Good Husband Material (20 page)

I did go and see her the day we got back and she looked pretty pathetic – like a little girl sitting up in bed with her long loose hair and a fringe. She was all ready to play a big scene, but I kept it short and brisk. Said if she tried a stunt like this again I wouldn’t come at all, but being a soft touch I didn’t say that I was totally bored with her juvenile ways and never wanted to see her again, just gave her the ‘let’s just see each other as friends sometimes’ spiel.

Since then she’s been underfoot whenever she can find where I’m going to be, despite my swearing Sara into secrecy on the subject. Persistence should be her middle name.

But I’m holding out now for something more than she can be, and surely there must be other women out there who have the same effect on me as Tish still does? All I have to do is find one. But I’m determined never to come within temptation’s reach of Tish again, that’s for sure.

June the twenty-sixth, the day of the church fête, dawned hot and sunny (the power of prayer?) and I decided to grace the event with my presence.

The church field was transformed by stalls, acres of faded bunting, and another of those inflatable castles. There was also an awful band composed of small children playing instruments unsuited to their age, size, or mental abilities.

The place swarmed with piranha-like raffle-ticket sellers and I ended up with a fistful of different colours.

The stalls sold everything from knitted garments to second-hand books, and lots of those frilly little aprons and peg-bags shaped like dresses on coat-hangers so dear to the supporters of church bazaars, but I resisted all blandishments to buy any of these ghastly things, or try to throw a hoop over a bottle, or put a dart in the middle of a board.

I kept bumping into the vicar, who seemed to be everywhere at once, radiating enthusiasm and carrying a starting pistol. One of his toes was poking through his plimsolls. His large, jolly wife made her presence felt in every corner of the field by means of a megaphone.

All the children were marshalled into races of various kinds, including Margaret’s two dark-haired moppets, watched over by May (but no sign of Margaret, the Missing Mother).

Then there was an exhibition of folk dancing by local children, followed by a woman who clog-danced on a wooden board. I must tell Granny about that.

Feeling I’d done more than my duty by buying all those raffle tickets, I was about to call it a day when they announced that Lady Somebody was going to give the raffle prizes, so I thought I might as well hang on even though I never win anything.

She dispensed all sorts of really good prizes: a basket of fruit, a bottle of bubbly, etc., and I thought she’d finished when she suddenly read out a green raffle ticket number which I recognised as being one of mine. I didn’t quite believe it, but she read the number out again, and it was!

It was highly embarrassing going up for my prize in front of all those people. Lady Somebody shook me by the hand, murmured something that smelled of sherry, and handed me a painting.

A painting!

Of course, I didn’t stop to look at it until I was back in the anonymity of the crowd. It was in oils and depicted a seaside scene, probably Cornwall (aren’t they all?), and it wasn’t bad, either. On the back was a label: ‘By Claude Sturgeon: Foot Painter.’

And then it went on about there being a whole group of disabled artists who paint with their feet, and I was a bit more impressed with it after that, because I couldn’t have painted it with my hands, let alone anything else.

What a feat!

Sorry.

Mrs Deakin materialised at my side like a small flowered Dalek and admired it so greatly I almost gave it to her, but then decided that the first thing I’d ever won should really stay in the family, and Mother would love it.

Mrs Deakin said she’d closed the shop in order to attend the last half-hour of the fête, but she intended staying open extra late this evening to make up. ‘And those are
my
knitted scarves and gloves over there,’ she pointedly remarked, having observed my lack of trophies (other than the picture).

‘Really? They seem to be selling very well.’ Especially to the colour blind. I began to edge away: ‘Is that the time? I really must go and—’

But her eyes, fixed on something over my left shoulder, glazed over and the small predatory claw that she had laid on my arm tightened.

There was a strange prickling sensation down my spine. I turned slowly and with a sense of the inevitability of my doom watched a tall, dark and unwelcome figure stride determinedly through the crowd in my direction, like Moses parting the Red Sea.

His presence there was so surreal I thought for a minute I was having one of my peculiar dreams, and he would snatch me up in his arms at any minute and do unspeakably pleasurable things …

Shame on me!

Then I remembered that we’d
done
the unspeakably pleasurable things, and some instinct for self-preservation made me try to turn and flee, my heart flopping about like a dying fish and my face burning, before all the blood literally drained out of it. (Into my feet, I think, which is why I didn’t get very far before Mrs D. brought me up like my own personal anchor.)

His greeting was not that of one softened by the recollection of a tender moment – or even a hot, sweaty couple of hours.

‘What the hell are you doing here?’ he snarled, coming to a stop so close that I had to tip my head back to look at him.

Blue lights sparked in his long black hair, his skin was tanned an even dark olive against the soft white of his shirt, and his glacial green eyes froze me to the spot.

Anger loosened my tongue. ‘How nice to see you too, Fergal!’

Becoming aware for the first time of the small, chestnut-haired girl clutching his arm and panting from the exertion of being towed along, I added politely, ‘Hi!’

Then I took a second look: she was the girl in the airport photograph, the one he was embracing not an hour after he left me.

Her pansy-brown eyes stared inimically back: no one seemed pleased to see me, except possibly the vicar, beaming away on Fergal’s other side.

To say we were the centre of all eyes was an understatement. Mrs Deakin’s faculties were set to Maximum Receptivity Point, and I’d never known her silent for so long.

Fergal looked down his long nose at me. ‘I didn’t expect to find
you
here!’

I tried a cool smile, since I couldn’t think why he was looking so angry about it. He certainly couldn’t want a snake in his Eden any less than I did. ‘Why should you? And I could say the same about you: this is hardly your sort of thing, is it?’

‘You know each other?’ the vicar said, with an air of doubtful discovery.

‘We certainly did – once.’ The green eyes scanned me thoughtfully from head to foot. ‘You’ve changed a lot, Angel.’

Clearly this was not meant as a compliment, despite my old pet name.

‘Older and wiser,’ I said sweetly.

‘Vicar,’ Mrs Deakin broke in, unable to contain her curiosity a moment longer. ‘Who? What?’

The vicar took pity on her. ‘This is Fergal Rocco, Mrs Deakin, who, I’m reliably informed, is a rock star of note!’

He waited for polite laughter at his little pun, which Mrs D. supplied solo, before adding with éclat: ‘And the new owner of Greatness Hall!’

‘Some inherit Greatness,’ my mouth said, going it solo as usual, ‘and some have Greatness thrust upon them!’ Then I took a hasty step backwards, because I thought Fergal was about to commit violence on my person. Age doesn’t seem to have mellowed him.

‘Say, who is this?’ drawled the girl, still clinging to his arm like a furled bat (only the right way up) and giving me the Evil Eye. ‘An old flame, Fergal honey?’ she added disparagingly: ‘An
old
, old flame!’

Cow.

Fergal ignored her. ‘What are you doing here, Tish?’ he said more moderately.

‘I live in Nutthill.’ (And of all the villages in all the world, you had to choose this one!)

‘Really?’ He sounded less than delighted at the prospect. ‘Coincidences never cease, do they? I’m just moving in. Did I introduce Nerissa? Never mind, I don’t suppose you’ll ever meet again.’

Nerissa was pouting, and the vicar had the uncertain look of a puppy who doesn’t know if he’s done the right thing or not. Fergal began to turn away. ‘Nice to have met you again, Tish … Mrs …’

‘Deakin,’ she supplied eagerly. ‘Of Nutthill Home Stores. Anything you want, you come to me. No need to go to they nasty supermarkets!’

For a moment I thought his face might crack open into a grin, but no. ‘I’ll bear it in mind,’ he said gravely, and began to walk off.

With one mighty bound my mouth was free. ‘Oh, Fergal!’

He paused and scowled back at me over his shoulder.

‘There’s a letter in the post to you – well, to the new owner of the Hall, I didn’t know it was you – about the fence dividing your park from my garden. You’re responsible for it and the cows are trying to break through. Do you think you can have someone fix it?’

‘Fergal, honey, will you buy me one of these cute little teddy bears?’ Nerissa broke in rudely, batting her dark eyelashes at him. ‘The fête is going to close soon, and we haven’t seen anything yet.’

‘I’ll attend to it!’ Fergal Honey snapped in my direction, and strode off with Nerissa still clamped to his side.

The Human Poultice strikes again.

She’s definitely the girl from the airport. The future Mrs Rocco? She looks as if she intends to be, and that soft accent, big brown eyes and iron will might just do it. OK – and the marvellous figure and pretty face. And she can’t be more than twenty, if that.

He must have been desperate to make do with me that night. Any port in a storm, I suppose. Or perhaps
he
was drunk too?

How on earth am I going to cope with having him living in Nutthill?

I avoided Mrs Deakin’s questions (for the moment) by the simple expedient of walking off without another word, feeling churned up and confused. Why on earth was he angry at finding me in Nutthill? Unless he was as afraid of his girlfriend finding out about his illicit session with me, as I was of James discovering it?

Or perhaps he’s angry with himself for seducing me when I was drunk and (almost) incapable. So why come tearing across merely to freeze me to death and be rude?

I spent ages trying to frame a casual way of telling James that Fergal Rocco was the new Lord of the Manor, but I needn’t have bothered, because a couple of days later he picked up a copy of the local rag in the pub, which he carried home to brandish under my nose like Exhibit A.

‘Perhaps you’d like to explain
that
!’ he roared, his face an unbecoming shade of puce. It did not go well with sandy hair.

The large photograph on the front page showed Fergal and me gazing longingly into each other’s eyes from an extremely close range.

‘Funny, I didn’t notice a photographer.’

‘Obviously – I’m surprised you noticed anything except each other. I suppose you told him where you lived when you met in London?’

‘James! I’ve already told you I didn’t have a conversation with him.’

Unfortunately my face burned guiltily, even though it was the truth: the odd word does
not
constitute a conversation. ‘What are you being so cross about? I swear I didn’t know he’d bought the Hall until that day. It was a surprise to both of us, and I was just exchanging polite—’

‘Polite! You’re staring at him as if he was every hero in your stupid books rolled into one.’

That was pretty imaginative for James, though I resented the word ‘stupid’.

‘It’s the angle of the camera. See that hand at the edge of the picture there, clinging to Fergal’s arm? It belongs to the very young, very pretty American girl he was with.’

James gave me a suspicious glare and bent to examine the evidence. The vein in his temple ceased to twitch and his colour subsided to something approaching normal.

‘All this is quite ridiculous and you ought to know me better by now, James.’

‘I felt ridiculous down at the pub when they were showing me the photograph and asking me how my wife came to be on such familiar terms with a rock star,’ he muttered disagreeably.

‘We are not on familiar terms, and I wouldn’t describe him as a rock star, exactly.’

‘You’re the expert,’ he said nastily, but with a little less conviction.

‘Since Mrs Deakin observed the whole of this eventful meeting, I expect the correct version is known by everyone within five miles. The men were just teasing you, and you rose to it beautifully. I don’t suppose it occurred to you to defend me?’

He looked a bit shamefaced then, but did not apologise.

When he’d gone out to the Shack, I looked at the paper again. It just goes to show that the camera can lie – as also, apparently, can the photocopier.

I’d better give Mrs D. a brief outline of my youthful romance before other more lurid rumours begin to spread.

James woke me up much later by falling over the bedroom furniture and Bess, which was a pity since I’d only just dropped off. (Every time I closed my eyes I saw Fergal’s dark, face staring at me: rather unsettling.) Once awake I couldn’t get back to sleep again, and all my worries rose like black scum to the surface of my mind.

It had been possible almost to forget my fling with Fergal when I never expected to see him again, but not now, with him actually living here, when I could run into him any day of the week. Walking Nemesis.

Then there’s James: what’s the matter with him since we moved here? Is he having some sort of premature mid-life crisis? If he isn’t in the Shack he’s at the pub, or Howard’s, or with his cronies.

I used to look forward to our weekends, but now all we seem to do is bicker when we bump into one another on one of James’s rare visits to the house. And I’m doing all the house renovating and gardening (helped by Bob).

It’s strange that James is so jealous of Fergal, yet doesn’t seem to want me physically himself. Perhaps I’ve let myself go a bit since we came here and should make the effort to dress up when he’s home. (Not that he makes the effort to
be
home that much, so it would be wasted.) I could try a bit, though.