A Village Affair

'Yes,' she said, 'No-'

From the through sitting room where she was polishing the brass fire-irons, Elizabeth's sister Ann called, 'Who is it? I wish you'd shut the door.'

'Come in,' Elizabeth said.

He followed her into the cream painted hall where a Swiss cheese-plant sat exactly in the centre of an otherwise empty table, and then into the sitting room. Ann Barlow was wearing cotton gloves to protect her hands from the brass cleaning wadding and a flowered pinafore with a big front pocket on which 'Breakages!' was embroidered in royal blue stranded cotton. She scrambled to her feet, frowning. If there was one thing she hated more than an unexpected caller, it was an unexpected man caller.

'You remember Richard Jordan. Alice's father-in-law-'

In Ann Barlow's mind, the Jordans were entangled with the breakdown of her sister's marriage. She pulled off a glove and held out an indifferent hand, making ritual noises about coffee which Richard said untruthfully that he would love. He was directed towards a flowered armchair from which he could see a regimented garden and a white painted seat and a line of washing hung up in strict order of size. Elizabeth did not know what to do with him. She resented him fiercely both for coming and for looking so at ease now he was here. She sat opposite him and stared at his well-shod feet and resolved that she would not help him conversationally.

He did not seem to mind her unfriendliness. He told her that James had learned to swim in Cornwall, which she remained inflexible about since Alice hadn't seen fit to tell her they were going to Cornwall in the first place. He admired the delphiniums and said Cecily was opposed heart and soul to the notion of the new pink ones. He remarked on the beastliness of the A12, to which Elizabeth managed to reply that she didn't drive any more, and then Ann came in with a tray of coffee and, there was the usual fuss - Elizabeth despised Ann's houseproudness as deeply suburban - with little tables and spoons and plates to catch biscuit crumbs. When the fuss had subsided, Richard began to talk very differently. He said he was here without Alice's knowledge or permission but she had enough to cope with just now and he had made a unilateral decision to come that he would probably be punished for. He then said, with a calm Elizabeth found horrible, that Alice and Martin had separated because Alice had had a love affair with a woman, and that Alice was at the moment trying to determine her future and Martin was trying to recover from a breakdown. He then said, unwisely, that he hoped they would not be too harsh on anyone. At this point, Ann Barlow put down her coffee cup and left the room.

'I hope,' Richard said, 'that I have not shocked your sister.'

'Of course you have.'

'And you? Have I shocked you?'

'Nothing,' Elizabeth said angrily, 'nothing really shocks me.' She gave Richard the first proper look she had awarded him 'You are a meddler,' she said. 'And I doubt your motives.'

He shrugged.

'I hoped to smooth Alice and Martin's path-'

She snorted.

'I'm not a fool. Prurient is the word that springs to mind. Prurient is how I should describe your action in coming here.'

He lowered his head. She thought his colour was darkening.

'Heaven knows,' Elizabeth said, 'heaven knows what your motives are, what they have ever been.'

He kept his head down.

'Could they not be,' he said into his chest, 'could they not be altruistic?'

'Impersonally, of course they could be. In your case, I doubt it. I resent your coming. I resent your crude translation of my daughter to me. I resent your possessive attitude to grandchildren who are as much mine as yours. I resent your patronage. I resent the divisions you have, as a family, made in mine.'

He got up, abruptly, clumsily.

'I had better go.'

She said nothing. He was beside himself with rage.

'I shall tell Alice of this-'

'You are wrong to suppose she will have any sympathy for you. Much less gratitude.'

He wanted to shout at her that he saw exactly why Sam Meadows had left her, why Alice had seen in Cecily the mother Elizabeth had declined to be. He began, but she went past him to open the sitting room door and then the front door and he found himself outside, beside a bed of stout begonias, bellowing to himself in the quiet residential road, almost before he had said a quarter of it. There was nothing for it but to drive back to London.

Two days later, Alice received two letters at The Grey House. One was from her mother.

'I had a call from your father-in-law,' Elizabeth wrote, 'in the course of which I learned a great deal more about him than about you. Perhaps you will write. Perhaps you will even come and see me. Do not be afraid of coming, because I would not try to counsel you.'

It was signed, 'With love from your mother, Elizabeth.' The other letter was no more than a postcard. It was undated and unsigned, and it simply said, in Clodagh's wild black writing, 'Women need men like fish need bicycles.'

That was all. The next day the children came home and Alice realized, holding them with great relief and love, that in the fortnight they had been away she had come to no decision at all.

'What are you doing?' James said. He was holding a plastic ray gun and half a biscuit.

'Writing to Grandpa.'

'Can I too?'

'Yes, but not on this paper. On your own bit of paper.'

James put the ray gun down on Alice's letter. He did that all the time now, putting his spoon on her plate, his book across her newspaper, his toothbrush into her mouth.

'Jamie-'

He put his hand on the gun. Silently he dared her to move it away.

'I can't write-'

He raised his other hand and pushed the bitten biscuit at her mouth.

'Darling. Don't-'

'Eat it!'

'No, Jamie, no, it's all licky-'

He jabbed it against her lower lip and it broke.

'You broke my biscuit.'

'You broke it. Being silly. Move your gun so I can write.'

He kept his hand on the gun and screwed his foot round on the piece of biscuit that had fallen on to the floor until it was a brown powder.

There.'

Alice took no notice. He threw another bit down and did the same thing. Alice gripped the table edge and her pen and glared at what she had written.

'After thinking it over and over, I know I must decline your offer. The price - the price of having to rely on you - is too high. I can't do it. You are too protective, somehow, too administering. I couldn't breathe. I don't really know if I trust you.'

She thought, I should be saying this, not writing it, but if I say it he will argue with me and try to persuade me otherwise. And I may say, like last time, all kinds of things that I should not have said.

'Gun,' said James loudly. 'Gun, gun, gun.'

He pushed it roughly into her pen-holding hand and hurt her. She held the hurt hand in the other, tense with pain and fury, and he watched her.

'Gun,' he said again, but with less confidence.

'Go away,' Alice said. 'Go away until I have written my letter. Go and play with Tashie.'

He shook his head, but he was chastened by the red mark on her hand. He crept under the table and lay down and put his cheek on Alice's foot, and after a while she could feel tears running into her sandal. She moved her toes, so that he could feel them, and with an immense effort picked up her pen again.

'I can't,' she wrote to Richard, 'be the cure-all for your frustrations. I don't want that ever again, the prison of gratefulness. I am grateful, but I'd rather be it from a distance, on equal terms.'

She felt James's hand on her other foot.

'Jamie? You're a bit tickly-'

He giggled, faintly.

'You trapped me,' Alice wrote, 'didn't you. You trapped me into talking. I'd rather not think why you wanted to do that and I'd rather not think why you want to help me. But what has happened to me has moved me out of the objective case into the subjective case so that I am not available for anyone else's plans just now.'