Mrs Fytton's Country Life (37 page)

'Fuck off, fuck off,
fuck off, I say!

The cat walked on impervious, now in full view. Pimmy went, quite literally, barking mad.

'Shut up,' said Dr Tichborne. And he brought his heel backwards, sharpish, on the creature's quivering flank.

It yelped.

Mrs Dorothea Tichborne tutted in a new and uncharacteristic way, a little like a hiccup.

Pimmy barked again. Pimmy yelped again.

Mrs Dorothea Tichborne again hiccuped.

It was oddly irritating. Who was yelping and who was tutting?

Dr Tichborne turned. The Angel of Rage flapped his wings and breathed fire. Mrs Dorothea Tichborne made yet another stab at a hiccup. Dr Tichborne heard the Angel, turned and said, 'And you can fuck off too, you silly bitch.'

Pimmy, being male, did not take this upon himself. Mrs Tichborne was silent.

And then he saw through the window the shocked Dorkin girl sway and totter backwards into the rose bed, and the beautiful vicar, with those beautiful hands, reach out for her, and down they both went together. The Dorkin girl squealed like a stuck pig, and was beginning to look like one, with blood drawn upon those monstrous bare breasts.

Pimmy barked and barked and Dr Tichborne thought, above all the din behind him, that he heard the faintest of moans.

He looked around. His wife, doyenne of respectability and cream of mealtime etiquette, was slumped forward on the white tablecloth, her head in a bowl of muesli, making little bubbling sounds and moaning, in the same way that Dr Tichborne had heard many of his patients moan over the years. It was the moan of the end. He stood there wondering what to do. Even those rolling eyes of hers managed to look embarrassed at their overt activity. Do not say anything, they seemed to beg. Just go on as if you had not noticed.

What to do? What to do? He looked from the table to the window and back again. Pimmy was licking up the dripping milk. The bubbling died away, the moaning ceased, the eyes fluttered finally over their rolling whites.

What to do? What
?

And then his heart told him. He marched past the table out into the corridor, into his study, picked up a piece of lint and a bottle of iodine, and strode into the garden. The Dorkin girl was now upright again and drawing attention (as if there was any need) to the state of her front. The vicar was showing a keen interest. Dr Tichborne brought the lint and the iodine up close and slathered it on the offending area. The vicar showed an interest in taking the job over from the good doctor, but the good doctor held on tight.

'Now get those out of the cold air,' he said, 'dear. And Mrs Tichborne seems to be calling. See what she wants.'

Then did Dr Tichborne become like the Magdalene. He knelt at the vicar's feet and tenderly administered the lint to the small graze wound revealed below the cycle clip, touching that ankle for the very first time. He remembered a voice, from a very far off, his mother's voice, and he copied it now, exalting in the tenderness. 'There, there now - brave boy -you must be a man about it. There, there now - mustn't cry. Dry those tears, little man, and I'll kiss you better
...'

He just about stopped himself in time. Though the vicar did appear to be looking at him most strangely.

Angela Fytton, cycling up to Tally-Ho Cottage with the last of her invitations, sniffed the delicious yeasty, herby air, heard the yapping and the yelling as she parked her bicycle by the gate, and wondered. It was probably just that cat.

Inside Tally-Ho Cottage, Wanda was making hot infused oils. At the moment a glass bowl of oil, dense with chopped rosemary, sat over a saucepan of simmering water and had done so for two hours. On the table, waiting, were a jelly bag, a large jug, several airtight sterilized dark-glass storage bottles and a funnel. This time Wanda meant business.

Seeing the new owner of Church Ale House, she smiled through the window. She was ready for her at last. Dave the Bread slid the book
Cookery for Beginners
out of sight and went on putting currants on to his gingerbread men. In the oven was another experimental batch of Old Somerset Butter Biscuits, and this time, he hoped, he had got the proportions of the ingredients right.

Wanda called over her shoulder, 'Keep an eye on the oil, Dave, while I go and let her in.'

He went to the stove, removed the lid from the glass bowl and sniffed. He'd only ever had cocaine once, at one of Wanda's theatrical parties, but the effect of what he inhaled reminded him of that giddy moment. He put his head in still further and inhaled more deeply. It gave him a remarkable confidence. He replaced the lid and went across to the oven. Out came the Old Somerset Butter Biscuits, in went the gingerbread men. The air in the kitchen smelt of sweet bakery and pungent herbs. Authentically. Which was why Wanda wished Angela Fytton to come in and see it for herself. Wanda no longer felt hunted. She had given the Theatre of the Absurd a lot of time and attention, now she was going for the new School of Realism.

She picked up a biscuit from the tray as she passed by. 'Am I glad I've learned a few real tricks. She's got a sharp eye, that one. Have me sussed in no time
...'
She bit. Crunch. 'Do you know,' she said,
‘I
think you're nearly there.'

She looked at her husband's eyes. He looked back into hers, as much as he was able to focus after the astonishing effect of the rosemary.

'Wanda,' he said, 'there's nothing like the real thing. Just put your nose into that lot for a moment
...'
He pointed at the saucepan. Wanda did as she was bid. 'You market that, my girl, and we'll make a fortune.'

He smiled at her, a little dazedly. But Wanda was already ushering Angela in and pointing out a remarkable bit of weaving attached to her loom.

Lucy Elliott watched her children smiling up at the beautiful goddess whose large white teeth resembled more tombstones than a graveyard. And she watched her husband smiling into those clear blue eyes that were as sunlit pools by a fiord. And, finally, she watched Angela Fytton smiling up at those suntanned cheeks that were dusted with roses, and she said, 'I'm afraid Anja will not be able to come because she will be baby-sitting for us.'

'Of course,' said Angela Fytton.

Anja smiled.

The children smiled.

Craig Elliott did not smile. He looked beyond the window, to the frost bound hill and the lowering sky beyond. Then he looked at Angela. Then he looked as thoughtful as a man could look in his own kitchen, and certainly worthy of comparison to any piece by Rodin. Finally, with just a hint of sadness about his lips, he crossed the room and placed the invitation upon the mantelpiece.

In St Hilary's she paused to look at the bench ends.

Daphne was up a very long ladder. 'I was right,' she said. 'These are the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy and those over there will be the Seven Spirituals.'

Angela handed her the invitation. She went over to the bench ends. 'Might they have done this ale thing at Candlemas?' she asked.

'Possibly,' she said. 'But more likely Easter.' She smiled down at her. 'No reason why you can't bend the truth. The Church has been doing it for years. It was pagan anyway. Why Candlemas in particular?' She returned to her brushing.

Angela fingered the bench ends. 'Oh, no reason - just an idea.'

She slipped out of the church and got back on her bike. Candlemas, she remembered from her Cambridge days, was the time when the Old Faith repurified their Virgin.

The sound of an ambulance siren split the silent air. Above her head the rooks crowed and wheeled as it roared past. She flattened herself into the side of the hawthorn hedge, which scattered its icy droplets all down her neck and into the tops of her
Wellingtons.
And then it was gone.

Up at the vicarage it was silent and closed. The Reverend Crispin Archer was out doing his job again. A tireless young man, though strangely driven just recently. She had been trying to talk to him for several days. She had a proposition for him and she was hopeful, despite his modern leanings, that he would agree. She pushed the invitation through the door and went on her way. There was still time. Plenty of that.

Sammy was leaning over the winter pens with a stick, scratching the ears of a pig.

'Ambulance?' she said. She handed him the invitation.

He did not look up from the muddy pink and brown-spotted backs of his animals. The cold air had nipped his nose and watered his eyes. Or was it the air? His sunken toothless-ness seemed more pronounced. She took a switch from the hedge and followed suit with the scratching. 'Pigs are very rewarding animals,' she said. 'Not like my hens.'

'She's dead,' he said. 'And she was the last.'

'Who?' said Angela, thinking it was probably one of his far-rowers.

'Old Mrs Tichborne. Dead.'

So it was sorrow and not frost in his eyes.

'Oh, Sam
’
Angela said softly. 'I'm so sorry.'

'That ambulance. Carried her off. Went -' he snapped his fingers - 'just like that. The very last of that kind. The last mistress.'

She put her hand on his arm. 'Sorry
’
she said again.

He turned his watery eyes to her and rubbed a dewdrop from his nose with the back of his hand. He smiled very broadly and spat. 'I'm not
’
he said. 'Good riddance. Gentlemen of the party.' He spat again.

'At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldly woe; Till sapped their strength, and every part unsound, Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round
’

she said softly, remembering her first journey down here. He nodded.

'What was it?' she asked. 'Heart.'

'Poor Dr Tichborne
’
she said.

Sammy looked at her, then he looked at his pigs. 'Poor be blowed
’
he said. 'Could do with a few more spouses following suit.'

He rattled the gate and two of his fattest pigs came waddling over to be scratched. He scratched one, Angela scratched the other. He read the invitation and sighed. 'You asking Gwen?' he said.

'Could do.' They stood there in silence for a while. 'Did you ever use rush lights, Sam?'

He nodded. 'Hard lighting,' he said and wiped at his nose again.

'There's a forge over at Cleeve End, isn't there?' 'Fancy stuff for fancy folk,' he said. 'Play-acting.' He did not say another word, so she left off the scratching and cycled briskly home.

Mrs Dorkin replaced the telephone and danced a jig all round the bar of the Black Smock. But she wouldn't say why. And then she carried on cleaning with a renewed vigour that took the landlord's breath away. The baptism would have to be postponed, that was all. But not for very long. No matter what happened - and it was either God or the devil looks after his own - no matter what happened, that ceremonial would still go ahead. After all, it was what Mrs Tichborne herself had wanted.

'Had wanted?' said the landlord of the Black Smock.

But more Mrs Dorkin would not say.

Later, when everything was calm, Angela slipped out into the ink-black, starry night, her boots making no sound along the frosty lane. All was dark shadows and rustlings as she made her way to the Tichborne House, as if the land were wrapping itself deeper into its winter sleep. She was right about one thing when she decided to come down here - you really could walk the lane at night without fear. The people here were entirely good. Entirely.

The curtains of the Tichborne House were drawn and all was still. Just as it should be, she thought, for a house in mourning. As she reached the gate someone swished out in front of her. She gave a little squeak. But it was only the vicar.

'A sad day
’
he whispered.

'I will cancel my part
y, of course
’

The vicar. 'Oh, I think not
’
he said. 'The good doctor wants everything to go on exactly as it was before. Indeed, he insists upon it.' And then he added, rather miserably, 'Even the baptism.'

'Older people don't like change
’
she said.