No Ordinary Affair (2 page)

“No. No indeed it isn’t!” He looked shocked and annoyed and I glanced at the box, puzzled at how he could be disappointed with the job I’d done.

“It’s the lack of discipline that’s led to the decline of our society. Manners cast aside. Ill-mannered yobs running about. It all starts in the home you know. There’s no order anymore. No respect for authority. The children don’t obey the parents, the wives don’t obey the husbands…”

I realized then that we were talking about totally different things and was relieved that I didn’t have to rewrap the watch. I hate wrapping. Did I tell you that? No? Well, I do.

“That’s a rather outdated notion,” I laughed as I put the box down on the counter and rang up the purchase.

“So I take it you don’t obey your Mark.”

“That’ll be twenty-eight pounds,” I said. “And no, I don’t. But then again he doesn’t require it of me.”

“Pity,” he said. “It’s my opinion that a woman feels more secure in herself when her man has the courage to be fully in command.”

I was trying to think of an answer when he held up the paddle. “And this,” he said. “How much does the owner want for it?”

I felt my face grow warm as he handed me the implement. If wasn’t as heavy as it looked, but something about it sent a cold thrill through me in light of his words. I tried to imagine Mark putting me over his knee, raising my skirts and smacking my bottom while I whimpered for mercy. But the image would not come. It simply was not who Mark was.

“There’s no price,” I said.

“Then I’ll come back tomorrow and check again,” he said. “Would you hold it for me?”

“As you wish,” I said. “I can’t imagine an item like this is much in demand.”

I took a slip of paper and taped it to the surface of the paddle, which had been worn smooth from use, and wondered how many bottoms it had landed on. The chill ran through me again.

“Your name?” I asked, looking up at him.

“Ethan,” he said. “Ethan Willoughby.”

I wrote the name on the paper, but when I looked up to tell him I’d see him the next day, my customer had already left.

M
ark and I arrived home at around the same time that evening and I could tell right away that he would be too tired to cook.

“Rough day?” I asked.

“Don’t even get me started,” he said. Mark was an instructor at a boys’ school in the neighboring village. His charges, the sons of privilege, ran roughshod over the staff, and the headmaster was so afraid of the parents that he regularly undercut teachers’ efforts to make the lads accountable.

“Nigel Stone and Charles Frasier got into a fight today in the stairwell,” he said. “Mr. Privens got his glasses broken trying to pry them apart. I’d have chucked them out, but Mr. Ivey told me to give them detention. Detention! For fighting! Honestly, Mary, sometimes I think I’d see less headaches at a school for delinquents.”

I reflected quietly on Mark’s problem and the words of the stranger I’d waited on that day.

“Do you think things were easier back in the days when boys were beaten?”

We were indoors now and Mark turned to me in the foyer, his expression shocked. I could see my reflection in his wire-rimmed glasses, placid and curious as I awaited his answer.

“Oh, I don’t know,” he said. “They were probably more afraid to do the things they do today, but I’m not sure if a good smacking really builds character. Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for consequences but not such medieval ones.”

“Hmmm.”

He smiled. “That’s a bit of an odd question for you to ask, anyway, Mary, don’t you think?”

“Not really,” I replied, walking to the kitchen and putting on an apron. “We had a box of old schoolmaster things come in today and one of our customers was opining rather wistfully on the days when discipline was firmer.”

Mark shook his head as he leafed through the mail he’d picked up from under the slot of the front door as we entered. “Well, you know how those old timers are.”

“That’s the funny thing,” I replied. “This gentleman was not an old timer. He was around our age in fact.”

“Takes all kinds, I suppose,” Mark replied. “But like most people he was probably speaking from theory than from practice. It’s always easy to postulate about things.”

“This is true,” I replied, and moved to put the tea on. It was two hours yet until my night class started and I was mindful of making sure Mark was fed and settled before I went on my way. Doing things like that made me happy, and there was a part of me that wished Mark were more old-fashioned and expected it, rather than constantly saying, “Oh, now, you didn’t have to do that….”

It sounds strange, I suppose to hear me say that, but that’s just how I was. How I am. Only I didn’t really understand the connection at the time. But I’m getting ahead of myself now.

So first things first.

My class went well that night. I arrived to find I’d gotten the second highest grade on a test we’d taken the previous day, and while I’d been dreading the upcoming lesson on editing technical works I found myself grasping the subject matter far better than I’d anticipated.

This was almost a miracle since my mind wandered the entire time. I couldn’t get my strange customer out of the way and kept playing our short conversation over and over in my mind, seeing again and again how he’d held that paddle, how he’d caressed the smooth surface that had brought pain to so many errant youngsters. And I could not for the life of me understand my reaction to what should have been an innocuous exchange, nor my ongoing fascination with it.

“Mrs. Saunders?” I snapped back to reality upon hearing my name. The instructor, Mr. Malloy, and the rest of the class, was looking at me expectantly.

“Yes?”

“I was just asking your opinion on the current editing tools we’re using.”

“The software?” I asked.

“That is the only editing tool,” he said dryly. “Unless you have some secret tool you’re not sharing with us.”

I reddened as my classmates snickered. “It’s fine,” I said quickly. “The, um, formatting is a bit trickier than the last
version
of WordPro, but other than that…”

“Thank you,” he said, and moved on to something else. I was relieved to have answered the question to his satisfaction, even as I sat there feeling quite badly for thinking about my customer again when my poor husband was at home – alone – likely dreading his next workday.

So I turned my thoughts away from what had happened at the shop and to my own relationship with my husband - my wonderful, patient, understanding husband. If I only had a pound for every time one of my girlfriends told me how lucky I was to be married to Mark.

“He’s so nice. He’s so considerate. He’s so gentle.” Those were the kinds of things I heard from them at every turn, and they were all true. They truly were. But deep down, just as I longed for Mark to be more demanding, I equally longed for him to be less acquiescent.

“Whatever you say, darling,” was his common refrain, for Mark was eager to please. But he spent so much time pleasing me, he left none for me to please him. Which was what I longed for.

Sometimes I’d drop hints. “Would you like me to wear this dress?” I’d ask, holding up something I knew he would prefer I not wear.

“You’re a clever girl,” Mark would say. “You don’t need me to tell you how to dress.” And when he said things like that I’d turn away so he wouldn’t see the tears that sprang to my eyes, even though I never fully understood until later why his words filled me with frustration.

But the more I dwelled on my conversation with Ethan, the more things started to fall into place. He’
d
spoken of guidance and punishment with something akin to affection, and not just the guidance and discipline of children but of wives by their husbands.

I tried again to imagine Mark taking control, giving me a comeuppance once in a while for doing the things he sometimes fretted over, like forgetting my mobile or being so chronically disorganized with our papers that I lost important bills or notices on a regular basis. I tried to imagine him taking the yard stick that hung on the back of our pantry door – the one he used to measure for the shelves he often built for his workshop and saying, “Mary, I’ve quite had enough of this. Now turn around and hike up that skirt. No, not halfway young lady. All the way
.
..”

But I couldn’t get through the fantasy without either laughing at the silliness of it, which is what I’d likely do if Mark presented himself in such a way. He’d been far to passive and accommodating for far too long and I just needed to get used to it. On the whole it wasn’t such a bad thing. We omen had fought so long to have things this way, hadn’t we? So was it really fair for me to want to go backwards?

No. No it wasn’t. It was rubbish, that’s what it was.

So I did the right thing and put the whole business out of my mind, went home and cuddled close to my husband. And the next morning when I got up
,
and put on my prettiest, most feminine, most form-fitting dress
,
I told myself it was because
Miss Parsham
might appreciate my looking a bit more pleasant. And when I dabbed perfume behind my ears I told myself it was because the back room of the shop could be musty and the pleasant scent I wore would offset it. And the bit of extra makeup? Well, I just bought a new brand. Might as well try it out.

“See,” I told myself when
Miss Parsham
did indeed compliment me on my appearance.

“Much better,” she said, regarding me over the top of her horned-rimmed glasses. “You’ll make a far better impression on the customers looking like a lady than you will dressed like a slattern.”

I frowned but said nothing
, though I wondered a bit petulantly if she thought I dressed like a slattern, why she hired me
. I
thought I
dressed stylishly.

“I’m off to another estate sale,” she announced. “So you’ll be at the helm again today. Mind?”

“No,” I said, and then quickly before I could forget. “Before you go,
Miss Parsham
, a gentleman found this in the box you bought back, I think, from the schoolmaster’s estate sale. He wanted to know what price you put on it.”

She slid her glasses further up on the bridge of her nose and took the paddle, squinting at it with a deep scrutiny before handing it back

“I’ve never seen it,” she said.

“But he took it out of the box,” I countered.

“I didn’t say it wasn’t in there. I just said I don’t remember seeing it,”
Miss Parsham
replied. “There was a ledger, several inkwells, some slates. But not that thing as I recall. However, if you say he took it from the box he took it from the box, although why he wants that and nothing else I have no notion.”

She glanced at the paddle again. “Charge him twelve pounds.”

“Twelve pounds? Is that all? It looks old.”

“Perhaps I could get more, but it’s of no interest to me compared to the other things,”
Miss Parsham
said, pulling on her raincoat. She looked out the window and sighed. “Ugh. I do hate going to estate sales in the rain. Half the time the relatives haven’t the sense not to haul everything out on the lawn even though they know it will get soaked.”

I put the paddle back behind the counter. “Maybe you’ll get there before it rains,” I said. “It’s not supposed to come in
'til
sometime after noon.”

“Let’s hope so,”
Miss Parsham
replied. “There’s supposed to be books at this one. The last thing I need is to find some lovely old valuable volume wet through. I don’t think my heart could take it.”

I smiled as she left and turned my attention to two women who were walking in. They were looking for teapots and I directed the to several especially lovely ones we’d acquired. They were pleasant and chubby and were part of a club
which
held what they called “eclectic teas” at a different members’ home each week.

I was quite enjoying their company when I saw the shop door open and Ethan
Willoughby
stroll in. He was wearing a long black coat, and his shoulder length hair was pulled back this time. He also carried a cane and the first impression I got was of a country gentleman who’d stepped not through a shop door, but through a portal in time.

He gave me a little smile when he saw me but left me to my other customers, who continued to chat me up about their unusual tea club and some of the interesting things they’d done. I cast sidelong glances at Ethan as they finalized their selection, worried that he’d get tired of waiting and leave. But he seemed in no particular hurry as he quietly perused the shop shelves, his hands deep in the pockets of his overcoat.

The ladies were pleased with their teapots. One was green and shaped like a cabbage and the other gold with an exaggerated stem and a lid handle shaped like a key. The pair thanked me profusely for my help and promised they’d be back as they left

“We’ve taken up enough of your time,” said the shorter of the two. “And I’m sure you’re eager to wait on that dashing gentleman there.”