Perfectly Correct (13 page)

It was the same revelation as Toby. Louise had seen him in the bar and been introduced to him. But it was only when Miriam turned to her and whispered behind an indiscreet hand, ‘At last, a bit of real talent!’ that Louise had suddenly seen him as sexy. Then he had dazzled them both. Five years older than them, the gloss of Oxford and a fellowship at Bristol still on him, while they were nothing but undergraduates, he was a star in their tiny firmament. Louise, peaky and shy, smiled at him and watched him. Miriam, in her late summer bloom, glowed when he looked at her and seduced him without effort.

Louise turned the pages irritably. Lawrence was still going on about the state of England and the way one countryside replaced another, the mean dirty mining villages overwhelming and obliterating the open country. Louise skipped to the end of the chapter. She was only interested in prosecuting Lawrence as a sexist. Anything else was irrelevant. She wondered for a moment what Mr
Miles would think of Miriam and felt unreasonably uneasy. Mr Miles could not seriously be of any interest to Miriam whose taste in men had always been for skinny intellectuals. Miriam, with her social conscience and her sharp feminist mind, could not possibly be attractive to Mr Miles whose tastes must surely run to the broad-hipped and bucolic. Nonetheless, Louise glanced at the clock and wondered whether Mr Miles would invite Miriam into the farmhouse for a mug of tea. She felt even more impatient with Lawrence, who believed that sensuality could smash the barriers of class and education.

Toby drew up outside the cottage. He was speechless with anger. Rose beside him was quite unconcerned. ‘
That
was a good afternoon’s work,’ she said with satisfaction as if they had enjoyed a peaceful shopping trip together. ‘Thank you for driving me.’

Toby opened the car door and got out. He was inwardly raging.

Rose leaned into the car and gathered up the Fromes’ laundry from the back seat. She slammed her door and set off down the path. Toby watched her go. She still had his hundred pounds in her pocket.

At the van door she greeted her dog, climbed the steps and then turned and waved. Toby stood still and then limped into Louise’s house. He had hurt his ankle when he jumped down from the wall and he very much wanted a drink.

‘You were a long time,’ Louise remarked. ‘Where have you been all this while?’

Toby dropped into a chair and nodded, saying nothing.

‘Miriam’s gone to the farm for a walk,’ Louise said. ‘You only just missed her.’

There was a short silence. ‘She’ll be an hour at the least,’ Louise prompted. She was not feeling desire for Toby, but she had a need to reassure herself that what she had said to Miriam was right – that her lover was turning to her, that he preferred her to his wife, and that he would ultimately come to her.

‘I’m absolutely exhausted,’ Toby said. ‘May I have a bath?’

‘Of course. There are clean towels in your bedroom.’ Louise paused. ‘Shall I scrub your back?’

Toby got to his feet with a little grunt of discomfort. Louise watched him limp to the stairs. ‘Are you all right?’ she asked. ‘Have you hurt yourself ?’

‘She’s a public nuisance,’ Toby exploded suddenly. ‘I’ve had a bloody awful afternoon. I’ve sprained my ankle running around after her and I’m no further forward at all. She’s rolled me over for a hundred pounds and all I have to show for it is an absolutely wasted afternoon.’

Miriam would have been familiar with the irritable tone of Toby’s voice. He was intolerant of physical discomfort and on camping holidays if it rained, or if he scraped his knuckles or banged his elbow, he would be suddenly gripped with temper which only comfort and sympathy could abate. But Louise had never seen him like this before. His tone with her was always urbane, and detached. Toby scowling and red-faced like a crossed toddler was a new, less attractive Toby. He always laughed at her misfortunes, laughed affectionately, as if they did not much matter and she was silly and rather endearing to make such a fuss. But now, in his own discomfort there were no grounds for comedy.

‘Bloody woman,’ he said again, and turned and limped upstairs, dramatically favouring the sprained ankle and clinging to the banister.

Louise looked after him thoughtfully, and let him run his own bath and scrub his own back.

Miriam arrived at the back door of the farm and knocked. There were two short barks from a dog and a shout from indoors, bidding her enter. She opened the door with the old-fashioned latch and stepped into a large scullery. There was a row of pegs with foul-weather gear hanging up, and below them a muddle of Wellington boots. There was a handsome tea trolley bearing cardboard trays of dirty eggs, speckled with straw and grey-white hens’ droppings. There was a dog basket in the corner of the room and a large old-fashioned white kitchen sink with an enormous boiler hung above it and a hard-worn towel beside it. Either side of the sink was a brand new washing machine and tumble dryer. The collie barked once more, but kept its place in its basket.

The inner door to the house opened and Mr Miles looked out. ‘Oh! hello,’ he said. ‘Come in.’

Miriam hesitated and then undid her neat brown boots and left them side by side in the doorway before crossing the threshold to the kitchen. She felt rather like a tourist visiting a temple barefoot, anxious to conform to the courtesies and yet feeling ridiculous.

Mr Miles was eating his tea. A large brown loaf stood on the table with two thick slices carved from it. He had a broad wedge of pie on a plate with a pile of bright green tinned peas and boiled potatoes. A brown teapot stood on the table with a sugar bowl and a bottle of milk. He had a book propped against the butter dish and the radio was tuned to Radio Four.

‘I’m sorry to disturb you,’ Miriam said. ‘I brought you
this from Louise.’ She held out the envelope. Mr Miles pocketed it.

‘Would you like a cup of tea? Something to eat?’

Miriam hesitated. ‘I shouldn’t interrupt your meal,’ she said.

Mr Miles merely waited for a direct answer to his invitation.

‘I’d love a cup of tea,’ Miriam admitted.

‘Cup behind you, help yourself,’ he said and sat down again at his place. He switched the radio off and when Miriam had taken a mug from the dark wood Welsh dresser he pushed the milk bottle and teapot towards her.

Miriam poured herself a cup and then tasted it. It was very good quality Lapsang Souchong. She looked at Mr Miles with surprise. He shut his book, carefully marking the place, and continued to eat his meal with neat movements. Miriam thought she had never seen a man with such calm presence.

She looked around her. The kitchen floor was stone-flagged with bright rag rugs like scattered islands of warmth. The ceiling was low with the dark heavy beams making it lower; Miriam thought that Mr Miles must have learned to duck his head every three paces. Behind her was the Welsh dresser and a large wood-burning kitchen range. To her right was a small casement window with a view over the nearest fields and then, as the land fell away downhill, the rolling side of Wistley Common, green and fresh in the May sunshine.

At the back of the room was a kitchen sink with a large expensive dishwasher beside it. A small white-painted door led to the larder and beside it another dark wood door with a latch led to the rest of the house. Miriam guessed the place was an old Elizabethan farmhouse with later additions. She
would have loved to look all over it, but glancing at the owner’s unperturbed bulk she thought she did not have the nerve to ask.

Mr Miles finished his meal and folded a large slice of bread and butter into a quarter and downed it in two great bites. He poured himself another cup of tea and waved the pot invitingly at Miriam. She took another cup, not from thirst, but to prolong the visit.

‘This is nice,’ Mr Miles said. ‘Not often I have company for tea.’

‘Have you always lived alone?’

‘With my dad and mum before she died, and then with him. He went five years ago. Cancer.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Miriam said.

Andrew Miles shook his head. ‘He was glad to go, he was grieving for her. He thought he’d be with her after death. Cancer’s a disease from grief, don’t you think?’

Miriam felt rather bemused. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘I’ve never thought of it.’

Andrew nodded. ‘I think it is,’ he said. ‘Very rare in the animals. Only in the ones that can love. I’ve had a dog die of cancer but never a sheep.’

‘Don’t sheep love their lambs?’ Miriam asked, feeling wonderfully out of her depth.

‘For a while,’ he pronounced. ‘But they’ve got terrible memories, sheep. Most forgetful animals. Some of them never get the knack of caring for the lamb at all. It’s as if they forgot they just had it. A lot of nuisance, that is.’

‘Nuisance?’

‘Someone else has to rear them. Another sheep if they’re lucky. Me, if they’re not.’

‘You hand-rear lambs?’ Improbable images of Little
Boy Blue and Bo Peep flashed across Miriam’s urban imagination.

‘Yes.’

‘Isn’t it frightfully hard work? Do you bottle-feed them?’

‘I bottle-feed them. It’s always hard work at lambing. No-one gets much sleep at that time of year.’

‘Why not?’

Mr Miles looked carefully at her as if to make sure that she was not teasing him with feigned ignorance. ‘You have to wake with the sheep,’ he explained. ‘Make sure the lambs come all right. Help them if they need it. Pair up the lambs with the right mother, make sure she doesn’t reject them. Get orphaned lambs fostered on to other mothers. All sorts.’

‘I never knew,’ Miriam said. ‘I thought farming was all machines these days.’

Andrew Miles smiled one of his rare friendly smiles. ‘Not on this farm,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just got a television. Anyway, we have sheep and cows and hens. You can’t really mechanise beasts.’

‘What about battery farming?’

He looked shocked as if she had said something terribly vulgar. There was a brief embarrassed silence. ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said finally.

Miriam waited for an explanation of why not; but he said nothing more. ‘I don’t know anything about farming or the country,’ she heard herself say apologetically.

‘What’s your line then?’

Miriam’s work sounded curiously evanescent to herself as she tried to explain. ‘I run a refuge for women whose partners are violent to them, in Brighton. And I work with alcoholic women who are trying to give up drinking. And I work with women who keep getting involved with the wrong sort of man.’

Andrew Miles looked enormously impressed. ‘What do you do with them?’

‘I counsel them. I help them to change.’

He looked at Miriam as if she were some kind of rare animal which had strayed into his kitchen. ‘Change?’

‘Women who drink or who seek violent men or uncaring men have to change themselves before they can properly leave,’ she said. ‘Otherwise they just find themselves in a similar situation with another man who is as bad. It becomes a pattern for them. I counsel them how to change their emotional patterns so that they can truly change their lives.’

‘Well now,’ Andrew Miles said, enormously impressed. ‘I never heard of such a thing before. And where did you learn to do that?’

Miriam smiled. ‘I go on courses. I’m still learning. I shall be learning all my life.’

‘And you’re Miss Case’s friend?’

Miriam nodded. ‘My husband and I used to share a house with her. We’re staying with her this weekend.’

A guarded, almost frightened look came across Andrew Miles’s face at the mention of Toby. ‘Oh, I couldn’t live in a town,’ he said suddenly.

Miriam, who did not follow the connection, looked surprised. ‘Why not?’

He pushed back his chair from the table and started stacking the plates in the dishwasher. ‘So complicated,’ he muttered half to himself. ‘All these people sharing houses and changing their lives and learning.’

Miriam laughed her seductive giggle. ‘We don’t do it all the time,’ she said. ‘Sometimes we do nothing.’

Andrew looked up at her. ‘I would hope so,’ he said firmly.

Miriam brought her mug over to the dishwasher, tossed
the dregs in the sink and put it in the top rack. Andrew Miles returned the milk and butter to the larder, put the bread in a bread bin and wiped down the table. There was an intimate domestic atmosphere generated by this sharing of tasks. Miriam suddenly wondered, unprompted, what Andrew Miles would be like in bed. She smothered a giggle by bending to pick up a table mat which had fallen to the floor.

‘Would you like to see the beasts?’

Miriam nodded. ‘If I’m not delaying you?’

He led the way from the kitchen to the scullery, stepping into his boots and pulling his cap on over his thinning golden hair. He waited for Miriam to fasten her little boots and then led her out of the back door. He showed her the hens scratching in the yard and the little wheeled hen coops. He showed her a couple of guinea fowl which his mother had kept and which had survived her. There were lambs in the field nearest the house and two of them hurtled towards the gate when they saw him. Miriam petted them but Andrew thrust his hands in his pocket and would not touch them though they bleated for his attention.

‘They’re so sweet,’ Miriam said.

‘They’re for eating, they’re not pets,’ he said firmly. ‘They’ll have to forget they’re hand-reared.’

‘Can’t you keep them?’

‘I’ll keep the yow,’ he said. ‘But the little tup’ll have to go.’

In a further field there was a small herd of creamy-coloured cows. ‘Charolais,’ he said proudly. ‘That’s a pedigree herd, that is. French cows.’

‘Why not English?’ Miriam asked.

‘Less fat on Charolais,’ he said. ‘The cooks don’t like meat with fat any more. It has to be lean. All the English varieties,
good English cows, are too fatty. So we farm lean beasts now and the taste is all wrong.’

‘Why?’

‘It’s the fat that flavours the meat,’ Andrew Miles said solemnly. ‘But you can’t tell them that. Someone decides that fat is bad for you and nobody eats decent beef any more.’ He shook his head at the folly of fashion in food. ‘I can give you the finest steak you’ve ever tasted off these fields – but I’d go out of business if I tried to farm English beef. It’s all French. It’s all tasteless. And now they’re all going vegetarian.’