by Ann Swinfen
He nods. He has been at St Martins for over two months now, but he has hardly dared to speak. The habit of silence and fear has been so drilled into him that he cannot overcome it. He looks around. Part of the roof has fallen in. The floor is littered with straw and bits of broken stone and shattered pews. It reminds him powerfully of other ruins, still hot from the fires that have ravaged them, filled with the sweet stink of burnt human bodies, where he and Mama and Papa had to hide. He is rigid.
Natasha, who has been following the news reports of the recent Warsaw rising, wonders whether she should have brought the child here. Drawn to him by a shared experience neither of them can speak of, she longs to help, but cannot think where to start.
'Look,' she says, drawing him on to her lap, and lifting a ragged panel of glass from the top of a tea-chest. 'When Frances was helping me start to tidy up in here, see what we found.' She holds the panel up in front of him, so that the light flowing down the nave from the east window lights it up in intense shades of deep blue and crimson.
Gregor sees the Virgin and Child who used to look down at him from the window above the family pew at home in Poland. He reaches out a finger to touch the dusty glass. 'Mary,' he whispers.
* * *
Standing in the very back pew, drawing himself away from the congregation of which he is obliged to be a part, Gregor looks down the aisle at the two figures in grey morning dress before the altar. Rage pounds in his head like physical blows. He understands, for the first time, that to see red is not a mere figure of speech. His vision swims in a blood-red haze, and he can barely draw breath. Hugh slips into the pew across the aisle and gives him an anguished look, but Gregor ignores him.
Frances comes into the chapel on William's arm. She pauses beside the first pews, adjusting her veil, allowing Olga, her bridesmaid, to spread out the train of her dress behind her. Through the smell of blood in his nostrils, Gregor can smell her. The scent she wears, Je reviens, and the flowers of her bouquet, orange blossom and freesias. As she moves forward, the skirt of her wedding dress brushes against him, but she does not look at him. She is abstracted, absorbed in the ritual.
He hates her so much he wants to hit her, there, in front of the whole congregation.
She has reached the altar. She hands her flowers to Olga. William steps back, the best man moves a little to one side. Giles bends towards her and smiles.
* * *
'Darling,' Lisa whispered now to Paul in that same pew at the back of the chapel, 'could we slip out, before we get caught up with everyone? I think I might lie down for a bit.'
* * *
As the congregation came out of the service there was a feeling of festivity in the air. Richard and Natasha stood together beside the door, shaking hands as people filed past. When everyone but Frances had gone, Natasha turned to Richard and kissed him on each cheek.
'I wish Edmund could have known you, Richard. You and your crazy trains – he would have loved that!'
Richard blushed and mumbled something. He would like to have known Edmund, if it came to that. He must have been quite a man, to have inspired such love in a woman like Natasha Devereux. It always seemed strange to him that he never thought of her as a woman so much older than himself. She still turned male heads in the street – he had seen it happen.
The hazy clouds were beginning to drift away as Frances and Natasha walked slowly back together towards the house. Chrissie came out of her family's front door and raced past.
'I'm going to see if Samira is coming!' she shouted.
'It's going to be fine after all,' said Frances. 'We won't need to use the Scout tent that Mabel has been agonising over. Did you pray for sunshine?'
'Not really. I was thinking about Edmund. Did you?'
Frances looked away from her, across the garden towards the rise of the meadow, before it dropped away to the Ludbrook.
'No, I wasn't praying. I wasn't even thinking. If I think these days I am too apt to work myself up into a state. So I just let myself go, on a tide of music and the beautiful language of the service. I'm so glad Richard is a traditionalist, at least as far as the texts are concerned. Though I'm relieved he supports the ordination of women.'
'Mum!' shouted Katya from the stableyard. 'Come and see! Spiro has done the most fabulous things!'
'Go on,' said Natasha, laughing. 'Go and see. It is good to see her full of excitement again, like a child. She forgets her teenage pose of boredom and angst.'
The kitchen was warm and spicy with the scent of cinnamon and nutmeg as Frances came in. Spiro and Sally were laughing while they put away baking tins, and Olga was humming to herself as she rinsed down the sink and wiped the table top that glowed with the sunlight slanting in through the open door. Picasso was washing his back legs nonchalantly on one of the assorted rush-seated chairs, having insinuated himself back into the kitchen while they were busy. Seurat had gone off somewhere with his chicken leg, probably deep into the shrubbery, and – being the more diplomatic of the two – had not shown his face again yet.
Laid out on the dresser were plates of egg and watercress sandwiches, buttered drop scones, a heap of chocolate muffins, and two particularly wicked looking cakes, sticky with honey, over which Sally had placed a net canopy, to the frustration of several wasps. Spiro opened the upper oven on the range and lifted out four large gratin dishes covered with neat rows of grey-green parcels, like fat sausages. The smell of roasted peppers and garlic billowed across the kitchen in a warm wave.
'I'm absolutely starving,' wailed Katya. 'Can't I have just one, Spiro?'
Spiro laughed at her and looked at Sally. 'Shall we permit her just one? She can tell us if they are all right.'
Before Sally could reply, Katya speared one of the dolmades on a fork and fielded it on a plate.
'Wow, it's fantastic,' she mumbled through a full mouth, fanning the heat away with her hand. 'Try a bit, Mum.'
Frances took the proffered forkful. 'Delicious, Spiro. What an inspiration! We've never thought of using the vine leaves. The vine is so old it doesn't produce any proper grapes any more, it's just ornamental.'
'Vines – they need proper care, of course,' said Spiro. He grinned, thinking of the cracked and broken panes of glass in the old orangery. The vine sprawled in every direction, its branches reaching out like the gnarled arms of some benevolent giant. Briefly he remembered the disciplined rows of vines in his uncle's vineyard in the Peloponnese. They seemed cowed and timid by comparison.
'Yes, we probably don't look after it as we should. Birgit and Peter are our flower experts, and Mr Dawlish is very good with all the standard vegetables – potatoes, carrots, tomatoes and peas, you know. But none of us has any expertise in the more exotic things.'
'You could grow much more in your orangery. Peppers. Melons. Figs.'
Frances laughed. 'I'm not sure whether Mr Dawlish would approve, but we'll have to get you to work on him. It would be fun to grow things like that – and helpful to the community's budget, if they did well.'
Sally ducked her head as she took off her apron.
'I quite fancy that. Luscious home-grown melon for breakfast. Nice juicy peppers, instead of the rather withered efforts from the village shop.'
'We could even sell peppers to the village shop,' said Katya, carried away with the idea. She looked at Spiro, Frances noticed, with enormous respect. He had shed his jacket and tie, and had donned the huge butcher's apron Gregor sometimes wore. His sleeves were rolled up and there was a dab of flour on his nose. What was even more interesting was that Katya had thrown off her poacher's jacket and several more of her layers, which now lay about on chairs and on the scullery floor. In her skirt, leggings and sleeveless T shirt she was not conventionally dressed by Irina's standards, but she looked a good deal less odd. She was also bright with cheerfulness and excitement. Frances felt a rush of gratitude towards Spiro. And, in an odd way, towards Bob and the cats.
'Has anyone let Bob out of his confinement yet?' she ask
ed.
'Heavens!' said Sally, 'I completely forgot. And I must go and see if Sarah is being a pest to Peter. I'd better give her something to eat before the guests arrive. They'll be here any minute.'
'You run along, darling,' said Frances. 'We'll muster the troops to move all the food outside. Spiro, could you round up Nick and Tony? There are crates of bottles to be carried up from the cellar and put out in the shade of the chestnut, next to those long tables. And,' she added quietly, as he was taking off his apron, 'you can't think how grateful I am.'
'This was nothing,' he said, laughing. 'I am enjoying myself. You can't think how grateful I am to get away from my books!'
* * *
Giles stole another look at his watch. In his view they had accomplished all that could usefully be done in this morning's rehearsal, and he was getting anxious about Nigel, who had arrived half an hour ago and was prowling about restlessly. It was absolutely essential not to offend Nigel. He held the key to Giles's immediate future, and it was important to clinch a deal quickly, while the reputation of Vet in Hot Water was still riding high. This morning's rehearsal had convinced him that his vague worries were more than justified. The second series, due to be screened in six months' time, was going to be panned by the critics.
It was always a risk, especially with a sitcom. A good idea could keep the team going for the first series, but if key members had to leave and the whole thing lost steam, the follow-up could just turn into a dying duck. With Max gone off to New York for a year as a comedy-writer-in-residence for a prestigious theatre workshop, and Judy doubtful about returning to play her minor part now that she was making a name for herself as a lead comic, the prospects for a third series were zilch.
He was getting a bit tired of it himself, frankly. He'd been so desperate for something that he'd agreed to the first series, and it had turned out to be great fun after all. But, let's face it, falling about head over arse in the muck, in pop comedy, was not going to do his long-term ambitions any good. He only had the vaguest idea what Nigel Laker was planning – he had been hugging it to his chest for weeks, not wanting the other channels to get a whiff of it. But Giles was pretty sure it was more up-market than this stuff.
The janitor walked in the door without knocking and jangled his keys.
'I gotta lock up. It's gone twelve. You're supposed to be outa here.'
He was an unpleasant, pimply young lout, chewing gum and leaning insolently against the door-frame. The director, having paid for the rehearsal room till twelve, was determined to get his money's worth.
'We have another five minutes,' he said fussily, looking at his watch.
Without answering, the janitor pointed indolently at the clock on the wall. It said one minute past twelve.
Giles intervened. 'Time we were off, I think.' He beamed charmingly at both the director and the janitor, and lied, 'Good morning's work done. Let's quit while we're ahead.'
It took another fifteen minutes, even so, to sort out times for next week's filming schedule and to gather up his coat and suitcase.
'Let's get out of here,' he muttered to Nigel. 'God, I need a drink! Where's your car?'
'Just round the corner on the left. Let's get on our way and stop somewhere out of London for a drink and a bite. I know an acceptable hostelry about three-quarters of an hour from here. Nice little place where they serve real ale and quite decent food, not your usual bought-in bar lunch stuff.'
'Great.'
Nigel's Merc was parked on a double yellow line, and a parking ticket was stuck to the windscreen.
'Damn,' said Nigel. 'I was afraid of that. I thought I'd only be a couple of minutes.'
Giles's heart sank. 'Let me,' he said hastily, reaching out his hand for the ticket.
'Not on your life. I don't believe in handing over money to petty bureaucrats.' Nigel removed the ticket from its plastic envelope, tore it into tiny shreds and scattered them broadcast over the street. This seemed to cheer him up a good deal.
'Hop in,' he said. 'No talking about the new series till we get to the pub, then I'll fill you in.'
Chapter 6
'We'll need to put all the rest of the cars in the field,' said Nicholas. 'We can only squeeze in one more here on the gravel.'
Mr Dawlish always wore a flat cap, whatever the weather, which he pushed back when speaking. By the end of a long discussion it would be hanging on for dear life to the wiry curls on the back of his head. He pushed it back now. 'Yes, Oi suppose. Mabee a bicycle might get, but nothing else. Oi'll get Miss Owens's sign and move 'im, and open the fild gate.'
'Good thing Alun Philips was able to move his cows out of that field yesterday,' said Nicholas. 'I hope last night's rain won't mean the cars churn it up too much. I don't think we've ever had so many cars here before.'
Mr Dawlish heaved up the 'Parking' sign that Nicholas had earlier hammered into the grass verge, and trudged off down the drive to the point just before the field gate. Nicholas could hear him banging in the wooden support with a stone as the next car crunched up the gravel drive.
'Just go on round the house to the garden,' he said to the Patels from the village newsagent's shop, who were climbing out of a bright red Fiesta, the last car in the long row already parked. 'Refreshments over at the far end, by the big chestnut tree. Natasha is there somewhere too.' Samira, as Chrissie's best friend, led her parents off with an air of casual self-importance.
* * *
When Mia Patel had arrived in Bristol as a bride of twenty in 1974, chosen by Chanor's grandmother as suitable for marriage to her English-born grandson, she was determined that she would create a wonderful home for him and the children (who would come soon), modelled on what she found in Good Housekeeping, which at that time was her favourite reading. Mia was clever and ambitious.
'You must understand,' Chanor said, during their only meeting before the marriage, 'that England now is not like the days of the Raj. There are no servants.'
'No servants?' Mia smiled at him, polite but disbelieving.
'Truly, no servants. Except in families like – like the Queen's. Sometimes there is a servant who comes into the house a few hours in the day to clean, but that is all.' He cleared his throat. 'My mother,' he said, 'does not have a servant.'
'Not even of this daily kind?'
'No, not even that.' He did not want to admit this, though he was a good, honest boy. He had known at once that his grandmother had made a wonderful choice. Mia was the perfect wife for him.
'But in my grandfather's house,' said Mia, very puzzled, 'there are seventeen indoor servants and ten outdoor servants.'
'I know,' said Chanor sadly. Mia came from an old-fashioned household, where four generations of the family lived together in a rambling mansion.
'But,' he added hopefully, 'you will not need servants in England. I will buy you the very latest electric cooker, with built-in hob and oven, and a vacuum cleaner, and a washing machine, and a tumble-drier.' He paused. 'Even a dishwasher,' he added bravely. He was not quite sure how he would manage this, but he was sure that somehow he would find a way.
The marriage had proved a very happy one, although Chanor was not able to fulfil all his promises at once. Mia was determined that her house should be as unlike the cheerful but disorderly home of her Punjabi childhood as possible. There the instructions to servants would be changed and countermanded half a dozen times by different members of the household. The servants, being accustomed to this, postponed every task. If a meal was due to be served at noon, you could expect to sit down at two or – if it had been a hot day of short tempers – three o'clock in the afternoon. Every day was a drama. As a young girl she had tumbled about through this chaos with her brothers, sisters and cousins, without the slightest concern. When she was thirteen or fourteen, however, her innate sense of order surfaced. She had begun to be distressed by the muddle of her family life. Now she wanted to make for Chanor a home that was tranquil and ordered. When the children arrived, they would be br
ought up to be neat, polite and quiet.
At this point, Fate intervened. The children they both so much desired did not appear. Mia grew restive, sitting alone in her perfect house, and her ambition asserted itself. She began to attend evening classes at the local college of further education. She enrolled first for flower arranging (in the English style) and cake decorating. She went to French for beginners and elementary pottery, nouvelle cuisine, typing and Shakespearean tragedy. She avoided practical car maintenance (Chanor would not have approved), but progressed to intermediate French, practical mathematics, beginners' German, and American poetry. When at last Samira arrived, Mia had run out of courses at the college, and could have given instruction in most of them.
It was 1985 when Samira was born. Their business – a delicatessen selling mostly, but not exclusively, Indian foods – was flourishing in Thatcher's Britain. But before the baby was a year old, another Indian family in the neighbourhood had petrol poured through their letterbox and a match set to it. Eighteen months later a teenage boy they knew was badly beaten up in a racist attack and spent three weeks in hospital. Mia, who had always been so cool and in command, became – for the first time – hysterical.
'We cannot continue to live here,' she had said to Chanor, her face wet with tears. 'What will become of Samira when she has to go to school? Oh, what shall we do?'
Chanor was quite unnerved – both by the recent violent events and by Mia's loss of control. He promised immediately that he would look for a business in one of the nearby rural counties. When they discovered the newsagent's business for sale in Clunwardine Priors, Chanor was doubtful, but Mia knew with certainty that this was where they should make their home.