First Friends (36 page)

‘I don't think that Mrs Tanner minds at all that she has to live in that ghastly modern box. Good morning, William.'

‘Not everyone likes cold and damp as much as we do, Cass,' said William, who was living in somewhat straitened conditions at the Manor. ‘The smell of mice is an acquired taste, you know. And the Tanners couldn't afford the central heating and all the extras you put in.'

‘All thanks to my dear old pa,' sighed Cass. ‘I still miss him so dreadfully.'

‘We all do. This is Nick Farley. He's a lawyer. His firm deals with all our problems and Nick's been helping us out with a boundary dispute. He's staying a few days. This is Cass Wivenhoe, Nick.'

‘How do you do?' Cass allowed her hand to rest in Nick's clasp a moment or two longer than was necessary.

‘We were wondering if we could carry you off for a lunchtime drink? Abby said to be sure to ask you.'

‘Oh!' Cass pretended to debate with herself, eyes fixed on Gemma. ‘Well, I don't quite know . . . '

‘Oh, do come,' said Nick. He smiled at her and Cass turned to Gemma.

‘Darling, d'you think that you and Saul could go home by yourselves? I'll be very quick but tell Charlotte I may be a few minutes late. Good girl. Look, there's Saul, run and tell him. Off you go.'

‘Charlotte?' questioned Nick, watching Gemma pick her way between the grassy humps to Saul.

‘Charlotte's my elder daughter. She's cooking the lunch.'

‘Are you trying to tell me,' Nick lowered his voice slightly as he and Cass followed William out of the churchyard, ‘that you have a daughter old enough to cook the lunch?'

‘Don't be silly. Charlotte's nearly fifteen.' Cass was never afraid of
divulging this fact as the response was always the same. Nick did not disappoint her.

‘I don't believe it.'

As they set off towards the Manor, Cass saw Jane Maxwell walking home.

‘Hold on a sec,' she said. ‘I must have a word with Jane. Jane!' She hurried after her. ‘Jane!'

Her preoccupation pierced by Cass's second, more insistent cry, Jane turned and waited for her to approach.

‘How are you, Jane? I haven't seen you for ages. Come and have coffee with me very soon. Please,' she said as Jane hesitated. ‘Let's make a firm date now. It's a Hammy day tomorrow so what about Tuesday? Yes? Oh, good. See you then. Don't forget. ‘Bye.'

Cass hurried back and Jane walked on, seething.

Damn and blast the woman, she thought. I don't want to go and have coffee with her. Why can't she leave me alone? She jumped as a battered Land Rover screeched to a halt beside her.

‘Hello then. Been to church?'

‘Hello, Phil. That's right.' Jane glanced quickly up and down the lane. Although she had walked some way out from the centre of the village there were still one or two cottages and bungalows in sight. Nobody seemed to be interested but Jane knew her neighbours better than that.

‘What're you doing, Phil? You promised me.' The low, furious tones were at odds with the smile still fixed to her lips.

‘I didn't promise nothing. Chrissakes, Janey, I can stop and say hello, can't I? We've known each other all our lives. Shouldn't've bought a house in the village if you didn't want us to meet.' The young man at the wheel seemed charged with vitality. His very hair, thick and dark, seemed to stand on end with it, and his incredibly beautiful, dark blue eyes sparked angrily between long curling lashes.

‘I do want to see you. Please, Phil, you know I do. But not here. You know what they're like around here.'

‘It would look mighty odd if we ignored each other, old sweethearts like us.'
His voice dropped, caressing and sweet. ‘Come on, love, let's see you smile. I got the key of Long Barn.'

She looked away from the expression in his eyes. ‘I don't know.'

‘Yes, you do. It'll be OK. Say about four o'clock.'

Jane struggled with herself.

‘All right then. About four o'clock. I'll walk across the fields. Don't come down in the Land Rover mind.'

‘Don't talk daft.' He winked at her, pantomimed a kiss. ‘See you later then.'

Jane walked on.

B
Y THE TIME
J
ANE
arrived at the Rectory on Tuesday morning Cass had already had a visitor. Abby had called in on her way to Plymouth.

‘I'm doing the Tesco run and I wondered if you wanted anything,' she told Cass, who had persuaded her to stop for a cup of coffee. ‘I know this is your busy week, getting them all back to school.'

‘Sweet of you. Although it's only the girls so far. The boys don't go back to Mount House until next week.'

‘Well.' Abby shrugged. ‘You've still got two lots of trunks and tuck-boxes to do. Sheer hell. Thank God I haven't got to think about it yet. What will you do with Charlotte when she leaves Lambspark next year?'

‘Don't talk about it.' Cass filled the coffee mugs from the kettle on the Aga. ‘I can see another Education Debate looming. Gemma will be perfectly happy to go to Meavy with Sophie but where Charlotte will go I simply don't know. We'd like her to go into the sixth form at Blundells. Oliver will be starting and they could go together but I hardly dare mention it. She goes into the most fearful sulks as soon as I open my mouth. The thought of having all four of them at different schools fills me with horror.'

‘So what did you think of our Nick?' Abby perched at the corner of the kitchen table with her coffee while Cass scribbled busily on the back of an old bill with a stub of pencil.

‘Perfectly gorgeous,' she answered promptly. ‘I couldn't think
who he could be when I saw him in church. He looked much too old to be one of William's school chums or Army buddies. Very attractive though, isn't he?'

‘Bit old for me,' said Abby provocatively.

‘Only in his forties,' protested Cass. ‘Forty-five, forty-six?'

‘That's twenty years older than I am,' Abby pointed out. ‘Anyway, he's married.'

‘Is that intended to tell me something?' Cass arched her brows.

Abby laughed. ‘Have you finished that list? I must get on.'

‘Hold on a sec'. Cass added a few items. ‘I think that's it. By the way, what about coming to dinner on Saturday? Tom's home for the weekend and I've got Harriet Masters staying for a few days. You could bring Nick if he's still with you.'

‘He won't be,' said Abby. ‘William and I would love to come but Nick'll be back home with wifie. I could give you his number if you like?'

‘Oh, shut up!' said Cass good-naturedly and grimaced as the door bell shrilled. ‘Blast! Here's Jane already, and I'm still in all this muddle.'

‘Who?'

‘Jane Maxwell. You know? You met her at our barbecue. Her mother was William's old cook or something. She's married to a submariner now. They've bought a house in the village.'

‘Oh, her. Rather a dreary creature I always think. What's she coming for?'

‘Well, you know how it is. We naval wives must stick together and I don't think she's coping very well with being alone. I might ask if she and Alan would like to come on Saturday if he's home.'

‘Oh, bore!' Abby made a face. ‘They're such a prim and proper pair, so inhibiting!'

‘I'd like to see the person who could inhibit you,' remarked Cass. ‘Go and do your shopping and I'll see you later. Don't forget Saturday.'

‘As if I would. What a pity Nick won't be around. It's always such
an education watching you carry on your little affairs under Tom's nose whilst playing the loving wife. Nick was quite smitten, you know.'

‘Oh, go away!' Cass pushed her friend out of the garden door and went to answer the front door in high spirits.

Jane, waiting on the doorstep, was feeling quite the reverse. The hours spent in Long Barn with Philip Raikes on Sunday afternoon had merely served to make her more confused and unhappy.

Phil had been waiting for her when she had stepped tentatively within the door. He had carefully ground out his cigarette before moving forward to take her in his arms.

‘Hello, love. All right then?' He kissed her, gently at first but then more passionately. ‘Come on over here, I've brought a blanket.'

Ten years before he'd used exactly those words when, as fumbling, inexperienced teenagers, they'd discovered each other in the straw of Long Barn. For nearly three years they'd done everything together, and then Philip had been sent to an uncle in Ivybridge to learn the trade of a plumber. Shortly after that Jane had got a job in the lingerie department at Debenhams in Plymouth and arranged to share a flat with a friend through whom she later met Alan Maxwell, a Petty Officer in the submarine service. She was struck by his cleanliness, good manners and purposeful attitude to life, characteristics that had been very little in evidence during Jane's up-bringing, and it was only later that she became aware of his resemblance to Philip Raikes; taller, perhaps, and heavier built, but his colouring was the same and he had the same vitality. That was a bonus.

Odd, then, that it was the very things that had attracted her to Alan, that, five years later, were to throw her back into Philip's arms. The peace and solitude occasioned by Alan's long months at sea had become loneliness and boredom. The thrill of owning her own home—it was at her request that they had bought the new house in her old village eighteen months previously—had worn off and her immaculate surroundings, once her pride and joy, now seemed sterile and empty.

Besides, Alan's ambition, which had pushed him so swiftly up the ladder, was now a threat to her peace of mind. Parties on the submarine or in the homes of the other officers were a nightmare to her. Her voice and clothes were wrong. They all seemed so frighteningly self-assured and, although they were very kind to her, she knew that secretly they were despising her. It was different for Alan. He was accepted on the strength of his abilities. He'd proved that professionally he was as good as they were and he had managed to pick up so quickly the nuances of social life that still left her bewildered and fumbling. The men talked shop where Alan could more than hold his own; the women were more personal. They talked a language that was unknown to her and—to her amazement—their language was sometimes almost as crude as her old dad's had been. They all drank an enormous amount and sometimes the men became playful and acted very foolishly which their wives thought terribly funny but which embarrassed Jane dreadfully. She simply couldn't understand it or accept it and Alan, preoccupied with holding his own, had no patience with her. They seemed to be drifting further and further apart and it was this loneliness which had made her turn back to the security of a past which she had so readily rejected.

She had met Philip again—now living near Yelverton—coming out of the village shop. It was just after the Wivenhoes' barbecue and Alan had gone back to sea for six weeks, still cross, leaving her miserable and lonely.

Philip's warm greeting and his insistence that they should meet, just for a drink, for old times' sake, both eased her sense of inadequacy and excited her. His admiration was a balm, soothing the sore places of her humiliations, and his dogged pursuit of her flattered the feelings lacerated by Alan's anger and disparagement. She couldn't resist him. They met secretly and more and more often until one day, in looking up old places, they had found themselves in Long Barn.

The inevitable had happened and Jane was trapped. Philip wanted her to leave Alan and come back to him. He insisted that they belonged together, should never have parted and was angry—Jane had
been foolish enough to tell him of the wrongs and injustices at Alan's hands—at her husband's treatment of her. Jane, feeling that she was being swept away on some inexorable tide, had begun to feel frightened. Things were getting out of hand.

Now, on Tuesday morning, she looked at Cass, calm and secure, and it was as though a gulf yawned between them. How could someone like Cassandra Wivenhoe ever understand the sort of mess that Jane had made of her life? Any communication between them, except the most superficial, was impossible.

‘Jane.' Cass managed to sound both amazed and delighted. ‘Come on in. What a marvellous morning. It certainly makes up for such an awful summer, doesn't it?'

Chatting cheerfully she led Jane into the drawing room and hurried off to make some more coffee. She knew quite well that Jane, unlike Abby, would not have been at ease sitting at the cluttered kitchen table, nor would she have welcomed the friendly, if muddy, overtures of Gus, now stretched before the Aga.

Jane, left alone, wondered why people like the Wivenhoes, who were not short of money, should surround themselves with shabby furniture and faded curtains. She looked disparagingly at the ageing Sanderson chair covers—why not those nice stretch nylon ones that could be popped into the washing machine?—and the worn Aubusson rugs. She frowned at the amount of polishing required. You could buy lovely modern stuff already varnished so that it needed only a quick wipe over with a duster. And were those dog hairs on that cushion? As she leaned forward to examine the offending article more closely, Cass reappeared bearing a tray which she placed on a mahogany gate leg table.

‘Here we are. Sorry to be so long. Do you know, I can't remember whether you take cream and sugar.'

Since Jane had only been to the house twice this was not remarkable. ‘Both, please.' Jane shifted forward to receive the cup and saucer and helped herself from the proffered sugar basin.

‘Oh, good,' said Cass. ‘It's so nice to find someone else who likes
fattening things. People are so Spartan these days, don't you think? Abby only ever drinks it black and it makes me feel so guilty. By the way, that reminds me. I think you told me that Alan's home this week. How about coming to supper on Saturday? We've got a few friends coming in and we'd love you to come too.'