A Village Affair

'Why didn't you put him back?'

The women looked at one another.

'It seemed pointless,' Alice said. 'And not very kind. We rather admired his enterprise.'

'I won't admire it when he appears in our room at dawn.'

Alice looked deflated.

'I'll put him back then. Later.'

Clodagh picked up a bunch of keys from the dresser.

'I ought to go. The drawbridge goes up at eleven.'

Alice moved across towards her. 'I'll come and see you off.'

Anthony was watching. Clodagh, observing this, said lightly, 'No need.'

'I'd like to. You've worked so hard today. Anyway, I must shut up the hens.'

'No,' Clodagh said, and shook her head. 'I did the hens. Before supper.'

She crossed to the stable door and unlatched it.

'Night everyone-'

Alice was gripping the chair back. She saw Clodagh go every night but tonight it was dreadful, heaven knew why. The door closed. She wanted to rush out through the front door and intercept Clodagh's car and get into it with her and just not be separated, not be made to be apart, again . .. Instead of doing that, however, she sat down slowly and poured herself some coffee and wished that Anthony wouldn't keep looking at her.

'Brandy?' she said to him.

'Love it-'

Martin got up.

'I'll get it.'

He went out to the dining room.

'Pretty good,' Anthony said. 'For my little brother to find himself the Unwin's lawyer.'

'It was Clodagh's idea.'

'Was it now?'

'Her father is thrilled-'

Martin came back with a bottle.

'Only half an inch I'm afraid.'

He poured brandy into Anthony's empty wine glass. For no reason at all, Alice remembered her father asking for brandy when he came to tell her that he had left her mother and that she hadn't had any then, indeed had never been even part owner of a bottle of spirits in her life. She hadn't been near her mother for a year but she would go now. She and Clodagh would take the children to Colchester to see Elizabeth and perhaps - Alice's heart gave a little lurch - stay in an hotel near-by. And they could go to Reading on the way back and see Sam. Sam would love Clodagh. Perhaps - perhaps they could stay away for a few days, free, just roaming with the car...

She said to Martin, 'I can't think why brandy should make me think of my mother, but really I must go and see her.'

'Of course,' Martin said.

'Maybe Clodagh could come and help me with the children-'

'Good idea.'

'Next month-'

Martin stood up, yawning.

'Whenever you like. I'm dropping.' He gestured at Anthony. 'Sleep well. No hurry in the morning.'

'You must feel very proud of him,' Anthony said, when Martin had gone.

'Of course I do.'

'So glad.'

'Anthony,' Alice said, 'enough games for one evening. Time for bed,' and she leaned forward to blow out the candles, and as she did so Anthony found that his long scrutiny of her and of Clodagh had been rewarded and that he had made a most interesting discovery. And so, in order to consider it at leisure, he was quite happy to be shooed upstairs with the remainder of his brandy. The goodnight kiss he gave Alice on the landing was compounded both of admiration and appreciation of the probable complexity of the future.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

On fine afternoons, Lettice Deverel carried the parrot in its cage outside and hung it in an apple tree. It liked this and made bubbling noises of deep appreciation. As long as she was in sight, bent over a nearby border in an ancient Italian straw hat, it continued to bubble contentedly, but if she moved too far away it grew agitated and screamed at her that she was a surly bagpiper. Sometimes she wished she had not confined its education solely to literary references to parrots because now it seemed resistant to learning anything new. Peter Morris had attempted to teach it prayers but it became overexcited and shrieked 'Parrot, parrot, parrot' at him and then cackled with ribald laughter.

Margot Unwin, finding no one in Rose Villa, one warm, still, late afternoon, came round the house into the garden, calling for Lettice. Lettice was at that moment tipping a barrowload of weeds on to her compost heap, but the nearest apple tree remarked conversationally in Lettice's voice, 'Well, Polly, as far as one woman can forgive another, I forgive thee.'

Margot Unwin gave a faint squawk. Lettice appeared with her barrow through a gap in her immense and burgeoning borders. Margot flapped a hand at her.

'I always forget about your wretched bird.'

'Did he say anything improper?'

'Only that he forgave me.'

'Oh,' Lettice said looking pleased, 'that's his bit out of The Beggar's Opera. He hardly ever says it. You are much favoured.'

Margot inserted her face sideways under the hat brim and gave Lettice a kiss.

'I need to talk, Lettice.'

'Clodagh?'

'Clodagh.'

'Come and sit over here. No, not near the parrot. He always wants to join in and I wouldn't put eavesdropping past him.'

'Why do you have a parrot?'

'I like him,' Lettice said, brushing garden bits off a wooden seat. 'He is contrary and amusing and independent. Margot, you look tired.'

'So annoying. But I'm worried.'

Lettice sat on a second chair and removed her hat. Underneath it her grey hair was tied up in a red spotted snuff handkerchief. She wore a rust linen smock over wide blue trousers and elderly espadrilles. Margot Unwin wore a sweeping print frock.

'I shall get us some tea.'

'No, dear. Don't trouble. It's the sympathy I've come for.'

'I doubt there's anything I can do'

'You can listen.'

Lettice had been listening to Margot for thirty years, from the time she had bought Rose Villa and had only been able to spend weekends and holidays there, travelling up and down in the train from Waterloo with her pockets stuffed with sketches of what she would do to the garden. Only young Ralph had been born then and Margot was pregnant with Georgina and very handsome and spirited and impatient with being pregnant at all. There were endless parties up at the Park, weekend parties and shooting parties and tea parties for the children where the guests were accompanied by nannies in Norland uniforms. Margot started by inviting Lettice up as a curiosity, relying on the fact that she would wear breeches or a cloak or clogs and that she would express her decided opinions in a fresh and unconventional way. But then, at one lunch party, Lettice told the table at large that she was not a performing monkey, and went home. Margot followed her. She stood in Lettice's extraordinary and absorbing sitting room in her Belinda Belville dress and the Unwin pearls and said she was sorry. Very sorry. Then she burst into tears and Lettice, who recognized a true if incongruous friend, forgave her.

They had not quarrelled since but Lettice had always, tacitly and tactfully, retained the upper hand. As with Peter Morris, Lettice came to represent a confidante. When Margot Unwin supposed herself out of love with Ralph and very much in love with someone else, when Clodagh ran away from school, when a rampantly attractive and unprincipled Argentinian polo player besieged the defenceless Georgina for months on end, it was to Lettice that Margot came. Perhaps, Lettice sometimes thought, it was simply because their backgrounds were so different that their friendship was so real. Lettice, growing up in an austere academic household in Cambridge, might have come from another planet to that of Margot's adolescent society whirl. But after the apology, Lettice knew an excellent heart beat beneath the Hartnell suits and cashmere jerseys, and, as she grew older, she was inclined to think she valued excellence of heart above all things. She leaned across now and patted Margot's hand.