A Village Affair

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘Darling, I should have rung—’

  ‘Not at all,’ Alice said politely.

  Clodagh said, ‘I’ll go in and put the kettle on,’ and went into the house with Charlie on her hip and the others dancing behind her. Cecily watched her go.

  ‘Is she an Unwin from the Park?’

  ‘Yes. The youngest.’

  Cecily wanted to say that Clodagh seemed very much at home but stopped herself. She put an arm round Alice.

  ‘It is lovely to see you. I’ve been longing to see how you were getting on with the house. And I thought, heavens, the holidays are nearly over—’

  ‘We’ve been so busy,’ Alice said. ‘I don’t know why moving should take up all one’s life, but it seems to.’

  ‘And what about some help?’

  ‘I’m fine,’ Alice said.

  ‘And a holiday?’

  ‘Honestly,’ Alice said, and there was an edge of impatience to her voice, ‘we don’t need one just now.’

  ‘There’s Martin,’ Cecily said, dropping her arm and catching Alice’s tone, ‘as well as you.’

  Alice began to move towards the house.

  ‘Come in and have tea.’

  The kitchen looked undeniably a happy place. There was a blue jug of yellow tulips on the dresser, and on the table James and Natasha were putting out plates and mugs haphazardly on a yellow flowered cloth. Charlie was already in his high chair gnawing on a carrot, and by the window, still in her wizard’s cloak, Clodagh was slicing and buttering currant bread. There was a kettle on the Aga and the top half of the stable door was open. In a Windsor armchair by the fire a tabby kitten lay asleep on a blue and white cushion. It was all entirely as it should be and the sight of it caused Cecily’s heart to sink like lead.

  She had paused, on her way to The Grey House, at the Pitcombe shop and post office. She was not quite sure why she had done this, nor why she had said vivaciously to Mr Finch, ‘I am on my way to The Grey House! I am Mr Jordan’s mother, you see.’

  Mrs Macaulay had been in the shop at the time and so had Stuart Mott’s wife, Sally. Mrs Macaulay had beadily taken in Cecily’s clothes – very good but my, wouldn’t it be a treat to have that much to spend – and Sally Mott, who was tired of having Stuart out of work and under her feet all the time, came boldly forward and said she wondered if Mr Jordan could do with some gardening help because Stuart could probably spare him a bit of time if . . .

  Cecily was delighted. The suggestion suited her every wish to help and it gave her a purpose in arriving at The Grey House unannounced and clearly not just passing. She took Sally’s telephone number, bought two tins of dog meat – not the brand, Mrs Macaulay noticed, that her girls favoured – and a box of chocolate buttons, and went out of the shop leaving a breath of ‘Arpège’ behind to daze Mr Finch. He took the washing powder and the packet of aspirin that Mrs Macaulay held out to him and heard his mouth say, ‘Will that be all?’ While his heart sang Swinburne:

  Strong blossoms with perfume of

  manhood, shot out from my spirit as rays.

  Now, Cecily put the chocolate buttons down on the table beside the milk jug. James’s eyes bulged with immediate desire and Charlie, using his carrot as a baton, pointed at them with it and mewed urgently. Clodagh stopped buttering and with a winglike swoop of her cloaked arm vanished the box into her pocket.

  ‘After tea.’

  ‘Now, now, now,’ said James.

  ‘After tea.’

  ‘Now—’

  ‘James,’ Alice said, ‘you know the rules perfectly well.’

  ‘So sorry,’ Cecily said stiffly. She looked round the room. ‘You’ve made this so pretty. And how lovely to have a kitten.’

  Natasha slid into a chair next to her grandmother.

  ‘He’s called Balloon because of his tummy. Clodagh says he’s a lousy kisser.’

  The other side of the table, James began to giggle.

  ‘Personally,’ Natasha said, ‘I don’t kiss him a lot because his breath is fishy.’

  ‘I’m glad to hear it,’ Cecily said.

  ‘There’s hens,’ James said.

  ‘Hens, darling?’

  Alice said, ‘We’ve got a dozen pullets. White Leghorn crossed with Light Sussex. Clodagh knows about hens and we are learning.’

  ‘They can’t do eggs yet,’ James said, ‘but they can when they’re bigger.’

  Cecily eyed Clodagh.

  ‘What a knowledgeable young woman—’

  Clodagh put the plate of buttered bread on the table and then went over to the Aga and said something quietly to Alice who was making the tea. Alice laughed and said something inaudible back. They came back to the table together and began in a practised mutual way to give the children their tea, cutting up Charlie’s bread into little squares, putting honey on James’s, pouring milk into mugs. Alice gave Cecily a cup of tea and sat down beside her.

  ‘Darling,’ Cecily said, ‘I think I’ve found you a gardener this afternoon. Someone called Stuart Mott—’

  ‘He’s a rogue,’ Clodagh said.

  ‘All gardeners are rogues,’ Cecily said, ‘more or less.’

  ‘This one’s more.’

  ‘But does he know about gardening?’

  ‘I think he must. He’s mad about prizes, marrows like hippos, yard-long runner beans. If you lick off all the butter, Charlie Jordan, you will simply have to eat your bread bare.’

  Smiling angelically, Charlie laid the bread on his highchair tray and began, with tiny, neat fingers, to pick out the currants. Alice, Cecily noticed, had hardly spoken.

  ‘Darling. Mightn’t he be worth a try?’

  Alice said slowly, ‘I’ll suggest it to Martin—’

  ‘I long for you to come down to Dummeridge. The potager is having its first real spring and as you were in at its conception—’

  ‘Alice,’ Clodagh said, ‘are you a gardener?’

  ‘You know I’m not—’

  ‘Alice painted the most lovely frontispiece for my book. She was a kind of inspiration—’

  ‘You must beware of my mother,’ Clodagh said, stretching over to rescue a sticky knife that had fallen from Natasha’s plate. ‘She thinks you are a gardening genius but she’s quite unscrupulous in bending people to her will. You’ll find yourself talking to the Evergreen Club, none of whom can hear a word you say.’

  Cecily turned to Alice who was cradling her cup in both hands and drinking dreamily out of it.

  ‘When can you come? Come for the night. Bring everyone, before the end of the holidays.’

  ‘It would be lovely,’ Alice said remotely.

  ‘I’ve started the recorder,’ Natasha said to her grandmother. ‘I can play “London’s Burning” after only two lessons. Will you come and hear me?’

  ‘Yes,’ Cecily said unhappily, ‘I should love to.’

  She got up. Alice said, ‘Five minutes only, Tashie.’

  Natasha took Cecily’s hand and led her out of the room. When the door had closed behind them Cecily had a sudden angry, irrational feeling that everyone in the kitchen was bursting with suppressed laughter the other side of it.

  ‘Do you,’ she said to Natasha, despising herself for doing it, ‘do you like Clodagh?’

  ‘We adore her,’ Natasha said, ‘and I can play the first two lines of “Frère Jacques” too—’

  ‘And does she come here a lot?’

  ‘Oh, every day. And when Mummy was doing the shop she took us on a walk and got us some frog spawn. It is disgusting. Of course, a lot of interesting things are disgusting. Aren’t they?’

  ‘Yes, darling,’ Cecily said sadly. ‘Yes, I’m afraid that they are.’

  When Cecily returned to Dummeridge that night, Richard was at home. She had known he would be and although the knowledge hadn’t in any way affected her impulsive drive to Pitcombe, she discovered that she was surprisingly pleased to find him when she got back. He was sitting in the drawing room with an open briefcase and a whisky and soda
, and when she stooped to kiss him he said, ‘What’s the matter?’

  ‘Tired, I think. I’ve just come back from Pitcombe.’

  He went on flipping through papers because it was what she expected of him.

  ‘All well there?’

  ‘Oh yes—’

  ‘Drink?’

  ‘Please—’

  He put his briefcase down and went to the drinks tray on the sofa table. He poured a gin and tonic and took it back to her.

  ‘Alice any better?’

  ‘Alice,’ Cecily said with some edge, ‘was looking fine.’ She paused, took a swallow of her drink and then said carelessly, ‘There was really no chance to talk to her.’

  ‘No chance?’

  ‘She has a new friend. The youngest child of Pitcombe Park. Seemed very much at home—’

  Richard, perceiving at once what was the matter, picked up his papers again and said, ‘You should be pleased she has found a friend locally. I thought you were worried she was lonely—’

  Cecily got up, rattling the ice in her glass.

  ‘Of course I’m glad.’

  Richard said quietly, without looking up, ‘Alice had to leave home some day.’

  Cecily said angrily, ‘Richard, she isn’t well.’

  He said nothing.

  ‘I can’t talk to you about it,’ Cecily said. ‘You can’t relate to humankind at all, only to business. I don’t suppose you give Alice any thought at all. I don’t suppose you ever have.’

  He said, in a perfectly ordinary voice, ‘How do you know what I think?’

  ‘The evidence of my eyes and ears.’

  ‘I’m a patient man,’ Richard said, ‘but sometimes you try me to the limit. You don’t know what I think because in forty years you have never once asked me.’

  Cecily was close to tears. She still stood by her armchair holding her drink because she had meant to walk out on some Parthian shot and go off to the kitchen to grill trout for their dinner.

  ‘Then I’ll ask you. I am asking you—’

  ‘What I think about Alice?’

  She subsided on to the arm of the chair.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘My feelings for her are considerable. I am fond of her and I admire her. But I think she has taken a long time to grow up. If she is being awkward now—’

  ‘I didn’t say she was being awkward.’

  ‘—if she is disappointing you—’

  ‘I didn’t say—’

  ‘Shut up,’ Richard said, suddenly angry.

  Cecily got up.

  ‘I don’t want to hear any more. You haven’t a clue. But then you have no idea what women are like or what they need. You never have.’

  ‘Is that so?’

  She almost ran to the door.

  ‘I’m going to get supper.’ She waved an angry hand at his papers. ‘You go back where you belong.’

  When the door had shut, Richard sat for a moment and looked ahead of him without seeing anything. Plainly, Alice had in some way defied Cecily, and although he was sorry for Cecily, he was also glad. He sighed and went back to his papers. The considerableness of his feelings for Alice were a self-forbidden luxury.

  ‘Juliet?’ Cecily said into the telephone.

  It was a quarter to eight. Juliet Dunne had just read the last word of the last bedtime story and had come down to find that the dog had eaten most of the shepherd’s pie she had left by the cooker for supper, and then the telephone had rung. So she had answered it with a snarl.

  ‘Oh, Cecily,’ Juliet said, ‘so sorry to be cross but really. Sometimes I hate domestic life so much I am not responsible for my actions. The fucking dog. And, frankly, fucking Henry for needing supper at all. I’d give anything to be a kept woman at this minute.’

  Cecily made soothing noises.

  ‘I really rang to talk to you about Alice—’

  ‘Allie? Why, is something—’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure—’

  ‘I thought she was looking miles better,’ Juliet said. ‘I saw her on Tuesday. We had a tots tea party.’

  ‘Do you know Clodagh Unwin?’

  ‘Clo? All my life, practically.’

  ‘She seems,’ Cecily said, ‘almost to be living there.’

  ‘Whoopee,’ Juliet said. ‘Best thing in the world. She’s the most lovely fun. She’ll cheer them all up. Oh Lord, Cecily, here comes Henry. He’ll have to have dog food, there isn’t anything else. If you’d had daughters, Cecily, would you have encouraged them to get married?’

  ‘Probably not—’ Cecily said, thinking of the briefcase in the drawing room.

  ‘Of course, with sons, I can’t wait to be shot of them. But I’m stuck with Henry. Look, I think it’s brilliant about Clodagh and Alice and I should think the Unwins are thrilled. They always want Clo to settle down, so a nice dose of happy family life—’

  ‘Is – is she safe?’

  ‘Safe?’ Juliet said. ‘Safe? Clo? Heavens, no. What do you want a safe friend for Alice for? Henry’s safe and he bores me to tears, don’t you, darling? Cecily, I must go and open his tin of Chum.’

  Cecily put the telephone down. Then she went over to the refrigerator and took out the trout that Dorothy had left, ready gutted, on a plate. She looked at their foolish dead fish faces. Tomorrow, she resolved, she would telephone Martin. He was, after all, her son.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Martin Jordan and Henry Dunne met for lunch in the White Hart in Salisbury. Henry had telephoned Martin at his office and said, rather mysteriously, that he had something to discuss and could they meet somewhere that their crowd didn’t frequent. Martin said what about the White Hart as it was so large, and so they met there in the foyer, conspicuous in their moleskin trousers and tweed jackets among two busloads of spring tourists, one checking in and one out, in a welter of nylon suitcases and quilted coats in pastel colours.

  Henry found them a table in the corner of the bar and went away for two pints of beer and several rounds of prawn sandwiches. When he came back he said, ‘I sneaked a look at The Grey House the other day. I must say, you’re doing a great job. John’s a wonderful fellow, but of course he never much minds how things look.’

  Martin was extremely pleased. He had worked tirelessly at weekends in the garden, and was allotting himself four hours’ outside painting a week. Alice said ‘Oh well done’ rather absently to him, quite often, but he didn’t feel she quite took in the scale of his achievements, and anyway, he liked other people to appreciate the improvements he was making. He shrugged his shoulders self-deprecatingly.

  ‘Those mahonias had really had it—’

  ‘Awful things. Only worth it for the scent of the flowers in March—’

  ‘Absolutely.’

  Henry took a large bite of sandwich, chewed, swallowed, took a pull at his beer and said, in a much more solemn voice, ‘Martin, nice as it is to see you, this isn’t just a social lunch.’

  ‘I rather gathered that—’

  ‘Fact is, I’m here as Sir Ralph’s emissary. To test the water. To put something to you.’ He took another bite. ‘A proposition.’

  Martin immediately and wildly thought that Sir Ralph might want to buy back The Grey House. For all the difficulties involved in getting there, now he was there he felt extremely possessive about it as well as being conscious that living there added several social cubits to his stature. He put on a soberly considering expression.

  ‘I won’t beat about the bush,’ Henry said. ‘Thing is, Sir Ralph needs a new solicitor. He’s decided he must have local advice, particularly for the estate and – this is strictly in confidence – I think he’s fallen out with the London lot, naming no names. He wants to change a lot of things – I’ll tell you about that later – and he asked me who I would recommend. I suggested your outfit. He thought for a bit and said why not you.’

  Martin was scarlet.

  ‘I – I’m not a senior partner—’

  ‘I said that. He said he didn’t mind ab
out that, and that one day you would be. Fact is, I think it’s your living in The Grey House that’s done it. He feels it would be keeping everything in the family, so to speak.’

  ‘I haven’t any experience in estate work—’

  ‘I have.’

  ‘I say,’ Martin said, and beamed.

  ‘Like it?’

  ‘I’ll say. That is – if I can do it—’

  ‘Nice piece of business to brandish at your senior partners. I wouldn’t like to promise, but it’s my guess that estate business will lead to all personal business too in the end, Lady Unwin and all. Pitcombe Park’s pet lawyer. Thing is,’ he looked at Martin over the rim of his beer glass, ‘it’d help me a lot, having you on my side. He can be the devil to handle, used to having his own way. Clodagh takes after him.’

  Martin was full of excited generosity.

  ‘She’s amazing. She’s cheered us all up like anything. Allie’s quite different and the children think she’s wonderful.’

  ‘That’s another thing. You see, the Unwins are pleased as Punch she’s taken to you all. Any friend of Clodagh’s is likely to be beamed on by them but your family is exactly what they want for her. They were in a frightful state when she got back from the States, made worse, of course, by the fact she wouldn’t tell them anything. Margot was all for rushing her off to some frightfully expensive trick cyclist in London to have her head seen to. But life at The Grey House seems to have done the trick for nothing. Sir Ralph said this morning he hadn’t seen Clodagh in such good form for years.’

  Martin, whose private thoughts about Clodagh were of a guiltily excited kind, said, well, she was the greatest fun . . .

  ‘Oh, she is. But she’s a bad girl too. Has those poor old parents running round in circles.’ He looked at his watch. ‘Can I take it that your answer is at least a preliminary yes?’

  Martin said, with enormous self-control, ‘You may.’

  Henry got up.

  ‘I think the next step is – I mean, before you breathe a word at your office – to see Sir Ralph together. All right by you?’