A Village Affair

by Julie Houston

  Clare shrugged. ‘She said that basically you got there first and she couldn’t really jump up and knock him off you before claiming him for herself. She said no man has ever affected her in the way Mark did, from the moment she glanced across the table at him at that wedding.’

  An awful thought suddenly occurred to me. ‘So, are you telling me that Tina has never really wanted me for a friend? That she only became my closest friend as the best way to be near to Mark?’

  ‘Gosh no, Cassie, you mustn’t think that.’ Clare was visibly distressed. ‘We all fell a little bit in love with you at Davina’s wedding. You were so, so…’

  ‘So what?’ I stared at Clare. ‘What was I?’

  ‘Sweet and vulnerable and shy and—’

  ‘Sweet? Oh, great. If that’s supposed to be a compliment, then forget it.’

  ‘All right, not sweet. You just seemed all alone, abandoned on the singles table with the rest of us when you should have been Davina’s bridesmaid. Or at least on the top table. You were family, for heaven’s sake. And you had no dad. I remember asking you where your parents were. And you just said, “I’ve no idea where my father is – unless he’s still trying to find himself in Morocco – and my mother is the Purple Hat over there.” And then we all felt horribly guilty because we’d been laughing about your mum. And you sat there really uptight, your face pale and pinched, and told us you were planning to buy a house in Derby and we just got the impression that you were sort of running away from home. That you’d rather still be living here in Midhope, but that you somehow needed to prove yourself.’

  ‘That’s bollocks. You’re making me out to be some sort of Orphan Annie. I loved my job in Derby, was more than happy to buy my flat there…’

  ‘But even happier to come back to Midhope and settle down with Mark.’ It was a statement rather than a question.

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘And being married to Mark, well, you sort of blossomed, Cassie. You were still pretty uptight about your mother; still totally over the top about everything being neat and tidy, but that tight, nervous look went from your face. You’d got what you wanted.’

  ‘And Tina hadn’t?’

  ‘She got the consolation prize with Simon. Once she saw Mark only had eyes for you, she made a play for Simon at the wedding and the rest is history.’

  I laughed shortly. ‘As are Simon and I.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘History.’

  ‘Well, if it makes you feel any better, after Tina had got off the train from Leeds the other day – the day you decorated her car, I mean – she walked up from the station to the office with a new client she was wooing. Apparently, they’d been on the train from Leeds together talking business, and Tina suggested the client walk up to the office with her so she could then give them a lift home…’

  ‘Oh, good, I’m glad he saw her for what she is.’

  ‘A she actually – why do we assume clients in business are men? Anyway, she was a woman whose husband had just left her for his secretary. What a cliché.’

  ‘Nearly as bad as going off with your best friend’s husband.’

  ‘Anyway, you scored a bull’s-eye. Tina said, once she saw the car with its lipsticked message, the woman had a strop and she’s not heard from her since. She’s refusing to deal with her.’

  ‘Yes!’ I waved my willy in the air, catching one of the hen’s crumpled silver wings as I did so.

  ‘Bitterness doesn’t become you, Cassie.’ Clare took my arm but I shrugged her off.

  ‘Neither does being lied to, cheated on and generally being made a fool of.’

  Clare sighed. ‘I know, I know. What’s happened’s really terrible. I can only begin to imagine how you must be feeling. That’s why—’ She stopped abruptly.

  ‘That’s why what?’ I glanced at her and when she didn’t continue I looked at her more closely. ‘What, Clare?’

  ‘I’ve fallen in love, Cassie. Big time.’ Clare raised her eyes and gazed straight at me and I saw just how tired and strained she looked.

  ‘You’re always falling in love, Clare,’ I laughed. ‘There’s a new man every week with you.’

  ‘Cassie, I’ve never been in love.’

  ‘But…’ I stopped what I was saying and stared at her. Clare’s eyes were full of unshed tears. I’d never, in all the years I’d known Clare, seen her cry. Or Tina, come to that. While Fi and I could sob for Britain – and generally did – both Clare and Tina always remained steadfastly dry-eyed even when watching the most tear-jerking films. Or even at Tina’s father’s funeral, where the three of us had sat behind Tina and Simon, her mother and three brothers and their wives. Fi and I had gone through a pack of tissues, but Tina had remained stoically emotionless. I conceded, at the time, I was probably crying for the now almost mythical Man in Morocco rather than Tina’s dad.

  ‘I’ve had more than my share of men…’

  I nodded in agreement and then ducked as one of the hen’s willy deely boppers flew through the air onto the glass-topped table in front of us. I put it on my head for safe-keeping. The hens were now being entertained by a party of stags dressed from head to toe in pinkishly transparent plastic bags tied in neat bows atop their heads, beer-flushed faces peering from cut-out holes. I stared, trying to catch Fi’s eye, but she was in full flow, explaining animatedly to the now seemingly recovered BTB that she must nip any hovering in the bud from day one if she was to have a long and happy marriage.

  ‘Condoms,’ Clare said, following my eyes.

  ‘Sorry?’

  ‘Stags, dressed as condoms.’

  ‘Right. OK.’ I turned back to Clare, giving her my full attention. ‘But you’ve never wanted to fall in love with one man, Clare.’

  ‘No. But only because I never have. Never understood this need other women seem to have to spend the rest of their lives with just one man.’ Clare wiped her eyes crossly with the back of her hand and waved away the tissue I proffered from my bag.

  ‘The man in The Botanist?’

  Clare nodded.

  ‘So, that’s lovely, isn’t it? What’s the problem? He looked very gorgeous. And very single: no woman out with him on a Saturday evening…?’

  ‘I rescued him,’ Clare smiled.

  ‘From what? A mad dog? Muggers? Himself?’

  ‘From the stag do he was part of.’

  ‘Right, OK. How come?’

  ‘He was the stag. It was his stag do.’

  I stared at Clare. ‘Oh shit, he’s about to get married?’

  ‘Yep. The one man I know is the man for me and I can’t have him.’

  I frowned. ‘But, Clare, I hate to remind you of this, but most of your men you can’t have. You do tend to have a thing for married, unobtainable men.’

  ‘But I’ve never wanted to keep one for myself before. I’m more than happy to have a bit of a fling and then hand them back to their wives. No harm done.’

  ‘Well, that’s a moot point, Clare; you know what I think of your dalliances. So, how did you rescue him?’

  Clare sighed. ‘It was on Thursday evening. I was just about to put my feet up with a glass of wine and watch a catch-up of Broken. I’ve always had a thing about Sean Bean. Mind you, he’s looking a bit old now…’

  ‘Get back to your story, Clare.’

  ‘Anyway, I’d only been sitting down five minutes when I heard a knock at the back door. So, I go to open it and there’s a man shivering on the doorstep.’

  ‘Shivering? Why was he shivering? We’ve been having a late summer heat wave.’

  ‘He was stark-bollock naked apart from the tiniest of thongs and bandages.’

  ‘A woman’s thong?’

  ‘Yep. And wrapped in bandages.’

  ‘Bandages? Why bandages?’

  ‘Presumably because they were a bunch of doctors from some hospital in Sheffield, and I’d say he was shivering more from shock than the cold. He’d fallen over, because his ankles were tied with a bal
l-and-chain thingy, and his head was bleeding.’

  ‘How come he was in your back yard? Did you know him previously?’

  ‘Not at all. I knew his mates because I’d organised the stag do. They weren’t your usual condom-wearing stags: they were much older, for a start, and professional – as I say, mainly hospital doctors. I’d worked over the phone, and also face to face in the office, with his best man, and together we’d planned that just eight of them should start off here in Midhope with canapes and champagne at the new wine bar down East Street and then a meal at George’s restaurant and spend the night in The Mucky Duck before flying out from Leeds Bradford airport to Prague. I did tell him Prague was a bit passé, that everybody did it, and suggested Le Touquet as being rather more in keeping with their professional status. But he wasn’t having any of it – wanted the whole traditional stag do with strippers and pole dancers.’ Clare sighed, looking weary. ‘I mean, I pride myself on being rather more upmarket than other stag-do organisations – you know, champagne rather than beer; culture rather than blow-jobs from arresting women police officers…’ Clare nodded towards her hens, a couple of whom were now simulating energetic and inaccurate sex with the condom-disguised stags, and sighed deeply once more. ‘I appear to be going steadily downmarket at the moment.’

  ‘So why did the groom-to-be end up on your doorstep?’

  ‘Panic. He’d really not wanted a stag do unless it was very low key. He’d only agreed to it as long as he had some control over it, and no strippers or pole dancers or being tied up in cling film was involved. They’d called into the office on Thursday afternoon on the way to The Mucky Duck and I could tell then he really was pretty uptight about the whole thing. Probably didn’t help that he’d been in theatre all morning and was tired…’

  This was all a bit of a strange tale. ‘So, he didn’t go back to The Mucky Duck and re-join the party then?’

  ‘To be honest, I did tell him I was off duty, that there was no way I wanted him in my back yard. Then I relented: I couldn’t just turn him out into the street in that condition so I let him in and bathed his head – he had a deep cut and it was bleeding quite badly. I actually thought he might need a stitch but he had a good look at it in the bathroom mirror and assured me it didn’t warrant one. And then he slept.’

  ‘What, you just let a strange man into your house to sleep?’ I was quite shocked.

  ‘Yep.’ Clare was slightly on the defensive. ‘I reckon they’d spiked his drink with something.’

  ‘Doctors spiking drinks? Doctors wouldn’t do that, surely?’

  ‘Sometimes, Cassandra, you really are incredibly naïve. Doctors, remember, have access to any number of weird drugs.’

  ‘Sorry, I don’t believe that. Doctors just wouldn’t do that.’

  Clare was impatient. ‘Whatever, Cass, he was out of it. The plan for Thursday night had been to get him to the hotel, strip him, wrap him in bandages, handcuff his legs and then time him to see how long it took him to make his way from the hotel garden and back to his room. Totally puerile stuff. Anyway, their little jape came to nothing because he decided to have the last laugh by disappearing.’

  I pulled a face. ‘Oh God, his mates must have been so worried when they lost him. You can just see the headlines in the local paper can’t you: Sheffield Doctors in naked stag do romp. I bet they looked everywhere for him.’

  Clare laughed too and relaxed somewhat as she carried on with her story. ‘He managed to find a taxi that was prepared to take him, but he didn’t know the area so just asked for my place. He remembered seeing The Four Feathers pub and the church, and the next minute he was banging on my door. I had to pay the taxi driver, of course. By the time I got him inside he was pretty cross: thought it was me that had suggested and organised the whole ridiculous prank.’

  ‘Don’t you think he overreacted a bit? I mean, this is the sort of thing that happens on a stag do. Maybe he should have just gone along with it and enjoyed two days in Prague.’

  Clare glanced across at the hens, who seemed to be getting a bit restless. ‘I think I’m going to have to move them on to the nightclub soon,’ she frowned. ‘God, I can’t bear the thought of several more hours of this.’

  ‘Oh, don’t leave it like this,’ I exclaimed. ‘I want to know what happened next.’

  ‘Well, he said he wasn’t hanging around to find out if Prague would be any better. He’d never really wanted a stag do in the first place.’

  ‘Bit of a party pooper. All this had been arranged for him and then he decides to go AWOL.’

  ‘Do you blame him? I certainly don’t. Anyway,’ Clare went on, ‘he obviously had no phone on him so he used mine to ring The Mucky Duck and passed on a message that he was fine and the rest of the stags should go to Prague without him.’

  ‘Really? How on earth is he going to face them back at work?’

  ‘Cassie, he was absolutely exhausted. He’d been in theatre all day operating on a little boy who’d been in some hit-and-run accident in Sheffield.’

  ‘Oh, the poor thing!’

  ‘Yes, but even worse, just before they set off he’d called onto the ward to see how he was doing. He’d died. He was only five years old. Just started school and he’d died.’

  ‘But why did he stay with you? Where was his fiancée? Couldn’t you have got in touch with her and asked her to come and pick him up?’

  Clare shook her head. ‘On her own hen do: New York, apparently. So, there I was, at home, with a strange man so I just put him to bed in the spare room. He was desperately upset he hadn’t managed to save the child, mortified that he’d gone AWOL, leaving his own party, but equally determined that he wasn’t re-joining it to go to Prague.’

  I looked at my watch and then across at Fi, who was in the middle of some sort of drinking game with Beryl and two more hens. ‘I’m going to try and get Fi home in the next few minutes. Just tell me what happened yesterday. How come you’ve fallen in love with him?’

  ‘There’s just something about him. Yesterday he was totally apologetic that he’d ruined the party, but couldn’t bear to go back to an empty flat or the hospital. So, he sat in the garden all day and just reread books he’d loved as a child and I happened to have loved and kept too. He started on The Water Babies before breakfast and then went on to The Famous Five. I was busy in the office but kept running down to the garden to make sure he was OK. He was either sleeping in the sun or reading. Last night, Cassie, I made us spaghetti and we just talked and talked and talked. I have never felt such an affinity with another human being before.’

  ‘Did you sleep with him, Clare?’

  ‘No, Cassie, I didn’t.’ Clare was cross. ‘He needed a friend, not a lover: he has one of those at home. I eventually managed to get hold of James, the best man, and very diplomatically suggested that Rageh was not in a good place.’

  ‘Reggie? Sounds like an old man, or an East End mobster.’

  ‘Clare tutted. ‘Rageh. His parents are originally from Somalia. Doesn’t really get the laddish British stag culture. He said he tried to get involved, tried to find the party spirit, but it just wasn’t in him.’

  ‘I want to go home,’ I said, hoisting my willy over one shoulder and adjusting my twin willy deely bopper. ‘I’ve really had enough.’

  ‘Snap,’ Clare said grimly. ‘But, unfortunately I’ve another lifetime to spend with these women. I’m not sure how you’re going to extricate Fi from this lot…’

  We both looked over to the bar where Fi and the hens were still entertaining and, in turn, being entertained by the now somewhat bedraggled condoms. Fi didn’t look as if she was anywhere near ready to leave.

  I made my way over and, in an attempt at jollity, slapped the tall dark-haired man blocking my path to Fi and the now extremely raucous hens, over the head with my three-foot, day-glow penis.

  The man and the very attractive brunette to whom he was attached, both turned crossly as I interrupted their tête-à-tête with a willy and a
manic smile.

  Great stuff. I’d just executed Actual Bodily Harm with a Giant Todger on Xavier Bamforth. The very thing to finish off my evening from hell.

  15

  Paula

  1976

  ‘You putting on a bit of weight?’ Dot narrowed her eyes and looked directly at Paula’s stomach before holding her younger daughter’s gaze.

  Paula looked away first, taking time over the cutting of her slice of toast and marmalade into four neat pieces. ‘Summer seems to be over,’ she said, deliberately changing the subject. ‘I’m glad – I’ve had enough of the heat.’

  ‘Paula, I’m talking to you. Don’t ignore me with chitchat about the damned weather.’ Dot opened and emptied the green and orange Brook Bond tea packet into the caddy, manoeuvring off the little orange dividend stamp before licking and sticking it into her divvy book.

  Paula reached across the tablecloth for the tea packet, searching for the picture card between the wrappers as she’d done all her life. Ridiculously, she still got a slight thrill in being the one to extract it after years of competition with Linda as to who should get to the giveaway card first. Linda, Paula now thought somewhat sourly, was two months into married life and queening it in her brand-new detached up on the Copper Beech estate. Not that there appeared to be any copper beeches up there: just a mass of houses and bungalows in a monochromatic beige fake stone.

  Play Better Soccer. Well, that was no good to man or beast. Paula twisted the card and flicked it across the table where it came to a halt by Norman’s finished breakfast plate. The discarded bacon fat and white gristle from Norman’s favourite black pudding made her stomach heave and she quickly looked away.

  Dot poured tea for both of them before sitting down heavily across from Paula. ‘I reckon, Paula, there’s a lot more in there…’ she indicated Paula’s middle ‘… than has gone in through your mouth.’ Embarrassment made Dot’s words cruder than had been her intention and she reddened but still held Paula’s gaze.

  Paula didn’t say anything but, aware of her mother’s scrutiny, buried her face in the steam rising from the green Beryl Ware cup.