by Mary Nichols
‘It was meant to be a surprise. I’ve bought an acre from Lady Quarenton, on the corner by Mill Road.’
‘Does that mean you don’t want the farmhouse after all?’
‘I never said I didn’t want it, simply that I didn’t want to live in it. But if you’re determined not to sell, why not let it? The rent would come in useful.’
‘But what about Virginia?’
‘There’s this house,’ he said. ‘Shall we give it to her when we move out, hand the deeds over? Make it a final settlement. It will leave you to do what you like with the farmhouse.’
‘Do you think she’d agree?’
‘Leave her to me. I’ll go up and see her after work tomorrow. I think I can persuade her it’s a good idea.’
She took the drum away from Nicholas. ‘Then do it, please, and put the sale of the extra land in hand. Use the money any way you like.’
He left his chair to bend over and kiss her. ‘Thank you, darling. It couldn’t have come at a better time.’
Virginia was in the stable grooming her horse when George arrived. She was wearing jodhpurs and a pullover that looked as though it might have been one of John’s. It’s sloppiness enhanced, rather than detracted, from her slim figure. He took her in his arms and kissed her, then stepped back to hold her at arm’s length. ‘God, you’re beautiful.’
She laughed. ‘In this old thing?’
‘We can soon remedy that.’ He pulled the jumper over her head and threw it over the side of the stall before pulling the strap of her brassiere down so that he could kiss her breasts, one by one, licking his tongue round the nipple and nipping them with his teeth when they rose in response. She pulled his shirt out of his trousers, undid the fly and pushed her hand inside. Oh, he was so hard, so big, so exciting, everything she could wish for and she wanted him. How she wanted him!
It had begun as a simple interest in her welfare after John died, then a mutual sharing of problems, and after that it had escalated into something far more important. He was dynamic, purposeful, successful, handsome in a rugged way, and very sexy. Did Barbara know that? Virginia doubted it.
‘God, George, I need you. I need you right now.’
‘Me too.’ He took her hand and pulled her towards the stairs to the hayloft, where they undressed each other in a frenzy of impatience. Nude she was like a goddess; he couldn’t see enough of her lithe body, still youthful and untouched by ugly stretch marks. Two or three times a week for the last six months, he had feasted his eyes on it, stroked it, kissed it, entered it. And she loved it. Loved him, she told him time after time, crying out when she climaxed, gripping him with her thighs, holding onto him, as if she were drowning. She revelled in it, in everything they did, the strange places they found to indulge in sexual fantasies, the risks they took.
‘George, how long can we keep this up?’ she asked, some time later, when they were lying side by side, with their bodies glowing and the smell of straw and sex in their nostrils.
‘For ever, I hope.’
‘You’re simply sticking your head in the sand. Barbara will find out sooner or later.’
‘Why should she? I make no secret of the fact that I take an interest in your affairs. Which is why I’m supposed to be here. She wants to sell the land and let the farmhouse. I’m supposed to find out how you feel about moving into something smaller.’
‘You know how I feel about it, George.’ She rolled over and propped herself on her elbow to look at him. ‘I want to get out of here. It’s haunted by John and his first wife. Everywhere I look I see them, every time I move even the smallest ornament, I imagine them standing over me, disapproving. To me it represents a year or two of happiness and endless months of horror watching him die.’
‘I’m going to build us a bigger house, so how do you like the idea of moving into the one we’re in now? You would own it outright which is more than you do the farm.’
‘It’s OK by me, so long as we can still be together.’
‘Then, I’ll put it in hand.’ He reached for his clothes, picked the straw out of them and dressed. ‘I’d better be going.’ He bent over to kiss her. ‘See you soon. There’ll be lots of legitimate reasons for me to come now.’ He laughed. ‘Business reasons.’
She stayed where she was for several minutes after he had gone, then slowly dressed herself and went down to finish grooming her horse.
Things didn’t improve on the business front: the economy lurched from one crisis to another. Bankruptcies were at an all-time high, leading to massive unemployment. Barbara’s sympathies were all with the men who were out of work and she felt guilty that she had so much, that her children were plump and well clothed, that George seemed to be able to maintain his lifestyle with barely a hiccough. ‘I work damned hard for it,’ he told her, more than once. She forbore to remind him of the money that had come from the sale of the land belonging to the farm. He was touchy about that, even though it had been his salvation.
They moved into their new home in the spring of 1926. George christened it The Chestnuts because a couple of the old trees were included in the garden. The house was large and modern with every possible labour-saving device built into the kitchen, including a refrigerator. There were four bedrooms and a luxurious bathroom. Barbara had enjoyed furnishing it, though George had haggled over every single item, bullying the poor shopkeepers, who were struggling as much as he was, into huge discounts. And though she was glad to leave their first house, which had always been associated in her mind with sharp practice, if not downright dishonesty, she wished he hadn’t used so much of the proceeds from the sale of the land to build it; the plot alone must have cost a fortune. She had intended the money to help with the business, not for her own comfort.
He had an answer to that, as he had for everything. ‘It proves George Kennett is not only a survivor but a winner,’ he told her when she mentioned it one morning at breakfast, the only time of day they had more than two minutes together. ‘If he can build a house like this in the middle of a recession, then there must be something special about his business acumen. Besides, it kept the workforce busy when I might have had to lay some of them off. What sort of message would that have sent out, do you suppose?’
‘Lay them off? Things aren’t that bad, surely?’
‘They will be if the miners have their way. The country relies on coal for almost everything. If my customers suffer, then I suffer.’
Barbara hardly blamed the miners. They had a dreadful job to do, tunnelling away in semi-darkness under the ground, many in seams so poor, they had to dig the coal out lying on their bellies, getting ill with lung troubles and failing eyesight. The trigger that caused the unrest was the lifting of subsidies, which left the mine owners struggling and they demanded wage cuts from their employees.
‘Four pounds a week, I ask you!’ George said, tapping the newspaper report he had been reading. ‘That’s more than I pay my skilled workers. Holding the country to ransom, that’s what they’re doing. In the old days—’
‘They sent women and children down the mines,’ she said, spooning boiled egg into Nick’s mouth. ‘It took a lot of hard work to put an end to that.’
‘Don’t be silly, there’s no comparison.’
It was always the same: whenever she tried to voice an opinion counter to his own, he dismissed it, as if she had no brain to think for herself. She must be the little woman, the homemaker, a shadow of her husband. Almost in defiance, she started painting again, setting up her easel and paints in the spare bedroom and working away in the lonely evenings after the children had been put to bed. It was a large canvas of a girl sitting on a rock gazing out to sea. She didn’t know why she chose that theme, but it seemed to suit her mood.
In the event, remembering how they had let the miners down the last time, the Trades Union Congress called out the dockers and the transport, iron and steel, gas and electricity workers and a general strike began on the third of May. Uncollected rubbish began to pile up in
the streets, commuters couldn’t get to work, raw materials weren’t getting through to factories and the threat of food shortages sent some people scurrying to the shops to buy up things like sugar, tea and coffee in spite of government warnings not to do so. And there were long queues at all the petrol stations. The army and navy were called in to move goods, and volunteers suddenly appeared prepared to drive trucks, trains and trams, and man the telephone exchanges. People in the rural communities fetched out long disused pony traps and roamed the woods for fuel.
‘It’s almost impossible to get about,’ Penny told Barbara in one of her periodic telephone calls. ‘What with amateurs driving trams and buses and car owners volunteering to take people to work, London is one big traffic jam. And picketing strikers are throwing stones and slashing tyres. Simon got a gash on his face from a half brick. He was only doing his bit, driving a tram. He came through the war without a scratch and now he’ll have a scar on his face.’
Barbara pictured Simon’s unblemished handsome face and her heart gave a sickening lurch to think of it being disfigured. ‘Is it very bad?’
‘You know Simon. He’s making a joke of it, as usual: says it will make him even more attractive to the ladies and they won’t look sideways at him anymore because he has no war wounds to show he did his bit.’
‘Tell him I’m sorry.’ She meant more than just sorry he had been injured, but sorry for everything else, for the unnecessary guilt he seemed to carry around with him, for the fact that she had used him for comfort when her father died and had none to offer in return, for the feelings she still had for him, feelings which seemed to have survived her marriage and which she could never speak of.
‘I will. How is it with you?’
‘Apart from the fact we can’t travel on public transport and have to be careful about using coal, not much is different.’
‘How’s the new house?’
‘It’s fine. I’m just about straight. You’ll have to come and visit. I haven’t seen you for ages.’
‘I will as soon as I’ve got a day to spare. I’m busy filming at Cricklewood, or I would be if everything had not ground to a halt over this strike.’
‘Perhaps it won’t last long.’
She was right. The general strike collapsed after only nine days, though the miners stayed out until August when hunger forced them back to work. Some of the smaller mine owners had gone out of business and there were no jobs to go back to. They left their homes and drifted south looking for work.
Charities were set up to help not only the miners, but others hit by unemployment, and Barbara volunteered her services to an organisation set up in Melsham to help unemployed men and their families. Alison was at school and Elizabeth was happy to look after Nick.
Mrs Gregory, who was its driving force, was a woman of enormous proportions, very efficient but with a heart of gold, who put Barbara to work making soup in a kitchen set up in an empty shop. By the time the soup was ready, there was a long queue of ragged, half-starved applicants. Barbara had known there were poor people, struggling to get by, but she was appalled to think that in a comparatively affluent place like Melsham, there were men in rags and children without shoes.
Later she took her turn manning a clothes store, sorting and ironing donated garments, sewing on buttons, ranging shoes in pairs, and putting clothing too worn and dirty to be passed on into bags for the rag-and-bone man. From not having enough to do, she now didn’t have a moment to spare. She found herself with a new circle of friends: colleagues in the charity including Lady Quarenton who worked as tirelessly as anyone. She ceased to worry what George was up to every minute of the day, and because there was always something going on, some humorous or sad tale to tell, she became a more interesting person in herself. It didn’t happen overnight: she had her difficult days when nothing seemed to go right, days when she wished she had time to have her hair done, when it was an awful rush to get to the school by four. But on the whole she began to enjoy life again.
George viewed this new Barbara with tolerant amusement. It kept her off his back and let him get on with his work without having her forever peering over his shoulder, trying to catch him out oiling wheels, not to mention being able to see Virginia whenever he liked. Virginia had moved into their old house and the farmhouse was let to an American colonel who had come over during the war and liked England so much he had married an English girl and stayed. Things were on the up and George intended to stand for Melsham Town Council in the forthcoming local elections. It was easier to control what was happening in the town from the inside, instead of having to lobby for everything he wanted.
Barbara was busy on the picture she was calling Girl on a Rock the evening he was elected with a majority of a hundred and fifty. It was Virginia who was photographed standing behind him on the rostrum, though in his acceptance speech, he was at pains to say his wife had supported him throughout and would have been with them that night but their small daughter had a tummy bug and needed her mummy, which left Barbara fielding solicitous enquiries for several days afterwards.
It meant he had another excuse for not being at home in the evenings. Council meetings were notorious for going on and on and he was duty-bound to stay to the end. ‘Most of it’s waffle,’ he told Barbara. ‘Some of them have no idea how to come to the point, but I have to listen. In the middle of the dross, there might be something worth listening to. And of course, I have a contribution to make. Quite an important one, as it happens.’
‘I’m sure, you have,’ she murmured, folding the ironing which had been airing on the clothes horse. He had been a great deal more cheerful of late, possibly because he had got his own way – or most of it – over the sale of the land and his election, but was he being unfaithful? The signs were still there, though she tried not to think of it, tried not to wonder who it might be. His secretary? Someone he had met at work? When these soul-destroying thoughts invaded her mind, she deliberately pushed them from her, refused to listen to herself, kept herself busy painting in the long, lonely evenings when the children slept soundly and the house was quiet.
Because of the children she couldn’t go with George when he went on a business visit to Paris with a combined delegation from county council and Melsham Town Council, though she knew some wives were going, paid for by their husbands. She helped him pack in a flurry of last-minute instructions, watched as he kissed the children goodbye and stood on the step with them, waving as the car went off down the drive to the station. Then she turned back indoors with a sigh that was almost one of relief.
Chapter Six
George smiled at Virginia across the hotel lounge and nodded imperceptibly towards the lifts. She smiled back and mouthed, ‘Don’t be long,’ and then drifted off to the reception desk to pick up her room key.
The discussions officially broke up at six, though some of the delegates planned to continue informally after dinner, and though George would have infinitely preferred to spend the evening with Virginia, he had elected to remain. There were still two sizeable sections of the Melsham Industrial Park not yet developed and he was determined to tie at least one French engineering company down to investing in Britain, and Melsham in particular. He was representing Melsham Town Council, of course, not Kennett’s, but if there was anything in it for him personally, he meant to be in a position to take advantage of that too.
He sat back in his chair and lit a cigar, watching Virginia’s sinuous figure in its black jersey dress as she stepped into the lift and was carried upwards. He had used his influence to get her a job in the office of the county council’s chief executive the year before and it had turned out very well. She had quickly learnt council procedure, how to set up meetings and agendas, write notes and minutes, to liaise with other departments and keep everyone sweet. Arnold Bulliman, a crusty old relic nearing retirement, was already finding her indispensable and he hadn’t stopped to consider that others, more senior, might feel put out that she had been given a place with the d
elegation so soon after taking up her post. She was young and beautiful and she always seemed to have a special smile for him which made him go weak at the knees. It amused George. ‘I just hope you can keep him out of your bed,’ he had said, just before they left England.
She may have been able to keep the chief executive out of her bed, but not George. He was in it every night. They had to be very careful, of course, very discreet, pretending to have no more than family connections. During the day they kept their distance and all communication was on a strictly business footing. There was the odd passed note and the veiled message left with the desk clerk, all very dangerous, very exciting, heightening the rapture of their lovemaking, which was thoroughly abandoned.
On their last night he sat on the edge of the bed, to smoke a cigarette and telephone Barbara, while behind him, Virginia, nude and shining, her blonde hair spread about her shoulders, was marching her fingers down his back to his buttocks and stirring him up again. ‘What’s that? No, of course there’s no one here. I’m in my room. The line’s bad, lots of interference.’ He jerked his elbow into Virginia to silence her giggling. ‘I’ll be home tomorrow, but it might be late, so don’t wait up for me. Kiss the children for me. Bye now.’
‘Oh, God, George, I wish we weren’t going home tomorrow, ‘ Virginia said when he rang off. ‘I want to keep you for ever.’
‘You don’t wish it any more than I do, sweetheart.’
‘Then why don’t we stop all this hole-and-corner stuff and come out into the open, be together?’
He smiled, though what she suggested was out of the question. He could not jeopardise all he had worked for, his standing in the community, his affluence, his reputation, for the sake of an affair, however pleasurable. ‘Darling, one day perhaps we will, but you know how things are…’
‘Yes, I know how things are. I am condemned to the role of the other woman, the secret love…’
‘But that’s what’s so good about it, my sweet. You are my secret love. Always.’