by Rachel Green
Simon laughed. “How did you know I was thinking about Mum?”
“You always do.” Jennifer dumped her dish into the sink and turned on the taps. “You always hesitate when you throw food away.” She mimicked their mother’s stentorian tone: “Don’t you waste that good food. There are children in Africa who’d be glad of it.” She smiled, reverting to her own voice. “No wonder you entered the priesthood.”
“What else could I do?” Simon smiled and added his empty bowl to the swirling water. “It was either that or start work at the factory. At least I got a grant for my education.”
“I didn’t need one.” Jennifer took the coffee mugs down from their hooks. “I had that scholarship to Middlesex. Not as prestigious as Queen’s, perhaps, but I did all right for myself.”
“You certainly did, dear.” Simon squeezed her hand. “I know you’re an excellent writer but I do think your imagination gets a bit carried away sometimes.”
“It’s my job.” Jennifer spooned coffee into the cups and passed them to him to add the hot water. “I have to think the unthinkable or nobody would read my books.”
Simon laughed. “Just stick to your pen name is all I ask. The bishop would have a fit if he connected me with the author of She Died for Passion.” He filled the cups and passed them back.
“I didn’t know he’d read it.” Jennifer smiled and added cream to the coffee, followed by a sprinkle of cocoa powder. “Do you want sugar in yours?”
Simon laughed. “No thanks, I’m sweet enough. Hey! I said I’d make the coffee.”
“I know, but you make it too strong.” Jennifer sprinkled brown sugar over the cream, allowing it to dissolve. “All the parishioners think you’re sweet enough to eat.”
“Who am I to dissuade them?” Simon smiled, the lines of fatigue easing from his features to leave him looking the part of the dashing young priest once more. “At least it keeps the church full.”
“Beauty equals bums on pews,” agreed Jennifer. “Even some of the men come just to ogle you.”
“All sinners saved as part of the service.” Simon winked at her.
“And a few damned for impure thoughts to keep the books even.” Jennifer carried the coffees into the living room. “Leave the washing up. I’ll do it later.”
“Thanks.” Simon followed her in. “I might have an early night, I think.”
“No work to do? That makes a change.” Jennifer sat in the armchair while Simon kicked off his slippers and lay on the sofa, propping himself into a seated position using the arm. His left sock had a hole in it.
“I wish you’d throw those out,” Jennifer said with distaste. “What if someone saw you with holes in your socks?”
“They’d think me a darling for devoting my life to poverty and the church. They might even put an extra pound in the collection box.” Simon waved his foot at her. “If they offend you that much you’re welcome to darn them.”
“Not a chance.” Jennifer shuddered. “Nobody darns socks anymore.”
“Why not?” Simon sipped his coffee. “Mum used to darn socks.”
“That’s because we couldn’t afford new ones. Now that Tesco sells three pairs for a fiver there’s no need to mend them anymore.”
“That’s a shame.” Simon took a sip of his coffee. “I think the world wouldn’t be in such a crisis if we did a bit more making do and mending.”
“You won’t save the world by darning socks.”
“It’s not just socks, though, is it? Plastic milk bottles. Whoever thought of plastic milk bottles should be excommunicated. What was wrong with the milkman’s glass bottles, eh? That was pure recycling at its finest.”
“And ten pence on the pop bottles,” said Jennifer. “I made my makeup money collecting pop bottles.”
Simon laughed. “Yes, sometimes you collected them from the back of the pub. You were a tearaway in those days.”
“So were you, before you decided the priesthood was a cushy number.”
“I was called to it,” said Simon. “I renounced my worldly passions.”
“Only after Eleanor Page dumped you.” Jennifer smiled and changed the subject. Simon would never go to bed if she wound him up. “What was that I heard about Old Tom digging up a grave today? Apparently he got the plots mixed up and tried to bury Mrs. Daniels over the top of Mr. Peabody.” Jennifer looked over at her brother. His eyes were closed, his hands still clasped around the coffee mug balanced on his leg. She stood and relieved him of it, setting it on the coaster he’d used for his glass.
She dimmed the lights on the way out of the room and sat in front of her computer again, logging on to her messenger program. She put her coffee to one side and poured herself a generous glass of wine while her chat program connected, the string of names changing to green or red to show their online status.
“Guess what?” she typed to her friend Catherine. “Grace Peters has taken a long drop off a short rope.”
Chapter 3
Susan writhed under Sir Robert’s gloved hand, the hot wax spilling onto her back and hardening. All the colors of the rainbow, or at least in the online catalog of the candle merchant, had been dripped, poured and ladled onto her back, bottom and thighs, running like the rivers of Eden across her smooth skin.
He used the head of one candle to round off the tip of a two-inch diameter church candle and pushed it inside her.
“Oh God, yes,” she said. “Please, Master, more.”
He smiled, one hand manipulating the candle inside her while the other held a hot red taper candle over her spine, adding another layer of color to the canvas spread across her willing flesh. He left off fucking her, twisting her hands up off the bench and behind her back and switching to white tapers, fixing the red one vertically into the soft wax already pooled in the small of her back. The white candles, lit in a bundle of three from the red, spilled a torrent of wax over her fingers and wrists. Susan shrieked, twisting around the thick rod of wax filling her on the inside.
“Please, Master, please.”
If he could have seen her eyes he would have smiled even more. He knew they would be opened wide, desperate for release.
“Not yet,” he commanded, fumbling open the fastenings of his pants. He stopped the rain of wax in order to free his erection, rubbing it in the hot pools covering her body to share the pain and pleasure she was yielding to. He rubbed against her, feeling the pressure build. “Now!”
“Thank you, Master,” she cried, going into convulsions. The church candle clattered to the floor as her vaginal muscles contracted, her juices spilling over the wax in a torrent of white foam.
Robert came, his semen spilling over her and mixing into the wax.
Chapter 4
“Watch the cat!” Meinwen yelled as her best friend barely avoided the tabby.
Dafydd Thomas almost dropped the box on the way to the truck, his dreadlocks swinging wildly as he recovered from almost treading on the cat. “Meinwen Bronwyn Jones! What have you got here?” He steadied the box with a knee as he sought a better purchase. “I think I’ve put my back out with this one.”
“Stop your yammering, Dave.” The box’s owner trotted out of the house carrying an aspidistra as tall as her and a transistor radio by means of hooking one finger through the carry strap. “That’s my computer and all the discs I need to get it running again after its journey in there. You drop that box and I’ll make you sorry I was ever born.”
“I already am.” Dafydd put the box onto the back of the truck and slid it forward. “I must have been bonkers to offer to help you move.” He stood at the back of the truck surveying the boxes, his hands on the small of his back and grunting. “Where did you keep all these bits of…collectables?”
“I heard that unspoken thought, Dafydd Thomas.” She tucked the plant under one arm and tucked the radio into the computer box. “And don’t call me by my full name. Only my mam called me that and I was tired of it before I was six. I was surprised by the amount of stuff I was
keeping in my wardrobe and under the bed as well. I just haven’t had time to go through it all and decide on what to chuck.”
“I wish you had. It would have made this job easier. Less weight means less fuel too, you know.”
“Sorry. I had to close the shop in a hurry. Half of these boxes are stock from Reincarnations and worth too much to ditch. Look, can you take Mildred off me?”
“Yeah, well. Sorry about the shop an’ all.” Dafydd took the plant out of her hands and wedged it into the truck, using Meinwen’s duvet to protect it from damage. “Even sorrier you’re going to Leighton.”
“Laverstone,” Meinwen corrected. “I told you. There’s nothing left for me in Dovey now the shop’s closed. I’ve been itching to leave ever since Mam died and that was five years ago.”
“Why Laverstone though? Why not Aberystwyth or Cardiff, even? There’s plenty of tourist trade in Cardiff ever since they started filming Torchwood and Doctor Who there.”
“I’m not going into the Dr. Who market.” Meinwen sat on the tailgate. “It’s too competitive. Besides, there are other areas of interest in Laverstone.”
“Such as?” Dafydd sat next to her and began rolling a cigarette. “My gran says there’s nowhere quite like home.”
“And thank any god listening for that.” Meinwen glanced up at the second floor window she’d spent the last five years looking out of. “If I never see this place again it’ll be too soon.” She went to the passenger seat of the truck and pulled out a slim volume called Folklore of Laverstone. She waved it at Dafydd who stared at it while he lit his cigarette.
“You wrote a book, did you?” He nodded toward the author’s name.
“No. Another M Jones did. I can’t claim to be the only one.” She sat again and opened the book at the introduction. “I’d have had to be in my sixties to have written this. It was published in nineteen sixty-four.”
“Laverstone is a quiet backwater surrounded by the fields of Wiltshire and the arteries of London avoided, by accident or design, by the twentieth century. The fever to build roads and motorways never seemed anxious to include this historic market town.
“The hamlet of Laverstone was founded in fifteen forty-eight as a traveling inn for coaches on their journey between the metropolis and Oxford, and provided the basic needs of food, shelter and stabling. Within a year it had grown a smithy and several rude houses that took advantage of the river Laver and the pastureland surrounding it for several acres on each side.
“A village grew around the hamlet. Landowners carved up slices of the countryside and settled. The village became recognized as a town when the first of the three churches, that of Our Lady of Pity, was erected in eighteen sixteen. The inn grew into a manor, which flourished up to the late nineteenth century then fell upon hard times. The current owner, Frederick Waterman, became a reclusive poet after tragedy struck the family in the late nineteen fifties.
“The town, like Avebury, is surrounded by a ring of standing stones, reputedly either fifteen or seventeen of them, depending upon the proclivities of the counter. There are several legends warning of straying too near the stones at certain times of the year, the vernal and autumnal equinoxes, for example. It is reputed that Laverstone is where William Shakespeare found the inspiration for A Midsummer Night’s Dream.
“See?” Meinwen punched him on the shoulder. “The whole town is magical. I’d be daft not to go there.”
“There’re other towns not so far away.” Dafydd pulled on his cigarette. “Tintagel. Boscastle. Glastonbury. They’re places steeped in magic. You could open a shop there.”
“And be one among dozens?” Meinwen snorted. “I looked Laverstone up. There isn’t a single witchcraft shop in the whole town.”
“Aye. They probably burn them down.” Dafydd dropped his cigarette and ground it out with his foot. Without a filter, it would vanish into the soil within a day or two. He looked at her through his dreads. “Look, I don’t want you to go, okay?”
She nodded, flicking through the pages of the tour guide as if there was a script inside. “I know,” she said eventually, “but I have to go. I’m so sick of this town I could cry.”
“Why there, though? You might as well be moving to the moon. Or France.”
“It’s as good a place as any.” Meinwen closed the book and looked directly at him. “I’ll be honest with you, Dave. I met a bloke and he lives in Laverstone. Okay?”
“What sort of bloke? A boyfriend sort of bloke?” Dafydd frowned and stood, putting his hands on Meinwen’s shoulders. “I thought you and me had something special?”
“We did.” Meinwen winced as he let go and turned away. She caught his arm, pulling him around. “We do, I mean. We’re buddies, though. We’re not partners.”
Dafydd took her hand. “We could be.”
Meinwen almost laughed but stopped herself, shaking her head. “What about Madge? You’ve been seeing her on and off for nearly ten years.”
“Only because you were too proud.” Dafydd looked down. “I love you, Manny. Always have, always will.”
“I know.” Meinwen reached forward and opened her arms, relieved Dafydd returned the hug. “That’s why we’ll always be best mates. One for all, remember?”
“Yeah.” He smiled. “You haven’t said that since Billy left when we were kids. All for one and one for all.”
“Like Dumas’s heroes.” Meinwen smiled, her eyes glittering with tears.
“Nah, like on the telly.” Dafydd ran the knuckle of his index finger below her eye, caught the unshed tear and licked it off his finger. “Just you and me now.”
“One for all and two for one?”
“Yeah.” He pulled her in for another hug. “You’re my bestest buddy.”
Meinwen laughed and went inside for her bedding. “Two more boxes in the kitchen and we’re done. Then we can get off.”
“I thought you said we were just friends?” Dafydd grinned and ducked her mock punch, coming back out a minute later with both boxes and a mug perched on top of them. “Shall I take this back again? You only ever used it when I came ’round.”
Meinwen stared at it for a moment. “No. I was going to give it you back, but can I keep it instead?”
Dafydd nodded and grinned. “Sure,” he said. “It’ll be something for you to remember me by.”
While he finished packing the truck, Meinwen dropped her house keys inside the envelope and licked the flap to seal it. It wasn’t much to show for five years of living in a one-bed flat on Gwelfor Road but it had overlooked the estuary and for that she was grateful. She turned to the south-west, taking in every last detail of Cardigan Bay to store for the weeks and months of being landlocked in Laverstone.
“You ready?” Dafydd stood with the keys to the truck in his hand. “We’d best get a move on or the sun’ll come out and we’ll never get away from the crowds wanting a Mr. Whippy.”
Meinwen smiled, shoving the envelope through the letterbox before climbing into Dafydd’s ice-cream truck. She’d timed her moving date to his day off so he could drive her. “Yes. Let’s go before I change my mind.”
“Is that a possibility? I could drop my keys down this drain.”
She laughed. “No, I’m going and I won’t be back.”
“Not even for my Mr. Whippy?”
“Maybe for that.” She climbed into the passenger side. “I never could resist your strawberry syrup.”
“Now you’re talking.” Dafydd laughed and climbed in, turning the engine over to warm it up. Meinwen winced at the sudden peal of Greensleeves through the loudspeaker.
Dafydd lunged to switch it off. “Sorry.”
“Thank you.” Meinwen shook her head, grimacing. “Honestly, I don’t know why ice-cream trucks play that tune at all. It’s so sad.”
“Is it?” Dafydd pulled off and headed downhill. “It’s just an old English madrigal, isn’t it? All about true love and delightful company.”
“Unrequited love and a king pining away for
want of a woman,” said Meinwen. “You might as well be playing Madonna’s Sex through your loudspeakers.”
Dafydd laughed. “I’d probably sell more ice cream, too.” He slipped in a CD of nineties chart hits and they drove through the rest of Aberdovey in companionable silence. Meinwen was wrapped in thoughts of the town she’d grown up in and how Dafydd would fare without his best friend. “There’s your old shop,” he said as they passed the vacant building. “They’ve not started renovating it yet.”
“Never,” said Meinwen, “am I calling a shop ‘Reincarnations’ again. It’s just asking for the lease to be canceled.”
“Well, it is coming back to life,” said Dafydd, trying to hide a smile, “just as a bookies. It could be worse.”
“In what way?” Meinwen turned her attention from the beachfront properties to the driver. “What could be worse than a bookies?”
“A butcher’s?” He allowed a grin to break through. “Or a Methodist church.”
Meinwen punched him on the arm. “Oh, very funny, I don’t think. Watch out for that bolt of lightning!”
“Where?”
“It must have been my imagination,” she said. “Because at least I have one. I didn’t go into a dead-end job like you.”
“Ice-cream trucking isn’t a dead-end job,” he said. “Well, except when you park up in dead ends.”
“It’s not a life’s ambition, though, is it? Didn’t you want to be a rock star?”
“I’m still working on it.”
“How far have you got?”
“Three Blind Mice on the recorder. I’m a bit stuck on getting the G-sharp, see.”
Meinwen laughed. “What about the winter? I’ve seen you with all sorts of jobs in the winter. Didn’t one of them grab you?”
“I quite like the burger truck,” said Dafydd. “Not that there’s much call for burgers in the middle of winter. You freeze your tits off just getting your money out, sometimes, let alone driving to Aberystwyth or Machynlleth, and then I’m digging trucks out of snowdrifts, see.” He glanced across at her. “What about you, then? How did you meet this fancy man of yours? What does he look like?”