Mrs Fytton's Country Life

by Mavis Cheek

  As the blackbird lay in the garden, slowly stiffening, a small blue pellet attached to its inner thorax, the Rudges were off at these important tasks. Whatever the outcome’like a decent international boxing match, everybody won. Win, lose or draw, they were going to reward themselves. It was from these twin mighty oaks that their little acorn, in the shape of a swimming pool, would grow.

  The cat from Tally-Ho Cottage, passing through, watched Angela shut the gate. Angela watched the cat, her dugs dragging, slink over to the upturned stiff, contemplating, perhaps, a nice bit of game for her tea. Angela, not quite at one with nature red in tooth and claw, clapped her hands. 'Shoo’ she said. The cat shooed. The cat was irritated. The cat, seeking to vent its irritation on an irrational world, took the path over the back, along the hedge and up through the Tichbornes' garden. There was a nasty little snapping dog who lived there and she could drive him absolutely mental just by giving him the merest shadow of a flick of her tail from the undergrowth.

  There were some, and not only the cat, who might have wished, in the weeks to come, that Angela Fytton had minded her own business in the matter of the colour of nature's dental endowments and pointed, horny extensions. But shoo that cat she did.

  In search of revenge for the shoo, the cat reached the Tichbornes' garden just as Angela arrived on her bicycle and delivered her invitation into the hand - not very clean, she noticed - of the Dorkin girl, who was hovering at the back door.

  'And this one is for you and your mother’ she said.

  The Dorkin girl barely looked at it. She was scouring the lane with her luminous, hopeful eyes. How cold she must be, thought Angela, wearing so little in this frost. She clicked the gate shut and departed.

  Unobserved, the cat slipped slowly through the shrubbery. Pimmy growled. Mrs Tichborne tutted. Pimmy barked and barked. Dr Tichborne imagined shooting the bad-tempered creature. Come to that, he imagined shooting both the bad-tempered creature and the dog. But only for a moment. What, after all, had the dog done to him?

  Dr Tichborne was not a violent or evil man. Nor, as he might admit with regret, in his darkest hour, was he a courageous man. And he was having one of his darkest hours now.

  He was not a courageous man - and he was having by far his darkest hour now, as he buttered his toast and tried not to look through the window at the young Dorkin girl. It was January, for God's sake, January. Whatever possessed her to have her chest out in the garden in this kind of weather?

  As if he didn't know. As if his darkest hour was not in direct correlation to his knowing. She was out there and so was Crispin Archer. Somewhere. Golden as Helios in the faint morning sun. Either on his way to the church or on his way back from it, and she, the mammoth-fronted Dorkin, knew his every step. And worse - O fearful thought whose lucidity came suddenly, yesterday, when he saw the Reverend Crispin Archer's eyes as he watched the girl, or certain bits of her, leaning out of an upstairs window - he knew hers.

  It cut Dr Tichborne to his very soul to see this beautiful young man throwing his private urges away on a girl with half a brain and twice as much chest as Treasure Island. He looked at his wife. She had never appeared more serene or untouched by human hand. Even her tutting was no more than the automatic response of one who knows she will, if she must, rule the world.

  Dr Tichborne wanted to shout, to let all those years out in one long cry. Or hurl the marmalade. He fingered the jar. But he never would. He had never spoken to his wife above an acceptable, unaroused pitch, nor she to him. How he would love to roar like a lion. But he had only ever bleated like a lamb.

  Pimmy barked for the third time. You see a cat, you don't like a cat, you react. The dog owned and expressed every emotion that his mistress did not. Dorothea Tichborne winced. Her husband winced to see it. In this morning's buttery light she suddenly looked unappealingly grey. Dorothea had never liked loud noise of any kind. Never. Which is why they had lived together so quietly.

  She was poring over the ancient book of baptismal instruction. She wished the forthcoming baptism of her servant to be held as an example to the rest of the parish youth. Mrs Dorkin, who put on her pink plush hat to take tea at the Tichbornes', had remained firm. Total immersion. 'In the old days the water was taken from the well to the church. Now that's true repentance for you’ said the elder Dorkin with satisfaction. 'Because it's that cold.'

  Mrs Dorothea Tichborne could see the point about the mortification of the flesh, but she disagreed about the tradition of it. The font would do perfectly well. It was a big one. Not big enough for full immersion, but you couldn't - alas - expect that nowadays. Shame. But there it was.

  Mrs Dorkin had brushed the crumbs from her lap, readjusted her pink plush hat and returned home. She was not a woman to accept defeat, but then neither was Mrs Dorothea Tichborne. The font it would be. It was, after all, a Devereux font. She read on. The dog barked again. She looked up, tutted and said, 'See what it is out there, Percy, please.'

  'It's a cat, dear.'

  He watched, miserably, as the Dorkin girl tottered up the path in her extraordinary high heels, frontage forward, to greet the beautiful Crispin as he cycled to a halt by the wall. He watched as the vicar dismounted those adorable thighs of his, leaned over the gate, reached out his adorable hand in the frosty air and touched the loathsome girl on her foul cheek in an adorably tender way. Rage welled in old Dr Tichborne's breast and rose up like an angry bubble in his throat. He put all he had got into it. Now or never, he thought, and he yelled with a voice that had been stored deeper, even, than under a hat.

  'Oi’ he cried. 'Oi’ And he banged on the window long and ha rd as if both his heart and the window would break. 'Clear off! Get off! Go away! Oi, away!' He roared even more loudly. There was a rushing of wings in his head. The Angel of Rage held spoken. He banged on the window anew.

  'Bloody cat’ he yelled at the Dorkin girl, for his wife's benefit. 'Bloody, bloody cat. Bloody cat!'

  He forgot that the sine qua non of their marriage was to never raise your voice. He forgot that when his wife, as Dorothea Devereux, accepted him, she begged that their married life please be as quiet and as pious as a convent. For which she would be very much obliged. She would also retain her private income.

  He saw the Dorkin girl's and the vicar's startled eyes, and how they drew closer together as the gate swung away and they stared wonderingly at his frenzied window-banging. Bang, bang, bang, he went on the glass. Words he knew not that he knew came into his mouth. Good words, rich words, ancient words dredged up from a depth hitherto unplumbed. Saxon words, deep from within the historical psyche.

  'Oi!'He banged again. 'You can just fuck off out of it. D'you hear? Go on - clear off! Piss off - sod off - vamoose!' This last sounding a little tame, he added, 'Bloody vamoose’ which felt a lot better.

  Then he began a little tantrumming dance of rage - something he vaguely remembered doing from long, long ago, before he had words, before someone chidingly told him not to...

  'Fuck off, fuck off, fuck off, I say!

  The cat walked on impervious, now in full view. Pimmy went, quite literally, barking mad.

  'Shut up,' said Dr Tichborne. And he brought his heel backwards, sharpish, on the creature's quivering flank.

  It yelped.

  Mrs Dorothea Tichborne tutted in a new and uncharacteristic way, a little like a hiccup.

  Pimmy barked again. Pimmy yelped again.

  Mrs Dorothea Tichborne again hiccuped.

  It was oddly irritating. Who was yelping and who was tutting?

  Dr Tichborne turned. The Angel of Rage flapped his wings and breathed fire. Mrs Dorothea Tichborne made yet another stab at a hiccup. Dr Tichborne heard the Angel, turned and said, 'And you can fuck off too, you silly bitch.'

  Pimmy, being male, did not take this upon himself. Mrs Tichborne was silent.

  And then he saw through the window the shocked Dorkin girl sway and totter backwards into the rose bed, and the beautiful vicar, with those beautiful ha
nds, reach out for her, and down they both went together. The Dorkin girl squealed like a stuck pig, and was beginning to look like one, with blood drawn upon those monstrous bare breasts.

  Pimmy barked and barked and Dr Tichborne thought, above all the din behind him, that he heard the faintest of moans.

  He looked around. His wife, doyenne of respectability and cream of mealtime etiquette, was slumped forward on the white tablecloth, her head in a bowl of muesli, making little bubbling sounds and moaning, in the same way that Dr Tichborne had heard many of his patients moan over the years. It was the moan of the end. He stood there wondering what to do. Even those rolling eyes of hers managed to look embarrassed at their overt activity. Do not say anything, they seemed to beg. Just go on as if you had not noticed.

  What to do? What to do? He looked from the table to the window and back again. Pimmy was licking up the dripping milk. The bubbling died away, the moaning ceased, the eyes fluttered finally over their rolling whites.

  What to do? What?

  And then his heart told him. He marched past the table out into the corridor, into his study, picked up a piece of lint and a bottle of iodine, and strode into the garden. The Dorkin girl was now upright again and drawing attention (as if there was any need) to the state of her front. The vicar was showing a keen interest. Dr Tichborne brought the lint and the iodine up close and slathered it on the offending area. The vicar showed an interest in taking the job over from the good doctor, but the good doctor held on tight.

  'Now get those out of the cold air,' he said, 'dear. And Mrs Tichborne seems to be calling. See what she wants.'

  Then did Dr Tichborne become like the Magdalene. He knelt at the vicar's feet and tenderly administered the lint to the small graze wound revealed below the cycle clip, touching that ankle for the very first time. He remembered a voice, from a very far off, his mother's voice, and he copied it now, exalting in the tenderness. 'There, there now - brave boy -you must be a man about it. There, there now - mustn't cry. Dry those tears, little man, and I'll kiss you better...'

  He just about stopped himself in time. Though the vicar did appear to be looking at him most strangely.

  Angela Fytton, cycling up to Tally-Ho Cottage with the last of her invitations, sniffed the delicious yeasty, herby air, heard the yapping and the yelling as she parked her bicycle by the gate, and wondered. It was probably just that cat.

  Inside Tally-Ho Cottage, Wanda was making hot infused oils. At the moment a glass bowl of oil, dense with chopped rosemary, sat over a saucepan of simmering water and had done so for two hours. On the table, waiting, were a jelly bag, a large jug, several airtight sterilized dark-glass storage bottles and a funnel. This time Wanda meant business.

  Seeing the new owner of Church Ale House, she smiled through the window. She was ready for her at last. Dave the Bread slid the book Cookery for Beginners out of sight and went on putting currants on to his gingerbread men. In the oven was another experimental batch of Old Somerset Butter Biscuits, and this time, he hoped, he had got the proportions of the ingredients right.

  Wanda called over her shoulder, 'Keep an eye on the oil, Dave, while I go and let her in.'

  He went to the stove, removed the lid from the glass bowl and sniffed. He'd only ever had cocaine once, at one of Wanda's theatrical parties, but the effect of what he inhaled reminded him of that giddy moment. He put his head in still further and inhaled more deeply. It gave him a remarkable confidence. He replaced the lid and went across to the oven. Out came the Old Somerset Butter Biscuits, in went the gingerbread men. The air in the kitchen smelt of sweet bakery and pungent herbs. Authentically. Which was why Wanda wished Angela Fytton to come in and see it for herself. Wanda no longer felt hunted. She had given the Theatre of the Absurd a lot of time and attention, now she was going for the new School of Realism.

  She picked up a biscuit from the tray as she passed by. 'Am I glad I've learned a few real tricks. She's got a sharp eye, that one. Have me sussed in no time...' She bit. Crunch. 'Do you know,' she said, ‘I think you're nearly there.'

  She looked at her husband's eyes. He looked back into hers, as much as he was able to focus after the astonishing effect of the rosemary.

  'Wanda,' he said, 'there's nothing like the real thing. Just put your nose into that lot for a moment...' He pointed at the saucepan. Wanda did as she was bid. 'You market that, my girl, and we'll make a fortune.'

  He smiled at her, a little dazedly. But Wanda was already ushering Angela in and pointing out a remarkable bit of weaving attached to her loom.

  Lucy Elliott watched her children smiling up at the beautiful goddess whose large white teeth resembled more tombstones than a graveyard. And she watched her husband smiling into those clear blue eyes that were as sunlit pools by a fiord. And, finally, she watched Angela Fytton smiling up at those suntanned cheeks that were dusted with roses, and she said, 'I'm afraid Anja will not be able to come because she will be baby-sitting for us.'

  'Of course,' said Angela Fytton.

  Anja smiled.

  The children smiled.

  Craig Elliott did not smile. He looked beyond the window, to the frost bound hill and the lowering sky beyond. Then he looked at Angela. Then he looked as thoughtful as a man could look in his own kitchen, and certainly worthy of comparison to any piece by Rodin. Finally, with just a hint of sadness about his lips, he crossed the room and placed the invitation upon the mantelpiece.

  In St Hilary's she paused to look at the bench ends.

  Daphne was up a very long ladder. 'I was right,' she said. 'These are the Seven Corporal Works of Mercy and those over there will be the Seven Spirituals.'

  Angela handed her the invitation. She went over to the bench ends. 'Might they have done this ale thing at Candlemas?' she asked.

  'Possibly,' she said. 'But more likely Easter.' She smiled down at her. 'No reason why you can't bend the truth. The Church has been doing it for years. It was pagan anyway. Why Candlemas in particular?' She returned to her brushing.

  Angela fingered the bench ends. 'Oh, no reason - just an idea.'

  She slipped out of the church and got back on her bike. Candlemas, she remembered from her Cambridge days, was the time when the Old Faith repurified their Virgin.

  The sound of an ambulance siren split the silent air. Above her head the rooks crowed and wheeled as it roared past. She flattened herself into the side of the hawthorn hedge, which scattered its icy droplets all down her neck and into the tops of her Wellingtons. And then it was gone.

  Up at the vicarage it was silent and closed. The Reverend Crispin Archer was out doing his job again. A tireless young man, though strangely driven just recently. She had been trying to talk to him for several days. She had a proposition for him and she was hopeful, despite his modern leanings, that he would agree. She pushed the invitation through the door and went on her way. There was still time. Plenty of that.

  Sammy was leaning over the winter pens with a stick, scratching the ears of a pig.

  'Ambulance?' she said. She handed him the invitation.

  He did not look up from the muddy pink and brown-spotted backs of his animals. The cold air had nipped his nose and watered his eyes. Or was it the air? His sunken toothless-ness seemed more pronounced. She took a switch from the hedge and followed suit with the scratching. 'Pigs are very rewarding animals,' she said. 'Not like my hens.'

  'She's dead,' he said. 'And she was the last.'

  'Who?' said Angela, thinking it was probably one of his far-rowers.

  'Old Mrs Tichborne. Dead.'

  So it was sorrow and not frost in his eyes.

  'Oh, Sam’ Angela said softly. 'I'm so sorry.'

  'That ambulance. Carried her off. Went -' he snapped his fingers - 'just like that. The very last of that kind. The last mistress.'

  She put her hand on his arm. 'Sorry’ she said again.

  He turned his watery eyes to her and rubbed a dewdrop from his nose with the back of his hand. He smiled very broadly a
nd spat. 'I'm not’ he said. 'Good riddance. Gentlemen of the party.' He spat again.

  'At every draught more large and large they grow, A bloated mass of rank unwieldly woe; Till sapped their strength, and every part unsound, Down, down they sink, and spread a ruin round’

  she said softly, remembering her first journey down here. He nodded.

  'What was it?' she asked. 'Heart.'

  'Poor Dr Tichborne’ she said.

  Sammy looked at her, then he looked at his pigs. 'Poor be blowed’ he said. 'Could do with a few more spouses following suit.'