A Change of Pace (9 page)

‘Aren’t I a bit old to be raped?’

‘Age doesn’t come into it. There was an old lady of eighty only last week — chap of sixteen ... ’ Pol closed her eyes. ‘Just pop into the kitchen, Pete, and take the lemon sorbet out of the freezer, it’ll need thawing out.’

‘But surely —’

‘Pete, please do as I say.’ Pete went, and Pol, beginning to think she’d gone too far, decided to backtrack. ‘He means well, but sometimes ... well, you know.’ She smiled placatingly.

Bet, however, was in no mood for olive branches. She stood up and carefully placed her empty glass on the patio table. ‘Look, Pol, I would like to make one thing quite clear, then I swear I won’t mention the subject again — that is, if you don’t. The fact that we all live under the same roof does not in any way whatever give you the right to interfere in my life. If I meet someone and become friendly with him, that’s my business; if we sleep together, that’s also my business — ‘

‘Oh God, you haven’t, Bet! Not yet, surely — Kitty Cornwall said — ’

‘How dare you discuss me with Kitty Cornwall! What I choose to do or not to do is entirely my own affair. Do I make myself clear?’

By this time Pol was standing too. She was also trembling a little; like most people who spend much of their time being rude to others, she was shattered when the compliment was returned. ‘I’m sorry if I’ve offended you, Bet. I — that is, Pete and I — only meant it for the best. After all it’s not much more than a year since Miles’s death, and for you to become entangled with someone of Simon Morris’s reputation —Kitty Cornwall told us ... ’

But Bet had gone, slamming the sitting-room door so hard that one of Pol’s precious Spode plates fell off the mantle-piece and would have shattered in a thousand bits if, as she told Pete afterwards, she hadn’t been there to catch it. Since then they hadn’t spoken; Bet hadn’t even rung Pol about coming to London ...

Bet looked at her watch. Not yet twelve, but she was fed up with sitting in the café staring at the oddities wandering up and down Haverstock Hill, and the noise of the traffic was giving her a headache. She got up from the table and wandered over to the counter to pay for her coffee. The waitress accepted her money, scarcely bothering to raise her eyes from the magazine she was reading.

Outside the sun shone, but the cold wind blew dust in her eyes and made her shiver. Somehow, now, it all seemed rather absurd, Pol and herself screaming at one another like a pair of fishwives. Across the street a tall man was walking slowly up the hill; he carried a briefcase and an elderly dog trailed behind him on a lead. She wanted to run after him, call out, force him to turn round and be Miles: ‘Hullo, darling, look, hang on to this damned canine for a minute, I’m dead beat ... ’ She stood and watched the figure until it disappeared out of sight round the corner by the tube station, then continued slowly up the hill. Perhaps she would give Pol a ring, say she was sorry, make it up. Then she’d catch the early train home.

*

‘Hullo, my dear, been up in town on a spending spree?’ Someone poked Bet in the back with a brolly. Liverpool Street station seethed, a Strauss waltz echoing merrily over the loudspeakers. She and Pol, tearfully reunited until the next time, had lunched in the latest Knightsbridge wine bar, and now her headache was worse than ever. She turned crossly to find old Monty Cornwall smiling encouragingly. ‘Actually I’ve been visiting my husband’s grave,’ she shouted above the din, then immediately felt ashamed of herself.

Difficult filly, that, thought old Monty Cornwall, not minding; damned good-looking, though. He squeezed Bet’s arm. ‘Don’t mind me, my wife says I’m always putting my foot in it. What you need is a drink, come on, let’s make for the buffet car, I always do, it’s the only decent spot on the train.’

By the time the train pulled into Stourwick Bet had to admit that perhaps Pete was right about Monty Cornwall. To her surprise she’d enjoyed the journey, and Bernie, detailed to meet her at the station by Nell (‘Go carefully with her, Bern, she’ll be pretty down I expect’) was a little shocked by the sight of her smiling, animated face as she emerged from the platform followed, he noted with disapproval, by the ubiquitous Monty Cornwall.

‘Goodbye, my dear, a most enjoyable journey. You must come over to dinner — I’ll get Kitty to ring. You and your wife, too, of course,’ Monty Cornwall turned politely to Bernie, but Bernie was already striding towards the car. Monty winked at Bet and raised his brolly in a gesture of farewell. Where was Kitty, she should be waiting. Ah, there she was. He hurried across the station yard. ‘Hullo, Piggy, my dear, bloody awful journey as usual ... ’

Bet and her son-in-law spoke little as the Renault pushed and shoved its way out of Stourwick through the evening rush-hour traffic. Bernie, though loath to admit it, was slightly in awe of Bet; he never quite knew how to take her, she was so very different to his own mother. Besides, rightly or wrongly, and he was hard put to say why — just a gut reaction, he supposed — he always felt she didn’t appreciate his Nelly in the way a proper mother should; call him a wimp if you like, but that was the way he felt. For her part, Bet found Bernie irritating but useful; he was also, annoyingly, quite often right. They rarely found themselves alone together, and when they did, as now, had little to say to each other. Particularly now, as Bet was day-dreaming about Simon Morris, and Bernie was busy trying to screw up the courage to broach the subject of a letter he’d received that morning from his dad.

Free from traffic at last, they turned off the main road into the lane that straggled haphazardly over the broad, rolling East Anglian fields to Hopton. Now or never! (‘You’ve got to tell her, I’m not going to — they are your parents after all,’ Nell had said.) And Bernie, gritting his teeth and pressing his foot hard down on the accelerator, plunged boldly in. ‘I had a letter from my dad this morning, by the way. He says if it’s OK by you, they’d like to come for Easter. Just a couple of days, he says, he can’t spare more, but they’re longing to see the place. We’ve more or less finished the spare room — Nell’s only got to run up the curtains — and I could do with Dad’s advice on the over-all heating problem.’

Oh no, not Easter! Diz away in Paris and no one to giggle with. Bet, rudely jerked out of her daydream — Simon, having been made Advertising Copywriter of the Year, had just looked deep into her eyes and asked her to dinner at the Savoy — sought despairingly for an excuse, a cop-out, some watertight reason why it would be totally out of the question to entertain Sparsworth senior and his wife for Easter, but found none. She longed to bang Bernie over the head with her rolled-up London evening paper, jump out of the car, scream. Could she, she wondered, bear it?

Reg and Maureen Sparsworth lived in a bungalow on the outskirts of Aldershot; Reg, an ex-regimental sergeant-major, having built his retirement home within, as he put it, the sound of the bugle. Small in stature like his son, Sparsworth senior possessed a formidable authority, and Bernie’s obsession with efficiency undoubtedly sprang from the rigorous early training he had received from his father. Maureen Sparsworth was a large, timid lady, dragooned for so long by her husband that she’d forgotten — if indeed she ever knew — what it was like to have a mind of her own. Her two passions in life were keeping a spotlessly tidy establishment, and Bernie, and it was on these two topics only that she could be persuaded to talk. Just as well, really, as her husband seldom stopped. Apart from verbal diarrhoea, another of Reg’s tiresome attributes, and there were many, was his habit of giving Bet a friendly squeeze whenever they found themselves alone together, and she still remembered with a shudder his kiss — wet and bristly — in the vestry after signing the register at the children’s wedding.

‘Do say if it’s not on, and I’ll let Dad know. I just thought it might be a good time, with Diz away in France and so on.’ Bet closed her eyes. Don’t be intimidated by that family of yours, Simon had said, but that was long ago and Simon had deserted her. She didn’t have any option, did she? She’d have to say yes — or rather shout it; one always shouted if one wished to be heard when driving with Bernie, for the simple reason that no matter what the prevailing circumstances, he never turned his car radio off.

‘No, Bernie, that would be absolutely fine. Your mother must be excited, she’ll be longing to see the house and all the work you and Nell have done. Let’s just hope the weather stays fine.’

Bernie glanced at her in surprised approval. Did she mean all that, or had she been up to something in London? ‘Let’s hope so,’ he said, ‘Dad wants to nip over and have a look at Felixstowe while they’re here and it won’t be much fun if it pours with rain.’

It wouldn’t be much fun in the sun for that matter, not with Reg Sparsworth. ‘No,’ Bet said, ‘I suppose it wouldn’t.’

After that they lapsed into silence, both deep in their own thoughts, and remained so for the rest of the journey.

Chapter Eight

‘Now then, Elizabeth, sar’-major’s orders; change your mind and come with us, there’s a good girl. It’s a lady’s privilege to change her mind, you know, us men wouldn’t have it any other way. We can easily squeeze you in; the wife won’t mind popping in the back with the others, and we’ve plenty of sandwiches.’

‘No, Reg, honestly,’ Bet smiled palely. Would they never go? ‘It’s awfully kind of you, but I really do think I’d better stay at home, I still feel a bit under the weather.’

‘If that’s the case, Mum, I think I should stay home with you. It’s not fair to leave you for so long on your own when you don’t feel well.’ So Nell was trying to wriggle out of it now, was she! ‘I think we should leave Betty in peace,’ Maureen Sparsworth added her mite. ‘The weather looks none too clever, and if she doesn’t feel well, sitting on a windy beach in the wet won’t help.’

‘I think you can leave me to be the judge of that!’ Reg smiled in a way that made Bet want to scream. ‘A breath of fresh air never did anyone any harm.’

Bet was alone, battling with the Sparsworths. The Redfords had chickened out, of course — golf at Le Touquet — and Diz had departed for Paris and the Duponts. The run-up to his departure (Did she think his French good enough? Were his clothes right? If the Duponts kept a servant — they were thought to be rich — should he tip same? Would he be expected to pay for anything, and if so, what? What about a dinner jacket ... ?) had left her already twanging nerve-ends twanging in such a way that she felt as if someone were practising the National Anthem up and down her spinal column. She’d nevertheless waved him goodbye at Stourwick station on Maunday Thursday in a welter of misery, and the house felt drab and empty without him. Ridiculous, when you came to think about it, he’d only be away a fortnight, and the last thing she wanted was to become one of those ghastly possessive mothers.

Easter with Reg and Maureen had been every bit as bad as she thought it would be; the weather hadn’t helped, and she had spent most of the time — when she wasn’t cooking —vainly trying to escape from Reg. When the Felixstowe trip was first mooted, she’d pleaded incipient flu, but was pretty sure Reg suspected her of scrimshanking. She was proved right on this point when he tracked her down in the old stables, where she and Tib were hiding, for the sole purpose of telling her so. And if you asked him, her refusal to accompany them on the outing wasn’t because she felt ill, but because she planned to entertain a secret lover while they were out. (She should be so lucky!) ‘I’ve noticed a gleam in those green eyes of yours, Elizabeth, if no one else has! You can’t get much past old Reg S., you know. The All-Seeing Eye, that’s what the lads called me in the old days ... ’

‘Look, Dad, it’s gone half-past nine, if we don’t start soon we’ll be behind schedule.’

‘Schedules are made to be broken, son, always remember that. What would have happened at Waterloo if Old Hookey had insisted on keeping to his schedule, eh?’ No one answered; they weren’t meant to, Reg merely wished to make the point that he was in charge and the schedule was his to do what he liked with. You couldn’t have other ranks chipping in with tomfool suggestions, that would never do! All the same, the boy was right, they’d better be for the off. Pity about Elizabeth, though, he’d like to have had her sitting beside him. Those eyes, they fair gave him the jim-jams ... come to think of it, her boobs weren’t half bad either. Not to worry, there’d be other times.

‘Marching orders, everyone!’ Maureen cringed, Nell gritted her teeth and Bernie only just succeeded in preventing himself from jumping to attention. Only Bet looked cheerful as she rubbed a space on the wet window-pane and watched the Sparsworth Volvo, crammed to the gunwales with people and equipment, turn smartly round in the yard, and to the accompaniment of the Sparsworth signature tune (three short, sharp toots on the horn followed by a long one — V for Victory — get it?) sweep out of the gate and disappear from view round a bend in the lane.

Blessed silence, and a whole day to do what she liked with.

The kitchen was warm, inviting, with Tib snoring in his basket, the gentle hum of the fridge, rain gurgling in the guttering outside the window, everything spotless; Maureen had seen to that before she left. The windows were clean for the first time since they’d moved in. (Have you tried Go-Go, Betty, it’s ever so good, just adds that extra zip and sparkle), you could see your face in the sink, and there wasn’t a cobweb in sight.

Bet poured herself a cup of coffee — another of Maureen’s tips: Always have the percolator on the go, dear, you never know when the men might fancy a cup and they can get on the snappy side if they’re kept waiting — and switched on Radio 2. ‘Once I had a secret love ... ’ The chocolate-cream voice of Doris Day filled the kitchen. Bet, smiling, stuck her feet up on a chair, lit a cigarette, reached for the
Guardian
.

Halfway through the leader, she heard the sound of a car turning in at the gate. Oh God! She simply couldn’t bear it; they must have decided not to go after all. Bet shut her eyes and began to pray ...

‘Anyone at home?’ Simon’s face at the window. Tib was barking, her own mouth was dry, hands shaking. ‘How did you know I’d be here — the others have gone to Felixstowe —’

‘I know they have — the whole village knows, and good luck to them. My word, that coffee smells good, there isn’t a cup to spare, is there?’

Pull yourself together, Brandon, you’re not a lovesick schoolgirl. Her hands were only trembling a little now, and she managed to pour out a coffee without Simon seeing. ‘And what brings you here, Mr Morris? If it’s to complain about Tib and that pheasant last week —’

‘Don’t be an ass. I’ve come to ask if you’d care to pay a visit to the Old Minster at South Elmham. I like to go there from time to time, it’s good for my soul — or what little soul I have left. We could take a picnic. I know it’s pouring, but we can always eat in the car, and anyway I met old Sid Garnham in the shop just now and he says it’s going to clear up.’

‘I’ve nothing to make sandwiches with,’ she said, ‘and I’m supposed to have flu ... What exactly is the Old Minster?’

In the end they made Marmite sandwiches; Simon said they’d been his best thing for nursery tea and he hadn’t had any for years. It was his idea, too, to raid the Redford cellar for a really decent bottle of wine. ‘Alfonso keeps ours under lock and key, and besides, he’s in one of his moods. I’m sure your brother-in-law would be only too delighted, and we can always pay him back.’

Then they were away, bowling through the soggy spring countryside. Bet with a map on her knees; happy, not thinking of anything; not talking either, just watching the tiny blue patches in the smoke-grey clouds get larger and larger, until suddenly the blue had taken over and everything steamed in the sudden warmth of the sun. The country became flatter, a Flemish landscape; pink-washed farmhouses riding like ships in a sea of green-brown fields; here and there a solitary oak, a windmill, the square, squat tower of a village church.

‘Not far now. Light me a cig, will you. See, Sid Garnham was right — he always is.’

‘You haven’t told me yet about the Old Minster and why it’s good for your soul.’ Simon puffed on his cigarette and screwed up his eyes in the sun. ‘I don’t suppose you’ve ever heard of St Fusi?’ Bet shook her head. What a. lot she didn’t know.

‘Not surprising, I suppose. As saints go, he’s pretty obscure. St Fusi was the missionary priest sent from Ireland to convert East Anglia, his more famous rival being St Felix, who was sent from Rome. St Felix, after the usual vicissitudes common to that sort of work, became the first Bishop of East Anglia, with his cathedral sited somewhere near Felixstowe; exactly where isn’t known. The story goes that he was joined at some point by St Fusi, hot-foot from Ireland and bursting with enthusiasm for the cause. However, although they were united in their aim to convert the wild men of East Anglia to their own, Christian God, early Christian Ireland was a very different place from world-weary Rome, and it wasn’t long before the two saints fell out. As a result the bishopric was split, St Felix remaining at Felixstowe and St Fusi setting up a second, possibly rival, bishopric at South Elmham.

‘Of course, a lot of all this is speculation, but we do have one overwhelming piece of evidence as to the rivalry — the Old Minster at South Elmham. And whereas there’s no trace of St Felix’s church — no doubt a run-of-the-mill wattle-and-daub affair, fashionable at the time and dead easy to build —the ruins of St Fusi’s stone church stand to this day. We shall never know how or why he built it — and it certainly dates back to the eighth century; it was built, that’s all. A huge, Romanesque edifice; a sort of poor man’s St Sophia, if you like, plonked down in the middle of the Suffolk wilderness.

‘No one knows, either, how long the place was used as a church — if it ever was used as a church. We do know that by the eleventh century the bishopric had removed to North Elmham in Norfolk, where there are the remains of a cathedral, although that didn’t last long either and was replaced eventually by the cathedral at Norwich. Naturally, lots of legends grew up over the centuries about what the Old Minster was for. Built by a giant in a fit of madness, or as a penance; a fairy castle that somehow got left behind; Merlin’s summer palace — you name it. It’s only comparatively recently that anyone has taken an intelligent interest in the place, and it’s surprising how few people even in Suffolk know of its existence. The tradition goes that the farmhouse on whose land it stands is built on the site of the bishop’s palace, but there’s no hard evidence. There’s the remains of a chapel in the garden, but it’s of a much later date than the Minster.

‘And that’s all I can tell you, really, and you no doubt think that’s too much anyway. To answer your other question, Why is a visit to the Minster good for my soul? is a little more difficult. I suppose because it’s beautiful, exotic, unique, forgotten, mad, probably a white elephant from the day it was built, and proves that thirteen hundred years ago there were people around every bit as daft as we are now. Oh, I don’t know — do you want any more?’

‘That’s enough, actually.’ Bet put out her hand, he took it without looking at her. ‘We’re almost there ... ’

The last part of the journey was slow, a farm track full of potholes and puddles leading to a magnificent eighteenth-century, lime-washed farmhouse. Then, after gaining permission from the farmer to leave the car in his rick-yard, there was a muddy walk over the fields. Simon strode in front with the picnic basket and an ash wand cut from the hedge, Bet squelched along behind in her wellies, carrying the plastic bag with Pete’s precious bottle of wine in it. They passed the ruined chapel, then climbed over a stile into a bumpy, sloping field full of baaing sheep. Lucky she hadn’t brought Tib. Simon had said no when she suggested it. It wouldn’t do him any harm to stay at home for once, he said, he could take a well-earned rest and prepare himself for the return of the sergeant-major (Bet had told Simon about the sergeant-major). At the bottom of the field they turned left along a small, boggy stream, its banks churned to mud by the sheep. Had it been as wet as this in St Fusi’s time? Probably much wetter.

‘Come on, slowcoach, there it is.’ Simon pointed his wand — Merlin in an anorak? — towards what looked like a small wood ahead of them to the right. The trees already held a fuzz of green, one or two rather nondescript rooks flapped about, primroses shone in the bank below the trees. Just an ordinary wood, and just another of those flat, archaeological sites that have to be explained to one by an archaeologist, and which even then doesn’t make sense. What had she expected, Canterbury cathedral? Simon, ahead of her, had already climbed the bank into the wood and disappeared. About to follow him, maddeningly, one of her boots got stuck in the mud, forcing her to put the bag of wine down on a nearby tussock and then hop about on one leg like an idiot in a frantic attempt to get the boot back on again. After a great deal of swearing and wondering why the hell Simon wasn’t there to help, she succeeded at last, and picking up the bag of wine, prepared to follow him over the bank.

It was only then she realised that the wood wasn’t a wood at all; what she’d thought to be the density of trees was in reality a huge, ruined building, the trees merely an outer ring around the grass clearing on which it stood. She clambered over the bank in a sudden rush, then just stood and looked, head back, clutching her plastic bag to her chest, mouth half-open in wonder.

How had they done it? Was it for the glory of their new-found God, or was it simply megalomania? The place looked as outlandish as a unicorn in that quiet English landscape, only much, much larger. Grey stone walls, in places still as high as the nave of a cathedral, stretched up towards the sun, arched Romanesque windows gaped blindly through matted ivy; scattered among the primroses, great blocks of stone, a Herculean pillar. There was the sudden clap and shudder of wings as a flock of pigeons, disturbed, burst from a high, creeper-covered arch and took flight towards the open sunlit fields. And Bet went on standing there. She wanted to cry; not for sadness, but not for happiness either. Simply at the sheer, unexpected wonder of the place. For a moment she even forgot Simon. Only for a moment, however. Then he was there beside her, excited, triumphant, laughing at her wonder ... wanting her.

And she stood there, nodding, exclaiming, feeling the wind on her face, the beat of her heart; trying to pull herself together, take control of the situation.

Then, of course, it happened. It was inevitable, really, when one came to think of it. In a futile attempt to put a few more feet between herself and temptation, she took a step backwards, tripped over a tussock of grass and slithered ungracefully to the ground. Wiping the mud from her nose and feeling an absolute idiot, but otherwise OK, she looked up to find Simon kneeling beside her. ‘Darling Bet, you are so utterly, absolutely, splendid, do you think I could kiss you? I’m sure the rooks won’t mind, and if you’re worrying about the ghost of St Fusi, there’s not the slighest cause for alarm, those early saints were a broad-minded lot.’