Part 13
The Heartful Bodger
The soft squelching mud of the riverbank felt peculiar between Lizzie's naked toes but she was away from the odious Conrad, free to walk and think on her own. She walked carefully and after a time got used to the feel of the mud. It felt cool, given the warmth of the day, and she was not bothered by her feet getting dirty. It was a lovely walk. The river one side, the cool greenness of the wood the other and, whilst there was only a hint of a path, the going was not difficult. She had left the noise and laughter of the others far behind and all she could hear or see for a time was the natural sounds of the morning.
Ahead of her Lizzie gradually became aware of a strange sort of whirring noise. Not a constant noise but one that regularly died away and then came back again. She could not see what it was through the trees but she thought it must be quite close and, whilst she had been happily walking along the river bank quite naked, it now occurred to her that even though nudity seemed very normal in Conrad's world, assuming, that is, she wasn't simply dreaming and it was some sort of real world, perhaps it might not be so normal everywhere in it. She rather wished she was clothed but looking around her she could not at first see how she could clothe herself. After a while her eyes fell on some dock leaves and her nimble fingers were soon threading them onto a springy willow twig to form a sort of skirt. Tying it around herself it was, she thought, truly best described as a 'sort of skirt' as it was hardly long enough to be described as a skirt, even a miniskirt: a wide belt of leaves around her hips was all it was. The whirring noise stopped causing Lizzie to look up from her dressmaking in concern but it soon started again. Whatever could it be?
Lizzie did not have to walk much further to find the answer to her question because, coming around a sharp bend in the river, she espied a man working in the wood and it was clearly him making the whirring noise. He was standing, facing Lizzie, at some sort of wooden contraption which seemed to be moving in a number of ways. Most obvious was a long pole slanting up from behind him with its end bouncing up and down above him on a rope attached to the machine. Another piece of wood right in front of him was rotating and yet another piece of wood under his foot was going up and down. Coming closer Lizzie began to understand what this contraption was and the function it performed. It was, as Lizzie later found out, a pole lathe upon which the man was turning a piece of wood. His foot moved a treadle, this pulled down on a cord wrapped around the work revolving it and at the same time pulling down on the long springy pole, perhaps twenty foot long and set at an angle across a frame. This pole bounced back upwards and pulled the cord up again, before the process was repeated. A clever machine to turn wood without the use of an engine or electric motor. Quiet, clean, simple and effective and used for hundreds of years in the forests.
The man looked up at Lizzie and laughed a particularly merry, carefree laugh. He was a tall muscular man with flowing locks of tightly curled yellow hair reaching to his shoulders and a short equally yellow beard. He was simply dressed in a leather apron and was standing knee deep in wood shavings, not just standing in them but they were in and hanging from his hair as well as flying over his shoulder when he applied his gouge to the wood.
"Hello," said Lizzie, "who are you and what are you doing?"
The man took his foot from the treadle and the motion and noise stopped, "I'm Heartful and I'm doin' a bit o' bodging, missie."
Lizzie looked around. Not only were there Heartful and his machine but also there was a hut and all sorts of finished pieces of work. Stools, chairs, tables, walking sticks and what appeared to be (Lizzie moved a little closer to them to check) and, yes, indeed were short rounded sticks. There was a common theme to these rustic products - wherever possible and with all the legs for the chairs and tables there was ample opportunity, the ends were fashioned in the shape of a penis. Chairs with the uprights to the backs standing proud, the legs of the tables resting on bulbous acorn shaped feet, walking sticks curling round like a soft unerect penis might curl at rest or, in a different style, with upright tumescent handles to grasp. And then there were all the round sticks in all shapes and sizes and woods, Lizzie could easily see what those were: pale holly dildos, warm brown cherry dildos, darker brown oak dildos. Small ones, long ones, thick ones, surprisingly slim ones for what purpose Lizzie did not like to think. All the work, though, beautifully made.
"I'm a Bodger, see. I live in't woods and make things from what's around me in t' woods. I hew, I hedge, I coppice, I hurdle, I bodge." He smiled broadly. "Look, choose, try."
Lizzie sat on a chair and thought it very comfortable. It would have looked really cool in her room back home only, of course, her mother would hardly have approved at all of the penile shaping of the legs and arms. They were not subtle—there was no mistaking what they were. She thought how shocked her friend, Lotte, would be if Lizzie took her into her bedroom and she saw this chair. It was not good, though, to think of home. How was she to get home?
The tables were just as well made and perhaps she could have got away with a small one beside her bed as long as you didn't look at the ends of its legs. She got up and went to look at some little stools. They had rather odd bowed seats with holes in the middle of them. She sat down on one but it was not very comfortable.
Heartful began to laugh, "No missie, you sits t'other way, astride like!"
Lizzie got up and sat astride the stool—that was much more comfortable.
"Yes that's a right, what size are yer?"
Lizzie was puzzled by the question. What did the strange man with his leather apron mean? Her height, her dress size, her shoe size or what?
"What do you mean?"
"Don't you know? Surely you know? Haven't you had a fittin'? Where's me set of fittin' measures?"