A Village Affair

by Julie Houston

  ‘What? Paula, you are going to sit down and tell me what the hell you are on about. Let me ring Freya and tell her you’re just helping me with something here and you’ll be a while.’

  Once I’d returned to the kitchen, Paula was pacing the floor like a caged animal. I put the kettle on and made the ginseng tea Paula always drank and poured myself more wine before we sat at the table.

  ‘Explain yourself. You can’t just come out with a comment like that and then expect to leave without telling me what you mean.’

  ‘Yes, you’re right.’ Paula had regained some of her colour, but she was still in a state of anxiety. ‘I’d been seeing Rowan for a few months…’

  ‘My father, Rowan? Rowan who left you to go to Morocco?’

  Paula nodded. ‘It was like this, you see, Cassandra…’

  27

  Paula

  1976

  ‘I’ve got some pride,’ she’d said to Rowan’s departing back. ‘And it wasn’t bloody Keir Hardie who said that – it was Bernadette Devlin.’

  Paula sat on her mother’s tablecloth for another good ten minutes hoping Rowan would come back, hoping he’d tell her he’d been joking and of course they were going to go off travelling together.

  Paula lay there in the sultry heat of that hot July evening for a bit longer, not quite knowing what to do. She felt spaced out, knew she was a little drunk, maybe a little stoned. Never having smoked pot before, she liked the idea of being stoned. Rowan was often stoned, she realised. She should have got stoned with him before: it felt sophisticated, worldly, less provincial, less this damned town that she appeared to be stuck in. Well, sod Rowan. She didn’t need him to go travelling. Lots of girls went off by themselves. She could get a job in London, maybe. Earn more money than at bloody Crosland, Crawshaw & Sons. But where would she live in London? How did you go about finding a flat, a job?

  It was getting darker: not the black of a winter night, but a subtle, hazy dusk that would take over for only a few hours before the hot sun would break through once more in this amazing, wonderful summer of 1976 that people would talk about, and then reminisce over, in the same way they’d know exactly where they were when Kennedy was shot and Elvis died.

  Paula couldn’t bear the thought of the next day and the day after that, having to sit in that damned office with Janet on one side discussing how much stuff she’d now accumulated in her bottom drawer in case Alan actually asked her to get engaged. While Alison at the desk to her right, waved her own tiny solitaire pointedly across her at Janet before solicitously asking, after every weekend, ‘Any news?’

  Paula glanced at her watch. It was nearly ten o’clock. She sat up and started to gather the remains of the picnic. Wine – lucky it wasn’t red – had spilt on Dot’s white starched tablecloth and a couple of grass stains and ash from the joint they’d shared stared out accusingly down one of its sides. She sighed, knowing she’d have to secrete the cloth upstairs and get to work with the OMO in the bath before her mother saw it and started asking questions.

  When she’d gathered everything up, retrieved the empty wine bottle from behind one tree and had a pee behind another, Paula headed for the Japanese garden and the hole in the hedge. Except, in the gathering dark, it all appeared a bit different and she realised she’d lost her bearings. Must be more stoned than she thought, she giggled to herself, tripping over a stone that suddenly appeared in her path.

  ‘What did you do last night, Janet?’

  ‘I got engaged. You, Paula?’

  ‘Stoned, I got stoned, Janet, and had sex in someone’s garden…’

  She giggled again and then stopped suddenly as she realised someone was watching her progress from his seat on the decking of the summerhouse.

  Rowan? Had he waited for her, after all?

  ‘Can I help you? You do know this is our garden, you’re on our property…?’

  ‘Oh, property is theft,’ Paula said, more bravely than she felt. ‘I only borrowed it for a while.’

  He laughed at that and Paula, peering through the half-light, was relieved to see he was a boy, probably around her own age, rather than an older man. ‘Not in my back yard, you don’t, you cheeky thing.’

  She laughed with him: it was a bloody cheeky thing to do, after all, to creep into someone’s garden and have a picnic there. And get stoned and have sex as well, she reminded herself. Blimey, her mother would have an absolute fit if she knew what she’d been up to.

  ‘Just thought I’d have a little wander,’ she apologised. ‘It’s such a beautiful evening and I didn’t think anyone would mind.’

  ‘We could have you arrested for trespass.’

  ‘Well, yes, I suppose you could. But you’d have to go back up to the house to phone the police, by which time I’d be gone.’ Paula sniffed the air. ‘And the police would then come and arrest you for smoking weed.’ She realised the path she was taking was heading totally in the wrong direction and she turned, thankful to see the outline of the hedge to her left. ‘See you.’ She shifted the picnic basket to her other hand and set off once more.

  ‘Do you want a drink?’ The boy held up a bottle and a glass. ‘I’ve only one glass, but you can share it.’

  Paula hesitated. She didn’t want to go home. Her mum and dad would still be up, demanding to know what she’d been doing. ‘OK, thanks.’ She turned once more and walked up the steps towards the boy.

  He shifted over so that she could share the wooden sun bed and the one glass of wine and then passed her the joint.

  What the hell: why not? She was no longer a novice – she knew how to do this now. Paula took a deep drag on the joint, closing her eyes as she inhaled the acrid smoke.

  ‘Careful,’ he warned. ‘It’s strong stuff, that.’

  She inhaled again, wanting to block out the fact that Rowan had left her: he wasn’t coming back; he didn’t want her to go off with him after all.

  Paula turned to look at the boy. ‘So, do you live in that big house, up there?’

  ‘No, I’m just the gardener. I live here in the garden.’ His voice, cultured, educated, was not that of a gardener from Midhope.

  ‘Like Bill and Ben?’ she laughed.

  He laughed with her and she looked more closely at him. He was very good-looking, she thought, tipsily. Not her type really, but lovely eyes. Were they blue? She peered even more closely. ‘Are they blue?’

  ‘Are what blue?’

  ‘Your eyes?’

  ‘They were last time I looked in the mirror.’

  ‘Hmm. So, what are you doing down here, all by yourself?’

  ‘Having a drink…’ he waved the bottle once more, ‘…and getting away from the dinner party my parents are having at the house.’

  ‘Oh, so not Bill or Ben then?’

  ‘One of them, I reckon.’ He smiled and took the joint from her, inhaling and filling his own lungs.

  ‘So, Bill, what do you do? I’ve not seen you round here before.’

  ‘I’ve just finished at Bristol University. I’ve come back oop north – as they say round here – to start work with my father.’

  ‘And are you happy about that? Do you want to stay round here?’ Paula couldn’t imagine why anyone would want to come back of their own accord, once they’d managed to leave, and she peered at him once more to gauge his reaction.

  Bill shrugged. ‘I’ve been away from here, first at school and then at university, since I was eight. I know the boys I was at prep school with before I went away to boarding school. Most of them are still round here: Old Midhope families who’ve owned, and still do own, the textile mills and the engineering companies. There are loads of them; they always make their way back to where they started from.’

  ‘Right.’ Paula was beginning to feel very floaty: she couldn’t decide if she was totally miserable or a strong, independent woman who could do anything she wanted. A bit of both really.

  ‘I’m off to Paris next week. Going to stay with some friends of my parents for
a month before I start work here. I’m really looking forward to that. I love Paris.’

  Paula felt sudden tears well. Oh, to have a family that had friends in Paris, for heaven’s sake. As far as she knew, Dot and Norman had never been to France – except for Norman being part of the D-Day landings during the war – never mind have friends there. She wiped the tears away with the back of her hand.

  ‘Hey, come on,’ Bill said kindly. ‘What is it? What’s the matter?’ He took Paula’s hand and stroked it gently.

  ‘I’m just feeling a bit lost and alone.’ She sniffed loudly, wiping her eyes on her long purple cheesecloth skirt.

  Bill laughed again. ‘Well, what do you expect, wandering round someone else’s garden at night all by yourself?’

  He moved nearer to her, slipped his arm around her shoulders and pulled her to him. While she’d convinced herself that Rowan had smelt wonderful, in reality, she now admitted to herself, he’d only ever smelt slightly feral and unwashed, while this boy gave off a fresh, clean scent: some sort of lemony aftershave; and his hair, short, blond and springy, smelt as if he’d just got out of the shower. He very likely had. ‘Have a good cry; grass can do that to you,’ he said into her hair. ‘You really shouldn’t have any more.’

  Paula didn’t like to tell him she’d been getting stoned all evening. It was lovely just lying there in the warm evening air, the night-scented stocks, jasmine and honeysuckle mixing their thuriferous perfume with the clean scents of this boy. She leant into him further, feeling the heat from his body.

  ‘I think I’d like to kiss you,’ she said dreamily.

  ‘By all means do,’ he laughed. ‘You’re very different, but very gorgeous.’

  Paula turned and met his mouth with hers. He tasted of toothpaste, wine and pot, a heady combination of clean living and rebellion. He teased her with his fingers and his tongue until she knew she was going to go all the way with him because she wanted to, and because she could. And while Rowan might not want her, this boy obviously did. At one point he stopped, looked down at her and said, ‘Are you sure about this. I don’t want to take advantage of someone who is out of their head.’

  ‘I can assure you, I can just as easily get up, walk through that hedge and make my way home. Or, I can stay here and finish what we’ve started. I don’t usually do this sort of thing, but from now on I’m a liberated woman and am going to do whatever feels good.’

  And so she did.

  28

  Blame It on the Heat…

  ‘So, who the hell was he, then, Mum? And what’s he got to do with Xavier?’ I just stared at my mother after she’d talked solidly for the past half an hour, relating the events of that hot evening back in 1976 when she’d gone into someone’s garden and, by the sound of it, had sex with some stranger who now appeared to be my father.

  ‘I knew he lived there – was the son of the owner.’

  ‘And?’ I wanted to shake Paula, make her get to the point.

  ‘Well it’s obvious who he was, for heaven’s sake.’

  ‘Is it?’

  Paula tutted. ‘Edward Bamforth. Who do you think I’ve been going on about?’

  I actually laughed. ‘What? You’re trying to tell me Edward Bamforth is my father?’

  Paula looked sheepish. ‘Possibly… Probably…’

  ‘Well, make your damned mind up, Paula. He either is or he isn’t. And if he is, well, you’ve just bloody well ruined my life once again.’

  Paula sighed, and twisted the many bangles up her arm, a sure sign she was distressed. ‘Cassandra, like all sensible girls I was on the pill. I couldn’t get pregnant, or so I thought. I was nearly twenty-one and madly in love with Rowan. He was the first boy I’d ever slept with.’ She stopped and glared at me. ‘You know, this isn’t easy, Cassandra, talking like this. I am your mother, after all.’

  ‘All right, Mum, I’m sorry. Just tell me what happened next.’

  ‘When I woke up the next day I was so ashamed of what had happened, as well as utterly miserable that Rowan had gone, I couldn’t go into work. I stayed in bed all day, unable to face the world, and though your nan knew I wasn’t really ill she understood there was something wrong and she played along with it and brought me nice things to drink and let me sleep.’

  ‘Nan would. She was very kind under all that brusqueness.’

  ‘I made plans that day. I was going to save up as much as I could and then set off travelling by myself. When I found out I was pregnant, I was devastated. Why the pill hadn’t worked, I’ve no idea. Maybe I missed a couple – I was never very good at remembering to take it.’

  ‘So, it’s just as likely I’m Rowan’s as much as I am Edward Bamforth’s?’

  ‘I convinced myself you were Rowan’s. We’d been, you know, sleeping together for a couple of months. It was just a one-off with Edward Bamforth. I wanted the baby to be Rowan’s. I thought if I were able to tell him that I was pregnant, he’d come back and stand by me.’

  ‘You never thought about a termination then?’

  Paula looked at me. ‘Yes, constantly. But Granddad Norman persuaded me not to. Said he’d known girls during the war who’d had backstreet abortions and who’d been maimed for life.’

  ‘But it was 1976, Paula. People had legal terminations all the time.’

  ‘I know. Part of me hung on to the hope that once Rowan knew, he’d come back for me and we’d go and live in Hong Kong or somewhere.’ She shook her head. ‘I was a fairly immature twenty-year-old.’

  ‘You’re not helping me out here, Paula,’ I tutted. ‘Which one of them is my father?’

  ‘Well, if I tell you that Rowan had red hair…’

  ‘Really?’ I was surprised. ‘You’ve never told me that before.’

  ‘Just think about it, Cassandra. I’ve got very dark hair and brown eyes and Rowan had beautiful auburn hair and brown eyes. You’re blonde and blue-eyed.’

  I tried to picture Edward Bamforth. ‘Edward Bamforth’s grey and balding.’

  Paula smiled. ‘But at twenty-one he had blond hair and blue eyes.’

  My stomach was churning and there was a pounding at my temples. ‘But if Edward Bamforth is my father, then Xavier is my half-brother.’ I started to cry, huge tears rolling down my face. ‘It’s not fair, Mum, it’s not fair.’

  Paula stroked my hair as I buried my head in my arms on the table and wept.

  ‘I’m so sorry, Cassandra, but I had to tell you. You know you can’t have any sort of, well, sexual relationship with Xavier. It’s not right.’

  ‘But if you hadn’t told me all this, I’d never have known. Everything would have been OK.’ I was crying into my shirtsleeve turning the white cotton transparent with my tears.

  ‘Yes, but I’d have known,’ Paula pleaded. ‘Can’t you see that?’

  I lifted my head. ‘So, does Edward Bamforth have any clue he may have fathered a child that night? Did you go and tell him?’

  ‘Well, for the first few years, I’d no real idea. I tried to pretend it hadn’t really happened. I mean…’ Paula was embarrassed. ‘Look, I’d done something I was terribly ashamed of. I’d … I’d slept with two different men within an hour of each other. And in someone else’s back yard. All these years later, I still can’t think about it without feeling utterly guilty, and yes, totally ashamed. How could I admit to it? Cassandra, this is the first time I’ve told anyone. Can you imagine telling your nan what I’d been up to?’

  ‘Well, no…’

  You have to understand, Cassandra, I still don’t really know. And I might have actually gone and spoken to him, told him he was possibly your father. He was a nice guy; I liked him. He rang for a taxi to take me home that night.’

  ‘Oh, big of him.’

  ‘Cassandra, he didn’t force himself on me, if that’s what you’re thinking. From what I remember – and it is forty years ago, for heaven’s sake – I instigated it. Needed to prove to myself that someone wanted me after Rowan abandoned me…’ Paula stood up
and refilled the kettle and then looked at the clock. ‘I’m going to have to get back. Freya will wonder what on earth’s happened to me.’

  ‘Text her and say we’re sorting something and you’ll be back in half an hour,’ I pleaded. I didn’t want to be alone, didn’t want to go to bed with this new knowledge hammering in my brain.

  Paula sat down with her tea. ‘As I say, I might have plucked up the courage to go down to the house and have a word with him at some point, but funnily enough your nan did a bit of cleaning there around that time for Mrs Bamforth. Do you remember when your Nan used to have quite a few cleaning jobs? Anyway, Mrs Bamforth’s daily was a friend of Nan’s and when she had some sort of fall, Nan stood in for her. It was only for a few weeks and it’d be about the time Nan found out I was pregnant. I can see her now, sitting at the kitchen table with that damned great brown teapot in its tea cosy. Do you remember it?’

  I nodded.

  ‘“Well,” she said, “it’s not just you that’s got yourself into trouble, Paula. Edward Bamforth’s got some nice girl in France pregnant. There’s a right how’s-your-father going on down at that big house: Mrs B crying, Mr B shouting and that young Edward slamming doors and saying he’s not getting married.” After that, I really couldn’t introduce him to the idea that he might possibly have fathered another child at almost the same time.’

  ‘You were a rampant lot in the seventies, weren’t you?’ I said almost bitterly.

  ‘I blame it all on that hot summer of 1976,’ Paula said vaguely. ‘If it had rained you wouldn’t be here.’

  ‘Thanks for that,’ I muttered. ‘Well, you must have come across him since. Does he know who you are?’

  ‘No. I saw him in town once, but he moves in different circles. And once he was married, he lived right the other side of Midhope, over towards Colneborough. I never saw him again. It was forty years ago, Cassandra. When I saw him chairing the meeting the other week, I wouldn’t have had a clue it was him. It was a one-off and all in the past.’