A Rural Affair

17

It was all I could do to stay upright and not give way to my knees, which were advising me, in the strongest possible terms, to sit down. I certainly couldn’t have done without the help of the pew in front, the back of which I clutched, knuckles white. I gazed in horror and disbelief as she got ever closer, a nightmarish veiled vision, smiling coyly and acknowledging friends along the way, presumably on the arm of her father, a small, ruddy-faced man with bulbous eyes. My own eyes were giving them some competition, unable to believe what they saw.

‘Pretty,’ commented Jennie charitably in my ear, because of course we had a bird’s-eye view from the raised choir stalls.

‘Pretty unbelievable!’ I spat, a trifle loudly perhaps, causing even Molly, tone – if not stone – deaf, to turn.

‘Shh!’ Jennie hushed me, alarmed. ‘What d’you mean?’

‘That’s Emma Harding!’ I hissed. ‘The one who was bonking Phil until he up and died a few weeks ago!’

The shock on Jennie’s face gave the outrage on mine a good run for its money. The blood drained from her cheeks and the breath was seemingly sucked from her as if a high-speed vacuum had been applied to various orifices. She stared at me, dumbstruck. Then, as one, we swung back to the bride.

‘I don’t believe it,’ she gasped, joining me in clutching the pew in front.

‘I swear to God,’ I sped on furiously. ‘She sat on my sofa in my sitting room piously explaining how she wouldn’t take a penny from me, before deciding better of it. I’d know her sanctimonious little face anywhere!’

Jennie digested this in horrified silence as Emma and her father proceeded in stately fashion towards us, up to the steps where Simon and the vicar waited by the altar.

‘And all the time she was busy re-bagging Simon!’ Jennie said. ‘Little tart,’ she spat venomously. Sylvia, in front, turned to give her a disapproving look.

‘Scheming little tart,’ I agreed, ignoring Sylvia’s furious frown.

Fortunately for Emma, Luke was still giving it whampo, and our remarks didn’t drift further than our immediate neighbours. We watched, tight-lipped and incredulous. Without much fear of recognition either, disguised as we were in unfamiliar cassock and ruff. Emma’s eyes, anyway, were only for her groom, waiting straight-backed and proudly for her; she wasn’t busy scanning the choir stalls for detractors. As she hove into view under our noses I realized she was much more of a highlighted blonde than a natural one these days, and she was sporting a deep San Tropez tan, her shimmying shoulders, smooth and gleaming, rising from her strapless gown. She glided into position, and as Luke’s final chord drifted away into the rafters she smiled up into her groom’s eyes. Simon’s face was suffused with unadulterated delight as he gazed down.

‘Hussy!’ hissed Jennie, and even Angie leaned around to give her a startled look.

Mike, our vicar, rocking back and forth on the soles of his shoes, said a few words of welcome – as usual mentioning the church roof – and then directed us to our first hymn. I managed to mutter a few words of it but Jennie, beside me, stood mute and pale throughout. Finally, under cover of the last verse, which was delivered at full volume by the congregation and to which we were supposed to provide the descant, she muttered in my ear, ‘I’ve a jolly good mind to say something.’

My eyes widened in horror. She had a determined look on her face that I knew of old. ‘What – you mean at the just-cause-and-impediment stage?’

‘Well, that’s what it’s there for, Poppy.’

‘Like what?’ I yelped. ‘What would you say?’

‘Something like: do you have any idea what cunning little fortune-hunter you’re about to get hitched to? That’s what. Oh, and incidentally, the married man she was bonking was married to my best friend and was the father of her children. That’s sort of what I had in mind.’

‘I’d rather you didn’t,’ I whispered nervously. ‘He clearly loves her cunning little heart for better or worse, and don’t forget that he knew about the married man, probably the children too. The fact that it was my married man, had he known Phil, would probably have been a great comfort to him.’

Yes, I thought, as the hymn ended on a high note, Simon must have thought he was up against some handsome, virile lurve machine. Some piece of work in the sack and some insatiably smooth operator out of it. And, all the time, it had been Phil. Phil Shilling, with his thinning sandy hair, his long nose, the pointy bit of which reddened and dripped when it was cold, his thin lips, his very short temper, not to mention his very short … Well. Not that size matters. But what had she seen in him? This baffled me most, as we sat to watch them make their vows. It actually made me question my own recollection of Phil. Had I not spotted his startling resemblance to George Clooney? Was I perhaps jaundiced, due to a stunning lack of attention? Did he, in fact, have a scintillating wit and a charming manner, but only when I wasn’t in the room? Had I sapped it out of him, squashed him? With my domineering ways, my fish-wife manner? Was it my fault? You don’t have to know me too well to realize this line of thought was well within my psyche; for the finger of blame, even at my most innocent, to pivot suddenly and point inexorably at me. After all, I’d picked him too, hadn’t I? As Emma had. He must have had some endearing qualities.

Heroically, Jennie sat on her hands at the moment critique as the vicar asked the audience. I watched as Simon slipped a ring on her finger and gazed tenderly into her eyes. She could have had that look, that ring, four years ago if it hadn’t been for Phil. Unbelievable. The mind didn’t so much boggle as bulge pneumatically. I cast around desperately for clues.

They’d worked together, of course, which traditionally makes for a heady environment, sexual tension and all that – although Lord knows why, with bright lights, first-thing-in-the-morning faces and unattractive gobbling of sandwiches at desks. I can’t imagine it did much for Phil. But then he was her boss, which was well documented. Yes, that must have been it: the masterful way he called her into his office to discuss new business, poking his nasal hair back with his little finger; that would have got the juices flowing. Or the attractive way he cleared his throat at least twice before he spoke, and then the slow, soft, ultra-patronizing tones he employed, implying he had to go at this speed and volume because the person on the receiving end was not only a moron, but capable of reacting violently if he used anything like a normal tone. It all came back in a horrific rush. The way he’d patiently take a pan off the hob and throw the water away, quietly explaining that potatoes went into cold water, not hot. How many times did he have to tell me? The way he showed me how to clean the work surfaces in the kitchen, calling it Surface Training. The way, when he came home from work, he surreptitiously ran his finger along the windowsill, still in his overcoat, checking for dust. The way, in the early days, I’d bellowed and roared, fists tight with rage, and yes, even thrown a plate. And then later, when the children were around, just buttoned it. Kept the house impeccable and got on with it. Lived life in my head; a whole different scenario, where I was married to someone else, someone lovely. Knowing, in a tiny place in my heart, as Jennie had so succinctly pointed out when he’d died, that one day I’d leave him.

Why hadn’t I lived with him before I got married? OK, I had for a few months but it should have been a few years! No child of mine, I decided vehemently, eyes blazing, would ever go up that aisle, stand at that altar, under the eyes of God, without having lived in sin first.

Emma was slipping her own ring on Simon’s finger now. I looked at her in disbelief. I’d been tied to Phil. Had children by him. Without a great deal of unpleasantness to extract myself, I was lumbered with him. But this girl – I watched as she and Simon knelt together, bowing their heads to be blessed by the vicar – this girl had chosen to delay her life by four years on account of him. What had I missed?

The Gloria was next, whilst the bride and groom disappeared to the vestry to sign the register. Jennie and I belted it out furiously, one or two heads turning to marvel at our volume. Then the happy couple returned and there was another hymn: ‘ransomed, healed, restored, for … ’ No. I couldn’t sing the last bit. Then a word from our vicar, Mike: his address.

I can only assume Mike had been at the sherry again, or had had a row with his wife, Veronica, seated in her usual pew, because even by his standards it was inappropriate. Mike, bearded, Welsh and thoroughly right-on, thought he’d been put on this earth to deliver challenging sermons. He felt it his duty. We, on the other hand, felt it his duty to give comforting soporific ones that we could doze off to, mentally ticking our lists of Things to Do. But Mike believed he was edgy. His theme today was love and the different forms it took. Reasonably innocuous, one might think. And so indeed it started: platonic love, then brotherly love, then paternal, and then erotic – ‘about which I know absolutely nothing!’ he spat venomously, glaring at his wife. Naturally the entire congregation tried not to look at Veronica, who, if she had a spasm at being outmanoeuvred, mastered it admirably, sitting calmly, impassive, while ‘No, Mike, for the last time, I am not doing that!’ rang clearly in her neighbours’ heads.

Another hymn, then Luke got very busy with a Mozart canon, and then, finally, the service was over. As the bride and groom swept back down the aisle to triumphant chords, Jennie and I, pausing only to throw our cassocks over our heads and leave them in a heap in the vestry, marched straight out of the back door. We paused neither to congratulate nor to throw confetti, but most certainly to give vent to our feelings.

‘Bitch!’

‘Slut!’

‘I cannot believe it,’ I seethed as we hustled down the little side path together, avoiding the main entrance. Handbags were clutched fiercely to chests.

‘And how could she get married here!’ squealed Jennie. ‘In your church, where you got married, and where you’ve just buried your husband – her lover!’

‘Quite!’ I agreed, stopping still a moment as the impact of this hit me. I swung around. ‘She’s going to have to walk straight past him,’ I breathed. ‘He’s right next to the path.’

We watched as the bridal procession did indeed make its way out of the main door and past Phil’s very prominent, very fresh mound of earth. Emma didn’t give it a second look.

‘That is one very shrewd operator,’ observed Jennie, narrowing her eyes.

‘Cool as a cucumber,’ I agreed, marvelling at the magnitude of her gall.

‘And poor Simon has no idea what he’s taking on. What a piece of work he’s just married.’

‘Will you tell him?’ I asked, as we turned and hurried away. ‘I mean, that it was my husband whose death he was effectively waiting for?’

Jennie gave it some thought. ‘No.’ she said finally. ‘I won’t be speaking to Simon again. Not now, not after who he’s married. I had hoped we might stay friends but I doubt our paths will ever cross. I’m sure he won’t come to the book club now. Odd, though, isn’t it?’ She wrinkled her brow as she looked into the distance. ‘He clearly thinks he knows her inside out. She lived next door, you know; they grew up together. Her father was their gardener. They lived in the grounds, in the cottage.’

‘Oh … right.’ I remembered sitting in my car outside Meadow Bank Cottage, in the grounds of Meadow Bank House. ‘So presumably they’ll live in the big house soon, when Simon inherits it. Didn’t you say his father had died?’

‘Yes, and the mother wants to move out because she thinks it’s too big for her.’

‘Perfect timing, then, once again, from Miss Harding,’ I said grimly in disbelief.

‘Exactly,’ said Jennie as we reached the gate. ‘Well, good luck to them,’ she went on acidly. ‘You know what they say: if you marry money you pay for it. And she clearly has married him for that. If she loved him she’d have married him years ago.’ She shuddered. ‘Poor Simon. It’s making my own marriage look increasingly less flawed, I must say. Comparatively speaking, of course. Dear old Dan,’ she said almost fondly. ‘At least I didn’t marry him for his money. I’d have been sorely disappointed if I had. Oh, hello. Talk of the devil.’

We were in the lane now, which led in one direction to the gallops where the race horses trained, and in the other, up the hill to Wessington, where no doubt the reception was being held – presumably not at the bride’s house but in the zonking great grounds of the groom’s, next door. Dan was standing in the middle of the road beside an old Morgan, one of his many disastrous cars. The bonnet was up, steam was billowing, and Dan was scratching his head.

‘Oh, what a surprise. He’s broken down,’ observed Jennie, but she didn’t say it with quite the vehemence she was capable of. ‘And there I was, thinking he’d come to whisk me away. My knight in shining armour.’

‘Bit of a problem with the radiator valve!’ Dan called to us cheerily over the raised bonnet, as clouds of steam threatened to envelop him. One or two cars had already stopped behind him in the lane.

‘Is there, darling? Never mind,’ Jennie cooed back. ‘I’m sure you’ll fix it.’ She gave me a grin. ‘It’s my new approach. It’s called Not My Problem. Can’t think why I hadn’t thought of it before.’ And off she swept, tossing her husband a dazzling smile, in the manner of a woman who was off to open a bottle of rosé.

It was, however, a problem for the wedding party. Church Lane was narrow, and with Dan blocking it there was no way the bottle-green vintage car, wide and Chitty-chitty-bang-bang in style, could get past. The happy couple had already climbed into the back, behind the elderly chauffeur, ready for the off. They looked increasingly unhappy as Dan failed to budge.

‘Can’t you move that thing?’ Simon stood up commandingly in the back. He and his bride were being showered by just a little too much confetti. One or two of the village boys were picking it up off the road, thinking it a huge lark.

‘Stop that!’ Emma snapped at them as a fair amount of gravel came with it.

‘Sorry, old boy. Seems to be caput.’ Dan grinned back pleasantly.

‘Well, push it, can’t you?’

Dan shrugged and looked away up the hill to Wessington. Very much uphill, so no, he couldn’t, not on his own.

With a sigh, Simon vaulted smartly out of the back of the car. Following suit, one or two of the male wedding guests surged to help: young men in morning coats, testosterone-fuelled, keen to show off to their girlfriends, then get to the champagne. Together they made a big show of taking off their jackets and handing them to the girls, rolling up their sleeves while Dan got in the driving seat of the Morgan amid much laughter. I, however, found my legs taking me, not across the road to my own house and my own bottle of rosé, but towards the lychgate at the bottom of the church path, where the vintage car was parked.

Emma’s eyes on the debacle ahead were full of irritation. She sat on the red-leather seat gripping her bouquet, tight-lipped. This was a girl who got what she wanted all right, I thought as I approached. A girl with a huge sense of entitlement. She wouldn’t see the funny side of this, her wedding car held up by a clapped-out old banger. Wouldn’t throw her head back and roar with laughter at her new husband pushing it up the road, saying it would be one to tell the children. And neither would Phil, it occurred to me abruptly. He’d have been very cross. As she was. How alike they were, I realized; how similar. They’d have got on like a house on fire. My heart suddenly lurched for Simon, laughing with his mates as he pushed Dan up the road in his Morgan. Love surely was blind, and particularly when it became fuelled by the lack of it. Became infatuation. Which wasn’t the same thing at all. I was beside the vintage car now, where Emma sat alone, glaring.

‘Congratulations,’ I said quietly.

Her head turned and her eyes came to rest on me. They took a moment. Then her face blanched. She looked stunned.

I smiled. ‘You look like you’ve seen a ghost. Not the one back there in the churchyard, is it?’ I jerked my head.

She inhaled, sharply, between barely parted lips.

‘I’ve just been at your wedding,’ I said. ‘Singing for you, in the choir. I live here, remember? It’s my church. My village. Lovely service. Wonder if Phil enjoyed it?’

She glanced around quickly, looking for her groom, for moral support. Her eyes were panicky. And Simon was coming back, but slowly, brushing his hands on his trousers, stopping to share a joke with his ushers. She was on her own.

‘And don’t think you’ll get a penny out of me,’ I said carefully. ‘Because you won’t. Not one penny. You’ve got a flaming nerve, Miss Harding. Or should I say, Mrs Devereux.’

I turned and walked away, towards home, towards my well-earned drink. I felt just a little taller and a little light-headed too. It isn’t often you hope to spoil a bride’s day, I thought as I crossed the road to my cottage, but I sincerely hoped I’d wrecked that one.