Village Fortunes (Turnham Malpas 17)

by Shaw, Rebecca

  ‘I see. A conspiracy of silence then.’ Chris looked from one to the other of them, turned away and left, but in a second he was back as though expecting to learn something more when he caught them unawares. But they’d not spoken at all. ‘I’ll have some jelly babies for Charles please, got to have something to tempt him into submission with.’ He paid and then finally left, giving them a long penetrating look before he closed the door.

  As it turned out, Jimbo had arrived at the Big House to see Chris, and Chris was in so he never got to the store when it was only the casuals in charge.

  Both Johnny and Alice were in too. Alice told him that Chris was in his room reading, but Jimbo guessed maybe that was a cover and in reality Chris was more likely sleeping.

  ‘Well, I need to see him rather urgently. Shall we disturb him or shall I sit here and wait?’

  ‘It sounds serious, Jimbo.’ Johnny got to his feet, aware Jimbo appeared to have something unpleasant to impart to Chris.

  ‘Oh, it’s serious, yes.’

  ‘I’ll go get him then. Would you like to use my study?’

  ‘Yes, I would. Thanks.’ Seated in Craddock Fitch’s old study brought back lots of memories for Jimbo, and he allowed himself a wry smile as he remembered the challenges he and Craddock had often faced in here. But this challenge was the biggest ever.

  He heard footsteps and then in came Chris. He went straight round to what was now Johnny’s chair, seated himself comfortably, and said, ‘Am I to be told the secret of the entire Charter-Plackett family avoiding me this last couple of days? I hope so, as it’s all getting very mysterious.’

  ‘There’s no mystery at all. We’ve been otherwise occupied.’

  ‘Right. It’s still mysterious.’ Chris lit a cigarette while he waited for Jimbo’s explanation.

  If ever there was a man in charge of himself, utterly confident that nothing he could be told would faze him, it was Christopher Templeton at this moment, and Jimbo felt an element of repugnance when he looked at Chris. Jimbo knew that if Chris was the last man on earth he would not allow him to marry his daughter, not even for the survival of the whole human race. ‘Remember Frances?’

  Chris smiled. ‘Of course. How could I forget her? She’s a lovely, fun-loving, exciting, charming, wonderful person, and you should be proud to have her as a daughter.’

  Jimbo agreed. ‘We are very proud of her. After what she’s gone through this last twenty-four hours we know she’s a strong, wonderful person.’

  Not a flicker of curiosity crossed Chris’s face.

  ‘You see, Chris, she’s suffered,’ Jimbo paused to take a deep breath, ‘a miscarriage. She’s home now, from hospital, in bed resting. It’s been a terrible shock for us and for her.’ Jimbo waited for a reply.

  Chris knocked some ash from his cigarette into his cupped hand. ‘And?’

  ‘And?’ Jimbo leapt to his feet, placed his hands on the desk, leaned forwards and through gritted teeth, said, ‘It’s your baby, I thought you might be interested to know what’s happened. We are deeply grieved for the loss of the baby and for what Fran has gone through.’ Jimbo raised his voice to make sure Chris understood how he felt. ‘Have you no conscience, man? She believed in you. What are you? Twelve years older than she is, an experienced man of the world and you have no conscience when you knew she was a virgin, knew she was all those years younger than you, when you swept her off her feet with the glamour of your position, your wealth, your charm, your good looks. You knew all of that, and still you didn’t take enough care to make sure she didn’t get pregnant?’

  Chris stood up, stubbed out his cigarette, put his lighter back in his pocket, faced Jimbo with a face utterly under control, and said, ‘She knows what makes the world tick and believe me she was willing. Very willing.’

  Jimbo blanched.

  Chris almost began to smile and in that split second Jimbo sensed this wasn’t the first time Chris had faced an irate father.

  ‘C’est la vie, Jimbo. C’est la vie!’ Chris said

  Perhaps if he hadn’t said it in French, Jimbo might not have hit him quite so hard. But the fact that he dismissed the idea of Fran’s vulnerability in French somehow made Fran appear cheap, and Jimbo wasn’t having that.

  He punched Chris on the chin with an almighty blow that much to Jimbo’s surprise knocked Chris out cold. He fell between the desk chair and the fireplace, catching the side of his head on one of the brass spikes of the ornate Victorian fireguard as he collapsed.

  ‘My God! I’ve killed him!’ Jimbo prodded a toe at Chris’s leg and Chris responded with a slight squirm. So he wasn’t dead, just stunned. Wouldn’t matter if he was, it was what he deserved, Jimbo felt.

  Breathing heavily, Jimbo marched into the sitting room to tell Johnny what had happened. With a dead straight face he said slowly and deliberately, ‘I’ve just knocked your brother unconscious. He may need hospital treatment. Sorry and all that. Why? You may well ask. He’s made our daughter Frances pregnant, but last night she had a miscarriage, and he’s not the slightest bit repentant in any way at all, and so I punched him. He’s still breathing though. Good day to you both.’

  Jimbo didn’t start the car until he’d got his emotions under control. When he did he roared down the drive, swung right into Church Lane and then down Jacks Lane, Stocks Row, and home. Harriet found him sitting on a kitchen chair helpless with mirth. She asked him what had happened up at the Big House and he couldn’t tell her for laughing.

  Harriet was angry with him. ‘I’ve been worried sick about what might have happened to you. It is neither the time nor the place for roaring with laughter. Nothing, absolutely nothing, that has happened since last night is funny, you know. Fran’s asleep, that’s if you’re interested.’

  Jimbo wiped his eyes, and said, ‘I’ve locked the front door so no one can get in. If the doorbell goes, I’ll answer it.’

  Making no sense of what he said because she was so angry she ignored him, asking instead if he’d like to share her pot of tea.

  ‘Yes, please. I knocked him out.’

  Harriet sat down rather more heavily than she’d intended. ‘What? Not Chris?’

  Jimbo nodded. ‘Everything was going fine until he told me twice that it was Fran who was more than willing, he said . . .’ Jimbo began laughing again. ‘He said, “C’est la vie, Jimbo, c’est la vie.” And that did it. I saw red and punched him, right there on the jaw, and he fell down. He’s not dead, well, he wasn’t when I left, but you should have seen him. You should have seen him! He went down like someone pole-axed. I’d no idea I could do something like that any more.’ Jimbo rubbed his knuckles and then picked up his tea and drank the whole cup down in one go. ‘Can I have another one, I’ve got the most terrible thirst?’

  ‘I didn’t know you could either.’

  ‘I was just so incensed. I found Johnny then, and told him what had happened.’

  ‘What did he say?’

  ‘Nothing at all. He just looked shocked.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘Then I left for home, as there was no point in hanging about because I wasn’t sorry, just blazing mad. Chris isn’t sorry, you know. I expect that for him the miscarriage has solved a very awkward problem.’

  ‘No doubt it has. I’m sorry Fran’s had to go through it, but in one way it’s solved a problem for her too. But on the other hand, we’ve lost our first grandchild.’

  Jimbo sobered up. ‘I didn’t think about it like that. Of course we have. Have you told the others?’

  ‘I will when I’ve started feeling better about it all. What an experience! Never again, I hope.’

  The other person who couldn’t stop laughing was Alice.

  Whether it was the shock of it or what, Alice couldn’t decide, but the prospect of Jimbo walking calmly into their house needing as he said ‘a word with Chris’ and then knocking Johnny’s fabulous brother out stone cold on the study floor, well, who wouldn’t find it funny?

  Chris had to be ta
ken to hospital because, firstly he’d been knocked unconscious and was only just coming round when Johnny found him, and secondly he had this rather nasty-looking wound on his left temple with a lot of blood about, so obviously that needed looking at too.

  Between Johnny and Alice they managed to manhandle Chris into the 4×4. And then Alice was left to smother her smile as best she could and, as Chris had once so pointedly reminded her, to look after the children.

  She knew, though Johnny hadn’t said anything, that he was steaming with temper. All the effort he’d made to renew relationships with the people in the village, people who were already beginning to accept him as their rightful Lord of the Manor, had possibly been thrown away by his own brother. Johnny was never openly critical of Chris and his wild ways, but Alice knew his attitude to life seriously disappointed Johnny.

  Johnny waited at the hospital until some decisions had been made about Chris’s care. The powers that be decided he needed to stay in for at least one night as they were none too happy about the wound on his temple and so Johnny went home, collected some overnight things for the invalid, went back to the hospital to find Chris still in emergency, waiting until they found a ward bed for him.

  He had a steadily swelling lump on his jaw where Jimbo’s fist had landed that not even Chris would be able to find a believable excuse for, and a dressing on his temple over the cut made by the spike of the fireguard, and now around the edges of the dressing, a rapidly spreading bruise was becoming more obvious.

  ‘Right. Here’s your stuff. I’ll ring the hospital later on to see how you are. If you can come home, you can ring for a taxi. We’ll talk when you get home. Other than that I have nothing to say. Bye, Chris.’

  ‘He told you, did he?’

  Johnny nodded.

  ‘You’ve brought my cigarettes?’

  ‘No. They won’t allow you to smoke.’

  Chris gave Johnny a lop-sided grin. ‘I’d get round them somehow.’

  Finally Johnny could take no more from him. ‘How could you have been so careless? Have you no conscience?’

  ‘I was careless once, that’s all. Just once when she caught me by surprise.’

  ‘You do know the very first moment I feel you are on the mend, you’re going home. If I have to handcuff you and drag you there all the way, so be it. I just regret I didn’t send you straight back home. Why did you come back? Really?’

  ‘To see Fran, of course. I kept thinking about her such a lot, and so I thought I’d come to see if the old magic was still there. And I did briefly toy with the idea of taking her back to live in Rio . . .’

  ‘And have you?’

  Chris grinned. ‘Have I what?’

  ‘Seen Fran?’

  ‘No. Well, I did, yes, in the store briefly. But she refused to have anything to do with me. I sent her a note telling her I’d see her in the Wise Man that evening, but she never turned up. Other than that . . .’ Chris tried to settle himself more comfortably, but found the effort too much. ‘God, my head. Aaah!’

  Johnny said, ‘I’ll be off then. I shan’t visit tonight. I’ve lost such a lot of time today.’

  ‘Would Alice come? I’m in need of some tender loving care.’

  ‘That’s up to Alice, I doubt it though, as she hasn’t stopped laughing since Jimbo left.’

  ‘Alice! Laughing at me?’

  ‘Yes. Bye.’

  Johnny pulled up outside the Big House, switched off the engine and sat thinking about what to do next. He wasn’t going to Jimbo’s to apologise; that was for Chris to do, although Johnny guessed he wouldn’t do it without pressure. Poor Fran. She was a lovely girl, good looking, sweet natured, hard-working. She didn’t deserve Chris tempting her. Well, it hadn’t happened in his house, that was for certain. The trouble was that Chris was so hard for women to resist; he had such charm, he was so handsome. Well, the moment he was well enough to travel he was going home.

  Johnny thumped the steering wheel with the heel of his hand. Damn him. So careless with other people’s emotions was Chris. Since he was fourteen he’d ridden roughshod over people, caring only for his own physical satisfaction, and nothing for them. But for it to be Fran, that was the worst part of this mess. Everyone who knew Fran was fond of her, and she was genuinely very likeable. But for Jimbo to knock Chris out, it must have been an almighty punch. Suddenly Johnny’s amusement tipped the scales and he was laughing like Alice had. Alice had always had a much more frank assessment of Chris’s character than everyone else, not being quite so bowled over by his good looks.

  Johnny leapt out of the car and went into his house, his happiness rising as he entered. The Big House always had that effect on him, partly because he loved the house so much, and also because inside were the three people he adored more than anyone else in the whole world. Charles came running to meet him. ‘Dada. Dada.’ His arms spread wide, ready to clutch his daddy’s legs. Johnny caught hold of him and swung him up on to his shoulders, and the two of them went to find Alice and Ralph.

  Chapter 16

  They knew there was some connection, Bel had almost let it slip to Dottie that there was a very serious connection between Chris and Fran. But the fact that Chris had gone back after only five days in Turnham Malpas and most of that had been spent in hospital, and the fact Fran was nowhere to be seen, gave everyone something to speculate about.

  So on the following Monday afternoon when the embroidery class met as usual there was no need to scratch their heads for something to talk about. It was there waiting to be discussed, the most interesting part was that none of them had any answers. But Evie needed to speak first.

  ‘Good news, everyone. It’s settled, they’ve accepted the new design. I’ve brought all the materials we need and so we can begin at last. Here we are, look.’ Evie unrolled a detailed plan of what the congregation had decided upon, and was delighted by the admiring silence while they studied it.

  Eventually Sylvia said, ‘Well, you’ve done some brilliant designs in the past but this, well, it’s the best ever. It’s wonderful, Evie, and we’re all so very lucky to have you in charge. Fantastic.’

  Some of them were speechless, so captivated were they by what she showed them.

  ‘We’re privileged, totally privileged to work on this. I’m gobsmacked. They’ll come from far and wide to see it. It’s marvellous,’ said Barbara the weekender.

  Merc, who felt humbled by Evie’s spectacular talent, said softly, ‘Amazing! Absolutely amazing! Thank you, thank you so much for giving me the opportunity to work on such a splendid hanging. I love the colours. I love the face of the saint, so strong, yet compassionate, and the background, by Jove, Dottie, that’ll keep you busy.’

  Dottie was overawed. ‘It will, it will. I shall be proud too, yes, proud to work on that.’

  ‘I like that gold thread, Evie,’ said Sheila, wondering if she, Sheila Bissett, with her humble origins, was clever enough to do justice to Evie’s design. ‘I wish I had talent like this. You are lucky, so lucky, Evie.’

  ‘They took a while to decide they’d accept it. It was the new vicar who persuaded them, he gasped when he saw it.’

  ‘And so he should. Well, let’s get cracking,’ said Barbara. ‘I can’t wait to start.’

  It took a while to sort everyone out but none of them could leave until they’d actually made a start on their part of the hanging. ‘Let’s stay another hour, shall we? It’s already quarter-past three and we’ve done nothing yet,’ Evie suggested.

  They all nodded their agreement and it was silent for a while until Evie had made the tea and as they always did – tea and embroidery not being good bedfellows – they’d moved away from the big table they used to work at to a couple of the tables reserved for the coffee mornings. It was then that Dottie asked if anyone had any more news about Fran and better still about why Jimbo was suffering with a painful hand.

  ‘When I was in there this morning choosing a card for my gran’s birthday—’ began Barbara.

/>   ‘She must be a big age, how old is she now?’ someone asked

  Barbara answered, ‘One hundred and three on Thursday.’

  ‘No!’

  ‘Well, anyway, he moaned a bit about his hand hurting and said he’d sprained it. But I don’t think you get bruises on each knuckle when you sprain your hand; it didn’t look right somehow. Harriet said how painful it was and quickly changed the subject. Grandmama Charter-Plackett came in to say she was going to their house and did she need to take anything with her for lunch? Harriet said no and almost pushed her out before she could say any more. So Harriet’s working in the store instead of Fran, and the old lady’s making lunch. So they can deny it as much as they like, but things aren’t right, whatever they say.’

  Sylvia, who wished she still worked at the rectory because then she might have got to know a bit more, said, ‘Bel and Tom know nothing, they say, and instead of a big laugh when you go in it’s more like the reception at MI6, blank expressions and mum’s the word, with a bit of avoiding-looking-you-straight-in-the-eye thrown in. They’ll be asking us for identification soon, us that’s known them for years.’

  It was Dottie who contributed the most mind-blowing piece of information. ‘Well, I clean Thursday afternoons for Harriet, as you know, but I’ve been told this week I don’t need to go, but they’ll pay me double next week when I go, because they know I rely on the money.’

  This information from Dottie shocked them all. ‘Pay you for doing nothing! That doesn’t sound like Jimbo at all, he must have had a nervous breakdown. There must be something very serious going on. But what?’ said Sheila, intrigued by this piece of extremely worthwhile gossip.

  Grandmama went straight round from the store to Jimbo’s house, glad to be of use. She’d been given a key and as she let herself in she called out, ‘Fran. It’s me, dear. Ready for your morning coffee? Because I am.’ She got no reply. ‘I’ll make it, then.’