Beware the Roasburies! Pt. 01

Though this is written in the first person it is not autobiographical. All characters and events are fictional, and bear no relation to any person living or dead.

It is a long slow story, be warned! I'm sure an editor could cut out a good deal and make it more zingy, but sorry, I like it the way it is. If you get bored you can always stop reading and wander off to something with a little more pace.

It is in seven parts, all of which are finished, and as far as possible will be posted on consecutive days.

There are some coincidences in this story. At the end of part seven I append a brief account of the coincidences in my life which obliquely gave rise to this story.

*****

Prologue

Looking through the loft for something else, I, Graham Proctor, happily aged and retired, found a large cardboard box, and on opening it, found it was full of diaries. My diaries. I used to keep diaries! I'd forgotten all about them. I started to keep a diary of my life from early teenage and only stopped when...

Anyway, I became engrossed in those from 1968 onwards when I first came into contact with the dreaded but not entirely dreadful Roasburies: the Dragon and her often absent husband Geoffrey, and their wicked ways.

Reading the entries in my spidery writing provoked still more memories, and I decided use the diaries to chronicle the whole saga before I forgot it all again, or I died and it died with me.

Here it is.

--

Chapter One

Friday 13 December 1968

I was not worried about bad luck, not being superstitious, so I was happy to go out and about on Friday the Thirteenth. Indeed at the time I blessed my good luck, for I met Penelope Roasburie. Little did I know...

It was at a Christmas carol service on the evening of that very date. The service was in the chapel of a Hall of Residence at Manchester University that I had previously inhabited in my final year as a student, studying for the LLB, my law degree.

I had left University six summers previously, was now 26 years old, and was very gainfully employed. I was, they always told me, gifted. I had a photographic memory, and seemed to have no trouble with any of my school subjects. As a result I sat my "O" levels at fifteen and my 'A' levels at seventeen, gaining 'A' Grades in English, History and Mathematics.

I had always been interested in the law aspect of history and literature, and applied for a law degree at Manchester, completing it with a First in 1962 aged 20. I was actually sought (nowadays they call it headhunted I believe), by a Manchester law firm, JRW Ltd., the initials standing for the surnames of the three founding fathers of the firm, Jenkins, Reich and Walsh.

The three founders were de-mobbed together after the war and decided to set up in general practice together. By 1968, the practice dealt mainly with a wide range of company and land law.

While the three partners may have been interested primarily in my head, they got the whole package, right down to my toenails.

They sponsored me and then employed me through the following three years' training, and by 1968 I had also worked for them for three years fully qualified. The work was varied and at times demanding, and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I was by then assigned permanently to companies that had asked for me by name, and was kept busy with them and more casual clients. My bonuses were substantial and even at my young age, there was some talk of my joining the Partners as a Junior Partner, though that did not come to anything, the reasons for which will become apparent.

I had bought, on mortgage, a newly built two bedroom flat: hallway, with kitchen and a large living room to the right, a bathroom ahead and two bedrooms to the left. It was modern, warm, neat and roomy. The mortgage was steep early on, but easily manageable with my bonuses, and since I was single I was very cheap to run.

Another very pleasant aspect of work at JRW was the personnel. Some of the clerks and all the secretarial staff were female, which was common at the time, but there was also a woman solicitor as well as the eight other men. Her name was Zena.

Now in those days, Zena would have been called 'coloured' or worse, 'half-caste', and it was a tribute to her that having the two disadvantages of colour and gender, she more than held her own to qualify, and gain a respected position in our practice. Mind you, she was extremely talented: she had to be. She worked in the adjacent office to mine, and we shared a clerk (pronounced 'clark' - don't ask).

Early on we discovered that she lived on my way to work, so I volunteered to give her a lift, and for five years it had been normal practice for us to travel together to and from work on most days of the week in one or other of our cars, usually mine.

It didn't hurt that she was really beautiful, with rich brown skin and straight glossy black hair, though I never flirted or made any moves toward her, not that I didn't want to, but simply because I had not the courage. The result was that we became close friends, but never more than that. We would have tea together about once a week at her flat, and from time to time we'd have dinner, or go to a concert or a play. Afterwards one of us would drop the other off and be invited in for coffee, when we would have rampant - coffee. We really were platonic friends. No really!

I suppose I was average looking (there has been some deterioration since then). Six feet tall, twelve stone (a hundred and sixty-eight pounds if you don't know that fourteen pounds equal one stone), slim with decent musculature. So, average looking, not devastatingly handsome, not ugly. You have the picture.

Zena had warned me early on against making advances to the clerical staff or the clerks - that was simply not done - though two of the women who were friends of Zena sometimes got lifts to their homes with me.

However, outside work, I had a couple of short term relationships which petered out after a few months each. I was not ready to settle and, it seemed, neither were they.

Back to the Carol Concert. The luck of the 13th came from three things acting in my favour: one, the Chaplain had contacted me in a panic when the guitarist who was to accompany the singing went down with 'flu, begging me to fill in for her. Well, I was no professional, but could hold my own (guitar). It was the era of the protest folk song and of folk groups, and I was very much into that genre at the time. Penelope Roasburie noticed me since I was playing at the concert.

The second stroke of luck was that Penny and her flatmate had hosted a party at the university chaplaincy the night before, and there was a small barrel of beer unfinished that Penny needed to move to her flat for the Christmas vacation.

The third stroke was that I had a car and the chaplain told Penny this salient fact. It was a cold, dark, foggy night. So it was beer that brought us together - an auspicious beginning in anyone's book.

The first I knew was a voice behind me.

"Graham?"

I turned. After all it was my name. First impressions: rich brown shoulder-length shiny thick hair, startlingly large green eyes, pretty little nose, full lips, roundish face with good cheekbones. My eyes did not have time to travel further, in any case I was in the thrall of her beautiful face.

"Yes?" As you can see, being a lawyer I had a way with words. I added a smile, no extra charge.

"I'm Penny Roasburie. Tony Ledson said you might be able to help me." Big engaging smile, twinkling eyes - hers not mine.

I cocked one eyebrow as an invitation to proceed - Athletic see?

"The thing is, we had a party last night at the Chaplaincy, and I need to move a barrel of beer to our flat before the Chaplaincy closes for the vacation. Fr Tony said you're a kind helpful man, very friendly, and you have a car." She stopped and looked hopeful.

"You want me to move a barrel of beer to your flat? How big?" I told you I was bright.

"Living room, one bedroom, kitchen and bathroom," she said with an impish grin. She was growing on me.

"The beer," I said doggedly, though I allowed a grin to cross my lips in acknowledgement of her pedantry.

"A Firkin," she said, her grin continuing and if anything, widening. Was she expecting a firkin risqué response? She didn't get one.

"Seventy Two Pints?" I said knowledgeably, drawing on past experience working in a bar. "I hope most of it was drunk - I couldn't lift a full one."

She looked impressed. "Yes, I'm sure most of it went last night." Again the expectant wait.

"OK," I said. "You coming as well?"

"Yes, of course," she said with a hint of the patronising, "Tony's given me the key to the bar. You get to drink some as a reward!" and she laughed. It was a tinkling and musical laugh, a laugh one would like to hear often.

"It won't be fit to drink after we've moved it," I argued. "It will have to settle again."

Now honestly, I never thought this was fishing for an invitation, but I got one nevertheless.

"So you'll have to come round after Christmas when it's settled, won't you?" Again those eyes twinkled; she knew how to charm.

I was duly charmed and nodded vigorously, and she laughed that laugh again, her smile lighting up her face. She definitely deserved more of my time.

Now as I said, though she was not devastatingly beautiful like Zena, she was very, very attractive - slim and well-proportioned: neatly full up top and a neat round behind, good legs. Yes, by then my eyes had done the tour. Most girls of twenty are pretty, but she was more than that, and did I say neat?

She was intelligent and fun to talk to, and we had a good chat on the short drive through the murk to the chaplaincy, and thence to her flat.

What she craftily hadn't mentioned was that she and her flatmate lived in the attic of an Edwardian house: two long flights of stairs to her top floor flat. The flat took over the whole top floor, and the sloping ceilings following the rooflines gave it an interesting appearance. The landing was spacious, off which were, clockwise, a bathroom, a kitchen, a storeroom/pantry, a very large living room with a minuscule veranda beyond two french doors, and off the living room a large bedroom with two three-quarter beds.

On a foggy December night it wasn't warm in there, in fact it was bloody cold, though the gas fire soon took the edge off the freezing living room. No central heating: this was a student flat!

She offered coffee and I accepted. We sat and chatted without taking our coats off. Patty, her flatmate, was not in evidence, and I learned she was staying with her boyfriend that night. It seemed his flat was warmer, though I'm sure this was not the only or even the main attraction.

Having done Penny a favour, I felt emboldened to ask her out, and rather to my surprise she accepted eagerly, at least I thought so.

I had not bargained for our first date being the next day, doing Christmas shopping in the city and returning library books, followed by tea and crumpets back at her flat. It was good enough for me: I was dating a girl, and a pretty one at that. I didn't care what we did, as long as we did it together. There were other things I'd have liked to do together, but it was early days. Little did I know how far away those 'things' would be.

Over the meal it transpired that she was going home for Christmas the following Wednesday. She lived near Chester, about forty miles away, so of course I volunteered to drive her, and of course, after some rather contrived reluctance out of concern for my inconvenience, she accepted.

To seal the deal we went to a folk club in a city centre pub, the Shakespeare (across a narrow street from Lewis's Department Store) on the Monday night, and we kissed our first chaste lip-kiss when I dropped her off afterwards, gently refusing her offer of coffee, since I had to get to work early the next day to make up for taking the day off on Wednesday.

I could tell she was not sexually loose, so it was becoming clear I would have to go slowly and carefully; already I knew for certain that she was well worth all the self-control I could muster.

In a way it was a good thing, for we got to know each other well on the journey to her parents' house, each giving the other an autobiography and then plenty of discussion about politics, religion, morality and current affairs generally. We found we were were very comfortable with each other, very relaxed, and in agreement over most things.

The house was in Rowton, a village a few miles outside Chester City. A large house, it sat in its own grounds, and gave testimony that the family were very wealthy indeed.

Her mother was coolly polite, but I could feel some reserve. I put it down to snobbery since I was a Manchester lad and had never lost the accent, where it was clear these people were Cheshire Set and rejoiced in theirs. Her father was civil bordering on friendly. He apparently owned a manufacturing company, inherited from his father.

"Penny says you work for a solicitor's practice?" Mother asked, clearly less than eager to spend time conversing with me.

"Yes, it's mainly involved with business law - JRW Ltd."

"Isn't that-?" Penny's father began, but mother was talking, and flashed a crushing glare to silence him.

"In a clerical capacity?" she asked. I detected a sneer. I was beginning to dislike her.

"No," I said. "I'm a lawyer. I deal mainly with creating and assessing contracts, and handling industrial law disputes."

She sniffed at that and excused herself. We could hear her talking on the phone in the hallway.

Penny's father chatted about the problems of late payments and union power then moved on to approve of what Enoch Powell was saying about immigration, and to bewail the Race Relations Act recently enacted.

I tried to be diplomatic as a guest, and thinking of Zena, I was thankful he did not ask my opinion. He was also upset about the Trades Descriptions Act which he asserted, 'makes my life difficult - too much red tape - typical of a Labour Government, always anti-business.'

I contented myself with commenting that the government was elected by the people, and the Act was in their election manifesto. I don't think he liked that much. Too bad.

Her mother re-entered the room, and the atmosphere cooled dramatically. She made it clear to Penny that it was time I was going since they had unspecified 'things to do'.

I had not been offered any refreshment, nor did her mother thank me for bringing her daughter home for Christmas, though her father did. In view of the atmosphere, I was relieved to be getting on my way.

I took the attitude to be snobbery, and wondered why rich people became so snobbish. It was clear I was not welcome, and Penny's mother did not like me at all. In view of the father's comments, I did not think we would agree on very much, and I could see bitter arguments in the future if I ever returned.

At 'home', Christmas was fun as always; it was good to go home to parents, and connect again with my older sister Jane, younger brother Jack and even younger sister Kitty (short for Katherine). Jane had graduated long since and was into estate management, Jack had moved to London the previous year and was involved in trading stocks and shares, while Kitty was in her first year at Oxford; we always ragged her about being the brains as well as the baby of the family.

The other three stayed in the parental home, while I, whose flat was only five minutes' drive away, slept at the flat and commuted each day, usually on foot.

While we were all at home as children, I think the best description of our relationships was 'tolerance'. We did not fight, we did not hate each other; if any of us was in need the rest would rally round, but we had our own lives and rubbed along quite well, usually at a distance.

Now we were all away from the parental home, we rarely saw one another, but when we did gather we got on very well, absence clearly making our hearts grow fonder, and we would go drinking together, sharing our news.

Our parents were their usual gentle selves, delighted we were all together, asking about our love lives, no doubt with grandchildren in mind. From the replies they got, I think they were resigned to being patient for a few more years. Dad was a head teacher and Mum was a nurse.

There was no contact with Penny over Christmas: this was 1968 - no cellphones, no personal computers, and limited access to landline phones. She did not know my address and though I could remember hers at her parental home, it was Christmas and the post would have been too slow. As a result she came back after Christmas and New Year on the train.

I left it an extra week after the Christmas vacation before phoning her flat on a Saturday morning - by which I mean I phoned the one pay phone on the ground floor hallway of her building from a phone box near my flat.

Saturday 11 January 1969

It seems strange now to think how few folk had landline phones in Britain even in the mid 60s. One went to the nearest phone box, or went in person to the other person's place if it was urgent. Further afield there were telegrams for emergencies, or letters handwritten with a pen on paper, or typed on a typewriter - remember those? I seem to remember one spent so much time correcting typos with eraser paper that it was usually easier to write by hand.

The concierge and owner of Penny's house lived on the ground floor and signalled three doorbell rings to Penny's flat - the signal that there was a phone call for Penny, two rings would have meant her flatmate Patricia, one ring was someone at the front door for either of them.

Penny seemed very happy to hear from me and immediately pointed out that the beer would have settled over the holiday, and would I like to come over and help drink it. Would I ever! We made a date for Friday.

Friday 17th January 1969

That evening, after we had done justice to much of the remaining beer (and I was impressed that she was a keen beer drinker), she informed me that her flatmate was away for the weekend seeing her boyfriend, and I was welcome to stay over, rather than drive after drinking - I could then drink even more!

We had listened to a Bob Dylan LP I had bought her as a belated Christmas present, and had discussed it. Then I got my guitar out of the car and we sang some songs together. By then, I had privately decided that this woman was the one for me, which was a little premature, but I had never felt quite like that about any woman. I said nothing about my plans for fear of scaring her off.

"Where do I sleep?" I asked. "Sofa or Patty's bed?"

At this she became serious.

"I don't want to give you the wrong idea," she said, quite shyly, "and I've never done this before, but you can sleep in my bed."

"Where will you sleep?" I asked disingenuously with a smile which she misinterpreted.

"We can sleep together," she said and continued hurriedly, "but I mean that and only that, we sleep. I think I can trust you, and that's more than I can say about my previous boyfriends. I wouldn't have let any of them near my bed. You know my feelings about sex, we've talked about that in general terms. Sex for me is about real commitment and we don't know each other enough to be committed."

"I can accept that," I said.

She went to the bathroom to change, and I stripped down to my briefs in her absence and climbed into bed. She emerged from the bathroom in a pair of baggy flannelette pyjamas, and I was pretty sure she had her bra and knickers on underneath. She could trust me, she had said - oh yeah? She trusted her bra and knickers more!

"Which side?" I asked, already on the left.

"As you are," she said, with a red face which was not the result of a vigorous scrub. I could see there was a mixture of fear and excitement, and she was so embarrassed!