Mrs Fytton's Country Life

by Mavis Cheek

  Dave nodded. 'Busy little bee, my Wanda’ he said.

  'And how is her finger?' asked Angela.

  'Ah’ said Dave. He looked at his watch. 'Got to get back for the oven’ he said. 'My biscuits.'

  ‘I can give you some interesting old recipes for biscuits’ she called after him, but he was off, speeding down her mossy path in a welter of patchy yellow and hairy thigh.

  He gave her the thumbs-up from the gate and was gone. Only the warm, inviting smell of new bread remained. Clearly, in the matter of getting to know her neighbours, she must be the one to break the social ice. Her party could not come a moment too soon.

  Angela had not yet called upon the Tichborne residence. Whenever she saw the benign old doctor out with his binoculars, he smiled at her kindly, and she smiled back and said something polite about bird-watching before passing on. It was unsurprising that they socialized so little, his wife being, so she had heard, something of an invalid. Mrs Tichborne scarcely ventured out and looked so proper when she did that Angela felt it wise to wait to be introduced. She did, however, surprise herself and begin to attend church. Evensong. It just seemed the appropriate thing to do, given that her new home was so bound into the tradition. She liked to study the pew ends while the vicar did his stuff. All part of being in the country and being good, she thought. Looking away from the devils quickly.

  To fill up the uncomfortable time between entering the church and the beginning of the service, Angela strove to -look as if she knew what she was doing. Just like everyone else, she wished to appear able to have long, private, interesting chats with the Almighty while on her knees and to look as if the Almighty were answering her back. Because He or She was certainly answering all the other assembled kneelers back in earnest. You could tell, she thought, by the rapt look on their faces that they'd got a hot line to heaven. All except her. 'Listen, God,' she said. 'If you are up there and offended, I apologize. You know I don't really believe in you, but - well - here I am and there you are. And when in Rome - well, no, not in Rome any more, not since Henry VIII and little Edward, but when in the country you do as the other country dwellers do, so I'm here as part of my social duty. You do not have to say anything

  God duly didn't.

  She attended Evensong because she had tried the morning family service only once and once was quite enough. At the family service, the vicar played his guitar, exhorting everyone - Lucy Elliott, her new Dutch au pair and her three fidgeting children; Mrs Dorkin and the Dorkin girl (who were surprisingly pious and sometimes attended Evensong as well); two very spotty youths in plastic biker jackets who stared, silent throughout, at the Dorkin girl's striking frontage; Dr Tichborne alone in the Devereux pew; and Wanda, who, with her stage skills, kept them all in tune - to clap their hands and join in and sing! After which you had to kiss everyone.

  And as if that was not embarrassing enough, at the exhortation to kiss everybody, she watched the extraordinary spectacle of the Dorkin girl practically elbowing a very speedy Dr Tichborne out of the way to reach the vicar, while the two spotty youths followed in hot pursuit of the Dorkin girl and appeared to think that church-kissing was just a longer version of the word 'grope'.

  Evensong was an altogether calmer experience. Both the Tichbornes attended, and there was absolutely no kissing, hand-clapping, 'Wow!', 'God!' or hymn-singing of anything but a traditional nature. This service brought in Sammy and St Hilary's ex-incumbent, the Reverend Bertrand Stokes, who was driven there and back in a taxi paid for by Mrs Dorothea Tichborne. The sight of St Hilary's ex-incumbent attempting to genuflect to both the Holy Host and his aristocratic one was painful to behold, despite his being held in firm support by the taxi driver. Lucy Elliott came alone, keeping her eyes closed throughout, even when standing for the hymns, and Angela sat at the back feeling more sinner than celebrant. The Rudges would have come, but they always had to head off back to Bristol on a Sunday evening to avoid the traffic.

  Daphne Blunt never came to services. As soon as the doors were flung open ready to welcome the sinners in, she slipped out of the side door and away. 'Too much bad done in the name of religion for my liking,' she told Angela. ‘I’ll care for the fabric. The witness can take care of itself.'

  On this particular September Sunday after Evensong, the great and the good, in the person of Dorothea Tichborne, finally condescended to be introduced. For some reason best known to himself, Dr Tichborne was under the mistaken apprehension that Mrs Angela Fytton of Church Ale House in the county of Somerset was a recent widow. And for some reason he seemed to find this quite cheering. He beamed at her as they approached. 'Death is but a tavern on the way’ he said, as if he were wishing her a happy birthday. 'Time heals. Very quickly. Quite often.' He turned to his wife.

  'And prayer’ added Mrs Tichborne. To which the bright-haired young vicar, hovering behind them by the church porch, said a very cheerful 'Amen'.

  Dr Tichborne, showing more of the mettle that Angela had last seen fending off the Dorkin girl on the altar steps, then responded surprisingly by repeating the words 'Time' and 'Amen' with such passion, and such a look of fire directed at the vicar, that she thought he might have gone Shaker. Particularly as the vicar's apparent response was indeed to shake, before suddenly hurtling off in the opposite direction, his cassock flapping above his jeans and cowboy boots, looking over his shoulder and down the path towards the gateway, fearful as if the devil himself were after him. Old Dr Tichborne eyed him very sadly. Angela felt sorry for him. There was, despite its joyous rural undertow, some oddly unfriendly behaviour in the country.

  'There now’ said Mrs Dorkin disappointedly, as she and daughter Dorkin, and daughter Dorkin's considerable chest, leaned over the lych-gate. 'Never any time, that one.' She gave the girl a little dig in the back with her knuckles and, accordingly, the girl puffed herself out even further in the manner of a very well-fed pouter pigeon. Mrs Dorkin winked at her and said very loudly, 'Well, it's time my girl was baptized at any rate.' She gave Dr Tichborne a cocksure look. 'Can't get married in church without... now can you?'

  Dr Tichborne took one look at the female swellings of his young servant girl nestling among the lichen and the ivy, and ck)sed his eyes.

  Mrs Dorkin looked upon the gesture and saw it as reward for all her efforts. She knew that look. It was unbridled passion, as the books would have it, unbridled passion if ever she saw it. One day daughter Dorkin would not only have made her bed, but also be invited, urgently, to lie in it. Like the Lord, who governed over all of St Hilary's and Staithe, Mrs Dorkin looked upon her handiwork and was pleased. Well pleased.

  Smiling beneficently upon the world and those rosy breasts in which she invested much hope, she tucked her daughter's arm into her own and gave it a yank. The nestling pair, so rudely pulled from their bed of lichen, bobbled about a bit uncertainly and then returned to their rightful place, before their owner and her mother made their way down the lane. From behind they were like a pair of ships in full sail, with their petticoats fluttering, their hips rolling, their dazzling golden curls flying in the summer breeze. Mrs Tichborne looked and saw the devil walking beside them and clutched at her crucifix.

  ‘I am settling in very well,' said Angela. 'Thank you.'

  'Good, good, good,' said Dorothea Tichborne. But her mind was on saving her servant's soul. Baptism, she thought, was the answer. A good deed to lighten the darkness. ‘I must speak to the vicar about Sandra's baptism,' she said, with unaccustomed vigour. And with surprising agility she shot off in search of the fleeing cassock.

  As, it must be said, did Dr Tichborne.

  Thus an invitation for Mrs Angela Fytton, putative widow, to the ancient Devereux, now Tichborne, seat was not forthcoming.

  After her customary Sunday evening stroll up one side of the Mump and down the other, Angela returned home. Once back in her own garden, on the other side of the yews, she found the vicar taking a tremendous interest in the faint stars that were beginning to appear in the evening sky.
'God's jewel casket,' she said.

  The Reverend Crispin Archer looked strained. He was staring up at the stars for guidance but all he could think about was quite the wrong kind of heavenly body. There was a faint chill in the air, a hint of autumn.

  'Would you -' She hesitated. ‘Would you care to slip through the hedge and come in for a glass of mulberry wine?'

  She had never seen such gratitude. At least the vicar was socially inclined.

  In the gloaming, Sandra Dorkin leaned on the vicar's front fence and waited and dreamed. He must return to the manse at some time and she wanted to thank him, in the warmest way possible, for agreeing to baptize her. As her employer pointed out, a girl of nineteen, be she ever so pure, must have sinned a little on the way.

  Angela faced the vicar across her kitchen table. She sipped the red liquor very slowly, determined to like it. The vicar appeared to like his very much indeed. The first one went down without, apparently, touching the sides.

  'An adult baptism is interesting,' she said.

  'Yes,' he said miserably. 'Our esteemed benefactor thinks I should give a full submersion, on account of all the sins accumulated. She's very taken with the idea.'

  'That seems logical,' said Angela, forcing down another sip of the red stuff.

  ‘I favour just a little trickle on the forehead,' he said mournfully.

  'You're the vicar.'

  Odd how the irrefutable seemed to cut no ice. He nodded, still mournful.

  'Cheer up,' said Angela. 'After the ceremony you can play your guitar and we can all hug and kiss.' She gave a gesture of solidarity. 'Mix the old with the new. Like your sermon this evening. You could use the water from my well - if there is any. We can dress it,' she added vaguely.

  Dress it. Undress it. He winced. Full baptism. He winced again.

  She refilled the vicar's glass but not her own, which she pushed to one side. 'Do you know,' she said, 'I can't go on pretending any more.'

  The vicar looked at her. If another one was about to declare herself he would take himself off to a mission hut. 'What?' he said cautiously.

  'This wine’ she said. 'It's horrible. And I'm not going to make any more of it. It really does taste of worms. I should be making church ale instead. And selling it to raise money for St Hilary's.'

  If she had wanted encouragement, she received none. 'Like in the olden days?'

  But the vicar merely remained looking distracted.

  'Have some more’ she said, and poured out the remains of bottle number one. 'It really is filthy.'

  The vicar could not agree. Indeed, he felt it had just the right poke to it. When he slipped back through the yews later, he clutched the two remaining bottles. I will donate them to the jumble, he said to the silvery night, before stumbling through his back door and undressing, rather awkwardly, in the dark. Though there was no need, for the Dorkin girl had grown bored with waiting and, when the two youths in plastic biker jackets came along, she went for a walk with them up over the hill and down among the pig huts. But he put the bottles in his own cupboard all the same.

  The next morning Angela went off to post a card of the Glastonbury Thorn to Claire and Andrew. It was a survivor like herself, she thought. She also thought that a postcard would mean Ian and Binnie would see it. She made it as joyful and celebratory as she could.

  I am so enjoying living down here. Everything is working really well and I want you to come and try my Fytton honey, and see my herb bed, and eat my vegetables and preserves and pickles and make a breakfast of my eggs [she added 'hens' to the eggs, imagining some coarse wit if she did not]. So please come and visit me or stay with me soon, before the winter sets in. Or come then. I really want you to meet everyone, especially Sammy, who is wonderful. No more now. Too tired from digging. Love Mum.

  Coming back from the pillar box she met Rika in the lane.

  'Ja, ja’ beamed the scarlet-cheeked au pair over the heads of the three screaming Elliott children, and then kissed them, one, two, three, so that they screamed even louder. They were wielding little nets, looking as picturesque as a field of poppies, Angela thought. Coming closer, however, she saw that they were beating each other over the head with them.

  'No, no,' said the kindly Dutch girl as the children turned their attention to her own prominent bottom. And she gave each one in turn a pat on the head that nearly flattened them.

  Whereupon they burst into tears and she hugged them to her substantial chest and made them cry even louder.

  It was hard to know if she was several petals short of a tulip or highly intelligent, but whatever she was she was remarkably impervious to the tyrannies of children.

  'Time to go home,' she said.

  Angela walked with her. 'And are you enjoying it here?' she asked.

  'No,' said the girl. ‘I mean - time to go home ... I miss my parents. I miss my friends. I miss my beer ...' She rolled her eyes. 'Oh, the English beer. So weak, and it needs salt...' She shrugged. 'So, I go home. Mr Craig has bought me a ticket already.'

  From an upstairs window, Craig Elliott looked down, crinkled his eyes and waved. He looked a much happier man. Did Angela imagine it or did he kiss his fingertips to her? She imagined it, of course. He was surely kissing his fingertips to his screaming children.

  She went a little further on, and looked over the wall of the Rudges' garden, where nothing was stirring, not even a bird. And she was tempted - oh, wasn't she? - to ask their gardener, who came from miles away and drove a very shiny car, if she could borrow the petrol Rotovator before she began digging her herb beds. Cutting and slashing and clearing the nettles and other growing things had been tiring enough, without the thought of taking a fork and shovel to the ground as well. A Rotovator would relieve the pain of the effort quite nicely.

  There again, it would also churn up and destroy anything in its path. But she was tempted, very tempted. Nevertheless, as she leaned there, looking down on the perfect, silent garden where not a leaf lay out of place, not a chewed petal drooped or an aphid glowed its green among the leaves, she was overcome with a desire to dig her own soil with her own two hands. Another line of Plath's floated into her head:

  Perfection is terrible. It cannot have children. Cold as snow breath, it tamps the womb.

  No, no. If Daphne could do what she did with her own bare hands, then so could she. She had promised herself to go slow, with time, with the seasons - and so she would. Anyway, she might find something really interesting. A jewel from King Alfred's crown, perhaps. She smiled at the memory. A girl could dream...

  She heard the latch of the Rudges' side gate. Someone was about to come out. She gave the Rotovator one last, yearning look before picking up her skirts and running back along the lane before her courage failed her.

  She stopped by Sammy Lee's gate. How lonely he must be, she thought, looking at his silent, dark-paned cottage. And how sad never to have loved even once. Or maybe how sensible. He stood in the sun, leaning against his porch, a cup in his hand, a thin cigarette between his lips, and she supposed that was contentment. She looked at his cabbages and felt an odd sensation which she realized was envy. He had set jam jars of beer in among the rows of vegetables and they were full of bloated creatures who'd died smiling and ready to face that eternal hangover in the sky. She had not believed him and was at her wits' end, practically hearing the munching from her garden every morning. A beery demise, though, was fitting. It seemed an appropriate death to deliver as the owner of Church Ale House. 'So it does work,' she said.

  'If you use the right stuff,' he agreed. 'No use putting Kestrel lager down for them. Even a slug knows what it likes.'

  'Maybe I should make my own,' she said, pointing. But if she thought he would laugh she was wrong.

  'See those,' he said, pointing to trails of greenery running through his hedge. 'Wild hops.'

  She went back home. But she was definitely, definitely thoughtful.

  'Keep busy’ continued the theme in her head. Along with 'Wild hops, wi
ld hops, wild hops'.

  15

  October

  The Original Witch will pick up the switch and turn off the lights in the steeple's sight. She will laugh, Ha Ha She will laugh, Ho Ho And the walls will go just like in Jericho.

  maighread medbh

  According to a Brydges ancestor, who had borrowed the text from the Puritan lobby, there was but one way for a good woman to conduct her life.

  The Goodwife is like a merchant's ship, for she bringeth her food and her nourishings for the heart, soul, and temporal body from afar... Thro her Wisdom and Diligence great things come by her; she Brings in with her Hands, for she putteth her hands to the Wheel. .. She overseeth the ways of her household ... and eateth not the Bread of Idleness.