‘Someone else has to rear them. Another sheep if they’re lucky. Me, if they’re not.’
‘You hand-rear lambs?’ Improbable images of Little Boy Blue and Bo Peep flashed across Miriam’s urban imagination.
‘Yes.’
‘Isn’t it frightfully hard work? Do you bottle-feed them?’
‘I bottle-feed them. It’s always hard work at lambing. No-one gets much sleep at that time of year.’
‘Why not?’
Mr Miles looked carefully at her as if to make sure that she was not teasing him with feigned ignorance. ‘You have to wake with the sheep,’ he explained. ‘Make sure the lambs come all right. Help them if they need it. Pair up the lambs with the right mother, make sure she doesn’t reject them. Get orphaned lambs fostered on to other mothers. All sorts.’
‘I never knew,’ Miriam said. ‘I thought farming was all machines these days.’
Andrew Miles smiled one of his rare friendly smiles. ‘Not on this farm,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just got a television. Anyway, we have sheep and cows and hens. You can’t really mechanise beasts.’
‘What about battery farming?’
He looked shocked as if she had said something terribly vulgar. There was a brief embarrassed silence. ‘I wouldn’t do that,’ he said finally.
Miriam waited for an explanation of why not; but he said nothing more. ‘I don’t know anything about farming or the country,’ she heard herself say apologetically.
‘What’s your line then?’
Miriam’s work sounded curiously evanescent to herself as she tried to explain. ‘I run a refuge for women whose partners are violent to them, in Brighton. And I work with alcoholic women who are trying to give up drinking. And I work with women who keep getting involved with the wrong sort of man.’
Andrew Miles looked enormously impressed. ‘What do you do with them?’
‘I counsel them. I help them to change.’
He looked at Miriam as if she were some kind of rare animal which had strayed into his kitchen. ‘Change?’
‘Women who drink or who seek violent men or uncaring men have to change themselves before they can properly leave,’ she said. ‘Otherwise they just find themselves in a similar situation with another man who is as bad. It becomes a pattern for them. I counsel them how to change their emotional patterns so that they can truly change their lives.’
‘Well now,’ Andrew Miles said, enormously impressed. ‘I never heard of such a thing before. And where did you learn to do that?’
Miriam smiled. ‘I go on courses. I’m still learning. I shall be learning all my life.’
‘And you’re Miss Case’s friend?’
Miriam nodded. ‘My husband and I used to share a house with her. We’re staying with her this weekend.’
A guarded, almost frightened look came across Andrew Miles’s face at the mention of Toby. ‘Oh, I couldn’t live in a town,’ he said suddenly.
Miriam, who did not follow the connection, looked surprised. ‘Why not?’
He pushed back his chair from the table and started stacking the plates in the dishwasher. ‘So complicated,’ he muttered half to himself. ‘All these people sharing houses and changing their lives and learning.’
Miriam laughed her seductive giggle. ‘We don’t do it all the time,’ she said. ‘Sometimes we do nothing.’
Andrew looked up at her. ‘I would hope so,’ he said firmly.
Miriam brought her mug over to the dishwasher, tossed the dregs in the sink and put it in the top rack. Andrew Miles returned the milk and butter to the larder, put the bread in a bread bin and wiped down the table. There was an intimate domestic atmosphere generated by this sharing of tasks. Miriam suddenly wondered, unprompted, what Andrew Miles would be like in bed. She smothered a giggle by bending to pick up a table mat which had fallen to the floor.
‘Would you like to see the beasts?’
Miriam nodded. ‘If I’m not delaying you?’
He led the way from the kitchen to the scullery, stepping into his boots and pulling his cap on over his thinning golden hair. He waited for Miriam to fasten her little boots and then led her out of the back door. He showed her the hens scratching in the yard and the little wheeled hen coops. He showed her a couple of guinea fowl which his mother had kept and which had survived her. There were lambs in the field nearest the house and two of them hurtled towards the gate when they saw him. Miriam petted them but Andrew thrust his hands in his pocket and would not touch them though they bleated for his attention.
‘They’re so sweet,’ Miriam said.
‘They’re for eating, they’re not pets,’ he said firmly. ‘They’ll have to forget they’re hand-reared.’
‘Can’t you keep them?’
‘I’ll keep the yow,’ he said. ‘But the little tup’ll have to go.’
In a further field there was a small herd of creamy-coloured cows. ‘Charolais,’ he said proudly. ‘That’s a pedigree herd, that is. French cows.’
‘Why not English?’ Miriam asked.
‘Less fat on Charolais,’ he said. ‘The cooks don’t like meat with fat any more. It has to be lean. All the English varieties, good English cows, are too fatty. So we farm lean beasts now and the taste is all wrong.’
‘Why?’
‘It’s the fat that flavours the meat,’ Andrew Miles said solemnly. ‘But you can’t tell them that. Someone decides that fat is bad for you and nobody eats decent beef any more.’ He shook his head at the folly of fashion in food. ‘I can give you the finest steak you’ve ever tasted off these fields – but I’d go out of business if I tried to farm English beef. It’s all French. It’s all tasteless. And now they’re all going vegetarian.’
‘Toby cooks a lot of lentils,’ Miriam agreed.
Andrew’s eyes widened in silent horror. ‘Yes,’ he said. ‘I imagine he would.’ He turned and gestured at a field beyond the cows. ‘Here is where we’re going to have the party when I get the hay in.’
‘A party? You mean you really are having the travellers here?’
He looked at her. ‘Why not?’
‘Well, the whole village seems to think that it’s a dreadful thing. Louise had Captain Frome on the telephone twice and then he came out while you were there.’
‘Captain Frome’s not the whole village. Some of them at the Holly Bush are rather looking forward to it.’
‘Looking forward to it?’
‘When the hay is in.’
‘What’s the hay got to do with it?’
Andrew Miles looked at her once more, as if she were pretending to an ignorance which no adult could reasonably have. Then he pointed to the field where the tall grass was speckled with flowers. ‘When that’s cut, and all the other hayfields, you can put wagons on it, or tents, anything you like. It’s just grass. It’ll grow. And when the hay is in there’s a little break, like, before harvest and shearing. That’s when people always had parties, in the old days. You’ll have heard of haymaking?’
‘In books, yes.’
‘Well, after haymaking, and later again, after the harvest is in, people have their shows and their parties. That’s how it’s always been. So when they telephoned me and asked me if I had a field I said they could come, either after haymaking or after harvest. And they wanted to come soon. I think it’ll be fun.’
Miriam giggled again. ‘They’re going mad about it in the village.’
Andrew Miles shook his head. ‘Not all of them. A few of them, the newcomers, they’re all upset about it. But the other farmers and the lads in the Bush, they’re not worried.’
‘It may be more than a few people in vans,’ Miriam warned him. ‘It’s not so traditional these days. They’ll probably have huge electronic speakers and the music will go on all day and night. And there’s certain to be drugs being sold.’
‘Well,’ Andrew said tolerantly. ‘They’re just kids after all. They deserve a bit of fun.’
Miriam could think of nothing more to say. ‘Thank you for showing m
e round. I’d better get back now.’
‘D’you know the way?’
‘Yes, I’ll go over the common.’
Andrew touched his finger to the cap he habitually wore. ‘Would you like to come to the party?’ he asked pleasantly. ‘It’ll be next weekend. I’d be very pleased if you would come. I’ve asked Miss Case already.’
Miriam smiled at the thought of this formal invitation to a rave. ‘I should love to come,’ she said. ‘Thank you for asking me.’
Andrew nodded and headed towards the yard, his dog at his heels. At the gate the hand-reared lambs stood and bleated appealingly. He paused and thrust his hands deeper into his pockets to prevent himself caressing them, and then went on to the barns. Miriam turned down the track that led to the common and started to walk back to Louise’s cottage, three miles downhill.
Sunday
TOBY PAID ANOTHER VISIT TO THE VAN on Sunday morning while Louise and Miriam fetched the Sunday papers from Mrs Ford’s shop. As soon as they had turned out of the drive in Louise’s car Toby skipped over the front doorstep carrying a cup of tea, down the garden path, and through the orchard gate. He found Rose prepared to be gracious. She drank it, sitting on the step of her van, watching the sun burn off the early-morning mist. Toby, cramped and chilly sitting on the dewy grass and eyed in a baleful way by her dog, thought that few scholars had endured more in the course of research.
Rose was prepared to be obliging. She brought out the box of newspaper clippings again and showed them, one at a time. They all described raids on empty houses where windows had been smashed or fires laid. From the outraged tone of the newspapers you would have thought that millions of pounds had been lost. But in fact the fires were rather small and easily contained. And the windows were quickly replaced.
‘It wasn’t the amount of damage, or the expense,’ Rose said. ‘It was to give them the sense that we were everywhere. Like the IRA.’
Toby glanced up from a particularly trivial cutting. ‘Hardly like the IRA,’ he objected.
Rose shook her head at his stupidity. ‘The IRA didn’t really care about a telephone box in Milton Keynes,’ she said. ‘The point is to make the population feel that the terrorists can go anywhere they want. That nowhere is sacred. That they have so many members that they extend everywhere. That’s basic terrorist theory. I’d have thought you’d have known that, a bright boy like you.’
Toby shifted a little in the damp grass. The dog sniffed at his ankles as he stretched out and he drew them back up towards him swiftly.
‘Did you say you had some diaries?’ Toby asked.
‘I’ll show you them later.’ Rose was quite absorbed in her bottomless box of little pieces of newspaper. ‘Here, I did this one. It says, “Entrance was effected through a small, unfastened scullery window”, and it says later: “These reckless harpies must be employing children or even trained monkeys for the successful accomplishment of these acts of violence”. That was me!’ she said proudly. ‘Me!’
‘I wonder if I could take the diaries away with me, to read carefully?’ Toby asked.
Rose did not lift her delighted face from her box. ‘Oh no,’ she said.
‘I should be tremendously careful with them. I know how precious they are …’
‘No.’
‘I have to see them, study them, in order to understand them properly,’ Toby said. ‘I have to read them and re-read them or else I can’t do the book at all.’
Rose looked up at him. ‘As you wish,’ she said helpfully. ‘I wanted to write it myself, anyway. I’ll have a bit of a clear out and burn the stuff that’s no good and then I’ll write the rest.’
‘No!’ Toby yelped. ‘Don’t burn anything. Please don’t burn anything until I’ve had a chance to look at it. Please, Miss Pankhurst – you don’t know what people might find interesting. All sorts of things which you might think are boring would be very interesting to historians. I’ll read every word, I’ll take tremendous care of them. I’ll bring them back to you the very moment I have read them.’
‘Oh, very well.’ Rose suddenly lost interest. ‘You can take this box now if you like.’
‘I’d like to start with the diaries,’ Toby said hopefully.
‘This box or nothing,’ Rose said, holding it out.
Toby almost snatched it from her. ‘Is it all suffragette clippings?’ he asked, looking at the depth of the box and the cream-coloured drifts of newsprint.
‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I popped all sorts in there over the years. Dress patterns, recipes, stories that I liked the sound of. But you can read it all if you want to, as you say. It will be fascinating to you even though it’s quite boring to everyone else. It’s just a lot of junk to everyone else but, as you say, you’ll be reading every word.’
Toby forced a smile on his face. ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘I’ll bring it back the moment I’ve finished.’
‘You needn’t bring it back,’ she said. ‘I was turning it out anyway. You can sort it and keep what you want.’
‘I will,’ Toby promised. ‘And then we’ll look at something else, shall we? The diaries and the photographs?’
Rose nodded. ‘All right.’
‘Could we perhaps have a little glance at the photographs now?’ Toby asked winningly, keeping a firm grip on the box.
‘No,’ Rose said decisively. ‘They’re under a box of hats that wants turning out. You can see them when you’ve finished with the newspaper clippings. I’ll be ready for you then.’
‘All right,’ Toby agreed. ‘I’ll read them at once and be back soon. Perhaps tomorrow.’
Rose smiled at him, her malicious old-crone smile. ‘You’ll need your eyes tested,’ she said. ‘You’ll need your head tested too.’
Toby managed a pleasant laugh.
‘Which woman is it to be, then?’ Rose demanded suddenly. Toby, struggling to his feet and cautiously putting his weight on the sprained ankle, gave a little whimper of discomfort. ‘What d’you mean, Miss Pankhurst?’
‘Can’t go stringing them both along forever, can you?’
Toby looked at her blankly.
‘Unless you’re more of a man than most you can’t satisfy two women,’ Rose said clearly. ‘It’s a rare man that can satisfy one. So which will you have? Louise or Miriam?’
Toby tried an urbane smile. ‘It’s not quite like that,’ he said pleasantly. ‘Louise is our very good friend, and Miriam is my wife. It’s not a question of choosing between the two. I am married to Miriam and Louise is a dear, dear friend. These days I think everyone accepts that a man and a woman can be friends.’
Rose shook her head. ‘That girl needs a man,’ she declared. ‘A man in her bed and a baby on the way. She needs someone to warm her bed at night, not a quick poke and then an empty house. And Miriam needs some fun. She looks downright miserable. And you’re the one that has brought all this about. So you’d better think carefully what you’re doing, my boy. You’re bringing neither of them any good at all.’
Toby gritted his teeth and kept the smile on his face. ‘I think these days we don’t really believe that a woman needs a man and a baby,’ he said. ‘Of course Louise will make her own choices as an informed adult. She has her own life to live. I think neither you nor I can say what’s best for her, can we, really? And Miriam is absolutely free to live how she wishes. We have an open and adult relationship. I assure you she does the work she wants and she lives as she wants.’
A fugitive memory of Miriam as he had first met her with her curly wild hair and her larky eyes swam up from his past and challenged his view of her as a woman who had fulfilled her potential. Toby put at once from his mind the knowledge that his wife was deeply unhappy.
‘All three of us are very happy in our own ways. Not your ways perhaps, but they do very well for us. You needn’t worry about us, I promise you, Miss Pankhurst.’
‘You’re a selfish little puppy,’ Rose said levelly. ‘You’d better make your mind up, one or the other; or you’ll
lose both and serve you right.’
Toby bit back a roar of rage at this old woman daring to lecture him. ‘I’ll think about what you’ve said,’ he replied, smiling till his cheeks ached. ‘I hear what you’re saying. I’ve taken it on board. I thank you for your concern for us, and I promise you I’ll think about it.’
Rose grunted in disdain and stamped into her van and slammed the door behind her. Freed from her presence, the dog came out from under the steps and snarled at Toby’s feet. Toby limped hastily to beyond the garden gate and shut it with a bang. Between the pain in his ankle and the bruising to his ego he felt thoroughly battered. He trailed back to the house with his huge box of newspaper clippings in his arms in an advanced state of sulk. If he had not admired Rose and liked her so very thoroughly – as any researcher should feel towards his subject – and if he had not been a committed feminist and she a woman, he would have absolutely hated her.
Miriam and Louise bought armfuls of newsprint: the Sunday Times, the Observer, the Independent and the Sunday Telegraph. It did not occur to either of them to buy any of the tabloids though they both spent some time reading the lead stories and furtively turning the pages until Mrs Ford’s indignant glare drove them from the little shop. Neither woman had bought a tabloid newspaper for ten years. Tabloids maintained a reprehensibly sexist attitude towards women, and whatever the news they carried neither Miriam nor Louise would ever stoop to support them. Miriam could see the Daily Mirror at work since someone in the refuge would always buy it. She would read it, clandestinely, during the morning, and while she was generally outraged by its attitudes she found herself reliably entertained. However she would never have bought it for herself.
In the doorway of the shop they met Captain Frome. ‘It seems we’ve won the first battle,’ he said loudly enough for the other customers in the shop to hear. ‘The police turned a convoy of ten vans – ten, if you please! – back at the roadblock and they’ve gone over the border into Hampshire. We’ve won the first battle, if we remain vigilant we’ll win the war.’
There was a rustle of polite interest in the little shop.
Perfectly Correct Page 12
