Hallam comes to her one day demanding that she stop teaching his wife such uncouth behavior. Blanche, the epitome of innocence blinks. "What ever do you mean?"
"I mean tonight at dinner."
"Yes?"
"And the sauce."
"Oh."
"Yes…" Hallam draws it out in a manner Blanche has heard many times before when he's trying to put the words together for the right argument. "Agnes can't run around in trousers all day and she cannot, cannot be licking things like a child in a sweet shop."
To this Blanche only smirks, if only remembering how Agnes' eyes lit up as much as Hector's last Christmas when they'd both received small tins of licorice. And how even then Agnes had taken to licking her fingers. Licking other people's too apparently.
She'd really not meant anything by it, Blanche was sure. "Oh dear, clumsy me." Agnes sighed and set down the gravy boat. Blanche waved her off with platitudes but Agnes insisted. Blanche didn't remember much in between that other than Hallam's outburst of surprise and the wicked giggle of young Hector, allowed at the dinner table at last.
Agnes, in her rather quiet dinner outfit (for there is a war going on) looked terribly resplendent, almost pleased to be of service. Blanche was sure her breath caught as soon as she'd felt the warm tongue against the pads of her fingertips; like touching an eel.
"I'll have a word with her," says Blanche quietly as she turns to her bookshelves, "if that's what you want."
"I want you to stay as far away from my wife with your…ways is what I want." Hallam's pulse throbs in the red vein above his forehead and how much he looks like his father then. "Do I make myself clear?"
"Crystal." Blanche says, pulling out a large tome that had been gathering dust (Eunice refused absolutely to get on the stepstool). She stared at the faded title until the click of sharp soles had faded.
Blanche wonders how mad he would be if he found out that Blanche had also taught her that trick she can do laying on her back.