by Jilly Cooper
‘Good God,’ repeated Etta, leaping forward to rescue the Solomon’s seal from Dora’s pacing feet.
‘So I rang Colin Mackenzie, and he raced back from Newbury and it’s all in the Mail today.’ Dora brandished the paper in triumph.
‘Gosh, a double-page spread,’ said Etta, examining the pictures of Shade, Rupert and Taggie. ‘Isn’t she beautiful?’
Shade is quoted as saying: ‘I kissed Taggie Campbell-Black on the cheek. I was euphoric my horse had won a race and she’s my trainer’s wife. Such behaviour is standard. I feel very sorry for Taggie, who’s a lovely woman.’
‘Shade’s threatening to sue,’ went on Dora gleefully, ‘claiming Rupert’s endangered at least five million pounds’ worth of horse-flesh.’
‘Poor horses, they must have been terrified in London. Where will they go?’
‘Well, Shade’s other ten were already with Marius, so they’ve gone there. Poor Marius has plenty of empty boxes. But Shade won’t like that because he likes to play trainers off against each other, and he likes his horses to win, and Marius is having an even worse year than Ralph Harvey-Holden.
‘Taggie’s terribly embarrassed, but Colin Mackenzie agrees with me: Rupert’s used the whole thing as an excuse to get rid of Shade, who demanded more attention than all the other owners put together. He’s known in the yard as Needy Gonzales. ‘Plants partial to Shade,’ giggled Dora as she watched Etta tread in the goat’s beard.
‘Would you like a cup of tea and some toast and marmalade?’ asked Etta.
‘Yes please,’ said Dora. ‘And now, shifting from the profane to the sacred, my heavenly boyfriend Paris is having a driving lesson, so I’ve got an hour or so to kill. Shall I take you round the church and tell you the legend of Willowwood?’
‘I must get these plants in.’
‘You can do that this afternoon.’
As they set out for the village, coming out of Badger’s Court was a Water Board van with Leakline printed on its sides.
‘I ought to drive round in that,’ smirked Dora. ‘I must say that was a brilliant scoop …’
‘How is your boyfriend?’ asked Etta.
‘Got his part in Othello. He’s playing Cassius, who in the play is described as “having a daily beauty in his life”. I hope Paris doesn’t, and I’m the only one.’
The weeping willows in the churchyard were all bare. Nearby yews retained a few of their gold leaves in their dark branches like loose change.
‘Sit, Cadbury,’ said Dora as they went into the church. ‘That’s where Pocock and his pals ring their bells,’ Dora pointed left to the tower, ‘and that font blazing with colour is Direct Debbie’s handiwork.’
Near the chancel steps lay a stone knight wearing chainmail.
‘Nice,’ Dora stroked the little whippet lying against his crossed feet, ‘that they had dogs in bed with them even in those days. The knight is Sir Francis Framlingham the first, Ione Travis-Lock’s umpteenth great-grandfather. He went on a crusade and beat the hell out of Saladin.
‘But in that window,’ Dora indicated a handsome man with a pointed beard and long dark hair astride a knowing-looking white-faced horse, ‘is the eighth or ninth Sir Francis and that’s his beautiful grey charger, Beau Regard, who was home-bred. Beau Regard and Sir Francis had never been parted and were almost more devoted than Sir Francis was to his lovely young golden-haired wife, Gwendolyn, who was expecting their first baby.
‘Now it really gets romantic. Sir Francis wrote sonnets to Gwendolyn – actually my boyfriend Paris writes me sonnets too – and in her honour planted a wood of weeping willows all round the churchyard, because their cascading yellow leaves and darker yellow stems in winter reminded him of her flowing hair before she pinned it up.
‘Well,’ Dora sat down in a pew, picking up a hassock on which a weeping willow was embroidered, ‘the Civil War was raging round here at the time, and there are lots of priest’s holes in Willowwood Hall where the King’s men sought asylum.
‘Sir Francis, who was a very good friend of General Fairfax and a leading light of the Cavaliers, went off to fight for the King. Like Napoleon’s horse Marengo, Beau Regard was pure grey, so Sir Francis’s men could recognize their leader in battle. Alas, it made him a Roundhead target. Wounded at the battle of Naseby, Sir Francis crawled into the bushes and managed to fasten a letter he’d been writing to Gwendolyn, telling her how much he loved her, to Beau Regard’s bridle, before setting him loose. Beau Regard refused to leave his master, but when he was fired on by the enemy he took off so fast, no one could catch him.
‘Gwendolyn was about to give birth when Beau Regard staggered up to the gate, neighing imperiously. He’d found his way home – a hundred miles – with a bullet in his side, his grey coat drenched in blood. When one of the grooms removed his bridle they found the letter for Gwendolyn, who managed to read it before she died giving birth to a son, little Francis.
‘Poor Beau Regard was distraught his master wasn’t there.’ Dora rolled her eyes in horror and dropped her voice. ‘Even when the bullet was dug out, he pined away and died a few days later. Meanwhile, poor Sir Francis escaped and stole home after dark (even though the house was being watched by Cromwell’s men) and was absolutely gutted to find both his wife and his beloved horse had died. So he buried them side by side in the churchyard.
‘Now I’ll show you their grave.’ Dora ushered Etta out into the churchyard, where a west wind was sending hundreds of gold willow leaves across the yellowing grass. They were greeted by an ecstatic Cadbury.
‘Here it is.’ Dora pointed to a flat moss-covered slab surrounded by a rusty iron fence entwined with brambles.
‘Rather unorthodox,’ mused Etta, peering at the almost in-decipherable lettering, ‘burying them together.’
‘Sir Francis owned the church. He could do what he liked,’ said Dora. ‘I expect they’ve got separate coffins, although a shaggy horse to hug on cold winter nights might be a comfort. And the willow saplings Sir Francis had planted were watered by his tears,’ she went on dramatically. ‘The big round pond on the edge of Marius’s land below your bungalow is rumoured to be salt water from the same tears. Whenever it overflows, little streams cascade down the hill to the River Fleet.’
‘That is so exciting,’ cried Etta. ‘Thank you, Dora.’
‘You can read all about it in a little booklet they sell in the village shop.’
‘But you have such an eye for detail.’ Etta ran back and put a couple of pounds into the collecting box. ‘This church is so beautifully kept.’
‘Painswick does the brass,’ said Dora, putting Cadbury on a lead as they walked back to the high street. ‘Have I told you about Painswick? Poor old duck’s dying of heartbreak over Hengist Brett-Taylor, our glorious ex-headmaster at Bagley Hall. She was his PA and when he went inside for some pathetically small crime she couldn’t stand working there without him so she retired here on an excellent pension, but she’s sad and lonely and misses the rhythms of school life. I’m sure the reason she allowed me to camp out at Ivy Cottage is so she can rabbit on about Hengist and the old days. I must rush back there and tart up before I meet Paris.’
Etta returned to her shade-tolerant plants, ashamed to be cast down by such a sense of loss. Poor Miss Painswick. Poor Sir Francis and Lady Gwendolyn, but at least those two had known reciprocated love, however briefly. As did Dora, running off in a glow to meet Paris.
Etta had loved Sampson so passionately at the beginning, but realized he’d never loved her except in a violently possessive way. All she felt now was guilt that she didn’t miss him, but she was conscious all the time of his disapproval, when she left the soap in the basin or ate a second piece of cake, or wrote her name in a steamed-up window.
But as she got home to the bungalow, she was greeted by Gwenny Pocock mewing round her feet, and the telephone ringing.
‘Joyce Painswick here,’ said a prim voice.
‘What a coincidence, I’ve just been admiring your
wonderful brass in the church.’
‘Midsomer Murders is on tomorrow evening. I wondered if you’d like to come and have supper.’
‘How lovely!’ Etta perked up immediately. ‘I’ll bring a bottle. I might even bring two.’
19
Etta was excited and astounded at the end of November to receive an invitation to a drinks party at Willowwood Hall – so flattering when Alban Travis-Lock had only met her briefly in the Fox.
‘Sorry I haven’t called,’ Ione Travis-Lock had scribbled on the back. ‘Do hope you can make it.’
Romy and Martin were most put out to discover Etta had been invited as well as themselves. Who would babysit?
‘I will,’ announced their ravishing niece Trixie, who’d returned to Willowwood for a few days ostensibly to revise for exams.
‘I don’t see enough of my dear little cousins,’ she added, smiling sweetly at a disapproving but hopelessly susceptible Uncle Martin. ‘I need Dad to write my coursework and I’m going to take Granny shopping to buy her a fuck-off dress.’
‘Don’t be obnoxious,’ spluttered Romy. ‘Your grandmother is still in mourning.’
‘Mourning becomes Electra,’ mocked Trixie. ‘Then I’ll find Granny a fuck-off black dress. Dora said Granny had them all drooling in the Fox the other day.’
Fleeing to the kitchen, Etta reflected that Trixie must have inherited her fearless genes from Sampson.
Everyone in Willowwood was unbelievably flattered to be asked to the Travis-Locks’ ‘do’, as Debbie Cunliffe called it, until they discovered that absolutely everyone had been invited, even Craig Green, the village leftie, and Pocock, who loathed Craig. Martin, who had sacked Pocock, would have to face him.
Also invited were Old Mrs Malmesbury, who wasn’t on speaking terms with Farmer Fred because he was threatening to cull the badgers. His land lay to the east, between that of Marius and Harvey-Holden, who were also not speaking to each other or to Farmer Fred because he was always starting up noisy machinery when their stable lads rode out on nervous young horses. Mrs Travis-Lock’s parties were rather like the tapestry in the Cluny Museum in Paris, where the lion lies down with the lamb and the greyhound with the rabbit, and when warring factions, if not suspending battle altogether, agree to a temporary truce.
As Dora, who was waitressing, pointed out, ‘The Major and Direct Debbie, who can’t stand Ione, have cancelled a golfing weekend in Spain, your daughter Carrie is coming back from a conference in Tokyo and the Little Boltons, the porn billionaire and his ghastly chav wife, have booked into the five-star Callendar Hotel for the weekend because Primrose Mansions won’t be finished for another twenty years. It’ll be Playboy Callendar Hotel if Cindy has her way.’
All the women intended to dress up to the nines, thanks to a rumour that Valent Edwards and Bonny Richards had been invited because Mrs Travis-Lock wanted to shoot down Valent’s plans for a runway. Joey had already told Etta they were on Valent’s yacht in the Caribbean. Seth Bainton and Corinna had been asked but hadn’t bothered to reply.
‘Damn rude,’ said Ione Travis-Lock.
Etta would have been terribly nervous if Woody and Joey hadn’t been invited and Dora hadn’t said they’d look after her. Wicked as her word, Trixie had found Etta a sassy black taffeta dress, tight-fitting and with frills at the neck, and then lied that she’d bought it for a tenner from a charity shop.
‘I forgot to get one,’ Trixie replied airily when an unbelieving Romy demanded to see the bill.
Trixie, in league with Dora, also gave Etta a soft grey eye-shadow, a glittering pink lipstick called Purr and a beautiful floral scent called For Her, and persuaded Etta to have her hair cut and highlighted by Janice, the wife of Jase the farrier, who worked part-time in the village shop.
The result was gratifying. As it was pouring with rain, Woody gave Etta and Dora a lift in his white van which said ‘Stump Grinding Assessment’ on the side.
‘You look awesome, Etta,’ said Dora in amazement, ‘and that is a cool dress. And as you’re going to an even cooler house, Mrs T-L doesn’t believe in central heating, you’d better bring a shawl.’
‘You look great,’ agreed Woody. ‘Like a film star.’
‘You mustn’t get your lovely new hair wet,’ added Dora, nearly spiking out Etta’s eye with a red umbrella.
On the way they stopped at Ivy Cottage to pick up Joyce Painswick, resplendent in a crimson tent, who had become a firm friend after she and Etta shared macaroni cheese, watched Midsomer Murders together and admired endless photographs of Hengist Brett-Taylor.
It took quite a lot of tugging to get Painswick into the cab of Woody’s van.
‘Good thing you and I and particularly Woody have small bottoms,’ whispered Dora.
As they splashed and jolted up the narrow lane that was pitted with craters by the endless rebuilding of Badger’s Court, Woody said, ‘Mrs T-L will bawl us out for not walking.’
‘She can’t, we’re lift-sharing,’ said Dora, adding dramatically, ‘and I must warn you all not to think you’ve strayed into I’m A Celebrity when you go into the downstairs loo and find billions of worms heaving in a dark vat. This is Mrs T-L’s wormery, which devours household waste and turns it into liquid fertilizer.’
Among the parked cars they saw Joey’s filthy van, with ‘I wish my wife was as dirty as this’ written on the side.
‘Mop Idol’s not dirty,’ protested Dora. ‘Poor thing cleans for Mrs T-L and according to Joey has to brush and wash up everything because Mrs T-L thinks Dysons and dishwashers and tumble dryers use too much energy.’
Inside, the party was well under way. Joey and Chris from the Fox were in the kitchen tarting up sweet cider with dark ale and spices in vast saucepans. Mop Idol, comely and slim despite four children, was having her bottom pinched as she took round big jugs of the stuff.
Dora was soon handing round lentil bake.
‘That’s Toby and Phoebe Weatherall from Wild Rose Cottage,’ she hissed, pointing out a chinless pink-and-white-faced young man in a dark suit and a very pretty girl looking the picture of innocence in a tartan gym tunic with a white collar and with her long mousy hair held back by an Alice band.
‘Toby’s pushing round the drink because he’s Mrs T-L’s nephew and they’ve been invited to kitchen sups later,’ went on Dora. ‘They’ve only been married a year and are still unpacking their wedding presents. Everyone thinks they’re an awfully sweet couple because they’re younger than anyone in the village except children, so they’re asked everywhere. Toby works for your daughter, Carrie. Phoebe’s a terrible freeloader. Freebie, I call her.’
Alban Travis-Lock, in a decrepit dark blue smoking jacket and no tie (which wrong-footed most of the men, who’d been made to wear ties by their wives), had surreptitiously kept whisky, which could be mistaken for mulled cider, aside for Toby and Alan, his drinking chums at the Fox.
As Woody was promptly hijacked by Ione to put more logs on the fire and Painswick, in her role of junior church flower arranger, to hand round courgette and butternut squash tart, Etta was abandoned in a yelling throng, all looking round for Bonny and Valent.
Willowwood Hall, long and low-beamed with narrow windows, had many small downstairs rooms in which to play Hunt the Hostess.
The walls were covered with landscapes needing a clean and ill-lit family portraits which looked down on lots of Middle Eastern memorabilia – sculptures of Anubis, Isis and Osiris and a bronze of Gordon of Khartoum – picked up during Alban’s Foreign Office days.
Anxious to see the garden, Etta could only make out lichened sculptures and sweeping lawns frilled with white cyclamen. Inside, spectacular orchids, jasmine, stephanotis and gardenia wafted their sweet seductive scents, but the ceilings were so low the men had to bend over and fall down cleavages to hear anything, and the rooms were too dimly lit to allow much lip-reading.
Having just washed her hair and filled her ears with water, Etta was depressed she really was going deaf, but thrille
d when she suddenly noticed a portrait of the eighth Sir Francis Framlingham astride a prancing, even more curly-maned and knowing Beau Regard; and there was a lovely oil of golden-haired Gwendolyn.
Turning, she found Alban Travis-Lock looking at her in admiration.
‘No wonder Sir Francis Framlingham planted so many willows in Gwendolyn’s memory,’ said Etta.
Leading her into a library, which contained every book in the world on willows, Alban pointed to a picture of Beau Regard appearing ghostly and bloodstained through the trees.
‘Oh,’ gasped Etta, ‘have you ever seen his ghost?’
‘Only on his way home from the Fox,’ quipped Alan, popping his head round the door. ‘Sorry we’re late, Carrie’s on her way. Is it true Bonny and Valent are coming? I hear he’s bought a yacht bigger than the QE2. He’s not? Probably terrified Ione’s going to lecture him on his carbon footprint. Hello, darling,’ he kissed Etta, ‘you look gorgeous …’
‘Doesn’t she,’ brayed Alban.
Alan was wearing a red silk tie covered with stalking green panthers – the sort of Tie Rack tie that women give their lovers as goodbye presents on Paddington station.
Oh goodness, I hope he’s not going to leave Carrie, thought Etta, I’d miss him so much.
‘I need a huge drink,’ said Alan.
As they went back into the drawing room, Etta was taken aside by Major Cunliffe, who was wearing a maroon bow tie to match his complexion. He apologized for grassing her up after their session at the Fox.
‘Most enjoyable occasion, let me replenish your glass. I probably reported back a little too enthusiastically to my better half on a lovely new neighbour. She gets a tad jealous. Hope you didn’t get into trouble.’
‘Oh no, no,’ lied Etta.
The Major went on to say how fulfilled he was by the retirement he had ‘taken early’ because the personal touch had gone out of banking. He was just waxing lyrical about his rain gauge and how many millimetres of water there had been that month, when his wife Debbie, like a bull mastiff in drag, bore down on them.