An Affair to Remember (4 page)

“Never mind that, just make sure you remember what I’ve said. And if you’re not busy there’s that top shelf you can make a start on sorting.”

“Okey-doke.” Karen rises reluctantly from her seat; with her scalp showing pink through her cropped, orange hair, green skirt and pink top, she bears a strong resemblance to a large and brightly coloured sweet. She hovers listening for a moment or two in front of jams and marmalades, but once she hears the car engine start and Emmie is safely off the premises, replaces her earphones, climbs back on the stool and resumes her comic. “Stupid old cow,” she whispers under her breath, “and don’t think I don’t know where you’re off to either…”

Sam Mallory too hears the sound of Emmie’s departure, and feels himself relax. Why she makes him so tensed up he’s no idea, but she does. Where did he go wrong, he wonders as he lights yet another cigarette, leans back in his chair and stares mournfully out of the window. His office, as it’s grandly called, situated next to the kitchen at the back of the house, was once a windowless store room. He and Emmie had a window installed when they moved in, and though on the cramped side, it made a not unpleasant little room in which to do a spot of work (the admin required to run the shop is pretty minimal) and contemplate life in general. Well away from the living room, with its incessantly burbling TV, it probably has the best view in the house – most of whose windows face on to the village street – looking down the valley towards the river and the hills beyond, quite steep ones too for Suffolk, it has the added advantage that Emmie seldom visits, and Sam has come to regard it as his own, private little kingdom.

Sam Mallory is forty-two years old, but has only been married two, having met his wife, Emmie, through the services of a marriage bureau. That their marriage was a mistake of monumental proportions they now both realise, but Sam, following the code by which he was brought up, feels that having made a promise he must stick to it, and Emmie has, quite simply, nowhere else to go.

The thing was it had happened so quickly, so quickly indeed, that looking back he can’t now imagine how it had all come about. It was the summer he left the army; the summer his parents died, and as an only child with the home he’d known all his life sold, its furniture dispersed, he had become aware of a feeling he’d never experienced before, loneliness: that from now on, unless he did something about it, to be alone in the world with no ties or commitments was what his future held. And at thirty-eight years old it was not a future he looked forward to. It was as though with his parents’ death, so sudden and so final, he had somehow lost his identity. No longer Sam Mallory, army son of Ted and Betty Mallory: middle of the road efficient, but managing to reach the rank of major, leaves spent with his parents at the house in Kitchener Road; always busy; always something to sort out, places to go, things to do, he seemed to have suddenly become a totally different person; indecisive, lost, his priorities a meaningless jumble.

That last leave he’d spent making Dad a new hen house. Dad had always kept hens ever since he could remember. He’d said goodbye at the end of his leave, realising for the first time how old and frail his parents had become. No one lasts for ever, he’d thought, but until then somehow Mum and Dad had been a sort of permanent fixture. Now, however, as they waved him goodbye at the door of No. 23, the thought came that perhaps he should stop roaming about the world, get out of the army, find something else to do, buy a small shop, something like that, and be around for their final years. Perhaps it was a premonition – on the whole a pretty stolid sort of a guy, he had upon occasion experienced premonitions before, and although he’d kept quiet about them, fearing he would be laughed at, they had, in most cases anyway, turned out to be valid – he didn’t know, but it was only a few weeks later the call came one evening when he was dining in the Mess. Private Watkins whispering discreetly in his ear that there was an urgent phone call for him: An impersonal voice over the crackling line as he stood sweating in the cubbyhole that housed the Mess extension: “I’m afraid, sir, there’s been an accident.” A car accident. Mr and Mrs Mallory, head-on collision with a lorry, much regret, dead on arrival in hospital… And well, that was that. A good way to go he told himself: together, except when Dad was away at the war, as they had always been . Never to experience the indignities of extreme old age and failing health, that was good wasn’t it? But good or not, their death had certainly marked the end of his world as it had been for as long as he could remember.

Six months later he was back in civilian life… With hindsight, he can’t help wondering why on earth he’d left the army. The parents dead, it didn’t matter how much he was away from the UK. His service record was good and there was even a moderately reasonable chance of promotion. But he had, and that was the end of it. He’d stood at the front door that last day at No. 23, the house empty, everything sorted, and felt quite suddenly that he was being offered a chance to make a new life. Why he should want a new life, he didn’t exactly know, he’d thought the old one was quite good, but there it was, this voice inside him telling him to get going before it was too late. And what did he do with this new found freedom, he asks himself as he watches a pair of pigeons canoodling on the fence at the bottom of their strip of garden. He goes to a marriage bureau and marries, of all people, Emmie.

The trouble was at the time it had seemed the obvious thing to do. Everyone said so, even the CO’s wife at his farewell party in the Mess. “You’re wasted, Sam,” she’d told him, “you should be married, you’d make such a wonderful husband.” And he had to admit that although he doubted very much whether he’d make a wonderful husband, it did seem, now he had a bit of capital from the sale of the house plus a pension from the army, to marry, have a home of his own, kids perhaps, was the sensible thing to do. The decision made, the question was of course, who? He’d had affairs in the past, indeed been in love quite a few times – there was that adjutant’s wife in Cyprus, for example, Angela something, he’d been crazy about her, now he couldn’t even remember what she looked like – but never encountered anyone he had the slightest desire to spend the rest of his life with, besides which, and it had to be said this was important, he didn’t know anyone. Not in civilian life, apart from people of his parents’ generation. And how, with no job and no home of his own, was he going to meet anybody anyway, let alone anyone suitable? The CO’s wife once again came up with the answer. “Go to a marriage bureau, lots of people do: life’s so fluid nowadays no one’s ever anywhere long enough to form a proper social circle, and they’ve really come into their own.”

And then, when he’d finally plucked up enough courage to go, the lady at the marriage bureau (Friends for Life) had been most optimistic. “Good gracious Major Mallory,” she’d said, looking up from a careful perusal of his application form, “with all this going for you, you can take your pick. Are you sure you haven’t been married before?”

“Of course I haven’t,” he’d said crossly, “I’d know if I had wouldn’t I? The thing is I’ve been in the army since I was eighteen and there just never seems to have been the time.”

“Not to worry,” the lady (a Mrs Jeffreys) had said briskly, busy fingers already scrabbling through her card index, “I’ll soon fix you up.” And, more’s the pity, she had.

He met Emmie a week later, in the buffet at Victoria Station. She lived in West Norwood at the time and Victoria was handy for trains. His first sight of her, when sweating with nerves, he’d stood in the doorway of the buffet at Platform 9 looking for a lady in a red coat with a white carnation in the buttonhole, had in fact been a nice surprise. Tall, blonde, fortyish. She appeared, when, overcome with shyness he had finally made himself known, to be full of warmth and high spirits and, he had to admit, not unattractive.

Over coffee amidst the clutter and noise of a British Rail Station buffet, she told him she was a widow, her husband having died four years ago after a lingering illness. Since his death she’d continued to live in the flat they’d rented in West Norwood and kept her old job as a dentist’s receptionist, but had now reached the stage when she felt it was time to start a new life, make new friends, live a little, before it was too late. “Know what I mean?” she’d asked, and he felt he did. He knew exactly. It must be fate, he told himself after they’d parted, having arranged to meet for a meal in two days’ time, pushing aside the niggling doubts about whether they were really suited. After all, they both seemed to want the same thing, and surely out of all the women he could have met that counted as some sort of a coincidence? Over dinner in a bistro in Ebury Street, he told her of his plans to buy a small business in the country with his savings and the money from his parents’ house. And she had seemed quite enthusiastic. “What about a little tea place, or a bed and breakfast,” she’d suggested, “you’d meet loads of new people that way.”

“Actually I was thinking in terms of a small shop. One of those village affairs that sell everything…”

“Why not. Sounds great. I’ll help you look if you like.”

Two days after that they’d made love in Emmie’s flat: small, and rather dreary, looking out on a shunting yard, and sharing a bathroom with the man upstairs; no wonder she wanted to get out of it. “Stay the night if you like,” she’d said after their rather tepid lovemaking, “and we can have another go later on. It’ll be better then, you’ll see.” But he had to get back to his Aunty May’s, in whose house he’d been staying since he left the army, and somehow it never did get much better. Despite the fact that in the past several of his lovers had described him as hot stuff in the bed department, with Emmie for some reason he simply could not summon up any great enthusiasm. However, Emmie, at least in their pre-marriage days, had more than made up for any failure on his part: crawling perseveringly over him, wrapping her naked body round his and poking her finger up his anus with every appearance of enjoyment. To no avail. He’d found the former embarrassing, and the latter acutely uncomfortable, but ashamed of being thought, no doubt rightly, a bit of a wimp, didn’t have the courage to say so.

Just two months after their first meeting they were married, 1st of April to be exact: to have chosen that particular date for it no doubt the first of the many mistakes he was to make. It was on their honeymoon – a week in Cromer – that things began to go really wrong. Sod’s Law, of course, that made the weather so awful. It poured with rain throughout and after three days spent cooped up in the hotel lounge, they were bored stiff with each other.

It was on their last day that he had seen the advertisement. Browsing through the local newspaper, there it was. ‘
General store for sale in pleasant village
;
house attached
,
Box
…’ etc., etc. As soon as he saw it he knew. Knew somehow that it was important; in some extraordinary way, meant.

“I bet it’s way out in the sticks, that’s why it’s so cheap,” was Emmie’s unhelpful comment. Adding the rider that she was not a country bumpkin, never had been, and it was no use asking her to be.

“We can at least have a look,” he’d said, “needn’t commit ourselves, you’d enjoy the drive.” And despite rumblings from Emmie, they’d gone.

That last day of their honeymoon, the day they visited Kimbleford for the first time, the weather had improved; a bit wild perhaps, but holding promise of things to come. Heavy showers one minute, brilliant sunshine the next, there was a glint of primroses in the hedge as they turned off the main road and followed the signs to the village. “Look, Em, primroses,” he’d said, trying to cheer her on, but she’d sat sullenly at his side, her dreams of a trendy restaurant on the coast, or even a little bar in Toremolinos, as other dreams had so often done before in Emmie’s life, rapidly fading, and she refused even to look.

Two miles from the main road, they climbed one last hill and saw below them the village of Kimbleford. Sam, aware of a strange, unexpected feeling of excitement, stopped the car on the grass verge where the road flattened out at the top of the hill, and got out to have a better look. Emmie, still sulking, remained where she was. “I don’t like heights,” she said, “they give me claustro-what’s-it. Anyway it looks like rain again.”

Pleased to be alone, he lit a cigarette and looked about him. The valley laid out below was quite narrow; certainly for this part of the world, more like a combe in Devon, he thought, as the wind blew a smattering of raindrops in his face. You could see a river running along the bottom, and the tops of the houses of the village that straddled its banks. Beyond the river on the far side of the valley, steep fields mostly under plough climbed to the woods along the top; the road, high hedges just coming into leaf, winding up the hill between them. Sam stood quite still, looking.

“Come back in the car, you chump,” Emmie called, “you’ll get soaked.” He took no notice; remained standing there getting wet. A ragged black cloud, blown by the wind, raced across the sky above his head and disappeared over the rim of the valley, and he knew, with no feeling of surprise, even any doubt, he had come home.

The shop proved easy to find, halfway down the main street of the village, a large
For Sale
notice displayed in its bow-fronted window. Inside was quite spacious; even Emmie seemed impressed by the living accommodation. The house, built in the 18th century by an apothecary with leanings towards gentility, whose recipe for the relief of colic had proved a considerable money spinner, possessed a certain elegance. Three fair sized bedrooms, with high ceilings and sash windows, a fifteen foot living room, and a separate dining room. (“We’ll never have any guests,” Emmie said, poking her head round the door, and sniffing disparagingly, loth to admit that after living in that poky flat for so long, to be the possessor of a real, live, pukka dining room was actually rather exciting, “so what’s the point?”) But the
piece de resistance
, the thing that really swung it from Emmie’s point of view, was the large up to date and recently renovated kitchen. She had to demur a bit of course. “The place needs loads doing to it. I’m not living anywhere without central heating so don’t ask me, and we could do with an en suite.” But Sam, who’d decided all along that they would, with or without his wife’s approval, told the pleasantly surprised owner they’d take it, and what’s more offered the full asking price.