It's not a typical story so don't be meticulous regarding its structure.
Strolling through Yorkshire with Thomas Koming on a sunday morning made Mrs Harping feel like a young woman again.
Coming to town with Mr Harping was like taking part in military manoeuvres. So long for the drive in: mark. So long to find a parking space: mark. (They had a Ford Fiesta but Mr Harping drove as if it were a Chieftain tank.) So long to shop: 'Quickly, quickly, you 'orrible little woman, a Peruvian grandmother with gout could get round Tesco's faster than this', or 'Look, we're three minutes behind schedule already! Better do Safeway's at the double.'
How different, then, walking these same streets with Thomas. He never hurried her, considered his time well spent if he had no more to show for it than the memory of her smile. They wandered, they chatted - mostly Mila Cunningham chatted, Thomas paying solemn attention to all her opinions. they paused to admire the sights - the castle crumbling on its hill above the diamond, the Georgian frontages below, the sparkle of canal water glimpsed through the Brick Stane entries, the boats in Mere Basin bright as bathtime toys.
Sometimes she reached out and touched him, almost as if to prove that he was real. For reply his cornflower gaze adored her. Wheb she was with Thomas she never gave Mr Harping a thought. It didn't matter that the shops, except for the newsagent on the corner, were closed. They window-shopped. Mr Harping never window-shopped; but Thomas allowed himself to be steered from one display to the next and never cared what he was being invited to admire as long as it was pretty.
Today they stopped at the jeweller's. When Milas was a girl old Mr Rubaah sold costume jewellery and alarm-clocks from a shop the size of a goat-house in one of the entries. His son Mr Rubaah expanded into a proper shop in Castle Place selling better jewellery, siverware and a nice class of crystal, and his son Mr Rubaah expanded in to the shops on either side to create Rubens, a glittering array of jewellery, presentation-ware and objects d'art. It was all here: the precious, the semi-precious and the merely pleasing. Mr Rubaah the latest was no snob when it came to selling. He agreed with thomas: he'd put anything in his window if it was pretty and turned a profit.
Mrs Harping was looking at the rings. Some were new, others antique; several were a shade ostentatious for good taste but Mrs harping didn't mind. she loved their fire, their sheer joie de vivre. 'Oh look, Thomas,' she said, pointing to a cluster of amethysts around a single diamond, 'that's a hundred years old. It was first worn by a lady when my grandma was in her pram'.
Thomas Koming said, 'Rugle,' and set about chewing the ear off his teddy; which Mrs harping took to mean much the same as tempus fugit. Thus preoccupied - Mrs Harping with the ring, her grandson with his bear - they did not for a moment notice they had been joined at the glittering window bya third party; and indeed, to take the non-specialist view, a fourth.
'Lovely, aren't they?'
Mrs Harping looked up, enhusiastic agreement on her lips; but she was so taken aback that all she could manage was sort of non-committal moo.
Politely, the man showed no signs of having noticed. 'every inch a gentleman,' thought Mrs Harping in mounting hysteria. But what did he expect? - standing there in his green felt fedora, his tartan muffler and his calf-length burgundy corduroy coat, like a man thrown out of a Doctor Who audition for being too peculiar. It may have been the smear of lipstick that finally did for her, it may have been the puff of blusher; it may have been the brassy curls permed within an inch of their life peeping out from under the hat. Or it may have been the dog - if it was a dog and not a skinned rabbit - squatting on its naked rump at his feet. It wore a blue collar studded with rhinestones, and that was all. Its freckled fawn body was devoid of fair. There were tufts on its feet, a plume on its tail, an explosion of hair like a punk's Mohawk on its head, but its cat-sized torso was nude. It gave Mrs Harping a bored yawn revealing an absence of teeth.
She backed so hurriedly she almost fell off the kerb. 'Whoops' said the strange man mildly. Flustered and embarrassed, Mrs Harping flashed him her most brilliant smile, wheeled the pram and set off across Castle Place like a galleon in full sail, her raincoat flapping round her. Her cheeks flamed. She realized her behaviour was provincial but she'd been startled. Her willingness to live and let live was as well developed, she hoped, as in any middle-class woman of her generation - beside Mr Harping she seemed a dangerous libertatrian - but hersubconscious was honed by small-town mores fifty years before when an apparition in lipstick and a green fedora would have had insults, and worse, hurled at him in the street.
By the time she reached.......
to be continued:D