A PENNY FOR THE GUY

The annual village bonfire party usually provided a colourful interlude in an otherwise dull November. The school children in particular looked forward to the evening. A working party of dads built a giant bonfire in farmer Padgett’s field, the one that was next to the pub and had been kept as grass for as long as anyone could remember. This year’s effort was particularly grand because someone on of the organising committee knew someone who had a furniture factory on the trading estate and a very large wagon of wooden bits and pieces of surplus or broken furniture turned up in Padgett’s field.

“Looks like a chair mountain,” somebody said when they had finished building the pile which was indeed higher than the pub itself. Padgett always had the job of fixing the guy to the top and this year he was going to have to use one of his tractors and a front-end loader with its hydraulic extension in order to reach the dizzy height.

The school children were encouraged to make a guy and on the two Saturday’s before the 5th, a few of the bigger children would take the creation into the local market town to raise money. All the proceeds went to the school and “the penny for the guy” collection normally yielded fifty pounds or there abouts. The headmaster, Guy Watson, was delighted with the efforts made by his parents and their children and the money, last year it was one hundred and sixty pounds, was used to purchase some materials for the art classes. Running a C of E village school wasn’t easy and all contributions were gratefully received. Mr Watson was into his art and a firm believer that his children should be encouraged to express them selves right from the start.

“They must be allowed to find their inner creativity,” he would tell all new parents.
The headmaster had found his own inner creativity with Miss Penny Dugworth. Miss Dugworth had joined the staff of three to take charge of the infants. Miss Dugworth was fresh out of teacher training college and the village school was her first hands on job. Mr Watson wasn’t.
The two of them had been attracted to one another from day one. From the interview really. Mr Watson had never liked red heads. He always thought that people with red hair had short tempers, too much Celtic blood in their veins. He didn’t know why he’d carried the impression with him, but he had. He’d never been out with a girl with red hair nor ever kissed one. The first thing he noticed about her, after the shock of red hair, was her smile; a big mouth full of even tomb stone sized white teeth. It was the sort of mouth that dominated the face. It took complete control of the lower half and when it broke out into a smile, became the focal point for the whole thing. It was a big smile from a little girl, an innocent smile that drummed up naughty thoughts. Her big green eyes twinkled when she smiled, danced with fun and expelled her sense of humour. She wasn’t a beautiful girl but she did have an attraction, a youthful liveliness and intelligence that popped and bubbled around her. It wasn’t though precocious in any way. She’d flirt without perhaps meaning to. She was one of those people that would look directly into your eyes when talking to you. Would give undivided attention. She was one of those people that made you feel flattered, important. She almost had an aura, a static charge, about her, not a halo, but something that distinguished her from those around, those other pretty girls that Mr Watson would fantasise about, pour over from the pages of “Men Only”. She was short and slim and looked as though she had been a gymnast. When she wore a skirt, which wasn’t that often, her legs looked fantastic and what ever she wore, her bottom looked perfect. She was twenty something and therefore nearly twenty years younger than he was. From the first time he met her, he fancied her, couldn’t wait to get to know her, hoped she wanted to get to know him. Probably in his dreams.

They’d been working together for some months. Mr Watson was enjoying flirting with her more and more and found himself thinking about her on occasions when his mind should have been focusing on other more important issues. One evening during a half term she invited him to her flat at the top of a Georgian building in the market town. She cooked a sea food pasta and they sat together at a little round table in the flat enjoying the food and each other’s company. When she came to clear the empty plates, smeared with the juice of her cooking, he grabbed her hand and pulled her down towards him firmly but not in any way threatening. As she came down their lips met and they kissed, his thin ones beautifully engulfed by her big mouth, swallowed up with their pasta tongues circling each other. Soon pushing his chair back from the table, he manoeuvred her to his lap where she sat with her back to him. He started to kiss her nape, the vulnerable flesh covering the spine just before it reaches the brain. Her red hair was piled up somehow so that her slender neck presented itself as a new thrill. Before long the two of them were standing by the open window in the dark with only the outside streetlights to guide them. They behaved recklessly, without worrying about the consequences.

Mr Watson certainly didn’t want his wife to find out. They had to be careful. The headmaster didn’t want any accusing fingers pointing at him. In such a small community scandal was only a slip away. Miss Dugworth on the other hand had less to lose. She didn’t seem to care about her lover’s position. Not strictly true. She cared about it over her desk after school hours or in Mr Watson’s big four-by-four, or in the little bed in her flat, but she didn’t care about keeping the affair a dark secret forever.

“Why can’t we just come out of the closet Guy?” she asked him one evening.

“I’ve got my reputation to think about Penny darling. And my wife. God what would she do?”

Mrs Watson was a very wealthy woman. She’d been a Padgett before she’d married. Her father had left her half of his estate when he died. It wasn’t many village school headmasters that could afford to drive around in the latest Range Rover. So the relationship soldiered on behind closed doors with the headmaster and his junior member of staff getting deeper and deeper into each other’s emotions, each other’s inner creativity. There was gossip, ugly rumour but no actual proof. Someone on the parents committee thought that the headmaster was being over friendly to Miss Dugworth. The two other members of staff thought so too. They called her “teacher’s pet” behind her back. But no one had any actual proof that the two had been carrying on.

“Where there’s smoke there’s fire,” said one of the parents not long before the November celebration and the headmaster found himself under more scrutiny than ever before.

It was the vicar who approached him first.

“Everything er..all right Headmaster?” he asked after morning prayers on the Monday.

“Yes thank you vicar,” replied Mr Watson.

“How is Marjory? Haven’t seen her for months.”

“Oh my wife’s fine thanks vicar. Just fine.”

“Good. Pleased to hear it. You’re so lucky to have the love of a good woman.”

“Yes. I am aren’t I?” The headmaster said realising that he had the love of one and the lust of another.

Like all such “chats”, the vicar’s words fell mostly on stony ground. Mr Watson’s affair with Miss Dugworth had blunted the edge of his conscience so that he found himself justifying his infatuation with the younger woman. Marjory no longer really loves me he thought, but she did, perhaps not as much as on the day thirty years before when they married, but nevertheless, she still loved her husband.

Like an accident waiting to happen, the triangle would turn pear shaped. Marjory would get to hear about Penny (“The Penny would drop,” he joked to himself in a macabre way) and then all hell would let loose. Guy Watson just couldn’t take the risk. He couldn’t afford to upset his wife, lose her and the school, his comfortable slot and respect in the community. He was playing with fire by playing with the red head.

“I think that we ought to stop seeing each other.” He spoke the words just like a headmaster would.

“What the fuck do you mean?” said Penny Dugworth, unlike an infant’s teacher.

“It’s just that I cannot go on seeing you and lying to my wife.”

“Does she know about me?”

“No. But she will. Someone will spill the beans.”

“I’ll spill the fucking beans as you so put it.” Miss Dugworth had never talked to her boss like that before.

“What on earth do you mean?” said the rather frightened headmaster.

“I mean that if you are trying to dump me and I think that’s what you’re trying to do, then I’ll go and see your wife and tell her just what extra curricular activities you’ve been getting up to.”

“You wouldn’t do that Penny darling.” The headmaster looked even more frightened.

“I fucking well would Guy darling.”

“Then let’s not rock the boat. Let’s leave things just as they are. Aye?” The headmaster couldn’t think what else to do. This was a situation he hadn’t expected. As he pulled up his trousers and tucked in his shirt and watched as Penny Dugworth slid back into her underwear and jeans, he knew for the first time that the affair had become sordid. He felt trapped in the classroom, boxed into a corner with the dunce’s hat on, a dark, messy, grubby place out of which he didn’t know how to crawl.

As often happens, when the dam breaks, you either sink or swim. Guy Watson swam; doggy paddled his way back to safety.

“I’m told that you and Miss Dugwold are, what shall we say, fairly pally.” Marjory Watson came up with the unexpected but expected statement over a Sunday breakfast on the morning when the clocks had gone back.

“Miss Dugworth,” replied her husband.

“What?” said Marjory.

“Her name is Penny Dugworth.”

“Well, Guy. What ever her name, are you being over friendly with her?”

It all came out. The dam did burst and Guy told his wife the whole truth and nothing but the truth. He spared her the gory detail but explained that he was now trapped in a dreadful relationship with her and that he was being virtually blackmailed by her. He said he was sorry, really very sorry.

“Well Guy,” said Marjory seriously as she sliced the top off her boiled egg. “You’ve been a bloody fool. I’ll have to have a word with the woman and you can stop seeing her. She’ll have to leave the school of course.”

“Of course dear,” said Guy with so much relief that it gave him a headache to go with his dry mouth.

True to her word, Marjory Watson spoke to Penny Dugworth who left the school immediately. She didn’t stop to say goodbye, didn’t leave a note for her lover and no one ever heard from her again.

The evening of the bonfire party arrived and the giant bonfire was set alight by the vicar. Right at the top, seated in one of the less broken chairs was the life-sized guy that the school children had made. Padgett had fixed it up there as he always had. It looked grotesque sitting on top of the flaming pile. It’s clothes, one of the headmaster’s old three-piece tweed suits, looked almost unused. The floppy felt hat that had come from Marjory Watson covered the straw hair on top of the rubber mask with its dreadful grin. Through the open slots for the eyeholes, a pair of green pupils looked out lifelessly.

The flames licked higher and higher and the straw ignited just before the rest of the dummy.

“Look mummy!” said one of the excited children pointing to the disfigured flaming effigy. “The guy’s got red hair.”

“Yes dear, it’s flaming red isn’t it?” said the mother without really looking up from her hot dog wrapped as it was in its own bread roll straight jacket.