‘Are we going to get a tractor? What about the horses?’ Doris imagined mechanical horses shitting rusty washers out in the stable. Before that moment she hadn’t known she loved their horses. Not like she loved the kids or Dan or her mum. But she loved them all the same, their chestnut solidity. The cold air they sneezed out over their bran.
Dan didn’t answer.
Doris pulled on her scarf, knotting it as if it would keep her head on. She passed the old piggery and saw its roof needed mending. She followed the fence and saw where it sagged. Everywhere she looked she saw jobs, jobs, jobs. She’d never had to mend a fence before the war. That was men’s work. And materials were so hard to come by. It used to be Dan’s territory.
The hated truck stood where she’d parked it, skew-whiff. Doris loved driving their car, but that was strictly War Ag use only these days. She showed her well-worn knickers each time she clambered up into the truck’s cab; she really should practise the manouevre. Or maybe… trousers?
Good Lord, no. There were limits.
* * *
Nance saw that Doris was in a hurry, and turned neatly from serving Alec Pargetter to ask what she needed. Solid and bonny, the shopkeeper’s daughter had kept house for her father since they moved to the village. Nance conveyed intelligence the way an animal might, by her calm regard, her unflurried composure. She never drew attention to herself, and seemed to need no flattery. Linen apron, nicely pressed collar, that was Nance.
‘Soap flakes! Can you believe I forgot them when I come in earlier.’ Doris was astonished by her own idiocy; if I worked for me I’d sack myself. ‘Sorry to barge in, Alec,’ she said.
‘Not at all, Doris, do go ahead.’
Such calming manners. Such reserve. Doris felt calm around Alec. A gent, he was silky, like Mother Cat. In some villages, an Archer might not be on first-name terms with a Pargetter. She was proud of Ambridge’s egalitarianism, even as she side-eyed Stan Horrobin browsing a tray of apples and wondered if he was about to nick one. Obviously, the Archers were never invited to Lower Loxley, not like the vicar or Dr Seed; Ambridge’s egalitarianism only went so far. Doris was relieved; she’d be sure to let herself down socializing with the likes of Alec and Pamela Pargetter.
Nance reached down beneath the counter; she could put her hand on anything in the shop. Her father relied on her to keep track of the sewing needles, the Oxo cubes, the starch. ‘How’s your mum doing, Doris? I heard she’s not so well and she’s come to stay.’
Doris looked into her purse, poking around the big round pennies. You can’t blow your nose in this village without it becoming the talk of the town. Looking up into Nance’s docile smile she reproached herself. It was a kind question. ‘Yes, it’s her legs. She’s decided to stay on, indefinite like. In case she has a fall.’ Doris gambled on Nance not knowing her mother had lived with family, rather than alone.
‘You are good. It’ll be lovely to see her again. Such a nice lady, your mother.’
‘Yes, well, she gets tired, her legs, so, maybe no visitors for a while.’ More espionage.
‘There you go.’ Nance handed over the box of Lux. No money changed hands. The slate was settled monthly.
Nice hands, thought Doris, whose own hands were scarlet mitts. And nice soft hair, all pulled back like that. There was something pleasingly bovine about Nance, now that Doris noticed her. She was emitting light in a way she never used to. If the woman wasn’t already in her thirties, Doris would suspect she was in love.
There was nobody to love in this village. All the younger men at war, all the older ones spoken for. Or, if she was honest, long past such energetic emotion. ‘There you go, Alec,’ smiled Doris. ‘She’s all yours.’
The bell over the door sang as Doris left Alec and Nance alone together.
‘Where were we?’ Alec’s eye was no longer a bloodshot dot in a blossom of bruises. It was sad, though. Sad and witty; quite the combination.
‘I was looking out your account.’ Nance pulled out a ledger, and ran a finger down a long line of figures. At Alec’s insistence, Pamela patronized the Browns’ shop for all their more basic, homely shopping needs. Supporting Ambridge was as ingrained in Alec as letting ladies go first, or believing himself to be right.
They were interrupted again. Caroline Dibden-Rawles waddled in. Brown hair like a conker and the bouncy gait common to three-year-olds.
Kitty chased in after her. Then chased her out again, as Caroline pirouetted. She laughed a ‘sorry!’ at Dottie as they bowled past her in the doorway.
Nance’s voice was low. ‘Terrible, really, to be made a widow so young.’
‘Tragic,’ agreed Alec. He had his wallet ready.
‘He was a handful, that Noel,’ said Nance. ‘But to die like that, on holiday. Bournemouth, it was.’ She seemed to stop herself. ‘Oh, Mr Pargetter, I shouldn’t go on, he was your friend.’
‘An old friend, since school. But don’t worry, Nance, Noel was a handful.’
Noel Dibden-Rawles had died as he lived – foolishly. The story had the simplicity of fable. During a week’s ‘recuperation’ by the sea, a drunken Noel announcing he would go out with the night fishermen, and a fatalistic Kitty knowing better than to try and stop him; there was no stopping Noel.
And then the sad deputation of men in sou’westers at the door of the lodgings. Noel had stood up in the boat. They’d tried to stop him, but he said he wanted to kiss the moon’s reflection.
He fell in. He drowned. That’s how it went if you cheeked the sea.
‘I heard,’ said Dottie, bustling over, ‘that the poor girl was left destitute. He drank every penny.’
Both Nance and Alec tried to semaphore with their expressions that this manner of gossip was beyond the pale.
Dottie didn’t notice; she had the thick skin of a rhino. A rhino from Fulham, to be precise. ‘His horrible stuck-up family disowned her, according to Mrs E. She gets by on a pittance of a life insurance. Some people! And her so nice. Ooh, mind out, here she comes.’
It was as if two children dashed in. Kitty was as breathless and excited as her daughter. The pointed woollen hat and the oversized coat added to the effect. But Kitty was never less than beautiful. It was as much to do with her vivacity as her freckled skin and the burnt-copper hair that escaped from the hat. She was after powdered egg, she said, would Nance have such a thing?
‘Ooh, dun’t she talk pretty? I love that accent. Is it Dublin, love?’ Dottie’s laugh sent her shoulders upwards. ‘Only place I know in Ireland!’
‘Actually, yes.’
‘You ain’t had one of these nasty letters, have you?’
‘Me?’ Kitty put her hand to her throat. ‘Why? I haven’t done—’
Dottie laughed, looked repentant. ‘I didn’t mean nothing. You’re as pure as the driven snow, even I can see that. But,’ she said, her tone changing, becoming thrillingly dark, ‘I reckon where there’s one, there’s another.’
Nance’s head was down; she took a long time finding the powdered egg.
Alec’s nostrils dilated, like a horse shy of a gate. He looked at the ceiling, and Dottie looked at him. Unlike her Ambridge hosts, she had no deference. She had only a sense of fun that seemed downright dangerous to the others in the shop. ‘What you bin up to, eh? Eh? Which lovely lady are you canoodling with on the sly?’ She guffawed loud enough to make Frank pop his head in from the back room. ‘Your face! God love you, Mr P, I’m only teasing.’
‘Ha ha,’ managed Alec, placing a pound note on the counter.
Kitty was beleaguered, holding onto Caroline, delving into the sack of a bag she carried, the collar of Noel’s coat riding up over her chin.
And then Caroline began to wail. Like a siren. She’d dropped her marble. Her favourite marble. Her only marble.
It rolled. Caroline strained to run after it. Kitty held on to her, said desperately, ‘Oh, whisht, darling!’ Alec stopped the fluorescent ball with his shoe, and handed it to Kitty.
And there it
was. Today’s jolt of electricity.
Just his bare fingers on her glove.
That was all it took to remind him of yesterday and her bed.
* * *
‘Me old pal, me old beauty.’ Walter bent to pet Glen on the junction platform. The dog leaned into him; they were old friends. ‘Who you waiting for, Doris?’
‘My new men.’ Doris stamped her feet, as if that might help with the biting cold. February had snuck in hard, Mother Nature showing everyone who was boss. ‘I lost my whole team, Walter, to the war. And now they’re sending me replacements.’
‘You had a good gang on the go,’ said Walter. ‘You miss ’em?’
‘I do.’ Doris inhaled Walter’s eau de cologne: stale beer and roll-ups. The Gabriel smallholding was neglected in favour of The Bull. ‘How’s your mother getting on without Jonjo, may he rest in peace?’
‘She’s all right, she’s all right, not so bad, you know.’ Walter said it like the gentle mantras he used on cattle. He was better with animals. Glen was in a trance as Walter felt his ears.
It must be nice to be Glen. Absurd thoughts like this had begun to intrude on Doris. Getting petted and fed, and responsible for one thing and one thing only. No dog could beat Glen at his job; the Brookfield flock did as they were told. She wondered, suddenly, if the sheep’s future was hanging in the balance as they chewed stolidly on hay back in the great barn. Two of the largest fields had already been ploughed up for spring wheat. Perhaps England’s insatiable mouth would require all of the grazing pasture to go.
Only two of the people alighting were men. They were evidently her men. One of them was a teenager, his face a dot-to-dot of pimples. He limped, she noticed.
‘Hey, you! You for Brookfield?’ called Doris to the other, a dark, wiry fellow.
He was.
In the truck he sat up front. ‘So, Doris, can I call you Dolly?’ His low, sandpaper voice was stubbly like his face.
She couldn’t place the accent. ‘No,’ said Doris.
They were plainly not country people. The teenaged Eugene was on a sabbatical from Oxford. Doris had had to help him up into the cab; his foot seemed deformed. ‘I had a complete nervous collapse after mods,’ he said defiantly, and then, ‘I shouldn’t be here, I should be studying. This is a waste. This is madness.’
‘None of us should be here,’ said the other man. Jez was unsympathetic. He took up a lot of space, legs spread, arm out of the open window even though Doris would have preferred to keep out the cold.
‘We’ll make the best of it,’ said Doris. She was rallying herself as much as them. She thought of the three hale and hearty local chaps she’d waved off a month ago. Brawny, canny, can-do.
‘The journey,’ said Eugene, ‘has quite worn me out.’
Doris felt Jez study her. She fidgeted at the wheel. Jez was the natural leader of the pair, she understood that and sensed Eugene felt the same. ‘Do you have much experience?’ she asked him.
‘What a very personal question, Dolly.’
‘I meant…’ Doris turned the unwieldy steering wheel to take the fork for Ambridge. He knew what she meant. Doris braked hard and her passengers jerked forward.
‘Whoa, Nelly!’ laughed Jez.
Jane Gilpin, one inch from death in front of the truck, mouthed ‘sorry!’ at Doris and carried on down the lane until she reached the last house on the row.
* * *
The silver in the cabinet was tarnished. The cabinet itself wore a fur stole of dust. The whole of Turnpike, a handsome house set a little apart on the edge of the village, spoke of neglect.
Jane first sat at the long oak table but reconsidered and positioned herself carefully on an upholstered chair, so as to look both elegant and serene when Denholm returned with the tea things.
She regretted the navy suit she’d chosen. Too severe. Jane pushed at her hat, a chiffon something that seemed soigné in her looking glass but felt foolish in this forbidding room. It was a room still dominated by the dead lady of the house.
Denholm’s mother had been rather like her furniture. Austere. Outmoded. Caring little for comfort and much for intimidation. He was, all agreed, ‘lost without her’, a catch-all term that could mean the silly man couldn’t boil an egg without supervision, or that he was the nearest thing Ambridge had to a Heathcliff.
Jane, alone of all his neighbours, favoured the latter.
It fitted with her image of herself. An unplucked flower. A neglected artefact, covered in cobwebs, that really should be taken out and polished and admired. Not idolized; Jane was modest. Just some notice would do.
Today was the day. It had to be; she would surely collapse if Denholm didn’t ask her today. So many false starts over the preceding weeks. So many ellipses in their discourse that turned to prattle about the weather.
He had never mentioned love. She had waited. She had decided such flowery talk wasn’t necessary. She had made many small concessions along the way. Jane was accustomed to making concessions.
‘This isn’t my forte.’ Denholm backed into the room with a tray. His clothes were putty-coloured, droopy; it was as if a sofa had come to life. ‘Do you take milk? I’ve no milk.’
‘Black will be perfect.’ Jane had never drunk black tea. Such a bachelor, she thought fondly.
‘It’ll have to be.’
Jane tittered.
Denholm looked surprised. He didn’t make jokes. And yet this Jane Gilpin kept laughing. The tray went down with a bang on a low table. Waggling his jowls, he pawed at cups and spoons until he’d managed to pour a cup of tea. ‘Here. Take it. Take it.’
‘Delicious,’ she said, after a sip. ‘Mmm,’ she added. She did hate silences and Denholm tended to favour them. ‘How have you been?’
He was again surprised. ‘You know how I’ve been,’ he said. ‘We spoke only yesterday.’
‘How true. You see through my feminine gambits.’ Jane bore the silence as long as she could before resorting to the one topic that surfaced over every teacup and every tankard. ‘We’re still no wiser about who wrote that dreadful letter at Christmas.’
‘It’s been weeks.’ Denholm was gruff. ‘Why does it matter?’
‘I see you are made of sterner stuff than I. To me it matters enormously. Someone we trust, a friend in our midst, reached out and slandered dear Alec. Who’s next?’
‘Why should anyone be next? I assumed Pamela wrote the note.’
Jane was startled. Denholm so rarely said anything she didn’t expect. ‘But Pamela’s a lady, she would never stoop to such behaviour.’
‘She might if she wanted to punish her husband.’ Denholm didn’t push his theory with any passion.
‘No, no, no,’ said Jane. ‘I can’t countenance that.’
‘Do as you like,’ said her lacklustre swain.
‘I fear, sometimes, that the letter writer’s pen might target me.’ Jane shook with her own daring.
‘Why, what have you done?’ Denholm looked properly at her for the first time that afternoon. Or possibly ever.
‘Nothing, why, nothing,’ said Jane. She wasn’t being truthful. The letter writer would never unmask her, however. Of that she was confident. ‘I meant, well, you and I, our tête-à têtes.’
The silence again. Jane persevered with the bitter tea, and then, suddenly, it all came good. Denholm stood up and said the words she’d fantasized about in her narrow bed at Woodbine Cottage. And some other words, too, perhaps not quite so en pointe but Jane disregarded those.
‘Since dear Mother died,’ was how Denholm began, ‘I’ve been alone in this house. It’s not good for a man, Jane, being alone. I need a lady, a woman, not a young lady with silly ideas, no, but a lady of, well, not young. A lady who understands that life isn’t all roses and, um, jaunts, and what have you. That kind of lady. A lady like you, Jane. Who wouldn’t expect much.’ He looked down at her, and seemed to soften. ‘You remind me of Mother. Don’t blush, it’s true. One doesn’t have to be beautiful, Jane. I’m n
ot that kind of man.’
‘Thank you,’ said Jane, uncertainly.
‘What?’ Denholm scowled. ‘Don’t interrupt, please. This is far from easy. Do you know what I’m trying to say?’
Jane did. But she shook her head. She wanted to hear him say it clearly and precisely. So she could flatten the memory like a dried rose and keep it for ever.
‘I would appreciate it if you could see your way clear to being my, well, my, in a way, no, not in a way, my, yes, that’s it, my wife.’ Denholm fished in his pocket and took out a ring box. He opened it. He took out the ring and waggled it at her. He fixed Jane with a stare that was close to belligerent. ‘Well?’
The ring was, she knew, his mother’s engagement ring. Emeralds and diamonds. ‘Yes, Denholm.’ Jane closed her eyes. She was ecstatic and so didn’t see Denholm slump with relief into a chair. She milked the next few seconds for every last drop of goodness before opening her eyes and saying, ‘But alas it cannot be.’
Wringing her hands, Jane launched into a much more polished speech than his. ‘I can’t leave my sister, Denholm. Imagine Blanche, confined to her tiny bedroom with those poor wasted legs. I am a woman of honour, Denholm.’ Here, as rehearsed, she struck her sparrow breast. ‘Do not beg. I have my duty and I must fulfil it, even if it means relinquishing…’ Jane whispered the word. ‘Love.’ She let that hang in the air alongside the dust motes. She could easily hold two distinct thoughts in her head at once. She could know that Denholm had asked her to marry him so she could be his bulwark against a lonely old age, at the same time as she could believe he was desperately in love with her. That they cancelled each other out was neither here nor there.
She had more to say, and she said it, to his baffled face. She had a card to play, and if she worded it just right, perhaps Jane could snatch her life back, own it, live it. ‘I hardly dare ask, but I must. There is one way out of my, our, predicament. If you could take on the burden of Blanche…’ Jane peered up at Denholm from beneath the chiffon veil. It was a strangely forensic look for such an emotional moment. A tiny malnourished hope flared, that he might say it would be his pleasure to take both Gilpin sisters under his wing.
The Archers Page 3