Mornington-By-Mere – (34) Lancelot and the Palfrey’s

 

In the seventies Mornington-By-Mere was a busy little village and thriving with Valentine St George as the Baron in residence.   

Throughout its history the Village of Mornington was largely dependent on agriculture for its survival but RAF Mornington as a fully operational front line bomber station brought additional prosperity.

However the farms of the Vale were still crucial to the health of the welfare of the inhabitants.    

One such farm was Windmill Farm run by the Hall family and had been for six generations but the next generation was in doubt as Lance, the sole heir of the Hall family had doubts about his future and in particular at the age of 18 he couldn’t see himself as a farmer.

 

It was that doubt which shaped his thinking for the next four years and his interactions with the Palfrey girls of nearby Meadow Lea Farm in the Dulcets.

The Dulcets were a collection of villages and hamlets such as Dulcet Meadow, Dulcet St Mary, Dulcet Green and the nearest one to Meadow Lea, Dulcet-on-Brooke.

 

The narrative of Lance Hall and the Palfrey girls is not intended to be a boastful tale of conquest and at the time he was not proud to have done what he eventually did and the eventual outcome was not even the intended one, in fact in the four year period of Lance’s life that this story covers, the thought never once crossed his mind that it might happen and it certainly wasn’t desired, it just happened but he never regretted the final outcome and indeed thanked God for it.

 

It was 1975 when it all began and Lance Hall was just 18 years old when he met Helen Palfrey for the first time.

It was a cold grey Monday morning, so grey and dismal it was clear rain wasn’t far away.

He was visiting a friend in Shallowfield that morning and he had just stepped off the bus when the girl in front of him dropped her umbrella.

Lance bent down and picked it up and when he stood up again she had turned around and he was staring into the eyes of an angel whose brunette hair framed the classical beauty of her face.

“Thank you” She said and smiled and he was instantly smitten.

But as taken with her as he was, he was completely struck dumb and all he could do was return her smile and hand her the umbrella and that would probably have been that, had it not been for the fact that she was visiting the same friend that he was.

Although he had never met her before it turned out that they were both members of the Finchbottom Vale Young Farmers Association.

The reason they both happened to be meeting Yvonne Bird in Shallowfield that day was to sign up for some part time work to earn some extra money and in Helen’s case it was to swell her coffers before she started University.

 

Over the next few months they became very close friends but sadly no more than that.

It turned out that they had several mutual friends and they kind of fell into a sociable group of a dozen or more friends who would go out either in one big group or smaller ones and go bowling, barn dancing or to the seaside at Sharpington or any number of things, the pub quite often.

And all of these many and varied social activities they participated in, but try as he may he never made any inroads into her heart.

 

Another bi-product of Lance and Helen socialising in the same group was his introduction to the Palfrey family and their farm.

Windmill Farm in Mornington was the larger of the two, which had at its center the large farmhouse, parts of which dated back six centuries.

It had been added to over the years to accommodate the growing Hall clan until it was now comprised of six upstairs bedrooms and an equal number of rooms on the ground floor.

There was also milking sheds, barns, hen houses, assorted out buildings and a farm cottage.

Meadow Lea Farm on the other hand was smaller and less diverse in nature but it had been around every bit as long and the Palfreys had worked the land to great effect.

 

Helen’s widowed father, Richard was a quiet kindly man who seldom spoke, while her uncle, Donald on the other hand never shut up and had a dry wit and if you were in the right frame of mind he could be hysterically funny.

If on the other hand you were not in the mood for it then he was just bloody annoying.

He was an accountant by profession which is a humourless occupation at the best of times which is why he over compensated.

Margot, her Aunt was a real battle-axe who had a face that could warp wood.

She was a Theatre Sister at the Winston Churchill Hospital in Abbottsford where he suspected she probably did unpleasant things to patients probably while they were unconscious.  

Her Aunt and Uncle had moved to the Meadow Lea after her mother was diagnosed with terminal cancer and much to her annoyance they never went home again.

 

Helens eldest sibling was Ken who was twenty one years old and was a farmer like his father, while he inherited his uncle’s liking for being a wit he sadly he didn’t possess any but he was a good farmer.

 

Then came the three sisters, Helen aged 18, Martha 16 and 15 year old Katie and considering the fact they were sisters they couldn’t have been more different from each other personality and appearance wise.

They all had something around the eyes that bound them as kin, provided they were all together in a small room and you could compare them closely.

In a crowd however you would never have picked them out as siblings and furthermore they had absolutely nothing in common other than the same parentage and their shared beauty and of course an unbreakable love for each other.

 

Helen was the oldest of the Palfrey girls at 18, the same age as Lance and was the tallest by several inches and she was blessed with stunning legs, in fact legs so stunning that they had never been surpassed in his eyes.

She had long brunette hair that fell over her slender shoulders she was also very slim, a size 12 in old money, God alone knows what the modern equivalent is.

She was not overly endowed in the bust department but he always thought she was perfectly in proportion.

Helen was also keenly intelligent and delightfully funny with the dirtiest laugh he had ever heard.

 

But despite all of that she didn’t have a clue how gorgeous she was and as a result she had a succession of failed relationships with unsuitable men who used her, abused her and then dumped her and managed to leave her thinking she deserved it.

Lance would never have treated her that way because he loved her and he would have cherished her if he’d had the opportunity.

 

One of her wider social group was Helen’s sister Martha, she was the middle one of the three and was a few months short of 17.

She was brunette as well but she didn’t suffer from Helen’s lack of self-confidence in fact her problem was that she thought she was very attractive.

In fact Martha actually thought she was more attractive than she really was.

She used to borrow her sister Helen’s clothes which didn’t fit her.

Martha actually thought that if she squeezed her size 14 arse into her sister’s size 12 knickers that she actually had a size 12 arse.

Only she knew why she did it, because she was attractive in her own right, just not as attractive as her sisters.

Perhaps she envied Helen’s slim figure and so tried to be her, but she was on a hiding to nothing because she was very definitely not Helen.

 

Katie was the youngest at 15 and she was Blonde and full of self-confidence but she could afford to be as she had everything, a delicious figure, a bubbly personality and an infectious sense of fun.

Oh yes Katie was funny and sexy and furthermore she had a crush on Lance, and he was as flattered as hell and had he been 3 years younger and not in love with Helen he would have snapped her up in a heartbeat.

 

As the months went by and Helen went from one disastrous, ill-considered boyfriend to the next, he sat on the side-lines watching then one day when she had just picked herself up from yet another car crash of a relationship Lance decided he should just ask her out and be done with it.

That decision proved to be a colossal mistake.

He wasn’t her type apparently.

“No I guess I’m not” he said “that’s because I’m not an asshole that treats you like shit”

After that exchange they didn’t talk for three months.

 

When Helen and Lance finally began talking again he found that nothing had changed

He was still desperately in love with her but she still just wanted them to be friends.

That was the moment it dawned on him that it was never going to happen for them, and he thought he should have walked away there and then but he didn’t.

Instead he asked out her sister Martha who was then 17.

There’s no doubt that initially he went out with Martha because it was a way for him to be close to Helen but at the same time he could still have a life.

It was a dangerous enterprise to undertake on several levels and perhaps the most hazardous was the fact that with Martha’s facial features she had the most chance of ending up looking like her hatchet faced Aunt which was a scary thought.

That summer Martha gave him her virginity in a tent in Sharpinghead not perhaps the most romantic of ways but it seemed to him as good a place as any at the time.

Two months later they were engaged and Helen left for University.

Everything seemed to be working out for the best Lance loved Martha even though she wasn’t her sister and they were planning their future together and Helen was getting on with her life and working hard towards her degree and still going out with bastards.

But every time Helen came home from University the wound would open up again and she filled his every waking thought.

One Christmas when she was home he was making love to Martha in her bedroom and he actually imagined it was Helen so he broke up with her on New Year’s Eve.

 

The New Year began with Martha in tears in one room and Helen demanding to know what the hell was going on in another.

“Why are you breaking up with her?” she demanded for the third time. “She really loves you”

“Because I’m in love with someone else” he finally replied

“Who?” she asked

“You really have to ask” Lance replied

She looked blankly for a moment and then it dawned on her

“You can’t still be in love with me”

“Well I am” he retorted and then she sat down and lit a cigarette

“I thought you’d gotten over me” she said

“Oh yes you would think so wouldn’t you” he snapped

“Well you should have” she barked “I’ve given you no encouragement”

“Yes I should have” he said “then I wouldn’t see your face when I’m making love to Martha”

Lance left then and went home before she could respond.

 

Two days later he received a letter with a hand written envelope, in a familiar hand smelling of her perfume.

Helen had written him a letter, and his heart soared, and it took him half an hour to work up the courage to open it and another thirty seconds to throw it in the bin.

Three hand written pages in her elegant hand, extolling the virtues of her younger sister and begging him to change his mind.

Three long hand written pages and not one word of love for him.

He resolved then and there to break the chain that bound him to her and run for the hills.

After a week he had almost gone a whole day without having a drink but his determination was strong.

Until one cold wet night when there was a knock on the door and Martha stood there soaked to the skin and crying and he was trapped again.

 

For the next year or so everything seemed to have settled down mainly because Helen and Lance largely avoided each other.

In addition to his work on the farm he was working a lot of extra hours trying to stash some money in the savings for their impending nuptials and Helen was busy working on her dissertation and Lance thought perhaps he had finally turned a corner.

Which is why he lowered his guard, and from Easter of that year onwards Helen and he were back on speaking terms again.

And as there had been no repeat of picturing of her siblings face while making love he was in a positive frame of mind.

 

Martha had been lured away from farming by her Uncle into the world of accountancy and had been working for a big Aerospace Company in Finchbottom for over a year, they probably employed a fifth of the town’s available workforce at the time and she earned good money.

But better than that they had a huge sports and social club, and better still it was heavily subsidised.

That summer, there was a big fancy dress party and Martha got them tickets and she had a spare one which without asking him first, she gave to Helen who was back from University, having graduated with a first.

Lance was cross when he first found out, but Martha was so proud of her sister for graduating he relented.

Also Martha said she needed cheering up because she had just broken up with her latest waster of a boyfriend.

The latest pig, in a long line of pigs, so no surprise there.

 

On the night of the party it was a warm dry night and as the Palfreys Farm was only about a mile from the railway station, and the social club was a similar distance away at the other end, they decided to walk to and from the station, in costume.

Lance went to the Palfreys in his street clothes and changed in Martha’s bedroom.

Martha was dressed as a flapper in a dress she’d made herself and she looked really hot and Lance went as a Roman, wearing sandals and a toga.

Helen though was dressed as a toddler, in a smock top and a nappy, which showed off her gorgeous long legs to great effect, and her brunette hair was tied up in little bunches and she had a dummy on a ribbon around her neck.

For the walk to the club she wore a long wrap around skirt to protect her modesty.

 

When they got there they found the fancy dress party was already in full swing and was very well attended so much so that the hall was packed.

Lance noticed he was not the only Roman at the forum by long way and Martha was not the only Flapper, Helen however was unique as always.

With the heavily subsidised bar the drink was flowing freely and the crowd were exuberant in the extreme, some were so exuberant that they could barely stand.

 

As the evening wore on much alcohol was consumed and overall it was a very enjoyable night out indeed and Lance felt at last that he was able to enjoy being in Helen’s company without the old feelings coming to the fore.

 

Martha was close to having had one Bacardi and coke too many but insisted she was fine.

“Have a dance with Helen, I need a pee” she said and tottered off to the ladies.

“Great idea” Helen said and grabbed his hand and dragged him off to the middle of the dance floor just as Fleetwood Mac’s, Albatross began.

She stopped and turned around to face him and wrapped her skinny arms around his neck and then inexplicably she kissed him.

 

When Helen kissed him out of the blue it was not a sisterly smack or a friendly peck, this was an open mouthed penetrating tongue kind of kiss which took him completely by surprise and took his breath away.

It took him a moment to realise what was happening and that he needed to be joining in.

However once he had cottoned on he went about it with relish and his hands which had been resting in the small of her back quickly encroached inside her smock top and were caressing the naked skin of her back.

The music went from Fleetwood Mac to 10cc to Harry Nilsson and still they kissed.

It was only when the dulcet tones of Jeff Beck’s, Hi Ho Silver Lining, broke the spell that they suddenly realised they were not alone and Helen giggled and as she giggled Lance realised he was fully aroused beneath his toga which made it difficult to walk in any way other than gingerly.

Helen looked at him curiously before looking down at the protrusion and began giggling again.

They walked back sheepishly to their table just a Martha came stumbling back towards them.

She was laughing like a drain as she tottered along and when she reached them she slurred

“I fell over” and roared with laughter again   

“I think we’d better get you home” Helen said

 

Martha was still laughing as they gathered their stuff together and steered a drunk and giggling Martha towards the door.

Once outside Helen said

“Hold on”

And began rummaging inside her bag and eventually fished out her wrap around skirt.

Lance watched her intently as she wrapped the skirt around her slender pins and when she caught him watching her she blushed and then smiled.

They set off down the road with Martha sandwiched between the two of them and he fully expected them to continue that way the whole way home but when they got to the station, the train was on the platform so they jumped on and before the train even left the station Martha was asleep and with her sister asleep Helen took the opportunity to hold his hand.

 

When they got off in the Dulcets, Martha seemed to have suddenly sobered up and got it into her head that they weren’t walking fast enough and yomped off ahead of them at pace.

Helen and Lance set off after her but she built up a good head of steam and then Helen took hold of his hand again

“Let her go” she said “she’ll be alright” and pulled him towards a convenient bus shelter and then dragged him inside.

“She’s almost home anyway” she said and kissed him, her hot darting tongue exploring his mouth while her hands tried to get inside his toga and his arousal tried to get out, when it suddenly occurred to him that his drunken fiancé was somewhere ahead of them in the dark and he was in a bus shelter snogging her sister so he stopped things before they went too far and said

“We need to find Martha, come on let’s get you home”

She was reluctant to leave but she nodded her ascent and followed him and they walked the rest of the way holding hands.

 

Helen and Lance reached Meadow Lea Farm and they walked to the house and Helen opened the door

“Come in for coffee” she said

His head was swimming with the evenings events, and he needed to think so he shook his head.

“Please” she begged “just coffee”

Lance agreed and Helen took his hand and led him inside.

Although the thought never occurred to him at that precise moment he really had no choice but to go in as his street clothes were in a bag in Martha’s room.

At the bottom of the stairs she whispered

“Put the kettle on and I’ll go and check on Martha”

Lance nodded and went through to the kitchen and filled the kettle and flicked the switch before walking back to the lounge just as Helen walked lightly down the stairs, she was barefoot and wearing a full length white cotton Kaftan and she was carrying his street clothes in a carrier bag.

“Martha is spark out” she said as she closed the distance between them and he got a sudden whiff of freshly applied perfume and he was intoxicated by it.

Lance was also very aroused as he believed that perfume was the only other thing she was wearing apart from the kaftan.

Helen smiled and in an instant her mouth was over his.

They were hot and urgent kisses far more eager than on the dance floor and more intense than in the bus shelter.

Lance broke away and asked

“What about your Dad”

“He’s in Sharpington, so is Uncle Donald and Auntie Margot and Ken is at his girlfriends and Katie sleeps like the dead” she replied

“What about Martha?”

Helen responded to his question by pressing her mouth against his again and once more tried to get inside his toga and unlike in the bus shelter this time she succeeded.

 

They made love on the sofa as his fiancé slept in the room above them and it was the perfect culmination of his years of longing.

Afterwards they lay panting on the sofa loosely covered by her Kaftan before she took him to her room and they made love again.

 

It was almost dawn when Helen woke him with a kiss.

“It’s time to go sweetheart” she said softly.

Lance returned her kiss with interest but Helen curtailed the embrace and slipped her Kaftan back on and went downstairs to retrieve his bag of street clothes and when she returned she sat on the bed and watched him as he quietly got dressed.

 

They tiptoed down the stairs and stood on the doorstep and kissed and then she said

“I love you” and his heart soared and they kissed again and he quite reasonably believed it was a new beginning, he certainly wasn’t thinking that it was the end.

“I never did get a coffee” he said and she giggled

Lance walked towards the gate and turned around and waved to her from across the Farm Yard and she blew him a kiss.

The dawn had fully broken by then and as he turned and waved once again the birds sang out their morning song that echoed Lance’s joy.

 

 

As he left Helen on that joyous morning he thought that the bright dawn heralded a bright new beginning, a new dawn for a new start, but how wrong he was.

When he went to the Farm the next day Helen was conspicuous by her absence and his new beginning turned out to be a false dawn, a case of the same old same old.

She had gone to Northchapel to stay with friends and he was left in limbo and he didn’t know how to behave around Martha, who was oblivious of the fact that he and Helen had made love while she slept.

He was confused, was it over between them or not, and were he and Helen a couple or not?

If Martha ever knew about what happened between Helen and Lance that night she never mentioned it and her behaviour towards him was unaltered. 

It was a month after the fancy dress party when Helen finally reappeared.

But it was another week after that before he got her on her own because she was avoiding him.

He took a day off from the Windmill Farm, which caused a bit of a ruck between him and his father, but he shrugged it off and made his way over to the Palfreys.

He waited in the copse beside the farm, where he had a good view of the comings and goings from the house and he waited until everyone had either left for the day or gone about their work.

 

The weather had been very hot for the previous few weeks and that day was no different even that early the heat was beginning to build.

He gave it another half an hour just to make sure no one returned and then he left the wood, climbed the fence and crossed the yard.

He let himself in the front door and tiptoed through the lounge and dining room and as he approached the kitchen door he looked in and he could see her at the kitchen sink.

As she stopped what she was doing she dried her hands and turned around just as he stepped through the kitchen door.

Helen gasped when she saw him and then almost instantly she dissolved into tears and ran in to his arms.

After some consoling he asked her

“Why have you been avoiding me?”

“Because I love you” she replied “but I also love Martha”

She sobbed uncontrollably again  

“Didn’t that night mean anything to you?” he asked coldly and pushed her away

“It meant everything to me” she screamed “that’s why I feel so guilty, so wretched”

She turned away from him but he took hold of her arm and pulled her back into his arms. 

After he had calmed her down and dried her tears they talked calmly and then she took him to her Aunt and Uncle’s bed and they stayed there all day.

 

When he kissed her goodbye that day it was the last time and furthermore he planned for it to be the last time he ever saw her.

Helen couldn’t live with the guilt of what she had done and even though she loved him desperately she vowed that they could never be together.

So after their brief affair Helen went back to University to do her masters.

 

Martha and Lance split up soon afterwards, he told everyone it was because he wanted a family and she didn’t but the truth was his heart wasn’t in it anymore if indeed it ever really had been.

In truth after sleeping with Helen, making love to Martha always felt like second best.

He knew it would hurt her when he broke off the engagement but Martha was a lovely girl and she deserved better than him.

She deserved someone who really loved her the way he loved Helen.

 

After parting with Helen and breaking up with Martha he left Windmill Farm and moved to his Uncles Farm near Highfinch, he told his father he wanted to gain some varied experience so he would be better equipped to take over from him.

But what he really wanted to do was to wash his hands of the Palfreys once and for all. 

And moving to Highfinch for a lengthy stay would achieve that or so he thought.

His cousin Dave had a mobile disco, he also had transport, he had all the gear, all the gigs and all the gab but he didn’t have a driving licence, he could drive tractors but he didn’t have a licence to go on the road.

So Dave persuaded him to be his roadie, he would drive him to the gigs and help him set up, then at the end of the night, pack away and drive him home, simplicity itself.

One night a little under a year after he broke Martha’s heart they were doing a gig at Purplemere college an in between set up and break down his time was his own.

Sometimes Lance would stay in the venue for the evening, other times he might have a sleep in the van or as he did on one particular occasion he went down the road for a pint.

 

When he returned to the venue he discarded his cigarette end as he walked up the steps to the front door he noticed a blonde girl to one side of the door obviously crying.

“Are you alright?” he asked and as she turned around she was wiping her eyes

“Yes thank you” she replied and then she smiled at him in recognition.   

It was Katie Palfrey and when she saw it was Lance she burst into tears again and ran to him.

“Here we go again” he thought another crying Palfrey girl, but he was not the same sympathetic man he was when he held a sobbing Helen in his arms in the Palfreys kitchen.

She was crying over being discarded by a shit of a boyfriend, she obviously shared her sister’s habit of making bad choices.

Nor was he the same person Katie had a crush on when she was 15 years old, that man was gone forever.

His heart had hardened since then and he was ashamed to recall in later years but he took advantage of her vulnerability and made love to her in the back of the van.

Well more precisely they had sex, there was no love involved in the act at least not on his side.

They met up a few more times after that, purely for the sex as far as he was concerned and then when it was clear she wanted more he dumped her and there were more tears.

 

The significance of that meeting with a crying Katie Palfrey in Purplemere didn’t strike him at the time.

But it facilitated his having slept with all three of Richard Palfrey’s daughters.

But when it did occur to him he felt no pride in that dubious accomplishment.

It did however amuse him to wonder if Uncle Donald would have seen any wit in the fact that he had bedded all three of his nieces.

 

After he broke up with Katie he hoped that that would be the last he heard of the Palfreys but of course life just wasn’t like that.

He had spent two years working with his Uncle up in Highfinch when he decided it was time to go home.

He was just turned 25 and was unattached and he hadn’t had a serious relationship since breaking up with Martha and wasn’t looking for one for that matter.

 

He threw himself into his work and for the next 18 months he thought of nothing else and it took some severe arm twisting by his mates to persuade him to go to the Mornington Beer Festival.

 

The Beer Festival was a two day event and as was the norm it was being held in the grounds of Mornington Manor which was only a short walk from Windmill Farm.

In addition to his mates they were accompanied by two young girls, Sally and Linda, who were the girlfriends of two of his mates.

The girls were gregarious, bubbly and outgoing and everybody liked them, but Lance just found them annoying in the extreme and the moment he saw them he regretted his decision to go.

Everything about them was loud and brash there was nothing that could be in any way considered to be subdued in either of them.

Garishly bright multi-coloured clothes, excessive quantities of jewelry and too much makeup.

After an hour in their company he was ready to throw in the towel but decided on one more drink.

 

They arrived outside the main beer tent, which was crowded and noisy.

As they made their way to the bar he decided he wasn’t up for it and hung back in preparation to slip away into the crowd, he got as far as the door when he was stopped dead in his tracks.

He was staring into the eyes of an angel whose brunette hair framed the classical beauty of her face and he was once again smitten.

“Lance” She said and smiled “is it really you?”

“Hi Helen”

“Hello stranger” She said smiling broadly, she still had the same lovely laughing eyes which narrowed when she smiled, which he remembered was often, and her smile illuminated her face.

Her friends said something about getting to the bar but he wasn’t really paying attention. 

“I’ll catch you up” she responded to them

“God it’s good to see you” Helen said

“Yes it is” he agreed but was incapable of forming a more informative sentence, such was his state of shock.

“Would you like a drink?” he asked

“Yes please” she replied “But not here, somewhere quieter”

“Let’s go to the pub that will be deserted today” Lance suggested

“Ok then” she agreed

 

“It’s so good to see you” she said as they walked towards the Old Mill Inn “I thought you were in Highfinch”

“I was” he replied “I’ve been back about 18 months”

“I suppose you must be married and settled down by now” she mused

“No I’m still single” he replied “I decided relationships weren’t worth all the heartache, what about you?”

“The same” she said “I decided to give up on assholes that treated me like shit”

“A good choice” Lance agreed as they approached the pub.

“And anyway I let the only decent man I’ve ever known slip through my fingers”

“What?” he exclaimed coming to a halt

“I still love you” Helen said “I loved you then and the moment I saw you again it confirmed what I’ve always believed, I love you still”

“I never stopped loving you” Lance said “And I tried, really hard”

“Then I think it’s time we did something about it” she said

“What about Martha?” he asked

“She’s happily married and lives in Finchbottom, she’s moved on” Helen replied

“So we will be hurting no one by being together, but by being apart we are hurting ourselves and I don’t want to hurt anymore”

“Nor do I” he said and sealed it with a kiss

 

Helen and Lance married the following year and had three children and by the time they celebrated their 35 wedding anniversary they hand 2 grandchildren.

 

So as for the other two Palfrey girls, in the year after Lance split up with Martha she gained four stones and married a ginger haired accountant, and they’re still married and she never had any children.

Katie on the other hand married three times and had a child from each, all of them girls, and they became some other young man’s nightmare.