The Country Life

Chapter Sixteen

Pamela and Martin both looked slightly startled when I burst into the kitchen, their heads jerking up in unison and their eyes wide with enquiry. I was now so besieged by allergy that it felt as if a great swarm of bees were milling around my face. Even so, I was dimly surprised to find the two of them indoors, having thought they were to spend the afternoon en famille by the pool. Pamela was sitting at the table reading a newspaper laid out flat in front of her like a bolt of cloth, a pair of glasses balanced on her elegant nose. Opposite her, Martin sat with his chair drawn up, absorbed in the same loving transfer of information from book to pad which I had overseen on the lawn that morning. Seen from the side their heads were barely six inches apart; and at my entrance they sprang away from each other, as if I had caught them at some guilty pursuit, like cheating or espionage.

‘What’s happened to you?’ cried Pamela; a cry, if I were to be honest, expressive of a dangerously threadbare concern.

‘I don’t know,’ I slurred. ‘It started in the field. I think I must be allergic to something.’

I was beginning to feel quite dizzy, and I pulled out a chair and sat down beside Martin.

‘Which? The top field?’ said Pamela.

‘The gold one.’ I sneezed. ‘Beautiful.’

‘The top field. It must be hay fever.’

She nodded firmly. I wondered if she intended to do anything about it. In spite of my distress, I was becoming acutely aware of some fast approaching limit on Pamela’s kindness. Martin was looking from one to the other of us, as if he were watching a play.

‘Let me think,’ said Pamela presently. I understood from this comment that she had, in the period since her last remark, been considering my plight rather than ignoring it. ‘What have I got? Oh, I know. Have a look in that cupboard over there beside the door. See if there’s a packet of something called Zortek or Zartek. Something like that.’

I realized that she was speaking to me, rather than some other factotum, and felt slightly injured that she should not be sufficiently moved by my condition to get the packet herself. Permitting myself a pathetic sigh, I got heavily to my feet and went to investigate the cupboard.

‘See it?’ called Pamela unhelpfully from behind me.

I found the packet and went directly to the sink for a glass of water. I had to admit that Pamela’s diagnosis had been accurate; for only a few minutes after I had taken the pill and sat down again, I felt the inflammation of my eyes and nose begin miraculously to subside.

‘What were you doing in the top field?’ Pamela lightly enquired.

‘Walking,’ I replied, somewhat belligerently. ‘There’s a public footpath.’ My conversion to the whole business of footpaths, though opportunistic, was proving profound. ‘I met a man.’

‘A man?’

I nodded.

‘Well, what sort of man?’ said Pamela finally. She appeared exasperated. ‘Didn’t you ask who he was?’

‘I don’t see that I had the right to ask,’ I said. ‘It was a public footpath, as I said.’ This was not, I suddenly remembered, strictly true — the man had approached me right over the field. ‘He pointed out,’ I continued, mounting a new offensive, ‘that a step had broken on the ladder over the fence. I had been about to stand on it and he wanted to prevent me hurting myself. That was all.’

‘What did he look like?’ persisted Pamela. I should probably have noticed that her interest in him was unnatural; but the fact that I myself wanted to know who he was gave Pamela’s curiosity the illusion of being merely an extension of my own.

‘Very odd,’ I said. I couldn’t think how to describe him, so instead I placed both hands over my face so that they formed a sort of vertical roof. ‘Like that.’

‘Oh, that was Mr Trimmer,’ said Pamela quickly. She sounded relieved. After a moment she smiled. ‘I should watch out if I were you. He’s probably taken a fancy to you. He’s absolutely notorious. Of course, he’s terribly sweet, but simply desperate for a girlfriend. I shouldn’t think there’s a woman in a twenty-mile radius that hasn’t been asked out by Mr Trimmer.’

I was beginning to feel rather offended that Mr Trimmer hadn’t in fact asked me out, and then remembered that I’d run off before he’d had the chance. It irritated me, nonetheless, that Pamela was so keen to ridicule the notion of someone taking an interest in me. I realized that I had felt flattered by Mr Trimmer’s heroic run across the top field, which now had been diminished to public comedy.

‘I thought he was nice,’ I said. ‘He looks peculiar, but there must be plenty of people who don’t mind that.’

Martin’s head shot up disconcertingly at this remark.

‘Oh, he’s terribly nice,’ intervened Pamela. She did not, I sensed, wish to be thought unkind; although I had the feeling that this was for reasons more of vanity than conscience. ‘No, he’s an absolute darling. The problem is with his mother.’

‘His mother?’

‘Yes, he lives with his mother,’ said Pamela, in a confidential tone. ‘Mrs Trimmer. Dora. She’s a real old battleaxe. She’s got poor Jack utterly under her thumb and scares off anyone who comes near him. She thinks they’re after his money.’

‘Has he got any?’

‘Oh, not really. They live in this wonderful house, though. It’s an absolute pit inside, but it must be worth a fortune. Jack’s father left it to him when he died, and Dora’s worried that if he mames, his wife will boot her out. So she tells him the most dreadful things about everyone he meets — simply makes things up!’

‘What sort of things?’

‘Oh, you know, that they’ve all got horrible diseases, that sort of thing. She got into terrible trouble once’ — Pamela lowered her voice, as if someone might be eavesdropping — ‘for saying that a girl in the village was a convicted thief. Poor Jack had been quite taken by her, so he stuck his neck out and brought her round for tea anyway. Afterwards Dora said that some silver had gone missing from the house, so what did he do but go marching over there in the middle of the night to demand it back!’ Pamela shrieked with laughter. ‘There was the most terrible set-to with her father, right out in Hilltop High Street!’

Martin yawned conspicuously. I saw the moist, red cavern of his mouth.

‘He’s Mr Madden’s manager, isn’t he?’ I said, only then remembering why his name was familiar to me. The creature had mentioned him in connection with the shooting of Geoff.

‘That’s right. Piers adores him. Couldn’t do without him. And Dora has given us her seal of approval, so there’s no trouble from her. Old George Trimmer, her husband, worked here for years.’

There was a pause. The house ticked and creaked around us. Outside, through the window, shadows surreptitiously advanced across the lawn in the cooling afternoon.

‘Right!’ said Pamela briskly, standing up. I wondered if she was offended that she had not been implored to continue with her narrative. ‘I’d better get on. Can you two amuse yourselves until supper?’

‘I — yes,’ I said firmly. I had been about to say ‘I think so’, before remembering Pamela’s aversion to qualified statements. ‘What would you like to do?’ I said, to Martin.

‘Dunno,’ he ungraciously replied.

‘Well,’ said Pamela tersely. ‘If you don’t mind, I’ll get on.’

I realized that, having achieved the first steep slope of novelty with regard to looking after Martin, I had slackened off slightly in the efforts I was making to fill his time. It is one of the difficulties of change that the work of one’s own accommodation with it can obscure any real assessment of success or failure; and of unhappiness that improvements or otherwise in spirit become the focus, and dictate the sense of outcome, of a day’s work. Suffering from both, I had neglected Martin in favour of tending myself; and I saw another ascent rise before me as I acknowledged within the triumph of my own survival the inadequacy of its accomplishments.

‘How about a walk?’ I said. I tried to sound enthusiastic, but my eyes still itched a little, and my throat was thick. ‘Or do you want to carry on with that?’

I was intensely aware of Pamela, who was now busying herself with her back to us at one of the kitchen counters. I could tell from the tense set of her shoulders that she was listening, and willed Martin to respond in an obliging fashion.

‘No, I’ve done enough,’ he said, his manner all at once remarkably pleasant. ‘Let’s go out while it’s still light.’

Once outside, Martin’s amiability persisted.

‘Are you feeling better?’ he enquired.

‘Yes, thank you,’ I said. ‘I’ve never been allergic to anything before. I don’t know why it should have happened just then.’

‘Maybe you were allergic to Trimmer.’

‘As I said, I thought he was nice.’

It was now early evening, and as I pushed Martin along the gravel path at the side of the house, I was struck by how lovely the hot days were in retreat. The air was as thick and soft as the faded petals of the rose garden, and induced a feeling of wistful calm; a curiously alloyed sense of contentment, as if through the sudden stillness the noise of distant troubles could all at once be heard.

I had for some time been shamefully mindful of Toby’s supposed visit to the cottage; an intention so vague that I felt I would have to spread my net wide to catch it. Since my return from my walk, a worm of anxiety had been gradually working its way across my thoughts, as events had trespassed further and further into the swath of time with which I had hoped to surround the possibility; and now I began to search deviously for a means of luring Martin to the cottage garden so that I would be able to take up my vigil. I was not fully conscious of the development of this matter in my mind from the seed of suggestion to full-blown expectation; indeed, it was probably for this reason that it had been permitted to grow unchecked. Once or twice I had examined its deleterious progress and hacked it back, appalled; but as soon as I turned my thoughts to other things it would continue its subtle creep through my heart. I did not really like Toby; and if I had dug at the soil beneath these wild hopes I would probably have found the desire for them not to be fulfilled. His attraction was all in the moment, like the taste of something sweet on the tongue.

‘Where would you like to go?’ I said to Martin, pausing at the junction where the path to the cottage snaked away between the hedges. ‘We could go and sit in my garden if you like. It gets the sun in the evenings.’

I waited, my heart suspended in hope.

‘OK,’ said Martin innocently. I felt immediate guilt at the effortlessness with which I had tricked him. It was, I realized, remarkably easy to husband motives in the presence of those who had none. ‘Have you got anything to drink?’

‘Like what?’

‘Booze,’ said Martin, to my surprise.

‘Of course not,’ I replied. ‘Where would I get that from?’

‘How should I know? Wherever other people get it from. A shop. I was only asking.’

‘I don’t have the money for that sort of thing,’ said I. By and large I had felt a sense of relief at my own poverty since being in the country, but just then, for the first time, the notion of tiring of it insinuated itself among my thoughts. Like someone on whom the grip of religious fervour momentarily loosens, I caught a glimpse of a route by which one day I might wander out of my conviction; a route which could lead me eventually to regret everything I now felt so keenly.

‘I’ll tell you what,’ said Martin. ‘Why don’t you go back into the house and get a bottle, and then we can go and sit in the garden.’

‘What do you mean, get?’ He had made his suggestion as if he were striking a bargain with me; and I wondered if he had guessed at the tawdry aim on which our cottage expedition was founded. ‘Are you suggesting that I steal a bottle from your parents?’

‘It wouldn’t be stealing.’ said Martin obstinately. ‘It’s just getting, like I said.’ He put his head back and looked up at me craftily. ‘No booze, no cottage garden.’

At that I was sure that he knew of my deceit. In the heat of blackmail I completely forgot that my gracious reception of Toby could have easily been forgone. I was conscious in that moment only of my own guilt, a feeling which invariably looms large in the mind, and which thus appeared to have cornered me in a position from which the only escape was an extreme, if criminal, act of penitence.

‘All right,’ I said. ‘But only if you’re sure your parents won’t mind.’

‘Oh, they won’t,’ said Martin lightly. ‘Just make sure they don’t catch you.’

‘Where should I go?’

‘There’s a cupboard in the kitchen. There’s usually some stuff in there. It’s right by the door.’

I turned on my heel and walked quickly back down the path with a feeling of obstruction in my throat. My mind was a blank of panic and as I opened the back door and entered the quiet house everything seemed to list before my eyes. I trod noiselessly up the corridor and opened the kitchen door. The room was empty; and knowing that I had to act quickly, I went directly to the first cupboard. It was the same cupboard in which I had found the pills, and opening it for the second time I realized that if anyone had apprehended me at that moment, I could have given the excuse for my intrusion that I had come to take another. Sure enough, on one of the lower shelves I saw a rank of bottles; and grabbing the nearest, I shut the cupboard door and fled back down the corridor. Once outside on the dusky path I bent over and gasped several times. My heart was thrashing in my chest. I realized that I had not taken a single breath during the entire operation. My immediate feeling of relief was soon superseded by an overwhelming sense of triumph. I could scarcely believe my own daring; and as I skipped back up the path to where Martin sat waiting in his chair, I found myself starting to laugh.

‘Da-da!’ I said, waving the bottle gleefully before him.

‘I can’t believe you did that,’ he said. ‘I was only joking.’

‘No, you weren’t!’ I said, horrified at his cruelty.

‘Yes, I was. Why don’t you go and put it back?’

‘I can’t!’

‘Never mind.’ He stretched out a hand for the bottle. ‘It’s done now. What did you get?’

‘I don’t know,’ I miserably replied, giving it to him. ‘I didn’t look.’

‘Gin,’ he said, examining it. ‘Didn’t you get any tonic?’

‘That was really mean of you.’ I turned his chair around on the gravel and began pushing him up the path towards the cottage. ‘I would never have done something like that if you hadn’t asked me.’

‘Yes, you would,’ said Martin. ‘If it hadn’t been in your nature, nothing would have made you do it. As it was you were off as soon as I’d mentioned it. Was it exciting, Stel-la?’

‘I suppose so,’ I admitted, my exhilaration punctured. ‘It seemed so at the time. I can’t believe I did it now.’

‘That’s what they all say,’ Martin replied.

We reached the garden and Martin leaned forward to open the gate, clutching the bottle against his lap. I propelled him up the path and then onto the grass, depositing him beside the apple tree.

‘I’ll go and get some glasses,’ I said sullenly, walking off.

‘Don’t be angry with me, Stel-la!’ called out Martin over his shoulder.

Inside, the cottage was cool with desertion. A smell of damp and neglect hung in the air. I went to the kitchen and found two smudged glasses in one of the cupboards. As I was about to carry them outside, it struck me that I had not looked in a mirror for some time, and that my appearance might require some attention in view of the impression of unstudied charm I hoped to give were Toby to ‘wander over’, as he had put it. Once I had thought of this aspect of things, it was hard to limit the exertions I was prepared to apply to it; my only constraint being that it was essential that no effort should appear to have been made. I put down the glasses and ran up the stairs to my room, aware that Martin was waiting for me outside; and it was probably the precipitateness his presence forced on my cosmetic interlude that caused me to seize from my suitcase — without the calm consideration that was their due — the cut-off trousers. Frantically I tore off my skirt and put them on, rushing to the mirror with my comb. My reflection was more or less what it had been the last time I had worn them; but what I forgot, as I hurriedly took this pleasing image away with me down the stairs and out into the garden, was that my delight on that previous occasion had been private. I had little idea of what others might think of this display of flesh. Its effect on Toby was uncertain; and on anyone else, unwanted.

‘Sorry I took so long,’ I said to Martin as I came out of the cottage door and approached him across the grass. ‘I was a bit hot, so I got changed.’

I was talking, I knew, to conceal my embarrassment; for Martin’s eyes had attached themselves to me, and were travelling unsparingly up my legs as I walked. He looked, frankly, astonished by my appearance; and it was hard to sustain the carelessness with which I was attempting to set about the business of preparing the drinks while so blatantly under examination.

‘What,’ he said finally, ‘are you wearing?’

‘Hmm?’ I looked up from where I had sat down beside him on the lawn. ‘Shorts. What does it look like?’

I had meant the remark to be a reproach.

‘It looks sexy,’ said Martin.

‘Thank you,’ I replied.

It occurred to me then that Martin might think I had put the shorts on for his benefit; and all in all, before long I was fervently wishing that I had remained dressed as I was, or could find an excuse to go back into the house and change again without looking idiotic.

‘Why did you get changed?’

‘I told you, I was hot.’

‘I don’t believe you, Stel-la.’

‘I just felt like it.’ I handed him a glass in which there was a small measure of gin. ‘Can we change the subject, please?’

‘Are you expecting someone?’ he said, taking the bottle from me and placing it furtively behind his chair.

I was about to reply adamantly that I was not, when I saw from the direction of his gaze that the question had been more innocent than it sounded. He was looking towards the bottom of the garden, from where there came the sound of footsteps approaching along the gravel path beyond. I realized that he had put the gin behind his chair to hide it, thinking that one of his parents might be corning; a gesture which suggested that I had been slightly misled concerning the seriousness of its theft. I was glad, in any case, that he had concealed it. Combined with the cut-off trousers, it might have given Toby — for they were his footsteps, I was certain, that we heard — an impression of dissolution. The figure of a man came into view, and for a brief moment everything in me seemed to rise to its feet in anticipation; until I saw that my visitor was not Toby, but the man I had met earlier on in the field, the unfortunate Mr Trimmer.

At the sight of us sitting there his expression did not change; indeed, it was hard to know whether he had seen us or not, and if so whether our presence there was a necessary, expected or unwelcome feature of his intrusion. He opened the gate and began toiling towards us up the garden. In the wake of a disappointment, even the most well-intentioned approaches can seem a pest; and at the sight of Mr Trimmer’s curiously compacted face, and the diffident set of his clumsy body as he drew near, an unrestrainable irritation took hold of me.

‘Hello?’ I called out imperiously, as if to a stranger caught sneaking about my property.

‘Afternoon,’ said Mr Trimmer, drawing to an immediate halt at the sound of my voice and apparently waiting for permission to complete the final two or three yards to where we sat. He raised a hand as if to touch an invisible hat. As he lowered it, his eyes fell upon my exposed legs.

‘Hello, Jack,’ said Martin affably, grinning at him in an evil manner. He waved an arm in encouragement. ‘Come on over. Have you come to see Stella?’

There was a considerable pause.

‘I met her,’ said Mr Trimmer, planting himself in front of us where we sat, with his eyes averted and his hands clasped before him, like a man about to sing the national anthem, ‘in the top field.’

‘Ah,’ said Martin.

I felt that Mr Trimmer had been intending to enlarge on his description of our meeting, but that Martin’s peremptory assent had cut the thread of his discourse. He fell silent, his face working in a peculiar sideways motion, apparently recovering from the interruption. His eyes strayed to my legs and then darted away. Presently he seemed to have gathered his momentum once more, and opened his mouth to speak.

‘She was taken ill,’ he said. ‘I came to see if she was better.’

‘I’m much better, thank you,’ I said. I found that I too was speaking slowly. My face was burning. I caught Martin looking at me out of the corner of my eye. ‘It was very kind of you to come.’

Despite my lugubrious diction, that fact that I was speaking directly to him seemed to hit Mr Trimmer like a strong jet of water. His face wore a crumpled expression of heroic resistance, as if at any moment he might fall over.

‘I was going to mend that step,’ he said. ‘I was on my way to do it when I saw you.’

My complaint had evidently been festering in his thoughts all afternoon; and touched by his avowal, I refrained from enquiring as to how he had thought he would mend the step with a gun rather than a hammer and nails.

‘I realized that you probably were,’ I said, anxious that my reply sounded more complex than it actually was. ‘Afterwards. I would have hurt myself if you hadn’t stopped me.’

Martin was watching this tortured exchange with unconcealed fascination, an unpleasant smile on his face.

‘Thank you for coming,’ I said, nodding enthusiastically in the hope of drawing our interview to a close.

Mr Trimmer stood on, plinthed on the grass by his large, leather-booted feet.

‘Would you consider,’ he finally pronounced, while Martin’s head wagged up and down below him at every word, ‘coming out with me one evening?’

‘Oh!’ I said, horrified. I laughed shrilly. ‘That’s very kind of you. I don’t know if I can, though. I’m usually quite busy over at the house in the evenings.’

‘No, you’re not,’ declared Martin. ‘She’d love to come out with you, Jack. She can come tomorrow.’

‘Tomorrow?’ said Mr Trimmer to Martin, as if he were responsible for the transaction. Seeming to realize that this was incorrect, he turned back to me. ‘Would that be all right?’

‘I suppose so,’ I said, defeated.

‘I’ll call here at eight, then.’

‘That would be lovely,’ I rallied. ‘I’ll see you then. Goodbye.’

Mr Trimmer seemed surprised at being so abruptly dismissed, but he took it well enough, and bidding goodbye to both of us turned and made his way back down the garden, his elbows flying out to either side as if he were in a hurry.

‘Thanks,’ I said to Martin.

‘It serves you right.’ He raised his glass to his lips. ‘Besides, you said you liked him.’

I lay on my back on the grass. ‘What on earth are we going to talk about for an entire evening? And where will we go?’

Martin did not reply, and when I looked at him I saw that he was watching me with a peculiar expression on his face.

‘You’ve got nice legs,’ he said in a strangled voice.