Mrs Fytton's Country Life (10 page)

'Don't use it much,' said Mrs Perry, ushering her out. 'Third bedroom,' she said, opening another panelled door.

In this little bedroom there were the original window shutters. Just for a moment Angela imagined some dimpled owner of cap and ringlets peering around. She went over to the window and pushed them. They were fastened down but workable. Behind her, and oddly out of joint, were bunk beds.

'For the grandchildren,' said Mrs Perry.
'When
they come. Of course, they're nearly grown up now. But that's why the shutters are fixed. Didn't want them pinching their fingers. They're useful though - keep out the draught. Have you got children, Mrs Fytton?'

'I have two.' 'How old?'

'Eighteen and nineteen. Boy and a girl.'

Mrs Perry stared at her.

'I had them young
’
said Angela. 'I wanted to.'

'I had mine late
’
said Mrs Perry. 'Daughter. Moved to Bristol as soon as she could. And I don't blame her
...
Two sons, but nothing for them here. Long gone.'

They came out into the corridor. 'One more bedroom
’
said her guide, opening a door. They peered into a small-windowed, sloping-ceilinged room almost bare of furniture but piled high with cardboard boxes. Mrs Perry looked at them and sighed. 'Have to start filling those soon.' She closed the door firmly. 'Now, just the old sewing room, and then that's it and we can have our tea.'

'Imagine having a whole room devoted to sewing
’
Angela said.

Mrs Perry looked at her with sharp look again. 'It's the lightest place upstairs. And it was work. Everyone sewed on the side. It wasn't called needlework for nothing. My own grandmother was such a needlewoman that they'd send over with stuff from beyond the Quantocks. And
her
mother did some of the lace trimmings for Wells when the Queen and Prince Albert visited. I had a little bit put by in a box somewhere.'

They went down a short corridor. At the back the house was a hybrid of half-landings and diversions, with all sense of eighteenth-century rationale gone. Angela thought it was the same with life. You put all your balanced bits at the front for the world to see and kept the muddled accretions of a lifetime out of sight.

Mrs Perry opened the door on to a small room with bare boards and bare walls and full of dazzling sunlight streaming from its one huge window. But if Angela had hoped to see a couple of mop bonnets nodding over fancy stitchwork, she was disappointed.

'Not much sewing room in here now
’
said Mrs Perry wryly, indicating the mountains of agricultural magazines, cardboard boxes full of yellowing papers, unappetizing bric-a-brac. Above it all sat a glassy-eyed stuffed stag's head. In much the same condition as herself, Angela thought.

Mrs Perry sighed. 'Archie
’
she said. 'Another good reason for moving. Since we got rid of the last few milkers, he's started going to car-boot sales. Only he brings back more than he takes.'

'Now, here's my pride and joy. The bathroom.' They entered.

Two outside walls to it - Archie never thought - but we've got one of those electric wall-heater things she made a mime of pulling at a corded switch - 'and that does all right. It's the only room we did up.' She touched the avocado suite with reverence. 'Before this it was Saturday night in front of the fire.'

Angela decided to concentrate on the velvet curtains, gooseberry green like the room below. In a
bathroom
...
velvet?
Caption for
Tatler
photograph: 'Angela Fytton chooses velvet for the family bathroom
...'
She had the grace to wince.

Mrs Perry's eyes softened as they had done at the door of her old room.
‘I
shall be sorry to leave this bathroom
’
she said. 'You only need curtains for the cold, not because you're overlooked. That's why I've got these thick things up.' She touched the velvet and dust flew about. 'It's all got too much for me
’
she said softly and more or less to herself. Then she pointed. 'You see, the trees outside hide everything. Even in the winter. The holly and the yews protect you. If it ever gets hot, you can sit in the bath with the windows wide open and enjoy a chat with the birds. I might miss that.' She touched the edge of the big, ugly sink. 'If we'd only had more time and the inclination, we'd have put in more improvements like this
’
she said wistfully.

Angela, who had never quite understood the philosophy behind Zen and archery before, now got the idea. For just as the arrow flies truest when you detach yourself from the act and let the spirit guide you, so she heard her own voice, coming from somewhere she did not know she had visited, saying,
‘I’ll
take it. I'll pay the full price. And you can leave behind anything you don't want.
Anything.'

Now she felt wonderful. Shriven. Purged. Born anew. It was, indeed, as delirious as the moment of acceptance of a lover. Yes, she was saying. Yes.

Mrs Perry's mouth went into that thin line again. 'Oh,' she said. 'I thought the agent would have told you. It's already sold. He's buying it.'

Angela Fytton, embarrassment notwithstanding, immediately burst into tears. Of sorrow. And of rage. "Then why the bloody hell did he send me here if he's going to buy it?'

'Ah no,' said Mrs Perry, 'that was the
other
agent who sent you
...
Tea?'

They sat at the table with the milk bottle and large brown Betty between them. The brew was dark brown and the biscuits were ginger snaps, which they both dunked. A couple of hens came tottering in and Mrs Perry shooed at them absently. Then, from beneath a bench on the far side of the room, there was a stirring and a low groan or two, and the unmistakable sound of a fart. Jesus! thought Angela, it's a drunk. But it was an ancient Labrador who slithered out, padding thoughtfully towards the hens. Relieved, and from the deeps of her disappointment, Angela watched. They stood their ground, those poultry, defiant, heads cocked, aware of the ginger snaps that were so near. The dog pushed on, his nose coming within inches of their feathered scuts. Still they remained: determined, brave, resolute. Robert the Bruce had a spider, thought Angela, I have sodding hens.

'Mrs Perry,' she said,
‘I
will pay more.'

'Mrs Fytton,' came the reply, 'those are town ways.'

The hens squawked and rose on their silly wings, but still they did not get out of the Labrador's way. Any other buyer, she knew, would butcher the place. The very things she wanted to conserve would be thrown away.

'This estate agent,' said Angela, 'you know what he'll do. He'll buy it, do it up and sell it for a fortune.'

'That's up to him,' said Mrs Perry, pouring again.'
We
don't want to, that's for sure.'

She put the teapot down and gave Angela a straight, if slightly weary, look. 'It's over. Time moves on. Does it never occur to you town folk that we country folk might like the look of what you want to leave behind? It's not very comfortable living here and it never was. You should think about that.'

'What? Noise pollution, air pollution, shops that don't know you?'

'Shops of any kind. And air pollution means some form of transport. We used to have a railway station
and
buses to connect us to it. Noise is a part of the price you pay for still being included in the human race. What the common agricultural policy began, BSE just about finished. Along with politicians up in London telling us what we can and can't do. They should try telling a young lad of sixteen that he can go out on the withies for a living but he can't make a bob or two for the hunt.' She sniffed. 'Anyway, what withies are there left nowadays?'

Well,
quite,
thought Angela, wondering what the hell a withy was and putting it in the box marked still room.

Mrs Perry took a packet of cigarettes from her apron and offered one to Angela, who, in distraction, would have taken a brier pipe.

'My family was from around these parts for a very long time and I'm the last. It's the same with Archie - apart from his old aunt in the home over Shepton way. My family did dairying and were blacksmiths for generations.'

'Blacksmiths?' Angela was enchanted.

'Blacksmiths,' said Mrs Perry, a little irritably. Her hostess struck a match. Angela bent to the flame. Mrs Perry looked up. 'But oddly enough, Mrs Fytton, the latest farm models do not require shoeing. It was all over when they stopped the hunt. I ask
you...'

Angela hoped her eyes looked back clear of the guilt of that twenty-pound note. 'Must have been a hard life,' she said.

'It was. But when I look at my daughter I'm not so sure. We women were better off here on the land in some ways. It was hard work, but it was your home. What husband in his right mind is going to have a dairy herd and a pig unit and leave his wife? He's a fool if he does. Risks everything. Whereas the towns . . . well.' She leaned back and gave Angela a very straight look. 'Country women had more independence than you think in the olden days. And time. It was the seasons that dictated, not clocks.'

Angela said defiantly, 'When I am here, I shall adopt the ways of the country and go at the season's pace.'

Mrs Perry ignored this with as much contempt as Canute poured upon the notion of sea-control. She shrugged. 'Well, it's over now.' She leaned forward and looked into Angela's starry eyes. 'It is not a romance, Mrs Fytton, the life. And I can't say I'm sorry it's over. Leastways I'll never have to go up that hill in midwinter to rescue some damned stray beast. Or get my hands frozen to the churn. Or worry to Archie's coughing.' Suddenly she banged the table with the flat of her palm. Angela jumped, and so did the hens, which ran scattering. 'Get out, you lot,' said Mrs Perry, quite good-naturedly. But they lingered by the door, still eyeing the biscuits and the dog alternately. They showed no fear. Just for a moment Angela felt like putting her head on one side and clucking too.

'Well, I want what you don't, Mrs Perry,' she said defiantly. 'Sanctuary and a bit of history. Ancient and modern.' She tried not to think of the avocado suite.

'If you want sanctuary, you need a church,' replied Mrs Perry quite sharply.

'Immunity, then,' said Angela, suddenly understanding what Virginia Woolf meant when she wrote the word in her diary. 'I want immunity, protection, safe harbour, peace
’

It's a lot to ask of a house, Mrs Fytton.'

'I know
’
she said. 'But as soon as I saw this house I knew it was right. Like a lover.'

Mrs Perry looked at her. 'Do you think those give you peace, Mrs Fytton?'

Angela realized that it was not the language for a purebred country wife. She changed the subject. 'Why is it called Church Ale House?'

More tea was poured. The cigarette was sucked.

Mrs Perry said, 'They used to brew the church ale here. Daphne Blunt says it would have been done by an ale-wife once upon a time. Apparently it was women's business but it made them too independent.' She laughed. 'There's always been good profit in drink. Anyway, it was celebration stuff. Church ale, bride ale. Before God and the priests said they mustn't.'

'Was that recently?' said Angela, thinking of licences, regulations about the marketing of comestibles and Women's Institute jam.

Mrs Perry shrugged and looked amused. 'Depends what you call recent
’
she said. 'Not bad in country terms. Three hundred or so years.'

Angela smiled uncertainly.
Was
she being played with?

'Look
’
said Mrs Perry, suddenly serious again, leaning forward and stabbing at the air with her cigarette. 'There isn't enough good in folk to go round as it is, without us climbing on the bandwagon. I haven't got straw in my hair when it comes to gazumping. First come, first served. It has to be so. I want doesn't always get. I wish it was you, but it isn't and that is that, Mrs Fytton.'

I want doesn't always get. No, she wanted to cry, it does
not.

She remembered. How she thought he must be ill because he looked so white and so shaky and so crumpled. He sat on the settee and she beside him, but when she reached out to touch him, he pulled away from her and she suddenly knew. There was a kaleidoscopic tumble of images and memories in her head, a sudden realization of jigsaw pieces that never quite sat true. He is leaving me, she thought. Just as he said, 'I am leaving you
’
And* when she said, 'Don't go,' he said,
‘I
must.' She said, 'What about the children?' He said, 'Don't make this hard on me.' So she didn't. And he went. He closed the front door so quietly that she could not be sure he had gone. Then she called his name. And the house was suddenly empty, like a body without a heart. Which left her sitting on the settee thinking, So that's how people
really
speak in this situation. Instinct told her to preserve some dignity. He would never come back if she showed him how deep the wound went. He would be too afraid.