That Man Simon (7 page)

But presently, after remarking that the supervision of his house would preclude his going far afield that year, Simon added, ‘I might possibly manage a week at the White House.’

At this Jenny, who had been wondering how best to excuse herself and leave them together, alerted. ‘The White House?’ she exclaimed. ‘You don’t mean the hotel at Herm, do you?’

‘Yes, I do. Do you know it?’ he asked.

‘Only from the outside. We’ve never stayed there.’

‘I didn’t realize that you and your grandparents had ever been abroad, Jenny,’ said Fenella, as if she suspected the younger girl of making something up in order not to be left out of the conversation.

‘Herm isn’t abroad. It’s one of the Channel Islands,’ said Jenny.

‘Oh, I see,’ said Fenella dismissively. ‘Yes, I remember now. You went on a package holiday to Guernsey some years ago, didn’t you?’

‘Yes, and from Guernsey we took a day trip to Sark, and two or three excursions to Herm,’ answered Jenny cheerfully. She knew that Fenella’s reference to the

‘package’ nature of the holiday had been as calculated as her earlier remark about Jenny’s dress being ‘one of your home-mades’. But such sly digs, although not lost upon Jenny, were wasted on her. They could only have humiliated anyone who, like Fenella and her mother, valued everything by how much it cost.

‘What did you think of Sark?’ asked Simon Gilchrist.

‘Unfortunately the weather was not very good the day we went there, so we didn’t get the best impression of it.

We preferred Herm.’

‘Sark is very fine. But, like you, I like Herm the best,’ he said. ‘My grandparents retired to Guernsey. For years, my sister and I spent the greater part of our holidays with them.’

‘I daresay the Channel Islands are very pretty, but I prefer islands like Majorca where one can be certain of sunbathing every day,’ said Fenella.

‘It’s an advantage, I agree, but one can enjoy oneself without the sun,’ remarked Simon Gilchrist. ‘A couple of years ago I spent a wet but enjoyable week in a place called Les Eyzies in the Perigord region of France.’

‘Oh, really? What is the attraction there?’ she inquired.

‘Prehistoric cave drawings and rock shelters. The National Museum of Prehistory is there, and also several caves full of strange crystals.’

‘It wouldn’t appeal to me, I’m afraid,’ said Fenella. ‘I hate damp, dark underground places.’

‘Is Lascaux in that area?’ asked Jennifer.

‘Yes, it is.’

‘Oh, I wish you would tell my grandfather about it. He’s very much interested in prehistory,’ she said unguardedly.

Immediately afterwards she regretted allowing her guard to slip, and made the need for a handkerchief, left in the pocket of her white coat, a rather feeble excuse for escaping.

She left the party as early as possible and, as she walked home, her thoughts reverted to Susan Ellis’s suggestion that Jenny should join her on the Spanish island when school broke up in July. Perhaps it would be a good idea to get away from Farthing Green for a few weeks, and see life in a new perspective.

What Susan did not know was that, in a sense, her stay-at-home friend was far more widely travelled than she was.

Jenny’s father had been in the Foreign Service. Jenny had been born in Washington D.C., had learnt to walk in South Africa, and to read and write in Italy. It was during the Rome posting that her parents had come to England for Christmas, and died there. Jenny had not been with them on the fatal shopping expedition because she had had a cold. Instead, she had spent the afternoon making paper chains. Shortly before tea time, the local policeman had brought the terrible news that the Rector’s son and his daughter-in-law had been killed in a collision at the crossroads just outside the village.

Now, years later, Jenny could see some mercy in the fact that she had lost both of them. From what her grandparents had told her, and her own dim memories, she felt sure that Peter and Cathy Shannon had been so happy together that her childish grief had been nothing to what either of them would have suffered if bereft of the other.

‘Children grow away from their parents. It’s natural and proper that they should,’ Grandpa had said to her once. ‘But husbands and wives grow together and become indivisible.’

This train of thought led to her own eventual marriage.

But she was no nearer to knowing whether she and James could achieve that marvellous state of indivisible harmony than she had been on the night of his proposal. If anything, she felt less sure.

One evening she was waiting at the county bus stop when she saw a silver Jaguar approaching. Quickly she turned her back to the road, hoping the driver would not spot her. But the car slowed down and stopped beside her, and the driver tooted his horn to attract her attention.

Forced to turn round to face him, Jennifer searched wildly for some feasible excuse for refusing a lift. But there was none.

‘Hop in, Miss Shannon. I’m going your way,’ said Simon Gilchrist, leaning across to open the nearside door for her.

‘It’s very good of you,’ she said stiffly, climbing in beside him.

‘Not at all. I’ve been hoping for a chance to have a word with you.’ He glanced in his driving mirror, and waited for some cars and a lorry to pass before he pulled out.

‘What about?’ she asked.

‘You don’t like me, do you?’ he said casually.

She flashed a startled glance at him, and saw a gleam of amusement in his eyes, a slight quirk at the corner of his mouth.

‘I hardly know you, Mr. Gilchrist.’

‘Is it because you can’t forgive me for felling the beech tree? Or is it one of those instinctive antagonisms?’

Jenny floundered for a moment, feeling her cheeks growing hot. Finally she said, ‘As I’ve already told you, I don’t think you’re improving Farthing Green by slapping an ultra-modern house in the middle of it.’

‘Not precisely in the middle,’ he said mildly.

‘Well, anywhere in the village. Old and new just don’t mix.’

‘They can - if they’re the best of their kind.’ At last he set the car in motion. ‘I take it your taste inclines to stockbrokers’ Tudor, Miss Shannon?’

‘Not at all,’ she countered sharply. ‘I just don’t think a lovely unspoilt village is the place for ... for a glorified goldfish bowl. I’m sorry if that sounds rude, but it’s something I feel quite strongly about.’

‘Evidently. But how do you know it will be like a goldfish bowl?’

‘Well, that’s what we’ve heard.’

‘And from what you know of me, you can well believe it.’

Jenny bit her lip, and let that pass.

They drove a couple of miles in silence, and then he said,

‘I gather you work in the city. What do you do for a living, Miss Shannon?’

‘I’m a nursery schoolteacher.’

‘At one of the State primary schools?’

‘No, at a private kindergarten and prep school.’

‘Whereabouts is it?’ he asked.

Jenny told him. She felt sure he was not really interested, and wished he would not bother to make polite conversation. The drive home had never seemed so long.

On the straight stretch which had once been a bad place for accidents but which was now widened into a dual carriageway, he took one hand off the wheel and offered her a cigarette.

‘No, thank you, I don’t smoke.’

He lit one for himself from a lighter built into the dashboard. Watching him use the gadget, it flashed through her mind that he had beautiful hands; strong and shapely, with long supple square-tipped fingers. Then because she did not want to admire anything about him, she turned her head away and looked fixedly out of the window.

About a quarter of a mile from the village, a small boy suddenly burst through the hedgerow ahead of them and made frantic stop signals.

‘It’s Billy Hunter,’ said Jenny, as her companion brought the car to a standstill. She wound down the window.

‘What’s the matter, Billy?’

‘Oh, miss, come quick. Bert’s fell down the cliff and I think he’s dead!’ The boy began to sob with shock and terror.

From the brink of the small disused quarry which was a favourite play place for the local children, they saw Bert lying motionless below them.

Simon Gilchrist was the first to reach him. He was already kneeling by the boy when she and Billy scrambled down beside him.

‘Don’t worry, Billy. He certainly isn’t dead,’ he said reassuringly. ‘Look, he’s coming round.’

It seemed that Bert’s only injury had been the blow on the head which had knocked him out. He did not appear to have any broken bones.

With an ease which surprised Jenny - Bert was a solidly-built lad of ten - Simon carried him up to the top of the quarry, and across the field to the road.

‘I doubt if Mrs. Bagley will be home yet. She’s a widow and she works at the chocolate factory in the city,’ Jenny said, as they drove Bert home.

At Willow Cottage, Simon sent Billy to fetch the doctor or, if he was out, the district nurse.

‘I think the boy will have to go to hospital to have his head X-rayed,’ he said, after Jenny had found the latch key under a pot of geraniums in the porch, and they had laid Bert down on the front room sofa.

It was only a few minutes before Billy came back with Doctor Mason.

‘Lucky you caught me. I was just starting out to a maternity case, so I can’t spare much time,’ he said briskly.

After a brisk examination of the boy, who was still very dazed and pale, he confirmed the need for an X-ray.

‘I’ll get an ambulance straight away. You’ll stay with him until it arrives, or until his mother gets back, won’t you, Jenny? I’m sorry I can’t stop myself, but Mrs. Barnes is in labour. It’s her first baby, so it may not arrive till midnight, but you can never be sure of these things.’

The nearest hospital was on the coast, six miles west of Farthing Green. It was not long before the ambulance arrived, and Bert was put into it, watched by a small crowd of neighbours and passers-by.

‘There’s no need for you to wait, Mr. Gilchrist,’ Jenny said, when it had driven off.

‘The boy’s mother will want to go to the hospital. I’ll run her over there,’ he said. ‘Let’s make a pot of tea, shall we? I don’t think Mrs. Bagley will mind in the circumstances.

What time does she usually get home?’

‘On the six o’clock bus, I think She’ll be dreadfully upset, poor woman. Bert’s all she’s got now.’

‘Don’t worry. I expect it’s only concussion. He’ll probably be risking his neck again by this time next week.

Where do you suppose she keeps the tea?’ he said, looking round the cramped, ill-lit cottage kitchen.

Jenny found the tea caddy and put the kettle on. ‘Now this place looks very picturesque from outside, but I’m sure you wouldn’t want to live in it,’ he remarked, as they waited for the water to boil.

‘No, it is pretty grim,’ she admitted.

‘And I expect most of the houses that make up your

“lovely unspoilt village” are not much better as far as comfort and convenience go,’ he went on. ‘Even the Rectory only looks attractive. I’ll bet it’s like an icehouse in the winter, and the kitchen is pure nineteenth-century.’

‘Not quite. We do have a modern gas cooker. But it is a cold house, and not very well planned for easy running,’

Jenny conceded reluctantly.

‘Yet you’re up in arms because I’m building a house which really is geared to modern life,’ he said, with a quizzically raised eyebrow.

‘Because modern houses may be ideal inside, but they always look so ghastly outside,’ she contended. ‘Those hideous flat roofs with water tanks stuck on top, and—’ she stopped short suddenly. Then, after some second’s hesitation, she said, ‘Look, we’ll never agree on this subject.

But I don’t want to quarrel with you when you’ve been such a help with poor Bert.’

For once, his smile held no mockery. ‘Are you calling a trace, Miss Shannon?’

She held out her hand, and said, ‘Yes, I suppose I ... and everyone in the village calls me Jenny.’

His fingers closed firmly over hers, and then there were footsteps on the path and Mrs. Bagley rushed in.

Some time after nine o’clock, Jenny was crossing the hall at home when the telephone rang. She perched on the rug chest and lifted the receiver.

‘Farthing Green 181.’

‘Jenny? Simon Gilchrist.’ His voice sounded even deeper on the telephone. ‘I thought you’d like to know that young Bert’s X-ray didn’t show any serious damage, but they’re keeping him under observation for a couple of days.’

‘Oh, what a relief. How is Mrs. Bagley now? Has she calmed down?’

‘Yes, she sat with the boy for a while and then I took her home, and a neighbour is going to keep an eye on her.’

‘Well, thank you for ringing me. It was kind of you to think of it.’

‘I’m not entirely inhuman. Good night, Jenny.’

‘Good night ...’ She hesitated before adding ‘Simon.’ But before she said it, he had rung off.

The following Friday evening, James rang up to ask Jenny if she would care for a run to the coast on Sunday afternoon. But on Saturday the good weather changed, and it was still chilly and overcast on Sunday morning. Before going to church, Jenny rang James to see if he had any alternative plans for the afternoon. It would be unpleasant at the sea on such a day.

Somewhat to her relief, James said his mother was not well, and he thought he had better cancel the outing, and stay with Mrs. Langdon.