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Authors: Anne Weale

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BOOK: That Man Simon
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‘You wait until you meet him,’ Jenny said obstinately.

‘I’m sure you won’t like him either. He’s not our sort of person at all.’

Next morning, on the bus to town, Jenny sat next to Mrs.

Crabbe, whose husband was the licensee of The Jolly Maltsters.

‘I hear you’ll soon be having neighbours, Miss Shannon,’

she said, when they had paid their fares.

Jenny nodded. ‘Yes, so I believe.’

‘Funny sort of house to put up right next to the Rectory.

I’m surprised it’s allowed really.’

‘What do you mean, Mrs. Crabbe? How do you know what kind of house it will be?’

‘My nephew Ron works in the County Council planning department, you know. He and Gwen were over on Sunday, and he told us all about it. Well, he knew we’d be interested, naturally,’ the publican’s wife explained.

‘Ron thought the plans wouldn’t be passed,’ she went on, in a confidential tone. ‘But it seems this Mr. Gilchrist has pull. Ron says he’s won a lot of awards and made quite a name for himself. Modern stuff, you know. Personally I don’t care for all these futuristic ideas. There was a piece on the telly the other night and some of the pictures they showed were no better than a kid of four could do.

Abstracts, the man said they were. Rubbish, if you want my opinion. Still, it’s all a matter of taste, I suppose. But I wouldn’t want them in my lounge.’

‘Yes, but the house, Mrs. Crabbe,’ Jenny prompted.

‘What did your nephew say about it?’

‘Well, it sounds most peculiar to me, dear - not like a proper house at all. And quite out of keeping with your place. I’m sure the Rector won’t approve. But perhaps I’m old-fashioned in some ways. I don’t like a flat roof, myself.’

‘So it’s going to be very modern?’ Jenny said, with mounting dismay.

‘Oh, the last word, so Ron says. Flat roof ... glass walls ...

central heating. It will cost a pretty penny.’

When Jenny reached home at five o’clock, she found that work on the building site had already begun. Twenty feet of hedge had been torn down and the gap was criss-crossed with the tracks of heavy lorries. Where, last spring, daffodils bloomed, great stacks of bricks had been unloaded.

And where the grass had grown tall over the croquet lawn, there was now a gaping crater of tumbled soil.

For some minutes Jenny stood watching the yellow excavator as it rumbled back and forth with loads of earth.

And it filled her with anger and pain to think of the aconites and tiny wild violets which would never grow there again, and of the birds which would nest somewhere else, frightened away by the sudden noisy disturbance of their former peaceful sanctuary.

By the time she reached the Rectory, she was almost in tears.

‘Oh, Granny, have you seen? It’s being ruined!’ she exclaimed in despair.

‘It is sad to see it change,’ Mrs. Shannon agreed, with a sigh. ‘I remember how lovely it used to look when your grandfather and I first came here. We had a gardener in those days, of course. Ben Culling ... such a nice old man.

You wouldn’t remember him, Jenny. He used to roll the big lawn until it was as smooth as velvet. He took such pride in it.’

‘We should never have let it be sold,’ Jenny said bitterly.

‘It would have been better to let it go wild. Mrs. Crabbe told me this morning that the new house is going to be some frightful ultra-modern monstrosity. Grandpa will hate it. He was dreadfully upset when those new people took over the grocery shop and pulled out the old bow window and put in a huge plate glass one. He said it ruined the whole facade.’

‘Well, I suppose he was right, but it does give them room for a much better window display,’ Mrs. Shannon pointed out practically. ‘And I don’t think many people ever really studied the facade. Most of them probably never gave it a second glance. Times change, dear. We can’t stop progress.’

‘I don’t see anything progressive about having a hideous eyesore stuck right under our noses,’ Jenny said miserably.

‘I don’t care about progress. I want things to stay as they are.’

‘It may not be as bad as you think. We may quite like it when it’s finished,’ her grandmother suggested gently.

But she understood Jenny’s passionate resistance to change. Anyone whose life had once been so cruelly disrupted was bound to resent further unsettlements.

Jenny might not be consciously aware of it, but the disturbance now in progress across the fence probably called up memories of that terrible day twelve years ago, Mrs. Shannon thought with a pang.

She herself had never quite got over the tragic loss of her son and his lovely young wife - both killed in a motor accident a week before Christmas. And Jenny’s whole world had been shattered. It was not surprising that she clung to all things familiar.

On Thursday evening, after they had been to the cinema and were having supper at the Lanchow Restaurant, Jenny discussed the matter with James. ‘You have got a down on the poor bloke,’ he said teasingly, after listening to a vehement disapprobation of Simon Gilchrist.

‘It isn’t funny, James. You wouldn’t like it if it was happening next door to you,’ she countered indignantly.

‘No, I agree the place does look a mess. But it won’t be in a chaos for ever. It’s bound to be like a battlefield while they’re laying the drains and putting in the foundations.’

‘Thank you.’ Jenny smiled at the Chinese waiter who had just set a bowl of sharks fin soup in front of her. ‘Oh, well, it’s no use carping about it,’ she said gloomily. ‘But it’s going to ruin the spring for us, what with cement mixers rumbling and the workmen bawling out pop songs. There’s one youth who obviously thinks he’s the next best thing to the Beatles.’

‘Does he whistle at you? I wouldn’t blame him. I like that thing at the back,’ said James, referring to the stiff black Tom Jones bow which she had stitched to a comb and perched on the back of her head.

Tonight she was wearing a new dress, a very plain princess style of matt tobacco-coloured crepe. It had taken her hours of patient work to cover the tiny buttons which fastened the long tight sleeves, but now she had the satisfaction of knowing that for the price of four yards of material she had a dress which looked like a model.

‘I wish I could take you to dances,’ James said suddenly.

Although his limp was very slight and did not prevent him from wildfowling on the marshes on bitter winter mornings, and sometimes driving in motor club rallies, he seemed to feel it precluded him from dancing.

‘Oh, you know I’m not mad about dancing,’ Jenny said lightly. ‘Anyway, it will soon be swimming weather again.’

On the way home, James fell silent. Jenny thought he was probably tired. He had spent most of the previous night attending a difficult foaling at Mallow Farm.

The Rectory was in darkness when they reached it, as her grandparents were always in bed by half past ten.

‘Thank you, James. It was a delicious supper,’ Jenny said, as he helped her out of the car.

He followed her to the porch and shone his torch on the latch while she unlocked the door with her key. Then as she switched on the hall light and turned to say good night, he caught her in his arms and kissed her.

Although they had been going about together for nearly two years, he had never kissed her before. Nor had anyone else. Sometimes Jenny wondered if she was the only girl of her age who had never been kissed.

But she was being kissed now and, after a few seconds of surprise, she found it a very pleasant sensation. James held her tight against him, and she could feel his heart pounding, but his lips were gentle. She closed her eyes, and slid her arms round his neck.

When they drew apart, Jenny’s heart was thumping too.

‘Good night,’ James said huskily.

And before she could catch her breath to answer, he was back in the car.

Up in her bedroom, she switched on the lamp on the dressing-table and took off her dress and hung it in the wardrobe. Then she sat down in front of the looking glass, half expecting to find her reflection subtly altered. A slight frown wrinkled her forehead. She could not understand why, having at long last kissed her, James had then rushed off like that. Had he regretted his impulse? Should she not have responded so readily? Would he have preferred her to be a little coy?

‘But it isn’t as if it was our first date,’ she thought perplexedly. ‘We’ve known each other practically all our lives. Everyone else thinks we’ve been on kissing terms for ages. Most of them assume we’re unofficially engaged. I never go out with anyone else, and James has no other girl-friends.’

Beside her trinket box, there was a photograph of her parents with Jenny, a fat goggle-eyed baby, lolling on her mother’s lap.

Her grandmother always said she was like her mother.

But it was not strictly true, unfortunately. Catherine Shannon’s eyes had been green. Jenny’s were a commonplace hazel. Catherine’s blonde hair had been curly. Jenny had inherited the colour, but not the soft natural curl. Her own hair was so fine and flyaway that even the lightest of perms made it frizz. She wore it in a thick straight bob, with a fringe brushed across her forehead.

Although she had been only eight when their death had left her an orphan with no one but her grandparents to look after her, Jenny retained vivid memories of her parents’

happiness together. Her grandmother had often told her the story of how they had met, fallen in love and married in the space of three whirlwind months. In her early teens, Jenny had confidently expected the same exciting romance to happen to her one day.

Then, as she grew up, her life had formed a placid predictable pattern, with James the only man in it; and, gradually, she had ceased to daydream of a cataclysmic grand passion, and had come to accept that such things hardly ever happened, and then not to girls like herself.

But now that James had kissed her, and so brought their relationship to a point where it was more than a close friendship but not yet an avowed love affair, she felt all those dreams and longings beginning to stir again.

And as she lay in bed, watching clouds scud across the face of the lambent moon, she was filled with an absurd desire for something wonderful and exciting to happen to her.

The following day was the beginning of the Easter holiday, and Jenny planned to devote it to redecorating her grandparents’ bedroom for them. As the Rector prepared his Sunday sermons on Fridays, he would not be using the car that day. After doing the morning chores, Mrs. Shannon and Jenny went to town to choose a suitable wallpaper.

By the time they had selected a charming Toile de Jouy pattern depicting eighteenth-century shepherdesses in leafy pastoral settings, and done some other shopping, it was getting on for lunchtime.

They had left a cold meal for the Rector in case they were not back by one and, on impulse, Jenny said, ‘Shall we have a lunch at the Carlton, Granny? It’s so crowded in the Copper Kettle. Let’s enjoy a spot of luxury for once.’

The Carlton was the town’s most fashionable restaurant.

It was run by a Hungarian, the food was excellent, and the dining-room overlooked the river and the public gardens on the far bank.

At a table by the window, they studied the menu and chose a meal. Then Jenny sat back to survey the other diners. Most of them were middle-aged businessmen, but there were a few other women in smart spring hats having lunch there. She was glad she was wearing her turquoise suit and her best chiffon blouse with a floppy bow at the neck.

The sun shining on the river, the unaccustomed opulence of their surroundings, and the smooth nutty taste of the sherry they ordered, combined to give her a feeling of pleasant well-being. And then, as her glance travelled idly round the large room, a waiter moved aside from a table in the far corner and her mood was abruptly broken.

‘Is anything wrong, dear?’ asked her grandmother.

‘Don’t look now, but one of the men at the corner table is Mr. Gilchrist,’ Jenny told her, in a low voice.

Mrs. Shannon sipped her sherry, and then looked casually towards the corner. ‘Which one? The young man facing this way?’

Jenny nodded. ‘Oh, don’t let him see you looking, Granny. With any luck, he won’t notice me.’

‘He doesn’t look unpleasant. He has a most attractive smile.’

‘Probably buttering up prospective clients,’ Jenny said acidly.

After the waiter had served their prawn cocktails, she managed to shift her chair so that, if Simon Gilchrist did look in their direction, he would only see her back view.

As she and her grandmother were starting their pineapple mousse, Mrs. Shannon reported that the men were leaving.

Jenny’s heart sank. So he had spotted her after all.

‘Good afternoon, Miss Shannon.’ Simon Gilchrist approached their table with that glint of quizzical amusement which she found so disconcerting.

‘Good afternoon,’ she said distantly. And then, because she knew she could not avoid introducing him, ‘Granny, this is Mr. Gilchrist.’

‘How do you do, Mrs. Shannon. May I join you for a few minutes?’

‘Please do,’ her grandmother said graciously.

‘It’s fortunate that your granddaughter has such striking colouring,’ he said, with a glance at Jenny’s hair, ‘or I might have missed this opportunity of apologizing to you.’

BOOK: That Man Simon
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