A Change of Pace (6 page)

Chapter Five

It was the day Bet took Tib for his walk in the wood. Tib had a walk every day, he expected it; but, used to running wild on Hampstead Heath, he had grown bored with being marched round the lanes on a lead — and for that matter, Bet had grown bored with it too. On being applied to, Christine Barnet suggested the wood. It belonged, she said, to the Westovers, but had always been open to the village — the squire was like that. Her gran had done her courting there, and so had many others, and the children still picked the primroses to decorate the church at Easter. The idea of going to the wood excited Bet. She could see it from her bedroom window. Only a field away from the Rectory garden, it crouched along the rim of the hill, witchy, mysterious, its ancient, serpentine edge curling in and out between the chocolate-coloured furrows of the field that bordered it.

It was a cold, still, April day — nearer winter than spring — when they set out, and Bet was just a little nervous by the time they had crossed the field and found the mouth of the bridle path Christine had told her about. There was the same sense of awe as on entering a cathedral, it seemed necessary to tiptoe, keep one’s voice down, look about in a kind of wonder. She started down the ride. On either side immensely tall ash trees reared up towards the sky, their bases contorted into a hundred bizarre shapes. And every so often within the labyrinth of trees — rather like coming upon one of those minute piazzas when wandering the streets of an Italian city — there would be a small clearing, in the middle of which stood a large and spreading oak. Wood anemones were scattered over dry, brown leaves in a network of white and green; there were clumps of primroses and the spotted leaves of purple orchids not yet in flower; one could see that later the place would be alive with bluebells.

It was the most beautiful wood Bet had ever been in.

She walked quietly, hardly daring to breathe in the silence, looking up every now and again at the patches of pale sky filtering through the grey tracery of winter-bare branches above her head. At first Tib, also a little in awe of the place, kept close to her heels, but after a while grew bolder, eventually running on ahead so far that she lost sight of him in the maze of trees. Then suddenly a jay flew across the ride in front of her, its harsh, warning cry reminding her of childhood summers in the New Forest; she and Dad crouching together in a hazel bush, watching for red deer.

‘Tib? Tib, where are you?’ She was feeling nervous again — Little Grey Rabbit all on her own in the Weasel Wood. Then the barking started, and not just Tib either; there was a strange bark as well, and a man’s voice shouting — Oh God!

‘Tib, come here, you bastard, before I murder you!’ She started to run; round a bend in the path, boots squelching in the muddy ruts, breath coming in short, sharp gasps. Was it the Westovers’ keeper? Would he shoot Tib? God, what a fool she’d been to let him off the lead in the first place, and damn and blast Christine Barnet!

‘Look here, you two, if you’re going to fight, fight. If not, belt up. I’ve a hell of a head as it is and ... Good heavens, it’s Mrs Brandon! I did so hope we’d meet again and now we have.’ From under the branches of a spreading oak the cross man laughed at her. Beside him, eyeball to eyeball, hackles raised, snarling horribly, Tib and a large, hairy, marmalade-coloured dog confronted each other.

‘Oh dear, I’m most frightfully sorry. Tib’s a complete coward actually, he ... How on earth did you know my name?’

‘Hardly very difficult; Hopton isn’t Hampstead, you know. And there’s no need to apologise, Oxford’s to blame as much as yours. Perhaps if we shake hands they’ll calm down. They’re probably only showing the flag. My name, in case you didn’t know, is Simon Morris.’

‘I didn’t know.’ Bet was still fighting for breath. She took off her glove, it had mud on it and there was a hole in the thumb. ‘How d’you do,’ she said feeling a bit of an idiot. His hand was sharply cold. Did he hold onto hers a little longer than was necessary, or was that her imagination?

‘It’s worked, look,’ Simon said. And it had. The two dogs subsided on to the ground, tongues lolling, looking rather foolish. Whatever else he might be, the cross man was knowledgeable about dogs.

‘Now that’s over, come and sit down. You look quite done in — have you run far?’

‘No, of course I haven’t, and I’m not in the least done in. I was just worried. I thought Miss Westover had a gamekeeper and I ought to have kept Tib on the lead, but Christine Barnet said it was all-right to come to the wood.’

‘Christine Kettle that was?’

‘Yes, as a matter of fact, but how did you — ?’

‘Everyone knows the Kettle family. Christine’s mum taught me the facts of life. One Easter holidays it was, and if I remember rightly, I wouldn’t believe her. Shame she’s run to fat, but then she was a daughter of old Sid Garnham, and all his girls did — run to fat, I mean.’

‘You know this part of the world pretty well, then?’ Her bottom, balanced precariously on a mossy tree stump, was getting damp, and she was still breathless.

‘Pretty well. I was brought up here. Cyn Westover’s my cousin.’

‘Oh. Oh, I see.’

‘You thought I was some sort of gigolo, didn’t you — the local squire’s toy-boy. Come on, don’t be embarrassed, people often think that. I suppose it’s because I have that dago look. My Dad was Italian, you see.’

‘Cosimo de Medici — I was right!’

‘Cosimo what?’

‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, nothing really ... ’

‘Look, you can’t suddenly shout ‘Cosimo de Medici’ and then say it doesn’t matter ... ’

Afterwards, although she tried, Bet couldn’t remember much of their subsequent conversation. They’d laughed quite a bit — a lot, actually — and she’d told him about Miles and the children and living in Hampstead, she did remember that. She now knew that he was ‘loosely connected with advertising’, had been largely responsible for that commercial about the box of chocolates dancing with an Airedale (‘My chef-d’oevre; perhaps it’s time I moved on’), that he was always changing jobs, was unmarried, and that he and Cynthia Westover had been brought up together, his Italian father having died in the war — so he must have told her all that. But how long they spent sitting under the oak tree she’d had no idea — until she had sense to look at her watch and discover to her horror that it was already quarter-past four.

‘Heavens, I must go, I should be home by now, putting the stew in the oven, the children will be back soon and —’

‘Do you know why they planted oaks in among the ash trees?’ She shook her head; she didn’t want to go. ‘So that when the ash trees are cut and growth begins again, the shade from the oak makes them reach up towards the light instead of branching out. The trees are coppiced a section at a time, and if it’s done properly in rotation, you get a continuous supply of usable ash poles throughout the year. The conservation people would love to get their hands on this wood, they say it’s a perfect example of coppicing continued without interruption for centuries, and Cyn doesn’t look after it properly. They’re probably right there, but of course she won’t sell. And do you know that at midsummer there are butterfly orchids? Butterfly orchids are greeny-white and rather rare; they only release their scent at dusk, you see they’re pollinated by moths and —’

‘It’s a beautiful, beautiful wood,’ she said, ‘but I really must go.’ And she was suddenly afraid he was going to kiss her.

Afraid?

But he didn’t kiss her, he merely patted her on the shoulder. ‘Mind how you go, then, Mrs Brandon, and I’d watch out with Tib and the pheasants if I were you.’ Then, whistling up Oxford — hopefully digging for rabbits a few yards away —he was gone, leaving Bet looking after him and feeling cheated. Silly, really, considering she was the one who said she had to go.

It was while she was walking across the field of young wheat that divided the rectory garden from the wood that she decided — frankly, she wasn’t altogether sure why — she’d not tell the others about her meeting with the cross man. She’d tell about the wood, of course, but ...

*

‘Checkmate!’ Triumphant, Cynthia Westover took a gulp of her brandy and ginger, and smiled across the table at her cousin Simon, who simply looked annoyed. ‘Come on, Si, don’t sulk, you’re a big boy now, remember.’

‘You know perfectly well I could beat you with one hand tied behind my back and my eyes shut if I wanted to. I just can’t concentrate this evening. Let’s turn out the lights and watch the horror movie.’

‘Not tonight, my love, I have to be up at six a.m. Rodders is taking me to have a look at that filly. Come on, Ox, up you get, you lazy hound, it’s bedtime.’ She turfed the sleeping marmalade dog off his nest in the sofa cushions, and then stretched, looking down at the top of Simon’s head as he bent to put away the chess men. Then, as one performing some sort of rite, she dribbled the remaining contents of her glass over his hair.

‘Oh shut up, Cyn, and leave me alone, I’m not in the mood.’

‘Has our Simmy got his black monkey, then? Shall Cyn drive him away? Take him by his long black tail and throw him out of the window — Like This!’ She plunged on top of Simon, knocking him off his chair, and they rolled, fighting, on to the carpet.

A log collapsed in the grate, outside an owl hooted, and the dog, Oxford, used to such antics, waited patiently to be let out for his evening run.

Later, upstairs in Cyn’s bedroom, Simon smoked a last cigarette and watched his cousin put cream on her face. ‘Cyn?’

‘Yes, my poppet?’

‘Do me a favour?’

‘Depends what it is, and please use the ash-tray, Alfonso’s getting restive again. He nearly had a fit when Pooh Bah made a mess in the bath last week, and he’s started on again about that cousin of his in Madrid who has a restaurant — ’

‘Stop waffling and listen. All I’m asking is — you know you said you thought you’d give a party when sexy Sonia comes to stay next week?’

‘You want me to invite that Brandon woman from the Rectory, don’t you?’

Simon looked at her with genuine admiration. ‘Cyn,’ he said, ‘you’re the cleverest girl in Suffolk, in England, in the world; you know everything and can do anything  — ’

‘Never mind all that, I’m not in the mood. That is what you want, isn’t it?’

‘Well, I just thought they seemed a bit out of the usual run of retired majors and redundant bank managers with spotty daughters who normally settle round here, that’s all.’

‘I thought you said the sister was absolutely frightful, the one that ran into you at that ghastly place of Pogo Nicholson’s. — ’

‘She wasn’t that bad, she just took me by surprise, and the husband’s OK; a bit of an ass, I suppose, but then who isn’t. Anyway, how did you know I wanted you to ask Mrs Brandon, you only saw her in The George that day.’

‘Good God, you twerp, I haven’t known you for forty-odd years without being able to see when you fancy someone! Heaven knows, I’ve had enough experience. But Si, she’s not your type. Ex-Hampstead, civil servants widow; a bit on the arty side, I’d say, by the look of her. She’s not in your league, she really isn’t.’

‘It’s got nothing to do with being in my league. I just want to get to know her a little. She’s a good-looker, you have to admit that.’

‘I’m not admitting anything. She’s also several years older than you and has a married daughter and a son of seventeen. Honestly, Si, it’s not on, I mean, not for the kind of thing you have in mind.’

‘So you’re saying you won’t ask them, you’ll just ignore their existence. Isn’t that rather rude? Surely, in your capacity as squire of the village — ’

‘Balls! Since when, pray, have you ever concerned yourself with my capacity as squire of the village?’

‘Don’t change the subject. I should have thought it would have been a simple thing to do, just to ask them to a party. If Sonia’s going to be there, the more guests the better; that woman runs through people quicker than castor oil through a cat with diarrhoea.’

‘Oh go to bed, you little pest, I’ve got to be up again in a few hours.’

‘But will you, Cyn, will you?’

‘Wait and see.’

But of course she did.

Chapter Six

‘Pol? It’s Bet.’

‘Look, Bet, I can only spare a moment, we’re on our way out — some do in the City at the Woodcutters’ Hall.’

‘Don’t you mean Woodchoppers?’

‘If you’ve only rung to make stupid jokes — ’

‘On the contrary. Unlike you, I can’t afford to spend a fortune on my phone bill.’

‘Well, in that case —’

‘I just thought I’d let you know we’ve all been invited for drinks at Hopton Manor on Saturday. Cynthia Westover has issued a blanket invitation. I assume you and Pete want to come? ... Pol, did you hear what I said?’

‘Of course I heard what you said. I was just thinking it’s a bit odd her ringing you, that’s all. I mean, it must have been the Cornwalls who put her up to it.’

‘Actually, I don’t think old Monty Cornwall was involved this time ...’

Bet had been surprised herself at the invitation from Hopton Manor, and could only assume that Simon Morris must have brought influence to bear on his cousin. Certainly the issuing of the invitation had been informal to a degree, and only three days’ notice given. She’d been having a midmorning cuppa with Christine when the phone rang. ‘Mrs Brandon? Cynthia Westover here. Look, I’m frightfully sorry it’s such short notice, but would you like to come for drinks on Saturday evening — six to six-thirtyish? And do bring your boy, there’ll be plenty of young around.’

‘That’s awfully kind of you, Miss Westover. The thing is, I do have rather a houseful, my daughter and — ‘

‘Oh, bring the whole family, my dear, the more the merrier. Look I must dash, we’ve got a mare foaling. ’Bye.’

Smarting a little at the abrupt dismissal, Bet returned to her cup of tea. That was not how they issued invitations where she came from. However, Christine seemed impressed, which was something.

‘Miss Cyn’s really nice when you get to know her,’ she said, nibbling one of Bet’s chocolate digestives, ‘not a bit snobbish. Of course, I’ve known the Manor all my life, my nan used to do the scrubbing up there when Colonel Westover, that’s Miss Cyn’s father, was alive, and my great-uncle George was gardener there for years. The Colonel went a bit odd in the end. He was in one of those Japanese prisoner-of-war camps and he was never the same after that, my nan said. Of course I don’t remember him, really, but —’

‘There’s a cousin, isn’t there? We met him briefly the other morning in The George.’

‘Our Simon!’ Inexplicably, Bet’s hackles rose. If Miss Cyn, why not Mr Simon? God, this wretched place was even succeeding in making her a snob. ‘Yes, Simon Morris. He was brought up at the Manor, wasn’t he?’

‘He’s a bad boy, our Simon, but lovely with it.’ To Bet’s annoyance she noticed Christine was smiling reminiscently. ‘He and my mum used to sit next to each other at Sunday School — little devil he was, Mum said. Miss Priddie, the Sunday School teacher, couldn’t do anything with him. She complained to the Colonel in the end and they took him away. He wasn’t half one for the girls, but the boys used to bully him a bit, called him The Little Wop because his dad was an Eyetie — I expect they were jealous, really.’

‘Why was he brought up at the Manor?’ Bet’s voice was as casual as she could make it; she mustn’t appear too interested. Anyway, she wasn’t, was she. As it happened she needn’t have bothered; Christine was already on to her. Uncle Sid Kettle had reported Simon asking leading questions on the subject of Mrs Brandon at The Waggoner the other evening. Unaware, Bet ploughed on, and managed to get a few more pertinent facts before Christine hurried off to finish polishing the mirrors in Pol’s bathroom.

Simon’s father had been an Italian restorer of antiques by the name of Angelo something-or-other. Called to the Manor to do restoration work by the old squire — Miss Cyn’s grandfather — shortly before the outbreak of World War II, he had completed his task by running off with the squire’s nineteen-year-old daughter, Angela, to the scandal of the surrounding neighbourhood and the fury of her parents —’People were more straight-laced in those days, weren’t they, Mrs Brandon?’

Christine was a bit vague about what happened next. All she knew was that Angelo returned to Italy soon after the outbreak of war, leaving the now pregnant Angela Westover behind in London. Whether the couple were ever actually married, she was none too sure, but as soon as the baby Simon was born, Angela’s parents relented, and he was dumped down at Hopton by his mother, who promptly joined the ATS and spent the rest of the war having a whale of a time acting as driver to a succession of senior army staff-officers.

Safely cocooned in the Hopton nursery with his cousin, Cyn, Simon was happy too. And all went well until the war was over, when Angela married again — Angelo was by now safely dead; killed by an Allied bullet in North Africa in 1942 — this time a retired rubber planter, recently demobilised from the army, by the name of Reggie Morris. The couple bought a house in Camberley and set up a riding school, and for the first time in years Angela decided to take an interest in her son; he must, of course, come and live with them.

Unfortunately Simon thought otherwise. He loathed his step-father, didn’t much like his mother, whom he barely knew, and kept on running back to Hopton. It didn’t matter how much the Colonel leathered him on arrival; like the proverbial cat, he continued to come back. In the end everyone gave up. Angela had never been all that keen on him anyway, and had really only asked to have him back out of a belated sense of duty. Simon was sent away to boarding school, and spent his holidays at Hopton. ‘So he got his own way in the end.’ Christine rinsed her cup under the kitchen tap. But then people like him usually do, don’t they.’

Predictably, the invitation to Hopton Manor was given a pretty mixed reception by the rest of Bet’s household. Nell was delighted, but immediately afterwards said she couldn’t possibly go as she had nothing to wear and no time to buy anything. Diz said he thought he’d give it a miss, cocktail parties with the gentry not being much in his line. And Bernie, giving his moustache a quick comb in the kitchen mirror, said he hoped the Westover servants’ hall was comfortable, because as an ex-Barton Comprehensive boy, that was where he would be entertained; at least he knew his place, if no one else did. Bet groaned and went on peeling potatoes; she knew they’d all agree to go in the end.

Later, during the washing-up, Nell said: ‘Joking apart, Mum, why do you think we’ve been invited to the Manor? You must know how snobbish they are round here. The Rawdons — that nice couple in Buttercup Close, Bernie and I had supper with them the other night — said that unless you’ve lived here at least three hundred years, or you’re a millionaire, people like the Westovers won’t have anything to do with you socially; it isn’t that they’re nasty, it’s just they simply don’t notice you, which in a way is even worse.’

‘Dear Nelly, you’re such an innocent!’ Diz dropped a handful of forks into the silver drawer with a crash that made his mother wince. ‘Don’t you realise that people from the Rectory rate higher in your actual social hierarchy than the simple denizens of a housing estate? The rector, now, would certainly come before, say, your local doctor, even possibly your local lawyer, and — ’

‘Two points, you berk, before I throw up,’ interrupted his brother-in-law. ‘One, none of us happens to be the rector; and two, the Westovers are nothing anyway, just a load of chinless idiots who happen to have inherited a house paid for by the proceeds of some sort of quack horse medicine ... ’

Quite suddenly, Bet started to giggle, and once started, couldn’t stop. Shoulders shaking, eyes streaming, she hung over the sink, scrubbing ineffectively at the mashed potato saucepan in an agony of suppressed laughter. ‘Now look what you’ve done, you idiots.’ Nell put a comforting hand on her mother’s heaving shoulder. ‘You’ve gone and upset Mum! She doesn’t have much of a life down here, and all you two can do when she is asked out, is try and spoil it for her.’

‘She’s not crying, she’s laughing.’ Diz knew his mother better than the others. Nell went pink. ‘Quite honestly, Mum, I can’t see it’s that funny.’

‘Oh darling, it isn’t, not really, — you’re quite right. It’s just ... well, it was the cousin, you see. I happened to meet him in the wood — I must have forgotten to tell you. He ... he was quite friendly, actually, in spite of the dogs, and I think it may be because of him we’ve been asked.’

Suddenly everyone shut up. What was so funny about meeting the cousin? Which cousin, anyway? Diz glanced sharply at his mother, remembering Mr Bone. He hoped she wasn’t getting peculiar.

*

It was more or less dark by the time they set out for Hopton Manor the following Saturday. Bet was right, everyone had agreed to go in the end. Admittedly, she’d had a bit of a struggle with Diz over his party outfit, in the course of which he’d threatened once again not to attend. He’d appeared downstairs in jeans and an army surplus shirt, and it was only after repeated threats from her and much cajolery from his sister that he was finally won over and agreed to change into his only suit; last worn, he reminded them bitterly, at his father’s funeral.

Nell had been reduced to tears over her outfit. At considerable expense and after much soul-searching, she’d gone mad and purchased herself a jade-green two piece of a somewhat way-out design, only to be told at the last minute by Bernie that it made her look like someone in a pantomime. Tearfully refusing ever to be seen in the outfit again, she ended up wearing a rather sexy cocktail frock borrowed from Pol. Pol herself naturally looked exactly right in a soft tweed dress which must have cost the earth, and a pearl choker.

As a result of all this Bet was left with little time to spend on her own appearance. Too late, she noticed a soup mark on her red dress, and her mascara brush had somehow gone all gooey, causing her eyelashes to stick together. But it couldn’t be helped, and after one last, despairing look in her rather murky bedroom mirror — the others having commandeered the one in the bathroom — she hurried downstairs to join the Redfords.

‘Bet, did you know you’ve smudged your mascara? You should have done your face in my bathroom, that bedroom of yours is a positive black hole. I can’t imagine why —’

‘Oh shut up, Pol. Who’s going to look at me anyway?’

As the crow flies, Hopton Manor, set in a shallow valley on the far side of the wood, was only a mile from the Rectory; however, by road it was nearly three. The drive gates were imposing enough, their effect slightly marred by the fact that they were propped open with an aluminium dustbin. The drive itself was full of potholes and seemed to go on for miles. The house, when they reached it at last, a crouching mass in the gathering dark, looked vaguely Queen Anne. However, as no welcoming light shone from its elegantly proportioned windows — not even a cheery gleam from a lantern in the porch — it was hard to make out what it was like. In point of fact the whole place looked utterly dead. Had they come on the wrong night? Somewhere quite near an owl hooted, and from the woods behind the house came the harsh, mournful bark of a mating fox.

Trespassers, they tiptoed across the gravel to the front door, the sound of their feet on the stones painfully loud in the all-enveloping silence, and huddled in the porch while Diz boldly grasped the ancient doorknocker — there didn’t seem to be a bell — and gave several loud raps on the front door.

Nothing happened.

‘Bet, are you sure you’ve got the date right?’ Pol hugged her fur coat. ‘Of course I’ve got the date right. Miss Westover definitely said Saturday.’

Actually, Bet was beginning to have doubts about this. ‘Give the knocker another go, Diz,’ she hissed, ‘someone must be there.’ Diz obediently did as he was told. ‘Is anybody there?’ he shouted into the unresponsive darkness. At that moment the door opened and he was propelled abruptly into a vast, cluttered hall, lit, it appeared, by a single forty-watt bulb.

‘Good evenings?’ A tall, extremely handsome manservant encased in tight, perfectly cut black trousers and a dazzling white jacket stood before them, the expression on his face one of chilling disapproval. ‘Mrs Brandon and party from the Rectory — WE HAVE BEEN INVITED,’ Pete shouted in his best talking-to-foreigners voice. ‘Si si.’ The manservant nodded impatiently and waved them in the direction of a door to the right of the staircase, then promptly disappeared into the surrounding gloom. Nell nudged her mother. ‘Let’s hope there are more like him around, eh, Mum!’ Bernie’s face, already grim, took on an even grimmer aspect. Far away, at the end of a long passage, in another world of warmth and light and laughter, Bet thought she heard the sounds of a party.

The room into which they’d been ushered so unceremoniously turned out to be a cloakroom cluttered with damp mackintoshes, wellies, old walking sticks and fishing gear; it was freezing cold, and smelt strongly of cat. Too cold to take their coats off, they stood around glumly waiting for something to happen.

At last — just as Diz, bored with hanging about, had taken down a fishing rod, placed an aged deerstalker on his head and, despite protests from Bet, was about to launch into one of his impersonations — there came a shriek from the doorway. ‘My poor dears! That adorable Alfonso has shown you into the gents! I really am most frightfully sorry. My name’s Sonia Byngham-Smythe, by the way, and you simply must be the party from the Rectory.’

They nodded, even Pol bereft of words. Mrs. Byngham-Smythe was indeed an apparition. Clad in green lurex tights topped by a tunic of purple silk, her age impossible to determine, she looked Bet up and down, her enormous, mascara-caked eyes taking in every detail of her appearance. ‘And you
must
be Mrs. Brandon.’ Bet placed her hand defensively over the soup stain. ‘Is that enchanting boy your son? How lucky you are — I’ve only a dismal daughter.’