After the meal was over Robin excused himself from the table, walked over to the kitchen window and peered out at the sky. The rain had finally stopped.
‘Reckon it’s brightening up, Roger,’ he remarked.
‘Right,’ said Roger, rising from his chair. ‘Coming, James?’
‘Absolutely,’ replied James, swiftly downing the last of his claret.
I gave Maude another questioning look.
‘Shooting,’ she said. ‘You can always tell a farmer. It’s a lovely day, let’s go out and kill something.’
I burst out laughing.
‘Really mother,’ said Robin, and then to me rather pointedly, ‘You’ll be all right, Rose.’
It was a statement more than a question. I glowered at him. It seemed fairly clear that he was deliberately leaving me with his mother, and he could not have been much more transparent.
‘Glass of port,’ invited Maude. ‘The fire’s lit in the drawing room.’
The drawing room was another big airy room, and the fireplace turned out to be a beautiful old inglenook. I sank into a battered armchair which reeked of faded luxury and seemed to mould itself to my backside, stretched out my legs, and began to sip what proved to be an excellent port from a glass which most people would have considered to be rather too large for the purpose. Not Maude Croft-Maple, however.
She stoked up the fire, piling on logs from a basket in the grate, and when she had finally arranged the fire to her satisfaction she lowered her not inconsiderable frame into the armchair next to me.
‘You like sex, I suppose,’ she said.
I nearly choked on her splendid port.
‘Well, you do, don’t you?’ she pressed.
‘Uh, yes I do,’ I responded eventually, and not a little uncertainly.
‘Well, that’s all right then,’ she said. ‘They’re all rams, the Davey men. Lad wouldn’t be wedding you unless you’d got that side sorted out, I don’t suppose.’
I was speechless. You have to remember that at home with the Hyacinth Bucket of Weston-super-Mare sex was never even mentioned. I was a divorcee, and my mother had once caught me at the age of fifteen with my sixteen-year-old boyfriend and no knickers, yet I sometimes suspected she still thought I was a virgin.
It therefore came as something of a shock to be sitting with my aged future mother-in-law discussing my sex life — or rather listening to her discussing it. More was to follow.
‘Robin’s father was hung like a donkey,’ she remarked conversationally. ‘Could never get enough of it, neither. Didn’t play away from home though. Neither will Robin as long as he gets his home comforts. They don’t cheat, not the Davey’s.’
‘Right,’ I said. And that was all I could manage.
‘James is the same. Never interested in settling down with one woman, waste of energy as far as he’s concerned. He breaks hearts but not promises.’
She sighed. ‘I still miss it, you know,’ she continued evenly. ‘Wonderful man, Roger, I’m a lucky woman. Love him to bits, and he loves me. But he’s never made my nerve ends jangle. Know what I mean?’
‘Yes, I know what you mean.’ I did too. I may not have done, not quite, before I had met her son.
‘Shock you does it, an old woman talking about sex?’
I gulped. ‘Not exactly,’ I said. ‘Surprises me, I suppose.’
‘Surprises me too,’ she said, with a throaty laugh. ‘I remember years ago reading in a magazine about some old geezer who was asked what he wished he’d known when he was eighteen, and he said he wished he’d known that one day the sex urge would go away and what a relief it would be.’
She winked at me. You hardly ever see a woman wink. It was quite captivating.
‘Trouble is, I’m still waiting for that to happen. Don’t know whether to be glad or sorry. More port?’
Grateful that Robin was driving I accepted another huge glassful. Maude continued to talk about her family but somewhat to my relief the sex discussion seemed at an end.
At no stage during the day was Natasha Felks ever mentioned, although I remained all too aware that she had died only eight months before Robin proposed marriage to me. I assumed that Maude and the rest of the family did not talk about her in my presence, even if they were sometimes thinking about her, out of deference to my feelings.
By the time we left for home that evening I had come to the conclusion that Maude Croft-Maple was the most extraordinary person I had ever met in my life. Apart from Robin, of course.
It was during the week after my first meeting with Robin’s mother that the news of our engagement leaked out — as, of course, it was always going to. Never try to keep a secret in a police station. One night Robin and I were enjoying a late-night curry in a little Indian restaurant where I had never before met anyone I knew in the world when in walked Phyllis Jordan, to pick up a takeaway, she explained. I was wearing my diamond ring on my engagement finger and Phyllis spotted it at once. She was after all my favourite office manager because of her extraordinary attention to detail.
I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head, she stared so hard at my wedding finger. Then she looked up at us both enquiringly and I felt myself flush. I didn’t know whether Robin had guessed that I had not exactly been boasting about our engagement, nor if he had how he felt about it, but he obviously decided the time had come to take the initiative.
I introduced him to Phyllis merely by name, without any explanation, which, I suppose, was pretty cowardly of me.
‘Hi,’ said Robin casually. ‘I’m Rose’s fiancé.’
Well, I suppose I couldn’t blame him. If you’re going to marry a woman you can hardly remain incognito.
Phyllis’s eyes opened even wider than they were already. ‘Delighted to meet you,’ she said, and she couldn’t have looked much more pleased with herself if she’d just won the lottery, as with a knowing smile at me she left the restaurant clutching a bag full of what smelt like a particularly fierce selection of curries.
I knew the news would be around the entire nick in no time and I was not to be disappointed.
‘Congratulations, boss,’ said Peter Mellor, rather pointedly, as we retired to the nearby Green Dragon pub for a lunchtime pint the next day.
I grinned. ‘Phyllis didn’t waste much time then,’ I said as easily as I could manage.
‘Perhaps she didn’t know it was a secret,’ he responded. I studied him carefully. I couldn’t be sure, but I had a feeling my cold fish of a sergeant was a bit offended that I hadn’t confided in him.
‘It’s not,’ I said firmly, and added a bit of a half-fib. ‘Robin’s only just given me the ring, that’s all.’
‘Well, all the best anyway, boss,’ he said.
‘Thanks Peter,’ I said. ‘You must come and meet Robin, have a drink with us one night.’
Well, the word was out now, so I might as well hit the gossip head on.
‘That would be great, boss,’ Peter replied, but I fancied he was a little tight-lipped.