A Village Affair

'And your heart?' Clodagh said. Her head was high. She was wearing a brief, pale grey dress and she stood upright in it, a narrow shaft under her cloud of hair.

'Of all people,' Alice said, 'you know about my heart.'

Clodagh came forward suddenly and leaned on the table. She said urgently to Alice, 'It's real you know. Real. It isn't just pour epater Je bourgeoisie.'

'I know.'

Clodagh put her hand on Natasha's.

'It isn't selfish. It's giving. It folds in other people. It's what's best in women-'

'Clodagh,' Alice said, 'I know.'

Tears were running down Clodagh's face. She took no notice of them and they dripped on to the table.

'You must know it,' Clodagh said. 'Everyone must. They must see that it is as strong and real as ordinary love. I never knew that before but now I do. Oh, Alice-'

They were all watching her. James had taken his thumb out. Alice stretched out a hand.

'Clodagh. Clodagh, why all this, why worry-'

'Because of the centre line,' Clodagh cried out, letting go Natasha's hand and covering her wet face with her own. 'Because of that. Because I'm afraid of it, because I'm afraid it will pull you back, it will, it wUl-'

Natasha got hurriedly off her chair and came to her mother. Alice took her hand. She sat upright in her chair, holding her children, and although her face was quite drained by fatigue, she said in a voice of great calm, 'You needn't be afraid.'

Clodagh took her hands away from her face and went over to the roll of kitchen paper on the dresser and tore off a strip and blew her nose ferociously.

'Alice. Oh my precious Alice. You are such an innocent-'

And then the doctor had come. He had gone upstairs with Peter Morris to Martin, who, bruised to his very depths by his own behaviour as well as by the bitter discoveries of the last twenty-four hours, had conducted himself with the passive courtesy of a well-brought-up schoolboy, and had been helped into pyjamas and into bed, and given an injection to help him to sleep. Outside on the landing, with a weary distaste, Peter Morris explained the circumstances to Dr Milligan and then the two men went down to the kitchen and found that Clodagh had gone and that Alice was sitting at the table playing hangman with her children.

Dr Milligan said he would call again tomorrow but he thought Martin should be taken away for a while.

'So that,' he said to Alice, 'you can put your house in order.'

Alice said nothing. She stared at the spot on the table where the hanging lamp made a neat circle of apricot light.

'It isn't "F",' Natasha said. 'Only four more wrong and I've hanged you.'

Alice felt the two men looking down at her, big, greyhaired men in a late Sunday comfortableness of clothes. She heard Clodagh in her mind, Clodagh saying to her, laughingly, 'Why should men despise you? Honestly, you're a walking stereotype. Do women despise gay men? Alice, Alice-'

She looked up with difficulty.

'I will ring your mother-in-law in the morning,' Peter Morris said.

'Oh-'

'Yes,' he said firmly.

Doctor Milligan moved away towards the door.

'I'd get those children to bed if I were you. And yourself.' He opened the stable door. 'Rain,' he said, and went out into it.

Peter Morris came round the table and laid a brief passing hand on each child's head.

'You can always ring me-'

'Yes.'

'Martin will sleep all night.'

'Yes.'

'Get to bed now.'

When he had gone, Natasha said, sighing, 'It was all Uncle Anthony, wasn't it?'

'Well, partly-'

'Will Daddy be better in the morning?'

'A bit better.'

'Who's doing the school run?'

Alice thought.

'MrsAlleyne.'

James's lip trembled.

'No-'

'It's her turn-'

'I wantClodagh-'

'Yes. Yes. I know.'

She stood up and took James's hand.

'Come on. Bed.'

He trailed after her, dragging on her hand. They went slowly up the stairs, past the eloquently closed spare room door, and along the passage to James's room where his bed awaited him under a fly-past of model aeroplanes. He looked very small and fragile in bed. The sight of the back of his neck filled Alice with panic. She kissed him quickly for fear she might cry before she was out of the room, and for once he did not beseech her to stay, but put his forbidden thumb in and turned docilely on his side.

In her room next door, Natasha was settling Princess Power into her pink plastic castle for the night. Without turning, she said, 'Should I say goodnight to Daddy?'

'I think he is fast asleep. Have you put out your ballet things, for tomorrow?'

Natasha nodded. Tomorrow, Alice thought. Monday, ballet class, community shop, Clodagh to see to the children at teatime, Martin awake again, Cecily coming, Gwen coming, everyone beginning to know. And before that, this night to get through. She went over to Natasha and kissed her.

‘The moment she's organized, Tashie, you hop in. I'll come in later, when I've had a bath.'

'I wish,' Natasha said, 'that I could have her Power Chariot too.'

'Perhaps, for your birthday-'

Natasha began to talk, softly and intimately, into the pinkly mirrored throne room. Alice went out and closed the door. Then she listened at all the other doors, even, after a struggle, at the spare room door, and then she went along to her own bedroom and took her shoes off and lay down on her bed. She did not turn the light on. She simply lay there in the pale darkness and stared up into it, and outside, in the summer night, the rain pattered down on to the hard, dry ground.

'What are you telling me?' Cecily said, but she didn't really mean it. She knew.

Peter Morris said nothing more. He got up and went over to the window and looked out at his damp garden.

'And the doctor?'

'He went to The Grey House this morning. He thinks you should take Martin home with you for a few days. He needs looking after.' He turned from the window. The results of shock, you see. What might, a century ago, have been called a brainstorm.'

Cecily had her eyes closed.

This whole business is grotesque.'

'But it is happening.'

She opened her eyes and spread her arms out to his study walls.

'But here-'

'InPitcombe?'

'Yes.'

'Humanity is no different. It's just that the setting is prettier than, say, Solihull. And no crowds to hide in.'

Cecily said with a kind of stiff shyness, 'It must seem absurd to you, but I have never encountered such - such a - a situation before.'

'Nor I,' Peter said. 'Men yes. But not women. It is quite different, with women.'

Cecily shut her eyes again.

'No doubt-'

Peter Morris crossed the room and laid his hand on her arm.

'We must go round to The Grey House.'

'The children-'

They are at school.'

'Not the baby.'

The baby is where he should be,' Peter said. 'With his mother.'

Cecily allowed herself to be helped from the chair and guided from the house. The village street was empty except for Stuart Mott trimming the two green moustaches of privet that separated Miss Pimm's harsh little front garden from the pavement. He looked up when he saw them coming and gave a tossing nod of his head to show that he couldn't possibly relinquish the handles of his shears to wave. He knew who Cecily was. It looked, from the way she was walking, as if she had some bad news to break at The Grey House. Perhaps Mr Jordan's father had died or something had happened to that brother. Miss Pimm, dusting her dead mother's bureau in the front first-floor room, saw them too, and remembered that she had seen Peter Morris walking Alice along like that, as if sheltering an invalid, only the night before. Miss Pimm picked up her mother's inflexible photograph. The night of her mother's fatal stroke, she had gone straight to the rectory, just run there, even before she telephoned the surgery. It was the only time in her life she had ever tasted brandy.