From the Top Shelf - Ellen's happy end

 

Ellen and Roderick are reunited at last. It seems he did not die in the war after all. Cruel headmaster Filbertson is found murdered in his bed, and the perpetrator is none other than Rose's father. Roderick arranges for Rose and her father to escape to America, and they are never heard from again. Roderick's father has also died, thinking his son was dead, and his home, 'Shalimar', has been put up for sale.

There is little more to tell, except to say that Rose and her father did somehow manage to evade capture and, to all intents and purposes, disappeared from the face of the earth.

When Roderick and I returned to Oswestry two days later I was overjoyed to find my mother was safely past the crisis point of her illness. Mr. Frobisher, the late Headmaster's deputy, had himself driven over to the hospital with the onerous duty of presenting my mother with a full account of the tragedy as verified by the police. He had already been there over an hour when we arrived, and the initial impact of the shock upon my mother had passed. She was ashen pale but reasonably composed and dignified. It was my sincere conviction that her short-lived marriage had been a far from happy one - despite all her attempts at hiding her misery from me - and that in due course she would come to terms with the reality of her second widowhood without undue grief.

Regarding her worldly well-being, a solicitor later came to visit her in the sanatorium where she was recuperating after her illness, with the news that she was named as the sole beneficiary in her late husband's will, and was therefore now the mistress of Woodcliffe Hall School.

"So he must have loved me - in his own strange way" she murmured wonderingly to me when next we met. But I never breathed a word about the things he had done to Rose Potter. I simply couldn't...

As for Roderick and me, we returned to Bishops Stanton where, with my mother's unqualified blessing, we quietly and inconspicuously got married as soon as we possibly could. Roderick had, of course, been honourably released from all further military obligations because of his paralysed left arm, although happily it began to slowly mend - as did his general health and spirits with each new day we spent together.

We settled down to wedded bliss; not in grand style at 'Shalimar', but humbly and contentedly in my mother's tiny cottage which had not been sold, and which she gave us as a wedding present. Roderick loved the place as much as I did and, with the money invested from the sale of 'Shalimar', he was able to paint to his heart's content - while I kept chickens and geese...and had babies.

Thank heavens all dreadful nightmares slowly fade in time; and when the horrid spectre of Alfred Filbertson had sufficiently receded from my mind, Roderick began to spank me again, in the lovely playful way that only he knew how to do.

It became a little difficult when the babies started to arrive - nevertheless I can truthfully say that I had my bottom, bare or otherwise, heartily spanked throughout my twenties, thirties, forties,and well beyond that. In one way it was a delightful vicious circle, because the more often I got spanked, the more Roderick's virility achieved positively Herculean proportions, so consequently the more babies I bore!

Finally when our brood reached half a dozen, we were obliged to move into a larger cottage, the expense being more than defrayed thanks to the profitable vogue which Roderick's landscape paintings were by then enjoying.

Now I am a proud grandmother, although still trim and sprightly enough in figure to cause that wicked gleam to appear in my husband's eye. All our children have gone out into the world now and once again there are just the two of us - Roderick and Ellen.

And should you be impertinent enough to enquire if I still, after all these years, go across my husband's knee, I would probably tell you in no uncertain terms to be about your own business...but I would blush and hang my head, all the same!

And they lived happily ever after.