Mrs Fytton's Country Life (44 page)

Daphne Blunt continued to look unimpressed at the lighting arrangement of pegged tapers hanging about the room. She stared at the rush-light holder and, for some reason, perhaps the ale, perhaps not, tears filled her eyes, though whether tears of sorrow or anger who could say. Her proud hostess assumed it to be strong emotion at the sight of something so simple being used again, history being brought alive, and smiled contentedly. She focused enough to see a tear, then another, course down the side of that Afghan nose. Some well of deep emotion. And Amen, she thought. Although, then again, it could be the slight and rising smokiness of the room.

Ah well. Mrs Angela Fytton felt extremely proud of her achievement. Rushes picked and stripped by her own hands. Rushes dipped in mutton fat and turned until they were of the correct, thin shaping. How long it had taken her. She had read her way through three whole novels while doing it, for you must wait for the mutton fat to harden fully each time before another coating can be made.
That
was commitment.
That
was determination. Why, looking at the line of little flames she knew for certain that she could do or make or grow anything. She was independent, free, completely self-sufficient. Such was good husbandry. She was sure Maria Brydges would be proud of her too.

She peered at all the faces assembled to see how their rapture was faring. She peered harder. She had to peer even harder, for the faces were becoming even more hazy - dim even. Behind her someone coughed. Then another. More coughing broke out. So
meone stood up and a chair over
turned. Glasses were hurriedly emptied, more coughing, even more difficult to see. And then Angela realized, suddenly, that the room was filling with mutton-fat smoke, that the rush lights were sputtering and spitting and quite noxious in their smell, and that everyone was leaving the room and rushing out into the corridor past the little roundel, back through the house, into the kitchen and out into the night -gasping and choking in their quest to get some air. Plates of food lay abandoned on the table or were scattered on the floor, half-empty glasses lined the route to the front door - the piano ceased and the room became intolerable with the smoke and the smell. Angela Fytton too fled.

Sammy Lee, who had earlier persuaded his old love to follow him into the garden, heard the word Tire' as he snuggled his ancient chin into the warm folds of Gwen Perry's comfortable bosom out by the hives in the moonlight, and immediately abandoned his delights and stumbled back to the house. Through the window he could see a flashing and a flickering, and without a moment's hesitation he raced, so far as his knotty old legs could race, back to the well, picked up two of the buckets still waiting in their innocence, and ran indoors with them, upending them over the rush lights and dampening everything from the velvet curtains to the leftover food to the little bowls of burning, scented oil. The rush lights ceased immediately and the air was filled with the nauseating smell of old mutton, damp fabric and pickle juice. He checked that all was safely out and then left the room, closing the door behind him and shaking his head at the folly of it all. Only in the kitchen did one candle rekindle itself. The Dorkin girl's, made by Wanda, supplied by the bees and of good honest wax.

Gwen Perry took his arm. They understood. They understood and they did not, at all, approve. Rush lights
...
they said to each other.
Rush lights.

'It was the same with those terrible biscuits of hers,' said Sammy. 'What's wrong with digestives?'

And they hurried away up the hill.

The vicar and the Dorkin girl and the Dorkin girl's mother made a voluble trio as they staggered their way towards the Dorkin cott.

Mrs Dorkin was all for putting her daughter out, away, off - all for sending her to the crossroads, to the fields, to the Mump itself to hurl herself into the darkness if she chose. And the vicar was trying to get a word in edgeways about the possibility of his taking her in.

Mrs Dorkin merely snorted.
‘I
should have thought she's been taken in quite enough, vicar. I should have thought from the look of her you could see how much she's been taken in
...
She's been taken in so much, my Sandra has, she's started coming out again.'

But the Dorkin girl was smiling to herself and suggesting, not too politely, that her mother put ye olde sock in it. What did she care now? For she had the vicar's arm around her waist. Or what was left of that part of her anatomy nowadays. She knew it was her mother who had been taken in. By old Dr Tichborne. But if there was one part of her anatomy she
had
learned to keep shut it was her mouth. She did not say what was on her mind, which was binoculars.

On they walked, away from the foul smokiness of Church Ale House.

'Funny, all that smoke
’
said Mrs Dorkin. 'I remember rush lights in the three-day week. You don't go out of your way for
them
’

'I think
’
said the vicar, forgetting that his hand was where it was in order to offer support arid letting it, instead, caress. 'I think it was some kind of exercise in humility.'

'Don't approve of exercise
’
said Mrs Dorkin. 'Makes you stringy.'

She sighed. All those years of not letting Sandra go swimming or ride a bike. For what?

'No
’
said the vicar, confused. Though in one particular he was clear as a bell - and not confused at all. He kept his happy hand exactly where it was.

Craig Elliott was relieved to get Lucy Elliott out of the poisonous atmosphere. She coughed rather sweetly, a little like La Dame aux Camelias (she was still weak, poor thing), and clung to him as they walked. 'You played so wonderfully
’
he said. But it came out oddly. So he decided just to think the rest, which was, Don't die, Lucy, over and over again. He felt strangely emotional. Don't die, Lucy, he thought. Or I shall die too. For where should I be without you? And, as he told the stars while their footsteps rang out along the lane, I am not
drunk.

But Lucy was very far from death. She was so far from death that she almost broke into song. But since, for some extraordinary reason, the only song that came to her lips was
circa
1905
and charged the listener with the command 'Hold your hand out, you naughty boy
...'
she felt it best to keep it to herself. Women should, she now understood, have a little death now and again. Craig had been giving women a little death now and then for as long as she had been married to him, and now she was having one of her own. She knew what her husband was thinking. She knew it was, Don't die, Lucy -and that he meant it with every breath in his body. Apart from any emotional considerations, if she popped her clogs he'd have three children to look after and a great deal of inconvenience, and
then
where would the magnum opus be? She leaned into him again, making a little pale oohing sound and hiding her smile in his lapel. She was smiling because she remembered what she was wearing. Her black leather trousers. Perfect fit.

Old Dr Tichborne was not at all sure what had happened. But since the music stopped and the vicar departed in such a hurry, there was nothing more to keep him in that velvet chair with something hot and smelly spitting all over him, so he slipped off home. Slipped seemed rather an appropriate word, since on the way he found some new aspects of the lie of the lane to negotiate, and several branches along the road had definitely extended themselves further in order to bump him one. Quite often he found himself pursuing the way home along the cracked and frosty ditch instead of up on the road - which was odd - and once or twice, for no apparent reason, he became entangled in the hawthorn hedge. Picking off the bits and looking up at that spangled darkness above him, he wondered why it seemed that the very stars themselves tonight were racing in the heavens. Swirling in the firmament. Art and beauty. To admire from afar yet never to possess. Perfection. He remembered the beautiful, flowing music tonight. He remembered the extra-strong binoculars recently purchased. Pity of it was that he had no one to hide them from, now that Dorothea was no more. It took, he thought, some of the relish out of it. Perhaps he wouldn't get rid of the dog. A little company was no bad thing.

Wanda and Dave the Bread hurried along the frosty distance laughing and laughing and laughing, though they were not entirely sure why.

'We're weaving our way home
’
said Wanda, exploding with more unladylike guffaws, so that her husband felt obliged to take a large handful of her nether flesh and press it warmly. Which had the immediate effect of upending them into the ditch and into an interesting heap that should have comprised two, and was in fact three. Old Dr Tichborne was about to climb out of the ditch for the very last puzzling time when he received visitors.

'Hello
’
he said.

'Hello
’
said Wanda conversationally.

And in the way of all good and genuine neighbours, they hauled Dr Tichborne out. And then helped him home. From where he then helped them home and Wanda, having seen the light as much as any Evangelist, said she had nothing to hide and that he must come in and see her macrame snoods. Which he declined, feeling he had eaten enough. So that they felt obliged to see him home again, and he them, until after some confusion between the parties as to who lived up which path and through which door, they parted company and went in to sleep it off.

'Woman's a fool
’
said Wanda as she climbed into her bed. 'She could have made candles from her very own beeswax. Or bought them -' she yawned with great satisfaction - 'from me.'

But Dave the Bread was already asleep, and crowing in his dreams for all the compliments his baking had been given. He still, though unaware of it, wore his hat.

Only Daphne Blunt remained, hunched in the cold, waiting by the gate, the smoke-induced wateriness gradually turning to a glitter in her eyes. Mrs Angela Fytton, a little less secure about being of Church Ale House in the county of Somerset, knew she was there but for some reason did not wish to join her. At that particular moment, she rather wished she had not moved anywhere. Particularly not to the same neck of the woods as Ms Blunt.

'Sorry
’
she said forlornly.

'You know what you've done, don't you?' said Daphne. 'You've made a mockery of the whole thing. You've made the whole thing into something out of
Country Life
meets the Rural Dream. Free rush-light holder with every floral flounce
...'

'Yes
’
said Angela.

'The house is fine. The garden is fine. The hives, the hens, the apples, the mulberries - even the
ale
is fine. Just. A true tradition. And you were quite right. It brought us all together. A sense of community. And now you've mocked it. We don't need rush lights, Angela Fytton. And rush-light holders belong in a
museum
. . . thank God. And we certainly don't need someone to come along and tell us how
good
we all are.'

Mrs Angela Fytton mumbled something along the lines of meaning to donate the thing to the local museum the very next day
...
But Daphne Blunt was not to be mollified. Angela found it peculiarly sobering.

'We don't need rush lights, and
that
is what we should be celebrating. No women and children struggle home wet through and weighed down with their burden nowadays. No women and children cut their fingers to pieces stripping them down. No women and children have to tend the things constantly so that they don't go out
...
That was not a tradition, Mrs Fytton.
That was a burden and a necessity.
And making the holder into a mantelpiece fancy. Oh, please
...
What will you do for an encore, Angela? Construct a gibbet in the garden as a feature and hang a few effigies of witches from it? You could even sew bells on their feet to frighten away the crows.'

Angela Fytton put her hands over her eyes as if to hide the words. She knew they were true. She hoped to God she didn't go blurting out that she'd read three bloody
novels
while doing
it...

'Did they really cut their fingers to pieces?'

Daphne waved her hands in an irritated gesture. 'Oh, forget it. Fortunately we all drank so much that no one realized the silly sentimentality of it all.'

'I just think people are so much better down here. Traditional
’

Daphne Blunt rolled her eyes. 'If you are going to live in the country, you'll have to abandon sentimentality. Honour its past by all means, but don't, for God's sake, try to re-create it.' She stopped suddenly. She too put her hands over her eyes. 'Do you know
’
she said,
‘I
think I've got to go and lie down.' With which she turned towards the sparkling road that led to her home. 'One thing I will say
’
she offered faintly. 'That ale was bloody good.' And off she went.