A Rival Creation Page 3

  At noon she was back in the hall where she had given her talk the night before. Although Tollymead was a large village, the congregation now gathered for the Harvest Lunch was small and today outnumbered, at least twenty to one, by apples. Bramleys, shiny as if polished by a crazed housewife, and dusty-looking Coxes, their colours subdued like neglected ornaments, lined the podium, spilled out of carrier bags, and lay stacked in the deep windowsills. Harvest was a good time for being charitable and getting rid of one’s apple glut all in one go. Liberty could almost hear her neighbours all thanking God for arranging things so… well, so sensibly.

  The table where last night she had imagined herself laid out, had been removed from the podium and joined with another at the centre of the hall to form a large T, so, Liberty thought with a small smile, her corpse would be on the floor now amongst the apples, as if she had drowned in a river of fruit. Maybe it was more affecting that way? Liberty cocked her head a little to one side; less of the mortuary slab about it.

  ‘A plague on their fruit trees.’ Ted Brain the vicar was at her side, a lone apple in his small hand. ‘I don’t know what they think the poor and needy of the district can want with all these apples. Shove them up their gas meters maybe.’

  Liberty laughed weakly. It worried her that the vicar did not seem to like his parishioners very much. She was not overly taken with them herself, but that was different. She was an amateur, not like Ted, paid to love and forgive. No, from her vicar she wished for better; she liked to imagine a soft duvet of tolerance and love covering them all and their miserable failings. The other day, when she was giving Ted a lift into Fairfield, she had argued with him.

  ‘You know, middle-class country dwellers have problems too, souls even, if you look hard enough. We need saving just like everyone else.’ But she didn’t feel she had convinced him. Ted cared only for what he called Real People, and in Tollymead, if there were any, they did not seem to attend church. Whenever she spoke to Ted, Liberty tried to be more Real, but somehow she always had an uneasy feeling that she disappointed him. The drinks party, for example, that she had given to mark her and Johnny’s tenth year in the village, had been all wrong. Ted had arrived with a pleasant enough smile, what he was expecting she still had not worked out, a single parent support group maybe. He had stayed chatting to the Hampshire matrons, schoolmasters and commuters with a look on his face of a reluctant saint washing the feet of a particularly sorry lot of poor and needy. But afterwards he had told her she had fallen straight into her slot in the village, marked by outmoded and classridden values. When he had first met her, he said, he had hoped for something different. Liberty had been upset by his words but she kept on trying to please. She always did. It was a habit she felt sure owed much to her appalling start in that direction. Her father had loved her mother, her grandparents had loved her mother. Liberty had killed her. Not deliberately of course, and had she had a chance she would have loved her mother as much as anyone; but as it was, she had killed her. It was knowledge so painful that even now she would step gingerly through her thoughts like a heron picking its way through marshland.

  ‘Here,’ she handed Ted the basket dangling from her arm.

  ‘Jam,’ he said. ‘Excellent.’ He peered into the basket. ‘And chocolate cake.’

  ‘It’s been frozen I’m afraid,’ Liberty muttered.

  Ted Brain carried on rummaging through the contents of the basket. ‘Instant cappuccino, asparagus, butter… and what have we got here? Tinned mussels and a string of garlic. A bottle of Chablis too.’

  ‘I’ve written down a very good recipe for baked mussels in garlic butter. It’s sellotaped to the tin, here.’ Liberty showed him. ‘Mussels are supposed to be very good for you, unless they’re bad of course, when… but this is a very good brand. Garlic protects against colds, not to mention passing vampires,’ she smiled, ‘and we all know there are lots of them around Hampshire.’

  ‘Great stuff!’

  Liberty felt warmed by his approval as he put her basket down on the podium. She had planned her gift a couple of days before, imagining the pleasure of some house-bound old dear getting the basket full of inessentials. You could have life’s necessities piled up around you and still feel poor; it was the chocolate cake that made the difference.

  ‘Hello there Liberty. I’m sorry I missed your talk last night, didn’t know you were on actually.’ Evelyn Brooke peered up at her through round glasses. ‘That bore Nancy tells me it was “different”.’

  Liberty smiled tiredly, but she liked Evelyn. She had known her since she was a child. Evelyn had been old then and she was old now. It was comforting in an uncertain world that some things remained the same.

  ‘I wasn’t feeling terribly well. I was thinking of killing myself, you see… I suppose I still am. I just don’t seem to be getting round to it.’ She regretted her words the moment they were spoken. She did that sort of thing quite often. A perfectly innocuous phrase would be making its way to her lips, when it would be unceremoniously elbowed aside by a string of unsuitable words that embarrassed her even as they were uttered.

  ‘People do commit suicide,’ she added lamely. ‘Look at Hemingway.’

  ‘You, my dear child, are not Hemingway,’ Evelyn said.

  ‘Well there you are; another reason for doing away with myself.’

  Evelyn’s mouth turned down at the corner as she gave Liberty a disapproving look, but before she had a chance to say anything Oscar Brooke came up to her, taking her by the elbow. Nodding hello to Liberty, he hissed to Evelyn, ‘When does this thing end?’

  ‘We haven’t eaten yet. You two know each other already do you?’

  ‘We met briefly last night,’ Oscar said. ‘Victoria was at the talk last night. She enjoyed it.’

  ‘Well you’re not likely to forget each other, both having such silly names,’ Evelyn said.

  Liberty had not looked properly at Oscar last night, and he had been wrapped up against the cold and rain in a large overcoat, with the collar turned up. Now she looked closer at him and found herself thinking that, if she was to die soon, his face was not a bad one to take along as a last image, apart from Johnny’s, of course. Oscar did not look much like his aunt, standing as tall and slim as she was short and square. His straight hair was blond, whereas Evelyn’s had been black before turning wire-wool grey. He did have the same high-bridged nose though, and Evelyn’s deep-set eyes must once have been the same vivid blue. He wore glasses, of course, with round, tortoise-shell frames, but he seemed to Liberty the sort of man who had ended up with the latest fashion in spectacle frames purely by hanging on to the same ones for twenty years.

  ‘If you’ll excuse me,’ he said, ‘I think I saw Victoria calling me.’

  Liberty looked after him as he hurried off to his wife, who was standing on her own, her hand raised in a little wave.

  ‘What is it do you think,’ she said to Evelyn, ‘that makes a man prefer the company of a ravishing twenty-five-year-old with a heart-shaped face and magnolia complexion to a thirty-nine-year-old with a fat, scarred face and dimply thighs?’

  ‘You’re being very silly today Liberty,’ Evelyn said. ‘Even by your standards.’

  Ted Brain announced that lunch was being served.

  ‘Luncheon,’ Nancy Sanderson muttered in a long-suffering way just behind Liberty.

  Liberty wandered off towards the table. A large, misshapen Bramley was knocked off the podium and rolled unevenly across the floor, like someone running with only one shoe on. It came to a halt right by Liberty’s feet and she bent down to pick it up. ‘You’re a miserable specimen, aren’t you, just like me,’ she whispered. She put her hand out, but Neville Pyke’s square, paint-stained paw got there first.

  ‘Waste not want not,’ he said rubbing the dust from the apple with the sleeve of his blue club blazer before placing it on the white paper table-cloth. Taking a step back to survey the scene all the better, he said, ‘I don’t think one could see a prettier sight a
nywhere in the land.’ He beamed at the table, which stood bedecked with all manner of twigs and berry-laden branches as if the decorating had been left to a rather untidy beaver.

  ‘All across the country folk are sitting down to Harvest Lunch,’ he said, ‘but I don’t think there’s a table anywhere to rival this one, not even in Everton.’

  He made Liberty feel guilty. Where she saw cheap china and a mess of twigs on a make-do table, he saw beauty. There he was: getting old, quite fat, quite bald, a little stooping, making ends meet on a pension in a village that was nothing like the old-world idyll he had dreamed of finding when at long last he retired to his country cottage. There he stood, seeing the best in everything. Either that, Liberty smiled suddenly, or he had very bad taste.

  ‘It’s lovely,’ she said, ‘really lovely.’ She didn’t mind lying. It was like when a friend had bought a new dress and showed it to you, all pleased and proud: a smile, a little twirl; a ‘What do you think?’ You didn’t say, ‘Bloody awful,’ whatever you thought.

  Nancy Sanderson and her helpers busied around the table carrying plates of food, their church hats perched like insults on the back of their heads. ‘Sit over there Liberty,’ Nancy said over her shoulder. ‘Next to me.’

  Ted Brain’s place was at the top of the table, marked by a particularly large apple speared through its middle by a lit candle. Liberty sat next to Evelyn a few places further down, and soon Nancy joined them, plonking down on the empty chair between Liberty and Ned Simpson. She did not mention the talk, but with a tactlessness that Liberty could not help but admire, asked about the scar on Liberty’s right cheek. ‘I wanted to ask you last night. It’s very bad isn’t it?’ She peered closer. ‘A nasty wound. Doesn’t look as if it’s healed properly, you know.’

  Liberty said nothing, hoping she could ward the inquisitive Nancy off with a persistent smile. As her smile stiffened out in the cold, she found herself wondering if that was the secret of Mona Lisa’s smile: she was fed up with Leonardo asking her all those really intimate questions about her love life.

  The conversation round the table was growing quieter as people’s interest seemed sucked towards her and Nancy.

  ‘I said, I hear it was a dog,’ Nancy went on. ‘Now why was there nothing about it in the Tribune? I thought dog attacks were all the rage these days. I’ve had several cases before me on the Bench lately. You could sue, you know.’

  Liberty felt a moment’s pride at being so fashionably maimed, but she said, ‘It was only a very small attack.’

  Neville spoke from further down the table. ‘I can’t say I’m surprised nothing was written. I said to Mrs Pyke only yesterday that our little village seems rather neglected in our local paper. I often find myself searching in vain for a mention in the Village Diary, but it’s always Everton this and Everton that.’ He made an artful pause. ‘Maybe now we’ve got the new editor in our midst we will see a change for the better.’

  ‘Being new here,’ Evelyn said, ‘maybe my nephew thinks Everton is a football club. That would certainly justify the interest in their jam-making and beauty pageants.’

  Oscar opened his mouth to speak, but Nancy got in first. ‘Don’t be silly Evelyn. Anyway, the pronunciation is completely different. Ev’ton. E.v’.t.o.n.’ Her cyclamen lips stretched and pursed as she enunciated.

  ‘The Village Diary is very little to do with the staff or the editor,’ Oscar said. ‘It’s more of a community notice-board made up of entries from the residents of the different villages themselves. Apart from asking my staff to make up entries,’ Oscar smiled patiently at Neville, ‘there really isn’t much I can do to raise the profile of the village. I know I’ve only been living here for a few weeks, but Tollymead doesn’t seem to exactly throb with activities. Today being an exception of course. Now something like this Harvest Lunch…’

  ‘Luncheon,’ Nancy muttered.

  ‘… is just the item for the Diary if anyone would care to write in. Of course, if something happens that is of more general concern—’

  ‘Like the attack on Mrs Turner here,’ Nancy interjected.

  ‘—then of course it gets taken up elsewhere in the paper by our staff. There’s no discrimination intended,’ Oscar said to Neville, ‘I assure you.’

  ‘And none taken, none taken I’m sure.’ Neville nodded his bald head vigorously. ‘But we have the makings of a very fine community here, very fine indeed if we’d all just try a bit harder. What better tribute to God’s creation than the close and caring community of a traditional English village?’

  Liberty joined in the murmured approval; Neville was right. Had she herself not come running back to Tollymead when life got tough, her head full of images of village life that would have Miss Read suing for copyright? They all seemed to want a fully formed, up-and-running village community as a pretty back-drop to their busy lives but, like the corkscrew at a picnic, everyone counted on somebody else to provide it. Everyone, that was, but Neville and Nancy Sanderson and a handful of others, who valiantly flogged the dead donkey, organizing the Christmas Bazaar and the Summer Fête, the Women’s League and the odd fundraising event; all about as integral to the day-to-day life of the village as a monocle to a child’s eye. There soon would come a time, Liberty thought, when busy commuters would have to hire the services of professional villagers. ‘Of course we’re very lucky, what with the mother’s help and the gardener, not to mention the simply marvellous little man who looks after the Village Spirit. He takes care of everything: those annoying visits to church between Christmas and Easter, slide shows in the village hall, the cake stall at the fête, although he does charge extra for bell-ringing. And his wife’s rather a treasure too; regular as clockwork at the WI meetings, never fails to twitch the net curtains first thing in the morning and last at night. She even offered to do the gossip at the Post Office counter, but I said, “Mrs B,” I said, “I’ll take care of that, you’re doing enough as it is, and I wouldn’t want to take advantage.” Where did we get them from? Oh this splendid little firm in Cobham.’

  ‘Anyway Liberty,’ Nancy’s voice roped her thoughts back in line. ‘Do tell us what happened.’

  ‘It’s not really very interesting,’ Liberty tried. ‘My hand’s fine and the wound’s healing nicely.’

  ‘I hope you reported the dog’s owner to the police.’

  ‘No, no I didn’t.’

  ‘Why ever not?’

  Liberty was beginning to get upset. The more she wanted not to carry on with the subject, the more interest she seemed to generate.

  ‘Because it was my father’s dog,’ she admitted at last. That did nothing to quell the curiosity of the others.

  ‘Oh the poor man,’ Nancy said briskly. ‘He must be feeling simply awful.’

  ‘This is my fault.’ Hamish’s voice, heavy with a thousand burdens, had floated towards her as she bent double on the orange plastic chair in the surgery waiting-room, clutching her bleeding cheek with her hand that was also bleeding and wrapped in a soiled tea towel. It was a voice Hamish liked to use quite often, but this time she had been in too much pain to bother with the comforting denial of facts that he expected from her. Instead she had wondered tiredly, was this enough? Had the wounds, caused by her father’s ill-disciplined and grossly indulged dog, coupled with the goddamned awful name he’d given her and that she had carried like a stigmata, at last atoned?

  No, of course not. Not when measured against the loss of a wife. She had sighed and turned away from her father’s face and his relieved smile that waited in the corners of his mouth, like a prima donna in the wings, poised to rush out and receive her applause.

  ‘Poor man,’ Nancy said to Piglet in an encouraging sort of voice. Liberty jumped as she was dragged back to the Harvest Lunch via yet another detour of her mind. Maybe it was not so surprising after all that she had failed as a writer, when her stream of consciousness revolved around Winnie the Pooh.

  ‘Oh. Right.’ Liberty opened her eyes wide in an attempt t
o look alert.

  There was silence at her end of the table. She felt as uncomfortable as when she was nagged to tell one of her two jokes; the more she protested that it was not really all that funny, the more everyone became convinced they wanted to hear it. Now the whole hall seemed quieter and heads were turned expectantly towards her.

  Liberty sighed. Nancy was making her feel uncooperative and childish.

  ‘All right, but it’s only a little dog bite. Not at all your headline-grabbing kind.’

  ‘When did you say it happened?’ Nancy asked.

  ‘That really wet Wednesday some weeks ago. It was pouring down. I was walking across to my father’s house at the school, to show him some snaps Johnny had sent. Johnny is my son.’ A note of proprietory joy sneaked into her voice, and she paused to allow herself to dwell for a moment on the open-featured, fair-haired love of her life.

  ‘How is dear Johnny?’ Evelyn asked.

  ‘Very well thanks,’ Liberty smiled at her. ‘Sweden is proving a huge success. He’s living in a cabin in this real Troll forest: miles and miles of fir trees. And he’s off to Australia next month, for the next stage of the great gap-year adventure.’

  ‘I thought he was going to Edinburgh.’

  ‘No, that’s afterwards. This is—’

  ‘Liberty, you were saying it was raining.’ Nancy called them to order.

  Liberty began to get annoyed. They wanted to hear a story. OK, fine; they were going to get one. Her head a little to one side, she looked thoughtfully at Nancy before continuing. ‘I thought my father must have been watching “Good-bye Mr Chips” or “Dead Poets’ Society” again, because his sitting-room was filled with boys: sweet, small boys smelling of sweat and wet socks. Hamish was standing by the open fire, declaiming – Owen I think – and he was wearing a garland of tobacco flowers in his hair.’

  ‘Nicotiana,’ Neville informed the table in general.

  ‘Hamish was standing by the open fire, declaiming, a garland of nicotiana in his hair,’ Liberty repeated patiently.