A Rural Affair (26 page)

‘Well, I suppose that’s what made me realize I’m not quite ready,’ I said finally. And oddly, it had a ring of truth about
it. ‘I didn’t know, until I went.’ This was obviously deeply unchivalrous to Luke, but it was said quietly, out of hearing
of the mothers. And since Bob, like a child, only understood the truth and not coded subtlety, it was the way forward. His
face cleared.

‘You didn’t enjoy it.’

‘I wouldn’t say I didn’t enjoy it.’ I felt hot. Hoped my antiperspirant wasn’t going to let me down. ‘I wouldn’t say that,
but it felt a bit strange to be out.’ True again.

‘You wouldn’t with me,’ beamed Bob.

Wishing my own social code didn’t prevent me from seizing him by the lapels and roaring, ‘Don’t be ridiculous, Bob, stop this
silly nonsense now!’ I found myself inclining my head, as if conceding that this was indeed a possibility. Suddenly I wondered
if, total pushover that I was, I’d find myself next Saturday night at the King’s Head, opposite Bob, who might even bring
his twelve dogs along; and who might, the following week, be supplanted by Frank, or Dickie Frowbisher, and all the other
oddballs of the parish thereafter.

‘I’m sorry,’ I said, quite firmly for me – remembering the inner strength, remembering Mum and the steel I was going to find
– ‘but I simply can’t make it. Goodbye, Bob.’

And with that I pushed my buggy and my small child past him and headed into the shop for provisions. The eyes of the village,
I felt sure, were upon me.

The Gloria was finally given an airing the following Saturday, but not, it transpired, for the couple who had originally chosen
it to be sung at their nuptials.

‘Why not?’ I asked Angie as we slipped into the choir stalls together.

‘She dumped him, apparently,’ Angie told me rather too gleefully as we collected our hymn sheets. Angie was more than slightly
anti-men at the moment.

‘Who did? The bride?’

‘Yup. Word is, she got cold feet. Called the whole thing off a week ago. The invitations had gone out, wedding presents had
been opened – the whole bit. Takes some doing, don’t you think? The week before?’

Blimey. It did. And I remembered how close I’d got to it with Phil during that terrible final week; the overwhelming feeling
of panic as the whole thing gained momentum, like a runaway freight train, without me behind it. My mouth getting drier, not
sleeping, everyone thinking it was excitement. Dad, Jennie, all looking at my wide eyes and thinking they were starry, not
seeing the fear. Jennie, telling me all brides lost weight before the big day. Only my dressmaker looking concerned, because
every time I had a fitting she had to take the ivory silk in a bit more. I remembered having my legs waxed the day before
and the young girl asking if I was excited, and me suddenly sobbing, ‘No!’ How it had come out in a horrible, choked voice.
She’d looked terrified and
ripped those strips away in silence, the fastest leg wax in the world, whilst I’d pretended the tears streaming down the side
of my face were due to the pain.

I sighed, shuffling along the pew a bit as more people arrived. It did take some doing, and I hadn’t had the guts. Or the
neck. Or the stomach. Or whatever part of the body it took to let a hundred and fifty people down – but not yourself. I was
full of admiration for Miss Anna Braithwaite, as we gathered she was called, not a spinster of this parish, but yet another
Londoner who’d wangled her way into our idyllic village church by dint of having a distant relative who lived nearby, where
she’d lodged her suitcase for a couple of weeks, and become a bona fide country dweller. So yes, neck had been her particular
body part; the one which had enabled her, first to swing the bucolic setting, and then to break a man’s heart.

Would I have broken Phil’s heart? I picked up the Gloria song sheet as Angus slipped in beside Angie on the end, Sylvia electing
the row in front. I couldn’t exactly imagine him prostrate with grief, punching walls into the night in a Heathcliff manner.
More tight-lipped and furious. Livid. Nonsense, Poppy; you’re rewriting history. He was actually very much in love with you.
He just hid it well.

‘So who’s getting married, then?’ I asked Angie, thinking: never again.
Never
.

‘A local couple, apparently, which is much more satisfactory. They got engaged last week and wanted to get married immediately
but were told they’d have to wait ages for a slot. They were about to get hitched in the registry office but then this came
up, so they grabbed it.’

‘Good for them,’ I said admiringly.

‘No order of service sheets, of course, because it was too
late to get it all organized, but when you think about it, how much nicer to get married just like that. Next week? Good friends
will always just drop everything to come, and you don’t get any of the fuss. None of the usual pre-nup merry-go-round with
lists at Peter Jones and bridesmaids getting the hump because they’re dressed as shepherdesses; just an incredibly spontaneous,
romantic occasion. A really lovely joyous expression of … shit.’

‘What?’ I frowned. She’d ducked her head down and was furiously pulling her fringe over her eyes.

‘Bugger. It’s Pete. Passion-Fuelled. Back row of the church. Don’t look now. Don’t want him to see me.’

‘Why not?’ I said, nonetheless following her furtive glance to where Pete, blond and gorgeous in a dark suit, was indeed collecting
a hymn book and joining the growing congregation.

‘Made a bit of a fool of myself,’ Angie muttered.

‘Really? When?’ I was intrigued. ‘You never said.’

I turned to stare at her in wonder. Pete was surely a harmless crush. A fantasy figure, like a member of a boy band, to pin
on a bedroom wall and drool over. He was also a good ten years younger than Angie.

‘What did you do, wrestle him into the back of his mobile forge?’

‘Don’t be silly.’ Angie reddened.

I blinked. ‘Please tell me you didn’t rip off his leather apron? Have him over his anvil? Hammer hammer hammer?’

‘Oh, shut up, Poppy.’ She swallowed. ‘No, he just … Well, he sussed that I was getting him out on false pretences, that’s
all.’

‘Getting him out? What d’you mean?’

‘Horses only need shoeing every six weeks or so. Pete was doing mine slightly more regularly than that,’ she said tightly.

‘Oh.’

It occurred to me that I did see Pete’s van go past my house most weeks, and if I wandered past Angie’s house with Archie,
Pete was quite often parked in the stable yard round the side.

‘Of course I always had some spurious excuse up my sleeve, about how their feet grew quickly and needed trimming, or I was
worried a shoe was loose. I even wrenched a shoe off myself in the middle of the night, nearly put my bloody back out, just
so I could get him round.’

An image of Angie in her stables, under cover of darkness, with a startled horse and a pair of pliers, sprang to mind. My
mouth twitched, but I was surprised too. Didn’t know she had it so bad.

‘What happened?’ I said gently.

‘One day he said he thought my horse was in danger of being over-manicured, and was there any particular reason I’d got him
round. He looked me right in the eye and asked if there was anything else that needed servicing?’

‘No!’ I breathed.

I tried to imagine the shy, taciturn Pete saying that, but was aware I’d only seen him out of his milieu, at the book club,
not handling a nervous horse, a red-hot firing iron in his hand.

‘Oh, Poppy, he was all strong and masterful. You should see him when he’s in his own environment,’ she said, echoing my thoughts.
‘It sort of … defines him.’

For some reason I thought of Sam, when I’d first met him: in his paper-strewn office, sleeves rolled up, files and books all
over the floor. Not any more, of course. Tidy now.

‘So … you said?’ I prompted, tremulously.

‘I said yes.’

‘Angie, you didn’t!’

‘I bloody did. I looked him straight back in the eye and said yes, actually, I’d like him to do the same for me as he’d done
for Mary Granger last hunting season, and gave him a terrific wink.’

‘He services Mary Granger?’ I gasped. Mary was a rangy, scary, foxy blonde, who rode horses professionally and relentlessly.
She was always trotting past, stony-faced and in a hurry, one horse under her bony bum, another on a lead rein. She probably
wouldn’t have time for the normal social conventions a boyfriend entailed. I could imagine her bonking a man like Pete before
breakfast, as part of her horsy routine. Stable management.

And was it my imagination or was Sylvia, in front of Angie, leaning back, straining to hear?

‘Why are you so horrified?’ Angie looked defiant. ‘Not everyone wants a boyfriend, you know. I don’t. And I certainly don’t
want another husband. But what I do, occasionally, feel the need for, is the touch and feel of a man and some basic human
comfort. Preferably without a saggy stomach, dandruff or BO, and preferably the right side of forty.’ She raised her chin.
‘I’ve always liked sex, if you must know.’

‘Right,’ I said inadequately, wondering if I must know that
in church
and quite loudly too. Sylvia’s ears were as pricked as those of any horse on the hunting field.

‘Well, anyway, we went upstairs –’

‘Just like that?’ I tried but failed to keep the squeaky excitement from my voice.

‘Yes, just like that. He made the pretence of grabbing some tools, and then he asked where the bathroom was, which, frankly,
I was pleased about, because don’t forget he shoes horses for a living. Fairly blue collar and all that. So
when we got to the top of the stairs I showed him into my en suite. Then I went into the bedroom, took all my clothes off
and got into bed.’

I felt my mouth fall open.

‘I had to,’ she confessed. ‘Otherwise I knew I wouldn’t do it. Knew I’d lose my nerve.’

I nodded dumbly, acknowledging the warped logic in this.

‘Anyway, he was ages in the bathroom, and after a bit he called out, “Mrs Asher?”, which was rather formal, I thought, and
not quite what I was expecting, so I called back, “In here!” And in he came holding my shower attachment, and saying it was
rather different to Mary Granger’s.’

I stared at her for a long moment. Then the penny dropped.

‘He does plumbing on the side,’ she said stiffly. ‘Unofficially. Just during the recession. Hasn’t got a licence so it’s hush-hush.
He serviced Mary Granger’s shower, apparently.

‘Oh, Angie …’

‘So there I was, in bed, stark-naked, propped up on pillows and showing a great deal of cleavage. Near as damn it with a rose
between my teeth.’

‘What did you do?’ I breathed.

‘Well, he went completely puce, naturally, and his jaw dropped – he nearly dropped the shower head too – and then I had to
pretend it was the most natural thing in the world to be talking to my plumber-come-farrier supine and in the buff. I said
it was probably best that he took it away and sorted it out at home, where he’d got the proper tools, and he agreed. To save
us, I asked conversationally in what way my shower head differed to Mary’s and he said mine had bigger holes. Did I mention
I’d lit a candle?’

‘No.’

‘Yes. By the bed. And a few on the dressing table. Diptyque.
And squirted Jo Malone about too.’ She sighed. ‘Anyway, he fled. Thundered downstairs and out to his van and roared away in
moments, no doubt to tell the entire village about the terrifying frustrated housewife at the manor. I should think everyone
knows by now.’ Her face collapsed a bit. She looked older.

‘They don’t,’ I assured her quickly, but knew she was right. It was only a matter of time before it ricocheted around the
village. ‘And anyway, you could say you always have an afternoon nap,’ I suggested. ‘Churchill used to. And a bath.’

‘I could,’ she agreed, ‘except it was ten o’clock in the morning and I wasn’t exactly marching the troops across the Rhine.
Yes, of course you can, here.’ This, to Angus beside her, who’d asked to borrow her hymn book.

He then engaged her in animated conversation. The overexcited gleam in his eye, and the way he was staring down her top, worried
me. Oh Lord, had he overheard? Sylvia, in front, turned to me, eyes huge. Right. They both had.

As Jennie slipped in beside me from the other end, I resolved not to say a word. Not yet, anyway.

‘Heard about Angie and Pete?’ she muttered as she took her coat off.

‘Yes!’ I breathed. ‘But don’t say a word.’ I swung round to glance, but Angie was still engrossed with Angus. ‘She’s terrified
it’s all round the village.’

‘It is. Pete told his sister, who works with Yvonne in the shop, which is tantamount to putting it on the bush telegraph.
Silly fool,’ she murmured, casting Angie a look.

‘It was a misunderstanding,’ I said loyally. Sometimes I found myself the glue between Jennie and Angie. Jennie occasionally
found Angie a bit moneyed and spoiled, whilst Angie regarded Jennie as puritanical and over-principled.

‘As usual she thinks she can get what she wants simply by batting her eyelids.’

This was uncalled for, even for Jennie.

‘Oh, come on, she’s mortified.’

‘Oh, really? Not so mortified that she’s not throwing herself at the new master of the hunt too, I gather.’

‘Really?’ I was shocked. ‘Who told you that?’

‘Mrs Tucker at Countrywide, where I get Leila’s food. The first meet of the season’s next week, apparently, and Angie was
in her shop yesterday, buying the tightest jodhpurs possible because some sexy new blood is leading the field. She’s out of
control, Poppy.’

‘Right,’ I said wearily. If anything got Jennie’s blood up more than Angie at her most frivolous, it was Angie enjoying her
expensive, privileged lifestyle. A wide streak of socialism shot right through Jennie, and she regarded the horsy crowd as
arrogant toffs, particularly at this time of year. Personally I loved both my friends and found it all rather tiring.

‘We’re singing for a completely different couple today,’ I told her, changing the subject. ‘The bride got cold feet. Someone
else has nabbed the spot.’