Part 46: A glass of cold milk and a cucumber sandwich…

At the bar, Penelope ordered a glass of cold milk and a cucumber sandwich

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Penelope never returned to the All Saints church, and, for a week, she did not leave her house, save for midnight prowls in the alley behind Flintstone Terrace. Suddenly, she became frantic with the silence. She flung herself out of the house, leaving the front door swinging open. She raced up to the village green, no topcoat over her festering garments and her thick brown hair matted and bedraggled. People stared at her, but she continued with a resigned fury.

The glimmer of her old life as Olive drew her into Ye Olde Inn, where she hoped to sit inconspicuously at a table in a secluded corner and listen to normal people talking and laughing. The bartender gaped, and Penelope caught a mutter from a man close by: “There’s that crazy hermit!”

“A glass of cold milk and a cucumber sandwich,” said Penelope to the barman.

The half dozen young men loafing at the bar surveyed her, stunned into amused silence, ear-to-ear grins on their faces. They made her feel so uncomfortable that she couldn’t eat or drink her sandwich and milk. She thrust them away and fled, a woeful failure in her first attempt to eat out in eighteen weeks—failed to revive that Olive whom she had coldly killed.

Previously, Olive would have enticed the young fellows with her smiles and the appeal of her body. They would have returned her stare, wishing they dared to court her. Now, they wouldn’t touch her with a ten-foot pole.
 
 
To be continued… 
The real world:
 
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Like to know more about Alf, Bert and the rest of the gang? You can read their chaotic history in What on Earth.
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Image by Bernadette Wurzinger from Pixabay