As far as Honor could see, women tended to become either fat or thin in old age. In Avis’s case it was the latter. There was almost nothing of her, but with her bright eyes, dyed red hair and animated expression she was like a flickering flame, burning low these days but still vital, and giving off light and warmth.
This morning, Honor arrived at Avis’s terraced bungalow at seven thirty to help her get up, wash, and move to her daytime position on the sofa. Until recently she’d sat on the end of the sofa with her feet up on a padded stool, but these days she lay full length with a light fleece over her legs, a pile of cushions behind her, and a table with her ‘necessaries’, as she called them, drawn up alongside.
The ‘necessaries’ included a machine for listening to audio books, plus a wireless kept tuned to Radio Two (both with extra-large On/Off buttons), a water beaker with a lid and a spout, a box of tissues, a dish of mints and (most importantly) a lipstick – Tropic Rose – and a gold powder compact with a mother of pearl lid.
Medication and pills, of which there were many, were not considered necessaries. The miniature plastic chest of drawers containing them stood on the sideboard between the Christmas cactus and the photo of Arthur in his prime. The pills were the one thing that made Avis grumble, but even the grumbling was a sort of joke. They got most of the early morning ones out of the way as soon as possible, a few had to wait till Avis was eating her porridge.
‘Any more of these and I’ll rattle like a maraca,’ she commented, swilling down the handful Honor passed her. ‘I look like a flipping maraca, don’t I?’
‘I’m not sure I know what one looks like,’ said Honor. ‘Do you?’
‘Skinny with a bump on the top,’ explained Avis. ‘My father didn’t care for skinny women, just as well when you looked at my mother, but if he saw one he used to say “There goes another one, death’s head on a mop-stick”!’
Honor loved Avis’s fruity humour. Her father featured a lot in their conversations, and Honor had long since decided that she liked him. A picture of Avis’s parents stood near the one of Arthur. Her father was small and dapper, beaming bright in a suit and a billycock, his wife high and wide on his proudly held arm, and looking even bigger in her puffy sleeves and voluminous skirt and hat like a galleon.
As they went about the lengthy business of porridge, tea, bathroom and dressing, they chatted comfortably. Not all of Honor’s people could do this, because while the personal care was going on they were too worried, or wobbly, or just plain embarrassed, which Honor perfectly understood – she was sure she’d have been the same herself. But Avis just carried on as if nothing was happening, and she took a lively interest in Honor.
‘Now tell me, sweetheart,’ she asked, as Honor dropped her kaftan over her head and felt for her twig-like arms in the capacious sleeves. ‘How’s your young man?’
This wasn’t forgetfulness, but a joke between them. Of course Honor realized she wouldn’t know when it did become forgetfulness, but it amused them both to have the conversation about Honor’s imaginary boyfriend.
‘He’s waiting for me.’
‘That’s nice. A girl should keep a man waiting. What line is he in?’
Honor understood this, too. ‘He’s in the clothing line.’
They started at a snail’s pace for the sofa. ‘Maybe he can get you something nice.’
‘What sort of thing?’
‘Oh …’ Avis’s breathing was becoming heavy now, they were nearly there. Honor steadied her as she sank down, her eyes closing for a moment.
‘I’d like some nice fluffy bedsocks.’
Avis wagged a crooked finger, the nail an immaculate carmine. ‘Undies … Pretty undies.’
They both laughed, but Honor could feel the old lady’s piercing bright eyes on her. She busied herself arranging the cushions, and the fleece, pulling the table with the necessaries to within easy reach.
‘Would you like a drink, Avis?’
‘No thank you, I’ve had my tea. Any more liquid and you’ll never get away.’
‘Do you want the radio on?’
‘Not for now thank you, dear. Sit down, sit down.’
‘I’ll make my cuppa and be straight back.’
A minute later Honor sat on the Parker Knoll with its pink tapestry upholstery and wooden arms. She enjoyed these moments, when the tasks were done and there was time to chat. Her old people might live circumscribed lives but so, for her own reasons, did she. She was glad to have a routine, and to know her work was essential – that it made a difference. When her father teased her about what a ‘tie’ it all was, she tried to tell him that she was happy to be tied. She didn’t want to rush around, or go abroad, or be out every evening. She had created a life that suited her. Indeed it was one of Hugh’s maxims that people ‘wrote their own script’ as he put it – but he still wasn’t able to see that that’s what she was doing.
Just as Avis couldn’t quite believe she didn’t hanker after a ‘young man’.
Now Avis asked, ‘But you’re alright, are you?’ as if something had passed between them which implied Honor wasn’t.
‘I’m very well thanks. Let me see … The house is quieter because my younger brother has moved up to London—’
‘London? London! What will he be doing up there? I lived for a while in Maida Vale, it was full of streetwalkers in those days, but they were quite nice girls in the main. Sociable – well they would be, wouldn’t they?’ She sank into a husky chuckle from which she took a moment to emerge. ‘They never caused me any trouble, and it kept the rents down. That was after Ronnie ran off, and I hadn’t got two pence to rub together, I was living on a greasy rag … Who did you say was going?’
‘My brother, Bruno. He starts college up there soon. Not in Maida Vale though – that’s posh now, I believe. Million-pound houses.’
‘A million? Cripes, I don’t know … A million …!’
‘A tart would have to be doing pretty well to live there now.’
‘You’re right!’ This provoked another chuckle which turned into a cough. Honor passed her the beaker and helped steady it while she drank. Once that was over, with the usual satisfied exhalation, Avis wagged the finger again.
‘I may have been broke, but I never did that. I could have done, I thought about it, but no’ – she shook her head emphatically – ‘never that.’
‘I’m glad to hear it,’ said Honor. It amused both of them that she should sound slightly prim, when in reality she was not easily shocked.
‘Then with Arthur we were in Dollis Hill,’ went on Avis, rehearsing a chain of memories that was as familiar as a well-walked path. ‘That was nice. Wonder what that’s like these days … Then when he got the Salting Packet we came here. A bit different for us two Londoners …’ She considered this for a moment, before sloughing off what Honor thought of as her ‘mind’s eye’ look and focusing once more on the here and now, particularly Honor herself.
‘That’s a lovely place, up there where you and your family live.’
Honor agreed that it was. ‘We’re very lucky.’
‘It’s got that name, that pretty name …’
‘Heart’s Ease.’
‘Heart’s Ease. Lovely garden, lots of those great big bushes with the big flowers.’
‘Rhododendrons, all round the lawn.’
‘I’ve been there. Years ago they used to have the church fête up there. They had a fortune teller inside one of those bushes, like her tent.’
‘Yes, I’ve been told that.’
There followed a pause, not an uncomfortable one, during which Avis’s eyes remained on Honor speculatively. Then she seemed to reach a decision and looked away, playing with the edge of the fleece.
‘You know there were goings-on – before that, long ago.’
‘No.’
‘Oh, big scandal.’ Avis shook her head. ‘She ran off with the gardener.’
‘No – who?’
‘Like that book, the dirty book … well
I took a look and it wasn’t all that …’
‘Lady Chatterley?’
‘That’s the one.’ Avis darted an affirmative finger. ‘The lady who lived in your house ran off with him. Never seen again.’
Honor was fascinated. ‘I haven’t heard any of this.’
‘Oh yes. Set Salting tongues wagging, believe you me.’
‘I can imagine,’ agreed Honor. ‘Was this lady married?’
‘Now you’re asking …’ Avis rolled her eyes. ‘Widowed, I think. That’s what I heard.’
‘I suppose that’s not so bad. She didn’t run out on her husband.’
‘He was a wrong’un. Like Ronnie.’
‘Who, the husband?’
‘No, no, no the gardener chappie. That’s what I heard.’ Avis blew out her lips. ‘That’s sex for you. When it’s all sex. Nice, but no good.’
Even from her inexperienced standpoint Honor felt compelled to demur. ‘Not always, surely. Not always no good.’
‘It depends. These two were stark raving mad for it, and off she went.’
‘What, and she never came back to the house?’
‘Didn’t want to. Imagine. That lovely house – where you live,’ Avis reminded her as if she needed reminding. ‘Never seen again.’
‘So she sold it.’
‘Had to.’ Avis rubbed her thumb and forefinger together. ‘He was a bad lot.’
Honor found herself reflecting on this a good deal during the day. When in her early-evening break at home, she asked her mother about it she was surprised to learn that she knew nothing of the story.
‘Heavens above, it all sounds terribly – I don’t know – sort of glamorous? Outre, at the time.’
‘Avis says tongues wagged.’
‘I bet they did. I mean, the fifties weren’t exactly noted for wild goings on. If it had been the sixties, another matter.’
‘She was a widow.’
‘And a merry one by the sound of it.’
‘I don’t know.’ Honor considered this. ‘I’ll have to see if I can find out more.’
‘Yes, do!’ Marguerite, in possession of a gin and tonic, was enthralled. ‘You move in the right circles.’
Funnily enough it was Hugh who recalled something, when Marguerite was passing on the story over supper.
‘Honor was very intrigued with the whole thing,’ she said, to indicate that it wasn’t just her.
‘There’s a grave in the churchyard of a chap who lived here. I noticed because it mentioned the house. Maybe he was the wronged husband.’
‘He wasn’t wronged, she was his widow.’
‘If she was a free agent, I don’t see what all the fuss was about.’
Marguerite pulled an exasperated face. ‘She ran off with the gardener, darling, and was never seen again! You must admit it was quite fruity, especially then.’
‘There are gardeners all over the television.’ Hugh was enjoying himself. ‘And they’re absolute models of respectability.’
‘Well, this one definitely wasn’t. Avis said.’
‘Who’s Avis when she’s at home?’
‘She’s the very old lady Honor looks after down in the sheltered housing.’
‘I guess she’d know. I’ll look at that grave again on Sunday.’
‘You must tell Honor.’
‘I will,’ said Hugh. ‘If you think she’d be interested.’
Armed with the information, Honor made a point next day of making a detour via the church between shifts. A gentle drizzle was falling and she dragged on the pac-a-mac that she kept in her tote. Following the spell of fine weather the mac was dry and crackly with disuse, and stuck out where it had been folded. She thought she must look like a particularly angular ghost drifting between the gravestones. The spots of rain tapped in an uneven rhythm on her shoulders.
Her father had said the grave was up in the far corner but it was some time since he’d spotted it and he could be no more precise than that. She drifted along the uneven row, peering from time to time. The drizzle became proper rain and she put her hood up. Old, no longer fashionable names, spoke quietly from the mottled stone. Horace … Ethel … Wilfred … Lily … Gilbert … Stanley … She peered more closely.
Stanley Govan. There followed dates, and the name of his regiment.
Formerly of Heart’s Ease Soldier, and dear husband of Barbara
Odd how that ‘formerly’ made it sound as though his heart, at the time of his death, had no longer been at ease. And yet Barbara – she had a name now – hadn’t bolted until afterwards. ‘Dear husband of Barbara’, was that rather lukewarm? Or was it just that these days everyone was conditioned to more extravagant expressions of grief?
Honor stood looking at the grave, the rain and her hood providing a sense of privacy. She did her sums. Stanley had died in his seventies, a relatively young man by today’s standards. But then if he had been a soldier he would have been through both world wars, either one of which experiences would knock the stuffing out of anyone. So Barbara surely must have been much younger than him if she had been of an age and mind to run off with someone after his death. And she would have been quite entitled to find love again, so the mysterious gardener must indeed have been a ‘bad lot’ as Avis put it, for her to need to run off, and for the whole thing to be such a scandal—
‘Good morning.’
The voice made Honor jump.
‘Sorry …!’ The man of about fifty, whom she half-recognized, laughed pleasantly. ‘Didn’t mean to make you jump.’
‘That’s alright. I was just, you know, looking around.’
He was wearing a waxed jacket and wellies. No hat, but he had hair like a dog’s coat, wiry and curly, that was not flattened by the rain. ‘Interesting, isn’t it, grave-browsing?’
‘Yes it is.’
‘I’m Ed Jones, by the way, I’m the vicar here as of a few weeks ago – I think we may have met?’
‘Honor Blyth. Yes, we have – I come sometimes with my father.’
‘Ah, right. From Heart’s Ease?’ He nodded at the grave. ‘This chap lived there.’
‘I just found that out.’
‘I believe, though don’t quote me on this, that it was his parents’ before him.’
‘Oh, really?’ Honor was ambushed by a sharp sadness. So their house had been the dream house of that Victorian couple, Stanley’s parents, passed on to him with love and in the expectation of happy continuity. But the woman, Barbara, had thought nothing of that when she ran away, heedless of her dead husband’s legacy. Honor thought she had just been plain selfish.
She was mortified on behalf of Stanley, the soldier, formerly of Heart’s Ease. She almost hoped there was no afterlife, it was too horrible to think of him looking down on what had happened after his death, seeing his widow betray him and his lovely house sold to strangers just for the money … Except, she reminded herself, they lived there now. Her family, the fortunate, faithful, affectionate Blyths, who valued the idea of home and knew how lucky they were to live where they did. So perhaps their presence had restored Heart’s Ease to its rightful character. She hoped so.
Ed Jones was speaking. ‘… raining just a bit. We’re doing coffee in the church this morning, would you like to join us?’
‘I’d love to but I’m working …’ She pulled back the cuff of her mac to look at her watch. ‘I’d better get on to my next shift.’
He accompanied her back towards the church. Now she could see the inner door ajar, and the lights on, a baby buggy and a couple of umbrellas in the porch. At the junction of the paths he said, ‘Right, well, nice to see you outside of official duties as you might say. I must go and join the ladies. See you again soon I’ve no doubt.’
‘Yes. Bye.’
He was very nice, she thought, the new vicar. Manly but kind, a good combination.
Of course, one of the reasons Avis was so well informed about the Heart’s Ease scandal was that Arthur had been editor of the Packet, and so a kind of living
archive. Anything of any interest that had happened in Salting for the past century was stashed away in the cuttings library, now on microfiche. The Packet, though not exactly going strong – it was mainly an advertising vehicle these days – was still delivered free to convenient households in the town, and Honor promised herself a bit of sleuthing. She decided not to revisit the subject with Avis just yet, because Avis tended to take over rather and it was, after all, the Blyths’ house that was the cause of interest.
That evening Bruno rang. Or at least Robin rang initially, and Honor answered. She had once overheard her father say to her mother, ‘Honor has a bit of a crush on Robin’, which she had immediately and for the first time recognized as true. Up till then she had just known that she liked her brother-in-law very much, as everyone did, because he was so charming and friendly and apparently interested in them all. She’d never told her father that she’d heard his remark, but it had made subsequent interactions with Robin a lot trickier what with her heart pattering and the wretched blushing – at least on the phone he couldn’t see that!
‘Felicity’s out at her book club, so as Bruno and I are fending for ourselves with the aid of a few beers and a curry, we thought we should ring and see how you all were.’
‘Thank you,’ said Honor. ‘We’re all fine.’
‘How’s work going?’
‘Very busy, but I like that.’
‘I suppose it’s a growth market, what with the demographic mushroom.’
Honor knew this was a sort of joke, and if anyone else had made it she would have thought the less of them for it, but Robin she was prepared to forgive. ‘Sort of. How is Bruno, anyway?’
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