A Village Affair (15 page)

‘Tired, I think. I've just come back from Pitcombe.'

He went on flipping through papers because it was what she expected of him.

‘All well there?'

‘Oh yes—'

‘Drink?'

‘Please—'

He put his briefcase down and went to the drinks tray on the sofa table. He poured a gin and tonic and took it back to her.

‘Alice any better?'

‘Alice,' Cecily said with some edge, ‘was looking fine.' She paused, took a swallow of her drink and then said carelessly, ‘There was really no chance to talk to her.'

‘No chance?'

‘She has a new friend. The youngest child of Pitcombe Park. Seemed very much at home—'

Richard, perceiving at once what was the matter, picked up his papers again and said, ‘You should be pleased she has found a friend locally. I thought you were worried she was lonely—'

Cecily got up, rattling the ice in her glass.

‘Of course I'm glad.'

Richard said quietly, without looking up, ‘Alice had to leave home some day.'

Cecily said angrily, ‘Richard, she isn't
well
.'

He said nothing.

‘I can't talk to you about it,' Cecily said. ‘You can't relate to humankind at all, only to business. I don't suppose you give Alice any thought at all. I don't suppose you ever have.'

He said, in a perfectly ordinary voice, ‘How do you know what I think?'

‘The evidence of my eyes and ears.'

‘I'm a patient man,' Richard said, ‘but sometimes you try me to the limit. You don't know what I think because in forty years you have never once asked me.'

Cecily was close to tears. She still stood by her armchair holding her drink because she had meant to walk out on some Parthian shot and go off to the kitchen to grill trout for their dinner.

‘Then I'll ask you. I am asking you—'

‘What I think about Alice?'

She subsided on to the arm of the chair.

‘Yes.'

‘My feelings for her are considerable. I am fond of her and I admire her. But I think she has taken a long time to grow up. If she is being awkward now—'

‘I didn't say she was being awkward.'

‘—if she is disappointing you—'

‘I didn't say—'

‘Shut up,' Richard said, suddenly angry.

Cecily got up.

‘I don't want to hear any more. You haven't a clue. But then you have no idea what women are like or what they need. You never have.'

‘Is that so?'

She almost ran to the door.

‘I'm going to get supper.' She waved an angry hand at his papers. ‘You go back where you belong.'

When the door had shut, Richard sat for a moment and looked ahead of him without seeing anything. Plainly, Alice had in some way defied Cecily, and although he was sorry for Cecily, he was also glad. He sighed and went back to his papers. The considerableness of his feelings for Alice were a self-forbidden luxury.

‘Juliet?' Cecily said into the telephone.

It was a quarter to eight. Juliet Dunne had just read the last word of the last bedtime story and had come down to find that the dog had eaten most of the shepherd's pie she had left by the cooker for supper, and then the telephone had rung. So she had answered it with a snarl.

‘Oh, Cecily,' Juliet said, ‘so sorry to be cross but
really
. Sometimes I hate domestic life so much I am not responsible for my actions. The fucking dog. And, frankly, fucking Henry for needing supper at all. I'd give anything to be a kept woman at this minute.'

Cecily made soothing noises.

‘I really rang to talk to you about Alice—'

‘Allie? Why, is something—'

‘Well, I'm not
sure—
'

‘I thought she was looking miles better,' Juliet said. ‘I saw her on Tuesday. We had a tots tea party.'

‘Do you know Clodagh Unwin?'

‘Clo? All my life, practically.'

‘She seems,' Cecily said, ‘almost to be living there.'

‘Whoopee,' Juliet said. ‘Best thing in the world. She's the most lovely fun. She'll cheer them all up. Oh Lord, Cecily, here comes Henry. He'll have to have dog food, there isn't anything else. If you'd had daughters, Cecily, would you have encouraged them to get married?'

‘Probably not—' Cecily said, thinking of the briefcase in the drawing room.

‘Of course, with sons, I can't wait to be shot of them. But I'm stuck with Henry. Look, I think it's brilliant about Clodagh and Alice and I should think the Unwins are thrilled. They always want Clo to settle down, so a nice dose of happy family life—'

‘Is – is she
safe
?'

‘Safe?' Juliet said. ‘Safe? Clo? Heavens, no. What do you want a safe friend for Alice for? Henry's safe and he bores me to tears, don't you, darling? Cecily, I must go and open his tin of Chum.'

Cecily put the telephone down. Then she went over to the refrigerator and took out the trout that Dorothy had left, ready gutted, on a plate. She looked at their foolish dead fish faces. Tomorrow, she resolved, she would telephone Martin. He was, after all, her son.

CHAPTER SEVEN

Martin Jordan and Henry Dunne met for lunch in the White Hart in Salisbury. Henry had telephoned Martin at his office and said, rather mysteriously, that he had something to discuss and could they meet somewhere that their crowd didn't frequent. Martin said what about the White Hart as it was so large, and so they met there in the foyer, conspicuous in their moleskin trousers and tweed jackets among two busloads of spring tourists, one checking in and one out, in a welter of nylon suitcases and quilted coats in pastel colours.

Henry found them a table in the corner of the bar and went away for two pints of beer and several rounds of prawn sandwiches. When he came back he said, ‘I sneaked a look at The Grey House the other day. I must say, you're doing a great job. John's a wonderful fellow, but of course he never much minds how things look.'

Martin was extremely pleased. He had worked tirelessly at weekends in the garden, and was allotting himself four hours' outside painting a week. Alice said ‘Oh well done' rather absently to him, quite often, but he didn't feel she quite took in the scale of his achievements, and anyway, he liked other people to appreciate the improvements he was making. He shrugged his shoulders self-deprecatingly.

‘Those mahonias had really had it—'

‘Awful things. Only worth it for the scent of the flowers in March—'

‘Absolutely.'

Henry took a large bite of sandwich, chewed, swallowed, took a pull at his beer and said, in a much more solemn voice, ‘Martin, nice as it is to see you, this isn't just a social lunch.'

‘I rather gathered that—'

‘Fact is, I'm here as Sir Ralph's emissary. To test the water. To put something to you.' He took another bite. ‘A proposition.'

Martin immediately and wildly thought that Sir Ralph might want to buy back The Grey House. For all the difficulties involved in getting there, now he
was
there he felt extremely possessive about it as well as being conscious that living there added several social cubits to his stature. He put on a soberly considering expression.

‘I won't beat about the bush,' Henry said. ‘Thing is, Sir Ralph needs a new solicitor. He's decided he must have local advice, particularly for the estate and – this is strictly in confidence – I think he's fallen out with the London lot, naming no names. He wants to change a lot of things – I'll tell you about that later – and he asked me who I would recommend. I suggested your outfit. He thought for a bit and said why not you.'

Martin was scarlet.

‘I – I'm not a senior partner—'

‘I said that. He said he didn't mind about that, and that one day you would be. Fact is, I think it's your living in The Grey House that's done it. He feels it would be keeping everything in the family, so to speak.'

‘I haven't any experience in estate work—'

‘I have.'

‘I
say
,' Martin said, and beamed.

‘Like it?'

‘I'll say. That is – if I can do it—'

‘Nice piece of business to brandish at your senior partners. I wouldn't like to promise, but it's my guess that estate business will lead to all personal business too in the end, Lady Unwin and all. Pitcombe Park's pet lawyer. Thing is,' he looked at Martin over the rim of his beer glass, ‘it'd help me a lot, having you on my side. He can be the devil to handle, used to having his own way. Clodagh takes after him.'

Martin was full of excited generosity.

‘She's amazing. She's cheered us all up like anything. Allie's quite different and the children think she's wonderful.'

‘That's another thing. You see, the Unwins are pleased as Punch she's taken to you all. Any friend of Clodagh's is likely to be beamed on by them but your family is exactly what they want for her. They were in a frightful state when she got back from the States, made worse, of course, by the fact she wouldn't tell them anything. Margot was all for rushing her off to some frightfully expensive trick cyclist in London to have her head seen to. But life at The Grey House seems to have done the trick for nothing. Sir Ralph said this morning he hadn't seen Clodagh in such good form for years.'

Martin, whose private thoughts about Clodagh were of a guiltily excited kind, said, well, she was the greatest fun . . .

‘Oh, she is. But she's a bad girl too. Has those poor old parents running round in circles.' He looked at his watch. ‘Can I take it that your answer is at least a preliminary yes?'

Martin said, with enormous self-control, ‘You may.'

Henry got up.

‘I think the next step is – I mean, before you breathe a word at your office – to see Sir Ralph together. All right by you?'

‘Absolutely.'

‘Saturday morning? Sorry to cut into gardening time, but it wouldn't interfere with a working week and it's the one morning I have the remotest chance of his undivided attention for three minutes at least—'

Martin rose too.

‘Suits me fine.'

They went out into the foyer which was now entirely empty except for an enormously fat woman wedged in an armchair and grasping a Curry's carrier bag on what remained of her knees beyond her stomach. Outside in St John's Street they turned instinctively to one another and shook hands.

‘Henry,' Martin said, ‘I'm really awfully grateful.'

‘Fingers crossed. If it comes off, I'll be the grateful one. See you Saturday.'

And then they separated, two pairs of well-polished brown brogues going purposefully off down the Salisbury pavements among the dawdling shoppers and the pushchairs.

Dutifully, Alice took the children down to Dummeridge for the day. Clodagh had wanted to come, but Alice had said no.

‘
Please
. Why not? It's another pair of hands to help with Charlie—'

‘I can't explain why not, I just know I couldn't handle it. Clodagh, it's
duty
I'm going for, not particular pleasure.'

‘What am I going to do all Thursday?'

‘Make us an amazing supper to come home to,' Alice said jokingly, but knowing Clodagh would take her seriously.

‘OK then. But I'll have my pound of flesh some other way.'

Alice said happily, ‘I know you will.'

At least the children had been pleased about going. Natasha had dressed herself with immense care in fancy white socks and a pink plastic jewellery set, including earrings, which Gwen had given her and which Alice knew would cause Cecily real grief. James had submitted to Alice's desire to compensate for the pink earrings by substituting brown lace-ups for his prized trainers with silver flashes on the heels, and Charlie, promoted from his carrycot to an egg-shaped safety seat in the back of the car, dah-dah'd contentedly to himself while taking off his first shoes and socks and throwing them on the floor.

It was a long drive, but all three were remarkably good. Alice talked to them a lot over her shoulder, because she felt nervous, and because the first thing she was going to have to say was that they couldn't, after all, stay the night. She should have said that at the outset, but she hadn't, and now Cecily would have made up beds and told Dorothy to set up the cot and altogether it was an awful prospect and all her own fault. And then, driving through Wareham, she had thought, with sudden indignation, that she had no idea why she should feel guilty about
Martin's
mother. Martin never seemed to.

Once this had occurred to her, her indignation grew.
She
was the one who made all the running with Dummeridge, and it was a running she had now made for over a decade. Just because she had been so conscientious, they all of course expected her to go on being conscientious, so that Martin would have been amazed to be told to remember Cecily's birthday himself, or to bring the children down to see her at Dummeridge. The last mile to the house, the leafy, sun-flecked familiar mile that Alice used to drive with such a joyfully lifting heart, seemed to have lost its charm entirely. She rounded the last curve of the road, went over the little stone bridge that spanned the remains of an ancient moat and pulled up in front of the studded front door with a kind of dread.

The children squealed for release like piglets and went racing into the house shouting for Cecily. Alice followed slowly with Charlie under one arm and his discarded shoes and socks in her free hand. Natasha and James and Cecily had collided on the stairs and were hugging and chattering, and, watching them, Alice felt small and cold. Charlie stretched out of her arm towards his grandmother, so Alice put him down on the flagged floor and let him stagger across on his soft bare feet, bleating for attention.