Village Fortunes (Turnham Malpas 17) (7 page)

‘A gin and tonic for me, please, and I know Ford would like a half pint of Dicky’s home brew. He’s been longing for that for months. Haven’t you, love?’

‘Indeed I have. Lovely to be back, and thank you all for making us so welcome.’

Ford sat down no longer needing to squeeze himself in as he used to do. They were all surprised at how thin he was and how quiet. Maybe he was exhausted after moving, or perhaps embarrassed about being an ex-prisoner. But whatever was the reason, he certainly had lost that big personality they’d all grown accustomed to, and loved.

The people who’d come to welcome Merc and Ford back to Turnham Malpas were queuing to buy them their next drink, or eagerly hovering around to bring them up to date with the latest village news.

When she could get a word in, Grandmama wanted them to know about the changed circumstances up at the Big House. ‘Sir Johnny has pots of money, believe me, and the alterations he’s doing on the estate, well, they are costing a fortune. But it doesn’t bother him. He’s rolling in money.’

‘He’s married you say?’ inquired Merc.

‘Oh, yes. He married Alice. You remember, the music teacher, and they’ve just got their second son yesterday. We don’t know his name yet.’

‘What about Craddock Fitch? We haven’t seen him,’ asked Ford.

‘Well, he’s moved into Sir Ralph’s old house. Renting it from Sir Johnny. But he’s gone up north doing some research they say. But what on earth he has to research I don’t know. He’ll be back in a day or two.’

Their impromptu welcome-back party was in full swing but not everyone there was as enthusiastic as Grandmama.

One of the less keen was Harriet. Jimbo, thinking of future trade that Ford and Merc might bring to the store, had insisted on her attending the party. But she only decided to join him because otherwise she’d be in the house alone as Fran was out with her mysterious boyfriend.

‘It’s all very well is this, Jimbo. But I don’t normally socialise with ex-prisoners.’

‘Hush. For heaven sakes! They’ll hear you.’

‘And if they do, I’ve a right to say how I feel. I didn’t lie, did I? It’s the truth. He is a liar.’ Harriet glared at Jimbo and raised her eyebrows. ‘Isn’t he? Go on, admit it.’

‘Yes. But now’s not the time.’

‘Be honest, you’re only welcoming them because it’s good for trade. I haven’t been married to you all these years without knowing what makes you tick.’

‘Well, for now,
hush
, and try to look as pleased as everyone else is.’

‘Are they really? I wonder. I can’t say Ford looks particularly pleased. In fact he looks as though he’d rather be at home with the door locked against the chance of unexpected visitors.’

‘You’re talking nonsense, Harriet; he’s always a very sociable kind of man. Mother’s thrilled to bits they’re back, and she’s a good judge of character. She always has been.’

‘I’m not talking nonsense. Anyway I’m going home as it’s late and I’ve a lot to do tomorrow. I need an early start.’

‘It’ll look very obvious if you go now. There’s another hour to closing yet.’

‘Sorry, Jimbo, I’m off.’ Harriet got to her feet and called across to Merc and Ford that she was leaving. Merc tried to persuade her not to go, but Harriet made the excuse of a bad headache coming on and disappeared, leaving Jimbo feeling an inconsiderate fool of a husband. Maybe she was right. After all Ford had been found guilty of condoning theft. He’d made a lot of money at it too, no doubt, if he could afford to buy Glebe House. But Jimbo hadn’t finished his glass of home brew yet and he decided he’d leave when his glass was empty.

Harriet stood for a moment as she enjoyed the sight of the village in the light of a brilliant moon. The thatched roofs and the gleaming white walls of the cottages around the green appeared more spectacular than usual, and she savoured the privileges that living in such a beautiful rural place afforded her. She spotted Fran’s bright yellow mini creeping gently round the green and felt relieved her daughter was home safely.

Harriet raised her hand thinking Fran might have noticed her standing there in front of the pub, but her wave wasn’t returned. Behind Fran came a bright red sports car which Harriet instantly recognised. The driver paused to give Fran a wave and then pulled away leaving Fran to park. No wonder Fran refused to tell them whom she was seeing. He was much too old and much too sophisticated for a girl of Fran’s age and experience. Harriet couldn’t think what to do. If she went home right now Fran would know she’d seen his red sports car and there’d be no avoiding a confrontation. And Harriet couldn’t face this. In fact, she decided, she’d pretend she’d seen nothing at all, she wouldn’t even tell Jimbo. She’d ignore it. Blot it out of her mind, and then one day when the time felt to be right, Harriet would let Fran know she knew and give her some motherly advice. Of all people. Chris Templeton!

Finding no one at home Fran went straight to bed in order to avoid both her parents. Being out, they wouldn’t know what time she’d come home, and so as long as she kept her eyes shut if Mum came in to say goodnight she’d be all right. Fran wondered where they’d gone. Usually they shared all their news with her but tonight they hadn’t. Maybe they’d had an unexpected invitation somewhere. Well, she certainly wasn’t going to worry herself about them, they were grown-ups after all. Instead she’d lie warm and snug in her very own bedroom, and
think
.

About Chris. Jimbo and Harriet would be certain to disapprove. He was too old for her, wildly sophisticated, with a much broader knowledge of the world than she had. All she’d done was go to school, have a few holidays abroad in well-civilised places in Europe, and work in a village shop (which by his Brazilian hotel standards was minute and pathetically local). And what had he done? Been to the Arctic on a school expedition, nearly been killed in an avalanche on some mountains somewhere in South America, canoed down the Amazon at a back pack and tent level. He always had loads of money available, and had actually lived with two girls, although not at the same time of course, before he’d come to England.

Fran Charter-Plackett had been a virgin until she’d met Chris and by comparison she was totally inexperienced in all aspects of life. Why he fancied her she didn’t know. But fancy her he did and she loved every moment of the time they spent together. He could arouse her with one gentle touch of his beautiful hands on her bare arm, and when— Fran heard the front door slam.

Drat it. That sounded like Dad coming home. Just in case her dad could read her mind she decided to shut out all thoughts of Chris, which was stupid. But the thought of her dad, and worse, her mum knowing who she was seeing . . . No, it wasn’t Dad, it was Mum. Definitely Mum, because she was coming upstairs. Fran’s bedroom door opened and Mum said, ‘Hello, darling. Been home long?’

Fran pretended to stir slightly.

‘Sorry, we’ll talk tomorrow.’

Fran waited till the door had closed again and then she sighed. She had all this brave talk about being an adult and being able to come and go as she pleased, when all the time she couldn’t face up to her parents. At almost twenty-one. If she was at university she’d be doing exactly as she liked. With one bound Fran was out of bed, pulling on her dressing gown and heading downstairs.

‘I thought you were asleep. Cup of tea?’

‘Please. Where’s Dad?’

‘Finishing his home brew in the pub. They’ve had an impromptu welcome party for the Barclays, and Dad insisted we went.’

‘Right. I’ve been up at the Big House.’

‘You have?’ Harriet turned away so she wouldn’t betray what she’d just found out.

‘Seeing Chris.’

‘Ah. Right. Nice man.’

‘You approve?’

‘It’s not for me to approve or disapprove.’

‘Come on, Mum, tell the truth.’

Harriet placed a mug of tea on the worktop and nodded to Fran that this was for her. ‘Yours.’

‘What are you having?’

‘A whisky.’

‘You never drink whisky.’

‘I can do as I like.’ Harriet took a sip of her medicinal whisky.

‘Like I do, you mean?’

‘Apparently.’ Harriet turned to face her. ‘Let’s stop fooling around. He’s too old, too smart, and he’ll soon tire of you.’

‘Mum!’

‘I’m right and you know I am, and that’s why you didn’t want to tell us who you were seeing.’

‘He isn’t. He’s lovely. He’s kind and considerate and amusing, and interesting, with an unusual slant on life. He finds the English absolutely hysterical.’

‘Hysterical? That’s not very good manners on his part.’

‘You’re being stuffy, just like he says we all are. It’s time we all relaxed, he says, and see the funny side of ourselves. And he thinks that class distinction, no matter how much we deny it, is still present in every level of English society and that it’s hilarious. And come to that, I think so too.’

The front door slammed shut and Fran knew her dad was about to find out the most precious, most important secret she had ever kept from him. Damn it, she wasn’t ready for it.

Jimbo strolled into the kitchen, looked from one to the other of them both and asked, ‘What’s the matter?’

Fran decided to go for it. ‘I’ve just been telling Mum.’

‘What?’

‘Who it is I’m going out with.’

Very casually Jimbo replied, ‘Oh. That. I’ve known for a while.’

‘You have?’ Harriet was shocked. ‘You never told me.’

‘She’s old enough to know what she’s doing.’

Fran, who’d been expecting him to explode into one of his notorious tempers, was at a loss to know what to say. ‘You don’t mind then?’

‘He is the most unsuitable man for you to be consorting with that I could ever have imagined you would find time for. But you’re a young woman now and it’s time for you to make your own choices.’

‘Thanks, Dad, for treating me as a grown-up for the first time ever. Thanks, I appreciate that. So that’s all right then. If Dad’s all right about him, you don’t mind, Mum, do you?’

Harriet, staggered by Jimbo’s calm and the fact he’d known for weeks, answered, ‘Apparently not. I’m off to bed. See you in the morning.’ In fact Harriet was completely nonplussed. She and Jimbo never had secrets from each other. It was one of their golden rules and yet here he was, calm as you please, when Fran was cavorting with a man so unsuitable that if Harriet had made a list of unsuitable characteristics for a boyfriend of Fran’s, he’d match up to every unsuitability. Was there such a word? If there wasn’t, Harriet Charter-Plackett had just invented it.

Harriet brushed her teeth with such vigour that any lingering bacteria would have fled in haste halfway through the process. She flung her clothes on the carpet, careless of where they fell, and leapt into bed still infuriated by Jimbo’s attitude. Not for one moment did she imagine that a man of Chris’s temperament had not wanted to go the whole way with Fran. Well, at least she knew Fran was bang up to date on contraception and so hopefully no worries on that score.

Harriet caught the sound of Jimbo’s footsteps on the wooden floor of the hall as he crossed from the kitchen to the stairs, and she hurriedly pulled the duvet right the way up to her chin and pretended to be asleep. On the other hand she couldn’t have fallen asleep in such a short space of time, so that trick wouldn’t work.

When he came in from the bathroom a few minutes later, she said, ‘Shut the door, Jimbo, please. Now tell me how long you’ve known about Chris and Fran.’

‘I found out quite by chance really. Remember that time about six weeks ago when I went to that committee meeting of the Rotary Club in the pub the other side of Culworth, when they wanted to ask me about having a big dinner party and entertainment afterwards at the Old Barn? Well, I saw Fran and Chris coming out of there. I was so surprised I hid in the gents until they had time to drive away.’

‘Why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because.’ Jimbo got into bed.

‘I said, why didn’t you tell me?’

‘Because I knew what your reaction would be, and while I was hiding in the gents I decided the more we opposed him the more her resolve would harden and that she’d never listen to common sense. But it’s gone on far longer than I’d anticipated, I imagined it would be short lived. You have to admit he is a very attractive man.’

Harriet studied his last sentence and admitted that she found Chris attractive too. ‘He is, but she isn’t his type. Too young, too inexperienced, she’s a child by comparison.’

Jimbo groaned. ‘I know that, but if we oppose her seeing him . . .’

They lay in bed side by side, each with their own thoughts. Finally it was Jimbo who broke the silence. ‘You’ll have to have a word with her.’

‘Me?’

‘Yes. It’s a mother and daughter job, is this.’

‘Oh, is it? And what is her father going to do about it?

‘Best if I stay out of it, and then if things get really serious I’ll have to come in with the heavy guns. With him. Man to man.’

Despite her anger over the situation Harriet had to laugh. ‘Heavy guns! Chris Templeton would make mincemeat of you.’

‘Thanks for the vote of confidence.’ Jimbo paused for a moment and then said, ‘I can’t think what he sees in her.’

‘The only thing I am grateful about is that Fran knows about contraception. I saw to that. And the school did too of course.’

‘That’s not quite the point though, is it? Him having his way with my daughter. Sounds old-fashioned, but I don’t like the man any better for it. Coming in here and pretending he barely knows who she is.’

Harriet remembered the day Alice’s baby was born and the flowers Chris bought, and the way he kissed Fran for making them into a respectable bouquet. ‘Kissing her as though he scarcely recognised her when all the time . . . That was deceitful and not half. He’s not nearly so pleasing as Johnny.’

‘You’re in the mood for crossing people off your visiting list, aren’t you? That’s three just tonight.’ Jimbo reached over to turn off the bedside light. ‘Merc and Ford Barclay, and now Chris.’

‘He’s taking advantage of her, that’s what I don’t like. I mean, what does a sophisticated wealthy man like him want with her? Only one thing. I’m going to tell her right now, in fact. I’ll go wake her and tell her. She needs to know.’