A Village Affair

'You must get away,' Clodagh said.

They were lying in the orchard under the old Russet Egremont where Clodagh had suggested they plant a Paul's Himalayan Musk which would spread through the gnarled branches like a cascade of late blossom ...

'No,' Alice said slowly.

'Yes. Yes!'

Clodagh rolled on her side and propped her head on her hand. She put out her free hand and ran a forefinger down Alice's profile.

'Come with me. We'll go down to Windover. We'll start a new life there together, you and me and the children. I'll get a job. You'll paint. Alice-'

Alice turned her head to look at Clodagh.

'Windover will be just the same as here.'

'No. No. Here everyone knew you as a married woman. There we'll arrive as two women, you and me, no past. We can do it. We can do anything we want.' She pushed her face close to Alice's. 'You don't need money. I've got that. You don't need anything, you just need to come. I love you. Do you hear me? I love you.'

Alice just went on looking. After a long time, it seemed to Clodagh, she said, 'And I love you. More than I think I have ever loved anyone.'

'Then come, then come-'

Alice turned back to look at the sky. She pulled a long grass from its sheath beside her and put the juicy end between her teeth.

'Loving you makes all decisions much more difficult. Loving anybody does-'

Clodagh snorted.

'You sound like Lettice-'

Lettice had stopped Clodagh the other day, coming down from the Park, and had taken her by the shoulders and said, very fiercely indeed, 'If you love Alice Jordan, my girl, you have to let her go.' Clodagh had been amazed. She still was. She liked Lettice a lot but some of her opinions had got stuck in some kind of timewarp. Throw away the best thing that had ever happened to her? Deliberately? Causing heartbreak all round? Honestly.

Alice was frowning.

'Alice,' Clodagh said softly, to win back her attention.

'Mm?'

'Look at me-'

Alice turned.

'I'm looking-'

Tell me why you love me.'

Alice smiled, a slow, lazy smile.

'I love your gaiety. And your freedom of spirit. And your arrogance and strength and mad courage. And I love your love for me.'

After some time, Clodagh said, 'We don't have to go to Windover. I can sell it. It's worth millions, I should think. We'll go abroad. We can go anywhere. What about the South of France?'

'Lovely,' Alice said, but her mind had slipped into neutral once more.

'You have to come with me, you know. You'd only be half a person without me. Like I'd be, without you.'

'I know.'

Then when shall we go?'

Alice sat up and pulled her plait over her shoulder and began to pick grass seeds out of it.

'You must go.'

'Shut up!' Clodagh shouted in panic, springing up.

'Calm down,' Alice said. 'I just mean for a bit. I must be absolutely alone, for a bit-'

Clodagh stooped to seize her shoulders.

'You won't go and see Martin, promise-'

'Martin is in Cornwall.'

'Or Juliet. Or my mother. Or-'

'Clodagh-'

'Promise!' Clodagh screamed.

Alice slapped her.

'Shut up!'

'Sorry,' Clodagh said, crying. 'Oh God, Alice. Oh my God!'

She fell on her knees beside Alice.

'I'll kill myself if you leave me.'

Alice put her hands over her face.

'Think what we've shared,' Clodagh said. Think what we do together. No one else can do that for you, no one. Only me. We'll go to France. We'll have a house in the sun, we'll all go naked in the sun. We'll have a garden with lavender and thyme and a terrace over a valley. We'll never have to be apart, nights and days together, days and nights. The children will be bilingual, brown as nuts and bilingual. We'll make love when we want to, quite free, in sunlight and moonlight, and you'll come so alive you'll wonder you ever called it life before-'

Alice's hands were shaking. From behind them she said, 'Be fair.'

'Fair?'

Alice put her hands in her lap and held them tightly.

'I expect you think I am deeply bourgeois but I can't come to paradise dishonestly-'

'Dishonest? What the hell's dishonest about us? It's being so bloody honest that's half-killing you!'

'Glodagh,' Alice said. 'Clodagh. I can't think while you're here.'

'I'm terrified of your thinking-'

'What would you do,' Alice said, 'if you had three children?' She looked at Clodagh squarely. 'And a husband.'

'It's excuses,' Clodagh said at once. 'All excuses-'

'Call it whatever names you like. Nothing changes what is, what I have in my path that you don't have in yours.'

Clodagh grew excited again.

'I see, I see. You're going to be the sacrificial lamb, nobly giving up the best happiness you'll ever be offered-'

'I didn't say anything about giving up anything. I have thought about sacrifice and I'll think some more. You could think about it too. You could think about a good deal, and stop shouting at me.'

'Alice,' Clodagh said, 'I'm scared as hell.'

Alice put out a hand and took Clodagh's.

'I remember the day you told me your lover in New York was a woman. We were down in the river meadow and the children had made a boat out of a log and you were wearing your wizard's cloak. I shan't ever forget that conversation. I shan't ever forget that I suddenly could see the powers and freedoms that might be mine. "We all have a choice," you told me. "You, me, everyone." Well, you had chosen, and then I did. Nobody made us, we chose. And now here we are with the results of our choice and we have to choose again-'

'I can't believe what I'm hearing!'

'Yes you can. You know it's true. "If you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen," you said to me.'

Clodagh snatched her hand away.

'But you won't stay in the kitchen with me!'

'I didn't say that. I haven't decided anything. But we must be apart for a bit. I don't want it but I can't think at all while there are emotional demands all over me, yours, the children's, anyone's. It isn't just the now, you see, it's the future too. Things never stand still, do they.' She looked at Clodagh. 'You ought to think about your own future too. For your own sake.'

Clodagh stood up. She was wearing a peculiar patchwork skirt with long handkerchief points to the hem, which brushed against Alice's bare arm. Alice looked with love at the triangle of red and yellow cotton lying against her skin.

'Just a week,' Alice said.

'I'll go to London.'

'Yes.'

'Who knows' - defiantly - 'who I may meet?'

Alice said nothing. Clodagh moved away to lean on the apple tree trunk.

'Wouldn't you care?'

'Of course-'

'Would it make you angry?'

'No.'

'Sad?'

'Very.'

'Alice - Alice, why don't you resent anyone for anything, damn and blast you?'

'I do.'

'You don't-'

'I do. I just can't resent anyone for something I've done-'

'Go to hell!' Clodagh shouted. She swirled from the tree in her gypsy rags. 'Priggish, conventional, bloody bourgeois! I'm going, I'm going and you'll never know where!'

And then she ran from the orchard and across the lawn by the sandpit and Alice heard her car start up and roar furiously round the house and down the drive. Then Balloon came, dancing through the long grass, to remind Alice that, crisis or no crisis, a cat would like his supper.