Whispers in the Village (5 page)

Anna saw an elderly man holding back the march of time as long as he could, but a very elegant elderly man, with his silver, well-groomed hair, his sparkling blue eyes and his very noble, distinguished nose. He had that aristocratic bearing, which, so far as he was concerned, meant he always got his own way.

Well, matey, that isn’t going to happen, not to this smart cookie. Anna graciously thanked Muriel for her glass of water and, after drinking it all down in one go, set about cooling the atmosphere as only she could.

‘I love the hanging baskets at your door, Lady Templeton. I think hanging lobelia looks so good and seems to get better and better as the summer goes by. The rectory garden is absolutely to my taste, I’m positively revelling in it. Caroline obviously has a real gardener’s touch.’

‘Oh, she has! She and I have such interesting talks. She didn’t know one flower from another when she first came, but before they left she was winning prizes at the village show. We swapped cuttings, you know.’

‘Do you do your own garden then?’

‘Well, mostly. But Willie Biggs, the old verger, gives me a hand from time to time. He’s got green fingers, too. But then you can see that for yourself from looking at the churchyard. The new chap … whatsisname, Ralph? I can never remember.’

Ralph muttered, ‘Zack.’

‘That’s it, Zack. He’s green-fingered as well. Except he’s gone modern and all his colours clash. It makes Willie Biggs wince. He puts bright orange with dark purple and it looks quite nauseating.’

‘What’s wrong with going modern? They’re still flowers, modern or not, and really, nothing in nature clashes, does it? At least they do make people look at the church, even if they don’t come in.’

‘But it’s the colour schemes he uses.’ Muriel’s still-attractive face screwed up with disdain. ‘I used to think—’

Ralph groaned inside. If Muriel got on about flowers he’d never get his view across. He interrupted her rather forcefully. ‘More to the point, what on earth is Peter going to say when he gets back from Africa? Tambourines and castanets and guitars in
his
church, is that what’s coming next?’

‘Sir Ralph! It isn’t
his
, it belongs to us all. But perhaps Peter might see the broader picture, like more young people in the church? Had you thought of it that way? What’s wrong with that?’

‘But all they’d be coming for is the music. If it can be called that. I thought you positively murdered that first hymn on Sunday. Murdered it. I’ve never sung it to “Yellow Submarine” before. Couldn’t get the hang of it at all, so I stopped singing.’

‘I noticed.’

Ralph’s eyebrows shot up. ‘Ah! Right.’

Muriel threw an anxious glance at him. ‘Ralph, dear …’

The gentle remonstration in Muriel’s voice set Ralph boiling with temper all over again. ‘It was disgraceful, Anna, absolutely disgraceful.’

‘I’m sorry, Sir Ralph, but that’s how it’s going to be. Now, I must leave. It’s the Penny Fawcett mini-market on Monday morning. A chance to off-load what they didn’t sell in Culworth Market on Saturday, but there we are.’ With a wicked grin, Anna handed back her glass to Muriel. ‘Most kind. Now, where did I put my car keys?’

Ralph picked them up from his desk and handed them to her. She took the opportunity to capture his hand and hold on to it. ‘Please, Sir Ralph, please understand what I’m trying to do. With you on my side miracles could occur. All I ask is the chance to achieve it. I’ll say good morning and God bless. I’ll let myself out.’

As she left the study she smiled at them both and Muriel responded but Ralph had nothing to say.

‘Ralph, how could you? To the rector. It really was not right, my dear.’

‘She’s going to ruin everything. When I said about dancing in the aisles I was joking but she meant it. Remove the pews? Absolutely not. I won’t have it.’

He stormed about his study, his face growing redder by the minute, and Muriel feared for his heart. He wouldn’t withstand another attack like the last one.

‘Muriel, I’m going out.’

‘Very well, dear, a walk might be soothing. Give you time to think.’

‘I may not be back for lunch.’

Muriel knew this wasn’t the moment for questioning him about where he was going; it would only wind him up even more. But in minutes she heard his car starting up. Muriel raced to see if he’d taken his tablets this morning, but when she looked in the box she couldn’t decide if he had or he hadn’t. If he was taking the car, that most likely meant Culworth and the Abbey and more aggravation. She must remain calm. As he’d said when he’d had his first heart attack, he couldn’t live the rest of his life wrapped in cotton wool.

Milk. That’s right, she needed some milk. Since the milkman had given up his round, Jimbo had stocked every possible kind of milk anyone could ask for. How he’d found space for it all she couldn’t imagine; the Store was already so full of tempting goodies. She set off to walk round the Green, purse in hand, pushing all thought of Ralph and his heart right out of her mind.

She thought about the service and about the singing of that first hymn, how people had enjoyed it, and how much she’d thrown herself into singing it. Anna was right; you couldn’t hold back the centuries. One had to move forward and take hold of the future.

The initial rush of mothers shopping on their way back home after seeing the children to school had disappeared. There were just two of them standing gossiping by the coffee machine, Tom behind the Post Office grille and the Senior sisters, Thelma and Valda, discussing a purchase from the frozen meal freezer in soft undertones. Out of the corner of her eye Muriel thought she saw Thelma slip a packet into her shopping bag, while Valda made a show of placing another boxed meal in her wire basket, saying, ‘We’ll take this one then.’

Muriel’s face flooded with colour and burned with embarrassment. She hated things like this. To speak or not to speak, that was the question. Take pity on them, she thought. They existed on their pensions while she and Ralph had Ralph’s investments to live on. Should she speak up? No, she wouldn’t. She’d have a word with Jimbo.

But, as she waited behind them at the till, Muriel found the courage to point at Thelma’s bag. ‘Thelma! You’d be losing your head if it was loose, you’ve forgotten you put a meal from the freezer in your bag by mistake.’

It was Thelma’s turn to blush. ‘I haven’t. Are you accusing me of shoplifting?’

‘Well, no, more a senior moment.’

‘Senior moment? Are you being funny? You mean we pinch stuff from here regularly?’

‘No. I’m not saying you steal things, when I said “senior moment” I meant you were having a memory lapse.’

‘Then why call it a Senior moment?’

‘Well, that’s what they say, isn’t it?’

‘Who says we Seniors steal?’

‘Well … I haven’t said you steal, it’s just that—’

‘You’ve just said we’d had a Senior moment, which means it’s general knowledge that we steal and people say a Senior moment, meaning us.’

‘Well, no, it’s just a saying.’

‘We don’t steal, see.’ Thelma prodded Muriel’s lapel. ‘We wouldn’t dream of stealing from Jimbo, Huh! As if we would.’ The two of them paid for their one meal and departed, leaving Muriel feeling the victim.

‘I’m so sorry, Bel, to cause trouble. But I was sure—’

Bel beamed her usual loving smile. ‘Don’t worry, Lady Templeton, you’re probably quite right. They’re a slippy pair of customers. I’ll keep an eye out. Jimbo is thinking of putting a mirror over the frozen food counters so we can see right from here at the till what’s going on over there. Don’t let yourself get upset about it. They’re not worth it.’

‘But I am. I feel quite dreadful.’ Muriel paid for the milk and went out, but not before she’d overheard one of the mothers gossiping by the coffee machine say, ‘This new Anna disagrees with Scouts. All uniformed organizations, in fact. Says it smacks of Hitler Youth.’

‘Don’t care what it smacks of, it gives me two hours of peace on a Scout night. And do I deserve two hours of peace? Yes, I do. So I’m all for it. What’s Hitler Youth anyway?’

‘Don’t know, but it sounds like no good to me.’

Muriel paused to put her change away safely and heard Maggie Dobbs from the school say, ‘She’s got someone coming to stay. A vagabond or someone, what’s got no home and’s just off drugs. That’s what I heard on the bus Saturday.’

Muriel dallied no longer. Surely they couldn’t be talking about Anna? Not a drug addict in the rectory? Surely not. She wouldn’t, would she? When she thought about those green eyes of hers and how direct they were, she had a nasty sneaking feeling that taking in a waif and stray would be just what she’d do. She wouldn’t tell Ralph. He’d say she was listening to dangerous gossip and dismiss it. But it was surprising how many times gossip turned out to be true. A tramp in Caroline’s lovely house. It didn’t bear thinking about.

Ralph didn’t come home for lunch and she wished he would. It was four o’clock before she heard him coming in through the back door. It occurred to her they’d need to lock their doors twenty-four/seven, as the Americans would say, if Anna brought a down-and-out to the village.

She called out as brightly as she could, ‘Tea, Ralph?’

‘Yes, please.’

As she put the tea tray down, Muriel looked at Ralph and decided he was a better colour, not that kind of puce shade his cheeks went when he got too angry. ‘Where have you been, dear? If I might ask?’

‘You may, of course. I’ve been in Culworth to the Abbey and were told that we’d got Anna allocated and there was no one else available. The number of ordinands being what it is.’

‘I see.’

‘What does that mean, Muriel, my dear?’

‘Nothing. I was thinking, that’s all.’

‘Mmm.’

Muriel poured his tea for him, and kept the biscuits well away because of his diet. She bit into her fruity shortbread and chewed it, there was nothing quite like a shortb—

‘They were implacable. I told them what she was planning. I said, is this the way we have to go?’

‘And?’

‘All I got was a nod.’

‘Right, then. We must put a brave face on it and let her get on with it.’

‘I think we’ll go abroad. Somewhere warm for the winter, for several months.’

Muriel swallowed the last of her biscuit, drank a few sips of her tea and said, a mite challengingly, ‘I didn’t know Templetons ran away from trouble. I wouldn’t have married you if I’d known that.’

‘Muriel! No one can accuse me of running away from anything. Ever.’

‘You are now.’

‘I am not. I am merely thinking of you and the winter weather.’

‘And I’m thinking of missing lovely frosty mornings, when the trees are silver all over, and the children make a slide of that water-leak on the Green, which they never manage to cure. And the days when the pond is frozen over and the silly geese are sliding all over the ice, wondering why they can’t swim as they usually do. And snuggling down in my nice warm bed with the curtains drawn and lying against your warm back and warming my cold feet on your legs.’

‘Muriel! Stop it. If I want to run away I shall.’

‘In that case you’ll have to go on your own, because I’m not going. Most emphatically. Do you hear? I’m not going. Someone has to stay here and fight. If you’re not ready for a fight, well, I am. Where shall you go?’ Calmly she poured herself another cup of tea, popped a drop more milk in it and waited for her bombshell to land.

Ralph was aghast. He placed his hands on the arms of his leather chair, straightened his back and looked at her. He was devastated, she could see that. It was the very first time in their married life together that she had stood firm and refused to do what he proposed. He couldn’t believe it. What on earth had happened to his world today? The village that he loved was about to be strung up and put out to die, and his wife, his beloved wife, his childhood sweetheart, was refusing to go to sunnier climes to avoid watching from the sidelines as their village was ruined. Not Muriel, she wouldn’t do any such thing now, would she? A bit of persuasion, a bit of flattery and hey presto!

‘My dear, you know I couldn’t manage without you on a long trip. Who’d remember to look in the drawers before we checked out? Who’d know where we’d put our passports?’

‘You.’

‘Where we should go? What ruin we needed to visit? Which restaurant we should eat at? I couldn’t manage without you. Think of the sun glittering on the sea, the delight of silvery sand trickling between your toes—’

‘You don’t like silvery sand getting between your toes. You hate it.’

‘I do. I do. But please, Muriel. It wouldn’t be the same pleasure without you and your wonderfully innocent outlook on the world.’

‘I’m sorry, Ralph, but that’s it. Absolutely not. The whole winter. No.’

Ralph placed his cup and saucer very firmly on the tray. ‘Why are you being so awkward? So difficult? I’m offering you the whole winter in New Zealand or South America, or … wherever, think about it.’

‘I shan’t. Because I’m not going and no amount of persuasion will make me go. We’re needed here. She’s not a dragon, simply someone with a mind of her own, but somehow maybe we can mould it, if we stay. If we go, then we can’t. Anna’s not all bad. She’s a lovely girl. Her eyes and her hair are very striking.’