Tea and Crumpets

Two old ladies sitting in their front room in conversation having their afternoon tea - they are slightly dotty

The conversation started in the usual desultory way.

‘I don’t wonder at it.’

‘No Mable, neither do I.’ 

‘I don’t blame it on Dave.’
‘Dave?’
‘You know, him with the shiny face.’
‘Ah, shiny face!’
‘Yes, he’s not a bad lad, if you see what I mean.’

Sheila pondered over this a bit. There was a lad named Dave she used to know, but he be dead now.  She remembered him vaguely.

‘The butcher’s lad.’
‘Butchers lad, who’s that then.’

Mable continued, ’There’s no decent butcher round here, Samuel’s used to be good, now its Tesco.’
‘I hear they are closing down.’
‘No!’
‘Well that’s what Fred said at the Union.’
‘Well that’s no skin off my nose, I don’t go there.
‘I got some ointment for that.’
‘What for?’

Mablel touches her own nose. Sheila misinterprets it.

‘Ok, I ain’t tellin nobody.’
‘What?’
‘Your secret.’
Mable, indignantly,
‘I ain’t got a secret.’
‘What about Dave then.’
‘He bin gone long time.’  Mable sulks into silence.

The afternoon sun slants through the blinds, the eight-day clock on the mantle piece measured the seconds. There was the slurp of tea, and the clink of china.

Mable lifted her heavy bosoms, by her arms, from her lap, and huffed. She seemed to hold her breath, in anticipation of some indignant delivery.

‘Sport! I see some sport the other night, I can tell you! It looked like unarmed combat to me.’
‘Were it army?
‘Army, what you mean?’
Shelia looked puzzled. ’Unarmed combat !’ she said in accusative way.’

Mable’s bosoms lifted higher, that in it’s self a wondrous sight.

‘Unarmed or not they got right to it, I saw his bum, naked he were.’
‘Naked, you say, what Tele were that?’
‘Oh I don’t know, that channel five I shouldn’t think, they go in for that kind of thing.’
‘But what was it?’

Mable screwed lips to show discustation.

‘Sex.’ She screwed the word out of the side her mouth as if she were spitting blood.

Shelia sat silent for some time.

‘Was this at the dentist,’ she observed.
Mable was confused. ’What dentist?’
‘You. know, Antonio.
‘What from the song?’
‘No, you idjut, 'Make You Smile' dentist. Next to Travel Agents.’
Mable was getting muddled. ‘I ain’t going anywhere.’
‘Well, I went. All new fangled it were. You don’t sit down, you lay down!’
‘On the floor?’
‘No, he have a chair that lays you out like on a bed. He do with his foot.’
‘His foot!’
‘On a pedal’
‘A bicycle pedal.’ Mable laughed at her own joke.

Shelia ignored her, and spoke wistfully as if it were an experience not to be missed.

‘Please lie right back in the chair, he said, in that Spanish voice of his, and make yourself comfortable.’
‘And down I went, like a bride on a bed, He looked down, with those brown eyes of his, and I felt quite faint. Good job I put clean knickers on, I  thought.’
Mable was aghast. ‘You mean he check down there first.’

Before Shelia could answer there was a shout from the hall.

‘Granny, its me.’

Mable smirked a bit, ’that be my granddaughter. Where you bin?’

‘I just come from Antonio’s’
‘The dentist!’ The two old ladies said together.
They saw their chance. ‘He make you smile did he?’
There was no reply.
Mable looked at Shelia. ‘Sex…..she breathed.
But there was twinkle in her eye.