A Passionate Man

by Joanna Trollope

  ‘You were rude,’ Diana Jago said.

  ‘I don’t have to agree with you,’ Liza said, wishing she had not said it the moment it was out and then, making matters worse, ‘I am perfectly entitled to my own opinion.’

  Susan looked at her.

  ‘So you are,’ she said, and moved away.

  Simon Jago put a hand under Liza’s elbow.

  ‘Forget it.’

  ‘She always sounds so sneering—’

  ‘No, no. Just blunt. Calls a spade a spade.’

  Liza said, ‘I’d better find Archie—’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘Thank you. Thank you for standing up for me.’

  She pushed through the disorderly crowd of chairs and people.

  ‘Poor little thing,’ Diana said, watching her go. ‘I don’t suppose she’s ever said boo to Archie before.’

  ‘Come on. Archie wouldn’t be hard on her. Not Archie . . .’

  ‘Every marriage,’ Diana said surprisingly, ‘has its own balance. It’s a natural balance. Liza’s tried to tip theirs a bit, that’s all.’

  ‘Good God. Has she? Why?’

  ‘Search me. I just know—’

  ‘Forty-seven members,’ Mrs Betts said triumphantly, steaming up to them. ‘And eleven more promises. Now, Mr Jago, we really can get started.’

  There was a crush to get out of the hall. In it, Liza lost Archie and found herself next to Colin Jenkins who said he hoped she didn’t mind him saying so but he was a bit concerned about the fire hazard of the Sunday School carrying real candles at their crib blessing service.

  ‘Twelve children,’ Liza said. ‘Or fourteen. A dozen little candles. Parents all round. I’m sure it will be perfectly safe.’

  ‘There ought to be a code of practice about these things,’ Colin said. ‘Then we’d know where we were.’

  Liza stared. Ahead of her in the crowd she glimpsed Archie, head and shoulders above the rest. She saw Sharon Vinney pluck at him as he passed, and mouth something, and she saw Archie bend swiftly towards her and then, as if she had hit him, jerk away from her and shove his way forward into the night outside.

  ‘Excuse me,’ Liza said to Colin Jenkins and began to press forward herself. She had to pass very close to Sharon Vinney who wore a quilted skiing jacket and swinging ear-rings in the form of crucifixes.

  ‘You can tell him,’ Sharon said loudly to Liza as she went by, giving out a blast of fried food and old cigarette, ‘you can tell him that I’m not the only one. The whole village thinks the same. The whole place—’

  In the lane outside, Liza could find no Archie. She called him, self-conscious at the sound of her voice and his name. After a while, Mrs Pinkney from the bungalow crept up and said she had seen Archie walking away a few moments ago, in the direction of home.

  ‘Quite fast, Mrs Logan. I think he thought you were ahead of him. At least, I wouldn’t like to be definite, but I think—’

  Liza set off, running. At the Beeches Lane turning, she caught Archie up.

  ‘I’m here!’ she called. ‘Archie! Wait!’

  He took several more strides before he halted.

  ‘Mrs Pinkney said you thought I’d gone—’

  ‘No,’ Archie said.

  ‘But why did you rush off, then? Why didn’t you wait? It’s dark, Archie, it’s a dark night—’

  ‘Sorry,’ he said. ‘Sorry.’

  His voice sounded half strangled.

  ‘Was it Sharon? I came ushing out after you, just in case, and here you are stampeding off and just leaving me—’ She broke off. She couldn’t see his face. She took a deep breath and said loudly, ‘Well, whatever she said to you, you bloody well deserve!’

  Archie began to walk again. She hurried to keep up with him.

  ‘What, Archie, what is it, what did she say? What—’

  ‘She said,’ Archie shouted, ‘she said I was neglecting her mother and that I was not fit to be a doctor.’

  Liza drew a huge breath.

  ‘But that’s nonsense. Take no notice. You know it isn’t true—’

  Archie swung round in the lane, almost on the spot where Blaise had said, ‘If you only knew the power that is yours,’ and gripped Liza’s shoulders.

  ‘It is not nonsense. It is true.’

  Oh, my God, Liza thought, I can’t stand any more of this. It’s always been bad, Archie’s violent overreaction to things, but this autumn it’s got really out of control. And I haven’t got the energy to humour him any more, really I haven’t. She drew a breath.

  ‘Sharon Vinney,’ said Liza in the level, quiet voice she used in class, ‘is a mischief-maker. You’ve said it yourself, often. There’s nothing she likes better than a bit of trouble to stir. And it isn’t as if she does anything for her mother herself. She expects the Health Service to do it all. She expects you to do everything she won’t. I’m sorry I shouted,’ Liza said with great kindness. ‘Really I am. But you mustn’t be a silly Archie.’

  He drew his breath in sharply. Liza tried to take his hand in the darkness and found his fist was clenched.

  ‘Archie, please—’

  ‘I’m hungry,’ he said. ‘I’m terribly hungry,’ and began to walk away once more, up the lane, leaving her no alternative but to follow.

  ‘I don’t know what’s the matter,’ Liza said to her sister on the telephone. ‘It’s like living with some mad stranger. He sat miles away from me at the meeting. Then he just let Susan Prior be frightfully insulting without even attempting to defend me. And then he took some stupid village remark to heart and rushed off home leaving me to follow on my own. In the dark.’

  Clare, whose genuine sympathy was not unmixed with a small pleasure at Liza’s dismay, settled herself more comfortably by the telephone and said, ‘Does he know about Blaise, do you suppose?’

  There was a brief, complete silence.

  ‘How do you know about Blaise?’

  ‘From Blaise.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘He came here,’ Clare said, while the pleasure grew and began to dwarf the sympathy. ‘He came here because he was desperate for someone to talk to.’

  ‘I don’t believe it!’

  ‘It’s true. Of course,’ Clare said, ignoring the huge excitement she had felt when Blaise described his love for Liza, ‘I didn’t encourage him at all. I mean, I’m sure he’s as much in love with the idea of being in love as he is with you. I’m sure you see that.’

  Liza said nothing.

  ‘After all,’ Clare said, sensing a tiny triumph, ‘he can’t hold a candle to Archie. And it’s just a crush, really, isn’t it, a schoolboy crush?’

  Liza took a deep breath.

  ‘Archie knows nothing about Blaise, because there is nothing to know.’

  Clare’s triumph began to deflate.

  ‘Liza—’

  ‘I can’t help Blaise’s feelings. I can help my own and they are under perfect control. I don’t need you to point out what the matter with Blaise is.’

  ‘No,’ said Clare, drooping.

  ‘You’re as bad as Archie,’ Liza said, gathering strength. ‘You imagine all kinds of awful things that couldn’t possibly happen. Do you really think I would risk all I’ve got for something so silly?’

  ‘No,’ Clare said.

  ‘Let’s stop talking about it,’ Liza said, generous at the approach of victory. ‘I tell you why I really rang. It’s about Christmas. Will you come and have Christmas Day here? Please. We’d love it.’

  Typical, Clare thought miserably, putting down the telephone. I have the upper hand for the first time in ten years and I lose it in three sentences. Not just that, but Liza’s right. She was justified in being cross. Who, in their right minds, would risk Archie for Blaise? She got up and went along the hall to her sitting room. On the table in the window she had put a neat, small Christmas tree, carefully decorated in gold and silver and scarlet. Archie would laugh at that tree. He’d think it half-hearted, inhibited. No wonder Liza had stre
ngth, living with someone of such appetites. It gave you confidence, being with Archie. Her tree had no confidence, poor thing, sitting neatly on its table, obediently glowing with symmetrical fairy lights. She leaned against the wall and looked at it.

  ‘Sorry,’ Clare said to her Christmas tree.

  On Christmas Eve, Sir Andrew and Marina telephoned from Kenya. They were in the last week of their honeymoon. The children, dressed for bed, had a minute or two each on the telephone to them. Imogen was very excited.

  ‘Hello, lady, hello, lady, hello, lady,’ Imogen shouted to Africa. From Africa, Archie could hear his father laugh.

  It was paradise, they said. They were at Malindi and had been on safari. Marina was beside herself about the birds. They had been on a private safari and had been given breakfast out in the bush, breakfast with napkins and Cooper’s Oxford marmalade and eggs and bacon cooked on a bonfire.

  ‘But no Times,’ Sir Andrew said. ‘All that was missing was The Times.’

  ‘Are you brown?’ Liza asked. ‘Are you brown as nuts?’

  ‘As cornflakes—’

  ‘Oh! Oh, it sounds so marvellous!’

  ‘It is,’ Sir Andrew said. He was laughing. ‘It is. Her ladyship shot a guinea fowl. Lovely shot. We’ll bring the cape back, for salmon flies. For Archie.’

  ‘Can you hear that boom-crash?’ Marina asked, coming on the line to Thomas. ‘Can you hear? That’s the Indian Ocean. I’ll bring you shells—’

  ‘Yes,’ Thomas said, cramming his ear to the receiver. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Happy Christmas, darling. Give them all a hug from us. A big Christmas hug.’

  It was quiet and dull when they put the receiver down.

  Mikey said sadly, ‘They saw a lion.’

  Christmas seemed suddenly commonplace, beside a lion.

  Liza said, ‘Everything she touches becomes special, doesn’t it? You can’t have ordinariness, not with Marina—’

  ‘Sh—’ Archie said.

  She flashed him a look of irritation.

  ‘Not still—’

  He crossed to the kitchen door.

  ‘I’ve got a few calls, I won’t be long.’

  ‘Granny Mossop?’ Liza said unkindly, to punish him for his persistent unacceptance of Marina.

  Archie paused, his hand on the doorknob. He seemed about to say something noisy, but then he changed his mind and said in a perfectly normal voice, ‘I sent Granny Mossop into hospital two days ago.’

  ‘Oh, good, good—’

  ‘Not good,’ Archie said. ‘She won’t speak to me. Or the nurses.’ He looked at the children. ‘Into bed, you lot. Or You Know Who’ll never come.’

  Abruptly, Imogen remembered.

  ‘Chrithmath!’

  She went scuttling up the stairs, squealing like a piglet.

  Colin Jenkins disliked Christmas. At Christmas and Easter, he was quite unable to control the parish, which took the bit between its teeth and plunged into the festivals with a lavishness which Colin felt was both wrong in itself and mainly attributable to the materialism of the present government. Chrissie had, as usual, declared the over-excitement of the parish not to be her responsibility.

  ‘Sorry, dear, but it really isn’t my business. I’ve done my organizing. I did it in November. What with Mother and the hospital, I’ve got my work cut out as it is. You should just put your foot down. Really you should.’

  The interior of the church was flagrant proof that he had not. It was crammed with as much decoration as it could hold: windowsills furred with pine branches, pillars wound with ribbons, pedestals in every corner bearing explosive arrangements of greenery and scarlet silk poinsettias, six inches across, bought by Mrs Betts from her wholesalers in Southampton. From the chancel arch a gold cardboard star spun on a chain of tinsel, and, below the lectern, illuminated by miniature electric light bulbs rigged up by Lynne Tyler’s husband, stood the Sunday School crib, the cast only lacking the three kings, who lay in a shoebox in the vestry, awaiting Twelfth Night.

  It not only irritated Colin to see the church turned into some ceremonial garden centre, but also to see it full of people who never came to church otherwise. They’d come at Christmas because it was quite jolly; they would telephone for wedding or funeral or christening arrangements in the faintly imperious manner of people booking holidays; they were full of inflexible theories about the way vicars – and, even more, vicars’ wives – should live their lives, but any suggestion that they might use the church for its regular and intended purpose caused indignation and resentment. When he was a young man, Colin had once been so stirred by a speech given by Bishop Trevor Huddlestone that he had, for at least a month, determined to become a missionary. Christmas at Stoke Stratton made him regret with particular energy his failure to keep that resolve.

  He expressed his disapproval by refusing to dress up for Christmas. They could have him simply in a surplice and black stole, and, if he stuck out like a sore thumb in all the gaudy nonsense, so much the better. Maybe that would get the message home. The church, of course, was packed, from the Jagos in the front pew with their two languid daughters tossing sweeps of blonded brown hair from their faces, to Lynne and Robbie Tyler at the back with their brood of children and a clutch of aunts and grans. Mrs Betts, who believed God to be primarily the President of the Women’s Institute, wore a fancy tweed coat with matching hat, and was accompanied by a daughter and a son-in-law so suitable in dress and demeanour that they might have been designed for her, as fashion accessories.

  About halfway down, sandwiched between pews full of Christmas strangers staying in the village, Liza, Archie and Clare had penned the children between them. Archie was not on call again until Boxing Day, but his morning of Christmas freedom had begun at ten past four when Imogen had appeared, covered in chocolate and strenuously wishing to play post offices. By nine o’clock, the day had felt already done to death, and when Clare appeared at ten-thirty, in time for church, both Liza and Archie had fallen upon her like castaways sighting a sail. Clare, who could not help drawing comfort from other people’s misfortunes, was heartened at the sight of them and began to feel a dim glow of appropriate enthusiasm. Anything, after all, was better than waking alone to a silent city that was bound to be full, just bound to be, of blissful couples in bed together, opening stockings crammed with sentimental, intimate jokes.

  Liza was wearing a cream jersey that Clare knew, after she had hugged her, was cashmere, It was from Marina. So was the beautiful brown snake belt she had on, and the computer games for the boys and the princess dressing-up clothes for Imogen and – what for Archie?

  ‘A rod,’ he said, gesturing towards it. ‘A trout rod.’

  ‘But it’s a beauty!’

  ‘Yes,’ he said flatly. ‘Far too much.’

  Liza seized Clare’s arm and mouthed silence. In the kitchen, alone for a moment, she had shown Clare a tiny box with a garnet-and-pearl pin in it, a heart on a golden bar.

  ‘Who’s it from?’

  ‘Shhh. Guess.’

  ‘No,’ Clare said, eyes enormous.

  ‘Yes. Silly ass. I shall give it straight back.’

  ‘It’s awfully pretty.’

  Liza put the box back in the kitchen drawer. The card that had come with the box lay under the drawer’s lining paper.

  ‘What did Archie give you?’

  ‘A picture. A Victorian watercolour of the Stoke river.’

  ‘It sounds lovely!’

  ‘It’s sweet,’ Liza said, thinking of the garnet pin.

  Archie had been very kind to Clare. He had made her coffee and talked to her all the way down to church and given her Thomas to sit next to. Above the carols, and the readings, delivered at top-speed in an incomprehensible scream by the older members of the Sunday School, Clare could hear Imogen’s intermittent grizzling. She was not the only one. Dotted around the congregation, the child victims of Christmas hype whined and fidgeted. Clare, without responsibility for any of them and pleased to be in
this comfortable, celebratory, unspiritual gathering, briefly felt quite happy.

  But for all that, she could not help perceiving that Archie was not. Finely tuned as she was to notice every quiver on the seismograph of her own feelings, Clare had become morbidly sensitive to atmosphere. Archie was smiling certainly. He sang the carols, admonished Mikey for wriggling, glanced with affection at Liza, at his children, at Clare. But he was not happy. Just below the surface, Clare thought, lay some trouble, manifesting itself in glimmers of tension and defensiveness. She worried that it was Blaise. It was not reasonable to worry about Blaise, she told herself, but instinctively it was not to be avoided. Liza had said someone in the village had upset Archie. Could it be that? Or could it be that Liza’s new little manner with him, a kind of condescending little manner, thinly masking a sizeable impatience at his attitude to his father’s marriage, was affecting him more deeply than anyone suspected? Oh dear, Clare thought, how awful, how interesting, how consoling. Should she say anything about Blaise? Heavens! Should she?

  Thomas seized his Songs of Praise and riffled through it officiously.

  ‘“Hark the Herald”,’ he hissed. ‘There you are. Seventy-four.’

  Two days before the New Year, Sir Andrew and Marina came home. They had a horrible flight, they said, delayed and rough, and Sir Andrew was feeling a bit battered by it, but all they needed was a good night’s sleep and they would be down, as planned, on New Year’s Eve.

  Archie was on duty throughout the New Year. When Liza had suggested asking his father and Marina, he had said do, yes, do, with unexceptionable enthusiasm, but of course I shall be in and out a lot. That did not seem to Liza to matter. Indeed, it might be easier to have only his intermittent presence for the first staying visit. She, on the other hand, was excited about it. She and Sally cleaned the spare room, and she put on new white linen pillowcases and sheets with embroidered hems. She made lists of meals and, as she did it, imagined how warm Marina would be in her praise of them.

  Early on the morning of New Year’s Eve, the telephone rang. Liza, thinking it would be a patient, picked it up preparing to say that Dr Logan was already at the health centre.

  ‘Liza—’