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Authors: Clare Curzon

BOOK: The Body of a Woman
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‘Euclid himself contrived a mathematical algorithm to find the highest common factor, or divisor. Take for instance the numbers 35 and 150. Divide the greater by the smaller and the remainder is 10. Now divide the original 35 by that remainder and the new remainder is 5. Next divide your 10 by that 5 and the remainder is nought. Arriving at zero remainder proves that both original numbers are divisible by the last number you have reached. And that, being the first to obtain zero, is the greatest.'
‘Which was 5,' she said faintly, accepting but still not seeing why. She had always imagined a parallel between mathematics and religion: that reasoning in either was beyond her. Which left only a choice of blind faith or disbelief.
He was beaming at her delightedly through thick lenses which made his eyes into huge, dark beetles, his wire-rimmed spectacles askew on the beaky nose.
Well, she had brought that on herself. To escape sinking further out of her depth, she glanced past him, seemed to recognise an acquaintance and gave a little social wave. ‘It was lovely meeting you again,' she lied, smiled and moved on.
‘Gorgeous hat,' intervened an old goat breathing brandy fumes over her. She kept her gaze ahead, content in the knowledge that a wide brim ensured a certain degree of privacy. Few dared plunge under to kiss since the exercise required some co-operation from the wearer.
Perhaps the best part was the luncheon itself, although she sat in a group of Aidan's choosing. Happily the vein of high-flown technicalities appeared to have dried up, but their pettish talk was mainly of research underfunding, grumbles at the government and (from the more elderly) unpleasant details of ill health.
Leila refused the offer of liqueurs with the coffee, hoping that Aidan might do the same, but he was set on going the whole hog, by now flushed and self-important. Not that there and then it would be noticeably unique.
Returning from the ladies' room she found him alone, strutting about the hall, waving his mobile phone and loudly complaining that he'd sent for the car ten minutes back and the bloody chauffeur hadn't turned up. When he did, Aidan gave him the Ozymandias brush-off.
‘God,' he said, leaning back against the cushions, ‘what a lot of boring old farts they are. I'll be glad to get home.'
Not more, Leila thought, than she would. There was plenty to do there; at least six tea chests remained to be unpacked from the old house, and family guests were expected tomorrow for lunch.
Leila's Uncle Charles was a big man in several ways, but wherever he was invited and took along his middle-aged mistress, he invariably introduced her as his housekeeper. Leila, feminist rebel over this if nothing else, had once questioned what she considered a slight. Janey, subject of the disagreement, was forthright about it. ‘Housekeep is what I do. Wife I'm not. And what we get up to in the bedroom is between him and me.'
She was a totally honest woman, or as near as dammit. She had a flat, rectangular face, with a straight nose and high, straight brows set precisely at right angles to it. The parchment-pale flesh over her cheeks fitted tightly to the bony infrastructure so that her lips often drew apart, making her look slightly aghast; which she never was. Her manner was always calmly pragmatic, and Leila was very fond of her.
They arrived for lunch half an hour early which irritated Aidan although, knowing Charles, he should have expected it. ‘Tell me what I can do to help,' Janey offered.
‘Sit down, relax and stop fussing, woman,' Charles growled. ‘Where are your kids, Aidan? Backpacking to Taiwan or prostrate over exams?'
‘Edward's in the States, fixing himself up with some research into Artificial Intelligence. Chloe's staying with her grandmother in Nice.'
If Aidan had hoped to dazzle the older man he was disappointed.
‘So Eddie's into robotics, eh? Great future in that. Especially in astronavigation. Gone to Houston, I suppose.'
Leila darted him a glance. His response was too instant and informed. She guessed Eddie had been writing to Charles. Which could indicate he was short of money again.
(And Charles not even a blood relative, although both children preferred to ignore that shortcoming.)
‘We thought you might like to look over the house,' she suggested, ‘while I finish getting lunch.'
Charles sat on over his drink, digging himself out for the guided tour with Aidan just minutes before the hot meal was ready for serving.
‘And the wicked old thing knows exactly what he's doing,' Janey remarked confidently, sitting on the kitchen table and swinging her legs like a teenager. ‘As in Alice, “He only does it to annoy/ Because he knows it teases.” I do think you've got yourself a lovely house here, Leila.'
‘It will be, I think, but there's a lot to be done. I'm glad Aidan decided against living in London. I just hope the commuting doesn't get him down.'
‘A grand new job, a grand new house, with both the kids growing up and away. This will be a quite different lifestyle for you both. So what are your plans?'
Leila straightened after transferring the roast beef from cooker shelf to cork mat and paused a moment, hands in oven gloves on her hips. ‘Do you know, Janey, I've no idea. Aidan will be pretty involved with the university, of course.'
‘Damn Aidan's plans; what about your own? You must get yourself a life, Leila. It's more than time.'
‘Well, I have the shop. I'm really grateful to Uncle Charles for setting me up with that.'
Janey grimaced. ‘It wasn't what I'd hoped he would pick on, but you know Charles: two years ago the lease was up for grabs and property hereabouts gets more valuable every year. He felt it was too good to pass up. But running a shop doesn't exactly stretch you, does it?'
Leila smiled. ‘It's a bit like that fully-stocked doll's-house he gave me when I was ten.'
‘And you should have been five. It wouldn't have happened if I'd been around then, my dear.'
Leila laughed. ‘You certainly know how to work on him.'
‘I don't manipulate, Leila. I simply tell him what I'd prefer. Like that dress account he opened for me. I really didn't need it, so once I'd explained he cancelled it and gave me carte blanche at the bookshop instead. Much more sensible. I'm sorry I can't take you for a new swish outfit again, but do let me have a list of what you fancy reading.'
By now Janey had slid off the table, seized some tongs and was arranging roast potatoes for her in a ceramic dish. ‘These are crisped perfectly, Leila. Oh, I do enjoy eating what someone else has cooked.'
Leila reached out and hugged her. This plain-faced little woman dressed as a middle-aged flowerchild was one of the most comfortable people she knew.
At lunch Janey left the men to do the talking, only piping up during the dessert with a question to Leila about picking up her studies again. It had the effect of halting the others' conversation.
‘I should hardly think she'd want to do that,' Aidan decided.
‘She needn't do it at your college. Why not the Open University?'
‘Yes,' Charles agreed wickedly. ‘If she keeps it dark you won't lose face, old man. How about it, Leila? I was sorry you never went on to get your degree. Whatever happened to your early thirst for history?'
The truth was it had got crowded out. Her special fascination was with pre-colonial Africa, and she'd hoped to spend a few years out there in research. Aidan and marriage had put paid to that.
‘Maybe it wasn't all that pressing,' she offered. ‘I hadn't actually fixed my options for if I graduated.'
‘Not if: when,' her uncle said staunchly.
‘A piece of paper!' Aidan cried scornfully. ‘One advantage of passing through the entire academic process is learning that degrees and diplomas aren't worth the paper they're printed on. But of course you must acquire them to dare point out the fact.'
As Janey mumbled into her plate Leila thought she caught ‘ …pissing from a great height.'
When they had consigned the china and cutlery to the dishwasher the two women rejoined the men who had decided on a local stroll. ‘We'll see what your new neighbourhood's like,' said Charles benignly.
‘Beech woods and farmland in that direction,' Aidan offered at the foot of the drive, squire-like and waving a fancy walking-stick. ‘The village is over to your right. Though village or town, we haven't quite decided yet. Anyway there are shops and dwellings, pubs and churches, bus and train stations. That sort of thing. Leila tells me there's even a Tuesday market.'
By common consent they turned left where the road began to twist and narrow, descending between over-arching beech trees.
‘Deer? You really get wild deer?' Janey cried in delight, pointing to the roadside warning.
Leila nodded. ‘Now and again. They don't gallop about as the sign shows. A lone one will just stalk across the road, very dignified and snooty. That's why motorists need to cut speed. Let's go through that gate and strike off into the woods, then we can work back in a circle.'
The roundabout route took a good hour and a half, including a twenty-minute lounge on the sunbaked grass of a large clearing. Then they climbed steeply between silver birches and oaks to a wicket gate in a barbed wire fence. Beyond it were signs of a community presence. An asphalt path, shaded to one side by an avenue of tall lime trees, opened on the other to a sports field where a cricket match was in progress.
‘Bless my soul!' declared Charles as a fielder came streaking towards their boundary, hands cupped for a catch. ‘Surely that's a …'
‘A woman,' Janey completed. ‘They've picked a mixed team. I wonder how well she bats.'
‘We'll never know. According to the scoreboard this is the second side in.'
They strolled around two sides of the field to bring them close to a tiny pavilion. About twenty relatives and friends were sprawled in deck chairs or on the grass to cheer on what were clearly scratch teams kitted out in a wide variety of whites. On folding tables among the spectators were scattered the remains of a picnic lunch.
The scoreboard, a clumsy, wheeled affair with slots for figured cards was being managed by a plump girl rising on tiptoes to record the runs. ‘Nineteen required to win,' she shouted and the little crowd ad libbed with cheers or groans.
‘Theess,' said a tall, rangy young man in a battered panama, carefully placing tongue between teeth to achieve the unnatural Anglo-Saxon double consonant, ‘ees a crehzy ghem.'
Leila smiled at him. He had a long, droll, sad-clown face with a hint of crescent-moon to the profile. When he was older, she imagined, nose-tip and chin would grow closer, with the wide, loopy grin trapped in between. A humorous Mr Punch with an Inspector Clouseau accent, almost too Gallic to be true.
He rolled his eyes at the newcomers, waving an arm towards the field. ‘Can sohmwohn explehn to me pleess ow it works? I think per'aps there are some roools about the weather. But today it as not rhenned and so the ghem goes on forever.'
‘It just feels like that, Pascal,' said the plump girl briskly, and as a shout went up from the field, ‘Oh Lord, was that a four or a six?'
Flat-bellied, in baggy cream flannels of ancient vintage stopping two inches short of his ankles, and topped by an immaculate white silk shirt, the Frenchman must surely be dressed for play. ‘How many did you make?' Leila enquired of him.
‘Do not ask. I just ‘it at the ball when I see eet and I nearly knock out the uhmpire.'
‘He got forty-seven,' said the plump girl kindly. ‘He went in as number five and he may have saved their day.'
But he hadn't. As they watched, his team's score rose bravely by singles and a couple of fours until with a howl from the watchers the heroic schoolboy batsman was run out.
Their last man stomped in. He must have been eighty but he squared his shoulders, hit out low and took a single, leaving the other batsman to lose the match with an easy catch to square leg.
‘So who is playing?' Charles demanded amid the applause and cheerful commiserations.
‘Acrefield Way,' said the plump girl. ‘We have this match every year in June, and a return one in September. One side of the road plays the other; the odds against the evens.'
‘And which has won?'
‘We did,' she said, total partisan. ‘Evens, of course.' Stumps were being drawn as batsmen and fielders came streaming back to surround them.
Charles was grinning as he poked Aidan in the ribs. ‘Go on, admit to everyone that Acrefield's where you live. Next year we'll see you out there with your pads strapped on, showing what a Blue can do.'
‘You know I detest all sports,' Aidan muttered. ‘And anyway our house has a name, not a number.'
‘You really are -' the plump girl asked, ‘the new folks at Knollhurst?'
‘Yes,' Leila admitted happily. ‘And now we can meet our neighbours.'
‘Wohnderfoool,' said Pascal, savouring the word. ‘You leeve on the sehm side of the road as myself. Welcohm to the loozairs.'
They were toasted with flat lager, plied with leftover sausage rolls and the offer of sandwiches drily curling under the scorching sun.
‘A true village community,' boomed Charles, enjoying Aidan's embarrassment at being surrounded by locals he'd had every intention of staying aloof from.
‘Look, we have to get back. I've things to do,' Aidan reminded Leila tetchily.
Charles beamed back at him. ‘If you must. I think I'll stay on for a bit; circulate and get to meet folks, don't y'know. So thanks for a great lunch, and we'll pick you both up Tuesday at eleven on the dot. Best bibs and tuckers, eh? Cheerio then.'
‘Tuesday,' Leila agreed, kissed them both warmly and followed in her husband's wake. Tuesday would be fun. Tuesday meant the thrill of Ascot, and forecasts promised that the good weather would continue unbroken.
 
“Swish” was what the fashion-blind Janey had called the expensive suit. Three years old now, it was still Leila's favourite, folded away in tissue paper between the rare special occasions when she graced it. And now, with the invitation to Ascot, already she'd be wearing it twice in four days.
Its pale shade was the same “apricot creme” that filled the hand-made Belgian chocolates at the shop. The jacket was long and beneath it the short, floaty skirt's handkerchief points drew attention to slim legs and delicate matching sandals.
The fine straw hat, however, was new this year, wide-brimmed and translucent. A classic: nothing idiotic or eye-catching.
Anyway it was Janey who would turn heads, with her strange assembly of charity shop cast-offs. One sure bet was that she and her outfit would later feature in some glossy colour magazine, falsely attributed to one of the famous way-out designers.
Owning one leg of a horse that was running in the three o'clock, Charles was persona grata in the saddling enclosure, chatting almost knowledgeably with jockey and trainer. Although the syndicate's newest member he was the only
one present that day. The chestnut gelding, satin-coated and inclined to prance, was drawn number four.

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