‘I have indeed,’ replied Elliott. ‘The seeds of a man’s downfall are sown in the very ground of his success. An ethical man made successful, abusing the power he wields. The unstinting desire to win at all costs because knowing one has power triggers psychological changes, bad changes. Power leads to greed as leadership leads to entitlement.’
Sophie gulped. He could have easily been describing John; she hadn’t thought until that very moment how much power might have corrupted her own husband.
‘Really it should be called the David Syndrome though, shouldn’t it? Poor old Bathsheba gets the blame for leading him to the dark side when it’s his own weaknesses that do that,’ Elliott continued.
‘You’re right of course. Poor Bathsheba.’ Yes, blame the easy target. ‘Being surrounded by yes-men who substantiate his feelings of supremacy and have fed his ego until it’s bloated. I imagine all that led him to believe he was coated with Teflon.’ She was talking about David, yet thinking of John. If ever there was a living, breathing example of Bathsheba Syndrome, he was it. Sophie sighed heavily.
As if Elliott felt the dip in her mood, he dragged the conversation back to its origin.
‘You were telling me about your running, and how it started off as a punishment. So how come you got hooked?’
‘Ah, yes, well one thing that life at St Bathsheba’s did teach me was that it took only a little more effort to do a good job than a bad one, so I thought I might as well do my best for Miss Geraint because I really liked her. Plus Irina was flopping and pretending to be exhausted and out of breath and it annoyed her that I appeared so enthusiastic. I did as Miss Geraint taught me: alternate walking and running, building up my stamina. After the week, I asked if I could carry on. I liked the feeling of pushing myself, feeling my lungs working to capacity, my heart thumping. Irina thought I was a masochist. I even started getting up half an hour earlier and running around the grounds, sometimes in the pouring rain, sometimes in the first showing of sunlight. When I ran I felt my head clear of everything, respite from exam stress’ and from feelings of inadequacy and loneliness ‘. . . so, thanks to St Bathsheba of Whitby being a total non-entity, I discovered something wonderful; a valve, a survival mechanism. I run when I want to be alone with my thoughts, when I’m sick up to here with political phrases and jargon . . .’ When I’m tired of being savaged by the media, disregarded by my family, ignored by my husband. Sometimes, when she set off running for the fields behind Park Court, she imagined leaving them all behind in her wake, feeling the air grow clearer the further away from them she got. Running helped her to breathe.
When Henry had died, she had to force herself to wash, eat, put on her shoes and take steps outside, because all she wanted to do was curl up into a ball, around the memory of him being safe and growing inside her. Running helped her to rejoin the world again, when she didn’t want to but had to because John needed her and her mother was admonishing her for bringing everyone down with her depression.
Sometimes she dreamed that she ran to the edge of the earth and jumped off into the inky star-filled blackness, her feet continuing to power through the oxygen-less atmosphere. But in those dreams Sophie was always running away from and never towards anything. There was nothing to run to.
‘Miss Geraint was forced to resign the year after, when Miss Palmer-Price discovered she lived with a woman,’ said Sophie, shaking her head. ‘What a horrible, horrible place it was. So intolerant and hypocritical. The head of Religious Studies was the most unchristian woman I ever met. I once commented in class that I thought Mary Magdalene was probably very much in love with Jesus and Miss Egerton went ballistic.’ Talking to Elliott was making Sophie realise she really had been quite the renegade. ‘I was going through a romantic – with a small “r” – phase at the time, I think,’ she went on. ‘I never meant it was a consummated relationship, just that I thought they must have been very fond of each other.’
‘And I would be inclined to agree,’ said Elliott.
‘She reported me to the head as insinuating they were friends with benefits. Sex hadn’t even crossed my mind, but she wouldn’t listen. She said I was disgusting for suggesting there was anything other than a spiritual connection between them.’
‘Your teacher sounds grim.’ Elliott said, a growl lacing his words. He’d met far too many people who purported to be Christians when they were enemies of decency and compassion.
‘She made me believe my soul would be damned. I was terrified. I daren’t tell her that I harboured a secret hope that they were madly in love with each other and wanted to get married. She’d have blown up and redecorated the assembly hall with her intestines.’
‘You aren’t on your own in believing that Jesus and Mary Magdalene had a more than platonic relationship, though I personally don’t,’ said Elliott.
‘When I got a little older, I preferred to think of them as close friends who loved each other so much that sharing each other’s orbit was enough to make them happy. Nothing more complicated than that.’
‘And now?’ asked Elliott, but the clock in the hallway interrupted any answer she had been about to give. It chimed over and over and Sophie realised how late it was.
‘Elliott, I am so sorry, I’m keeping you up.’
‘You’re not, I’m often up until the wee small hours anyway.’
‘Even Cinderella didn’t leave it until the last stroke of midnight.’
Elliott picked up her mug just as she was reaching for it to take over to the sink.
‘Cinderella would have washed her own cup, too,’ said Sophie.
‘Not if she’d been in my house. I’d have made her feel like an honoured guest.’
Of that, Sophie had little doubt. She felt very welcome in this house; not merely tolerated, but valued for who she was, not for her connections or how beneficial she could be to someone.
‘Cinderella had decidedly better shoes though.’ Sophie lifted up her foot with the cheap sneaker on it.
‘Good tight laces,’ Elliott adjudged. ‘She was a fool not to favour a strap in my opinion.’
Sophie wagged her finger. ‘Then again, if she hadn’t lost her shoe, she might not have married the prince.’
‘Do you know, I hadn’t thought of that.’
‘I’ll go out of the back door . . .’
‘. . . to avoid the curtain twitchers, I know,’ said Elliott, finishing off her sentence.
The moon was a perfect disco ball of bright silver tonight, lighting up the bay of Little Loste, making the wave-tops glitter. The world looked monochrome, like something from a 1930s movie where the hero grabbed the heroine and kissed her passionately after a half-hearted protest from her.
‘Goodnight, Pom. Let me see you to the bottom of the garden.’
‘No, I’m good, don’t worry,’ said Sophie, stepping quickly away from him in case he was thinking along the same lines as she was. Because if Elliott Bellringer seized her around the waist and pulled her towards him, Sophie didn’t know if she would have resisted or not.
Chapter 34
The next morning, Tracey picked Sophie up at half-past eight. She was in a state of high trepidation.
‘Don’t laugh,’ she said, ‘but I started thinking in bed last night, what if Pom lied as much as I did about being good at sewing. Then I had this dream where you made a dress out of really cheap material and it was awful. I woke up in a right old panic at half-five and I couldn’t get back to sleep.’
‘That might happen,’ said Sophie.
‘Please don’t joke.’
Sophie yawned. She hadn’t exactly had a restful sleep herself last night. It had taken her at least an hour to drop off because thoughts of ‘Ells Bells’ kept trespassing into her brain. She could have happily stayed at the vicarage for hours more, talking to him – no, talking with him. John talked to her or at her, they didn’t really converse much: there was a difference. Then, when she did eventually drift off, something had woken her up in the early hours, a f
eeling that she was being watched. Her eyes had sprung open but there was nothing there. She’d called out, but no one had answered her. Not that the sensation had been scary; just odd. Almost as if something were checking on her as a mother might check on a sleeping new baby, putting her head close to assure herself he was still breathing.
‘Sorry,’ said Tracey. ‘I bet I’ve turned you into as big a stress-head as I am. Did you get a shit night’s sleep because of all the trouble I’m causing you?’
‘On the contrary, I sleep better here than I have done for years,’ said Sophie, which was true – apart from the previous night. Too much talk about Mary Magdalene and Jesus and orbits. And love.
Slattercove market was in full swing when they arrived there.
‘This is the best place,’ explained Tracey, leading her over to a stall. Sophie locked down into material-hunting mode, shifting bolts of cloth aside to view others. Nothing there. They moved on. Nothing there either. She found the right colour but not the right material; then she found a right-ish material but not the right colour.
‘Where else could we go?’ asked Sophie, after they had exhausted all the stalls without success.
‘Whitby? Although we’d probably be better going to Nunbury, but that’s an hour’s drive away.’
An hour and ten minutes later they were in Nunbury.
‘I hope Jade flipping Darlow realises how much trouble we are going to,’ tutted Tracey.
‘If you want this dress to bond you together, then it has to be right,’ said Sophie. ‘I trust my instincts and they weren’t coming up trumps.’
‘Do you ever make dresses for yourself ?’ asked Tracey.
‘Yes . . . but John doesn’t . . . The thing is, newspapers want to know whose outfits you’re wearing, and it wouldn’t look good to say that I’d made them myself.’
‘Why not, though? You’d think in this day and age that making your own would be respected. Even Princess Anne gets mega brownie points for putting on the same outfits a few times, cutting costs. Some of those designers charge an absolute fortune, don’t they? The most expensive thing I have in my wardrobe is a leather jacket. I paid three hundred quid for it after my divorce as a treat.’
Sophie didn’t say what she must have paid in her lifetime so far for clothes. Clothes maketh the man had been a familiar mantra both for her family and for John’s. She’d felt, though, that a lot of her own creations suited – and fitted – her much better than those she’d bought.
Nunbury had a sizeable prom and bridal shop not far from the multi-storey car park and just for interest, they went in to look. The place was full of teenage girls rifling through the racks. Sophie wasn’t that impressed by the selection.
‘They’re all so samey,’ she said. ‘Drab. As if they’ve been made by people who’ve churned out uninspiring bridesmaids’ dresses for fuddy-duddies all their lives and can’t quite adapt to the whole idea of the prom. These are not designed for teens.’ She picked one off the rail and held it up. ‘Dreadful, insipid, cheap,’ she said.
‘I beg to differ,’ coughed Tracey, pointing to the price tag.
Something danced at the side of Sophie’s brain: an idea; but when she tried to focus on it, it slid away.
‘They’re certainly making their money today though,’ remarked Tracey as more teenagers and their mums walked in through the door as they walked out. ‘Yep. It’s an expensive time of year. And a worrying one for a lot of parents, I shouldn’t wonder.’
‘You can always get your dad’s girlfriend to make you a dress,’ put in Sophie, tongue firmly wedged in her cheek.
‘Oy, cheeky,’ Tracey said, then shook her head slowly from side to disgusted side. ‘All that cash, just for a few hours’ wear and then it’s totally redundant. It’ll sit in a wardrobe for years before eventually being donated to a charity shop. Madness. Thank goodness we didn’t have them in my day. My dad couldn’t have afforded five hundred quid for a frock.’
‘The thing is, we do have them now and every girl wants to look like Cinderella at the ball,’ said Sophie. The Cinderella image was fresh in her mind from last night, holding up her sneakered foot to a man who could easily be a lucky woman’s Prince Charming. Dena Stockdale’s father’s firm, Daisy Shoes, must make a killing at this time of year, she thought, maintaining the Cinderella theme. Some kids probably didn’t even go to their proms because they couldn’t afford the outfits. And if they could, there was all the other stuff, for girls anyway: shoes, bags, jewellery, nails, hair, spray tans . . . it was never ending.
They found a large material shop in the precinct selling dreadfully overpriced stock, but – as luck would have it – on the sale rack was a bolt of cloth that was the perfect colour and quality for Jade’s dress. Sophie gathered up all the other things on her list from various shelves in the same shop: cotton, boning, tailor’s chalk, interfacing. She also found a beautiful strip of jewel-encrusted ribbon that would make the perfect embellishment for the neckline and the waistband.
‘How much?’ shrieked Tracey, blanching when the shop assistant told her the total cost. She took out her Visa with a sigh. ‘Me and my big mouth,’ she said. ‘This’ll teach me a lesson I’ll never forget. It would have been cheaper to feed Jade a load of pies until she filled that red frock out. In fact, why didn’t I think of that first?’
‘Wait till I hand you my bill.’ Tracey’s jaw dropped and Sophie laughed. ‘Let’s go for lunch,’ she suggested then, pointing to an Italian bistro. ‘I’ll pay. I think we need to eat to combat the shock.’
‘No, I’ll pay. I owe you,’ insisted Tracey, but Sophie insisted back.
Over lasagne, buttered mangetout and a bucket load of French fries, Sophie and Tracey traded information and chatted like friends who had known each other for far longer than they had. It was different to being with Elise, filtering every mouthful in case she said something indiscreet that Elise could ferry back to Gerald. Tracey told her more about her ex-husband and how controlling he’d been, how everything had to be done his way or he blew a fuse, even down to how their house was decorated. Sophie didn’t say how much Tracey’s marriage seemed to mirror her own.
‘I saw a photo of you in the paper and you look so very different with black hair, Pom,’ said Tracey, finishing off the last of her small rosé wine. ‘It’s going to be a hell of a job trying to get it back to your natural colour when you go home.’
‘That’s the least of my worries,’ said Sophie.
‘I can’t call you Sophie. You don’t look anything like her. I can’t believe you’re one and the same person.’
We aren’t, Sophie wanted to say to her. Pom’s happy.
She picked up the dessert menu because she didn’t want to think about going back to Cherlgrove and having to face all the Mayhews and the Calladines again.
Over tiramisu Tracey told her that she wished Elliott could meet someone who wasn’t a twat like his ex-wife. ‘I’m so worried that Joy is going to come back and disrupt Elliott’s life – and Luke’s, I’ve got a gut feeling about it. He was never as content with her as he is now without her. I want him to find someone who—’ She stopped in mid-sentence, and Sophie prompted her to go on. ‘Okay then, who he talks to like he talks to you. He tends to keep his barriers up with women. I mean, imagine what could happen if he invited Miriam Bird for lunch? She’d consider that an engagement. He’s aware of her feelings and wouldn’t lead her on. It’s too easy for people to fall in love with someone like Elliott, someone strong and good and kind; but with you, he’s totally relaxed.’
‘Maybe that’s because I’m married and out of bounds,’ replied Sophie, even though she suspected it wasn’t that.
Tracey knew it wasn’t that either. ‘There are plenty of married women in the congregation and he doesn’t open up to any of them like he does you.’
Sophie tried to look bemused but her heart was betraying her with an excited tattoo. It would be wrong to think of herself as special to Elliott Bellringer, but her br
ain was not in control of her feelings. It needed to seize the reins from her heart – and fast.
Chapter 35
Sophie sat in church the next morning and listened to Elliott’s sermon about the prodigal son and her thoughts started to wander. She tried to envisage rocking up at Park Court, walking into a hallway full of Calladines and Mayhews who threw up their hands in joy and immediately instructed Margaret – or whoever was employed in her place – to go and kill the fatted calf; but she couldn’t conjure the scene. Even in her imagination, which she was supposed to be able to direct, all she could see was them standing in a disapproving crescent. Her father would be shaking his head, unable to look at her; Clive would be regarding her as if she were a black-haired alien. Celeste, in that horrible mink coat, wearing the expression of someone who had just had a bad smell released under their nose and her mother, Annabella and Victoria in a tight judgemental knot, like the three witches of Macbeth. Edward might smile, she thought, but his smile would quickly vanish again for fear of recrimination. She didn’t even want to contemplate what John’s reaction would be.
She turned her attention back to the pulpit. ‘You see, God is kinder than we are. We would probably get really annoyed if our brother or sister ran away and then turned up again and was treated like a king. But God doesn’t give up on us when we do something wrong,’ Elliott was saying.
‘I wish I were going home to God then.’ Sophie thought she’d said this to herself, but from the way the people seated in front of her whipped their heads round, it seemed she hadn’t. She felt herself growing hot with embarrassment as Elliott’s mouth quirked with amusement as he continued to speak, his blue eyes lingering on her for a long moment. She wished he would go on to say, ‘What this story is really telling you is that if you ever run off, don’t go back. There’s no point because it will be awful, give or take a roast dinner. So why not stay where you are and be happy?’ But he didn’t. And fatted calf or no fatted calf, she would have to go and face the music at some point and risk her siblings kicking up a stink just like the prodigal’s did. Maybe God was sending her a clear message after all, via Elliott’s sermon. Maybe He was telling her to go home and everything would be okay, after they’d all given her a piece of their minds. Best to get the turning up part over and done with, sooner rather than later, find some semblance of normality.
The Magnificent Mrs Mayhew Page 24