A Village Affair

by Julie Houston

  ‘Come on, Cassie.’

  ‘Come on, what?’

  ‘The Frozen Knacker? Why do you think Tina and Mark frequented it?’

  ‘I’ve no idea. Presumably because it’s so far out on the moors they knew there’d be no one there who’d see them together?’

  Simon sighed, a rather unpleasant condescending little smirk on his pale face. ‘The Blue Ball? The most notorious gay pub this side of Manchester? The only people who frequent it are couples having affairs, knowing there’ll be none of their usual social circle there. And young gay men on the lookout for sex.’

  12

  Paula

  1976

  ‘Man,’ Rowan complained as he descended the bus stairs and joined Paula on the pavement where she’d waited over half an hour for his arrival. ‘I’ve just had to sit through fifteen minutes of the sodding Wurzels and “Combine Harvester”. What is the matter with this fucking country that everyone, even the bus conductor, was singing along with the kids on the top deck?’

  ‘Oh God, how awful. Why didn’t you go downstairs; get out of their way?’

  ‘I needed a smoke.’ Rowan was irritable. ‘Why’ve you dragged me all the way out here anyway? I’ve had to get two buses and they were both full of noisy kids and singing morons.’

  ‘School holidays, I suppose,’ Paula soothed, not wanting Rowan’s bad mood to spoil the surprise she’d planned. ‘O levels’re over and school’s finished for the summer. Don’t you remember how it felt when you knew you had six glorious weeks ahead of you and nothing to do except a bit of dusting, vaccing and washing up at home?’

  Rowan wasn’t to be placated. ‘We had eight or was it nine? And the minute term was over, I was on the plane and back home in Hong Kong. And the last thing I intended doing was hoovering, which is what I assume you mean by vaccing?’ The son of a diplomat based in Hong Kong, Rowan had been at one of the North’s minor public schools from the age of thirteen and, for all his left-wing posturing and socialist ideals, would often snidely bully Paula about her working-class upbringing and, what he assumed to be, her inferior education.

  ‘Well, we won’t be here for much longer,’ Paula smiled, taking his hand. ‘It was payday today and I put as much money as I possibly could into the Post Office. Just three or four more months and I’ll have enough saved up for travelling. I can’t wait to get out of this country either…’

  Rowan took his hand from Paula’s in order to light a thick, ready-made joint, but didn’t offer her any. ‘What’s in the basket? It smells a bit…’ Rowan screwed up his nose and took a deep drag on the smoke, filling his lungs before releasing it in a world-weary sigh.

  ‘We’re going for a picnic,’ Paula said proudly.

  ‘How bourgeois,’ Rowan said, eyebrows raised. ‘Pork pies and pickled onions?’

  ‘Don’t be daft. I’ve got Brie, tarasamalata, hummus and olives.’ She offered the word olives with reverence, desperate for Rowan’s approval.

  ‘You do know Judas Priest are possibly doing a session at The Crypt tonight?’

  ‘Judas Priest?’ For a second Paula wavered. Next to Led Zepp, Judas Priest was her favourite band. ‘At the Crypt? In Midhope? Never.’

  ‘Yep. They’ve been playing Bradford and Leeds, and Brian knows their roadie.’ The Crypt – a tiny one-room, dark and smoke-filled club, proudly trumpeted as Midhope’s answer to Liverpool’s Cavern – was run by Brian Mulligan, a squat, pugnacious electrician whose love of heavy rock had led him to convert what had once been Midhope Electricians’ Union meeting room into a drinking club and venue for bands. Norman had banned both his daughters from going there as everyone knew it to be full of drugs, drug pushers and long-haired head bangers listening to loud music and getting high. The Crypt was as much off Linda’s radar as Norman’s, but Paula had been going since she was eighteen and, now that she was almost twenty-one, both she and Norman had given up any pretence that she’d never darkened its doors.

  ‘I keep seeing this place from the top deck of the bus on my way home,’ Paula said, putting all thought of Judas Priest on hold for another time and quickening her step. ‘It’s far too nice to be in a dark club on a gorgeous evening like this.’

  ‘Good job I’ve not eaten then.’ The joint had obviously worked its magic and Rowan patted her purple-clad bottom before falling into step beside her.

  *

  ‘Shit, man, this is some place.’ Paula had led the way around the perimeter of a huge, expertly-trimmed privet hedge until, stopping at the very end of its green and verdant length, she squeezed herself and her basket through a hole in the tangled bush before holding the limbs of the hedge apart, allowing Rowan to follow her through.

  ‘Shit, that’s tight,’ Rowan complained, brushing leaves and dust from his black AC/DC T-shirt, and then, gazing around whistled. ‘Bloody hell, is this your local park?’

  Paula giggled. ‘The park? Don’t be a moron. Mind you, there is a tennis court somewhere over there. I saw that from the top of the bus, too.’ She indicated vaguely with a wave of her hand before heading down an overgrown path, Rowan in her wake. ‘They won’t see us down here…’

  ‘Who won’t?’ Rowan was beginning to sweat in the heat, beads of damp breaking out on his forehead. He wiped his face with the back of his hand and continued to walk, swatting at flies and high grass as he went.

  ‘I’ve no idea. Somebody obviously lives here.’

  ‘This is someone’s garden? You can’t just let yourself in and have a picnic on someone’s private property.’

  Paula turned and, smiling, quoted, ‘“Private property is already done away with for nine-tenths of the population; its existence for the few is solely due to its non-existence in the hands of those nine-tenths.” Karl Marx said that,’ she added proudly. She’d been to the library at the weekend; it had been totally deserted, the rest of Midhope not wanting to be in a fusty library in the seemingly endless heat wave, and soon got chatting to the librarian who’d pointed her in the right direction to learn more about Capitalism and Marx. She was delighted she could show off what she’d learnt in front of Rowan.

  ‘Yeah, right. Course. Well done… Have you got some wine in there?’ He didn’t offer to carry the basket for her, but continued to swear at the biting midges, sneezing occasionally as they walked.

  ‘Right, we just need to get through here.’ Paula hesitated as a red-lacquered bridge and a little oriental wooden house suddenly appeared before them, obviously a focal point of the whole garden. Camellias, azaleas and a Japanese apricot, its intense pink blossom long blown to the wind, dozed calmly in the breathless heat. ‘Come on,’ she whispered and, taking his hand, broke cover across the carefully raked gravel in front of them and raced for the cool, green copse of indigenous oaks, sycamores and beeches that had been spared by their Japanese interlopers.

  ‘We’re fine here,’ Paula panted, pulling out a white starched tablecloth, together with a bottle of Blue Nun.

  ‘How provincial.’ Rowan pulled a face at her choice of wine, but nevertheless deftly pulled its cork and, settling himself back against a massive oak, downed half its warm contents in one go. ‘Warm, too,’ he added, finally holding the bottle out to Paula. ‘Didn’t you have any of those blue ice packs in your freezer? We couldn’t do without them in Hong Kong.’

  ‘Freezer?’ Paula was momentarily puzzled. ‘Oh, no, sorry, ours was on the blink; must have been the heat.’ She didn’t like to tell him that the nearest they had to a fridge was the cold stone sink in the cellar in which her mum kept the milk bottles once they’d been delivered every day by Jack, the whistling and limping milkman who’d been part of her life ever since she could remember. Together with the mesh-fronted meat safe – also doomed to exile in the cool, dark, musty-smelling depths of the cellar – and the huge metal bread bin, now dinted after she’d accidentally fallen over it and sent it crashing from its place at the top of the cellar steps one evening after an excess of Strongbow Cider at The Crypt, these were as bi
g a part of her home as Dot and Norman themselves.

  Once the olives, hummus and taramasalata were eaten, the wine imbibed and the packet of McVities’ chocolate digestives – pinched from the pantry before they’d had a chance to reach Dot’s biscuit barrel – broken open and half of them also devoured, Rowan lit another joint and lay back in the long grass, pulling deeply on its pungent-smelling contents before handing it over to Paula. She didn’t smoke cigarettes and usually found that, unable to inhale, cannabis had little effect on her. She drew in the smoke and immediately blew it out again, where it drifted on the warm evening air, mingling with the intoxicating vanilla scent of heliotrope and the unmistakable perfume of the white-blossomed nicotiana.

  ‘Hey, don’t waste it, man.’ Rowan pulled deeply on the joint and, without warning, flung Paula onto her back, covering her mouth with his own, forcing the smoke into her lungs. ‘Right, do it yourself now,’ he grinned as she came up for air, coughing. ‘That’s it, slowly, let the shit do its magic.’

  Already slightly tipsy from the wine and the sultry heat, Paula took another hit, inhaling and pulling the smoke into her lungs. A feeling of wild euphoria went through her and she broke off a chocolate digestive, slipping it into her mouth, tasting the chocolate, closing her eyes as her tongue and teeth met the crunchy sweetness of the biscuit. ‘That is the most unbearably pleasurable thing in the world,’ she sighed, reaching for the packet.

  ‘I think you’ll find this even more so,’ Rowan grinned, delighted with the drug’s effect on Paula. He lay her down gently on Dot’s best tablecloth and, slowly unpopping the metal press studs of her dress, reached inside for the warm breast unhampered by any bra, holding it almost reverently in his hand before lowering his head to meet it with his mouth.

  13

  Escape from the Hoverers…

  Mark had more often than not been away on Friday evenings, usually travelling home from London or Europe after a week there working. Or after, I now realised, making whoopy in some hotel with Serpentina. As such, Friday evenings followed a routine where, once I’d fed the kids, I’d make myself a much-looked-forward-to treat of cheese on toast, Branston pickle and a big glass of red wine in front of a Poldark catch-up to start my weekend.

  On this Saturday evening, once I’d got rid of Slimeon – I’d rechristened him in the light of his insinuating comments about Tom – I headed for the kitchen, the fridge and the bread bin.

  My usual Friday night treat, albeit carried over to a Saturday, tasted dry and totally unappetising, even with a glass of Mark’s best Merlot, and I abandoned both and settled for some sensual pleasure with Captain Poldark. But, when the bastard abandoned Demelza and ended up in that whingeing milksop Elizabeth’s bed, I threw the TV control across the room and rang Fi.

  ‘Are you off to Leeds with Clare?’

  ‘Yes, in about an hour’s time. She’s got her first Henotheism hen party in the middle of Leeds and wants to be on hand to make sure everything’s going to plan. She’s been with the hens most of the day already.’

  ‘Right, I’m coming with you.’

  ‘Are you? Are you sure?’ Fi sounded doubtful. ‘Are you up to it?’

  ‘Up to it?’

  ‘Well, I’m not sure a gaggle of women celebrating a forthcoming marriage is the best thing for you at the moment.’

  ‘Neither’s cheese on toast and Ross Poldark… Give me an hour and I’ll come and pick you up.’

  *

  ‘You’ve lost weight,’ Fi said, eyeing me up as I walked into her kitchen. ‘If that’s what it takes to lose this two stone –’ Fi grabbed the flesh around her middle – ‘then I’m going to have to encourage Matt to get his rocks off somewhere other than here.’

  ‘Not funny, Fi.’

  ‘No, you’re right it wasn’t. Sorry. That was crass.’ Fiona sneezed and turned to give me a hug. ‘Hell, the girls have been riding; they only have to bring their crops and hats into the house and I’m sneezing.’

  ‘What on earth is that?’ I looked at the narrow wire that appeared to be heading from Fi’s shirt pocket before disappearing down the band of her jeans and into her crotch.

  Fi grinned. ‘I’m tasering my twat.’

  I winced at the crude expression and Fi laughed again. ‘You really are such a strait-laced girly, aren’t you? If you lived here with us on the farm you’d see nature at its most basic, including Matthew up to his elbows in order to fertilise the girls.’

  ‘The girls?’

  ‘All right then, the cattle, the cows: our bread and butter.’

  ‘Er, so what’s this thing then?’ I nodded towards Fi’s nether regions.

  ‘Marvellous little machine that does pelvic floor exercises for you. You know we women are meant to do them daily. Supposed to do wonders for you. I tell you, it gives me a thrill every time I plug myself in while I’m doing the washing up or ironing.’ Fi pulled a red and white machine the size of a cigarette packet out of her shirt pocket, squinted at it before replacing it and then headed for the stairs. ‘Give me two minutes until this programme has finished and I’ll put on some lippy and be good to go.’

  Once Fi had disappeared upstairs, I took a furtive look around at their huge farmhouse kitchen. Much as I adored Fi and Matt, I could never be in their house without wanting to have a good clean up. Ross, the farm’s black and white collie, was stretched luxuriously on the ancient battered sofa. The previous Sunday’s newspapers were abandoned on another chair while a plethora of rusting farm tools lay awaiting Matt’s attention on the kitchen surfaces and in the otherwise empty glass fruit bowl. A decrepit tabby cat narrowed devilish eyes at me from its bed of unironed laundry in the garish tangerine plastic basket on the top of the cream Aga.

  ‘Off you get, you damned thing. Go on.’ Fiona, fully made up and looking particularly glamorous in tight jeans and a red low-cut top out of which spilt her ample breasts, reappeared in the kitchen, clapping her hands at the cat. ‘God, it’s like living in a zoo here. What I’d give for a smart flat in the city with not a dog or cat hair to be seen.’

  I smiled. ‘You married a farmer. What do you expect? Where is the farmer, anyway?’

  ‘Come on, Cassie, you know what Matt’s like. It’s only seven o’clock. He won’t be finished for another couple of hours.’

  ‘And the boys?’

  ‘Out helping him.’

  ‘That’s good then.’

  ‘Is it? Why?’ Fi looked puzzled.

  ‘Keep them off the street.’

  ‘Cassie, I’d rather the boys were out on a Saturday night enjoying themselves, having a beer, getting drunk, bringing home girls instead of muck-spreading with Matt.’ She sighed. ‘And when the three of them are actually inside they don’t move from this kitchen. Every time I turn around, one of them is behind me, hovering.’

  ‘Hovering?’ I laughed, imagining Matt and the boys, all six-foot-four and built like brick shit houses, crowding round Fi.

  ‘And if it’s not the men, it’s the dog. He knows he should be outside with the rest of the animals but, no, he slinks back in and hovers like the rest of them, waiting until I feed them all. Teatime is the worst – even the girls hover, blocking my way to the oven.’

  ‘Next time they’re behind you, just turn and hand the shepherd’s pie, or whatever it is, to them and scarper.’

  ‘I’d go to the bathroom, sit on the loo with Hello! magazine, but there’s always someone in it.’

  ‘You need an en suite.’

  Fi snorted. ‘In addition to the new tractor, slurry spreader, rotator and roller? Anyway, I tell you, Cassie, they’re all in league, including the cats, to see who can corner me the most. I reckon they take bets to see who can get the closest without actually touching. I can literally hear them breathing down my neck.’

  I laughed again. ‘Maybe you could build a shed in the garden?’

  ‘A shed? They’d all be in it demanding cups of tea and cake. Hovering’s an Olympic sport to them – the shed would just b
e them going international. And Matt’s mother is as bad. She still thinks she’s in charge of the kitchen even though she moved down the lane when we took over the tenancy. She hovers at least once a day, usually at mealtimes. Next time she puts her mug of tea just where I’m going to roll out pastry, I’m going to shout, “Checkmate” and hand her the rolling pin. Actually, do you know, she’s gone really trendy since losing Matthew’s dad and moving into that little flat. She told me the other day she’d bought herself a pair of NYPD jeans.’

  ‘NYPD?’ I laughed. ‘New York Police Department?

  ‘She meant DKNY,’ Fi said, shaking her head. ‘She’s bonkers. One finger short of a KitKat. It comes from being a farmer’s wife all those years. God knows how I’ll end up.’ Fi shook her head again, obviously lost in thought. ‘So anyway,’ she continued, ‘you can see why I’d like my great oiks to leave home. I mean, they’re twenty-two and twenty now. Shouldn’t they be finding their own place to live? They just seem to adore the farm.’

  ‘And you as well,’ I said. ‘The farm’s in their blood; has been since they were tiny.’

  ‘Well, their blood might just have to flow elsewhere.’ Fiona sighed again.

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘You have to remember we don’t actually own this place. Matt’s family have been tenants for donkeys’ years. I mean, literally hundreds.’

  ‘Who are the landlords? Not the Bamforths?’

  ‘How do you know about the Bamforths?’ Fi was obviously surprised. ‘Yes, they are, actually.’

  ‘I know all about the Bamforths,’ I said, picking up my keys. ‘Come on, I’ll tell you in the car. Where are we meeting Clare?’

  *

  ‘Fiona, have you ever thought that Tom might be, well, gay?’ We’d parked the car in the Woodhouse Lane car park and were walking down to The Botanist on Boar Lane where we’d arranged to meet Clare.

  ‘Your Tom?’

  ‘Hmm.’