And all the time she felt that the weeding was a futile gesture because she couldn’t imagine being in the Priory in twelve months. Left to himself Jeremy would either allow the place to become a wilderness or he’d invite one of his arty friends up from London to consider a landscape design. She imagined that they’d pull out all the plants and devise something minimalist and oriental with gravel and strange statues.
It was Edie’s idea that she should take a day off. Anne decided that she got on so well with Edie because, although she hardly liked to admit it, they were of the same generation. They were somehow less hung up than the youngsters with all their principles.
Anne had confided to Edie that the thought of leaving Baikie’s to return to her life at the Priory and Jeremy was making her panic. Of course she hadn’t told Edie about Godfrey but she had guessed about an affair that had gone wrong.
“The trouble is I haven’t really thought it through,” Anne had said.
“While I’m here I forget that there’s anything going on outside. I mean, I know we have to put up with Vera’s antics but that’s almost seemed like part of the survey. It’s all about digging around to find answers, isn’t it? But now we’ve got a date for leaving, well, I can’t put off making decisions for much longer.” Then Edie had said, “Why don’t you take a day off and go home? It might put things into perspective.”
Anne had taken the advice and while she squatted in the sun untangling the goose grass and the columbine, she had been trying to sort out the more difficult mess of how to spend the rest of her life.
“You have to decide what you really want,” Edie had said. Which was all very well except that she knew that what she really wanted was Godfrey Waugh and she still wasn’t sure whether or not he was a murderer.
At lunchtime Jeremy arrived home. He had interests of some description in an antique shop in Morpeth and had gone in, he said, to check that the manager had priced some new stock correctly. The manager was young and pretty.
“Roland has no idea,” Jeremy said. He stood on the flagstone path, very dapper in his Ralph Lauren shirt and his St. Laurent blazer, sweating slightly. He had to shout because he wouldn’t venture onto the grass in case his shoes got mucky. Anne refused to stop weeding to go to him. There was something reassuring about the rhythm of stooping and pulling and of seeing the ground clear in front of her.
“I mean, he’s a first-class salesman. I’ll give him that. But he knows nothing about the period.”
She wondered briefly which period but knew better than to ask. Jeremy liked to lecture.
“You’ll never guess,” Jeremy went on excitedly, hands flapping, a parody of himself. “We’ve been invited to a do at the Hall.”
That did make her stop. She stood up, felt the muscles in her shoulders pull, the tingle where the sun had caught the back of her legs.
“What sort of a do?”
“Oh, nothing really formal. Nothing really posh. I mean, I expect everyone and his dog will be there. It’s some sort of celebration for the youngest brat’s birthday. But Lily Fulwell did come here specially to ask.”
“You’re such a snob, Jeremy,” she said gently.
“Darling,” he said, “I can’t help it. Are you going to stop that now and come in for lunch?”
“If you like.”
“I can’t wait until you give up that dreary business in the hills.
Won’t it be wonderful when everything’s back to normal again?” She caught the anxiety in his voice and thought that Jeremy was probably panicking too. He wasn’t stupid and hated any change or disruption. He was a kind and funny man and she thought she would miss him. But it wouldn’t do to stay.
“What shall we have for lunch?” She couldn’t face a confrontation now, even about when they should eat. This was her day off.
“Oh God!” He was distraught. “I didn’t think. I meant to pick something up on the way back.”
“Let’s go to the pub,” she said, then smiled when Jeremy pulled a face.
Homemade leek pudding or jumbo sausage and chips weren’t really his taste. He didn’t feel at ease with the lunchtime boozers.
“Oh God,” he repeated. “All right. If we must. But I wouldn’t do it for anyone else but you.”
In the house he followed her upstairs, waited in her bedroom, shouting through the door to her when she stood in the shower. This is what it must be like, she thought, to have a clinging child who follows you everywhere. She heard his words sporadically through the sound of the water. At first it seemed he was talking about the Fulwell party again. The idea of being invited to the Hall had delighted him. She caught: “I suppose we’ll have to get it a present.”
But when she emerged, wrapped in a towel, she realized he was talking about something else.
“You will phone her, won’t you? I can’t face putting her off again.”
“Phone who?”
“The woman who’s been trying to get in touch with you. I just said.”
She was sitting at the dressing table rubbing the towel over her hair.
The sun had made it brittle and the roots needed doing. “I didn’t hear.” “Oh God, Jeremy, talk to yourself,” he said. He was sitting on the bed behind her. She saw his reflection in the dressing table mirror, put out but trying not to show it.
“I’m sorry. Can you tell me again?”
“A woman phoned for you several times. She presumed I could get a message to you. I didn’t like to tell her I hardly ever see you these days.”
“Sorry,” she repeated to keep the peace. She thought what right’s he got to make me feel guilty? He’s usually in London anyway. Then, because he was still sulking, she asked, “What’s her name?”
“Barbara something. She said you’d have the number.”
“Waugh?” she asked. “Barbara Waugh?”
“That’s it.”
“What did she want?”
“Oh, she wouldn’t tell me. I presumed it was girly stuff. You will phone her before you go back to that hovel in the hills?”
“I will, but not until I’ve eaten.”
He grimaced. “Come on then. Let’s get it over.”
She was tempted to take him into the bar where Lance, the young mechanic from the garage, would be eating boiled ham and pease pudding sandwiches with oily hands. A juke-box playing rock music tried to compete with Sky TV. Instead she took him to the lounge. There were only two other customers in the room, sitting at a table in the corner.
At first they were so engrossed in conversation that they didn’t see Anne and Jeremy come in. But Anne saw them immediately. It was Godfrey Waugh and Neville Furness. Godfrey had his back to her but she recognized him at once, the grey tweed sports jacket he wore when he was trying to be casual, the thinning hair. A glass of orange juice stood untouched beside his elbow. Neville was drinking beer and when he looked up from the conversation to take his glass, he saw her.
He must have said something to Godfrey, because although he didn’t look round he quickly drank the juice then he stood to go. Anne wondered what they could be doing here. Perhaps another meeting with the opposition group, another concession, another bribe? Neville nodded to her as he walked past, but Godfrey, staring straight ahead, would not catch her eye.
Jeremy was farting about with menus and showed no sign that he had noticed the men. She said, “Order me a G &T. I’m just going to the ladies’.”
She caught up with Godfrey in the car park. He stood with his keys in his hand by the side of his white BMW. Perhaps he’d wanted her to catch him up, had been deliberately slow, because Neville was already driving away. She thought though, as he looked in his wing mirror before pulling out into the road, that he must have seen them.