A Village Affair

He stopped the car outside the very pretty facade. The front door was open. A kitten, past the sweet stage of babyhood and fast approaching a gawky adolescence, was sitting just inside in a patch of sunlight, washing nonchalantly. It took no notice of him.

'Alice!' Anthony called.

There was no reply. He walked into the hall and across it into the kitchen. There was no one there but several people had recently had tea and there was a muddle of mugs and crumby plates. Anthony called again.

In the open doorway to the garden, a small, neat girl appeared.

'Are you Anthony?'

'Yes,' he said. 'And you must be James.'

She sighed. That was the sort of joke James liked. She said severely, 'I am Natasha.'

'I am sorry. Where is your mother?'

'Doing the church flowers. Clodagh's out here. Come andseeClodagh.'

Anthony went out into the garden. There was a sandpit with a very large baby or a very small child in it and a larger child on a little bicycle and a girl in a sort of camouflage boiler suit and a lot of brass jewellery shelling peas into a red enamel pot. She looked up at the sound of footsteps and Anthony thought he had seldom seen anyone look less welcoming.

Clodagh held out a hand.

'You must be Anthony.'

He sat down on the grass beside her. The children all came closer and regarded him. The baby one came very close and poured a cupful of sand over his foot and into his shoe.

'Charlie,' Natasha said. She stopped and brushed at the shoe, making clucking noises.

'I gather,' Anthony said, 'that Alice is doing the church flowers. And that you are Clodagh.'

That's right.'

Anthony took off his shoe and poured the sand out into the grass. Charlie watched interestedly and then took off his own shoe and shook it hopefully.

'Which of you children is which?'

'I'm Natasha. I told you. And that's James and that's Charlie.'

'And I am your uncle.'

'It's so sad,' Natasha said, 'we have three of you and we never see any of you. One is in America.'

'You are seeing me now.'

He looked at Clodagh. He wanted to provoke her.

'Are you the nanny?'

Clodagh wasn't even going to look at him. She went on zipping her thumb along the pea pods so that the peas pattered into the pot.

'No.'

'She's the friend,' James explained.

Clodagh shot him an affectionate look.

'Mummy's friend?'

'All our friend.' /

Anthony turned round.

'Bit of all right, here.'

Natasha felt a social obligation. She said, 'Shall I show you round?'

'I'd rather you showed me Mummy.'

Clodagh said, Take him to the church, Tashie, there's a love.'

'Won't you?'

'No,' Clodagh said. 'I won't.'

Anthony got to his feet.

'Lovely welcome-'

Clodagh said nothing. She was full of loathing.

'Don't I even get any tea?'

Natasha said comfortingly, 'It'll be time for a drink soon. And we ate all the chocolate crunchy.' She paused and then she said, 'I could give you a banana, I should think.'

'Certainly,' Clodagh said. 'As many as he can eat.'

Natasha led the way back into the kitchen. She peered into the fruit bowl.

"They're all speckly. Do you mind? I only like them very smooth.'

'I don't really want a banana.'

Natasha looked puzzled. He was a most peculiar uncle. She thought uncles laughed a lot and gave you pound coins and took you for rides in sports cars with the top down. Anthony's car looked very boring. It was even black. She said, 'Shall I take you to the church?'

He sighed and nodded. She led the way out of the house and up the garden to a field path. She told him about her school and about Sophie having to have glasses and about her intense longing to have some too. He nodded a bit but she didn't think he was conversationally very responsive. She asked him if he ever wore glasses and he said 'No', rather crossly, and she began to be disappointed in the role of hostess.

'The church,' she said in a last effort to entertain him, 'smells exactly like my cloakroom at school.'

But he only grunted. They skirted the churchyard wall and Natasha thought of several interesting remarks about the headstones but hadn't the heart to utter them. In silence, they walked up the path to the south porch, and went from the bright warmth outside to the damp cool dimness inside. There were several women dotted around the nave, and dustsheets and trugs of greenery and flowers and pairs of secateurs, and in the aisle a very beautiful woman was sweeping with an almost bald broom. The woman, Anthony recognized with a start, was Alice. Her hair fell in a river down her back from some high-crowned arrangement on her head, and she was wearing something swirling and green. Natasha ran forward and seized the broom, and said, 'Here's Anthony!'

Alice stopped sweeping. She looked up and smiled at him angelically. Then she gave the broom to Natasha and came quickly to Anthony and put her arms round him.

'Anthony-'

He held her back. He felt, as he so seldom did, full of a large and happy warmth.

'You look amazing-'

She laughed. Then she looked closely at him and said, suddenly sober, 'Oh, poor Ant. I wish you did.'

'Everyone is so horrible to me. Your baby filled my shoe with sand.'

'He didn't mean it!' Natasha cried indignantly, her eyes full of sudden tears. 'He's only little!'

Alice took her arms away from Anthony.

'Don't be an ass, Ant.'

'I rely on you to be kind.'

'Are you whining?'

'No. Only pleading.'

She gave him a sideways look.

'If you say so-'

A faint scream came from the west window. On a ladder insecurely poised against the high sill, Miss Payne, as small and round as a blue tit, was losing out to an immense and purposeful white stone vase that she was attempting to fill with cow parsley and iris. Anthony, who liked all diversions for their sakes, sped away from Alice and caught Miss Payne as she tottered, cradling her in his arms like a large pale blue knitted football. He then came back up the aisle with her, as if she were some kind of trophy. She was pink with distressed excitement. The other flower ladies left their assigned corners and crowded round with twitters of concern. Peter Morris, who had been in the vestry screwing up a modest little looking glass so that he could inspect himself before he emerged into the chancel every service, came down into the nave and for a fleeting moment thought Miss Payne was being abducted. Then Anthony set her gently on the floor and she began, quite helplessly, to giggle. Everybody watched her.

'Of course, nobody her age should even be asked to go up that ladder-'

'I've always said we could do with a nice cheerful arrangement of silk flowers up there, no trouble to anyone, only need an occasional shake-'

'You all right, dear?'

'Better sit down, Buntie dear, after a shock like that-'

'Perhaps next time, Mrs Jordan, you being so much younger, you could volunteer for the west window?'

'Of course,' Alice said, 'but Buntie wanted to do it.'

Miss Payne nodded violently. Anthony stooped over her.

'Shall I carry you out and lay you down on a nice tombstone to recover?'

She gave a little squeal of delight and horror. Peter Morris moved calmly through the little group and steered Miss Payne to a pew.

'I don't know, Buntie. Cradle-snatching I'd call it.'

Miss Payne began to cry. Peter Morris pulled out what he always called his public handkerchief and handed it to her. Anthony looked at Alice.

'I'd no idea doing the church flowers could be such a lark.'