The Vicar's Wife and the Blue Eyed Boy (standard:drama, 2879 words)
Author: Sue Simpson (Sooz)	Added: Feb 21 2003	Views/Reads: 5757/2899	Story vote: 0.00 (0 votes)
Not as it would seem

We all took advantage of the vicar's wife, she was such a pushover.  We
used her mercilessly and she was always available to be used, opening 
her door to hoards of the care home urchins offering home-made cakes 
and lemonade.  At the home we only got water, lemonade was a treat 
indeed. 

She even came to work at the home in the early evenings.  I think they
kept her on out of sympathy because she was hopeless at the job. 
Normally there was only one member of staff on duty between half three 
and five, but when Mary Robert's worked they had to have back up 
because us kids ran amok. 

Mary believed that each and every one of us hopeless cases had a bright
future ahead of us, all we needed was a little love.  She took it upon 
herself to be the provider of it.  She never raised her voice and even 
when she was in a terrible fluster and was at her most out of control 
she kept smiling at us. 

“My door is always open,” she used to say.  She meant it too.  The poor
vicar was at a loss to stop the rampaging throng of scruffy kids 
knocking at the vicarage door every weekend.  Some of them used to 
throw her kindness back in her face by robbing her blind. She learned 
though. She learned to keep her handbag close and her urchins even 
closer.  Mary was unable to have children of her own, so she ‘adopted' 
each and every one of us.  We were her special children. 

I kept in touch with Mary all these years since leaving that place. She
had been good to me and I wanted to repay her unnecessary kindness when 
I too became an adult.  Edward her husband died a good few years ago 
now and Mary had become a little bit flaky. Don't get me wrong now, I 
don't mean senile, nothing nearly so severe as that, but she became the 
local cat lady. You know every town has one, a lady who fills her home 
with a hundred and one stray-cats.  Only Mary didn't stop at cats, she 
had cats, dogs, hedgehogs, birds, rabbits, badgers and a naughty goat.  
Both the vicarage and Mary's heart were large and the place resounded 
with strange animal noises and the lull of love. 

I knew something had happened as soon as I rang the doorbell that day.
Mary appeared at the door  pink cheeked and dishevelled, she ushered me 
quickly into the house and shut the door behind me. 

“Wait until you see,” she said. Her delicate hands fluttered by her
pinny pocket like an excited bird.  “He came to me. The Lord sent him, 
and it's my duty to make him well again.” 

I had a feeling, you know that feeling you get when you just know you
aren't going to like what comes next, but I was powerless to stop the 
force that is Mary with a mission. 

She opened the drawing room door and there he was. 

Jerry Springer wasn't happy about the situation and spun his head in
distaste. I had only been in the room three seconds and found myself 
concurring with Jerry's sentiments, while admittedly lacking the 
ability to spin my head right round. He glared at the newcomer as he 
might if confronted by a six foot mouse, he knew that he wanted to 
attack this thing, but wasn't sure if it would be wise. Having the 
reputation of being a very wise old barn owl he knew he wouldn't like 
to do anything to jeopardise that. He contented himself with blinking 
his huge amber eyes at me and tutting, it was all too much for him. 
Owls shouldn't have to put up with that. He went to sleep still sitting 
on the back of the cherry red armchair. 

Treacle the black lab pup had Benjamin the Lop-eared Rabbit by the snout
and was trying to pull him out from under the occasional tables.  I 
rescued the poor Rabbit from the exuberant pup but not before the nest 
of tables and all the accumulated junk had fallen with a loud crash to 
the floor. 

Sugar the sulphur crested cockatoo said “ Oh Bollocks,” much to Mary's
disgust. 

Treacle yelped and scampered off to the other side of the room, but he
made sure he gave the thing crouched by the patio doors a very wide 
berth. 


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