Joanna Trollope - A Village Affair

Thank you so much, but no. I am flying in, literally, on my way to a meeting in Shaftesbury. Look, I've brought this. I've always loved them. It's a lacecap.'

'Oh,' Alice said, 'how kind of you-'

'I suppose,' Lady Unwin said, 'you are no relation to Cecily Jordan?'

Alice said, smiling, 'She is my mother-in-law.'

Lady Unwin grasped Alice's hand with warm enthusiasm.

'My dear! What luck. Now look-' She dropped Alice's hand and opened a large, professional handbag from which she took a slim diary. 'Now then. When can you dine with us? Let me see. Saturday fortnight? The eleventh?'

'Lovely,' Alice said faintly. Thank you, how kind-'

'And if you are speaking to your mother-in-law, tell her I am a devoted fan. I wonder if she'd stoop to talk to our little flower people here? Or perhaps a gardeners' brains trust for the hospice? I must think. Goodbye, my dear-' She waved a ring-glittering hand around the room. 'Too pretty.'

People like that, Alice thought, watching her enviously as she climbed swiftly into her car and turned it competently in the drive, people like that don't feel pain. People like Lady Unwin don't get into muddles and feel that their lives are without point and that they don't see the way forward.

'I've got a crush on Lady Unwin,' she said to Juliet Dunne, later, on the telephone. 'I want to be like her when I grow up.'

'Margot?' Juliet said. 'Don't be an ass. Of course you don't. It's an awful life. Luckily she's an old bossy boots so she rather likes it.'

'But she looks as if she's beyond things being able to hurt her. She looks-'

' Allie,' Juliet said firmly, 'if you don't book a holiday for yourself and Martin sharpish, I shall come and do it for you. Oh Lordy, here's Henry, early, if you please - Don't,' she said, away from the telephone, 'those are for the children's tea. Allie, dins at the big house will be quite sparky, I promise, and you'll love Clodagh. She's been a frightful headache all her life and has been living with some lawyer in New York for years whom she utterly refused to let Margot and Ralph - What? Oh, Henry says he is a millionaire, the lawyer. Anyway, millionaire or not, she's left him and come home so Margot has gone into her ultra-clucking routine. But Clodagh's lovely fun. Allie, I've got to stop and beat Henry up. He's eating all the children's egg sandwiches. Honestly, Allie, Henry is my cross.'

'Am I your cross?' Alice said to Martin at supper.

He leaned across the table and patted her but he wasn't giving her his full attention.

'Of course not.'

'If I'm such a burden to myself, I must be a burden to you-'

'You're tired-'

'But that's the effect, not the cause.'

He had his mouth full. Through his fish pie he said, 'Don't agree.' He finished his mouthful and went on. 'You've taken on so much. The village think you're great. Has the rector been?'

'No-'

'He will, then. I saw him in the shop. Seemed nice.'

'He'll only want me to do things.'

Then say no.'

'But you see,' she said, leaning forward to give him the second helping he always had, 'one of the reasons for living here is to be involved.'

'Not in everything. Not so that you are so tired you can't see straight.'

She said, looking at him hard, 'But I don't think it's that.'

Visibly he flinched. She saw his mind tiptoe away from the turn the conversation was taking, a turn he could not bear. He waved his fork at her.

'Frightfully good, this,' he said.

Two days later, Alice was pushing Charlie in his buggy along the river path. It was a pretty, bright, chill day and there were catkins on the willows and clumps of primroses on the banks. She picked one and gave it to Charlie. He held it respectfully at stiff arm's length and she thought how he was learning because even a few weeks ago he would have tried to eat it.

A man came along the path towards them, a big man in a loose tweed overcoat whom she took to be John Murray-French, and was just raising her arm to wave when she saw he had on a dog collar. When he came nearer, he called, 'Lovely morning!'

'Yes!' she called back.

He said, when he was near enough merely to speak, 'I'm Peter Morris. And you are Mrs Jordan. And I owe you what is known as a pastoral call.'

He was about sixty, vigorous and upright with thick hair and a good colour. He stooped to Charlie who offered him the primrose.

Thank you, old chap.'

'I know you are awfully busy,' Alice said.

He straightened.

'It's a shocking time of year for dying. They totter on all whiter and then, just as it begins to get warmer and lighter, they give up the ghost. It's been one funeral after another. That's why I came out today, to see something starting for once.' He looked down at Charlie. 'You're starting, luckily. Is that your only one?' 'He's my third.'

'You don't look old enough. I was going to come and tell you not to let the old biddies bully the life out of you. They will if they can. They do a wonderful job in the village but they know no mercy. Hope you'll be happy here.'

'Oh, we will-'

'It's a nice place. And you've a lovely house. I used to go up and play poker with John Murray-French in your house. I expect we'll start again in his cottage when he's settled. Two old bachelors together.' He looked down at Charlie again. 'Never had any children. My wife died before we got round to it.'

'I'm so sorry-'

'So was I. I was a sailor. That is, before the old Admiral up there' - he looked up at the blue sky - 'summoned me aboard. You'll find I speak my mind. If I can't abide something, I say so. And that applies to a large number of bishops. Woolly lot. Why don't they just see what the BibJe says about things? You know where you are, with the Bible.'

Alice turned the buggy back towards the village.

'I've never really read it. Not since school.'

'Not surprised. People don't. But sixty-five million copies are sold every year, so someone reads it. You ought to try.'

'I wouldn't know where to begin.'

'No excuse,' Peter Morris said heartily. He took the handles of the buggy from her and began to push.

'I hear they've got you on the community shop.'

'And the flower rota. But I've jibbed at the Sunday Group.'

'Good for you.'

'But the belonging, I mean, doing things, is part of living here-'

'So is getting on with everyone. I always say to newcomers, don't think living in a village is easy. In a town you can pick and choose your friends but a village is like a ship - you have to get on with everyone. Not easy, but not impossible. Hold on old fellow, here come some bumps.'

They emerged on to the broader path below the pub, the Pitcombe Inn. Late daffodils were drooping in the window-boxes and through the partly opened groundfloor windows seeped a stale breath of beer and frying. Peter Morris went on pushing Charlie, past the pub and round the corner up the village street where people hailed him. Alice felt comforted, walking beside him while he pushed and replied briefly to those who greeted him. He stopped at the corner of the lane to The Grey House.

'I'll return the chariot to you.'

'Thank you,' she said. She rather wanted to ask him to come with her.

He said, 'I've a bereavement, a broken leg and a bad case of self-pity to see to before lunch, Mrs Jordan. It was nice to meet you.'

He held out his hand and grasped hers.

'Keep smiling,' he said, and put a finger on the end of Charlie's little nose. 'You too, old fellow.'

Alice dressed three times for dinner at Pitcome Park, and when she finished she was more than half-inclined to throw off her final choice and go back to the first one. But there wasn't time, and in any case, Martin was getting impatient. She came downstairs holding the ends of a heavy Turkish necklace of silver and turquoise behind her neck with both hands and asked him to hook it up for her. He was wearing a dinner jacket and looked very sleek and remote. He turned her back to the light in the hall so that he could see, and muttered over the necklace. She stood with her head bent, holding her pigtail away from her neck to help him, looking down at the deep folds of her red skirt and the toes of her embroidered slippers which said 'Made in Jaipur' on ribbons sewn to the insoles.

There,' he said triumphantly, and gave her shoulder a finishing pat. She let her pigtail fall again, down her back. She had woven it with ribbons for the dinner party and Natasha, who had sat admiringly on the end of her bed watching while she did this, was now sitting on the last step of the stairs trying to achieve the same effect on Princess Power. James sat on the top step crying quietly with'his thumb in. He didn't want Alice to go out and he didn't want to be left with Gwen. He said now, removing his thumb just long enough, 'What if there's a baddie?'

Natasha sighed.

'Quite honestly,' she said, plaiting away, 'you watch too much television.'

James loved television. He watched it, clutching a cushion in his arms so that he could bury his head in it if anything on the screen looked as if it might become frightening. But when the television was turned off, the baddies on it seemed to lurk about his imagination much more powerfully than the goodies. He knew Gwen wouldn't be any good at dealing with his fears because she somehow had something to do with the baddies. Only Alice staying at home would be any good.

He stood up.

'Don't go!'

Martin climbed past Natasha up the stairs and knelt below James.

'Now, come on, old boy. We are only going out for a few hours and we are only going to the Park-'

'Don't go! Don't go!' screamed James, staring at his mother past Martin's face.

Gwen came out on to the landing holding Charlie in her arms. He was wearing a yellow sleeping suit and looked like a drowsy duckling. He saw Alice in the hall and yearned out of Gwen's arms down towards her.

Til be back so soon,' Alice cried up to her two boys, 'so soon. I'll come in and see you the minute I'm back, I promise-'

'I should just go,' Natasha said, not looking up from her task.

'Oh, Tashie-'

James's crying rose to a howl. Martin gave him a despairing look and scrambled back down the staircase to the hall.

'Dear me,' Gwen said, 'what a silly fuss. Now you've set Charlie off-'

Martin hurried Alice towards the front door, wrapping her coat round her.

'Come on, come on-'

'I hate this,' she said unhappily, 'I hate going out when he's so miserable-'

'He only puts it on for you. To try and make you do what he wants.'

'Even so, he is frightened-' Martin said irritably, 'He is frightened of everything.'

He got into the driving seat of the car and leaned across to open the passenger door for Alice.

'He'll be five soon,' Martin said. Three years until prep school. He'll have to pull himself together.'

Alice said nothing. There were at least three things she wanted to say, chief amongst them being that she did not think James ought to be sent away to school at eight, but they only had five minutes' time for talk in the car, and they were bound to disagree and then they would arrive at the Park all jangled up and...

'Are you sulking?'

'No,' Alice said in as ordinary a voice as she could manage.

'I wish James had a quarter of Tashie's spirit.'

'I expect he wishes it too.'

The Park gates, with their boastful stone triumphs, reared up briefly in the headlights' beam, and vanished past them.

'I say,' Martin said, 'this is rather something.'

'D'you think it will be a huge party?'

'Dunno,' Martin said. He peered ahead. Lights were shining through the dark trees.

'It's huge-'

'It sure is.'

Alice thought of the black lace dress discarded on her bed.

'I've got the wrong clothes on-'

'No you haven't. Anyway, it's too late to think that.'

The drive swung round and opened into a floodlit sweep in front of the house; nine bays, ashlar quoins, roof pediment, long sashed windows and, above the front door, the arms of the family, added by a mid-Victorian Unwin who wished the world, or at least that part of it that came to Pitcombe Park, to be in no doubt as to the antiquity of his lineage. Alice leaned forward.