The Colonel and His Daughter

by Teresa Ashby

  “What have you done to her?” he said giving Bill a ferocious glare.

  “I proposed,” Bill said. “And she said yes.”

  “Will you give me away, Dad?” Diana cried.

  “What, and have a publican as a son in law?” Potts growled. “What do you take me for? Some kind of idiot? Of course I’ll give you away – be delighted to do it.”

  He shook Bill by the hand. The man had a bone crushing grip, but Potts was pleased. A firm handshake was a sign of a strong character and Bill would need to be strong if he was going to marry Diana.

  And not only that, he was making a fuss of Wellington, not minding that the dog was slobbering all over his smart black trousers.

  “Welcome to the fold,” Potts said.

  “Why were you sitting in the dark, Dad?” Diana said. “You and Trudy don’t have to pretend to have fallen out any more. Bill told me your cunning plan. So you can take that sad look off your face and stop pretending to be depressed.”

  Potts took a deep breath. “Well, he didn’t tell you all of it,” he said. “Because he didn’t know the rest. You see, there never was going to be any wedding. You overhearing us talking . . . it was a misunderstanding.”

  “But you were down on one knee . . .”

  “I was picking her wedding ring up off the floor,” Potts said. “Then that ghastly Bernard Chumley showed up and we decided to keep up the pretence until he’d gone to stop him pestering Trudy.”

  “But why didn’t you tell me?” Diana cried.

  “You seemed so happy about it,” he said. “And you’ve been crying such a lot. We didn’t want to add to your misery. We were waiting for the right moment.”

  The finer details no longer mattered.

  “Oh, Dad, you silly old goat,” Diana laughed. “I’ve been crying a lot because . . . well, it’s hormones you see. I’m going to have a baby. That is, Bill and I are going to have a baby. You are going to be a grandfather.”

  Potts sank back in his chair to absorb the news. His eyes brimmed with tears. A grandfather? Well, he didn’t see that one coming!

  “How wonderful,” he said. “I’m so pleased. On both counts.”

  The words seemed inadequate to describe the joy brimming inside him.

  “So what about Trudy?” Diana demanded.

  He looked at his daughter and blinked rapidly.

  “What about her?”

  Diana and Bill just stared at him like a pair of mesmerised owls.

  “What?” he puffed. “What?”

  The following morning, Trudy opened her front door to find Sandra standing on the doorstep clutching an overnight bag.

  Sandra had a reputation for foisting herself upon people and Trudy found herself blurting out, “I don’t have a spare bed . . .”

  “Why would you?” Sandra said, struggling in and setting the bag down on the coffee table.

  Roger ambled over and gave it a sniff, then realising there was nothing edible, slouched back to his chair.

  Sandra opened it with a flourish.

  “You’ve robbed Boots?” Trudy said and Sandra burst out laughing.

  “Sit yourself down, Trudy,” she said. “I am going to give you the makeover to end all makeovers.”

  She lifted out a pack of false eyelashes.

  “But I don’t . . .”

  “Sit,” Sandra instructed, giving Trudy the lightest of pushes.

  Trudy fell back into the chair, watched as Sandra plugged in a set of curling tongs that looked like some kind of ancient torture device, then closed her eyes and thought of England.

  Meanwhile Diana was ushering her father into the village hairdresser.

  “It’s a woman’s place,” he protested. “It’s full of – well women! And I don’t need a haircut. I cut it myself and I don’t . . .”

  He was pressed into a chair and before he could escape, the hairdresser had wrapped a cape around his shoulders.

  “Could you give his eyebrows a trim, Katie?” Diana murmured. “They’re so bushy that last time the council were out slapping preservation orders on trees, he almost had one slapped on his head.”

  “Don’t worry, Colonel,” Katie said. “I keep my grandad and all his chums neat and tidy.”

  “Hear that, Dad?” Diana said. “You’re in safe hands.”

  That afternoon, Trudy went to answer her door and was astounded to see the Colonel standing in the storm porch, a trail of clematis draped across his shoulders.

  He looked as if he’d been scrubbed, polished and tidied up to within an inch of his life.

  He stared at her, then peered closer.

  “Like what you’ve done to your hair,” he said briskly. “Becomes you. And the face stuff. Not that you need it, but the late Mrs Potts used to call it gilding the lily.”

  “Oh,” Trudy pressed her hand to her cheek. “This? Sandra did it. I’m not sure I like it.”

  “Can I come in?” he asked sheepishly. “It’s just I’ve been pelted with dead roses and Mrs Barker from the dairy hissed at me as I passed as if I were a pantomime baddy. Not only that, I seem to have collected a following.”

  He stepped aside and Trudy spotted several women clustered by her gate. They were booing softly and one of them shook her fist at Potts.

  “Shame,” Marjorie’s voice tinkled.

  “Cad,” Greta shouted.

  “You’d best come in,” Trudy said.

  She felt quite chuffed. She had no idea everyone in the village thought so highly of her that they felt the need to come to her defence like this.

  Roger ambled up, sniffed the Colonel’s hand and looked hopefully past him.

  “Sorry old boy,” he said. “I left Wellington at home. He misses you too.”

  “Would you like some tea?”

  “No, thank you,” he said, twirling his hat. “But I would like to leave via the back door when I go, if you don’t mind.”

  He picked a few browning rose petals from down the front of his shirt and dropped them in the bin.

  He sat on the sofa and Roger scrambled up beside him.

  “Thought you’d like to know, Diana and Bill are getting married,” he said. “Apparently they had a long talk last night and cleared the air. They told me about the baby. Wonderful isn’t it?”

  “Yes, it is,” Trudy said, picking at a pluck on the arm of the chair.

  “You know, several of the plants in my conservatory are dead,” he said out of the blue. “And there are tell tale blotches on the leaves. As if someone sprayed them with killer.”

  “Really?”

  “Yes. I suspect it was Trudy Benson, in the conservatory, with the mister spray.”

  Her mouth twitched. She couldn’t help it.

  “Are you sure it wasn’t Colonel Mustard, in the conservatory, with one of his cunning plans?” she asked.

  “That’s more like you,” he beamed. “I want to clear the air between us, Trudy. We’ve known each other too long to fall out over this.”

  “You want me to come back and do for you, like before,” Trudy said.

  She felt oddly humiliated. Perhaps he would heap on the agony and offer her a pay rise to make up for the disruption he’d caused.

  “I hear you’ve been going round in your Liz Taylor sunspecs,” he said and to her utter astonishment, he leaned forward and placed his fingers gently under her chin, raising her head so she had to look at him. “Those pretty eyes shouldn’t be so red. It doesn’t go well with green. And no amount of make up will hide it.”

  Only Reverend Blinking could have told him about the sunglasses. No one else had seen her red eyes, except Roger and to the best of her knowledge, he wasn’t able to use the phone.

  “Oh, just stop it, can’t you?” Trudy cried. “It was only ever pretend. We wouldn’t have found ourselves in this mess if Diana hadn’t overheard us talking about our silly plans for her wedding and if that wretched Bernard hadn’t been after plighting his troth.”

  “And I would never have realised
how much I loved you,” Potts said gruffly. “There, said it now. All out in the open. I love you, Ermintrude Benson. And this time I want to ask you properly to marry me. Ring and all. So will you? Will you marry me Trudy?”

  He fumbled in his pocket and pulled out a small box, opening it with a nimble flick of his finger.

  “Ooooh!” The sound came from outside like a sudden massive gust of wind and when Trudy looked, it was to see several mouths gaping open. Those gathered at the gate had seen the ring and must realise that a reconciliation was on the cards.

  “Hope you like emeralds. I know some people consider them bad luck, but I don’t think we need worry, do you?”

  The room seemed to have suddenly grown dark, yet there hadn’t been a cloud in the sky when she’d opened the door to let Potts in. They looked up and saw the crowd had moved from her gate to stand noses pressed against the window.

  There was an expectant smile on every face.

  “What do you say, Trudy? Or have I totally misread the situation?”

  “You haven’t misread anything,” she said, holding out her left hand, fingers splayed.

  He took the ring from the box and slid it gently onto the third finger of her left hand.

  “Aaaaah,” the crowd sighed.

  Trudy went to the window, smiled and waved, then pulled the cord to close the curtains. The crowd jostled, squeezing together trying to catch the last glimpse of the happy couple before they disappeared behind a swathe of flowery cotton.

  Then she turned into the Colonel’s arms for a kiss, every bit as sweet as she expected it to be.

  “I think this is the part where you’re supposed to ravish me, Colonel,” Trudy said softly.

  “And as always, dear lady, you are absolutely right . . .”

  -THE END-

  Teresa Ashby has been writing short stories, serials and pocket novels since the 1980s for magazines in the UK and abroad – she welcomes visitors to her blog

  http://teresaashby.blogspot.com/