A Village Affair

by Julie Houston

  ‘Now, do we have any more questions, children?’ I trilled, Joyce Grenfell-style. ‘About Sidney, the lovely dog, maybe…?’

  *

  The rain that had been threatening all weekend arrived with a vengeance and, by 5 p.m., after a wet break and lunchtime when the kids had been cooped up, annoying and pecking at each other like battery hens, together with the usual after-school staff meeting, I was longing for a soak in a bath and an early night.

  ‘I’m assuming you’re going to be at tonight’s meeting?’ Harriet asked as we walked together across the playground to the car park.

  ‘Meeting?’ My heart sank.

  ‘About the new development? The Bamforths are holding a public meeting in Westenbury village hall. I thought you’d want to be there – I hear it could affect Little Acorns?’

  My heart sank further. ‘Gosh, I’m glad you reminded me. I’d totally forgotten. Of course I need to be there.’ I looked at my watch. ‘I’m going to have to get a move on: I promised I’d pick up my mother and grandfather. My granddad Norman is going to be devastated by this. They’re planning a huge estate in the wildflower meadow behind his house.’

  Harriet looked at me. ‘Your granddad isn’t the Norman who actually made the wildflower meadow, is he?’

  I nodded. ‘Yes, and he’s ninety-one now and seems to have given up the will to live because of all this.’

  ‘Gosh, he’s quite famous: I remember reading an article about him in the local paper. I often used to take my older kids down there in the summer when the flowers were in full bloom. We’ve had loads of picnics in that meadow.’

  I smiled. ‘So have we. But you don’t live over here in Westenbury. Would any development affect you?’

  ‘If I didn’t go to the meeting to give my support that would be a bit of “I’m all right, Jack.” I mean, the Bamforths don’t actually own the fields around where we live but, if they do get planning permission to build on their land, I can’t see how the local authority can turn down others round here who might decide to jump on the bandwagon. Anyway, Lilian, my nanny, rents a cottage on the Bamforth Estate and I said I’d go along with her. She’s pretty upset about it all, as you can imagine. And to be honest, it’s a bit of a night out.’ She laughed. ‘Nick’s at home at the moment, for a change. He can put the kids to bed.’

  ‘I can’t believe I’d forgotten the meeting was tonight – I mean, I’ve already had a phone conversation with David Henderson about it today. God, how awful if I’d got in the bath with a glass of wine as I was planning to do.’

  ‘I forget things all the time,’ Harriet laughed. ‘It comes with having five kids – it addles your brain.’

  ‘So, what’s my excuse? I’ve only got two.’

  ‘Do you really need to ask?’ Harriet laughed again, but this time with a modicum of sympathy.

  I rummaged in my bag for my car keys, which I’d forgotten I’d left for safekeeping in the office drawer. ‘See, look, I’ve forgotten my damned keys now. Shit, I hope the caretaker hasn’t locked up.’

  Harriet glanced back towards the school entrance. ‘Quick, Eric’s just going into school.’

  *

  ‘OK, you two. It’s going to have to be a takeaway for supper. I’m out again in an hour.’

  ‘Takeaway again?’ Freya dragged herself away from Hollyoaks long enough to air her disapproval. ‘We’re going to turn into takeaways. It’s not good for a teenager to eat junk food, you know. Paula said.’

  ‘Yes, well, Paula isn’t the oracle on teenage dietary habits.’

  ‘Oh, I think she is.’

  I ground my teeth. ‘Curry then, or a bowl of cornflakes? Your choice?’

  ‘Curry, if you insist.’

  ‘I don’t. As I say, up to you.’

  ‘Well, you need to eat,’ Freya said, without looking up from the TV. ‘Paula and I were only saying the other day that you’re too thin.’

  ‘What are you now? My mother?’

  ‘Well, Paula is.’

  ‘That’s debatable,’ I muttered, hunting for the takeaway menu and phone number. I always used to know exactly where it was: a place for everything…

  *

  With fifteen minutes to go before I left, Freya suddenly announced she was coming with me.

  ‘You need to get changed then,’ I said, eyeing her studded dog collar and oversized holey hoody.

  ‘I am changed,’ she said in some surprise. ‘Which is more than can be said for you.’ She looked my black work suit up and down before raising her – black heavily kohled – eyes at me.

  ‘You can’t go like that,’ I said. ‘I’m representing the school.’

  ‘Yes, and I’m representing Great-Granddad. Oh, and you’d better see this…’

  ‘What? What is it?’ I looked suspiciously at the crumpled letter Freya produced from her school bag. The envelope had very obviously been opened and resealed – badly.

  ‘It says you have to sign it to say you’ve seen it. Good job I opened it first or I wouldn’t have known.’

  ‘Known what?’ I looked at her.

  ‘Known you had to sign it,’ she said patiently, as if talking to one of my five-year-olds.

  ‘Oh, for heaven’s sake, Freya, I can do without this right now. “If Freya continues in this vein,” I read, “I will have no alternative but to exclude her for a period of time…” I carried on down the page. ‘A protest?’ I glared at her. ‘What protest? What were you protesting about?’

  Freya fiddled with her My Chemical Romance badge (I thought they’d disbanded years ago) but then said defiantly, ‘School dinners. There’s not enough nutritional value in them.’

  ‘I thought turkey twizzlers were banned.’

  ‘I’m sure they were, but there’s still not enough vegetables. The veg we have is tinned sweetcorn or almost brown, mushy broccoli. The cooks even call spaghetti hoops a veg. And the vegetarian choice is usually just pizza or a baked potato and so…’

  ‘And so?’

  ‘And so, because no one would listen to us, despite politely asking for a meeting with our head of year…’

  ‘You surely have some sort of school council to which you can take your grievances? Go through the proper channels?’

  ‘Mum,’ Freya sighed, ‘I am the school council.’

  ‘What, just you?’

  ‘I’m the Year 10 rep. I knew you weren’t listening when I told you I’d been voted in.’

  ‘I’m sorry, darling, I have had rather a lot on my mind lately.’ What a dreadful mother I was to forget. ‘I can’t believe that the school would think it an exclusion issue because of your request for a bit of fresh cabbage.’ I looked at the letter more closely while Freya looked decidedly shifty.

  ‘Hang on, Freya. A sit-down protest in the yard? A refusal to come into lessons until your demands were met? Inciting others to protest?’

  ‘It was only RE. Not much of a lesson,’ she said sulkily.

  ‘Encouraging male students to wear skirts as part of a gender-equality protest,’ I read. ‘For heaven’s sake, Freya, there are hundreds of kids who’d love a place at a state grammar school like yours. The head won’t think twice about booting you out, especially as you very rarely do your homework and insist on wearing as much of this emo stuff as you can get away with on your uniform.’

  ‘Mum,’ Freya said patiently, ‘I’m the mainstay of the first seven netball team. They need me.’

  ‘Yes, well, Theresa May thought that as well.’

  ‘Theresa May played netball? I didn’t know that.’

  ‘Now you’re being deliberately obtuse.’ I looked at my watch. I’d had enough of trying to bring up teens single-handed. ‘Wait there. No, don’t. Ring Paula on your mobile and tell her I’m running late.’

  I went into the sitting room, but Tom was in there, watching TV. I ran upstairs, closed the bathroom door and, with heart pounding, rang Mark. Why on earth was I nervous about ringing my own husband? My husband, Serpentina…

&nb
sp; Mark answered immediately. ‘Cass, I’m so glad you’ve rung.’

  I was put on the back foot immediately. ‘Are you? Why?’ Hope surged through me. Mark must have just needed me to ring him for him to come home.

  ‘Well, I don’t see why we can’t be friends. I know what I did was awful for you, pretty unforgivable, but we’re all adults, and Tina and I really want to be there for you.’

  ‘You moron. You pillock. You… you ridiculous wanker.’ I was seething, a red-hot mist descending as I shouted down the phone. I slammed it down and then immediately picked it up again and hit redial.

  ‘Cass…’

  ‘Mark, I’d like you to sort out your children.’ I spat out each word, like a volley of bullets.

  ‘The children? What’s wrong with the children? Are they OK?’ I felt a modicum of satisfaction that there was a sense of panic in his response.

  ‘I’d like you to know there is a big possibility that your son is gay and your daughter is a revolutionary and about to be expelled.’ There, that should rattle the complacent wanker’s cage.

  There was a long silence and then Mark said, very calmly, ‘Cass, I’ve known for months that Tom is very probably gay.’

  ‘What? And you never said? Never thought to discuss it with me?’

  ‘Cass, how could I tell you I’d seen Tom in The Blue Ball? You’d have wanted to know what I was doing there, who I was with, why I was in a gay pub…’

  I shook my head in disbelief. ‘So, Tom saw you with Tina and couldn’t say anything because he was with another boy and you saw Tom and couldn’t say anything because you were being an adulterous bastard?’

  Mark didn’t contradict me. Instead he said, ‘It really isn’t the end of the world, Cass.’

  ‘Oh, don’t be so bloody condescending as well as being a lying cheat. And what about your daughter? What about Freya?’

  Mark had the audacity to give a little, what can only be called paternal, laugh. ‘Freya? What did you expect? She’s Paula’s granddaughter!’

  17

  Whose Village Is It, Anyway…?

  The village hall in Westenbury is situated between Little Acorns School and the main village pub, The Jolly Sailor.

  ‘I can manage,’ Granddad was saying crossly. ‘I’m not an invalid. Just pass me my stick, Freya, and I’ll be fine.’

  The car park, usually empty of an evening unless the Brownies or Zumba class were in situ, was surprisingly full and, once inside, we had to search for seats. ‘I knew we were going to be late,’ Granddad grumbled. ‘All the best seats at the front have gone.’

  ‘Over here,’ Harriet Westmoreland waved from the second row back. ‘We’ve saved you some seats.’

  ‘Brilliant, thanks,’ I mouthed back, and ushered my lot forwards.

  Edward and Xavier Bamforth were already sitting at a trestle table up on the stage where, previously, I remembered fondly, a six-year-old Freya, dressed in cute yellow PVC mac and wellies had sung and danced a rendition of ‘There’s a Worm at the Bottom of the Garden’ in the only concert I’d ever managed to get her to perform at. She’d been a bit of a revolutionary even then, producing two real live worms from her mac pocket and shaking them at the audience as the other tots shook imaginary worms and lisped ‘… and his name is Wigg-er-ly Woo.’

  ‘Our Linda and Davina are here,’ Granddad said, pleased. ‘Why aren’t we sitting with them?’ He started heading down the hall towards them.

  ‘There’s no seats left down there, Granddad,’ I said, hurriedly steering him to the left-hand side where Harriet had placed bags and cardigans on the wooden chairs. I suddenly realised it was a bit like being at a wedding and, instead of ‘bride or groom?’ it was ‘for or against?’ Linda and Davina, together with Anthony and some others, were sitting firmly in the ‘for’ camp. As was Karen Adams. My heart sank: I could really do without her there.

  ‘Snap!’ Ben Carey, the vicar of All Hallows said as Freya sat down next to him. He fingered his dog collar, eyeing her studded one, and she laughed out loud with him. To Ben’s right sat David Henderson and a very beautiful blonde I assumed to be David’s wife.

  ‘Cassandra, this is Mandy, my wife.’ David smiled vaguely but his eyes were scanning the room, obviously intent on working out just who was for the Bamforths’ plan and who was not.

  ‘Hello, Cassandra,’ Mandy Henderson said coolly. ‘I’ve heard a lot about you.’

  I reddened slightly, remembering she was a magistrate and knew of my little infraction in causing ‘Criminal Damage’ to Serpentina’s car. All I needed was for her to say something about it and for Freya to find out what I’d done, and I’d have absolutely no bargaining power when it came to Freya’s own – less artistic – protest. I’d already heard Freya proudly telling Paula what she’d been up to at school and, despite my glaring at Paula through my mirror as the pair of them sat and whispered in the back seat of the car, Paula had praised rather than condemned Freya’s sit-in at school.

  I glanced at the stage where, in front of a very professional-looking display showing a huge map of Westenbury and its neighbouring villages, the enemy was already seated and ready for action. Edward Bamforth was talking intently to the woman on his right – apparently a secretary taking notes – while Xavier Bamforth was sitting somewhat moodily to his father’s left, reading from some papers in front of him. He suddenly looked up and in my direction, holding my gaze for several seconds before looking away.

  People were still making their way in and more chairs had to be ferried from side rooms into the main hall while several groups were left standing, leaning against the shiny terracotta-coloured walls, their pints of lager and glasses of wine presumably transported from The Jolly Sailor across the road.

  Edward Bamforth lifted the glass of water to his mouth, put it firmly back on the table and then stood.

  ‘A big thank you to everyone for coming along this evening…’

  ‘Can’t hear you at the back; speak up.’

  ‘Is that better?’ Edward adjusted the tinny-looking microphone in front of him and, as high-pitched buzzing static flooded the hall, Granddad Norman winced theatrically and twiddled with his hearing aid.

  ‘Tonight, I want to share with you all a marvellous opportunity to build and develop this village of ours…’ Edward started.

  ‘Ours? We were under the impression it was yours?’ I glanced round and saw Wayne the Wasp Murderer leaning against the wall, enjoying both his pint of lager as well as heckling Edward Bamforth. ‘If it’s our village, then you can keep your thieving hands off it.’

  ‘Sit down, give the man a chance.’ This from the ‘for’ contingent.

  ‘You may not know this,’ Edward started speaking once more, ‘but under a government consultation launched two years ago, rules have been changed to allow local councils to allocate small-scale sites in the green belt specifically for starter homes.’ There was silence from the gathered audience as Edward warmed to his theme. ‘We have fantastic plans for the whole of this area. Times are changing, people want new houses, new leisure facilities…’

  ‘I’ll tell you what we want round here, well, in Midhope any road…’ A tall lugubrious-looking figure dressed in black stood and faced the stage. ‘John Clarke of Clarke and Sons, Funeral Directors. Never mind your fancy ideas for shops and a ski slope, what we need is a new crematorium in this town. Have you been to the old one, Mr Bamforth?’

  ‘Er, not recently.’ Edward Bamforth seemed lost for words. He laughed. ‘I do try and avoid it if I can.’

  ‘You agree to his plans for Westenbury, Mr Clarke,’ Wayne the Wasp Murderer yelled, ‘and he’ll promise you a new one. A crème de la crem, as it were…’

  Hoots of laughter filled the hall. I glanced at Xavier Bamforth, who appeared to be biting down on a smile. He was rather handsome when he smiled. Dark hair, dark eyes. I’d always been a fair hair, blue-eyed sort of girl myself. Mark came instantly to mind but, for the first time in four weeks, my stomach didn’t l
urch with sorrow and longing for him. Pillock, I thought to myself comfortably, and continued to stare at Xavier Bamforth.

  ‘Old people used to poke me at weddings and say, “It’ll be your turn next,”’ Paula was whispering to Freya and Harriet. ‘So, I used to poke old people at funerals and say the same thing back to them.’ The three of them cackled and several heads turned and glared with the accompanying ‘Shhh.’

  ‘I think, Mr Bamforth, you’ve not done your research well enough.’ I hadn’t seen Matt and Fiona sitting several rows behind us and Matthew now stood, everyone turning in his direction. ‘Matthew Richardson, tenant farmer on one of the Bamforth farms on the other side of Westenbury. My family has been farming this land since 1630: I’ve checked the date today – been doing a bit of historical research as it were.’

  ‘And are you making a living, Matthew?’ Edward Bamforth asked, attempting familiarity with his tenant.

  ‘Yes, as much as any tenanted farmer can. But any expansion we may have envisaged, any new equipment we may have considered buying, we’ve had to put on hold knowing this damned silly idea of yours is hanging over my sons and me. I want to be able to pass on my farm to my children as my ancestors have passed it down the line to me.’

  Matthew, a naturally fairly shy man paused and looked at Fi. She squeezed his hand and he turned back to the Bamforths. ‘Mr Bamforth, this is our land. OK, you may own the acres round here after your family bought it – what, seventy years or so ago, just after the war? But you don’t own its life, its very heart, and you never can or will. The farmers who, three hundred and sixty-five days a year, tread its soil, know the depth of its streams, the foundations of its actual farms and the birds in its hedgerows; these are the people who really own your estate.’

  I turned and caught Fi’s eye and she pressed her hand to her heart, and winked at me. She may have been affecting nonchalance, but I saw her blow her nose on the tissue she fished out of her cardigan sleeve. I don’t think I’d ever heard the usually shy, and sometimes even taciturn Matthew speak so many words all in one go.