Rose pushed back her chair. ‘Do you want to do the grand tour before it gets dark?’ She was obviously tremendously proud of her new home, though she nonchalantly declaimed in a very Roseish manner how ridiculous it was to call it Moor End Hall. Since the East Midlands aren’t exactly overloaded with moors, the house was at least a hundred miles from any moors to be at the end of. It was impressive in the sense that it was big, but pretty it wasn’t. Two Victorian Ashtons in succession had fancied themselves as architects and had transformed what had originally been a plain large Georgian box by adding wings, battlements, turrets, a tower, crenellations and several gables, all in different variations on the Dutch style. ‘There was another wing to that side,’ said Rose as we stood in the gardens, looking at the back of the house, ‘but luckily it got dry rot in the sixties and was pulled down. I wish the same could happen to that one,’ she added, pointing. ‘That’s where Flavia lives.’
Flavia had ignored Jeremy’s suggestions that now he was getting married it was time she moved out to the very nice house on the estate that had been prepared for her. Her eyes had brimmed over with tears and she’d asked Jeremy in a choking voice how he could be so cruel as to turn her out of the house she’d been brought to as a bride by his father, where she had so many happy memories (despite the many witnesses who’d heard her complaining about the damp and cold and draughts), if she really deserved to be put out on to the scrap heap like that and so on. Rose said sourly that what Flavia really objected to was changing address from Moor End Hall to Moor End Farmhouse and her objections would have vanished like smoke if she’d been able to move into the Dower House, a William and Mary gem. Unfortunately, it had been sold to cover death duties after the war. The net result was that Jeremy folded under an assault that would have downed many stronger men (even Rose admitted that) and agreed his mother could stay on in the house, though he stipulated she move into the wing and leave the main part of the house to him and Rose. Flavia had taken most of the best furniture and pictures to console herself for this cruel upheaval. Rose had no great expectations that this experiment in shared living would be harmonious. I also had a feeling she wasn’t going to go out of her way to try and make it so either. ‘The problem is Jeremy won’t stand up to her,’ she said in a disgusted voice.
‘He was standing up to her all right when I arrived,’ I said. ‘I haven’t got a clue what it was about, but every particle of her body language said she wasn’t getting a simple walk-over.’
‘Oh, that’ll be about this housing development,’ said Rose. ‘She hasn’t stopped banging on about it since we came back, even though it’s really none of her business. It’s our affair, not hers.’
‘What’s it about?’ I asked, rather amused at her proprietorial tone.
Rose shrugged. ‘There’s been a development proposed for a site near the back gates for ages. Something really luxy, forty-odd houses, private swimming pool for the residents, the lot. Probably even a gym by the sounds of it.’ She raised her eyebrows. ‘We’re talking about serious money here. The developer had it practically sewn up, planning permission and all, when out of the blue some naturalist discovered there was a colony of incredibly rare toads right where they were going to put the access road. They really do stop these projects for toads,’ she said in an amazed voice. ‘Or maybe it was frogs. I can’t remember. Not that it matters. It was something that hopped. I’d have been tempted to put down toad poison and claim they’d caught a toad plague.’ She laughed, ‘OK, I wouldn’t, but I might have caught them and taken them to a toad luxury development elsewhere. But this lot weren’t quick enough off the mark, and the pond where the toads live was designated a SSSI or whatever they call it. The developers were told they could only have their development if they moved the access road and some of the houses right away from Toad Hamlets. The only practical place for the new road is our farm track, which would be quite sensible, except they also want an extra five acres for the houses that would have gone near the toad pond. They’d be a bit close to this house, and we’d have to make a new farm road too of course.
‘Flavia is dead against the whole thing. She says she’ll leave the house rather than see it desecrated by crass commercialism. Actually,’ Rose said pensively, ‘that’s the best reason I’ve heard so far for going with the developers. Problem is, I think that when push came to shove you’d find she’d decided that her duty lay here.’ She smiled suddenly. ‘Amazingly enough, for once I side with Flavia, but not just because I don’t fancy having the hoi polloi so close to us. I don’t think we need this sort of development, the houses in the village are already priced way too high for the people who were born here. We need houses they can afford to buy, not executive nests for rich townie yuppies.’
‘I had no idea you had a social conscience,’ I said teasingly and a little unfairly. Rose’s always enjoyed involving herself in causes, and being mistress of the Big House was going to give her loads of opportunities for finding them locally. I wouldn’t be surprised to find her standing for the Parish Council before too long, and heaven help them when she got on it. Underneath a flippant exterior, she’s extremely bossy. She stuck her tongue out at me. ‘What are you going to do?’
‘Jeremy hasn’t made up his mind. This only came up a couple of weeks before the wedding, so he hasn’t had time to go over the ifs and buts.’ She perched on the edge of a balustrade in defiance of the chill rising up from the stone. ‘It sounds like a lot of money the developers are offering, but he says when you look into things like tax and the costs of the new farm track it mightn’t add up to so much. The nearest house would be just behind that little hill there too,’ she said, pointing down the valley.
I looked at lawns sweeping down to a lush field, the various greens of grass and hedge darkened by the gathering dusk. A few peacefully grazing sheep stood out as lumps of light grey and some bird was warbling in a desultory manner from a copse of trees. It was very quiet, barely possible to hear the cars from the main road. It was difficult to imagine what it would be like with forty houses, their occupants, animals and probably two or three cars per household only a few hundred yards away. ‘I can understand why Jeremy’s reluctant to risk spoiling all this. Once it’s gone you’ll never get it back, will you?’
Rose nodded. ‘Jeremy thinks that the company behind the scheme might be dodgy too. It’s one of those outfits where you can’t find out who owns it, and since he wants to become a JP he certainly doesn’t want to risk getting into business with some outfit that turns out to be crooked. So he’s taking his time and they’re getting impatient for an answer.’
‘If it’s that important to them they’ll just have to wait, won’t they?’ I asked.
‘Well, it’s not as if they can do anything else,’ said Rose practically.
‘What’s that?’ I asked as we turned around to go back inside, pointing to a ruinous heap at the end of the garden. ‘Another Victorian improvement that didn’t quite work?’
Rose laughed. ‘No, it’s the original house. The Mrs Ashton of the day wanted to live in London, and to help her husband make up his mind she burnt the house down.’
‘A bit drastic, surely,’ I said.
‘It didn’t work either. He decided the ruins would make a really superior folly and it would do his wife good to see them every day from the windows of the new house. He promised she could go to London once she’d presented him with a proper family. I believe she got to twenty-two before he relented. There’s a portrait of her upstairs with about twelve of them grouped around her, so it can’t be too much of an exaggeration.’
I laughed, ‘I trust that Jeremy isn’t going to try and make the same sort of bargain.’
‘I’d like to see him try,’ retorted Rose grimly. She glanced down at her enviably flat stomach and shuddered. ‘I can’t even imagine being pregnant once let alone twenty-two times?’
I stopped, looking at her in surprise. ‘Aren’t you intending to have any children?’
�
��Not all of us have a maternal instinct,’ she said defensively. ‘I suppose I’ll have to have at least one eventually, it’ll be unfair on Jeremy if I don’t. He loves children. But I’ll delay it as long as I decently can -’ she glanced sideways at me - ‘if only so I can annoy Flavia.’ I wasn’t sure from her expression whether she was joking. ‘The woman’s already started dropping hints I should leap into brood-mare mode. Can you imagine what my life would be like with the grandmother from hell next door? She’d never stop interfering. As she won’t move out, I’m going to have to wait until she’s popped her clogs to be able to have a baby in peace, which since she’s disgustingly healthy means I’ll probably be the first woman to have a baby while operating a Zimmerframe.’
‘Well, considering how short your engagement was, you’d be advised to wait for a bit anyway, unless you want a lot of counting up on fingers,’ I said.
Rose beamed at me, bad mood forgotten. ‘Clever Susie, I’ll tell her that next time she tries to nag me.’ We retraced our steps to the welcomingly warm kitchen which smelt strongly of casseroling alcohol. She bustled around, opening oven doors and peering inside, shoving in baking potatoes, and generally trying to give an impression of someone who was completely au fait with the workings of her kitchen. It wasn’t entirely successful. I was forced to point out she had put the potatoes in the plate-warming oven.
‘I thought it seemed a bit cool,’ she said as she moved them over to a hotter one. She waved me to go and sit down by the fireplace which was big enough to have once roasted a whole pig on a spit. The two logs burning away looked dwarfed and can’t have been throwing out much heat, since the cat had curled itself up comfortably on the edge of the hearth and was toasting his back. He flicked his ears when one of the logs spat firework sparks up the chimney, but Rose hastily put the bottle and glasses she was carrying down on a low wicker table and picked him up, scolding him in a loving, silly voice for being a reckless cat who was about to be covered in scorch marks. He dangled limply from her arms, blue eyes glinting like jewels, used to this treatment. Once she sat down, he curled himself up comfortably in her lap and began to purr raucously. She stroked the shiny fur with one hand as she leant forward to fill the glasses with the other, a movement which spoke of long practice at doing these different actions with both hands.
‘How’s Phuket settling in?’ I asked. The cat had been named after a particularly memorable holiday Rose had had in Thailand.
‘He’s still upset about that horrid cattery, aren’t you, darling?’ she cooed, rubbing his ears. ‘But he’s just about achieved an entente-not-at-all-cordiale with Dexter. They pretend neither exists. He’s still got some way to go with Jeremy though.’
‘You mean he bites him whenever he gets the chance?’ I asked.
She laughed. ‘Something like that. He’s just a teeny-weeny bit jealous, aren’t you, my darling?’ she crooned, stepping up the stroking. The cat leant back with a thoroughly self-satisfied expression on his face, looking completely sweet, adorable and strokable. I knew better. My hand still bears the marks from the last time Phuket took me in that way.
Rose leant back and sighed happily. ‘I never expected to be able to entertain you so soon. Having you around makes me feel I haven’t completely lost touch with being single. Maybe I don’t have to become a fully paid-up member of the ranks of sober and godly matrons, as they put it in the marriage service, quite yet.’
‘Bit of a lost cause expecting you to become sober and godly, isn’t it?’ I asked lightly, though with a twinge of alarm. So I might look at marriage through highly tinted spectacles, but surely you weren’t supposed to hanker after your bachelor days quite so soon after getting married?
‘It’s the matron bit I really object to,’ she said with a giggle as she took a swig from her glass, proving that for the time being at least she definitely had no intention of being sober. ‘In fact, I don’t think Jeremy’d like it very much if I joined the ranks, so I’d better stay the way I am,’ she said, looking at me with a contented smile that suggested my alarm had been groundless. ‘I still can’t believe that you threw everything in and moved up here at a moment’s notice,’ she added with mild amazement. ‘Though when you decide to do something you always really throw yourself into it, don’t you? Are you sure it has nothing to do with Stephen? Do you really not fancy him, not the teensiest little bit? Shame. Have you met anyone interesting since you made the great move?’
I glanced at her cautiously. There she sat, drink in one hand, the picture of marital contentment, albeit not sober, godly or matronly marital contentment, so surely she wouldn’t give a toss about my bumping into Luke. Yet - I couldn’t forget the expression on her face as she’d told me to lay off him. Surely if she didn’t know he was a comparatively close neighbour it would be better all round to delay enlightenment until she was more settled in her marriage. Well, that was my rationalisation anyway. Besides, I wasn’t lying when I said that the most interesting man I’d met here was the charming gay owner of the second-hand bookshop, who shared my taste for truly trashy literature to read in the bath. I hadn’t actually met Luke here, had I? I didn’t get the chance to add anything to this somewhat mendacious statement, as there was a tentative little tap on the door and Flavia popped her head around.
‘Oh, there you are!’ she said, in a voice of artificial surprise, as if just before dinner she’d have expected to find Rose anywhere but the kitchen. ‘I just popped in to get my copy of Mrs Beeton, which I must have left here. I can’t find it in my new little kitchen. You won’t have any use for it, will you, Rose?’
‘Personally, I find it a bit old-fashioned,’ Rose drawled through clenched teeth. ‘I prefer something more modern - like Delia Smith.’ I was extremely impressed Rose knew the names of any cookbook writers.
Flavia stood up from where she’d been examining the shelves of a near-empty bookcase. She didn’t look particularly surprised not to find her book. ‘Oh, you must mean the back-to-basics book? Yes, I hear it’s very useful for those who need to start from scratch.’
By the look on her face, Rose might well have been in danger of committing matri-in-law-cide if Jeremy hadn’t come in at that moment with a whirling, bounding mass of black-and-white energy which promptly decided that I was in need of a good wash. While I was fighting Dexter off and persuading him I preferred not to be licked, Jeremy despatched his mother with a speed and skill that spoke of long practice.
‘Hamish’ll be here soon,’ he said over his shoulder, as he poured himself a glass of whisky. ‘He’s got some papers for me and as he’s coming from some conference in Peterborough he thought he might as well drop them in on the way home. It’s out of his way, so I’ll have to offer him a drink at least.’ He looked hopefully at his wife, judging her mood. Her face was still stormy.
‘I suppose that means you want me to invite him to for dinner,’ she said, looking extremely put-upon.
‘Well, yes, if you could. That would be kind of you. But are you sure that you’ve got enough?’ asked Jeremy eagerly, apparently oblivious to her martyred air.
Rose hesitated, then relented. ‘There’s enough for a complete regiment of guardsmen. Of course Hamish can stay if he wants to.’
He cast her a relieved glance. ‘Great, and I’m sure he will. It smells delicious,’ he added with slightly unflattering surprise. ‘Have you been using that cook book that my mother gave you?’
‘The one entitled Cooking for Complete Wallies?’ Rose enquired in an acid voice.
‘Was it really called that?’ he asked innocently. ‘No, it can’t have been. You aren’t that bad, darling.’
Rose looked distinctly unappeased by the endearment. I cut in before she could start making him suffer for his mother, ‘Er, Jeremy. . .’ Having caught his attention I floundered around for something with which to follow it up. ‘Er, what does Hamish do exactly? I know Rose told me but I can’t remember.’
Rose’s delicately arched eyebrows rose. Trust her to put a
completely unwarranted emphasis on my unexpected interest. ‘Is that why you don’t fancy Stephen?’ she asked sotto voce.
‘No, it is not!’ I snapped, equally sotto voce, and turning my attention back to Jeremy, who didn’t appear to think there was anything untoward in my enquiry about his friend.
‘He’s a solicitor. He handles the estate business, which is why he’s dropping around some bumf this evening.’
‘Oh,’ I said. Rose had been quite right. Soliciting wasn’t a very interesting thing to do. ‘Is that why he came to work around here, so he could do your business?’
Jeremy shook his head. ‘But of course I handed it over to him as soon as I knew he was moving here. He’s a very clever bloke, much brighter than me, always has been,’ he said matter-of-factly and not sounding as if he gave a toss about it. ‘He used to work for one of the top London firms, specialising in company law.’
‘If he’s so clever, why’s he given it all up to become a country solicitor?’ I asked, as Dexter, recognising a soft touch, pushed himself against me adoringly and rested his chin on my hand for me to scratch.
‘Er, I think he likes the country,’ Jeremy said, patently snatching the first thing he could think of out of the air. He might just as well have been holding a sign above his head with ‘I’m trying to prevaricate about something’ on it. Rose was going to have a very easy married life in some respects, Jeremy was far too transparent to ever be able to have a mistress. He’d be rumbled before the first longing look.
‘Really?’ I asked sceptically. I saw Rose’s antennae swivel my way again attentively. She was still wearing a slightly offended air about the cooking remarks, so I decided that some teasing later would be worth it if I could get her thinking of other things. And there’s no quicker way to distract her attention than a man. ‘Even if Hamish suddenly developed a passion for the country, couldn’t a big shot like that find a firm where he could continue specialising and make a name for himself?’ I persisted. ‘Or was it really just some excuse because he wasn’t good enough and blew it?’
Seven Week Itch Page 9