"Mummy! I'm not plain and Tess certainly isn't."
"You know what I mean. Now don't take me up on everything. When they get married their husbands won't be ashamed to have anybody for a meal."
"This is my managing director, darling," said Jill pertly. "Just cut a slice off him and put it under the grill, will you?"
Kershaw roared with laughter. Then he took his wife's hand. "You leave Mummy alone." All this jollity and family intimacy was making Archery nervous. He forced a smile and knew it looked forced.
"What I really mean is, Mr. Archery," said Mrs Kershaw earnestly, "is that even if your Charlie and my Tessie have their ups and downs at first, Tess hasn't been brought up to be an idle wife. She'll put a happy home before luxuries."
"I'm sure she will." Archery looked helplessly at the lounging girl, firmly entrenched in her chair and devouring strawberries and cream. It was now or never. "Mrs. Kershaw, I don't doubt Theresa's suitability as a wife..." No, that wasn't right. That was just what he did doubt. He floundered. "I wanted to talk to you about..." Surely Kershaw would help him? Jill's brows drew together in a small frown and her grey eyes stared steadily at him. Desperately he said, "I wanted to speak to you alone."
Irene Kershaw seemed to shrink. She put down her cup, laid her knife delicately across her plate and, folding her hands, in her lap, looked down at them. They were poor hands, stubby and worn, and she wore just one ring, her second wedding ring.
"Haven't you got any homework to do, Jill?" she asked in a whisper. Kershaw got up, wiping his mouth.
"I can do it in the train," said Jill.
Archery had begun to dislike Kershaw, but he could not help admiring him. "Jill, you know all about Tess," Kershaw said, "what happened when she was little. Mummy has to discuss it with Mr. Archery. Just by themselves. We have to go because, although we're involved, it's not quite our business. Not like it is theirs. O.K.?"
"O.K." said Jill. Her father put his arm round her and took her into the garden.
He had to begin, but he was hot and stiff with awkwardness. Outside the window Jill had found a tennis racquet and was practising shots against the garage wall. Mrs. Kershaw picked up a napkin and dabbed at the corners of her mouth. She looked at him, their eyes met, and she looked away. Archery felt suddenly that they were not alone, that their thoughts concentrated on the past, had summoned from its prison grave a presence of brute strength that stood behind their chairs, laying a bloody hand on their shoulders and listening for judgment.
"Tess says you have something to tell me," he said quietly. "About your first husband." She was rolling the napkin now, squashing it, until it was like a golfball. "Mrs. Kershaw, I think you ought to tell me."
The paper ball was tipped soundlessly on to an empty plate. She put her hand up to her pearls.
"I never speak of him, Mr. Archery. I prefer to let the past be the past."
"I know it's painful—it must be. But if we could discuss it just once and get it over, I promise I'll never raise the subject again." He realised that he was speaking as if they would meet again and often, as if they were already connected by marriage. He was also speaking as if he had confidence in her word. "I've been to Kingsmarkham today and..."
She clutched at the straw. "I suppose they've buill it all up and spoiled it."
"Not really," he said. Please God, don't let her digress!
"I was born near there," she said. He tried to stifle a sigh. "A funny little sleepy place it was, my village. I reckon I thought I'd live and die there. You can't tell what life will bring forth, can you?"
"Tell me about Tess's father."
She dropped her hands from fidgeting with the pearls and rested them in her respectable blue lap. When she turned to him her face was dignified, almost ridiculously prim and shuttered. She might have been a mayoress, taking the chair at some parochial function, clearing her throat preparatory to addressing the Townswomen's Guild. "Madam chairman, ladies..." she should have begun. Instead she said: "The past is the past, Mr. Archery." He knew then that it was hopeless. "I appreciate your difficulty, but I really can't speak of it. He was no murderer, you'll have to take my word. He was a good kind man who wouldn't have harmed a fly."
It was curious, he thought, how she jumbled together old village phrases with platform jargon. He waited, then burst out: "But how do you know? How can you know? Mrs. Kershaw, did you see something or hear something...?"
The pearls had gone up to her mouth and her teeth closed over the string. As it snapped pearls sprayed off in all directions, into her lap, across the tea things, on to the carpet. She gave a small refined laugh, petulant and apologetic. "Look what I've done now!" In an instant she was on her knees, retrieving the scattered beads and dropping them into a saucer.
"I'm very keen on a white wedding." Her face bounced up from behind the tea trolley. Politeness demanded that he too should get on his knees and help in the hunt. "Get your wife to back me up, will you? Oh, thanks so much. Look, there's another one, just by your left foot." He scrambled round after her on all fours. Her eyes met his under the overhanging cloth. "My Tess is quite capable of getting married in jeans if the fancy takes her. Would you mind if we had the reception here? It's such a nice big room."
Archery got up and handed her three more pearls. When the tennis ball struck the window he jumped. The sound had been like a pistol shot.
"Now, that's quite enough, Jill," said Mrs. Kershaw sharply. Still holding the saucer full of pearls, she opened the window. "If I've told you once, I've told you fifty times, I don't want any more breakages."
Archery looked at her. She was annoyed, affronted, even slightly outraged. He wondered suddenly if this was how she had looked on that Sunday night long ago when the police had invaded her domain at the coach house. Was she capable of any emotion greater than this, of mere irritation at disturbance of her personal peace?
"You just can't settle to a quiet discussion with children about, can you?" she said.
Within an instant, as if at a cue, the whole family was upon them, Jill truculent and protesting, the boy he had encountered on the drive now demanding tea, and Kershaw himself, vibrant as ever, his little lined face showing a certain dry acuteness.
"Now, you're to come straight out and give me a hand with these dishes, Jill." The saucer was transferred to the mantelpiece and stuck between an Oxfam collecting box and a card inviting Mrs. Kershaw to a coffee morning in aid of Cancer Relief. "I'll say goodbye now, Mr. Archery." She held out her hand. "You've such a long way to go I know you'll want to be on your way." It was almost rude, yet it was queenly. "If we don't meet again before the great day—well, I'll see you in church."
The door closed. Archery remained standing. "What am I to do?" he said simply.
"What did you expect?" Kershaw countered. "Some sort of incontravertible evidence, an alibi that only she can prove?"
"Do you believe her?" Archery cared.
"Ah, that's another matter. I don't care, you see. I don't care one way or the other. It's so easy not to ask, Mr. Archery, just to do nothing and accept."
"But I care," said Archery. "If Charles goes ahead and marries your stepdaughter, I shall have to leave the church. I don't think you realise the sort of place I live in, the sort of people..."
"Aah!" Kershaw wrinkled up his mouth and spread his hands angrily fanwise. "I've no patience with that sort of out-dated rubbish. Who's to know? Everybody round here thinks she's my kid."