Joanna Trollope: A Village Affair

'Love,' she said.

Later, when he was driving her to Paddington, Richard said quite casually that he would like to buy her a little flat or house in Salisbury, to be near the children's school. He said it would be a secret between the two of them. He said it would have no strings. She could have it for a month or a year or however long she wanted it for. She felt quite bewildered by the offer and said, looking away from him 'But why?' and he said for the children first and for her and Martin second.

'Martin?'

'If you have some independence, he won't feel so threatened or resentful. It will make the next step easier. He cannot bear the thought that the law will require him to give money to a woman he believes has betrayed him. If you don't need so much from him, that's one less battle. One less battle is good for the children.'

'But you can't, why should you-'

'Mind your own business,' Richard said. 'Just let me know when you know.'

In the train, tiredness fell upon Alice like a hammer blow. She put her head back on the orange tweed headrest with which British Rail sought to cosset its passengers, and closed her eyes. Through her mind a procession of people moved, Clodagh and her children and Martin, her parents, her parents-in-law, Clodagh's parents, all spinning slowly by, their faces seeming to wheel up out of a soft darkness and then melt away again into it. I am the link, Alice thought. All these people, through me, have their future. It's a horrible power, but it's real. And it's mine. Even if I don't want it, it's mine. Things aren't going to happen to me now because I have to make the next things happen. I have to choose. I am far beyond any point I ever was before and there's nothing to shield me now. I am in a high, bare, painful place ...

'Excuse me,' a voice said next to her, 'but am I on the right train to make a connection for Didcot Parkway?'

Elizabeth Meadows opened the door of her sister's house in Colchester and found Richard Jordan there.

She was so astonished that she almost shut the door again in fright. He said, smiling, 'I wondered if you would have forgotten what I looked like.'

'Yes,' she said, 'No-'

From the through sitting room where she was polishing the brass fire-irons, Elizabeth's sister Ann called, 'Who is it? I wish you'd shut the door.'

'Come in,' Elizabeth said.

He followed her into the cream painted hall where a Swiss cheese-plant sat exactly in the centre of an otherwise empty table, and then into the sitting room. Ann Barlow was wearing cotton gloves to protect her hands from the brass cleaning wadding and a flowered pinafore with a big front pocket on which 'Breakages!' was embroidered in royal blue stranded cotton. She scrambled to her feet, frowning. If there was one thing she hated more than an unexpected caller, it was an unexpected man caller.

'You remember Richard Jordan. Alice's father-in-law-'

In Ann Barlow's mind, the Jordans were entangled with the breakdown of her sister's marriage. She pulled off a glove and held out an indifferent hand, making ritual noises about coffee which Richard said untruthfully that he would love. He was directed towards a flowered armchair from which he could see a regimented garden and a white painted seat and a line of washing hung up in strict order of size. Elizabeth did not know what to do with him. She resented him fiercely both for coming and for looking so at ease now he was here. She sat opposite him and stared at his well-shod feet and resolved that she would not help him conversationally.

He did not seem to mind her unfriendliness. He told her that James had learned to swim in Cornwall, which she remained inflexible about since Alice hadn't seen fit to tell her they were going to Cornwall in the first place. He admired the delphiniums and said Cecily was opposed heart and soul to the notion of the new pink ones. He remarked on the beastliness of the A12, to which Elizabeth managed to reply that she didn't drive any more, and then Ann came in with a tray of coffee and, there was the usual fuss - Elizabeth despised Ann's houseproudness as deeply suburban - with little tables and spoons and plates to catch biscuit crumbs. When the fuss had subsided, Richard began to talk very differently. He said he was here without Alice's knowledge or permission but she had enough to cope with just now and he had made a unilateral decision to come that he would probably be punished for. He then said, with a calm Elizabeth found horrible, that Alice and Martin had separated because Alice had had a love affair with a woman, and that Alice was at the moment trying to determine her future and Martin was trying to recover from a breakdown. He then said, unwisely, that he hoped they would not be too harsh on anyone. At this point, Ann Barlow put down her coffee cup and left the room.

'I hope,' Richard said, 'that I have not shocked your sister.'

'Of course you have.'

'And you? Have I shocked you?'

'Nothing,' Elizabeth said angrily, 'nothing really shocks me.' She gave Richard the first proper look she had awarded him 'You are a meddler,' she said. 'And I doubt your motives.'

He shrugged.

'I hoped to smooth Alice and Martin's path-'

She snorted.

'I'm not a fool. Prurient is the word that springs to mind. Prurient is how I should describe your action in coming here.'

He lowered his head. She thought his colour was darkening.

'Heaven knows,' Elizabeth said, 'heaven knows what your motives are, what they have ever been.'

He kept his head down.

'Could they not be,' he said into his chest, 'could they not be altruistic?'

'Impersonally, of course they could be. In your case, I doubt it. I resent your coming. I resent your crude translation of my daughter to me. I resent your possessive attitude to grandchildren who are as much mine as yours. I resent your patronage. I resent the divisions you have, as a family, made in mine.'

He got up, abruptly, clumsily.

'I had better go.'

She said nothing. He was beside himself with rage.

'I shall tell Alice of this-'

'You are wrong to suppose she will have any sympathy for you. Much less gratitude.'

He wanted to shout at her that he saw exactly why Sam Meadows had left her, why Alice had seen in Cecily the mother Elizabeth had declined to be. He began, but she went past him to open the sitting room door and then the front door and he found himself outside, beside a bed of stout begonias, bellowing to himself in the quiet residential road, almost before he had said a quarter of it. There was nothing for it but to drive back to London.

Two days later, Alice received two letters at The Grey House. One was from her mother.

'I had a call from your father-in-law,' Elizabeth wrote, 'in the course of which I learned a great deal more about him than about you. Perhaps you will write. Perhaps you will even come and see me. Do not be afraid of coming, because I would not try to counsel you.'

It was signed, 'With love from your mother, Elizabeth.' The other letter was no more than a postcard. It was undated and unsigned, and it simply said, in Clodagh's wild black writing, 'Women need men like fish need bicycles.'

That was all. The next day the children came home and Alice realized, holding them with great relief and love, that in the fortnight they had been away she had come to no decision at all.

'What are you doing?' James said. He was holding a plastic ray gun and half a biscuit.

'Writing to Grandpa.'

'Can I too?'

'Yes, but not on this paper. On your own bit of paper.'

James put the ray gun down on Alice's letter. He did that all the time now, putting his spoon on her plate, his book across her newspaper, his toothbrush into her mouth.

'Jamie-'

He put his hand on the gun. Silently he dared her to move it away.