What was it, the reddening of the inner eye, or the lack of blinking in the old, that made their eyes blaze so? Suddenly I laughed too, unable to help myself.
‘I missed my old life sorely after the Great War,’ he went on. ‘Laid up at my aunt’s house, my hand in a bandage. Sir Michael saved me. He made me gardener at Upton Hall under Mr Binfield. The work was hard, you see, and Mr Binfield didn’t care that I had only the seven fingers to help me get to grips with all the new tools. But I didn’t have enough time for mourning.’
I tilted my head. ‘Are you saying I need a job, William?’
He grinned. I’m saying idleness doesn’t suit you, and since that Barney Bowyer and his Colin took over the mill, you haven’t had near enough to do. Why don’t you follow my example and have a little holiday of your own? There’s nothing like a change of air.’
I remembered him sitting in my kitchen in the warm late summer, talking of the craters of St Eloi while the apples stewed on the stove. How many weeks had passed since then? Six, seven? It was a different era.
I got up from the armchair, and he also rose to his feet. He was my height now that he was stooped a little. I glanced up at the high shelf. ‘We’re beneath your ancestors.’
He reached up and grasped the rim of the lampshade, tilting it so the light was thrown upward to the top of the shelf. A woman framed in black looked out, her jaw and nose and chin rendered in clean bare lines, and the shadows gentle. Her gaze, from the great height, was directed at her son. My eyes roamed freely along the lines, into the soft hollows, and it was only slowly that I became aware of his silence and mine.
‘Gosh, William,’ I said when I’d gazed my fill. ‘Don’t you look like your mother.’
‘Yes, Ellen. I take after her, for certain.’
He let the lampshade go and the shadow fell, and rose and fell again, but less each time until it was still. We moved together towards the door.
‘Are you going to the vicar’s housewarming, Ellen? I think it would give you a filip.’ He touched my arm. ‘You don’t want to be roaming around this old place.’
I gazed out where the lamplight fell on the cobbles, unable to look at William for what he might see in my eyes. From a distant shadow Nipper barked. Oh, Nipper, you naughty, naughty boy.
‘I’m taking Lady Brock to the party,’ I said after a moment. ‘I didn’t realise it was a housewarming. Isn’t it a little late? Reverend Acton’s been here a good few months.’
William spoke solemnly. ‘A housewarming, you can hold at any point in the first year.’
‘I didn’t know that.’ I found myself smiling. ‘I’d better go home and look for a present.’
He opened the door. ‘You do that, my dear.’
28
‘LORD, ELLEN, I wish you’d sell this Land Rover. It’s like travelling in a meat safe.’
Althea and I were driving to the vicarage on a cold cloudy midday, blasts of chill air sweeping our feet and knees.
‘The heater’s broken,’ I told her.
‘I’m aware. Do you really need this great beast? You aren’t hauling tree trunks out of the mill channel any more. You could have a nice little car. One with a heater that works.’
‘It’s useful in floods.’
‘And how often do we have a flood, for heaven’s sake?’
I didn’t reply.
‘I know what I was going to tell you,’ Althea went on. ‘Our Reverend was in one of those Oflags during the war. A POW camp in Germany.’
‘Hmm?’
‘James Acton.’
‘What about him?’
‘You’re rather distraite these days, Ellen, if you don’t mind me saying.’
Distraite. Distracted. Distraught. I let it pass.
‘Tell me again.’
‘He was a prisoner of war in Germany, dear. Tried to escape and got caught in the woods, sent back, then he tried again – oh, I can’t remember how many times.’
‘Gosh.’ My attention was caught now. ‘Extraordinary. Why didn’t he give up?’
‘You’ll have to ask him,’ Althea said. ‘Now here we are, and it’s party time. Do try to snap out of it, darling, and enjoy yourself.’
The vicarage drawing room was a vast, draughty space with a ceiling high enough for stalactites, or more likely columnar icicles, to form without inconveniencing us. Luckily today it was filled with most of the parish of Upton and Barrow End, who were keeping warm by talking as loudly as possible and fuelling themselves from the buffet, where a wide range of colourful bottles stood next to a huge hot heap of home-made sausage rolls.
‘God, it’s an absolute scrum,’ said Althea happily as she was borne away by friends to a large battered leather sofa. I caught sight of Lucy, touchingly dainty and trim in a navy two-piece, merrily raising a plastic cup in a toast before the crowd obscured her.
Gradually the gaiety and the chatter diverted me, and half an hour later I was being propelled pleasantly through this cheerful throng when I came face to face with the Reverend James Acton.
‘What a nice party, Reverend.’ I handed him a small parcel. ‘I hoped these might come in handy.’
He unwrapped it there and then. Laughed as he drew out a pair of oven gloves. ‘Thank you very much. I haven’t got any. Keep burning my fingers.’
Traditional porridge-coloured yarn woven thick, a long strip with two slip pockets, one at each end. I swore by them. ‘They’re the best kind. I buy them from the Women’s Institute market.’
What an old maid I sounded.
‘You don’t come to church,’ he said.
I shook my head. ‘I’m afraid it would be lip service only for me, Reverend Acton.’
‘Please call me James.’
‘James. I don’t mean to offend. I’m getting to be rather a pagan these days.’
He raked me over with the same bold, dark-blue, rather disconcerting stare I had noticed when we met at Church Walk during the flood. ‘Happens to a lot of women your age.’
I laughed in astonishment. ‘Kindly explain!’
He looked somewhat, but only somewhat, abashed. ‘Sorry. I meant that people can get to a point where the received wisdoms don’t satisfy them any more. And women see more of life than men, often they see too much, and so it happens more to them.’
‘Do you think so?’
‘Oh, yes. Men have this great capacity for busyness, minutiae. The behaviour of machines, and so forth. They don’t look up, and so they miss things.’
I didn’t think the Reverend fell into this category. He hadn’t taken his eyes from my face. If he were a pirate, it was a very civilized one, comfortably taller than me. I was glad of my new suede boots with a heel. I didn’t have to crane my neck as we talked.
‘What an intriguing idea.’ I found myself smiling. ‘Reverend, I’m assuming this story about Germans chasing you through the woods isn’t a fantasy of Althea’s?’
‘They actually trod on me one time. And I felt insufficiently like a pine log.’
I had a sudden image of him prone in undergrowth, wide-eyed as a lizard as the guard’s boot landed between his shoulders. ‘What on earth made you keep trying?’
‘It was my duty. Let me get you another drink.’
I accepted. My first had been a punch made by the Sunday School children, consisting of blue lemonade and a waterlogged cherry. ‘And a sausage roll, please.’
He moved away towards the buffet. Over the other side of the room a pair of spectacles glinted: Margaret Dennis was sending me a friendly lighthouse-like beam, as if, were there not fifty pink-cheeked chattering people between us, she would be moving in to buttonhole me. A glass of light dry sherry materialized in front of me along with James Acton.
‘I was also lucky.’ He handed me the glass, and a sausage roll in a paper napkin. ‘To escape with my life, I mean.’