LITMIR.BIZ

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A friend of hers had scrawled a postscript upon the envelope with the information that the doctor was intending to keep Phyllis for a day or two yet and that this friend would drop by at some point to see that I was managing.

      I thought for a moment that Mrs Abbey was the author of this postscript and that was why she was here. I even had the horrible suspicion that this woman was actually here now to break the news that my cousin’s bicycle accident hadn’t been an accident at all, and I had to add another act of violence to the day’s tally.

      But she didn’t. She had nothing to say on the subject at all. She was far too busy proving that she was at least a little bit of a genuine gossip because she was enjoying the horror of the attack on Mr Winstone and the inconvenience of Eddington being half a mile on from here and the irritation that certain self-important gentlemen didn’t consider it necessary to drop a woman home.

      ‘Did you help them ferry Mr Winstone to the doctor after all?’ My bewilderment wasn’t easy to hide.

      Eyebrows lifted. In the greasy light of the oil lamp on my cousin’s kitchen table, her hair looked more frayed about the edges than it had been before. The yellow glow was casting her cheekbones into strong relief and it made the shadows under her eyes stronger. She looked tired. But no weariness could affect her presence. She was, as I have said, rather tall and immaculately clad in a navy skirt and jacket, and she had a jaw that implied considerable strength of will and carried its own kind of beauty. There was, I’d noticed, something about the confidence of women of that age – all over thirty – who knew these days exactly what they were capable of and wore it as easily as a dash of lipstick.

      Mrs Abbey’s mouth only formed a little smirk as she conceded, ‘If I’d gone with them on their little jolly to see the doctor, they’d have insisted on driving me straight home and I’d have been safely tucked up under the sheets by now instead of bothering you on your doorstep. No, the truth is I’m here because it’s getting horribly late and it’s still a long way home and I’ve done something rather foolish.’

      The smirk eased to show a brief gleam of teeth.

      I repeated blankly, ‘Foolish?’

      She leaned in to confide dramatically, ‘I went to where it had happened and to see if this vagrant had left any signs behind.’

      Ah. She wanted to discuss her squatters again. I disarmed her as best I could. ‘It’s not foolish at all. Freddy and I did exactly the same thing. Would you like a cup of tea?’

      It was only after I made the offer that I remembered that my cousin’s kitchen was like Mrs Winstone’s house. Here too we were dependent on an ancient cast-iron range for any cooking. My parents’ home in Putney had running water, gas and electricity laid on. This kitchen had a big stone sink without taps, a tiny window that looked out onto the privy and the single luxury of a full jug of water on the sideboard waiting to be used. Unfortunately, I hadn’t lit the beast of a range yet and it was going to require a minor war to get it going. Then Mrs Abbey chose that moment to break the latest shocking news of the evening. She actually laughed at my offer and said, ‘No tea for me, thank you. I know where you get your water.’ Then, seeing my face, added, ‘You did know it came from the stream, didn’t you?’

      I’d been drinking from that jug all afternoon. While I was hastily resolving to boil the water very thoroughly from now on, Mrs Abbey drew out a seat at my cousin’s tiny table.

      The kitchen was whitewashed on both walls and ceiling and the clean austerity of the room was a direct contradiction of the clutter that swamped the rest of the house. I moved to the sideboard and propped myself there. Now that I’d let this woman into my home and gone through the brief flutter of companionship I had time to wonder why she was here at all. I prepared to let the silence stretch. I was beaten by Mrs Abbey’s sly sideways look and murmur of, ‘How did you get along with Freddy?’

      Her manner puzzled me. It was the sort of tone a woman might use while probing an illicit liaison, only this boy was barely fifteen. I said helplessly, ‘He seems very nice.’

      ‘Didn’t you find him a little simple, poor boy?’

      This was what she was probing. ‘No.’

      ‘I suppose you didn’t know him before, did you? That’s one thing that can be said for Matthew Croft, he’s certainly improved the boy.’

      ‘Mr Croft isn’t his father, is he? I mean, he’s not Freddy Croft?’

      This question amused her. She laughed. ‘He certainly isn’t. Matthew married Mrs Croft in the spring. Or Eleanor Phillips, as was, I should say. And she isn’t his mother either.’

      I conveyed my enquiry with a look. The name was not one that had made its way into my cousin’s letters. Which, to be frank, meant my cousin liked her.

      Mrs Abbey added cheerfully, ‘Her farm is the one just up the lane from the village. You’ll see her out and about exercising her horses. Or, at least, usually you do but I haven’t seen her ride for a while. Freddy’s helped her with them since he was evacuated here. He’s from London, like you. Although perhaps not quite like you. His former home is presently a flat piece of ground in one of those cleared spots around the East End.’

      ‘And is yours?’

      ‘Pardon?’

      ‘You, me and Freddy; we’re all from London. It’s starting to feel more like home by the minute.’

      Mrs Abbey looked askance at my comment. It made me realise what it was about this visit that felt slightly out of kilter with my expectations. She wasn’t here for tea. She wasn’t really here as my cousin’s friend and she certainly wasn’t quite succeeding at becoming mine. That was the point, I realised. The problem here wasn’t so much that I didn’t think that I would like her but that I felt she wasn’t quite letting me know her. I might have decided that I thought she was wrong for sifting through so many subjects just as soon as she entered the house but they were all shifting so rapidly from genuine humour into sharp edges that I still couldn’t say that even these rather harder gossipy kind of comments were truly giving me a clear measure of who she was.

      Actually, there were two things I could tell. The first was that she didn’t have a very nice way of repaying the way everyone tended to be kind to her. And they did it without seeming to like her very much either.

      I also could tell that she was only prepared to allow a discussion on her old life amongst the barrow boys of the London East End in that it gave her a chance to return to a discussion of those squatters.

      ‘Sweet of you, Emily, dear,’ she remarked with the crisp elocution that comes from superior schooling at an early age, ‘to imply that I rank amongst the Freddys of this world as an evacuee but actually my old home was levelled years ago for a new gas works. But if it’s Londoners you want, you’ll find this place feels even more like home soon. There’s a whole bunch of émigrés in a camp a mile or two away at the old air-raid look-out station on the Gloucester road.’

      Her little conversational turn was so neatly done it made me smile. I understood at last why she’d been so keen to talk about Freddy. His origin would have brought us to this point if my comment about hers hadn’t.

      I was standing with my back to the cast-iron stove leaning against the rail that dried the dishcloth. Mrs Abbey’s attention didn’t enjoy the subject of the squatters for long. Her mouth was already running on to fresh sympathies for the old Colonel and his prolonged absence which had allowed the squatters to arrive unchecked. At least, I thought she meant to seem sympathetic. What she actually said was, ‘Silly old coward. The whole family knows how to make a mess of things, so I suppose we shouldn’t expect them to step into the breach about this. I suppose your cousin told you about young Master John Langton’s antics and passed them off as if they were just a little misstep?’

      I stilled against my prop of old metal while she added a shade sourly, ‘Everyone does it. It’s a great conspiracy of silence out of respect for the old man, but I can tell you that nothing the son did should ever be classed as forgettable.

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