A Village Affair Read online

  He said, ‘I’ve a bereavement, a broken leg and a bad case of self-pity to see to before lunch, Mrs Jordan. It was nice to meet you.’

  He held out his hand and grasped hers.

  ‘Keep smiling,’ he said, and put a finger on the end of Charlie’s little nose. ‘You too, old fellow.’

  CHAPTER FIVE

  Alice dressed three times for dinner at Pitcome Park, and when she finished she was more than half-inclined to throw off her final choice and go back to the first one. But there wasn’t time, and in any case, Martin was getting impatient. She came downstairs holding the ends of a heavy Turkish necklace of silver and turquoise behind her neck with both hands and asked him to hook it up for her. He was wearing a dinner jacket and looked very sleek and remote. He turned her back to the light in the hall so that he could see, and muttered over the necklace. She stood with her head bent, holding her pigtail away from her neck to help him, looking down at the deep folds of her red skirt and the toes of her embroidered slippers which said ‘Made in Jaipur’ on ribbons sewn to the insoles.

  ‘There,’ he said triumphantly, and gave her shoulder a finishing pat. She let her pigtail fall again, down her back. She had woven it with ribbons for the dinner party and Natasha, who had sat admiringly on the end of her bed watching while she did this, was now sitting on the last step of the stairs trying to achieve the same effect on Princess Power. James sat on the top step crying quietly with his thumb in. He didn’t want Alice to go out and he didn’t want to be left with Gwen. He said now, removing his thumb just long enough, ‘What if there’s a baddie?’

  Natasha sighed.

  ‘Quite honestly,’ she said, plaiting away, ‘you watch too much television.’

  James loved television. He watched it, clutching a cushion in his arms so that he could bury his head in it if anything on the screen looked as if it might become frightening. But when the television was turned off, the baddies on it seemed to lurk about his imagination much more powerfully than the goodies. He knew Gwen wouldn’t be any good at dealing with his fears because she somehow had something to do with the baddies. Only Alice staying at home would be any good.

  He stood up.

  ‘Don’t go!’

  Martin climbed past Natasha up the stairs and knelt below James.

  ‘Now, come on, old boy. We are only going out for a few hours and we are only going to the Park—’

  ‘Don’t go! Don’t go!’ screamed James, staring at his mother past Martin’s face.

  Gwen came out on to the landing holding Charlie in her arms. He was wearing a yellow sleeping suit and looked like a drowsy duckling. He saw Alice in the hall and yearned out of Gwen’s arms down towards her.

  ‘I’ll be back so soon,’ Alice cried up to her two boys, ‘so soon. I’ll come in and see you the minute I’m back, I promise—’

  ‘I should just go,’ Natasha said, not looking up from her task.

  ‘Oh, Tashie—’

  James’s crying rose to a howl. Martin gave him a despairing look and scrambled back down the staircase to the hall.

  ‘Dear me,’ Gwen said, ‘what a silly fuss. Now you’ve set Charlie off—’

  Martin hurried Alice towards the front door, wrapping her coat round her.

  ‘Come on, come on—’

  ‘I hate this,’ she said unhappily, ‘I hate going out when he’s so miserable—’

  ‘He only puts it on for you. To try and make you do what he wants.’

  ‘Even so, he is frightened—’

  Martin said irritably, ‘He is frightened of everything.’

  He got into the driving seat of the car and leaned across to open the passenger door for Alice.

  ‘He’ll be five soon,’ Martin said. ‘Three years until prep school. He’ll have to pull himself together.’

  Alice said nothing. There were at least three things she wanted to say, chief amongst them being that she did not think James ought to be sent away to school at eight, but they only had five minutes’ time for talk in the car, and they were bound to disagree and then they would arrive at the Park all jangled up and . . .

  ‘Are you sulking?’

  ‘No,’ Alice said in as ordinary a voice as she could manage.

  ‘I wish James had a quarter of Tashie’s spirit.’

  ‘I expect he wishes it too.’

  The Park gates, with their boastful stone triumphs, reared up briefly in the headlights’ beam, and vanished past them.

  ‘I say,’ Martin said, ‘this is rather something.’

  ‘D’you think it will be a huge party?’

  ‘Dunno,’ Martin said. He peered ahead. Lights were shining through the dark trees.

  ‘It’s huge—’

  ‘It sure is.’

  Alice thought of the black lace dress discarded on her bed.

  ‘I’ve got the wrong clothes on—’

  ‘No you haven’t. Anyway, it’s too late to think that.’

  The drive swung round and opened into a floodlit sweep in front of the house; nine bays, ashlar quoins, roof pediment, long sashed windows and, above the front door, the arms of the family, added by a mid-Victorian Unwin who wished the world, or at least that part of it that came to Pitcombe Park, to be in no doubt as to the antiquity of his lineage. Alice leaned forward.

  ‘This is such a weird thing to be doing! It’s like visits to Rosings in Pride and Prejudice. You know, best clothes, best behaviour, kindly patronage—’

  ‘Nonsense,’ Martin said tensely.

  ‘But—’

  He stopped the car at a respectful distance from the steps to the front door.

  ‘It’s a perfectly normal thing to do. And very nice of the Unwins.’

  Alice said in a rude voice, ‘Well, it isn’t normal for me.’

  Martin said nothing. He got out of the car, shut the door without slamming it and came round to open Alice’s door.

  ‘Allie—’ he said, and his voice besought her to be amenable, ‘don’t let James get to you. He’ll be fine, once we’ve gone.’

  ‘It’s nothing to do with James—’

  The double front doors were opened above them and an oblong of yellow light fell down the steps. They were instantly silent, like children caught red-handed. Martin put his hand under Alice’s elbow, and guided her up the steps. At the top, a small man like an ex-jockey was waiting to open the inner glass doors to the hall. He said, ‘Mr and Mrs Jordan,’ without a questioning inflexion, and Martin said, ‘Evening, Shadwell.’

  ‘How do you know?’ Alice mouthed at Martin.

  He ignored her. Shadwell slipped Alice’s coat from her shoulders, murmured, ‘This way, Mrs Jordan,’ and went across the hall – it was round, Alice noticed, so did that mean all the doors had to be curved, like bananas? – and opened another double pair, and there was the drawing room and Lady Unwin, swimming forward in a tide of green silk ruffles and ropes of pearls, to envelop them in welcome.

  The room was large and grand and there were about a dozen people in it, grouped among the damasked chairs and the tables bearing books and framed photographs and extravagant plants in Chinese bowls. There was also someone particular by the fireplace. Everyone else was dressed as Alice would have expected – indeed, as Lady Unwin would require – in dinner jackets and the kind of silk frock that saleswomen are apt to describe as an investment, but this person looked like the cover drawing for Struwwelpeter, which Alice had had to hide from James’s fascinated but appalled gaze. All Alice could see, because the person was half-turned away from her, was a wild head of corn-coloured hair and a bizarre costume of black tunic and tights. Whoever it was, Lady Unwin was leaving it until last.

  ‘Alice, dear – may I? – Alice, this is Mrs Fanshawe who lives at Oakridge Farm, simply brilliant with flowers, can’t think how she does it, and Major Murray-French you know of course, and the Alleynes from Harcourt House – little ones just the age of yours I think, such fun – and Elizabeth Pitt, Mrs Pitt who is my right arm on all these commit
tees, truly I cannot think what I should do without her, and Susie Somerville who is – what are you, Susie? Calling you a travel courier seems so rude when all the tours you take are so grand, I simply shouldn’t dare to aspire to one, I promise you – and Simon Harleyford who is here for the weekend, so nice to have you, dear – and Mr Fanshawe without whom we just wouldn’t have our famous summer fêtes, and Clodagh. Clodagh, come over here and say hello to Mrs Jordan.’

  The black tunic and tights turned briefly from the small bright pink man she was talking to, said ‘Hi’ and turned back again.

  ‘I told her,’ Lady Unwin said in a stage whisper to Alice, ‘I told her to be especially nice to Nigel Pitt because I really need him for the hospice. Our present treasurer is threatening to retire, so tiresome but I suppose as he’s nearly eighty I shouldn’t bully. Come and talk to Susie. She knows everything there is to know about Indian palaces.’

  ‘I don’t, actually,’ Susie Somerville said, when they were left alone. She was small and leathery and in her forties, dressed in an evening suit of plum-coloured velvet. ‘I only know how to get a porter wherever I am and how to change a colostomy bag. Being a courier is murder, sheer murder. Our outfit is so expensive that only the ancient can afford it so I haul these disintegrating old trouts round Baalbek and Leningrad and Udaipur and spend every evening mixing whisky and sodas and Complan. It’s a nightmare.’

  ‘Why do you do it?’ Alice said, laughing.

  ‘Money. They give me vast tips, especially the Yanks who love it that I’m titled. I’d miles rather be married, but I only ever want to marry people who don’t want to marry me. So I’ve got horses as substitute children and a lot of friends and this ghoulish job. D’you ride?’

  ‘No,’ Alice said.

  ‘You’ve got a man,’ Susie Somerville said, draining her glass, ‘you don’t need to.’

  Ralph Unwin, in a deep blue smoking jacket and smelling of something masculine and Edwardian, came up to take Alice in to dinner.

  ‘Is Susie trying to shock you?’

  ‘I can’t shock anybody any more,’ Susie said. She jerked her head towards the fireplace. ‘How’s Clo, now she’s back?’

  Ralph Unwin spoke quietly.

  ‘We think she’s fine. She won’t speak of why she left, so we are simply biding our time.’ He glanced at Alice. ‘Our daughter, Clodagh. It looked as if she might be going to marry a chap in New York, but she’s suddenly come home.’ He smiled very faintly. ‘Young hearts do mend.’

  Susie Somerville and Alice both looked across at the Struwwelpeter shock of curls. Alice said suddenly, surprising herself, ‘Of course it hurts, but it’s better to feel something so strongly that it half-kills when it’s over than—’

  She stopped.

  ‘Hear, hear,’ Susie Somerville said. ‘Story of my life. Come on, Ralph. Margot’s gesturing like a windmill. Nosebag time.’

  In the doorway to the hall, there was polite congestion. Alice found herself next to Clodagh, whose face was difficult to see on account of her hair. Alice could not, out of delicacy, mention New York but she felt she ought to say something.

  ‘We’ve just moved in to John Murray-French’s house.’

  ‘I know,’ Clodagh said and moved on to catch up with her mother.

  At dinner, Clodagh was next to Martin. When she turned towards him, Alice could see her face, which was neither pretty nor in the least like either of her solidly handsome parents. It was the face of a fox, wide-cheeked and narrow-chinned, except that her mouth was wide too. Because Alice was new to the village she had been put next to her host, and in order that she should not be alarmed by too much social novelty, John Murray-French was on her other side. In front of her was a bone china soup plate edged with gold containing an elegant amount of pale green soup sprinkled with chives.

  ‘Watercress,’ John said. ‘They grow it further down the Pitt river. Are you liking my house?’

  ‘Enormously.’

  ‘You’re too thin.’

  ‘I don’t think,’ Alice said, leaning so that Shadwell could pour white burgundy over her shoulder into one of the forest of glasses in front of her, ‘you know me well enough to say that.’

  ‘It doesn’t need intimacy. It needs an aesthetic eye. I don’t just know about ducks.’

  ‘Ducks,’ Ralph Unwin said. ‘Perfect bind. I gather they are coming off the river up the village street again.’

  ‘Does that matter?’

  ‘Only in that someone, sooner or later, slips on what they have left behind, and as they are reckoned to be my ducks, I end up visiting the victim in Salisbury hospital. My dear girl, you haven’t any butter.’

  Down the table Martin and Clodagh were laughing. She was doing the talking, very animatedly, and Alice could see her excellent, very white teeth. On Martin’s other side, Susie Somerville and Mr Fanshawe were having a boastfully comparative conversation about international airports, and opposite Alice a gaunt woman in a grey silk blouse pinned at the neck with a cameo was drinking her soup with admirable neatness.

  ‘You know Elizabeth Pitt, of course,’ Ralph Unwin said.

  Mrs Pitt leaned forward.

  ‘I know you. Two dear little boys and a girl. They look exactly the age of Camilla’s three. And you’ve taken on the dreaded shop.’

  Ralph Unwin gave a mock shudder.

  ‘The shop!’

  ‘It’s jolly good,’ John Murray-French said. ‘Has just the kind of food I like. Left to myself I’d live on beans and biscuits and whisky.’ He indicated his soup. ‘Can’t really see the point of vegetables.’

  ‘Are you,’ Sir Ralph said to Alice, ‘going to start a vegetable garden?’

  Alice smiled at him.

  ‘I’m hoping my mother-in-law will do that.’

  ‘Not Cecily Jordan!’

  ‘The same—’

  ‘My dear,’ said Elizabeth Pitt.

  ‘Does Margot know? You won’t get a minute’s peace—’

  ‘Yes, she does.’

  ‘I told you Martin was Cecily’s son, you know,’ John said. ‘It’s odd how nobody listens to a word you say unless you are offering them a drink, when they can hear you clear as a bell three fields off.’

  Sir Ralph bent his blue gaze directly upon Alice.

  ‘What wonderful luck. Has Martin inherited her talent?’

  She looked down the table. Martin was describing something to Clodagh and using his hands to make a box shape in the air. She looked utterly absorbed.

  ‘Not really. I mean, he’s very good at keeping a garden tidy, but he hasn’t really got her eye.’

  ‘This child’s a painter,’ John said across her, ‘but she won’t paint.’

  ‘Won’t?’

  ‘I can’t, just now,’ Alice said unhappily.

  Sir Ralph put a hand on hers.

  ‘Sort of painter’s block?’

  ‘I suppose so—’

  ‘I know!’ Elizabeth Pitt said triumphantly. ‘Juliet Dunne has a charming one, in her sitting room. Now Juliet,’ she said, turning to Sir Ralph, ‘has got a brilliant scheme for the hospice garden party—’

  Sir Ralph bent towards her. John Murray-French turned away to say to the woman on his far side, ‘I gather your trout have got some nasty ailment—’

  Alice looked back down the table at Clodagh. She could watch her for a bit now, without distraction. It looked as if she hadn’t touched her soup, and she had broken her roll into a hundred pieces and scattered it messily round her place, just like a child. She had very good hands. As far as Alice could see, they were without rings, but her nails were painted scarlet. Her eyes were set slightly on a slant, and even though her hair was light, her brows and lashes were dark. She didn’t seem to have on any jewellery except an immense Maltese cross suspended round her neck on a black ribbon, invisible against her black tunic. She was saying something to Martin, looking down, and then she suddenly looked up and caught Alice gazing at her but her expression remained quite unchanged. Alice
felt snubbed. She looked towards Sir Ralph and Mrs Pitt, but they were deep in county politics, so she looked instead at all the Unwins on the walls in their gilded plaster frames, regarding the dinner party from beneath their unsuitable, practical twentieth-century picture lights.

  When the salmon came, John Murray-French turned back and told her that his son Alex was married, to a French girl whom he had met in Athens. Alice said she was so glad. They ate their salmon talking companionably and Alice tried to be interested in Alex’s new job as an investment analyst and at the same time tried to remember the flavour of Alex’s brief, ardent interest in her. During pudding – a chocolate roulade or apricot tart – and cheese – Stilton and Blue Vinney – Sir Ralph devoted himself to Alice. He was very charming. He told her of his childhood at Pitcombe, and how two spinster great-aunts had lived in The Grey House then. He told her how his three children had exactly the same nursery rooms as he and his sister had had, which gave Alice the chance to ask a question to which she perfectly well knew the answer.

  ‘And is Clodagh your youngest?’

  He immediately looked fond.

  ‘She is. Twenty-six. Of course, she could have been married a dozen times over, but she has impossibly high standards. She’s much the brightest of our three. She worked in publishing in New York. Somebody and Row. I’m afraid I’m putty in her hands.’

  Alice rather wanted to say that it looked as if Martin was, too. But instead, she said, ‘Perhaps she could get a job in English publishing, now she’s back.’

  ‘You must forgive a fond old father, but I rather want her here for a bit. Perhaps you could help me devise a scheme to keep her. I know she’d love to see your paintings.’

  ‘Oh no!’ Alice said, genuinely alarmed.

  ‘All you creative people, so modest. Now tell me, when are we going to be allowed to meet your mother-in-law?’

  When the cheese had been borne away, Lady Unwin rose and swept the women out of the room before her.

  ‘Strictly twenty minutes,’ she said to Sir Ralph, and then to her charges, ‘Clodagh thinks we are absolutely barbaric. Don’t you, darling? I suppose Americans wouldn’t dream of such a thing.’