A Village Affair

Natasha said in distress, looking at Miss Payne, 'But it's sad.'

'Heavens,' Anthony said, 'what a sentimental little party.' He turned to Alice. 'Wouldn't you like to come home now and pour me a huge welcoming drink?'

'Not much,' Alice said.

'Allie-'

Alice did stern battle with her temper.

'I must finish sweeping up. Tashie will help me. You go and sit in the churchyard and I'll be out in five minutes.'

'All right,' he said reluctantly.

He went down the aisle and Miss Pimm and Mrs Macaulay and Mrs Fanshawe watched him go as if to see him safely off the premises.

'Hold the dustpan steady,' Alice said.

Natasha knelt down and leaned her weight on the dustpan.

'Is sentimental,' she said, looking downwards, 'nice or silly?'

At supper, which they ate in the kitchen with the upper half of the stable door open to the dim summer night, Anthony talked a great deal about the Far East, and, by inference, of the depth and breadth of his experience of life. Alice heard him with affectionate pity and Clodagh with contempt. Martin felt, as Anthony meant him to feel, faintly insecure. He tried, eating his chicken casserole, to tell himself that whereas Anthony had passed ten years, he, Martin had lived them. Anthony had stories; he, Martin, had a wife and children, a house and friends and a solid career. Perhaps, Martin thought, getting up to go round the table with the second bottle of Californian Chardonnay, if Alice would let him make love to her, he would be able to hear anything, absolutely anything, Anthony chose to say, with equanimity. He believed Alice when she said she wasn't interested in anyone else. He believed that she loved him - heavens, she was more loving to him and appreciative than she'd been in ages, years even - but there was this bed thing. Suppose she never wanted sex with him again, what the hell would he do? It was bad enough now, he sometimes felt quite obsessed by it, thinking about it, wanting it. On top of the physical difficulties there was the siren call of self-pity. Martin knew Alice despised people who were sorry for themselves, but sometimes, after a messy little session alone with himself in the bathroom, he would look at himself in the shaving mirror and say piteously, 'What about me?' He got angry with Alice then, and showered himself furiously, muttering abusive things about her into the rushing water. And after that, he felt as he supposed women did after they'd had a good cry, absolutely wrung out and forlorn. He hated the whole business and, try as he might, he couldn't escape the fact that he wasn't the one who had brought it about.

'Don't I get any?' Clodagh said.

Martin came slowly out of his trance.

'And after I've ironed seven shirts of yours today and put new slug pellets round the delphiniums and done the school run?'

He put his hand on her shoulder.

'Sorry. Miles away.'

'Are you thinking about my farm?'

Martin was a poor liar. In a kind of shout, he said, 'Yes, actually.'

Clodagh looked briefly at Anthony.

'Martin is our family lawyer now.'

'How deeply respectable.'

Alice said mildly. 'What an old bitch you are.'

'I needn't be.'

Clodagh gave a snort. She got up and cleared away the plates and put a blue china bowl of strawberries in the middle of the table. Anthony watched her. He thought that when he next telephoned his mother, he would tell her that he saw exactly why she had reservations about Clodagh as a. friend for Alice. He turned to look at Alice. He held his wine glass up to her. She must be sorry for Clodagh.

'Here's to you.'

Thank you,' she said. But she said it absently. Taking a bowl of strawberries from Clodagh, she said, 'What is your farm like?'

'Lovely.'

'What kind of lovely?'

'A square flint house with brick chimneys and a wonderful Victorian yard. Six hundred acres-'

'Six hundred and thirty,' Martin said.

'It's grown!'

'No. It just wasn't measured properly. I've had it measured. For valuation.'

'Martin,' Clodagh said, putting an enormous strawberry on top of his helping as a reward, 'you are wonderful.'

Anthony said, 'Why don't you live there?'

Alice held her breath.

'It hasn't been mine. When it is, I might.'

'Do you,' Anthony said, leaning forward, 'live here?'

She looked straight at him.

'I live at home. I spend most days here.'

'Why?' Anthony said.

Alice said, without looking up, 'Because we like her to.'

There was a tiny, highly charged pause.

'I see,' Anthony said.

Clodagh said spitefully, 'Do you know how to like people?'

'I know how not to like them.'

Martin waved his spoon.

'Pax, you two.'

'We might just, you see,' Clodagh said, embarking on the high wire, 'be about to have a most interesting conversation about love.'

'Love?'

Alice looked up. Her eyes were enormous.

'It's the most important thing there is. I always knew it would be.'

Martin, alarmed at this kind of remark being made in public, said quickly, 'Are there any more strawberries?'

It was all the poetry Alice was reading, a sort of sequel to all those novels she used to devour. He shot a glance at her. She was looking at Clodagh but her mind was clearly miles away. Anthony picked up the strawberry bowl.

There's about six. I'll share them with you.'

He put two in Martin's bowl.

'You don't change, do you?'

'What I don't understand,' Anthony said, 'is why everyone expects me to.'

After supper, Alice put a pot of coffee on the table, and then she and Clodagh moved about in the dimness outside the candlelit circle round the table, clearing up. They were talking together softly, and at the table Martin and Anthony were talking about Dummeridge. After a while, Alice and Clodagh said that they were going to tuck the children in and left the kitchen. When he could hear their feet safely on the stairs Anthony said, 'Come on. Tell me about Clodagh. Why is she here?'

Martin poured a spoonful of brown sugar into his coffee.

'We met her up at the Park. She's been an absolute godsend. A sort of unpaid nanny and companion. It's made all the difference in the world to Alice.'

'Maybe,' Anthony said. 'But is she going to stay for ever?'

'Lord no. She had a bit of a crisis of some kind in the States, so she came home. She'll be off to do something else after the summer. She's that land.'

'Do you like her?'

Martin flinched a little.

'Of course-'

'When you were younger, you'd have been scared of a girl like that.'

'Well,' Martin said jauntily, 'I'm older, aren't I?'

'Mother doesn't like her.'

'Mother doesn't have to live with her.'

'Why doesn't she like her?'

Martin shrugged.

'I don't know.'

'You do.'

'Shut up,' Martin said loudly, suddenly angry. 'Shut up, will you?'

'No good losing your temper.'

'I haven't-'

Anthony got up and went over to the open door and lit a cigarette.

This is quite a place.'

'Yes.'

'Three children. Steady progress up career ladder. Well done.'

Martin said nothing. Anthony came back to the table and dropped into his chair again.

'To be quite honest, I envy you. My future is rather bleak.'

'Surely-'

'Surely what?'

'Surely you can get another money job?'

'Oh sure. But it seems a bit pointless. What for? You know.'

Alice and Clodagh were coming back down the stairs. They were laughing.

'I get lonely,' Anthony said, thrusting his face at Martin.

'I'm sorry-'

The kitchen door opened and the women came in. Martin waved the coffee pot in relief.

'Coffee?'

'Lovely,' Alice said, and then to Clodagh, 'It was everything you see, comic and pathetic, I wish you'd-' She stopped. 'Charlie has got out of his cot,' she said to Martin, 'and gone to sleep underneath it.'