Lots of Love (67 page)

The speed with which Glad Tidings had stalked her between manor and post-office stores disturbed Ellen, as did the heavy trade that the little shop encountered during their brief conversation. Every pensioner in Oddlode had decided to buy their local paper at the same time as Ellen went in to buy cigarettes. They had shuffled around her in a formidable group detachment, tuning in hearing-aids and peering over half-moons.

‘What was that about?’ Ellen asked Bevis, as her icecream melted on her knee, seeping into the fabric of her capri pants.

Above her the horse-chestnut whispered in the breeze, suggesting that love and thunderstorms were in the air. No caterpillars descended this time. Instead, Ellen watched the leaves move inside the canopy, her own personal comfort umbrella, reassuring her that this was her safe place.

‘I don’t want to be in a safe place,’ she suddenly realised out loud. ‘Safe is somewhere you lock things in. Bugger safe. Bevis, we have to
do
something!’

The leaves shook under a gust of breeze and Ellen ducked as something resembling confetti tumbled towards her. But then she saw that it wasn’t a paper cascade – it was butterflies. Dozens of white butterflies flew from the horse chestnut and across the village green.

‘“This is the self-preservation society!”’ she sang as she ran back to Goose Cottage to fetch the jeep.
‘“This is the self preser
–” oh, bugger.’

The Wycks barred her path at the gate. Like two of Pheely’s weathered gargoyles propping up a row of goofy garden gnomes, Reg and Dot played sentry to a rabble of ape-shouldered youth, Saul at their centre. Ellen quailed, knowing that she couldn’t talk her way out of this one.

‘You bin gallivanting with Belling?’ Dot demanded, fingering her handbag.

Ellen nodded, not trusting herself to speak.

‘Ely bin interfering?’ she persisted.

Amazed at the way news travelled around here, Ellen nodded again, noticing that Saul’s blue eyes were shooting out of his face like gas flames.

‘Go talk to the nutty potter,’ Dot told her. ‘Tell her you needs to know the truth.’

Ellen glanced over her shoulders anxiously. ‘I’m sorry?’

‘Talk to Ophelia Gently.’ Saul translated for his grandmother. ‘She knows why Ely’s doing this.’

‘They was good kids,’ Dot lisped, through her missing teeth. ‘Not like most round here. Belling ain’t never bin as bad as they all makes out. The nutty potter knows the truth. You talks to her, girl.’

Ellen swallowed uncomfortably. ‘Thanks. Would you mind my asking why you are telling me this?’

‘Saul!’ Dot summoned her grandson, making the entire Wyck contingent quail.

He scuffed the ground. ‘Nan reckons as I owes you an apology,’ he told Ellen, glancing at his diminutive grandmother. ‘For the badger.’

Ellen stared at him in amazement. ‘Accepted.’

He scratched his shoulders self-consciously beneath his T-shirt arms, revealing his muscled biceps and the unicorn tattoo. Ellen studied the bareback nymph for a moment, vaguely recognising the pale-faced temptress, although she couldn’t place her.

‘Ely made me do it.’ He didn’t look at her.

‘Ely was behind the badger?’ Ellen gasped.

‘He din’ kill it or nothing. He caught me with it and said he’d report me for baiting – then he said as how I could make up for you mucking Nan about. He said he wouldn’t do nothing about it if I left it here for you.’

‘Did he write the note?’ Ellen wondered what Ely planned to leave her next – a wildebeest in her bed, perhaps, or a pony carcass in the bath?

He shook his head. ‘I got someone else to do that.’

Ellen was too distracted and weary to care. ‘Let’s forget about it.’

‘You’re okay, you are,’ he muttered, glancing at her shyly. ‘We’ll make it up to you.’

She looked at all the Wycks, wondering why they had changed their tune so suddenly.

‘Talk to the nutty potter,’ Saul repeated his grandmother’s words.

Ellen caught Dot’s eye. ‘Okay. I’ll talk to her again. Thanks.’

Pheely, rather embarrassingly, was in the loo when Ellen found her way out of the choked garden maze and into the Lodge cottage.

The sound-effects were not good. A tinny transistor belting out Radio Three failed to mask the noise of a loose bowel movement being evacuated at speed, followed by a long, mournful groan.

Ellen wavered, tempted to bolt back to Goose Cottage and continue walking the carpets bald as she had been all morning. But Hamlet had already lured Snorkel into the undergrowth for a game of rough-and-tumble, accompanied by great growls and shrill barks.

‘Who’s there?’ Pheely demanded, through the bathroom door. ‘Is that you, Dilly?’

Ellen chewed her lip and looked anxiously around. Godspell’s bust had been moved inside to shelter it from the spits of rain that were dancing out of the tall pines. It was even more mesmerising now that Pheely had started to add the final touches before glazing. The limpid eyes watched her suspiciously, the narrow mouth was pursed with disapproval and the spiky hair exploded from the frowning forehead and crown, as wild and black as a thick cloud of crows rising from a crop field. But what Pheely had really captured in that severe, passive little face was the sadness. There was something heartbreaking about it, an unspoken energy that seemed to crack the many angles, gouges and swirling marks in the clay. Compared to the gnarled gnomes and flowery fairies, Pheely had created a masterpiece. It was incredibly powerful.

Dragging her eyes away, Ellen noticed that Pheely had been working on another sculpture on a second stand, this one covered with wet muslin and a bin-liner. She went to take a peek underneath.

‘Don’t look at it!’ howled a frail voice behind her.

Pheely had emerged from the bathroom, looking grey, her bloodshot eyes slitted. ‘My work is private,’ she enunciated. ‘You have no right to snoop. Have you come to apologise?’ She reached for her cigarettes. ‘Make it snappy if you have – I’m not feeling too good.’

She and Ellen squared up to each other, the recent shift from new friendship to enmity awkward and unyielding.

Ellen wanted to wade in with accusations and demands, but instead watched her pale face worriedly, wondering how long she had been ill. ‘Where’s Dilly?’

Pheely misinterpreted the question. ‘If you came to see her,’ she muttered, reluctant to show how disappointed she was to come second best, ‘she’s staying with a friend in Kent for an eighteenth birthday party. She’ll be back at the end of the week. I’ll tell her you popped by.’

‘I came to see you.’

Pheely lifted her chin. ‘Yes?’

‘You were right. Spurs has agreed to marry Godspell.’

‘Of course I was right,’ Pheely snapped impatiently, glaring at Godspell’s bust.

‘I think you know why.’

For a moment the huge eyes were unshuttered and frightened. Then they blinked and reappeared cast in cucumber cool. ‘They must be in love.’

‘No! It’s farcical,’ Ellen raged. ‘They don’t love each other – they barely know each other. Hell’s Bells and Ely are blackmailing their own children.’

‘They could both walk away if they wanted to.’ Pheely touched her belly as it let out a great roar of complaint.

‘No, they can’t. Their hands are tied. Their hands in marriage are tied.’ She laughed hollowly. ‘They’re being held behind their backs while they’re marched up the aisle.’

‘Spurs will leave long before it happens. He ran away last time.’

‘Not this time. He’s got this crazy guilt thing going on, atoning for the past. And this time his mother is d—’ Ellen remembered that she had been sworn to secrecy and stopped herself. She stared at the capsized-hull ceiling. ‘His mother is putting him under a mind-blowing amount of pressure,’ she burbled feebly. ‘I think he’s close to cracking up.’

‘He’s hardly got a reputation for stability. What exactly do you expect me to be able to do about it? Suggest a good therapist?’

Ellen felt the tears bubbling. ‘I just need you to forgive me for being a lousy friend,’ she whispered hoarsely. ‘I can’t leave this bloody place having screwed up both love
and
friendship.’

Pheely cleared her throat archly. ‘
I
was being a very good friend when I told you not to go near him, and now look what’s happened.’

‘I know. I let you down, I let Dilly down—’

‘You’ve let yourself down,’ came the sanctimonious interruption.

‘No!’ Ellen protested hotly, no longer caring if the tears spilled – she couldn’t hope to control them these days. ‘I don’t regret the fact that I love him. Loving him has made me feel alive again. I’ve found a part of me that I thought I’d lost and it’s the best thing that has ever happened to me. It might have cost me my pride, my heart, my savings and my bloody self-control but, Christ, I love him. And don’t you
dare
tell me that what we feel for each other isn’t love. I don’t care if it’s days, hours or only minutes. Thirteen years with Richard never left me wanting to die for him.’

‘You want to die for Spurs?’

‘I was dying of suffocation with Richard. Now I’m just dying of love.’

Pheely’s own eyes filled with tears, but she set her chin determinedly and looked away. ‘I don’t think I can help you, Ellen.’

Ellen nodded silently.

‘I don’t know what you’re going through, you see,’ Pheely admitted suddenly, in a small voice. ‘I thought I had a working knowledge of love until I saw you and Spurs. How can I help you? I don’t know the first thing about love. Just motherhood.’ She let out a stifled sob and immediately batted out a don’t-go-there hand as she battled to regroup her emotions.

Ellen chewed back the questions, knowing that to ask any of them would excite the full Pheely armoury of defensive fire. Instead, she settled for the simplest and most truthful of facts. ‘You could be my friend again.’

‘Lord, no,’ Pheely muttered, in a choked voice, ‘you’d only mope about being miserable.’

Ellen snorted with unexpected laughter.

Pheely’s huge sad eyes watched her speculatively as they regarded one another with closely guarded affection. ‘Thank you.’ She mustered a pale smile.

‘For what?’

‘For not asking.’

‘Not asking what?’

‘Stay and have a drink,’ she offered, still very much on edge, ‘and I might just tell you.’

‘Is everything all right?’ Ellen asked cautiously, looking at her deathly pale face.

Pheely stubbed out her cigarette and immediately lit another
en route
to the fridge. ‘Fine – I’ve just been working rather hard, and Dilly’s been ridiculously theatrical about everything. Then I ate some old mackerel pâté that gave me a terribly upset stomach and the stress rather got to me. I’ll be fine. Nothing compared to your heartbreak. Cheap White?’ She held up a bottle.

It was far too early in the day for Ellen, and she doubted Pheely was wise to booze on food poisoning, but she was too grateful for the reprieve to refuse.

They sat on the floor by the open terrace doors, looking out at the gathering rainclouds above the wooded garden. Ellen told Pheely about her confrontation with Hell’s Bells, and Spurs’ defeated concession. To her surprise, Pheely’s face lit up as she listened. ‘This might sound foolish, but I envy you,’ she said. ‘Knowing what it’s really like to be madly in love with someone who’s madly in love with you is a very rare experience. It’s what we all dream about, isn’t it?’

Ellen looked at her in bewilderment. ‘It doesn’t feel that great right now, I can assure you.’

‘But you don’t really think he’ll go through with it?’

She didn’t hesitate. ‘He’ll see it through. He has to.’

‘He sees it as the ultimate sacrifice to make amends.’

Pheely whistled, pressing the cool wineglass to her pallid cheek. ‘He hasn’t found religion, has he?’

Ellen shook her head. ‘I’m sure his father-in-law will be working on that.’

‘Oh, yes, Ely the social-climber will not be satisfied until he makes it to heaven,’ Pheely said bitterly. ‘He once told me that religious devotion was three parts devil to one part emotion.’ Her eyes flashed.

Ellen watched her curiously. ‘You know him quite well, then?’

‘No better than anyone in this village. I can take him or leave him. In fact, I find him rather comical.’

And yet when Ellen told her about Ely gazumping the Brakespears and buying Goose Cottage for an inflated price, Pheely exploded. ‘The bastard! How
dare
he?’ she ground her teeth. ‘Ely is so damned conniving. You might think Hell’s Bells has her son in manacles, but she’s nothing on Pearly Gates. The pig. He told me he had hardly a penny spare, that the auction had almost wiped him out.’

‘Does he owe you money, then?’

‘And the rest! That bloody
rat
is refusing to put Dilly through university. I can’t possibly afford to, and I simply can’t bring myself to tell her that the pot is empty. She’s so looking forward to going.’

Ellen looked into the unsipped amber depths of her wineglass and felt her mind swimming up to the surface of self-obsession, hauling itself on to the bank and shaking itself dry.

‘Ely Gates is Dilly’s father, isn’t he?’ She tried not to laugh.

Pheely sucked in her lips and looked at her for a long time. ‘He seduced me when I was sixteen – and it’s not the first time. Don’t believe for a moment that he is the bastion of morality around here,’ she snarled. ‘He’s kept mistresses for years. Just ask yourself how Pru Hornton survives in that gallery without selling a thing. Ely keeps her. And he kept me. To my shame, he still keeps me.’

In sobs and gulps and shudders of embarrassment, the story was revealed. Pheely told of her unexpected pregnancy after a tipsy teenage night with Ely, not long after his marriage to wealthy but dull Felicity. The decision to keep the baby had infuriated him, and his subsequent financial input, sternly regulated and carefully overseen, had been under the strict proviso that their secret was never revealed.