Last Act of All Read online

  Sullenly, the old families — the Batemans, the Edes, the Whittons — drew closer in their indifference to the outside world. They seldom became heated over events beamed into their sitting-moms with the six o’clock news: their forefathers had greeted Roman decrees and the repeal of the Corn Laws with much the same head-shaking detachment and amused contempt. ‘That’s their business’ took care of most things.

  For their own, there was savage loyalty and protection, a formidable defensive alliance. They had been spared the late-twentieth-century invasion of weekenders which had leeched the life from so many other, more picturesque Radnesfields. Those not discouraged by the mean ugliness of its housing stock, mainly post-war, were repelled by its atmosphere. To an outsider, the inhabitants seemed remote and coolly hostile, their interest furtive and spiteful, their unconcern so pointed that it was cruel.

  *

  ‘It’s a masterpiece, the way he’s taken it,’ Radnesfield’s personification went on. The air was thick with the avidity of their curiosity, and she was, as she would have put it herself, in her height and glory.

  It was nothing new for a member of their community to be returning from a sojourn as a guest of Her Majesty: indeed, the cadet branches of the Ede family spent as much of their time in as out.

  It was, however, a new and titillating experience when it was Edward Radley’s wife, his family having been for centuries the closest approach to squires that Radnesfield would recognize.

  Gratification loosened Mrs Bateman’s tongue. ‘Very steady, he were. Just quietly, “Now, Martha,” he says, “Mrs Radley will be home today. You can move my things into the spare room, because she’ll be very tired and will need to rest”.’

  Eyes widened in enjoyment, voices lowered in pleasurable speculation as to what this titbit might imply. Only Jane Thomas, Martha’s schoolmate and old sparring partner, spoke robustly.

  ‘Sounds real thoughtful. She won’t feel much like keeping company first days, seems to me.’

  ‘Well, catch my Dave, after all that time.’ The girl who spoke had bold dark eyes, and rolled them expressively.

  The laughter was ribald, the comments had a mocking edge. Sensitivity was not a village virtue.

  Martha Bateman let the talk ripple on, like musical improvisation, only until she chose to gather them, once again, under her direction.

  ‘We all know about your Dave’s courting habits,’ she said unkindly, and watched the girl flush a dull, uncomfortable red, as if one of the shaming marks of Dave’s attentions still disfigured her face.

  ‘Anyway,’ Mrs Bateman continued, ‘that’s what he said. And that Stephanie’s coming home, isn’t she, to see her mother for the first time since she was took away.’

  ‘Wonder how she’ll take it.’ Mrs Ede, behind the counter, voiced the common thought. ‘Weren’t too happy at the time, by your account, Martha.’

  There was a little silence. They had heard it all then, the child’s hysterical refusal to see or speak to her mother, as a result of that most dramatic event in village history.

  There was nothing fresh to add, and Martha pursed her lips in annoyance. She had uncharacteristically kept nothing in reserve from that feast of scandal for this later famine.

  So she frowned, repressively. ‘I wonder at you asking me to demean myself, gossiping. That’s their business, isn’t it?’

  Then briskly, with a change of tempo, she closed the discussion. ‘Well, them as lives longest’ll see most. Now Mary, you going to get my order, or keep me standing all day? You’re getting slow as that clock of yours. You want to get Willie Comberton to see to it, you do.’

  There was laughter as Mrs Ede complied, and Martha Bateman, feeling the grim satisfaction which was her nearest approach to pleasure, read out the next item on her list.

  *

  With automatic movements Sandra Daley wiped the draining-board, peeling off the silly rubber gloves with red tinted nails attached that she had once thought so amusing. Wearing them now was an unthinking habit; below them, her hands were rough and her own nails chipped and broken. She didn’t bother now, any more than she bothered about her face or her hair, showing its dark roots.

  Jack had gone to the front door on his way out to work. He was coming back, so the postman must have called, but she did not turn. She took no interest in the post nowadays, and it was always painful to see how Jack looked at her.

  ‘Something for you.’

  So she must turn, had no option but to face his cold distaste.

  ‘You’d best open it.’ He thrust it into her hand, since she showed no sign of taking it. ‘It’s an invitation. We don’t get too many of these now, do we?’

  He knew something about it already. His light brown eyes observed her without affection, as she accepted the envelope reluctantly, opening it with fingers that had become clumsy.

  ‘Mr and Mrs Edward Radley,’ she read slowly, like a child unfamiliar with its letters. Then ‘Oh!’

  ‘Yes, “Oh!”’ he mocked her cruelly. ‘Should be quite a party, shouldn’t it? Make a change to go out – we haven’t had too many knees-ups, not since—’

  Hard and uncaring, he sounded, yet he could not bring himself to say the words. She began to shake her head, slowly at first, until the movement was almost a shudder.

  ‘No, no. I’m not going, I can’t go—’

  ‘Oh yes you bloody can.’ In a sudden violent motion he caught her wrist, turning it to the edge of pain. ‘You’re the one who likes parties, remember – the good-time girl. “Oh Jack, it’ll be such fun!”’ His voice was shrill and venomous in mimicry.

  She hung her head. ‘It was – different, then,’ she whispered.

  ‘Maybe it was for you.’ He released her arm with jarring force and spun away from her, to stare with unseeing eyes through the window, across the meadow and the spinney towards Radnesfield House. ‘Well, as it happens, you’ve got no choice. Lilian got her invitation yesterday, and she wants to go. But she doesn’t want to go alone.’

  ‘Lilian!’ she spat the word at him. ‘You go with your precious Lilian. You don’t need me.’

  He faced her again, his mouth twisted into a sneer. ‘Need you? God, of course I don’t need you. Take a good look at yourself — what sort of use are you? But Lilian wouldn’t like it if you stayed at home. It wouldn’t really look very good, would it?’

  ‘You can’t make me—’ she began, with a flash of her old spirit, but faltered under his cold, contemptuous gaze.

  ‘We agreed, didn’t we? As you said — when was it now? I’m not sure, but perhaps you could remind me — “We’ve been through too much to quarrel now.” Something like that. A bit of an understatement, really, I thought it was, at the time. And you didn’t care what my conditions were, you said, in one of your more grovelling moments.’

  ‘Yes, I know.’ Her voice was so full of tears, as to be barely audible. ‘But oh, Jack, I never thought it would be this way—’

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes. ‘Should have thought of that before, then, shouldn’t you?’ he said gruffly. ‘And for god’s sake do something about yourself. Have you passed a mirror, lately — you’re a ratbag. No wonder you disgust me.’

  The tears began again, welling up and spilling silently, as she heard the front door slam behind him. He had every right to punish her, but as she stood shaking uncontrollably, she wondered how much more punishment she could take.

  *

  It was, as usual, just on twelve o’clock when George Wagstaff came into the farmhouse kitchen.

  There was a savoury smell coming from the elderly Aga, and he went over to warm himself, removing a cat and a protesting terrier from the bright rag rug with the toe of his stockinged foot.

  Dora, his wife, was busy at the sink. His son Jim had come in ahead of him and was already washed and sitting at the table set for what was the main meal of the day.

  ‘Go and get yourself washed, Dad,’ Dora said. ‘I’m going to dish up now — that’s Sally back f
rom Limber. I can hear the car. They were all waiting for him, when George returned to take his place at the head of the table.

  ‘Hear Radley’s bringing his missus home this morning,’ he said gruffly.

  It was, on the face of it, a simple enough remark, but it made his wife look up sharply from the chicken stew.

  ‘Is Stephanie back?’ she asked, ladling a heaped spoonful on to his plate.

  ‘Well, a taxi came in earlier, so I reckon that was most likely her coming home from that posh school. Good news for you, eh Jim?’

  His sister shot him a sardonic look, as the young man flushed a dusky crimson.

  ‘Have a heart, Dad, she’s only a kid. It’s the horses that are the attraction, not me.’

  ‘Oh, I can well believe that she prefers the horses, but what about you?’ Sally, at eighteen, always had the upper hand in any exchange with her elder brother. ‘Mum, not that much for me! You’re always trying to feed me as if I were baling hay instead of tapping a word processor.’

  ‘That’s no reason not to eat properly. We’ll have no slimming nonsense in this house.’ Wagstaff’s response was automatic, but now that his daughter had attracted his attention, his heavy brows came down.

  ‘And where were you last night anyway, miss? I didn’t get you that little car so you could come in at all hours.’

  Sally was an attractive girl with her father’s fair hair and high colouring, but her jawline was as squarely determined as his, and now she looked mulish.

  ‘Just out,’ she said, meeting George glare for glare.

  Dora, dark and quiet-mannered like her son, hurried as usual to intervene.

  ‘That’s no way to speak to your father, Sally. And you might as well tell us, before we hear it in the village.’

  The girl banged her fists on the table. ‘Why does anyone live in this place?’ she cried in fury, then, ‘Oh, all right, if you really want to know. I went out with Len Whitton.’

  Jim, who had taken no part in the conversation, winced. His father’s colouring, heightened already, became a suffused purple, and his bright blue eyes bulged.

  ‘Len Whitton!’ he roared, bringing both huge fists down in exactly the same movement as his daughter’s, but shaking the thick pine board so that the terrier, startled, set up a frenzied yapping. ‘You’ve been told before, you’re to have no truck with the village lads. And Len Whitton! By god, if you were a bit younger I’d set to and put you over my knee.’

  Tears springing to her eyes, Sally pushed away her untouched plate and sprang to her feet.

  ‘You’re such a snob!’ she cried hotly. ‘Oh, it’s all right for Jim to fancy Stephanie Fielding, because she’s posh and talks proper. But I’ll make friends with who I like – I don’t care what you say.’

  ‘Len Whitton’s bad news, Sal,’ Jim said gravely.

  She coloured, but went on. ‘Len Whitton, Will Ede, Dave Thomas – it’s all the same to Dad, whatever they’re like. Just because their parents are working class and we’re farmers, even if we haven’t got our own—’

  ‘That’s quite enough, Sally,’ said Dora in the tone that had always meant business. ‘We’re prepared to make some allowances for your tantrums, just the way we did when you were two years old, but you weren’t allowed to be plain nasty then, and you needn’t think you’re going to get away with being nasty now.’

  For a second the girl met her mother’s eyes rebelliously, then, bursting into tears, whirled round and ran out.

  Jim rose. ‘I’ll go after her, see if I can talk some sense into her.’

  His mother, sighing, took his plate over to the Aga to keep warm. George was struggling for control.

  ‘Len Whitton!’ he said at last, through clenched teeth. ‘If he harms a hair of her head, I’ll — I’ll kill him!’

  Dora gave him a straight look. ‘Oh, hasn’t there been enough trouble yet for your taste? George, your temper’s going to kill you, never mind anyone else.

  ‘Sally’s young still. She’s not taken with Len, and she’ll have done with him soon enough if you don’t go forcing her to carry on, out of defiance. Just let things be.’

  Wagstaff glowered like one of his own bullocks. ‘You wouldn’t want to see her marrying into the village, any more than I would.’

  She sighed again. ‘No, of course I wouldn’t.’ She sat down once more, looking at her cooling plateful without enthusiasm, then said slowly, ‘There’s a bit of a funny mood in the village, the last couple of days, George, have you noticed?’

  He shot her a look from under furrowed brows, but it wasn’t anger she saw there now.

  She had seen that look in the eyes of a stable cat, hunted by the farm dogs. Frightened it might be, but it had been ready to sell its life dear.

  In that moment she realized, for the first time in her life, what they meant when they said, ‘My blood ran cold.’

  *

  ‘Do you know, that woman doesn’t even seem to have heard of recycled loo paper?’

  Marcia Farrell dumped a packet of luridly pink toilet rolls, along with a small jar of jelly marmalade, on to the vicarage kitchen table.

  ‘And then she said, pointedly, “And will that be all, madam?” as if she expected me to pay the fancy prices she charges for the whole of my weekly shop.’

  The vicar, wearing a frayed grey wool cardigan over his clerical shirt and collar, was sitting beside the stove which was failing to heat the draughty, stone-flagged vicarage kitchen. His study was even colder, so he had brought through a pile of books in the so far unrealized hope that they might provide fresh inspiration for Sunday’s sermon.

  ‘I suppose she doesn’t have the advantage the big supermarkets have,’ he felt obliged to suggest.

  His wife snorted. ‘They somehow managed to go to Mallorca last year on their profits. And we don’t exactly have the advantage of the salaries other people have. Or even the sort of vicarage that you can heat, or keep clean.’ Her eyes raked the shabby, untidy room disparagingly.

  Peter Farrell winced. He was morbidly sensitive to the sufferings of his wife, who was not an instinctive home-maker, with the old and inconvenient vicarage. The church had tried unsuccessfully to sell it, handicapped by its unattractive nature and the cost of putting right the defects which made the months of November to March almost intolerable.

  He depended so totally on her, on the robustness of her character and her faith, to make up for the shrinking delicacy of his own. It was disheartening that the bishop had not found him a charge where Marcia’s interest in women’s groups and poverty initiatives would be appreciated, and now he felt selfish for having condemned her to being underused, and worse, resented, purely to indulge his vocation.

  It might have been different, if he could convince himself that his was a successful ministry, but in Radnesfield he could never feel that modern Christianity had eradicated another, more ancient creed. And increasingly, of late, he had felt himself powerless against the stealthy advance of evil. He could never tell Marcia, but at times the wings of darkness seemed to brush his own face.

  Marcia had put the kettle on and was continuing her saga. ‘Then she made a fuss about Nathan, when he knocked over some stupid tins, and you know how sensitive poor little Nat is! I nearly lost my temper, but I was given grace just to smile at her and say, “Suffer the little children, Mrs Ede!”’

  Her husband smiled weakly. Oh, he loved his children, of course — that went without saying — but sometimes it did seem to him that suffering was the mot juste. Marcia was wonderful with them, simply wonderful, encouraging them to express themselves, and be real individuals, but without her, he would be totally lost. His face grew sombre at the memory of that nightmare day, Marcia broken and sobbing and threatening to walk out on them all. It had been the death of her hope, so callously engendered by that — he swallowed the word, one which vicars shouldn’t even think of — by Neville Fielding...

  Almost as if she had followed his train of thought, Marcia went on, spooning
decaffeinated coffee into Oxfam mugs, ‘I noticed Edward Ridley driving out early, presumably to get Helena. I asked Mrs Ede if she knew if she was getting out this morning, and I’m sure she knew, but all she said was, “I really couldn’t say, I’m sure.” Very helpful!’

  ‘Well, you know how they hate being questioned—’

  ‘Oh, I know that, all right! You could hardly live in this village for five years without realizing that if you so much as ask them how they are, you get a metaphorical slap in the face. How they expect you to do your job unless they tell you the problems, I don’t know.

  ‘Though of course, doing what’s right when it’s easy isn’t really a challenge, is it?’

  Then a frown darkened her mechanical smile. ‘But I must say, it is hard to be treated as a vulgar gossip, when I’m doing my best to help with your pastoral duties. Because if Helena is coming home, you should go up and see her immediately.’

  He became visibly agitated. ‘Oh – oh no, surely not! They’ve asked us to go on Saturday, and at first they’ll want some peace and privacy – they won’t want me to intrude—’

  ‘Intrude? Peter, how can her priest intrude? That’s like suggesting that a doctor intrudes at the scene of an accident! This is a spiritual emergency, Peter – she must have a desperate need to lay down that burden of sin and guilt! Seeing her at the party will hardly meet the case, now will it?’

  She smiled at him rallyingly, and noticed, with irritation, that he had started that unconscious wringing of his hands again. ‘So misguided – so unwise—’ he muttered.

  ‘Well, you could say that a party shows a more frivolous attitude than one might hope – it’s not one of the more usual manifestations of repentance, is it?’ She laughed, but getting no response, went on, ‘Still, being charitable, it may be they see this as a way of putting the whole thing behind her—’

  ‘Behind her!’ The words burst from him. ‘How can anyone be foolish enough to think that this will put it behind her? It’s starting something – it’s got everything stirred up again, and you can feel how uneasy people are. So much evil, so many of us drawn to sin! And now it’s all coming to the surface, all over again, like some foul, loathsome —’Stumbling into incoherence, he broke off.