A Change of Pace

by Budd, Virginia

  ‘Look, ducky, I’ll ring the Rectory this afternoon, have a word with Bet — and Cameron, if I can get hold of him — but quite frankly I don’t see the world falling apart because we can’t move down there for another week or two. Now I really must go, old girl, there’s a call from New York on the other line.’ He quickly replaced the receiver before she could say anything else. ‘Fiona, love, can you come in? I’m afraid there’s been a disaster with your coffee ... ’

  That afternoon, pleasantly relaxed after a heavy lunch, Pete put a call through to the Rectory. Would Bet be in one of her moods? He loved talking to Bet, she terrified him and excited him at the same time; like a nervous thoroughbred horse, you never knew what she would do next, kick out at you or smile that lovely smile of hers. Wasted on old Miles really. All those years stuck in Hampstead, reading the Guardian, canvassing for the Labour party and organising jumble sales for War on Want. He wondered what she would do now, let loose on the world after so long. She’d loved Miles Brandon totally, he’d always known that. But occasionally, just very occasionally, he’d glimpsed another quality in her; a kind of harsh sexuality quite out of keeping with her role of liberal-minded Hampstead housewife and mother.

  ‘Hullo, hullo! How’s my favourite sister-in-law? I gather there’s been a spot of bother with our esteemed friend Cameron?’

  ‘Look, Pete, before you go any further I should just like to say that I’ve quite enough to do down here without having to spend half my time relaying totally unnecessary messages to your wretched builders. I’m not surprised they’re behind, Mr Cameron says Pol changed her mind six times over the bathroom wallpaper and then went back to the first one they’d tried. He was practically in tears, he ... ’

  Pete closed his eyes. Bet always looked so delicious when she was cross. He tried to imagine her standing there by the phone, one slim, brown hand gripping the receiver, her hair bouncing about on her shoulders — the colour of sweet dark sherry, he’d once poetically described it, and even after all these years it was still like that except for one or two interesting streaks of grey at the temples. Her green eyes would be all stormy and tragic-looking, and ... ‘Pete, are you still there or has some idiot cut us off?’

  ‘I’m still here, ducky.’

  ‘Answer my question, then. Do you or do you not know that Pol is now insisting on having a daily? Not only that, but expecting me to scour the neighbourhood for one.’

  ‘Actually, ducky, I think she only wants one twice a week — someone to get things ready before we come down on a Friday and clear up afterwards on a Monday. The place will probably be a bit of a shambles; you see, the old girl means to do quite a lot of entertaining.’

  ‘It’s a pity she couldn’t have told me that in the first place. Now I’ll have to rewrite the notice I was going to put in the Post Office.’

  ‘What a bore for you, ducky, Pol should have made it clearer.’ Did he sound sympathetic enough? ‘Look Bet, you’ve been an absolute brick these last weeks, you really have. The last thing I want to do is add to your worries, it’s just ... well, you know Pol.’

  ‘I do indeed.’ There was silence. Would she hang up on him? ‘Are you still there, ducky?’

  ‘Of course I’m still here. I just don’t have anything else to say. Mr Cameron, as far as I can tell, is doing wonders; the place looks like something out of Ideal Home and if Pol would only stop messing him about he would have finished weeks ago.’

  ‘Well, that is splendid news, really splendid. Old Felix’s cousin, Monty Cornwall, put us on to Cameron, you know.

  He has a place in Suffolk — Monty Cornwall, I mean, not Cameron. Frightfully good chap, Felix says, brother in the Rifle Brigade. We’ll have him over and you must meet. Of course he knows everyone in the county, the Cornwalls have been there since the flood.’

  ‘Aren’t you afraid I might let the side down? Currently the only person I’ve met, apart from the vicar, is a young plumber from one of the housing estates. He came to complain about Tib. Diz says he’s fallen for me.’

  ‘We’ll soon change all that.’ Pete tried not to feel disturbed by this news. Hobnobbing with plumbers from the local housing estate, not quite his and Pol’s line of country! He suddenly realised the time. He’d promised to be home early, Pol was giving one of her dinner parties. ‘Must go now, ducky. And as I’ve said, don’t worry about a thing. I’m sure old Monty Cornwall’s wife will be able to rustle up a daily if the worst comes to the worst.’

  ‘To hell with old Monty Cornwall and his wife!’

  Pete smiled. He loved Bet when she said things like that.

  Back at no. 6 Parsley Street, Pol greeted him tearfully. ‘The Cardews can’t come, she’s got flu. He only rang five minutes ago so there’s no time to get hold of anyone else. It really is the limit. How can people be so inconsiderate. And what, may one ask, does one do with all this food?’

  Pete’s heart sank.

  *

  ‘All I said was, I’m a little tired of being used by Aunt Pol as some sort of go-between.’

  ‘I realize that, Mum, but you must admit that if you and Aunt Pol spend your time sniping at each other over the phone before she’s even moved in, it doesn’t augur too well for the future. Know what I mean?’

  ‘Please don’t use that expression, Diz. If I don’t understand what you mean, I’ll say so.’ Bet peered gloomily at the potato she was scrubbing. Was she becoming a nag? Probably; old Ma in the kitchen amongst the pots, shrieking instructions that no one listened to, every other sentence an expostulation, if not an expostulation a gripe. All the same, it wasn’t fair, was it, Pol spending her Christmas lying on a beach doing damn-all while she slaved away here freezing to death.

  ‘The trouble with you, Mum,’ Diz nibbled at a raw carrot, ‘is that you always have to go to such extremes. All you needed to do was to say to Aunt Pol quite calmly and quietly that you did just happen to —’

  ‘Look, Diz, when I want your advice on how to deal with my sister, I’ll ask for it. What are you doing down here anyway? Shouldn’t you be working?’

  ‘The learning factory doesn’t encourage work at home. Rightly or wrongly, they feel the home environment is not conducive to study, and looking round here, who am I to argue? Besides, I’ve promised to help Bern paint their sitting-room this evening. We’re getting in some cans of beer and making a night of it.’

  ‘Well, see you don’t make too much of a night of it, that’s all. And ask Bernie not to wash his brushes in my sink this time, he can use the one in the old pantry.’

  They had been at the Rectory nearly four months now, and the Sparsworths nearly three. It was early days yet, but now that Nell had got herself a job in Stourwick with a firm of solicitors and was consequently out of the house all day, things were settling down quite well. Before this happened, Bet had to admit that life had not always been easy. Odd that with all her worrying about how she and Pol would get on living in the same house, it had never crossed her mind to worry about how she and Nell would get on. Had Nell ever wondered about how she would get on with Bet? She’d never said anything — but then she wouldn’t, would she? What both of them had forgotten, of course, in the excitement of moving and making a start in a new place, was that Nell had been undisputed queen of her own domestic domain for the past eighteen months; and although her mother had been queen of hers for the past twenty-eight years Nell naturally had no intention whatsoever of relinquishing any of her newly acquired power.

  Matters hadn’t been helped by the fact that Nell was such a hopeless cook. She tried, God knows she tried, following the instructions on each new recipe with the fanaticism of a scientist working on the blueprint of a top secret formula (that in the process she used every utensil in the kitchen was neither here nor there). The net result, however, never varied; whatever the dish had started out as, it ended up tasting of nothing. No wonder Bernie smothered everything he ate with tomato ketchup. What was more, like many bad cooks, Nell seemed quite unaware of her lack
of ability, and would hover anxiously over Bet’s somewhat haphazard but effective efforts with cries of ‘Surely you should use the scales, Mum, you’ll never get the right consistency like that!’ — causing Bet to shut her eyes, think of England, and pray that she wouldn’t give way to the impulse to take her darling daughter by her pretty, plump shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled. When the explosion eventually came, however, it wasn’t over the food, but the time at which they all sat down to eat it.

  It had been decided before the Sparsworths took up residence that when they did, Bet and Nell would share the cooking on a rota basis; one week Nell, one week Bet; at least until Nell started working when, as Bernie put it, a certain amount of re-scheduling would have to be done — i.e. Bet would do it all. This arrangement had one basic snag. Throughout the Sparsworths’ married life Bernie had sat down to his evening meal at six-thirty sharp. This was the time at which he had always eaten it, as had his Dad before him, and this was the time at which he wished to continue to eat it. Bet, on the other hand, throughout her married life had invariably organised family supper for seven-thirty, as had her mother before her, and during her week as duty cook she resolutely refused to have the meal on the table a moment earlier. Hints from Bernie along the lines of ‘Need any help, Mrs B.?’ or ‘Gracious, is that the time. I’m so hungry I could eat a house, only had a cheese and pickle sandwich at dinner time,’ had no effect on her whatever, she simply went on sipping her pre-prandial glass of sherry. Matters eventually came to a head when Bet, arriving in the kitchen one evening to make a start on the vegetables, found a box of frozen chips thawing in the sink, a saucepan of baked beans bubbling away on the Rayburn, and her daughter frying beefburgers. When asked what the hell she thought she was up to, Nell, very pink in the face, said she was cooking Bernie’s tea. She was sorry if she was in the way, but as Bernie was the household’s sole breadwinner, she didn’t see why he should be kept waiting for hours for his evening meal, and anyway she (Nell) was fed up with missing ‘Coronation Street’.

  Then the fat was in the fire! Tears and recriminations (Nell), invective (Bet), oil on troubled waters (Bernie) —mercifully Diz was out to supper with a school friend —during which the beefburgers got burned, nobody watched ‘Coronation Street’, and nobody had so much as a slice of bread until well past nine o’clock when, worn out with shouting and faint from lack of food, the protagonists collapsed in a heap and decided to call it a day. Embraces and tearful apologies followed, giggles too on the part of Bet and Nell — Bernie didn’t seem to think it all that funny. As at the conclusion of most battles, the upshot was a compromise. Bet agreed to put back the evening meal to six forty-five, and Nell and Bernie would eat on their own at weekends, except for Sunday lunch which Bet would cook unless otherwise arranged. On the whole, give or take the odd hiccup, this arrangement had worked pretty well. Bet still cringed at the sight of Bernie’s battery of sauce bottles, and Bernie still, no doubt, moaned to his wife about Bet’s liberal use of garlic —but one couldn’t expect miracles, and on the whole, in that department at least, things weren’t too bad.

  The real trouble, as far as Bet was concerned, was the loneliness. Stupidly, she had simply not catered for this. She’d accepted, of course, the reality of missing Miles; there would be no escape from that, she knew only too well. But this sense of isolation was something altogether different, and not what she’d hoped for when she made her great decision to move to Suffolk. Indeed, once at the Rectory she’d seen herself as the centre of a busy household, meeting new people, making jam for the W.I., genning up on local history. Even, perhaps giving the occasional modest cocktail party such as she remembered her parents giving at their retirement cottage in Devon in the long ago days before she and Miles were married. But somehow things hadn’t turned out like that. But then life never did turn out the way you thought it would, did it? Perhaps it would have helped if she’d been able to drive. Miles had always done the driving, there never seemed to be any need for her to learn. Or perhaps when the Redfords moved in things would get better. But in a way she dreaded their coming.

  Not that she was jealous of Pol — or Nell for that matter. Under no circumstances would she have wanted to be married to either Pete or Bernie. But one could not escape the fact that, of the three females living at Hopton Rectory, Bet Brandon would be the odd one out.

  So, there it was; after four months she’d made no friends, apart from Miss White at the Post Office and the ubiquitous Mr Bone. There had been one caller, the Rev. Snately, their peripatetic vicar, but it was no use pretending his visit had been a success because it hadn’t. Mr Snately was based at Upton Tye, a village a few miles to the east of Hopton, Hopton church having become part of a multiple parish. Being part of a multiple parish meant that three Sundays out of four the church remained its weekday self, empty, damp and shuttered, with only the chirp of a trapped bird in the chancel or a scuffling of mice in the pews to break the silence. Bet knew; she ventured there quite often; had even put her name down as a potential flower-arranger for the vases on the altar, but no one had taken up her offer.

  It was freezing cold in the sitting-room the day Mr Snately called, she was out of instant coffee and had been compelled to offer him Bovril, which he plainly disliked. He was very old and very deaf, and they had little to say to each other. In the end he only stayed ten minutes, driving away in his little Morris 1000, wrapped in his thick winter overcoat and looking like some sad old toad.

  But it wasn’t during the day, when she really was alone, that Bet’s sense of isolation bit most deeply. It was in the evening when the children were at home and, supper over, she would retire alone to her sitting-room, shut the door behind her and try not to listen to their excited chatter, as under Bernie’s supervision, they sought to bring the old house back to life. It was then that loneliness, like a damp overcoat, wrapped itself around her, and she truly believed she would never feel properly alive again.

  There were, of course, compensations. There always were, weren’t there, if you looked for them carefully enough? Bet’s compensation was the garden. Enormous — much too big for her to cope with, really — wild, mesmeric, totally enchanting and totally time-consuming. She’d had a bit of help with it; a friend of Mr Bone’s came one Sunday with his rotovator and turned in the walled vegetable garden (he’d managed to tear out several horseradish plants, a couple of crowns of rhubarb and a plant Bet couldn’t put a name to, but was pretty sure was rather rare; no matter, it was a tremendous help all the same), the two boys had cut and raked the lawn and dug out the small forest of unwanted saplings, and Nell, with infinite care and thoroughness, had weeded the rockery. That in doing so she had pulled out most of the things Bet wished to keep and left most of the weeds, was neither here nor there. But despite all this Bet remained undisputed queen of the garden; it was her domain, and in it her will was law.

  In the long, soft, autumn days following her and Diz’s arrival at the Rectory, she had worked away at the tangled borders for hours on end, planting, dividing, planning, bringing them back to order, back to life. And this occupied her so completely that while she was doing it she found to her surprise that she forgot Miles and her loneliness, forgot even the cataclysmic disruption of the settled existence she had known for so long. She seemed to become a different person, altogether simpler, more self-reliant. At peace in her solitariness, she knelt on the wet ground, her fingernails black with earth and mud on her knees, talking to Tib, talking to herself, dreaming ...

  There was another aspect of the garden she’d grown to love, the verandah. The verandah, Edwardian in design, lay along the south side of the house, facing on to what had already become known as the croquet lawn — Diz, rummaging in the little room behind the stables one wet afternoon, had come across a box of ancient croquet mallets, complete with six hoops and a battered ball. As winters went in that part of the world, it hadn’t been particularly cold so far — only the house and Bet’s soul were cold — and the ver
andah, built to trap any sun there might be, was a wonderfully pleasant place to sit and drink one’s after-lunch coffee, even if one did have to be muffled in rugs, gloves and a woolly hat. At one end of it a wisteria twined itself in and out of the wrought-iron pillars supporting the roof, at the other, bare ropes of Clematis montana and a rampant, viciously spiked Albertine rose formed a woody screen through which gleamed the pale gold sprays of winter-flowering jasmine. Alas part of the Redford domain, the verandah was already scheduled for complete refurbishment; the faded Edwardiana, so much loved by Bet, was shortly to be replaced by sensible, sliding patio doors, double glazing, and all the very latest in designer garden furniture. But meanwhile, enjoying it while she still could, Bet would lie back on the one remaining basket chair, watching the smoke from her cigarette curl up into the misty recesses of a now defunct Virginia creeper, and dream of Edwardian tennis parties long ago. Scrumptious teas with brown-bread ices, cucumber sandwiches and damp seed cake, served by a pretty parlourmaid with streamers in her cap. Men in flannels with ties round their waists, girls in white dresses and bandeaus. Cries of ‘Rippin’ shot, Angela’, ‘Well played there, Bertie’, echoing round the garden; the smell of full-blown roses, fresh cut grass, warm strawberries ...

  It was while day-dreaming in this way that Bet would sometimes become aware again of that inexplicable upsurge of excitement she had experienced that first day at the Rectory; but it never lasted long, and all too soon would be extinguished by the mundane reality of her daily life. Headlights turning in at the yard gate, car doors slamming, voices ... ‘Mum, can you put supper forward, we’ve collected that stuff for insulating the roof and we want to get as much done tonight as we can’ (Diz). ‘I couldn’t get the fish, Mum. I had to type a last-minute brief for Mr Slade and only had twenty minutes for lunch. There simply wasn’t time to get to the market. Will fish fingers do?’ (Nell). ‘Sorry, Mrs B.’ (Bernie) ‘but I’ll have to turn the electric off for a bit after supper. Shouldn’t be too long, but I want to do those plugs.’