walks on the Heath with her parents had marked the limits of rural exploration. She had lived all her married life with Amos in London, and apart from occasional games of tennis and some gentle skiing there had been no call to exert herself. In his forties Amos had taken to going on trekking holidays, but always with male friends and colleagues. The idea of leaving the boys and accompanying him to Nepal had seemed so far-fetched to her in those days that it had never even been discussed. Nowadays Amos was too heavy for the mountains, and preferred a tropical beach.
Polly sat down on a stile and waited for her to catch up.
‘Am I going too fast?’ she asked.
‘Yes, but I like it. You know the way?’
‘Sel and I walked along here the other night.’
‘Did you? Going to the village?’
Polly shook her head. ‘Just having a walk together. He can’t work every minute of the day and night, but he gets so restless.’ She picked off a yellow leaf that was blotched with dark spots like skin growths, and twirled it in her fingers.
‘I noticed that,’ Katherine said.
‘I wish he’d relax more,’ Polly murmured.
‘Why does he drive himself so hard?’
Amos had driven himself too, especially in his early years at the Bar, but he always claimed that it was work undertaken ultimately to generate the time and money that would allow him to enjoy himself. A simple equation, Katherine reflected. And of course, as it was her habit to acknowledge, he had always been generous with the money.
Buying you off? A voice that she didn’t recognize startlingly murmured inside her head. She ignored it, and concentrated her attention on Polly.
‘Because he thinks he has fucked up,’ Polly answered in a level voice. ‘He thinks that he’s failed with everything else in his life, therefore he’s trying to compensate by building us a new home overnight, using his bare hands. We’re totally broke, you know. We had to sell the house, finally, to pay off the debts, and we’ve put just about everything that was left into the Mead barn.’
‘I didn’t know.’
‘No one does, really. Don’t tell Amos, will you? He and Sel are so competitive.’
‘He’d probably try to give you some money.’
‘Exactly,’ Polly smiled, without much humour.
‘What are you going to do?’
‘I’ll have to get a job.’
‘In the furniture business again?’
‘No. I’m sick to death of wood and patina and British brown.’
‘Writing more books, then?’
‘I don’t think so, no. That’s the kind of work that you have to demonstrate some continuity in. I’m not sure if any publisher these days would be interested in me popping up with a proposal for a new life of Mary Seacole or someone. I mean a job job.’
‘I see,’ Katherine nodded.
‘Wish I did. But I’ll think of something.’
‘Of course you will.’
‘Do you need an assistant at the charity?’
‘No.’ Katherine was slightly in awe, even after so many years, of Polly’s academic and literary achievements. Polly would never make a belittling or even clever rejoinder if you made a mistake or revealed your ignorance in some way, she was far too gentle for that, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t if the circumstances were different. Katherine didn’t think that someone with opinions as definite as Polly’s would fit particularly easily into their quiet offices.
‘Oh, well.’ Polly sprang off the stile. Her bulk didn’t seem to impede her movements in the least. Polly raised her voice and called, ‘Colin, what are you looking at?’
‘I was just thinking that it’s a very painterly light.’
The answer came quickly enough, but it was obvious to both of them that this wasn’t at all what had been in his mind.
‘Shall we walk on?’ he smoothly suggested.
They followed the path for another half-mile until the fine tower of St Andrew’s, Meddlett came into view between the trees. The footpath joined the minor road into the village just at the sign displaying its name. With a black aerosol spray, someone had rather neatly deleted the ett of Meddlett and added -ing twatz.
‘Not everyone’s mad about village life,’ Colin observed.
The road led past the churchyard gate. There were quiet rows of gravestones. The church itself, Perpendicular with great arched windows, rose like a grey ship out of a smooth green sea.
In the distance, a man with a dog at his heels strolled on the other side of the road, raising his hand to a car as it crept by, and a woman in a green padded coat towed a wheeled shopper. The village street was otherwise deserted, yet they had the sense that they were being watched. The cottages enclosing the central green had low, deep-set windows. There was a pond in the centre of the green, and several ducks pottered on the bank under the willow branches. A bus stop, a post box and a red telephone kiosk stood in a line. The door of the combined general store and post office was open and there were bundles of kindling and logs stacked beside tilted boxes of tired-looking cauliflowers and onions.
Colin went inside to buy a newspaper, but came out without one.
‘You have to order the Guardian,’ he remarked.
Katherine was reminded of the village where she and Amos had stopped for tea on their drive up, and warily looked about her for the gang of teenagers. The fact that there was no one actually in sight under fifty meant that the three of them ought to have blended in perfectly. But they did not. She felt conspicuous, the precise opposite of being in London where the expected blanket of invisibility had indeed fallen around her at some point in her mid forties.
‘Let’s have this drink,’ Colin said.
He steered them past the pond and another row of flint cottages with tiny front gardens until they reached the Griffin. In the bar two silent couples were finishing their food but the table in the window, the one that had been occupied on Colin’s first visit by Jessie and Damon and the dog, was now empty. The same barman was in his place behind the pumps.
‘Afternoon,’ he said, after a pause.
‘Hello, again,’ Colin answered, with slight emphasis. ‘It’s pretty quiet this afternoon.’
‘That’s Meddlett for you,’ the man replied, slowly, as if they were foreign enough for him to be doubtful about their levels of English comprehension.
They chose glasses of wine from the options chalked up on a blackboard. Polly was already telling the barman that no, they were not passing through. They had come to live here. A flicker of interest animated his face.
