A BELTAINE AND SUSPENDERS |
1 | ESTHER M. FRIESNER A BELTAINE AND SUSPENDERS I DON'T CARE WHAT YOU say, Olivia; it's no natural place." John Herrick, Vicar of Staddle-upon-Truss, dashed the papers onto the pew beside him and lifted his well-chiseled chin in a manner straight out of the more popular female romances. To the casual observer, Father Herrick did not seem a typical servant of the Lord, unless it were Lord Byron. "You dropped one," said Telemachus Battle-Purfitt, frantically wiggling long, pale fingers at the errant sheet. |
2 | The vicar retrieved the page and gave it a superficial glance. "Oh, that's merely a copy of an especially intriguing passage from the Stilby-Nash. You may have it for your records, if you like. I've the original." He offered it to Telemachus. "No, no thanks, nonono, not to bother." Telemachus fairly gasped out the words, backpedaling swiftly until his shoulders were nearly pressed flat against the bizarre mural on the parish church wall which he had been at such pains to uncover and restore for these past seven months. |
3 | Flakes of plaster clung to his jacket and blobs of freshly applied tempera stained his cuffs, but it did not seem to matter to him so much as his successful escape from accepting the vicar's paper. "Do give it up, Father John," said Olivia Drummond in her clear, capable voice. In heavy walking tweeds and thick brogues, she lounged against another pew as if she were the squire of some rural seat come to exercise political bonhomie by mixing with the locals at the pub. |
4 | "He won't touch a thing that's been on the floor, even if it is a consecrated one. You know our Tilly and germs." A weak smile fairly doubled over Telemachus' meagre-fleshed face. "Just a precaution," he quavered, scampering back up the scaffolding to the safety of his scrapers and palette knives. "Mummy says one never knows, especially after all those London mites trampling through the house." Father Herrick stacked his papers smartly. |
5 | "I don't know why your mother ever agreed to take in so many city kids during the Blitz, old boy. Not if it was half the strain you paint it." A spark of alien fire kindled in Telemachus' shallow blue eyes, a fugitive Bolt of gumption striking his book-curved spine abruptly stiff. "Whatever her personal feelings in the matter, Mummy has never been known to shirk the performance of her duty." "Too right." Olivia laughed until her skinny shoulders shook beneath their burden of woven wool. |
6 | "England expects, but Lady Battle-Purfitt forestalls. Oh, don't look at me that way, Tilly! You know I'd die before disdaining your sainted mummy's devotion to what's expected of her in this world. In fact, I'd give a good deal to meet her. Admirable woman. She saved those poor little guttersnipes from the German bombs all the same, whether she did it out of Christian charity or because it went with the image of lady of the manor." "They were just so . |
7 | . . unsanitary." Telemachus shuddered. He daubed at a badly faded section of the mural with a camel's hair brush. "So precocious, too." "Don't tell us again about how your mother caught a pair of them making the beast with two backs in the pergol." Olivia strolled up to the scaffolding and rested an elbow on the wooden frame. Telemachus gave a small squawk to feel the timbers shake ever so slightly and Olivia desisted. |
8 | "How could they?" Telemachus shook his head, patting his bedewed brow dry with a folded pocket handkerchief. "They were only infants!" A hot flush overwhelmed his sallow cheeks. "And I do not wish to discuss such--such carnal matters while we are under this sacred roof!" "Don't fret about Miss Drummond's choice of language for my sake, Telemachus," the vicar replied with a superior chuckle. "I am quite understanding, even if the Church is not. |
9 | Back to the soft. It always proves to he too much for your urbanized souls, no matter the age. The ancient fertility of the land. The Great Mother's siren song. I'm not at all surprised. Your neck of the woods is rife with nodes of chthonic power, Telemachus. Doesn't a day go by that some young sprig of a folklorist isn't discovering a strangely isolated village in the hinterlands whose inhabitants still cling stubbornly to the Old Religion, bound to the earth by more than a tenant's agreement, serving arcane and ageless deities, worshipping the fructifying forces in ways that aren't quite C. |
10 | of E." He lifted one corner of his perfect lips in a knowledgeable smile. "Don't look so altogether scandalized, it's only good business practice to familiarize oneself with the competition." "Oh, for pity's sake!" Exasperation made Olivia's cheesy complexion acquire just the hint of color along the hatchet-blades of her cheeks. "The Great Mother had no more to do with it than my mother. These so-called 'kids' Tilly's mum caught having it off in the pergola were a hot young village stallion of about twenty and the sixteen-year-old sis of one of the Blitz babies. |
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