44. A VICAR MOVING IN

Two women and one man discuss romantic love...

“What’s going on here, mum?” asked Primrose as she pushed her son David up the street where her mother lived.

David was about a year and a bit old and out of the pram and in a shiny new stroller. He had arrived in Primrose’s life when she had decided that her body was unlikely to enjoy a pregnancy despite a great deal of trying. At a smidgen off being forty herself the notion of childlessness had been something she had learned to accept, and the early stages of her pregnancy had been put down to being a relatively early menopause. But soon enough he’d made his presence known with a great deal of kicking and tossing, and she had found that she could smile more than ever.

“Nana!” he called out when he saw Ursula standing by a small truck parked outside her front door.

“Hello, precious,” she cooed at the infant, and then she smiled warmly at Primrose.

“He’s doing well,” she murmured.

“Yes, but what’s going on?” demanded her daughter.

“I’ve got a lodger,” grinned Ursula. “I never asked for one, but one came along and I couldn’t say no!”

“Who on Earth...” ejaculated Primrose, and Jude Pernicle poked his nose out of the front door.

“I haven’t got much more,” he said to Ursula.

“Reverend?” stuttered Primrose, “I thought you lived in that big Victorian house by the church!”

“I did, but I retired,” he told her, smiling warmly, “and how’s the little fellow coming on?” he added.

“He’s brilliant,” Primrose told him, reaching down and stroking her son’s blonde hair.

“And no Christening as yet?” asked the retired cleric.

“Graham and I aren’t … we don’t have the same beliefs as you, Reverend,” she told him, “and christening isn’t on our list of things to do.”

What she was expecting in reply might have been any kind of riposte in support of Christianity, but his reply stumped her.

“I can’t fault you there,” he said quietly, surprisingly quietly because his normal volume was far from being muted.

“Wait until we’re inside,” warned Ursula, “we don’t want the whole world to know what we do or don’t believe in.”

“So you’re going to have a man in your house,” grinned Primrose, “I wonder how that’s going to work out? Anything like that saucy book you’ve been writing?”

“It’s not saucy and I didn’t lend you a copy just to mock it,” replied Ursula, “it’s meant to be about a lady in her more mature years finding that love doesn’t have to die with youth. It’s meant to be serious!”

“Oh, it’s serious enough and what I’ve read is fantastic,” Primrose said, picking David up and parking the stroller near Ursula’s front door, “and you lent me a copy to type it out for you, don’t forget, double spaced and with no mistakes, so I’ve had to read every word more than once.”

“Have you more than just started it?” asked Ursula when they were all indoors.

They sat down in Ursula’s front room and baby David was laid on a comfortable chair where he promptly closed his eyes and went to sleep.

“Well, as far as reading it goes, I’ve read just about all of it,” confessed Primrose, “though my typing’s lagged behind my reading a bit. I got carried away by the dirty bits!”

“They are not dirty!” protested Ursula indignantly, “they’re what my own personal experience tells me a woman might want in her life as she grows older.”

“Or think she wants…?” teased Primrose.

“No. Wants.” insisted Ursula.

“And have you told the Reverend what a single woman of a certain age might want?” grinned Primrose. “Really, mother, I thought you were perfectly happy in your man-free world!”

“Who’s for a cup of tea?” asked Ursula, deliberately changing the subject. Then she looked at Jude, and added “I dared say it’s too early for something spiritual?”

“It is I’m afraid,” he smiled back at her, “a cup of tea would be lovely. Now, Ursula, what’s this about a book you’re writing?”

“It’s nothing,” she almost stammered in reply, “just an idea I had, that’s all.”

“It’s a rolling panorama of love and sex,” put in Primrose mischievously, “telling saucy tales of a woman’s search for the perfect experience with a man, and how she’s never going to limit herself to one fella just in case there’s another better one just round the corner. And on top of the sex there’s a great deal of romantic tenderness, of togetherness, of being as one in the world.”

“And that’s what you’re about is it, Ursula?” asked Jude nervously.

Ursula blushed. Primrose had never seen her mother’s cheeks turn such a shade of red. “Not at all,” she said firmly. “It’s not about me at all: I don’t enter into even the edges of the story. It’s about Gertrude, a completely fictitious and made up woman. I wish I’d never started writing the darned thing if people are going to start thinking that it’s autobiographical!”

“Mum, methinks you protest too much!” laughed Primrose.

“Just a minute,” put in Jude, and Ursula noticed a look akin to horror on his face.

“Yes?” she asked.

“Well, I have told you, you do know … about me,” he stammered reluctantly, “how I’ve not had much of a romantic life! I don’t want to have to bar my bedroom door in case a woman looking to ravish me breaks into my sleep...”

Ursula looked dumbfounded, and then she laughed. “Jude,” she said lightly, “I’ve never ravished a man in my life and I have no intention of starting now! I’ve had two marriages and both with men who, to put it bluntly, well satisfied me between the sheets. But I’ve never forced anything onto anyone and nobody, thankfully, has forced anything on to me! So there’s no need for you to bar your bedroom door, no need at all.”

“It’s just this talk...” The retired vicar looked completely out of his depth as he shook his head.

“You poor dear,” smiled Primrose, “this is only girl talk, and mum’s book might have a few bits and pieces that she picked up during her life, bits and pieces that I frankly found embarrassing, which I would because of who she is, but I’d give a pound to a penny that she picked them up from men to whom she was happily married...”

“What I think you need, Jude, is a drop of spiritual assurance,” said Ursula, standing and moving to the trolley in the corner.

“I think you may be right,” he replied uncomfortably. “Who would have believed it: I’ve stood pontificating at the pulpit for year after year recounting ancient stories and doing my damnedest to relate events from almost pre-history to the lives of modern folk. I’ve even assumed that the men and women I was preaching to believed the stuff in the Bible and it made me guilty to think that I, who was supposed to, thought the bulk of it a load of silly old tales told round bonfires on cool winter evenings by bearded men still chipping away at lumps of flint to make their tools. And here I am, a man of the spoken word suddenly lost for words when it comes to real life and real people.”

“I think you ought to read mum’s book,” suggested Primrose.

“Nothing much gets learned from fiction,” put in Ursula. “It’s not real life but a dramatised enhancement of some aspects of real life. Fictitious sex is fantastic, is powerful, lasts for hours of gasping, thrusting ecstasy, but is not one bit as pleasurable as the real thing.”

“Mother!” protested Primrose, and it was her turn to blush.

“The trouble is,” said Jude slowly, “I’ve never read a book with creatures doing that kind of thing, nor have I ever been with a woman like that… and I rather suspect I never will.”

“You mean you’re a virgin?” gasped Primrose, “you poor old thing! And mum! Forget your writing, if ever you met with a challenge in your life this is surely got to be it!”

© Peter Rogerson 23.08.18