Mrs. Malory and Any Man's Death (2 page)

“Oh well,” Rosemary said, “it’ll be interesting to see what happens.”

 

Phyll rang about ten days later.

“She’s dying to see you all,” she said, “so could you come next Tuesday? I thought a lunchtime thing would be best—a lot of people don’t really like driving at night. Twelve or twelve thirty. Drinks and a few odds and ends to eat, nothing formal. Not a lot of people, mostly neighbors from the village and you and Rosemary, of course.”

“That sounds lovely,” I said. “I’ll look forward to it.”

Rosemary and I arranged to go together. “If you think it’s going on too long,” she said, “just give me a nod and I’ll say I’ve got to go and collect Alex from school.”

The road to Mere Barton is very narrow, with virtually no passing places, and any encounter with a lorry or a tractor means having to back up a long way with your head uncomfortably screwed over your shoulder.

“I must say I’m grateful not to have to drive down this road in the dark,” I said. “And thank goodness for a solid Edwardian house with a proper drive so there’s plenty of space to park!”

Higher Barton, as its name indicates, stands on a slight eminence just outside the village. It is very handsome, its red brick mellowed by time and with a multiplicity of lovingly crafted architectural adornments that would actually justify that house agents’ favorite phrase, “many period features.” There were already several cars there, as some of the local residents had elected to drive the short distance from the village, and I parked beside the shiny new Range Rover that belonged to Diana Parker. Her husband, Toby, is a Member of Parliament with a London constituency, but Diana chooses to live down here on the farm that used to be his family home. Not that it’s a farm now, just a done-over farmhouse, several fields and stabling where Diana keeps her horses.

“All the usual suspects,” Rosemary murmured as we went into the drawing room.

“I think you know everybody,” Phyll said, leading us forward. “Rachel, here’s Sheila and Rosemary.”

Rachel never really seems to change. Obviously she’s grown older, as we all have, but her hair is dark and her face unlined—all, I’m quite sure, without any artificial aids—and she still has the air of relaxed confidence that marked her out even as a schoolgirl.

“How lovely to see you both again.” She came towards us, her hands outstretched and with that particularly sweet smile I remembered so well, and I felt a wave of affection, as I felt Rosemary did too, as she embraced us. Rachel always was a special person.

We exchanged a few disjointed remarks and Rachel said, “We can’t chat properly now, and there’s so much I want to catch up on. Shall we have lunch at the Buttery, for old time’s sake? How about Friday?”

As schoolgirls the three of us always used to go to the Buttery after games (though it wasn’t called the Buttery then—I think it was the Periwinkle) to drink hot chocolate and complain about being forced to participate in athletic activities.

Rachel went away to talk to the little group who were standing beside a table where Phyllis’s odds and ends to eat were laid out; though, since she is a splendid cook, they were considerably more than that.

“Come and have some of these gorgeous crostini,” Judith Lamb called out to us. “I don’t know how Phyllis manages to do all these wonderful things. The spread she put on for the village hall Christmas party was fabulous!”

Judith is the widow of an accountant—they both came here from Birmingham when he retired. He died a few years ago, and Judith lives in the cottage next to Annie’s and is her most enthusiastic helper. She, too, is small and purposeful, but built with fuller lines. She has a round face perched on a round body, and to the fanciful eye resembles an old-fashioned cottage loaf.

“Here.” William Faber offered a plate. “Do try some of these excellent miniature pizzas—such a good idea!”

William Faber is the rector of All Saints, the handsome village church, and has the care of two other parishes. He likes to be called Father William (though I do find my thoughts fly instantly and inappropriately to Lewis Carroll when I hear him addressed in this way) and has, as they say, spiked up the services (in the face of some opposition—appeals having been made to the bishop) in all three parishes. He can quite frequently be heard giving witty, inspirational talks on the radio in the Thought for the Day slot and is, consequently, very popular in the village.

A group of other people now came into the room: Fred and Ellen Tucker, who have the one remaining farm in the village; Maurice Sanders, who used to be some sort of civil servant but who, with his wife, Margaret, now keeps the village shop; George Prosser, a retired navy captain; Jim and Mary Fletcher (he had been a bank manager and she was a librarian); Lewis and Naomi Chapman (he still works as an anesthetist and she was engaged in some sort of medical research); and, finally, ushering them all through the door like an efficient sheepdog, Annie Roberts.

“We all walked up from the village,” Annie said. “It’s such a lovely day.”

The room, large as it was, suddenly seemed very full of people and I retreated, with my plate of food, to one of the window seats where I was joined by Lewis Chapman.

“I’ll wait for the scrum to subside,” he said, smiling, “before I attack the food.”

Lewis is a really nice man, a cheerful soul with a jolly outgoing disposition, in contrast to his wife’s austere and withdrawn manner. I never feel entirely at ease with Naomi. I always think of that description of Katisha in
The Mikado—
“as hard as a bone with a mind of her own”—and there’s something of Katisha’s imperiousness there too. I always feel she’s judging me . . . and usually finding me wanting.

“I’m really sorry about poor old Alastair,” Lewis said. “We go back a long way; we did part of our training together at Barts. But it must have been a dreadful time for Rachel—he was ill for so long and he needed a lot of nursing. I must say,” he continued, looking across the room, “she looks pretty good after all she’s had to go through.”

“Rachel’s always been tough,” I said, “mentally and physically, right from when we were at school together. She always coped, no matter what. That’s why I’m glad she’s back here with Phyll. Poor Phyll. I don’t think she’s really got over her father’s death, even now.”

“He was a good age.”

“I know, but I suppose we all expect our parents to be immortal.”

“Ah, there you are, Lewis.” Naomi came toward us holding her plate, glass and handbag in the sort of elegant and effortless way that I can never achieve. “Are you getting some food?”

Lewis got up obediently and went over to the table while Naomi joined me.

“So, Sheila,” she said, “and what are you writing now?”

“Writing? Oh, nothing special, just a few reviews.”

“Such a pity. I greatly enjoyed your book on Mrs. Gaskell.” She gave me what might pass for a smile. “We shouldn’t let our talents rust as we get older.”

“I never seem to have the time,” I said, disconcerted as I frequently am by Naomi’s style of conversation, “what with the house and the animals and the children.”

“I find that one can usually make the time if it’s something one
really
wants to do.” She bit neatly into a vol-au-vent without, I noticed with loathing, scattering shards of puff pastry as other people do.

It was with some relief that I saw Annie Roberts making her way towards us.

“Sheila,” she said. “Just the person I want to see.” My heart sank because I knew immediately that there was something she wanted me to do—and one never says no to Annie. “Just come over and have a word with me and Ellen. It’s about the Book.”

The Book, always referred to with a capital letter by those involved with it, was Annie’s latest project. Realizing that there’d been a proliferation of village history books—not meager little brochures, but substantial, glossy publications—with documents going back (if possible) to the Domesday Book and ancient photographs and reminiscences, Annie decided that Mere Barton should not be left out. Unfortunately, to produce such a volume it’s necessary to have suitable material (especially pictorial records), and the only people able to provide that would be those whose families had lived in the village for generations. Mere Barton was singularly lacking in such people. Of the original inhabitants only Fred and Ellen Tucker, Phyll and Rachel, Toby Parker and Annie herself remained.

Annie detached Ellen from the group she had been happily engaged with.

“Right, then. I thought you two ought to get together,” Annie said. “Sheila’s our local author so she’s obviously the person to help you, Ellen, and I thought we could all meet sometime next week and get things moving. We’ve got some material—that stuff of Fred’s, for instance, Ellen—and I’ve got all those photos of my grandfather’s. Sheila will be able to tell you what we can use, and I’ve got a lot of ideas we can all of us follow up. So shall we say next Monday morning, ten o’clock at my cottage?”

Ellen and I looked helplessly at each other and silently nodded our agreement to this arrangement.

“Right,” Annie said. “I’ll see you then. Oh, there’s Diana. I’m sure Toby has all sorts of family things that we could use. I’ll get her to look them out, and I’ll have a word with him when he comes down.”

She dived across the room and Ellen and I looked at each other and smiled.

“Poor Diana,” I said. “And poor Toby too. Perhaps he’ll take refuge in the House where she can’t get at him.”

“I’m sorry, Sheila,” Ellen said. “I’m sure you didn’t want to get roped in for this, but I really would be grateful if you could lend a hand. It’s not my sort of thing at all and I haven’t the faintest idea how to go about it.”

“Well, apart from being resentful at being pushed around by Annie, I’d really quite like to have a look at the material. I love old photos and things like that so it will be a pleasure.” I saw Rosemary making little waving gestures to me across the room. “Oh, I think Rosemary wants to go, but I’ll see you at Annie’s on Monday.”

Driving home, I told Rosemary about my involvement in the Book.

“It might be interesting,” I said, “if only I didn’t feel so cross at being manipulated by Annie!”

“Well, you know what she’s like—she’s got the whole village under her thumb; I wish I knew how she manages it! Still, she does get things done; I’ll say that for her.”

I cautiously overtook a tractor with an unsteady load of silage. “I wonder what happened to Anthea.” I said. “Do you think she’s ill?”

“And, did you notice? Nobody asked about her. I wonder,” Rosemary continued thoughtfully, “if she was actually invited.”

 

 

 

Foss, my Siamese, in his endless quest for entertainment, has invented a new ploy. When I go upstairs he rushes past and lies across the stair in front of me. This means that I either have to step over him (difficult because they are steep cottage stairs) or pay him the attention he requires by stroking him. This continues all the way up the stairs (mercifully he doesn’t do it for the downward journey). I suppose I should have sharply discouraged him when he started it, but because he thought of it all by himself, and because (of course) I’m a fool about animals, I go along with it even though it makes going upstairs a very slow business indeed. This, and the fact that it took me ages to find anywhere to park in the village (the main street is always full of people who have driven the short distance to the village shop), meant that I was late getting to Annie’s.

I went in through the open front door and found Annie and Ellen seated at the large round table that takes up the greater part of her small sitting room.

“Oh, there you are,” Annie said. “We’d almost given you up.”

I made my apologies, aware that I’d started off on the wrong foot and would have to be especially cooperative to make up.

“Well, sit down now that you’re here and see what you think of these photos that Ellen’s brought.”

A collection of old sepia pictures was spread out, mostly of agricultural pursuits—harvesting with open wooden carts and heavy horses, ploughing (the horses again), people in old- fashioned clothes, holding farm implements, standing self-consciously in front of groups of sheep or cattle—the collective memory of one family pinned down in time.

“Aren’t they splendid!” I said enthusiastically. “And look at this one of the village street; all the cottages look quite shabby, very different from now when they’ve all been done up.”

“Oh well,” Ellen said, “the village is full of off-comers now—retired people or commuters. Everything’s been buzzed up. Fred’s father said that when he was a boy it was a proper working village. There was a tailor, a baker, a wheelwright, a shoemaker, a blacksmith, and an alehouse.”

“An alehouse?” I asked. “Where the hotel is now?”

“Bless you, no.” Ellen laughed. “It was at Rose Cottage, just down from here—you knocked on the door and handed in your jug and they filled it with ale.”