Amenable Women

by Mavis Cheek

  After careful thought Flora sent Hilary a letter which touched, briefly, on the lack of material inheritance but which, rather cleverly Flora thought, reminded Hilary of the spiritual legacy her father had left her. All the happy memories and the fun. That night, when Hilary rang, Flora expected it to be difficult but no. Hilary just said that the letter was sweet and that she and Robin thought that her mother needed her and that she could get compassionate leave and she was coming down to stay . . . ‘I could do with a week or two off myself, actually.’

  Flora’s heart – unmaternally – sank. ‘That would be lovely later,’ she said, ‘But I’m just getting used to being on my own and – well – getting into the rhythm of it –’ Hilary was understandably frosty. ‘What do you mean, rhythm?’

  And then Flora lied. ‘I’ve just asked your Aunt Rosie not to come – she was all set to come back from Japan and I said no. Now if you come she’ll get all offended and you know how . . .’ She did not even sound convincing to herself. Rosie never took offence at anything, which came, Flora supposed, from a misspent life. But she panicked. She was just getting used to being on her own, just getting used to her freedom or the possibilities of it – and now this. And then she had a brilliant idea. ‘Well – the other thing is that I’m so involved in your father’s history of Hurcott and it’s taking up so much time. And I do want to finish it for him.’

  ‘Dad’s last great work,’ said Hilary, fondly.

  ‘Oh yes,’ said Flora smoothly, ‘in fact, I was out at the old wall tonight following up on something he wrote and I found the Cleves datestone just where he said.’

  Hilary snuffled. ‘He was so brilliant . . .’ Her snuffles became louder.

  ‘Yes he was,’ said Flora, ‘and we must never forget that. And I want to do his –’ she took a deep breath – ‘History great justice – and I’ll need to concentrate for the next week or two so would you mind . . . .?’

  Hilary wavered, ‘We-ell . . . I could help, couldn’t I?’

  Flora rushed on with another brainwave, ‘And I’ll tell you what you could do for me since you’re in London – you could go to the Calligraphy and Wordiform Society in Bloomsbury and ask about the carved lettering. I’ll send you a tracing. I need to know – as your father says – how previous historians date it to late sixteenth century when it so clearly says 1557.’

  There was a hint – just a hint – of respect in Hilary’s voice as she agreed. ‘You are being thorough,’ she said. ‘Dad would be pleased. You’re just sort of tidying it all up. Aren’t you?’

  Flora squeaked rather than spoke a ‘Yes.’ Though she would’ve loved to yell ‘No.’

  ‘Edward Chapman’s History of Hurcott with Particular Reference to the Anne of Cleves Datestone . . . It’ll be just great. The village will have a person of importance to commemorate. We ought to talk about his headstone, you know.’

  Flora said quickly, putting Hilary’s infuriating title to the back of her mind, ‘A year, the vicar said, before we can erect it. In the meantime – that carving date. Let me know as soon as you can. Oh – and I hope my letter was helpful. I’m sorry about the will. I know it was a disappointment.’

  ‘Oh well – Robin says that we’re fine at the moment and Ewan was right – we may as well wait until later.’

  ‘Hmm,’ said Flora. ‘Makes sense I suppose. And we’ll talk about the headstone once I’ve finished all this paperwork and um – tidying up.’

  When she put down the phone she poured herself a very large glass of Edward’s more expensive red wine. ‘Cheers, Anne of Cleves,’ she said, ‘wherever you are.’ For now she could invite Ewan to Lodge Cottage again because she had found the stone. She slept very well.

  Gradually, over the days that followed, she corrected Edward’s dreadful prose. She used some of the history books piled in his study and they were most enlightening; factual but enlightening. It seemed that Anne of Cleves was really Anna of Cleves and Flora decided to call her that. It sounded right. And there was some useful information about the how and the why of Anna’s arrival in England to be Queen. It was cheering to accomplish something of a cranial nature before getting on with the domestic side of things. Cleaning and washing and hoovering were put in their place by the information and ideas floating around in her head. One of the ideas lodged there and so – checking that it was not the middle of the night – she telephoned Rosie in Tokyo. Following that she made a phone call to the travel agent in town. Both of which conversations were satisfactory. Then, feeling perfectly content, she set off across the paddock towards Anna’s stone, humming The Ride of the Valkyries – for there was no one to tell her to stop – to make her tracing.

  Perhaps Anna walked this very route, she thought. Perhaps she walked it when it was a properly laid-out garden, maybe a herb garden with evening scents to soothe Anna’s bruised, rejected heart. After all, you couldn’t have a more public dumping than the King of England’s. If she were anything like Flora it would be that public humiliation she would find so hurtful. No wonder she was said to enjoy her country manors and estates in the years that followed her divorce; the Tudor Court, like Hurcott or any small community, would be full of prying eyes and gossiping tongues, though Edward was right and she did seem to like Richmond Palace too. Any scandal involving royalty would be discussed with ardent delight – nothing new under the sun – and would probably be quick to lay the blame on Anna rather than the King. Spin now, spin then, thought Flora sourly. Like the good folk of Hurcott Ducis thinking that if one of the Chapmans had to go, pity it was not the dull female half. Well – if she got this History right, maybe the surviving female half could show them her other side. It would be no good looking for admiration or support if she told them about Edward and Pink Lips. The village might pity her – but they would not be surprised – quite the reverse – and probably it would only enhance his reputation as a dashing lad. No, she would have to deal with that little aberration in private. And she would.

  Earlier that day she had finally dealt with the contents of the laundry basket. The one place in the house that still contained a little bit of Edward’s personality. There, beneath the feminine bits and pieces of Flora’s, was his custard-yellow jumper. She remembered Ewan admiring it tremendously when they met up somewhere or other and Edward was wearing it. So – rather than take it all the way to the charity shop – Flora washed it (lovingly, by hand) dried it, and pressed it. Then she parcelled it up and put a note for Ewan inside saying that she knew he liked it and hoped he could use it. She would deliver it tomorrow when she also had another fish to fry.

  She knelt – not entirely comfortably given her knees – on the dewy grass and placed the paper across the stone and began her tracing with swift, firm rubbing. Myra in the library had showed her how to do it years ago but she had never been as good at it as Edward. Or had she? For too long she had stayed in his shade and really, when it came to it, she was probably as competent as anyone else. One day, she vowed, as she rubbed carefully and the image appeared reasonably clear and sharp, one day the village will see that I am a woman of consequence. Maybe. You have two (rather large) feet, Flora, she told herself. Stand on them.

  She slipped the tracing along with a pretty postcard of the village green into an envelope and addressed it to Hilary. She signed the card Your Loving Mum because you had to begin somewhere and she liked writing the words. And the memory of Hilary referring to her as ‘Mother’ was not very nice. She stamped the envelope and put it in the hall, next to the parcel for Ewan, ready to take with her when she set off for her next, altogether more interesting, village assignation.

  Then, humming happily she went upstairs to begin packing. Once this was accomplished she would telephone Hilary and tell her – firmly – what she was about to do. Or one aspect of it anyway. The other she would keep to herself.

  4

  Pond Cottage Brings a Suitable Enlightenment

  Either Flora was the changeling of the family or her sister Rosie was, for
they could not be more different. Rosie was born both with the looks and the ability to make a good marriage. They overheard their mother saying this to their father and pondered for days on what a good marriage might be. Rosie was three years Flora’s senior and led in places where Flora could not hope to follow. For over ten years Rosie was personal assistant – in every way – to the owner of a cosmetics company with many an unsuitable flirtation along the road. That really did take Flora’s breath away – to have an affair within an affair was – well – shocking. Beautifully, beautifully shocking.

  When Rosie’s boss sold the company to a Frankfurt-based consortium and took a less onerous role in the business, to everyone’s surprise, they married. ‘Now she’ll pay for her pleasures,’ was the way most proper folk saw the situation, including their mother who, though by now in a hospital bed from which she would never return, still showed a sense of righteousness. This was obviously not the good marriage envisaged. But Flora knew that Rosie would not pay. Rosie was a woman destined to be paid. No children for Rosie, no husband with a sensible job or any of that settling down in one place nonsense. They travelled about the world – doing a little business, having pleasures, and bringing a whiff of exoticism into Flora and Edward’s lives if they made a rare visit. Rosie telephoned from Japan when Edward’s funeral took place. She was sympathetic, apologetic, practical. ‘Can’t get back,’ she said. ‘Wouldn’t be much good if I could. I’ll come as soon as I can. Just let me know if there’s anything you want.’ Flora understood. Rosie’s saving grace was generosity. She would give you the coat off her back, as Flora once said, and it would be quality. When Rosie said anything you want, she meant it. And Flora was going to take her up on the offer.

  Edward, she was delighted to think, would not only be rotating in his grave at the idea of her employing Wally Binder but he would be now be spinning out of control about the next thing Flora had in mind. It was the phrase ‘Next time Paree . . .’ as written by Pink Lips that rankled. If it had been ‘Next time Bognor Regis’ or ‘Next time Felixstowe’ she would not have taken it so hard. But Paree . . .?

  Rosie owned a Parisian apartment, her original little love nest, where it was not unknown for Rosie to take one of her illicit amours when Harald was safely out of the picture. It was scarcely used now. The place might have the taint of wicked unchastity about it but – frankly – if there was the taint of anything wicked going, Flora was up for it. It would be an interesting challenge, going to Paris alone, and now she had an excellent reason. Research. Next time Paree, indeed. She hoped, yet again, that wherever Edward had come to rest, up or down or stuck in Limbo, that if there was a consciousness within his spirit and they allowed him to eat breakfast he was rotten well wincing into the cornflakes.

  Rosie was delighted. ‘That’s the girl,’ she said. ‘And when I come back we’ll think about your love life. You’ll need another man sometime and I’ll help you choose one.’ The implication, and quite right in Flora’s opinion, was that she was not very capable of choosing one on her own.

  ‘Thanks,’ she said. ‘Now – about the key . . .’

  The conversation with Hilary that followed was exactly what Flora feared and expected. Difficult.

  For Hilary said, with some astonishment, ‘Paris? Alone? Then I’ll come too.’

  ‘No,’ said Flora firmly.

  ‘Why ever not?’

  ‘Because I need to grieve alone,’ said Flora. ‘Come with me next time. That would be nice. I’m sending you the tracing.’

  ‘Why Paris?’

  ‘Why not?’

  For all the best travel there is a focus for the traveller even if it is only a double bed in a discreet little hotel. Flora’s focus was the discovery that the marriage portrait of Anna of Cleves was owned by the Louvre. For some reason this portrait of a longdead Queen of England by Hans Holbein, the portrait that Henry VIII commissioned and with which, when he received it, he fell in love, now hung in the greatest Parisian art museum. Flora would go to the Louvre and see this woman, this Flanders Mare, for herself. There was another portrait, a miniature, housed in London at the Victoria and Albert Museum, but Flora did not want to see it yet. She wanted to do what Henry had done – she wanted to see the portrait he saw of Anna for the first time and make her judgement accordingly. The miniature portrait was given to Henry by Holbein some time later, apparently, though taken from the same initial sitting. But by then he had made up his mind. It was in London, it was easily accessible, and it must wait.

  Now for the one final thing she must do that morning before setting out. Flora put on the most dramatic-looking of her black widow’s weeds – so much easier it was to be in mourning – and walked the short distance to Pond Cottage. On the way she posted the envelope to her daughter and called in at Little Beeches where she put a parcel and a note inside Ewan and Dilly’s front porch. She walked on, pleased to have done something nice for him. In the note she said that she would be away for a little while and looked forward to telling him why when she got back. She wrote down her mobile number, just in case. Braveheart. Then on she marched, her black weeds flying out before her.

  By now it was seven o’clock in the morning, clear and fresh, with birds twittering away and the sun glinting through clouds and God should have been in His Heaven and all right with the world but the Browning moment was somewhat diluted by her mission. She felt caught between the three states of merry widow, grieving bereaved and cuckolded wife. As if she had stepped into the wrong play. One thing to suffer the guilt of not suffering enough about an unimpeachable husband, quite another to discover his incontrovertibly peachable fidelity without the possibility of habeus corpus and confrontation.

  There were many things about Edward that Flora would not have found particularly surprising – that he had a gambling addiction, that he secretly collected rude postcards, that he fiddled his tax expenses perhaps – but never in a million years would she have believed him to be a Lothario. Even a very low-key Lothario. Indeed, signs of his Lotharioism had never entered her head. She took comfort in the same way many a wife has taken comfort, and probably many a wronged husband, too. She blamed the other party. Having seen her own sister in action and seen what success a determined woman can have, Flora decided that it must be the same in Edward’s case. One day Edward was probably sitting innocently on a stile contemplating his navel when the two-bit floozy with the very pink lipstick came upon him and stole his honour away. This might be telescoping events a little but – largely – it must have been like that. If it was not, then Flora was – well – naïve was the kinder word but fool was more fitting. And Flora did not wish to think herself a fool. For over thirty years she had lived with Edward so she did know him, she did. No Lothario he. Whereas she whom she suspected of seducing her husband might not look exactly like a siren but . . . Flora preferred the comfort of the fantasy. Despite suggesting she pull herself together she was not entirely resigned to someone pinkly pouting their way into her – she accepted – unusual marriage. Bitch in the Manger this may be, she thought, but whatever the illogic, she needed to know more about the origins and unfolding story of Edward and Pink Lips.

  Pond Cottage was one of a dozen or so small – now bijou – dwellings on the outer edge of what had once been the manorial lands and which, before that, were the lands of the local priory. As she passed Duck Cottage, three doors up from her destination, she felt a little pang and shook her head and pursed her lips. That was the Dobsons’ – she missed Mary badly – especially now – but the cottage was let for two years alas not to a nice couple of Hindus, or a jolly couple of Rastafarians – but to a pair of crisp-suited bankers who certainly wouldn’t frighten the horses. Mary and Geoff were still in Canada and not due back for months. ‘Come on out,’ they wrote shortly after they left, and then Mary rang suggesting it. But they were staying in a fairly primitive place in the Laurentians, researching Iroquois and Algonquin histories and Edward and Geoffrey did not get on very well. They’d get on bet
ter now, she thought wryly, and walked on.

  The row of cottages looked very pretty in the morning light. They were near the centre of the village and would have been troubled by traffic and parking and dog-walking gawpers had they not had wonderfully long front and back gardens which gave them their privacy. When the dear Dobsons first bought theirs it was, like most of them, nearly falling down but the whole row was renovated and extended, each one now a sweetly desirable little place. The cottages faced the pond and leant against each other in a strange perspective that would have suited Alfred Wallis very well. When she first saw them Flora remembered Crabbe and his Village Life – ‘I paint the Cot, as Truth will paint it, and as Bards will not . . .’ It could not have been an idyllic life for the original tenants. Far from it. They were built very many years ago – centuries – to house the local landowner’s labourers, so it was said, and probably stood on the site of much earlier dwellings of the kind that sprang up around monastic walls. In the Farrell history he stated – more in hope than certainty – that the pond dated from Priory days when it would be stocked with carp and other such voracious scavengers – which made the name of the owner of Pond Cottage considerably more amusing than it already was.

  As Flora walked up the path of the bijou little dwelling that had once been so humble, she thought how extraordinary it was that a modest piece of history like this base cottage should be owned by a woman who liked video cameras, Chris de Burgh, and bloody posy pots. And other people’s husbands. She rapped on the wooden front door with her knuckles, which really hurt and improved the mood no end, but she was quite unable to use the knocker which was wrought in the shape of a fish – and then she waited. Her black shirt flapped around her calves and her black jacket billowed around her and she could see from her shadow that she did not look very friendly. Indeed, she looked quite scary which was better than docile and plain, anyway.