Amenable Women

by Mavis Cheek

  Matthew Arnold was quite right. How she had longed to end her funeral oration with:

  Spare me the whispering, crowded room,

  The friends who come, and gape, and go;

  The ceremonious air of gloom –

  All which makes death a hideous show!

  Thank heavens it was all over.

  All around her was the light and air of April promise. Oh for something cheerful to happen. Or something extraordinary. Something that would push her back into the real world after this sombre piece of theatre. Charles Hammick, one of the guns, was guiding Theresa Hammick carefully around the edge of the grave. How wonderful it would be if one of them fell in. Or both. That, at least, would be something. If Dilly Davies had been here she might well have done – given her proclivities – but she was not – nor was Ewan Davies her husband. They were having their usual spring three-weeks break apart as usual. Dilly was put on a cruise liner bound for – well – she never knew or seemed to care where and came back looking lovelier than ever in her bronzage – and Ewan was bound for his beloved Ireland and the salmon. An ordinary, quiet, wholly understandable pastime from which he returned looking pinker and slightly plumper – and even more ordinary. All three of which Flora thought suited him. Suited him very well. And if Dilly had fallen into the open grave it would have suited Flora very well, too. Very well indeed. She sighed. If only . . .

  Hilary had her arm through Flora’s and put her head on Flora’s shoulder thereby banishing any further thoughts of graveside fun. ‘Well, I thought that was just lovely,’ she said, and kissed the top of Hilary’s heaving head.

  ‘Did you like my speech?’

  ‘It was the high spot, Hil, the high spot.’ Hilary nodded into Flora’s chest. ‘I thought it was pretty good. What Dad would have wanted.’ Flora nodded back and off they went. Nobody fell into the hole and still Flora had not cried.

  As they walked the short distance to The Lodge Flora mused that all this was what came of having had separate bedrooms for the last four years. Liberate Your Marriage the pundits suggested. The theory was that each marital moment was desired because one had to ask for it. Since at that point in the Chapman household marital moments were a bit on the wane anyway, Edward pointed the notion out in the newspaper and they thought it might be a good idea. Flora enjoyed some strange and amusing visions, which she kept to herself, of Edward appearing at her bedroom door wearing a paisley dressing gown and a wicked leer, possibly toting a thin moustache – which persuaded her that the experiment might have its fun side. Edward remained in the bedroom at the front and she moved to the larger of the two guest bedrooms at the back. She cast a hopeful eye at Hilary’s room – but they still pretended she might come home one day. Edward hopeful, Flora praying not. Children grew up and left home so that adults who had been forced to act like adults while their children were living at home, could revert to childhood themselves, was what she thought. Apart from a parent like Edward, of course, who had never quite grown up in the first place. Perhaps that was why Hilary liked him so much.

  Flora made her new bedroom comfortable – which was perhaps the wrong way of looking at it given it was supposed to encourage something altogether more hotblooded. She painted it pale peach and installed pretty blinds. It looked perfectly reasonable. But then – in a sudden flush of potentially hotblooded expectations – she went mad and a ordered a fluffy white carpet, the kind of carpet favoured by ageing Hollywood grandedames. Hormones were such a useful excuse for any lively behaviour in a mother of a certain age. Flora deflected any further criticism from Hilary by looking her firmly in the eye and beginning a sentence that seemed likely to involve sex and her parents – at which point Hilary turned on the coffee grinder, and that was that.

  Flora and Edward went through the Lancelot and Guinevere motions at first, both of them trying to be full of sexy longing, then they tried sexy fun – (though no paisley cravat nor seductive leer nor moustache appeared) – and flirtatious dalliance with each other. It was, Flora thought, bowel-freezingly embarrassing and must – surely – have had Edward diving into his pillow in silent laughter just as she did. She tried to overcome the humour of it and – despite its being shepherd’s pie and peas or spaghetti bolognaise – to sashay past him at meal times. She tried wearing musky scent (a winner, apparently, if your marriage is jaded for it apparently reproduces the female aroma though Flora could not recognise her own which was more, to put it kindly, of the sea) and he tried to show her a good time – but the reality was that gradually, gradually all marital moments in the bedroom ceased and his insomnia and her chattering and laughing in her sleep, were left to disturb no one. If they did surprise themselves with the odd foray into conjugality, it was on the sofa downstairs and rather friendly and innocuous and tended, oddly, to happen during Planet Earth or when Climbing the Eiger was over. The sofa and the sitting room were obviously still seen as joint territory. No more of that, either. Didn’t women crumble away to dust without a regular seeing to? Hope not, she thought, as they reached the front door. The first person to come forward and greet Flora was Lucy Stevens, with her pink nose from crying. Lucy adored Edward and spoke of him to Flora as the father she never had. Lucy helped her off with her shawl saying, ‘Haven’t seen this before and I’ll bet you’re glad that’s over,’ all in the same breath of apparent solicitude. This gesture would have been very nice if as usual – Lucy Stevens had not paused to check the garment’s label, give the fabric the once over and feel the material before shaking her head and hanging it in the lobby cupboard. With Lucy Stevens as a cleaner, Flora was constantly giving her head a little shake too, as if to dislodge a particularly confusing piece of behaviour. She did so now as she walked towards the sitting room. Lucy must go. At the doorway she took a deep breath, turned, and set her face in as sombre mode as she could to receive her well-wishers.

  Mrs Graves and her daughter attended on the guests with wonderfully solemn faces. Mrs Graves kept her bun-shaped hat on, presumably as a sign of respect, and Flora found herself wondering if there was anything in the world so comforting as the sight of a woman of any age between fifty and a hundred, wearing a slightly stretched dark cardigan, floppy navy trousers and an indoor hat – and handing round a tray of mixed drinks including a very brown-looking sherry of her own choosing (over which she had fought with Giles and won, Mrs Graves being something of an expert on sherry and Functions as she put it).

  There was not, Flora decided. Right now it was the most comforting sight in the Universe. As was the same image but attached to a younger version of same – of the daughter Martha – following on, also in cardigan and trousers but with a perky black beret on the back of her head and a tray of rigid bridge rolls containing tinned salmon and a very extraordinarily textured slice of cucumber.

  It was pointed out to Flora many years ago by Mrs Graves that in her Mrs Beeton Book it said that hats should always be worn unless the occasion was informal like family tea. Like so many things in this microcosmic village it was absorbed as verity and not considered worthy of comment.

  As she looked about her at the respectful post-funerary assembled, she wondered what they would say if she told them in her funeral words that Edward called her Bun Face – and that she always felt hurt when he did. Even after thirty years it still hurt. She would have liked to tell them that it was one hell of a relief not to have to suffer that any more . . . But she warned herself to do no such thing . . . Dignity is all, she seemed to hear a voice saying, dignity and docility is the way forward – it has been so for millennia and no doubt would continue so forever.

  Even sorting through Edward’s desk during the days that followed his funeral was more wearying than sorrowing. His paperwork was in more order than several apple pies, and if she hoped to find a little mystery there was none. Most of the creative stuff she had seen before – the ‘Jottings of a Country Gent’ and his poetry. ‘Ah! Sweet Hurcott on Auburn nothing hath . . .’ and other equally queasy stuff. But when she f
ound the beginning chapters and notes of the History of Hurcott her curiosity got the better of her. There it lay in its neat buff folder. She sat in his leather chair, feet up on the disgusting elephant’s foot he insisted on keeping for the purpose (Well – it’s dead now, been dead a good long while, no point getting het up about the rights and wrongs of it) and read the opening lines of The History of Hurcott Ducis.

  ‘Let us begin at the beginning,’ he wrote, ‘and with Lodge Cottage. Lodge Cottage, in the pretty village of Hurcott Ducis, is the home of the writer’. Which writer? she wondered. And then realised he meant himself. She itched to find a pencil and cross out ‘Let us begin at the beginning’ and ‘the writer’ and substitute ‘my’ – but what was the point? Instead she went on reading and it was as if Edward, at his worst, was there in the room.

  ‘The writer has ascertained that the current dwelling is sited on what was once the gatehouse, or something akin to that function, to the Priory of St Athanasius, Athanasius being one of four great Greek doctors of the church . . .’ Edward then wrote most fully on the subject of the four Greek doctors . . . Oh how often Flora had wished the Encyclopaedia Britannica to hell, and Oh the pretence that they had bought it for Hilary’s use.

  Flora liked digging around things and the surprise of discovery. She was happy to be humble with people who knew more than her and she liked mysteries. Edward did not very much care for anyone knowing more than he did . . . She remembered Giles’s face stern with suppressed emotion, standing at the graveside and saying the exact opposite. ‘He was a man of great achievements and great modesty.’ Flora swallowed hard and went back to the History. It was safest.

  ‘The writer,’ wrote Edward, ‘has discovered that some of the old Priory’s stones were used in various ways – some to build the church of St Lawrence in the Village and some to rebuild parts of the outlying walls to the Priory, now a Manor and renamed Hurcott Hall . . .

  ‘The gatehouse was considerably refurbished and adapted into a residence to house the estate overseer (from where this writer now writes). The whole might well have stayed in the family had not Thomas Hurcott been heard to say some treasonable things in 1539 about the King of England . . . In consequence Thomas was executed and his family turned out. The Crown reclaimed the estate, including the modernised gatehouse, and it became part of the divorce settlement given to Henry’s fourth wife, Anne of Cleves, sometimes known rather amusingly as the Flanders Mare on account of her exceeding ugliness . . .’

  On reading that, Flora remembered Aunt Helen’s words, ‘Very plain . . . Big boned . . . Never married again.’ So Edward went to his death thinking it was perfectly acceptable to find the term ‘Flanders Mare’ amusing. Mind you, he had also gone to his death thinking it was perfectly all right to call his wife

  Bun Face. Insults down the ages, she thought, how little has changed.

  ‘After her divorce Anne of Cleves stayed occasionally at Hurcott Hall and was said to be fond of it in winter months because it was a warm building. This was on account of the brick and the angling of the windows which . . .’

  There followed a long and technical description about why the Hall might be warmer than many. Flora skipped it and read on. ‘Anne of Cleves also enjoyed her Palace at Richmond, her Castle at Hever and her manor at Bletchingley. At first Richmond, Bletchingley and Hurcott were said to be her most frequently used homes but later she used Dartford which Henry VIII developed into a much more modern and convenient home in 1541, and which was also endowed to Anne of Cleves. Hurcott gradually fell out of favour as Dartford had no Great Hall and could not, therefore, be opened for Banqueting and was therefore, with her reduced income, a much cheaper option . . .’

  He then went on to write in some detail about the decline in the Tudor economy which suffered severe inflation (quite a lot of statistics here) during the second half of the century. Flora thought there might be similarities between herself and Anne of Cleves for apparently the ex-Queen’s allowance was cut once her ex-husband Henry died – and Flora was aware that she would miss, paltry though it was, Edward’s Heron ‘shilling’. But Anne sounded practical and sensible, at least.

  It was oddly comforting, as if Edward were still in the room though he would not have countenanced her quietly reading through the pages. An idea began to sprout. Edward had left behind a good many notes and a pile of expensive-looking books. Widows had done things like this down the ages. They took their deceased husband’s raw magnum opus and made something of it. She couldn’t think of an example, but then, they might not all have been acknowledged. Flora found herself smiling again at the thought. She could be very methodical, and imaginative. And, if she applied herself, so she daydreamed, why – then – when it was done she might be hailed, after all, as the brilliant, clever Flora Chapman whom nobody had quite realised was so scintillatingly talented. A very nice little fantasy. It might even make Hilary sit up and take notice. That would be very nice.

  Among all Edward’s dry-as-dust listings about Hurcott was mention of a date-carved stone set in the remains of the original estate boundary walls. This was the wall, much added to and improved and rebuilt where necessary which now made the boundary of the new estate of houses behind Lodge Cottage. Flora had no idea that such a stone even existed. Perhaps he had made it up? But Edward would never do such a thing – as with the crossword, so with his facts, he was a stickler for truth. Flora was sure that if he wrote that there was a stone then a stone there must be.

  Well, he obviously found the existence of such an artifact about as dull as he found Flora – for he made no further attempt to explain or conjecture or locate it. Nor did he try to explain the singular fact that the stone was carved with the date of 1557 but had, judging by the style of it and according to a highly respected nineteenth-century antiquarian, been carved perhaps forty years or more later. And there Edward left it, wanting to get on to the next bit – the pattern of the drainage and old field system – rather than dwell and linger over such a fascinating little nugget.

  Lying back against Edward’s old leather chair and chewing her pencil end, she thought how odd it was that Anne of Cleves – who was vaguely involved in their marriage beginnings – was now raising her head at the end of it. One does not look for signs, Flora told herself firmly, but sometimes they happen and sometimes they bring an odd kind of comfort. Flora began to think of Anne almost as an old friend, or at least an ally. A Flanders Mare and a Bun Face. Certainly if she and Flora sat together across a bottle of Chardonnay they would have quite a lot to talk about. ‘After Anne of Cleves’s death in 1557 the lands and outbuildings, together with the main house, were returned to the Hurcott family, whose Catholic views were acceptable again now that Mary I – Bloody Mary – was on the throne of England. Thomas Capel was steward. That cruel Queen died in the following year and the house and lands were once more given in long lease to good Protestants, the Bryans. Whereupon the Capels wisely converted. The Bryans held it until 1595 when the last of the family died and the lease passed back to the Crown. It was said that Queen Elizabeth I had a fondness for the place and visited it in her last years, but there is no confirmation of this and she was something of an age by then and it is highly unlikely she would make such a journey . . .’

  How typical of Edward, thought Flora, to add that bit about Elizabeth and her age. He always referred to the no longer young women of the village as the Old Ladies, as if they were in shawls, rocking chairs and the last stages of dotage. Not that he did so to their faces, of course. Even Edward was not that silly, which is why they all loved him and why Flora sometimes thought she would go off pop if she didn’t tell them how he insulted them behind their backs. She never did. Bun-faces were born to be kind. But had Edward been sitting here now Flora would have pointed out to him that the Old Queen had a lively reputation for keeping the young men at court dancing to her tune long after her teeth and her hair had fallen out. For all Edward knew, Elizabeth was happy and energetic well into her sixties – playi
ng the femme fatale and living it up. Oh yes if he were in the room with her – she looked around hurriedly but he was not – she most definitely would have pointed this out . . . How brave she was now that he was no longer here. Being bereaved was a little like the morning after the night’s party before when you think of all the things you might have said.

  ‘The original gatehouse was razed to the ground in 1709 and a new lodge built in the manner of Wren. I am indebted to Mr Joseph Farrell and his history of some of the buildings in and around Hurcott Ducis (price £1.20p and available in St Lawrence’s) for some of this detailed information.’ Flora smiled at this careful acknowledgement. ‘Some of’ was highly significant. If there was one other person who took himself more seriously than Edward, it was Mr Joseph Farrell – although nowadays he must be over ninety. Mr Joseph Farrell would brook no nonsense when it came to being acknowledged in even such a humble history as Edward’s. Joe Farrell had moved away now, but he had his spies, no doubt.

  Edward concluded his chapter on the history and environs of his own house with ‘Thus it is that the outer wall of the estate is the only remaining feature of what was once the grand and noble Priory of St Athanasius – a wall that is a reminder of the long and chequered history of both the great estate and the present writer’s own humble home of Lodge Cottage.’ It was then that Flora, about to turn the page, felt unwonted expectation and fervently hoped that her deceased husband had not yielded to the urge to quote ‘Ozymandias’. Oh please God no, she thought. She turned the page. He had. Pound to a penny. There it was. Yet again. Edward could adapt ‘Ozymandias’ for any occasion and had once declaimed a couple of its lines to Hilary’s geography teacher when proof was produced that Hilary, far from being persecuted with detentions by same, had not given in any homework for over a month and showed little aptitude for the subject. Edward raised a finger and fixed the mild-countenanced Mr Frobisher with gimlet eye and said ‘I met a traveller from an antique land/Who said: Two vast and trunkless legs of stone/Stand in the desert . . .’ Which came as a great surprise to Mr Frobisher who was not a great one for English literature. Nor, really, was Edward, but it was something Flora had once quoted to him in the early days and he liked the ringing tone of it. He learned it off by heart. How she wished he had not.