Mrs Fytton's Country Life (46 page)

'In reunification
’
she said, taking a few stabs at the word before finally settling for an approximate version.

He was still attempting to follow.

And, with a great deal of strain, two phrases did finally stand out from the crowd: 'Don't go ever. Don't go. Well, not yet.'

He brought her some water. 'Come on
’
he said.
‘I
think you ought to get into bed.'

Angela looked up from weeping. 'Only if you'll come with me
’
she said.

He looked suitably torn between morality and desire. Whatever the morality of it all was. Why not? Binnie wouldn't know.

Nobody would know. And anyway, in a manner of speaking, this was still his wife.

He whispered into her quivering ear. She blinked. He whispered again.

'Oh, speak up, sod it
’
she said, with a touch of a completely new Angela about her. But she lay herself back against him very sweetly.

So he said it once more. 'Do you want me to get in it too, or just on it?' 'What?' 'The bed.'

And she nodded. 'Assolutly
’
she said.

They bathed together in the avocado bath, lit by moonlight and a beeswax candle. When Ian pulled the velvet curtains to keep out prying eyes, she yanked them back again. 'No one can see us
’
she said. 'We are invisible.'

'This is what I wanted
’
she said as they held on to each other and creaked their way along the moonlit passage.

Ian opened the door of the sewing room, out of curiosity. 'You haven't done much to it yet
’
he said, not as a criticism but as a statement of fact.

She stopped for a moment and gave him a searching look. Her eyes were dark and unreadable in the shadows. 'No
’
she said, and quickly closed the door.

'What a lovely room
’
said Ian, looking around in the moonlight. 'I like it
’

As she turned down the white pique bed cover she smiled. 'So do I.'

She supposed she must thank the mulberry tree. For if it had not existed and if Ian had not mistaken what was going on in the garden on that previous night, then what was going to happen between them
tonight
would have happened too soon. She would not, quite, have known her own mind. Reached her synthesis. And she did and had done both now. Nothing is yours for all time. You have the use of it for a while before you pass it on.

'Don't go' and 'Not yet' made perfect sense.

Better by far, she thought, slipping in beside that dear and familiar body with its mind and manners that she had trained so well - and which, she supposed, had probably trained her so well too - better by
far
to do it this way. After all, what was good enough for Nell Gwynn was good enough for her. Better to be a happy mistress than a harrowed wife.

'Don't go' and 'Not yet' would suit everybody perfectly. Except, perhaps, Maria Brydges. But she wasn't here any longer. Was she? And she couldn't be expected to get
everything
right.

Epilogue:

April

Vice is nice But a little virtue Won't hurt you.

felicia lamport

Angela Fytton felt she had paid the price. The stinging suggestion about a gibbet had finally shed the light of her own lustration. Her very own Candlemas.

She took the rush-light holder to the local museum, who were pleased to keep it. In a display case. Where it belonged. With a prettily scripted ticket explaining that it was donated by 'Mrs Angela Fytton of Church Ale House'.

And she had the Celtic well resealed and never again mentioned the idea of dressing it to the vicar. Who, in any case, had quite enough to do with the dressing of a new baby, which was more wriggly than any eel.

She put Maria Brydges's diagrams aside and drew up a list of the herbs
she
wanted, including heart's-ease and love-ache, because you never knew when they might be required. And she spent a very happy springtime going between her vegetable bed and her herb beds, and when she was not doing that she wallpapered and painted and made the inside of the house her own. You did not, she found, need to alter the fabric of a place in order to shape it. It was, she realized, quite bogus to live in another woman's shoes. Except, she might wickedly speculate, Eve's. So she wore her own. And she sang as she went about her work and was very, very happy.

She tiptoed around Daphne Blunt very carefully these days, and if they talked of such matters at all, they talked of the paintings in the church, which were nearly complete.

'Consider this,' said Daphne, standing back to look at her work. 'Consider that the tenets of goodness upon which the Christian faith, and most other faiths as well, including our secular one, is based are the qualities held to be inherent -now even
genetically
inherent - in women. Odd, isn't it, then, how little we have gained in terms of power in those places?' And she turned back to the last section of the wall, saying, 'Much to do and much to learn, still. Much.'

To tend the sick, to feed the hungry,

to give drink to the thirsty, to clothe the naked,

to harbour the stranger, to minister to prisoners,

to bury the dead:

These were the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy. In each one, Dorothea Tichborne's face was clear - lying on a sickbed, holding up an empty bowl, receiving a cup of water, standing naked and shivering, knocking at a door, standing behind bars and, finally, lying on a bier. The painters had their own way with revenge.

To convert the sinner,

to instruct the ignorant,

to counsel those in doubt,

to comfort those in sorrow,

to bear wrongs patiently,

to forgive injuries,

to pray for the living and the dead:

These were the Seven Spiritual Works of Mercy. In which the Tichborne face could be seen as a sinner, as ignorant, as a doubter, as one in sorrow, as one who is wronged, as injured, as sick but alive, as dying or dead.

Revenge, thought Angela Fytton, did not necessarily have to hurt anybody. Revenge, thought Angela Fytton, could simply be a balm from within. As was that medieval painter's. Revenge could be exacted without hurting any of the parties concerned. Especially an innocent child. But she did not say this to Daphne. In case she asked her why.

It was an even playing field between her and Belinda now. And everybody got what they wanted. Ian was a bit confused at first, which was understandable, given that he seemed to have sprouted two wives. But his capacity to love expanded to embrace both of them. And he soon saw the benefit. And Angela, who had never countenanced the illicit in her life, let alone sharing the man she loved, took to it like hens to sweet breadcrumbs
...
Not the food of life, of course, but a little bit of something very pleasant on the side. Freedom was no longer just another word for nothing left to lose, freedom was choice.

'But I love you,' Ian said. 'I want to stay with you.'

'And I love you too.'

And then he thought. And he said, 'But I also love Belinda.'

To which his ex-wife, though he was expecting an explosion, responded with a nod. 'And Tristan, you love him too?'

'I do, I do,' he said, suddenly feeling that twist to his heart. She could not help but add, 'And all Tristan's lovely, adorable, intellectual teeth?'

Her ex-husband looked at her for a moment. And immediately felt a surge of something requiring immediate gratification. He put his hand out to touch her.

'And our two?' she said. 'You also love them.'

He growled. 'Possibly.'

She removed his hand.

Conf
ound lust.

'Definitely,' he agreed.

And also celebrate it.

'Why change the habits of an entire planetary history?' she said, being quite convinced, having seen what she had seen of the birds and the bees, not to mention the hens and the pigs, that the male member was never made to be faithful. Well, not yet. How could it be with several thousand years of genetic programming behind it? But what it could learn to do, as the female of the species had learned with its own particular brand of genetic promiscuity, was to be
discreet.
Later she picked up the bog myrtle leaf that had fallen from her sleeve to the floor and gave it to him to hold. It crackled, of course.

And thus it was that Angela Fytton discovered it was perfectly possible to become Mistress Fytton of Church Ale House but without the ringlets and the sprigged muslin and the mulberry tarts, of course.

And what of her offspring?

'Get your feet off that settee
’
demanded Claire Fytton. 'And wash up those mugs. They're festering.'

A skinny girl with freckles and a boy with an inadequate moustache leapt up as if they had been stung. This was not the usual behaviour they expected from a student flat.

Andrew Fytton, coming into the room behind his sister, made way for the pair as they scuttled off down the corridor towards the kitchen.

It was such a responsibility being the owners of a student flat. Or, if not exactly the owners, because their father and their mother were, then the subletters of same.

'We've got the electricity bill
’
said Andrew Fytton to his sister. 'I'll divide it by four and add theirs to the rent.'

'Good
’
said Claire Fytton,
'good
’

Her brother nodded. Something caught his eye and he frowned. He got up and paced across to the window. 'Bloody curtain pole's coming down again
’
he said. And he went off to get a screwdriver.

'I've told you before
’
he called to the boy with the inadequate moustache, 'when you pull the curtains, do it
gently,
for Chrissake.'

The boy with the inadequate moustache shrugged. 'Sure
’
he said. 'Keep your hair on.'

'Up yours
’
said Andrew mildly. And returned to the curtains and their pole, quite expertly.

After the fixing of which, and the ritual by Claire of the inspected and passed mugs and kitchen sink, the four of them went out to sample the delights of studenthood in a northern town. Where smallish flats on the perimeter of existence were remarkably (as Ian commented to Angela when they visited the place) cheap.

'Clever of them
’
he said.

'Very,'
agreed Angela.

'Did you notice
’
said Claire to Andrew as they walked along the windy streets, 'that Dad and Mum held hands when we came up here?' 'No
’
said Andrew.

'Better not let Binnie know
’
said Claire. 'Know what?' said her brother.

When her children came to visit they approved of Ye Olde Black Smock and little else, but they were kind enough to allow that while
they
might not find Church Ale House a desirable place in which to live, their mother did, and parents - perhaps - had rights. If not to full-blown happiness then to a certain degree of equilibrium.

Whenever her ex-husband visited her, Angela thought there was nothing so pleasant as being a mistress to a man to whom you had once been married. You know everything about him. He knows everything about you. Even that little bulge just above the top of your knickers that would be quite difficult to introduce to anyone new. An ex-husband finds such things, and holds them, and speaks of them as familial delights. And then, just as one is thinking his little ways ait becoming irritating, and he is thinking the same of you, it is time for him to leave and go back to his one, true wife. And his . delightful, many-toothed son.

Belinda is also happy. And as for the extra mortgage taken out concurrently by Ian and his ex-wife in the name of housing their children, why, it is nothing compared to the peace and quiet and pleasure that Binnie feels now that she is, once again, mistress of her own life. And she is doing the little bit of dentistry necessary to pay for Ian's share of it with a willing, willing heart. Because she is happy. Quite possibly, in time, she will be happy enough to think of a little brother or sister for Tristan - another little brother or sister for Claire and Andrew. But - she shivers - perhaps not
quite
yet
...