The Bachelor

by Tilly Bagshawe

  Converted from the old village bakery, and run by a sixty-five-year-old matron called Doris and her sweet but dim daughter Denise, it wasn’t exactly Vidal Sassoon. But needs must. Flora had caught sight of her toenails in the bath a few nights ago and almost had a heart attack.

  ‘I look like a Hobbit,’ she’d told Mason on their daily Skype call. ‘Bilbo Fitzwilliam.’

  ‘No, you don’t. You look beautiful,’ Mason said loyally. ‘I just wish I could see you in the flesh. Man cannot live by Skype alone, you know.’

  It was a familiar refrain, and a fair one. Flora had been promising to fly home for a few days for months now. It wasn’t that she didn’t want to. Just that every time she thought she might have a window, more work miraculously materialized.

  ‘I know,’ said Flora. ‘I’ll book something. I promise.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Soon. Very soon.’ She meant it. She missed Mason horribly. Seeing him on the computer, lying in bed in their apartment, felt surreal. Flora worried that their life together in Manhattan was starting to feel like a distant dream. A part of her past, rather than her future.

  ‘Is the water all right for you?’ Denise was asking, plunging Flora’s battered feet into a plastic washing-up bowl that she’d filled from the sink, while her mother, Doris, folded foils into Flora’s hair.

  ‘Hmm? Oh, yes. It’s fine.’

  ‘I’ll bring you a couple of wedding magazines, shall I?’ Denise said cheerfully.

  ‘Oh, that’s OK. I don’t really—’

  Ignoring Flora’s protests, Denise deposited Modern Bride and Wedding Fever into her lap. ‘A little bird told me Eva Gunnarson’s not the only bride-to-be up at the castle.’ Denise winked, her heavy false eyelashes coming down onto her over-Botoxed cheeks like shutters. ‘You must be well excited.’

  ‘The wedding’s not till next summer,’ said Flora, flipping politely through the magazine pages and trying to look interested. ‘I haven’t had time to think about it much, to be honest with you.’

  Flora suspected that Eva herself was the ‘little bird’. Desperate for some sisterly solidarity, and feverishly excited about her own wedding to Henry, she was forever shoving bridal magazines under Flora’s nose, or emailing her images of flower arrangements or veils. Right this moment, in fact, Eva was supposed to be meeting with the vicar to discuss something or other about her and Henry’s nuptials – also not scheduled until next summer, but in Eva’s mind this was ‘practically tomorrow’. She simply couldn’t understand why Flora hadn’t started trying on dresses already. ‘Any good seamstress will need at least six months’ lead time, you know,’ she told Flora seriously, in the manner of someone delivering a hurricane warning to someone refusing to leave their home.

  While Denise did her best to return Flora’s feet to human status, Flora sipped her PG Tips and pretended to read her magazines, whilst secretly tuning in to what was going on around her. A very old woman sitting under an old-fashioned dryer in the corner, having her remaining wisps of hair ‘set’ into tight, white curls, turned out to be old Mrs Griggs, mother of Mrs Preedy from Fittlescombe’s eponymous village shop. Her loud, derogatory comments about her son-in-law’s business acumen, fashion sense, and failures as a father – ‘he wouldn’t say boo to a goose, that Preedy. Lets them kids walk all over him’ – left no one in the salon in any doubt as to her firmly held opinion that her daughter could have done better. ‘Beautiful she was as a youngster, my Val. She looked like Marilyn Monroe.’

  Flora was still struggling to imagine the hefty, boot-faced Mrs Preedy as a young siren, when another conversation claimed her attention.

  Two younger women, who Flora vaguely recognized as mothers from the local primary school – she’d seen them pushing buggies towards the village green at pick-up time – were having their hair washed side by side by Doris’s two juniors, gossiping loudly to drown out the sound of the water.

  ‘He really is gorgeous, isn’t he? Much better looking than Gabe Baxter,’ said one.

  ‘D’you think so?’ observed her friend. ‘I dunno. He’s a bit smarmy. I think it’s the posh voice.’

  ‘You wouldn’t need him to talk though, would you?’ the first girl cackled. ‘It’s like David Beckham. “Stop squeaking, David, and get on with it!”’

  Both women laughed.

  ‘They’re both dirty dogs though, aren’t they? Beckham’s slept with everything in a skirt and Saxton Brae’s no better. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could spit.’

  For the first time Flora realized they were talking about Henry.

  ‘I heard he’s got a new bit on the side,’ said the first woman. ‘Someone local apparently.’

  ‘Really?’ The friend turned her head, earning herself a squirt of warm water in the eyes. The junior passed her a towel. ‘Someone besides that snooty Savile woman, you mean?’

  ‘What, Skeletor?’ Both women laughed again.

  ‘She’s awful, isn’t she? God knows what Henry sees in her. I mean, why would you sleep with a flat-chested cow like Georgina Savile when you’ve got Eva Gunnarson at home?’

  Flora froze.

  It wasn’t that she couldn’t imagine Henry cheating on Eva. With his arrogance, and raging sense of entitlement, he probably viewed having a mistress as no more than his due, par for the course for an eligible bachelor like him. But an affair with George Savile? That she couldn’t imagine.

  He can’t be, she told herself. They’re business partners. Besides, Henry hates George. Every time she comes to Hanborough, he looks as if he can’t wait for her to leave.

  Although, come to think of it, an affair would explain George’s frequent visits to the castle. Flora tuned back into the women’s conversation.

  ‘So who’s his new bit of crumpet?’ asked the friend.

  ‘Dunno,’ the first woman said. ‘Nobody does. They’re being very discreet, apparently. But I hear she’s married.’

  The friend sighed dramatically. ‘Poor old Eva Gunnarson. Just goes to show, even if you’re a supermodel, you can still get your heart broken. Men like Henry Saxton Brae will still shit on you.’

  ‘Only if you let them,’ said the first woman. ‘If you ask me, Eva should give him his marching orders.’

  ‘Yeah, but d’you think she knows?’

  ‘Course she does! Everyone knows. D’you think Posh Spice didn’t know? She just wanted the lifestyle, didn’t she?’

  Their conversation moved on to the Beckhams and footballers’ wives in general. But Flora sat in utter shock. Was this true? How could she have spent so many weeks at Hanborough and not heard so much as a whisper of these rumours before now? Then she remembered that today was the first time she’d been anywhere except Hanborough, or passed out on the couch alone in Peony Cottage, for almost a month. You couldn’t hear rumours if you never talked to anyone.

  She was still thinking about Henry and George and Henry’s other mystery lover, if such a person actually existed, when Doris led her over to the basins to have her highlights rinsed out.

  Unable to face another bridal magazine, Flora distracted herself by picking up the latest copy of Vanity Fair. It wasn’t until she was back in her chair and halfway through her blow-dry that she saw it.

  ‘Oh my God!’ she said out loud. ‘Oh my God. How could he?’

  ‘Everything all right, my love?’ Doris asked her, still working her magic with the round brush.

  ‘No,’ said Flora. ‘Not really. In fact, not at all.’

  The scheming, lying bastard!

  The Reverend Bill Clempson shook Eva Gunnarson’s hand warmly and watched as she sauntered happily back down the vicarage’s garden path to her car. She really was a quite inordinately beautiful girl, and even lovelier in her anticipatory, prenuptial glow. Henry Saxton Brae was a lucky man.

  ‘Take a bloody picture, why don’t you? It’ll last longer.’

  Jennifer Clempson, Bill’s wife, loomed in the doorway with a face like thunder. To say that Bill adored Jen w
ould be an understatement. She was truly the miracle of his life. They’d first met when Jen was working as the vet on Valley Farm, Gabe and Laura Baxter’s reality show that had caused a huge schism in the Swell Valley when Bill first arrived in the parish. Bill had been leading his flock in protest against the show and its intrusive TV crews, when Jen had deposited a truckload of manure over his Mini Cooper, covering it completely. Never in Bill’s wildest dreams had it occurred to him that, from this inauspicious start, this gorgeous, kind, accomplished, confident young woman might one day become his wife.

  And yet she had. Not just that, but she was now four months pregnant with his child! Their child. Truly the Lord had blessed him.

  However, it would be fair to say that perhaps pregnancy didn’t bring out the absolute best in Jennifer Clempson.

  ‘It’s not very vicarly behaviour to stand there checking out your parishioner’s perfect, supermodel arse, you know,’ Jen grumbled.

  ‘My darling, I wasn’t “checking out” anything,’ said Bill. ‘I was actually just thinking how happy Eva seems. Like we were before our wedding.’

  ‘Hmmm,’ said Jen, grouchily.

  Bill placed a hand lovingly on her emerging bump. ‘You’re so beautiful.’

  ‘It’s not very vicarly to lie, either,’ said Jen. ‘I look like a dyspeptic frog with a beer belly and you know it.’

  ‘Nonsense,’ said Bill. ‘You look lovely. Like a … like a …’ For an awful moment his mind went completely blank. What were pregnant women supposed to look like? All he could think of was the word ‘glow’.

  Glow-worm.

  Electric eel.

  In desperation he blurted out, ‘… like a beautiful dolphin.’

  ‘Like a dolphin?’ Jen’s eyes widened. ‘I look like a bloody dolphin?’

  Then, thankfully, the clouds broke and she grinned, then laughed, kissing her relieved husband and rolling her eyes. ‘That is the crappiest compliment ever, Bill.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He blushed.

  ‘No, I’m sorry. I’m just in a bad mood. I can’t move five yards without wanting to throw up. So why was she here?’

  ‘It was supposed to be their first spiritual preparation session. I try to do five hour-long meetings with all couples-to-be, just to make sure they understand the sacrament. But Henry couldn’t make it, unfortunately.’

  ‘Why not?’ asked Jen.

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Some last-minute business meeting or other. It’s amazing the excuses people will make to avoid looking honestly at their spiritual lives.’

  ‘Or to avoid telling their fiancées they’re off shagging someone else,’ said Jen, raising an eyebrow knowingly.

  Bill frowned. ‘You shouldn’t repeat that sort of gossip, darling. Remember, you are the vicar’s wife now. We have a position to uphold.’

  ‘I wonder what position Henry Saxton Brae’s upholding right now?’ Jen grinned. ‘D’you think it’s the wheelbarrow?’

  ‘Jennifer!’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so po-faced!’ said Jen. ‘You know as well as I do that man’s like a dog in heat. While Eva’s hanging around our living room talking to you about lace and hymns, he’s off somewhere having his wicked way with his mystery mistress. Who do you think it is?’

  ‘You sound like a bad daytime soap opera.’ Bill kissed her indulgently.

  ‘Oh, come on. You must have an idea.’

  ‘I need to go and work on my sermon.’

  ‘How about “Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour’s wife”?’ Jen called after him. ‘That’s a good theme. Or perhaps it should be “cover” in Henry’s case, seeing as he’s already at it.’

  Bill shook his head. He too had heard the rumours about Henry’s philandering. But he chose not to believe them. In the Reverend Clempson’s book, even infamous playboys were innocent until proven guilty.

  Perhaps ‘trust’ should be this Sunday’s theme?

  Lucy Smart fought her way off a packed Tube train at High Street Kensington, emerging onto the equally crowded street.

  Had London always been this much of a zoo? Or did it seem worse to her now that she and Richard had traded their big house in Battersea for a new life in the country?

  From the start Lucy had had mixed feelings about their move to the Swell Valley. Like Richard, she’d always loved the beauty of the place, and adored spending weekends and half-term holidays at her parents’ farm near Fittlescombe. She also bought into the idea of the boys growing up closer to nature, with more space to play outdoors and ride and fish and build camps and do all the things that she used to love as a child, and that her boys rarely got to do when they’d lived in London.

  But … (There always had to be a but.) As a GP, Richard had instantly plugged into village life, and the children had had their new school to keep them occupied; at their age, school was a whole world in itself. It was only Lucy who ever felt the oppressive weight of time on her hands. Only Lucy who ever gazed out of the window at Riverside Hall, the Wellesleys’ idyllic house, which she and Richard had rented to get out from under her parents’ feet, admiring the glorious view over the Downs while simultaneously longing to be able to pop out to Starbucks and go and meet a girlfriend, or go to Zara on a spur-of-the-moment shopping spree, or do any of the hundreds of little things that one could do in London, but couldn’t in the country.

  It didn’t help that Richard was wildly unsympathetic.

  ‘Of course you can go for coffee in the country. You just do it at people’s houses, that’s all, and not in some dreary American dump on the Wandsworth Bridge Road.’

  ‘People’s houses? Like whose?’ Lucy shot back.

  ‘I don’t know. Henry and Eva’s?’ said Richard.

  ‘Henry and Eva’ was Richard’s answer to everything. Lucy had tried to explain that, nice as she was, Eva really wasn’t exactly a kindred spirit. ‘Come on, darling. What do I have in common with a twenty-five-year-old Swedish lingerie model?’

  ‘Great tits?’ Richard offered helpfully.

  ‘I’m serious.’

  ‘So am I!’

  ‘Just because Henry’s your friend doesn’t make Eva mine.’

  ‘Well, make friends with some of the mums at school then.’

  ‘I’m trying!’ Lucy said, exasperated. ‘It’s not that easy.’

  ‘I don’t see why not.’

  ‘That’s because you don’t have to do it. Dickhead,’ said Lucy. ‘Most of them have known each other for years. I don’t fit in.’

  Lucy adored her husband, but he could be terribly blinkered at times. It was as if he had decided they were going to be happy living in the country; ergo, they were happy. Any feelings Lucy might have to the contrary were teething problems, the inevitable bumpiness of a transition from one life to another. He had made an effort to invite London friends down for the weekends, mostly for Lucy’s sake. But, ironically, that only made it worse. Even listening to friends moan about traffic on the Cromwell Road school run had the power to make Lucy feel homesick. Which was, of course, ridiculous.

  I am home, she told herself. Wherever Rich and the kids are is home.

  But, try as she might, she couldn’t stop the tendrils of some dark mood, some nameless depression creeping in. Lucy was thirty-five, five years older than Richard, and in a myriad small ways she was beginning to notice her body ageing. Nothing catastrophic. Just the usual fine lines around the eyes, the inevitable slight sagging in her breasts, the faint latticework of stretchmarks across her once taut and perfect stomach. Rich, God bless him, never saw her as anything other than beautiful. But Lucy couldn’t quite shake the feeling that this was her last chance; these were her last years as a vibrant, attractive, sexual woman in her prime. And that she was wasting them, locked away in a country house like Miss Marple, crocheting. (Metaphorically, obviously. Lucy wouldn’t know what to do with a crochet needle if world peace depended on it.)

  Trying to explain any of this to Richard was like shouting flat-pack assembly instructions in Urdu to a
deaf mute. Lucy was perfect. Their life was perfect. Any minor problems that arose, Richard would solve by loving Lucy even more. And so, guiltily, Lucy had let it drop.

  Hailing a cab, Lucy headed for her sister Pippa’s flat in Notting Hill. Normally, any trip to London was cause for celebration, but today Lucy felt jumpy and anxious, a mood that stayed with her all the way to Pippa’s place.

  Answering the door with her packed weekend bag over her shoulder and her passport clutched in one hand, Pippa Fullerton took one look at her sister and put the holdall down. ‘Are you all right? You look so pale! What’s wrong?’

  ‘Nothing,’ Lucy assured her. ‘Long journey, that’s all. What are you wearing, Pip?’

  Pippa was eight years younger than Lucy and still lived a life that revolved around Ibiza and parties and DJ boyfriends who all had names that sounded to Lucy like dogs, or cheap makes of car. The last one was called Fontina, sometimes referred to by Pippa as ‘Mr F’. Richard would always enquire after him by turning to his sister-in-law and asking loudly, ‘So how is what’s-his-name? Ford Cortina?’

  Today Pippa was off to some obscure festival in the south of France, and was dressed, as far as Lucy could tell, like an extra from a 1970s episode of Dr Who, in a tiny orange skirt, paisley shirt tied at the waist and floppy straw hat.

  ‘It’s boho,’ she said breezily. ‘Are you sure you’re all right? You look awful. Oh God, you’re not up the duff again are you?’

  ‘No! Definitely not! Why would you say that?’

  Lucy pushed past her, taking a look at herself in the hall mirror. Had she put on weight? Perhaps she shouldn’t have eaten that giant Pret baguette at Charing Cross Station earlier? But Pret was yet another thing she missed about London, and the siren call of the Chicken Caesar baguette had been more temptation than Lucy could resist.

  ‘No reason.’ Pippa shrugged. ‘You just look as if you might vom, that’s all. Anyway, if you’re sure you’re all right I’d better run. Don’t want to miss my flight. EasyJet are such Nazis these days. You know where everything is, right?’

  Without waiting for an answer she was gone, swirling out of the flat like a whirlwind and leaving Lucy, mercifully, alone.