A Rural Affair (44 page)

‘Don’t say anything.’

And then the ticket had arrived pronto, by hand through my door. And, actually, my plan had been to ask Luke, tonight. See
if he’d come with me. Waltz in with my new boyfriend. But that would have sealed the deal, wouldn’t it? And my fate along
with it. Knowing myself as I did, it would have been hard to stop that stone rolling into a relationship.

‘In fact not, I’m definitely not,’ I said with some relief, and only a little regret at the thought of the glittering occasion
I knew I would be missing. It was being held at Mulverton Hall, Sam’s place. Even more reason to waltz in with Luke, a bit
of me had thought. I realized I’d felt ridiculously betrayed on discovering he’d been married to Hope. Had wanted to trump
him. Why was that? And naturally everyone in the area was keen to go to the ball this year, being held as it was, not in the
usual soggy marquee in a field at the kennels with a sticky dance floor and overflowing portaloos, but at the local manor,
which no one had been inside for years. Oh yes, even the most fervent anti-blood-sport types would be there: never underestimate
the snoop factor. There was talk of a vast black and white hall with a gallery and sweeping staircase – Mrs Briggs knew someone
who cleaned – and there Sam would be, at the foot of it, handsome in black tie, with Chad and Hope too. The three of them
in an eternal triangle. I wondered how much Hope enjoyed that? Sam shooting her haunted looks? No, that was uncharitable.
I didn’t know the woman. It probably tore her apart. Not as much as it did
Sam, though. I gave myself a little inward shake. Other people’s lives. Get on with your own, Poppy.

‘I take it you’re not going either?’ I asked Peggy, wrapping my dressing gown firmly round my legs. It wasn’t really her thing.
Peggy had an aversion to establishment socials, preferring instead her usual corner at the Rose and Crown, where she played
backgammon with her cronies.

‘Yes, I thought I would, actually. Tom was sent a double ticket. I might go with him.’

I was astonished. ‘Really? Golly. Square it with Angie first, don’t you think?’

‘No, I didn’t think I would,’ she said calmly, draining her glass. ‘Tom quite wants the surprise element.’

‘Right,’ I said, boggling. Quite bold of Tom to show his face, and even more bold of Peggy to accompany him. ‘That’s very
much Angie’s fiefdom,’ I told her nervously. ‘She’ll be queen bee, top table.’

Peggy shrugged. ‘As Tom was for years. And all his friends will be there and he hasn’t seen them for ages. His girls will
be going too, don’t forget. They’d love to see him. I’ve talked to Clarissa about it.’

‘Have you? Isn’t she away at school?’

‘Yes, but I’ve got her mobile number. She thinks it’s a good idea.’ She gave me a steady, impenetrable look I couldn’t fathom.
‘Anyway, we’ll see. Haven’t decided yet. Night, Poppy.’ She got briskly to her feet and blew me a kiss. Peggy didn’t do embraces.
Didn’t go in for much bodily contact at all, come to think of it. ‘And well done you.’ She smiled down at me. ‘Good decision.
Cleaning that oven.’

I smiled. ‘Thanks.’

Peggy left the same way she’d arrived, via the back door. I got to my feet and stood in the open doorway, watching her
go down the garden path, from where she’d disappear through the gate, then into the field and around to the front. Suddenly
it occurred to me that she might not have run into Tom in town. She might have arranged to meet him, to talk to him. Persuade
him to come to the ball, knowing he’d been sent a ticket. For Angie’s sake. She might, in fact, be working some sort of magic.
Now that Tatiana had gone, and now that Angie appeared to be softening slightly, was less bitter. Now that both husband and
wife had had time apart to think, she might be judging the time was right. Because Peggy was like that. A good judge. Or …
was I endowing her with powers she didn’t have? Perceptions that were beyond her? I didn’t think so somehow. Odd, wasn’t it,
how some people had that sage-like quality. Did it come with age, I wondered? Or had it always been there? As Peggy’s mauve
velvet coat disappeared in a flurry through the garden gate it reminded me of something. I couldn’t think what. Ah yes, an
illustration in one of Clemmie’s books. Merlin.

I stood in the open doorway a long time after she’d gone. The ewes grazed quietly now without Shameless, and I loved the way
the enormous chestnut tree spread its boughs over them. In summer the huge dark leaves hung like a protective swirling skirt
and although they were almost bare now, the branches still seemed to offer shelter. The late climbing rose by the door brushed
my cheek, its scent redolent of warmer days, and drizzle dampened my face. In the certain knowledge that my fringe was beyond
redemption, I let it fall: let it frizz. I realized, with a start, that I was quite content. Was, in fact, relishing being
alone. I smiled up at the chestnut tree and was about to go inside when, suddenly, the French windows next door flew open.
Frankie shot her head round.

‘Oh, thank God you’re there. I thought I heard you. We need you right now, Poppy. Jennie has gone completely mental. Can I
come in?’

Before I could reply she’d leaped the little wall that divided our gardens and nipped inside my kitchen anyway. From her own
house I could hear the sound of voices raised in anger. Then an outraged scream, shouting, and the sound of things being thrown.
Something smashed against our party wall. I jumped, clutching Frankie’s wrist.

‘Jesus. What’s going on?’

‘Jennie, right, has completely lost it,’ she told me breathlessly as we listened. ‘She’s convinced it’s not my test, which
it bloody isn’t, and she knows it’s not yours or Peggy’s or Angie’s, or even by immaculate conception Mrs B’s, so she’s decided
the only logical conclusion is it’s Dad’s. That he’s having an affair, brought someone back here, and she dropped it in the
basket.’

‘Oh, for God’s sake!’ I gasped, incredulous.

‘I know, bonkers; but I told you, she’s lost the plot.’

We listened, clutching each other, as Jennie, at full volume, which we knew to be loud enough to penetrate ancient walls,
told Dan exactly what she thought of him, followed by what sounded like the toaster being flung across the room. Dan yelped
in pain.

‘Shit –
you bitch
– my ankle!’

‘Shall I go in?’ I breathed.

‘Oh yes, please,’ begged Frankie tearfully. ‘She’s going to kill him, I know she is. I honestly think she might – Oh!’

No doubt also believing this to be true, Dan was even now leaping the garden wall. The next thing we knew, he was in my kitchen,
cowering shamelessly behind his neighbour and
his daughter, even going so far as to clutch my dressing-gown cord. His wife, however, was only moments behind him: in very
hot pursuit, leaping the wall and brandishing a golf club.

‘Jennie,
no
!’ I screamed, springing forward to seize her wrist as she charged in brandishing the club. As the five iron flailed in the
air Mrs Tiger Woods sprang to mind.

‘Let go of me! LET GO OF ME!’ she roared.

‘No, Jennie!’ I flung her arm to the left with a monumental effort, so much so that the club flew from her hand. She cast
mad, wistful eyes after it as it hit a framed poster from the Royal Academy on the wall, smashing it. The sound of breaking
glass did nothing to deter her, though; in fact it seemed to galvanize her. Her eyes came back to her prey, who was shrinking
back down the kitchen, white-faced.

‘BASTARD!’ she screamed. As Dan turned and fled she pushed me out of the way, but as she ran past I managed to swing and grab
her jumper. I held on tight as Frankie, with great resourcefulness, rugby-tackled her ankles and brought her down. A terrific
struggle ensued, with Dan, I noticed, not helping in the least; he watched, petrified, peeping out from behind the doorway
into the hall, as Frankie and I pinned his wife to the floor.

‘Let me up! LET ME UP!’ she insisted hotly.

Relenting only a fraction, we tentatively allowed her to at least struggle to a sitting position against the wall, where we
crouched beside her like jailers, Frankie holding tight to one arm, me to the other.

‘In my bed,’ she was spluttering, ‘some tart, while my children slept!’

‘Jennie,
don’t
be ridiculous!’ I yelled. ‘You’re out of your mind!’

‘You’ve gone properly weird,’ gasped Frankie.

‘He wouldn’t, Jennie, he just wouldn’t!’ I urged. Dan shook his head vehemently, in helpless agreement, but knowing better,
perhaps, than to utter. Out of the corner of my eye I could see my other neighbour, Mrs Harper, at the far end of her back
garden, peering around the pyracantha on the party wall, possibly even standing on a flower pot.

‘Oh yes, he
would
!’ Jennie seethed, mad eyes leaping out of their sockets, her face crimson with rage. ‘That’s just it, he bloody
would
! He is not the man you think he is, Poppy, not harmless lovable Dan, can’t help getting into scrapes, poor lamb. He
would
do that and I
know
he did it because I found a black lacy bra UNDER MY BED!’

‘It’s mine!’ wailed Frankie, distressed. ‘I told you it’s new. I tried it on in your room because you’ve got the best mirror
– I must have left it there!’

‘You lie!’ she spat, her head spinning round to her daughter like something out of
The Exorcist
. ‘I wash your underwear constantly, young lady, and you possess nothing of that nature. You lie to protect him! You both
lie!’

‘No!’ Frankie cried, tears springing to her eyes as, at that moment, her younger brother and sister materialized in their
back garden. Jamie and Hannah were even now climbing over the garden wall in their pyjamas. Jamie helped Hannah down. They
crept, terrified, into my kitchen. If anything would stop my hugely maternal friend in her tracks, it was this: the sight
of her two frightened, vulnerable children, little faces bewildered, Hannah still clutching her teddy, dragged from their
beds by the screaming. But Jennie was too far gone. Her tether, which, as we know, some would dispute her ever having been
in possession of, had well and truly snapped. Despite her jailers she struggled to her feet and balled her fists.

‘WELL, WHOSE IS IT, THEN?’ she bellowed as we held her arms tight, her face a strange purple colour. ‘The sodding test? If
it’s not yours, and it’s not your father’s and it’s not Poppy’s or Peggy’s or Angie’s, WHO
THE
HELL
DOES
IT
BELONG
TO?’ she screamed.

There was a silence. It seemed to me the entire village held its collective breath.

‘It’s mine,’ came a voice to our left.

We swung around as one. Twelve-year-old Jamie, not thirteen until the winter, in his M&S jim-jams, getting taller by the minute
but still very much snub-nosed and freckled, still very much a child, gazed back at us. Two spots of colour were high in his
cheeks and I saw him swallow. A gasp went up from the assembled company. Jennie, still in a half nelson of sorts, still in
some sort of custody, went limp in our hands. She let out an anguished cry, the sound of an animal in pain. Then she bowed
her head and slipped slowly down the wall on her bottom, to the floor.

‘Yours?’ spluttered Frankie, since their mother seemed incapable of speech.

‘Yes, it’s mine. OK?’

Jennie moaned in agony again, but not so piercingly this time: it was more the cry of a defeated fighter at the very end of
their strength, very much on the ropes. Dan, however, seemed imbued with a new kind of strength. He hot-footed it from one
end of the kitchen to the other, and since he was no longer in imminent danger of losing his own life, he stepped over his
prostrate wife to endanger his son’s. He towered over Jamie.

‘You got someone pregnant?’ he hissed, aghast.

‘No, of course not. I was testing Leila, cos I thought she might be. I think she is.’

A profound silence followed this announcement. No eyes strayed from the small boy in checked pyjamas.

‘Leila?’ his mother finally whispered, dumbfounded.

‘Yes. She was getting all fat and bosomy, like you did with Hannah, and anyway I saw her doing it with another dog. So when
I saw her having a wee in the garden, I took your test and stuck it in the puddle. I had to run back upstairs to check the
instructions on the packet, and then I just chucked it in the bin. I was going to tell you, only I knew how cross you’d be
with her.’ His face was very pale now under his freckles.

His mother shut her eyes. ‘Oh, thank the Lord,’ she breathed. ‘Thank the Lord.’

‘You’re pleased?’ Jamie blinked. ‘I thought you’d be, like, mental. Get her to have an abortion or something.’

‘Oh, I might still do that, but – Oh no, I am
so
pleased, darling!’ Jennie struggled to her feet and staggered across the kitchen to take her astonished son’s face in both
hands. She kissed his forehead with a resounding smack, then both his cheeks equally roundly. ‘So
so
pleased it’s not your father, but even more relieved it’s not you!’

‘Me!’ he gasped, but she’d already squashed him in a face-altering embrace to her breast; so much so that his mouth became
a figure of eight, denying speech.

Dan, meanwhile, once his initial relief had passed, was rapidly engaged in regarding his wife with contempt. He folded his
arms in an attitude of haughty disdain. His lip curled. He hadn’t stalked off, mind, as some husbands might, in high dudgeon;
had remained stoically by his wife’s side. Whatever else one said about Dan, he saw these things through. But then again,
such moments of lofty moral altitude were few and far between in his married life; he wouldn’t want to miss out on them, would
he? Who knows how long it might be until another came along?

‘Sorry,’ Jennie muttered to him now, over her son’s head.

Dan regarded her frostily for a moment, but then his lip uncurled. He had the grace to accept this apology for what it was:
a genuine one, from a woman driven to distraction by unexplained circumstances, whose imagination had galloped from a teenage
pregnancy, to her husband’s love child, to underage sex, all in the space of a few hours. He inclined his head in acceptance,
and although he was unable to resist a faint gleam to the eye, she stood forgiven. And Dan forgave Jennie a lot, it occurred
to me; almost as much as she forgave him. Albeit for different reasons.