EQMM, February 2008

by Dell Magazine Authors

  As any good wife would have done, Mrs. Paraly swore to stay silent and keep her nose out of Cherry Garth Farm matters. Then, as even good wives will, she did what she thought best. Her excuse was that she had been visiting Betty Barney for years—both Gordon and Sophie Farrow addressed her as Auntie—and it would look very odd if she stopped doing so.

  She and Betty had a weekly chinwag in the kitchen and Mary went home with a dozen fresh eggs from free-range fowls, often with scraps of straw or a leaf stuck to the shell, proving them genuine. Always paid for, PC Paraly insisted on that; he'd owe favors to nobody.

  Kimberly wasn't around when Mary called. Gone back to Gurnard Wells to collect her final week's pay, an all-day job if you used the bus—it ran at three-hourly intervals and the journey took an age.

  Mary Paraly had stayed awake for too many nights not to have her approach worked out. She was determined, “all innocent like, just talking,” to let Betty know somebody guessed that all was not as it seemed. Wasn't it a worry—Mary suggested during small talk—that the daft girl might have an accident around the place? Not being wise to country ways, and head full of makeup and pop songs and that. “Just what you need, so busy and all, an invalid on your hands. And there'd be an investigation, most likely."

  Betty nonplussed her by laughing good-naturedly. “Small chance of that, thank goodness. Madam never stirs far from the house. Won't go near the stock, of course. Not even the hens—I liked looking after them when I was her age. Not her! Tried showing her the ropes and she said the fowls were looking at her crosswise, reckoned they have cruel faces. As if hens had faces ... She makes me smile, does Kimberly."

  Mary took leave to doubt that. Reading her friend's expression, Betty Barney shrugged and pulled a face. “Can't say I am any fonder of her, but I am getting used to Madam. Not listening to her prattle helps, it's no worse than having a radio on all day. Or a budgie chirping. Bit o’ company while Tom's in the fields, same as a budgie would be.” Mrs. Barney sounded genuinely if grudgingly indulgent.

  She slid a laden baking sheet into the oven and closed its door gently. “Now we can have a brew. Put the kettle on while I clear away.” She'd been making pastry at the scrubbed pine table. Mary felt herself blush a few minutes later when Betty said playfully, “You are wondering what I am up to, giving that little chit house room, don't deny it."

  "No! Well ... I'd never have put you top of the tree for turning the other cheek.” A game recovery: mutual liking was based on straight talk and a change of style would have roused the other woman's suspicion.

  "Simple,” Betty Barney claimed. “Now Mary, this is stric'ly between ourselves. Breathe a word of it and we shall fall out.... I have had my thinking cap on, and the long and short of it is I went about things wrong, saying that silly girl isn't fit to be his wife. He has to find out for himself and I intend that he shall."

  Her Gordon and Kimberly Stottle had been courting for several months since he'd dropped poor Sophie, but what did that amount to, Mrs. Barney demanded. A total of a few hours a week, with his sweetheart always at her best.

  "He hasn't had a chance to tire of her. My son's not wholly a fool, and given day after day here with Madam, she will get on his nerves. He has a week's leave when the training's over, and seven days with nothing but talk of how bored she is without him, or does he prefer her in pink or green and all that carry-on, should do the trick.

  "He rings her from the barracks every night he can, and she does nothing but whine about missing him and can't he ask them to let him off the army on account of the hardship to her. If he isn't thoroughly sick of Kimberly by the end of his leave, I shall be very much surprised."

  Persuasive, Mary considered. Young love can be too intense to blaze long. Sometimes a luckless pair discovered that after the honeymoon; sad, to say the least. ("I don't hold with all this living out of wedlock,” she digressed, halting up the narrative, “but it can save no end of misery for some.")

  PC Paraly's wife went home with her new-laid eggs and a lot to ponder. She was a little easier in her mind, though not much. Maybe Betty Barney's scheme was, as she vowed, to destroy Kimberly's appeal. Maybe. But Mary had played against Betty at countless village hall whist drives. The woman never betrayed clues to whether her cards were good or bad.

  Meanwhile Jim Paraly discounted Mary's fears. Betty Barney wouldn't take extreme action against Sophie's detested rival—because it would not be necessary. He'd been in the army during World War II and remembered what uniform did to him and the rest. Attitudes altered, tastes changed, new friendships were forged, sometimes with available girls. He believed the process was similar in peacetime.

  Distance, as the poet nearly wrote, can lend disenchantment to the view.... Attractive as Kimberly was—in a backwater without strong competition—rookie Private Barney's absence might end her spell.

  In any case, Miss Stottle would soon tire of living with her future in-laws at the back of beyond. Free board and lodging was all very fine, but Kim required makeup and fan magazines and lord knew what rubbish besides, and even she lacked the nerve to demand pocket money. He bet that she would be back among the fashion shops, hairdressing salons, and record stores of Gurnard Wells before Christmas.

  Gordon came home briefly when basic training was over. “'Twas just as I said,” his mother reported to Mary Paraly afterwards. “The poor lad was tired out after that long journey and thin as a rail—army food's terrible, he says. Madam was badgering him to take her to the disco at the Wells before his feet were under my table. You could tell he was fed up, and that was within ten minutes of her."

  Wishful thinking, however: Gordon continued phoning and writing to Kim, and she remained under his parents’ roof. “I hadn't bargained on Kim finding a job in the village,” Jim admitted. “Worked afternoons in the post-office shop, and that took care of her pin money."

  Quite soon Lance-corporal Barney, pleased with the new, lonely stripe on his sleeve, was home again. Embarkation leave this time, he'd been posted to West Germany. Kimberly Stottle wailed that it wasn't fair.

  Both embarrassed and flattered by her grief, Gordon said he'd get leave before she knew it, possibly only four or five months hence ... “Five months?” Kimberly shrieked. “That's dreadful, Gordie! Five months is ... uh, ever so many weeks."

  "Made the most ridiculous scene,” Betty Barney told Mary Paraly. “Quite spoilt my Gordon's homecoming, carrying on that way. Sophie happened to drop in while he was home, he was ever so pleased to see her.” (Happened my foot, the listener thought. You arranged it.) “Must have made a welcome change from precious Kimberly's tantrums and waterworks. But it's not too late to put things right and I told him so on the quiet. He could have Sophie back with a snap of his fingers."

  "How did he take that?"

  Betty scowled and changed the subject. In Mary's opinion the familiarity-breeding-contempt ploy was a failure—if indeed it had been the scheme and not camouflage for a more sinister checkmating of the interloper. Betty's overt confession had been a bit too glib for Mary's taste, and her concern revived.

  * * * *

  PC Paraly was easy in mind, however. Things seemed to have settled down at Cherry Garth Farm; presumably its matriarch had accepted the inevitable. He took to asking, mock anxiously when Mary returned with her dozen eggs, whether Betty had pushed Kim into the combine harvester yet, or was it burial alive in the silage pit? Things jogged along, as they say in those parts, but there were developments. Gordon Barney, a full corporal by then, came back on leave from Germany. He consoled fretful Kim by pointing out that his National Service was nearly half over, only another year to go. But then the Korean War broke out and conscript service was extended.

  "He didn't get nearer the fighting than Japan, a place called Kure where there was a big supply base,” Mary recalled. “But he was the far side of the world and wouldn't be back in a hurry.

  "I don't know whether she lost heart or just decided to, like, hibernate until he got back, bu
t that girl changed. It was as much as Kim could do to put a comb through her hair, bother with a bit of lipstick, and that wasn't like her at all. Everybody said the life had gone out of her.

  "Do her justice, Kim wasn't flighty. She loved Gordon right enough. Naturally, Betty tried persuading her to go dancing or see a film in Gurnard Wells and link up with her friends there—it'd cheer Kim up. Tom could run her there in the car, pick her up later, it was no trouble...

  "Hah! Trouble for Kimberly Stottle, though. His cunning mum would be writing to Gordon that the girl played fast and loose behind his back. Only that fox didn't run; Kim wasn't interested, just sat around like a wet weekend, piping her eye over the latest letter from Japan.

  "I told Betty straight, it was downright wicked to set such traps. Serve her right that all she'd done was prove that the girl was devoted to Gordon. Betty looked guilty and swore she'd just felt sorry for the kid and meant no harm. I could see she hadn't given up."

  The change was so gradual that Mary Paraly took months to notice it. Doing her shopping in town and seldom using the village store with its higher prices, she saw little of Kimberly.

  Then ... “I was up by the war memorial and spotted Sophie Farrow going into the baker's. I called her name but she took no notice. When I looked again, a bit put out, it wasn't Sophie—it was Kimberly! From the back, with a beret on, you'd be hard put to tell one from t'other."

  An expectant pause. Plainly Mr. and Mrs. Paraly were disappointed by what they considered a bombshell leaving me unimpressed. “Ah, he doesn't understand, you left that out, luv,” said Jim. “The thing is, Sophie was bonny in her way but what you might call hefty."

  "Big-boned,” Mary amended loyally. “Not fat fat, but cuddly."

  "Whereas Kimberly was slender—except where she wasn't,” said Jim. He didn't smack his lips but there was a wistful glint in the eye. “Slender and well-turned. That was her advantage over the local girls Gordon was used to. This was before the diets craze and young lasses wanting to be stick insects. Most country girls ate hearty and it showed.

  "Mary came home full of how Kim was putting on weight, but that was stale news. I'd look in the shop most days, what with buying baccy and the local paper, and I'd seen the way Kimberly was going. The double chin came first, then her whole face got rounder. And she kept growing—in every direction bar up, that's to say.

  "No, she wasn't in the family way, if that is the conclusion you are jumping to."

  "Wash your mouth out, nasty old man! She was a good girl, not even Betty could pretend otherwise."

  Ex-PC Paraly nodded impatiently. “All I meant, it was eating hearty and not goings-on ... Kim stopped painting her face so much and didn't bother with fancy hairdos and high heels, but that wasn't what had stopped her being belle of the ball. No, them extra pounds, a potato sack of them, turned her ordinary."

  "All Betty Barney's doing,” Mary crowed. “That woman could cook for England. I have a light hand with pastry but Betty left me for dead. Sponge cakes you had to keep a fork on to stop them floating up in the air, she was that good. And not just pastry—anything from Cottage Pie to Toad in the Hole was the best you'd ever taste.

  "It came to me in a flash, that was what she'd meant in church that day, telling Sophie not to fret. I felt such a fool. Remember me saying there's more ways of killing a cat than choking it with cream? Daft old proverb, only Betty was out to kill the cat that way, kill the romance anyway. Fatten Kim up and the spell would be broken, that was her game. Only another woman would think of it. Young fellows fall in love through their eyes, and fall out again if what they see don't please them."

  "Kimberly getting portly, there's no other word for it, crept up on her,” said Jim. “It wasn't like she ballooned out overnight. But Gordon had been away for so long that it was bound to be a shaker for him. Put him off Kim, though, if he was truly sweet on her? I couldn't see that happening."

  "I could, and so could Betty Barney. She did it under my nose when I went up to Cherry Garth to check. Brazen, with a look daring me to say anything..."

  Mary Paraly contrived to be late collecting her eggs, and she was still in the farm kitchen when Kimberly got back from work. Mary's nostrils had been twitching for quite a while. Steak and kidney pie, Betty informed her, coming along nicely.

  Kimberly made an oddly matronly figure for a twenty-year-old, her shop overall straining at the buttonholes. When she went to her room to freshen up before the evening meal, Mary heard the staircase creak under the weight.

  She and Kim, in a shapeless cardigan evidently borrowed from ample Mummy Barney, had been chatting for a minute when Betty apologised for being a bit behind with supper. “I know how sharp-set you must be, Kimmie, after serving all them customers. This'll tide you over.” The scones, split open, were hot enough from the baking for thick butter to be melting fast as Mary watched.

  "Two scones, mark you, four halves. Betty said something to me and next time I looked, the plate was empty and Kim was brushing crumbs off her cardie. Talk about the vanishing trick! Then Betty gave her meat pie with three veg and gravy, making my tummy rumble. ‘Treacle pudding for afters, Kimmie, your favorite,’ she said."

  Kimberly's jaws were too busy for more than an eager nod. Walking Mary to the front gate, Betty Barney was a shade defensive. “Can't have her pining away waiting, Madam has to be built up."

  Or as Mary put it, decades afterwards, “She'd got the poor girl hooked, same as those dreadful drug barons do. It was her plan from the start. Kim watched her weight when she moved in, but it would take a saint to resist Betty's food. After Gordon got that long posting overseas—well, I read a bit in a magazine once about comfort eating ... The wretched girl had no chance."

  It was late summer when Mary saw this non-force feeding in action. Gordon Barney was due home in December. November found Miss Stottle renewing interest in her appearance. She went to Gurnard Wells and invested in the latest hairstyle. She investigated a number of boutiques and fashion stores—and was observed leaving them looking crestfallen.

  Alarmed too late, she went on a diet.

  "Betty was all for it,” said Mary, torn between amusement and indignation. “But she took to leaving strawberry shortcake and cheese straws and suchlike near the girl, and let nature take its course.... I saw them go by in the car, off to Handley Cross to meet Gordon's train, and my heart fair went out to Kim. She looked nearly as big as Betty, and Betty was a substantial woman."

  "Porky,” Jim Paraly affirmed, before relating the climax of the conspiracy. He heard all about it later from henpecked Tom Barney...

  * * * *

  Once the ecstatic clinches were over, former Corporal Barney seemed subdued and thoughtful, making his mother smile. He sat in front, beside his father: not enough car room for three on the backseat, though once there had been.

  Back at the farm, Kimberly held Gordon's hand at every opportunity. A watchful, secretly gloating Mummy Barney noted that Kim's free hand stayed busy forking in or spooning up the welcome-home feast. Happiness had swept away good resolutions. Even better, Betty Barney noted Gordon noting his loved one's appetite.

  Kim excused herself after finishing a sizeable portion of rich cream trifle. She wanted to change into her best before going to the Sun in Splendor, where Gordon's pals were eager to catch up on his adventures. Mrs. Barney jerked her chin at Tom Barney and he obeyed the mute order—but stayed outside the room to listen.

  "How do you think she's looking, Gordon? Have I looked after her well or have I not? Your Kimberly is blooming."

  "Mum, you're an angel. I was worried when you nagged her into coming here, thought there'd be trouble. But you've treated her as your own, anyone can see that.” Fanciful, yet Tom Barney sensed his wife boggling. The lad was full of enthusiasm.

  "Y'know, I've loved Kim from the minute we met. Only there used to be ... I dunno, there was this, like shadow at the back of my mind, just an impression, of something not right. You've made her perfect, Mum! Ki
m's just like you now, a right good armful, a real woman."

  Eavesdropping Tom winced and took an automatic step backwards at the metallic note in his wife's next words. He thought of it as That Voice.

  "Proper woman? She is naught but an empty-headed chit. I shall say it again, you muttonhead: SHE WILL NEVER MAKE A FARMER'S WIFE."

  Oh dear, now Gordon was in for it. Nothing altered, the long argument revived, with Tom the grain between their millstones. Gordon could make a mule seem the model of willingness to go along with others. Some traits are genetic.

  Tom Barney found that he was wrong. Instead of exploding, Gordon said, “It doesn't matter at present, Mum—being a farmer's wife. I have decided that farming can wait. Dad and you are in your prime, so there's no hurry. Now I have seen a bit of the world I fancy more, at government expense. I have signed on again, twelve-year engagement. They promised me promotion and my pick of foreign postings if I would.

  "Don't look like that. I shan't be that old by the time my twelve years is up. Come out with a good pension, take over here. Kim will be ready to settle down then, same as me."

  "What? You dolt, she won't wait another twelve days for you, let alone twelve years. And I won't have her living off the fat of the land, neither. Madam will be out tomorrow morning."

  Gordon, exasperatingly calm, advised his mother not to fly off the handle. Kim wouldn't have to wait out his army service. As Mrs. Sergeant Barney—Mrs. Regimental Sergeant Major Barney before too long, just watch—she'd be entitled to married quarters and roam with him. Kim could hardly wait to see foreign parts.

  "Betty was beaten, horse, foot, and artillery. Waterloo wasn't in it,” Jim Paraly chortled. “The joke being that she was the one as had brought it about. We'd all had the wrong end of the stick; he fell for Kim in spite of her being slim and dressed to kill, not because of. There, they do say chaps marry girls like their mothers ... and now Kim was like Gordon's.