A Village in Jeopardy (Turnham Malpas 16)

by Shaw, Rebecca

  Sylvia, breathing hard, said between gritted teeth, ‘Home!’ pointing dramatically to the door. ‘We shall have words when we get in.’

  ‘Honestly, men aren’t even masters in their own homes nowadays,’ Willie grumbled.

  Sylvia loudly retorted, ‘Well, you certainly aren’t! Out!’

  And so it was that Willie slept the night on the sofa while Sylvia luxuriated in having the bed to herself and feeling distinctly self-righteous about it.

  So after Peter’s fruitless visit to Dottie’s he drove home, parked the car in Church Lane and knocked on Willie Biggs’s door. Sylvia answered and invited him in. ‘I was coming round, rector, but I saw you leave in your car.’

  ‘Ah! Do you have news about Dottie? She’s left us a note to say she can’t come to clean any more because she’s not fit to do so. From the sound of it someone must have—’

  Sylvia put a finger to her lips. ‘Willie! There’s a gentleman to see you.’

  The distinct sounds of someone in the kitchen doing the washing up ceased and Willie appeared, looking downtrodden. ‘Oh! Good morning, sir. You want to see me?’

  ‘I don’t know. Do I?’

  ‘Yes, you do,’ said Sylvia, arms akimbo, glaring at Willie.

  Willie cleared his throat. ‘There was an unfortunate altercation in the Royal Oak last night and unfortunately Dottie took it the wrong way. What I said was the truth but she took offence.’

  ‘I’ve been to see her this morning because of a note she put through our letter box very late last night. Audrey, her neighbour, says she left first thing this morning in a taxi with a large suitcase.’

  Sylvia gasped.

  Hesitantly Willie asked if he knew where she’d gone.

  ‘I don’t know, because she’s disappeared without even telling Audrey where.’

  Willie had no reply to this, feeling too shocked to think.

  So Sylvia replied on his behalf. ‘He can’t control his tongue nowadays. He’s not as bad as Don, who can say the most out-of-place things and doesn’t know he’s doing it. Willie knows what he’s saying but still he says it.’

  Peter turned to Willie. ‘What did you say, Willie?’

  ‘Well, it was like this . . .’ So he related the whole conversation to this man for whom he had more respect than any other person on earth and felt deeply mortified as he said it. ‘I can’t apologise enough. If I could see her now I’d tell her how sorry I am. And I am. Very sorry. I’ll get back to the washing up; I’ve nearly finished, love. It’s mopping the floor next you said.’

  Peter had to smile at Sylvia when Willie returned to his domestic duties. ‘I see why she is so upset. We never think on those terms, you know, Caroline and I.’

  ‘Neither does anyone else, except Willie. I do hope she comes back. We’ll all miss her. I’m so sorry, rector, I really am.’

  ‘So am I. I’ll let you know if I hear anything more. Bye, Sylvia.’

  With his hand on the door latch, Peter said before he left, ‘That’s three people gone from the village in one week. What is wrong with everyone?’

  ‘Don’t worry too much about Dottie; she’s pretty tough is Dottie.’

  ‘Perhaps, Sylvia, but not quite tough enough it would seem.’

  ‘I’m sorry all over again about what Willie said. He simply didn’t think.’

  Peter nodded his head. ‘You see, Dottie is acutely sensitive about her past life, though she may not appear to be.’

  Chapter 7

  During this first term at Cambridge Beth had chosen to come home for a weekend twice as often as Alex, and she was home again the weekend of the flood victims’ coffee morning. She clung to her mother the moment she appeared and Caroline did not need to be told how much Beth missed her home.

  ‘Had a good journey, darling?’

  ‘Lots of traffic but not too bad, no major hold-ups.’

  ‘I can’t believe that you passed your test first time. It took me four goes to pass.’

  ‘Mum! Honestly. Four tries! Mmm. Tea, cup of, needed immediately.’

  ‘Kettle’s already boiled. In the kitchen?’

  ‘Dad home?’

  ‘Shortly. Sick visiting in Little Derehams; it won’t take him long. It’s so lovely to see you. Dad was saying only the other night how lonely it was having no one but ourselves to say good night to.’

  ‘It’s lonely for me too.’

  ‘But you’ve made friends, you say.’

  ‘Oh! Yes, plenty, but no one I’m really close to and the temptation to dig out Alex is unbearable sometimes. But I don’t. He doesn’t want his sister tagging along. He’s got his rugby friends, and his science faculty lot and he seems perfectly happy.’

  ‘Here’s your tea, darling. I think perhaps he isn’t quite as content as you imagine.’

  ‘Well, he’s doing a very good impression of being so. I just don’t fit in, you know.’

  ‘I’m sorry you feel like that. But it is only your second term.’

  ‘I know. Can I tell you why?’

  ‘You can tell me anything you choose, as you well know.’

  Beth sipped her tea, put the mug on the corner of the Aga and then said, ‘Don’t tell anyone else, not even Dad, but they all like partying and dashing about here there and everywhere and dressing up and it doesn’t interest me one little bit, and I don’t know why.’

  ‘You used to enjoy parties. What do you prefer to do then?’

  ‘Think about home, and everyone here and wish I was home where I belong and feeling safe. Sometimes it’s so bad it hurts.’

  ‘That sounds like bad homesickness and it can be very upsetting, but if you stick at it, it will get better. By the time you go back for your second year you won’t be able to wait to get there, believe me.’

  ‘You think so?’

  ‘Yes, I do. Just get stuck in there and give yourself time.’

  Beth picked up her mug again. ‘Did you know Jake’s there?’

  ‘Jake Harding? Really! I thought he’d applied to London.’

  ‘Apparently not. I saw him from a distance the first term; I couldn’t believe it.’ Beth looked down at her mug of tea and said very softly, ‘He’s better looking than ever.’

  ‘I see. Is that possible, I ask myself?’ Caroline smiled and Beth managed to smile back. ‘Beth . . . you don’t still have feelings for him?’

  ‘I don’t know. Maybe. I think I must have. It’s a good thing he left Penny Fawcett when he did to live with his dad. Anyway, he can still turn my knees to jelly.’

  The back door opened and in walked Peter. ‘Beth, you’re home! You’ve made good time. How’s my favourite daughter?’

  Beth sprang out of her chair and they hugged. ‘All the better for seeing you, Dad.’

  ‘And I am too for seeing you.’

  ‘Tea, Dad?’

  ‘Yes, please.’

  Beth got out another mug, poured him his tea and then sat down again in the chair on the other side of the Aga to her mother. ‘Everything all right in the village, Dad?’

  ‘Apart from three people leaving in a hurry and we don’t know where two of them have gone, yes, I suppose you could say everything’s fine.’

  ‘Who’s left?’

  ‘Johnny has gone home to Brazil we assume, leaving Alice desperate. Marcus has gone to London to see about his book being published. Before you ask, he has finally got a publisher and I understand from Alice he has taken all the money from their joint bank account. And now Dottie.’

  At the mention of the third missing person Beth’s attention was immediately focused. ‘Dad! Where’s she gone?’

  ‘That’s it, we don’t know.’

  ‘Why has she gone?’

  ‘All because Willie made an unfortunate remark in the pub the other night and Dottie took serious umbrage and went away very first thing the following morning.’

  Beth, who had depended on Dottie right since her first coming to clean at the Rectory said, ‘Right! I’ll be back for my tea. Do
n’t throw it away.’

  ‘Where are you going?’

  ‘I’m going next door to see Willie, of course. I’m not having this.’

  The door to Willie and Sylvia’s cottage was propped open so Beth marched in full of anger to get to the bottom of what Willie had said to make Dottie leave the village.

  Willie was watching Countdown but when he heard Beth’s voice he immediately called out, ‘You’re home, love! Come in, come in.’ He found the remote, switched off his programme, delighted that she had called. ‘Well, Beth love, how nice to see you. Sit yourself down. I was thinking the other day about how you and Alex used to love to come here for your tea and we’d have a game of Snakes and Ladders or Ludo or something. Didn’t we have some fun? Eh?’

  ‘Willie! Dottie’s gone. What on earth did you say to her?’

  Willie was alarmed by the anger in her voice, he who’d always felt like her substitute grandfather.

  ‘It wasn’t anything much, just caught her by surprise.’

  ‘So, what was it? It must have been serious for her to run away; she’s not the running away kind. She’s strong, and she knows how to talk to people and I need her back, here in Turnham Malpas.’

  Willie shuffled about a little, straightened the newspaper and put it in the magazine rack, asked her if she wanted a cup of tea and said Sylvia wouldn’t be long, he didn’t know what was keeping her.

  ‘Was it about her being a prostitute when she was younger? Because I know all about that.’

  Willie had to be truthful to this girl he’d known since the day she was born.

  ‘Well, I’m afraid it was. I shouldn’t have said what I said, but I did. It was nothing but the truth and I’m so sorry about it, you’ve no idea, but she didn’t give me the chance to apologise. She went the very next morning before I’d even got up. How do you know about what . . . she was like when she was a younger woman?’

  ‘She told me one day.’

  Willie was horrified. ‘Told you? She’d no business to.’

  ‘Well, she did. Now all you can do is tell me anything at all that you know about her cousins. I know she has lots of cousins.’ Rather threateningly Beth added, ‘It’s the least you can do. Given the circumstances.’

  ‘There’s the one who lives in Little Derehams, but I don’t know her name; there’s another one called Irene what lives on her own and always wants Dottie to go live with her because she hates being lonely.’

  ‘So where does she live?’

  ‘Somewhere Bristol way, I think.’

  ‘You don’t know any more than that? Do you think Sylvia might know?’

  ‘She might, but I doubt it. The Fosketts have always bred like rabbits. Dottie once added up how many cousins she had and when she got to eighteen she had to stop, but she said there were many more.’

  ‘When Sylvia comes home I’ll ask her. We’ve got to find her; I can’t bear her to be sad. I’m surprised at you, Willie, saying something about her past life to her. You should be ashamed.’ Beth sat down to wait, saddened by her lack of progress, and Willie reluctantly had to decide that she had grown up since she’d gone to Cambridge, and he came to the conclusion she wouldn’t be wanting a game of Ludo, not no more. He sighed for past happiness.

  Sylvia didn’t know where Dottie might have gone either. ‘You see, love, it all happened so quick. She just went. I’m real sorry about what Willie said. Will you forgive him? He doesn’t want to be at odds with you, nor Alex for that matter.’

  ‘We can’t do nothing; we’ve got to try to find her. You’ve no idea how she helped me, when I came back from Africa in such a state, more than any other person except Dad. Only Dottie could talk to me without tiptoeing round me as if I was a piece of Royal Worcester; I needed her and it’s the least I can do after what she did for me. So, I’ll be back.’

  ‘Right, Beth, but remember me and Willie love you no matter what. I sat with you either side of the Aga in your Mum’s kitchen feeding you, and your Mum feeding Alex, or vice versa, when you were hardly big enough to have left the hospital and I love you as if you were my own. Don’t fall out permanent, will you?’

  Beth turned back to smile at her, whispered ‘Thanks,’ and went home.

  It was just as she was getting into bed that night she remembered once Dottie being without her phone at home due to the lines coming down at the bottom end of the village in a storm, so she’d asked Caroline to ring her cousin to tell her she’d no phone. Caroline had put the cousin’s number in her phone and promised to ring when she had a minute at the surgery. Beth decided she’d check her mum’s phone first thing in the morning. By the time she woke, however, Caroline had already gone to the village hall to help organise the coffee morning so Beth had to wait.

  The most ecstatic person in the crowd at the coffee morning was Alice, because at eight fifteen that very morning the postman had delivered a letter postmarked Rio de Janeiro through Alice’s door.

  She thrust the envelope open and began to read, her eyes filling with tears. ‘My dear Alice’ it began. Her heart missed a beat.

  I am a fool to run away from the very beat of my heart and come back to meaningless, stupidly endless, mind-numbing work in an office that revolts me with its plush, excessively expensive furnishings and assistants behaving more like slaves than real people. It is all so sickening to me since I met you. Somehow while living near you my values have undergone an almighty change. I no longer revere the extravagant lifestyle I had before I met you. I long to come back to you. I left because I could not believe that someone wanted me only for myself and not my wealth and position. All my life I have lived amongst moneyed people, and it is hard to find someone so genuine that they love you for yourself and not for your status and what your personal wealth can do for them. I’d heard those very same words of yours before several times, and I didn’t believe you meant them. It felt like a well-repeated old story.

  But now I know it wasn’t. You are the most genuine person I know and realise, with your high principles about marriage and fidelity, what it cost you to say what you did. If you say yes to a proposal of marriage from me I shall come back to Turnham Malpas immediately and make a life for the two of us. To marry in the church where my ancestors were christened, married and buried for generations, and God willing to have our own children christened there, is all I want. To be married to you, Alice March, for I yearn for you every moment.

  It is what I want more than anything in the world and I long for your reply. I know there are hurdles to overcome, namely a divorce from Marcus, but perhaps if his book gets published . . . he won’t mind too much.

  All my love, my dearest,

  Johnny

  Alice folded the letter, opened it, read it again, folded it and held it pressed to her cheek. So after all the pain she’d gone through and now . . . this. Oh! Johnny, oh! Johnny! I love you! More than life itself. It had taken only one small phrase from Johnny to rid her of Marcus and frankly one small phrase was all he deserved. Alice glanced at the clock; she’d be late for accompanying the dancing group! Help! But her heart sang as she raced upstairs, sang louder when she recollected she’d no need to listen for Marcus tapping away at his computer any more because Johnny would see to that for her. One glance in the bathroom mirror and Alice recognised the face of a woman in love and she rejoiced.

  At the dance recital Alice accompanied the group with more vigour and enthusiasm than in any of the many rehearsals they had done. They were Irish and danced with such speed and delight that when she finished playing Alice felt as exhausted as the dancers. The crowd in the church hall clapped and clapped and begged an encore. Luckily they’d got the music for another one that Alice had familiarised herself with just in case. The roof almost lifted off the hall at the end of their exhibition of Irish Dance and Bridget, who’d planned it all, was thrilled. Alice got a hug and a kiss from her. ‘Oh! Alice, I’ve never heard you play so well. Are you sure you haven’t got Irish blood in you?’

  ‘Not
that I know of. Right! I’ll go get us a drink.’

  ‘Sure the drinks are on me; here, take this,’ said Bridget, holding out a twenty-pound note.

  ‘I don’t want that, I did it for the flood fund!’

  ‘Well, put the whole note in their money box and tell them to keep the change, then.’ Alice got another hug, then Bridget dashed off to make some announcements about the raffle and spur everyone on to buy from the stalls. Her rallying tone had the desired effect and everyone who came endeavoured to find something to spend their money on. There were plenty of quality things to choose from. Bridget had even got an Irish Tourist Board company to come from miles away and give a percentage of all the money they took for their souvenirs and traditional handcrafts to the cause. Little Derehams and Penny Fawcett had both had collections to help swell the fund too.

  Caroline did well on her nearly new stall, though Sylvia, who had pledged to give her a hand, felt uncomfortable after Beth’s difficult visit the previous day. ‘I’m so sorry about Willie and Dottie. Heaven alone knows where she’s gone.’

  ‘Look, don’t worry. Willie shouldn’t have reminded her, but he did only say the truth . . . but he still shouldn’t have said it. Beth’s very close to Dottie, after . . . you know . . . Africa and all that, so I do wish for her sake we could find her.’

  ‘I tell you what; I could go see her cousin in Little Derehams. She might know where she’s gone. In fact she might be here. When we have a quiet moment I’ll go have a look round.’

  ‘Thank you, Sylvia.’

  It was the turn of the village school choir to perform next and their parents had turned up in droves to support their children. A space was cleared for the choir to assemble themselves with Bridget announcing their programme of songs, and the recorder recital too. The next ten minutes were exceedingly special to everyone, not just the parents.

  Kate Fitch, the headteacher, was profusely thanked for the children’s excellent performance and she said a few words. ‘Thank you! Weren’t the children wonderful? They’ve worked so hard to entertain you, and I love them all. My staff and I are delighted to have the children invited to perform and contribute to such a worthy cause.’ Caroline noticed that Kate’s husband Craddock was there, but not looking his usual bright self. His complexion, always pale at the best of times, appeared drawn as though he had worries he needed to keep to himself, but the smile of appreciation he gave Kate was genuine enough. Business in Turnham Malpas as elsewhere was going through a bad time and Caroline did wonder if business worries were beginning to affect him. She caught his eye and he came across to speak with her.