Hovis & Horlicks

A short but sweet story from Blushes 33 Those days seemed always to have been sunny days, as he remembered them; they couldn’t all have been so, of course, but memory functions selectively, and his chose to bathe his recollections of those hours in the little room, in the warm yellow light of Hovis afternoons in mid-summer. The window would have been open with the sweet tang of new-mown grass sharp in the still air; she would be naturally fresh-scented, the smell of her hair delicate in his nostrils as he stood behind and guided her, with a hand at either of her hips, to stand before the table over which she was to be caned. He could see — could see even now — the wide expanse of grass beyond the window, and old Fred sitting on the big motor mower, its puttering and clattering muted by distance, his workman’s cap on his head come rain or shine; and he could hear behind him, as he stood at the window, the sibilant shush of cott...