A Village Affair

CHAPTER EIGHT

Morning sunshine, coming in through the tall east windows of Pitcombe Park, fell upon the breakfast table, upon a jar of marmalade made by Mrs Shadwell the previous January, upon folded copies of The Times and the Doily Mail and upon a large biscuit tin bearing a Dymo-stamped label reading 'Her Ladyship's Ryvita'. Her Ladyship was not eating Ryvita. She was drinking a cup of coffee very slowly and trying very hard to concentrate on doing that, rather than on quarrelling with her husband.

The subject was Clodagh. The subject between them in the last six weeks had almost exclusively been Glodagh. At first they had been united in loving anxiety and relief at having her home, and then in approving pleasure over her friendship with The Grey House, but then Sir Ralph had begun to devise schemes to make it possible for Clodagh to remain at home, financial schemes, and what had been a mere crevice of difference between them had widened into a rift.

Margot Unwin loved her youngest daughter with quite as much energy as her husband did, but with more levelness of head. Clodagh's adolescence, a roller-coaster ride of scrapes and truancies and broken-hearted friends who always seemed more loving than loved, had made her mother aware that she needed, in riding parlance, a short rein. Clodagh's elder brother and sister had both been quite safe on longer reins, being more orthodox, less volatile and much duller, and Sir Ralph had always persisted in believing that Clodagh, left to herself, would emerge as tractable and conventional as young Ralph and Georgina had done. Attempt to coerce Clodagh into anything, he had always maintained, and it's like throwing a lighted match into a barrel of gunpowder; give her all the space she needs and she will come, in her own time, as good as anyone could wish.

'Don't,' Margot Unwin said, 'say gunpowder to me again.'

'Sorry,' Sir Ralph said, faintly huffy. He had grown fond of the image, over the years. 'I am only trying to illustrate what I believe.'

'I know what you believe.'

Sir Ralph began to butter toast vigorously.

'And I'm right. Her coming home from America proves I'm right. She couldn't, she found, be as bohemian as she thought she could, so she came home, very sensibly.'

'I don't think,' Margot said, putting down her coffee cup, 'you could call being half-engaged to an immensely successful American lawyer very bohemian. I suppose you mean it was bohemian of them to live together. And it wasn't sense that brought Clodagh home, it was the need of refuge-'

There was a knock and the door opened. Shadwell and two liver and white springer spaniels looked in.

'Mr Dunne's here, sir. And Mr Jordan. I've put them in the library. Mr Dunne said not to hurry as he knows he's early.'

'Thank you, Shadwell.'

The door closed. Sir Ralph rose and shook out his huge napkin like a sail cracking in the wind.

'We'll talk about this later, Margot.'

She did not move, but she said in her most commandingcommittee voice, 'You must know, Ralph, that I absolutely disapprove of what you are about to suggest to Henry. It is quite wrong. It is unfair to young Ralph and to Georgina and it will be disastrous for Glodagh. I may not be physically present at the meeting, but my astral self will be.' She paused, and then added, 'Very forcibly.'

And then she picked up the Daily Mail, shook it flat and, with the skill of long practice, opened it at Nigel Dempster.

'Who are all those?'

Henry Dunne squinted up at the marble busts along the top of the library bookshelves.

'Roman emperors, I think.'

'Heavens,' Martin said, 'fieol?'

'Oh yes, Grand Tour stuff. This room was done about seventeen-eighty.'

'It's amazing-'

'It's lovely,' Henry said, with the carelessness of one quite familiar with amazingness, 'isn't it?'

It was a long room, with three floor-length windows at one end, lined entirely with books. Over the books at one end was pinned a huge map of the estate. By the windows a vast partner's desk was heaped with papers, and parallel to the fireplace an amiable elderly red leather sofa faced a handsome portrait of the Unwin who had made the room and furnished its corners with a marble goddess, a Roman senator and a bronze, after Flaxman, of St Michael slaying Satan. The rest of the room was comfortingly filled with map cases and loaded tables and dog baskets. Here and there enormous hippeastrums reared out of Oriental urns, and turned their majestic striped trumpets to the light. The air of the room smelt of man and dog and polished leather and history. Martin sniffed. This, he thought in the phrase he had once used to himself about Alice, this is something.

Sir Ralph and two spaniels came in on a benevolent tide of greeting. He was carrying a file of papers and was followed by Shadwell with a tray of coffee. They sat down round the fire after shaking hands, and the third baronet looked down on them from his place on the overmantel panelling as he had looked down for two hundred years already. Sir Ralph waved an introductory hand towards him.

'Sir John. His elder brother, Ralph, died when only a child. He's the only John Unwin in an unbroken line of Ralphs, back to James I. So you see,' handing Martin a cup, 'y°u'U be taking on, if you agree, over three hundred of us.'

'Henry did say-'

'Did he? Good. Excellent. I wanted to see you at once but Henry is frightfully cautious. Aren't you, Henry? Insisted on seeing you first. What do you say?'

Martin was afraid that his eagerness was written on his face.

'Well, of course, Sir Ralph, if the idea meets with the approval of my senior partners, I'd be more than happy-'

'I'll make sure they're happy. My dear fellow, of course they'll jump at it. Can't tell you what a difference it will make, having you a stone's throw away.'

Henry, recollecting how he and Juliet were constantly at the mercy of midnight telephone calls about estate business, busied himself with his coffee cup. Martin could discover the job's little hazards for himself.

'The first thing I want to discuss, you see - and this is urgent - is my provision for Clodagh. I know,' Sir Ralph said, waving a dismissive hand at Martin's rising objection of professional inability even to hear the legal problem of someone who was not yet his client, 'you can't tell me anything yet. But I want to tell you. Because it's the first thing I'll want you to deal with.'

He got up and went off for the coffee pot. Behind his back, Henry signalled Martin to smiling acquiescence about anything Sir Ralph might say, however bizarre. He came back and refilled their cups with alarming swoops of his tweed-clad arm.

'Of course, this house and estate go to young Ralph. Goes without saying and I'm only thankful he wants it and doesn't feel he ought to be running a soup kitchen in Stepney or some pop group thing. As to the girls, I've got a couple of farms in trust for them, Georgina's in Wales, Clodagh's not far from here, near Wimborne. They aren't supposed to have them until my death but I want Clodagh to have hers now. I think she needs the income. What do you think? Am I going to have a problem unscrambling the trust? To be honest, Martin, I don't like problems.'

Martin swallowed.

'It's a bit difficult, not knowing anything about-'

'But you must,' Sir Ralph said with energetic friendliness, 'know about trusts. You are a lawyer.'

'There are a lot of complications,' Henry said, coming to the rescue. 'And until Martin has seen all the documents-'

'It's an express trust,' Sir Ralph said to Martin.

Martin shifted and put down his coffee cup.

'Usually, if all the beneficiaries of a trust are of age and in agreement, they can put an end to a trust-'

'Excellent!'

'But of course, that may not apply in this case because of other factors I don't know about.'

'What I want, you see,' Sir Ralph said, turning the full charm of his smile upon Martin, 'is to be able to provide Clodagh with enough to live on, without her feeling under pressure to take the wrong kind of job. You have seen enough of Clodagh to agree with me that that must not happen.'

Henry, seeing on Martin's face the as yet unspoken question of what was the right kind of job for Clodagh, cleared his throat loudly and frowned.

'Yes,' Martin said lamely, to Sir Ralph.

Sir Ralph went over to the windows.

'Come here and have a look.'

Martin followed.

'Seq all the new planting? Every tree indigenous. I hate to tell you how many elms we lost and now Henry tells me there's honey rot in the beech hanger. Well, what d'you say?'

He turned and faced Martin.

'My trees, my tenants, my daughter. You and Henry between you, hm? Keep us all in order. Ring Henry later in the week when you have told your partners, and he'll put you in the picture.' He held out his hand and shook Martin's warmly. 'I'm so pleased, so very pleased. Give my love to your pretty wife.'

On the days when Clodagh did the school run, for Alice, Alice painted. She began to paint much bigger, more abstract things, and to think, much more than she ever had before, about colour and light, as well as shapes. When she wasn't painting, or doing things for the children or the house, Clodagh took her round the village, to introduce her to all the cottagers. Clodagh knew everyone. As a child she had made a point of it, partly out of social curiosity and partly out of an appetite for oddness. The village had grown perfectly used to her, so used that she got slapped and shouted at along with their own children. In the village she learned obscene words for parts of the body which she took back to the Park to alarm Georgina with, and scrumped for apples (this was pure affectation for the Park glasshouses yielded white peaches and Black Hamburg grapes) and joined the Bonfire Night gangs that put jumping jacks in village dustbins. Watching the dustbins dance, clattering their lids, had been, she told Alice, one of the purest joys of her life.

In return, the village preferred her to any other Unwin, even though, inconsistently, they would have been shocked to see Sir Ralph or Lady Unwin being as impudently approachable as Clodagh. She had entree everywhere. Alice, a little self-conscious and anxious not to intrude or patronize, went in her wake in and out of a series of sitting rooms, where the television blethered on unwatched in corners and where old beams and fireplaces had been boxed in with plywood to modernize their old-fashioned shortcomings. She drank a good deal of dark tea, listened to endless monologues about health, and helped to wash up in kitchens where potato chips and motorbike parts bubbled companionably away side by side in their pans of oil. In the newer cottages picture windows let in blank blocks of light and fireplace surrounds rose in pyramidal steps dotted with brass animals and ornamental china thimbles. There weren't enough children, Alice noticed, not enough prams in back gardens and tricycles blocking hallways.

'Can't afford it,' Sally Mott told her. 'No one can afford to live here except in a tied cottage. Our Trevor's had to go to Salisbury when he married, same as our Diana did. Pitcombe's going to fill up with outsiders now, once the old ones have gone. Dad's cottage now-'

'I expect we'll sell it to weekenders,' Clodagh said, 'from London. Don't you think?'

'You can laugh-'

'I'm not laughing, Sally. I'm teasing. Lots of employment for all of you, looking after weekenders, so why should you complain?'

Sally Mott had learned a great deal about complaining from Rosie Barton. Rosie's life ran the way Rosie wanted it to and she had been anxious to put some of the village women on their guard about being exploited. Sally was ripe for such views, ripe for grievance. She gave up her job cleaning at the Park soon after Rosie Barton came to the village, and she wasn't going to start again, scrubbing for weekenders, not for anyone, thank you.

Lettice Deverel, too, had her views on weekenders. Clodagh took Alice to meet her as well as to drink Nescafe and eat shortbread in the comfortable rectory kitchen. Lettice Deverel said that mud always got the better of phoney weekenders in the end and Peter Morris said they were good for the collection but not really much good for the congregation. When Clodagh and Alice had gone, Peter went up to see Lettice and ask her if she thought Alice wasn't looking very much happier and very much better. Lettice agreed, but she did not sound particularly pleased.

'Sometimes, you give a very good imitation of being a crabbed old spinster-'

'Clodagh Unwin,' Lettice said, 'needs a good hard job. She's simply avoiding the issue, queening it over that poor girl.'

'Poor Polly,' said the parrot suddenly. 'Pretty Polly. Poor Polly is a sad slut.'

'Why poor?'

Lettice Deverel turned on her kitchen tap and ran water vigorously into a stout black kettle.

'Because two reasons. One, Clodagh is indulging herself. Two, because Alice Jordan is ripe for the picking.'

Peter Morris began to laugh. After a while, having pondered the joke to itself, the parrot joined him.

'So you disapprove of an excellent friendship?'

'I disapprove of people being made fools of.'

'Fool!' the parrot cried with energy. 'Fool! Good morning. Who is a pretty bagpiper, may I ask?'

'Oh dear,' Clodagh said, pushing Charlie up the village street beside Alice, 'Lettice is disapproving of me again. She does it about every three years and she will never tell me why.'

'Perhaps,' Alice said, 'she pays you the compliment of thinking you ought to know why.'

'This time I do know. And what's more, she's ahead of me-'

'What do you mean?'

A car drew up beside them and a woman's voice said clearly, 'Mrs Jordan?'

They stopped. The face looking out of the driver's window was brightly made up under careful hair, and surmounted a blue blouse tied at the neck with a bow. Clodagh, behind Alice, hissed faintly.

'Cathy Fanshawe, Mrs Jordan. I've been meaning to come for weeks, but what with one thing and another, I've been so rushed I haven't known whether I'm coming or going. It's the Conservatives-'

Alice stooped to the car window.

'Conservatives?'

'My husband is the local chairman. We're so thrilled you've moved in. Geoffrey said-'

Clodagh gave Alice a sharp dig from behind.

'Mrs Fanshawe, I'm afraid that I'm not really a Conservative-'

'Surely,' Mrs Fanshawe said, thinking of The Grey House and Martin's appearance and the school run to Salisbury in unmistakable uniform, 'you can't think the Liberals are any kind of alternative just now?'

'No,' Alice said, 'I don't. I-'

Clodagh came to stoop beside her.

'She's a babe in arms about politics, I'm afraid. And about most things. Too sad.'

Mrs Fanshawe looked nervous. A well cared-for hand crept up to adjust the bow on her blouse.

'Perhaps your husband-'

'He,' said Clodagh firmly, 'is worse. Much worse. Practically a Communist.'

Alice began to shake.

'So sorry-'

'Perhaps I might just call one evening? With the forms.' She looked directly at Alice. 'We could have a proper chat about it.'

Helplessly, Alice subsided in silent laughter on the pavement. Charlie watched her gravely from his pushchair.

'You see?' Clodagh said to Mrs Fanshawe. 'So sad. Not fit to make an adult decision really. I don't think the Conservatives could want her. Do you?'

Pink with indignation, Mrs Fanshawe put her car into gear.

'It's really,' Clodagh said gloomily, 'a hopeless case.'

Alice gave a little yelp. Mrs Fanshawe wound her window up with great speed and let the clutch out too suddenly in her agitation so that the car leaped forward like a kangaroo. Across the street, old Fred Mott watched them from behind his cactus collection; the jerking car, Alice still sitting giggling and helpless on the ground, Clodagh standing above her in an attitude of the profoundest regret. He began to giggle faintly himself.

'What's up with you,' his granddaughter-in-law Sally said, bringing in a bowl of pot noodles from the kitchen.

'Them girls,' Fred said, wheezing. 'Them girls there. Them bad girls.'

Sally looked.

'You don't want to take no notice of them. That's just Miss Clodagh, bullyragging again. That's all.'

Clodagh put her hand under Alice's arm.

'Get up, do. Honestly. What will people think? First you upset nice Mrs Fanshawe who utterly worships my mother and then you sit on the ground and giggle like a glue-sniffing schoolkid. Charlie's quite shocked.'

'Bah,' Charlie said.

Alice struggled up, wiping her eyes.

'Clodagh, you are absolutely shameless-'

'On the contrary. I'm trying to get you off the street and into the privacy of your own home before the whole village thinks you are on the bottle.' She waved across at Fred Mott, chumbling through his pot noodles, and he grinned back and shook his spoon. 'If Sally Mott has seen us, we might as well be tomorrow's headline in the Sun.' She began to push Charlie briskly uphill, talking as she went. Weak with spent laughter, Alice followed.

'Stupid,' Sally Mott said, resolving to tell Gwen. 'Too old to behave like kids.'

'I like a bit of fun,' Fred said, letting the noodles dribble down his chin. He glared at Sally. 'I like a gay girl, I do.'

After lunch, Clodagh took Charlie upstairs and put him in his cot and pulled the cord of his musical box so that it began to play 'Edelweiss', over and over, luring him into sleep. Charlie liked his cot. He put his first finger into his mouth, turned on his side and gave himself over to the tinny little tune. Clodagh dropped a kiss on his warm round head, drew the curtains and went down to the kitchen where Alice was putting plates into the dishwasher before she went up to the studio to paint until Natasha and James came home. The room was full of contented post-lunch quiet. Alice shut the dishwasher door and straightened up. 'Don't go,' Clodagh said. She was standing just inside the doorway to the hall, still holding the doorknob in her hand.

'What, not paint? But I thought-'

'I want,' Clodagh said, 'to talk to you.'

Alice found she was holding her breath. She stayed where she was, by the dishwasher, silhouetted against the window. Clodagh went round the table to the two wooden armchairs by the Aga, lifted Balloon off one, and sat down with him on her knee.

'Come here,' Clodagh said. 'Come here where I can see you.'

Alice came, very slowly. She sat opposite Clodagh, upright and on the alert as if bracing herself for a row.

'What-'

'Wait,' Clodagh said, stroking Balloon.

'What do you mean, wait-'

'Wait until you aren't exuding anxiety and apprehension like a blue flame.' She looked at Alice. 'What are you afraid of?'

'I'm not afraid.'

'Sure?'

'Only - excited afraid-'

'That's all right then.'

There was a pause. It was a silent pause except for Balloon's purring and, far away, a distant aeroplane. It's two o'clock, Alice thought, two o'clock on a Wednesday afternoon...

'It's time,' Clodagh said. 'Isn't it.'

'Time? Time for what-'

Clodagh sighed gently.

'Time for me to tell you that I love you. Time for us to begin.'

Alice said nothing. She sat absolutely still and stared at Clodagh. Clodagh picked Balloon off her knee, kissed his nose and put him on the floor. Then she looked back at Alice.

'You know what a spoiled brat I am,' Clodagh said. 'You know how I always want what I want right now. Well, by my standards, I've waited for you because I... I knew it was going to be worth it. I've waited since I saw your reflection in the mirror when you came into the drawing room at home and I felt my stomach turn over. Love at first sight. Love Alice.'

She stood up and crossed the few feet between them and knelt in front of Alice.

'What about you?'

In a slightly strangled voice, Alice said, 'Me?'

'Yes. You. What do you feel about me?'

Alice leaned forward and put her hands either side of Clodagh's face.

'I feel,' Alice said, 'that I hate it when you go out of the room.

'More,' Clodagh said.

'Everything I do with you is more fun, better, than anything I do with anyone else or by myself. I like myself better. I feel more - more able. I'm so happy,' Alice said, putting her arms round Clodagh's neck and burying her face in her hair. 'I'm so happy I feel quite mad.'

Clodagh undid Alice's arms so that she could push her away a little.

'Kiss me.'

Alice bent again.

'No,' Clodagh said, 'on second thoughts, I'll kiss you. I think you need a bit of handling.'

After a considerable time, watched detachedly by the kitten, Clodagh drew away and said, 'Wrong again. You don't need any handling. You just need lots more of the same.'

She stood up.

'Come on.'

'What do you mean?'

'I mean bed.'

Alice gave a tiny gasp.

'Bed!'

Clodagh knelt and undid Alice's shirt and put her hands inside and then, after a few seconds, her mouth. Alice sat with her eyes closed. Relief flooded slowly, heavily through her, relief and release and a sensation of glorious blossoming, like a Japanese paper flower dropped into water and swelling out to become a huge, rich, beautiful bloom. Clodagh turned her face sideways so that her cheek rested on Alice's skin.

'Look at you,' she said, and her voice was as thick as honey, 'look at you. You're like all bloody women. You thought, didn't you, that when two women fall in love, one at least has to have the same sex experience as a man. And that there has to be a woman one, one that behaves as a woman does, with a man. Are you beginning to see? Are you beginning to see that it's so great for us because we know what the other wants because we want it ourselves?' She took her face away and looked up. Alice was in a kind of trance. Clodagh stood up and then bent to take Alice's hands.

'Alice,' she said, 'Alice. Come with me.'