A Village Affair

CHAPTER TEN

In the Pitcombe Stores, Mr Finch was patiently explaining to his new assistant, Gwen's daughter Michelle, about the arrangement of tinned vegetables on the shelves. It was not that Michelle was stupid, but rather that she wanted to work in Dorothy Perkins, in Salisbury, and they had said she couldn't until she was eighteen, so the village shop was to her no more than a tiresome stopgap at one pound eighty pence an hour. She was elaborately bored, all week, except on Mondays when, this being the show season for Mrs Macaulay and her girls, Mr Finch allowed her to help Mrs Jordan in the travelling shop. Michelle didn't just admire Alice, she really liked her company. When she got home on Mondays, Gwen always wanted to know what Alice had said to Michelle, but Michelle went mulish and wouldn't tell. Her Mrs Jordan, she felt, was different from the one her mother worked for. Her Mrs Jordan talked to her like an equal and lent her books and once gave her a pair of silver earrings like shells so that Michelle had to lock herself in the bathroom and pierce new holes in her ears with a needle stuck into a cork and an ice cube to deaden the lobe.

She said, 'Yeah, OK. Right. OK,' to Mr Finch but she wasn't really listening. Who cared whether carrots went next to butter beans or peas? She stood and bit her nails and thought about the black leather jacket she'd seen on Saturday that she'd set her heart on.

"There now,' Mr Finch said, 'quite clear I think. Now you just load up from these boxes while I go and give Mrs Finch a hand with the freezer delivery.'

Michelle gave the faintest snigger. Everyone knew Mrs Finch and the freezer delivery driver fancied one another, though why the sight of Mrs Finch with her blue eyelids and purple hair didn't make the freezer man want to crack up Michelle couldn't imagine. He came twice a month, and Mr Finch always shot out to the back to give a hand. Michelle imagined a really good punch-up going on among the fish fingers and ice lollies in the glacial van while Mrs Finch sobbed theatrically into the little lace handkerchiefs she favoured.

When Mr Finch had gone, Michelle began, laboriously, to take the tins out of their cartons and bang them on the shelves. After a few minutes, Miss Pimm came in and scuttled about in pursuit of a ball of string and a packet of custard powder. Long ago, Michelle had briefly been in her Sunday School, manifesting, Miss Pimm was mortified to remember, an unwholesome curiosity in Mary Magdalene and the woman taken in adultery.

'Michelle,' Miss Pimm said, displaying her purchases with exaggerated honesty, 'I believe I owe Mr Finch exactly seventy seven pence for these two items.'

'Right,' Michelle said, getting up without a smile.

She took Miss Pimm's proffered eighty pence over to the till and was an age with the change.

Three pence,' said Miss Pimm.

'I know,' said Michelle. 'I'm not daft.'

Miss Pimm, reddening in her characteristic blotches, opened her mouth to object to being spoken to in such a way and managed no more than a hoarse and humiliating caw. Michelle stared at her. Then the shop door twanged open and Michelle's gaze moved beyond Miss Pimm and lit up. A man's voice said, 'I am in Pitcombe. Aren't I?'

Michelle was delighted. She dropped Miss Pimm's change very approximately into her outstretched hand, tossed the whig of hair she liked to let fall into her eyes and said, 'Sorry. This is Las Vegas.'

'Same thing,' Anthony said, coming forward. He looked down at Miss Pimm. She reminded him of a moorhen. He said with great charm to her, 'I'm sure you can help me. I am Martin Jordan's brother. I am looking for The Grey House.'

Frenziedly, Miss Pimm fixed her eyes on his silk paisley tie.

'Yes!' she said. 'Yes!'

Anthony waited. Michelle leaned on the counter and gazed frankly and greedily at him. Miss Pimm raised her troubled eyes to his striped shirt collar. She licked her lips and swallowed.

'Welcome,' she said. 'Welcome to Pitcombe.'

The propriety of her own behaviour encouraged her and her eyes moved to Anthony's chin.

'Up the village street until you pass, on the right, a cottage with an ornamental well in the garden. Turn right there, a very narrow lane, and The Grey House is ahead of you.'

'How very kind,' Anthony said gravely.

His voice was so pleasing, Miss Pimm dared one fleeting glance at his eyes. He was winking at Michelle. Seizing her custard powder and her string, and gobbling to herself faintly in her distress, she scuttled from the shop into the street. Fred Mott watched her unpityingly from his window and then observed that the tall bloke who had just gone in was now coming out and was climbing back into the brand of car the telly ads promised would always get you a sexy bit in a slit skirt. Fred fingered his trousers. Sally had sewn up the slit in his pyjama bottoms. He sniggered. She couldn't sew up the slits in his mind.

Anthony drove up the street slowly, Miss Pimm and Michelle quite forgotten. It all looked very pretty and neat, grey stone and bright gardens. Trust Martin not to dare to live anywhere more adventurous than this. By the ornamental well - it was an immense affair with a fretted wooden roof like a Swiss chalet and had a plaster cat creeping along the ridge - he turned right, and beyond the cottages he saw the stone gateposts and the clipped hornbeams and the grey-gold gravel and he said to himself again, trust Martin.

He stopped the car outside the very pretty facade. The front door was open. A kitten, past the sweet stage of babyhood and fast approaching a gawky adolescence, was sitting just inside in a patch of sunlight, washing nonchalantly. It took no notice of him.

'Alice!' Anthony called.

There was no reply. He walked into the hall and across it into the kitchen. There was no one there but several people had recently had tea and there was a muddle of mugs and crumby plates. Anthony called again.

In the open doorway to the garden, a small, neat girl appeared.

'Are you Anthony?'

'Yes,' he said. 'And you must be James.'

She sighed. That was the sort of joke James liked. She said severely, 'I am Natasha.'

'I am sorry. Where is your mother?'

'Doing the church flowers. Clodagh's out here. Come andseeClodagh.'

Anthony went out into the garden. There was a sandpit with a very large baby or a very small child in it and a larger child on a little bicycle and a girl in a sort of camouflage boiler suit and a lot of brass jewellery shelling peas into a red enamel pot. She looked up at the sound of footsteps and Anthony thought he had seldom seen anyone look less welcoming.

Clodagh held out a hand.

'You must be Anthony.'

He sat down on the grass beside her. The children all came closer and regarded him. The baby one came very close and poured a cupful of sand over his foot and into his shoe.

'Charlie,' Natasha said. She stopped and brushed at the shoe, making clucking noises.

'I gather,' Anthony said, 'that Alice is doing the church flowers. And that you are Clodagh.'

That's right.'

Anthony took off his shoe and poured the sand out into the grass. Charlie watched interestedly and then took off his own shoe and shook it hopefully.

'Which of you children is which?'

'I'm Natasha. I told you. And that's James and that's Charlie.'

'And I am your uncle.'

'It's so sad,' Natasha said, 'we have three of you and we never see any of you. One is in America.'

'You are seeing me now.'

He looked at Clodagh. He wanted to provoke her.

'Are you the nanny?'

Clodagh wasn't even going to look at him. She went on zipping her thumb along the pea pods so that the peas pattered into the pot.

'No.'

'She's the friend,' James explained.

Clodagh shot him an affectionate look.

'Mummy's friend?'

'All our friend.' /

Anthony turned round.

'Bit of all right, here.'

Natasha felt a social obligation. She said, 'Shall I show you round?'

'I'd rather you showed me Mummy.'

Clodagh said, Take him to the church, Tashie, there's a love.'

'Won't you?'

'No,' Clodagh said. 'I won't.'

Anthony got to his feet.

'Lovely welcome-'

Clodagh said nothing. She was full of loathing.

'Don't I even get any tea?'

Natasha said comfortingly, 'It'll be time for a drink soon. And we ate all the chocolate crunchy.' She paused and then she said, 'I could give you a banana, I should think.'

'Certainly,' Clodagh said. 'As many as he can eat.'

Natasha led the way back into the kitchen. She peered into the fruit bowl.

"They're all speckly. Do you mind? I only like them very smooth.'

'I don't really want a banana.'

Natasha looked puzzled. He was a most peculiar uncle. She thought uncles laughed a lot and gave you pound coins and took you for rides in sports cars with the top down. Anthony's car looked very boring. It was even black. She said, 'Shall I take you to the church?'

He sighed and nodded. She led the way out of the house and up the garden to a field path. She told him about her school and about Sophie having to have glasses and about her intense longing to have some too. He nodded a bit but she didn't think he was conversationally very responsive. She asked him if he ever wore glasses and he said 'No', rather crossly, and she began to be disappointed in the role of hostess.

'The church,' she said in a last effort to entertain him, 'smells exactly like my cloakroom at school.'

But he only grunted. They skirted the churchyard wall and Natasha thought of several interesting remarks about the headstones but hadn't the heart to utter them. In silence, they walked up the path to the south porch, and went from the bright warmth outside to the damp cool dimness inside. There were several women dotted around the nave, and dustsheets and trugs of greenery and flowers and pairs of secateurs, and in the aisle a very beautiful woman was sweeping with an almost bald broom. The woman, Anthony recognized with a start, was Alice. Her hair fell in a river down her back from some high-crowned arrangement on her head, and she was wearing something swirling and green. Natasha ran forward and seized the broom, and said, 'Here's Anthony!'

Alice stopped sweeping. She looked up and smiled at him angelically. Then she gave the broom to Natasha and came quickly to Anthony and put her arms round him.

'Anthony-'

He held her back. He felt, as he so seldom did, full of a large and happy warmth.

'You look amazing-'

She laughed. Then she looked closely at him and said, suddenly sober, 'Oh, poor Ant. I wish you did.'

'Everyone is so horrible to me. Your baby filled my shoe with sand.'

'He didn't mean it!' Natasha cried indignantly, her eyes full of sudden tears. 'He's only little!'

Alice took her arms away from Anthony.

'Don't be an ass, Ant.'

'I rely on you to be kind.'

'Are you whining?'

'No. Only pleading.'

She gave him a sideways look.

'If you say so-'

A faint scream came from the west window. On a ladder insecurely poised against the high sill, Miss Payne, as small and round as a blue tit, was losing out to an immense and purposeful white stone vase that she was attempting to fill with cow parsley and iris. Anthony, who liked all diversions for their sakes, sped away from Alice and caught Miss Payne as she tottered, cradling her in his arms like a large pale blue knitted football. He then came back up the aisle with her, as if she were some kind of trophy. She was pink with distressed excitement. The other flower ladies left their assigned corners and crowded round with twitters of concern. Peter Morris, who had been in the vestry screwing up a modest little looking glass so that he could inspect himself before he emerged into the chancel every service, came down into the nave and for a fleeting moment thought Miss Payne was being abducted. Then Anthony set her gently on the floor and she began, quite helplessly, to giggle. Everybody watched her.

'Of course, nobody her age should even be asked to go up that ladder-'

'I've always said we could do with a nice cheerful arrangement of silk flowers up there, no trouble to anyone, only need an occasional shake-'

'You all right, dear?'

'Better sit down, Buntie dear, after a shock like that-'

'Perhaps next time, Mrs Jordan, you being so much younger, you could volunteer for the west window?'

'Of course,' Alice said, 'but Buntie wanted to do it.'

Miss Payne nodded violently. Anthony stooped over her.

'Shall I carry you out and lay you down on a nice tombstone to recover?'

She gave a little squeal of delight and horror. Peter Morris moved calmly through the little group and steered Miss Payne to a pew.

'I don't know, Buntie. Cradle-snatching I'd call it.'

Miss Payne began to cry. Peter Morris pulled out what he always called his public handkerchief and handed it to her. Anthony looked at Alice.

'I'd no idea doing the church flowers could be such a lark.'

Natasha said in distress, looking at Miss Payne, 'But it's sad.'

'Heavens,' Anthony said, 'what a sentimental little party.' He turned to Alice. 'Wouldn't you like to come home now and pour me a huge welcoming drink?'

'Not much,' Alice said.

'Allie-'

Alice did stern battle with her temper.

'I must finish sweeping up. Tashie will help me. You go and sit in the churchyard and I'll be out in five minutes.'

'All right,' he said reluctantly.

He went down the aisle and Miss Pimm and Mrs Macaulay and Mrs Fanshawe watched him go as if to see him safely off the premises.

'Hold the dustpan steady,' Alice said.

Natasha knelt down and leaned her weight on the dustpan.

'Is sentimental,' she said, looking downwards, 'nice or silly?'

At supper, which they ate in the kitchen with the upper half of the stable door open to the dim summer night, Anthony talked a great deal about the Far East, and, by inference, of the depth and breadth of his experience of life. Alice heard him with affectionate pity and Clodagh with contempt. Martin felt, as Anthony meant him to feel, faintly insecure. He tried, eating his chicken casserole, to tell himself that whereas Anthony had passed ten years, he, Martin had lived them. Anthony had stories; he, Martin, had a wife and children, a house and friends and a solid career. Perhaps, Martin thought, getting up to go round the table with the second bottle of Californian Chardonnay, if Alice would let him make love to her, he would be able to hear anything, absolutely anything, Anthony chose to say, with equanimity. He believed Alice when she said she wasn't interested in anyone else. He believed that she loved him - heavens, she was more loving to him and appreciative than she'd been in ages, years even - but there was this bed thing. Suppose she never wanted sex with him again, what the hell would he do? It was bad enough now, he sometimes felt quite obsessed by it, thinking about it, wanting it. On top of the physical difficulties there was the siren call of self-pity. Martin knew Alice despised people who were sorry for themselves, but sometimes, after a messy little session alone with himself in the bathroom, he would look at himself in the shaving mirror and say piteously, 'What about me?' He got angry with Alice then, and showered himself furiously, muttering abusive things about her into the rushing water. And after that, he felt as he supposed women did after they'd had a good cry, absolutely wrung out and forlorn. He hated the whole business and, try as he might, he couldn't escape the fact that he wasn't the one who had brought it about.

'Don't I get any?' Clodagh said.

Martin came slowly out of his trance.

'And after I've ironed seven shirts of yours today and put new slug pellets round the delphiniums and done the school run?'

He put his hand on her shoulder.

'Sorry. Miles away.'

'Are you thinking about my farm?'

Martin was a poor liar. In a kind of shout, he said, 'Yes, actually.'

Clodagh looked briefly at Anthony.

'Martin is our family lawyer now.'

'How deeply respectable.'

Alice said mildly. 'What an old bitch you are.'

'I needn't be.'

Clodagh gave a snort. She got up and cleared away the plates and put a blue china bowl of strawberries in the middle of the table. Anthony watched her. He thought that when he next telephoned his mother, he would tell her that he saw exactly why she had reservations about Clodagh as a. friend for Alice. He turned to look at Alice. He held his wine glass up to her. She must be sorry for Clodagh.

'Here's to you.'

Thank you,' she said. But she said it absently. Taking a bowl of strawberries from Clodagh, she said, 'What is your farm like?'

'Lovely.'

'What kind of lovely?'

'A square flint house with brick chimneys and a wonderful Victorian yard. Six hundred acres-'

'Six hundred and thirty,' Martin said.

'It's grown!'

'No. It just wasn't measured properly. I've had it measured. For valuation.'

'Martin,' Clodagh said, putting an enormous strawberry on top of his helping as a reward, 'you are wonderful.'

Anthony said, 'Why don't you live there?'

Alice held her breath.

'It hasn't been mine. When it is, I might.'

'Do you,' Anthony said, leaning forward, 'live here?'

She looked straight at him.

'I live at home. I spend most days here.'

'Why?' Anthony said.

Alice said, without looking up, 'Because we like her to.'

There was a tiny, highly charged pause.

'I see,' Anthony said.

Clodagh said spitefully, 'Do you know how to like people?'

'I know how not to like them.'

Martin waved his spoon.

'Pax, you two.'

'We might just, you see,' Clodagh said, embarking on the high wire, 'be about to have a most interesting conversation about love.'

'Love?'

Alice looked up. Her eyes were enormous.

'It's the most important thing there is. I always knew it would be.'

Martin, alarmed at this kind of remark being made in public, said quickly, 'Are there any more strawberries?'

It was all the poetry Alice was reading, a sort of sequel to all those novels she used to devour. He shot a glance at her. She was looking at Clodagh but her mind was clearly miles away. Anthony picked up the strawberry bowl.

There's about six. I'll share them with you.'

He put two in Martin's bowl.

'You don't change, do you?'

'What I don't understand,' Anthony said, 'is why everyone expects me to.'

After supper, Alice put a pot of coffee on the table, and then she and Clodagh moved about in the dimness outside the candlelit circle round the table, clearing up. They were talking together softly, and at the table Martin and Anthony were talking about Dummeridge. After a while, Alice and Clodagh said that they were going to tuck the children in and left the kitchen. When he could hear their feet safely on the stairs Anthony said, 'Come on. Tell me about Clodagh. Why is she here?'

Martin poured a spoonful of brown sugar into his coffee.

'We met her up at the Park. She's been an absolute godsend. A sort of unpaid nanny and companion. It's made all the difference in the world to Alice.'

'Maybe,' Anthony said. 'But is she going to stay for ever?'

'Lord no. She had a bit of a crisis of some kind in the States, so she came home. She'll be off to do something else after the summer. She's that land.'

'Do you like her?'

Martin flinched a little.

'Of course-'

'When you were younger, you'd have been scared of a girl like that.'

'Well,' Martin said jauntily, 'I'm older, aren't I?'

'Mother doesn't like her.'

'Mother doesn't have to live with her.'

'Why doesn't she like her?'

Martin shrugged.

'I don't know.'

'You do.'

'Shut up,' Martin said loudly, suddenly angry. 'Shut up, will you?'

'No good losing your temper.'

'I haven't-'

Anthony got up and went over to the open door and lit a cigarette.

This is quite a place.'

'Yes.'

'Three children. Steady progress up career ladder. Well done.'

Martin said nothing. Anthony came back to the table and dropped into his chair again.

'To be quite honest, I envy you. My future is rather bleak.'

'Surely-'

'Surely what?'

'Surely you can get another money job?'

'Oh sure. But it seems a bit pointless. What for? You know.'

Alice and Clodagh were coming back down the stairs. They were laughing.

'I get lonely,' Anthony said, thrusting his face at Martin.

'I'm sorry-'

The kitchen door opened and the women came in. Martin waved the coffee pot in relief.

'Coffee?'

'Lovely,' Alice said, and then to Clodagh, 'It was everything you see, comic and pathetic, I wish you'd-' She stopped. 'Charlie has got out of his cot,' she said to Martin, 'and gone to sleep underneath it.'

'Why didn't you put him back?'

The women looked at one another.

'It seemed pointless,' Alice said. 'And not very kind. We rather admired his enterprise.'

'I won't admire it when he appears in our room at dawn.'

Alice looked deflated.

'I'll put him back then. Later.'

Clodagh picked up a bunch of keys from the dresser.

'I ought to go. The drawbridge goes up at eleven.'

Alice moved across towards her. 'I'll come and see you off.'

Anthony was watching. Clodagh, observing this, said lightly, 'No need.'

'I'd like to. You've worked so hard today. Anyway, I must shut up the hens.'

'No,' Clodagh said, and shook her head. 'I did the hens. Before supper.'

She crossed to the stable door and unlatched it.

'Night everyone-'

Alice was gripping the chair back. She saw Clodagh go every night but tonight it was dreadful, heaven knew why. The door closed. She wanted to rush out through the front door and intercept Clodagh's car and get into it with her and just not be separated, not be made to be apart, again . .. Instead of doing that, however, she sat down slowly and poured herself some coffee and wished that Anthony wouldn't keep looking at her.

'Brandy?' she said to him.

'Love it-'

Martin got up.

'I'll get it.'

He went out to the dining room.

'Pretty good,' Anthony said. 'For my little brother to find himself the Unwin's lawyer.'

'It was Clodagh's idea.'

'Was it now?'

'Her father is thrilled-'

Martin came back with a bottle.

'Only half an inch I'm afraid.'

He poured brandy into Anthony's empty wine glass. For no reason at all, Alice remembered her father asking for brandy when he came to tell her that he had left her mother and that she hadn't had any then, indeed had never been even part owner of a bottle of spirits in her life. She hadn't been near her mother for a year but she would go now. She and Clodagh would take the children to Colchester to see Elizabeth and perhaps - Alice's heart gave a little lurch - stay in an hotel near-by. And they could go to Reading on the way back and see Sam. Sam would love Clodagh. Perhaps - perhaps they could stay away for a few days, free, just roaming with the car...

She said to Martin, 'I can't think why brandy should make me think of my mother, but really I must go and see her.'

'Of course,' Martin said.

'Maybe Clodagh could come and help me with the children-'

'Good idea.'

'Next month-'

Martin stood up, yawning.

'Whenever you like. I'm dropping.' He gestured at Anthony. 'Sleep well. No hurry in the morning.'

'You must feel very proud of him,' Anthony said, when Martin had gone.

'Of course I do.'

'So glad.'

'Anthony,' Alice said, 'enough games for one evening. Time for bed,' and she leaned forward to blow out the candles, and as she did so Anthony found that his long scrutiny of her and of Clodagh had been rewarded and that he had made a most interesting discovery. And so, in order to consider it at leisure, he was quite happy to be shooed upstairs with the remainder of his brandy. The goodnight kiss he gave Alice on the landing was compounded both of admiration and appreciation of the probable complexity of the future.