A Village Affair (26 page)

She looked up with difficulty.

‘I will ring your mother-in-law in the morning,' Peter Morris said.

‘Oh—'

‘Yes,' he said firmly.

Doctor Milligan moved away towards the door.

‘I'd get those children to bed if I were you. And yourself.' He opened the stable door. ‘Rain,' he said, and went out into it.

Peter Morris came round the table and laid a brief passing hand on each child's head.

‘You can always ring me—'

‘Yes.'

‘Martin will sleep all night.'

‘Yes.'

‘Get to bed now.'

When he had gone, Natasha said, sighing, ‘It was all Uncle Anthony, wasn't it?'

‘Well, partly—'

‘Will Daddy be better in the morning?'

‘A bit better.'

‘Who's doing the school run?'

Alice thought.

‘Mrs Alleyne.'

James's lip trembled.

‘No—'

‘It's her turn—'

‘I want Clodagh—'

‘Yes. Yes. I know.'

She stood up and took James's hand.

‘Come on. Bed.'

He trailed after her, dragging on her hand. They went slowly up the stairs, past the eloquently closed spare room door, and along the passage to James's room where his bed awaited him under a fly-past of model aeroplanes. He looked very small and fragile in bed. The sight of the back of his neck filled Alice with panic. She kissed him quickly for fear she might cry before she was out of the room, and for once he did not beseech her to stay, but put his forbidden thumb in and turned docilely on his side.

In her room next door, Natasha was settling Princess Power into her pink plastic castle for the night. Without turning, she said, ‘Should I say goodnight to Daddy?'

‘I think he is fast asleep. Have you put out your ballet things, for tomorrow?'

Natasha nodded. Tomorrow, Alice thought. Monday, ballet class, community shop, Clodagh to see to the children at teatime, Martin awake again, Cecily coming, Gwen coming, everyone beginning to know. And before that, this night to get through. She went over to Natasha and kissed her.

‘The moment she's organized, Tashie, you hop in. I'll come in later, when I've had a bath.'

‘I wish,' Natasha said, ‘that I could have her Power Chariot too.'

‘Perhaps, for your birthday—'

Natasha began to talk, softly and intimately, into the pinkly mirrored throne room. Alice went out and closed the door. Then she listened at all the other doors, even, after a struggle, at the spare room door, and then she went along to her own bedroom and took her shoes off and lay down on her bed. She did not turn the light on. She simply lay there in the pale darkness and stared up into it, and outside, in the summer night, the rain pattered down on to the hard, dry ground.

‘What are you telling me?' Cecily said, but she didn't really mean it. She knew.

Peter Morris said nothing more. He got up and went over to the window and looked out at his damp garden.

‘And the doctor?'

‘He went to The Grey House this morning. He thinks you should take Martin home with you for a few days. He needs looking after.' He turned from the window. ‘The results of shock, you see. What might, a century ago, have been called a brainstorm.'

Cecily had her eyes closed.

‘This whole business is grotesque.'

‘But it is happening.'

She opened her eyes and spread her arms out to his study walls.

‘But here—'

‘In Pitcombe?'

‘Yes.'

‘Humanity is no different. It's just that the setting is prettier than, say, Solihull. And no crowds to hide in.'

Cecily said with a kind of stiff shyness, ‘It must seem absurd to you, but I have never encountered such – such a – a situation before.'

‘Nor I,' Peter said. ‘Men yes. But not women. It is quite different, with women.'

Cecily shut her eyes again.

‘No doubt—'

Peter Morris crossed the room and laid his hand on her arm.

‘We must go round to The Grey House.'

‘The children—'

‘They are at school.'

‘Not the baby.'

‘The baby is where he should be,' Peter said. ‘With his mother.'

Cecily allowed herself to be helped from the chair and guided from the house. The village street was empty except for Stuart Mott trimming the two green moustaches of privet that separated Miss Pimm's harsh little front garden from the pavement. He looked up when he saw them coming and gave a tossing nod of his head to show that he couldn't possibly relinquish the handles of his shears to wave. He knew who Cecily was. It looked, from the way she was walking, as if she had some bad news to break at The Grey House. Perhaps Mr Jordan's father had died or something had happened to that brother. Miss Pimm, dusting her dead mother's bureau in the front first-floor room, saw them too, and remembered that she had seen Peter Morris walking Alice along like that, as if sheltering an invalid, only the night before. Miss Pimm picked up her mother's inflexible photograph. The night of her mother's fatal stroke, she had gone straight to the rectory, just run there, even before she telephoned the surgery. It was the only time in her life she had ever tasted brandy.

‘Is – is it known,' Cecily said, ‘in the village?'

‘Not yet.'

‘Must it be?'

‘It can't be stopped—'

‘Why should not Alice go,' Cecily said, suddenly angry and turning upon Peter. ‘Why must it be poor Martin—'

‘The children.'

‘Yes—'

‘My feeling is that Martin and Alice must heal separately before they come together again to heal their marriage.'

Cecily snorted.

‘Their marriage! My dear Mr Morris, that is surely over—'

‘Not at all.'

He gripped her arm to cross the street.

‘Such a betrayal,' Cecily said, thinking not solely of Martin.

‘No worse, I think, than conventional adultery. Both are sins. Neither need destroy a marriage, given sufficient support.'

In the lane leading to The Grey House they met first the milk float and then a pick-up truck bearing Martin's heavy-duty lawn mower away for repair. In the last cottage garden, a rubber sheet blew on the washing line beside several pairs of immense pyjamas. At the gateway, Peter Morris took Cecily's arm more firmly and led her across the front of the house and round to the stable door to the kitchen. The top half was open and inside, in jeans and a checked shirt, very pale and with extremely neat hair, Martin sat at the table with the newspaper before him.

He looked up when their figures darkened the doorway, and then stood up, and said, ‘Hello, Mother,' and came over and opened the door and kissed her cheek. Then he said, ‘Good morning, Peter,' and stood back, politely, as if there was nothing more he could do.

Cecily put her arms round him. He stood and allowed her to. Then he said, ‘Would you like some coffee? I expect there is some.'

‘Darling,' Cecily said. ‘Darling.'

‘Please,' Martin said. He put her arms away.

‘I've come to take you home, darling. I've come to take you home with me for a while—'

‘I should like that,' Martin said.

‘My car is at the rectory—'

She looked round the room.

‘Where is Alice?'

Martin said carefully, ‘Alice is taking Charlie for a walk in his pushchair. She would be glad for me to be at Dummeridge.'

Cecily gave a savage little yelp.

‘I am sure she would!'

Martin's face immediately creased with distress and Peter Morris came forward and took his arm.

‘Of course she would. She wants to see you better. We all do.'

‘Heaven knows what Milligan gave me last night,' Martin said. ‘I feel as if I'd been hit with a sledgehammer.' He put his hand to his face. ‘I tried to ring the office. Alice said—'

Cecily put her arm around him.

‘Don't worry about those things. Don't worry about anything. We'll take care of them.'

‘My bag,' Martin said. ‘I packed my bag—'

Peter went upstairs to look for it. On the landing, he found Gwen, bundling sheets into a pillowcase for the laundry.

‘That's his mother come then?'

‘Yes—'

Gwen believed clergymen had a threefold social duty to baptise, marry and bury and no business to step beyond it.

‘I suppose you got her to come?'

‘I am looking for Mr Jordan's bag—'

‘If you'd wanted to be useful,' Gwen said, pushing in sheets patterned with Paddington Bear, ‘you'd have sent Clodagh packing weeks ago.' She jerked her head towards an open door. ‘You'll find Mr Jordan's bag in there.'

‘Gwen. Gwen, I hope you'll stay. At least until Mr Jordan gets back—'

‘Depends,' Gwen said, ‘on what I'm asked to do. Doesn't it.'

Peter said with some asperity, ‘I don't seem to remember you having any moral difficulties with Major MurrayFrench's girlfriends.'

Gwen gathered up the bursting pillowcase.

‘That was different, wasn't it? That was
normal
.' She moved towards the stairs. ‘If I stay, it'll be because of the kids. You can't despise the kids, can you?'

Alice, on the river path with Charlie, saw Cecily's car go down the village street. cross the bridge and climb easily up the opposite hill, southward. She could see two heads in it. When it had disappeared, she put Charlie into his pushchair with his drooping bunch of buttercups, and pushed him resolutely up the street, talking to him animatedly. Cathy Fanshawe, coming out of the shop, saw her and ran across to say breathlessly that the fête had made nine hundred and fifty-one pounds, would you believe it? Alice said how wonderful. Cathy thanked her profusely for her stall and ran back again to her car. Soon Cathy Fanshawe would know why Martin had been taken away by his mother.

In the kitchen at The Grey House, Clodagh was frying a sausage for Charlie's lunch. Gwen had pointedly gone home. Clodagh too had waited until Cecily's car had pulled away from the rectory. She had had nothing to do all morning but wait. She had meant to speak to her mother, but Margot had gone up to London early for a dental appointment and lunch at the Parrot Club. The speaking would have to happen that evening or else Margot would hear, distortedly, from the village, and Clodagh wished her to know that she, Clodagh, would be leaving quite soon, and taking Alice and the children with her, to Windover. She had said nothing of this to Alice. She was waiting until she and Alice were alone.

When Alice came in, she put Charlie into his highchair and then went over to Clodagh and held her. Neither of them said anything. Charlie, looking for something he could reach, found the telephone cable and pulled it, so that the receiver clattered off and Alice had to come to its rescue.

‘Awful
boy
.'

Charlie beamed.

‘I am a coward,' Alice said. ‘I couldn't face Cecily.'

‘There are quite a lot of cowards around here,' Clodagh said, turning the sausage, ‘and you ain't one.'

She put the sausage in Charlie's dish, with a chopped-up tomato, took it over to him, and cut it up.

‘Nah,' Charlie said.

‘It's all you're getting.'

He blipped the pieces of sausage with his spoon. Clodagh put her hand on Alice's shoulder.

‘Sandwich?'

‘No thanks. Nothing. Not hungry.'

‘Alice,' Clodagh said, ‘this is no moment to have the vapours. We are just beginning to get somewhere.'

Alice smiled. She picked up Clodagh's hand and laid her cheek on it.

‘It's not the vapours. It's lack of sleep and lots to think about. And anyway, I must go. Shop day.'

Clodagh opened the door.

‘I'll be here when you get back. We all will. Waiting for you.'

They stood and looked at each other. Then Alice leaned forward and kissed her and went out into the garden towards the drive.

The Community Shop was standing as usual in the yard behind the post office. Also as usual, Mr Finch was standing on some aluminium steps washing the windscreen with a plastic bucket in one hand and a sponge in the other. The back doors of the van were open, and what was not usual was that Mrs Finch, in a frilled floral blouse, was inside stocking up the shelves. Mrs Finch prided herself on having no manual part in the business though she kept an eagle eye on the books, and if she was minding the shop when a customer wanted potatoes she would pull on rubber gloves before she touched them and make it very plain, with deprecating remarks and smiles, how unaccustomed she was to this aspect of what she called the commercial world.

Alice went up the steps into the van.

‘Hello, Mrs Finch. No Michelle?'

Mrs Finch paused, holding two bottles of vinegar.

‘No, Mrs Jordan. No Michelle.'

‘Is she ill? She was fine on Saturday—'

‘She is quite well. She is serving in the shop.'

‘I see,' said Alice, who didn't. ‘Well, let me do that. I know you don't like it—'

‘Mrs Jordan,' said Mrs Finch, clasping her bottles, ‘I am not one to flinch.'

She took a breath. She had rehearsed this to herself several times, ever since Gwen's astonishing visit to the shop shortly after midday. She put the bottles in their allotted place and turned towards Alice with her hands folded against her sunray pleated skirt.