by Mavis Cheek
Angela smiled uncertainly. Was she being played with?
'Look’ said Mrs Perry, suddenly serious again, leaning forward and stabbing at the air with her cigarette. 'There isn't enough good in folk to go round as it is, without us climbing on the bandwagon. I haven't got straw in my hair when it comes to gazumping. First come, first served. It has to be so. I want doesn't always get. I wish it was you, but it isn't and that is that, Mrs Fytton.'
I want doesn't always get. No, she wanted to cry, it does not.
She remembered. How she thought he must be ill because he looked so white and so shaky and so crumpled. He sat on the settee and she beside him, but when she reached out to touch him, he pulled away from her and she suddenly knew. There was a kaleidoscopic tumble of images and memories in her head, a sudden realization of jigsaw pieces that never quite sat true. He is leaving me, she thought. Just as he said, 'I am leaving you’ And* when she said, 'Don't go,' he said, ‘I must.' She said, 'What about the children?' He said, 'Don't make this hard on me.' So she didn't. And he went. He closed the front door so quietly that she could not be sure he had gone. Then she called his name. And the house was suddenly empty, like a body without a heart. Which left her sitting on the settee thinking, So that's how people really speak in this situation. Instinct told her to preserve some dignity. He would never come back if she showed him how deep the wound went. He would be too afraid.
Well, she was not going to give up on this house in the same way she gave up on her marriage. She adopted the same bright-eyed pose as the hens. Dangerous, expectant. Mrs Perry brushed some crumbs from the table for them and they pounced. No waiting, no politesse. That was the way. Say what you want and hang around until you get it. Mrs Perry tapped the dog's nose out of the way as he came scuffling among them, and the hens, as if taking their cue from her, made a series of runs at him, their little beaks flashing like flick knives. He immediately slid back under the bench.
Exactly so, thought Angela.
'How long have you been married, Mrs Perry?'
'Forty-seven years.'
'Happily?'
'Well, I -' Mrs Perry looked flustered.
'Sorry’ said Angela. 'That was very rude.'
'This and that’ said Mrs Perry. 'But we made a good team.'
'Oh’ said Angela. 'I was dead romantic about it all.'
Mrs Perry raised a wispy grey eyebrow. ‘I was the opposite. Archie's family were glad when I accepted him, me being strong and sensible. And so were my mother and my aunts. Of course, I swapped the dairy and the forge to only go half a mile over the hill to work with Archie's mother, so she couldn't complain. We did the milking, of course, and the eels, preserves and cider - which were their three sidelines. When you've gutted eels and stoned plums and washed bottles for a year or two, everyone is inclined to want you to stay around.' And then she stared out of the window towards the hill and the pigs.
Now that the hens had quietened down she beckoned, with a low whistling noise, to the bench. Out came the dog, meek and happy. She bent and scratched behind its ear. The hens stood quietly to one side, tap, tap, tapping at the cracks between the flagstones. All, it seemed, were waiting.
'Women can be your worst enemies,' said Angela.
Mrs Perry looked perfectly noncommittal.
Well’thought Angela, what would she know? 'Do you know, Mrs Perry, I once tried to go down to Greenham Common to take some food and blankets and stuff - and they wouldn't let me on the minibus with my son. Because he was male.' She paused. 'He was six’
'No,' said the woman, suitably surprised.
'Yes,' said Angela. 'Six’
Something suddenly dawned on her. 'Mrs Perry,' she said, 'I'm sorry. I realize you won't know what Greenham was.' Mrs Perry raised her eyebrows.
'It was an American base, for nuclear weapons, close to London. Women made a peace camp there and cut the wire and did a lot of material damage and hassling and held vigils to make the army and the police understand the women weren't just a passive load of skirts but were political, fighters ... The women were spat on, reviled and despised. But they stayed there for years, some of them, and lived in the most appalling conditions - tents that were constantly being torn down by the authorities - snow, wind, rain, frost - no facilities of any kind except what a few kind locals offered. They were really brave.'
'Ah,' said Mrs Perry.
Angela shrugged. 'It was just a little moment in history. And in women's history. And then - pouf - it was over.'
Mrs Perry nodded. 'Women did a lot in the war too’ she said. 'But they knocked you straight back afterwards.'
'Of course they did’ said Angela vaguely. 'But six. I should have known after that.'
There was the sound of a car driving on gravel. 'Oh’ said Mrs Perry, standing up. 'That'll be Dave the Bread.' And she went out of the back door, pushing it open with a smart smack of her hip. The small one. Now Angela realized what caused the lopsidedness.
The hens followed Mrs Perry, rushing and squawking. The dog did not move. Angela stroked his head. Time, she thought dreamily, makes door frames drop. And then, even more dreamily, she thought that once she was installed here she would allow herself the same privilege. Why, she could drop all over the place. Buttocks scraping the floor, belly swinging low as a chariot, and hiding it all under swirling elastic-waisted rustic skirts while she beamed at the world...
Mrs Perry returned, followed by a large man dressed for the part in a white coat and white baseball hat bearing the boast 'Dave the Bread'. Angela tried not to look at the baseball hat.
'Morning’ he said, smiling at her curiously. He had a strong south London accent. Ah well. Despite that, he held a big square rush basket in front of him from which floated a yeasty, tantalizing smell. He put a large square white loaf on the table, and then Mrs Perry pointed to a currant one.
'That too’ she said. 'As I've got a guest.'
Angela put out her hand. 'Mrs Fytton’ she said. 'I'm hoping to move in here.'
'Good, good’ said Dave the Bread. 'Family?' he added hopefully, obviously seeing a many-loafed bill. He hovered, eyeing the teapot.
'Goodbye, Dave’ said Mrs Perry.
'See you again’ he said, and left very reluctantly.
'Yes’ said Angela. 'Yes, you will.'
'Go on’ said Mrs Perry, sitting down and cutting away at the loaf. She pushed a piece of the speckled soft white bread across to her. No plate.
Great, thought Angela stoutly. No plate. Tentatively, she brushed at the table top with her hand. There were a lot of deep grooves in the table top - a lot... Natural bacteria, she told herself, natural. She broke a piece of bread and put it in her mouth. It was soft and stuck to her teeth - insubstantial, like those clouds. She preferred to think of it as Thread like thistledown' and to imagine it on a hoarding showing rolling green hills and sleepy distant hamlets...
Outside the hens squawked and scratched at the door and the Labrador groaned in its sleep. Sunlight streamed through the kitchen window, making the air so warm that Mrs Perry opened the door again. Bash, bash went her hip. The hens eyed her.
‘I have nothing for you’ she said.
Angela was amazed to see them turn and run away, with the fowlesque equivalent of dark mutterings. Fight your corner, she wanted to say. Stay and fight your corner.
She stared out into the garden - the neat back lawn leading down to the stream, the old trees bowing - the very pic-turesqueness of it seemed too good to be true. 'That is exactly the kind of view you would expect in an old-fashioned English murder mystery’ she said. 'Everything on the surface looking peaceful and contented, while underneath it seethes with evil and murderous intent. Just why are those roses growing so energetically, my good woman? What is buried beneath them? Just what have you used in the soil?'
Mrs Perry looked perplexed. 'Compost’ she said. 'Though it's true Archie piddles on it.'
Angela stared with embarrassment. 'Really?' she said, thinking that Archie was probabl
y senile.
Mrs Perry nodded. 'It's the best way to bring your compost on. He very seldom uses the one indoors. You're supposed to say the name of your enemy while you're doing it - to make him rot.'
'No!'
'Yes.'
Angela laughed, immediately christening her own proposed compost heap Belinda. 'Perhaps he's called the compost heap after one of your admirers.'
Mrs Perry looked extremely uncomfortable and quivered in a scarlet blush.
'I'm so sorry, that was quite tasteless,' said Angela. How, she asked herself, could you?
'Your compost is very important,' said Mrs Perry.
'Oh, it is, it is,' said Angela effusively. 'So important,' and she just about managed to stop herself from adding, 'Mmm, mmm, compost’ and licking her lips.
The hens came pattering in like overflounced tap-dancers.
'What will you do with these when you go?' she said.
'The pot,' said Mrs Perry shortly.
Angela looked suitably careless. 'But I could have them if ... I mean, I've never looked after hens but I'm quite sure I could learn.'
Mrs Perry did not look up. She nodded. And then, as if to herself, she said, 'And then there's the bees.'
Bees? thought Angela. Oh, fuck. But she just shrugged as if she and Brother Adam of Buckfast were as one, and said, 'Bees are so vital, aren't they? Honey, candles, that sort of thing.' She remembered her Sylvia Plath. 'Bee boxes. Hunting the queen.' Who said good art must be useless? 'Brood cells.'
'You might like a sip of my mulberry wine,' said Mrs Perry, obviously impressed. ‘I know I would.'
Mulberry wine, thought Angela, mulberry wine ... 'From your own - urn?' She wasn't entirely sure what mulberries grew on.
'We have the oldest tree by a long way round here. Went in before Queen Victoria, they say, and mostly we get more than we know what to do with’
Angela looked doubtful. Chinese heavy embroidery and worms came to mind. 'Mulberries?' she said cautiously. 'Lovely.'
'Think of it as medicine, Mrs Fytton,' said Mrs Perry affably as she poured two small tots of ruby liquor into tiny glasses. 'That's the tree out there. They say that after the mulberry tree has shown green leaf there will be no more frost.'
Angela went to the window and immediately gave a little gasp. Behind her Mrs Perry laughed. There was no doubt about it, the trunk with its two central boles looked like a gigantic male back view - rough and muscular as a half-hewn Michelangelo and just as naked, with vast sinewy arms reaching out west to east and barely shadowed with tiny soft green leaves.
Mrs Perry chuckled. 'Some see it straight away and some never do,' she said.
'Did it grow like that?' asked Angela.
Mrs Perry looked bothered by the question. 'Not exactly,' she said delicately. 'The bit you see was done a good hundred years ago.' She smiled and pushed the little glass of red liquor along the table. 'Mulberry and rosemary tea,' she said, 'is supposed to restore - er - vigour.'
Angela said, 'Oh,' went pink, and resumed her seat. She looked at the glass hesitantly.
Mrs Perry said, ‘I don't think mulberries on their own have any particular force in that department.'
And again Angela wondered if she was laughing at her. 'How do you know all these things?' she asked.
'It's passed on. Mother, daughter, grandmother.' She shrugged. 'It's the country for you.'
'Yes,' said Angela. And she suddenly giggled. 'Even the trees.'
'All promise and no delivery,' said Mrs Perry, looking firmly at her glass. 'When you see it from the front. It was got at. By Archie.'
Mrs Perry held her glass up to the sunlight, where it glowed like a ruby. 'It's supposed to have once been a white fruit that got stained by the blood of a pair of murdered sweethearts. According to our history woman.'
But Angela was already far away, imagining herself slipping out in the moonlight to stroke those rippled buttocks; or winding and spreading herself within its arm; or reaching up to bite the fruit so that the juice ran down...
The dog was pushing the Perry pinny up over the round knees with its nose. 'He wants a walk,' Mrs Perry said.
Angela tried to look at him fondly. Go away, stick your head up your bum and let me finish, she thought, hoping it was true that dogs had extrasensory perception.
The dog eyed her. No doubt about it, he knew. Any more from you, she transmitted, and you'll go into the pot too. No Sheherazade could have felt more desperate, she thought. I am telling this story to win.
Angela put down her glass and continued. 'Well, to cut a long story short, my husband met a pretty woman who wanted a baby. Just when we were almost free again, he falls for the oldest trick in the world. Young, blonde, with size four feet. Shafted by my own sex. First there was the Green-ham group, who shafted me because I had a child. Then there was this Belinda woman, who shafted me because I didn't.'
Mrs Perry said wryly, 'The one thing about the old days is that you had no choice in the matter. Bit of a relief in some ways. If you lived.'
‘I want to come here to a decent, honest community where I can rebuild my life. Please.'
Mrs Perry stood up very quickly. She was embarrassed. 'I must take this dog for a walk.' The dog came rushing over to her as she reached for his lead.
Miserably Angela downed her wine. So she had lost, then?
‘I do understand,' said Mrs Perry kindly. 'But I won't break our promise. The man has made us an offer fair and square.'
She held out her hand. 'Come again, Mrs Fytton,' she said. 'Will you do that?'
'Why?' said Angela aggressively as they walked off down the path together.
'Come in three weeks' time and the mulberry will be in leaf,' said Mrs Perry at the gate.
Angela turned. She traced the words in brass - Church Ale House - and looked back along the path to where the breeze moved through the boughs of the tree. She fancied it was waving at her. I will not go and look at the front of it until I own it, she thought.
She knew now that the ruddy-faced cook would have been making mulberry tarts, of course, while the fantasy ladies of the house wore the product of the worms in which to eat them. And what had the Roman women who lived here worn? Or eaten? And what did the Saxon matron use to make the cakes that Alfred burnt? How she wished she could be a part of that whole cycle - the timelessness of Mrs Perry's own connections, her innate happiness drawn from a sense of belonging. That was what she lacked. Now she no longer belonged anywhere. She could have belonged here, but someone with shiny shoes and insider knowledge was buying it. Nothing short of an act of God could prevent the sale, and God was unlikely to have a gap in his schedule, given the state of the world.
She watched Mrs Perry set off towards the hill where the pig man kept his pigs. Angela heard her say, 'If you chase those pigs again you'll be on the lead properly.' The dog walked soberly by her side. Even at a distance the old woman was looking very thoughtful. Angela slowed as she went past, and waved.
The woman turned. 'By the way,' she called, stopping for a moment and leaning on her stick. 'Thank you for the explanation, but I went up to Greenham Common myself, to see my daughter. She was living in our old tent.'
Angela opened and closed her mouth, but no sound came out. 'Oh,' she said eventually. ‘I just thought...'
'We don't all have straw in our hair, Mrs Fytton’ said Mrs Perry, quite kindly under the circumstances.
'Well, no, I never -' began Angela, but Mrs Perry cut her short.
'And anyway, I have a bit of an apology to make to you. Carol, my daughter, was probably one of the women who banned your son. She was a stinker about all that.' Mrs Perry paused and shook her head and smiled. 'Until she had her own family. Both boys. Did I laugh when they came along... "There's two of the little so and sos," I said when she had them. "Now what?'"
'Into the pot?' said Angela.
Mrs Perry laughed and turned to continue her climb.
Angela leaned despondently on the steering wheel. The horn went
off. Fuck, she thought, as a bird of some sort rose from its cover with a great hullabaloo and piercing, menacing look. Mrs Perry's look was not dissimilar as she tried to calm the dog.
'Like you,' Angela whispered on the air, ‘I wish to be good. Just like you.'
Mrs Perry waved her stick and continued on up the hill. The pig pens glinted in the sun. 'Next time,' she called, 'I'll show you the bees.'
She thought of her perfect and elegant home. And she knew she was sick of that too. Two bathrooms indeed - who needed them when one avocado suite would do?
O luxury! thou curs'd by Heaven's decree, How ill exchang'd are things like these for thee!
She sobbed. Her stomach churned. She stopped the car and got out. Pigs, mulberries and the warmth of the sun made her queasy. She apologized in advance to the profusion of cow parsley - about the only country plant she knew - at the foot of that ancient hill and threw up as neatly as she could. When she was a child and had wanted something very badly, it made her literally sick with longing. As she bent double she was aware that this was serious, this was very serious indeed. She felt possessed. She threw up again. She waited, watching the hill. And she had to stop the car several times in the lane before finally driving away.
