‘How are things at home?’
‘Wild,’ she answered. ‘If I don’t get out of that zoo soon I’ll have cubs.’
‘Sit down,’ he said. ‘This wood belongs to my father. If I’d known you were coming I’d have brought some armchairs out, and a cocktail cabinet. What’s the matter then?’
‘The old man’s as sick as a dog. He lost a painting and blames it on poor Uncle John. As if he’d steal anything. He really is losing his grip.’
He was amused at this unexpected suspicion. ‘Did he get my letter?’
‘Look,’ she said after a silence, ‘if you’ve been writing stupid letters again asking for my hand in marriage I’ll do my nut. You know how crazy the last one drove him. It may be your little kick, but he doesn’t dig that sort of stuff. It’s county crap. If you want to marry me we can do it any time you like, and you know it.’
They sat by the tree. ‘True,’ he said. ‘But I have my mother to deal with first. If only we could be born without families.’
‘We’d starve to death,’ she said. ‘Where’s the painting?’
‘In my room.’
‘Let’s get it.’ She took his arm, twigs and bushes pressing her. ‘I know why you did it, but we must get Uncle John out of trouble.’
If Handley didn’t suspect and hadn’t received his letter (maybe that vicious bulldog gobbled it up), then there was little point in keeping it. And if, as Mandy said, he wouldn’t object to them getting married there was even less reason — except for the gaping hole in the middle.
‘I knew it was you,’ she said. ‘But there are times when Dad’s brain doesn’t work fast enough. He hasn’t cottoned on yet. He’s moaning in bed, covered in hot-water bottles and waiting for the doctor. Thinks he caught flu in London.’
Ralph’s father, a tall amiable man wearing an old jacket and a limp felt hat, was shovelling pigshit into a dumper truck. Mandy smiled and greeted him. ‘I can’t shake hands, my dear. If you both want a job you can help me clean this up.’
The humid heavy air drove the stench up her nostrils. ‘Perhaps one day,’ she said. ‘Ralph borrowed my father’s latest painting and I’ve come for it back. He’s getting an exhibition ready for the autumn, otherwise he wouldn’t bother.’
‘I’ll help you later,’ Ralph said sheepishly, no intention of doing so. His father knew it also, and smiled sadly. Spilsby was a humanist, a man who believes one gets wise with age, and that everyone else did also. He was often disappointed in this respect, but never admitted it, otherwise he would not have been a humanist. ‘Mother’s in town,’ he said. ‘Gone to get those curtains.’
‘Mandy and I love each other, father. We want to get married.’
He leaned his spade against the barn. ‘Want to? What a way to treat a girl! Speak like a man, Ralph, and say that you must!’
Mandy smiled, huddled close. ‘I’m pregnant.’
‘So, you’d like to get married,’ he muttered. ‘We must have a drink.’ They walked into a parlour furnished with antique chairs and tables and a richly embroidered sofa, but with excruciatingly garish lampshades hanging from wall-brackets. Spilsby poured three glasses of brandy, and hoped they’d be happy. Mandy’s throat drew hers in with one graceful slide. Then she kissed Ralph modestly on the cheek, and shook hands with his father. Ralph shifted from one foot to the other, as if his unpredictable courage had tricked him into a situation he was now rather afraid of. ‘I imagine you’ll both be well looked after,’ Spilsby said. ‘We’ll have to have a long talk with your parents, Mandy, before anything can be settled.’
‘It is settled,’ she said, pouring a second glass of brandy and drinking it down. ‘I’m in the family way,’ she said, helping herself to a third, fulfilling her simple and effective philosophy of: If you want it, take it.
Spilsby put the bottle back in the cupboard. ‘Of course it is, my dear. But there are always details. Did I hear you say you were pregnant?’
‘You did, really.’
‘Really?’
‘Really. Aren’t I, Ralph?’
‘Really?’ asked Ralph. ‘Are you sure?’
‘Yes, really. Really really.’
‘Really?’ said Spilsby.
Ralph was reeling, his face white. It was the first time he’d heard about it, thinking at first it was one of her flippant jokes. ‘Well, yes,’ he said to his father, not knowing whether he ought to stand by her like a man, or back up her stupid joke.
‘Perhaps you’d better wait until your mother comes back before we talk about your engagement.’
Mandy saw him turning nasty if they stayed ten more minutes. ‘I want that painting for my father,’ she said. ‘He’s got the gallery man coming at twelve from London. I’d love to meet your wife, Mr Spilsby. Maybe I’ll call tomorrow.’
They went up to Ralph’s room. He’d been dreading this, though no one could say he lived by dread alone, which may have explained his continual jaundice and the liverish twitch that sometimes controlled his mouth. She went unsteadily to his bed, and lay on it, head resting on the spreadout palm of her hand, hair draped like a waterfall over the pillow: ‘Aren’t you going to get me a drink?’
He stood far off, to keep her tempting beauty in full view, and yet stay safe from it. ‘You’ve had three already. Are you really pregnant?’
‘Don’t start that again.’
‘Are you?’ he shouted, fists clenched. ‘Are you?’
‘I might be,’ she smiled. ‘I’m very late. I’ll fall down those stairs if I don’t have some black coffee. I suppose he sits up half the night making that brandy in the barn. He’ll break the last of his three-star bottles one day and nobody’ll be fooled anymore. It got me drunk too quickly to be any good. It’s ratbane and acid. I’ll get the customs and excise on to him. It got me right at the back of the head, here. Something’s inside, eating me away. Right here. Feel it?’
‘I get that,’ he said, a hand on her neck. ‘Is it like a lot of ants crawling about?’
‘That’s it. You are sensitive, after all. I suppose that’s your idea of sympathy. If somebody told you he had cancer you’d say you had it as well, then expect him to feel better by feeling sorry for you.’ She pointed to a huge roll standing in the opposite corner. ‘Is that the painting?’
‘Are you pregnant, or aren’t you?’
‘Of course I am,’ she cried, ‘till my period starts. What does it matter anyway? We’re engaged, aren’t we? I hope you don’t expect me to get that great canvas on a bus. They’ll have to tie it on top.’
‘I’ll drive you home,’ he said. ‘But I won’t be able to stay for lunch or anything.’
With such a weight on his shoulder he seemed relaxed to her, more fitted for life than she had ever seen him. He was unaware of raindrops falling between the house and Land-Rover. ‘When we’re married,’ she said, ‘maybe we should go to Canada.’
He slid the logroll of the painting in. ‘Why Canada?’
‘You might like it there.’
‘A good place to bring up children,’ he said, searching for his key. He backed out, to find his way blocked in the yard by his mother’s powder-blue Morris Traveller.
Mrs Spilsby unfolded from the door of her car. Her husband rushed over from his work. ‘We have a visitor, dear.’
‘Ralph,’ she cried, ‘where are you going?’
‘To take Mandy home.’
She came around for a better view. ‘Who?’
‘Mandy,’ Mandy said, her large eyes staring. Wind flipped raindrops across her face.
‘What are you taking from the house? There, in the car?’ She was almost Ralph’s height, her hair broken in its rolled shape by a brown hat. She pulled off her gloves as if about to drag the canvas out into the yard. She was short-sighted, but didn’t wear glasses even when driving. ‘Is it a carpet?’