She would sit them out. She would see them off.
‘Tea, ladies?’ she asked.
* * *
Less than twenty-four hours later, Dottie was pumping out her latest bulletin as she held out her special green ration book to Nance. She was entitled to cod liver oil, when what she wanted, she liked to say, was cake and a nice G & T.
The subject of today’s newsflash was Lisa. ‘Legs still bad, apparently,’ she told the queue in the shop. ‘Poor old duck.’
‘If I might just…’ Morgan, hat against his chest, was trying to buy a box of candles from Nance. ‘Bit of a hurry.’
‘By the way, Doc, it’s definitely a boy!’ Dottie patted her stomach through layers of poplin and wool. ‘Mrs E tied her wedding ring to a piece of thread and held it over me and it went back and forth, like a pendulum-thingy, so that means it’s a boy. Round and round’d be a girl. I’m glad. I want a boy.’
‘Not particularly scientific.’ Morgan winked at Nance, who quashed the smile it invoked.
‘Oh, you and your silly old science,’ said Dottie. ‘Explain this to me, if you can, with your science, Doc. Jane Gilpin’s house is haunted.’ She opened her boiled-egg eyes even wider, delighted. ‘Yes! How d’you like that? Ghostly children laughing in the walls, apparently.’
‘Jane said this?’ Morgan frowned.
‘She’s taking double her sleeping draught to get away from them.’ Dottie shuddered happily.
The doctor was thoughtful, almost forgetting to pick up his change.
The bell above the shop door announced Agnes. ‘Is the rumour true?’ she whispered, nose twitching. ‘Rhubarb?’
Emerging from the back room, Frank Brown held a box of the stuff in his arms. ‘Yes, it’s all true. The only thing Walter Gabriel’s good for: his rhubarb! Fetch the other boxes in, Nance, there’s a love.’
‘Let me help,’ said Morgan.
‘Erm, all right.’ Nance hurried out, and Morgan followed her to the cold yard.
‘What a gent,’ said Dottie, elbowing Agnes out of the way to get at the Christmas-red stalks.
‘At least they can’t ration Walter’s rhubarb,’ said Agnes aggressively. She barked out comments like gunfire. ‘How’d they expect us to live with all these new rules? And nothing’s happening, is it? Is it?’ She repeated herself when she was ignored. ‘This war’s a flop. So why d’we have to live so mean, eh?’
‘I’m sure,’ said Frank, ‘the government knows best.’ There was a Union Jack hung above the onions. A portrait of the king leaned against the shredded suet. Frank Brown was a reserved man, opaque to his customers. His patriotism was the most noticeable detail of his personality.
‘The government?’ Dottie’s patriotism was more robust, more given to complaint. ‘They don’t give a stuff for the likes of us.’ She rifled through and sorted the rhubarb. ‘Bet Chamberlain doesn’t queue for sugar. All them bulletins on the BBC, they make me nervous, even though they’re only reporting that nothing’s bleedin’ well happened.’ She held up a gigantic stalk. ‘What does Walter do to his rhubarb to get it like this?’
‘Best you don’t ask,’ said Frank.
Dottie saw a crumpled something among the rhubarb. ‘A letter!’ She ferreted it out, triumphant. The other shoe had finally dropped, and she, Dottie, was at the white-hot heart of the news.
She read it out, with all the gusto of a poor man’s Bette Davis.
* * *
The weak Easter sunshine touched the pewter and the silver and the porcelain on the long, polished table.
Lent, most Protestant of months, was finally over. No more fasting and reflection; time to feast. As much as one could in wartime.
There was a linen napkin beside every plate. All that ironing, thought Doris, as she eyed the chorus line of cutlery and hoped Dan wouldn’t dive in and use a grapefruit knife for his fish, or something.
Doris had no idea what a grapefruit knife might look like.
The invitation to Easter lunch at Lower Loxley had sat, throbbing like a poisoned apple, on Brookfield’s mantelpiece for a week. Thrilled to be invited, the Archers couldn’t help thinking the universe had made a mistake. A lever had slipped, a button had been pressed at the wrong time. The likes of Dan and Doris didn’t hobnob with the likes of Alec and Pamela.
‘It’s the war,’ Dan had decided. ‘It’s making us all pull together, and quite right too.’
‘All very well for you to say,’ Doris had sighed. He didn’t have to do his hair or tut over his wardrobe.
‘To friends,’ said Pamela, raising a glass.
‘To friends,’ said her guests. Frances, the vicar’s wife, said it a little late. Her husband gave her a look.
No, not exactly a look, Doris corrected herself. Next door to a look. She noticed how heavy her glass was, how pleasant it was to hold. The rich – and the Pargetters were rich – led such different lives, where everything they touched was smooth and perfect and just so.
On one side of her sat Morgan, on the other, the vicar. She was grateful not to be beside Alec. She admired him, yes, but could never think of a thing to say to him. For the moment, as a girl Doris knew from the village lumbered in with a tureen of spring vegetable soup, the woman opposite her did all the talking.
Magsy Furneaux was comfortably built, un-showily made. Only her brooches and earrings and the watch that sat like a diamond-studded tourniquet on her plump wrist gave the game away. Magsy was a Borsetshire Furneaux, from a prominent family that had provided the area with landowners and members of parliament down the centuries. It had also provided Morgan Seed with his wife.
This wife, a good woman and Magsy’s sister, died when the two Seed boys were small. And there and then Magsy found her vocation. ‘I love them like they’re my own,’ she used to say, before they flew the nest. Now, as ever, she fussed over her brother-in-law as if he was a hothouse orchid. ‘A touch of soup, Morgan, on your chin. Just there.’
He ignored her. Not unkindly. Despite Magsy’s insistence that ‘poor’ Morgan was struggling since the boys grew up and she moved out, he seemed to be doing well enough, with his comfortably upholstered frontage and his pink cheeks.
‘I’ve always loved this room, Pamela,’ Magsy went on. ‘It has such charm. The panelling is so handsome.’
‘Bit dark, if you ask me,’ said Dan, whose manners had been left at home. ‘Soup’s top notch, though, Pamela.’
Pamela, who had done nothing to the soup beyond ordering it to be made, inclined her head at the compliment. She had never chopped an onion in her life.
‘What did we all give up for Lent?’ Morgan asked this with the assurance of a man who never gave up anything. ‘I gave up telling my patients what to do. They all ignore me anyway, which is sometimes just as well. I can be rather a nag. No smoking, no rich food, a daily walk! A doctor’s advice is seldom welcome.’ He leaned towards Alec. ‘I’m assuming we’ll enjoy one of our customary cigars after lunch, sir?’
Alec patted his breast pocket, where two Cohiba Robustos sat like hot dogs.
Dan wasn’t invited to this private gentleman’s club of two, much to his relief. He was a pipe man.
‘I didn’t consider giving up anything this year,’ said Pamela. ‘The war, surely, gave everything up for us.’
Doris agreed. ‘Phil and Chrissie usually give up sweets, but…’ The suggestion that they make do with carrots, as advised in Woman magazine, had not gone down well.
‘Was that young Gerald I saw loitering on the drive?’ The vicar asked this gravely; Henry was great for funerals but not so hot at weddings. ‘Surely he’s old enough to join us at lunch these days?’
A slight current ran the length of the table. Alec looked at Pamela who did not look back. She said, smooth as silk and quite as slippery, ‘Dear boy’s not been at all well.’
Well enough, thought Doris, to yet again shove my Phil into a ditch this morning. The only heir to the Pargetter estate erred towards Pamela’s family in his looks, which were finely sketched an
d wary. His physique, however, was that of a cuckoo in the nest. Gerald was overblown, ham-armed, with a ripe menace in his not-at-all gentlemanly demeanour.
Cloth-eared to nuance, the vicar wasn’t done with the topic. ‘Gerald’s at your old school, Alec, isn’t he? You’re a Marlborough man.’
‘No, Rugby, and yes, Gerald followed my lead.’ No need to fill them in on Gerald’s progress or lack thereof at Rugby, where he inspired letter after letter from his tutors.
Alec poured water for Magsy, who was over-grateful. She brought to mind a dog that craves a caress but fears a kick. She made Alec uneasy; such a soggy woman, he thought. ‘Dig in, do,’ he said, knowing how Pamela loathed colloquialism at the table. At Lower Loxley, hospitality was generous – but we must all behave. ‘What do you think,’ he asked Dan, ‘of these artificial fertilizers Whitehall’s pushing?’
‘Artificial what?’ Magsy’s question was ignored; the miracle feed was discussed above her greying head.
‘Powerful stuff,’ was Dan’s take.
‘Science is the future of farming.’ Alec waved a butter knife to underline his point.
It was easy, thought Doris, to forget that Alec was a farmer; there was rarely mud on his bespoke clothes, and no other farmer smoked like a film star.
‘Those are broad powers you have with the War Ag, Dan.’ Alec was wry. It suited him. He was made of wry materials. ‘You can requisition people’s farms, I understand, if you suspect some abuse, if they’re not using the land to maximum capacity.’
As Dan nodded, Doris cut in. ‘Not that my Dan’d ever take anybody’s farm from them!’ The very idea.
‘I would,’ said Dan. ‘If I had to, love. If there was no option.’
‘No option?’ Doris was shocked. These were livelihoods they were discussing.
Pamela said, ‘Dan might not have a bayonet but he does have War Ag forms in triplicate.’ She changed the subject; shop talk was also unwelcome at her table. She turned to the vicar, and said, ‘Henry, as the days begin to lighten at last, I suppose it’s time to start planning Ambridge’s midsummer pageant.’
The vicar, mid-chew, put down his bread roll, coughed and agreed. ‘Although, given the present crisis, is it appropriate to plan something as frivolous as a pageant?’ He often couched his opinion in a question. It was one of the reasons other men avoided him like the plague when he dropped into The Bull.
‘The pageant’s vital!’ Doris surprised herself by disagreeing publicly with Ambridge’s man of God. She generally backed him up, even when he was silly, which did happen. ‘I mean, Henry, forgive me, but the village needs something to look forward to.’ She registered how he blinked at her breach of etiquette. You’re not a god. Pamela had been right when she said that; the vicar was, after all, just a man. ‘They’re saying this war might last as much as a year; we need to keep cheerful.’
‘The war,’ said Alec, ‘will last considerably more than a year.’ When he tried to join up he’d been told instead to put his affairs in order, and wait until he was needed. The conscription age would inevitably go up. More and more men would be sucked into the whirlwind tearing up Europe. ‘I do detest hearing newspapers describe it as a phony war. It’s perfectly real.’
‘Now, now, no doomsday talk.’ Morgan glanced at his sister-in-law, at her stricken face. ‘Not in front of the ladies.’
As the soup plates were cleared – noisily, the village girl was no waitress – and the lamb brought in, Doris felt Pamela bristle. Not all ladies had to be protected. That’s what Doris would tell Morgan if she wasn’t so, well, ladylike. The moment of affinity with her hostess surprised her; Pamela was exotic to Doris, who lacked her poise, her control, her ability to wear such tight clothes. She said, ‘What I say is, let’s poke that old Hitler in the eye. I’ll be your first volunteer for the pageant committee, Pamela.’
‘As if it’s a matter of volunteering,’ murmured Alec into his moustache.
‘My husband’s quite right.’ Pamela was unapologetic. ‘I’ll requisition the usual personnel. But we need some new blood. How about that sweet Irish gel? Kitty Dibden-Rawles. She seems a little isolated since Noel passed away.’
Afterwards, Alec would congratulate himself on not jumping out of the chair at his wife’s casual mention of Kitty. He could have kissed Doris Archer when she speculated that Kitty might not be keen, her being so young and gay and what have you.
‘Nonsense. It’ll get her out of the house.’ Pamela was firm, as ever. All her opinions came chiselled on tablets. ‘She deserved better than that wastrel, Noel. Although my husband had an unaccountable fondness for him, didn’t you, Alec?’
‘Everybody was fond of old Noel. Loveable rogue, you know.’ Towards the end, when Alec saw Kitty’s life pared thinner and thinner by Noel’s behaviour, Alec had stopped using that sort of euphemism; the lovable rogue was a selfish bastard. A drinker, a sadist and, Alec suspected, handy, to use another euphemism. Kitty had worn long sleeves in summer and there was a newish scar on her freckled nose. ‘Lamb’s a touch tough,’ he said, by way of deflection.
A chorus began in defence of the lamb, as he knew it must. Magsy was especially fulsome. The woman was so grateful, and yet so demanding; she confounded Alec.
Unmarried women of Magsy’s age, even when they were solvent, drifted through village society like waifs. Always included in Sunday lunch invitations or birthday suppers, but never anticipated with any real pleasure. She was a duty, in her mauve-ish, dated frock. And the poor old girl knows it. Perhaps that was the real reason Magsy Furneaux unsettled Alec. He paid her great attention for exactly three minutes, and saw her purr.
A call-and-response from that morning’s service came back to him. Landed smack in the middle of his thoughts, with all the vicar’s dour sing-song enunciation.
Wash me thoroughly from my wickedness and cleanse me from my sin.
‘Lord have mercy,’ he’d mouthed. Doris had been more enthusiastic. More confident of a sympathetic ear up there.
‘That rocking chair is ever so inviting.’ Doris pointed with her fork, then felt vaguely embarrassed for doing so. There were rules to eating here; she didn’t know them all, and felt they lurked beneath the Persian rugs waiting to trip her up.
‘It was Alec’s great-grandmother’s.’ Pamela, who had taken three mouthfuls of her meal, laid her cutlery on her plate. Straight, pointing to twelve o’clock. Abiding by the rules. ‘Some of the house’s older furniture is a trifle heavy for my taste.’
‘Heavy,’ said Frances, and laughed. The vicar’s wife often did this; laughed at something that was not, by anybody’s standards, funny.
‘You know the superstition, don’t you?’ said Doris. ‘If a rocking chair rocks on its own that means a ghost has come to sit in it.’
‘Whoo!’ Alec provided a spectral sound effect.
‘It’s not out of the question,’ said Pamela. ‘There must be any number of ghostly Pargetters in this house.’
Beneath the table, Hero, the black Labrador, licked Alec’s hand. As if to reassure his master that Alec wasn’t one of those ghosts.
‘My favourite!’ The vicar clapped his hands when rhubarb crumble appeared. ‘You spoil us, Pamela.’
‘My pleasure,’ murmured Pamela. All one word: mayplesha.
The war, thought Doris, as she decimated her sugary dessert, had yet to reach this table. Perhaps the inherited panelling kept it out.
Dan finished his before Pamela had picked up her spoon. ‘That’s what I call a pud,’ he said.
‘There’s plenty more,’ said Pamela.
Doris didn’t know whether to be proud of Dan’s appetite or to prod him under the table with her uncomfortable ‘good’ shoe. At home, she loved to see him eat, but here it was unseemly. His elbows were on the table; wasn’t that wrong too?
‘More! More!’ Dan was giddy on crumble.
Doris kicked him.
Magsy spoke, and her piety suggested she knew she was about to dampen the mood. ‘Dear A
nthony,’ she said, ‘adored my crumble so.’
‘God rest his soul.’ The vicar put down his spoon, and there are those who would say he did so reluctantly. He blessed himself. ‘A fine boy, Magsy, and a credit to you, Morgan.’
It was still fresh, the wound. Anthony Seed had been one of the war’s first casualties. Morgan’s younger son had been twenty-three and handsome (and growing more handsome after death; memory is indulgent) when he signed up.
On his first day on the Saar front, near the French border with Germany, in a place Doris couldn’t pronounce, Anthony had walked into a British booby trap intended for the Germans. His own countrymen had shot him to death.
‘It doesn’t seem fair,’ said Magsy, still mild, but struggling. ‘The whole patrol followed him, but Anthony was the only one to die that day.’
‘It’s not fair,’ said Alec. He felt for her hand. It was damp.
‘Still, we must—’ Morgan’s eyes flitted everywhere. He wasn’t allowed to finish; Magsy had more to say.
‘D’you know, my George hasn’t shed a tear.’ Magsy blurted it out as if confessing some unspeakable crime. ‘Not one. Over his own brother.’
Morgan’s bedside manner was stretched thin. ‘George is a grown man, Magsy, with a very busy life to lead. Important government work. Of course he grieves, we all do. He lost his brother. I lost…’ He couldn’t say it. Then he could. ‘I lost my son.’
‘I’m like a mother to those boys.’ This was how Magsy described herself to herself; it was first and last in her autobiography. ‘I feel their hurts as my own.’
The emotional scaffolding around Magsy needed constant upkeep; Doris remembered the scene at the funeral when George Seed had shaken off his aunt and screeched, ‘You’re not my damn mother!’ No doubt everyone else at the table remembered, too. ‘You gave your all to them,’ she said.
‘Worrying about children is mandatory,’ said Alec drily. As if on cue, Gerald thundered down the stairs and bayed at the housekeeper for his boots.
A change of topic to something blameless was needed. Doris was serene, knowing Pamela would supply it, with her usual finesse.
The Archers Page 6