A Change of Pace (2 page)

It was a warm day in late May, with the stink of petrol and exhaust fumes rising miasma-like above Hampstead, and the two of them were sitting in the back garden having tea, when Nell let loose her bombshell. The words came out in a rush, as though prepared beforehand, and at the end she had looked at her mother as one expecting, at the very least, a blow on the head for having the audacity to propose such a plan.

It had resulted initially, it appeared, from the fact that Bernie was to be transferred to the insurance group’s head office at Stourwick in Suffolk — a step up the promotion ladder that could not possibly be refused. In any case they both wanted to move out of London, the flat in Fulham being no place to bring up a family. To this end they had begun house-hunting in Suffolk at weekends. However, despite the fact that the group gave substantial help over mortgages, every property they liked proved to be way above their price range — ‘You know Bernie, Mum, he’s such a perfectionist’ — and after several weeks of fruitless searching they’d begun to get pretty fed up. Then they’d gone out for a meal one evening with Aunt Pol and Uncle Pete — ‘That new place in the Kings Road, the one with lots of salads and all those statues’ — and the idea had suddenly come to them. Aunt Pol had just said how she longed to have a little place in the country for weekends, and Suffolk seemed as good a county as any to start looking, when Uncle Pete said out of the blue, How about buying a house together and cutting it in half? She and Bernie could live in one half and he and Aunt Pol could use the other half as their weekend base. The advantages of this plan, as Uncle Pete saw it, were twofold: first, they could jointly afford a much better place, and second, the Sparsworths could keep a watching brief on his and Aunt Pol’s part of the house when they were away during the week.

‘Good old Pete, always one eye on the main chance,’ Bet hadn’t been able to resist interrupting at this point. Nell looked at her reproachfully. ‘Mum, please!’

Well, of course the next thing had been. What about Diz and Mum left all on their own in Hampstead? And quick as a flash someone said — Nell couldn’t now remember who —Why can’t they come too, then we could buy an even bigger and better house? ‘You see, Mum, Diz had already told us you were fed up with Thorn Lane and didn’t want to stay on here. And if you came too we could get something really good with a big garden. You know how you love gardening and are always complaining you can’t do it properly in London. Bern’s brilliant at DIY and, well, we just thought ... ’

‘I take it,’ Bet said, ‘you’ve already discussed all this with Diz?’

‘Well, yes, as a matter of fact we have. He thought it a great idea, he —’

‘Naturally, I’m the last to be told.’

‘Please, Mum, don’t make things difficult, we only meant it for the best. It seemed such a great idea, all of us together in a new place ... ’ Nell’s voice petered out and she took a gulp of tea. Silence fell between them while they listened to the distant rumble of traffic on Haverstock Hill, bisected now and again by the moan of a police siren or the roar of a jet. In truth Bet was not only intrigued, but astonished by the whole, bold scheme; she hadn’t thought these particular members of her family capable of producing an idea of such originality. She felt a twinge of excitement, a stirring of interest; it was like tentatively putting one’s foot to the ground after a long illness. Still, one shouldn’t sound too enthusiastic at first.

‘Well,’ she had said at last, ‘it’s certainly an original idea and it has distinct possibilities, but I’m not sure about ... ’ And that was how it began.

Of course there were snags, not the least of them being Pol and Pete. Bet’s sister, Polly Redford, was three years her junior. She and Pete, married in 1962, had never produced any children. They lived, more or less harmoniously, in a smart little house in Chelsea, had a new car every two years, and entertained their friends to cosy dinner parties where the drink flowed freely, everyone made token passes at everyone else’s wife and of course nobody minded. The Redfords had for some years talked of buying a cottage in the country, a weekend retreat in which to unwind in some arcane village setting, but for one reason or another the plan had never come to fruition — until now.

On thinking things over after Nell had gone, Bet could see that from her sister’s point of view, house-sharing would have a great many advantages; a built-in housekeeper for a start, a gardener, too, for that matter. But she was forced to admit that she herself would also benefit from such a scheme. Sharing a house with Pol after so many years would certainly be a challenge, might even turn out to be a test of endurance — but it could hardly be worse, she felt, than her present situation.

The relationship between Bet and her sister had always been a complex one. Ever since childhood, for reasons unclear to Bet, she had felt guilty about Pol — and, surprisingly, the guilt had continued even after Pol married and became considerably better off than Miles and herself. Pol did little to dispel her guilt, in fact made it worse by somehow always managing to give the impression that, although she herself was having a simply marvellous time, somewhere just round the corner Bet was having an even better one. That Bet had two children and Pol none, oddly enough had never been an issue. Indeed, Pol was closer to Nell than Bet was; they had always got on, ever since Nell, as a toddler, had fancifully likened her aunt to ‘a beautiful fairy on a Christmas tree’ .

Bet’s feelings about her brother-in-law were more straight forward. Pete was all-right really. Under his pose of City gent/Tory backwoodsman, he was a simple, kindly soul. After the war, his father, who had been a minor civil servant, went into partnership with a man he met in a pub and made a fortune out of scrap metal overnight. Pete had been sent to a minor public school which he hated — or so, in a drunken moment, he had once admitted to Bet — but always publicly referred to his years there as the best of his life — and if anyone chose to believe the school was Eton, that was their affair. After doing his National Service as a corporal in REME — again, if anyone chose to believe he’d been a second lieutenant in the Guards he wouldn’t disillusion them — he went into a stock-broking office in the City, where he discovered to his considerable surprise that he was absolutely brilliant at making money. Over the years he had kept his rather florid good looks, and apart from a slight thinning of his blonde hair, a tendency to breathlessness and a budding double chin, he still looked pretty much as he had when Pol married him.

The snag about Pete, from Bet’s point of view was that in the last few years he’d taken to falling in love with young and unlikely girls, and using Bet as an embarrassed confidante. Since Miles’ death she had heard little of his activities on this front, but found it hard to believe they had ceased. Pol, cocooned as she was in her own self-esteem, appeared never to have doubted Pete’s devotion, and Bet passionately hoped this state of affairs would continue, for all their sakes. Miles had always tended to treat Pete as something of a joke figure, often repeating, in a take-off of Pete’s plummy Old Etonian accent, his brother-in-law’s latest statement on world affairs. Bet and Diz always fell about laughing, and it was only afterwards, when Nell put on her prim face — not daring to voice her disapproval in front of her father — that Bet would experience a twinge or two of guilt. For the truth was that she loved Pete, and his kindness and understanding of her pain following Miles’s death had been a revelation.

Despite the doubts and anxieties, however, a decision was made at last. The house in Thorn Lane was put on the market and house-hunting in Suffolk began in earnest. At first they’d been flooded with particulars of perfectly splendid-looking properties, every last one turning out to have a fatal flaw not mentioned by the estate agents. A buyer was found for Thorn Lane, ready and anxious to exchange contracts — an up-and-coming actor and his live-in girlfriend — but still they’d found nothing. Then at last, when hope was almost gone, one pouring wet Sunday afternoon at the end of July, with Pete driving, Diz map-reading, Bet and Tib penned up in the back, they found it.

The Old Rectory, Hopton, ‘in need of some modernisation and repair’, was the last house on the day’s list, the agent’s particulars so bald that they’d nearly left them behind, feeling a visit would simply turn out to be a waste of time. However, the house did have the right number of bedrooms, and it was only three o’clock — they might as well just take a quick look.

At first sight Hopton village was pretty uninspiring, especially in the rain. There was the usual fuzz of 1950s council houses, there were two newly-built council estates, and there was a main street which, as in many Suffolk villages, straggled on for nearly three-quarters of a mile. Pete drove slowly past a row of cottages, the rain thudding on the car roof, and stopped beside a village ancient with a sack draped round his shoulders. The ancient pointed a quavering finger. ‘Over bridge and bear round to the right, can’t miss it, gate’s just past church.’ And there it had been, a Jane Austen rectory, simple, sensible and beautiful, with a cedar tree, a jumble of stables and a real walled vegetable garden. ‘Oh God,’ she’d whispered into Tib’s ear, ‘we’ve found it,’ and prayed the others would think so too. Tib shot out of the car and disappeared, Diz put on his enigmatic face — so like Miles — which meant that underneath he was very excited indeed, and Pete, after a long look round, said: ‘It needs a lot doing to it, of course, but it does have possibilities. If we can bring the price down a bit ... get a grant ... ’

Deeds were signed, builder’s estimates discarded. After much wrangling and discussion, crucial decisions were made about who should have which part of the house, and whether to divide it into two or three; in the end they plumped for two, with Bet, Diz and the Sparsworths living more or less together, though of course they all had their own rooms. It all took a long time, harsh words were spoken and tempers lost, but somehow or other, as the leaves were beginning to turn on the Heath, Bet, Diz and Tib had left no. 10 Thorn Lane, Hampstead, for ever, and here they were, the vanguard of their little army, two intrepid explorers of a new world ...

Bet shivered. She felt cold and slightly sick; she should have eaten, not drunk. She supposed she’d better get some sort of meal together. Oven-ready chips and beefburgers, their last purchase from the shop round the corner in Kingsland Avenue. ‘Goodbye, dear Mrs Brandon,’ Mr Gopal had said, squeezing her hand rather too tightly for comfort, ‘we will be missing you a great deal here,’ and she almost ran out of the shop for fear he should see her cry. She hadn’t even stopped to check her change, sometimes necessary with Mr Gopal, but one never minded having to, he was always so sympathetic. She shivered again. Surely it shouldn’t be so cold in here on such a lovely day? Damp, of course. No doubt endemic — all rectories were damp. Oh God, they’d never get the place right! The future loomed unbearably — what little money she had wasted on incompetent damp-proof experts and exorbitant heating bills.

It was all the miserable Bernie’s fault for refusing Pete’s offer. ‘We’ll start as we mean to go on, Pete, thanks all the same,’ he’d said primly — presumably using ‘we’ in the regal sense, for Bet herself had no such inhibitions — when Pete offered to lend them the money for central heating. ‘It’s your decision, old boy, of course,’ Pete responded, but one would have thought it better to have the whole house done in one go rather than fiddle around separately. Cheaper, too, in the long run.’ But Bernie, to Bet’s annoyance — and even Nell had looked a bit wistful — merely shook his head. ‘I’m thinking in terms of solid fuel, actually, Pete,’ he said, looking keenly round the table at the circle of unresponsive faces, ‘there’s no doubt SF is the fuel of the future, and with some of these new systems, only half the price of gas. Anyway, I’d like to shop around a bit before I come to any decision. There’s a guy in our Life department who’s quite an expert.’

At this point Pol had looked at Bet, obviously expecting her to speak up, say that of course they would accept Pete’s offer, it would be absurd not to. But she hadn’t spoken up, she’d just sat there and sulked, preferring to remain a member of the rank and file and let Bernie take responsibility for organising the heating — or anything else for that matter —in their part of the house. Was that what twenty-eight years of marriage did to you? Made you lose the power of positive decision-making? Made you work on the principle that if there was a man in the vicinity, it might be easier — even better — if he took charge? Pretty feeble, really, when you thought about it, but there it was. And Bernie, the self-opinionated young ass, had his way; the net result being that while the Redfords would bask in a steady temperature of seventy-five degrees this winter, the rest of them, compelled to make do with an as yet untried and extremely ancient Rayburn and a few assorted electric fires, would freeze.

Central heating, or the lack of it, wasn’t the only dissimilarity between the two sections of Hopton Rectory either. Pete and Pol’s half — the south wing, consisting of the rector’s old study, a butler’s pantry and the back stairs leading to two bedrooms and an antediluvian bathroom —had already undergone gigantic changes, and although still far from complete, it was well on its way to becoming the luxury pad Pol claimed was absolutely essential to country living. Not really in Bet’s style, of course, which was one consolation, but nevertheless pretty impressive. In contrast, to date, the Brandon/Sparsworth end of the house had been left virtually untouched. Apart from some necessary adjustments to the plumbing, a few new tiles on the roof and the sanding of the floor in Bet’s sitting-room — she wasn’t going to have Miles’s Persian rugs slumming it on six layers of khaki linoleum — nothing had been done. Bernie was the expert on DIY, let him get on with it. All she was interested in was the garden anyway.