The Road to Lichfield Page 9

  Five

  Sandra said, ‘Your brother was looking awfully well, I thought. I didn’t think he’d remember me, but we had quite a chat, really very interesting, about a play on Northern Ireland he’s producing. He’s a very committed sort of person, isn’t he, I mean, he really does take things seriously.’

  ‘I wouldn’t entirely say so.’

  ‘Well, he’s your brother, you should know. But I must say he’s the sort of person we could do with more of here. I’ll come into the library with you, I want them to put up the notice about the Traffic Action Group. Does he come down often?’

  ‘Not all that often.’

  ‘Pity. I say, Anne, do you really get through all those books in a week? I envy you, I’m always wishing I had more time to read. Oh, that reminds me, I’ve still got that book of yours on old farmhouses and things.’

  ‘M. W. Barley. Did you think it was interesting?’

  ‘Well, truth to tell I never got around to reading it from cover to cover. I did dip into it a bit.’

  ‘It has a long section on cruck-framed buildings like Splatt’s Cottage. How the internal arrangement changes – starting off with just one room, and then a kitchen being added at one end, and upstairs rooms and so on. And external chimneys.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Sandra vaguely, ‘I did have a look at that, I think. Anyway, I must let you have it back.’ She moved away, and through the book-cases Anne could see her manoeuvring her notice into a favourable position on the library’s pin-board. Returning, she peered at the books in Anne’s shopping basket.

  ‘Of course, I suppose you have heaps of time in the holidays. Why Gloucestershire?’

  ‘Oh, just I was thinking of going to Gloucester cathedral sometime.’

  ‘Lincoln’s the one I adore. That is the one with all those figures on the front, isn’t it?’

  ‘That’s Wells, actually.’

  ‘Oh, of course. Anne, I’ve been meaning to ask you about your father. How is he?’

  ‘So so.’

  They walked together down the High Street. Sandra, it seemed, had had a perfectly ghastly time with James’s father, the year before last, endless visiting at that hospital somewhere on the absolute outer rim of north London, and then of course she’d had her own mother in the house for ages, really hardly able to do a thing for herself. ‘So you have all my sympathy, I know what it’s like.’

  ‘I think it’s father who needs sympathy, really’ said Anne.

  ‘Surely they’re doing everything they can.’

  ‘Oh yes, they’re doing everything they can.’

  ‘Well,’ said Sandra. ‘This is where I must love you and leave you.’ She passed on the brink of the zebra crossing. ‘By the way, have you got the Pickerings lined up yet, over Splatt’s Cottage? And the R.D.C. man?’

  ‘No, I’m seeing him tomorrow.’

  Anne went into Dewhurst’s and bought two pork chops for supper. Paul had gone away on a school camp. Judy was spending a few days with a friend. Later, eating in the kitchen, she said to Don, ‘We could go off for the weekend. Why don’t we? First time we’ve been on our own for God knows how long.’

  ‘Go where?’

  ‘Oh, I don’t know. Anywhere. The Cotswolds. Remember Broadway? Walk, and look at things. Stay in a nice hotel. Why shouldn’t we? Please let’s.’

  ‘Why, particularly?’

  ‘No reason. Just it would be nice. I’ll ring somewhere up, shall I – book us in? ’

  ‘If you like,’ he said. ‘If you want to.’

  They drove west beside the green flanks of the Berkshire Downs. We walked, said Anne, up there, do you remember, years ago, after a dance or something, when we hadn’t known each other very long. We got a bus out from Oxford and had lunch in a pub that had tables outside and a dog that fetched stones if you threw them for it. Remember? And Don said, not the dog, frankly, no. And a bit after that, she said, in the vacation, that weekend we met in London, we went to bed together for the first time. Yes, said Don, that sleazy hotel in Kensington. Not sleazy, she said, I can see it now, not sleazy at all, marvellous, special. Well, he said, that’s as may be, and it’s just as well you can see it now because it’s not there any more. Knocked down for a new block of flats, I was noticing the other day. Isn’t it? she said, isn’t it? I didn’t know that. You never told me.

  ‘You’re very restless,’ he said. ‘What’s the rush? I’d have had another beer.’

  ‘But we want to see Hailes Abbey. And Belas Knap.’

  ‘Do we?’ he said. ‘If you say so. You drive, I’m having a snooze.’

  The hills presided over Gloucestershire and the Vale of Evesham, the Malverns whale-blue in the distance, limestone villages burning in shafts of sunlight. Counties met and interlocked; the Welsh mountains lay like clouds on the horizon. They climbed away from the valley up a field whose pitch silenced them, walking through cowslips. At the top, on the level, Don said, ‘What is it, anyway?’

  ‘Darling, I told you. A burial mound. Neolithic.’

  ‘Fine view, I’ll say that.’

  The barrow crouched among fields of kale, its age and function explained on the Ministry of Works notice. Don stood in front of it, reading, his hair lifting in the wind. Anne climbed the turf mound and stood on top, cushioned by the same wind, looking up the valley. There is Winchcombe down there, where we shall sleep tonight; Cuxing is over to the right somewhere, miles and miles away, quite out of sight; the Lake District where Paul is in some tent is due north, straight up the valley, on and on. And Lichfield, she thought, Lichfield is that way too, more to the right, the road to Lichfield is not so far off, north-east, over there.

  ‘Come up here,’ she said. ‘You can see for miles.’

  He came and stood beside her. She put her arm through his. ‘Aren’t you glad we came?’

  ‘Mmn. Good idea. We should bring the children sometime.’

  ‘No, we shouldn’t, it’s our turn now.’

  ‘I daresay. What’s that place down there?’

  ‘Winchcombe, where we’re staying. Do you realize we’re standing on top of a family mausoleum?’

  ‘So it seems.’

  ‘You can’t begin to imagine what they were feeling, those people, trailing up here burying each other with pots and brooches and goodness knows what.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Don. ‘Reassurance of some kind. Investment in the future. Sensible enough.’

  ‘What nonsense! Mumbo-jumbo, that’s all. Superstition. Just like any religion. Leaving money to have masses said for your soul, burying provisions with the dead – it’s all equally mad. You can’t plan the afterlife, even if you suppose there is one.’

  ‘But you don’t believe in planning life, either.’

  ‘No, I don’t,’ she said crossly.

  ‘That’s a kind of superstition, too.’

  ‘I don’t see why.’

  ‘Well,’ said Don. ‘It’s a way of refusing to anticipate things. If I don’t arrange for it, it won’t happen.’

  ‘Now you’re talking like an insurance agent.’

  ‘Maybe.’

  ‘I just don’t think,’ she said, ‘you ought to rule anything out. Did you know Sandra and James have already bought the house they’re going to retire to? Twenty-five years ahead. Fancy deciding where you’re going to be in twenty-five years’ time.’

  ‘I’d rather like to know,’ said Don, ‘where I’m going to be for the rest of the afternoon. What else have you in mind for us? You seem to be the planner today.’

  Did I tell you, she said, driving down the hill to Hailes Abbey, did I tell you about this man I saw yesterday? About Splatt’s Cottage. It didn’t work out quite how I’d expected. I’m in a bit of a muddle about all that.

  She had been passed from voice to voice, on the telephone, from office to office in which typewriters clacked and heels tapped echoingly across floors. You want our Planning Department; Mr Hanson deals with that area; do you know the application number? ‘I believe the
re’s a Mr Jewkes I should speak to,’ Anne said. And at last there came Mr Jewkes on the line, saying perhaps the best thing would be if she could pop along and talk it over. Yes, he said, he knew about Splatt’s Cottage.

  They sat facing each other in an office whose walls were lined with maps of the county. Maps showing density of population; maps showing distribution of industry; maps of town and country and road and rail networks. Berkshire was analysed and dissected, arrangements made for its future, schools planned for children as yet unborn, expansion areas designated for the housing of couples still unknown to one another. Amid these predictions, Mr Jewkes sat behind his desk, a man of amiable concern, more like an old-fashioned doctor, Anne thought, than a planning officer. He said, ‘It’s not scheduled, of course.’

  ‘No, we realize that. But we feel that all the same this application should never have been granted – that it’s a building of historic importance and ought to be preserved at all costs.’

  Mr Jewkes said mildly, ‘I did of course go into it myself, when the application was made.’

  She had expected someone more ruthless than this, a more clinical figure, disposing in this godlike way, changing landscapes at the stroke of a pen. He had gone over to a map cabinet now and came back with a sheet. ‘It’s marked on the 1875 Ordnance Survey, of course,’ he said. ‘The twenty-five inch. Rather interesting – you’ll see if you look, Mrs Linton, the ground plan shows some outbuildings that seem to have disappeared, or at least I could see no trace of them when I went there.’

  ‘Splatt’s Cottage’, it was spelt, in copperplate print, quite isolated among fields. The ditch curled around it. Like an eel, Anne thought.

  And he had done his stuff, Mr Jewkes, more deliberately, she realized with annoyance, than they had themselves, she and Sandra and Mary Pickering, in their desultory attempt to establish some facts about the place. Structurally, Mr Jewkes said, it was in a very dickey state, very dickey indeed. Dry rot, woodworm, the lot. You name it, he said, and it’s got it, poor old place. I had one of our public works chaps go over it pretty thoroughly and his report was rather daunting. He reckoned the costs of restoration would be fairly astronomic – always assuming the present owner could find a buyer for it at all. I can show you his report, if you like, Mrs Linton, said Mr Jewkes.

  Anne said, ‘No, I’ll take your word for it. But even so – even so buildings like this have been rescued. I mean,’ she said sternly, ‘cruck-frame farmhouses of the early fifteenth century don’t exactly abound.’

  ‘Quite,’ said Mr Jewkes. He looked at her over gold-rimmed spectacles. ‘That thought did occur to me,’ and Anne, feeling herself rebuked, looked away in discomfort. ‘Curiously,’ Mr Jewkes went on, ‘it’s not mentioned in Pevsner, whereas the Old Mill, which I’ve always thought rather dull, is. But that’s neither here nor there. We did, I assure you, Mrs Linton, think long and hard about this. And then, of course, there was the question of the amenity value of the proposed bungalows. The acute need for this kind of housing for old people.’

  ‘But you can’t be sure they’ll go to old people.’

  ‘Ah,’ said Mr Jewkes, ‘I think perhaps you’re not quite aware …. Have you seen the terms of the application?’

  Anne said, ‘No.’ She felt doubt take hold, insidious, like the early symptoms of a cold.

  ‘Let me just explain, then. What the builders have in mind is a group of purpose-built bungalows for the elderly. They are intending to keep the price low and are giving an undertaking that first options should be given to local people – to people born in Cuxing. Mr Pym is himself a Cuxing man, of course.’

  Sandra would say, Anne thought, this is a fix. ‘It sounds very altruistic,’ she said.

  ‘And builders,’ said Mr Jewkes, ‘are not always remarkable for their altriusm. I can imagine you may be thinking that, Mrs Linton. Quite. But sentiment apart, Mr Pym had also to reckon with the possibility that we would not grant planning permission. I think you could call this a scheme whereby the vendors benefit – though by no means on the scale they might – and the village gains some much-needed accommodation for its elderly. So you see, it was a question of expediency. Which do we need most – a building of admitted historic interest, but very uncertain future, or housing for old people?’

  Game, Anne thought, and I think probably set and match. She said, stiffly, ‘I see your point. I shall have to talk this over with the rest of the committee.’

  ‘Naturally,’ said Mr Jewkes. He rose, and held out his hand. ‘And of course if you’d like, to look in again, I’m always available. It wasn’t an easy decision, I do assure you, Mrs Linton, but decisions have to be made. Nothing stands still.’

  And I haven’t yet, she said to Don, had time to talk to the others about it, but I must say as far as I’m concerned I feel a bit uncertain about the whole thing now. I feel, she said, a bit foolish. I wish I’d never got pushed into it.

  Hailes Abbey, too, burned in the sunshine. They toured its nave, its aisles, the conjectural site of its altar, the skeleton of its cloisters, refectory, undercroft, all mounted on grass neatly banded by the mower, any insecurities of structure attended to with fresh mortar or discreet splintings of iron. Hailes Abbey, what there was of it, was all set for the next hundred years. Don said he’d had enough sight-seeing for now, if she didn’t mind, and sat in the sun on the cropped wall of what was once the monks’ frater, doing the Times crossword. Anne moved from glass case to glass case in the museum, poring over chunks of limestone that flowered into all the riotous creatures of medieval fantasy, and innumerable fragments of tile, their colours snuffed out by five centuries. Emerging, she saw Don sitting in exactly the same place, but the sun had gone in and the stone was drained of colour, grey not gold. She felt suddenly dispirited and remembered how her mother’s moods would fluctuate with the weather, and how this had always annoyed her when she was young. Oh dear, her mother would say, look at the day, pouring, doesn’t it make you feel low? and she would argue that how you feel comes from inside, not outside. And I still, she thought, am not much uplifted by weather, or otherwise, so there is no need for today to be spoiled by a few black clouds. ‘Coming?’ she said. ‘There’s the church as well.’

  They studied the wall-paintings. ‘I can’t make it out,’ said Don. ‘What’s it supposed to be?’

  ‘St Christopher. Look, there’s his staff, and his legs, and the wiggly lines are the water he’s walking through. He’s a charm against death, you know, like touching wood. That’s why he’s in so many churches – if you saw him you were all right for the rest of the day.’

  ‘In that case,’ said Don, ‘let’s tackle the hazards of the A46.’

  Leave the wretched crossword, she said, in the hotel bar, talk to me. Have you enjoyed today? We should do this more often. And Don, folding the newspaper (but right side out, she saw, ready for later) said, yes, very nice, I daresay we should, what about the summer, then? Scotland, isn’t it, we fixed on?

  Oh, Scotland, she said, I didn’t mean that, that’s different. Scotland’s the statutory two weeks holiday, so we’ve got something to talk to people about in the autumn. I meant days like this, she said, just for us, just for you and me.

  What’s up, Annie? he said, you’re very sharp, all of a sudden. What’s got into you? Nothing, she said. Nothing at all. Everything and nothing. Not to worry, as Graham would say. Come on, let’s have a look at their menu, I want my money’s worth, four courses and no nonsense. Prawn cocktails, duck with slices of orange glued on, the lot.

  They returned home to the phone ringing in the empty, dark house. Fumbling for her keys on the doorstep she thought, in dithering sequence: Oh God, Paul, there’s been some accident …. And then: Judy, Mrs Shapton ringing about Judy. And finally: father, the nursing-home, that Matron.

  But it was none of those things, merely Farrer, from the comprehensive, the headmaster, saying if it was not too inconvenient could she look in one day this week, just to have a talk.

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nbsp; ‘Yes’ she said, bored. ‘Yes, of course. Wednesday. Right you are.’ And put the receiver down thinking, Thursday I’ll go up to Lichfield. Thursday or Friday.

  ‘Who was it?’

  ‘Farrer. He wants to see me. Syllabuses for next term, I suppose. D’you mind if I go straight to bed? I’m flaked out – all that fresh air.’

  They had walked for miles, through a day of crystalline clarity in which, from the hill-tops, each detail of the landscape stood out minutely: the shape of trees, the swirling plough-marks on fields, smoke from chimneys, flash of light from car or window-glass. And then, in late afternoon, the day had mellowed to a dusty haze and the sunshine had streamed down through golden clouds in great shafts and pillars, so that it seemed as though a William Blake God, or angels at least, should descend upon Gloucestershire. They had walked apart, coming together only to consult about time, or direction. Anne, plodding over fields, climbing hillsides, crossing lanes, had felt alone. Don’s footsteps, a dozen paces behind, made no demands. She thought of nothing, except that she would like to get very tired, physically, and when, at some point, Don suggested they go back, said, you go, if you want, I’ll meet you later, it won’t be dark for ages yet. And had not for several minutes thought to look back for him, nor had been surprised to see him still there, hands in his pockets, following. Sorry, she said, arriving back at the car, you needn’t have come, I just felt like a good walk, and he’d shrugged, meaning, she supposed: why not? One might as well as not.