A Village Affair

by Julie Houston

  ‘Would you like to get some fresh air?’ Xavier was standing, screwing up his napkin before abandoning it at the place he’d been sitting.

  *

  We walked along the beach in silence as I tried to work out why my heart was beating more quickly than it should: I’d either drunk too much, was incredibly unfit or was about to have a heart attack. I took off my heels – ridiculous trying to walk on sand in heels – and the cool sand quieted the fluttering of my pulse for a while.

  ‘Cassie…?’ Xavier stopped suddenly, turning in my direction, bringing me to a halt.

  ‘Hmm?’

  ‘Thank you for today.’ He put a warm hand on my arm and stroked it lightly, and yet with such expertise, my pulse raced once more.

  ‘Thank you.’ Oh God, I didn’t know what to say or do. I only knew that if he didn’t kiss me I would die, right there and then, crumbling into a messy heap on that Mexican beach.

  Xavier brought his face down to my upturned one and, very slowly, oh so incredibly slowly, kissed the corner of my mouth. And then, encouraged by my response, moved his mouth to my open one and kissed me softly. Without thinking, I reached for the back of his head, burying my fingers in his thick, dark hair while my toes scrunched the sand beneath my feet.

  *

  Back in my hotel room, I texted both Clare and Fi with the same message:

  For the first time in my life, my legs won’t hold me up and I have just slid down the wall and onto the floor.

  24

  Avoid the Hairy, Toilet-Brush Ones…

  I landed back at Manchester airport on a cold and dank Sunday morning. October had morphed into November in my week’s absence, and I could see through the huge windows as I exited the Nothing to Declare channel, that the new month was already living up to its reputation as Mr Miserable.

  I thought back to all the holidays to Spain and the Canaries, to Majorca and Minorca that Mark and I had, over the years, taken with the kids. Tired and quarrelsome after a night flight, or one that had been delayed for hours, I always hoped for some sort of welcome in Arrivals. Even though I’d known there was no one waiting to pick us up at the airport – that there was no need for anyone to pick us up as our car was in fact waiting for us where we’d left it a week earlier – even though I always knew that, there was always that little frisson of hope that there might be someone standing and smiling, holding up a piece of paper with

  WELCOME HOME, MR AND MRS BERESFORD AND FAMILY.

  Daft really.

  I stopped to adjust my watch back to UK time. Six a.m. and nowhere near being light. There were very few passengers around at this time in the morning, and those there were appeared lost and slightly bedraggled. A couple of cleaners were cleaning the floor, manoeuvring their long-handled dust sweepers around chairs and tables in a desultory manner, with the distinct lack of energy and enthusiasm that suggested they’d already been at it for hours. I looked up, eyes scanning for directions to the train station, and there he was, leaning against a post on the periphery of the waiting taxi drivers, friends and relatives.

  ‘Oh, gosh, what on earth are you doing here?’

  ‘I needed to see if you were real, that you were as I remembered…’ He looked at me with those devastating brown eyes and grinned.

  I laughed, pulse revved up several notches. Thank goodness I’d cleaned my teeth with one of those disposable toothbrushes just before landing. ‘Oh, how lovely!’

  ‘…and, to be honest, I’m also catching a flight to Copenhagen in…’ he looked at his watch ‘…three hours’ time.’

  ‘Ah, not just here for me then?’

  ‘Well, I could have gone straight to Departures, but I checked your time of arrival, set off a little earlier and thought I’d welcome you back.’ Xavier held up a piece of white A4 paper on which was written:

  WELCOME HOME, MRS BERESFORD.

  ‘You remembered.’ I laughed out loud.

  ‘How could I forget that you’ve always aspired to being met at the airport with a card with your name written on it? Come on, I’ll buy you a quick cup of coffee and then you need to get your train. You’ll be wanting to get home to see your kids.’

  ‘So, you’ve been back from Mexico just two days and you’re having to set off again?’ I asked as we sat with a coffee each. I tasted mine: it was bitter and tasteless, nothing like the wonderful coffee I’d been used to every morning in Mexico.

  Xavier grimaced, both at his own coffee and the fact he was having to set off once more. ‘Yes, last thing I want, really, but a company just outside Copenhagen is interested in buying from us. And then Dad wants me to go on to Brussels. I thought I’d hire a car and drive down to see ma grandmère à Paris. I’ve not seen her for six months and she’s having a bit of a strop about it. So, I’ll be away until the end of the week.’ He took my hand. ‘I want to see you, Cassandra, as soon as I’m back in the UK. What do you think?’

  I grinned across at him and stroked his hand with my thumb. ‘I think, yes please, Mr Bamforth. That would be very acceptable.’

  *

  All the way back home, on the hour’s journey from the airport back into Midhope, crossing the Pennines from Lancashire, through Marsden, Slaithwaite and into Midhope, I sat with a ridiculous grin on my face. I couldn’t read my book; skimmed through, without a great deal of interest, the messages that had accumulated during the last twelve hours or so it had taken me to get home from Mexico, and, instead, just thought of Xavier. I went through all the images in my mind, from the moment I’d first seen him, aloof and uninterested in my office; to his raised eyebrows when he saw me in Leeds accompanied by my giant penis; to his looking after me as I threw up on the boat; to that kiss on the beach…

  And then I was at the station and Clare was there with Freya, helping me with my case and both hugging me as if I’d been away for years instead of a week.

  ‘Wow, you look fabulous,’ Clare said. ‘Look at that tan. And your hair’s great. Much more natural; suits you like that.’ She looked again and grinned. ‘You don’t half scrub up well.’

  ‘Even after a twelve-hour flight?’ I laughed.

  ‘Absolutely. Something, or…’ she lowered her voice ‘… somebody has done you some good.’

  ‘Shhh,’ I glanced over at Freya who, declaring herself starving, had stopped to buy a giant cookie from the newsagent booth. ‘Tell you all about it, later. How’s Rageh?’

  A big smile lit up Clare’s face. ‘Rageh is …’ she sighed, ‘…Rageh is the best thing that ever happened to me. He’s working – been called in to an emergency – but he’ll be over this evening.’

  ‘No more black eyes?’

  ‘Another visit from her, plus phone calls and rather unpleasant texts… and this.’ Clare handed me a copy of one of the Sunday rags – folded and folded again at the relevant article – as we got into her car.

  I read the whole article, which, although it didn’t put Clare herself, as the owner of Last Stagger, in a particularly good light, only mentioned the name of her business twice. The photographs of Clare, Rageh and the girlfriend were grainy and didn’t give a great deal away.

  ‘I actually think I’ve got away with it fairly lightly,’ Clare said. ‘What do you reckon?’

  I nodded. ‘It’s not as if it’s front-page stuff, is it? It is actually hidden quite well at page…’ I peered at the top of the page at where the newspaper was folded ‘…seventy-five.’ It might even get Last Stagger some free advertising. What about the hospital, though? How will Rageh’s boss and the hospital administrators view it? I mean, he is a children’s doctor after all? Might they not think it a bit sleazy, all this?’

  ‘Let me see it,’ Freya demanded from the back seat. I handed her the newspaper, knowing it was pointless not to. She’d only Google it, and read it at home if I refused.

  Clare bit her lip. ‘That’s my worry. We’ll just have to wait and see if they get hold of the story. They might not think it’s a problem. We just don’t know at the m
oment.’

  ‘Well, it wasn’t exactly his fault, was it?’ Freya tutted through a mouthful of cookie. ‘I mean, good on him not to be part of the whole ridiculous male-bonding shebang. I’d never marry anyone who thinks it good fun to dress up as a condom and spend time drinking and vomiting it all up in the gutter. Mind you, I’m sure I’ll never shackle myself to any man: I think the whole idea of marriage is an outmoded…’

  ‘Right, OK, Freya, we hear you.’ Clare and I turned and grinned at my daughter. ‘Come on, let’s get home; I’ve missed you and Tom. I hope the house is still standing.’

  *

  It was, but drowning in a plethora of homemade banners and flyers that were either still sticky from wet paint or in the process of being created, Freya’s printer regurgitating paper from her bedroom as if there were no tomorrow. Paula was sitting at my kitchen table, her face furrowed in concentration as she carefully applied red and green paint to the pencil lines already written on the huge piece of card in front of her.

  ‘Hang on, Cassandra, just let me finish this,’ she shouted over her shoulder, ‘and then I’ll be with you. Green for the countryside, you see,’ she went on ‘and red for danger.’ A pile of dirty dishes tottered precariously on the kitchen units, waiting, presumably, for the dishwasher to be emptied and refilled. One of the electric hobs was sticky with something I couldn’t quite make out, while a pan, bearing the remains of someone’s scrambled egg, sat carelessly to one side of the other. The bin, stuffed to its limit, was now fighting back, spewing out an empty packet of cornflakes, a banana skin and a dangerous-looking tin of baked beans from its smeared metal jaws. Every inch of the kitchen granite was covered in an eclectic mix of toast crumbs, card, flyers, string, sticky jars of honey and jam and dirty pants.

  ‘Those pants should be in the utility, Freya,’ Paula now said, seeing my face and, in doing so apparently condoning the rest of the stuff gathered unceremoniously on my granite. ‘I said I’d put the machine on if you got all your dirty washing together.’ She wiped her paint-splattered hands on her jeans and, moving the still-wet poster further onto the kitchen table, stood up and came over to give me a hug. ‘Welcome home; you look great. And your hair’s grown – I always said you should let it have its own way instead of ruining it with those straighteners all the time. Right, what do you think of this lot?’ Paula indicated, with her hand, the finished banners that were stacking up against one of the chairs.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Clare grinned. ‘I’ve got a ton of work I need to get on with before Rageh comes over. And it looks like you’re going to be busy too.’

  ‘Right,’ I said faintly, speaking for the first time since I’d come into the kitchen. ‘You do seem to be getting sorted. This is all for Saturday, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Freya said proudly. ‘We’re meeting in Norman’s Meadow, then marching around the village and back to the Meadow for speeches. I’m press secretary and I’ve been in touch with the Midhope Examiner and I’ve been tweeting—’

  ‘Hang on, you’re not fifteen yet. You can’t tweet…’

  ‘Paula set up a Save Norman’s Meadow account and I’m managing it. We’ve got loads of followers already including… da-dah…’ Freya imitated a drum roll, ‘… Harry Kennedy.’

  ‘Who?’

  Freya tutted impatiently. ‘Harry Kennedy? He’s in Second Coming and he’s famous. He went to our school. You know. Anyway, his grandmother lives in one of the Bamforth Estate’s cottages, very near Granddad Norman. He’s following us and I’ve tweeted him and asked him to come on Saturday.’

  ‘Right. Well, good luck with that, darling. Where’s Tom, by the way?’

  ‘Still in bed,’ Paula said. ‘He was out late last night.’ She looked at me meaningfully while Freya was bent over one of the posters. ‘He’s met some new friends at college, hasn’t he? He brought one home yesterday. Nice kid. They had a pizza together.’

  ‘Oh, yes,’ I said airily, determined that Paula shouldn’t think she was telling me something I didn’t already know already. ‘Lovely kid, you’re right.’

  We left it at that.

  *

  By mid-afternoon, I felt restless. I’d unpacked and set the washing machine going, cleaned up after a week with Paula in charge, done a shop and even made a chicken casserole. I knew my restlessness came from a heart-lurching need to see Xavier again, to relive that kiss on the beach, to just be with him…

  With Paula and Freya still stuck into organising their protest meeting up at Norman’s Meadow, I offered to do a spot of leafleting around Westenbury village and the villages beyond that were also going to be affected by the Bamforth Estate’s plans.

  With wonderful images of Xavier in my head, and Freya’s leaflets in a rucksack over my shoulder, I strode out across the fields and through the woods until I reached Littleford, one of our neighbouring villages.

  After the heat and humidity of Mexico, I actually relished the cold fresh air. I chatted to a few friendly people and worked up quite a sweat posting the flyers, at manic speed, through an amazingly diverse set of letter boxes. Why bother with a gym membership when you could walk, bend and stretch like this for free?

  Walking down one particular front path, I saw a Jack Russell at the window of the house and, while I should have known better than to deliver through that particular letter box, I went for it. The next thing I knew, the bloody thing had my finger in its jaws and wouldn’t let go. Thank God, I was wearing gloves, and leather ones at that, but Jesus, this was embarrassing. Here I was, Westenbury’s new head teacher, stuck to a letter box in the certain knowledge that my finger was about to lose all contact with my hand.

  With one final yank, I managed to retrieve my finger from the slavering beast’s jaws, leaving my leather glove behind. A bit shell-shocked, I walked, gloveless, both tittering and crying down the rest of the estate.

  Back at the house, Paula, Tom and Freya enjoyed my retelling of the story – with somewhat over-the-top dramatic actions – immensely, but once in bed I developed rabies, tetanus and gangrene, interspersed with an uncontrollable urge to titter with an even more uncontrollable desire to have a very naked and tanned Xavier in the bed with me, all of which was not conducive to a good night’s sleep. I woke tired and bad-tempered, and nearly rang school to say I wasn’t well.

  I didn’t.

  *

  My second half term as head teacher.

  Even after a long flight, jet lag and a day spent wiping, hoovering, washing and disinfecting, not to mention ten rounds with a Jack Russell, I was more than ready to begin the new session at school. I’d spent a lot of the flight back from Cancún planning the weeks ahead and was looking forward to getting stuck in once more.

  ‘Right, we’ve got squirrels.’

  I stared at Stan the caretaker, who’d pounced on me as soon as I opened the main door.

  ‘Squirrels?’ I’d heard of nits, lice and even crabs but squirrels? ‘What do you mean?’ I frowned.

  ‘Time of year, Mrs Beresford. Come on, I’ll show you.’

  I walked behind Stan into the hall and followed the direction of his pointing finger. I squinted up at the ceiling but could see nothing. ‘What am I looking at?’

  ‘Little buggers have got into the roof space where it’s warm. They’ve started eating the ceiling.’

  ‘Eating it?’ I glanced across at Stan. ‘I thought squirrels ate nuts?’ I smiled.

  ‘Not a laughing matter, Mrs Beresford,’ Stan admonished me. ‘If that hole up there gets any bigger you’ll need a new ceiling and the kiddies won’t be able to eat their dinner in here. Health and Safety and all that.’

  ‘Oh crikey, what does a new ceiling in an old Victorian school cost these days?’ Gone were the days when the local authority shelled out for repairs. We were on our own. Or, at least, the Trust was.

  ‘I’ve already rung Rentokil,’ Stan said importantly as a tiny flurry of plaster flakes drifted down towards us. ‘They’ll be here later this afternoon
.’

  ‘Not until then? Is the ceiling safe? It’s not going to fall in on us, is it?’

  ‘Oh goodness me, no. The squirrels come in most years.’ Stan rubbed his chin. ‘Think of it as their winter holiday home. Mind you, I’ve never known ’em start eating the place before.’

  ‘Well, let’s keep this to ourselves. I don’t want the children to know.’

  *

  ‘Mrs Head, you looks wonderfuls.’ Deimante followed me into my office as soon as I’d opened the door and hung up my coat. ‘Hairs good, should keep its longs like that. Too shorts before for goods-looking lady like you. Now, I mights be leetle bits late sis afternoons…’

  ‘Oh? Well, I do need to know if you’re not going to be out on the lane, Deimante. If you’d leave your lollipop where we know where it is, then I’m sure one of us can pop out to patrol the traffic at three thirty.’ I actually quite fancied jumping out into the road with a lollipop.

  Deimante leant over my desk and whispered confidentially. ‘I goes for Samiri Exam.’

  ‘Right. OK. Samiri Exam?’

  ‘Taip. Yes, is correct.’

  ‘So, is this an exam for a new job? We’d hate to lose you.’

  ‘Lose me?’ Deimante frowned. ‘Nots getting lost. Very very goods at directions…’

  ‘Yes, I know you are. Oh, I know…’ Light suddenly dawned. ‘Is the Samiri Exam the test that you have to take in order to become a British citizen? You’ll have to answer questions such as: “What is the name of the admiral who died in a sea battle and can now be seen on a monument in Trafalgar Square in London?”’

  ‘Sat’s easy,’ Deimante scoffed. ‘Is Nelson. And Drake was bossy of Armadas…’

  ‘Oh, you’ll have no problem.’ I beamed as if she were one of my pupils about to take her SATs tests.