Perfectly Correct

by Philippa Gregory

  His sunny smile was as untroubled as a little cherub. ‘Fine. You pack a box. I’ll just pop down and see Rose is OK.’

  Louise watched him walk down through the orchard and went inside to her study. The red light on her ansaphone winked urgently. She played the message. It was Toby, his voice urgent and whiney.

  ‘Louise, I need to talk to you urgently. Please return this call without fail. I also need to talk to Miriam who has done a dreadful thing. Please make sure she calls me. This is really urgent. I am at the university all evening since I cannot go home until this is resolved. I am depending on you. You must telephone me at once.’

  Louise glanced towards the orchard. Andrew’s big boots stood neatly beside the step of the caravan. Rose’s dog dozed beside them. Louise dialled Toby’s departmental office. He picked up the phone on the second ring.

  ‘Toby Summers.’

  ‘It’s me.’

  ‘Louise, thank God! I’ve been waiting for hours for you to call.’

  ‘I only just got in.’

  ‘Is Miriam with you?’

  ‘She’s coming out now. She’s on her way.’

  ‘I think she’s gone absolutely crazy,’ Toby said. ‘You must talk to her, Louise, and then I’ll come out and see her.’

  ‘She sounded very upset,’ Louise said cautiously.

  ‘She’s gone mad,’ Toby cried, forgetting the cardinal rule that madness and women can never be anything more than tangentially connected. ‘She’s barking. She’s stolen my cash card and she’s robbed me of an entire month’s salary.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘Since last Tuesday and on every single subsequent day, she has taken the maximum of two hundred pounds out of my account,’ said Toby, spite making his enunciation dauntingly precise. ‘She’s emptied my account. I had seven hundred and fifty pounds in there and it’s all gone.’

  ‘It’s not possible,’ Louise said certainly. Toby’s and Miriam’s sexual standards might be flexible but they had always shown rigorous rectitude over their independent bank accounts.

  ‘I tell you it’s gone!’ Toby wailed. ‘What did she say to you?’

  ‘That the refuge was bankrupt, and that she was unhappy with you.’

  Toby moaned. ‘The refuge! Oh God, that bloody refuge! She’s spent all my money on those hopeless women!’

  ‘Toby!’

  ‘I’m sorry, Louise. I’m sorry! I don’t know what I’m saying! I’m dreadfully upset. Also, we had a quarrel. Did she tell you?’

  ‘She said something.’

  ‘I thought you might tell her about the negligee,’ Toby said. ‘I wanted to clarify things for her.’

  ‘So you told her you’d had an affair for the past nine years.’

  ‘I didn’t say who with.’

  ‘Oh, thank you,’ Louise said with weighty irony.

  ‘Look,’ Toby said. ‘We’re in crisis. There’s no getting away from it, Louise, and you and I have to stand together. We’ll tell Miriam we’re lovers. She’ll agree to let me go, I know she will. You needn’t tell her about the gown, it wouldn’t make any sense to her. And she can give me my money back. She can have the house if she wants, she can buy me out of my share. I shan’t need a place of my own, once I’m living with you. I should have done it years ago. I’ll come out now. We’ll start our life together now.’

  ‘No,’ Louise said quickly. ‘That’s not possible. I’m not even in my cottage. I’m staying up at the farm.’

  ‘My mind’s made up,’ Toby announced with awful decisiveness. ‘I’m coming out at once, Louise. I’ll come up to the farm to meet you there.’

  ‘I can’t …’ Louise started.

  ‘You and I are going to be together and we’ll get my money back from Miriam. We’ll counsel her. We’ll help her with this. She’s obviously suffering some kind of crisis kleptomania. We owe it to her to help her. I’m on my way. We’ll be together now, my darling …’

  ‘No!’ Louise shrieked, but the telephone clicked and Toby was already gone.

  Louise walked slowly to the Land-Rover as Andrew stepped into his boots at Rose’s door. Rose came out on the step and waved to Louise. Louise waved back. Even at that distance she could see Rose’s triumphant beam. ‘Everything all right then, dear?’ Rose yelled.

  ‘Yes, thank you,’ Louise called back repressively.

  ‘Farmhouse to your liking? Bed comfortable, is it?’

  ‘Yes,’ Louise said shortly and got into the Land-Rover and slammed the door. She could still hear Rose’s rich wicked chuckle. Then Andrew stepped into the cab and started the engine. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked. ‘You’ve got everything?’

  ‘Everything,’ Louise said. ‘But there’s a bit of a problem with Toby and Miriam.’

  ‘I should think there was,’ Andrew said in a tone of reproof. ‘Carrying on as you’ve all been doing.’

  Louise looked him straight in his dark blue eyes. ‘That’s quite enough of that,’ she said firmly.

  Andrew pulled his forelock and drove out into the lane. ‘Yes’m,’ he said subserviently. ‘Beg pardon’m.’

  ‘Miriam says she wants to leave him, she’s coming out to the farm tonight. I said that would be all right.’ Louise shot a quick look at him. ‘You said it would be all right?’

  He nodded. ‘It is.’

  ‘But now Toby says that she’s been stealing money out of his bank account, and he’s coming out to sort things out.’

  ‘Coming out to the farm?’ Andrew asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Louise said awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry. I told him I was there and he just said he’d come out. He didn’t give me a chance to say no.’

  ‘We’d better go down to the Bush then,’ Andrew suggested helpfully. ‘And stay there till they’ve sorted themselves out. We could stay at the Bush all night. Give them the place to themselves. Keep out of trouble generally.’

  ‘Oh, no! They’re my friends. I have to be there.’

  ‘Seems to me like you’ve been there a bit too much already.’

  Louise laid one finger on his hand as it rested on the gear lever. ‘I warned you,’ she said. ‘That’s enough.’

  He shot her one of his wicked grins. ‘All right, I’m done. But shouldn’t they just get on with it on their own? There’s an awful lot of talking and talking and talking in your world. Maybe they’ll just go to bed and make up.’

  Louise shook her head. ‘I don’t think they’ll do that,’ she said. ‘There’s the missing money, and Toby told Miriam he had an affair.’

  Andrew pulled up outside the Holly Bush and switched off the engine. Louise tried to open her door but the handle came off in her hand. ‘He lives dangerously, that Toby,’ Andrew said with respect. He walked around the Land-Rover and opened the door for Louise. ‘Rose told me that he’s been stealing women’s underwear and dressing up in it.’

  Louise closed her eyes briefly. ‘Please, Andrew, don’t ever ever mention that again. I can’t bear to even think about it. Rose should not have said anything, least of all to you. It was a distressing and very private thing. She should have treated it in the strictest of confidence.’

  ‘Put you off him, did it?’ Andrew noted perceptively. ‘Well, I can imagine it would.’

  Louise slipped down from the cab seat, her face closed and her lips tight.

  ‘Very disturbing,’ Andrew sympathised. ‘I can see it would be very disturbing – seeing your lover, all dressed up in flowery knickers!’

  Louise walked past him saying nothing, pushed open the door of the pub and went in.

  ‘Worse if it was one of them basque things. Stands to reason. It would put anyone off,’ Andrew said irrepressibly as he followed her in. ‘Or stockings and suspenders,’ he speculated.

  There was something like a muted roar of approval as he came in. ‘Is it on then?’ someone shouted from the end of the bar. ‘The party? When are they all coming?’

  ‘You’ll never get them in on the roads,’ someone else warned. ‘There’s
police patrols all the way up to the A3. And they’re putting up the roadblocks in the village again.’

  The landlord nodded at Andrew and drew a pint of Theakston’s Old Peculier and pushed it towards him. ‘Will you have a little drink?’ Andrew asked Louise, with wilful provocation. ‘A nice sweet sherry, or a Babycham or something?’

  ‘I’ll have a pint,’ Louise said icily. She hitched herself up on a bar stool and smiled at the landlord. ‘A pint of that please.’

  ‘It’s Dr Case, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Not often we have the pleasure of seeing you in here.’

  Louise, who had only ever been into The Olde House at Home, nodded. ‘I think I’ll be in a bit more often now,’ she said. ‘And I’ll pay for the drinks. How much?’

  The landlord looked thoughtful. ‘That’s £173.30,’ he said.

  The bar exploded in laughter, Andrew with them. Then he slid his arm around Louise’s waist and hugged her tight. ‘That’s my slate,’ he said. ‘It’s probably my dad’s slate too. Put it down on the slate, George, I’ll pay you after shearing!’

  ‘So are they coming?’ A man pushed past a couple of other drinkers and tapped Andrew on the shoulder. ‘Have you heard from them? Is it still on? Or are the roads too bad?’

  ‘I heard yesterday,’ Andrew told him. ‘They say they’ll get through the roadblocks. They say they’re coming. They’ve paid me for the field and they’ve booked the caterers and they’ve hired the electrics they need. They’re all set. I expect them tomorrow morning.’

  There was a ripple of approval and promises called to be up at midday and help the organisers set up tents and a stage. Andrew nodded his thanks and picked up his glass and guided Louise to a seat in the corner.

  ‘So everyone here wants the party?’

  ‘I did tell you so, but Captain Frome thinks otherwise.’

  ‘How will they get through the roadblocks and the police control points?’

  Andrew shrugged and drank his beer. ‘They’ll drive round. There’s lots of tracks across the common that they could use. They’ll find a way if they want to enough.’

  At quarter to nine Louise glanced at her watch. ‘I’m sorry, but we have to go. Miriam said she’d be with us at nine.’

  Andrew obligingly drained his pint glass. ‘So now we go back home and stick our nose in their private business,’ he confirmed.

  ‘Well, it’s my business too.’

  ‘Not any more it isn’t. Your business is me, your work, and the farm,’ Andrew said firmly. ‘And in a little while our marriage and the babies.’

  He waved goodbye to the landlord and the men at the bar and shook his head at the shouts of derision that his drinking days were over.

  ‘Babies?’ Louise asked when they were in the Land-Rover together.

  ‘Well, of course,’ Andrew said. ‘Don’t you think we’d make wonderful babies? Don’t you think they’d have a fine childhood, growing up at the farm? Don’t you want to have a child of mine?’

  Louise hesitated for no more than a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes to all of it.’

  The farmhouse kitchen was warm from the big cream Aga and rich with the smell of cooking meat. Mrs Shaw had left them a big steak pie. Andrew put potatoes on the boil while Louise opened a bottle of wine.

  ‘Will he stay to eat?’ Andrew asked, counting potatoes.

  ‘Would you mind very much if he did?’

  ‘He can if he wants,’ Andrew said. ‘But I’m not having any funny stuff.’

  ‘Funny stuff?’

  ‘Creeping about in the middle of the night and wearing frilly underwear,’ Andrew said firmly. ‘Any of the funny stuff he does.’

  ‘Are you being deliberately irritating?’

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew said smugly.

  There was a knock at the door. The collie from his basket in the scullery barked once. Louise opened the kitchen door and then the outer door. Miriam stood on the doorstep with a small overnight bag in her hand. The two women embraced and stepped back to look at each other.

  ‘Oh, Miriam,’ Louise said tenderly. Miriam looked worn but defiant, as if she had come to the end of a long hard task.

  ‘No need to ask if you’re happy,’ Miriam said. ‘You’re glowing.’

  Louise lowered her voice. ‘I’ve never felt like this in my life before. We’re going to get married. We’re going to have babies. I’m going to live here. Oh!’ she added as she remembered. ‘I’ve lost my job. I’m out from the summer term.’

  ‘Because of the Creative Anarchy Group for Equality?’ Miriam guessed.

  Louise nodded. ‘Maurice Sinclair was just waiting to get me.’

  ‘You could refuse to go, start a campaign.’

  Louise shook her head. ‘I’m sick of campaigns and anyway, I don’t want to teach,’ she confessed. ‘I suddenly realised that I don’t know enough to teach. I want to read a lot more and think and write before I start teaching again. And then I don’t want to teach on any one particular side. I don’t want a label. I don’t want to be responsible for the feminist viewpoint or anything like that. I just want to read and think and get students to read and think.’

  She led the way into the kitchen.

  Andrew came from the stove and shook hands very solemnly with Miriam. ‘Hello.’ He took her bag from her. ‘Shall I show you your room?’

  ‘Thank you,’ Miriam said. Andrew led the way up the stairs and ushered Miriam into the room next door to his. It too looked over the common, and as he drew the curtains Miriam could see the stars in bright drifts in the black sky. ‘Wonderful night,’ she said. ‘And so dark! It never gets dark like this in town. And so peaceful!’

  ‘You’ll hear owls,’ he said. ‘And maybe a bark almost like a scream: that’s a vixen, nothing to worry about.’

  They went downstairs. Louise had poured wine. She gave Miriam a glass. ‘Toby’s coming out,’ she said. ‘He insisted. He wants to talk to you.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Miriam turned to Andrew. ‘I’m so sorry to inflict all this on you.’ She was embarrassed. ‘Louise, you should have told me, I’d have stayed in town.’

  ‘I don’t mind,’ Andrew said agreeably. ‘I said to Louise that you could both come. Just as long as he doesn’t do any of his …’

  ‘Andrew!’ Louise interrupted swiftly.

  He gave her a warm slow wink. ‘Ah,’ he said. ‘Forgot. Sorry.’

  There was a rap at the door. ‘That’ll be him,’ Louise said. She opened the door and let Toby into the room, blinking at the brightness from the dark outside and the warmth and the sudden good smells.

  ‘Hello.’ Andrew shook Toby’s hand firmly. ‘Louise and I are going to be married.’

  ‘What?’ Toby shot a swift anguished look at Louise.

  ‘Yes,’ Andrew said before anyone could say anything. ‘Three weeks’ time, at Chichester register office. I’m getting the banns posted on Monday. It is very sudden but we’ve wasted enough time already. Me with the pigs and her—’ he broke off with all the tact of a charging Charolais bull. ‘With nothing but her work,’ he continued. ‘We want a proper married life now. Don’t we, Louise?’

  Louise thought of a hundred things to say in the face of Toby’s strangled outrage, his goggling eyes glaring into hers. But she could think of nothing better than a swift smile at Andrew. ‘Er, yes,’ she said.

  ‘But this changes everything!’ Toby exclaimed incredulously. ‘You never said, Louise. I had no idea.’

  ‘Why should you have?’ Andrew asked. ‘It’s been very sudden for us. We’re very happy, aren’t we, Louise?’

  ‘Yes,’ Louise said monosyllabically.

  Miriam gave a muffled snort of laughter and poured herself and Andrew another glass of wine. He shot a brief smile at her.

  ‘There’s something I have to tell you, Miriam,’ Louise announced determinedly. ‘Something private. Shall we go into the sitting room?’

  Miriam looked suddenly grave. ‘Oh, all right,’ she said.

  ‘What abou
t me?’ Toby demanded.

  Miriam did not even turn her head. ‘You can wait,’ she said sharply. The two women walked out of the kitchen and Louise closed the sitting-room door behind them.

  ‘There’s no need,’ Miriam said abruptly. ‘You needn’t confess. I guessed. It was obvious once I thought about it.’

  Louise was too ashamed even to look at her. ‘I’m very sorry,’ she said. ‘I’m sorrier than I can say. I never stopped liking you, loving you. But I couldn’t say no. I was really in love with him, Miriam. Truly.’

  ‘I know,’ Miriam said. ‘I’d be angry with you except that I remember what it was like at the beginning. We both fell in love with him at once, and we wouldn’t have been in love with him half as much without the other one egging us on. We were very young, and he was stunning then.’

  ‘I should have told you as soon as it happened. I didn’t plan it, I didn’t intend to deceive you.’

  ‘I know you didn’t plan it,’ Miriam said. ‘And to be honest I always sort of knew. I thought we were very grown-up and trendy. We all knew it was going on but we didn’t need to spell it out or make a fuss. And it suited me, you know. I can see that now. I liked how it was when we all lived in the same house. Like a commune, very ’70s. And I always sort of knew.’

  Louise was scarlet-faced and near tears. ‘I wouldn’t blame you if you hated me.’

  Miriam shrugged. ‘If the marriage had been real and passionate I would have hated you,’ she stated coolly. ‘If I had been madly in love with him and stayed madly in love with him then I would never have forgiven you. But it wasn’t like that, was it? Not even from the start. So you didn’t take anything that I wanted badly.’

  ‘I wanted him to leave you,’ Louise admitted in a small voice. ‘Especially after I moved out here.’

  Miriam shrugged miserably. ‘Not much sisterhood about, is there?’

  Louise dipped her head.

  There was a sharp knock on the door. ‘I want to make a contribution,’ Toby’s voice said. ‘I want to be part of this discussion.’