An Affair to Remember (5 page)

Three months later, everything done that needed to be done, they moved in, and their first night had, rather surprisingly, been one of passion. “What’s got into you, Sam?” Emmie asked, as afterwards they lay side by side smoking a post coital cigarette in their king size double bed, “We should move house more often.” Sadly it had been a one-off. No repeat performance, and as spring turned into the wettest summer there’d been in years, the river burst its banks in three places, the roof leaked and builders’ dust and rubble filled the house, things between them went from bad to worse. Their lovemaking became increasingly rare and by the coming of their first winter in Kimbleford had more or less dried up altogether. Emmie’s enthusiasm for the place, like their lovemaking, was short lived. She never stopped complaining, and by the following spring Sam realised, not without experiencing both shame and guilt, that he had begun to hate her.

The strange thing was that as his hatred of his wife grew – perhaps hatred was too strong: dislike, exasperation, boredom, words better suited to describe what he felt about Emmie – so did his love for the place. Reared in a seaside town; most of his adult life until now spent travelling the world, he knew little of the English countryside; how it worked through the seasons; the flora and fauna inhabiting it. But walking the lanes and fields about the village, following the course of the river, wandering in the woods above the valley, he had this inexplicable feeling that not only was he part of the land around him, but in some strange way it belonged to him. Accompanying these feelings, although equally inexplicable, came the conviction that there was something that he needed to do here; something expected of him, a task of some kind. For whom or what he’d no idea, but quarrelling with his wife and trying, not very successfully, to run a shop, was not it.

Despite their many problems, however, life, as it tends to do, jogged along somehow. They began to make a few friends locally. People came to the shop: Emmie was good with the punters, you had to give her that, Sam set up a local delivery service, which helped, and between them they managed to make the business break even, more or less anyway. From Sam’s point of view the income they derived from it plus his army pension was quite sufficient for his needs, but not for Emmie. Emmie felt cheated. Began to think that her visit to the marriage bureau had been a mistake. She’d expected more than this from an ex-army major with a bit of capital, a lot more; had reached the stage when she even began to believe she would have been a sight better off if she’d stayed single. Now and again she would escape for a few days to London to stay with friends: “If I don’t get a break from this place now and again Sam, I’ll go bonkers.” When this happened he found himself hoping that she might not return. She always did, though, probably, he thinks bleakly, because she had nowhere else to go.

What a bloody stupid situation. The even stupider thing was he couldn’t see his way out of it. He knew Emmie wasn’t happy either. Sometimes, although he had to admit not often, he felt sorry for her. Together they’d got themselves into this mess and there it was. Divorce was an option of course, but he knew if they did divorce she’d do her best to bleed him dry, and as things are and likely to remain, he simply doesn’t have the money. He lights another cigarette; idly watches a large, white, rather flashy car (unusual for these parts) as it emerges over the rim of the valley, follows the road downhill towards the village, and once over the old stone bridge that spans the river at the bottom, disappears from sight. The church clock strikes twelve. Time perhaps for a break and a spot of lunch.

“Oh Jack, Jack, take me back to Barnsley with you,” Emmie moans, joy running through every bit of her as, legs apart, she lies on her back among the dead bluebells scattered beneath the ancient oak that stands sentinel over their ‘special glade’.

“I’d take you to the moon, darling, if I could.” Jack rides above her, his moustache brushing her cheek, blue eyes bulging, breath coming in short, sharp pants. Emmie closes her eyes, goes with the flow. There’s silence for a while, broken at last by the curiously mournful cry of a woman at the moment of passion, causing a fox, sleeping off last night’s meal nearby, to twitch in his sleep, one ear cocked in a question mark.

“Major, some bloke to see you, says he wants a word with the owner. I said as Mrs M. was out you’d come.” Karen’s head poking round the office door.

Sam jumps guiltily, “I’m on my way. Did he give a name?”

“No, but I think he be the new bloke down Brown End. Don’t know ‘es name but some says they seen un on telly.” Sam hurries after her, his eyes drawn inescapably, as iron filings to a magnet, towards Karen’s enormous bottom encased in the green mini skirt, swaying in front of him. A tall, aesthetic looking man stands behind the counter in the shop. Burned brown by the sun, longish, grey hair and a small pointed beard, he looks, Sam thinks, a bit like some saint in an Old Master painting, St Jerome perhaps, someone like that, except he’s wearing jeans, T-shirt and sandals. Seeing Sam he surges forward hands outstretched, filling the shop with personality, an aroma of Gauloise cigarettes and garlic.

“Major Mallory? Selwyn Woodhead, hi. Thought I’d make myself known as a newcomer to the neighbourhood. My wife, Clarrie and I moved into Brown End last week.” Sam wonders if he should return the ‘Hi’; decides to keep it formal, he is after all only a humble shopkeeper.

“Nice to meet you, Mr Woodhead. Actually my wife and I are newcomers ourselves; we only moved here a couple of years ago.”

“Splendid, splendid,” Selwyn Woodhead nods absently, his eyes roving, possibly with a hint of disapproval, round the shelves. “Do you deliver?”

“Yes we do, but try to keep it to a radius of ten miles. We started doing it when we came here and it seems –”

“Local honey?”

“Pardon?”

“Local honey, do you stock it? My wife and myself are honey fanatics, I’m afraid. We find it the answer to so many things. A most charming man we met at some frightful publishers’ jamboree last year – probably the Booker, I can’t remember now, but like most of those things too little booze and too much waffle, anyway he told Clarrie he’d written this book on the benefits of honey, from the spiritual as well as the medicinal point of view. She read it, became converted and, I have to admit not without a certain struggle, converted me.”

“We certainly stock honey.” Sam hopes he’s right, he must be, surely? “Although I’m not entirely sure if –”

“My granddad be a bee breeder.” The two men turn to Karen in surprise. In Sam’s case, it has to be said, with some disapproval. Somehow she wasn’t the sort of person he expected to be taking part in the conversation, especially one that took in publishers’ jamborees and the Booker Prize. But Selwyn turns towards her, smiles his formidable smile: “Your granddad keeps bees?”

“Six hives, he has, or I think it be six. He doesn’t half have a lot of honey. Sells it at the door of his council house sometimes, when he’s got too much,” she turns to Sam, “and the gentleman did say he were into honey…”

“You’re absolutely right, my dear, and marvellous news you know of a local source.” Selwyn pats Karen’s shoulder rather as he would a friendly horse. “Now tell me, would your, er, granddad be prepared to sell me some of his honey on a regular basis, in the comb of course?”

“He’d sell it if I asked un. Not much call for it round here, people like the shop stuff. That Mrs Gates who lives next door to un, she be always complaining about they bees, says she –”

“His address, my dear, that’s all I need.”

“68 Rosebud Way, that be first road in council estate, you can’t miss it, hives all over the garden. Someone from the Council came round a while back, said –”

“Splendid.” Selwyn’s had enough of Karen’s granddad for the time being. He turns to Sam: “Now, Major… By the way, have you been out of the army long?”

“Three years. I decided to when –”

“Terrific! God is that the time? I’m afraid I must dash. Some damned journo’s supposed to be turning up at 12.30 for an interview. No doubt timed so we’ll have to give him lunch. But what can you do, eh?” He turns to go.

“We deliver Wednesdays and Fridays, Mr Woodhead. If you could ring with your order the day before.” Sam just manages to get his piece in before the wretched chap disappears – no doubt for good. Emmie’d kill him if he didn’t.

Selwyn waves an impatient hand. “Fine, absolutely fine. Clarrie’ll be in touch. And while we’re at it, can you make sure you get in a good supply of nuts.”

“Nuts?”

“Yes. We find them such a good supplement for the honey. Honey and nuts, a great combination. However, Clarrie does tend to do a certain amount of entertaining and sadly some of our very good friends are still murdering their insides in the old fashioned way, so we’re forced to keep a stock of the basic necessities of life as well.”

“This be granddad’s address,” Karen, loath to leave the limelight, hands him a small piece of paper. Selwyn stuffs it in the pocket of his jeans. “Thank you both so much, I must go or I’ll be in shtuk with Clarrie. We’ll be in touch.”

Together they watch him as he slides gracefully into the Jaguar parked outside the shop on a double yellow line, and roars away up the street. Karen continues to look at the space where the Jaguar had been. “You know he be a TV personality, Major, the first I ever seen.”

“Good lord, is he really? He certainly looks a bit on the theatrical side. I don’t watch the box much, I must have missed him somehow…” But Karen isn’t listening, she’s already moved into a blissful world of her own where TV personalities hobnob with granddad while queuing up to buy his honey. Sam, leaving her to it, wanders into the kitchen, retrieves a can of beer from the fridge before make himself a sandwich. Selwyn Woodhead; what did he do besides being a ‘personality’ and eating honey? At least he and his wife might liven up the place a bit. Emmie would be over the moon…

She is.

“Selwyn Woodhead! You have to be kidding! And you’re telling me you’ve never heard of him? Honestly, Sam, I sometimes wonder what you did in the army all those years, I really do.” Emmie has a rather painful bite mark on her thigh, and her toe’s a bit sore where Jack had inadvertently trodden on it, but these are honourable scars, to be cherished and laughed over in secret, and for her, she’s in a pretty good mood.

“No I don’t know who he is.” Sam takes a sip of his tea (brick red and Em’s forgotten to put sugar in it), they’re in the kitchen having a post lunch cuppa. “And if you ask me, the guy’s a bit of an idiot. He told us he and his wife live on nuts and honey.”

“He does pretty well on it, so you’ve no cause to laugh. We’d better get some in, I suppose.”

“What?”

“Nuts, of course. There’s a place in Belchester I think could –”

“He’s getting his honey from Karen’s granddad.”

Emmie closes her eyes, “Are you saying you let that ginger haired slut stick her oar in? You wouldn’t believe, I only have to be out of the place for ten minutes and you manage to bugger things up. You know what the locals are like, they’d sell their own grandmother for a couple of pints of ale and a box of pins –”

“In this case of course, their own grandfather,” Sam interrupts, unable to stop himself. “Anyway, stop whinging on about Karen and tell me what Selwyn Woodhead really does, apart from being a personality.”

“Oh loads of things. He’s on telly all the time. Or he used to be, perhaps not quite so much now. He hosts team games, interviews people, writes books, that sort of thing.”

“Books. What about?”

Emmie looks at him in exasperation, puts down her mug of tea, “Oh I don’t know. Sex, I think, or maybe it’s ghosts. Could be both. I think he did a series on ghosts. Some years ago, I can’t remember –”

“He writes books about sex? I don’t believe you’ve a bloody clue what he writes about. Face up to it, Em, you’ve never read a book in your life.”

“Yes I have. And I’ll thank you not to use that sort of language to me. He does write about sex; how to enjoy it, make it interesting. Of course that wouldn’t interest you, though, would it?” He’d asked for that! Never mind.

“So,” he says, keeping his end up, “we have an authority on sex come to live in our midst, and not only that, one who subsists on nuts and honey. I wonder what this Clarrie is like.” However, Emmie knows all about Clarrie too, and the subject of the latest addition to the neighbourhood’s wives is too exciting for her to lapse into sulky silence, as would normally be the case after such an exchange.

“Clarrie Woodhead was a researcher at the BBC, and met Selwyn while they were doing a programme. He’s been married several times of course…” Wait till she tells Jack! He’d know about those books on sex, though come to think of it he didn’t need much instruction in that department, she thinks, smiling to herself. Sam, noticing the smile, looks at her with suspicion. What’s got into her now, he wonders, then realises he doesn’t actually care.

“I think I’ll do a bit in the garden this afternoon, those beans are coming on nicely now,” he says, getting up from the table and carrying his mug over to the sink.

Emmie yawns, stretches her arms above her head, “Well, I’m off to my bed for an hour or two, treating myself to a spot of shut-eye, so don’t expect me to be in the shop. Funny really, but I feel ever so tired, must be overdoing it…”

Sam puts on his gardening shoes, and having collected a spade and hoe from the shed at the back of the house, carries them down to the vegetable plot at the bottom of their garden. Once there, instead of getting on with clearing the patch of couch grass as he’d intended, he throws down the tools on a newly dug patch of earth, opens the small wrought iron gate in the hedge that leads into the field beyond, and walks across it to the river. The river’s low at this time of year, even more so with the current heatwave: coloured stones glint through the slow moving water and the sun, warm on his back, makes islands of shimmering light. A heron, quietly fishing from a half-submerged log a few yards upstream, disturbed by Sam’s presence takes flight, looking strangely outlandish as he flaps away towards the clump of trees in the field beyond. Somewhere not far off a tractor drones. Suddenly, unprecedentedly, a spark of joy runs through him. This is his world, his domain. Once, long ago, it had been bigger, much bigger, but it’ll do for now, he thinks.