Daisy’s hour of peace were also hoards of children clambering over pews, chasing each other down the aisles, punching their mothers, and having to be repeatedly hushed for talking. Not children used to being brought to church, thought Daisy. Then she realized she’d forgotten to kneel down when she came in, and blushing, sank to her knees.
Oh, please God, she prayed, shake Perdita out of this ghastly mood and make her happy again, and look after darling Violet and Eddie, and Gainsborough and Ethel, and please God, if you think it’s right, let me fall in love with a man who isn’t married, who falls in love with me and don’t make it too long.
Hell, she’d picked a pew next to the radiator. She’d be as red as those beetroots in the window in a minute. Please God, don’t make me so vain, she asked, scrambling to her feet with the rest of the congregation as the organ launched into ‘We plough the fields and scatter’.
Then Daisy twigged the reason for all those glammed-up women. Far ahead, in the France-Lynch pew, poignant because he was the sole inhabitant, stood Ricky. He was looking unusually smart in a pin-stripe suit and a black tie which was the only colour he’d worn since Will died. With the pile of huge marrows, the whole service seemed like some ancient fertility rite, with Ricky the unattainable corn king whom everyone wanted.
‘
Daisy’s eyes filled with tears. What beautiful words. Would she ever find time to paint wayside flowers again? Ricky certainly lit the Evening Star for Perdita. She
The gay Vicar, who loved the sound of his own voice, took a long time over the service and Daisy’s thoughts started to wander. Tears filled her eyes again as she thought of the little gravestone in the churchyard: In loving memory of William Richard France-Lynch, 1978–81.
Oh, poor Ricky. Daisy blew her nose on a piece of blue loo paper. She felt even sorrier for him with that stammer when he went up to read the first lesson, and had to announce that it came from the eighth chapter of Deuteronomy, a word which took him four goes. His face was impassive, his hands steady. Only the long pin-striped right leg, shuddering uncontrollably, betrayed his nerves. Now he was wrestling with the bit about
Comparing his grey frozen features with the carved stone angel beside the lectern, looking at the long lit-up scar, and the furrowed forehead as he wrestled with the difficult words, Daisy thought he didn’t need to humble or prove himself any more. She supposed because he was ostensibly Lord of the Manor, he felt he had to do it. Dancer would have had much more fun.
Daisy was sweating for him, and as he stumbled over the word ‘
The Vicar then took the text for his sermon from the second lesson, ‘God loveth a cheerful giver’, and was so carried away by his own rhetoric that he absent-mindedly helped himself to most of the grapes hanging down from the top of the pulpit.
Daisy was screwing up her courage to accost Ricky and ask him for a drink after church when the Vicar launched into the final prayer about being made flesh, and she suddenly remembered the vast ox heart cooking in the oven for Ethel, which would burn dry if it wasn’t taken out, so she belted home. Anyway Ricky had been buttonholed outside the church by the gay Vicar and scores of eager ladies.
‘Come to dinner this evening, just kitchen sups,’ Philippa was saying.
‘I’m afraid I’ve got to work,’ Ricky said brusquely.
‘
Daisy was still giggling when she got home to Snow Cottage and made the mistake at lunch of telling Perdita that Ricky had read the lesson.
‘Did you speak to him?’ demanded Perdita, dropping her forkful of braised fennel with a clatter. ‘What did he say about me? Did you ask him for a drink?’
‘I didn’t get near him. He was surrounded . . .’ Daisy was about to say ‘by women’, but hastily changed it to ‘by members of the congregation as I was leaving, and I had to get back for Ethel’s heart.’
‘What about my fucking heart?’ screamed Perdita. ‘You don’t give a shit that it’s broken. You’re so bloody wet, one could grow waterlilies all over you,’ and, storming out of the kitchen, slammed the door behind her.
‘Why don’t you stand up to her, Mum?’ asked Violet.
I must not cry, Daisy gritted her teeth. After she’d cleared up lunch she hoisted Ethel’s huge ox heart out of its water on to the chopping board. Usually she got through cutting it up by fantasizing that she was Christian Barnard saving the life of Francis Bacon or Lucian Freud. Today it didn’t work, the tears started flowing again. I mustn’t go to pieces, she whispered, tomorrow I’ll be brave, and ask Ricky round for a drink.
Fortunately the Caring Chauvinist was away the following day, but Ricky’s number was always engaged. Only when she checked with directory enquiries did she learn that the receiver was off the hook.
Getting home from the office, she found Violet and Perdita having another screaming match.
‘I’m not coming home at half-term if she’s here, Mum,’ complained Violet. ‘She’s destroying all of us.’
Having cleaned her teeth, washed, put on a bit of make-up and brushed her hair, Daisy set out up the ride to Robinsgrove. The sun was sinking in a red glow, the lights were coming out in Eldercombe Village. Once more Daisy was knocked out by the fecundity of everything, the blackthorn purple with sloes, plump hazel nuts already shredded by squirrels, elderberries shiny as caviar hanging like shower fittings from their crimson stems. She ought to make elderberry wine, then she wouldn’t spend so much on vodka.
Ethel bounced ahead, crashing joyfully through the russet bracken, then splashing and rolling in the stream, spooking as ponies loomed out of the dusk. Ahead towered Robinsgrove – such a large house for one unhappy man.
I must be brave for Perdita’s sake, said Daisy through chattering teeth as she pressed the door bell. He can only tell me to eff off. Inside she heard frantic barking. The door opened an inch.
‘Yes,’ said an incredibly unfriendly voice.
Little Chef had other ideas. Barging through the gap, he hurled himself on Ethel in a frenzy of tightly curled tail-wagging. Then, on tiptoe with excitement, he danced round her licking her eyes and ears.
‘Oh, it’s you,’ said Ricky. ‘C-come in.’
‘Ethel’s soaking.’
‘She’s OK. Little Chef seems to like her.’
Following him through the dark, panelled and tapestried hall, Daisy noticed the telephone off the hook in the drawing room, then froze. Ahead on the kitchen table lay a twelve bore. Ricky must be about to commit suicide. She must get him out of the house.
‘I came to ask you to supper,’ she babbled looking back into the drawing room. ‘You must come at once. Autumn’s awfully depressing, it affects lots of people. I’m sure things’ll seem better tomorrow.’
Ricky followed her gaze.
‘Oh, that accounts for the peace today. I must have left it off the hook this morning. Rupert rang about a pony. I went out to the yard to check some detail.’
He replaced the receiver. Instantly it rang – Philippa trying to fix up a dinner date.
‘I’m working tonight,’ snapped Ricky, ‘and next week I’m going to Argentina.’ He slammed down the receiver. ‘Fucking woman.’
He was going to shoot himself and Little Chef, thought Daisy numbly.
‘I don’t think you should be on your own,’ she said in what she hoped was a calming voice. ‘I know you’ll never get over what’s happened. But nice things do happen. They played “Invitation to the Waltz” on Radio 3 this morning’ – she was speaking faster and faster, edging towards the gun – ‘such a heavenly tune, I played it at school, and suddenly found myself waltzing round the kitchen, then Ethel leapt up and waltzed with me, and I thought perhaps there is a life after Hamish. If you came to supper now, you could watch television, and Violet learnt how to play poker in California, she’s teaching me, we could have a game and Perdita would love to see you.’ Her voice trailed off when she saw Ricky looking at her in utter amazement.
‘What
Daisy pointed nervously at the gun. ‘I think you should put that horrid thing away.’
Suddenly Ricky smiled with genuine amusement. It was as though the carved angel by the lectern had suddenly come to life.
