‘What time are the others arriving?’ he asked, breaking into her thoughts. He sounded excited. The gloom seemed to have lifted. She thought he was more excited about seeing his friends than he was about her. She never had that effect on him any more.
Felicity had been wondering about Lily Marsh, the student teacher, about whether she would accept the offer of accommodation. Felicity realized that they hadn’t discussed money. Perhaps that had been the problem, why Lily had run off in that way. Perhaps having seen the cottage, very picturesque, if a little primitive, Lily had thought the rent would be beyond her. She was only a student after all. Felicity wondered if she should send a note to school with James, something welcoming but very precise, mentioning a sum which wouldn’t put the young woman off. She’d been composing the letter in her head when Peter spoke.
She turned her thoughts to the matter in hand. Peter’s birthday meal. A ritual. The same three friends invited each year. ‘I’ve told them dinner at eight, with a walk to the lighthouse beforehand.’ The walk to the lighthouse was a ritual too.
She heard the postman’s van down the lane and then the flop of envelopes onto the hall floor. She left Peter to his toast and went to collect them. All the letters were for him. She recognized the children’s writing on three of the cards. She set the letters on the table in front of him. He put them into his briefcase without opening them. He always did that, always saved them to open at work. She’d wondered once if he had something to hide, in a moment of fantasy imagined another wife, a secret family. But it had just become a habit. He did it without thinking.
As he shut the briefcase, he stood up. There was a flurry of activity; Peter had promised James a lift up the lane to the bus and stood at the bottom of the stairs shouting for him to hurry. There were bags to be picked up and the packed lunch was almost forgotten. Felicity realized the note to Lily Marsh had never been written. She almost shouted to James as he ambled towards the car. Tell Miss Marsh to give me a ring about the cottage. But Peter would want to know what it was about and she couldn’t hold him up now. Besides, he might disapprove of the idea. She would need to sell the plan to him when things were less fraught. She put Lily Marsh out of her mind. At last the car drove off and the house was wonderfully silent.
She sat over another coffee and made a list for the farm shop. She had planned the weekend meals already in her head. There was a cake of course, already baked and iced. It was a pity the three older children lived too far away to share it. For dinner tonight she’d made a daube of beef, rich and dark, slippery with olives and red wine. It stood in the pantry and needed only to be reheated. Now she changed her mind. It was too hot for beef. If Neil at the farm had a couple of chickens, she’d do that Spanish dish with quartered lemons and rosemary and garlic. It would be much lighter, beautifully aromatic and Mediterranean. Samuel would like that. She could set a long table on the terrace under the veranda and they’d eat it with plain rice and a big green salad, and make believe that they were looking out over orange trees and olive groves.
Occasionally, when she talked to other mothers, who rushed in and out of her house to drop off their sons, or to pick up hers, she wondered if she was missing out by not having paid employment. They seemed astounded when they found out she was at home all day. But what could she have done? She hadn’t had much of a life before her marriage. She had no qualifications, few practical skills. Besides, Peter depended on her being there, calm and rested, to look after him when he came back from the disappointments at work. Certainly he needed her to be no competition. Imagine if she had become a successful lawyer or businesswoman, if she had started to win awards in her own right! The idea made her smile.
The farm shop was cool, the door into the yard open, letting in the smell of cows and grass. She was the first customer. Neil was still filling the fridge. The huge wooden board, the cleaver, the long pointed knives were still clean. He weighed the chickens and packed them into her bag.
‘They’re not free-range.’ He knew Felicity would be interested. ‘But barn-reared, not battery. You’ll taste the difference.’
‘That was a wonderful piece of pork I had from you last week.’
‘Ah,’ he said. ‘It’s all in the cooking, Mrs Calvert. And in the growing. I only cut it up.’
Another ritual. Like Peter taking his letters to work every day and the same three friends being invited for his birthday. This exchange passed between them every week. He carried the veg box out to the car for her and winked as he had added a few extra links of sausage for free into her bag.
‘I hear it’s a special birthday for Dr Calvert.’
She wondered, as she always did, how the butcher could possibly know all her business.
When she unlocked the door the phone was ringing and she ran inside, leaving everything on the drive. It was Samuel Parr.
‘I wondered if there was anything you’d like me to bring tonight. A pud?’
‘No,’ she said. ‘Really. Nothing.’
She found herself smiling. Samuel always put her in a good humour. He, too, was always at the back of her mind.
Later, when the chicken was cooking and the house was full of the smell of lemon and olive oil and garlic, the phone rang again. Felicity was sitting outside with the paper and another cafetiere of coffee, enjoying the last hour of silence before she had to drive into Hepworth. James had chess club after school and she’d arranged to collect him. A heat haze covered the fields towards the sea and in the distance the lighthouse seemed to shimmer, insubstantial. When she heard the phone she hurried inside. Her feet were bare. The flagstones on the terrace were so hot that they almost burned and the tiles in the kitchen were cool. The contrasting physical sensations on her feet excited her, made her suddenly catch her breath.
She had been certain it would be one of the children calling, but when she answered the line went dead. She dialled 1471 and was told that the caller had withheld his number. That had happened several times recently. She wondered if she should mention it to Peter. There had been a couple of thefts in the area. Perhaps the phone calls were to check if the house was empty. But she knew she would not tell Peter. Her life’s work was to protect him from unpleasantness and worry.
She finished her coffee, looking out towards the sea. A bath, she thought, using some of that expensive oil she’d bought in Fenwick’s on her last trip to town, to relax her before the guests descended.