“Well, you can,” Carole Temple conceded, “but they’re all very over-priced. I go and do a weekly shop at Sainsbury’s. And then once a month I stock up with basics at the Cash and Carry.”
Once again, you would.
“I gather your husband’s in Commodities,” said Mrs Pargeter, hoping that a change of subject might stimulate the conversational flow.
“Yes, he is,” Carole Temple confirmed with a finality which confounded such hopes.
Mrs Pargeter took refuge in a sip of coffee before attempting another foray. “Do you have children?” Surely that was a safe, uncontroversial subject.
“Two. At boarding school.”
“Oh?”
Mrs Pargeter waited for fond parental amplification of these minimal details, but she wasn’t even granted the sex of the Temple offspring. All she got was: “Very expensive, boarding schools these days.”
“So I believe.”
“Do you have children?”
The suddenness of this enquiry took Mrs Pargeter by surprise. But when she looked at Carole Temple’s face she saw no flicker of interest; the question had been asked merely as a matter of convention.
“No. No, I don’t.” The fact was still a cause of mild regret to her. But then, given the unpredictable demands made on the late Mr Pargeter’s time and his occasional absences, she had long ago concluded that their childlessness had probably been for the best. When they were together, they had been able to devote all their energies to each other.
By now roadblocks seemed to have been set up in all conversational avenues, and it was with some relief that Mrs Pargeter saw Vivvi Sprake bearing towards her, bringing in her wake two women who, by a process of elimination, must be Mrs Busy the Businesswoman and Mrs Snoop the Spy.
∨ Mrs, Presumed Dead ∧
Six
They were introduced to her respectively as Sue Curle and Fiona Burchfield-Brown. The former was in her early forties, a woman whose lined face enhanced rather than diminished her attractions. She had the rueful air of someone who has suffered but is not going to let that inhibit her future enjoyment of life.
But Fiona Burchfield-Brown, Mrs Snoop the Spy, was the surprise. Mrs Pargeter had been expecting someone beady and guarded, not the tall, slightly scruffy figure with the horse-brass scarf around her neck, who greeted her in exaggerated Sloane Ranger tones.
“Hello, such a pleasure to meet you.” Mrs Pargeter’s hand was seized and clumsily shaken. There was about all of Fiona Burchfield-Brown’s movements a coltish gaucheness, as if she had only just grown to her current dimensions and not yet learned to control her body.
“Sorry,” she continued in her English public schoolgirl’s voice, “I kept intending to come across and say hello, but I’ve had to wait in all week for these wretched little men who were supposed to be coming in to install the jacuzzi. I didn’t dare leave the house in case they arrived or rang up. My husband Alexander had set it all up and he’d have been frightfully cross if I’d missed them. Anyway, finally they ring this morning and say they’re not coming till next week. Honestly. I ask you.”
Well, at least that explained the apparent spying from behind the net curtains. Funny, though, thought Mrs Pargeter, Bona Burchfield-Brown didn’t seem the sort to have a jacuzzi. It was at odds with her slightly slapdash, eccentric aristocrat image.
As if anticipating this reaction, Fiona went on, “I don’t really think we need a jacuzzi. I mean, I can’t see myself using it that much. Still, Alexander’s very keen – lots of his chums in the City have got them – and he’s the one who earns the money, so…” She shrugged helplessly.
“Weren’t the Cottons planning to have one put in?” contributed Sue Curle.
“Well, it’s certainly not there,” said Mrs Pargeter with a chuckle. “And I don’t think I’m going to miss it either.”
“No, no, I knew they hadn’t had it done. It was only something they were planning. Rod was always talking about things he was going to do to the house – well, not do, but have done. And stuff they were going to buy…new video-camera…new compact disc player…”
“Oh, he was always on about that kind of thing,” Fiona agreed.
“Yes, and I remember Theresa saying they were going to have the kitchen done out,” Sue Curle recalled. “And she was going to replace that dreadful old freezer.”
“I don’t remember Theresa having a freezer. Wasn’t one in the kitchen, was there?”
“No, Fiona, she kept it in the garage. Great big antiquated lock-up one. Anyway, they were going to get a new one of those…”
“And they were even talking about buying a timeshare.” Fiona Burchfield-Brown grimaced, perhaps at the vulgarity of the idea, and shrugged. “But then once his promotion came up, he rather lost interest in Smithy’s Loam.”
“That was when he was sent up North?”
“Yes, Mrs Pargeter.”
“Please call me Melita.”
“Oh. Thank you.” Mrs Pargeter was by now accustomed to the slight hesitancy she heard in Fiona Burchfield-Brown’s voice. Everyone seemed to have the same reaction to her name. Though granted the licence to use ‘Melita’, few people took advantage of it. For most she seemed to remain ‘Mrs Pargeter’. And that state of affairs suited her well. Her Christian name retained its exclusivity, a bond between her and the late Mr Pargeter.
“Did you know the Cottons well?” she hazarded.
Sue Curle shook her head. “Not really. Well, in the way you do know people with whom you have nothing in common but geography.” Realising this might sound a little dismissive of present company, she covered it quickly. “I mean, obviously one does have friends locally, but the Cottons…well, we weren’t particularly close. They were perfectly amiable…You know, we’d help each other out, water each other’s plants when we went on holiday, that kind of thing…And, of course, one was always happy to, you know, pass the time of day…”
As these words were spoken, it struck Mrs Pargeter how little ‘passing the time of day’ she had so far witnessed in Smithy’s Loam. The six houses seemed hermetically sealed units, their occupants completely self-sufficient. Oh yes, they’d come out for a social event like that morning’s, but there was a kind of strain in the air. In spite of the proximity of the houses, nothing about Smithy’s Loam gave any sense of community.
Of course, the atmosphere might be different at the weekends, when husbands and children were about, but somehow Mrs Pargeter doubted it.
She turned to Fiona Burchfield-Brown. “Did you know them well?”
“The Cottons? No, not really. I mean, one made overtures. But Theresa tended to…well, keep herself to herself.”
That tendency seemed to be an essential qualification for life in Smithy’s Loam. In some ways, Mrs Pargeter reflected, that would suit her well. Not in every way, though.
Sue Curle summed it up. “No, the Cottons were the standard issue Yuppie couple. Well, perhaps a bit too old to be proper Yuppies, but Rod had all the Yuppie values.”
“Do you mean by that that Theresa didn’t?”
“No. Not particularly. I assume she thought as he did. I don’t know, she never talked about that kind of thing. As Fiona said, she kept herself to herself. At least, they never appeared to disagree. And they had no children to complicate things. Nice standard happily married little couple.”
The bitterness in the voice prompted no more than a quizzical eyebrow from Mrs Pargeter, but that was quite sufficient cue for Sue Curle. Like a scab waiting to be picked, the subject of her own marriage was not to be avoided.