Whispers in the Village (16 page)

‘Ah! yes. To apologize first and foremost. I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to get off on the wrong foot with you. No, not at all. I’m willing to compromise on the modernization of our services, music-wise. Could be an interesting experiment, so I’ve brought a few things for you to take a look at.’ Gilbert opened the file and handed it to her. ‘They’re for the boys to practise.’

Anna gravely studied the music, knowing her heart was pounding. She wished Paddy heaven knows where but not sitting down watching TV when she needed more space between her and Gilbert. She could smell that earthy sandalwood scent and was aware of the powerful male vibes which emanated from him and which almost knocked her off-balance. She studiously looked over the music, trying to give it her full concentration but not quite succeeding.

‘These appear very suitable, and I’m glad you’ve had a change of heart.’

‘Well, there’s absolutely no point in you and me being at loggerheads, is there? It would only involve Mrs Peel too and I don’t want that. There can be enough trouble in this village without me contributing to it. Right.’ Gilbert got to his feet and took his folder from her. ‘Must go. The boys will be waiting.’ He put emphasis on the word ‘boys’ as though saying that was one point he definitely would not be conceding.

An urge to challenge him came over Anna. ‘You’ve not had second thoughts then about having girls in the choir?’ She stood up in the hope she’d feel more in charge of herself, and in doing so brought herself within touching distance of Gilbert.

‘Absolutely not.’ Gilbert smiled down at her, completely unaware that Anna’s heart was pumping fast and her insides had turned to jelly.

He drew away and left the study. ‘I’ll see myself out. Goodnight.’

Anna sat down at her desk, shaking with anger at herself. She must,
must
get these feelings under control, because the only person who would get hurt would be Anna Sanderson. There was no way she could allow herself to be enticed away by a married man with five children and another on the way. Just a minute, he wasn’t enticing her, it was she who had the feelings, not him. He was oblivious to how she felt. She knew that deep down, but …

Paddy put his head round the door. ‘Going to the pub. Are you coming?’

‘No. Got a meeting.’

‘OK.’

As for Paddy, not even an apology and, only too obviously, she wasn’t going to get the money back from him. Apparently he was incapable of feeling. For all Mervyn was a fence and a conniving old rogue who dealt with a rough underworld she could only guess at, he did have feelings, especially about Caroline. Paddy had none. He did all the taking and she was growing mighty tired of it. As for Gilbert, there would be nothing but heartbreak for her there, so Anna clenched her hands together tightly on the desk and willed herself to ignore her feelings for him. But it was easy for the mind to say ‘ignore’, far harder for her body to comply.

Just as Anna daren’t let Gilbert know how she felt about him, so too Dean didn’t dare let Anna know how devastating his feelings for her were. They coloured every waking hour, every thought, each and every dream.

So far as Anna was concerned, his was a teenage crush and he had to be treated with care so as not to cause damage either to him or to her. She saw him on Friday evenings at the youth club, mainly because she was there every Friday night that she could manage and she guessed it was desperately bleak for Dean if she didn’t attend. The other two leaders, Kate Fitch and Venetia Mayer, were excellent in their way, Kate for the organization, Venetia for the socializing bit and the ability to draw even the shyest member into participating, and Dean, well, he did the table tennis.

The leaders always had ten minutes’ discussion after everyone had left and Dean brought up the matter one evening.

‘But it’s so valuable,’ Venetia protested. ‘None of us can play like you can and, like it or not, you’re training them even as you play. Haven’t you heard yourself giving that commentary? It attracts crowds. They’re all eager for a game when they’ve seen you play; you give them a goal.’

‘Yes, but that doesn’t seem to make much of a contribution.’

‘Yes, it does, Dean. Venetia’s right.’ Anna, to emphasize her agreement, patted his shoulder and felt him flinch.

Kate agreed. ‘Don’t for one minute think you’re not making a contribution, because you are. See how they flock round you. In fact, why not organize a match? Fifty pence to enter, profit to the New Hope Fund. Every little helps. We’d have to think about a prize.’

Dean heard it all but their approval meant nothing to him, except for that pat on his shoulder. He’d have loved to clasp her hand in his and kiss it. The idea obsessed him. Possessed him. Overpowered him. Then his natural reticence took charge and the emotion was directed that night to writing a poem dedicated to Anna, in the notebook he kept hidden among his papers in his room. If anyone ever found out about this notebook it would be the end of him.

It had a beautiful William Morris design on the cover in gorgeous peacock colours, triumphant and splendid, like his love for her. The leaves of it were made of silky smooth paper, which invited touching, caressing almost. In it were three poems, written with the special pen he kept for it alone. The scraps of paper he’d used for composing the poems were torn to minute shreds before he disposed of them.

If ever Michelle found this book – he smoothed his hand over the cover – he’d die. This last poem was his best so far. Poets were right when they said that their outpourings arose out of their deepest experiences of life. How could anyone write sensitively of emotions they’d never felt? He’d never written a poem in his life until now. Facts. Figures. Calculations. His world had always been governed by rules and constriction, but since Anna his spirit flew free, soaring upwards to the skies, making numbers lose all their magic. And this was he who, for years, had found paradise in page upon page of mathematical formulae.

Having a couple of days’ holiday to take, Dean had promised his grandad that he would walk with him around the gardens at the Big House. They were all having to be careful not to make him feel he was ‘pensioned off’ as he called it. Arthritis brought on by working outside in all weathers had finally taken its toll and he needed two sticks to walk even the shortest distance. So Monday morning found Dean escorting Grandad through his particular paradise. The only comfort he had about the gardens was the fact that his grand-daughter had taken his place as head gardener. His pride shone in his face like a beacon when he inspected the hot houses, the herbacious borders and the neat flowerbeds.

They came across Paddy weeding the winding path through the rhododendron wood. It had been constructed of old bricks and even the least energetic of weeds managed to find a way through the tight cracks.

Paddy got to his feet. ‘Morning, Greenwood.’

Grandad Stubbs snapped back, ‘Mr Stubbs to you.’

Paddy touched the neb of his cap. ‘Sorry, Mr Stubbs.’

‘Who are you anyway?’

‘I’m temporary help. Name’s Paddy Cleary. I do odd jobs for Michelle, that’s all.’

‘I see.’ Grandad glanced down the path that Paddy had already weeded. ‘You’re doing a good job. Very good, in fact. No point skimping jobs in a garden, they always come back to haunt you. Not used a weed killer, then?’

‘No. Michelle, with old Fitch’s agreement, tries to stay organic wherever possible, even out here.’

‘When did you start this ’ere weeding?’

‘Yesterday morning. It’s a long job.’

‘It is. But take heed of her. She’s a clever girl.’

‘She is,’ Paddy agreed with his tongue in his cheek, and thinking privately that she was a so-and-so nuisance to a self-respecting man.

‘Done gardening before?’

‘No. It’s all new to me.’

‘Keep at it.’ Grandad walked on, muttering to Dean, ‘He’s a slimy toad. Tell our Michelle to mind him. He’d slit yer throat as soon as look at yer. During the war I …’

Dean sat him down on a seat at the end of the wood and prepared to listen to a monologue about Grandad’s war experiences beginning at Dunkirk. He half listened, knowing most of it anyway, until he suddenly heard his grandad say, ‘ … lovely girl she was. Officer’s daughter. Slender and pretty with jet-black hair and a lovely fair skin, and eyes that always appeared to be brimming over with laughter.’ There was a pause and then Dean heard him speak in a voice he’d never heard him use before, a voice thickened by emotions. ‘I loved her. Still do, in fact. Her name was Lorelle. I thought that the loveliest name under the sun. But you see, I couldn’t talk on her level at all. Not that she tried to impress me with her education, in fact quite the opposite, but my word we were captivated with each other. Love at first sight.’

Grandad sat dreaming, looking into the distance, his mind and his body elsewhere.

Dean said, ‘What happened, then? You didn’t marry her, ’cos I remember Grandma had light coloured hair.’

‘There was no way a chump from the countryside could marry her. We wanted to, both of us, but my dad made me see it wasn’t right. Eventually the gap between us would have widened and neither of us would have been happy.’

‘But if you loved each other …’

‘We did, but I saw it wouldn’t have worked. She was used to far more than I could ever hope to give her, and she’d eventually become unsettled and one thing would lead to another. You see, you’ve been educated out of your class, you been at Cambridge and that. It might just give you the edge, but at bottom you’re still what you are and always will be, a country lad with country morals. They live by a different set of rules, them with education and money. Don’t make the mistake of pursuing someone who you know right from the start doesn’t quite fit, much as yer love her.’

Startled by his Grandad’s homily, Dean stayed silent. My God, did he know? But how could he?

Grandad struggled to his feet. ‘Come on, we’ve a lot to see yet. Have you brought them mint imperials?’

Dean brought out the bag and watched his grandfather’s knobbly hand shuffling about in the bag trying to get a grip on an imperial, and imagined what his hands must have been like when he met the love of his life. ‘You loved Grandma though?’

‘I did that. But it wasn’t a love that flew high like a bird with the freedom of the skies, it was more steady and very comfortable but, none the less, worth having. She was a good wife to me.’

‘Tell me, did you ever regret not going for that first love, despite the consequences?’

‘It would be disloyal to your grandma to say how much I …’ He swallowed hard. ‘She married a major from her dad’s battalion and that day I thought I’d never see another dawn. But you do, you know, you do. And time heals. Oh, yes.’

They wandered on slowly at a pace that wearied Dean, then his grandad spotted an untidy corner at the back of the vinery, a mixture of dumped and broken fruit boxes, an old rusting rake with a rotting handle, a bundle of knotted garden twine, yards of old netting from this year’s strawberry beds, straw and, worst of all, a box full of perfectly healthy daffodil bulbs, virtually hidden by the netting.

Grandad gave a poke at the netting with his walking stick to move it aside. ‘Look at that?’ His reverie forgotten, something of the younger man came to the fore. ‘See that? I’ll have ’em, I will. Someone’s about to make off with that lot, and I don’t have far to go to know who. You go on and find Michelle, bring her here to me.’

Before Dean had found his sister, Grandad Stubbs heard footsteps. He went to hide in the vinery. It was Paddy Cleary, wheeling his barrow filled with weeds. He stopped by the untidy corner, put down the barrow, moved the pile of weeds to one side, picked up the box of daffodil bulbs, placed it in the barrow, took a sheet of plastic from his pocket, unfolded it, covered the bulbs over, then swished the weeds over the whole lot to disguise the presence of the box, and wheeled innocently on.

Grandad boiled over, but kept a rein on his temper; he was in no state to challenge the man and still less had he the authority to do so. So he quietly slid the vinery door open, closed it firmly behind him and, keeping a safe distance away, followed Paddy.

What Grandad had not bargained for was that Michelle was talking to Mr Fitch close by the estate office, and Dean was still waiting to speak to her. They were in earnest discussion and merely nodded to Paddy as he wheeled by. So Grandad called out, ‘Paddy! Paddy!’

Paddy turned round and waited for Grandad to catch up.

Mr Fitch, who always had time for craftsmen with first-rate skills, shouted, ‘Good morning, Greenwood! Nice to see you’re still keeping an eye on things.’

Paddy silently picked up the handles of his barrow and began to slip quietly away.

‘No, Paddy! I want you to show Mr Fitch those weeds.’

Paddy hastened on but Mr Fitch called out. ‘Cleary!’

So Paddy retraced his steps and stood the wheelbarrow down. How the hell was he going to talk himself out of this one?

‘See, Mr Fitch,’ Grandad Stubbs panted, ‘see these weeds, it’s a waste of time and money expecting the path through the rhododendron wood to be weeded by hand.’

Mr Fitch raised a protesting hand. ‘You know I like to be as organic as possible.’

‘I know that, but he’s been doing a good job weeding that path for two days now, and still hasn’t finished. He could be better occupied, couldn’t you, Paddy?’