by Mavis Cheek
Betty looked even more shocked than Myra. Flora sought to calm her down. ‘It was the way he was. And he did ask me first.’
‘Did he?’ said Betty in a slightly higher pitch.
‘Oh yes,’ said Flora. ‘He asked if I wanted to join in.’ Betty squeaked something quite incomprehensible.
‘Almost his last words to me were that I should be more like him and take a few risks . . . He may have been right.’ She gave what she hoped was a suitable laugh – somewhere between sorrow and stoicism. ‘But I’m not like that.’
‘No, you are not, Flora. And all the better for it.’ This was said with a fierceness that Flora found comforting but she did not know why. ‘Ah Edward,’ she said, and shrugged a playful little shrug. ‘Always the adventurer.’ Betty looked much as you might expect the Queen to look on hearing her Archbishop of Canterbury was a swinger. Edward had always been a particular favourite of the postmistress’s, buying as many commemorative stamps as he liked. Flora decided to put the oddness aside, whatever its fount. ‘Enough of all that,’ she said firmly, and took a half-dozen eggs and some teabags from the shelf behind her. She put them down and looked around for a copy of the Mercury. Betty Gregg was draped across the pile.
‘Can you add on a paper for me, please?’ said Flora, squinting at the half-hidden weeklies.
Betty took on a very hunted look and did not move. Had the circumstances been different Flora would have enjoyed her evident unease – the post office was usually a place for which you needed Dutch courage – or at least a nip of something strongly caffeinated – to stiffen the sinews before entering – but she was growing irritated now. Enough was enough. Flora tried to pull a newspaper from under the postmistress who was forced to slide herself off the pile but whose hands and elbows remained on top of the front pages. ‘Do you really think you should?’ asked Betty. There really was no answer to that. Well, not one that sounded sane. In all her days of entering the post office Flora had never seen Betty either sit or lean on anything. ‘Perhaps not,’ she said in a humouring voice, and paid.
Flora left the shop with the eggs, with the teabags, without newspaper, but with the beginnings, very definitely with the beginnings, of a headache. Perhaps she would just go home and sort out her dirty washing after all. The bid for freedom from domestic constraints did not seem to be supporting the realms of liberated widowhood. Clearly the world she inhabited saw her in the continuing role of miserable widow, bereft and husbandless, tottering on the edge and therefore unable even to bear local news. By the time she arrived home Flora had seen at least half a dozen Hurcottians and the encounters had done nothing to improve her mood.
When Ewan rang, shortly after her return to Lodge Cottage and when she was on her knees in front of the washing machine, she left the call to be answered by the machine. ‘You want me,’ she found herself saying to an unremarkable bra, ‘you come and get me.’ The upshot of which was, when he arrived on her doorstep a little later, on his way home from the office, she was distant and polite with him, as he was with her. But he held his ground so she invited him in. He came in. He then stood very awkwardly in the sitting room and looked pained as he said, ‘I am so sorry that it all had to happen like this . . .’
Oh not again. She thought. She put up her hands to stop him. ‘Ewan – please – I’m fine – it happened – he’s dead. I’d much rather talk about something else. I’m really in no mood to play the grieving widow for ever and I’ve got one or two ideas to get on with . . . Or perhaps only one now . . .’
‘No, Flora –’ Now he put up his hands so that they both looked like mime artists doing cat’s cradle.
‘No, Ewan –’
He might have asked me about Paris, she thought, or thanked me again for the jumper. She had wrapped it up so beautifully. Disappointment strengthened her resolve.
‘This is what I’m going to do to take my mind off everything,’ she said firmly. But before she could go on to explain, Ewan took both her hands in his. He was looking at her very oddly as he held on to her hands. Concern was it? Or kindness or could it be – love? Stay cool, she told herself. Remember that even Ford Fiestas can be a bit racy if you put your foot down. Flora’s look of coolness and, she fancied, careless determination as she looked him in the eyes changed to astonishment as there came a sudden and very terrible high-pitched grinding noise from the kitchen. Ewan released her hands. Both of them rushed to see the cause. It came from the washing machine which was now in spin cycle. Very fast spin cycle. Too fast, it seemed, for the needs of the contents. Ewan leaned forward and pressed the stop button. The machine ground to a whinnying halt. After the two-minute wait for the door to be opened – the necessary amount of time to protect small children from throwing themselves into the still rotating drum (when she bought it and they told her of this delay feature she unsuccessfully asked for a machine without this facility since she was without any such dear little endangered things) – during which the two of them stared at the porthole as if it might yield up the secret of the Universe – Ewan opened the door and peered in. Out tumbled the unedifying, twisted mass of all her underclothes and there, poking up from the centre of the drum, one end of it caught in a hole, was a half hoop of curved wire. Her underwiring. The bra was even more unremarkable now.
So there they were, she and Ewan, head to head at the door of her washing machine, he with a pair of pliers, she with a torch, looking foolish, and about as likely to persuade him that she and her life were absolutely fine as a bird with no beak. What man would ever consider embarking on an affair with a woman who could not even do her own washing successfully?
She did not mention Anna of Cleves after all. It was hardly the moment for it as she stood there with the half hoop in one hand and the well-worn item of underwear in the other, with Ewan stiltedly explaining that the newspaper had got wind of a story – almost certainly untrue – about Edward and Pauline Pike and he felt – and he hoped she would forgive him if he overstepped – he felt that he ought to warn her. The whole village knew. It was in the local paper. If it was true then it was a very unpleasant and probably (he did not sound at all convinced) very exaggerated account of the affair and he hoped she would deal with it as calmly and courageously as she had dealt with Edward’s death. For a moment she hoped he might put his arms around her, or touch her, or something, but he did not. Take my hands again, she pleaded inwardly, but he stepped back, looking down, the tips of his dear ears very red. ‘Ah,’ she said, folding away the decrepit bra with dignity.
‘That.’
She decided to wing him a bit, since he now stood well away from her on the other side of the room and showed not the slightest likelihood of reaching out and comforting her, not even to the extent of offering her a handkerchief in case she cried (she didn’t). What a cold unfeeling person he was. She had been mistaken in him. He could not care less. No wonder Dilly drank. It was probably the only way she could get any fire into her life. She winged him by calmly stating that she had known about Pauline Pike all along and that she did not mind in the least. Truth has a ring about it and it was Ewan’s turn to look like a fish. ‘So you see,’ she said, nicely but coldly, as she opened the front door for him, ‘none of you really needed to worry. I have many things to occupy me now and really and truly I’m fine. Just fine. Really.’ She closed the door on his confused face as it said goodbye, then leaned against the wall in the hallway, and wept. Women like her did not get their fantasies made flesh. Not even little balding, golf-playing, pot-bellied ones.
Over the next day or so Flora made sure that everyone knew that she knew about Pauline Pike and she cared not one jot how it appeared to the village. This was Edward’s legacy, not hers, and she was not prepared to play the wronged and suffering widow. Undeserved sympathy, she found, was the most unpleasant offering to accept, bringing with it a sense of guilt and self-loathing. She assumed that the truth would make everything much easier but she soon discovered differently. On meeting the Vicar and Mrs Vicar in
the lane – and listening to their faltering suggestion of how hard it must be for her, Flora said robustly that it was not at all, that she accepted it, that they both had their lives, she and Edward, and that the affair was part of his. Feeling rather proud of this speech, and thinking that it was about as truthful as she could get and quite a weight off her shoulders, she was taken aback completely by the Vicar giving her an awkward pat on those same shoulders, which immediately made them sag with guilt again, while Mrs Vicar held her tight into her Boots face powder and said how brave she was, how brave . . .
The only person who did not know, who must never know, was Hilary. It was a secret to be tucked away much as Flora had tucked away that video. She left Hilary alone for a while in the fear that with all this heightened awareness going on she just might blurt it out; have a touch of the Tourette’s and come out with a stream of bad language and a vivid description of the Pink Pike’s soppy ruffles and floating orange thing. When she was a little more in control and the disappointment of Ewan not so acute, she rang her, rapping her knuckles on the table thrice before picking up the phone, to remind herself to say nothing.
‘You sound muted,’ said Hilary, with only a faint trace of told-you-so. ‘Was Paris disappointing after all?’
Flora did not rise. If the two of them were ever going to fill the void then rising was not helpful. Instead, when Hilary said, ‘I wish I’d come with you,’ Flora said – with some feeling, thinking about Ewan and using the bruising she felt, that she wished Hilary had come, too. ‘Perhaps we’ll have a little holiday together next year,’ said Flora. To which Hilary, programmed, said dourly, ‘Well I can’t afford it. Now.’
‘Ah well,’ said Flora, risking the old parental saw, ‘we’ll see
. . .’ And then rapidly changed the subject. ‘How have you been getting on?’ Hilary gave Flora a short history of her feelings and they talked about Edward for a little while and Hilary had a little cry. Flora decided to grasp the nettle and said, ‘I’m looking forward to getting down to your father’s history. It looks very interesting.’ Hilary made a noise. Flora rushed on. ‘It only needs a tweak or two,’ and crossed her fingers.
‘Hmm’ said Hilary doubtfully. ‘Well, tweaking’s fine but you won’t run away with yourself and do something silly with it now, will you?’ As if Flora was likely to get out her crayons for a good scribble. Still she did not rise. ‘No – just put it in order and finish researching a few things and so forth.’
‘Just collate them sort of thing?’
‘That sort of thing. With a touch of focusing.’ ‘Just a touch?’
‘Oh yes.’ ‘Good for you’.
‘Thank you, Hilary,’ she said, meekly. ‘I shall be Dorothy to his Wordsworth.’
Hilary made another noise that might or might not have been approval, and Flora said she would give her daughter a ring in a few days – perhaps there would be some news from the calligraphy people – and put down the phone. Talk about walking on eggshells but at least the bonding had begun. Do anything silly – indeed – how dare she even think of saying it? On the other hand there was nothing like a bit of anger to stoke the fires of enthusiasm. I’ll show you, my girl, she thought, and I’ll show him, too. It was going to be a two-glass night, Ewan’s Dilly or no Ewan’s Dilly.
Settled, she began looking at the novels so kindly dug out for her by Myra. Both books starred Anna of Cleves as principal heroine. Each one was concerned with how Henry’s love of a portrait and repulsion of the real woman could have come about. One suggested that Anna of Cleves and Holbein had an affair which is why he painted her to look so beautiful. Impossible, surely? And that Anna was persuaded to wear a blonde wig since the King favoured blondes. Unlikely, if the dignity in the portrait was anything to go by. The only basis for the story seemed to be from contemporary sixteenth-century historian, Hall, who reported that Anna had long fair hair. Wishful thinking. Anna was definitely a brunette.
The other novel, Anne of Cleves, suggested that Anna was given to flushing an unbecoming scarlet and scowling when she was feeling insecure. Two attributes of Flora’s which made her like the author of the book even less. It was given to very few women, or men, to look attractive when they were unhappy. Even more unbelievably the author went on to say that Anna had calloused hands from doing good works and getting on down in the henhouse back in boorish Cleves so that when, surprised by Henry’s unscheduled visit to Rochester, she had covered herself with a foul-smelling unguent, largely goose fat, to soften – or lighten – her chapped skin, she stank of it. This, presumably, to cover the fact that Henry told his Council that he ‘liked not her smell’. Extraordinary imaginations some of these Historical Romancers had. Or was it coyness? Or pheromonal ignorance? All these theories were fascinating but Flora could not find a shred of proof. No – the truth of Anna was in the unadorned story which was quite bad enough without embroidering it.
The Cleves of the sixteenth century did not look boorish.
With its softly curving landscape – not totally flat then – and its castle with pretty crenellations and its swans – it looked a pleasant, gentle place. A landscape and climate not very different from England. Her Palace stood at the top of a hill and the air must have been fresh and wholesome. Nothing in the description of Cleves can have prepared Anna for the harshness of her journey or her unkind welcome in England.
Over the next few weeks Flora cross-referenced what she had learned in Paris, with other accounts of the Cleves Princess’s fall from grace, some authenticated with contemporary documents, some by hearsay, and not once did she find reference to Anna being called the Flanders Mare. It seemed that this most famous and cruel of epitaphs was never used in Anna’s lifetime but was coined much later from a Bishop Burnet’s History of My Times at the end of the seventeenth century and was used again by Horace Walpole – a man given to disliking bluestockings – when he published his first attempt at a history of art in English in the eighteenth century. How very unpleasant, she thought, sourly, to think up such a lasting indictment.
Nowadays it would be called spin. For centuries Anna was an historical laughing stock simply because a turn of misogynistic phrase appealed. Bad enough the way the world was now about beauty or lack of it – but ten times worse then, it seemed. It made Flora all the more determined to rearrange this point of view. After all – as someone very eminent said – there is no such thing as history – merely biography. Emerson was it? Or Thoreau? Flora’s brain was creaking. It was a very long time since she had used it in this concentrated way. She began to enjoy it. Even Ewan faded away. Slightly.
Much of what she read was almost unbearable, the viciousness of its insult beyond anything – almost – that might be said by one royal, or celebrity, of another nowadays. There was plenty of evidence of Henry’s blustering, ungallant, insulting descriptions. Breasts, belly, smell, virginity – the lot. Quite enough to make a bishop blush, though not, obviously, enough to make a bishop tell his King to mend his ungodly ways and honour his wife. How interesting it was, she noted, that before Henry told the world of his dismay, everyone who met Anna praised her. And although this might be something to do with diplomacy, on the whole the praises were more believable since they were usually first hand – either from those nobles accompanying the Queen-in-waiting to England – or those who saw her at home in Cleves. But Henry stamped his foot, said, ‘I like her not’ and – lo – she was transformed into a brown-faced, pockmarked, frumpish, raw-boned nincompoop.
The German court dress of Anna’s Paris portrait did not exactly show the Princess off to feminine advantage. Her character shone through despite the clothes rather than being enhanced by them, and the French Ambassador, Marillac, wrote that he found her old-looking and only of middling beauty. But very soon after her arrival she replaced her heavy German style with the more fashionable five-pointed French hoods that showed the face so dramatically – and low-cut gowns that bared the shoulders. She made these changes almost certainly from her own inte
lligent appraisals of the fashions. If Flora doubted that the Princess would change her hair colour as Hall suggested, there was nothing undignified in her changing the way she dressed and becoming fashionable at court.
If Flora recognised Anna’s dignity, Henry allowed her none. As if the goose-fat and its delicate literary distillation of a much more unpleasant truth were not insult enough, the King’s ungallant attestation went even further during the annulment proceedings saying that he also found his wife’s body loathsome and her breasts and other parts so slack as to make him think she was no maid. He faced his fond and saintly bishops and lily-pure nobles with this unnecessary addition. So now Anna was not only ugly, dark and thick, and unpleasantly smelly in her womanly parts – she was – just to make quite sure he had kicked every available part of her – no virgin either. Which, Flora thought wryly, made Edward’s occasional verbal assaults on her seem rather affectionate by comparison.
Flora looked at the reproduction of Anna’s portrait again. Not possible, she decided. Not possible. Not the ugliness and certainly not the unchasteness. If the Cleves Court was as proper as described this last was quite impossible. Flora smiled at the absurdity of all of it. She could quite see why any writer of historical romances would want to turn this nonsense into fiction and want Anna to have lived and loved. To give Anna a happy past complete with lover was to be kind to her . . . Flora considered this. There were worse ways to live in Tudor times than without sex she guessed. At least it meant you didn’t die from syphilis or puerperal fever. And anyway, some of the happiest men and women she had ever met were nuns and monks and jolly Catholic priests. Not all of whom were devils in their habits.
The thread of irony ran through everything. That Henry should accuse Anna of ‘being no maid’ and then marry Catherine Howard, the much-bedded fifth wife – his ‘rose without a thorn’ – against whom the princess was purity personified.