‘It’s me, Evelyn. If Oscar is there that’s fine, I wanted to catch him, too.’
Liberty opened the door and Evelyn stomped in, depositing little puddles of slush from her flat-heeled sheepskin boots onto the blue carpet. ‘Now you’re always complaining you have no purpose in life, well you can shovel compost. I’m going away for a week or two. I’ve brought a list of things I’d like you to do for me. If you don’t mind,’ she added as an afterthought.
Oscar came downstairs, a pink bath towel wrapped round his waist.
God he was beautiful, Liberty thought, middle-aged but beautiful. A grin grabbed at the corner of her mouth.
‘Liberty stop leering at Oscar!’ Evelyn snapped. ‘Here’s the list.’ She handed Liberty a grubby piece of paper covered in huge, spindly writing lurching across the page.
‘Come and sit down.’ Liberty gesticulated towards the sitting-room.
‘Why this sudden departure?’ Oscar asked.
Evelyn glared at him. ‘You, dear boy, have no business asking questions dressed like that. Anyway, I’ve simply decided to pay a visit to my friend Mary Cotterell in Yorkshire.’
Oscar gave her a long look.
‘All right,’ Evelyn capitulated. ‘I thought it might be a good idea to lie low for a bit.’ She inspected the muddy tip of her boot.
‘Evelyn, what have you done?’ Liberty asked.
Evelyn looked up from her inspection of the boots. ‘I’ve only done what any self-respecting, upright individual would do in my—’
‘What have you done, Evelyn?’ Oscar sat down on the sofa facing Evelyn, who looked small in the generous armchair.
‘I’ve reported Campbell for illegal use of pesticides—’
‘Bloody hell!’ Oscar threw his hands in the air before having to grab the towel which fell open at the hip.
‘—and old Andrew Sanderson for supplying them.’ Evelyn looked carefully past the sofa and across to an oil-painting of a ship. ‘Well I mean, the Ministry of Ag sent down an inspector to check on the farming practices in the area and nothing came of it. Someone had to act.’ When there was no reply she went on, ‘I don’t suppose you two are aware that the common bumblebee might be extinct before the millennium.’ Her chins wobbled with outrage. ‘Yes, extinct.’
Oscar shook his head slowly. Liberty asked herself if she was wholly in favour of Evelyn’s actions this time.
Looking from one to the other of them, Evelyn said, ‘Well I must be off. Got an early start tomorrow.’ She hoisted herself up from the armchair.
As soon as she had gone, Oscar hurried upstairs to dress. Five minutes later he, too, was gone, and the house seemed to have grown. Empty room led into empty room, no noise, not much light. With a sigh, Liberty went into the kitchen and dished herself up a large bowl of chocolate fudge ice-cream. She took the bowl back to bed with her; as a sex substitute it would do, but as a conversationalist, she thought, it was lousy.
Village Diary
Tollymead: The Tollymead Christmas Bazaar and Art Exhibition raised the astounding amount of £2,354.50p, to be divided between the Church Fabric Fund and the Minibus Fund.
Anne Havesham returned from Christmas in New England topped up with new ideas for her planned television series, ‘Atlantic Cousins’.
‘My home town, Maryville, is not unlike Tollymead,’ she told me. ‘It’s got the same old-fashioned friendliness and neighbourliness. I miss the store, though. It’s housed in a brown clapperboard house and stocks everything from Salsa to needles and thread on its wooden shelves.
‘Of course a store like that is not only a cosy and convenient place to get one’s groceries, but a meeting place as well. As it says on a sign inside the Maryville store, “People who shop together, talk together”.’
‘If I see that woman mentioned once more I’ll cancel my subscription to that damn paper,’ Nancy said out loud as she turned the page of the Tribune. She had returned from shopping too exhausted to bother unpacking the groceries. A cup of tea and a rest first she had decided, but now, as she flitted through the pages of the paper, she felt only irritation. They all missed the old shop in Tollymead. Ms Havesham had been making eyes at Andrew too, she was sure of it, you just had to look at his smug expression when the woman’s name came up. She drained the mug of tea and got to her feet.
‘Well, he has no money,’ she said. ‘Not a bean.’ Picking up the carrier bag closest to her, she thought grimly that the way things were going at least there wasn’t such a mountain of stuff to put away. She brought the tins of crushed tomatoes and the tins of tuna fish into the larder and placed them on different shelves, one for the tomatoes, another for the fish. Nancy loved her large, old-fashioned larder with its papered shelves and cold marble slab; it was one of the things that had made her fall for the house. She thanked God every day that they did not have a mortgage. Andrew had paid it off during the years since the children left school. He would do anything to save the business, but he knew better than to try to persuade her to agree to selling the house. The other day, though, they had agreed to sell the half-acre of paddock at the bottom of the garden. She did not mind that so much. They had had planning permission to build on it since the days when Andrew’s mother had talked of moving close to her dear boy. Mrs Sanderson had died before her plans came to fruition, but the planning permission for a two-bedroom bungalow with loft space and a single car porch remained.
Nancy reached for a packet of Earl Grey tea and her eyes fell on the octagonal boxes of Turkish Delight and Chinese figs and the net bags of pecans and hazel-nuts. It had all been a waste, she thought, and wiped a tear from her eye with an angry gesture; no-one would eat them now. It was the first Christmas that neither of the children had been home. She could not blame Piers for going off to Greece with the new girlfriend they had never met, or Louise for going skiing with a group of friends. Christmas at home had always been subordinated to Andrew’s needs and desires, like everything else, and Andrew had never had much time for Christmas.
Nancy leant back against the larder door, hardly feeling the cold of the small, marble-shelved room. Oh, if she could do it all again, recreate the moments she had squandered: Christmas shopping with a small excited person at her side, a tiny hand thrust in hers, hiding presents, filling a stocking, decorating the house. She stood there and realized that she would gladly give ten years of her life for just one day back when her children were small and it was still within her power to make them happy; one day to do everything so very much better.
With a deep sigh she kicked off her new shoes that grabbed at her toes like crabs, before unpacking the rest of the bags. She paused by the replenished biscuit tin, picking it up and bringing it in with her to the sitting-room. She settled herself on the sofa and with a little sigh, curled her legs under her and picked out a chocolate Hobnob. She leant her head back, closing her eyes, filling her mouth with the taste of chocolate.
A loud snore made her open her eyes wide. She placed the tin on the floor and got up. Another snore led her into the study and to Andrew who lay, open-mouthed in his armchair, his lower lip sucked into his mouth with every noisy breath. The study smelt bad. She walked right up to him, not caring if she woke him or not. Bending over him, it was as she had thought: he’d been drinking. And it was only three o’clock. The first time this had happened she had pitied him and raged with him against the times and the people who were conspiring against him and the firm. But now she had had enough. His breath smelt permanently sour these days, and his face seemed coarse and foreign to her feelings. With longing so strong that it hurt, she remembered the soft flushed cheeks and wide smile of a small boy standing up in his cot, arms stretched towards her, and that baby’s breath as sweet as sugared tea, even first thing in the morning. What had been her response to all that love so freely given? ‘Chop chop, up we get. Now don’t be silly, there’ll be time for cuddles later but now Mummy’s got to get on. Chop chop, daddy is waiting, chop chop…’
She turned away f
rom the snoring Andrew and left the room, closing the door behind her.
She sat down, counting to ten and then as she had expected, the door opened again, letting out the bellow, ‘What the hell did you have to do that for?’
‘Do what Andrew?’ she called back, eyes closed.
‘You slammed that door deliberately, didn’t you? It’s all right for you, you can laze around in bed half the day but the rest of the world has to work.’
Her eyes still closed, Nancy could feel rather than see that he was coming into the room. Then she leapt up and stood before him. ‘It’s three o’clock, so don’t talk to me about working. Look at you, you’re not even sober. You disgust me.’
Andrew grabbed her arm and pushed his red face close, howling into hers, ‘So I disgust you do I? That’s not how it seemed the other night when you begged me to—’
‘No, Andrew please no.’ She put her hand across his mouth. ‘I’m sorry Andrew. I don’t know what got into me. I’m tired, that’s all. Come and sit down and I’ll make some fresh tea.’ She hurried out into the kitchen and by the time she returned with the tea Andrew was slumped on the sofa, his head in his hands.
Nancy kneeled in front of him, pouring out the tea. Handing the cup to him she whispered, ‘We’re losing everything else, we can’t lose each other.’
Andrew did not seem to hear her and she got up from the floor and sat down next to him. He turned and looked at her with bloodshot eyes. ‘They’re taking us to court. The bastards will fine us, I know they will, and we just can’t afford it. They’re out to close me down, do you hear. They’re making an example of us. It’s over. The blood, sweat and tears of three generations brought to nothing, and by me.’
Nancy watched the tears welling up in his eyes as he said, his voice breaking, ‘I’ve got nothing now. It’s all gone and whose fault is it? Eh? Whose fault is it?’
Nancy just shook her head.
‘It’s Evelyn. You know that, don’t you?’ Andrew went on. ‘Your friend Evelyn.’ With a grin that was almost a grimace he added, ‘I thought Campbell was going to take a shot-gun to her this morning.’
‘She’s away,’ Nancy said tonelessly. ‘When you told me this inspector was finally coming down I went to call on her but Liberty Turner, you know, the woman who lives next door, said she’d gone away to stay with a friend for a week or so.’ Nancy was not looking at Andrew as she spoke. She heard him snuffling and she heard, rather than saw, the shiver going through his massive chest, and she despised him. She felt it in every part of her, this contempt, as if some latent disease had finally taken hold of her. Was it for that blubbering, disintegrating figure she had sacrificed everything? Nancy’s world was falling apart and whose fault was that? Evelyn’s, that’s whose. Nancy felt cold all of a sudden, and her head ached. She got clumsily to her feet and went across to the drinks tray to pour herself some sherry.
Coming back from her friend Mary’s a week later Evelyn barely stopped to put her suitcase down before hurrying out into the garden. Late January was almost her favourite time of year, with the earth and the trees and shrubs barely containing the new life waiting to burst forth, and each morning like a birthday holding a new surprise.
‘You’re a lucky woman, Evelyn Brooke,’ she said to herself as she unlocked the back door. Two steps out and she stopped dead.
Next door, Liberty thought she heard the howl of a fox.
Twenty-five
Liberty stared out across the wasteland that had been Evelyn’s garden. Every perennial, every small shrub, every rare and beautiful plant, all shrivelled yellow and brown like late autumn leaves. It was as if a vampire had flitted from plant to plant, sucking the sap from each, leaving just the desiccated shell. She put her arm round Evelyn’s shoulders.
‘What on earth has happened?’
Evelyn did not answer. She kept staring out over the devastated garden.
Liberty knelt down stroking the grass as if it were the pelt of some dying animal.
‘I don’t know what’s happened,’ Evelyn said at last, her voice trembling. ‘I only know that it’s gone. The greenhouse too. My seedlings, all destroyed.’ And suddenly she sank to the ground by Liberty’s side, kneeling, and burying her face in her grubby, chubby hands, she wept.
‘Oh Evelyn, don’t, please don’t.’ Liberty put her arm round Evelyn’s hunched back. ‘Please don’t. Come with me inside. I’ll call Oscar.’
Evelyn swung round, looking at her. ‘Can’t you stop thinking about your fancy man for one minute?’ Then she clasped her hands over her mouth and turned away.
‘It’s all right,’ Liberty whispered. She managed to get Evelyn to stand up and walk with her back inside the house. She led her through into the kitchen, seating her at the table, before switching on the electric kettle.
‘What are you doing? I shouldn’t be in here,’ Evelyn levered herself out of the chair. ‘I have to go out there, why did you make me come inside?’ As Liberty took a step over to the phone, lifting the receiver to dial, Evelyn shrieked, ‘Who are you calling?’
‘I’m calling Oscar, but not because he is my, my fancy man, but because he’s your nephew and he loves you… as do I.’ Dialling the number of the Tribune, she looked sternly at Evelyn as if to stave off any further protest.
‘Nurture nurture, water water,’ Nancy chanted to herself as she pranced round her garden, a fanfare of smoky breath streaming from her lips, her bare feet glistening with melted frost. Every so often she would pause by a particularly healthy-looking shrub or plant and give it a good soaking from one of the two watering cans in her hands. ‘Nurture nurture, water water,’ she stood on tip-toe, dousing the clematis and passion-flower that climbed up the old brick wall. She stopped for a moment to watch the poisoned water trickle down on to the plants. ‘Have a little of Mr Andrew Sanderson’s life-removing mixture, and a bit more.’ She gave an extra splash to the evergreen leaves of the passion-flower. ‘What a brave little plant,’ she mumbled, ‘attempting to stay green through winter.’ She hurried on. ‘Lots to do, lots to do for Jack Frost and his trusty Speed Weed,’ she sang.
The next afternoon, when Andrew came back from work, Nancy was sitting in the armchair by the window, his armchair, her naked feet comfortably high on the footstool his mother had lovingly embroidered with roses and violets. She glanced up at him from her magazine, For Women Only.
‘Look what I’ve missed all these years,’ she said. She gave a last loving glance at the centre-fold picture of the dark-haired young man whose taut, muscular body glistened as if it had been rubbed with oil, before holding it up for Andrew to see.
Andrew seemed scarcely to have noticed her as he entered the room, heavy shoulders hunched, eyes down. Now he flinched as if Nancy had flicked the magazine in his face instead of just holding it up for him to look at. ‘What the hell is that?’ But his voice was expressionless.
‘I’m not surprised you have to ask,’ Nancy looked Andrew up and down appraisingly. ‘I mean looking at you both, one would hardly think you belonged to the same species.’
Andrew just kept staring straight at the picture, not really seeing it at all. ‘I don’t know what you’re on about,’ he said in the same even voice, ‘but I’ve just paid off my work force.’ His voice suddenly trembled. ‘I’ve just put on the street people who have been working for me all their adult life. There’s nothing left now.’ He gave a vague gesture with his hands before turning and walking out of the room. ‘Nothing left at all,’ Nancy heard him repeat as he disappeared from sight.
She sat back in the chair and continued flicking through the pages of the magazine. Five minutes later, she heard the anguished roar from the garden.
‘God what’s this? What’s happened?’
Nancy took one last look at the centre-fold, turning it this way and that, before putting the magazine away and getting up from the chair. She wandered across to the french windows, looking out. It was a garden made of straw, she thought. Andrew stood right outside an
d as he turned round she gave him a little wave, pretending not to notice his shouted questions and furious gesticulating.
‘To build Jerusalem…’ she sang to herself like she had when she was little and spoken to by her father… ‘Really Nancy, there are times when I just don’t know you. Tell me child, what gets in to you?’
‘… on England’s…’ Nancy moved away from the french windows, her hands still clasped over her ears. ‘… green and pleasant land.’ It was not many minutes, maybe about five again, Nancy calculated, until Andrew steamed back into the sitting-room.
‘Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the flesh of an Englishman,’ Nancy said. And she did smell him. She had never told Andrew, but the truth was, he always had been smelly. His feet smelt and his breath smelt and the suits he never allowed her to take to the cleaner often enough, they smelt too. Maybe she should have told him about it earlier. She decided to tell him now. ‘You smell. I can smell your feet from here.’
‘What the hell has got into you? Have you gone quite mad? You’ve been home all day. You must have seen what’s happened out there.’ Suddenly his voice rose to a shout. ‘Have you not seen?’
Nancy joined Andrew by the window. ‘You mean that?’ She lifted a lazy hand, pointing to the devastation outside. ‘I did that. Yesterday actually. Of course you wouldn’t have noticed this morning. It was dark when you left. Anyway, it takes a little time to work, but you know that.’ She felt tired all of a sudden and, not bothering to suppress the yawn, she said, ‘I think I’ll go and lie down.’
Andrew barred her way, his hand raised, then he let it drop to his side, stepping back to let her pass.
‘Middle-class country dwellers have souls too, souls and all the problems they bring.’ Wasn’t that what Liberty Turner had said to him once, Ted Brain thought as he drove along River Lane towards Evelyn Brooke’s house. Well he had not cared much whether they did or not, creating instead a worthy cause from a child’s lies. Not only that, he had fallen in love. He still could not bear to dwell on the afternoon when he had been exposed, not only to himself but to everyone else, as a credulous fool. Just the memory of the expression on the policeman’s face, when they had come to interview him after Anita’s return home, made him unable to meet his own gaze in the mirror.
A Rival Creation Page 21