Time of Her Life

by Josephine Scott

  I donned the purple dress, my replacement costume for the play and went back into the past, back to Castle Danverson, to recover the dress.

  I went at night, when the dogs were sleeping, when the brindle bitch, my favourite, woke from rabbit-chasing dreams to see me then went back to sleep, and I went up the stairs along the corridor to Lord Danverson's room. The page was sleeping on the floor at the door. He woke, saw me and fled in what looked like sheer terror.

  I entered Lord Danverson's room, and of course never appeared again.

  To the page I must have seemed like a ghost.

  To me it was just common sense to go back and recover the dress, so I wouldn't have explanations to give to Alfred, not that he would ever know it was me who lost it.

  I have just had a single illuminating flash of thought.

  The servant who handed my Lord Danverson his tankard of ale is the living image, the very double, the identical twin of Kenneth Thompson.

  How did I feel, sore and naked and birched? How did I feel? Confused. Hurt. Mixed up. It was the first time I had come back hurt, it was the first time I had come back crying.

  The next morning, long before I thought of having to return, I had a new feeling to contend with.

  Satisfaction.

  Unlike most evening classes, the local history talks had remained well attended. There was not an empty chair in Sheila Grantham's front room.

  "We know where most of the original castle stood." A sketch plan flashed onto the screen. "See where the dotted outlines are? That's where the original foundations of the castle were. You'll see in places it is much larger than the King's Theatre which was built on the site."

  "Does anyone know why the land stood empty for a hundred years?" asked Abbey, leaning forwards for a better look at the sketch plan. I walked most of that, she told herself. I'll find the rest, get round the back of the theatre, where they store all that old rubbish, walk the rest. The castle's bigger than I realised, but then, I've yet to find the kitchens and the stables, and other outhouses.

  "Superstition." Sheila Grantham grinned, her face bone-white in the light from the projector. "The story of the lady in purple persisted for ages! And then there was the Walchurch Curse, or as it became known, the Danverson Curse. Anyone who tried to build something there, who moved the stones, or dug foundations, got hurt in some way. When two or three people were killed, they gave up."

  "What do we know about the ghost?" asked someone else. Abbey heaved a small sigh of relief; she didn't want it to be her making all the running all the time. Des squeezed her hand and smiled. He didn't know about the ghost and Jim Melville. She'd tell him later.

  "We think she dates from the time of the castle itself, as she wears this flowing purple dress with lace collar, her hair up in a cap, very much a lady from the early 1600s. She walks around the walls, goes up the stairs and disappears."

  "How often has she been seen?" Someone else.

  "Quite a few times, apparently. Whoever she is, the story persisted that she was guarding the site, not letting anything be built on it. And as there was no pressing need to build on it and there were plenty of other sites in Walchurch, it was left alone."

  "How come the theatre got built?" asked Des, getting involved in the story now. Even for disbelievers, it was a good tale.

  "This is the strange part of the whole story." Another plan appeared on the screen, showing arrows this time. "We always get asked about the ghost, so we drew a rough indication of where she walks. The peculiar thing is, she, whoever she is, or the curse, if that's what it was, came into effect if someone tried to build a house or a shop or offices on the site. But when a sign went up saying they were going to build a theatre, nothing happened. She, the curse, whatever, didn't mind a theatre being built, but refused to allow the other buildings! So, we have a theatre and Community Centre. And a fine one it is too."

  More slides of the theatre, black and white, as it changed its portico, as it modernised, to today.

  Abbey sat in complete silence, as if turned to stone.

  I needed the theatre there.

  I need the theatre there.

  To get the costumes.

  To go back.

  "Incidentally, the Danverson motto was 'For Glory and For Love'. I took that as the title for the play I wrote. It's being performed at the King's Theatre just next week, isn't that right, Miss Brandon?" Sheila Grantham again.

  Abbey blushed as everyone looked at her.

  "Yes that's right. I - I have a small part in it."

  "I got the idea after researching the whole period of the 1600s, and it seemed right to link it with local dignitaries."

  "Sounds like it might be good." A voice from the other corner of the room.

  Be fair, thought Abbey, tell them now.

  "I would just warn you, if you're coming to the play, that I wear a purple dress. I've already been mistaken twice for the ghost by the caretaker!"

  A ripple of amusement ran round the room. Sheila snorted with delight.

  "What a lovely story! I'll have to remember that for the next set of talks!"

  Soon after that the class broke up for the evening. Des walked with Abbey to the door.

  "I'd like to stay with you for a while tonight but I think I'm coming down with a cold," he apologised, his eyes red and his nose already running. He snuffled into a handkerchief. "I don't want to give it to you."

  "Walk to the door with me, then you're on your way home anyway." Abbey tucked her arm through his, and they went out into the cold night.

  They walked in silence, comfortable in each other's company, Des occasionally sneezing and coughing.

  "You need to get home and into bed," Abbey warned solicitously. "Go on with you, get some whisky and lemon down you or something!"

  "I'll call you when I'm better."

  "Do that."

  He turned to go, but came back.

  "I almost forgot this. I picked it up for you, not had chance to look at it yet." A small book, locally printed: the history of Walchurch.

  "One of Sheila Grantham's efforts. Thought you might like to have a read." He sneezed violently. "G'night, Abbey."

  "Night, Des. Go home, stay warm."

  She watched him walk away along the road into the darkness, feeling suddenly lonely.

  What a foolish thought! I've been alone ever since I left home! And with family relations the way they are, I'll go on being lonely!

  Her flat wasn't welcoming any more, not since she had experienced other places, other walls, other people.

  A castle.

  She made herself tea, switched on, her electric blanket, and curled up on the sofa with the little book. It was something to read before going to bed. Much of what Abbey read had already been covered in the talks, the history of Walchurch, early sketches of how the church might have looked, an early sketch of the castle ...

  That made her pause for a while. She had never seen the castle from the outside, never appreciated the soaring towers, the slit windows, the huge moat with its heavy drawbridge and portcullis ready to drop. A solid place, impregnable, standing firm against foe and weather alike. Oh yes, that was a castle, and just how it should look. It felt right. Whoever had put the picture together had a feel for the rightness of it.

  A photograph of the Danverson tomb. Lord Josiah Thomas Danverson, flat on his back, hands clasped on his chest, his small beard in place, a dog at his feet. The stonemason had captured him in all his handsome glory. The family motto, 'For Glory and for Love', stood out clearly from the rich carving at the base of the tomb, with an heraldic shield alongside and flowing greenery surrounding it all.

  She couldn't see the person lying alongside Lord Danverson, the other Abigail Brandon. That would have to wait until she could get back in the church and see it when the covers had been removed, when the Danverson Chapel was open to the public once again.

  When the play is over, she told herself, I'll borrow the red-and-black dress and try to get back o
ne more time to another of Lord Danverson's festivities, try to see some more of the castle, try to see how I feel when I'm there.

  But for now, well, I might as well go write some more of my commentary. No Des, no sex, and tonight I'm not up to dressing up to go somewhere. I had just hoped ...

  Now

  A society lunch, very Edwardian, elegant ladies in draped dresses, ruffled parasols, jewellery glinting in the lunchtime sun. The men so smart with cravats and stickpins, walking sticks with silver-and-gold tops, polished boots, polished faces, well-fed paunches. So elegant, so smooth, so ...

  Suffocatingly dull.

  He was nice-looking, the man I picked from the lunch, the man who appeared to be alone and it turned out was alone. He was wifeless, she being at home with the ague, the ladylike illness that could be anything from a period to a stomach ache or a simple not wanting to go.

  We soon left the lunch, since the "I'm available" sign was flickering away like crazy, and he read it and we left.

  His club was all dark panelling and serious members, eyes peering over glasses and from behind papers, newsprint rustling with righteous indignation and jealousy.

  We departed for the upstairs room allocated to Sir Anthony.

  He wasted no time at all, a quick hug, arms around me and before I knew what was happening I was being spanked. Hard.

  How could such a man, no doubt with servants to attend to his every need, from shoe polishing to gardening, hurt so much with a white soft hand?

  But he did and it was an experience.

  And then he sat on the side of the bed and played with me and fingered me, thrusting fingers and then most of his hand deep inside me, bringing me to orgasm. His cock never entered me. I gave him pleasure afterwards, but it wasn't the same.

  I missed the solid cock ramming into me. Oh he was good, very expert, but Lady whatever-her-name-was no doubt had a bad sex life, for he was obviously impotent.

  And he, for the first time, opened my eyes to the fact that men like to spank women just for the hell of it.

  I knew then what Lord Danverson was about. And why the Mrs Dawson-Page lookalike so many years back told me he was a cruel man who liked to hurt women.

  What I'd like to know is, how did she know?

  The experience left me low. I needed a real experience, a real man. I donned my Dusty Springfield outfit and took off for the 1960s.

  The City of London. Full of men in bowlers and women in smart designer clothes, high-heels and briefcases, moving alongside their contemporaries as if they owned the place, which for the most part they probably did. I bought a spanking magazine from a man at a newsstand in Fleet Street, endured his leer of pure lust, handed over a one pound note I had rescued from a coin dealer. I walked to Fenchurch Street, walked along the kerb but still could not avoid the men who so nonchalantly swung an arm and contacted with my pubis, brushed against a breast, half apologised, and were gone before you could decide what the look had been saying.

  The station was full of old memories of steam, dust, dirt and grime. Full of commuters, all scurrying here, there and everywhere. Bought a coffee at a stall with money also rescued from the coin dealer. Read the magazine over the coffee, which I did not then drink, still afraid of what might happen if I really did take something back, other than come.

  Queued for the telephone in a line long enough to be sure I had something to do for some time; when I got three callers away from the telephone I muttered, looked at my watch and walked off. Not one eye blinked; everyone was doing the same, impatient, anxious.

  Out of the station, back down the now-deserted road, just the late workers hurrying home to wife, children and fireside to show any kind of life.

  And I turned into a sleepy off-the-beaten-track courtyard in the City of London, earlier full of men in bowlers and suits, but now late, deserted, left to dust and golden glow from a gas lamp, gloomy with a huge church. The inn was inviting. I had no choice but to go in. And I did, and I met two men.

  My instincts let me down.

  The man behind the bar was dark, lowering, with thick arms and heavy eyebrows. He wore a belt strong enough to moor the Queen Elizabeth. He looked a bit dirty.

  And I, fastidious even then, though why I didn't know, went for the smooth-talking elegantly groomed businessman.

  Nigel. In a suit.

  And a City flat. Where we fucked and rolled around in ecstasy. He knew how to fuck but ignored my need, shown by my unrolling the magazine onto the counter top.

  So I went back to the inn, drawn back to the inn, for the mirror was not in Nigel's City flat.

  And the barman knew what I had come back for. He touched his belt and indicated he knew how to deal with a woman the way she needed to be dealt with.

  And I stayed, and I went to his room and he thrashed me harder than I'd been beaten by anyone, even by Lord Danverson. A belt hurts in the way a birch cannot and will not.

  The leather bit and stung and hurt, drove me crazy. I couldn't wait for it to be over, but afterwards, oh, the afterwards, when he pulled me up on my hands and knees and rammed deep into me, so deep I thought he would burst me wide apart, and I knew then. This, yes this was what I wanted.

  Oh Des, if you ever read this, I wasn't being unfaithful to you, not really! For he looked just like you, or you looked just like him, I can't decide which it is!

  And I lied to Alfred and said I'd slipped and hurt my coccyx when I couldn't walk smoothly at rehearsal the next day.

  I read my magazines in the safety of my fiat, spent a fortune on them from the Private Shop, if only Sue and Linda knew how many times I'd crossed those forbidden portals and bought forbidden magazines! If only they knew what Sister Abigail got up to out of hours, when the mirror called and I obeyed the summons, and stepped in front of it...

  To be whisked back to the past and into a different life.

  Where all that mattered was sex and no worries about a reputation.

  What more could anyone ask?

  Everyone agreed that the play was a stunning success. For three nights the King's Theatre was full, for three nights a story set in 1625 unfolded across the stage, bringing a touch of the past, a moment of glory and a story of love, to the audience.

  Abbey walked the boards, spoke her lines, stood in the wings and dreamed her dreams.

  The applause was welcome, but more than that, the costume, the dialogue, the feel was right. More at home there than in her modern short clothes and office environment. More at home in this, the distant past, where life was much harder yet simpler, where simple pleasures became important, where financial considerations were not for women to worry about. For a while the unreal world of lights, wooden stage, wings, painted backdrop and props, was more real than her small flat, more real than the supermarket and the shops, more real than the cold dressing rooms and chilled corridors.

  If I were there, she mused, watching Stevie pout through the play, dazzling under the lights, I'd be thinking the other way round. For my man would be important to me, more important than anything else, so the motto would be 'For Love and for Glory'. And I'd give a great deal to have a man to love to the exclusion of all else.

  Des? He's nice, he's all right, but he isn't The One.

  He doesn't stir me deep inside. It's not a problem to me not to see him for these three nights, not a problem to send him home at the end of an evening. There's no desire to curl up against him and have him stay the night, to wake sleepy-eyed and warm next to him in the morning.

  "Goodwife Manderson." Jim Melville came up to her as they came off-stage after their final curtain, the applause of the audience still deafening. Alfred was here and there, praising and complimenting and exhorting people to please come to the next reading, they were doing a Shaw play next time, different costumes, different feel -

  "Mr Melville."

  "Now the play's over you can take that dress home and burn it!" He smiled to cover his awkwardness.

  "I might just do that, I've lived in it
for so long now!"

  "Here." He thrust a book at her. "This is for you. I have to say you were a fine goodwife, but you make a better ghost." And he was gone, out of the crowd of actors riding the adrenalin high of having done a fine performance. Someone popped a champagne cork, there was scattered applause. The sound of chairs and feet and voices reached them from beyond the curtain.

  "Abbey? I'll try and get you a bigger part next time." Alfred, close at her elbow, was looking at the book in her hand. " Walchurch ghosts. Where did that come from?"

  "Jim Melville. He said I made a fine goodwife but a better ghost!"

  "I heard tell you scared the superstitious old fool half to death twice, didn't you?"