‘You must let her stay here, Louise,’ Miriam said firmly. ‘She told me something in confidence which I can’t tell you, but you really do have to let her stay here.’
‘What d’you mean?’ Louise demanded. ‘She’s going as soon as the gear box is fixed. That’s the agreement.’
Miriam shook her head. ‘I want you to promise me that you’ll let her stay. I promise you she’ll not be here longer than a month. I give you my word, Louise. It’s just a month.’
Louise put their own plates down and plonked salt and pepper in the middle of the table. She poured more wine. She looked sulky. ‘You wouldn’t be so keen if it was your garden.’
‘I probably wouldn’t,’ Miriam admitted honestly. ‘But she’s where she wants to be. Listen, I’m making arrangements for her accommodation. If the problem is not resolved in a month I’ll find her a place in the h …’
‘A place in the h …?’
Miriam shook her head. ‘I really can’t say. But I promise you that she won’t be with you for more than a month.’
Louise sighed. ‘I don’t want her. I don’t see why I should have her.’
‘Well, you’ve got her. Just put up with her for a month. Twenty-eight days. It’s not much to ask. And it’s not as if you do a lot for the homeless.’
‘All right,’ Louise conceded grudgingly. ‘But she’s to go in a month without fail. And if anyone tries to join her –’ Louise was thinking about Captain Frome’s warning of family camps. ‘If anyone tries to join her I’ll have them all moved on.’
‘She doesn’t have anyone travelling with her. She specifically told me that she wanted to be here on her own.’
‘All right then.’
The two women ate in silence.
‘She told me a funny thing,’ Miriam said. ‘She told me I should change my own life, look at my own backyard.’
Louise glanced up, a forkful of casserole poised.
‘It’s true,’ Miriam said. ‘I spend all my life organising other people and I never look at what I’m doing. At where we live. At Toby and me.’
‘But you’re all right, aren’t you?’ Louise had no false delicacy warning her not to tread in difficult areas. Miriam had shared the difficulties of her relationship with Toby from the very beginning. Louise’s intimacy with them both was reinforced by the fact that she always heard of every marital squabble from both sides. On many occasions she had acted as unpaid (and untrained) counsellor, explaining Miriam’s feelings to Toby and vice versa. That her insight into Toby’s feelings came from her love affair with him did not seem, to Louise, to disqualify her from taking a neutral viewpoint. And indeed, Miriam had always found Louise supportive and sympathetic. There were few things Louise enjoyed more than dissecting her lover’s psychology with his wife.
‘We’re all right,’ Miriam agreed. ‘But nothing more than all right. We share a house. We often eat together. We sleep in the same bed. Sometimes we make love. It’s OK but you couldn’t say it was wildly exciting. We’re not close any more, if you know what I mean.’
Louise nodded encouragingly. ‘Is he withdrawn?’
‘Not him,’ Miriam said. ‘It’s me. I can’t even tell you why. I’m really busy all the time, and the work I do – well, of course it’s depressing. I’m home after him in the evening and then I spend an hour on the telephone. I’m out of the house before him in the morning. We saw more of each other when you were there, actually. We always had dinner together then.’
Louise hid her pleasure. ‘Don’t the two of you eat with Hugh?’
Miriam shook her head. ‘Toby doesn’t cook like he used to,’ she said. ‘Last time he did a proper meal was when you came.’
Louise nodded her head, looking concerned but feeling exultant. It was as she had thought. The marriage was a three-way relationship. With her withdrawal everything had changed. She felt a thrilling desire to jiggle the pillars of the temple like an experimental Samson and see if the whole thing came down.
‘If you could have anything you wanted,’ she asked, invoking the old game they used to play when they were undergraduates and thought that everything was possible, ‘anything in the world, what would it be?’
Miriam put her fork on her plate and rested her chin on her hands. For a moment she did not look like Miriam, thirty years old and stuck in a rut of social work and unsocial hours. She smiled. ‘I’d buy a bike,’ she said. ‘A mountain bike with loads of fancy gears and I’d pack a bag, and I’d take the ferry to Europe and I’d bike all around the world. Everywhere it was sunny. And I’d never come home again.’
Louise smiled indulgently. ‘Lovely,’ she said.
Saturday
THE PHONE RANG ABRUPTLY on Saturday morning, jerking Louise from sleep. She could hear Miriam downstairs, moving around the kitchen, making coffee and toast. Miriam never slept late any more, she was out of practice. Her conscience would wake her from the deepest, most restful sleep and remind her of work she had left unfinished: work which never could be finished while men and women treated each other with contempt.
‘Frome here,’ the Captain’s upper-class authoritative voice boomed in Louise’s ear. ‘Sorry to call so early, I had some news I thought I should tell you.’
‘Oh yes, Captain Frome,’ Louise said, sitting upright and rubbing her face into wakefulness.
‘We had the community policeman at the Parish Council meeting last night. It seems that your old lady may be joined by some friends, just as I thought. We all felt you should be warned.’
Louise raised herself in bed and looked anxiously out of the window. The blue van was still solitary in the orchard. The dog dozed at the steps. A small pile of wood, dead branches from trees, had appeared at the other side of the steps. Hazy violet woodsmoke shimmered from the aluminium chimney. Louise could smell the smoke, and behind the smoke the delicious smell of bacon frying. ‘Friends?’
‘There’s some kind of gang of travellers – the usual sort of thing. Apparently they’re headed our way. The police are keeping a general eye on things. But I told the community policeman about your old lady. He thought she might be some kind of advance guard, to soften up the do-gooders. I said you were taking a proper attitude to it. I said you were moving her on.’
‘I am,’ Louise assured him hastily. ‘In a month. I’ve said she could have a month.’
‘I thought you said she would be gone by June?’
‘I did … er … her plans have changed.’
‘Well, they’ll be here before then!’ the Captain exclaimed. ‘They’ll be here within days! The neighbourhood watch are leafleting houses, advising people to lock up their fields and paddocks. You’d be well advised to move her on and get that fence of yours repaired before they’re all camped in your orchard.’
‘Oh God,’ Louise said wearily.
‘D’you want me to come around and sort it out?’ the Captain demanded, trying to conceal his eagerness.
‘No, no! Thank you, but no. I have a friend, a social worker, she can find the old lady somewhere to go. She said she had a place for her. She’s staying with me. She’ll sort it out.’
‘Social worker, eh? I’d have thought you’d have done better with a firm word from me.’
‘Oh, thank you,’ Louise said distractedly. ‘But I really think … I’ll telephone if I need you, if I may.’
‘Very well, very well,’ the Captain said rather distantly. ‘See what you can do. The whole Parish Council is concerned at the line you’re taking. You don’t want to be seen letting the side down now, do you?’
‘No! Of course not.’
‘Newcomers to the country always have to be particularly careful,’ he advised kindly. ‘You think you’re doing the right thing but in fact you’re putting a lot of backs up. Take my word for it. Let’s do this as it’s always been done and get the gypsies moved on.’
‘I’ll phone you,’ Louise responded weakly. ‘Goodbye.’
Miriam tapped on the door and came into the room,
a cup of coffee in her hand. ‘I heard the phone.’
‘Thank you,’ Louise said. She took the cup. ‘That was the local bigwig. Apparently there’s a convoy of travellers headed this way. Everyone thinks they’re coming to my orchard. I’ve got to get the old lady moved on and the fence put up. Miriam, this changes everything.’
‘You could put a gate in,’ Miriam suggested. ‘She has to stay for a month. I promised her she could.’
‘But what about all the other travellers?’ Louise found her voice was rising. ‘And there’s the village to think about as well. I don’t want to upset everybody.’
Miriam shrugged. She was a city dweller, she had no idea of the mafia-like power of village society. ‘The other travellers won’t come here,’ she said. ‘What is there for them? A tiny little orchard and the company of an old lady? They’ll be on their way to a rave somewhere.’
‘Oh God,’ Louise said again. ‘They’ll be holding a rave in my orchard!’
Miriam laughed aloud. ‘No, all you’ve got is one quiet old lady for a month. This is just the panic of the bourgeoisie with property values under threat. Calm down!’
‘Well, I’m getting a gate put in,’ Louise said firmly. ‘I’m not having the fence open to anyone who fancies driving in. And you must make her promise that she is nothing to do with these others.’
‘OK. OK. I’ll make you some breakfast. Toast?’
‘Please.’ Louise got out of bed and pulled on her fraying towelling dressing gown. The silky one with the matching pyjamas was in the bottom drawer waiting for Toby.
She picked up the telephone. She knew Andrew Miles’s three-digit number by heart. Again she waited while the phone rang and rang. Just as she was going to give up, he picked it up. He was breathless. ‘Yes?’
‘It’s Louise Case.’
‘Hold on a minute.’
Louise heard him shouting at a dog to get out of the kitchen with those dirty paws and then he picked up the phone again. ‘Yes?’
‘I’ve just had Captain Frome on the telephone,’ she said.
‘Oh, him.’
‘He says there is a convoy of travellers headed this way.’
Andrew Miles said nothing.
‘I want a gate put across the gap in the fence,’ Louise told him. ‘The neighbourhood watch people are advising everyone to close up their paddocks and fields.’
There was a suppressed snort on the other end of the telephone which sounded like Andrew Miles trying not to laugh. ‘A bit difficult on a two-hundred-acre farm and a common with common rights,’ he pointed out.
‘Yes, but about my orchard …’
‘All right,’ he said. ‘I’ve got a hurdle I can put across. I’ll come down now.’
‘Thank you,’ Louise said. ‘And the gear box for the van?’
‘I’ve not found one yet,’ he said. He had forgotten all about the van. ‘I’ll ring a couple of garages and then I’ll come down.’
‘Thank you,’ said Louise again but he was already gone.
By the time Louise was dressed, in well-cut jeans and a crew-neck cream cotton sweater, Andrew Miles’s Land-Rover had already shuddered to a halt outside and Miriam had opened the front door to him. ‘Hello, come in.’
Andrew hesitated. He had never been inside the house since Louise had moved in. All their business had been conducted at the overflow end of the septic tank, or pacing the boundaries. ‘Louise will be down in a moment,’ Miriam said with her meaningless social-worker smile.
Andrew heel-toed his Wellington boots off and stepped over the threshold, leaving them in the porch. His knitted socks were thick and grey. He wriggled one adventurous toe back out of sight from a small hole. Miriam was too polite to stare but she was unused to people taking their shoes off before entering a house like faithful Muslims in a temple.
Louise came downstairs and recoiled slightly at seeing Andrew Miles, so big, and with such big woolly feet, in her dainty sitting room. ‘Oh, hello.’
‘She asked me in,’ Andrew said gracelessly.
‘Coffee?’ Miriam offered.
Andrew gave Louise a quick embarrassed look. ‘If you have the time,’ Louise said. ‘I expect you want to get on. You’re always so busy.’
‘Haymaking,’ Andrew explained quickly. ‘Soon,’ he added more honestly. ‘I’ll start on that hurdle.’
He backed out towards the door and stepped into his Wellington boots again.
Miriam looked curiously at Louise. ‘Is that your drunk neighbour? I thought you said he was old.’
‘I never said old.’
‘Take a cup out to him,’ Miriam commanded. ‘You can’t drag him down here and then not even pass the time of day.’
‘I pay him,’ Louise said. But she poured coffee into a mug and went out into the drive.
A black-and-white collie observed her silently from the cab of the Land-Rover, too well-trained to do more than beam at her and stir a silky tail.
‘Coffee?’ Louise offered, and handed Mr Miles the mug.
He was untying the hurdle from the back of the Land-Rover. But he straightened up and took it from her. Louise noticed for the first time that his eyes were an unusually dark blue, as blue as periwinkles. The old woman was right, he was an attractive man; but hardly an appropriate partner for her. Louise smiled at the thought of life in Wistley Common Farm. His life was an antithesis of hers. Their hours, their pastimes, even their thoughts were in complete contrast.
Andrew Miles drank the scalding coffee at speed.
‘Is it going to rain?’ Louise asked in her light social voice.
‘The forecast’s bad,’ he replied. ‘Rain from midday and some thunderstorms tonight. I’ll go down and see Rose before I leave. Make sure she’s all right.’
‘Rose?’
Andrew Miles looked surprised. ‘Rose,’ he repeated. ‘In the van.’
‘I didn’t know her name.’
‘Rose Miles.’
He handed the mug back to Louise with a word of thanks and then continued unloading the hurdle.
‘Hang on a minute,’ Louise said, struggling to understand. ‘Did you say Miles? Is she a relation of yours?’
‘She told you she was born here,’ Andrew said reasonably.
‘I thought she was a gypsy.’
He smiled. ‘Born in this house, married a gypsy. She went away when she was twenty or so. But she always comes back here for the summer.’
‘She’s one of your family?’
Andrew shrugged vaguely. ‘She was born a Miles. She’s an aunt or something. I’m not very good on that kind of thing.’
‘Well, then, she should certainly be at your farm,’ Louise said suddenly. ‘Not here.’
Andrew smiled. ‘I really would like to oblige you, Miss Case,’ he said formally. ‘But it’s her wish to be here. I can’t move her on. I have no authority over her.’
Louise felt reproved. ‘Captain Frome says there are travellers coming this way.’
Andrew nodded.
‘They might come in here when they see the van.’
‘They wouldn’t break down a fence. That’s damage and trespass. They’ll come on up to my farm.’
Louise’s eyes widened. ‘What will you do?’ she asked. ‘Have you warned the police?’
‘I’m renting them a field,’ Andrew Miles said pleasantly. ‘We’re going to have one of these – what d’you call them? – raves. There’ll be dancing and I’ve said they can have fires and cook. It’ll be a bit of a party. I like a bit of a party.’
He humped the hurdle from the back of the Land-Rover on to his back and carried it around to the break in the fence, not seeing Louise’s astounded face. He leaned it against the surviving fence and carefully broke away the damaged wood and put it into a pile.
‘Rose can have that, I suppose,’ he said to Louise. ‘Unless you want it for kindling.’
Louise flapped her hands dismissively at the wood pile. ‘You can’t possibly do this!’ she exclaimed. ‘There
will be all sorts of people. You don’t know what you’re getting yourself into. They’ll be dealing in drugs and they’ll be in trouble with the police, and they’ll be impossible to move on. They’ll damage your land. Their dogs will eat your sheep.’
‘Oh, I don’t think so,’ he said gently.
He reached in his pocket for some baler twine and started lashing the gate to the fence posts with three loose loops.
‘Why are you doing this?’ Louise exclaimed. ‘Why let these people come to your land?’
Andrew went to the other end of the gate and experimentally lifted and opened and then closed it. He twisted a loop of twine to fasten it shut.
‘No hinges,’ he explained. ‘You’ll find it a bit heavy to shift. But she’s not going anywhere till I get the van fixed. At least it closes the gap for you, if that’s what you want.’
‘Thank you,’ Louise said distractedly. ‘But why are you letting them on your land? Everyone in the village is against it!’
Andrew straightened up and smiled at her. ‘I like a bit of a party. It’s not often we get a chance for a bit of a party round here.’
Louise was speechless for a moment. ‘Captain Frome will go mad.’
Andrew smiled warmly at her. ‘He doesn’t matter,’ he said with the confidence of a man who lives in his own house, his father’s house, with his own land stretching for miles all around him. ‘He doesn’t matter at all.’
He opened the hurdle gate, picked up the broken fence rails, and strolled down the orchard towards Rose Miles’s caravan. He dumped the firewood on the little pile, kicked off his Wellington boots and left them by the steps, tapped on the open door and stepped inside, ducking his head, as a man confident of his welcome.
Miriam called from the front door. ‘Telephone!’
Louise went numbly in. ‘Hello?’
‘Frome here again,’ the voice boomed. ‘Sorry to trouble you twice in one morning. I’ve got some news I thought you should have. The travellers are definitely headed your way. They’re about forty miles from the village now. The police are setting up a roadblock and they’re warning everyone to lock their gates. Are you secure?’
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