Village Gossip

by Shaw, Rebecca

  ‘Not especially.’

  ‘You turned in an excellent performance tonight. True feeling, not acting. Eh? Am I right?’

  ‘You flatter yourself.’

  ‘I feel you tremble at my touch.’

  ‘For heaven’s sake!’

  ‘It’s true, my love, and you know it.’

  ‘I don’t.’

  ‘You’re fooling yourself.’

  ‘You’re the second person to say that to me tonight.’

  ‘I should guess the other was Harriet.’

  ‘It was.’

  ‘She knows me too well.’

  ‘Is she right about you, though?’

  He stared at Harriet still standing at the bar and then answered, ‘Not always.’ Hugo reached across the table and touched the hand holding her glass. ‘Not this time.’

  Caroline looked into his eyes, trying to judge the sincerity of what he was saying. His eyes left hers and looked behind her. His hand was withdrawn and she heard the last voice she wanted to hear at that moment.

  ‘Darling, I thought I might find you here.’

  She turned round to find Peter standing behind her. He was wearing a shirt she’d bought him only recently and his new linen trousers. He looked, as well he knew, a very appealing figure. Pure anger filled her to the brim but a lifetime of self-discipline enabled her to greet him civilly.

  ‘Hello. What a surprise!’ She pulled out a chair for him and then as an afterthought said, ‘The children! Who’s sitting in?’

  ‘Sylvia.’

  A thousand thoughts raced through her head as she realised that they’d made an arrangement so he could watch over her. Damn them both, she thought. How dare they? Before Peter sat down he put a hand on her shoulder and kissed the top of her head. He drew his chair nearer to her and sat with his arm nonchalantly along the back of her chair.

  ‘How did the rehearsal go?’

  Hugo, unfussed by Peter’s appearance, answered, ‘Excellently well. I’m very thrilled with them all. Your wife is proving herself tiptop where acting is concerned.’ He put a slight emphasis on ‘acting’ which angered Caroline even further.

  Peter, well practised at shouldering difficult conversations, chatted away to Hugo leaving Caroline to compose herself. Inside she was fuming. These two men were treating her as though she were a brainless chattle to be bandied about at their convenience. Peter doing his caveman act, all he needed was the leg bone of a mammoth in his hand, and Hugo playing the charming dilettant. Each of them recognised the other’s role but spoke about every subject under the sun other than the one which really lay between them.

  It was when Peter began saying how much he’d enjoyed Hugo in Macbeth and Hugo had pretended to shudder at the mention of that dreaded word that she finally snapped.

  ‘As the two of you appear to have lots to talk about I’ll leave you to get on with it.’ They both half rose in protest at her departure but she’d gone before they had a chance to speak.

  On her way out she stopped to say goodnight to everyone and then coolly left, after a final wave to Harriet.

  She greeted Sylvia with less than her usual courtesy. ‘Hi there. Thanks for giving Peter a chance to come and have a drink with us. I’ve come home early because I’m tired.’

  After Sylvia had left, Caroline checked the children were all right and then went to run a bath. She chose lavender bath oil to relax her and was just starting to simmer down when she heard Peter’s key in the lock.

  She listened as he checked the doors, shut windows, spoke to the cats, unlocked the cat flap and came slowly up the stairs. She’d imagined he’d come into the bathroom immediately but he didn’t. Lying back in the hot scented water with her eyes shut, she contemplated where her feelings were leading her. Having arrived at the conclusion that she was infatuated with Hugo and it wasn’t the real thing and she’d better get in charge of herself again quick fast, she became conscious of a movement close by and opened her eyes to find Peter in his pyjamas standing looking down at her.

  Immediately the fury she had felt in the bar overcame her and she blurted out her anger. ‘Satisfied, are you? You and Sylvia. That was a pathetic performance, Peter, and what’s more it was beneath you and you know it. It was childish in the extreme.’

  He knelt down beside the bath, laid his arms on the edge of it and rested his chin on them. ‘I had to give the matter the stamp of my approval and it was the only way I could think of to get the message transmitted round the village that their soft-in-the-head Rector didn’t believe a word of what they were saying.’

  ‘Is that so.’

  ‘Someone has to protect your reputation.’

  ‘Oh, so that’s what you were doing! And there I thought you were doing your caveman act.’

  He trailed a hand in the water and she shifted her legs to avoid the possibility of him touching her.

  ‘No. Though I can see it may have looked like it. But I don’t want anyone looking at you as Hugo did tonight.’

  ‘He has a massive ego and imagines every woman – excepting perhaps Harriet, who has his measure – will fall in love with him. He’s probably quite right, most of them do.’

  Peter flicked some water onto her shoulders and trailed his fingers over the wetness. ‘He has no business to toy with your affections.’

  ‘You make it sound as though I have no control over my own feelings. Well, I have.’ She sat up, sploshing water over the edge of the bath and drenching his pyjama jacket. ‘Sorry! I didn’t mean to do that. Just leave it to me, will you? And don’t ever again do what you did tonight. I am not a child. A jealous husband I don’t need, because there’s nothing to be jealous of.’ Peter began touching her arm gently and persuasively. ‘And you can take your hands off me, please, because I’m not having you going through the ritual of, as you see it, establishing your rights over me tonight. I am my own person and I won’t have it.’

  Peter sprang to his feet, angered by what she’d said. ‘I have never done that. Ever. Not once. And well you know it. We have always been equal partners.’

  The tremor in his voice appalled her. He was absolutely right. Damn and blast that Hugo. He was driving her to say things which in her normal mind she never would. She would not allow Hugo to make her throw away the one thing most precious to her.

  Caroline pulled out the plug, stood up and slowly unbuttoned Peter’s jacket, saying, ‘Put it in the airing cupboard to dry.’ She thought, what stupid comments people who love each other make when they really mean to say ‘I love you’. She waited for him to close the cupboard door before putting her arms around his neck. She said in a shaky voice, ‘I’m so dreadfully sorry, I really don’t know what’s come over me. Please forgive me. Now I’m making you all wet again. Sorry.’

  He helped her out of the bath, wrapped her in a towel and, holding each other close, they left the bathroom.

  Chapter 9

  Vera carried the tray out onto the patio and placed it carefully on the wrought iron table. She checked to make sure she had everything she needed and then sat down to wait.

  The geraniums were growing wonderfully well and already she could just see tips of pink showing in the buds. By next week they’d be ablaze. The pots Rhett had found were ideal. She patted the table top and admired the chair opposite her. It was painted white just like she saw in those posh gardening magazines at the nursing home. In fact, truth to tell, the whole of the patio with its pots of plants and the table and chairs could have been from one of them. Identical it was. And the crazy paving! He’d mended the worst bits and then extended it right up to the grass. Smashing, it looked. If she’d paid a thousand pounds, which she wouldn’t have, it couldn’t look better. Who needed a mansion to have a posh garden? There was no doubt about it, their Rhett had an eye for gardens.

  She heard the door bell. ‘That’ll be her.’

  Dottie Foskett had already opened the door as Vera reached it.

  ‘Thought you wasn’t in, but you’d said half past
three.’

  ‘I was sitting out in the garden, it took me a minute. Go through. The kettle’s already boiled, I won’t be long.’

  Dottie admired the garden while she waited. Their Rhett had turned out all right after all. Surprising in the circumstances, because she’d really thought he’d blown it with that witchcraft business the other year. Poor lad. What a start in life he’d had.

  Vera came through with the teapot.

  ‘New cups you’ve got then.’

  ‘That’s right. Got them from that china stall back o’ Culworth market. I thought we needed something a bit different if we were joining the aristocracy.’

  ‘Come on, Vera, you do give yourself airs.’

  ‘I don’t. Where could you find a nicer place to sit? There isn’t a castle in the land with a lovelier patio than this.’

  ‘They calls ’em terraces when they ’ave a castle.’

  Vera pondered this for a moment and then agreed with her. ‘You’re right. Milk or lemon?’

  ‘Milk, of course. Yer know they look God awful expensive to me. Are you sure they’re not valuable?’

  ‘Well, Greenwood Stubbs said they’d been laid about ever since he’d been there and nobody bothered with ’em so we got ’em. Pity for ’em to go to waste. Mr Fitch said they had to get rid of it all before he got back, so here we are.’ Vera sipped her tea, put down her cup and asked, ‘You weren’t in the pub last night were you, Dottie?’ Dottie, with a mouthful of buttered scone, shook her head. ‘Rector came in, you know, and kissed her and that and sat beside her with his arm round her, talking to Hugo.’

  ‘Bet you wished you were a fly on the wall when they got home.’

  ‘No, I don’t. I don’t wish either of them any harm. They’re a lovely couple. It’s Hugo who’s to blame.’

  Dottie winked at her. ‘Perhaps you should set your cap at him, take the heat off her.’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I can safely leave that to you.’

  ‘Me!’ Dottie made a show of being indignant. ‘You’ve heard they’re expecting another at Keepers Cottage?’

  ‘Gilbert and Louise, yer mean. Yes, I have. Going great guns they are. Who’d have thought it, her being like she was.’

  ‘The baby will only be eleven months when the next arrives.’

  ‘Yer’d better have a word in her ear, then. Tell her all yer know. She can’t keep this pace up. I expect Louise’ll be wanting you to do more hours. More tea, or another scone?’

  Dottie eyed her closely through narrowed eyes. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t yer?’

  ‘Wouldn’t you?’

  ‘Suppose I would. That miserable flat I have’s neither use nor ornament. Can’t swing a cat.’

  ‘Good job you haven’t got one then!’

  They chortled together over the tea cups and Dottie told her a few more pieces of scandal which mainly involved the antics of Kenny and Terry Jones and herself.

  ‘Honestly, Dottie, you are a one. You’re disgusting. It doesn’t go with my nice china at all it doesn’t, a tale like that.’

  ‘Is that your bell?’

  Vera listened. ‘It is. They’ll be waking Don up. All right, all right I’m coming.’

  Standing on her doorstep were two big men in suits. Before they opened their mouths she knew in her bones that they were police officers.

  ‘Mrs Wright? Mrs Vera Wright?’

  Vera nodded. They flashed their identification cards and asked if they could come in.

  She opened the door wider and showed them into her front room. She asked them if they’d like to sit down. What on earth were they doing here? Was it Brenda? Had something happened to Brenda? Don had always said she’d finish up in the canal with the company she kept.

  ‘Is it my daughter? Brenda. Is she all right?’

  The taller police officer shook his head. ‘It’s nothing to do with a daughter. From information we have received we believe that you have stolen goods on the premises.’

  Vera was shocked. ‘Stolen goods? I haven’t got no stolen goods. Do you mean shop lifting? ’Cos I’ve not been doing that. I’m honest and hard working like me husband.’

  ‘Where is he at the moment?’

  ‘In bed. He’s on nights.’

  ‘Could you wake him for us, Mrs Wright?’

  ‘Why should I? He’s only been in bed an hour.’

  Dottie appeared in the doorway.

  ‘Well, we need to speak to him.’

  Vera, fearing Don’s temper if she woke him now, asked, ‘Can’t you tell me what it’s about?’

  ‘Can we look in your back garden?’

  ‘I haven’t got no stolen goods in the shed if that’s what yer mean. Me, my Don and our Rhett, we’re all hard working people and we don’t steal, so there.’

  ‘It’s not the shed Mrs Wright, it’s …’ he referred to his notebook, ‘an antique wrought iron table, and two chairs, and a large quantity of crazy paving, two bags of cement and several highly-prized Victorian ornamental stone urns removed from the estate grounds in the last three weeks.’

  Dottie gasped and reached out blindly for the nearest chair. ‘Ohhh. Vera!’

  Vera had gone white as a sheet. ‘Oh no! Who’s …’ She was going to say ‘split on us’ but she was astute enough, despite the shock, to know that would give the game away. ‘Dottie, get our Don.’ Dottie disappeared up the stairs on feeble legs, every step a mountain.

  ‘Your grandson? Is he home yet?’

  Vera glanced at the clock. ‘Won’t be ’ome for a while yet. He starts at half past six in the summer and sometimes works till it’s almost dark. What do you want him for?’

  ‘He’s implicated in the theft.’

  ‘He got permission.’

  ‘From whom?’

  Despite her fear, Vera couldn’t name names. ‘Oh, nobody. But he wasn’t to blame.’

  ‘Then who was?’

  ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘You mean you won’t say?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  Vera stared at Don as he arrived in the sitting room with his trousers hastily pulled on, and his rolls of bulging fat clearly visible in the gaps between the buttons of his pyjama jacket. Was she married to this? No wonder they’d never made progress.

  ‘Mr Donald Wright?’

  Don acknowledged he was with a nod of his head. As the officer revealed his reasons for being in the house Don grew more and more furious and when the officer finished speaking he vented his spleen on Vera. ‘You and your fancy ideas! I might have known no good would come of it. La di da on the patio with yer cups of tea and yer gossip. It’s her fault, officer. She encouraged him.’

  ‘Could we see the garden, please?’

  Vera led the way and Don and Dottie brought up the rear. They made notes about the number of stone urns, the half bag of cement in the corner by the shed awaiting disposal, and took particular interest in the table and two chairs. Then they counted the paving stones Rhett hadn’t needed, then the new stones he’d obviously laid.

  Vera found she had tears sliding down her cheeks. She scrubbed at them with a comer of a tissue lying dormant in her skirt pocket. Just as she’d clutched her dream it was being snatched away. Why was there never hope? Other people had it but not Vera Wright. Oh no! Not her. Bottom of the pile again.

  ‘Would you mind telling me how you came to know about all this?’ Vera waved her arm vaguely around the garden. ‘You know, who told you?’

  ‘It was reported to us by the owners.’

  ‘I see. Oh, I see.’

  ‘Now, these articles may not be removed from this garden until we have arranged to do it ourselves.’

  ‘You’re taking up the crazy paving, are you then?’

  ‘Well, perhaps not, but we shall certainly be removing the urns and the garden furniture. Probably later this afternoon.’

  ‘What if we pay for it all?’

  ‘Sorry, but the owners want to prosecute.’

  At the word prose
cute, Vera knew it was all up with them. She sat down heavily on one of the wrought iron chairs but immediately recollected it wasn’t hers to sit on any longer and leapt to her feet. ‘Don, it could mean jail for yer.’

  ‘Me? I’d nothing to do with it. It was all you. If there’s anybody going to jail it’ll be you not me. I can’t afford to lose my job.’

  ‘Neither can I, Don.’ She went in the house, closely followed by Dottie, Don and the police officers.

  ‘We’ll say good afternoon to you, Mrs Wright, Mr Wright. Nothing is to be moved from here at all. We’ve made a note and we’ll be back either later this afternoon or first thing tomorrow. Sorry about this, but we’re only doing our duty. We could do nothing else but take action once it was reported.’ They shut the door and left Dottie, Don and Vera alone. For the first time since Brenda had got herself into trouble with Rhett, Vera sat down and howled. Don took the opportunity to stomp off back to bed.

  Dottie patted her arm, handed her a fresh tissue from the purple plastic handbag she was clutching, and said, ‘Look here, why don’t yer go up to the Big House and see Mr Fitch and offer to pay for the crazy paving and give him back the pots and that. Surely if he’s not out of pocket with it he’ll let you off.’

  Vera stopped sobbing. ‘That’s an idea. I could do that, couldn’t I?’

  ‘Of course yer could. I’ll come with yer, if yer like.’

  Vera decided she’d do better on her own than with her flashy cousin. ‘It’s very kind but it’s my problem and I’ll go by meself. Where’s Don?’

  Dottie, who’d always had a certain amount of respect for the man of few words her cousin had married, said, ‘He’s gone back to bed. The rat.’

  ‘He is, isn’t he? A blasted rat. I’ve stuck with him through thick and thin, but this time he’s finally done it. Abandoning me like that. I’m going to get changed into something smart and I’m going up to the Big House and seeing what I can do about this. I’m damned if I’m going to prison.’