‘Oh, we will,’ Marina said. ‘As soon as we can tell everyone.’
‘Archie?’
‘Archie.’
Liza picked up her wine glass and held it by the rim and looked down into it.
‘It isn’t personal, you know,’ she said. ‘It isn’t you. It’s anyone. It’s having his father all to himself, all his life, and no mother.’
Marina said, ‘I wouldn’t dream of mothering him. Or depriving him of his father in any way that is his.’
‘I know. I don’t think it has anything to do with logic.’
‘Of course not.’
Liza looked up.
‘He’s frightfully emotional, you see. He takes things to heart so much. When he loves people, he really loves them.’
She could feel silly, faintly tipsy tears pricking at the thought of Archie’s loving-heartedness.
‘I can see all that,’ Marina said.
Liza bent her head. She was filled at once with remorse at her recent behaviour towards Archie and a simultaneous and sudden recollection of Blaise O’Hanlon saying to her, ‘I’m in real pain.’ Marina watched her.
‘What is it?’
Liza said, ‘Oh. Oh, nothing really. Just some stupid cross-purposes—’
‘Your little boy?’
‘Thomas? Partly. And other things.’ Liza raised her head and said boldly, ‘Sometimes, I feel so inadequate. Archie’s so – so wholehearted, he lives so generously, he—’ She made a little negative gesture. ‘He’s such a thorough human being, if you know what I mean. And then I feel that I can’t measure up to the size of him. I am so much bolder away from him; I feel so much more confident. It’s almost as if he is—’ She stopped, and after a tiny pause said more firmly, ‘I know he isn’t judging me. I don’t mean that.’
Marina made a competent sign to a waiter for coffee.
‘What I don’t see,’ she said, ‘is why you should want to be like him. Why you aren’t pleased and proud to be yourself.’
Liza said, flattered, and thus without complete conviction, ‘England is absolutely full of girls like me.’
Marina said, laughing. ‘Don’t be absurd,’ and reached out and took Liza’s hand. ‘I think maybe you just need your husband to yourself. Maybe it’s time Archie was weaned off his father.’
‘Espresso,’ the waiter said, in caricature Italian, putting a tiny cup in front of each of them.
‘It isn’t that they aren’t both kind to me,’ Liza said earnestly. ‘It’s more—’ She paused, anxious to be quite fair and entirely honest. ‘It’s more that Archie feels his father understands everything about him so instinctively and, vice versa, that he doesn’t really need to try completely to understand me.’
Marina drank her coffee and wondered what it really was that Liza was trying to say. She knew from long experience what it was like to live with someone who baffled you, or denied you access to vital areas of themselves, and perhaps there were parts of Archie he had never transferred from his father’s guardianship to his wife’s. Perhaps, too, those things were in better hands with Andrew than with Liza? But Liza, Marina thought, watching her unwrap an almond biscuit from its tissue paper, wasn’t greedy; she just wanted what most humans wanted, to be loved and also to be acknowledged.
Although she perfectly well knew the answer to her next question, Marina leaned forward a little and said, ‘Do you think all this would be helped if I were to marry Andrew?’
Liza nodded vehemently.
‘Good,’ Marina said. ‘So do I.’
‘Does he talk about Archie much?’
‘Not an abnormal amount.’
Liza said with a tiny pride, ‘I was engaged to someone else when he met me.’
‘I know. I heard. He bore you off.’ Andrew had also said, ‘I was so relieved it was little Liza. Archie had had such a turbulent love life, violent enthusiasms followed by violent antipathies, everything from shop-girl waifs of seventeen to a terrifying divorcee of forty-four who prowled about after Archie simply growling with lust—’ Marina smiled at Liza. ‘Andrew was so pleased it was you.’ She leaned across the table again. ‘Now, my dear, we are going to a movie in a darling little movie theatre I have discovered full of armchairs. And then I shall make you promise solemnly to come and see me again soon. And then I shall let you go home.’
‘It’s been perfect,’ Liza said. She picked up the sleek carrier bag that held her new jersey and peered inside with a little sigh of contentment. ‘Should I tell Archie?’
‘About my marrying his father? No. No, I don’t think so. Wouldn’t you think it only right that his father should do that?’
Archie had resolved that he would not allow Liza’s day with Marina to become an issue. If she wanted to make a private mystery of it, he would let her, and would simply hope that whatever grievance it was that she had against him would become either clear to him, or evaporate. So he asked her about the practicalities of the day, envied the acclaimed French film she had seen, said, ‘Oh, Liza, it makes me think of Lucca,’ when she mentioned the gnocchi, and admired the jersey which was, as he said, a dozen cuts above any jersey that had ever entered Beeches House before. Then he kissed her, said, ‘I’m so glad it was fun,’ and went away to read C. S. Lewis to Mikey, leaving Liza in the kitchen feeling at once slightly superior and mildly frustrated.
When he came down, they had supper together and the telephone did not, for once, ring at all. They talked about incidents in the practice and incidents at Bradley Hall and not about Marina or Andrew or the threatened development. While Archie was peeling an apple, the telephone did ring at last, unable to contain itself, but it was not a patient for Archie, but Chrissie Jenkins, the Vicar’s wife, for Liza, who wanted to know if Liza would stand in for her at Sunday School this week, as her mother at Lymington was ill and she had to go down there for the day. Liza, thinking of the restaurant at lunchtime, the shop where Marina had bought her jersey, the luxurious plushy darkness of the cinema, and contrasting all these with Stoke Stratton village hall on a Sunday morning, and Lynne Tyler playing the sad, damp piano with several vital notes missing, said yes, without much grace.
‘I wouldn’t ask,’ Chrissie Jenkins said, whose whole life was dedicated to getting other people to do parish work in order to show the world that she was married to Colin and not to God, ‘if it wasn’t a bit of an emergency. She relies on me, you see, being a trained nurse.’
‘No, it’s fine,’ Liza said.
‘We’re doing the miracles this term. I expect little Imogen’s told you. It’s the feeding of the five thousand this week, and we were going to act it out. Lynne says she’ll bring brown bread cut into fish shapes, and will you bring white? And a little basket or two—’
‘Yes,’ Liza said. ‘Yes.’
‘Thank you ever so much,’ Chrissie said. ‘I know how you like to do your bit.’
‘Cow,’ Liza said, putting the telephone down.
It rang again at once, and this time it was Cyril Vinney, old Mrs Mossop’s son-in-law, to say his sciatica was so bad he didn’t know how he was going to make it through the night.
‘And the awful thing is,’ Archie said, collecting his bag, ‘that I wouldn’t much care if he didn’t.’
Stoke Stratton village hall had been built just after the war. It was a wooden-framed hut, gloomily creosoted, with metal window frames painted municipal-green. It consisted of one oblong room from whose ceiling hung, alternately, ineffective electric heating bars and unenthusiastic lighting strips, and, at one end, a grim little kitchen and a pair of institutional lavatories. The Women’s Institute, at the instigation of Mrs Betts, had made flowered curtains for the windows and contributed a square of orange-and-brown speckled carpet which swam, isolated, at one end of the polished wooden floor. But for all its charmlessness, Stoke Stratton was proud to have a village hall. Not only were there functions in it twice or thrice weekly – badminton, old-time dancing, Young Wives, Evergreen Club, Mother and Toddler Group, Poetry Cir
cle, Ramblers’ Club, Village Preservation Society, Gardeners’ Club, jumble sales, Christmas fayres, harvest suppers, P C C meetings, Youth Group discos – but Stoke Stratton graciously rented it to neighbouring King’s Stoke and Lower Stoke, neither of whom boasted such an amenity.
On Sunday mornings, Colin Jenkins turned the heaters on, on his way back from early communion, so that by the time the Sunday School assembled, they could only just see their breaths before them. It was the only Sunday School in the three villages, and provided a blessed child-free hour on Sunday mornings for parents who could be bothered to deliver and collect. Liza, armed with half a loaf – ‘Shouldn’t it be pitta?’ Archie had asked unhelpfully – and several small bread baskets, arrived to find a dozen little children sitting at a trestle table colouring in simplistic pictures of the raising of Jairus’s daughter. Imogen, who knew the form, ran to battle her way into a place at the table and corner the crayons she wanted, but Mikey hung back and said he thought he’d just watch.
‘But why? Why don’t you join in?’
He put his face babishly into Liza’s side.
‘I don’t want to.’
Lynne Tyler, a valiant and friendly woman whose husband was Richard Prior’s cowman, came out of one of the lavatories holding by the hand a shrew-faced child clutching a blue plastic handbag.
‘We do this all morning,’ Lynne said to Liza. ‘In and out. She won’t go alone and she won’t do anything when I take her.’
‘Can’t you ignore her?’
‘Last time I did, we had a disaster. Now come on, Kirsty. You sit down and do your drawing.’
‘Wanna wee—’
‘No, you don’t,’ Liza said, lifting her firmly on to the bench next to Imogen. Imogen clamped a hand on the nearest pile of crayons.
‘Mine,’ Imogen said.
Kirsty began to cry.
Liza said, ‘Let’s just start. Mikey, let go. Do you usually start with a prayer?’
‘Oh no,’ Lynne said, almost shocked at such a pedestrian idea. ‘We have a little song. Don’t we? Imogen, you tell Mummy what we sing.’
Imogen fixed Liza with an implacable stare.
‘“Jethuth,”’ said Imogen clearly, ‘“wanth me for a thunbeam.”’
‘There now,’ Lynne said, and went to the piano.
All the children climbed off the benches and clustered round her, all except Kirsty, who sat where she was and watched a trickle of pee run from under her skirt on to the floor. Sighing, Liza went to the kitchen for a bucket and a cloth.
‘Jesus wants me for a sunbeam,’ the children sang unevenly. ‘Jesus wants me for a star. I am Jesus’s little rainbow. Shining, shining from afar.’
They subsided raggedly on to the Women’s Institute carpet.
‘Hands together, eyes closed,’ Lynne said, swivelling on the piano.
‘We pray for our homes and our families. Sit still, Adam. And for our mummies and our daddies and our brothers and our sisters—’
‘And our dog.’
‘And our dog, Stephen. We thank you for the lovely countryside. And our food and drink. And all our friends. And we ask you to look after everyone we know who isn’t well. And now,’ said Lynne, ‘Imogen and Mikey’s mother is going to tell you the story.’
‘Wanna wee,’ Kirsty said loudly.
Lynne got up patiently, but Liza seized Kirsty and dumped her on the bucket she had brought from the kitchen.
‘You can sit there and pee to your heart’s content.’
Kirsty hit Liza with her handbag. Lynne looked deeply shocked at the whole episode.
‘Is she a Vinney?’
‘Yes,’ Lynne said.
‘That explains it then,’ Liza said heartlessly. ‘Don’t worry. I’ll face any music there is. Don’t move,’ she said to Kirsty. ‘Until I say.’
Kirsty subsided slowly down into the bucket until she was doubled up. Then she began to howl. At this moment, the door at the end of the hall opened and Blaise O’Hanlon came in. Everybody stared, particularly Liza.
‘Hello,’ Blaise said. ‘Hello, kiddiwinks. Hello, Liza.’ He held a hand out to Lynne. ‘Hello.’
‘What are you doing here?’
‘I came with a message from June,’ Blaise said. ‘About Tuesday. Dan has ploughed up the telephone cable with the rotavator so she couldn’t ring. I went to your house and your nice doctor husband said you were here with loaves and fishes. Why is that child in a bucket?’
‘It’s the best place for her,’ Liza said.
Blaise went over and pulled Kirsty upright.
‘You are very unattractive,’ he said to her with enormous charm. ‘And you smell like a fishing smack. But I don’t see why you should be condemned to a bucket.’
Kirsty gazed up at him with rapture.
‘This is Mr O’Hanlon,’ Liza said to Lynne. ‘He teaches at Bradley Hall School.’
Lynne smiled at him, partly out of natural friendliness and partly because he had been kind to Kirsty.
‘What message?’ Liza said.
Blaise was wandering about among the children.
‘I’ll tell you afterwards. Mayn’t I stay and help? I say, are you Mikey? I remember you from a football match. You run like the wind.’
Mikey blushed and nodded vigorously.
‘We’d be only too pleased if you’d stay, Mr O’Hanlon,’ Lynne said. ‘Now, hands up who’s going to be Jesus.’
‘I’ll be Jesus,’ Blaise said. ‘And then I can get this lot organized. Now, come on. I’ll have you, and you, and you over there in green trousers, as disciples, and the poor bucket child can be the boy who brought the fishes. And the rest of you can be the multitude. Who can tell me what a multitude is?’
‘I’m so sorry,’ Liza said to Lynne, ‘I really am. He’s being impossible.’
‘Oh no. No, he isn’t. You can see he’s a born teacher. I think it’s lovely he wants to help.’
Liza went over to a grey plastic chair and sat down, half indignant, half enchanted. In a matter of moments, Blaise had the multitude seated on the carpet – ‘Now don’t go near the edge because it is the sea and you will drown’ – and was standing before them with his arms outspread and the disciples jostling each other to be the ones completely next to him.
‘It had been a long, hot day,’ Blaise said, half an eye on Liza. ‘And you lot in the crowd had been wandering about after Jesus all day without a thing to eat or a drop to drink—’
Lynne tiptoed round to sit next to Liza.
‘He has a real gift, hasn’t he?’ she whispered. ‘And he’s ever so young.’
‘He’s ever so naughty,’ Liza said with emphasis.
‘Sweet face—’
‘And then one of the disciples – it’d better be you, Green Trousers – said, “Master, there’s a boy here with two loaves and five fishes.” Or was it five loaves and two fishes? Can’t remember. Doesn’t matter. And then you, little Miss Bucket, come up – come on, come here – and show me and all the others what you have got in your basket.’
Kirsty held up her basket so high that nobody could see.
‘Can’t see, can’t see,’ complained the multitude.
‘If you are tiresome, Miss Bucket,’ Blaise said, ‘I shall deprive you of your starring role and dump you back in the chorus.’
Kirsty knelt on the carpet and put her basket on the floor and the multitude crowded round and pawed it and spilled the loaves and the fishes.
‘Pick it all up,’ Blaise said. ‘Or I shall go away and leave you unprotected from frightening Mrs Logan.’
‘Poor little Kirsty,’ Lynne said. ‘It’s lovely to see someone take notice of her.’
‘And of course all the disciples said there won’t be anything like enough for five thousand people and Jesus said just you wait. Now, Green Trousers, you take a basket, and Mikey another, and little Ginger Specs, you have this one, and take them round the multitude – and do you know, there was heaps and heaps, the baskets were always full and every
one ate so much they had to lie on the ground groaning like you do at Christmas. Oh dear, Miss Bucket, what are you snivelling about now?’
Kirsty held out a diamond-shaped slice of brown bread.
‘I don’t like fish—’
‘Brilliant!’ Blaise said. He spun round on Liza. ‘Hear that? Amazing. Oh, the power that is mine—’
Liza got up.
‘Which I’m now going to take away. Go and sit down and let Lynne and me finish in peace—’
‘I’m sure you’re very welcome,’ Lynne said loudly, rising too and determined to show Blaise some Christian courtesy. ‘Very welcome to stay, indeed. Isn’t he?’ she said to the children who all chorused enthusiastically in agreement. ‘Shall we teach him our butterfly song? Come along, Imogen. You show Mr O’Hanlon the movements we do.’
She went over to the piano and struck a chord.
‘If I were a butterfly, I’d thank you, Lord, for giving me wings. And if I were a robin in a tree, I’d thank you, Lord, that I could sing—’
Waving his wings and opening and shutting his beak, Blaise O’Hanlon smiled in triumph at Liza over Imogen’s energetic head.
‘Well,’ Liza said later, in the lane, ‘what was the message?’
‘What message?’
‘The message you came with so urgently from June who cannot telephone because Dan has inadvertently ploughed up the cable.’
‘There isn’t one. And actually, the telephone cable at Bradley Hall is overhead and a very unsightly thing it is too.’
Liza stopped walking.
‘Then what is this pantomime all about?’
‘I wanted to see you. I couldn’t wait until Tuesday. I had to see you. I had to see where you lived.’
‘We live at Beeches House,’ Mikey said helpfully.
‘I know that now,’ Blaise said. ‘But I didn’t before and I longed to. So I came.’
Grasping Imogen’s hand tightly, Liza began to walk very fast up the lane. Blaise and Mikey ran to keep up with her.
A Passionate Man Page 8
