That Man Simon (9 page)

She always found it hard to imagine her grandparents ever being young. As far as she could remember, they had been as they were now; silver-haired and wrinkled, Grandpa thin and rather stooped, his eyes the colour of periwinkles under bristly white eyebrows, and Granny plump and cosy and short-sighted.

‘Yes, Giles was the curate at our church for five years before he asked me to marry him, but of course he was very shy in those days and he didn’t think my parents would approve.’

‘Why not?’

‘Because my father was a businessman with a worldly view of life, and Giles thought he would wish me to marry someone with better prospects. He was quite right. My father was furious when Giles asked permission to propose to me. I was sent away to an aunt in Harrogate for several months, so that we should not meet. But eventually my mother persuaded Father to give his consent, and we were married on the fourth of March, 1918. Fifty-two years ago.’

‘Yes, but the world was quite different then,’ Jenny thought, as her grandmother sat staring out of the window, lost in happy reminiscence.

‘Everything has changed - even people’s ideas of love.’

On Sunday, James came to lunch. When he and Jenny were alone, after Mrs. Shannon had gone up for her rest, he said, ‘What were you doing coming home with Gilchrist the other evening? I thought you detested him.’

‘As he’s going to be our neighbour I can’t very well have a permanent feud with him. Besides, he’s not as bad as I thought,’ she said, dodging the first part of the question.

‘Let’s go for a walk, shall we? Or would you rather relax?’

James agreed on a walk, and they set out for the beech woods about a mile away, with Josh following at their heels.

It was very peaceful in the woods, with shafts of sunlight slanting through the leaves and thick moss muffling their footsteps.

While they were sitting on a log, sharing a bar of chocolate and watching the feverish activity on a nearby ant-hill, James said suddenly, ‘Have you been thinking about ... us, Jenny?’

‘Yes, of course,’ she answered, in a low voice.

‘So have I. In fact, I can’t think of anything else,’ he said, reaching for her hands. ‘I thought I could be patient ... take things slowly. But I find I can’t. I want to marry you now ...

this summer. We’re right for each other, I know we are. I love you so much darling Jenny ...’

He would have taken her in his arms, but she drew back.

‘Oh, James, wait. I - I haven’t made up my mind yet. I’ve thought about it, but I’m still not sure. Give me a little more time - just a week or two.’

His hands tightened until the pressure hurt. ‘Last night I lay in bed and I wanted you so much I couldn’t sleep for hours,’ he said unsteadily. ‘Not just to make love to you, but to have you near me, to talk to you. To feel you belonged to me.’

His urgency, the passionate pleading in his voice, frightened her. She had never seen him like this before, stripped of all reserve, revealing an intensity of emotion which she had not known was in him. Suddenly, she felt that he was giving her no choice, that she was trapped. He loved her so much that she must love him in return or hurt him intolerably.

It was only a momentary sensation, and then James let go of her hands and said more calmly, ‘All right, love, I’ll wait a bit longer. But not too long.’

He stayed for tea, and then went off to visit his mother.

Jenny sensed that he would have liked her to offer to go with him, but she had a deep need to be alone for a while after the stresses of the afternoon.

In the hall, before he left, James put his arms round her and kissed her. But although she submitted to the embrace, she found that this time the touch of his lips left her unmoved.

Fenella Waring was still in the village because, a few days before her intended return to London, she had sprained her ankle badly. Rumour had it that John Barton was in her toils again. At least he had been seen calling at the Warings’ house several times since her accident. At one time he had been very much in love with Fenella, and she had encouraged him, only to drop him suddenly.

One evening she telephoned the Rectory to ask Jenny to come round for a chat as she was bored to tears with being unable to walk yet. Arriving at Red Gables, Jenny found the other girl reclining languidly on a sofa in an apricot caftan, with a pile of glossy magazines and an expensive box of chocolates beside her.

Inevitably, the conversation turned to the subject of Simon’s house.

Fenella said, ‘I seem to be the only one on the poor man’s side. People here are so stuffy and old-fashioned.

They’re afraid of everything new and progressive. I can’t wait for the housewarming.’

‘Your ankle will be better and you’ll be back in London long before then,’ said Jenny.

‘Maybe - maybe not. I’m not sure that I haven’t had enough of the theatrical rat-race.’

At this point the door bell rang. As her parents were out for the evening, Fenella asked Jenny to answer it. The caller was John Barton, bearing an enormous bouquet of flowers.

‘Oh, John, how heavenly - but how dreadfully extravagant of you,’ Fenella exclaimed, as he presented this offering.

Jenny saw his thick neck turn red with embarrassed pleasure. But she thought it very cruel of Fenella to start raising his hopes a second time merely because she had nothing else to divert her.

As she was now very much de trop, Jenny did not stay much longer. On her way back to the Rectory, across the green, she met James going for a drink at The Jolly Maltsters.

‘Come and have a cider in the Snug,’ he invited.

They had a drink and potato crisps in the little oak-panelled room off the main bar. Jenny was on the point of telling James about Fenella and John Barton when she realized that it would not be tactful. Indeed talking to him on any subject was rather a strain nowadays. They seemed to have lost the comfortable ease of the time before his proposal.

Presently she glanced through the archway behind the bar in the corner of the Snug and saw, standing in the Public Bar, Simon Gilchrist. As she watched him, he caught sight of her and lifted a faintly surprised eyebrow. Then he disappeared from view, and she knew that he was coming to speak to her.

JAMES was always rather wooden with strangers and after Jenny had introduced the two men, it was left to Simon to make civil conversation.

James might make a little more effort to be sociable, she thought critically. Mrs. Langdon had often joked about her son’s reserve, and how he really preferred animals to people. Jenny had never thought much about it, until now.

But tonight it struck her quite forcibly that people who had no ready small talk were really rather tiresome.

Fundamentally, she was a shy person herself. But Grandpa had long ago impressed on her that it was the duty of a parson and of all his household to bear patiently with bores, to listen sympathetically to those in trouble, and to make friends with the lonely.

Having essayed two or three topics without drawing more than monosyllabic responses from the young veterinary surgeon, Simon glanced at his watch, and said,

‘It’s later than I thought. I’d better be going.’

He put his half-pint mug on the counter, called good night to the landlord, smiled at Jenny and James, and left them.

‘Seems quite a nice chap,’ said James, without much interest.

‘Do you think so? I had the impression you disliked him.

You weren’t very forthcoming,’ Jenny slid off the stool on which she had perched. ‘I must go too.’

From the forecourt of the Maltsters one could see the entrance to the Warings’ drive. As Jenny and James left the public house, she happened to glance in the direction of Red Gables, and to see a car turning into the gateway. It was only a glimpse, and she could not be absolutely certain, but she thought it was Simon’s car.

At school, a few mornings later, she was supervising the tots’ milk break when Maggie Trent, the principal of the school, came into the large, light room where the youngest pupils played and battled from nine until half past twelve.

‘I’ve just been talking to a friend of yours. A Mr.

Gilchrist,’ said Maggie, helping herself to a biscuit from the children’s tin.

‘Really? What was he doing here?’ Jenny asked blankly.

‘He came to see if we would take care of his little girl.’

One of the boys knocked over his beaker and milk streamed across the table. But Jenny did not move.

His little girl, Maggie had said. That must mean that Simon was married.

‘Aren’t you feeling well, Jenny?’ Maggie asked anxiously.

‘I thought yesterday that you looked a little under the weather.’

‘No, no - I’m fine.’ Jenny went to the cupboard for a cloth, and quickly wiped up the milk. She refilled the child’s beaker and told him to be more careful this time.

Then, carefully casual, she said to Maggie, ‘I didn’t realize Mr. Gilchrist had any children, or even that he was married. But of course I know him only slightly.’

‘Oh, she isn’t his own child, but she is in his care now.’

Jenny drew in a sharp breath. ‘Not his own? I don’t understand.’

‘She is his sister’s little girl. His niece.’

Before Maggie could say any more, she was called to the telephone, leaving Jenny impatient to know more details.

‘Now put your beakers on the tray, children, and then I’ll read you another story about the animals on the farm,’

she said, forcing her mind back to the morning’s routine.

But as she read aloud and answered the children’s questions, she found it very hard to concentrate. As soon as her charges had been collected by mothers or au pair girls, she went in search of Maggie before it was time for lunch with the older children. Their school day lasted until half past three in the afternoon.

She found her in the large garden at the back of the house, having ten minutes relaxation before the bell rang.

‘Maggie, about Mr. Gilchrist’s niece ...?’ she began.

‘Oh, yes, I was in the middle of telling you when that tiresome Mrs. Laughton telephoned. Well, the little girl is called Polly, and she’s eight years old. Normally she’d come at the beginning of next term with the new intake. But in the circumstances I’ve agreed to take her immediately,’

Maggie explained.

‘What circumstances?’

Maggie glanced about to make sure none of the children was within earshot. She was an attractive woman in her middle forties, and Jenny had often wondered why she was not married.

‘It’s a pathetic story,’ she said, in a lowered voice. ‘The child is an orphan. Her father was killed on some Army mountaineering expedition in Pakistan when she was a baby. A year ago her mother died.’

‘Mr. Gilchrist’s sister.’

‘Yes, that’s right. The only relatives who could take the child were the father’s brother and his wife,’ Maggie went on. ‘They live in London, and have some older children of their own. I gather they were not too enthusiastic about having Polly. The child’s mother and the brother-in-law’s wife had never got on, apparently. Anyway, last week Mr.

Gilchrist went to see the child and was horrified to find that she was wretchedly unhappy with them. She begged him to take her away, to let her come and live with him.

She was in such a state, poor mite, and seemed so neglected, that he agreed. Much to the aunt’s relief, I daresay. She sounds a most objectionable woman. One of those bridge-playing, social-climbing types. Like our wretched Mrs. Laughton,’ she added wryly.

‘But what on earth is he going to do with her? A man can’t cope with a little girl of eight,’ Jenny said, frowning.

‘He’s going to try. He tells me that he is building a house in your village. It will be ready before long, and then he’ll have a housekeeper. In the meantime he’ll look after Polly as best he can. That’s why he wants her to start school at once. He feels it will help her to get over her unhappiness in London, and of course he must have time for his work.

So she’s starting with us next Monday.’

The lunch bell rang, and the children who had been playing on the swings and climbing frames came running towards the house.

‘I think he’ll manage,’ Maggie said contemplatively. ‘He strikes me as a very capable type. Jenny, you understand how this child must be feeling at the moment. You’ve been through it yourself. She’ll be in some of your afternoon classes. Keep a special eye on her, will you?’

‘Yes, of course. I’ll do anything I can, you know that,’

Jenny said warmly.

Before she left school that afternoon, she telephoned the Rectory and told her grandfather that she would be late home. Then she looked up Simon’s address in the directory, and set out for his flat.

It was on the second floor of a converted Victorian house in the Cathedral Close. Simon came to the door with a butcher’s apron over his trousers, and his shirt cuffs turned back on his forearms. There was an aroma of frying bacon.

His eyebrows went up at the sight of her. ‘Jenny - what brings you here?’

‘I hope you don’t mind. Miss Trent told me about your niece. I wondered if there was anything I could do to help?’

‘Come in.’

After he had shut the front door, he led the way along a passage to a long narrow kitchenette which reminded Jenny of a ship’s galley. A little girl in a pinafore was sitting at the table, carefully buttering slices of bread.