Andrew Taylor - Bleeding Heart Square

I had warned Joseph they might be a little stuffy, which turned out to be just as well. They had got out the silver tea service and the Crown Derby. Old Mary, who has never been more than a maid of all work and not a very good one at that, had been forced to come in on Saturday afternoon and drilled so hard in the duties of a parlourmaid that she didn’t know whether she was coming or going. John took one look at Joseph, and clearly decided that he wasn’t enough of a gentleman for him, though anyone can see that Joseph’s more of a man than John could ever be .

Anyway, John, who can talk the hind leg off a donkey, went on and on about this and that, trying to make Joseph look small. At one point he asked him what he thought of young John Gielgud’s Hamlet and later he pretended to be very surprised when he learned that Joseph had not been to a public school. I was never so ashamed of my relations in my life, but dear Joseph rose above it splendidly. He spent a lot of time talking very nicely to Agnes about her work with the Girl Guides and to dear little Fenella, asking her about her studies and so forth and what she plans to do with her life. She’s such a sweet little thing — she takes after my side of the family. I told her I had been using the diary she gave me at Christmas .

And then we had the row!! Beforehand, I had thought about telling John and Agnes about our engagement while we were there — not the full story, of course, because that concerns only Joseph and me — but decided it might be better to break the news when we next met. But John was so beastly I changed my mind. I slipped out of the room, put on my engagement ring and went back and said, cool as can be, ‘By the way, Joseph and I have some news.’

Well, you should have seen their faces drop. John began to splutter — he was so angry and surprised he could hardly get his words out. If looks could kill!! At least Agnes and Fenella managed to congratulate us. I couldn’t wait to get away. I made our excuses as soon as I decently could .

We walked to the Tube station. I was still seething with indignation on Joseph’s behalf. But he said that it was quite all right and he understood why they had been like that .

‘I know I’m a bit rough round the edges, my darling,’ he said. ‘But the heart’s as true as oak, I promise you that. And you were so brave in there. Like a lioness.’

I suppose that was what made me do it — not John and Agnes’s despicable behaviour but Joseph’s truly manly generosity and the loving tone of his voice to me despite the insults he had received. I told him that I felt we were now married in the eyes of God. I was trembling in every limb. ‘I want to be your wife in every way, dearest.’ I repeated it: ‘In every way, Joseph. Do you understand?’

Philippa Penhow saw a chance of happiness and she took it. She gave more than she took. You have to admire that, don’t you?

His wife had taken to sleeping in the kitchen. At bedtime Narton watched her pulling the mattress out from the scullery and unrolling it in the corner by the range, which had been banked up for the night. Margaret lived in the kitchen, which made sense in this weather because it was the warmest room. If you were going to spend your days there, Narton supposed, you might as well spend your nights there too.

Margaret had once been house-proud to the point of mania. She had kept the floor so clean you could eat off it, and she used to give the Vicar tea with newly baked scones in the parlour. On more than one occasion, Mrs Alforde herself had come with him.

Without looking at him, Margaret made the bed with blankets from the dresser drawer. Narton wondered whether he should stay with her in the kitchen, but only for a second. Anyway it was only a little single mattress of lumpy horsehair. It had gone on the bed they had given Amy when she was ten years old. All in all, he preferred to lie upstairs in the big double bedstead that sagged in the middle, turning restlessly to and fro between the dirty sheets, weighed down by too many memories and a mound of frowsty bedding.

He drifted into unconsciousness at about five o’clock in the morning. The bang of the back door roused him abruptly from a deep sleep at a quarter past seven. His limbs were aching and his mind was as misty and full of foulness as a London fog. Margaret had gone to work. He rolled slowly out of bed and painfully forced his body back to life. It was still almost dark outside. He had slept in shirt and underclothes. He urinated in the pot and pulled on his trousers and socks, noticing without much interest that the hole in one of the sock heels seemed to have grown larger overnight. He stumbled down the narrow stairs into the kitchen. As he had feared, the range was out. Margaret would get a cup of tea and perhaps a slice of toast at the Hall. She worked there for the loonies, whose souls were far above such mundane matters as keeping the kitchen clean.

It took him well over an hour to light the range, boil a kettle, shave and make tea. Afterwards he put on his overcoat and walked into the village. It was a grey morning, raining slightly, and he met no one until he was nearing the shop by the church. Robbie Proctor was standing under the lych gate, with his mouth open as usual and his nose in need of wiping. Had a screw loose, that one. When the boy saw Narton, he turned tail and ran off among the gravestones.

Things weren’t much more welcoming in the village shop. Rebecca, the Vicarage parlourmaid, was there, and a couple of labourers’ wives from Home Farm. They nodded a greeting but sidled away from him, re-forming in a whispering huddle on the other side of the shop. What were they afraid of? That he’d contaminate them like a cloud of poison gas?

He bought five gaspers and a loaf of bread. No one wished him goodbye. He knew that as soon as the door closed behind him the conversation would begin again. Margaret told him that everyone in the village thought he was mad. Perhaps they weren’t so far wrong.

At the cottage, he put the kettle on again and ate some of the bread. Afterwards he lit one of the cigarettes and wandered from room to room. It already had the feeling of an abandoned house. He came to a halt at last in the parlour, where he studied the cupboard beside the fireplace. He threw the butt of the cigarette into the empty grate and fished out a key from his waistcoat pocket. The door creaked as he opened it. There were three shelves. The upper two held toys, one or two books, some clothes. On the bottom one was a flat, soft parcel loosely wrapped in brown paper. Narton took articles at random from the top two shelves — a copy of Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland , a woolly hat with a bobble on the top, a tiny china pony that he had won for Amy with an air rifle at a fairground stall in Saffron Walden.

There was a hammering on the back door. Narton closed the cupboard, locked it and went unhurriedly back to the kitchen. The knocking continued. He opened the door and found Joseph Serridge standing outside and leaning on a stick. He wore a heavy raincoat and galoshes thick with mud.

‘I reckon it’s about time you and I had a man-to-man chat,’ Serridge said in a flat voice.

‘I thought you were in London.’

‘You going to let me in?’

‘No point. You won’t be here long.’

Serridge came a few inches closer. He towered over Narton, even though the latter was standing on the doorstep. ‘Suit yourself. I think this fun and games has gone on a bit too long. Don’t you?’

‘Fun and games? Is that what you call it?’

‘You can call it whatever you want,’ Serridge said. ‘But it’s going to stop. You are making a laughing stock of yourself. And I’m getting tired of having you hanging around.’