Last Act of All (2 page)

‘
He phoned me yesterday, asking about you. I made it clear it was none of his business, but all he said was that he had the hide of a bull rhinoceros and would be coming to see you anyway. So I asked him to the party by way of damage limitation. His lease is up on the cottage, apparently, so he’s going to clear it at the same time. So at least we should have seen the last of him after that.’

‘
Tell your gorgeous Helena I can’t wait to see her again,’ Dyer had managed to slip in, before Edward sharply replaced the receiver, but Edward did not relay the message.

‘
Oh look,’ he said, changing the subject. ‘Radnesfield, nine miles. Not long now.’

With
his head turned to look at the signboard, he did not notice the shudder of revulsion which wracked his wife’s slight frame.

*

‘Bringing her home today, he is.’

A
silence fell as Martha Bateman, making a pretence of consulting her shopping-list, tossed the remark to the other women in the village shop.

She
was tall and raw-boned, with a face that could have belonged to any period of history in this part of the Fens, angular, harsh and leathery of complexion, with watchful eyes under hooded lids. She looked as if the lighter experiences of life had passed her by, but her thin-lipped, unpainted mouth suggested that she would not have welcomed them. She dominated her audience without exertion, not only by her membership, both by birth and marriage, of two of the three local families who went back to the days of the Old ‘Uns, or by her position as housekeeper at the Red House, but also by the steeliness of character which had long established her the ultimate authority on every question from morals to spring-cleaning. She was graceless, insular, secretive and suspicious by nature, brusquely implacable in her judgements.

In
a sense, she was Radnesfield.

*

Right at the point where, in the Upper Pleistocene period, the primeval ice-sheet had stopped its advance on the east coast of the British Isles, south of the Wash, Radnesfield had its beginnings in a circle of skin tents. Later, there were mud huts: later still, farming homesteads began to crown the ridges of the low, smooth glacial folds.

By
the time it had a name, it had been ignored by half a dozen foreign invasions, lived under Roman law and Danelaw while ignorant of either, and brought itself painfully into the age of the wheel, the horse, and the iron ploughshare.

Turning
a wet, heavy furrow is a slow business, and they became deliberate of speech and manner, taciturn and stubborn, as set in their ways as impacted mud, their feet planted firm in the solid clay.

Two
thousand years later they were little different, fiercely private in an age when cars and the television set threatened the age-old rhythms of village life.

Now
there were strangers, ‘foreigners’, who came into the pub among the close-mouthed countrymen, talking too loudly and too familiarly, until frozen out by annihilating indifference: they were dismissed, afterwards, with a devastating, ‘Don’t know enough to keep their great old mouth shut.’

It
was not considered unkindness. As well ask a badger to relate to a humming-bird, as ask the villagers to appreciate attitudes which were as unreal to them as the images that flickered across their television screens in the darkened parlours.

Confidences
were, to them, embarrassing as nakedness, while, paradoxically, gossip wove the fabric of their lives. Gossip was an art form, related and received with a relish betraying its origins: what, after all, did Homer do but spread some unfounded and scurrilous rumours about what Odysseus got up to on a business trip abroad?

It
was a game with unspoken rules, where investigation was part of the pleasure. Questioning was as vulgar as obscenity; learning your neighbour’s business was a slow, absorbing, lifetime’s occupation. Life was people, not ideas.

Ideas
were dangerous. ‘Fancy ideas’ had lost the village many of its young, lured by the brighter lights and prospects of Cambridge or Ipswich or even, unimaginably, further afield. They would never know its comfortable, uncritical acceptance where the easy, half-contemptuous, ‘Oh, he’s all right,’ was all that need be said.

With
these desertions, the last days were upon them, when treasured links back to the Old ‘Uns would be severed, and the established order, the secrets and certainties of village life, would be blown away upon the winds of change.

Sullenly,
the old families — the Batemans, the Edes, the Whittons — drew closer in their indifference to the outside world. They seldom became heated over events beamed into their sitting-moms with the six o’clock news: their forefathers had greeted Roman decrees and the repeal of the Corn Laws with much the same head-shaking detachment and amused contempt. ‘That’s their business’ took care of most things.

For
their own, there was savage loyalty and protection, a formidable defensive alliance. They had been spared the late-twentieth-century invasion of weekenders which had leeched the life from so many other, more picturesque Radnesfields. Those not discouraged by the mean ugliness of its housing stock, mainly post-war, were repelled by its atmosphere. To an outsider, the inhabitants seemed remote and coolly hostile, their interest furtive and spiteful, their unconcern so pointed that it was cruel.

*

‘It’s a masterpiece, the way he’s taken it,’ Radnesfield’s personification went on. The air was thick with the avidity of their curiosity, and she was, as she would have put it herself, in her height and glory.

It
was nothing new for a member of their community to be returning from a sojourn as a guest of Her Majesty: indeed, the cadet branches of the Ede family spent as much of their time in as out.

It
was, however, a new and titillating experience when it was Edward Radley’s wife, his family having been for centuries the closest approach to squires that Radnesfield would recognize.

Gratification
loosened Mrs Bateman’s tongue. ‘Very steady, he were. Just quietly, “Now, Martha,” he says, “Mrs Radley will be home today. You can move my things into the spare room, because she’ll be very tired and will need to rest”.’

Eyes
widened in enjoyment, voices lowered in pleasurable speculation as to what this titbit might imply. Only Jane Thomas, Martha’s schoolmate and old sparring partner, spoke robustly.

‘
Sounds real thoughtful. She won’t feel much like keeping company first days, seems to me.’

‘
Well, catch my Dave, after all that time.’ The girl who spoke had bold dark eyes, and rolled them expressively.

The
laughter was ribald, the comments had a mocking edge. Sensitivity was not a village virtue.

Martha
Bateman let the talk ripple on, like musical improvisation, only until she chose to gather them, once again, under her direction.

‘
We all know about your Dave’s courting habits,’ she said unkindly, and watched the girl flush a dull, uncomfortable red, as if one of the shaming marks of Dave’s attentions still disfigured her face.

‘
Anyway,’ Mrs Bateman continued, ‘that’s what he said. And that Stephanie’s coming home, isn’t she, to see her mother for the first time since she was took away.’

‘
Wonder how she’ll take it.’ Mrs Ede, behind the counter, voiced the common thought. ‘Weren’t too happy at the time, by your account, Martha.’

There
was a little silence. They had heard it all then, the child’s hysterical refusal to see or speak to her mother, as a result of that most dramatic event in village history.

There
was nothing fresh to add, and Martha pursed her lips in annoyance. She had uncharacteristically kept nothing in reserve from that feast of scandal for this later famine.

So
she frowned, repressively. ‘I wonder at you asking me to demean myself, gossiping. That’s their business, isn’t it?’

Then
briskly, with a change of tempo, she closed the discussion. ‘Well, them as lives longest’ll see most. Now Mary, you going to get my order, or keep me standing all day? You’re getting slow as that clock of yours. You want to get Willie Comberton to see to it, you do.’

There
was laughter as Mrs Ede complied, and Martha Bateman, feeling the grim satisfaction which was her nearest approach to pleasure, read out the next item on her list.

*

With automatic movements Sandra Daley wiped the draining-board, peeling off the silly rubber gloves with red tinted nails attached that she had once thought so amusing. Wearing them now was an unthinking habit; below them, her hands were rough and her own nails chipped and broken. She didn’t bother now, any more than she bothered about her face or her hair, showing its dark roots.

Jack
had gone to the front door on his way out to work. He was coming back, so the postman must have called, but she did not turn. She took no interest in the post nowadays, and it was always painful to see how Jack looked at her.

‘
Something for you.’

So
she must turn, had no option but to face his cold distaste.

‘
You’d best open it.’ He thrust it into her hand, since she showed no sign of taking it. ‘It’s an invitation. We don’t get too many of these now, do we?’

He
knew something about it already. His light brown eyes observed her without affection, as she accepted the envelope reluctantly, opening it with fingers that had become clumsy.

‘
Mr and Mrs Edward Radley,’ she read slowly, like a child unfamiliar with its letters. Then ‘Oh!’

‘
Yes, “Oh!”’ he mocked her cruelly. ‘Should be quite a party, shouldn’t it? Make a change to go out – we haven’t had too many knees-ups, not since—’

Hard
and uncaring, he sounded, yet he could not bring himself to say the words. She began to shake her head, slowly at first, until the movement was almost a shudder.

‘
No, no. I’m not going, I can’t go—’

‘
Oh yes you bloody can.’ In a sudden violent motion he caught her wrist, turning it to the edge of pain. ‘You’re the one who likes parties, remember – the good-time girl. “Oh Jack, it’ll be such fun!”’ His voice was shrill and venomous in mimicry.

She
hung her head. ‘It was – different, then,’ she whispered.

‘
Maybe it was for you.’ He released her arm with jarring force and spun away from her, to stare with unseeing eyes through the window, across the meadow and the spinney towards Radnesfield House. ‘Well, as it happens, you’ve got no choice. Lilian got her invitation yesterday, and she wants to go. But she doesn’t want to go alone.’

‘
Lilian!’ she spat the word at him. ‘You go with your precious Lilian. You don’t need me.’

He
faced her again, his mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘Need you? God, of course I don’t need you. Take a good look at yourself — what sort of use are you? But Lilian wouldn’t like it if you stayed at home. It wouldn’t really look very good, would it?’

‘
You can’t make me—’ she began, with a flash of her old spirit, but faltered under his cold, contemptuous gaze.

‘
We agreed, didn’t we? As you said — when was it now? I’m not sure, but perhaps you could remind me — “We’ve been through too much to quarrel now.” Something like that. A bit of an understatement, really, I thought it was, at the time. And you didn’t care what my conditions were, you said, in one of your more grovelling moments.’

‘
Yes, I know.’ Her voice was so full of tears, as to be barely audible. ‘But oh, Jack, I never thought it would be this way—’

He
wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Should have thought of that before, then, shouldn’t you?’ he said gruffly. ‘And for god’s sake do something about yourself. Have you passed a mirror, lately — you’re a ratbag. No wonder you disgust me.’

The
tears began again, welling up and spilling silently, as she heard the front door slam behind him. He had every right to punish her, but as she stood shaking uncontrollably, she wondered how much more punishment she could take.

*

It was, as usual, just on twelve o’clock when George Wagstaff came into the farmhouse kitchen.

There
was a savoury smell coming from the elderly Aga, and he went over to warm himself, removing a cat and a protesting terrier from the bright rag rug with the toe of his stockinged foot.

Dora,
his wife, was busy at the sink. His son Jim had come in ahead of him and was already washed and sitting at the table set for what was the main meal of the day.

‘
Go and get yourself washed, Dad,’ Dora said. ‘I’m going to dish up now — that’s Sally back from Limber. I can hear the car. They were all waiting for him, when George returned to take his place at the head of the table.

‘
Hear Radley’s bringing his missus home this morning,’ he said gruffly.