Authors: Elizabeth Buchan
‘Not bad, eh,’ she said at last, pleased with herself and the world. She bent over to pull her stockings straight and prodded the lump on her knee, which had never been the same since she knocked it at Blane’s. ‘Bloody thing,’ she said.
‘I keep telling you to get it looked at, girl. And you won’t listen. You never listen to me,’ said Ned. His tone expressed concern. ‘You just go your own sweet way.’ He reached up to the mantelpiece for the brown Coronation mug, which was full of coins. ‘Here. Take this and go and see that doctor, just to make sure all’s well. Do you hear me?’ Ned took Ellen’s hands and wrapped her fingers around the coins. ‘Yes?’
‘Yes.’
Ned helped himself to a good dollop of beer money and put the mug back in its place.
‘But not today, Ned,’ said Ellen, counting the change. She turned to the mirror to tackle her hair. ‘Lay off today.’
He smiled at his wife’s reflection. ‘Done.’
At ten o’clock, Ned bicycled off with the exhibits, and Ellen took off her print overall and put on her hat.
This was it.
At Hook Meadow a flood of bicycles and carts loaded with flowers and produce was making an efficient job of blocking the entrance, resulting in a fair amount of free interchange. At one end of the meadow, the Fair people had set up their stands: catchpenny stalls, a bran tub and a roundabout. In between were stalls selling lemonade and cakes, and tea for the ladies. At the other end was the marquee, a stalwart of village life. The air inside it was thick, redolent of warm canvas, flowers, grass and sweat. The judges had made their rounds earlier and cards were propped up beside the exhibits: vases of dahlias, phlox, montbretias and asters arranged on tables covered with white cloths. Contrasted with the mould-spotted canvas of the marquee, their colours were fresh, startling.
Ellen began the wide circle designed to avoid the thing she wanted to look at most until last.
‘You’re daft,’ said Ned. ‘Always were.’ He went away to look at his own entries.
Several of their rivals from Yateley were grouped together making loud comparisons among themselves. Ellen ignored them and inspected the gentlemen’s buttonholes before moving on to the vases of mixed perennials and annuals. Outside, the brass band began an oompah tune which made her feel excited. She studied the children’s section – as always the wild-flower arrangements in two-pound jam jars were the biggest entry. On to the vegetables: carrots weren’t bad, onions only fair. Beans... well... Only then did Ellen allow herself to look towards the egg table.
The first quick squint did not tell her much.
‘Looking to a first, then, Mrs Sheppey?’ said Fred Stevens, whose own garden was famous in the village.
‘I might or I might not be, Mr Stevens.’
The air in the marquee grew even thicker and, feeling a little as if she was pushing through water, Ellen drifted towards the egg table. Now she was at the point, she had not realized quite how much she wanted to keep up her record.
But it was all right. ‘First’ said the copperplate legend on the stiff card beside her Leghorn pearls and she sighed with satisfaction. Then she shuffled her handbag from her left hand to her right, and tried not to look in the direction of Mary Prosser, also peering at the eggs, because, at heart, Ellen felt herself to be a merciful woman.
Hooking her handbag over her arm, she moved over to the Women’s Institute stand to discover that her fruitcake had been bested by Mrs Chandler’s, ranking only second.
Later in the afternoon, when the men had removed their jackets and rolled up their shirt sleeves, Ellen sat beside Madge on a fold-up chair in the shade by the marquee and drank her tea. They talked about Alf and Blane’s and poor little Simon Prosser, and the government’s attempt to cut dole pay from fifteen to thirteen shillings. Despite dry mouths and raging thirsts, the band oompahed stoically on.
The sun blazed onto the red-and blue-painted roundabout and the gaudy colours of the tombola stall, on glass bottles, half-finished cups of tea, bags of marbles, sticks of twisted rock, and onto hissing tea urns, plates of curling sandwiches and fairy cakes, whose icing had lost its anchorage in the heat.
The sun also picked out the ruby in Matty’s engagement ring. Flanked by Flora in green and by Dr Lofts (Ellen nudged Madge to look at that), the young Mrs Dysart moved through the crowd dressed in a straw hat and pink cotton. She was a nice little lady, Ellen told Madge, a good girl who didn’t get what she deserved from the family.
Madge agreed and asked Ellen if she liked working at the house. Ellen told her she did, but missed the chat.
‘Funny lot,’ said Madge. ‘Always thought they’d lost a bit of their plumbing myself.’
‘Tell you what, Madge, I could give up work tomorrow.’
Madge made a face as she bit into an extra sweet cake and her teeth jumped.
At four o’clock, Mr Fielding rang the bell to announce that Mrs Dysart would pick the winning ticket for the grand raffle, and, with a good deal of flourish, guided an anxious-looking Matty through the motions. Silence fell. Mrs Dysart seemed willing enough, thought Ellen, wondering whether if she nipped round the back she could get a refill of tea without having to queue.
The raffle announced, Mr Fielding launched into a peroration which welcomed Matty to her first Nether Hinton-Well-Yateley show, mourned the absence of Mr Dysart in America and concluded by sending respectful greetings to Sir Rupert and all good wishes for his health. A little girl lurched forward with a posy of sweet williams and marguerites and, over-eager and under-rehearsed, stuck them in Matty’s face. Matty’s hat dipped above the posy and hid her face, and Ellen had the impression that she was laughing. That’s right, she thought. You enjoy yourself.
Later still, when the edge of everyone’s high spirits had worn off and Matty had gone home, the band left off the oompah and settled into waltzes and foxtrots. The long afternoon drew to its close, and evening threw mauve and violet light across the meadow. Skylarks wheeled high in the sky, and over by the river swallows dived for their evening dip.
Beer and local cider were being sold from the tea-stand and the lads were now at it. The marquee had emptied: its vegetable exhibits filmed over in the heat, flowers drooped and the boiled potatoes had lost their floury eat-me quality. Family parties sat on rugs under the trees, and over by the bushes which led into the field, shadowy figures indicated couples who had gone in search of privacy.
Occasionally, the cry of a tired child sounded above the music. Tom Hudson was drunk quicker than normal, Alice Bugg was sick behind the school wall and Ma Barnet got stuck on her sticks and needed hauling over the mud by the gate. Ellen enjoyed that drama. During the day a smudge of potted meat had appeared on her dress and under her hat her hair was a disgrace. For once she did not mind.
Ned was locked into a group of men by the beer table, and he looked up to check where his wife was. The gesture made Ellen feel safe. The familiar life of the village: the familiar stuff of
her
life. Looking round, she concluded how little everything changed; each year it was the same, and each year it would remain the same. She did not wish it any other way.
After much negotiation, Robin Lofts had settled his surgery on the ground floor of Iris House. The house was damp and there was some question as to whether the sewage had backed up from the pipes running nearby, but it would do. Jock and Ethel Turner had lived there for years, arthritic shadows, and previous to that, the Boysells had struggled to survive and died, in due course, of damp-induced illnesses.
The siting of the surgery, therefore, was not auspicious. Ellen knew it well because she had often shared a pot of tea and charcoal biscuits (‘good for the back end’) with Ethel. They had shared the same brittle, sometimes bitter, sense of humour.
Ethel was a sharp one. Children grow up, she told Ellen. Don’t pin your hopes on them.
No trace remained of the souvenir shell boxes, knitted patchwork rugs and general clutter that Ethel had favoured in Robin’s freshly whitewashed surgery. Instead the room was clean and bare except for several wooden chairs arranged by the wall and a desk, at which sat Flora Dysart.
‘Hallo, Ellen.’ Flora looked up from an account book at the clock on the wall. ‘You’re just in time. Surgery closes in five minutes.’
‘Miss Flora! I didn’t expect—’
‘No. Why should you?’ Flora closed the book. ‘I’m sorting out some of the records for Dr Lofts as things have got in a bit of a muddle.’
Aha, thought Ellen. Dr Lofts’s attendance on Flora had not gone unnoticed at the village show – that and the sightings that had been reported of the two of them began to make sense. ‘Good for you, Miss Flora.’
Flora flipped open the ink well and dipped in her pen. ‘Um. I’m also going to work in a new clinic for Dr Lofts.’
Ellen adjusted her expression into one of polite interest.
‘Yes.’ Flora’s pen clunked against the pottery lip as she wiped off excess ink. ‘He wishes to set up a family planning service.’ Flora had not quite mastered carrying off this announcement and found herself observing the inkpot with the fascination of a naturalist watching a praying mantis eat its mate. She raised her eyes and correctly interpreted the appalled expression on the older woman’s face. ‘Only for married ladies, Ellen, of course.’
Apart from the determinedly modern, who adopted it as a rubric, in a village such as Nether Hinton family planning ranked on a level with satanism and incest. Ellen found herself looking at the floor and, for the first time in many years, was at a loss as to what to say.
‘Think of it, Ellen. No one need have children unless they want them.’
Ellen thought of the years of good tries and near misses, and the bleeding and weakness that always followed – and of the two small graves up in the churchyard. Of Betty who had left home at seventeen. Of the years that had gone too quickly.
‘Does Sir Rupert know about this?’ she asked.
Flora became very busy with the papers. ‘Actually, no, Ellen, not yet. I would be grateful if you didn’t mention it to anyone, particularly Miss Robson.’
‘I won’t have to, Miss Flora.’ Ellen recovered enough to point out with her usual tartness. ‘It’ll be over the village like wildfire.’
‘Oh dear,’ said Flora. ‘Still, I promised Dr Lofts I’d do it.’
At this point it occurred to her that Ellen was looking worn. Conscience-stricken, she pointed to the chair by the fireplace. ‘Ellen, please sit down and I’ll search out your records before Dr Lofts sees you.’
When Ellen emerged from the surgery, all colour had drained from her face.
‘Oh dear.’ Flora leapt to her feet.
Ellen hunched herself away.
‘Can I help?’ Flora’s voice sounded somewhere in the ether in which Ellen was floating. In the vague hope that things would return to normal, Ellen squeezed her eyes shut and moisture oozed onto the weathered skin beneath them.
‘Can I help?’ said the clear voice again.
Ellen shook her head, words reduced to a useless buzzing. After a minute or two, the habit of a lifetime asserted itself and she said, ‘If you don’t mind I want to go home.’
‘I’ll take you,’ said Flora. ‘I was just packing up. Can you wait five minutes?’
The walk to Clifton Cottage usually took fifteen minutes or so but Ellen, frightened by Robin’s gentle reassurance that there was
nothing
to be frightened about, moved awkwardly and without impetus. Flora offered her arm and, silhouetted between the cornfields, they moved slowly onwards, Flora keeping up a flow of talk. Ellen screwed up her eyes now and then, but would not look at Flora.
At the cottage, Flora said in the false-bright voice she hated but could not stop herself using, ‘I insist on making you a cup of tea.’
The crocks in the scullery were scoured and placed in height order on the shelves. A pile of laundry had been folded in a manner that creased it least: flapping shirt tails, tucked nightdresses and expansive knickers. The same skill and inventiveness was evident in the kitchen for Ellen had collected glass stoppers from Blane’s bottles and crocheted them into a mantelpiece covering.
Flora assembled cups and saucers and masterminded the making of the tea with difficulty. Eventually, she placed a full cup in front of Ellen. ‘Would you like... would it help to talk about it?’ She peered at the liquid in the cups. ‘Sorry about the tea leaves.’
Ellen did not look encouraging. The clatter of their cups emphasized the silence. Flora asked about the crocheted rugs covering the backs of the two chairs. Ellen straightened herself.
‘I made those.’
‘And the jug?’ Flora pointed at a fat-bellied object painted with shells.
‘Ned bought me that on an outing to Brighton.’
‘How pretty.’
Ellen roused herself. ‘You’re thinking, Miss Flora, that you’ve never seen anything quite so ugly. So it is.’ Ellen’s mouth twitched. ‘But Ned gave it to me and it means a lot.’ She got to her feet. ‘More tea?’
Greatly daring, Flora asked, ‘Is it your knee, Ellen?’
Ellen picked up the kettle. ‘The doctor
says
there’s nothing to worry about. He thinks the lump on my knee is just a cyst. Even so, it’s got to go and I don’t like it.’ She poured hot water into the teapot. ‘I don’t like the notion at all.’
It puzzled Ellen sometimes as to why she was the anxious type when her childhood had been so safe. You’re a fusser, Ned accused her over the years. Always nipping and tucking at things.
‘I’m sorry.’ Flora recognized terror in Ellen’s eyes and felt inadequate to deal with it.
‘I asked him if it would hurt.’ Ellen pulled the cosy over the teapot. ‘Last time I cut myself with a knife carving up the rooks, it hurt something rotten. Funny,’ she said, almost to herself, ‘me mum used to say I was as sharp as a knife.’
Flora fumbled to give some kind of comfort. ‘It’s not so terrible, Ellen. Hospitals are very good these days.’
Ellen transferred her gaze to the flowerbed outside the window. ‘
You
can say that, Miss Flora.’
Flora was trying to cut through the barrier of the healthy talking down to the sick and pushed her hand towards Ellen. As she did so, she made a typical Flora muddle and knocked over her tea. A puddle spread over the wooden surface and dripped over the edge of the table. ‘Oh, I’m so sorry, Ellen. Let me get a cloth.’