Liffey was red-eyed but had forgiven Richard for hitting her. She could understand that he was upset. And it had been careless of her to have misread the train timetable. But she was confident that he would be back that evening with roses and apologies and sensible plans as to how to solve the commuting problem. And if it were in fact insoluble, then they would just have to move back into the London apartment, apologising to Mory and Helen for having inconvenienced them, and keep Honeycomb as a weekend cottage. Liffey could afford it, even if Richard couldn’t. His pride, his vision of himself as husband and provider, would perhaps have to be dented, just a little. That was all.
Nothing terrible had happened. If you were an ordinary, reasonably intelligent, reasonably well-intentioned person, nothing terrible could happen. Surely.
Liffey shivered.
‘Anything the matter?’ asked Mabs.
‘No,’ said Liffey, lying. Lying was second nature to Liffey, for Madge her mother always spoke the truth. Families tend to share out qualities amongst them, this one balancing that, and in families of two, as in the case of Madge and Liffey, the result can be absurd.
At that very moment Mory, who had brutal, concrete architectural tastes, looked round Liffey’s pretty apartment and said, ‘Christ, Liffey has awful taste!’ and then, ‘Shall we burn that?’ and Helen nodded, and Mory took a little bamboo wall shelf and snapped it between cruel, smooth, city hands and fed it into the fire so that they all felt warmer.
‘I hope Dick Hubbard’s given you a proper lease,’ said Mabs. ‘You can’t trust that man an inch.’
‘Richard sees to all that,’ said Liffey and Mabs thought, good, she’s the fool she seems.
Mabs was all kindness. She gave Liffey the names of doctors, dentist, thatcher, plumber and electrician.
‘You don’t want to let this place run down,’ she said. ‘It could be a real little love nest.’
Liffey was happy. She had found a friend in Mabs. Mabs was real and warm and direct and without affectation. In the clear light of Mabs, her former friends, the coffee-drinking, trinket-buying, theatre-going young women of her London acquaintance, seemed like mouthing wraiths.
A flurry of cloud had swept over from the direction of the Tor and left a sprinkling of thin snow, and then the wind had died as suddenly as it had sprung up, and now the day was bright and sparkling, and flung itself in through the window, so that she caught her breath at the beauty of it all. Somehow she and Richard would stay here. She knew it.
Mabs stood in the middle of her kitchen as if she were a tree grown roots, and she, Liffey, was some slender plant swaying beneath her shelter, and they were all part of the same earth, same purpose.
‘Anything the matter?’ asked Mabs again, wondering if Liffey were half-daft as well.
‘Just thinking,’ said Liffey, but there were tears in her eyes. Some benign spirit had touched her as it flew. Mabs was uneasy: her own malignity increased. The moment passed.
Mabs helped Liffey unpack and put straight, and half-envied and half-despised her for the unnecessary prodigality of everything she owned—from thick-bottomed saucepans to cashmere blankets. Money to burn, thought Mabs. Tucker would provide her with logs in winter and manure in summer: she’s the kind who never checks the price. A commission would come Mabs’ way from every tradesman she recommended. Liffey would be a useful source of income.
‘Roof needs re-doing,’ said Mabs. ‘The thatch is dried out: it becomes a real fire-risk, not to mention the insects! I’ve a cousin who’s a thatcher. He’s booked up for years but I’ll have a word with him. He owes me a favour.’
‘I’m not certain we’ll be able to stay,’ said Liffey sadly, and Mabs was alerted to danger. She saw Liffey as an ideal neighbour, controllable and malleable.
‘Why not?’ she asked.
Public tears stood in Liffey’s eyes at last, as they had not done for years. She could not help herself. The strain of moving house, imposing her will, acknowledging difficulty, and conceiving deceit, was too much for her. Mabs put a solid arm round Liffey’s small shoulders, and asked what the matter was. It was more than she ever did for her children. Liffey explained the difficulty over the train timetable.
‘He’ll just have to stay up in London all week and come back home weekends. Lots of them round here do that,’ said Mabs.
Liffey had not spent a single night apart from Richard since the day she married him, and was proud of her record. She said as much, and Mabs felt a stab of annoyance, but it did not show on her face, and Liffey continued to feel trusting. ‘Lots of wives would say that cramped their style,’ said Mabs.
‘Not me,’ said Liffey. ‘I’m not that sort of person at all. I’m a one-woman man. I mean to stay faithful to Richard all my life. Marriage is for better or worse, isn’t it.’
‘Oh yes,’ said Mabs, politely. ‘Let’s hope your Richard feels the same.’
‘Of course he does,’ said Liffey stoutly. ‘I know accidents can happen. People get drunk and don’t know what they’re doing. But he’d never be unfaithful; not properly unfaithful. And nor would I, ever, ever, ever.’
Mabs spent a busy morning. She went up to her mother and begged a small jar of oil of mistletoe and a few drops of the special potion, the ingredients of which her mother would never disclose, and went home and baked some scones, and took them up to Liffey as a neighbourly gesture and when Tucker came home to his midday meal told him to get up to Liffey as soon as possible.
‘What for?’ asked Tucker.
‘You know what for,’ said Mabs. She was grim and excited all at once. Liffey was to be proved a slut, like any other. Tucker was to do it, and at Mabs’ behest, rather than on his own initiative, sometime later.
‘You know you don’t really want me to,’ said Tucker, alarmed, but excited too.
‘I don’t want her going back to London and leaving that cottage empty for Dick Hubbard to sell,’ said Mabs, searching for reasons. ‘And I want her side of the field for grazing, and I want her taken down a peg or two, so you get up there, Tucker.’
‘Supposing she makes trouble,’ said Tucker. ‘Supposing she’s difficult.’
‘She won’t be,’ said Mabs, ‘but if she is bring her down for a cup of coffee so we all get to know each other better.’
‘You won’t put anything in her coffee,’ said Tucker, suspiciously. ‘I’m a good enough man without, aren’t I?’ Mabs looked him up and
