Peacock Emporium (7 page)

‘Still, you’ve got to admit, he’s done all right for himself,’ the man had said. ‘I mean, if you’re going to get marched down the aisle by anyone . . .’

‘True. But . . .’

‘But what?’

‘Let’s face it, he’s going to need to keep an eye out, isn’t he?’

‘What?’

‘Come on . . . 
Girl’s a little tart.’

Vivi had stood very still. The man’s voice had lowered to a murmur, as if he had turned away to speak. ‘Tony Warrington saw her on Tuesday. A drink for “old times”, she told him. They used to walk out together, back when he lived in Windsor. Except her idea of
old times
was a bit too closely related to
good times
, if you know what I mean.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘Not a week before the wedding. Tony said he hadn’t even wanted to. Bad form and all that. But she was all over him like a rash.’

Vivi’s ears had started to ring. She put out a hand to steady herself.

‘Bloody hell’

‘Exactly. But keep it to yourself, old boy. No point ruining the day. Still . . . you’ve got to feel rather sorry for poor old Fairley-Hulme.’

Four

Douglas leant back in his chair, sucked ruminatively at the end of his ballpoint pen and gazed at the densely covered pages of plans in front of him. It had taken him several weeks, working long into the evening, but he was pretty sure he’d got them right.

He had based his ideas partially on a mixture of the ideals of the great social reformers, a kind of utilitarian blueprint for living, and something in America he’d read about – a more communal way of doing things. It was pretty radical, admittedly, but he thought it might work out rather well. No, he corrected himself, he
knew
it would work out well. And it would change fundamentally the face of the estate.

Instead of the huge herd of Friesians – the rules and regulations about which, since the introduction of the Common Agricultural Policy, his father had repeatedly complained could turn a sane man into a raving imbecile – a hundred acres would be turned over to a self-supporting community. The participants could live in the derelict tied cottages, doing them up themselves with timber from the Mistley wood. There was a water source near there, along with old barns that could be used for small numbers of livestock. If they got in craftsmen, artisans, they could even start a studio down there, sell their pottery or whatever, perhaps giving back a small percentage of the profits in return.

Meanwhile the four fields on Page Hill, the ones currently turned over to sugarbeet, could be divided into smallholdings to allow local people to grow their own vegetables. There was a growing market for home-produced food, an increasing number of people who wanted to ‘get back to nature’. The Fairley-Hulmes would charge a minimal rent, and take food as partial payment. It would be like a return to the tenanted farm, a return to the ancestral ways of the family but without the feudal attitude. And the scheme would be self-supporting. Perhaps even profitable. If it worked really well, the surplus money could be ploughed into some other project, perhaps an educational programme. Like one that taught the delinquents in town something productive, perhaps about land management.

The estate was too big for one man to manage. He had heard his father say so a million times, as if Douglas himself were not quite man enough to be included in this. There was the estate manager, of course, the head herdsman and the farmhands, the gamekeeper and the odd-job man, but ultimate responsibility for what went on belonged with Cyril Fairley-Hulme, a responsibility he had held now for almost forty years. And this responsibility no longer simply meant the running of the land, it meant complex calculations involving subsidies, which had meant more machinery, less diversification, more chemical weedkillers and fertilisers. All of which had left his father muttering unhappily that if he had to grub up any more hedgerows he might as well sell the animals, turn the estate into one of those American-style arable farms and be done with it, while his older men, those who had learnt to plough with horses, speculated that, forget animals, at this rate there’d be no need for humans.

The brief period of self-examination that had followed his meeting Athene had made Douglas realise he had never felt truly comfortable with the idea of inheriting the Dereward estate. It didn’t feel earned somehow: in an age when nepotism and feudalism were dying a slow death, it didn’t seem right that he should take on this self-aggrandising mantle, that he, not yet out of his twenties, should assume a right to the estate and responsibility for the lives of all who depended on it.

The first time he had broached this with his father, the older man had looked at him as if he were a Commie. He might even have used the word. And Douglas, who was astute enough to understand that his father was not likely to take seriously a plan that was half thought-out, had swallowed his words and gone off to oversee the disinfecting of the milking parlour.

But now he had a concrete set of proposals, which even his father would have to admit was likely to take the estate forward into the future, make it a model not just for agricultural excellence but for social change. He could follow in the tradition of those great reformers: Rowntree and Cadbury, those who had thought that making money was an insufficient aim unless it led to social and environmental betterment. He conjured up images of contented workers eating home-produced food and studying to better themselves instead of liquefying their weekly wages down at the White Hart. It was 1965. Things were changing fast, even if the inhabitants of Dere Hampton were unwilling to acknowledge it.

He placed the pages neatly together, laid them reverently in a card wallet and tucked it under his arm. He did his best to ignore the pile of letters to which he had yet to reply. He had spent much of the last month fending off complaints from ramblers and dog-walkers over the fact that he had erected a post-and-rail fence along the middle of the thirty-acre fields that led down to the wood to let the two sides for sheep grazing. (He had always fancied sheep. He still remembered fondly a youthful stay with a Cumbrian sheep farmer who counted his animals using an ancient and incomprehensible dialect:
Yan, tan, tethera, pethera, pimp, sethera, lethera, hovera, covera, dik . . . 
That the villagers could still walk down the field had not pacified them: they didn’t like, they said, being ‘penned in’. Douglas had been tempted to retort that they were lucky to have access to it at all, and that if the estate wasn’t made financially secure by such measures it would be sold off in parcels for development, like the once-grand Rampton estate four miles away. And see how they would like that.

But conscious that, as a Fairley-Hulme, he had at least to pay lip service to villagers’ opinions, he had suggested they write their complaints in letter form and he would do his best to address them.

He glanced at his watch, then tapped his fingers on the side of the desk, a mixture of nervousness and excitement. His mother should be preparing lunch. When his father retreated into his office for his usual half-hour of ‘paperwork’ (often involving the brief closure of his eyes – just for resting purposes, you understand), he would present his ideas. And perhaps make his own, more contemporary mark on the Dereward estate.

A short distance away, Douglas Fairley-Hulme’s mother took off her gloves and hat, and shepherded the dogs into the boot room, noting from the clock in the hall that she had arrived home almost half an hour before lunch was due. Not that there was anything to organise; she had set off in the expectation that she might at least be invited in for coffee and prepared everything beforehand accordingly. But despite her having walked all that distance, and appearing at the doorway quite windblown – every year, she forgot how March could surprise one – and obviously in need of some refreshment, her daughter-in-law had declined to invite her in.

She had not got off to a good start with Athene. She failed to see how anyone could. The girl was a wearisome sort, always making impossible demands of Douglas but rarely wanting to do anything wifely and supportive in return. But Cyril had told her she should try a little harder to make friends. ‘Have a coffee morning or something. Douglas says she gets bored. Easier for him if you two are friends.’

She had never particularly enjoyed the company of other women. Too much gossiping and worrying over things that didn’t matter. One of the disadvantages of being the matriarch of the estate was that people somehow expected her to have conversations all the time, that she should chat about fripperies at charity mornings and fêtes, when all she really wanted was to be at home with her garden. But it was rare that Cyril made a specific request of her, so she had set off dutifully on The two-mile cross-country walk that led to Philmore House, the large, Queen Anne-style residence that, on his marriage two years ago, Cyril had given to his only son.

Athene had been wearing her nightclothes, even though it was well past eleven. Not that she had seemed remotely concerned at having been caught in them. ‘I’m awfully sorry,’ she had said, not looking sorry at all. She had appeared momentarily surprised, and then flashed a bland, charming smile. ‘I’m not receiving people today.’ She had reached up to stifle a yawn, her seersucker robe revealing the flimsiest of nightdresses and, worse, a good length of pale
décolletage
underneath, even though any of the estate men might have been passing.

Douglas’s mother had felt quite unbalanced by this extraordinary breach of decorum. ‘I had thought we might have a cup of coffee together,’ she said, forcing a smile. ‘We’ve hardly seen you up at the house lately.’

Athene had glanced behind her, an air of distracted irritation hovering around her, as if her mother-in-law might have been followed by a phalanx of visitors, all demanding tea and conversation.

‘Cyril was – we were both wondering how you were.’

‘You’re terribly kind. I’ve just had rather a lot on.’ Athene’s smile wavered a bit when her mother-in-law did not budge. ‘And today I’m feeling rather tired. Which is why I’m not really receiving anyone.’

‘I thought we might have a little chat. About things—’

‘Oh, I don’t think so. But it’s very kind of you to think of me.’

‘There are a couple of things we’d like you to—’ ‘Lovely to see you. I’m sure we’ll see you again soon.’ And, after that brief exchange, the least demonstrative goodbye and not even a hint of an apology, Athene had closed the front door. And her mother-in-law, who normally liked to call a spade a spade, had been almost too stupefied to be offended.

In fact, despite being a woman of some certainty, she wasn’t even quite sure how to describe this turn of events to her husband. What could she say in condemnation? That the girl had received her in her nightdress? Cyril might find that charming – worse, he could start imagining things, and she knew where
that
might end. That Athene had declined to offer her coffee? Cyril would say simply that she should have given her some warning, telephoned before she left. It was one of the things that irritated her most, her husband’s determination always to be
fair.
She decided to say nothing, but when Douglas arrived she took him to one side and told him straight: if his wife didn’t want to dress herself with a little dignity, then she shouldn’t answer the door. There was a family name to uphold. When he had looked at her with incomprehension, she had felt a sudden fearful protectiveness, combined with a distant annoyance that the boy was so like his father. You spent their entire youth warning them. Years, perhaps. But it made no difference when it came to girls like that.

Cyril Fairley-Hulme put down his napkin and glanced at the clock, as he did every day during the short minutes between finishing his meal and the moment at which his wife stood and asked if he’d like a cup of coffee before he headed into his study. Behind him, the radio gave out the weather forecast in measured tones, as it did at the end of every lunch, and all three observed a minute’s silence to allow him to listen.

‘Very nice,’ Cyril said quietly. Then, as if making some long-pondered observation, ‘You can’t beat a good game pie.’

‘Delicious. Thank you, Mother.’ Douglas pulled the napkin from his lap and crumpled it into a ball on the table.

‘It’s one of Bessie’s. I’ll tell her you liked it. Do you have time for some coffee?’ The dining table had been laid, as it always was, with a neat formality and good china despite the mundanity of the occasion. She lifted the plates, and walked, straight-backed, from the room.

Douglas watched her go, feeling the words leaden in his mouth, at odds with the racing feeling in his chest.

His father took some minutes meditatively tamping his pipe, then lighting it, his thin, tanned face creased into well-worn lines of concentration. Then he glanced at his son, as if surprised that during this part of the daily routine he hadn’t left. ‘Dennis is sowing the tubers this afternoon.’

‘Yes,’ said Douglas. ‘I’m going to head up there when I leave.’

His father extinguished a shortened match and swore softly under his breath, glancing unconsciously at the door where his wife had exited. ‘Want to make sure he gets the distances right. He set them too close together last year.’

‘Yes, Father, you said. I’ll talk to him about it.’

His father looked down at his pipe again. ‘Waiting for harvest?’ he said, lightly.

‘What? Oh—’ It was often difficult to recognise when his father was joking. ‘Oh, no. Actually, Father, I wanted to talk to you about something.’

The pipe was lit. His father leant back, and exhaled a thin plume of smoke, his face briefly relaxing. ‘Fire away,’ he said genially.

Douglas looked at him, and then down, trying to remember where he’d put his folder. He stood, fetched it from the dresser, then began to pull out pages, laying them carefully on the table in front of his father.

‘What’s this?’

‘What I wanted to talk to you about. Some ideas I’ve had. For the estate.’