Briefs and Counters Chapter One

Celia sighed as she folded the last pair of boxer shorts of a long day. She held the soft cotton to her cheek and wished she only had a man to fill them while she buried her face in them. Alas, her wishes did not make the underwear any more manless and, just as the pants remained unfilled, her heart remained unfilled too. She often reflected, at the end of another day at the Brace Brothers department store briefs counter where she worked as a lowly checkout girl and assistant to the chief knicker tidier, the strict Miss Salcombe, upon how she came to be here when once she had everything. Once she had a super family, a super house, a super life, in fact everything was really super. But then her husband started acting strangely, talking endlessly about the family’s lost title of Duke of Eastminster, of the injustice of the loss of the ancestral lands, of the position in society, of not being able to get a table in the Ivy on a weekend, and about how he would reclaim their rightful place in the aristocracy. But then came the terrible news, he had mortgaged their home, their possessions, even King Mongkut their beloved Siamese, all to make a donation to the Labour party. Just as he had handed over the money to Lord Seedy in return for their promised reinstatement in Burkes, Scotland Yard had burst through the door, Lord Seedy had fled the country and Celia and her husband were left with nothing. When they lost the house, their marriage went out of the door with the TV and the cat, straight into the bailiffs van and she had been alone ever since, sniffing underwear and dreaming of what could have been. They had certainly ended up in a directory of burks, but the not the one they had planned. Would she ever find love again, Celia thought, and this time somebody she could rely on, tall, rugged handsome, clever, a conservative, and most of all somebody who would never put his pants on back to front because they fitted better that way, oh when oh when oh when she whispered to herself, and then the door opened….