DON’T HANG YOUR KNICKERS ON THE LINE

"You weren’t asleep then Eileen? I saw your light was still on so I thought I’d just give you a little tinkle."

(Oh help! A little tinkle! That means midnight at the earliest.)

"How are you Eileen? I’ve been a bit worried about you?"

(This being Marjorie’s usual opening gambit, I remain silent.)

"You’ve looked a bit peaky lately, as though you hadn’t a salt-spoon of stamina in you."

(That’ll be one of the "famous" Aunt Annie’s maxims, I bet.)

"Are you all right? Sure? Good. By the way, Eileen, I’m trying out my new electric over-blanket. You ought to go in for one. They’re grand. Eileen, I’m worried, I’m bothered."

(About me? Well, so you said. But maybe I’ll survive the night if you’ll only let me get my beauty sleep.)

"It’s about that Mr Potter, opposite me. You know?"

(Oh, sure I know: you’ve got a thing about that Mr Potter, same as you had about poor Miss Simpson, who you thought was a kept woman! The last time you mentioned Mr Potter it was on the subject of constipation of all things. "I shouldn’t be surprised," you said, "if that young man had what my old Aunt Anne called ‘a lazy gut’. He looks poisoned," you said. So what, I wonder silently, is his problem now?)

"Well . . . oh drat! Oh get OFF! OFF . . . Sorry Eileen, it’s those horrid Daddys. They haunt me. As soon as I put on my bedlight in they come. I hate them with all those floating legs too! There --I’ve done for him, I think. What was I saying? Mr Potter. Yes. Well, Eileen he’s a weird sort of chap. I’ll tell you something, he gives me the creeps. Why? Well, you don’t live opposite him so you can’t judge. How can I put it without sounding fanciful? Ever since his wife left him he hangs around that patch of garden and has that repressed and hungry sort of look, if you understand me?"

(I did. Not constipation. Sex! I became interested.)

"Eileen you’re going to laugh at me, but I’m serious when I say that I don’t even like hanging out my washing now! Particularly my more -- intimate garments. Yes, I mean it. It’s true I’ve caught him staring at my line as though he’s taking an inventory of what’s on it. Then he catches my eye and turns awy and looks sheepish. I’m really nervous. I’m not the kind to imagine things, I hope . . . ."

(You can say that again!)

"And I know I’m not young, but that doesn’t mean a thing now-a-days, does it? Women of over eighty get raped, don’t they?"

(Do I detect a slight note of wistfulness there?)

"Oh gerroff! Go away. It’s those darn Daddys again. GET OFF!"

The trouble with Marjorie is she tends to dramatize everything. Take our little road, for instance. You couldn’t find a more innocuous little corner. Most of us are pensioners living quietly; admittedly we have our troubles, such as when the wind is in a certain quarter, we are apt to get the sewage farm mingling with the fish-and-chip shop full blast, but that’s only on frying nights, so if  poor Marjorie’s fears are on the lines of Red Light areas, well, I would suggest that a pair of her old-fashioned knickers floating in the wind would cool rather than inflame any likely passions.

Incidentally, after that last sortie with the daddy-long-leg crew, apparently she fell, tripping over the chamber-pot, it seems, and bruising her knee. Trust Marjorie, I thought, perhaps unkindly, to get down to basics. It would be a chamber-pot that tripped her.