A Village Affair Read online

  ‘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 kind.’

  ‘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 rememb
ered 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.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  On fine afternoons, Lettice Deverel carried the parrot in its cage outside and hung it in an apple tree. It liked this and made bubbling noises of deep appreciation. As long as she was in sight, bent over a nearby border in an ancient Italian straw hat, it continued to bubble contentedly, but if she moved too far away it grew agitated and screamed at her that she was a surly bagpiper. Sometimes she wished she had not confined its education solely to literary references to parrots because now it seemed resistant to learning anything new. Peter Morris had attempted to teach it prayers but it became overexcited and shrieked ‘Parrot, parrot, parrot’ at him and then cackled with ribald laughter.

  Margot Unwin, finding no one in Rose Villa, one warm, still, late afternoon, came round the house into the garden, calling for Lettice. Lettice was at that moment tipping a barrowload of weeds on to her compost heap, but the nearest apple tree remarked conversationally in Lettice’s voice, ‘Well, Polly, as far as one woman can forgive another, I forgive thee.’

  Margot Unwin gave a faint squawk. Lettice appeared with her barrow through a gap in her immense and burgeoning borders. Margot flapped a hand at her.

  ‘I always forget about your wretched bird.’

  ‘Did he say anything improper?’

  ‘Only that he forgave me.’

  ‘Oh,’ Lettice said looking pleased, ‘that’s his bit out of The Beggar’s Opera. He hardly ever says it. You are much favoured.’

  Margot inserted her face sideways under the hat brim and gave Lettice a kiss.

  ‘I need to talk, Lettice.’

  ‘Clodagh?’

  ‘Clodagh.’

  ‘Come and sit over here. No, not near the parrot. He always wants to join in and I wouldn’t put eavesdropping past him.’

  ‘Why do you have a parrot?’

  ‘I like him,’ Lettice said, brushing garden bits off a wooden seat. ‘He is contrary and amusing and independent. Margot, you look tired.’

  ‘So annoying. But I’m worried.’

  Lettice sat on a second chair and removed her hat. Underneath it her grey hair was tied up in a red spotted snuff handkerchief. She wore a rust linen smock over wide blue trousers and elderly espadrilles. Margot Unwin wore a sweeping print frock.

  ‘I shall get us some tea.’

  ‘No, dear. Don’t trouble. It’s the sympathy I’ve come for.’

  ‘I doubt there’s anything I can do’

  ‘You can listen.’

  Lettice had been listening to Margot for thirty years, from the time she had bought Rose Villa and had only been able to spend weekends and holidays there, travelling up and down in the train from Waterloo with her pockets stuffed with sketches of what she would do to the garden. Only young Ralph had been born then and Margot was pregnant with Georgina and very handsome and spirited and impatient with being pregnant at all. There were endless parties up at the Park, weekend parties and shooting parties and tea parties for the children where the guests were accompanied by nannies in Norland uniforms. Margot started by inviting Lettice up as a curiosity, relying on the fact that she would wear breeches or a cloak or clogs and that she would express her decided opinions in a fresh and unconventional way. But then, at one lunch party, Lettice told the table at large that she was not a performing monkey, and went home. Margot followed her. She stood in Lettice’s extraordinary and absorbing sitting room in her Belinda Belville dress and the Unwin pearls and said she was sorry. Very sorry. Then she burst into tears and Lettice, who recognized a true if incongruous friend, forgave her.

  They had not quarrelled since but Lettice had always, tacitly and tactfully, retained the upper hand. As with Peter Morris, Lettice came to represent a confidante. When Margot Unwin supposed herself out of love with Ralph and very much in love with someone else, when Clodagh ran away from school, when a rampantly attractive and unprincipled Argentinian polo player besieged the defenceless Georgina for months on end, it was to Lettice that Margot came. Perhaps, Lettice sometimes thought, it was simply because their backgrounds were so different that their friendship was so real. Lettice, growing up in an austere academic household in Cambridge, might have come from another planet to that of Margot’s adolescent society whirl. But after the apology, Lettice knew an excellent heart beat beneath the Hartnell suits and cashmere jerseys, and, as she grew older, she was inclined to think she valued excellence of heart above all things. She leaned across now and patted Margot’s hand.

  ‘I’ve had half a mind to speak to Clodagh myself. It’s time she got on with her life.’

  ‘That’s exactly it. And Ralph has made it infinitely worse and has insisted on breaking up the trust so that Georgina and Clodagh get their farms now. Poor George. She doesn’t even want hers yet but of course she’s much too obliging to object. And now Windover becomes Clodagh’s and neither she nor her father, it seems to me, have any intention she should do anything other about it than treat it as a giant piggy bank. I’m quite appalled and Ralph is as stubborn as a mule. As for Clodagh—’

  Lettice stood up.

  ‘I am going to make some tea. Or would you rather have gin?’

  ‘Much rather.’

  ‘I won’t be a minute. You sit and admire my white delphiniums. All descendents from the ones you gave me.’

  ‘Lettice,’ Margot said, ‘you are a prop and stay.’

  She sat and looked obediently ahead of her and tried to be sensible and not seized with wild envy of Lettice’s single blessedness. After a few minutes, Lettice returned with two magnificent gilded Venetian tumblers and a yoghurt pot of pine kernels for the parrot. As she crossed the grass having put these in its cage, it could be heard exulting over its luck.

  ‘It’s a nice parrot, really,’ Margot said.

  ‘It’s a dear parrot. There you are. Now then. It seems that all incentive for Clodagh to do anything enterprising ever again has been removed from her.’

  ‘Exactly.’

  ‘And she is still dancing attendance on those young Jordans?’

  Margot took a swallow of her drink.

  ‘Do you know, I was so pleased about that! They are charming, Alice particularly, and those dear little children, and I thought how lovely for Clodagh, how normal, how good for her. And now she never goes anywhere else, never wants to do anything else, never wants to see anyone else. I wish them no ill, Lettice, but
I wish they had never come. I thought I might try another angle and wheedle Alice’s mother-in-law here by getting her to talk to the county WI but she was most peculiar on the telephone. I was unnerved, to be honest. She said she had promised herself to keep quite clear of Alice’s territory.’

  ‘Perhaps,’ Lettice said, ‘you should simply throw Clodagh out.’

  ‘I thought of that. I even said it. She said of course she wouldn’t stay for ever and the moment I wanted her to go she would go down to The Grey House or to a farm cottage at Windover. Then she told Ralph about this conversation and we had the most horrible evening. Thank goodness it was Shadwell’s night off.’

  Lettice pushed the lemon slice in her drink under the surface and watched the bubbles streaming upward.

  ‘Then you must talk to Alice Jordan.’

  ‘Poor girl. She’s done nothing wrong except befriend my bad daughter.’

  Lettice was silent for a moment, considering how to economize with the truth.

  ‘She is fond of Clodagh. Fond enough it seems only to wish all the best for her. If she sees that hanging about here for too long is bad for Clodagh, she may help to urge her to go. She ought to go—’ She stopped.

  Margot looked at her.

  ‘Go on.’

  ‘Young marriages like that,’ Lettice said, ‘don’t need permanent extra adults hanging around them.’

  Margot looked indignant.

  ‘Clodagh would never do a thing like that! In any case, Martin Jordan isn’t in the least her—’

  ‘All the same—’

  There was a pause. It would not be, Margot considered, the first time Clodagh had made mischief; made it not out of malice but purely because she had the power to do so. She stood up.

  ‘I shall talk to Alice Jordan. After the fête.’

  ‘The fête—’

  ‘Saturday, Lettice, and don’t you dare to pretend you didn’t know about it.’

  ‘Oh I do, I do. That plant stall—’

  Margot smoothed down her skirt.

  ‘If we don’t make a thousand, I shall suggest we put our herculean efforts into something else. The work is quite appalling.’ She looked up at the sky. ‘Pray for a fine day.’