The Adventure - Part Two

After a short scuffle over whether they should take the High Street or follow Chestnut Lane to the bypass, Claude and Clarice set out to see the famous Gutenberg Bible. The rain had stopped and the sun sank low in the west, painting the village as red as a poppy field.
Clarice felt content. She loved Laurel Grove and could not imagine living anywhere. She smiled to herself, thinking about their errand, and she sank into the soft leather of Claude’s two-seater Vauxhall. “Something to see, isn’t it?”
            “What’s that?” Claude had to shout to be heard over the noise of the engine and the wind that snapped his scarf and whipped the earflaps of his driving cap. He peered at her through the fog of his goggles.
            “I said it’s something to see … ISN’T IT?
            “No need to shout, Clarice. I’m not deaf!”
            “No,” she muttered. “You’re not deaf, for all that you pretend to be when it suits you.”
            Behind the wheel, Claude was content, too, and he let Clarice’s dig go unchallenged.
♦♦♦
 
            The mood soured when they pulled into view of the Laurel Grove Historical Society. The car park was a sea of Daimlers, Packards and Morris Cowleys. A queue of visitors snaked all the way from the entrance hall of the museum to the grassy verge beyond the gates.
            “We weren’t the only ones with this idea, it seems,” said Claude, who hated crowds. Especially crowds of culturally-minded folk lunatic enough to wait hours in a boring queue to get into an even more boring museum.
            “I’ve an idea,” he said. “I’ll drive you up to the entrance, and then come back around and wait with the car. There’ll be no place to park up there.”
            “You’ll do no such thing. We’ve not come all this way for you to snore away the rest of the afternoon and leave me on my own.”
            “D--- it, Clarice!”
            “Come now, Claude. You might even learn something.”
            “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
♦♦♦
 
            Claude and Clarice joined the queue and thanked heaven the rains had stopped. They seemed to advance no more than a few feet an hour. Claude’s tummy growled, and he wished that he had a sandwich. Clarice had begun an animated conversation with the couple standing in front of them. About what, Claude did not care to guess. He was bored, just as he knew he would be.
            Then at last, it was their turn to enter.
            “Tickets, please! Tickets!” barked a uniformed man with an appalling overbite.
            “Tickets? Clarice, you did not mention tickets.”
            Clarice shushed Claude, and began to work on the clerk. “Young man—”
            “No tickets, no entry. That’s the rules, ma’am. Now if you haven’t got a ticket, kindly step aside.”
            “Deliverance!,” thought Claude, keeping the comment to himself and leading Clarice away by the elbow.