There was fun to be had flirting with the nurses, he leered, alluding to kisses stolen on the night shift while the Sister wasn’t watching. But lying flat had stopped his ‘bowels moving’. Not until the day he was hauled to his feet by two strapping auxiliaries did things ‘start to move’. Maggie gagged on the graphic detail he provided. Malcolm couldn’t be more than 28 years old. With a lurching limp, his dreams of being a jockey were smashed.
The sun broke over the roof of the barn opposite; the dazzling light made Maggie’s eyes pinch. One more minute in the rays and she’ll get on with the routine. Watering the animals, mucking out the stables, sweeping the yard. It is easy in fine weather, horrible when it pours. She is learning stuff, too. Now the spring grass is growing, the horses and ponies have been ‘turned out’ in the fields. (That was the lingo, Malcolm told her. Turned out meant the animals lived outside all the time). All except Kelpie. The pony has to be brought into the stable during the day.
‘Why, Malcolm? It seems a bit unfair. It’s the summer and he’ll be lonely without the others,’ she complained.
‘But he’ll get laminitis, what you’d call sore feet,’ explained Malcolm dismissively. ‘On summer grass, that pony gets too fat.’
‘And he’ll limp like you!’ she joked. Malcolm didn’t laugh.
Maggie applied for the job. Seymour’s outburst was a bit of a hoot and anyway, she was sick of being short of cash and it might be a way to meet some new people. When the man called to tell her she had the job, said she was lucky, given her lack of experience, that she’d beaten the other candidates, she wondered if there were any. Still, nice to know she succeeded at something.
Carefully stubbing out her roll-up on the concrete, Maggie heads into the field with a halter. Kelpie was easy to catch if you offered him a treat. You just had to be careful of the other animals, especially that greedy little Donny.
It was a terrible shock. The shred of respect that remained for Seymour Stratton vanished when Mrs Morle found the letter. It said the cleaning job she had done for the last fifteen years was finished. Seymour could no longer afford to pay her; Amy was going to be the housekeeper. Mrs Morle had done him proud, he wrote, he was sorry, he wrote, but it was over.
Mrs Morle flung the note across the sitting room; it hit the wall and slipped behind the settee. She wouldn’t cry, not because of him. Him in his fancy car with his fancy friends, buying that ridiculous gypsy caravan, having all those parties for all those people. He could afford to pay for his house to be cleaned. He just didn’t want her anymore.
‘I didn’t think Seymour was such a bread head,’ says David, ‘He can’t make me get a job. I’m signing on. I need time to write music.’
So when David’s giro arrives each week, Amy cashes it at the post office when she’s doing the weekly shop. He also put a card up in the village shop offering guitar lessons. Now every Saturday he teaches a local school boy how to play. Simon has shifts in the pub and is scraping the rust off the wagon. Julian works on his father’s Morgan. There is talk of selling the car for a great deal of money.
Amy has become the housekeeper. Now she cleans the farmhouse as well as doing the washing and cooking. Sometimes she envies Maggie the chance to leave the house, even if her friend assures her that Malcolm and the animal sanctuary visitors are of limited appeal.
But at least being in the farmhouse gave her time to moon to music perfect for her mood; Carole King’s Tapestry. Loose-limbed, powered by the sexual energy Seymour had ignited in her, she dances as she dusts, relishing what they’ve found in each other. One day there will be all the time in the world to linger with their limbs linked. Until then they must be cautious.
She’s not cheating on David; they are exploring different ways of living and soon she will tell him about her lover. As Seymour says, no one should be hidebound by convention. That’s why last weekend, Seymour came down with Eleanor. The woman sashayed into the house like a queen while she, Amy, dragged the washing off the line. Soon, Amy thought, folding the pillow cases, everyone will know the truth. Although Seymour has never said it in so many words, he too longs for the time they will live together openly. They just have to wait for the right moment.
Last Saturday, he propelled her into his bedroom as soon as David left the house to give a guitar lesson. He made love to her frantically.
‘I love having you right here,’ he panted.
It was obvious what he meant.
22
‘It’s good to see you, love,’ says Amy’s father from the driver’s seat. He pushes open the passenger door and she slides inside.
Amy is too anxious to speak on the journey. The car draws up outside the house where she grew up. The street looks subtly different although when she glances up and down, she cannot see anything has changed. She feels she’s being watched and, from the corner of her eye, glimpses a face hiding in the hedge of the house next door. But on closer inspection, the face disappears. Perhaps it was only a leaf glinting in the sun. Grabbing her bag off the back seat of the car, Amy hurries to the front door.
The hall is dark and pinched as though the light has been sucked out.
