Farewell to Fairacre (17 page)

Occasionally, yes, was my reply to this self-posed query, but notion any permanent basis. He was an attractive man, he could offer a woman good company, protection and a comfortable home, and many a lone female, I felt sure, would be happy to consider marriage. However, I was not.

As Amy had so often pointed out, I was far too fond of my own company. Further, she was wont to add, I was very selfish, and it would do me good to have to consider someone else in my life. Look how much richer her own life was, she would say, married to James!

I forbore on these occasions to remind her of her unhappiness when James was away, presumably on business but, I guessed, with some dalliance with other ladies thrown in. Amy was no fool, and knew better than I did, I suspected, about such matters, but she was rock-bottom loyal, and never breathed a word about her doubts.

She was probably right about my selfishness, but what was wrong with that? I coped with my own worries as well as my own pleasures, without embroiling anyone else in my affairs. I gave help to others whenever I could, as in the case of poor distracted Minnie, and I suppose I could have done a great deal more if I had joined such excellent bodies as the Red Cross or the Samaritans, but I was never one for joining things, and in any case my spare time was limited.

No, the fact of the matter was that single life suited me admirably, and now that I was in my comfortable middle age I was decidedly set in my ways and would very much dislike sharing my home with someone else. There was a lot to be said for a lone existence, and I recalled a remark of Katherine Mansfield's when she said, 'If you find a hair in your honey, at least you know it's your own.'

I only hoped that John Jenkins' ardour would cool, and that Deirdre would be successful in capturing my other, rather less troublesome, admirer.

One could quite see the attractions of the monastic life, I thought, prising Pussi-luv out of the tin.

Promptly at six thirty on the following Wednesday, John's car arrived. He must have spent hours polishing it. It gleamed from nose to tail, and put my own shabby runabout to shame.

The evening was overcast but warm, and the heady scents of spring were all around.

John was cheerful, and not too embarrassingly solicitous, and my spirits rose as we approached my old home.

'Do you miss it?' he asked as we drew up.

'Not really. I think I prefer the cottage at Beech Green. For one thing, it is full of happy memories of Dolly Clare, and it is my own. This was only lent to me for the duration of my working life. I was always very conscious of that.'

'You are like me. I like to feel settled.'

Luckily, at this juncture, Horace appeared and greeted us. Soon the two men were reminiscing about their old school and the idiosyncrasies of some of the staff they remembered.

It was good to see Miriam and Gerard again. He was in the throes of producing a television series about diarists, and we all gave him conflicting and confused ideas about the people he should put in. I plumped for Parson Wood-forde and Francis Kilvert. Miriam said John Evelyn was absolutely essential. Eve said that Gerard could do a whole series on Samuel Pepys alone, and we all got extremely excited about the project and bombarded poor Gerard with our ideas.

He bore it all very well, and when we had run out of breath, said mildly that he was not going to use any of those diarists but some unknown Dorset individuals he had come across when reading about various seventeenth-century writers.

John, with considerable aplomb, changed the subject to gardening while we got over our disappointments and paid more attention to our excellent roast lamb and redcurrant jelly. It was salutory to remember, I told myself, that writers and other creative artists do not relish other people's ideas. They usually have more than enough of their own, and well-meant suggestions only add to the burden of their already over-stocked minds.

Miriam and I were taken to see Andrew asleep upstairs, in my old spare bedroom, once we had finished at the table. He looked so rosy and angelic, with dark crescents of eyelashes against his velvety cheeks, that it was difficult to believe that I had seen him that morning roaring his head off, in a paroxysm of infant rage, when I had been on playground duty.

The rain had swept in whilst we were enjoying ourselves and by the time we drove back to Beech Green the roads were awash, hard rain spun silver coins on the tarmac and the windscreen wipers were working overtime.

We passed the end of Pig Lane, and we soon approached my cottage.

'Stay there,' commanded John, as we drew up, 'and I'll get an umbrella from the boot.'

Huddled together we made a dash for the front door, John holding the umbrella over me while I found the key.

'You must come in,' I said.

'Thank you,' he replied, scattering showers of raindrops as he closed the umbrella.

'Coffee?' I asked, as he divested himself of his coat.

'How nice.'

I proceeded to the kitchen to do my duties. Frankly, I should have preferred to go to straight to bed, rather than sit making polite conversation, but I reminded myself of the fact that I had been fetched and carried, and protected from the downpour.

The fire was low, but I put on some small logs, much to Tibby's satisfaction, and we sipped our coffee companionably.

'I hope I'm not keeping you from your bed.'

'Not at all,' I said politely, stifling a yawn.

'It's wonderful to be here. So marvellously
cosy.
The fire, you know, and the cat, and you just sitting there.'

I wondered if he would prefer me to stand on my head, or leap about the room in a lively polka, but was too tired to do anything but smile.

'This is what I miss,' he said earnestly. 'The companionship, the sharing of things.'

Not again, I prayed silently. I was really too sleepy to listen sympathetically to any man's description of his loneliness.

He put his cup and saucer very carefully in the hearth, a move which I viewed with some apprehension. If this was a prelude to a proposal of marriage I must be on my guard. I felt such a longing for my bed that I might well accept him simply to terminate the evening's proceedings, and how should I feel in the morning?

He rose from his armchair and came to sit on a footstool very close to me. The light from the table lamp shone on his silvery hair. He really was an extremely handsome man.

'I'm sure you know how I feel about you,' he began, speaking quickly. 'It began when I first saw you. I had a premonition that we were destined to mean a great deal to each other. Do you feel that too?'

He looked so earnest, and his blue eyes were so pleading that I could quite see how easily I could agree.

'Well, I must say,' I began weakly, but was interrupted, rather rudely I thought, by my hand being snatched up and squeezed somewhat painfully. Aunt Clara's garnet ring was always rather small, and it was now being ground into my finger.

'Don't put me off,' he begged. 'Don't turn me down. You mean so much to me, and I couldn't bear it if you said "No". Say you'll think about it, if you need time. But what I dearly want to hear is that you would marry me.'

It was all said in such a rush, blurted out so urgently that there was no mistaking the sincerity of the offer. I was deeply touched, and withdrew my mangled hand as unobtrusively as I could.

'Dear John,' I began.

'You will?' he cried, attempting to retrieve my hand again. 'You'll have me? Oh, I can't tell you—'

'I didn't say that,' I pointed out. Was I never to get a word in edgeways?

He checked suddenly, and began to look crestfallen.

'Do have your coffee while it's hot,' I said. 'I was about to say, John dear, that I am truly fond of you, and it's wonderful for me to receive a proposal at my age. Let me think it over, may I?'

He sighed, and sat more upright on the footstool. I fetched his coffee and gave it to him.

'I suppose I shall have to be content with "truly fond", but I beg you to take pity on me. I'd do anything for you. We could move to wherever you fancied. Go abroad if you like. To France, say. I've a little cottage there. I'm not a rich man, but we shouldn't want for anything, and I do most dearly love you.'

'I know that. It touches me deeply.'

He put down the coffee cup again. It was still almost full. He stood up, and put his arms round me.

'Say you'll think about it. Say you'll tell me quickly. I shan't have an easy minute until I know. And please,
please
say "Yes".'

He kissed me very gently and made for the door. Outside the rain lashed down more fiercely than ever, and I handed him the umbrella which was still glistening with raindrops.

'I'll ring you tomorrow,' I promised, as he ran down the path.

Within a minute he was off, with a valedictory toot of the horn, and I put the cups and saucers in the sink, and put the fireguard round the ashes of the logs, and put myself, at long last, between the sheets.

What a day! I felt exhausted with all this emotion.

I had plenty to think about the next morning. I looked at myself in the looking-glass and wondered why anyone should want to marry me.

Certainly my hair was still thick and had very little grey in it, and I had always been fortunate enough to have a good skin, but otherwise I was humdrum enough in all conscience.

It was very flattering, though, to receive a proposal of marriage in one's late fifties, and I was duly elated in a moderate and middle-aged way. Perhaps, I thought, with some deflation, John had already asked more attractive women and they had turned him down?

Not with that silvery hair and those devastating blue eyes, I decided. He would make a most decorative adjunct to anyone's household, and no doubt be quite useful too in little manly things like changing electric light bulbs and washers on taps.

But did I want him? The answer was definitely 'No'! A pity, but there it was, and the really wretched thing was that I must tell him so in the kindest possible way.

I drove to school rehearsing different ways of turning down a nice man's proposal of marriage. They all seemed pretty brutal, and I was glad to reach school and to be confronted by my exuberant pupils.

Mrs Richards did not appear, and I took the entire school for prayers in my classroom. It was a quarter past nine when she arrived, full of apologies. Her car was being repaired. Wayne's van would not start. She had been obliged to go to catch the bus, and promised to tell me more at playtime.

Meanwhile, she hastened to her own duties, and I to mine. Every now and again, the awful fact of the impending telephone call I must make plunged me into gloom.

Mrs Pringle, arriving with clean tea towels, commented on my looks. 'Proper peaky again. You want to watch you don't have another funny turn,' she told me.

I said that I felt quite well. I could have said that if I were to have any more funny turns, it was not much good setting out to watch them, but I was in no mood to cross swords with Mrs Pringle in my present debilitated condition, and let it pass.

At playtime Mrs "Richards enlarged on her early morning difficulties as we sipped our coffee.

'There I was by the bus stop when Alan came along and gave me a lift. I've known him for years. He was sweet on me at one time, but I was only eighteen and he was quite old, about thirty.'

I thought of John Jenkins, who must be in his sixties. No doubt Mrs Richards would consider him in his dotage. Perhaps he was? A dispiriting thought.

'He was a proper pest,' she went on, 'and I asked my mum to choke him off. She told him I was about to be engaged to Wayne, and I was furious with her.'

'Why?'

'Well, I'd only been out once or twice with Wayne, and I didn't want him to think that I was running after him. I mean, I knew I could never take to Alan. You always know, don't you?'

I agreed fervently that indeed one did always know.

'But I was quite keen on Wayne, and I thought people would tittle-tattle and he'd be frightened off. It was stupid of my mum to say that, wasn't it?'

'I must get out to the playground,' I said, 'before murder is done.'

Out in the fresh air, with the rooks wheeling about the trees, and the children rushing around being aeroplanes or trains, I felt much better.

On the whole, I thought that my assistant had been jolly lucky to have a mother to take her part. If only I had someone to 'choke off' my poor old John!

Well, it would have to be me, and perhaps that was all for the best, I decided, as we returned to the classroom.

It was almost five o'clock when I returned home, as I had been waylaid by a parent who was worried about her child's asthma and wanted to know if PE lessons upset him.

It seemed sensible to fortify myself with a cup of tea before tackling my difficult task. It was a bright afternoon and no doubt John was either in his garden or even farther afield. Would it be better to wait until it became dark, I wondered? He would be much more likely to be near the telephone then.

On the other hand, I wanted to get the job over. Besides, if I rang after six o'clock he might think I had waited for the cheap rate period, and I should appear parsimonious as well as callous. How difficult life is!