Page 34 of Autumn at the Willow River Guesthouse
‘I’m going on a date with Jimmy Donbury,’ she said.
‘Well … nice lad,’ Pete said. ‘He ask you out?’
‘Ah … I asked him.’
Pete lifted an eyebrow. ‘Not sure that you’re going to get your own back on a London artist by dating a Devonshire farmer. But if you really like him—’
Lily frowned. ‘Aunt Gert suggested it. She wants me to break out of my comfort zone.’
Pete chuckled. ‘Did she get onto the “Angus is a monster but I still love him” topic again? She brings that one out practically every time I see her. I don’t think she can quite believe it herself.’
‘Something like that.’
‘Well, have a nice time. Don’t go disrespecting the lad. He’s down-to-earth, but he’s a nice lad. We always share a chat up at the farmer’s market and occasionally he’ll stop in at the park for a hotdog.’
‘I won’t.’
‘That’s my girl.’
Sarah had gone out—to a Village Council meeting, no less—so Lily idled around the house for a bit, changing clothes three times, before finally heading out to The Crown just before eight. She arrived five minutes fashionably late, and pushed through the doors to find a group of young men crowded around the bar.
‘And then, I said to him … your trotters have gone south!’
The group exploded with laughter, several guys slapping the bar, one nearly falling off his stool. Lily approached cautiously, finding Jimmy Donbury at the group’s centre, a pint half drunk in front of him.
‘Lily, there you are. Lads, do you remember Lily Markham? Hotdog Pete’s lass.’
Lily grinned. ‘Hotdog Pete on the sharpshooter,’ she said, making gun fingers with her right hand and firing off a couple of pretend bullets.
There was a scattering of muted laughter. Lily gave a grim smile.
‘Sandpit Lils,’ one guy muttered, and it took her a long hard stare to look back through twenty years of aging and maturity to recognise Colin Beecham, two years below her at school, and who had been famous back in primary school for eating his own socks.
‘Hey, Colin,’ she said.
‘Ha, you remember me. Working up at Wright’s, lawnmower section. Where are you these days?’
‘Frying eggs and making beds at Willow River Guesthouse,’ Lily said.
‘She’s a poet and she don’t notice it!’ Jimmy chortled, banging a hand on the bar, missing the rhyme of the phrase, as the other guys around them laughed.
‘Didn’t you get some posh job in the smoke?’ came a reedy, girly voice from a short, dumpy guy she couldn’t quite remember. That was it … Womble. So called because he allegedly only had one ball, after a monkey bars accident in the First Year. Wow, the years had been harsh, making him even shorter and dumpier than ever. Or maybe she had grown, she wasn’t sure.
‘William Jones? Is that you?’
‘She called him William,’ someone else chortled, and a sudden rattle of stools announced the group getting to their feet, clapping their hands together. ‘Womble … Womble … the Womble of Willow River is he!’
The whole pub seemed to shake with the raucous song, but as quick as it had begun, it went silent, the group stepping aside, leaving William standing alone in the centre.
‘The Womble of Willow River is me!’ he wailed in his high-pitched voice, doing an awkward dance step, his elbows bumping up and down, followed by another hail of wild laughter.
‘Whose round is it?’ Jimmy said, clapping his hands together, as the others patted Womble on the back and sipped their pints.
‘Mine!’ Lily shouted, putting up a hand. ‘What are you all having?’
‘Pint.’
‘Pint.’
