I had a reply two days later. Well-spaced small capitals, sitting solidly on lined paper. IT WAS NOTHING I ASSURE YOU ELLEN. I LIKE TO DO FAVOURS WHERE I CAN. I KNEW YOU WOULD WORK HARD AND THAT IS REPAYMENT ENOUGH. YOURS WM KENNET.
I told Lucy about Selwyn before church, as quietly as possible, as we walked up the lane to the lychgate. She often met me at the bus stop but today she was late, so we only came in sight of each other at the head of the lane where a dozen or so people were filing through into the graveyard and the church itself. I told her what had happened and she came to a standing halt, as I knew she would. ‘Mr Parr?’ She was gaping. ‘Parson Parr of Parr’s Mill?’
‘Why do you call him that?’
‘Everyone does. ’Cause he wanted to be a vicar, but then he changed his mind.’ She gave a long, throaty chortle. ‘Ellen. You are having me on. What the hell do you want with Parson Parr?’
‘Don’t say “hell” here, so near to the church.’
She sucked her teeth. ‘You can see that he’s about a hundred and five.’
‘He’s thirty-nine.’
‘He’s thirty-nine.’ She mimicked my plaintive tone. ‘Oh, good God above. You’ve got it for Mr Parr. Who would have thought.’
I glanced up at the church door, hot with irritation. ‘I knew you’d be like this. I only told you because I need to excuse myself after dinner. He’s taking me to tea at the Hall.’
She walked a small circle, her hands on her hair. Another laugh, this one harder. ‘Tea at the Hall. Tea at the Hall. Well, I never.’
Mr Price the verger was at the church door, his hand on the bolt. There was no one behind us. ‘Lucy. Come on.’ I started up the path.
On the way to the church she stopped again, twice, once to say, ‘Can he see without his specs on?’ and then, ‘Make sure you don’t miss your bus, after tea at the Hall.’
I didn’t tell her he was driving me back to Waltham. It would have finished her.
I marked the page with the silk ribbon and closed my prayer book. If I raised my eyes I could see Selwyn with Lady Brock the scone thief, today in a startling hat, a winged sort of turban. One of the wings was lower than the other, as if the hat had flown in and just that minute settled on her head. Lady Brock cared for her good friend Selwyn, and less than nothing for me. She already knew who I was. What on earth did she have in mind, inviting me to tea?
As they left the church they both turned their heads and smiled at me, and I couldn’t help it. I was not the person in Upton that I was in Waltham. I blushed, and blushed, and even my lips were hot, and I kept my foolish, burning eyes on the floor like a stupid schoolgirl. What was I thinking of? What was Selwyn thinking of?
I produced the fruit tart from my bag. ‘There weren’t any treacle ones left,’ I said to old Mrs Horne. ‘This is gooseberry.’
Mrs Horne nodded. ‘Very acceptable, dear. Thank you.’
After we washed the dishes we sat in the parlour as we usually did. I was secretly recovering from the sharp pain in my stomach which invariably came after eating so much delicious food, sharper today because of the impending tea. Lucy’s father sat outside on a stool with his pipe. Lucy and her grandmother embroidered. We enjoyed a spell of quiet, and then Lucy said, in a thick voice, ‘Ellen’s got to go.’
‘I know,’ Mrs Horne said calmly, without raising her eyes. I watched her deft, calloused old fingers stabbing and looping. An apple swelled in gradations from green to gold to deep pink. Lucy was talented but her grandmother’s work was glorious. The older her hands became, the more beautiful the result. I cleared my throat. ‘Lucy, would you care to walk with me to the Hall?’
She shook her head. ‘I should get up to the kennels.’
‘You’re not wanted there till evening time,’ said her father from the doorway.
‘Go on, girl,’ Mrs Horne told her. ‘Get your sulky face out of my sight.’
Selwyn met us at the door in the wall of the estate, where Lucy and Daniel and I had entered when we were young. Selwyn shook my hand and Lucy’s. I wondered whether she would suck her lip down over the gaps in her teeth, as she tended to do with strangers, but she didn’t this time because she said nothing at all, simply giving Selwyn a brief black stare as he said, ‘How do you do?’ and then turning away. We both watched her stiff back retreating. I was confounded by her rudeness. But Selwyn just said, ‘She’s a shy little thing.’
We passed in under the high elms that were loud with rooks today and walked up the path towards Mr Kennet’s shed. Selwyn chuckled. ‘Bill gets up a tremendous fug in that hut, doesn’t he, with his charcoal stove. It must be the warmest place in Upton Hall. Do you want to look in on him?’
‘I think not today.’
Two sparrows in the birdbath wriggled and flicked water with their wings. We walked on towards the house.
17
‘NIPPER,’ shouted Lady Brock, as the dog flung itself to the end of its chain. ‘Nipper, for God Almighty’s sake.’
We edged past the limit of the chain, Selwyn laughing. ‘Hello, Nipper,’ he said. ‘So nice, to be greeted this way by an old friend.’
‘He’s losing his marbles. He doesn’t recognize you. Everyone is new. Imagine that.’ Lady Brock gave me a wide grin. The hat was still roosting on her head. ‘Look at this thing,’ she said, following my eyes. ‘It needs to be put out of its misery. Come in. Mrs Hicks has commanded us to go into the sun room, since she burst a cushion in the drawing room and the air’s full of feathers.’ She took us inside and pointed across the hall. ‘Ellen, my dear, disport yourself in there. I shall go and order tea. Selwyn, would you be kind and play to Michael?’
‘It would be a pleasure.’ He mounted the stairs, glanced back at me with a smile.
‘He won’t be long,’ said Lady Brock. ‘Sir Michael’s been looking forward to some Chopin all afternoon, but he’ll only want a quarter of an hour or so. We moved the piano upstairs a month ago. It had to go through the gallery windows. Ted Blunden and Ernie Mount couldn’t budge it with their block and tackle, so we got the firemen over from Waltham and they inserted it in a trice. I have great confidence in them should we ever be ablaze.’
She disappeared down the hallway. I went where she’d bidden me. The air in there was sunlit and shaded, cool and thick and green with the smell of earthenware pots of alyssum which were ranked, shelf upon shelf, along one portion of the rear wall. A cactus grew up the edge of the huge glass doors, metal-framed and the metal painted black, which led out to the steps and the garden. The wicker chair creaked as I sat in it.
Dimly through the green the single notes came down from above, rounded, dropping. I hadn’t known that Selwyn played the piano. It floored me. He’d only told me words. I hadn’t seen or felt anything of his life, his world, until now.
I couldn’t stay still. At the other end of the sun room was another set of doors. They led into a gloomy dining room where the curtains were drawn. And beyond that, through another doorway, the hall, and somewhere beyond, the clink of crockery. I followed the sound and came upon the kitchen where a woman was pouring boiling water from a kettle into a teapot, face set upon the task. ‘I believe you must be Mrs Hicks.’
She glanced up, and down again. Her face mumping around toothless jaws. ‘And I believe you must be Ellen Calvert.’ She took a tea-strainer between thumb and finger and placed it on its pot. ‘I know about you. You and the Horne girl, pushing your dirty little bodies at my nephew.’
She was surely raving. I opened my mouth to tell her, but she was quicker. ‘Samuel Pearce on the railway line. His ear and his neck scalded cruel. I wouldn’t serve you so much as a cube of sugar if it was up to me, so you’re lucky it ent.’
She set down a white milk jug. The rim and spout and handle decorated with forget-me-nots. No, they weren’t. They were speedwells. I stood, once again pied with chalk and coal dust, stinking and trembling.