Posted by The Bardines: Chapter Four
Maggie and Peleg were delighted with the new digs. Above all it was safe. Safe. The word and the fact were a tonic which induced a huge exhale and descending calm. It was warm, dry, and theirs. They were in charge. They slept in their own bed every night. They bought their own food, cooked it on their own stove, and ate it at regular times if that was their wish. True, it was two flights of stairs and then outside to the necessary. A long way, especially in the depths of winter. Even longer lugging the piss pot back and forth. But that was endurable and was certainly better than squatting against a wall in Squeeze Gut Alley where any minute you might be coshed by some wretch who, God knows why, thought you might have something worth stealing. Better rags than his, perhaps?
At dinner one evening, a couple of months into their new situation with re-decorating coming along nicely, Peleg and Maggie chanced to look up at each other over a savory stew. Both burst into laughter – helpless, joyful belly laughter that had been missing for a very long time, and, then shortly and as suddenly, laughter slid into tears. Peleg moved his chair around the table to Maggie’s side, and they held each other for a long time feeling their great, good fortune, the kindness of Ira, and, above all, their bond, and their new home.
The next night after supper, the couple sat side by side at the table paging through Ira’s morning newspaper. Both were feeling just a little guilty. Each had indulged in the luxury of a cob pipe’s worth of tobacco. Had financial resources been a little more robust, tobacco would have been a given. But financial resources weren’t robust, ergo, tobacco was an extravagance of the first order. Their cash on hand was the remnants of Peleg’s last pay from which a good deal had lately gone to the redecorating project. It was still a few days before Peleg got paid. Nonetheless, each one was pleased that they had paid hard currency for the treat and not nicked it. As they exited the store in this state of moral exultation, Peleg reminisced about how this encounter might have gone in “the old days.” “I think that the lady feigns to faint in the back of the store with suitable histrionics, the clerk mounts his faithful charger and scurries to the rescue while the gent dips just enough tobacco from the jar that the theft will not be noticed, and then, he too rushes to assist his paramour?”
“That would be the play,” Maggie replied wryly. “Are we really getting respectable, Sardine?”
“Dearest, I believe we may if we’re careful.”
Taking a pull on his pipe, Peleg came upon a page with an advertisement for ladies’ gowns. These gowns, it was claimed, were suitable for all formal occasions including club dinners, balls, recitals, and weddings. The last word gave him quite a start; a very tempest of anxiety arose in Peleg’s guts and caused him to blurt out, “We’re not married!”
“You didn’t know?” said Maggie, mildly irritated at this interruption given she was in the middle of her favorite part of the paper. That was the part where readers wrote in seeking advice about almost anything imaginable. This day’s first letter had been sent by a widow, Millie Pankhurst from Mayfield, which was four or five towns over. Anonymity being impossible for about fifty miles around, she did not bother to hide her identity. Once widowed, she had entered into what had looked like becoming a satisfactory courtship with a farmhand of her town, one J. Bark. That is, it looked promising until it didn’t. It came out, well into the kiss and nuzzle phase, that her paramour, thinking he had Millie well and truly hooked, let it be known that he absolutely could not and would not work with pigs. Now Millie knew that Jeremiah “Shimmy” Bark had known for years that she and her late husband, Bendigo, owned and worked a very profitable pig farm. She accused him of concealing this deal breaker for the sake of considerable kissing, nuzzling and not a little “rubbing up against” to say nothing of the substantial profits to be had from pigs. Millie who was an innocent and eternal optimist had hoped she could reform Jeremiah and help him discover the rewards from a life of self-disciplined hard work and respectability. Deep down, however, she had feared what the whole town already knew, that the object of her affection was and would only ever be suited for a life completely void of self-discipline and good only for climbing trees to rescue cats and slapping people on the back who might buy him a drink. Well of course Millie had sent him packing with such eloquent vigor that the whole town was agog in awe and admiration. Their awe and admiration came courtesy of Benjamin Benjamin, Millie’s hired hand. Ben Ben, by chance, had been right around the corner of the house listening when Shimmy got the shove. Ben Ben was more than willing to share this news, and the tale of Shimmy’s comeuppance spread like fire through late fall tall grass. Millie, however, good soul that she was, had looked to the paper to assure her she had done the proper thing.
“Maggie!” Peleg’s tone was insistent, urgent. “Listen to me! I’m just looking at this advertisement for wedding gowns and, suddenly, I wonder if the town sees us as living in sin.
“Well, they wouldn’t be far off the mark,” replied Maggie who was beginning to formulate her own reply to the despondent lady pig farmer and was considering the problem of how to tell someone they had been a fool without coming right out with it.
“Maggie! God damn it, will you please listen?”
“All right, all right!” said Maggie reluctantly turning her attention from the exciting new world of journalism to her exasperated partner. “Vesuvius, what can possibly have you in such a dither? Calm down, can’t you?” (Every once in a while, Maggie let show traces of what might have been a wasted upper-class education.) “I’m listening now.”
“Well,” he began, “You’re the one always talking about respectability and making a good impression, and yet, we aren’t even married. We’re living in sin. We don’t care, but imagine the fuss if the townsfolk find out?”
Maggie realized the danger. Their hard won respectability was in grave danger. “Will you marry me?” asked Maggie.