A Change of Pace (3 page)

The phone rang as she was scrabbling through one of the many plastic shopping bags they’d brought with them, vainly looking for the beefburgers. It was the first time the phone had rung since they arrived; its bell sounded wheezy and full of dust.

‘Hullo?’

‘Oh, hullo. Am I speaking to the rector’s wife? I’m chairman of the Little Podlington Unmarried Mothers’ Association —’

‘I’m sorry, Pete, but I’m not in the mood for jokes. It’s been the most ghastly day. Say what you have to say and then get off the line, I’m in the middle of cooking the first meal Diz and I’ve had in twenty-four hours.’

‘Don’t be like that, ducky, I was only ringing to see how you’re getting on ... ’

The oven-ready chips were in the oven and she was upstairs making up the beds, when Diz and Tib arrived back, accompanied, inexplicably, by a cross-looking young man in a raspberry-coloured vest and jeans.
Now
what? Bet pushed up the window and stuck her head out. ‘Hullo?’

‘Is this your dog?’

‘Of course it is. Who — ?’

‘You’re lucky I haven’t called the police, then. It’s vicious. It chased our cat up a tree, and when my wife tried to stop it, it went for her. You should keep the animal under proper control, you know, instead of letting it run wild all over our estate.’

‘He’s talking utter rubbish, Mum. Tib wasn’t out of control at all, and if people can’t tell the difference between a friendly greeting and a vicious attack, all I can say is they should get themselves a doctor. I just —’

‘Diz!’ It came out in a sort of strangled shriek, and if nothing else, served to stop the two young men in their tracks. Having gained the advantage she’d better make use of it —was this positive decision-making? ‘I don’t wish to hear any more, Desmond. Take Tib round to the kitchen at once and shut him in. You can give him his dinner, I’ve unpacked his stuff. At once, d’you hear. I don’t want any argument.’

‘Christ, Mum!’ Diz, red in the face, his body rigid with outrage, stood blinking up at her, the evening sun shining on his spectacles. She felt a twinge of love. ‘Surely you’ve at least got the decency to listen to my side?’ he said. ‘That oaf threw a stone at Tib. It could have cut him quite badly, he —’

‘Scram!’ Why on earth had she used such a very outdated expression? But to her surprise it worked. After a moment’s shocked, reproachful silence, her son, with a grossly exaggerated shrug of the shoulders, turned on his heel and crunched heavily away across the gravel, dragging Tib behind him. She’d won!

‘I’m so sorry, Mr ... ?’

‘Bone, if you must know, but — ’

‘Mr Bone. I’ll be down in a second. I was making up the beds, you see we’ve only just moved in ... ’

A rapid glance in the mirror, a smear of lipstick and a squirt of that expensive perfume Pete had given her last Christmas. What was she trying to do, flaunt her sexuality (always supposing she still had any) in order to get this ghastly young man to climb down? She opened the front door. ‘Do please come in, Mr Bone. I’m so sorry about all this. Could I possibly offer you a drink? I’m sure we have some somewhere.’

Half an hour later, dog forgotten, slightly pink about the gills and smiling gently to himself, Brian Bone returned to Buttercup Close. What was a bird like that doing all on her own in a house like that with a son like him? Getting on a bit, but so was Liz Taylor, and he sometimes dreamed about Liz Taylor. Would he dream about Mrs Brandon? Well he wouldn’t mind! What with Moira expecting, and wanting him to kip in the spare room ...

He slid through the front door of no. 8, his trainers making no noise on the brown-and-orange-patterned brush-nylon carpeting. Tri, where have you been all this time? Mum says we ought to call the police and lay charges. These people shouldn’t be allowed to get away with it — that boy!’

Brian groaned. He’d hoped she wouldn’t hear him come in. He put on his soothing voice — used more and more frequently as the weeks of Moira’s pregnancy dragged by. ‘Calm down, pet. It’s all turned out to be a bit of a storm in a teacup. Mrs Brandon’s a widow, on her own, like, got a lot to cope with. She was quite upset. And you didn’t have to go and ring your mum.’

But there was no reply. Moira Bone was on her way to the bathroom. She was going to be sick again.

Chapter Two

‘Mrs Redford on the line, Pete. Shall I put her through?’ Wiggins Apthorp encouraged informality in their employees, Mr Bellman, the senior partner, taking the view that despite certain obvious dangers, such a policy paid off in the long run.

Pete groaned. Christmas had come and gone, but the Redfords’ wing of Hopton Rectory remained uninhabitable. They’d spent the holiday staying with friends in the Bahamas and had just returned, tanned and overfed, to the bleak reality of a London January. ‘I suppose you’d better. What on earth can she ... ? Oh hullo, darling, anything wrong?’

‘Of course there’s something wrong, I wouldn’t be ringing you if there wasn’t. I’ve just had the builders on the phone. They say they can’t be finished by next week. Some nonsense about having to wait for something to dry before they can do anything else. Just an excuse for skiving, of course, you know what these people are.’

Pete sipped a mouthful of cold coffee; it tasted of TCP. What on earth did Fiona do to get it like that? ‘Well, we’ll just have to postpone the move, that’s all, there’s not a lot else we can do. Does Cameron say when they think they will be out? Why not have a word with Bet?’

‘I’ve spoken to Bet already. I rang her to ask about finding a daily.’

‘What did she say about Cameron?’

‘Nothing really, you know Bet. Just said the place was still in a frightful mess and Mr Cameron was a nice man and doing his best. Honestly, I simply don’t know how Bet’s going to cope in the real world; she’s had Miles to wet-nurse her for so long ...’

Pete’s eyes wandered longingly in the direction of his
Financial
Times
. He twitched it towards him. Unfortunately he twitched too hard and managed to upset his still half-filled cup of coffee. A stream of khaki-coloured liquid trickled gently over the newspaper and down on to the expensive rug underneath his desk. ‘Bloody hell!’

‘Pete, are you listening?’

‘Of course I am, it’s just I’ve upset my coffee. I’ll have to get Fiona to clear it up before it soaks in.’ Pol snorted. ‘Do you ever do any work? I haven’t even had time yet for a slice of toast, let alone mid-morning coffee.’

‘Look, ducky, I’ll ring the Rectory this afternoon, have a word with Bet — and Cameron, if I can get hold of him — but quite frankly I don’t see the world falling apart because we can’t move down there for another week or two. Now I really must go, old girl, there’s a call from New York on the other line.’ He quickly replaced the receiver before she could say anything else. ‘Fiona, love, can you come in? I’m afraid there’s been a disaster with your coffee ... ’

That afternoon, pleasantly relaxed after a heavy lunch, Pete put a call through to the Rectory. Would Bet be in one of her moods? He loved talking to Bet, she terrified him and excited him at the same time; like a nervous thoroughbred horse, you never knew what she would do next, kick out at you or smile that lovely smile of hers. Wasted on old Miles really. All those years stuck in Hampstead, reading the
Guardian
, canvassing for the Labour party and organising jumble sales for War on Want. He wondered what she would do now, let loose on the world after so long. She’d loved Miles Brandon totally, he’d always known that. But occasionally, just very occasionally, he’d glimpsed another quality in her; a kind of harsh sexuality quite out of keeping with her role of liberal-minded Hampstead housewife and mother.

‘Hullo, hullo! How’s my favourite sister-in-law? I gather there’s been a spot of bother with our esteemed friend Cameron?’

‘Look, Pete, before you go any further I should just like to say that I’ve quite enough to do down here without having to spend half my time relaying totally unnecessary messages to your wretched builders. I’m not surprised they’re behind, Mr Cameron says Pol changed her mind six times over the bathroom wallpaper and then went back to the first one they’d tried. He was practically in tears, he ... ’

Pete closed his eyes. Bet always looked so delicious when she was cross. He tried to imagine her standing there by the phone, one slim, brown hand gripping the receiver, her hair bouncing about on her shoulders — the colour of sweet dark sherry, he’d once poetically described it, and even after all these years it was still like that except for one or two interesting streaks of grey at the temples. Her green eyes would be all stormy and tragic-looking, and ... ‘Pete, are you still there or has some idiot cut us off?’

‘I’m still here, ducky.’

‘Answer my question, then. Do you or do you not know that Pol is now insisting on having a daily? Not only that, but expecting me to scour the neighbourhood for one.’

‘Actually, ducky, I think she only wants one twice a week — someone to get things ready before we come down on a Friday and clear up afterwards on a Monday. The place will probably be a bit of a shambles; you see, the old girl means to do quite a lot of entertaining.’

‘It’s a pity she couldn’t have told me that in the first place. Now I’ll have to rewrite the notice I was going to put in the Post Office.’

‘What a bore for you, ducky, Pol should have made it clearer.’ Did he sound sympathetic enough? ‘Look Bet, you’ve been an absolute brick these last weeks, you really have. The last thing I want to do is add to your worries, it’s just ... well, you know Pol.’

‘I do indeed.’ There was silence. Would she hang up on him? ‘Are you still there, ducky?’

‘Of course I’m still here. I just don’t have anything else to say. Mr Cameron, as far as I can tell, is doing wonders; the place looks like something out of
Ideal
Home
and if Pol would only stop messing him about he would have finished weeks ago.’

‘Well, that is splendid news, really splendid. Old Felix’s cousin, Monty Cornwall, put us on to Cameron, you know.

He has a place in Suffolk — Monty Cornwall, I mean, not Cameron. Frightfully good chap, Felix says, brother in the Rifle Brigade. We’ll have him over and you must meet. Of course he knows everyone in the county, the Cornwalls have been there since the flood.’

‘Aren’t you afraid I might let the side down? Currently the only person I’ve met, apart from the vicar, is a young plumber from one of the housing estates. He came to complain about Tib. Diz says he’s fallen for me.’

‘We’ll soon change all that.’ Pete tried not to feel disturbed by this news. Hobnobbing with plumbers from the local housing estate, not quite his and Pol’s line of country! He suddenly realised the time. He’d promised to be home early, Pol was giving one of her dinner parties. ‘Must go now, ducky. And as I’ve said, don’t worry about a thing. I’m sure old Monty Cornwall’s wife will be able to rustle up a daily if the worst comes to the worst.’

‘To hell with old Monty Cornwall and his wife!’

Pete smiled. He loved Bet when she said things like that.

Back at no. 6 Parsley Street, Pol greeted him tearfully. ‘The Cardews can’t come, she’s got flu. He only rang five minutes ago so there’s no time to get hold of anyone else. It really is the limit. How can people be so inconsiderate. And what, may one ask, does one do with all this food?’

Pete’s heart sank.

*

‘All I said was, I’m a little tired of being used by Aunt Pol as some sort of go-between.’

‘I realize that, Mum, but you must admit that if you and Aunt Pol spend your time sniping at each other over the phone before she’s even moved in, it doesn’t augur too well for the future. Know what I mean?’

‘Please don’t use that expression, Diz. If I don’t understand what you mean, I’ll say so.’ Bet peered gloomily at the potato she was scrubbing. Was she becoming a nag? Probably; old Ma in the kitchen amongst the pots, shrieking instructions that no one listened to, every other sentence an expostulation, if not an expostulation a gripe. All the same, it wasn’t fair, was it, Pol spending her Christmas lying on a beach doing damn-all while she slaved away here freezing to death.

‘The trouble with you, Mum,’ Diz nibbled at a raw carrot, ‘is that you always have to go to such extremes. All you needed to do was to say to Aunt Pol quite calmly and quietly that you did just happen to —’

‘Look, Diz, when I want your advice on how to deal with my sister, I’ll ask for it. What are you doing down here anyway? Shouldn’t you be working?’

‘The learning factory doesn’t encourage work at home. Rightly or wrongly, they feel the home environment is not conducive to study, and looking round here, who am I to argue? Besides, I’ve promised to help Bern paint their sitting-room this evening. We’re getting in some cans of beer and making a night of it.’

‘Well, see you don’t make too much of a night of it, that’s all. And ask Bernie not to wash his brushes in my sink this time, he can use the one in the old pantry.’

They had been at the Rectory nearly four months now, and the Sparsworths nearly three. It was early days yet, but now that Nell had got herself a job in Stourwick with a firm of solicitors and was consequently out of the house all day, things were settling down quite well. Before this happened, Bet had to admit that life had not always been easy. Odd that with all her worrying about how she and Pol would get on living in the same house, it had never crossed her mind to worry about how she and Nell would get on. Had Nell ever wondered about how she would get on with Bet? She’d never said anything — but then she wouldn’t, would she? What both of them had forgotten, of course, in the excitement of moving and making a start in a new place, was that Nell had been undisputed queen of her own domestic domain for the past eighteen months; and although her mother had been queen of
hers
for the past twenty-eight years Nell naturally had no intention whatsoever of relinquishing any of her newly acquired power.

Matters hadn’t been helped by the fact that Nell was such a hopeless cook. She tried, God knows she tried, following the instructions on each new recipe with the fanaticism of a scientist working on the blueprint of a top secret formula (that in the process she used every utensil in the kitchen was neither here nor there). The net result, however, never varied; whatever the dish had started out as, it ended up tasting of nothing. No wonder Bernie smothered everything he ate with tomato ketchup. What was more, like many bad cooks, Nell seemed quite unaware of her lack of ability, and would hover anxiously over Bet’s somewhat haphazard but effective efforts with cries of ‘Surely you should use the scales, Mum, you’ll never get the right consistency like that!’ — causing Bet to shut her eyes, think of England, and pray that she wouldn’t give way to the impulse to take her darling daughter by her pretty, plump shoulders and shake her until her teeth rattled. When the explosion eventually came, however, it wasn’t over the food, but the time at which they all sat down to eat it.

It had been decided before the Sparsworths took up residence that when they did, Bet and Nell would share the cooking on a rota basis; one week Nell, one week Bet; at least until Nell started working when, as Bernie put it, a certain amount of re-scheduling would have to be done — i.e. Bet would do it all. This arrangement had one basic snag. Throughout the Sparsworths’ married life Bernie had sat down to his evening meal at six-thirty sharp. This was the time at which he had always eaten it, as had his Dad before him, and this was the time at which he wished to continue to eat it. Bet, on the other hand, throughout her married life had invariably organised family supper for seven-thirty, as had her mother before her, and during her week as duty cook she resolutely refused to have the meal on the table a moment earlier. Hints from Bernie along the lines of ‘Need any help, Mrs B.?’ or ‘Gracious, is that the time. I’m so hungry I could eat a house, only had a cheese and pickle sandwich at dinner time,’ had no effect on her whatever, she simply went on sipping her pre-prandial glass of sherry. Matters eventually came to a head when Bet, arriving in the kitchen one evening to make a start on the vegetables, found a box of frozen chips thawing in the sink, a saucepan of baked beans bubbling away on the Rayburn, and her daughter frying beefburgers. When asked what the hell she thought she was up to, Nell, very pink in the face, said she was cooking Bernie’s tea. She was sorry if she was in the way, but as Bernie was the household’s sole breadwinner, she didn’t see why he should be kept waiting for hours for his evening meal, and anyway she (Nell) was fed up with missing ‘Coronation Street’.

Then the fat was in the fire! Tears and recriminations (Nell), invective (Bet), oil on troubled waters (Bernie) —mercifully Diz was out to supper with a school friend —during which the beefburgers got burned, nobody watched ‘Coronation Street’, and nobody had so much as a slice of bread until well past nine o’clock when, worn out with shouting and faint from lack of food, the protagonists collapsed in a heap and decided to call it a day. Embraces and tearful apologies followed, giggles too on the part of Bet and Nell — Bernie didn’t seem to think it all that funny. As at the conclusion of most battles, the upshot was a compromise. Bet agreed to put back the evening meal to six forty-five, and Nell and Bernie would eat on their own at weekends, except for Sunday lunch which Bet would cook unless otherwise arranged. On the whole, give or take the odd hiccup, this arrangement had worked pretty well. Bet still cringed at the sight of Bernie’s battery of sauce bottles, and Bernie still, no doubt, moaned to his wife about Bet’s liberal use of garlic —but one couldn’t expect miracles, and on the whole, in that department at least, things weren’t too bad.

The real trouble, as far as Bet was concerned, was the loneliness. Stupidly, she had simply not catered for this. She’d accepted, of course, the reality of missing Miles; there would be no escape from that, she knew only too well. But this sense of isolation was something altogether different, and not what she’d hoped for when she made her great decision to move to Suffolk. Indeed, once at the Rectory she’d seen herself as the centre of a busy household, meeting new people, making jam for the W.I., genning up on local history. Even, perhaps giving the occasional modest cocktail party such as she remembered her parents giving at their retirement cottage in Devon in the long ago days before she and Miles were married. But somehow things hadn’t turned out like that. But then life never did turn out the way you thought it would, did it? Perhaps it would have helped if she’d been able to drive. Miles had always done the driving, there never seemed to be any need for her to learn. Or perhaps when the Redfords moved in things would get better. But in a way she dreaded their coming.