‘Yes,’ Alice said.
‘I do. How could you leave us all in the lurch like this? Henry’s got so pompous I think I’ll have to knife him. It’s only kind. I’m calling him Eustace in the mean time so I expect he’ll knife me first. Allie,’ Juliet said, bursting into fresh tears, ‘it’s such a relief to see you even if I think your behaviour so detestable that I can’t think how it can be.’
Alice poured them both a glass of wine.
‘I’m doing the school run,’ Juliet said. ‘I really shouldn’t. Blubbing and booze makes me quite incapable of anything except more blubbing and booze. Are you pleased to see me?’
‘Tremendously.’
‘Have you got new friends?’
‘One. And I’m planning another.’
‘Don’t like them too much—’
‘That’s not very kind.’
‘I don’t want to be kind,’ Juliet said, ‘I want to punish you like mad.’
Alice took Juliet all over the cottage and explained what she was going to do with it. Juliet said it hardly seemed worth it.
‘It isn’t just a cottage,’ Alice said.
Juliet said too right, it wasn’t. They got Charlie up from his rest and took him down to the kitchen, and he sat in his highchair, damp with sleep, and yawned at his lunch. Alice gave Juliet more wine and made omelettes and they talked about Cecily and Martin and the Unwins, and when Juliet said she really must go, really, truly, she came and put her arms round Alice and kissed her, a thing she had almost never done, and then she drove away in the rain, waving and waving.
When she had gone, Alice took Charlie into the sitting room and put him on the floor with his cars and the garage she had made him out of a grocery carton. Then she brought in coal and wood and newspapers to light a fire before the children came back from school, and knelt by Charlie, blowing at the kindling. When it had flared up comfortably, she sat back on her heels and watched the flames and Charlie crawled into her lap and offered her a police car. She put her arms round him and laid her cheek on his warm head. Even as she sat there, holding Charlie, Clodagh was somewhere above her, above those relentless grey clouds, flying alone to New York. Alice shut her eyes. Clodagh. To be remembered always with pain and thankfulness.
THE END
A Village Affair Page 27
