Foreigners (4 page)

She took one more puff of her cigarette before stubbing it out in the saucer, then sat back on the settee. Her face became gloomy.

“It must have been so awful for you.”

He wrinkled his brow: “How do you mean?”

“France. Normandy. Those terrible beaches.”

“Oh, I never went to France. Not long after that photo was taken,” he said, pointing over her shoulder, “I contracted peritonitis. Spent most of the duration of the war in an invalid hospital.”

She was curious and wanted to see the farm. He told her there wasn't much left worth looking at, but she was insistent, and it made him rather prideful. First they crossed the yard to the one remaining outbuilding, but she seemed disappointed when he explained that it wasn't anything more than a
storage shed; he'd kept winter feed in it at one point, but now only used it to store old garden tools and other such rubbish. The foundation for the barn was also rather a letdown. He'd sold the slate roof tiles to a salvage company from Matlock and had the walls knocked down after they became something of an eyesore to him.

She perked up a bit when he pulled back the rusty gate and led her through to the paddock. The grasses had already grown knee-high and here and there among the nettles beechnut saplings had begun to take root. He pointed them out to her and explained that the sheep would have eaten them long before they reached such a height; that, in fact, they'd have eaten everything to the ground, nettles included.

At the top of the paddock was the one remaining cattle shelter; the other, which stood on the opposite side of the stone wall that separated the paddock from the upper field, had collapsed three winters before. He showed her the long trough where he used to feed the sheep, and the cattle before them, as well as the remnants of a salt lick that had melted away over the years, staining the concrete floor of the shelter a pale violet blue.

She ran the toe of her trainer through the powdery blemish, then walked on to the stone wall. He stood back a moment, watching her. She leaned on her elbows and stared out over the field. A slight breeze coming from behind ruffled her short hair, revealing the pale nape of her neck. He went and stood beside her.

“This wall could do with mending,” he said, rocking a loose stone on its top. “I've let things go a bit.”

“It does seem a shame,” she said.

“Well, it's not such an easy job for me any more. I'd have to take it down to its base to fix it properly.”

“No,” she said, turning to him. “I mean this.” She nodded toward the field.

“Ah, yes,” he agreed. “I think so, too, at times. But things change.”

“For the better?” she asked.

“Sometimes yes, sometimes no,” he smiled. “This time, I think yes.”

She looked away again. She seemed unconvinced.

“Tell me,” she said. “Is it lonely?”

He shrugged his shoulders; he'd never thought so before. Then he turned and started back down the paddock. “Come with me,” he called over his shoulder. “I've something I want to show you.”

He could not recall the last time he had looked at them, and for a moment was panicked when they were not on the shelf in the lounge where he'd thought. Finally, after some rummaging, he found the small black cardboard box with the silver lettering that read
Pepper & Sons
in the bottom drawer of the bureau, beneath Pippa's mother's lace tablecloth.

He left the drawer hanging open and went and sat next to her on the settee. He put the box down on the coffee table and took a deep breath.

“She was very angry with me when I gave them to her,” he said, sounding slightly mischievous. “I drove all the way to Birmingham to have them made. I was told by someone in the village, I can't remember who, that Birmingham was the place.”

Very carefully, he lifted the lid from the box and set it aside. Then he folded back the tissue paper. She had to lean forward to see what was inside.

“My God, they're beautiful.”

He grinned: “Go on, take them out.”

He watched her as she dipped her slender fingers into the box and gently removed the two rings. She then placed them in the palm of her hand.

“For a long time,” he said, “we had very little money. When we were married I gave her a copper band, which was itself hard to come by. It always turned her finger green. There was never any thought of an engagement ring.”

“How could she ever have been angry with you?”

“Well, as I said, we hadn't a lot of money really, even then. Truth be told,” he continued, “I'd been putting little bits away for a few years before I bought them.” Now he laughed: “And when I did finally give them to Pippa, she was so upset with me that she refused to wear them.”

“Really?”

“Oh, it didn't last. Once she let me put them on her finger she never took them off. Not even when she was doing the washing up, which made me rather nervous.”

She slipped the rings, a small diamond solitaire in a raised setting and a gold band with delicate scrolling, onto her bare ring finger and held her hand out in front of her.

“I don't blame her,” she said. “Though I can understand your being worried.”

As she removed them she noticed that the width of each had been slightly altered, thin cuts where a dull metal had been added.

“Were they too small for her?” she asked.

“Oh, that,” he said, taking the rings from her and returning them to the box. “That's nothing.”

She placed a hand on his forearm. “I'm glad you showed them to me.”

“Yes,” he said, rising quickly from the settee. “Yes, I just thought you might like to see them.”

He walked back to the bureau and put the box in the drawer. He straightened the folds in the tablecloth and laid it carefully on top.

They fitted the last piece into the jigsaw puzzle of Westminster Abbey shortly before three and then, at her insistence, he napped in his chair in the lounge while she set about preparing tea. He slept soundly and woke refreshed, if a little stiff-necked, to a meal the likes of which he'd not had in a very long time: roast chicken, parsnips, potatoes, Brussels sprouts, boiled carrots and pork sausage. They ate not in the lounge, but at the dining-room table. They finished with cups of coffee and ice cream from a tub she'd found at the bottom of the deep freeze, where the chicken had lain hidden for so long. They did the washing up together. And afterward he took down two tumblers from the cupboard and brought them into the lounge, along with the bottle of cognac he kept now for whenever he felt a cold coming on.

First they watched a comedy program that he did not fully understand, but it made her laugh so he said nothing. Then it was time for the
Nine O'Clock News.
As the presenter began with a story on the Middle East, he wondered how it was that
the evening had passed so quickly. He poured himself a second glass of cognac.

“I sometimes think,” he said, “that the world has gone quite mad.”

The third story was that of a pensioner, an eighty-one-year-old widow in Luton, who'd been attacked by two men who followed her home from the post office after she'd cashed her benefit cheque. They'd tied her to a chair and beat her with a blackjack until her eyes had swollen shut. Then they'd used old newspapers to set fire to her settee and left her to die. Neighbours had heard the struggle, but none called for help until they saw smoke billowing from the window of her council house. All were shocked that such a thing could happen. A photograph of the woman in hospital, bandages covering her face, was shown. Police had no leads in the case, but were confident that the perpetrators would be found.

“You're right,” she said. “Quite mad.”

As the main news switched over to the East Midlands broadcast he leaned back in the chair and watched her. He felt slightly light-headed from the cognac. She was sitting forward on the settee; her glass, only half-drunk, she rolled between her palms, every once in a while taking the smallest of sips, at which she wrinkled her nose. Looking at her in profile as she eyed the television, he wondered if he didn't see something of Pippa in her. In the line of her jaw, possibly, which stood out strongly from her thin neck; or in the smallness of her ears. Pippa had had tiny ears, with only the hint of a lobe. Often he'd teased her about them by talking more loudly than was necessary.

When she turned to him he was smiling.

“Is there something funny?” she asked, returning his grin.

“No, no,” he said, shaking his head. “I was just thinking.”

“What about?”

“Nothing in particular, really,” he said. “Least ways nothing of interest.” He held out the bottle. “Would you like a top-up?”

“No, thank you. I'm fine.”

She set her glass on the table. “In fact,” she said, getting to her feet. “I think I might turn in if it's all the same to you. It's been a long day.”

It used to be that he would have a glass of cognac every night before bed, to help him off to sleep, until the time came when he found that even this small tipple left him groggy the following morning. But now, nearing the bottom of his third, he was looking forward to a fourth.

The empty Pepper & Sons box lay on the table beside him and he held the rings in his hand. The jeweller who'd mended them had done a poor job. The director of the funeral parlour had been apologetic about having to cut them from Pippa's finger and quite kindly offered to pay part of the repair cost, but he'd refused. And when he drove with them all the way back to Birmingham he found that Pepper & Sons was no longer in business. It had become a museum. The woman who ran the gift shop suggested he take them to a jeweller in the city centre. The address she gave him was that of a shabby storefront shop whose proprietor offered to buy both rings. When he wouldn't sell, the man suggested that he at least replace the stone in the engagement ring, informing
him that the original was of deficient calibre. In the end he took them to the local jeweller in the village who did the job for him at half price.