Constance sniffed and blew her nose, attempting to regain the control she so wished she had never lost.
‘I gave him a bollocking and then he said something really unpleasant and so I slapped his face and then he stomped off to the pub.’
‘Good God!’ said Freddie. ‘You’ve had a row with William. I never thought I’d live to see the day.’ His voice was light. He did not sound worried.
‘I’m afraid I’ve made a right mess of it,’ said Constance.
‘Well, it’s nice to know you’re human.’
‘What do you mean by that, for goodness sake?’
‘Constance, you’re jolly near perfect, don’t you realise? Mothers are allowed to lose their tempers with their sons, you know, especially when their sons have been behaving like prats. You’ll never love him any the less whatever he does in life, will you? And he feels the same about you. So what’s the great tragedy? I thought somebody had died.’
She managed a watery smile.
‘Freddie, sometimes you are just wonderful,’ she said.
‘It’s my turn,’ he replied affectionately. ‘And now I think it would be a good idea if I went to join my son for a pint, don’t you?’
William was in the back bar of the Dog and Duck when his father joined him. The boy’s face was pale and his eyes red-rimmed. Freddie wondered for a moment if he had been crying too. A pint of bitter stood on the table in front of William. He had hardly touched it.
‘Thought you had a drink problem,’ said Freddie, by way of a rather obscure greeting.
‘It’s not a problem, dad, honest.’ William sounded subdued, nonetheless.
Freddie smiled, leaned across the table and embraced his son. ‘Fine. Then let’s not make it one.’
‘I’m sorry, dad.’
Freddie leaned his head to one side, mildly surprised, and studied his only son carefully. Certainly William looked sorry. Those handsome features seemed quite morose. His shoulders were slumped and he sat almost hunched over the virtually untouched beer. Perhaps Constance had done more good than she realised. She’d given the little blighter a shock, that was for sure.
Freddie was ever an optimist. Unlike Constance, he could not bring himself even to mention drugs. The boy couldn’t be that daft, he told himself. He’s gone a bit off the rails. He’s had a shock, he’ll be fine now. He’ll not let anybody down.
‘I’m glad of that, son, pity you couldn’t have told your mother so, though,’ he said quietly.
William winced. ‘Did she tell you what I said to her?’
‘No. What did you say to her?’
‘If I told you, you’d kill me.’
‘Best not, then.’ Freddie looked him up and down again. ‘So let’s just try and straighten this mess out, shall we?’
Ultimately William stayed at home for little more than a week. Eventually he assured his father, as he had his mother, that he had not been taking drugs. Neither did he have a drink problem, he insisted, he just liked to party. He promised to control his partying and to work hard at college were he given the opportunity to do so again. And he apologised to Constance who accepted his apology warmly. But there remained a certain edge to relations between mother and son.
Some things that are said, particularly within families, can never be quite unsaid. Constance had been very deeply hurt. She couldn’t help wondering if her only son had always harboured the thoughts about her that he had expressed, the awful idea that she had been some kind of gold digger. She knew better really, but sometimes in temper people do say what they really mean.
Certainly she realised that it would take her a while to get over it and she was delighted in more ways than one when the family was told that William could return to college after all. In addition to continuing to want the very best for her son, she felt that a time apart would do them both good.
Ted Parish called with the good news. He also made it clear that the college principal was still suspicious about William’s possible involvement with drugs, but had accepted that nothing could be proved and agreed therefore to allow William to return — provided he pledged that there would be no further complaints about his behaviour.
William, by now apparently eager only to please, did so most earnestly. He also received a letter sternly informing him that the decision to allow him to continue with his studies had been made primarily in deference to the standing of his family and that should he fall by the wayside again he would not be given another chance.
Predictably there was plenty of talk in the village. Constance had quite rightly foreseen that the local scandal-mongers would somehow learn of each development in the saga of her son almost as quickly as did the Lange family.
‘I hope for ’is poor father’s sake that boy don’t turn out to be a black sheep,’ commented Marcia Spry to Mrs Walters in the village shop. Like a lot of dedicated gossips, Marcia had a penchant for speaking in clichés and using hackneyed expressions. ‘Of course, there’s always been a question mark ’anging over that mother of ’is. ’Er was never in Freddie Lange’s class. They was wed in no time, too. Marry in haste, regret at leisure, that’s what I always say...’
Mrs Walters had heard it all before from Marcia Spry and didn’t particularly wish to hear it again. There was always bound to be gossip about someone of Constance Lange’s standing in a rural area and Mrs Walters was not above enjoying a certain amount of idle tittle-tattle — you could hardly run a village shop and not indulge in a little gossip now and again. But that Marcia Spry always went too far, Mrs Walters thought, and she really was a rather unpleasant old busy-body.
Mrs Walters didn’t say any of that, of course. After all, she had a business to run and Marcia Spry was a customer who visited her shop far more frequently, and therefore spent considerably more money, than anybody would have thought necessary for an elderly spinster living alone. But Mrs Walters understood perfectly well that buying her groceries was only the secondary reason for Marcia’s frequent shopping expeditions. First and foremost Marcia Spry always wanted a good natter. And if Mrs Walters wished to make a living she had to accept that she had another function in Chalmpton Peverill in addition to selling stamps, newspapers, sugar, soap and bread, and generally considered equally important. The village shopkeeper and post-mistress was also widely regarded as both an audience and a sorting house for all the latest and juiciest gossip.
A meeting of the committee set up to arrange the village’s annual Christmas festival, which Constance was chairing and upon which both Freddie and Marcia Spry served, was held a fortnight after William Lange returned to college. The Langes had publicly made light of the whole incident and, on the surface at least, life seemed to be pretty much back to normal.
Miraculously perhaps — based on his initial response to the trouble he had got himself into, Constance had to admit to herself — William seemed to be settling down. Ted Parish had reported privately to Freddie that his son’s work already showed signs of improvement and certainly there had so far been no more unexplained absences nor bouts of public drunkenness. William appeared to be behaving responsibly again — much more like a Lange, Ted had told Freddie.
The meeting went as well as these things ever can, taking into account the various rival factions competing to gain maximum credit while at the same time putting in minimum work. The only unexpected moment came when the proceedings were virtually over and the discussions had more or less become small talk.
Without warning, a neighbouring farmer jokingly referred to having recently spotted Constance somewhere she should not, indeed, unless she hadn’t been telling her family the truth about her various movements, could not, have been. Her husband glanced at her inquiringly.