Chapter 22
First Cuckoo
Mace arrived just after the first batch of Skint Old Northern Woman was delivered, strode in like a conquering emperor, and kissed me right in front of Em, Anne and Walter, who were all helping to shift the magazines into the back room.
Bran had been helping, too, but had wandered off with a copy and hadn’t come back. Probably analysing it.
Mace was wearing the fur-lined leather coat, with a checked cotton Arab kaffiyeh tied around his neck. Instead of looking poncey and affected, he gave the impression he’d just dismounted from his shaggy pony and parked his scimitar at the door before popping in for a quick tea-and-ravage.
‘I’ve finished the play – three o’clock this morning – now I’m on my way to London,’ he said, favouring me with one of his intense ‘slow fuse heading for the dynamite’ smoulders. ‘This is just to remind you that I’ll be back.’
He released me, and while I tried to reinflate my lungs began moving cartons of magazines himself, rather faster than we had. ‘I’ll take a box of these with me, if that’s okay. I’ll settle up for them when I get back: if you trust me?’
‘We’ll bill you,’ I croaked, then cleared my throat and added, hardening my heart: ‘In case you decide not to come back.’
‘Oh, I’ll be back, darling – count on it.’
‘Do you want to be nude centrefold in the next one?’ asked Anne hopefully. ‘Give your services for free?’
‘I always do,’ he said, grinning. ‘And I’ll think about it.’
‘Heh! Heh! Heh!’ laughed Walter, seeming to find this amusing for some reason. ‘If he don’t want to do it I could be your pin-up,’ he offered generously. ‘I’ve got no bodily hair what-so-ever.’
‘Well, that would certainly be alternative,’ Emily said. ‘Or how about Chris, in just his dog collar and motorbike boots?’
‘Too kinky – the Church wouldn’t approve,’ Anne said seriously.
‘I don’t think the Church are going to approve of his marrying me, either,’ Em said.
‘Chris has been summoned to see his bishop this morning,’ I told Mace, as he stacked the last of the boxes. ‘We don’t know why, but we think he must have heard rumours about Em.’
‘Them ones about sacrificing chickens and funny crosses are all lies,’ Walter said stoutly. ‘Our Em never would hurt a fly.’
Well, she wouldn’t hurt a dumb creature … though dumb people are another thing.
‘If Chris and I can work out a form of marriage that respects both our beliefs, I don’t see what the Church has got to stick its nose in for,’ Em said mutinously.
‘Perhaps you and Anne could hammer out some form of agreement for Charlie and me?’ Mace suggested. ‘A peace treaty, so we could live adjoining lives, like friendly territories, overlapping at the edges here and there. The odd little border skirmish…’ He reached out and ran a finger down my cheek until it reached my lips, which quivered suddenly in a very SueEllen way, all on their own. ‘Meanwhile, I’m off to London, where hopefully I’ll discover Kathleen all in one piece, so satisfying Ran, at least, that I possess the qualities of a potential son-in-law.’
‘We already know Kathleen’s all right,’ Em said, looking thoughtfully at him. ‘We’ve seen it – by various means. But if the Treacle Tart marries Father, we all might be looking for a new home: so marry Mace, Chaz, and we’ll come and live with you.’
‘I don’t see why I have to sacrifice myself so the family can stay together!’ I protested.
‘Oh thanks!’ Mace said. ‘Don’t mind me.’
‘Yes, but Mace is probably filthy rich,’ Anne pointed out. ‘Aren’t you, Mace? You could afford to buy a bigger house, with room for us all?’
‘I could, but…’
‘This is the only really big house in Upvale,’ Em said.
‘Well, he could have an annex built on his cottage?’ I suggested. ‘And everyone probably won’t want to come at once anyway, unless its Christmas or something.’
‘So, are you going to marry him?’ Anne asked.
‘No, of course not. What would I do that for?’
They turned as one and looked at Mace.
‘Pretty obvious reasons, I should think,’ Em said, after a minute.
‘Bloody right,’ Anne agreed.
Gloria came in with a tea tray, and gave Mace a scathing head-to-foot inspection. ‘It’s you, is it?’
‘It was last time I looked,’ he agreed. ‘I’m off to London, though – I’ve a first night to attend – but I’ll be back after Kathleen’s wedding, with Caitlin.’
‘Why bother? You’ve played your part,’ she said sourly.
‘Life’s a play, and all the men and women in it but the players…’ he misquoted cheerfully, his pretensions not looking particularly depressed. ‘I refuse to be First Villain – I’ll be back. Would anyone like any shopping done in London? Christmas presents?’
Em felt in her dungaree pocket. ‘If you want a challenge, I’ve got Bran’s Christmas present list here.’ She looked down and read: ‘Three Hundred and Fifty-Nine Definitions of Meaning by Gottfried Flauncy Gresham. Published in 1959, probably had a print run of five copies.’
‘Hasn’t Bran put anything easier on the list?’ Anne demanded. ‘We’ll never effing find that!’
‘Jelly beans? Harry Potter? Liquorice smoking set and chocolate cigars?’
‘That’s more like it.’
‘I might as well give the book a go,’ Mace offered, and scribbled down the title before giving me another look of extreme (if blistering) intensity and striding off, his shorn black locks ruffled by an invisible hand.
‘You lay off him!’ I said to the air, which quivered sulkily like a heat haze – only in this case, a chill haze.
‘You can’t blame her for trying,’ Em said.
‘Yes I can.’
The window shutter banged twice, rather petulantly.
* * *
Unfortunately, Chris’s bishop did not want to congratulate him on his intended pagan/Christian nuptials with Em, merely to point out the gaping gateway to Hell grinning at his feet.
After that, Chris said, he fully and frankly expressed his own feelings on the matter to the bishop, which is probably how he got sent to Upvale in the first place, it being The Land Time Forgot.
‘I’m taking early retirement, just as soon as they find a temporary replacement,’ he told us as we sorted out our magazine dispatch depot. ‘I won’t have remarks like that made about the woman I love.’
‘Oh? What did he say?’ Em demanded eagerly.
‘My lips are sealed,’ he replied firmly, looking resolute under his Wyatt Earp moustache.
Seeing Em was considering unsealing them with the paperknife, I said hastily: ‘But won’t you have to move out of the Vicarage, too, Chris?’
‘I’m afraid so. But not out of Upvale. I have a small private income of my own, enough to buy a small cottage. But I hate to reduce Em to that level, after being used to all this space.’
‘Oh, anywhere that hasn’t got the Treacle Tart in it sounds wonderful to me at the moment, Chris,’ Em assured him. ‘And you can move in here with me until we sort things out.’
‘Not until we’re married,’ he said firmly.
‘But—’
‘Bloody straight-laced vicars,’ commented Anne.
‘He is not!’ Em said hotly. ‘He—’
‘Em,’ Chris said, and she stopped and looked at him.
‘Oh, all right.’
‘The attics?’ I suggested. ‘There are lots of them empty. Or why not get married quickly, if you’ve worked out a compromise ceremony?’
‘We could, if my friend can get away for long enough to officiate,’ Chris said. ‘Em doesn’t feel she can come any further into the church than the front porch, so we can have a simple ceremony there, and then we can all go up to the standing stones and Em’s friends can say a few words.’
‘Yes – just a general sort o
f blessing you know – nothing extreme,’ explained Em, which relieved my mind a little.
‘And then we can have a party!’ Anne said.
‘If we did it just before Christmas, we could combine the celebrations with that,’ Em suggested.
‘But what will your father say if I just move in?’
‘Nothing,’ Anne said. ‘You’re here most of the time now, anyway, aren’t you? He’s got used to you.’
Skint Old Bookworm, no. 1
Never trust a biographer: they read other people’s letters.
‘Ran said he had no objection to us marrying now, Em, providing you didn’t die in childbirth,’ Chris said, returning after bearding the lion in his den. ‘Has he always had these morbid ideas?’
‘That was bloody Charlotte!’ Anne said. ‘Honestly – you wouldn’t think he’d written a book about the Brontës, would you? If anyone was going to die in childbirth it would be Charlie, not Em.’
‘But I’m not the one marrying a clergyman.’
‘And I’m not having effing children,’ Emily stated. ‘Date stamp’s up.’
‘That’s all right, I don’t want to share you,’ Chris said.
‘Why not? I share you with your effing motorbike!’
‘Are you jealous of my motorbike?’ he asked, pulling her close and kissing her.
A small avalanche of magazines cascaded down behind them like a waterfall.
‘She doesn’t like it, Em,’ Anne warned.
‘Who doesn’t like what?’ asked Chris, confused.
‘The poltergeist thing. She never likes it when you’re happy. She’s a miserable bugger.’
‘Oh?’ He looked a bit taken aback. ‘Should I say a prayer, and see if it feels any happier – or goes away?’
‘If you like,’ Em said unconcernedly. ‘If you say one every time you come in here, she might get fed up and leave voluntarily, but she’s not doing anyone any harm.’
‘Right,’ he said uncertainly.
Skint Old Fashion Victim, no. 4
Some time around forty, our fashion sense withers away to a whimpering pinprick, and we make major clothes-buying mistakes.
Although we can see in the mirror that we don’t look the same as we did at twenty, somehow we still expect the same clothes to suit us.
This is the time when we buy sheepskin jackets that double our bulk, (and the only thing that looks good in a sheepskin is a sheep) glitzy ankle socks, and diamanté Alice bands.
Due to gravitational pull, our bums and boobs have begun their slow but inexorable continental drift southwards, so leggings and boob tubes are out.
However, you will slowly start to forge a new and unique personal dress style once you’ve overcome this initial catastrophic phase.
You will know you are over the worst when you buy something thinking: ‘I don’t give a stuff if that’s fashionable or not – it’s just so comfortable.’
Since Chris found out about the invisible occupant of the sitting room, I’ve caught him in there once or twice muttering and sprinkling water about. And actually the atmosphere does seem to be warming up, so maybe she’s gradually vanishing from the scene. Or perhaps she simply doesn’t like all the new technology: Chris’s humming computer, and the printer doing the labels, not to mention the packing of magazines into slithery plastic postal packets, which has all been going on pretty well non-stop.
I don’t know how Madge has done it, but it seems like every WI member in the country has ordered a copy for a start, and all Anne’s friends and acquaintances have too. (Probably too frightened not to.)
I simply don’t have time to think about Mace more than thirty or forty times a day … and night. It’s exhausting; he’s certainly such stuff as dreams are made on.
In fact, now he’s gone it does just feel like I had a really, really wonderful fantasy involving some gorgeous but unattainable person, who you know really wouldn’t behave in the least like that to you in real life. (And it would petrify you if he did, anyway.)
I expect things are settling into a more familiar perspective for Mace, too, now he is back with his rich and famous friends, in his posh London town house. I should think a few more days of drinking London water would flush even the most resistant love philtre out of his system.
He hasn’t totally forgotten us, though: a reporter and photographer from one of the Sunday papers turned up to do an interview – and who else could have told them about Skint Old Northern Woman?
Father was a little aggrieved that they hadn’t come to interview him this time, and insisted on being in on the photograph at least. Jessie did, too, but we drew the line there since she’d done absolutely nothing to help: I mean, even Clo and Febe have been putting in time packing magazines into packets.
Other than this, there has been no word from Mace, though on the first day of Christmas, my new love sent to me – a banana tree.
Figure that one out.
* * *
One morning, after the usual brief tussle with Frost, Father retired to the end of the table to read his mail muttering darkly, though I think it’s very clever of Frost to realise that the post belongs to us at all: nobody trained him to fetch it in.
There was only one thing in the post for me, and Frost had to drag that in separately – a stiff envelope like you send photographs in, containing – yes, photographs.
I puzzled over them, for most seemed to be photos of the Parsonage interior … especially my bedroom before Jessica seized it, and the little triangular bathroom off it with the fireplace, and rolltop bath with lion feet.
There was also one taken inside what looked like a tropical house at Kew, and a note from Mace: ‘This is my London house – thought you might like the way I’m re-modelling some of the interior rooms. The workmen have put the conservatory up, working literally night and day, which hasn’t pleased my neighbours…’
I looked up. ‘It’s from Mace. He’s making part of the inside of his London house look like the Parsonage…’ I looked down again, frowning. ‘But he can’t have done all that since he got back, can he?’
‘And why would anyone want to do that?’ Jessica said, puzzled. ‘He’s got one of those lovely, huge old terraced houses in a quiet square, I’ve seen it in a magazine.’
‘He borrowed a book of photographs of the Parsonage interior, ages ago: mentioned it to him in the pub one night,’ Father said. ‘The one that peculiar American did. Ranulf Rhymer: In His Place. I expect that gave him the idea.’
Em passed the photos round to Anne. ‘I expect he’s just doing one or two of the rooms up to make you feel at home, Chaz.’
‘What do you mean, feel at home?’
‘So you’re happy there, when he has to be in London,’ she explained. ‘We had a little chat when he came up to see Gloria. He told me he ordered the work done last time he was in London, after the Birthday Feast. Then he had the conservatory remodelled, and he says the garden is very lush and quite private, with a gazebo and a big pond with fish.’
‘But that means that he was expecting me to … I mean, all that time ago when I—’ I broke off, confused. I’d accused him of treating me as an easy lay, when all the time he’d been turning his London house into a home from home for me? I looked at the photos again.
‘I can see now it’s not the Parsonage – it’s sort of Essence of Parsonage meets … well – Comfort, I suppose.’
‘Yes,’ Em agreed. ‘He said he wasn’t going to sacrifice central heating in the interests of authenticity.’
‘Don’t bloody blame him,’ Anne said. ‘Got it in my flat.’
‘I like chopping wood and stoking fires,’ Walter said. ‘It keeps me nice and warm. I feel the cold, I do, because I’ve got no bodily hair what-so-ever.’
Em said: ‘I told him we’d have central heating if we could afford it, only Father always spends too much on tarts and booze – but we’d have open fires as well. And real sockets for the electricity, not two-pin ones with battered old adapters, like we
have now.’
‘Yes, aren’t those dangerous?’ Jessica said. ‘The ones in my room look like Bakelite.’
‘They are Bakelite. The whole place is a death trap,’ I said.
‘Yes, but I’d know if it was going to burn down,’ Em said. ‘And it would show up in Gloria’s tea leaves pretty spectacularly, too.’
‘I’ve never seen a fire in the tea leaves,’ Gloria said. ‘Not unless you count what Charlie’s lit under that Mace, what can’t be put out with any potion I can brew.’
‘The whole house wants so much spending on it, it’s ridiculous,’ Jessica said. ‘It would be much better to sell it, and have a cosy little modern house in the valley with all mod. cons. and a built-in kitchen. The show house on the Mango estate is lovely.’
‘Sell it?’ echoed Em.
‘Better for bloody who?’ Anne asked.
‘Ran, why don’t we have the house valued, just out of interest, to see what…?’ she began to wheedle, but then stopped and stared.
Ran, a strange and interesting shade of ash, was gazing down at his letter as though transfixed.
Then he looked up and gradually focused on Bran as though he’d never seen him before.
‘You’re not my son,’ he said slowly, in a strange voice. ‘I sent the cotton buds away for analysis, and you’re not my son!’
‘I know,’ Bran said, dribbling honey onto his toast.
‘What do you mean, you know? How can you know? I didn’t know till this minute when I read the letter!’
‘Mother told me.’
‘Mother? Which mother?’
“I only have one of those,’ Bran said patiently. ‘Maria Podjecki. Professor Podjecki.’
Father’s mouth opened and closed silently, like a rather handsome halibut. ‘Professor?’ he managed to say eventually.
Bran nodded. ‘Anthropology. Came to see me in my first term. Pops in sometimes if she’s over for a conference. Smoked salami and schnapps. Don’t like the schnapps,’ he added.
‘You never mentioned it!’
‘No? Sorry,’ he added vaguely, since we were all looking at him. ‘Should I have done?’
Every Woman for Herself Page 19