Bramwell miserably shook his head. ‘They’re not interested in Buckingham Palace or Big Ben or Madame Tussaud’s. None of that. It’s Harrison Ford and Jodie Foster they want to see.’ He drank deeply and took Richardson’s tankard silently to Toby for refilling. Lettie picked her way across the slippery grass to them and Richardson carried Adele’s glass to Liz who was giggling behind a stack of wine bottles. Randy Turner, his pigtail greased for the night, was showing her how to pour the wine into glasses without pausing. Lettie poured herself another Ribena from her bottle.
‘Liz seems to enjoy pouring the wine,’ Richardson observed when he returned.
‘Suits her,’ said Adele looking into her glass. Lettie was trying to find something to say. ‘All the buzz,’ she said eventually. ‘All the buzz, wasn’t it?’ She looked anxiously at their puzzled expressions.
‘The hijacking, Lettie means,’ said Bramwell.
‘A bomb like a pineapple,’ whispered Lettie with enthusiasm. ‘What a showdown!’
Adele said: ‘Which hijack?’
‘On the flight to Bahrain,’ said Bramwell off his guard. ‘The Arab nut with the …’ He caught Richardson’s eye but too late, ‘… pineapple.’
Avoiding Adele’s gaze, Richardson said: ‘Oh, it was just a joke. I forgot to mention it.’ Bramwell put his face in his beer tankard.
Adele had paled. ‘You were on the Bahrain flight … last week?’ she began. ‘And there was a hijack?’
‘It was nothing,’ grunted Richardson. Emerging from his glass, Bramwell agreed. ‘No, it was over the top really.’
‘Over the top,’ nodded Lettie.
Adele had composed herself. ‘Why doesn’t someone tell me about it,’ she suggested. ‘Tell me about it, Edward.’
Richardson sighed. ‘It was some poor demented Arab who had a baby pineapple of all things. It was sort of trimmed down and black, boot polish apparently, and he tried to fool us it was a grenade. But it was soon defused … the situation I mean. The security people took him in at Bahrain.’ He looked into his wife’s face, spread his hands and said again: ‘It was nothing. Really.’
He saw Rona and her mother walking up the gentle slope towards them. Rona held the old lady’s hand. She smiled towards them. Pearl laughed at the young people dancing. ‘It’s so noisy. How can they hear to dance?’ she asked.
‘Adele,’ said Edward Richardson as they approached. ‘This is Mrs Collingwood and her daughter, Mrs Train.’
Adele held out her hand. ‘I wish you’d call me Pearl,’ said the older American woman. ‘I feel like I belong here.’ She glanced at her daughter. ‘And so does Rona.’
With a faint smile Adele shook their hands. ‘I’m sorry if I look a little out of sorts,’ she added. She studied both women carefully. ‘I’ve just had a shock,’ she said with mock amusement. ‘My husband forgot to tell me he had been hijacked on an airliner.’
Richardson could see how angry she was. ‘An attempted hijack,’ he corrected holding out his hands. ‘It was harmless really. A demented man with a pineapple.’
They laughed uncertainly but Adele half turned away as if trying to see an excuse and said: ‘Ah, there are the people from St Sepulchre’s. Forgive me for a moment. I’ll just see they’re all right.’
‘What is St Sepulchre’s?’ inquired Rona watching her go. She could see the anger in her very walking away.
‘It’s an old folks’ home,’ explained Richardson. ‘Not very well named.’
‘They might have called it Resurrection, or something,’ suggested the old lady. She peered across the flickering light towards the elderly folk moving studiedly up the easy incline. ‘Maybe they need some help,’ she muttered and moved off after Adele. ‘Old people often do.’
Richardson and Rona were standing alone. He looked away, almost guiltily, following the old lady’s progress towards the agedly moving group mounting the slope like some defeated patrol. Rona was watching her also. Her voice carried back to them: ‘Welcome! Welcome!’ Richardson laughed and Rona shook her head. ‘Some of those people are probably younger than my mother,’ she said.
Her smile was thoughtful. ‘She won’t own up to being elderly,’ she said. ‘She’s just incredible. Hear her. It’s like she’s in charge here.’
While she was looking away Richardson took her in, the good profile, the half smile, her dark hair curling over her forehead. She turned and caught his examination. He said hurriedly: ‘Would you like some more wine?’ Holding the stem of her glass in two fingers and saying only ‘Thanks’ she handed it to him. The trestle table behind which Liz was pouring from the bottles was within reaching distance. The girl drained a glass and in one movement refilled it. Edward leaned over and picked up a bottle.
‘I’ll do it,’ insisted Liz putting out her hand to take it from him. ‘I’m the pourer.’ Her hair was sticking across her forehead and her eyes were confused and bright. ‘I won’t always be poorer,’ she said. She giggled at her joke. He handed the bottle and the glass to her. She spilled it and then slopped it over the rim.
‘You’d never make a barmaid, Liz,’ said Richardson taking the glass from her.
She screwed up her small face and said: ‘Not that I’d want to.’
Handing the wine to Rona, he said: ‘The story is that you arrived here almost by accident.’
‘It was certainly strange,’ she said. ‘We came into Heathrow, six weeks ago now, for goodness’ sake, and my mother became sick as we were being driven to London. We had hotel reservations, everything. She saw the church tower and insisted that the driver turned off.’ She shrugged. ‘And here we’ve been ever since.’
‘She seems better now,’ he commented looking over his shoulder. Mrs Collingwood was briskly shaking hands around the semicircle of people. Rona eyed her mother. ‘She was recovered from the moment she got here. I really don’t understand it. But in Bedmansworth she wants to be and here we are.’
‘Have you done any touring?’ he asked. He saw Adele observing them from the door of the tent where she stood with Annabelle Burridge.
Rona did not follow his glance. ‘We’ve been to Windsor, because it’s so near, and Bath and Stonehenge.’ She counted them off. ‘And we’re visiting Stratford next week. And we went to London with the darts team.’
She put up her hand to stay his laughter. ‘I know, I know.’ She shook her dark hair. ‘Mother wants to become part of the scene. We went to a show in the afternoon and did some sightseeing from the bus. They made a special detour so we could see Parliament and Buckingham Palace.’ She leaned confidingly towards him. He was conscious of how near she was. ‘The driver couldn’t find them. We had a great run around trying to locate Big Ben. I really don’t think he knew where it was.’
‘That sounds like it,’ he grinned. ‘You’d be amazed how local people are. They’re quite an insular community, you see, despite the airport on the doorstep and it’s only fifteen miles from Marble Arch.’
It was dark now. The guests gathered nearer the fire and the griddle. Freebie, the horse, was being fed by the children. It sneezed heavily on them. The trees were dark but there were early signs of a moon.
‘Mrs Mangold who keeps the Straw Man,’ Richardson went on, ‘told me that the last time she went to London was to buy a hat for her husband’s funeral. And that was twelve years ago. In a funny way this place is almost as isolated, insular, as it ever was. People don’t think much beyond it.’
‘You travel a great deal?’ Rona asked. ‘You’re in the airline business, aren’t you?’
‘I am and I have to,’ he said. ‘Really, to be honest, I choose to. I seem to be going somewhere or coming back most of the time.’
Adele approached almost stealthily and heard him. ‘He doesn’t have to,’ she said firmly. ‘He likes to fly away.’ She waved her hands like wings.
‘I don’t,’ Richardson said uncomfortably. ‘But that’s where the job is.’ He pointed to the sky. ‘Up there.’
There was a little s
ilence then Rona said to Adele: ‘You have the oldest house in the village. I’ve been admiring it.’
‘Some of the smaller cottages are older,’ said Adele. ‘But it’s seventeen sixty-nine – Georgian. It’s been in my family for four generations. You must come and see it.’
Rona said: ‘What, if I may ask, is that glass dome on the roof? I see it from the street.’
‘It’s my observatory,’ put in Richardson. ‘My hobby is astronomy. My telescope is up there.’
‘One way and another he spends most of his time in the sky,’ said Adele sweetly.
Rona was glad to see her mother approaching, shuffling enthusiastically at the head of a straggle of elderly people. ‘The leader of the pack,’ she said. The group was ushered on by a fussy fat woman swathed in a woollen headscarf. Pearl Collingwood was only a little breathless when she arrived: ‘My new friends!’ she exclaimed. ‘United against the future!’ Enthusiastically she introduced each by name. Sergeant Morris was regarding a foil-clad potato on his paper plate. ‘Howitzer shell that is,’ he said moodily. ‘I’d leave my teeth embedded in that lot.’ He indicated a thin, continually nodding woman at his side. ‘So would she, if she could keep her head still long enough to get one in her mouth!’ He confronted the old woman. ‘Wouldn’t you Minnie?’ He shouted it a second time, close to her ear. Her nodding quickened.
He accepted two sausages, counted them, and helped himself to another. He bawled at Minnie: ‘The bangers smell all right though! Have a banger!’
‘Sergeant Morris, dearie me,’ chided the woman with the headscarf. ‘I’m the matron,’ she explained a trifle helplessly to the others. ‘I’m Mrs Bollom.’ She indicated Adele. ‘Mrs Richardson knows me.’ Adele smiled in a strained way and said: ‘Of course, Mrs Bollom.’
‘Do you like being old?’ inquired Mrs Collingwood forth-rightly, surveying Sergeant Morris who choked on his food. Minnie, her nodding beginning to speed, patted him on the back. ‘Me? Like it?’ he retorted when he had eventually dislodged the sausage. ‘No I don’t, madam. I can think of better ways of spending the rest of my life than being old, believe me.’ He bit at his sausage again and swallowed it heavily. ‘It’s God’s joke, old age. And He’s got a few jokes, I can tell you.’ He glared towards the vicar who had approached diffidently. ‘Ask him.’
‘Dearie me, Sergeant Morris, I believe you have a pretty good life,’ said the matron unhappily.
‘Hobson’s choice,’ he grumbled. He glared challengingly at her and then the others. ‘Old?’ he said. ‘There’s only one thing. Old is when you can say what you mean. Do what you like.’
‘He put a sausage in my hand when I wasn’t looking,’ said Minnie.
‘Oh dearie me,’ said Mrs Bollom. ‘Oh dearie, dearie me.’
‘That’s all she ever says,’ complained Sergeant Morris loudly. ‘Dearie me. Double dearie me.’ He went away grumbling as he sloped off. Minnie followed him.
‘I’m sorry,’ said the matron helplessly. ‘He’s like that. They get annoyed, you know. Think that they’ve been cheated.’ She looked at the faces. ‘You ought to hear some of them complaining when they die,’ she said. ‘Oh, dearie, dearie me …’
Pearl and Mrs Durie were deep in discussion of the Abdication crisis when Pearl asked: ‘Have you always lived here?’ She leaned forwards as if it might be confidential.
‘In Bedmansworth? I’ll say I have, worse luck. Hardly been anywhere else. I’ve never been to the airport even, I’ve never been in a plane. That darts outing we went on was the first time I’ve been in London since Princess Diana’s wedding. We lined up and waved.’
Pearl said: ‘You must know everybody in Bedmansworth.’
‘Oh, I suppose I do,’ said Mrs Durie, casting her glance around. ‘Just about. I grew up with the older people.’
‘I’m getting to know people’s names,’ claimed Pearl. ‘That’s the Richardsons who live in the old house, I know the Reverend, and that’s the air steward. Bramwell?’
‘Bramwell, so he says,’ sniffed Mrs Durie. ‘You never know with him. Bramwell Broad. His wife, that Filipino girl, is called Lettie, poor thing.’
‘And Anthony and Annabelle Burridge, of course,’ continued Pearl. ‘And Mr Dobson at the post office.’
‘Dobbie,’ supplemented Mrs Durie. ‘He runs the band too.’
‘Tell me some of the others.’
‘Well now, let me see. That tall gentleman there, talking to Reg Latimer, who runs the paper shop and has got twin boys, that’s Mr Broughton-Smith. He’s got a medal from the war. Retired now, of course. He rings the church bell.’ She moved her scrutiny a few degrees. ‘Over there, that’s Thora Fickens, funny old package she is and she’s with Miss MacNamara, I never know her first name, who teaches at the Sunday School.’
‘Are the village schoolteachers here?’
‘They come from outside. Maidenhead way. That’s Mr Best, who’s got the market garden, smallholding place. This is his field and Bertie Browning runs the garage on the Slough Road.’
‘What about the children?’ Pearl asked.
‘I don’t know all their names. There’s our Randy, of course, useless kid, showing off to those little ones. The Richardsons’s boy is called Toby, bit quiet, bit of a loner. That young girl is Liz something. Her mum and dad come from London. And the thin girl is Mary Powell. Her father died last Christmas, poor little soul.’
‘What was school like in your day?’
‘The old school used to be where the village hall is now. That man over there, Percy Gordon, I used to sit next to him in class. When I go in there now I can see it all again. Before the war.’ She frowned like someone who has carelessly spilled a secret. ‘Just before.’
Pearl looked towards her daughter who was talking with Edward Richardson and Adele. Most of the food had gone, the fire was glowering below the grill. Toby was still coaxing beer from the barrel. Liz, attempting to be delicate in lifting a glass of wine, tipped it on her dress and cried out. Toby glanced at her and then continued the glance around to see that they were concealed. He went to her with his handkerchief ready and began to rub down the front of her dress. At first she tried to push him away, but he rubbed the handkerchief slowly against her, his eyes becoming bright, and she lowered her hand to the front of his trousers and felt him there. An astonished smile broke across his face.
‘So you were in Bedmansworth through the war?’ Mrs Collingwood asked Dilys’s mother on the far side of the tent.
‘I’ll say I was. Night-time we used to watch London burning. You could see it clear. We used to come up here, right up on this spot, where we are now and watch the guns and the searchlights and the fires. Just seeing it going on and thinking how those poor souls was suffering. I never could understand why they didn’t all come out here with us. When they ought to have done. I said to my husband, long after, when he was alive, I said that Churchill should have ordered everybody to get out of London at nights and into the country and let the Germans bomb nothing, just buildings.’
She pulled up breathless. ‘I like talking to you, Mrs Collingwood,’ she said. ‘You seem to bring me out.’
Pearl saw that Rona was still with the Richardsons. She asked Mrs Durie: ‘Do you remember the Americans being here?’
‘The Yanks,’ her face lit at the thought. ‘Oh, I’ll say I do. I was just the right age then, and single, of course. Like film stars, we thought, talking like Clark Gable and giving us gum and jam. My old mum used to look forward to me coming home with a tin of jam or luncheon meat. They had lovely luncheon meat.’
Mrs Collingwood asked: ‘Were they billeted in the village?’
The other woman tried to remember. ‘Some but not many. They had some sort of place, like an office, where St Sepulchre’s is now. But most came from further, and there was the Poles as well. They were buggers, those Poles. Oh, I’m sorry, Mrs Collingwood, it’s not like me to swear. But they was. Buggers.’
‘Maybe one afternoon, when you’re not too
busy,’ suggested the American, ‘we could go over to Windsor and take a look at the Castle. Rona doesn’t want to keep me company all the time. And she’s started painting again. We could have some tea.’
By the time people began to drift down from the field to the village it was fully dark. The single street lamp was supplemented by the dim light in the church and the shreds of a moon, and the windows of the cottages and houses in the street were lit and open because it remained a warm evening. Some of the people who had been at the barbeque went into the Swan and others into the Straw Man. Above them, attracting no attention, planes came into Heathrow, their landing lights like candles in the purple sky stretching far back over distant London.
‘Did you like it when I put my hand on your things?’ whispered Liz slyly as they walked, clutched against each other.
Toby glanced behind them. The nearest walkers were fifty yards to the rear; he could hear the vicar laughing. ‘Loved it,’ he said, leaning and kissing her on her pale, damp neck.
Liz giggled with the wine. ‘I just wanted to make sure you had some,’ she said.
‘Did you like me rubbing you down the top bit of that dress?’ he asked.
‘It was all right,’ she said blandly. She squinted down at the dim front of her dress. ‘Didn’t get the stain out though.’
With another glance behind he pulled her more tightly against him. ‘Let’s go somewhere,’ he whispered. ‘If we go back there’ll only be the television.’
‘Clive James is on,’ she told him. She appeared to weigh the conflicting attractions. ‘All right, we’ll go for a walk, if you like,’ she decided casually. ‘Let’s go down the Slough Road. Didn’t think much of that wine. I like my wine stronger than that.’
‘I’d rather have scotch to that beer,’ he boasted. ‘A few pints and I’ve had enough of that stuff.’ With a further backward look, he guided her from the village street to the Slough Road. In the anonymous distance appeared a yellow flashing light and the drone of a waspy engine.
Toby groaned. ‘God, it’s that nutter Bernard Threadle.’
Arrivals & Departures Page 13
