A Change of Pace (4 page)

Not that she was jealous of Pol — or Nell for that matter. Under no circumstances would she have wanted to be married to either Pete or Bernie. But one could not escape the fact that, of the three females living at Hopton Rectory, Bet Brandon would be the odd one out.

So, there it was; after four months she’d made no friends, apart from Miss White at the Post Office and the ubiquitous Mr Bone. There had been one caller, the Rev. Snately, their peripatetic vicar, but it was no use pretending his visit had been a success because it hadn’t. Mr Snately was based at Upton Tye, a village a few miles to the east of Hopton, Hopton church having become part of a multiple parish. Being part of a multiple parish meant that three Sundays out of four the church remained its weekday self, empty, damp and shuttered, with only the chirp of a trapped bird in the chancel or a scuffling of mice in the pews to break the silence. Bet knew; she ventured there quite often; had even put her name down as a potential flower-arranger for the vases on the altar, but no one had taken up her offer.

It was freezing cold in the sitting-room the day Mr Snately called, she was out of instant coffee and had been compelled to offer him Bovril, which he plainly disliked. He was very old and very deaf, and they had little to say to each other. In the end he only stayed ten minutes, driving away in his little Morris 1000, wrapped in his thick winter overcoat and looking like some sad old toad.

But it wasn’t during the day, when she really was alone, that Bet’s sense of isolation bit most deeply. It was in the evening when the children were at home and, supper over, she would retire alone to her sitting-room, shut the door behind her and try not to listen to their excited chatter, as under Bernie’s supervision, they sought to bring the old house back to life. It was then that loneliness, like a damp overcoat, wrapped itself around her, and she truly believed she would never feel properly alive again.

There were, of course, compensations. There always were, weren’t there, if you looked for them carefully enough? Bet’s compensation was the garden. Enormous — much too big for her to cope with, really — wild, mesmeric, totally enchanting and totally time-consuming. She’d had a bit of help with it; a friend of Mr Bone’s came one Sunday with his rotovator and turned in the walled vegetable garden (he’d managed to tear out several horseradish plants, a couple of crowns of rhubarb and a plant Bet couldn’t put a name to, but was pretty sure was rather rare; no matter, it was a tremendous help all the same), the two boys had cut and raked the lawn and dug out the small forest of unwanted saplings, and Nell, with infinite care and thoroughness, had weeded the rockery. That in doing so she had pulled out most of the things Bet wished to keep and left most of the weeds, was neither here nor there. But despite all this Bet remained undisputed queen of the garden; it was her domain, and in it her will was law.

In the long, soft, autumn days following her and Diz’s arrival at the Rectory, she had worked away at the tangled borders for hours on end, planting, dividing, planning, bringing them back to order, back to life. And this occupied her so completely that while she was doing it she found to her surprise that she forgot Miles and her loneliness, forgot even the cataclysmic disruption of the settled existence she had known for so long. She seemed to become a different person, altogether simpler, more self-reliant. At peace in her solitariness, she knelt on the wet ground, her fingernails black with earth and mud on her knees, talking to Tib, talking to herself, dreaming ...

There was another aspect of the garden she’d grown to love, the verandah. The verandah, Edwardian in design, lay along the south side of the house, facing on to what had already become known as the croquet lawn — Diz, rummaging in the little room behind the stables one wet afternoon, had come across a box of ancient croquet mallets, complete with six hoops and a battered ball. As winters went in that part of the world, it hadn’t been particularly cold so far — only the house and Bet’s soul were cold — and the verandah, built to trap any sun there might be, was a wonderfully pleasant place to sit and drink one’s after-lunch coffee, even if one did have to be muffled in rugs, gloves and a woolly hat. At one end of it a wisteria twined itself in and out of the wrought-iron pillars supporting the roof, at the other, bare ropes of
Clematis
montana
and a rampant, viciously spiked Albertine rose formed a woody screen through which gleamed the pale gold sprays of winter-flowering jasmine. Alas part of the Redford domain, the verandah was already scheduled for complete refurbishment; the faded Edwardiana, so much loved by Bet, was shortly to be replaced by sensible, sliding patio doors, double glazing, and all the very latest in designer garden furniture. But meanwhile, enjoying it while she still could, Bet would lie back on the one remaining basket chair, watching the smoke from her cigarette curl up into the misty recesses of a now defunct Virginia creeper, and dream of Edwardian tennis parties long ago. Scrumptious teas with brown-bread ices, cucumber sandwiches and damp seed cake, served by a pretty parlourmaid with streamers in her cap. Men in flannels with ties round their waists, girls in white dresses and bandeaus. Cries of ‘Rippin’ shot, Angela’, ‘Well played there, Bertie’, echoing round the garden; the smell of full-blown roses, fresh cut grass, warm strawberries ...

It was while day-dreaming in this way that Bet would sometimes become aware again of that inexplicable upsurge of excitement she had experienced that first day at the Rectory; but it never lasted long, and all too soon would be extinguished by the mundane reality of her daily life. Headlights turning in at the yard gate, car doors slamming, voices ... ‘Mum, can you put supper forward, we’ve collected that stuff for insulating the roof and we want to get as much done tonight as we can’ (Diz). ‘I couldn’t get the fish, Mum. I had to type a last-minute brief for Mr Slade and only had twenty minutes for lunch. There simply wasn’t time to get to the market. Will fish fingers do?’ (Nell). ‘Sorry, Mrs B.’ (Bernie) ‘but I’ll have to turn the electric off for a bit after supper. Shouldn’t be too long, but I want to do those plugs.’

It was through Diz that she first heard of the Westovers of Hopton Manor. Bernie and Diz made regular visits to the Jolly Waggoner, their local pub, and while there, usually managed to pick up some quite useful items of village gossip. That this worked both ways, so that they in their turn passed on some choice titbits about life at the Rectory, Bet didn’t doubt; in fact it probably accounted for the odd suspicious glance she received while waiting to be served in the village shop, or boarding the twice-weekly bus to Stourwick. And might even account, who knew, for her name being omitted from the flower-arranging roster. Be that as it may, the Westovers were, apparently, the local lords of the manor. At one time they had owned a sizable chunk of the surrounding countryside, including the village itself.

Their seat was Hopton Manor — about three miles from the village on the Stourwick road — and had been since the time of Elizabeth I. Like most old families, they’d had their ups and downs. In fact they had been going downhill pretty fast by the time the nineteenth century came along, until old Saltpeter Westover providentially invented a patent cure for constipation in horses, called it Hopton’s Elixir, marketed the stuff all over the Empire and re-founded the family fortunes. Now, however, they were down to their last 750 acres, and according to a Mr Jarman, who appeared to be an authority, the manor itself was in none too good a shape. The present incumbent, so Mr Jarman said, was a woman (‘The old man, ‘e ‘ad no boys’), one Cynthia Westover. Ms Westover, unmarried although well on in her forties, was said to be rather plain, rather tough, combined farming with horse breeding, and was considered by the village to be a good sort. Under her somewhat haphazard rule, life at Hopton Manor continued to maintain that necessary flavour of feudalism spiced with the bizarre (Spanish manservant, alcoholic house parties and assorted skeletons in the cupboard) deemed essential by the indigenous inhabitants of Hopton if the Westover family wished to continue to retain its status as their feudal overlord.

‘You see, Mum’ — for once Diz was actually helping with the washing-up — ‘from an anthropological point of view, Suffolk is quite extraordinarily interesting. Because of its geographical position — out on a limb sticking into the North Sea — the Industrial Revolution simply passed it by. As a result, in the rural areas like Hopton you still get these rigid class-distinctions. Nothing’s ever happened to break them up. Anyone who didn’t like it emigrated yonks ago, and the ones that remain don’t want any change. Did you know that for years Suffolk had the highest incest rate in the country?’

‘No,’ Bet said, handing back a plate still liberally coated in egg yolk, ‘but even I can see it isn’t Hampstead.’

Chapter Three

What with one thing and another, in the end the Redfords didn’t move in until the first week in February. Three days beforehand Pete dropped his bombshell. He would, he said, be unable to get away on The Day until early evening. This was gloomy news indeed and surely a recipe for disaster, making as it did a complete nonsense of all their carefully laid plans. But there it was; nothing, he told them, could be done about it; an emergency meeting of the Top Ten must take precedence over everything else — and he hinted that share prices would tumble and the economy breakdown if he failed to turn up at it. Privately Bet took all this with a pinch of salt, but wisely held her peace.

‘Have you ever heard of anything so inconsiderate!’ Pol wailed over the phone. ‘God knows, he does little enough, you would have thought he could have torn himself away from the office for this one day. But of course, as you know only too well, Bet, his home and his wife have always been way down on Pete’s list of priorities.’

From her end Bet made a few compassionate noises, but in truth found it hard to be entirely sympathetic. Why did her sister have to moan so much? However, deciding on balance to assume the somewhat uncharacteristic role of peacemaker — what had Bernie said? we must start as we mean to go on — she put on her soothing-little-sister voice and said What about Diz taking the day off from college to give moral support? She knew perfectly well he would be doing this anyway — he wouldn’t have missed the move for anything —but it seemed politic to appear to be making some sacrifice in the cause of the Redfords’ future comfort.

The furniture van from London being scheduled for eight-thirty a.m., Pol duly arrived the evening before. All through the previous week a steady stream of delivery men had called at the Rectory, someone had come to lay carpets, and on Monday the kitchen units arrived — teak and copper and costing almost as much as the house itself. Each evening Nell, Bernie and Diz would inspect the new arrivals, mostly with scorn and ribald laughter, but also, Bet suspected, in Nell and Bernie’s case, with considerable envy. She herself, creeping in later when no one was about, couldn’t help admitting the kitchen was pretty impressive, though the carpets weren’t really her cup of tea and some of the light fittings she thought quite frightful. The problem of Pol’s twice-weekly daily had been solved without the help of old Monty Cornwall or his wife. A Christine Barnet, young, lively and sensible — rather plain, too, which was an asset with Pete around — had appeared one morning in answer to Bet’s notice, and at what seemed, in comparison with Hampstead, an incredibly reasonable hourly rate, had agreed to clean the Redfords’ part of the house. Mrs Barnet, born and bred in Hopton, was one of the younger members of a vast family called Kettle, whose tentacles apparently stretched as far as Stourwick, and Bet was fairly sure that the day after Christine’s visits, the smallest happenings at the Rectory would be the main topic at breakfast tables throughout the county. All the same, Christine was a nice girl, and Bet hoped — but doubted —that Pol would be suitably grateful for her assistance.

On the evening of Pol’s arrival, Pol and Bet sat in Bet’s kitchen; Diz was upstairs working and the Sparsworths were out somewhere. ‘Absolutely typical,’ Pol said. ‘The one moment in our entire marriage when I really need Pete, he isn’t here.’ Bet, unable to stop herself, gave a derisive snort. It worked. ‘Oh God, I’m sorry, Bet, I’m always moaning, and you haven’t anyone to moan about. But P. is such a bore, I can’t help it.’

‘Don’t mind me, I’m used to it.’ Bet knew she sounded waspish, but too bad. ‘If you find Pete such a bore, why on earth are you so annoyed he won’t be here tomorrow?’

‘You don’t understand, do you? You never did. Just because you thought Miles was perfect — I’ve had doubts on that score myself, and so have quite a few other people — you think everyone else’s husband must be the same.’

For a moment the desire to pull her sister’s beautifully cut, beautifully blow-dried blonde hair almost overcame Bet, but sense prevailed. ‘Look, Pol, don’t let’s quarrel, it’s so silly. Here we are in this lovely old house, living under the same roof for the first time in nearly thirty years’ — Pol winced — ‘do let’s try and make a go of it. I mean, even without Pete it’ll be fun seeing how all your things go. And Diz will be here to help. He can be a bit tiresome, I know, but he can be funny too. Then there’s ... ’

To her horror, she suddenly became aware that Pol was about to burst into tears. Ignoring the still, small, anarchic voice inside her that proclaimed
she
was the one who should be crying,
she
was the one who had something to cry about, not her selfish sister, she gently stroked Pol’s hand as she’d so often done when Pol was a little girl. ‘Come on, Polly-Wolly, let’s have a drink, and then we’ll go upstairs and have another look at your bedroom.’

It seemed to do the trick. Her sister closed her eyes, opened them again, blew her nose on a handy Kleenex, smiled bravely and reached for the gin bottle.

Despite Pete’s absence, the day went smoothly. The furniture van turned smartly in at the gate at eight-thirty on the dot, the two removal men, unlike their predecessors, proving extremely competent. What was more, they seemed delighted with Pol’s tip, which turned out to be precisely half what Bet had given her two. But then she wasn’t used to tipping, was she? Miles had always done that ...

Pete arrived soon after five. They were all seated round Bet’s kitchen table — the Sparsworths home early in honour of the occasion — having a much needed cup of tea. It had been decided not to use Pol’s kitchen, splendid though this was, its designer having palpably not catered for people sitting down in it. The two spindly chairs provided were more suited to a smart cocktail bar in Mayfair, or even a smart kindergarten, than for weary people to rest their bottoms on.

‘Just as we’ve finished. One might have known,’ Pol said as Pete’s Aston Martin purred to a halt outside the kitchen window. He appeared a moment later, smiling sheepishly, his arms full of bottles of champagne. ‘Here you all are then. How goes it?’

‘Fine.’ Pol offered a frosty cheek. ‘No thanks to you. Bet and Diz have been splendid, I simply don’t know what I would have done without them.’

‘But Bet always is quite splendid, aren’t you, my duck.’ Pete kissed his sister-in-law on the lips, giving her a slightly unnecessary squeeze at the same time. ‘Now then, you can pour that there slop you’re drinking down the sink and get these ‘ere bottles open. Come on, Bet, where are your champagne glasses? We might as well celebrate in style. And after that your Uncle Pete is taking you all out to dinner.’

Pol gave her hair a pat and fiddled with her pearls. She’d insisted on wearing her pearls despite the unsuitability of the occasion, claiming, perhaps rightly, that they were safer round her neck than anywhere else. ‘That, if I may say so, is the first good idea you’ve had in weeks. By the way, did you remember to bring my electric blanket?’

‘Of course I did. You know your old husband never forgets anything. That’s why I’m a bit late, I had to go all the way back to Chelsea to collect it.’ With the flourish of an expert, he twisted the champagne cork. ‘Now then, fill up your glasses and let’s go on a tour of inspection.’

Dear Pete, thought Bet, she did have to admit he had his points.

Three hours and several bottles of champagne later, the entire party set out in search of somewhere to eat, the Redfords and Bet in the Aston Martin and the other three in Bernie’s Renault. After much discussion they had decided to try a new place, recently opened, so Pete told them, by a cousin of old Fruity Nicholson’s. ‘I hope you don’t mind my asking, Uncle Pete, but who’s Fruity Nicholson? I’d no idea there were still people around called Fruity — it’s so frightfully twenties, isn’t it?’ Bet looked at Diz sharply; lucky there was no college tomorrow, he’d had three glasses of champagne already.

‘Fruity Nicholson?’ Pete poured himself another drink, ‘marvellous old boy, some sort of relative of Monty Cornwall’s.’

‘He had to be,’ Nell whispered to her husband.

‘Lives in a castle complete with tower, drawbridge, the lot, only a few miles from here. The place was built by some Victorian jam manufacturer, so Fruity said. Well, I asked him if he knew of anywhere decent to eat out in this neck of the woods, and he mentioned that a cousin of his had recently opened a restaurant. The Donkey’s Shoe at Upton Lyttel — superb cooking, so he’d heard, and not too pricey either. Unless anyone else has any other ideas, I thought it might be a good plan if we tried it tonight.’

No one had any other ideas, a Berni Inn in Stourwick on Diz’s birthday was so far the sum total of their experience of eating out locally. Bernie did tentatively suggest The George at Stotleigh, it being so near and time getting on, but his suggestion met with little response. ‘I think we all deserve something a little better than overdone steak and frozen chips, Bernie dear,’ Pol said, smiling kindly at him. Bernie was not to be patronised. ‘Well, I just thought this Donkey’s Shoe, or whatever it’s called, might be difficult to get into on a Friday night, that’s all. I mean, as we haven’t booked —’

‘No need to worry about that! Fruity said just to mention his name at the door — no problem.’

‘Still, it might be wiser just to check ... Oh, never mind.’ Bernie subsided into sulky silence. Nell squeezed his hand.

As things turned out, it was past eight-thirty by the time they arrived at Upton Lyttel, since it was considerably further away from Hopton than they’d been led to suppose, and a number of wrong turnings were taken en route. Already the atmosphere in the Redford car, initially mellow, had begun to deteriorate. All were tired, and looking forward to relaxing in the ambience of Fruity Nicholson’s cousin’s eatery.

Their first sight of the village was not propitious, a double line of parked cars down the main street bearing witness to the popularity of the restaurant, which itself boasted a car park capable of taking only ten vehicles. However, by a stroke of luck some early diners were just leaving as Pete hovered uncertainly in the middle of the road, and he was able to squeeze into the gap left by their car. Bernie, not so lucky, was forced to continue on down the village street for another quarter of a mile.

‘Come on, girls, I’m starving even if you aren’t.’ Pete, apparently oblivious to the obvious fact that the place was full, walked purposefully towards what appeared to be a huge converted tithe barn. The noise was deafening. Fruity’s cousin had hit the jackpot; there was no doubt that the Donkey’s Shoe was the ‘in’ place to visit on a Friday night.

‘Table for six, dear? You must be joking.’ A young man attired in a sketchy imitation of an eighteenth-century shepherd’s outfit peered at them through a bundle of stuffed rabbits and a stook of plastic corn. ‘The best I can do is the annexe. Never mind, you’ll be able to watch Clement at his forge and there’s bags of atmosphere. Go straight through, past the trelliswork, turn right at the sheep dip — you can’t miss it. You may have to wait a bit for your order, mind, we’re rushed off our feet tonight.’ He vanished into the murk. Grim-faced, they pushed their way down the seething barn, found what they assumed was the sheep dip, turned right at it, and at long last came upon their vacant table. The reason for it being vacant on such a busy evening now became blindingly obvious: not only was it placed practically underneath the loudspeaker — at that moment blasting out a rock version of ‘Gathering Peascods’ — but it backed on to Clement’s forge.

For a moment or two they sat in stunned silence. In any case, the din was such that in order to be heard at all one was compelled to shout like the captain of a ship in a Force 8 gale, and it was all too dreadfully plain, that Fruity’s name had not worked its expected magic. Bet, already floating in a happy, alcoholic hinterland, was enjoying herself enormously. She felt like a child on a birthday treat; each new disaster befalling the grown-ups was an added bonus. She would feel like death in the morning, but who cared. The music changed to ‘Greensleeves’ and a laconic shepherdess loomed. ‘Anything to drink while you wait?’ she asked sharply, and shoved a jumbo-sized bill of fare into Pete’s nerveless hands. ‘Three gin and tonics,’ he bawled. ‘We can’t order yet, the rest of our party — ’

‘You’ll have to get a move on, the kitchen closes at ten.’

‘Oh. Oh dear.’ Pete looked wildly round. Pol watched him, smiling sweetly, the heat from Clement’s forge causing the sweat to trickle gently down her perfectly made-up face.

There was another deafening pause, then Bet saw them. Bernie led the way, purposeful, efficient, his face a mask, followed by her two: Diz, gesticulating wildly, and Nell, puce in the face with suppressed giggles. Smiling dreamily, Bet watched them, and for one long, marvellous moment her love for them enveloped her entirely; stupid tears came into her eyes and there was a lump in her throat. How lucky she really was. And thank God for Pete, too, what would they do without him?

Diz hurried forward, one hand outstretched. ‘Mr Stanley, I presume, my name’s Livingstone, David Livingstone, and I’ve walked across two continents to find you.’

‘All-right, all-right, joke over. Anyway, wasn’t it the other way round? I mean, wasn’t it Stanley who went to look for Livingstone, I always thought —’

‘Pete, it may have escaped your notice, but we’ve been told by the waitress’ — Pol glanced contemptuously at the scowling shepherdess — ‘that the kitchens close at ten. If we don’t make our orders quickly we shan’t get anything to eat at all, although heaven knows, in a place like this one shudders to think what it will be like if we do.’