Swan Isle

Mary Waingrove couldn’t settle that night.  She went to  the police station and was forced to make a statement blaming John for all that had occurred.  She understood the officer’s concerns about the shame she had brought to her father, Sir George Waingrove, the local Justice and the leading businessman in the village of Sleepy Meadows.  She understood clearly the officer’s reasons for charging John to protect her decency, her father’s reputation and the village as a whole.

As she lay restless in bed, she reflected on the events of that fateful evening. She couldn’t understand the reason why she felt so powerless in John’s company.  Some imaginary force had taken over her and she was powerless to resist it.  She had clearly loved her fiancé, Dexter Arnold and was looking forward to finishing her medical studies and to marrying him.  She had yearned to bear him three children, three boys.  Her dreams had been shattered earlier that day, the moment her eyes met John’s eyes and it revealed his inner soul to her.  It now seemed to her that she had been ordered to leave the match, take a bath, and smother herself with her most fragrant oils and perfumes. She was in a trance that made her wear her most exquisite, exciting and seductive clothes and physically lead him to that fateful wicket.  She now believed that the moment John had entered the village her fate had been sealed.

 Mary couldn’t remember undressing or seducing John.  They seemed to have been led to the enchanted field.  There was the smell of lady of the night and jasmine wafting in the dewy air.  She also remembered, what she thought were thousands of twinkling eyes observing them, as if the stars in the Milky Way had suddenly enveloped them, as she pursued John.

As they made hot passionate love for what seemed to be an eternity, she felt as though she was lying on a bed of soft downy feathers, suspended on a cushion of air but held in place by an army of invisible hands.

 John, though impressively endowed, started feebly as an untried weakling.  However, he grew stronger. That night, unlike a jockey, John had not chosen his steed.  The snow-white steed had selected him and had thrown him its reins.  With uncertain hands he had caught them and with unsure feet had reluctantly mounted the kicking, bucking, and rearing steed.  Like a true jockey he had controlled his mare and had ridden her hard past the winning post, she thought to herself.

 As she moaned and groaned, she reached those dizzying lofty heights of elation, not once, not twice  but more times than she could remember.  Each one was like a large stone being dropped in the ocean creating ripples of waves, which moved outwards from the centre, increasing in height and strength and reaching  the shore as a great tidal wave sweeping away everything in its path.  The last one had struck her and knocked her down leaving her semi-conscious.  She had been awakened from that state of semi-consciousness when the officer’s torch located their entwined bodies and they had fallen to the earth with the force of a meteorite colliding with another solar entity.

 As she tossed and turned the feeling of guilt, sadness and remorse overcame her.  She had felt sad and humiliated when she saw John was being stripped of his clothes and thrown into the cell of the police station.  The full implications of her false statement began to torment her.  She had been tricked by the officer’s machinations and clever schemes, not unlike the schemes and the copious crocodile tears of Sinon of Troy.  The officer had tricked her for his own gain. 

 As she woke up, she resolved to herself that she’d play no further part in it.  Justice had to be done regardless of John’s creed, colour and race.  She would not passively standby and allow John to be convicted for an offence he did not commit and be sent to prison for many years, simply to save her father's and her reputation. For Mary, John had ridden that kicking and bucking white steed. He had expertly controlled it and had won the race of his life.