“Hank, hon, maybe they don’t want to hear about the baby in the abbey.” JoJo fi ngered her gold chain, from which were hanging a veritable excrescence of trinkets. #1 Mom, Applepie, and Sugarbean danced alongside a Mercedes-Benz symbol, a diminutive spoon, and a minuscule Eiffel Tower.

“Hellsapoppin they don’t!” was Hank’s riposte. “You just ask them, Bean.”

JoJo rolled her eyes in apology at the other couple. “Hank’s charmed with England. Just really charmed,” she explained.

“Love it.” Hank nodded. “If I could just get some toast that’s h-o-t, the place’d be perfect. Why in heck d’you people eat your toast cold?”

“I’ve always thought it was a cultural defi ciency,” St. James responded.

Hank brayed appreciatively, his mouth open wide to display a row of startlingly white teeth. “Cultural deficiency! That’s good! That’s real good! Hear that, Bean? Cultural defi ciency!” Hank always repeated any remark that made him laugh. Somehow, it gave him a certain authorship over it. “Now, back to the abbey.” He was also not easily diverted.

“Hank,” his wife murmured. She was a bit like a rabbit, exophthalmic, with a little upturned nose that continually twitched and flexed on her face as if she were not quite used to the air she breathed.

“Loosen up, Bean,” her husband urged. “These people here are the salt-of-the- earth.”

“I think I will have more coffee, Simon,” Deborah said.

Her husband poured, met her eyes, and said, “Milk, dear?”

“Yes, please.”

“H-o-t milk for the coffee!” Hank remarked, seeing a new avenue in which to demonstrate his considerable verbal fl exibility. “Now that’s something else I just haven’t got used to. Hey! Here’s Angelina now!”

The said young girl-obviously by her physical resemblance to Danny yet another member of the curiouser and curiouser Burton-Thomas clan-was carrying a large tray into the dining room with intense concentration. She was not as pretty as Danny: a plump little red hen of a girl whose scrubbed cheeks and rough hands made her look as if she’d be more at home on a farm than attempting to be part of her family’s eccentric establishment. She bobbed a nervous good morning, avoiding their eyes, and awkwardly distributed breakfast, gnawing her bottom lip miserably as she did so.

“Shy little thing,” Hank observed loudly, squashing a square of toast into the centre of his fried egg. “But she gave us the true poop last night after dinner. Now you’ve heard about that baby, right?”

Deborah and St. James looked at each other, deciding which one of them would take up the conversational ball. It was tossed to Deborah. “Yes, indeed we did,” she replied. “Crying from the abbey. Danny told us about it just after we arrived.”

“Ha! Bet she did,” Hank said obscurely, and then to make sure his meaning was clear, added, “Nice little piece. You know. Likes the attention.”

“Hank…” his wife murmured into her porridge. Her hair was very short, strawberry blonde, and the tips of her ears, showing through it, had become quite red.

“JoJo-bean, these people are not d-u-m,” Hank replied. “They know the score.” He waved a fork at the other two. A piece of sausage was poised perilously on the prongs. “You gotta excuse the Bean,” he explained. “You’d think living in Laguna Beach’d make a swinger outa her, wouldn’t you? You familiar with Laguna Beach, California?” No pause for an answer. “It is the finest place in the world to live, no offence to you here, of course. JoJobean and I’ve lived there for-how long is it now, pretty face? Twenty-two years?-and she still blushes, I tell you, when she sees two queers getting personal! ‘JoJo,’ I tell her, ‘there-is-no-use getting hot and bothered about queers.’” He lowered his voice. “We got them coming out our verifi ed ears in Laguna,” he confi ded.

St. James could not bring himself to look at Deborah. “I beg your pardon?” he asked, unsure if he had correctly heard the unusual, gymnastic pun.

“Queers, man! Faggots! Ho-mo-sex-shuls. By the certifi ed, verified millions in Laguna! They all want to live there! Now, as to the abbey.” Hank paused to slurp gustily at his coffee. “Seems the real story is that Danny and her you-know-what used to meet at the abbey on a regular basis. You know what I mean. For a little clutch-and-feel. And on the night in question some three years back they’ve just decided it’s time to consecrate the relationship. You follow me?”

“Completely,” St. James replied. He studiously avoided Deborah’s eyes.

“Now, Danny, see, is a little leery of this. After all, being a virgin on the wedding night’s a puh-retty big item to let go of, don’t you agree? ’Specially in this neck of the woods. And if little Danny lets this fella have his way…well, there’s no backward road, is there?” He awaited St. James’s response.

“I should imagine not.”

Hank nodded sagely. “So, as her sister Angelina tells it-”

“She was there?” St. James asked incredulously.

Hank spent a moment guffawing at the thought, banging his spoon with tympanic delight on the top of the table. “You’re a card, fella!” He directed his attention to Deborah. “He always like this?”

“Always,” she replied promptly.

“That’s great! Well, back to the abbey.”

Of course, Deborah and St. James’ exchanged looks replied.

“So here’s this fella with Danny.” Hank painted the scene in the air with his knife and fork. “The gun is loaded and the trigger cocked. When all of a sudden comes this baby wailing fist to beat the band! Can you see it?

Huh, can you?”

“In detail,” St. James replied.

“Well, these two hear that baby and think it’s the worda God himself. They get outa that abbey so fast that you’d think the devil was chasing them. And that, my friends, put an end to that.”

“To the baby crying, do you mean?” Deborah asked. “Oh, Simon, I was hoping we’d hear it tonight. Or perhaps even this afternoon. Warding off evil turned out to be so much more rewarding than I expected it to be.”

Minx, his look said.

“Not to the crying baby,” Hank instructed. “To the you-know-what between Danny and whoever he was. Who the hell was he, anyway, Bean?”

“A weird name. Ezra somebody.”

Hank nodded. “Well, anyway, Danny comes back to the hall here with a case of the hooha’s that just won’t quit. Wants to confess her sins and go right to the Lord. So they call the local priest in. It is ex-or-cism time!”

“For the abbey, the hall, or Danny?” St. James enquired.

“All three, fella! So this priest comes rushing down and does the bit with the holy water, goes on to the abbey, and-” He stopped completely, his face lit with joy, his eyes alive with delight: a master storyteller with the audience tearing and clawing to hear every last syllable.

“More coffee, Deborah?”

“Thank you, no.”

“And what do you think?” Hank demanded.

St. James considered the question. He felt his wife’s foot nudge his good leg. “What?” he dutifully responded.

“Damn if there wasn’t a real baby there. A newborn with the cord still attached. Couldn’t be more than a couple hours old. Deader’n a door knocker by the time the old priest got there. Exposure, they say.”

“How dreadful.” Deborah’s face paled. “What a horrible thing!”

Hank nodded solemnly. “You’re talking horrible, just think of poor Ezra! Bet he couldn’t you-know-what for another two years!”

“Whose baby was it?”

Hank shrugged. He turned his attention to his now-cold breakfast. Clearly, the juicier elements of the story were the only ones that he had pursued.

“No one knows,” JoJo answered. “They buried it in the churchyard in the village. With the funniest epitaph on the poor little grave. I can’t recall it, offhand. You’ll have to go see it.”