The Anniversary

by Ann Swinfen

  When she had first visited St Martins, as a result of Samira's friendship with Chrissie, she was appalled by the mess and the casual way artists' brushes were left amongst food on the kitchen table, or muddy gardening gloves lay on the tattered but lovely Georgian commode in the hall. The whole place, with its jumble of people, reminded her powerfully of her grandfather's house, although she had to concede that these people seemed to get on with their various kinds of work in a disciplined way. Gradually she began to see that even the domestic side was not as disordered as she had at first supposed. She was fascinated by the place, and attracted by the people, much as her daughter was, but for some reason they made her feel extremely shy (unusual for Mia Patel), with their lack of formality. She could not quite see on what terms she should be with them. While they for their part – although she did not realise this – simply accepted her as they accepted everyone else, and were unaware of her problem.

  * * *

  Natasha sat enthroned under the copper beech on her Jacobean chair, which had been carried into the garden by Tony. Guests had begun to arrive almost before the official start of the anniversary celebrations at noon – Natasha's parties had a certain local fame, and an invitation to one was much cherished. This anniversary, long discussed and eagerly awaited, promised to be a party to outdo all others.

  'What fun, my dear!' cried Muriel Lacey, kissing Natasha. 'I am quite blown with cycling up the lane the very instant I closed the museum. Couldn't bear to waste a minute.'

  'I'm sorry you weren't able to come for the service,' said Natasha. 'Richard did it beautifully. I was so pleased.'

  'I was devastated not to be here, but there was this group from the Stanway Local History Society – you remember I did a talk for them last month? – well, they were going to be coming over either this Saturday or next Saturday, and I didn't want them to be disappointed by arriving only to find I was shut – it wouldn't have been kind, would it? – and it was a jolly good thing I did stay open because they did come and had a simply marvellous time and one old chap brought a 1910 grease can for the museum that Richard will be absolutely thrilled with – and, oh my dear,' said Muriel, without drawing breath, 'there is that awful man from The Poplars, you surely didn't invite him, did you?'

  Seizing the moment when Muriel paused, Natasha said, 'Yes. Yes, I did. One must be neighbourly.' She smiled enigmatically.

  'Natasha, you are plotting something. I know the signs. What is it he's called? Forrest? Bishop?'

  'Frobisher.'

  'Ah, yes, I knew it was something like that. Dreadful man! And as for his wife!'

  'Quite.'

  'How he got planning permission for that house I cannot imagine. It sits in that lovely corner at the end of the village where there used to be nothing but apple and pear trees that were as old as Methuselah and it looks like a cross between a Tesco supermarket and a 1930s swimming bath with the mockest of mock Tudor beams stuck on all over the front. How did he get away with it?'

  'He's a very clever man. That orchard was just outside the conservation zone of the village. It's a pity it wasn't included in the protected area, but I suppose people thought no one would want to build there, with the Ludbrook running right through the middle.'

  'And now he has culverted the brook and quite ruined the view from Miss Bagshaw's cottage, she's so upset and says why wasn't she consulted or even told, and honestly I don't know what to say to the poor old dear – what do you think?'

  Natasha, amused at this description of Miss Bagshaw, who was twenty years her junior, said, 'I don't understand the rules on planning permission, Muriel, but someone once told me that no one has rights to a view. I also know that Simon Frobisher has powerful friends and is a man of much influence. If he sets his mind on a thing, he will expect to get it in the end.'

  'But what does he do? He seems to be about the place all the time, but he's much too young to be retired.'

  'I understand that he has an office in The Poplars full of all this wonderful new computer equipment. I believe you can move millions of pounds around the world simply by using the computer and a telephone.'

  'How terrifying! Is he a money man, then?'

  'Amongst other things. His main business seems to be property development.'

  'Do tell me,' said Muriel, her mind hopping to another subject, 'is there any chance of Hugh turning up?'

  'I really don't know,' said Natasha a little sadly. 'We haven't seen him for two years, and that time it was only for a weekend. I told him that I was planning this party for the anniversary, but of course we hadn't arranged anything definite that long ago. At Easter I wrote to the last address we had for him. He was in Kashmir, where he went as a young man – but I don't know if he ever received my letter.'

  * * *

  William was also thinking about Hugh. He had never been able to understand what drove his son into the remote and difficult corners of the world where he had made a name for himself as an adventurer. As a child Hugh had been restless and daring, always getting into scrapes. And Frances, fifteen months younger, had tagged along behind, trying to jump as far and climb as high. He shuddered when he remembered teaching the pair of them to drive, on the farm tracks, when they were in their early teens. They were determined to outdo each other and – curiously, he thought, for he had fixed attitudes about the relative abilities of men and women – Frances had proved to be the better driver. She seemed to know instinctively how to handle a car, and would race along the tracks, but retain control. Hugh, determined not to be outdone by his younger sister, loved the speed, but did not have the skill to go with it.

  He can't still be trying to go one better than Frances after all these years, thought William humorously, sitting where Mabel and Tony had installed him, in the dappled shade of the chestnut tree. Here he was close to the main serving tables and could watch the guests flooding into the garden, but was not so directly in their path to the refreshments that they would feel obliged to stop and speak to him.

  Compared with Frances, Hugh's life has been full of drama and excitement, while she – as she puts it herself – has dwindled into a suburban housewife. I wonder whether he realises the agonies he puts us through. I shall never forget the time he was taken prisoner by that Indian tribe up the Amazon, and then reappeared weeks later in Peru. Or the time he was lost with his guide in a blizzard in northern Greenland, and the consul cabled to say that there wasn't much hope anyone could survive in those conditions. But of course he got another book out of it, to finance the next expedition.

  I would like to see Hugh just once more. And if he doesn't come back soon, he won't have much chance of seeing Natasha again.

  * * *

  Chrissie and Samira, having filled paper plates to overflowing with food, had come into the stableyard where they could picnic away from the grown-ups.

  'Would you like to see our puppies?' said Chrissie, when they finished. 'They're just two weeks old.'

  'Oh, yes!' said Samira, who had been hoping Chrissie would offer.

  'In here.' Chrissie led the way in through Nicholas and Sally's door, which opened on to a big family room occupying the whole ground floor of the old coach-house. At the far end a friendly sagging bergère suite was grouped comfortably around a wood stove, and a window – which had replaced the old shuttered opening – faced a corner of the garden and the meadow beyond. Beside the window was a lobster-pot playpen for Sarah, passed on to Sally by Frances when Chrissie was born. At the near end of the room, to the left of the front door, Sally had her own kitchen – with a window overlooking pots of geraniums in the stableyard, a modern electric stove, and a big scrubbed pine table where Chrissie's family usually had their meals. In a fraying dog basket near the wood stove Jeannie was curled up with her five puppies.

  'The wood stove isn't lit in the summer, of course,' said Chrissie, 'but this is where she likes to be with the puppies. I s'pose it makes her feel safe.'

  The two girls squatted down beside the basket. Je
annie eyed them, and licked a puppy with a proprietorial air.

  'Would you like to hold one?'

  'Oh yes,' breathed Samira, sitting down cross-legged on the rag rug and cradling the puppy with awe on her lap. Her home in the cottage behind and above her parents' post office and newsagent's was cleaned and polished to gleaming brightness, and she had to remove her shoes at the door when she came in. She regarded Chrissie's life amongst the happy casualness of St Martins with both envy and alarm. The puppy gave a small whimper, turned round and round a few times, then settled down to sleep. Samira stroked his fat pink tummy with longing.

  'He's lovely,' she whispered.

  'This is the one I'm going to have for my very own,' said Chrissie, lifting a female puppy competently. 'I haven't thought of a name for her yet. Harry's their daddy.'

  Samira caressed the domed head of her puppy tenderly, and whispered in its ear. It burrowed more firmly down into her lap.

  'Would you like to have one?' asked Chrissie generously. 'I don't think Mummy's found homes for all of them yet.'

  Samira swallowed painfully. 'My mother would never let me,' she said.

  'I know what,' said Chrissie, inspired. 'We'll get my granny to talk to her. She always says everybody ought to have a dog. Is that the one you'd like?'

  'Oh, yes,' breathed Samira, laying her cheek against the puppy's head. 'He's so beautiful.'

  * * *

  Lisa was lying on top of the duvet, not wanting to look ill or to worry Paul by going properly to bed. She could hear the voices of the guests floating up through the open window, and two small tears of self-pity rolled down her cheeks. She brushed them away quickly, and said in a bright voice to Paul, who was standing moodily staring out of the window with his back to her, 'Who's come, can you see?'

  'All the usual people from the village. Muriel Lacey was talking to Natasha for ages, but now the Patels are with her. Mrs Patel is wearing a beautiful sari – sort of peacock blue, with glittery gold bits.'

  He craned round the window frame. 'It looks as though Gregor is being polite to that new teacher from the village school. Can't remember her name. And a whole crowd of Davieses have arrived. There's Trevor, and his brother who farms over by Stanway Bridges, and that other brother. They each have about six kids, don't they? Looks as though they could form the school choir on their own.'

  'They do all have beautiful Welsh voices,' said Lisa, making an effort. 'Is Keith Howard here yet?'

  'That looks like Sir Keith talking to Peter. He must have flown over from Germany specially. I was reading in the Guardian just last week about some important concert series he's conducting in the main towns of the old East Germany. Pretty good, eh?' Paul had never quite grown used to the sometimes exotic world of St Martins. He did not boast of it in the staffroom of the school in Worcester, where he taught biology and botany. Boasting was beneath his dignity – but he did just occasionally let drop a casual remark.

  'Mr Patel is helping Nick and Tony bring out some crates of soft drinks, and the children are swarming around them like flies.' Paul chuckled.

  'I do wish you would go and join them. I'll be fine here on my own. It'll be a pity if neither of us is there.' Lisa paused, looking at Paul's worried back. 'I don't want to upset Natasha,' she added cunningly. Natasha would not be upset, but Paul was always slightly in awe of her. 'Go on. I'll have a little snooze and come down later. I just didn't get much sleep last night, but I feel as though I could now.'

  Paul turned round and looked at her, wrung with anxiety. 'But what if you want something? Nobody will hear you from down there in the garden, with people chattering like mad.'

  'I've got that great bell Mabel gave us last night. I promise I'll clang that furiously if I need anything. We always used to have that if we were ill when we stayed at St Martins as children. It makes a terrific racket – you can hear it right out to the meadow and down the drive. Do go on.'

  'Oh, all right then.' He stooped and kissed her carefully on the forehead.

  As soon as he was gone, Lisa curled on her side as far as the lump that was the baby would let her, and said forlornly to it, 'What are you playing at? Just tell me that.' And then, because there was no one to see, she allowed two more tears to trickle down and soak into the pillow.

  * * *

  'This is Simon Frobisher,' said Natasha, 'My granddaughter, Frances Kilworth.'

  'How do you do,' said Frances, extending her hand.

  Simon Frobisher's grip was hard and assertive. Painful, even, Frances thought, for any woman whose handshake was less firm than her own. She looked at him thoughtfully. He exuded wealth and power as a tom-cat exudes its scent.

  'Giles Kilworth's wife,' stated Simon Frobisher. He was a big man, with a charming smile, but he sounded as though he was used to making statements rather than asking questions.

  Faintly annoyed, Frances did not reply, but held out her hand to the wife, a woman incongruously dressed in expensive tweeds – a Paris couturier's notion of English country dress – with spike-heeled shoes and too much make-up. She wore a Liberty scarf knotted over her hair, like someone trying to pose as the Queen driving a Land Rover round the Balmoral estate.

  'Emileen Frobisher,' said Natasha.

  The woman offered a hand like a limp rag to Frances, barely touching her fingers. She jangled with solid gold bracelets and was enveloped in a cloud of too much expensive perfume. 'Oh, we just simply love Giles Kilworth. I'm just devastated that the first series of Vet in Hot Water has finished. Is it true that there is going to be another?'

  She had a curious accent. Frances, who normally had a good ear, could pick out traces of Birmingham, overlaid with Midwest America and a self-conscious gentility, but couldn't entirely pin it down.

  'Yes,' she said. 'They've almost finished filming it.'

  'Giles will be here this afternoon,' said Natasha, with the air of someone slipping a hare into a pack of hounds.

  Emileen squealed. 'Oh my!' She seized Frances's arm. 'You will introduce me, Frances, won't you? Oh, I'd be just thrilled. Giles Kilworth, fancy!' As she grew more genuinely excited, she lapsed into what must be her native mode of speech, which was definitely laced with the flat vowels of the industrial Midlands.

  Gently Frances disengaged herself, feeling unaccountably irritated at this woman using her first name, when she would normally never have given it a thought. Simon Frobisher, clearly aware of her reaction, gave one quick smile to himself, then stepped forward and set himself to charm her.

  'I haven't seen St Martins before, Mrs Kilworth. Not properly. I wonder, would it be too much if I asked you to show me round?' He turned on her the full force of his personality, and smiled.

  Frances, who was accustomed to professional charmers from Giles's theatrical crowd, nevertheless thawed slightly. 'If you like. Will you be all right, darling?'

  'Of course.' Natasha seemed to be sizing them both up with her shrewd eyes. 'You show Simon around and Emileen can stay and talk to me. I'll tell her all about Giles.' As Frances bent over to kiss her briefly, she murmured, 'Don't be too nice to him, doushenka.'

  'Now, Emileen,' Frances heard Natasha say, as she led Simon away, 'what would you like to know about my so-famous grandson-in-law?'

  * * *

  Frances took Simon round to the far side of the chestnut tree, where he could see the whole of St Martins stretched out beyond the copper beech, from the same angle as Tony's painting. She began to explain the different periods of the building, expecting him to become bored quickly, but he listened intently and asked intelligent questions. She noticed, as she was talking, that some of the roof tiles seemed to have slipped. One whole row dipped gracefully out of line. She couldn't remember seeing that when she had last been here.

  From this vantage point, she started back towards the house and caught sight of William sitting in a basket chair under the outstretched branches of the chestnut.

  'Have you met my father, Mr Frobisher?'

  'How do you do, sir,' s
aid Simon, taking William's trembling hand.

  Frances saw her father wince as the other man squeezed.

  'Simon Frobisher, Dad. I believe he's quite new to the village.'

  William mumbled something she did not catch, so she smiled and nodded at him and said she'd be back later for a proper talk.

  'I took Harry for a good walk this morning, Dad. All the way to the Ludbrook. He had a wonderful time.'

  William's mouth twisted at one corner in a travesty of a smile.

  'Come along this way, Mr Frobisher. I'll show you the main downstairs rooms, and the outbuildings where we have made the studios.'

  * * *

  For God's sake be careful, Frances, said William to himself. That man's a rogue. He may pretend he hasn't met me before, but he has. I handled the appeal against planning permission for his house four years ago – he defeated me then and that's why he is looking so triumphant now. And it was clients of mine in Stanway Bridges who managed to fight off his project to build an out-of-town supermarket and leisure centre just outside their village. What's he doing here? Natasha must have invited him, I suppose – but you be careful, my girl.

  * * *

  On their way through the house, Frances and Simon Frobisher came across Sally, checking that all the food from the dining room had been taken outside. She was chatting to Alice Tyler. Frances started to perform the introductions.

  'Oh, Mrs Kilworth and I have met before,' said Simon. 'I commissioned one of her hangings for my house.' He shook her hand. 'Nice to see you again, Mrs Kilworth.'

  'Sally, please,' said Sally. She did not look altogether happy at being confronted with Simon Frobisher, Frances thought.

  'And Alice Tyler,' said Simon thoughtfully. 'Haven't I seen a painting of yours in the boardroom at Hever Chemicals?'

  'Yes,' Alice said. She was not one to be coy about her successes. 'They bought that at an exhibition of mine a couple of years ago, and the CE later commissioned another for his private collection.'