Love's When Every Day's A Sunday
(Published 'The White Rose' 1989)

Felix Arthur Crewe was neither rich nor poor, just comfortable enough for a couple of bottles of wine each week and, with a little stretching of his housekeeping, a nice piece of steak gracing his Sunday plate amid a garland of green vegetables.

In spirit, he was down on odd days and up on the even, starting the count from Monday, of course, as one does in the part of the country where Felix grew up. Sunday didn?t count at all, naturally, being the Sabbath: in the sight of God, one must neither be sad nor happy, for any degree of richness is as nothing compared to the trappings of Heaven.

Then he met Margaret, a girl from a family who expected a lot from her, having foisted good breeding upon the narrow shoulders of the child.

'Walking out with Felix Crewe!' The shock was pandemic, stretching back into decades of Margaret's ancestors and even forward into the unborn posterity of her own children.

Felix and Margaret decided to ignore the wagging tongues, especially on Sundays, when it was easier to miss out on the local scandal by merely not going to church. Felix wore his best bib and tucker the whole week round in any event, and Margaret did a good line in maidenly dresses fitting for the most becoming Wednesday afternoon tea dances. Hand in hand, they did the tour of the watering places, the being-seen vantage points, the promenades, the top-of-the-hill sighting-holes...

The community, however, could only remain snubbed. They had not condoned the relationship before it started. So it was impossible to rubber stamp it now. 'What a carry on!' some said. Felix, himself, had no defenders at all. So when the liaison finally expired on the spurt of a late afternoon caprice, he was hounded from town upon a tide of gossip that had no good words, even for his careful housekeeping nor for the swinging pendulum of his soul that counted the days, for ever and ever, amen.