Perfectly Correct (24 page)

There was a brief silence as Miriam gathered information, collated it, and came up with an accurate analysis. ‘You lucky beggar. You’ve scored with the sexy farmer.’

Louise giggled a rich sensual chuckle. ‘More or less,’ she said. ‘Will you come and stay here?’

‘Won’t I be dreadfully in the way?’

‘No,’ Louise said. ‘Something like a thousand dope-heads and a hundred weekend ravers are arriving tomorrow morning. The neighbourhood watch will be here at any moment. And we’re surrounded by animals. It’s not as if we’re romantically alone together for the weekend.’

‘I’m on my way,’ Miriam said. ‘See you at nine.’

Louise and Andrew drove down to her cottage as the light faded from the sky and a small sliver of moon rose and hung like an elegant minimalist lantern over the common. Louise went into the cottage and threw a couple of pairs of jeans, some underwear, a couple of sweatshirts, and – after a moment’s thought – her silk pyjamas and silk dressing gown into a small suitcase and carried it down to the Land-Rover. There was a brief altercation as Andrew demanded that she bring all her clothes, all her books, all her work papers and indeed her word processor, ansaphone, and printer. Louise refused to bring more than she needed for the weekend. ‘Then we’ll see,’ she said.

Andrew, with a stubborn look which she was beginning to recognise, pointed out that if there was any nonsense on Monday morning he would be within his rights as Rose’s heir to move into his half of the cottage, and that he would not hesitate to do so.

‘I am not accustomed to being blackmailed,’ Louise said sharply.

He scowled at her. ‘And I’m not accustomed to being fannied about. I don’t like this will-you won’t-you stuff, Lou. You said you’d come for the weekend and I want you there with me. I don’t want you sloping off every five minutes to come down here.’

Louise felt her temper flare in a way she had not permitted
since adolescence. ‘I do not slope off,’ she insisted. ‘I will not be arrested and imprisoned by you. We’re having a love-affair, a relationship between free and equal adults. We’re not going to tie each other down.’

‘Of course we’re going to tie each other down!’ Andrew roared. ‘We’re in love! We’re lovers! Of course we’re not free. We’re responsible for each other’s happiness. What d’you want? To live alone and I come by at the weekend and screw you when my wife isn’t watching?’

‘Don’t shout at me!’ Louise shouted.

‘Why not?’ he demanded, volume undiminished. ‘You make me angry!’

‘Well, you make me angry!’ Louise bellowed back. To her surprise she found she was squared up to him, her fists clenched at her sides, her voice at full pitch. And she was not afraid of him, she was enjoying herself hugely.

‘Thank God for that,’ he said, his temper deserting him in a moment. ‘At least it’s not one of these cold-fish reasonable relationships where we each do anything and nobody really cares.’

Louise breathed deeply and felt the wave of adrenaline dying pleasantly away. ‘No,’ she said. ‘It’s obviously not one of them.’

She looked into his face. He was smiling at her, his face filled with intense affection.

‘So,’ he said. ‘Did we reach an agreement?’

‘I don’t want to work this weekend anyway,’ Louise decided, casting her mind back to the cause of the quarrel. ‘I’ll just bring the essays that need marking at once and a book I have to review. Will they serve as sufficient commitment for now?’

His sunny smile was as untroubled as a little cherub.
‘Fine. You pack a box. I’ll just pop down and see Rose is OK.’

Louise watched him walk down through the orchard and went inside to her study. The red light on her ansaphone winked urgently. She played the message. It was Toby, his voice urgent and whiney.

‘Louise, I need to talk to you urgently. Please return this call
without fail
. I also need to talk to Miriam who has done a dreadful thing. Please make sure she calls me. This is
really
urgent. I am at the university all evening since I cannot go home until this is resolved. I am depending on you. You
must
telephone me at once.’

Louise glanced towards the orchard. Andrew’s big boots stood neatly beside the step of the caravan. Rose’s dog dozed beside them. Louise dialled Toby’s departmental office. He picked up the phone on the second ring.

‘Toby Summers.’

‘It’s me.’

‘Louise, thank God! I’ve been waiting for hours for you to call.’

‘I only just got in.’

‘Is Miriam with you?’

‘She’s coming out now. She’s on her way.’

‘I think she’s gone absolutely crazy,’ Toby said. ‘You must talk to her, Louise, and then I’ll come out and see her.’

‘She sounded very upset,’ Louise said cautiously.

‘She’s gone mad,’ Toby cried, forgetting the cardinal rule that madness and women can never be anything more than tangentially connected. ‘She’s barking. She’s stolen my cash card and she’s robbed me of an entire month’s salary.’

‘What?’

‘Since last Tuesday and on every single subsequent day, she has taken the maximum of two hundred pounds out
of my account,’ said Toby, spite making his enunciation dauntingly precise. ‘She’s emptied my account. I had seven hundred and fifty pounds in there and it’s all gone.’

‘It’s not possible,’ Louise said certainly. Toby’s and Miriam’s sexual standards might be flexible but they had always shown rigorous rectitude over their independent bank accounts.

‘I tell you it’s gone!’ Toby wailed. ‘What did she say to you?’

‘That the refuge was bankrupt, and that she was unhappy with you.’

Toby moaned. ‘The refuge! Oh God, that bloody refuge! She’s spent all my money on those hopeless women!’

‘Toby!’

‘I’m sorry, Louise. I’m sorry! I don’t know what I’m saying! I’m dreadfully upset. Also, we had a quarrel. Did she tell you?’

‘She said something.’

‘I thought you might tell her about the negligee,’ Toby said. ‘I wanted to clarify things for her.’

‘So you told her you’d had an affair for the past nine years.’

‘I didn’t say who with.’

‘Oh, thank you,’ Louise said with weighty irony.

‘Look,’ Toby said. ‘We’re in crisis. There’s no getting away from it, Louise, and you and I have to stand together. We’ll tell Miriam we’re lovers. She’ll agree to let me go, I know she will. You needn’t tell her about the gown, it wouldn’t make any sense to her. And she can give me my money back. She can have the house if she wants, she can buy me out of my share. I shan’t need a place of my own, once I’m living with you. I should have done it years ago. I’ll come out now. We’ll start our life together now.’

‘No,’ Louise said quickly. ‘That’s not possible. I’m not even in my cottage. I’m staying up at the farm.’

‘My mind’s made up,’ Toby announced with awful decisiveness. ‘I’m coming out at once, Louise. I’ll come up to the farm to meet you there.’

‘I can’t …’ Louise started.

‘You and I are going to be together and we’ll get my money back from Miriam. We’ll counsel her. We’ll help her with this. She’s obviously suffering some kind of crisis kleptomania. We owe it to her to help her. I’m on my way. We’ll be together now, my darling …’

‘No!’ Louise shrieked, but the telephone clicked and Toby was already gone.

Louise walked slowly to the Land-Rover as Andrew stepped into his boots at Rose’s door. Rose came out on the step and waved to Louise. Louise waved back. Even at that distance she could see Rose’s triumphant beam. ‘Everything all right then, dear?’ Rose yelled.

‘Yes, thank you,’ Louise called back repressively.

‘Farmhouse to your liking? Bed comfortable, is it?’

‘Yes,’ Louise said shortly and got into the Land-Rover and slammed the door. She could still hear Rose’s rich wicked chuckle. Then Andrew stepped into the cab and started the engine. ‘Everything all right?’ he asked. ‘You’ve got everything?’

‘Everything,’ Louise said. ‘But there’s a bit of a problem with Toby and Miriam.’

‘I should think there was,’ Andrew said in a tone of reproof. ‘Carrying on as you’ve all been doing.’

Louise looked him straight in his dark blue eyes. ‘That’s quite enough of that,’ she said firmly.

Andrew pulled his forelock and drove out into the lane. ‘Yes’m,’ he said subserviently. ‘Beg pardon’m.’

‘Miriam says she wants to leave him, she’s coming out to the farm tonight. I said that would be all right.’ Louise shot a quick look at him. ‘You said it would be all right?’

He nodded. ‘It is.’

‘But now Toby says that she’s been stealing money out of his bank account, and he’s coming out to sort things out.’

‘Coming out to the farm?’ Andrew asked.

‘Yes,’ Louise said awkwardly. ‘I’m sorry. I told him I was there and he just said he’d come out. He didn’t give me a chance to say no.’

‘We’d better go down to the Bush then,’ Andrew suggested helpfully. ‘And stay there till they’ve sorted themselves out. We could stay at the Bush all night. Give them the place to themselves. Keep out of trouble generally.’

‘Oh, no! They’re my friends. I have to be there.’

‘Seems to me like you’ve been there a bit too much already.’

Louise laid one finger on his hand as it rested on the gear lever. ‘I warned you,’ she said. ‘That’s enough.’

He shot her one of his wicked grins. ‘All right, I’m done. But shouldn’t they just get on with it on their own? There’s an awful lot of talking and talking and talking in your world. Maybe they’ll just go to bed and make up.’

Louise shook her head. ‘I don’t think they’ll do that,’ she said. ‘There’s the missing money, and Toby told Miriam he had an affair.’

Andrew pulled up outside the Holly Bush and switched off the engine. Louise tried to open her door but the handle came off in her hand. ‘He lives dangerously, that Toby,’ Andrew said with respect. He walked around the Land-Rover and opened the door for Louise. ‘Rose told me that he’s been stealing women’s underwear and dressing up in it.’

Louise closed her eyes briefly. ‘Please, Andrew, don’t ever ever mention that again. I can’t bear to even think about it. Rose should not have said anything, least of all to you. It was a distressing and very private thing. She should have treated it in the strictest of confidence.’

‘Put you off him, did it?’ Andrew noted perceptively. ‘Well, I can imagine it would.’

Louise slipped down from the cab seat, her face closed and her lips tight.

‘Very disturbing,’ Andrew sympathised. ‘I can see it would be very disturbing – seeing your lover, all dressed up in flowery knickers!’

Louise walked past him saying nothing, pushed open the door of the pub and went in.

‘Worse if it was one of them basque things. Stands to reason. It would put anyone off,’ Andrew said irrepressibly as he followed her in. ‘Or stockings and suspenders,’ he speculated.

There was something like a muted roar of approval as he came in. ‘Is it on then?’ someone shouted from the end of the bar. ‘The party? When are they all coming?’

‘You’ll never get them in on the roads,’ someone else warned. ‘There’s police patrols all the way up to the A3. And they’re putting up the roadblocks in the village again.’

The landlord nodded at Andrew and drew a pint of Theakston’s Old Peculier and pushed it towards him. ‘Will you have a little drink?’ Andrew asked Louise, with wilful provocation. ‘A nice sweet sherry, or a Babycham or something?’

‘I’ll have a pint,’ Louise said icily. She hitched herself up on a bar stool and smiled at the landlord. ‘A pint of that please.’

‘It’s Dr Case, isn’t it?’ he asked. ‘Not often we have the pleasure of seeing you in here.’

Louise, who had only ever been into The Olde House at Home, nodded. ‘I think I’ll be in a bit more often now,’ she said. ‘And I’ll pay for the drinks. How much?’

The landlord looked thoughtful. ‘That’s £173.30,’ he said.

The bar exploded in laughter, Andrew with them. Then he slid his arm around Louise’s waist and hugged her tight. ‘That’s my slate,’ he said. ‘It’s probably my dad’s slate too. Put it down on the slate, George, I’ll pay you after shearing!’

‘So are they coming?’ A man pushed past a couple of other drinkers and tapped Andrew on the shoulder. ‘Have you heard from them? Is it still on? Or are the roads too bad?’

‘I heard yesterday,’ Andrew told him. ‘They say they’ll get through the roadblocks. They say they’re coming. They’ve paid me for the field and they’ve booked the caterers and they’ve hired the electrics they need. They’re all set. I expect them tomorrow morning.’

There was a ripple of approval and promises called to be up at midday and help the organisers set up tents and a stage. Andrew nodded his thanks and picked up his glass and guided Louise to a seat in the corner.

‘So everyone here wants the party?’

‘I did tell you so, but Captain Frome thinks otherwise.’

‘How will they get through the roadblocks and the police control points?’

Andrew shrugged and drank his beer. ‘They’ll drive round. There’s lots of tracks across the common that they could use. They’ll find a way if they want to enough.’

At quarter to nine Louise glanced at her watch. ‘I’m sorry, but we have to go. Miriam said she’d be with us at nine.’

Andrew obligingly drained his pint glass. ‘So now we go
back home and stick our nose in their private business,’ he confirmed.

‘Well, it’s my business too.’

‘Not any more it isn’t. Your business is me, your work, and the farm,’ Andrew said firmly. ‘And in a little while our marriage and the babies.’

He waved goodbye to the landlord and the men at the bar and shook his head at the shouts of derision that his drinking days were over.

‘Babies?’ Louise asked when they were in the Land-Rover together.

‘Well, of course,’ Andrew said. ‘Don’t you think we’d make wonderful babies? Don’t you think they’d have a fine childhood, growing up at the farm? Don’t you want to have a child of mine?’

Louise hesitated for no more than a moment. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Yes to all of it.’

The farmhouse kitchen was warm from the big cream Aga and rich with the smell of cooking meat. Mrs Shaw had left them a big steak pie. Andrew put potatoes on the boil while Louise opened a bottle of wine.