The village of Long Fredington was so called for the length of its main street, a full half-mile from Burton’s Farm in the cast to Thomas Hardy Close in the west. It was the largest of the Fredingtons, the others being Fredington St. Michael, Fredington Episcopi, Fredington Crucis, and Little Fredington. All were picturesque, the stuff of postcards, every house, even the newest, every barn, the church, the mill, the pub (now a private house), the school, and the shop (also now private houses) built of the same golden gray stone. If you were well-off, especially if you were well-off and retired, it was a charming place to live. If you had a car or two and a job in Casterbridge or Markton, a husband, and a nanny, it wasn’t so bad. For someone in Zillah’s position it was hell. Eugenie went to school on the bus, that was all right, but there was no nursery or preschool for Jordan and he was at home with her all day. She had no car, she hadn’t even got a bike. Once a week, if they hadn’t anything better to do, Annie at the Old Mill House or Lynn at La Vieille Ecole drove her ten miles to the Tesco to pick up supplies. Much less often, someone asked her round for a meal, but these were rare outings. They had husbands and she was a very good-looking unattached female. Anyway, she couldn’t get a babysitter.
At All Saints’ Church, a handsome fourteenth-century building from whose interior all the priceless brass had been stolen and melted down and the unique medieval wall paintings defaced with graffiti, she turned left down Mill Lane. After two smartly refurbished cottages were passed, all occupied dwellings ceased. But for birdsong, it was silent. The lane narrowed and beech branches met overhead. Although late autumn, the day was sunny and almost warm. If this was global warming, thought Zillah, she couldn’t get enough of it. Never mind the seas rising and the coastline disappearing, she didn’t live near the coast. And maybe she wouldn’t live down here at all much longer, not if she married Jims, her best friend, her childhood friend, really the nicest man she knew.
At the ford she trod carefully on the flat stones that formed a causeway across the brook. Ducks stared indifferently at her from the bank and a swan glided downstream. She had to admit it was pretty, and it would be a whole heap prettier if she could venture out into it from Fredington Crucis House wearing Armani jeans, a sheepskin jacket, and Timberland boots, having left the Range Rover parked outside the church. But Jims was gay, a difficulty not to be underrated. And what about Jerry? He wouldn’t have got whoever it was to send her that letter if he didn’t want her to think he was dead, but he was brilliant at changing his mind. If there was one thing beyond his liking mints and hating bananas that-well-defined Jerry, it was his rapid mind changes. Suppose he had a rethink and wanted to be alive again?
A large duckpond dominated the front garden, if this it could be called, of the Old Mill House. Although no rain had fallen in Long Fredington for a week and the stream water was exceptionally low, the banks of the pond were a quagmire. Waterfowl had been slopping about in it, animals with hooves had churned it up, and now Annie’s three children and her two were sitting in it, Annie’s Rosalba instructing her sister, Fabia, her brother, Titus, and Zillah’s children in the art of face-painting with mud. When Zillah came up the drive, she had just completed a rendering of a Union Jack in monochrome that extended from Jordan’s chin and round cheeks to his high domed forehead.
“Jordan ate a slug, Mummy,” said Eugenie. “Titus said there was this man ate a live goldfish and the cruelty to animals people made him pay a lot of money.”
“And Jordan wanted to eat one,” said Rosalba, “because he’s a naughty boy but there’s no goldfishes in our pond. So he ate a slug. And that’s cruel too and he’ll have to pay a hundred pounds.”
“Not a naughty boy,” Jordan wailed. Tears gushed out of his eyes and he rubbed them with his fists, ruining the Union Jack. “Won’t pay a hundred pounds. I want my daddy.”
Those words, frequently uttered, never failed to upset Zillah. She picked him up. He was wet through and covered with mud. Rather late in the day, she wondered indignantly what Annie was thinking of, leaving five children, the eldest of whom was eight, alone beside a large pond that must be at least six feet deep in the middle.
“I only left them for two minutes,” Annie cried, running out from the front door. “The phone was ringing. Oh, look at them! You three are going straight in the bath.”
Though she had no need to think of the cost of hot water as Zillah did, she didn’t offer to put Eugenie and Jordan in the bath. She didn’t ask Zillah in either. Jordan hung round Zillah’s neck, wiping his hands on her hair and rubbing his muddy cheek against hers. The chances were she’d have to carry him all the way home. She waited for Annie to say something about picking her up in the morning and taking her shopping, but Annie only said she’d see her soon and if she’d excuse her she’d have to get this lot cleaned up as she and Charles were going out to dinner in Lyme and they’d have to leave by seven.
Zillah sat Jordan on her right hip with her right arm round him. He was a heavy boy, big for his age. Eugenie said it was getting dark, which it wasn’t, not yet, and she’d be frightened if she didn’t hold Zillah’s hand.
“Why am I too big to be carried, Mummy?”
“You just are. Miles too big,” said Zillah. “Four is the upper limit. No one over four gets carried.”
Jordan burst into loud wails. “Don’t want to be four! Want to be carried.”
“Oh, shut up,” said Zillah, “I am carrying you, you halfwit.”
“Not a fwit, not a fwit! Put me down, Jordan walk.”
He trudged along, very slowly, trailing behind. Eugenie took Zillah’s hand, smiling smugly over her shoulder at her brother. The sinking sun disappeared behind a dense wall of trees and it suddenly became viciously cold. Jordan, snuffling and whimpering, rubbing at his eyes with muddy fists, sat down in the road, then lay down on his back. It was at times like these that Zillah wondered how she had ever got into this mess in the first place. What had she been thinking of to get involved with a man like Jerry at the age of nineteen? What had induced her to fall in love with him and want his children?
She picked Jordan up and, in the absence of any handkerchief or tissue, wiped his face with a woolen glove she found in her pocket. A bitter wind had got up from nowhere. How could she hesitate about saying yes to Jims? She was suddenly visited by fear that maybe he wouldn’t phone for his answer on Thursday, maybe he’d find some other woman who wouldn’t keep him waiting. That Icon or Ivo Carew’s sister Kate. If it weren’t for Jerry…She was going to have to sit down when she’d got this lot to bed and seriously think about what Jerry was up to and what that letter meant.
It took three times as long to get back to Willow Cottage with the children as it had taken her to get to the Old Mill House on her own. Twilight was closing in. The front door opened directly into the living room, where the bulb in the light had gone. She hadn’t a replacement. The cottage wasn’t centrally heated, of course it wasn’t. It belonged to a local landowner and had been let at a low rent to various more or less indigent people for the past fifty years. No improvements had been made to it in that time, apart from perfunctory painting carried out by tenants and mostly left unfinished. Thus, the inside of the front door was painted pink, the cupboard door black, and only an undercoat in uncompromising gray had been applied to the door to the kitchen. Electrical fittings consisted mostly of partly eroded cables passing, looped and knotted, from ten- and five-amp points, obsolete in the rest of the European Union and rare in the United Kingdom, to extension leads connected to a lamp, a fan heater, and a very old 45-rpm record player. The furniture consisted of rejects from the “big house,” where Sir Ronald Grasmere, the landlord, lived. It had been discarded forty years before, was old then, and had come from the housekeeper’s room.