Constance took a deep breath and grasped the edge of the table firmly as if to draw strength from it. She had more or less lost her grip over the past few weeks, nobody knew that better than Constance — unless, she reflected, with just a flash of the old wryly amused Constance, it was Marcia Spry — but she had to pull herself together. After all nobody except her could help her family, if not herself, get through it all.
But Constance did not know if she had the strength.
Josh lay heavily across his mistress’s feet, his tail thumping occasionally on the tiled floor, glancing upwards adoringly at her every so often.
She ignored him, as she seemed to so much of the time nowadays. Gone were the days when at the very least she would habitually if absent-mindedly scratch the top of his head whenever he rubbed against her.
He continued to thump his tail on the ground, hoping for attention. His eyes were sad. Josh knew his mistress was deeply unhappy. That meant he was unhappy too.
The villagers were amazed by the way in which Constance seemed to fall apart so quickly. Although they would have expected her to be devastated by her husband’s death they would also have expected her to cope. She was, after all, that sort of person.
Constance did not appear to be coping at all. And, as Constance herself had predicted, the villager best informed about all of that was Marcia Spry.
‘She just mope about day in and day out,’ Marcia related that afternoon in the village shop, her enjoyment of Constance’s predicament only thinly disguised. ‘You’d never ’ave thought ’er’d ’ave fallen apart like that, but then, of course, ’er didn’t have the breeding. I always said ’er true side would show itself sooner or later...’
But Marcia had chosen a bad moment to revel in other people’s misfortunes, let alone to indulge in character assassination.
‘I’m sure you always did, Marcia Spry,’ responded an angry female voice. And the redoubtable Iris Phillips, mother of Harley, her usually beaming features arranged into an expression of uncharacteristic indignation, emerged from behind the shelf of video tapes at the back of the shop.
‘And you’m right too. Us ’ave seen the true side of Mrs Lange often enough in this village. ’Er saved my Harley’s life, ’er did, and there’s many others could tell ’ee what that woman’s done for them. A saint she’s been to this village, if you ask me.
‘You should be ashamed of yourself, Marcia, you really should, talking like that about ’er. Mrs Lange needs some support from this village for once, and look what ’er’s getting. You’m a mean-mouthed, wicked old woman, Marcia Spry, that’s what you be.’
And with that Iris Phillips swept out of the shop calling behind her, ‘I’ll pay you tomorrow, Mrs Walters. I’d better go before I says more.’
But in the doorway, with half her body already out in the street, she turned to glower once more at an astonished-looking Marcia. And her final parting shot was beautifully delivered.
‘As believe me I could — a great deal more,’ she said menacingly.
‘Well!’ exclaimed Marcia, as soon as the shop door was firmly closed and Iris had retreated out of earshot. ‘I’ve never been spoken to like that before, I must say.’
Mrs Walters eyed her customer quizzically. Marcia, accustomed as she was to using the village shop-keeper and post-mistress as a sounding board and a sorting house for all her most scurrilous gossip, would, if she had thought about it, have realised that Mrs Walters had never before passed any comment at all really. But this time Mrs Walters not only looked like a woman who had seen and heard it all before, but also as if she’d had enough of it.
‘So perhaps it’s not before time, then, Marcia,’ she remarked conversationally.
Marcia could barely believe her ears.
‘Well,’ she said again, and, most unusually, she said nothing more as she paid for the packet of digestive biscuits which had been her excuse for going into the shop in the first place.
Hastily now, Marcia left the shop, her features pinched into offended disapproval. As she did so she almost bumped into William Lange, who seemed to be so preoccupied that he barely acknowledged her.
Nonetheless, Marcia had been impressed by William’s behaviour recently, if a little surprised. The boy seemed to have really taken hold of the reins, it seemed to her. He had announced right after his father’s death that he would be giving up his studies to run the farm, and he was making a fair stab of it too — the Lange’s most senior farm worker, Iris Phillips’s husband Norton, had told her that. Norton still liked a good gossip, even if his silly wife didn’t, Marcia thought — not that she thought of herself as a gossip, of course, rather a concerned neighbour taking an interest in local affairs.
As she proceeded behind William, a little more circumspectly than him on a street still covered by an inch or two of snow, Marcia watched the young man stride briskly along, his heavy boots crunching the white powder as he walked. At the entrance of Chalmpton Peverill Farm, he paused briefly to speak to Norton who had just pulled up outside in the Land Rover.
William went on into the house and Norton began to unload some trays of eggs from the back of the vehicle.
Marcia waved a greeting to him, and in spite of already having been effectively rebuffed by Norton’s wife, force of habit moved her to pass comment on her observations of the dramatic events which were dominating village life.
‘Proper chip off the old block, that William’s turning out to be, takes after his father, of course,’ she said to Norton who nodded his agreement. Marcia’s manner somehow inherently implied criticism of Constance, but if Norton noticed that, then unlike his wife, he chose not to comment. In any case, Marcia needed only a half-receptive audience to be quickly back into her normal stride.
‘He’s been a bit of a lad, there’s no doubt, but he’s coming good all right now.’ She sniffed the cold fresh air as if it smelt of something nasty. And her voice was full of double meaning and innuendo when she continued to speak.
‘Somebody had to...’
William walked into the house through the kitchen door as usual. It was about the only usual thing left at Chalmpton Village Farm. His mother, still sitting at the table, made no attempt to greet him as he removed his snow-covered boots carefully in the porch. She watched in silence as he picked up the big stainless steel kettle simmering on the hob of the Aga and poured hot water over instant coffee in a mug. When he turned towards her, his eyes were as cold as the street outside. His mouth was set in a thin hard line. He did not speak. He ignored her. He almost always did nowadays.
Constance was not sure that she could stand it any more. The atmosphere in the house that had always been so happy, was now perpetually strained. The memories made it all the more painful.
She studied her only son. The tears pricked at the back of her eyes, and try as she might she could not entirely stop them beginning to flow again. Constance knew really that her relationship with William was beyond repair, but, almost involuntarily she tried one last time to get through to him.
Her voice was cracking with emotion as she tentatively broached the subject that had so far been forbidden between them.
‘I know I’m to blame, what happened was just so... so awful,’ she stammered. ‘But, but I never, never meant...’