In the certain knowledge that if I could just shake off the Simpsons I’d still be able to hotfoot it down to Granddad Norman’s, I smiled sweetly at the whole gang.
‘Great,’ I concluded, moving towards the door and hoping they’d follow suit, ‘I’ll have a word with Liam’s teacher, and we’ll push from this end, and you pull from yours, and between us we’ll start the ball rolling to get Liam to university. Mmm?’
‘Don’t worry, Miss,’ Kylie said, jumping off my desk and going over to where eight-year-old Liam was standing, apparently distancing himself from procedures. ‘I’ll mek sure he gets in. If he wants to go out for footie practice, I won’t let him out until I’ve checked he’s done his homework.’
‘Fantastic, Kylie,’ I said heartily. ‘I knew I could rely on you.’
‘You see,’ Kylie could be heard lecturing her parents as they left through the cloakroom, ‘I told you she was really nice.’
Pleased that for once I’d not come to blows with one single member of the Simpson family but, instead, had sent them all on their way motivated and proud of themselves, I glanced once more at the office clock and, before anything or anyone else could detain me, made a dash for the door.
*
Ringing Tom to tell him to feed himself and Freya with the remains of last night’s supper, I left school at five and drove the country roads, avoiding the tea-time traffic, which was just beginning to build. It was a beautifully mellow September evening and I wound down the car window to let in the scents of early autumn. The morning’s dew-laden lanes were now dusty and fat with heat, the leaves of the massive sycamores along the way already brushed with colour, while an abundance of plum and apple trees flaunted their bounty. We were so lucky, living here in the countryside, protected from the sprawling urbanisation of the industrial north by square miles of untouched greenbelt and farmland. For the ten minutes it took me to drive to my grandfather’s, I managed to push all thoughts of Mark and Tina from my mind, relishing the landscape and its September sights and smells simply for themselves.
The kitchen door that opened onto Granddad’s small garden was ajar and so, instead of making my way into the house, I looked across to the dry-stone wall that separated his vegetable patch from the fields beyond. Granddad Norman was there, leaning on his stick, and obviously taking in the scents and smells of his wildflower meadow in much the same way as I had on my journey here.
‘Hi, Granddad,’ I called, walking towards him. ‘Are you OK?’
He turned towards me, the flat cap he assumed all year round, even on the hottest of days, atop his sparse white hair.
‘What is it? What on earth’s the matter?’
‘It’s t’fields, love. My lovely fields. They’re going to build one huge, buggering estate, right here, right on me bloody doorstep. In t’wildflower meadows.’
7
Have They Got Three Backsides…?
‘Come on, Granddad, I’ve made you some tea. Come and sit down and calm yourself. You really shouldn’t be getting yourself into a state like this; it’s not good for your blood pressure.’ Granddad accepted the mug of strong tea I’d made him, but refused the chocolate biscuit or to move away from his sentry post, continuing to guard his beloved fields from the – so far – invisible enemy. ‘Come on, tell me what you’ve heard. Who do you think’s going to build here? They can’t do that, you know. Not here. It’s green belt.’
‘That’s just what I bloody said,’ Granddad snorted. ‘But, according to your auntie Linda, they can do what they want.’
‘Who can?’ I turned to the woman who was standing over at the wall gazing at the fields and realised I’d not seen Linda, my mum’s older sister, for a couple of months. When I was a little girl I’d loved to go to Auntie Linda and Uncle Anthony’s house, watching Fraggle Rock on their huge colour TV while sitting on their capacious, squashy pink Dralon sofas; playing – when she allowed it – with my cousin Davina’s Cabbage Patch dolls, Care Bears and her eye-watering My Little Pony collection. I’d coveted everything my cousin Davina had, but particularly the snowy white skating boots that accompanied her to Bradford’s Silver Blades ice rink for her private lesson every Saturday afternoon. How I longed to chassé and spiral like Davina or, when she tired of ice-skating, and Saturday afternoons were taken up with the Midhope Junior Majorettes, don the plastic white boots, ra-ra skirt and flesh-coloured tights in order to twirl a baton over my head.
Born the same year as me, and, like me, an only child, Davina had every material thing going. Being taken from our little cottage at the end of a country lane, where Paula and I watched a tiny black-and-white TV on lumpy and leaking beanbags, to Auntie Linda’s over-heated brand-new detached house on a modern estate was utter heaven to the eight-year-old me. Every time I went for a wee in their centrally heated downstairs loo with its swagged and tailed curtains, its pink shag-pile carpet in which one could bury one’s toes, its pink, softly full rolls of real Andrex and the perfumed smelling disc in the toilet bowl that flushed beautiful blue bubbles, I felt pangs of pure envy. My reluctant return to our freezing, patchouli-smelling bathroom with the always-almost-empty roll of cheap white, scratchy loo paper inevitably rolled out of reach on the bargain-basement linoed floor, and always watched over by Che Guevara, had me swearing to myself I’d have every luxury Auntie Linda’s house possessed once I was grown up and married to Torvill – or was it Dean? – skating off into the sunset to Ravel’s Bolero.
‘Your auntie Linda knows the Bamforths.’ He nodded in her direction and she walked towards us. She’d put on a bit of weight since I last saw her but the golfing gear, the pink lipstick, coral nails and dark bobbed hair were just the same. ‘She plays golf with one of ’em.’ Granddad sat down heavily on the wall, grimacing slightly as his stiff, arthritic hip made contact with the stone.
‘Who’s them? Who are the Bamforths?’
‘You must know the Bamforth family? Made their brass out of engineering; gears and the like.’
‘Oh, you mean Samuel Bamforth’s, just outside Midhope?’ Everyone in Midhope knew Samuel Bamforth’s Engineering Company. Back in the sixties and seventies, school leavers from the local secondary moderns either went into the area’s already struggling textile mills or, with a decent clutch of CSEs, became apprentice engineers at, or went into the offices of, the extremely successful Samuel Bamforth’s, working there for the next forty years or more until retiring with the ubiquitous carriage clock or matching gardening tools for a newly acquired allotment.
‘So, Samuel Bamforth’s still alive?’ I asked. ‘He must be pretty ancient by now.’
‘Don’t be daft, lass.’ Granddad Norman glared at me, his aching joints together with rumours about his precious meadow rendering him uncharacteristically sharp. ‘Samuel Bamforth started th’ engineering place last century. Edward Bamforth, who I reckon must be his… his, erm, his great-grandson, is behind all this building malarkey. Bamforths bought all the land round here years ago.’
‘All of it? Which bits?’
‘Never mind bits,’ Granddad snapped. ‘They bought all of it. Farmland, woodland, cottages – bought it from the Duke of somebody’s estate just after t’war. I suppose they had to put their brass into summat.’
‘It’ll be all right, Granddad. They’ll never get planning permission. It’s all green belt round here.’
‘Well, I think they might, Cassie,’ Linda said, wiping her shoe on the lawn. ‘There’s a lot of dirt up there, Dad.’
‘It’s not dirt, it’s compost, rotting until it’s just right for t’roses. Two great hosses came down t’lane a couple of weeks back and left me a present. Too great an opportunity to miss. It’ll be just right in a week or so.’
‘You shouldn’t be lifting buckets of stuff at your age.’ Linda frowned and swatted at a couple of flies that had followed her. ‘Why don’t you let Jason come and mow your lawn for you and see to your roses?’
‘Who’s Jason?’ Granddad and I both looked at Linda.
>
‘He comes over to do our garden. He works for Celia, Edward Bamforth’s sister. It was her who recommended him. She was the one told me about the plans for their fields.’
Granddad snorted. ‘I don’t want nobody called Jason messing about wi’ my roses. I bet he thinks he knows it all and charges you a fortune for a bit of a garden manicure.’
‘Well, yes, he is rather expensive, but Celia says—’
‘So, what does Celia say about Granddad’s fields?’ I interrupted, glancing at my watch. I had so much to do at home and the much-revered Jason’s horticultural prowess didn’t interest me. The wildflower meadows did.
‘Well, according to your auntie Linda,’ Granddad almost spat, ‘t’Government is telling councils they have to build more and more houses. Never mind it’s green belt; people are desperate for houses. It has to be built on.’
‘Absolutely.’ Linda nodded in agreement, her shiny bob remaining curiously still. ‘People have to live somewhere. And if all these immigrants and refugees we’re insisting on letting in continue to flood in—’
‘I know what you’re talking about.’ Paula said, walking up the path towards us, clutching a mug of tea. ‘I could hear you from the house. Sorry, Linda,’ she said lightly, holding up the mug, ‘didn’t realise you were here or I’d have made you one, too. Pot’s not quite empty.’ Paula leant against the sun-warmed wall, closing her eyes against the setting sun.
‘Aye, well, nobbut else to talk about round here.’ Granddad really was cross. ‘How can anyone…’ he picked up his stick and waved it in the direction of the cornflowers, poppies and white campion as well as a host of others I couldn’t name or even recognise ‘… any bugger mow that lot down to build new houses? Nasty, tiny little boxes with three toilets – have they got three backsides? – but gardens smaller than a sodding postage stamp.’
‘Dad, they haven’t got planning permission yet,’ Paula soothed. ‘It’ll probably all come to nothing.’
‘Oh, I think you’re wrong, Paula. Celia seems to think it’s a fait accompli.’ Linda smiled somewhat patronisingly. ‘I mean, the Bamforths own virtually everything round here.’
‘Well, the bloody Bamforths can stick their fet and their bloody complee right up their arses.’ Granddad breathed heavily and all the fight seemed to go out of him. ‘I’ll be in me box by then, any road.’
‘Well, that’s no reason to give up a fight, if it comes to one, just because you’ll be dead.’
‘Mum, for heaven’s sake.’ I glared at Paula, who continued to calmly drink her tea.
‘I hear you’ve some news of your own, Cassandra Moonbeam?’ Paula turned in my direction, raising questioning, unplucked eyebrows over her mug.
‘News?’ My pulse raced. What had Paula heard?
‘News travels fast in a small place like Midhope.’
‘Are you having another baby, love?’ Granddad looked at me hopefully. He loved children, but particularly new babies.
‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’ve just got a new job.’
‘Oh, of course, you’ve started this new job of yours.’ Linda scraped at some remaining horse muck on her golf shoes. ‘Davina’s been promoted, you know. I don’t know how she does it. Two children, working full time and going off to London twice a week.’
‘Not to mention the full-time cleaner, the au pair and the gardener,’ Paula added drily. ‘Give me a lift home, will you, Cassandra? I’m just going to do a few jobs for your granddad and then I’ll be ready.’ She collected the mugs and walked back down to the kitchen.
‘We have to move on, you know, Cassie,’ Linda smiled, draping a yellow Pringle sweater round her shoulders before giving her father a dry kiss on the cheek. ‘We can’t stand still. We are a global economy and the economy says houses have to be built.’
She’d obviously been reading the Telegraph in between eighteen holes and lunch with the girls. ‘Not in Granddad Norman’s meadow, Auntie Linda. I shall fight it every bit of the way.’ I hugged Granddad and followed Paula into the house.
‘Mark’s got a mistress then?’ Paula was angry. ‘And for the last two years, Cassandra? I just can’t believe you haven’t told me what’s been going on.’
‘Shhh.’ I shook my head warningly as we walked towards the car, not wanting Granddad to hear and upset him further. He’d followed me back down the path, stomping his way angrily towards the house, swiping at weeds as he went and the last thing I wanted was for him to know about Mark and me. ‘Come on, I’ll give you a lift home and tell you what’s happened, although you seem to be pretty well informed already.’
*
‘So how do you know? Who told you?’ I’d parked up outside Mum’s cottage, reversing down the narrow and pot-holed dusty lane.
‘It’s true then? Oh, Cassandra…’
‘Mum, don’t sympathise—’ I felt the ever-present tears threaten and broke off, struggling to remain in control.
‘Well, if it’s publicly announced where Midhope’s chattering classes are assembled, the whole bloody town will know by now. Dawn told me. Her daughter was there, apparently.’ Dawn was one of Mum’s yoga mates. ‘Mind you, Dawn didn’t know who it was Mark’s supposed to have been sleeping with.’ For all Paula’s left-wing, free-love, let-it-all-hang-out idealism, she was strangely reticent about using the more basic words for what Mark and Tina had been up to.
‘Shagging,’ I said shortly. ‘And Tina,’ I added for good measure.
Paula stared at me. ‘Tina? As in your best friend, Tina?’
‘The very same,’ I said grimly. ‘Tom knows, but I’m going to have to tell Freya. Now. Tonight.’
‘Do you want me to come with you? You know Freya and I have a special bond. She reminds me very much of myself at fourteen.’
God forbid. ‘It’s fine,’ I said shortly. ‘Actually, I think Mark might still come back…’ While I might have made grand gestures a couple of nights ago telling Mark to get out and never come back, I desperately wanted him home.
‘And you’d take him back?’
‘… and then I wouldn’t have to tell Freya anything. She’d be none the wiser.’
‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Cassandra. What’s the matter with you? Where’s the strong woman I brought you up to be?’
‘She rebelled against everything you tried to push down her throat,’ I spat, as angry with my mother as with my errant husband.
‘And don’t I know it,’ Paula said just as crossly. ‘You had far more in common with your auntie Linda than with me.’
‘Mum, you wouldn’t even let me call you Mum. I had yoga, vegetarianism, veganism, transcendental meditation…’ I counted each one off on my fingers, ‘…Ying, Yang, Greenham Common, Save the Whale, Led Zepp and Leonard bloody Cohen. Each time you discovered something new I had to be a part of it too. I wanted Pot Noodles and Angel Delight; a week in Majorca, Wham! and the A Team…’
Paula made a little snort and I didn’t know if she was crying. She wasn’t: she was laughing. ‘You do exaggerate. I bought you the Wham! CD for your ninth birthday.’
‘OK, I’ll give you that one but, if you remember, my birthday party food was wholemeal bread and hummus and a solid brick of something or other for a birthday cake. What nine-year-old wants hummus, for heaven’s sake?’
‘Freya loves hummus.’
‘Well, yes, I know that. Middle-class kids today love hummus and olives. But back then, we didn’t. It was weird food, as Rebecca Warrington told everyone at school the next day.’
‘Did she? Little bitch. Wait till I see her. She comes to me for an aromatherapy session every week.’
Did she? Rebecca Warrington? Blimey.
‘We’re getting off the point here, Cassandra,’ Mum went on. ‘Mark was always going to be the one to have an affair.’
‘What? Right, that’s it, Mum, get out the car. I’m not discussing this with you any further. If that nosy parker Dawn, or Dawn’s bloody daughter, hadn’t told you, you’d have been none the wiser.
Mark will be back. I’m certain of it. It just needs me to give him the word, maybe some marriage guidance counselling… You’d approve of counselling, wouldn’t you, Paula?’ I revved the engine as Paula quickly jumped out of the car, frightened, I think, I was going to drive off with her foot still in the door.
Yes, I was right. This whole debacle wasn’t just Mark’s fault: Serpentina had led him astray; I’d not noticed because I was so busy with my teaching and the children. Oh, I could see it all now. I just needed to see Mark, talk to him, tell him it was probably my fault as much as his. Let him come home, we’d talk, he’d swear to have nothing more to do with Tina and everything would be fine. I sped home along the country lanes and, as I pulled into Tower View Avenue, immediately saw Mark’s shiny, elongated sports car he’d treated himself to when he hit forty last year sitting on the drive. When he’d brought it home, scattering unsuspecting pigeons as well as Mr and Mrs Craddock from number twelve as they walked back from picking up their pension, I’d laughed, teasing him that he obviously viewed it as a babe magnet. I wasn’t smiling now, the bastard.
*
‘Dad’s upstairs.’ Tom was standing in the kitchen methodically eating bread and Paula’s home-made plum jam while staring out of the window at the growing dusk.
‘Where’s Freya?’
‘Upstairs with Dad.’
‘Oh, Tom, you’ve not told her, have you? About Auntie Tina?’
Tom just looked at me and shrugged.
Shit. I took the stairs two at a time and found both of them in our bedroom. Mark was filling suitcases with his shirts, sweaters, socks and pants. His suits, still on hangers, were neatly piled on the bed.
He stopped what he was doing as I walked in, but Freya continued to empty Mark’s drawers, throwing the remaining socks into the furthest case with the same ease she scored goals at netball.
A Village Affair Page 7