Friday morning
Despite its sexism, Emily Seldom secretly liked her job title, “Subpostmistress of Synne.” If she blotted out the first two syllables, it conjured appealing fantasies of an alternative life to that of a middle-aged village shopkeeper and the uneasy celibacy that went with it.
Sensing her loneliness, the vicar had dangled the diversions of his writing group before her, but like Lewis Carroll, who said nude boys “always seem to need clothes,” the strictly sapphic Emily thought the naked male body, especially as it approached her age, to be ungainly, unhygienic, and slightly ludicrous (a sentiment also shared by the majority of heterosexual women). She longed for love, but unless the woman of her dreams walked into the post office and asked for a copy of Jazzwise, she had no idea where she’d find it.
The dark-haired woman currently hovering outside the shop, beside a wire carousel of postcards of Synne, was certainly attractive in a curvy, Italianate way, and when she glanced up in Emily’s direction, revealed astonishingly large brown eyes. But she was less than half Emily’s age, and probably straight, even though it taxed the imagination to guess what she saw in her companion, a short, beady-eyed, long-nosed young man who looked like a puffin with low self-esteem. Tourists, Emily thought, blinking in a sudden flash of rainbow-edged sunlight that reflected off the music CD they were inspecting.
Odd to carry CDs rather than use mp3 files, thought Emily, but with some approval for the girl’s preference for lossless music. Odd to use over-the-ear headphones rather than convenient earbuds, but the sound quality is better. Odd to carry a portable CD player when they must have arrived by car. Emily guessed they were motorists, because they were not burdened with parkas and bloated backpacks, which inevitably knocked items off her crowded shelves.
The bell on the front door jangled, and the young man and woman came into the shop, midway through an argument, apparently about the CD.
“‘Land of Hope and Glory,’” insisted the young woman.
“‘Rule Britannia,’” bleated her companion.
The woman shook her head. “You’re totally wrong as always,” she said scathingly, then turned a dazzling smile on Emily that, in tandem with her low-cut sweater, made the incognito Mistress of Synne feel a little better about life. “Hello, do you have any bottled spring water?” she asked, while the young man walked over to the magazine rack opposite the counter.
Emily pointed out the water. “Just visiting?” she asked.
“Something like that,” the girl replied. She turned to study her friend’s back. “The naturist magazines are on the top row,” she called. “I’ll lift you up if you can’t reach. And it’s ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ you tone-deaf wombat.”
“‘Rule Britannia,’” he mumbled back with subdued defiance, pretending to be fascinated by a kayaking magazine.
The girl switched her attention back to Emily. “Do pardon this unseemly burst of patriotism, but my fellow-citizen and I are having a mild difference of opinion. He thinks he isn’t an ignorant, pig-headed, beaky-nosed prat, and I happen to disagree on all counts. I say, do you know anything about music?”
Further along the shop’s single aisle, Sidney Weguelin stopped looking at Emily’s meager stock of birthday cards and seemed to pay attention to the conversation.
“I am something of a classic jazz aficionado,” Emily remarked.
“Oh, how splendid. I’m partial to a little hard bebop myself.” She ignored the pointed snigger that came from the young man’s direction. “Only we’re having a bit of a debate about this CD of East Coast hip-hop music.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know much about hip-hop. East Coast? You mean from New York City?”
“Er, no. It’s actually an English rapper who comes from Clacton-on-Sea. Calls himself Masta DJ T-Bot, but his real name’s Trevor Bottomley, and he’s a fourteen-year-old Young Conservative. The tune of the time is called ‘Why Doesn’t U Stand Up 4 the National Anthem?’ You see, he’s sampled the orchestral introduction to a patriotic song, but we never get as far as the big theme. I think it’s the opening of ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ but the sniveling idiot over there insists it’s ‘Rule Britannia.’ I have a pint of Bishop’s Finger riding on it.”
“And you know what I always say…” the young man began.
“Yes,” said the girl quickly.
Emily giggled. “I’d know the main themes, of course,” she said. “But as to the introductions…” She noticed Weguelin. “Sidney, could you possibly spare a moment to help these young people?”
The church organist, who had been following every word, glanced up with an expression of feigned distraction, the same look of humble wonderment adopted by opera divas when they emerge for a curtain call, as if they’d been sitting backstage with a cup of tea and decided to see where all that clapping was coming from.
“Tell you what,” said the young woman, “why don’t you listen to it?” She flipped open the cover of the CD player and removed the CD that was inside.
“Here,” she said, tossing it to Sidney, “hold that for a moment.” Sidney grabbed at it mutely, while the girl loaded the other CD into the player. Then she passed Sidney the headphones.
“Let me help you,” said the young man. “They adjust to fit, you know.” He reached over and fiddled with a slider, but only succeeded in trapping some strands of Sidney’s crinkly hair.
The player whirred softly, and Sidney listened to the music for a few seconds.
“This appears to be a lamentable love song called ‘Why Did U Leave Us, Maggie?’” he informed them.
“Oh sorry, wrong track.” The girl tried to find the appropriate button on the player, which had the effect of tugging Sidney, still reined by the headphones, sharply toward her cleavage. The headphones came off completely, taking several hairs with them. Sidney yelped.
“Young lady,” he said, after the headphones had been restored and he’d listened to the correct track, “what this barbarian has stolen for his neo-Fascistic posturing is not ‘Rule Britannia,’ written by Thomas Arne for his masque Arthur, but the opening of the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1 in D major, composed in 1901 by Sir Edward Elgar. Its trio section later gained words implying that England is a ‘Land of Hope and Glory,’ a sentiment with which I am rapidly losing faith. Good day.”
He thrust the headphones and the spare CD at the young man and pootered out of the shop, tripping slightly on the threshold. Emily giggled again but then recovered herself, regaining her prefixes.
“Thank you, dear,” the girl called out after Sidney, before turning to her friend. “You see, Geoffrey, I always said you didn’t know your Arne from your Elgar.”