A Village Affair

Richard looked at Alice. She took a leisuredly swallow of wine, returned his look and said, without any emphasis, 'He's being fed fish curry by the youngest child of Pitcombe Park.'

Richard's mouth twitched.

'Is he now.'

Alice nodded.

'I promise you.'

'Isn't that,' Richard said measuredly, 'something.'

But Alice couldn't reply because she was suddenly seized with a helpless fit of giggles.

On his way home from the office, Martin stopped at Pitcombe shop to buy seeds and brown garden twine. He was slightly irritated that Cecily had landed him with Stuart Mott who was the kind of gardener whose surface friendliness concealed a sneering contempt for any employer's opinion. If it wasn't for Stuart, Martin would not now be buying carrot and cabbage seed, both of which he considered wasteful to grow and dull to eat. He had meant to start Stuart's employment with the friendly firmness he had heard his father use to junior colleagues on the telephone, but Stuart's faintly curled lip had thrown him off key from the outset. When Cecily had telephoned him the other night with some idiotic objection to Clodagh as a friend of the family, Martin had been so aggrieved with her over her interference about Stuart that he had been quite short with her and the call had ended very coolly on both sides. Of course, being Martin, he had repented of this and had rung back to say sorry and his mother had said she quite understood, they were all clearly rather on edge just now, and no wonder. When she said that, Martin's regret quite evaporated and he wished he hadn't bothered to apologize. Standing in the shop now, spinning a rickety wire rack of seed packets, he felt indignation bubbling comfortably up in him all over again. This was aggravated further by Mr Finch coming stealthily up to him - he knew Martin was no candidate for bursts of lyric poetry - and saying, 'You've an exotic supper to look forward to tonight, Mr Jordan.' Martin said, without looking up from the printed merits of Nantes Express carrots, 'Have I?'

Lettice Deverel, who disapproved exceedingly of Mr Finch's separate and obnoxious manner to his upperand working-class customers, and who was halfobscured by a plywood unit of paper plates and doilies, said firmly, 'Mr Jordan's supper is no concern of yours, Mr Finch.'

Mr Finch tiptoed back to his counter and began to make an unnecessary pyramid of nougat bars.

'Miss Clodagh was in this afternoon,' he said in self-justifying tones, 'buying nutmeg and cinnamon. She told me they were to put in Mr Jordan's supper because Mrs Jordan is away taking the children to their grandmother.'

Lettice Deverel emerged and put a packet of sunflower seeds for the parrot down in front of Mr Finch.

'Two wrongs don't make a right, Mr Finch.'

'Seems to me,' Martin said in a jocular voice, coming forward with his seeds, 'that everyone round here knows all about my supper but me.'

'Village life, Mr Jordan,' Lettice Deverel said.

Martin offered Mr Finch a five pound note.

'Is Miss Glodagh getting supper for me, then?'

'I couldn't,' said Mr Finch in offended tones, taking the note between finger and thumb, 'possibly say.'

Lettice and Martin emerged into the street together.

'He's a dreadful fellow,' Lettice said, jerking her head backwards, 'but then, running a village shop is enough to addle the sanest wits.'

Martin laughed.

'He's not so bad. Made me rather look forward to my evening.' He bent to open his car door. 'Can I give you a lift?'

Lettice shook her head.

Thanks, but no. My conscience is burdened by the fruit cake I ate for tea and will only be quieted by a little vigorous exercise.' She looked at Martin with sudden keenness. The whole village will know you and Clodagh had dinner together by tomorrow. Take no notice. Tell Clodagh from me that it's time she went off and got herself a proper job. A job where she is stretched.'

Martin got into the car and started it and went slowly up the hill. As he passed Lettice, she brandished her thumb stick at him, and a bit further on he passed Stuart Mott talking to Sir Ralph's tractor driver, both of whom gave a brief, unsmiling nod. When he turned into his own drive, the kitten raced across his path in its usual ritual kamikaze greeting, and there - his insides gave a brief and pleasurable lurch - was Clodagh, taking washing off the line in the orchard beyond. She was wearing jeans and a black jacket embroidered with big, rough, silver stars.

He got out of the car and went to lean on the orchard fence. It was a soft pale early evening and some of the fat buds on the apple trees were beginning to split over the bursting pinkness within. The air, having smelled of cold or mud for months, smelled of damp earth. The hens were muttering about in the grass around Clodagh's feet. Last weekend, she had shown Martin how to measure their progress in coming into their first lay by the number of fingers you could place between the pelvic bone and the breast bone. 'Not yet,' she had said, 'it ought to be four fingers. But coming on.' He bent over the fence to make clucking noises at the hens, of which they sensibly took no notice, and then he said to Clodagh's galaxied back, 'What's going on?'

'Don't sound so thrilled,' Clodagh said, dropping the last garments into the basket at her feet. 'Alice meant to get home but your mother had killed the fatted calf so she couldn't. And you aren't deemed capable of scrambling your own eggs.'

'Wouldn't dream of it,' Martin said, opening the gate for her, 'if you're the alternative.'

'You have very bizarre fish instead.'

'Wonderful.'

He followed her into the house and the kitten joined them, mewing faintly in anticipation of supper. Clodagh stopped and scooped it up and dumped it on the laundry.

'You pig, cat. You've known there was fish in the house, all day, haven't you.'

'The whole village is talking about us. Apparently, you told Mr Finch you were getting supper for me.'

'Yippee,' Clodagh said. 'At least it'll take their minds off Pa's rent rises-'

'Rent rises?'

'I do believe he's putting up cottage rents a whole three pounds a week.' She put the basket down on the kitchen table and picked out the kitten, who began at once to purr like a generator. 'Anyway, you'll know all about that soon, won't you. As our new family lawyer?'

Martin frowned. Spontaneity was one thing, indiscretion quite another. He hadn't even been up to the Park to see Sir Ralph.

'What do you know about that-'

'Quite a bit.'

'I suppose your father talks to you?'

'Yes, he does. But this is different. This was my idea.'

'Your idea? But Henry-'

'Henry suggested your firm. I suggested you. Simple as that.'

Martin was not at all sure if he was pleased about this. Being beholden to Sir Ralph for a benevolent idea was one thing, but to feel you were simply the result of a chance and frivolous notion of Clodagh's was another.

'You're frowning,' Clodagh said.

'You make the whole thing sound so - so off the cuff-'

'It was, rather.'

Martin said stiffly, 'I don't like that.'

Clodagh watched him.

'If it had been a man, my father or my brother, you wouldn't mind. It's only because a woman suggested it, you feel insulted.'

'No.'

Clodagh went off to the larder and came back carrying a covered plate and an onion. Martin was still standing rather woodenly by the kitchen table. She put down the plate and the onion and came up to him.

'Just because I thought of you,' she said, 'doesn't mean it's a silly suggestion. Pa wouldn't have taken it up if it were silly, even for me. He was really thrilled. I promise you. You'll see, when you go and talk to him.'

Martin looked at her warily. His gaze was defensive.

'I don't like favours.'

'Martin-'