Lovers and Newcomers (6 page)

The clean, damp air swelled her lungs. She liked the gleam of the wet leaves, and the iridescent trails of slugs glossing the stones.

Katherine was unused to country walking. She had grown up in Hampstead, and Sunday walks on the Heath with her parents had marked the limits of rural exploration. She had lived all her married life with Amos in London, and apart from occasional games of tennis and some gentle skiing there had been no call to exert herself. In his forties Amos had taken to going on trekking holidays, but always with male friends and colleagues. The idea of leaving the boys and accompanying him to Nepal had seemed so far-fetched to her in those days that it had never even been discussed. Nowadays Amos was too heavy for the mountains, and preferred a tropical beach.

Polly sat down on a stile and waited for her to catch up.

‘Am I going too fast?’ she asked.

‘Yes, but I like it. You know the way?’

‘Sel and I walked along here the other night.’

‘Did you? Going to the village?’

Polly shook her head. ‘Just having a walk together. He can’t work every minute of the day and night, but he gets so restless.’ She picked off a yellow leaf that was blotched with dark spots like skin growths, and twirled it in her fingers.

‘I noticed that,’ Katherine said.

‘I wish he’d relax more,’ Polly murmured.

‘Why does he drive himself so hard?’

Amos had driven himself too, especially in his early years at the Bar, but he always claimed that it was work undertaken ultimately to generate the time and money that would allow him to enjoy himself. A simple equation, Katherine reflected. And of course, as it was her habit to acknowledge, he had always been generous with the money.

Buying you off?
A voice that she didn’t recognize startlingly murmured inside her head. She ignored it, and concentrated her attention on Polly.

‘Because he thinks he has fucked up,’ Polly answered in a level voice. ‘He thinks that he’s failed with everything else in his life, therefore he’s trying to compensate by building us a new home overnight, using his bare hands. We’re totally broke, you know. We had to sell the house, finally, to pay off the debts, and we’ve put just about everything that was left into the Mead barn.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘No one does, really. Don’t tell Amos, will you? He and Sel are so competitive.’

‘He’d probably try to give you some money.’

‘Exactly,’ Polly smiled, without much humour.

‘What are you going to do?’

‘I’ll have to get a job.’

‘In the furniture business again?’

‘No. I’m sick to death of wood and patina and British brown.’

‘Writing more books, then?’

‘I don’t think so, no. That’s the kind of work that you have to demonstrate some continuity in. I’m not sure if any publisher these days would be interested in me popping up with a proposal for a new life of Mary Seacole or someone. I mean a
job
job.’

‘I see,’ Katherine nodded.

‘Wish I did. But I’ll think of something.’

‘Of course you will.’

‘Do you need an assistant at the charity?’

‘No.’ Katherine was slightly in awe, even after so many years, of Polly’s academic and literary achievements. Polly would never make a belittling or even clever rejoinder if you made a mistake or revealed your ignorance in some way, she was far too gentle for that, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t if the circumstances were different. Katherine didn’t think that someone with opinions as definite as Polly’s would fit particularly easily into their quiet offices.

‘Oh, well.’ Polly sprang off the stile. Her bulk didn’t seem to impede her movements in the least. Polly raised her voice and called, ‘Colin, what are you looking at?’

‘I was just thinking that it’s a very painterly light.’

The answer came quickly enough, but it was obvious to both of them that this wasn’t at all what had been in his mind.

‘Shall we walk on?’ he smoothly suggested.

They followed the path for another half-mile until the fine tower of St Andrew’s, Meddlett came into view between the trees. The footpath joined the minor road into the village just at the sign displaying its name. With a black aerosol spray, someone had rather neatly deleted the
ett
of Meddlett and added -
ing twatz
.

‘Not everyone’s mad about village life,’ Colin observed.

The road led past the churchyard gate. There were quiet rows of gravestones. The church itself, Perpendicular with great arched windows, rose like a grey ship out of a smooth green sea.

In the distance, a man with a dog at his heels strolled on the other side of the road, raising his hand to a car as it crept by, and a woman in a green padded coat towed a wheeled shopper. The village street was otherwise deserted, yet they had the sense that they were being watched. The cottages enclosing the central green had low, deep-set windows. There was a pond in the centre of the green, and several ducks pottered on the bank under the willow branches. A bus stop, a post box and a red telephone kiosk stood in a line. The door of the combined general store and post office was open and there were bundles of kindling and logs stacked beside tilted boxes of tired-looking cauliflowers and onions.

Colin went inside to buy a newspaper, but came out without one.

‘You have to order the
Guardian
,’ he remarked.

Katherine was reminded of the village where she and Amos had stopped for tea on their drive up, and warily looked about her for the gang of teenagers. The fact that there was no one actually in sight under fifty meant that the three of them ought to have blended in perfectly. But they did not. She felt conspicuous, the precise opposite of being in London where the expected blanket of invisibility had indeed fallen around her at some point in her mid forties.

‘Let’s have this drink,’ Colin said.

He steered them past the pond and another row of flint cottages with tiny front gardens until they reached the Griffin. In the bar two silent couples were finishing their food but the table in the window, the one that had been occupied on Colin’s first visit by Jessie and Damon and the dog, was now empty. The same barman was in his place behind the pumps.

‘Afternoon,’ he said, after a pause.

‘Hello, again,’ Colin answered, with slight emphasis. ‘It’s pretty quiet this afternoon.’

‘That’s Meddlett for you,’ the man replied, slowly, as if they were foreign enough for him to be doubtful about their levels of English comprehension.

They chose glasses of wine from the options chalked up on a blackboard. Polly was already telling the barman that no, they were not passing through. They had come to live here. A flicker of interest animated his face.

‘Is that so? At Mead, is it? I’d heard about that. Planning issues, weren’t there, to do with building a new house?’

‘All sorted out now. Aren’t they, Katherine?’

‘It’s my husband’s house.’

Why not say it’s yours too?
The discordant new voice niggled in her head.

Colouring slightly she added, ‘Work’s about to start. It’s very secluded. It’s not going to spoil anyone’s view or anything like that.’

‘No? Well. Live and let live, I say, in any case.’ Three glasses of wine were passed over the bar. ‘I’m Vin, by the way.’

They introduced themselves. Polly took the glasses of wine and put them on the window table.

‘We don’t see much of Mrs Meadowe,’ Vin remarked. ‘Her late husband used to come in, after I took this place on. He always said I’d made big improvements. It was a proper dump before that, the old Griffin.’ He was leaning on the bar now, settling in for a talk.

‘We are all old friends of Miranda’s and Jake’s,’ Polly said.

Katherine understood that unlike herself or Colin she was used to the rhythms of country pubs. She knew how much chat to exchange and when to make a cheery move aside. Polly steered them to their table now, closing a deft bracket on the conversation.

The window gave an oblique view of the green. Cars and passers-by in the middle distance now seemed to move very slowly, as in a film playing at the wrong speed.

Polly took a satisfied swallow of her wine.

‘Look at you,’ she said to Katherine.

‘What?’

‘You look beautiful.’

Katherine was startled. After their damp walk she knew exactly how her hair would be frizzing and her nose shining like a fog lamp. Instinctively she put up her hand to fluff out a chunk of hair over one ear.

‘She does,’ Colin agreed. ‘You do.’

Katherine heard a
click
, like the shutter of a camera. She wished that she might have a picture of this moment, if a camera could have captured the surge of warmth that ran through her blood and loosened her muscles, the unlooked-for buzz of pleasure at finding herself drinking wine in the afternoon with Polly and Colin for company, with a view through the window of amber and crimson leaves, and a word like beautiful in her ears. She couldn’t remember anyone having applied it to her, ever, not even Amos.

How disconnected have you been?
the voice chimed in.

‘I don’t think so,’ she began to murmur, but Polly leaned forward and briefly covered Katherine’s hand with hers.

‘It’s all right, you know. You can be beautiful, it’s allowed. You don’t need Amos’s permission. Does she, Colin?’

‘No,’ he agreed.

Katherine thought for a moment. Her instinct was to deflect the compliment, but then, why? She sat forwards, smiling, her fingers lacing around her glass of pub merlot with the chain of purple bubbles at the meniscus.

Everything is going to change.

What did that mean? She was taken aback by the idea.

A burst of loud music suddenly poured through the pendant strings of brown plastic beads and bamboo tubules that separated the back of the bar from the kitchen.
Thank you for the music
, a woman’s voice warbled.

‘Oi, Jess,’ Vin called over the din. ‘Turn that down, customers can’t hear themselves think.’

There was quite a long interval, and then the volume diminished a little.

One of the pale couples was leaving. A girl appeared in the doorway, where Colin had previously glimpsed the man in chef’s clothing. She came in and gathered up the dirty plates from the vacated table.

‘Hi, I was wondering if you’d be back,’ she called to Colin.

‘Hello Jessie,’ he answered.

Polly and Katherine turned to him in surprise.

‘We met the other night. I came in for a quick drink, and Jessie and her boyfriend were sitting here. We got talking.’

Jessie grinned. ‘You and I did. That loser Damon had buggered off, remember, it was just me and Raff.’ Her eyes flicked from Polly to Katherine. ‘Your, ah, husband gave me a lift home…?’ She made it a pointed question.

‘These are my friends, Polly and Katherine. I’m not married,’ Colin explained.

Jessie glanced at the folds of Colin’s scarf, and his expensive soft jacket.

‘No. So you’re all from Mead, then?’

She shuffled the plates into a precarious pile, scraping leftovers on to the uppermost one. ‘Whoops.’

Cutlery threatened to slide out of the plate sandwich and she dipped her hips and shimmied to tilt the load the other way. She looked very young and cheerful.

‘All of us,’ Polly answered. ‘We’re old friends, we’ve known each other for years, and my husband and I and Katherine and hers have moved up here to be together and not to sink into a decline in our old age.’

‘That’s cool. So it’s like, what did you call it in those days, a commune?’

‘No,’ they said, absolutely in unison.

Miranda was passionate about her scheme and each of the rest of them would have differently defined what they hoped Mead would become, but they had always been unanimous in declaring that it wouldn’t be a commune. Amos had said that communes stood for vegetarianism and free love and bad plumbing, and he would not be interested in any of those separately, let alone in combination.

‘The jury’s out on number two,’ Selwyn had muttered out of the corner of his mouth to Polly at the time. The memory of this made her smile. When she was amused, Polly’s eyes narrowed under heavy lids and her cheeks rounded into smooth apples so that she looked like a thumbnail sketch of a Japanese lady on a packet of egg noodles.

‘It’s more a collaboration, I’d say,’ Polly offered.

‘What about you, then?’ Jessie asked Colin.

‘I come and go,’ he told her.

‘Can’t see my mum doing anything like that. She lives in a bungalow,’ Jessie remarked, as if this entirely defined her.

Vin leaned heavily on the bar. Jessie seemed to feel his glare on her back.

‘I got a job, as you see,’ she announced to Colin, rolling her eyes. She raised her voice slightly. ‘Helping out in the kitchen, bit of cooking, washing up and that. There’s plenty of work around here, not a problem. Are you going to have lunch? We’re supposed to stop at two. Chef’s off today, we’re just microwaving, but I could do you lasagne and chips, or a baked and toppings if you like.’

‘No, we’re fine. We’ll just have our wine. Thanks.’

Jessie nodded and hoisted her pile of plates. ‘Nice to have met you,’ she told Polly and Katherine. ‘Come back one evening. We’ve got live music Fridays and Saturdays, not completely crap, as it goes, then quiz night’s Tuesday.’

‘Amos and Selwyn would love a quiz,’ Katherine said.

‘But they don’t know anything about telly or sport or pop music,’ Colin pointed out.

Jessie turned on him in indignation. ‘Some of the questions are quite intellectual. You should come as well and meet Geza. He’s the chef.’

‘I see.’

‘Sure you won’t have some food?’

They assured her that they would not.

‘Bye, then,’ Jessie said, and danced her way back to the kitchen.

Polly gave her Japanese noodle lady smile. She leaned closer to Colin and lowered her voice. ‘You’ve got the chance of a nice gay chef, by the sound of it.’

‘I’ve already seen him. Not bad at all,’ Colin smiled.

She tapped her hand lightly on his knee.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Not even to please you, Polly.’