Fiction - Satire - Chafing on the Wold

 Chafing on the Wold

Major Standtoux ran the George flag up the pole as he did every morning while staring in the direction of the small pink cottage where Ms Knight lived. A light had come on in her bedroom and the curtains where open. His rapt attention was cruelly interrupted by the dog making a fuss.

“Stupid bitch Mandy - shut-up!” he barked.

 The watery eyed dribbling bull terrier sniffed and waddled away. The belief that a dog resembles its owner was never more true. By a cruel twist of fate Mrs Major Standtoux was also called Mandy.

A dirty ball of rags and whiskers known as Jepp stopped, as every morning in the middle of the drive and saluted the Major.

“Up her goes!” And the Major replied as every morning.

“Clear off!”

“Nice day for it….” The old mans bright but vacant blues eyes twinkled as he chuckled and turned away.

The Major mumbled as he secured the flag rope with a figure of eight. When he looked up he saw the Vicar approaching.

It was clear to the Major that the world had gone mad at some point, at what point he couldn’t quite say.

“Morning Major.” The Vicar said.

“What?”

“Nice morning.”

Women Vicars were part of the madness. It was just not right. The Vicar, a shapely and attractive woman of thirty something, was used to uninformed male prejudice and the Major’s in particular. However, she was just slightly concerned when he started to tremble and his face contort. Unbeknown to her, over her shoulder, the Major could see two upside down feet which had appeared in Ms Knights window, followed a few seconds later by the top of the bobbing red head of Dick Davies, a thrusting muscular man.

The Vicar took the red face and trembling of the Major to be the onset of one of his rants and thought it would be wise to move on.

“What?” the Major exploded to the empty garden and stormed off to the potting shed.

Blanche Davies – Jones, an American, from South Virginia, came to Chafing on the Wold several years ago seeking out the missing links in her family tree. Her good looks, accent and soft, slow speech caused a great stir.  Unfortunately, her research was considerably hampered by the Reverend Richard Jones – Davies. A bachelor who thought that God’s will was for his not inconsiderable academic skills to be employed in the compilation of a history of narrow gauge railways 1870 – 1900, not in the keeping of parish records.

It was several days before the young lady from America managed to get an invitation to tea at the vicarage. She was greeted with some warmth at first, but over cucumber sandwiches and tea it became apparent that Ms Davies – Jones knew nothing of American railroads. Alas, she didn’t even know of The Bristol Coal and Iron Narrow Gauge Railroad Company of Virginia and Kentucky 1876. Two, rather long, hours later, they started on the epic quest of searching for the parish records together. For someone  trained as a librarian and archivist Ms Davies-Jones was reduced to silent tears.  When the vicar commented on this she said it was a slight cold. Landslides of paper made white slopes up towards the ceilings in the corners of most rooms, contained and buttressed, by badly built walls of books. His eyebrows raised in astonishment when she suggested that they might look for the parish records in the vestry.  As the vestry door opened the mice had the good grace to retire, wallowing in the satisfaction that they had prepared quite a lot of the paper for nesting material.

“Please feel free to have a fumble about,” were the last words that he uttered, after reading a piece of paper randomly plucked from a pile, which he clutched to his chest, as he fell down dead.