‘We shouldn’t have made it so you can’t be straight with your children. I’m deeply sorry about that. Obviously the moment we’ve avoided thinking about has come at last.’
‘I know they know Caroline isn’t their real mother, but I think if you told them the whole truth they’d be able to face it at their age. It doesn’t mean they will want to go charging off to find … Suzy … does it?’
Peter got up and went to stand at the window. ‘She longs to see them.’
Harriet was glad they weren’t face to face or he would have seen the shock written there. She’d no idea they’d been in touch since Suzy left the village.
‘That was long ago when she came to visit Michael while she thought we were on holiday. I told her, no, I couldn’t allow it both for Caroline’s sake and for her own. Her conceiving my children was one moment of shame, my shame, which I shall carry with me to the grave. Yet from it Caroline and I were blessed with the children we both needed.’ Peter gave a huge sigh. ‘It was Caroline who asked Suzy if we could have the children, you know. And when she told me what she’d done I said no. Caroline said, “I see. So we can adopt children we know nothing of but you won’t let me adopt your own flesh and blood.” She told me Suzy wanted us to have the twins as soon as they arrived, because Suzy wouldn’t allow herself to see the children as they were being born in case she weakened. Such courage.’
Peter turned from the window, his eyes full of tears. ‘I saw her immediately after the birth, you know; her pain at relinquishing them to Caroline and me was terrible to witness. But she knew she couldn’t keep them, a widow with three little girls already, it would have been impossible for her. Yet she was so brave … she even asked me for my blessing. Can you believe that?’
Harriet shook her head, too emotional to speak, grateful he was looking anywhere but at her.
‘When Caroline told me that Suzy wanted us to have the children and I’d said no, I told her I couldn’t face looking at them every day and being reminded of my shame. I considered only myself with never a thought for what I’d done to her. I threw all her love and self-sacrifice back in her face. I have never met such forgiveness in a human being either before or since.’
‘Peter! Should you be telling me all this?’
He shook his head but carried on to say, ‘How Caroline coped with what I did, I shall never know.’
‘So Suzy wasn’t the only one to be brave.’
‘Indeed not.’ He paused for a moment, then his head came up and he looked her straight in the face. ‘Thank you for telling me, Harriet, I appreciate it. I’ve always been intensely grateful for the way the village has kept our secret. Deeply appreciative.’
Harriet stood up, crying inside herself, longing to get away. ‘I’ll go now I’ve said my piece. It was only in your best interests and the children’s. I hope you’ll forgive me for speaking out.’
‘There’s nothing to forgive. God bless you, Harriet.’
‘If anyone mentions anything to you from this conversation it won’t be me who’s told them.’
She left Peter to his heartbreak, made her escape, and went home to Jimbo and the no-nonsense world in which the two of them lived.
But stupidly the first thing she did when she saw Jimbo still working at his desk was to fling her arms round him and weep. ‘Darling! Oh, God! You wouldn’t believe.’
‘Harriet! Were they angry with you? Tell me. Here, sit on my knee.’ He gripped her tightly and let the tears run their course. ‘Here, look! A clean handkerchief. Wipe your face and tell your Jimbo.’ He wiped it for her and hugged her tight. ‘I did say don’t go.’
‘I know but I’m glad I did.’
‘Doesn’t sound like it.’
‘I think I’m not nearly as brave as I believe myself to be. Those two over at the Rectory, well …’
‘Go on.’
‘They’re an example to us all.’ Harriet told him everything she’d learned and finished by begging him not to say a word to anyone.
‘Cross my heart and hope to die.’
‘Promise?’
‘Promise.’
‘I never think about how lucky we are to have had four children as easily as we have done, and nothing wrong with any of them, but tonight I am. Peter and Caroline are in such a mess about this. If only they’d been able to have children of their own …’
‘It’s their problem, Harriet. I do feel very sorry for them but there’s nothing either you or I can do anything about, except be good friends to them both.’
‘I know, but what a predicament. I wish I could wave a magic wand and make it all right for the four of them. Heaven alone knows what the children’s reactions are going to be.’
‘I’m not often given to fanciful thoughts but I always think their love is something quite different from ours. Theirs is like a skittish, highly strung horse, all temperament and searing passion. It must be hell to live with a love like theirs, all up and down and sensitive and touchy. We’re like a couple of shire-horses, confident and strong.’
‘You make it sound damned boring, Jimbo.’
‘Boring! No, not boring, more beautifully comfortable, kind of. However, as I said none of it is our fault. It’s Peter’s.’ He slid her off his knee and turned to his desk. ‘Look, I’ve made a list of souvenirs I fancy selling. I’ve decided to be magnanimous and restore the Jones family to the bosom of our enterprise.’
Harriet was astounded. ‘After all you’ve said about them? I can’t believe this.’
Jimbo gave her a conspiratorial smile. ‘I know, I know, but business is business. Mrs Jones can come back to do the mail order business, because none of her replacements has measured up to her and Vince can do the doorstops et cetera and the picture framing. Now he’s retired they need a helping hand and I’m in a position to give them it, so I must.’
‘So that’s how you justify it. Well, you can ask them because I shan’t, it’s all too embarrassing.’ Harriet gave a huge sigh as she finished speaking.
He heard her sigh and said, ‘Harriet! Don’t worry about the twins; you’ve done your bit, just leave it to them. I can’t bear for you to be unhappy. I love you, you see, and what hurts you hurts me.’ Jimbo caressed her hand and twisted round to look at her standing behind him.
She smiled down at him and bent to kiss him. ‘And I love you, even if I am a shire-horse.’ They both laughed, Harriet picked up his sheet of notes from the desk and they began discussing Jimbo’s souvenir scheme. But for Harriet it didn’t entirely block out her worry about Peter and Caroline.
Peter was sitting in his study brooding on the problem when Caroline came home. She put her head round the study door and knew even before he spoke that Peter was troubled. ‘Darling! What’s the matter?’
‘Harriet’s been to see me.’
‘Yes?’
‘Apparently Beth is asking all round the school about …’ Peter hesitated, unsure how to phrase Harriet’s news. ‘Well, to be blunt, about her real mother. She wants to know who she is.’
‘Oh, God!’ Caroline sat down abruptly on the sofa.
‘Caroline! We knew it would come some time and it’s come now, so we have to face it.’
‘Not yet, not now. Please. I need time.’
‘We’ve had ten years of time to think and all we’ve done is amble along from day to day, putting it off, thankful for their ignorance.’
‘I won’t face it. I just won’t. I’m not ready for it.’
Peter’s answer to Caroline’s anguish was not the sympathetic one she’d hoped for. ‘I’m sorry, darling, but they are, even if we’re not, and something must be done about it.’
‘No, we don’t need to. We can just amble along as you say, and wait and see. They haven’t asked us, so it can’t be that serious.’
‘That’s probably because they don’t want to hurt us, especially you. Harriet pointed out to me the strong possibility that others might tell her and that could be catastrophic.’ Peter paused for a moment w
hile he searched for the right words. ‘You see, other people might be … cruel … you know, and Beth and Alex can’t fight that kind of cruelty without having a strong bond with us about the whole matter. I know it’s painful, my darling, but we’re the grown-ups in this and we’ve to smooth their pathway.’
Caroline shook her head vehemently. ‘I know they need to know, but not yet, they’re so little. So innocent.’ As she said ‘innocent’ she gave a great agonised sigh.
Peter went to sit beside her on the sofa. He put his arm round her shoulders and held her close. ‘I know, I know. We don’t need to tell them today or even tomorrow, but we must very, very soon. Deep down, you know I’m right. If they have a need to know then now’s the time, isn’t it? Otherwise it puts us on the wrong foot and makes us appear deceitful, and … Suzy herself didn’t want that. She begged me to be truthful and we both know she was right.’ Peter gave her a gentle shake. ‘Eh? Don’t we?’
‘But what will they think of you?’
‘That’s my burden, not theirs.’
Caroline shrugged his arm from her shoulders and turned to face him. ‘My absolute dread is if they want to see her.’
‘I don’t think they will, not yet anyway, but we can’t blame them if they do, can we? It’s only natural. Think it over, seriously, please.’
‘I will. But how shall we … kind of … do it?’
‘Heaven knows. We’ll think of something. We’re not entirely bereft of brains, are we?’
‘I wasn’t thinking of brains, it was heart and feelings and … things I’m most concerned about.’
‘Ah! Yes.’
Never one to allow the grass to grow under his feet, Jimbo had Mrs Jones installed in the mail order office and Vince doing practice runs with doorstop designs in less time than it takes to tell. Mrs Jones glowed with satisfaction the first morning she was allowed back in the Store.
Linda waved cheerfully from behind her post office grille. ‘Hello, Mrs Jones. Quite like old times. I expect you’ll be glad to be back, just like me.’
Mrs Jones’s normally grim face was creased with smiles. ‘You’ve no idea! Things have been very tight since Vince retired, but now the sun is out as you might say and I’m back doing what I was cut out to do.’ She looked around the Store, glad to know she’d be able to shop in here again instead of trailing to Culworth for everything she needed.
She bounced into the back of the shop and went straight to the mail order office, closed the door behind her and breathed a sigh of delight. There was a pile of orders waiting for her so she flung off her coat and hat, dug in her bag for her reading glasses and waded in. She reached out and took down a jar of ‘Harriet’s Country Cousins’ Seville Orange Marmalade’ but, before she parcelled it up for the post she ran her finger round the label, stroked the red gingham cover, teased the neatly tied bow of the gold cord encircling it and read out the description of the contents, then held the jar up to the light and enjoyed the golden orangey glow of it. There wasn’t a single jar of homemade marmalade on the market to compare. She felt a surge of contentment run through her veins, decided the jar was the most beautiful thing in her life at that moment and set to work as though she’d never been away.
Jimbo, with an ear to her office door, listened to her banging away with the stapler and rejoiced at the old familiar sound. He really would have to stop sacking staff the moment they displeased him because it always meant him eating humble pie and he was growing tired of the taste.
Harriet caught him listening to the ripping sound of parcel tape being dragged off the reel and poked him in the ribs whispering, ‘Satisfied?’
‘I am. Music to my ears, that is.’ With a smug smile on his face he went on. ‘She’s promised not to lose her rag ever again and she says I can call her Greta now.’
‘Oh! Who’s a lucky boy, then?’ Harriet, grinning from ear to ear, went towards the kitchen to face a day of making puddings and cakes to fill the freezers. Halfway through the morning she remembered about the twins and Peter’s distress, and it took the edge off her pleasure.
Dicky Tutt had the edge taken off his pleasure in the Store that same morning but not because of the problem at the Rectory. He had called in for a copy of the Cultvorth Gazette for Georgie on his way to the pub for his morning stint and found himself facing Bryn right by Jimbo’s newsstand. The hairs on the back of Dicky’s neck stood up and his scalp prickled.
‘Good morning, Dicky! Nice day.’
Dicky picked up on the mocking tone in Bryn’s voice. Remembering how he’d hidden behind Georgie’s skirts the night she’d poured the drinks over Bryn’s head, Dicky decided to stand his ground. ‘The morning would be a lot nicer if you weren’t here.’
‘Don’t be like that, I mean no harm.’
‘Don’t you? Just go back where you came from and leave us all alone. Georgie’s had enough of you and so have I.’
Bryn took hold of the lapels of Dicky’s jacket. ‘See here, you stunted little specimen, you miserable little dwarf. I’m still Georgie’s husband and it’s staying that way. She and I are business partners, right? I’m going to bring big business to the pub and that’s what she wants. See? So your Georgie this and Georgie that means nothing.’ Bryn snapped his fingers in Dicky’s face and disdainfully dusted off his hands as though he’d been touching something unseemly.
Linda rang her panic button.
Dicky snapped. He grabbed hold of Bryn’s shirt at chest level and jerked his face down towards his own. ‘See here, matey, Georgie is mine and I’ll move heaven and earth to keep it that way. So you can take your miserable pathetic business elsewhere. Find another pub and use that for your pie-in-the-sky plans. Any more of you aggravating me I’ll go straight to the police, and talk about church towers and such. They’ll listen to me. After all, I had plenty of witnesses and they’ve all got long memories.’ Dicky relaxed his hold on Bryn. ‘So git before I do my worst.’
Jimbo appeared by the newsstand.
Dicky saw by Bryn’s eyes that he was alarmed, but only for an instant. Then they changed and Bryn sneered, ‘You! A little squirt like you? Ha!’
‘Yes, a little squirt like me. Any more sniffing around Georgie and I will, God help me, I will.’
Something in the sparky way Dicky defied him triggered the idea that Dicky was intending to marry Georgie. ‘I do believe you’re thinking of marrying her, aren’t you?’ Bryn roared with laughter, holding his sides, his mouth wide open, his eyes screwed tight, his head thrown back. The sound of his amusement bounced from wall to wall. He got out a handkerchief and wiped his eyes. ‘Oh, God! What a laugh. You and Georgie! Oh, my word!’
One customer crept round to the front of the meat counter to get a better view, another put down her basket and abandoned all pretence of shopping to stare, and Jimbo prepared to roll up his sleeves and break up a fight. But they were all disappointed because Dicky, red in the face with rage, drew himself up to his full height, all five feet four of it, and said, while prodding Bryn’s chest with a forefinger, ‘That’s my intention. I want Georgie as my wife and she wants me. And by God, we will be together one day if I have to kill you to get her.’
Dicky stalked out of the door with such dignity that the observers almost clapped their approval, but then they looked at Bryn and saw a frightening mixture of hate and fear in his face which boded ill for Dicky. Poor chap.
Linda had stopped her pretence of counting her stock of stamp books. Mrs Jones, having come out to see the fun, scuttled back to her office in panic. Jimbo heaved a sigh of relief and the customers got on with their own affairs, mindful as they did so to give Bryn a wide berth.
He was rooted to the spot, apparently unaware of his surroundings. Jimbo watched Bryn almost shake himself and focus his eyes on Jimbo himself. Bryn laughed. ‘Did I imagine that or did the little dwarf actually threaten to murder me?’
‘He did.’
‘My God! I’d like to see him try.’ Bryn smoothed the front of his shirt and said,
‘Right, Jimbo. Have you had any more thoughts about what we talked of yesterday?’
‘Come into my office.’ Jimbo jerked his head towards the back of the Store and strode off in front of Bryn.
Jimbo took off his boater and, carefully placing it on a shelf, slowly turned and said in measured tones, ‘The next time you want to have a fight don’t choose my Store as the venue.’
‘Get on with you! You know full well it’s good for trade and that’s what matters to you, isn’t it? They’ll all be in here tomorrow hoping for a further instalment and what does that mean? More money in your tills. It’s your Achilles heel, isn’t it, Jimbo? Profit and more profit. You don’t fool me. This morning’s little episode will do this place no end of good.’
‘Bluster doesn’t impress me. So listen and get the message. I’m going along with the idea of souvenirs because I want to do it. Not because you’ve persuaded me but because it makes sound commercial sense. It’ll be a long time before I see fit to give you a slice of the action. Right. Got that straight. If there is a repetition of this morning you’ll never get a percentage no matter how big it is. That man has a right to threaten you and I’d back him one hundred per cent. Not as far as murder, but certainly where his ambitions for Georgie are concerned. So … watch your step.’ This time it was Jimbo’s forefinger prodding Bryn’s chest.
Bryn looked seriously disconcerted and backed off. ‘OK. OK. I get the message. That’s the trouble with this damned village: everyone thinks they have a right to take sides.’
Jimbo ignored him and moved on. ‘Mm. This is a list of the ideas we’ve come up with and I’m getting organised.’
Bryn studied Jimbo’s list and felt heartened by his enthusiasm. ‘Excellent. Excellent. I like the idea of sweets in Turnham Malpas tins. And the pencils. And the doorstops.’
A Village Dilemna (Turnham Malpas 09) Page 5
