Esmeralda's Walk

Esmeralda stepped out through her front door. She felt the cool breeze on her bare skin making her nipples suddenly go hard. She took a deep breath and walked down the path of her little cottage.

Lucy Freebody was right. It really was exhilarating. She felt as if her life had been transformed since finding Ms Freebody's book left on the Ebenezer Mapletoft Memorial Bench at the end of the village green. It had been in a plastic bag bearing the label of The Serendipity Society. Apparently the aim of the society was to leave life changing books for anybody to find and read - serendipity that could change their lives.

Esmeralda had always led a quiet life. She travelled to work every day for the Ebenezer Mapletoft Memorial Library Service, and at weekends she took long walks in the countryside, went to church and tended her little garden. She had been the model of quiet conformity. Now all that was to change. Lucy Freebody had opened her eyes.

She had lived in the little Norfolk village of Chipping St Giles since she had left university. It had been a safe and boring place. It would be so no more.

Ms Freebody believed that life was to be lived to the full. That we should cast aside hidebound convention. That we should show the world our true selves - and our naked bodies. There was no need to be shy or embarrassed. A naked woman was a confident woman. That was the motto of Miss Lucy Freebody.

Esmeralda, so long timid and retiring, was won over. No longer shy and retiring, Esmeralda was brimming with confidence. Today she was going to show the world her naked body.

Jack Lambeth sat in his little bedsit. On the wall were a large number of newspaper clippings. He had enjoyed writing that book as Lucy Freebody, he enjoyed even more collecting the stories about girls who had been arrested for walking down the street naked after reading it. The pictures in the newspapers seemed to indicate that the girls didn't manage to maintain their confidence for long.

Esmeralda's confidence started to evaporate the moment she felt the cool breeze on her naked body. You see Esmeralda had always been embarrassed by her naked body. She was a petite girl, petite that is in terms of actual height, being measured in the standard way she was only a little over five feet high. She was inclined to be slightly plumptious though and she sported two bosoms of prodigious size and remarkable firmness. So much did these two properties combine, that it was said of Esmeralda that she was taller lying down than she was standing up. This was perhaps, if truth be told, a slight exaggeration, but only slight. These magnificent specimens were each topped off by a large nipple and a wide dark areola so that if you had seen Esmeralda lying down you might have remarked that each of her twin peaks were capped with a wide circular plinth on which stood a miniature Nelson's column.

Esmeralda was not the sort of girl to spend either time or money on mere appearances. Her triangle of jet black curly pubic hair was neither combed nor trimmed and contrasted starkly with her golden blonde tresses. This was not because Esmeralda either dyed one or bleached the other. She had simply been born a two tone model, a hirsute chimera, a fact completely unknown to the inhabitants of Chipping St Giles until the fateful day of Esmeralda's Walk.

Her face was pretty rather than beautiful, her nose perhaps a little too snub, her lips a little too full, her eyes a little too large and a little too blue, a china doll of a face in fact, matched by a china doll of a high pitched, but not at all squeaky voice.

She worked in the mobile library and visited all the surrounding villages. Everybody knew Esmeralda.

Including the Rector of St Giles, the Reverend Doctor Septimus Dogge. Dr Dogge was well named as he was a rotund puppy of a man, of advancing, yet not advanced, years; he sported an impressive embonpoint, a bald head and a need to wear excessively pebble lensed spectacles. Dr Dogge however was inclined to one cardinal sin, the sin of vanity. You might not think that a man of advancing, yet not advanced, years, sporting an impressive embonpoint and a bald head would be vain, but you would be wrong. He hated wearing his spectacles, which he felt made his advancing years appear more advanced than they actually were.

It was a sin of vanity which was to play a major part of the events which were to mark forever the day of Esmeralda's walk.

Esmeralda saw him in the distance as she progressed down the High Street of Chipping St Giles. Her Lucy Freebody instilled confidence evaporating more and more, the further she got from the sanctuary of her little cottage. And as her confidence evaporated the embarrassment at her nudity, her total nudity, increased exponentially.

Dr Dogge was exiting the churchyard by the lych, which was his normal practice at ten of the clock each morning. Had Esmeralda but remembered this she might have delayed her walk by quarter of an hour, but she had not and now the reverend rector stood on the pavement beaming; waiting to greet her as she approached.

"Courage to the sticking place Esmeralda!" she thought, and summoning up such as were left she marched on.

Dr Dogge surveyed the advancing figure with some bemusement; by its shape and movement it appeared to be Esmeralda, but why should Esmeralda be wearing a two piece black bathing suit? For in the absence of glasses, Esmeralda's abundant black triangle, and wide dark areolas so appeared to Dr Dogge, his brain unconsciously filling in the gaps where the rest of the 'costume' should have been.

Then the explanation struck him. Of course! Esmeralda was a 'young person'. He had only that week attended a seminar given by the Rural Dean, Dr Simeon Simpkins; a man whom Dr Dogge intensely disliked; a man who did not it appeared entirely condone the Thirty Nine Articles of Christ's true church; a man who had not even accepted the well know fact that Jesus was English.

The office of rural dean was an ancient one, in the middle ages originally appointed to oversee the flogging of recalitrant clergy (a duty which Dr Simpkins, in his weaker moments, often wished could be revived) the post now involved dominion over parish priests, among which was numbered Dr Dogge.

At the seminar Dr Simpkins had talked of the need to attract 'young persons' back to the church. Young persons behaved in ways which were different, ways which, Dr Dogge supposed, included walking down the High Street of Chipping St Giles in a two piece bathing suit.

To attract 'young persons' to the church it was necessary, Dr Simpkins had announced, to be 'with it' - an expression he explained which meant understanding the ways of 'young persons' and accepting them. He had used a particular expression to describe this state of being 'with it'. What was it again, something to do with temperature, Dr Dogge remembered, what was it again? Oh yes! 'Chilly'!

That was it! Dr Dogge would be 'chilly' about Esmeralda's two piece bathing suit. Indeed he had a plan, a plan to do something really 'chilly' involving Esmeralda.

Meanwhile Esmeralda could not understand why the old buffoon was grinning like a demented Cheshire cat. She had expected harsh recriminations; she had been screwing to the sticking place in order to defend herself against harsh recriminations, despite feeling increasingly wobbly at the knees; and here was the old buffoon grinning like a Cheshire cat.

"Esmeralda!" announced Dr Dogge, as she came within earshot, "how lovely to see you in such a fetching costume!"

Poor Esmeralda. She had been prepared for harsh recriminations and here she was being complimented on her state of total nudity. She went bright red and started babbling.

"Er.... Thank you Dr Dogge."

"Septimus! Please call me Septimus," he distinctly remembered that it was 'chilly' to use Christian names.

"Esmeralda, dear child, I wonder if I could 'book you' for an important part in our little church fete champetre, later on."

Esmeralda looked at first puzzled and then alarmed.

"Do you see," explained Dr Dogge, "I said 'book' you and you work in a library. Do you get it, 'Book you' and there are books in a library."

From this you will gather that Dr Dogge considered himself a great wit, and as such could not bear the thought that others would not have realised that he had been witty, he therefore felt it necessary to explain every 'witticism' in detail lest it should not have been understood; an exercise which only led to any slight degree of wit which might have accidentally crept into his comment, being totally and immediately expunged.

"Book me?" Stammered Esmeralda.

"Certainly my dear. I need someone to open our little fete and it strikes me that you are, inter alia, the person for the job.". And from this you will understand that another of Dr Dogge's peccadilloes was the tendency to insert random Latin tags, the meanings of which he had often totally forgotten, into his speech.

"Do you mean dressed like this?" The bright red Esmeralda realised that this would be the ultimate trial of adherence to the tenets of Miss Freebody.

"Of course dear," replied Dr Dogge, surprising even himself by how 'chilly' he had become, "you look absolutely perfect."

"In that case, Yes!" Esmeralda had affixed to the sticking place and not been found wanting.

Forty yards away across the street a curtain twitched. It did not twitch of its own accord; it twitched due to the activity of the person peering from behind it. Not much that happened in the High Street escaped the notice of Margaret Corset, spinster of the parish, and perpetual branch chairman of the Chipping St Giles Women's Institute. The WI, the jam and Jerusalem brigade of ladies of a certain age who are at the beating heart of every English village. Margaret kept watch over comings and goings benefit of said curtain and her father's old binoculars.

She had seen everything. And in the case of Esmeralda absolutely everything, for her keen eyesight, and Daddy's binoculars showed that Esmeralda was indeed totally starkers.

Margaret however was in a quandary. Beside her stood the old black Bakelite telephone that connected her to that network of unattached middle class ladies known as the 'WI Bush Telegraph'. Margaret controlled not only to content of the information disseminated by this process, but also the attitude that the village should take to events.

And it was that attitude that now dominated her thoughts. For Margaret had long held a torch for the reverend doctor, and despite her fawning and slavering over him he had paid her not the slightest attention. And here he was fawning and smiling, nay, slavering himself over this naked girl. He was obviously just like other men, so easily moved by the sight of a pair of excessively overdeveloped bosoms and the naked female body.

Ah the naked body! Her mind suddenly drifted back all those years, to that day thirty-two years earlier when aged but sixteen summers she had been sent by her parents to summer camp in Sweden. The Swedes had had an attitude to the naked body somewhat different to that found in Norfolk, but apparently not shared by the Reverend Doctor Dogge, in Chipping St Giles. She had not worn a stitch of clothing for six weeks.

She suddenly made up her mind and picked up the telephone.

"Thank you so much my dear!" Pronounced Dr Dogge.

"But where do I have to go?" asked Esmeralda, her new found courage leaking away again.

"Quo Parcae vocant!" answered Dr Dogge, "whither the Fates call! You see it's a fete and you have to go where the Fates call. And he added," quite overcome by the depth of his own wit, "the Parcae are calling you to The Park! Because that is where the fete is held."

And he almost collapsed in helpless mirth overcome by the emotion of so much erudition at accomplishing a double pun in Latin. How 'chilly' was that!

"At what time?" Poor Esmeralda, shaking now not so much with mirth, as with terror at the thought of opening a fete starkers.

"Eleven o'clock," gasped the reverend doctor, quite unable to match his former witticism he could only manage 'alea iactet est', which indeed had a certain aptness given Esmeralda's situation.

Margaret Corset regarded the scene with disdain. The wretched man was so entranced by the sight of a naked female he had almost swooned with pleasure. Well they'd see about that. They'd soon see about that.

Esmeralda continued her walk down the High Street. Lucy Freebody had indicated several tasks that must be accomplished in the nude to obtain full liberation, although opening a village fete was admittedly not one of them. She entered the Village Shop and Post Office.

Miss Lucy Littlemouse had run the Village Shop and Post Office since her dear father had gone to a better place five years hence. Indeed he had always said that Great Yarmouth was a better place for a Post Office and he hadn't set a foot in Chipping St Giles since.

In all her years in the shop Lucy Littlemouse had never seen a sight like the one that greeted her the day of Esmeralda's walk. Esmeralda Bacon had come in in the all together. What on earth should she do? Esmeralda must have gone mad. She had heard that people went mad with a thing called 'heatstroke' - it was a hot day, the man on the weather forecast had suggested it might get over 75, perhaps Esmeralda had heatstroke. It would be best to humour her.

"Are you all right dear?" She enquired.

"Never felt better."

Lucy thought for a moment. That might just be the heatstroke affecting her brain. Perhaps she didn't realise she was in her birthday suit.

"Feeling the heat perhaps?"

Esmeralda stared back. This must be a reference to her state of undress.

"I just felt like wearing a cool outfit today."

Lucy smiled. Her diagnosis was right! Esmeralda had heatstroke and had gone mad. It was definitely best to humour her.

"And what can I get you dear?"

"A Daily Mail and a second class stamp."

Lucy obtained the necessary items and took the money. As soon as Esmeralda was out of the shop she grabbed the phone; Margaret Corset would know what to do!

Esmeralda continued her walk, task number three and then she would be completely liberated. She walked up to the door of The Manor.

Lady Chipping St Giles, or so she styled herself, was sunbathing in the garden. Marlene Plugg could of course style herself anything she liked, there was no law against it, but she should not perhaps have given the impression that she was the wife of a knight or a baroness as the title would suggest. For Marlene was in fact Lord of the Manor of Chipping St Giles.

English titles are peculiar things. The Lord Mayor of London is neither a lord nor indeed the mayor of London. A Lordship of the Manor is not a title any more than Landlord of the Dog and Duck; it is a nearly extinct mediaeval privilege which passes hands for a few thousand pounds and brings with it nothing but a few moribund feudal rights. However Marlene had paid good money for it and had bought it along with the Manor, following her win on the national lottery, and if she wanted to pretend she was some sort of aristocrat, who was to gainsay her.

She had never really been accepted in Chipping St Giles, being an in-comer (a title applied to anybody whose family hadn't lived there since time immemorial - that is to say the accession of Henry III to the throne of England).

She was also regarded as 'fur coat and no drawers' (the word drawers here referring to ladies undergarments not the place where you put the knives and forks), an expression indicating that money was spent on outward show rather than basic necessities, but in this case more literally true than was usually the case.

Esmeralda knocked on her door. The task, according to Lucy Freebody, was to 'confront an important person'. And who could be more important than the Lord of the Manor!

When Marlene opened the door the two women looked at each other open mouthed. Marlene had never liked the idea of wearing a bathing suit to sunbathe and didn't see why the Lord of the Manor would have to.

Both women were completely naked.

It took Esmeralda a few seconds to regain her composure. She had come to complain and she would jolly well do so.

"You should keep your dog under control," she shouted.

Marlene was inordinately fond of her dog - a cross between a Doberman and something totally indeterminate.

"Timothy is perfectly behaved," she shouted back. This statement was absolutely not true. Timothy, a name about as inappropriate as could be devised for a great slavering beast, was just about the worst behaved dog in the world.

"He's always after my Tiddles!" expostulated Esmeralda.

"So what!"

"Well, then he starts barking!"

"Well, your Tiddles shouldn't be so peculiar looking. If you kept your Tiddles properly coiffured he might not be tempted."

"Coiffure my Tiddles! What an extraordinary idea! All I'm saying is keep him away from the fete this afternoon."

"What fete."

"In the park. I'm opening it and I don't want any smelly mongrel coming after my Tiddles!"

"You mean you're opening it dressed like that!"

"Of course!"

Marlene was aghast. She was Lord of the Manor. She should have been opening the fete.

"Timothy!" She shouted.

At that moment the aforementioned Timothy appeared.

"Go Timothy!" Shouted Marlene,

Esmeralda ran. Lucy Freebody had said nothing about that being pursued by a smelly mongrel! Dreadful dog. First her darling Tiddles and now her.

Timothy licked his lips. What a fascinating sight, she looked very tasty indeed.

Meanwhile the Reverend Dr Dogge was being harangued by the Right Reverend Dr Simpkins, he of the thirty nine articles denial who, ex officio, held dominion over Dr Dogge.

"And what attractions are you bringing to this fete that will be of interest to young persons? Will it be cool?"

Cool?" What did the old buffoon mean?

"Yes cool, with it, groovy."

Oh! Cool! Dr Dogge had thought it was chilly. Never mind though.

"The Chipping St Giles Boy Scouts will be performing on bicycles."

He could almost see the sneer of disdain signalled by Dr Simpkins voice.

"Is that cool?"

"Well there will be the brass band of the North Norfolk police."

"And..."

"The horses and hounds of the North Norfolk hunt."

"I thought hunting had been banned."

"It has. They are purely ceremonial now."

"And..."

"The women's institute gymnastics team will put on a display of calisthenics."

"And..."

"The Chipping St Giles Morris Men will be dancing round the Maypole."

"Good God man! Do you call that cool! Is there nothing modern. Nothing cutting edge!"

"The fete is going to be opened by Esmeralda Bacon in her two piece bathing suit."

"Esmeralda Bacon? Was she on Big Brother?"

"I fear not."

"Celebrity Punch Up?"

"No."

"Norfolk's Got Talent."

"No!" Dr Dogge was becoming exasperated.

"Humph!" Dr Simpkins slammed down the phone. The man was an idiot. This was going to be the uncoolest fete ever.

In the Village Shop and Post Office Lucy Littlemouse stared at the telephone mouth agape. She was strongly tempted to call the authorities and have Margaret Corset taken away. The woman had obviously gone mad as well. The heat must be too much. But then she reflected. The Women's Institute was changing. They had been told that they had to keep up with the times. There were those Calendar Girls women. It must be what was expected these days. And Margaret Corset was branch chairman. She would know. She sighed. She had always supported the WI. It could depend on her now.

Marlene Plugg, self-styled Lady Chipping St Giles, was livid. She should have been opening the fete. But she had an idea, a vague memory of something she had seen in a book. If she was right it would be that bloody vicar and his harpies at the WI who would be laughing on the other side of their faces.