and he had grown a beard.

© Peter Rogerson 14.08.18