'Oh... no...' I managed to get out, while Mrs Binney gave him a look that should have withered him on the spot. It wasn't just spicy, it was electrifying. The revelation that Mrs B., of all people, had an admirer.
THREE
That was her interpretation of events, at any rate. There was, with its headquarters over in the centre of the village so that living a mile and a half away in the valley I knew little of its goings-on except by hearsay, a Friendly Hands Social Club which catered mostly for the over-sixties but, in order to augment its numbers, welcomed widows and widowers of any age. I'd been invited to join it myself after Charles died, but I felt that life held more for me yet than the excitement of a monthly communal visit by a chiropodist from the local health centre, or annual holidays by coach to Aberdeen or Durham, where the party stayed in the unoccupied university hall of residence during the students' vacation and was shepherded on daily sightseeing tours by the enthusiastic element that inevitably emerges as leaders of such organisations, and so I made my excuses. I was fully occupied with the cottage, the cats and writing. I took my van away on holidays. I didn't go out in the evenings if I could help it – not winter evenings, anyway, since in turning in to the cottage driveway in the dark I could easily land myself and the car in the stream.
Not so Mrs Binney, who went to anything that offered tea, biscuits and the chance of a gossip, especially when it was held in the village hall, a matter of yards down the road from her house. She'd been sitting non-participantly in the front row of what Fred Ferry called the Old Trouts' Knees-up for years until fate suddenly took a hand by arranging the demise of the octogenarian who'd hitherto played the piano for the Singalong Half-hour that wound up every meeting. When nobody else volunteered for the job, Mrs Binney unexpectedly upped and offered her services as accompanist – and, to everybody's surprise, did it very well. Father Adams's wife, who belonged to the club herself and kept me up to date with what went on there, said she didn't remember Maude Binney learning the piano as a girl – maybe she'd done it while she was away in service – but she could play all right. 'Sally', 'Keep Right On to the End of the Road', 'Silver Threads among the Gold'...
'Ah,' I said, recollecting the evening back in the spring when I'd passed the village hall on foot on my way home from a meeting of the History Society at the chairman's house, where we were planning the reissue of the village history we'd done a few years before, and I'd heard 'Sally' being belted out with such vigour it sounded as if the piano was coming through the corrugated tin roof at any moment. That explained it. I liked to know these things. I'd wondered at the time who was making all that noise.
Anyway, it seemed that the Singalong leader was a Mr Tooting who, with his wife, had retired to the village from the Midlands some years earlier. His wife had since died and Mr Tooting, distinguishable at any distance around the village by the fact that he was short, wore glasses, a military moustache, an air of supreme self-importance and a checked tweed pork-pie hat, had thereafter thrown himself into helping run local affairs. He was the most active churchwarden the Rector had ever had, always ready to organise beating the bounds, head a sub-committee for repairs to the organ, or personally oversee the men re-leading the roof. He fetched the old people's medicines en bloc from the chemist in the next village if they left their prescriptions in a special box in the post office, and was secretary of the Gardening Club, the Boys' Club and the Friendly Hands Club, at which he conducted the Singalong Half-hour by standing beside the piano, waving his arms at the audience as if trying to levitate them out of their seats, and leading the songs in a hearty baritone.
According to Mrs Adams, on the occasion of Mrs Binney's acting as accompanist for the first time, he bowed to her afterwards, led her forward by her fingertips as if they were dancing a minuet, and presented her to the audience, who supposed they must be meant to clap and obligingly did so. 'And then,' said Mrs A. with meaning, 'he kissed 'er 'and.' I could just imagine it. Mr Tooting doing a pint-sized impression of the conductor of the London Philharmonic at the last night of the Proms.
What did Mrs Binney do?' I enquired.
'Turned red as a beetroot and showed her teeth,' said Mrs Adams.
I could imagine that, too. Mrs Binney's smile, fortunately rare, was the result of somewhat antiquated dentistry and reminded most people of a horse about to bite.
Mr Tooting, still busy bowing to the audience, must have missed that bit. From then on all the Singalong Half-hours ended with his leading Mrs B. forward for applause, escorting her to her chair in the front row while he returned to the platform to read out the notices, and afterwards helping her on with her coat and walking with her to her front door, which was only a few yards up the lane, on his own way home, and anyway he had a torch. It didn't fail to arouse comment in the village, however.
'Tryin' to hang her hat up there all right.'
'Fancies herself livin' in thic bungalow.' 'Flatten he like a steam-roller on thur weddin' night', was Fred Ferry's country-candid observation to me outside the post office one day as we watched them walking up the village street together.
They were walking up the street together – big, brawny Mrs Binney and bantam-sized Mr Tooting – because she'd spotted him from behind her curtains as he passed her gate and had nipped out to catch him up. Mrs Tucker, who lived opposite her and kept a watchful eye on village goings-on from behind her own curtains, said she was always doing that.
Given that she'd decided he was interested in her, Mrs Binney was obviously doing her best to further matters – to which end, rocking the village to its stolid foundations, and as suddenly as she'd volunteered to play the piano, one day she abandoned the chamber-pot hat and drainpipe coat she'd worn ever since I could remember and appeared, first of all in the post office and later the same day in the valley, wearing a Picasso-patterned summer dress and a hairdo of violet bubblecurls.
Father Adams was talking to me at the cottage gate when she came somewhat self-consciously down the hill. 'Gawd, Mod,' he said, stopping in mid-sentence to stare at her in feigned astonishment. 'Thee'st look like a hyacinth wrapped up in a Tesco bag. What on earth'st thee bin doin' to theeself?'
Ignoring him, she patted her curls complacently and asked me how I liked it. 'I... er... hardly recognised you,' I stammered, which was obviously the right answer because, while Father Adams faded quietly into the background and disappeared – no doubt to tip his cronies at the top of the hill not to miss on her way back – she confided to me that Shirl had done it. Took all last night, she had, doin' the perm. And made the dress for her. Very handy with her sewing machine, was Shirl. Appreciating the effort needed to construct a dress that fitted Mrs B.'s large and angular form in any material, let alone matching up sections of white nylon patterned with red, yellow and green triangles, I said she certainly must be.
Shirl, I would explain, was Mrs Binney's son Bert's girl-friend. Twenty years back she would have been living with her parents in the nearby seaside town where she was a hairdresser, with Bert zooming over on his motor-bike to court her in the evenings and at weekends. In these days of couples no sooner fancying each other than moving in together, however, Shirl and Bert were ensconced in a caravan behind the Barage on the main road where Bert worked as a mechanic, while they looked around for something permanent.