Barbara Vine - The Minotaur

Winifred spread cloths on the tables and we set out the food. As the plates of ham were uncovered I wondered which one had been explored by the fly and resolved to give all a miss. Perhaps because of its repeated transition from fridge to table and table to fridge, the food looked the worse for wear, the slices of meat curling at the edges and the lettuce wilting. It was hot and stuffy inside the hall, a fact immediately commented on by Eric Dawson, who was the first to arrive. He went about opening windows. After that the village trooped in, mostly elderly couples and ageing single ladies. Perhaps they were younger than I remember but then, of course, anyone over forty seemed old to me.

Clinging to Eric's arm and flashing her ring, Winifred walked about greeting people, anticipating her future as chatelaine of the Rectory and parson's wife. Ella was transformed. She had dressed herself in a pink jumper and pleated skirt and washed her hair. She met a bosom friend, a woman of about her own age called Bridget Mills, and the two of them went off into a corner where the few chairs were set out and, their heads close together, began an eager conversation.

Everyone smoked and, in spite of the open windows and door, a thick blue fug built up, hanging like cumulus above people's heads. Knowing no one and with no one willing to introduce me, I went among the crowd explaining who I was and that I had been helping Winifred. They were very nice, these people, warm and friendly and welcoming. But there can be no more uncomfortable meal than a buffet supper in a place where there are twenty chairs to fifty people and few uncluttered surfaces. We juggled with a plate in one hand, a glass in the other, and in most cases a cigarette gripped between fore- and middle-finger of the glass-holding hand. Somewhere had to be found then to put the glass down while a fork was used on the food and it surprised me that only one plate crashed to the ground, this being dropped by an old lady introduced to me as Miss Adams. Ella rushed over, obviously very displeased at having to leave her friend even for the five minutes it took to clear up the mess.

I learnt something about village gossip that night and without, I hope, being unkind, the trivialities which Windrose concentrated on when any newcomer to the village was expected. For everyone talked to his or her neighbour for at least a while about the imminent arrival of a new tenant for The Studio. It was like Jane Austen but a hundred and fifty years later, long enough I would have thought for radical change. But these Windrosians were still excited by the prospect of this man's coming and a village gathering in the church hall was the perfect venue for an exchange of information. Those who knew when he would arrive depended on others to tell them his name and those who knew his name were avid to hear his age, the precise nature of his occupation and if he was unmarried. Perhaps, again in a Jane Austen climate, it is unnecessary to say that a bachelor of forty, as he seemed to be, was far more interesting to them than a woman of that status and age would have been. No doubt they were thinking that a single man would be in want of a wife.

A lot of the speculation seemed to be founded on wild rumours. After all, he could hardly be a painter of abstracts and a potter and a weaver of tapestries but various people put forward with absolute conviction these and other versions of what he did. Mrs Cusp, the churchwarden's wife, was sure she had heard of him as a Symbolist but perhaps that was someone of the same name. A retired army officer from the house next to The Studio said he hoped he wasn't ‘anything like Picasso’.

‘I hope he'll fit in,’ said Ella's friend.

‘Maybe he'll fall in love with you, Bridget.’ This from an elderly female lay reader who took the service when Eric was hard pressed. Apparently she was known for her tactless frankness. ‘He's never been married, has he? I always think that peculiar in a man who, however you look at it, is on the verge of middle age.’

This was hard on Eric, who tightened his lips, took off his glasses and put them on again. ‘I look forward to meeting him, anyway,’ he said in a repressive way unusual with him.

Even after most of the food had been eaten I waited for young people to turn up but none came. I was the youngest there by fifteen years. It was as if a Pied Piper had come into the village some time ago and lured all the children away. I asked Eric about this.

‘The young all leave,’ he said, fidgeting with his glasses. ‘There's no work for them and nothing much to do. The first thing they do when they leave school is get a car or if they're under seventeen, a motorbike, and then they're off. They go to the towns. We're getting to be a population of retired people.’

The effect was depressing. I would have been glad to leave but Winifred had to stay till the end and remove all the dishes and wasted food. It seemed to me that hers was an arduous job. I hoped it was lucrative but doubted it. Her principal reward would have been the praise of approving guests. I heard someone tell Eric he was a lucky man and what an excellent wife she would make. People still said things like that in the sixties. A man's life companion was a good proposition if she could cook and clean.

One good thing about an elderly population was that they tended to leave functions early. At ten sharp couples began going home. It was a fine clear night, the sun not long set and the sky still lit and coloured by it, blue and indigo feathers spread across its deep red. Because I have never been back I have no idea what that countryside is like now but then it was all little patchwork fields, rich flowering hedges and screens of tall trees. The elms have all gone long ago but when I was there Dutch elm disease had not yet come to England. Few new houses had been built except for the short rows of council houses outside each village and the cottages were almost all beautiful – if not beautiful to live in – with roofs of thatch or slate, tiny small-paned windows and ramblers climbing their walls. Roses round the door are a calendar and Christmas card cliché but those cottages really were like that and still are, for all I know. I had seen Ida desultorily embroidering a picture of one for a firescreen.

Zorah was not at breakfast and failed to appear for lunch. This was party leftovers thriftily served up by Ida. I ate none of it, sticking to bread and cheese as did Mrs Cosway, but I tried to keep a straight face while she wrinkled up her nose and turned her mouth down. On my way out with John I saw that the Lotus had gone. As usual he kept his head bent and eyes downcast as we walked along. I had debated with myself whether it was better to keep a matching silence to his own or to persist in talking even if I got no replies from him, and I finally decided on the latter. But there is something unnerving about an entirely one-sided conversation. Wearing and frustrating, and the speaker feels foolish. After ten minutes of what became fatuous rubbish about the weather and the scenery, I wanted to shout out, ‘For God's sake say something!’ but of course I had to resist.

I supposed I would get used to it and come to expect a response from him no longer. This was the beginning of my speculating as to what was really wrong with him. My knowledge of mental illness was very inadequate but I knew more than the Cosways. If he was schizophrenic, was he on any medication other than the sleeping pill Mrs Cosway gave him every night? He acted and moved like someone heavily dosed with a tranquillizing drug, his hands trembling, his gait often unsteady. His doctor must know, I told myself, this Dr Lombard who had come to visit Mrs Cosway while Winifred, Ella and I were out. Had he also seen Mrs Cosway's son or was John already in bed asleep?