Encounters (35 page)

Knew what? That she had married Gareth? That she was in London? That she was alive at all? All three perhaps.

He was watching her closely, reading her thoughts. ‘Come on. This place is ghastly. Knock that back whatever it is –’ he was looking at the glass in her hand ‘– and let’s get out of here. I’ve got a car outside.’

She had forgotten he was so much taller than she. He made her feel delicate and feminine, almost girlish again as she followed him across the carpet. Behind them the woman with the glossy fingernails lowered her glass and stared after them.

She found a car outside, on the double yellow line, in the care of the doorman and affecting not to see the fiver which changed hands as the man opened the door for her she slid into the seat, waiting for a moment in that strange encapsulated silence for Hugh to come round and climb in behind the wheel. As they pulled effortlessly out into the traffic she leaned back and closed her eyes. She did not ask where they were going. She knew it would be the woods behind her grandfather’s farm, now owned by strangers but mercifully preserved, where, at this time of year, the beeches were a cloak of gold.

As soon as she had got into the car she had spotted the tattered wartime copy of Keats in the glove pocket in front of her and quietly she smiled at the message. She wondered if he had remembered too the bracelet he had given her and gently as he guided the car into the traffic of the Cromwell Road she began to ease it down her wrist past the tightly buttoned cuff which had been so carefully fastened to conceal it.

T
he day started badly.

‘Why didn’t you go into that first car park? There was loads of room.’

‘Because it was so far from the fête. You know you hate walking.’ Malcolm’s voice had the patient note in it which always drove Ginny wild.

‘I do like walking in the country, it’s different, and look at this queue. Well be here all day.’

The line of overheating cars crawling over the sticky tarmac was radiating heat beneath the blazing sky, while the procession of people strolling from the village kept safely, sensibly on the grassy verge in the black shadow of the heavy walnut trees. Ginny eyed them enviously. Her dress was sticking to her back.

‘I’ve a good mind to get out and walk.’

‘Why don’t you, if you’re going to be so grumpy?’

‘All right. I will.’

She grappled for the handle of the door. Only when she was standing, slamming it shut, did she feel a twinge of conscience.

‘Are you sure you don’t mind me walking?’

‘I don’t mind. I’ll meet you there, OK?’

The shade of the trees was heavy with bees and pollen and thick, humid heat. Her toes, bare in sandals, were pricked and stung by the grass vergey things which grew there. But at least it was better than the imprisoning seats of the car. Poor Malcolm. He was stuck there till he reached the car park. So much for an afternoon in the country. The idea of the little church fête had seemed such fun at the time – they hadn’t dreamed there would be such a crowd. Distastefully she eyed the crawling vehicles, their heavy fumes polluting the country air.

A surge of excitement hit her as she came round the corner and saw before her the white marquees in the field, the khaki ex-desert army tents, the lines of booths with, in the centre, a tiny roped-off ring and everywhere the smell of drying grass with the sweetness of hay. Over a loudspeaker somewhere came music and as it was outside and a bank holiday she wanted suddenly to dance. She paid her ten pence at the entrance and then stood still uncertain what to do. How would she find Malcolm again? She walked cautiously in the direction of the car park. She could see the sun reflecting on the lines of windscreens behind a hedge.

Balls thwacked against the canvas backing to a coconut shy and she stopped to watch. ‘Three goes for ten pence, love. Go on. Have a try.’

Why not?

Hitching her bag on her shoulder she took the three heavy balls from the man’s hand and hurled the first one down the field.

‘Bad luck, love. Two more goes.’ Distracted, he was giving change to someone behind her. Her next go went wide. And the last.

She made a shamefaced grimace at the man and walked on. And then suddenly he was there, grinning, his camera in his hand.

‘Malcolm! Did you come in by another entrance?’ She was hoping he hadn’t been watching.

‘I saw you. Three bosh shots. How much did that little effort cost you?’

He was laughing at her and she blushed a little. ‘I bet you couldn’t do better.’

He couldn’t.

They were even, now. Together they walked slowly into the white elephant tent. ‘We might get something for the flat, Malcolm. There’s so much we still need.’

‘Like a dented warming pan or three chipped Victorian teapots, I suppose?’

Indignant she punched him in the ribs, then she began to push her way to the front of the gossiping women to where piles of exciting things were laid out on lines of flat trestle tables. All round the smell of trampled grass was very strong in the creamy twilight of the tent.

Strange, how two people with so much in common and so much in love could disagree so violently about decorating their first home. He wanted it light and airy; modern and functional. She had pictured it cluttered with Victoriana, draped and decorated, the windows festooned with lace.

‘My goodness, Ginny, you need one of these.’ His voice, mocking gently, was at her elbow. He had picked up a grimy watercolour in a fractured gilt frame. ‘What is it?’ He peered in the dim light. ‘
The Relief of Mafeking
, I think … Still it doesn’t really matter much.’

She ignored him, her hand straying over the spines of a pile of books, glancing at the titles.

Reluctantly he relinquished the picture and followed her. ‘Look, a novel by Mrs Radcliffe,’ he exploded with a laugh. ‘Ginny, my darling, that’s for you …’

She was getting hot again, fed up with his teasing. In the distance at the far side of the table she could see a neatly folded embroidered tablecloth. As she pushed her way towards it, a gently determined hand reached out from the crowd and it was gone.

‘That’s your fault,’ she flashed at Malcolm, suddenly. ‘If you hadn’t been fooling round distracting me I would have got that cloth. It would have looked lovely on the little round table.’

‘Not my table with the melamine top.’ His voice became suddenly threatening. ‘No squalid cloth with somebody else’s gravy stains is going on that. It’s simple and perfect as it is.’

‘It’s not; it’s … it’s bare.’

‘That’s right. Bare.’

A woman came between them for a moment. When she had gone he was smiling again. ‘Come on, Ginny. Don’t let’s quarrel. Let’s go and see what else there is outside. This tent is getting too hot.’

They fought their way back to the entrance. Ginny was scowling. The tablecloth still rankled. ‘That table needs something,’ she muttered at his broad back as he pushed his way ahead of her into the sunshine.

‘A pot plant, possibly. That is all,’ he flung over his shoulder. ‘Now forget it.’

A small child, red-faced and screaming, ran in front of them, the picture on its T-shirt grimy with melted chocolate.

‘Come on, Ginny. I’ll buy you an ice-cream.’ He groped for her hand and together they made their way towards a booth with a long queue at the far side of the ring where two ladies, hot and dishevelled, unused to the problems of melting ice-cream and soggy cones, were battling manfully to supply the queue.

‘What kind of pictures
are
we going to put in that room, Malcolm?’ Her mind was still on the flat as they shuffled slowly over the browning grass.

‘Perhaps one big one, over the couch. I haven’t decided.’

‘
You
haven’t decided.’ She repeated it just to make sure she’d heard aright.

He grinned. ‘I know, Ginny. But if it was left to you we’d have fifty tatty old prints.’

‘Better that than one painting on acres of white wall. With white furniture. Malcolm, it’s going to look like an operating theatre!’

‘Rubbish. It’ll look very nice.’

They shuffled forward another place in the queue.

‘It won’t. Oh come on. It’ll look terrible. It’ll have no warmth. It’ll be uncomfortable. Who’ll want to sit in a room like that, on a cold winter’s evening. No one.’

‘I will.’

‘Oh!’ Exasperated she stamped her foot. ‘Well, I won’t. You can bloody well sit there alone.’

‘Good. I will.’ He grinned at her. ‘Come on. We’re nearly there. Do you want a pink one or a white one?’

‘I don’t want one now. I want a cold drink.’ She pursed her mouth deliberately aping a small spoilt child. ‘Come on. I don’t want to stand in this silly queue.’

‘Well I do.’ The patient voice again. It snapped the last of Ginny’s control.

‘Well bloody well stand there then. I’m not going to!’

She was conscious of the shocked faces turned to her and the people hastily moving out of her way. Then she was alone, in the quiet green no man’s land between the tents. She looked round for Malcolm following, but there was no sign of him. He had stayed stubbornly in the queue.

She stood for a moment, her hands absent-mindedly strumming a taut guy rope, examining the woven skeins of hemp. Behind her she could hear the music and the excited shouts of children. In front there was a narrow strip of grass and then a high hawthorn hedge silent except for the occasional sleepy note of a hedge sparrow.

As always her temper was gone as quickly as it had flared. She walked slowly back to the queue, her head held high. Malcolm had gone. She glanced round wildly, conscious of the interested glances of others waiting their turn for ice-cream, but there was no sign of him anywhere. In the ring a group of children were lining up for a race. ‘Are there any more boys, seven to eight years old?’ a megaphone boomed near her. ‘Your race is starting next. Boys seven and eight years old, please …’

She began to walk slowly round the ring, her eyes scanning the crowds searching for Malcolm’s blue shirt. Suddenly every other man there seemed to be wearing a blue shirt, but each time she looked again, heart thumping a little, for his face, she found another.

‘Oh Malcolm, you beast. Where are you?’ She felt suddenly angry. He had no business to walk out on her like that. None at all. She stamped her foot.

‘Roll up, roll up. Come and try the hoopla. Roll up! Three hoops for fifty pence.’ She was standing right in front of a stall. Behind it the vicar himself, his round face flushed and perspiring a little peered at her anxiously, his dog collar restricting, over shirtsleeves. ‘Only fifty pence a go,’ he said again, almost pleading. He was looking straight at her. Glancing round, embarrassed, she realized that there was no one else near the stall.

She grinned suddenly. ‘What the hell,’ she murmured and then clapped her hand, embarrassed, over her lips. She groped in her bag for the coin.

The vicar watched eagerly as she stood poised, the hoop ready to flick from her wrist. It skittered across the table and rolled drunkenly and uselessly away. ‘Oh bad luck, my dear.’ He sounded really quite upset for her. She aimed better the next time. The hoop fell neatly around a small packet of sugar cigarettes. She shrugged helplessly as the vicar handed them to her and slipped them, trying to keep her face straight, into her bag. The third hoop teetered, wavering towards the edge of the table and fell, half encircling, on the saucer of fifty pence pieces – the hoopla takings. They both laughed. ‘You can’t have that,’ he said.

She had another useless go at the coconut shy and then wandered on down the rows of stalls, only half looking now for the blue shirt. She was beginning to enjoy herself. It was the turn of the little girls, five to six, in the ring.

A roar of laughter from a corner stall caught her attention and she wandered over. An old dresser, standing in front of draped sacking, was set up with old bits of chipped crockery. A man was hurling wooden balls at the plates and every smash was greeted by a cheer. She stood and watched for a while. It looked fun.

‘Come and have a go. Come on,’ the proprietor of the stall shouted, rattling the heavy balls in his enormous calloused hands. ‘Get rid of all your frustrations, ladies and gents.’ But the crowd was moving on, bored. In a moment they had gone and the stall was deserted except for Ginny. The man’s shoulders slumped. He turned away, letting the balls roll from his palms into the box. Then he caught sight of her watching. ‘Come on, darling. Want a go? Four for the price of three, seeing as it’s you.’ His shrewd eyes had spotted her new shiny wedding ring. He glanced left and right. ‘Had a spat with your old man, have you? I’ve just the thing for you. See?’ He bent and picked up a hideous jade green vase. He waddled over to the dresser and, sweeping a pile of broken china off with his arm, set up the vase on the middle shelf. ‘There you are darling. That’s him. Now. Take a good swing at it. Arm right back.’

Grinning she took the balls from him and hurled. The first smashed a plate on the edge of the shelf. It was the fourth ball which caught the vase full on its plump shiny belly. It rocked forward twice and then plunged from the shelf, smashing into a dozen pieces on the top of the dresser.

The man chuckled. ‘Made you feel better, didn’t it? Want another go?’

Ginny stood there, stricken. She hadn’t meant it. She was shaken with guilt. Supposing she had harmed Malcolm in some way by smashing the vase. She hadn’t really been pretending it was him. Oh please, please, Malcolm darling, where are you? She began to look round, lost again, searching desperately for his face in the crowd.

Puzzled, the man watched her for a moment. Then he shrugged. He waded through the broken crocks to the dresser and began to set up new plates and saucers, sweeping the debris from the shelves onto the old carpet laid on the grass below. Near the carpet was a sign. ‘Carpet for sale. Five pounds.’

She walked quickly away, scanning the crowds again, searching everywhere for the blue shirt, aching to have Malcolm beside her.

In the ring it was the toddlers’ race. Half of them were going the wrong way, but no one seemed to notice. The field was crowded. There were so many places he could be. In a tent, at a booth, walking like her in the crowd. Perhaps he had gone home without her? She was stricken with terror. Then she pushed away the thought. How silly. Malcolm would never do that, however angry with her. She set out to walk again, slowly, round the perimeter of the field, methodically glancing into every marquee and stall. It must be tea time, there were so many people clutching paper cups and sticky pink-iced buns. Wasps hovered over the litter bins.

She saw him at last back where she had started, standing arms folded, his feet slightly apart, watching two boys hurl wooden balls at the china on the dresser. There was a bemused smile on his face. The man had spotted him.