Chapter Nine
Sally and Imogen talked by the dying embers of the fire until nearly two in the morning. When the knock at the door came at
nine o’clock, they were far from ready to face the day.
“I’ll go,” shouted Sally, trailing wearily down the stairs.
Imogen, meanwhile, was dawdling in the bathroom. She was feeling less sick, as predicted by Morag the midwife, but early morning
was her worst time. She was debating whether to brush her teeth straightaway, which would almost certainly make her vomit.
It was either that or leave it until after breakfast, when being sick would definitely be more horrible.
Curiosity about who could be at the door made her mind up.
She found Sally leaning seductively against the wall by the open door. Unfortunately, her come-hither manner was let down
by smudges of mascara on her white face and by the disgracefully ragged old dressing gown she had found on the back of the
bathroom door. She was chatting to a pleasantly smiling man in his early thirties. He had a neatly controlled short back and
sides, glasses, and khaki gabardine shorts that were a little too long.
“Hi,” he said, over Sally’s shoulder. “If this is Sally, then you must be Imogen.”
Imogen nodded, smiling encouragingly.
“Gabriel sent me to do the garden.”
“You’re a gardener?” asked Imogen, puzzled, although the real puzzle was why Gabriel was sending staff to do anything with
her house.
“Actually, strictly speaking, I’m a forester,” he said. “I do quite a bit of work for Gabriel on the estate, and he gave me
a call. He said I should come and get the garden sorted for the fête. I’m sorry I’ve not come sooner.”
“Heavens, I forgot!” wailed Imogen. “It must be practically now, and the garden is just a complete jungle, and there’s loads
to do and... How long do we have?” she said, regaining control with difficulty.
“It’s tomorrow, actually,” said Peter apologetically. “But don’t worry! Gabriel specifically sent me round, so you don’t have
to do anything at all.” He glanced involuntarily at Imogen’s tummy. Clearly, he knew the score. “I need to just have a bit
of a go at the garden today and then the teams are all set to move in early tomorrow morning. It’ll all be fine, honestly.”
His reassuring grin was enthusiastically returned by Sally.
“That’s so kind,” said Imogen with relief.
After settling Peter in the garden with whatever tools the house had to offer from one of the spider-infested sheds—luckily,
he had also brought some things of his own—she and Sally retreated to the kitchen for breakfast.
“Excellent!” Sally exclaimed. “I love village fêtes.”
“It’s the church fête, actually, and since when, exactly, have you attended either sort?”
“Never, as far as I can remember,” she replied happily, “but I must say, if that’s the talent that’s available, I am going to dedicate the rest of my life to attending as many as possible.”
“He had socks on under his sandals, for heaven’s sake,” Imogen told her, waving an arm in the direction Peter had disappeared.
“Yeah, but he had a lovely smile.”
“And probably a lovely wife and children too,” said Imogen repressively, “as, indeed, you have yourself,” she added, not entirely
accurately.
“Maybe that’s the problem,” said Sally, suddenly serious. “If Alistair was a bit more masculine and dictatorial about everything,
there might be more of a spark.”
“You wouldn’t have married him if he was.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know what I wanted then.”
They both sighed sadly.
“Let’s not think about it,” said Sally, clapping her hands. “Our unconscious minds will work on it while we do country things.
Now, what’s the plan? I want it to involve welly wanging, cream teas, and coconut shies.”
The day of the fête dawned as warm as the days before, but this time the sky had turned from azure to a heavy gray-white. The atmosphere was unbearably oppressive, washing Imogen with waves of sweat as she rifled through her clothes in the search for something to wear. Or, come to that, anything to wear. Her wardrobe was shrinking as her tummy expanded. Too hot for the long-sleeved shirts and trousers she had been wearing to cover her bump, she plumped for a skimpy T-shirt and an ancient Indian cotton skirt with tiny flowers all over it. Thankfully it had an elastic waist. The T-shirt stretched uncompromisingly over her newly swelling tummy, but the skirt was quite pretty, and her face, flushed with the heat, at least had a healthy glow. She added some silver disc earrings she had bought in a little hippie shop in Portneath and grabbed a scarf to tie back her hair.
Coming down the stairs with Tango at her heels, she felt a little nervous to see what Sally was up to. She needn’t have worried.
She found her friend in the garden, next to Peter the forester. Peter and Sally were clearly overseeing operations as hordes
of small boys in scout uniforms scurried to and fro in the garden and over the bridge into the orchard, all carrying folding
trestle tables.
Distracted by feeding Tango and making tea, Imogen glanced out again a few minutes later. Miraculously quickly, the tables
had been set in two orderly rows across the lawn. Now the boys were carrying immaculate, folded white tablecloths to each
table. Imogen noticed Arthur, the fat chocolate Labrador, lying on the grass under the yew tree, panting laboriously in the
heat. As she looked around to find his owner, there was a rap at the door.
“May I come in, my dear?”
“Winifred, how lovely,” said Imogen, unconsciously raising her hand to check her hair was staying neatly within the scarf.
Winifred Hutchinson tended to have that effect on her. “Would you like some tea?” she added, holding up the pot she had just
made.
“That would be splendid,” Winifred replied, “and may I say how well you are looking, my dear,” she added, glancing approvingly at Imogen’s gently curving tummy.
“Er, is everything okay for the fête?” said Imogen anxiously. “It is all looking rather tired, I’m afraid. I’ve not really
had time for gardening.”
“That’s not surprising,” replied Winifred. “At least we have the roses in bloom. The collection you have in the rose garden
includes quite a few very special plants, you know. The lady who lived here before you was quite a collector and expert on
the matter.”
“Really?” said Imogen, thinking guiltily of the greenfly-and black-spot-infested bushes, straggly with neglect. “I don’t really
know what to do about roses—”
“In the autumn, I’ll come over and show you how to prune them back for the winter. Once as soon as the flowers have faded,
and then again in December or January. As for today, my dear, your only responsibility is to do exactly what you have done
so far and then to waft around the stalls for a bit and let people have a jolly good look at you. There are lots of people
who are awfully curious about the new owner of Storybook Cottage, you know.”
Imogen felt too hot and uncomfortable to eat lunch, and Sally, looking hungover, did little more than pick at the salad she
had prepared. Relieved to clear it away, they both joined the throng congregating around the podium in the orchard. Winifred
was thrilled to have engaged the services of the local radio DJ, but Imogen was unimpressed. He looked suspiciously orange.
Several of the village’s middle-aged women felt differently. They clustered around him as soon as he arrived, fawning and
politely jostling to be by his side. Mrs. Muriel Pinkerton, in particular, lived up to her name by becoming quite pink in
the face, giggling skittishly whilst patting him on the arm.
Bounding heavily onto the low podium, narrowly avoiding treading on Winifred’s toe, he grabbed the microphone from the stand
and waited for the smattering of applause to die down.
“Not exactly irresistible, is he?” said Sally, appearing at Imogen’s side and making her jump. “Although looking at this lot,
they wouldn’t be more excited if Elvis Presley rocked up.”
“They’d be surprised, though,” whispered Imogen. “He’s obviously a bit of a local hero. Look, even Winifred is flushed with
excitement.” Although it could be the weather, she told herself, retying her scarf to take the hair off the back of her neck.
Not only was the heat becoming more oppressive but the gray-white skies were regrouping, with black clouds now stacked onto
the horizon behind Middlemass Hall.
After a good five minutes of talking about himself, the man declared the fête well and truly open. Scuttling back to their
respective stalls, the ladies of the village prepared to do battle.
Meanwhile, clearly concerned that their local celebrity would be harassed by members of the public wanting to do inconvenient things like paw him and ask for his autograph, a small group of advisors formed a shield around him and hustled him off. Looking on with an expression of mild amusement on her face was a pretty woman with a short, shaggy brown bob. She was holding a lead with a handsome black Labrador on the end of it, with her other hand on the shoulder of a cross-looking blond-haired little girl. “But Daddy said I could!” she protested.
“Eilish?” the woman said warningly. “Daddy’s not in charge now. I am. Now, you go and choose a cake from Miss Perkins at the
cake stall.” She tucked a five-pound note into the little girl’s hand. “Off you go,” she added, raising an eyebrow to brook
no argument. “I think I saw a lemon drizzle one there earlier, but you’ll have to be quick.”
Imogen watched them with longing. They looked so comfortably as if they belonged. Even the dog had an air of confidence. That
would have been her with Nigel if things had gone as planned, she thought wistfully, wondering if she and her baby would ever
feel as at home in Middlemass as this woman clearly did.
Wandering around the stalls, she gave the villagers the “jolly good look” at her Winifred had said they wanted. She was very
aware of her shiny nose and the tight T-shirt stretched over her bump.
“I think you’ll find that’s a size eight,” said a lady at the secondhand clothes stall to Muriel, who—with her round face
glowing red in the heat—was examining a skimpy slip dress.
“Oh, good,” Mrs. Pinkerton replied before adding to a pursed-mouthed woman behind her, “It’ll fit my niece Stella a treat,
then. There’s nothing of her, you know.”
“It’ll certainly cover ‘nothing of her,’ that’s for sure. Why young girls go around with hardly a stitch on them nowadays is a mystery to me,” she replied sourly, apparently irritated that her love idol had been hustled away from her so abruptly.
Imogen wandered on past a stall selling plants she couldn’t begin to identify. The initial buying frenzy over, it was already
nearly as empty as the cake stall, with only an elderly man she knew by sight chatting to Muriel’s husband, who was obviously
in charge. They stood at right angles to each other, both staring—eyes narrowed—into the middle distance, hands in pockets
rattling change. Occasionally one would allow a brief comment to escape the corner of his mouth and the other would nod economically
in response. Thankfully being ignored beyond the initial ’ow do? and cap-touching, Imogen carried on.
Feeling compelled to buy something, she stopped at a stall selling jams and chutneys, most of them with handwritten labels
and frilly gingham caps. She was dithering between gooseberry jam and a delicious-looking chunk of honeycomb crammed into
a jar, when someone tapped her on the shoulder, making her jump.
“Check out that gorgeous hunk,” said Sally.
“It does look rather irresistible, doesn’t it?” Imogen replied. But Sally wasn’t looking at the honeycomb.
Turning to follow Sally’s gaze, Imogen sighed. “You need to raise your standards, woman. Since I got here I’ve not seen—bloody
hell, you don’t mean him!” she exclaimed, as she realized her friend was very obviously and indiscreetly pointing at Gabriel.
Oblivious to their examination of him, he was loping moodily toward them wearing grubby cream cricket flannels, an open-necked shirt, and about three days’ worth of beard. He looked hungover, exhausted, bad-tempered, and stomach-meltingly desirable.
“Who else?” sighed Sally appreciatively.
“Well, he’s a grumpy, oafish yob for a start,” said Imogen. Who kisses women, takes the piss, and then makes as if it never
happened, she added to herself.
“Ah, a Mr. Rochester sort of character,” said Sally understandingly. “All injured machismo and charisma. Yum. What does he
do anyway?”
“Some sort of caretaker at Middlemass Hall.”
“Ooh, good with his hands too, eh?”
“It’s more managerial from what I can gather,” Imogen said crushingly. “And he laughs at me,” she added, feeling disloyal
at not mentioning his kindness offering the driving lessons.
“So important to find a man with a sense of humor.”
“And he nearly killed me once,” said Imogen, remembering the tractor.
“Gosh, how exciting! I wish he’d nearly kill me,” Sally purred, giving him a come-hither look. But she was too late. Just
then, an excessively glossy and manicured-looking woman in a floaty dress came up to him and put her hand on his arm. He stopped,
seemingly reluctantly, and turned to her. She was chatting animatedly, a girlish laugh ringing out again and again as she
repeatedly tossed her hair back before looking coquettishly at him from beneath a shiny blond fringe.
“And what do you reckon to her , then?” Sally added, nudging Imogen painfully in the ribs.
“I reckon she’ll give herself whiplash if she keeps doing that flicky thing with her hair,” said Imogen sourly, only slightly
reassured that Gabriel appeared to all but ignore her, whoever she was.
Suddenly exhausted, Imogen snuck back into the house. Ten minutes later, she was curled up in the Lloyd Loom chair in the
corner of the kitchen with a big mug of tea. Half hidden by the range, she escaped the notice of the ladies doing the teas
as they bustled into the kitchen with stacks of dirty cups and saucers en route to the sink.
“What on earth possessed Mrs. Rudge to offer up her Victoria sponge for the teas I will never know. In my book, you’ve either
got a way with sponge cake or you haven’t,” said one of the women.
“She’d have been better off doing flapjacks, same as last year, Joan,” Muriel added. They both nodded in smug agreement.
“This sink could do with a spot of bleach,” Joan went on.
“You’d never have seen stains like this when you were doing for her ladyship,” said Muriel, rolling up her sleeves.
“No, you wouldn’t,” agreed Joan. “There’s plenty has changed since she died, that’s for sure,” she added. “Who would have
thought there’d be a young single woman living in a big family house like this, for a start?”
“Well, them career girls with their money can do everything they like, can’t they? And I do mean everything . There’s the house and the car, and you’ve not failed to notice there’s a little stranger on the way, if you please—all that, and not a husband in sight!”
“And,” continued Joan, working up to her pièce de résistance, “what I want to know is, how exactly has she earned the money
for it all?”
“She’s no better than she ought to be,” concurred Muriel sanctimoniously, pursing her lips. “You needn’t think it’ll take
long before she spots Lord Havenbury and makes a play for him, you mark my words.”
“She’ll have a hard job,” replied Joan. “I hear that toffee-nosed girl from the conference center company has him in her sights
already, and she looks like a one who gets what she wants.”
“In my opinion,” said Muriel weightily, “she’s a brazen hussy—that’s what!” not bothering to clarify if she was referring
to the conference center girl or Imogen. Both probably.
Imogen used the noise of clattering cups and water splashing into the sink to sneak out of the open kitchen door. Head down,
she crashed into a male chest clad in a striped shirt.
“My newest patient. How nice!” exclaimed a voice as, mumbling an apology, she stepped back to see her dishy doctor, Simon.
“How are you?” he said, noticing Imogen’s flushed face.
“No better than I ought to be, apparently,” said Imogen.
Catching sight of Muriel and Joan through the kitchen door, he quickly summed up the situation. “Really? How exciting!” he
said with a wolfish grin.
She smiled back ruefully.
The moment was broken by a pretty young woman running up and grabbing Simon’s arm.
“There’s no escape, darling,” she said, tugging at him. “I’ve promised you in the stocks for the wet sponges, and the mob
are accepting no excuses.”
“This is Genny,” he said to Imogen, as she tried to tug him away, “my chief torturer and fiancée. You’d think she’d plead
for clemency on my behalf, wouldn’t you?”
“Certainly not,” Genny said, acknowledging Imogen with a smile. “My class still remembers their last lot of inoculations from
Dr. Simon here, and they’re not prepared to forgive and forget.”
“Genny’s a teacher at the primary school,” explained Simon. “If there’s bedlam in the playground, you’ll generally find her
in the thick of it. Crowd control isn’t in it. It’s more like incitement to riot if this one’s on duty.”
He grabbed her fondly around the waist, and Imogen had to admit, they made a lovely couple, both blond and blue-eyed, Simon
classically handsome, and Genny like a nymph—with her delicate, makeup-free face. Artlessly elegant, she was barefoot, with
faded jeans and a loose denim shirt that complemented her pale, clear eyes.
“Simon mentioned you’d just moved into the village,” said Genny easily to Imogen. “You should come for supper soon.”
“I’d love to.”
“Good! How about the end of next week?”
Arrangements discussed and confirmed, Genny and Simon shot Imogen matching wide grins and sauntered arm in arm to the orchard, where the children were noisily playing some organized games. A little bit disappointed to discover that Simon was taken—and by a woman she had no chance of living up to—Imogen wandered after them. She came across the still-grumpy-looking Gabriel on the little bridge over the stream. As she was already on the narrow path, there was nowhere to escape, and he had seen her. In fact, with the black cloud over Middlemass Hall visible behind him and his glowering expression, he looked like the wrath of God standing squarely in Imogen’s way. Right on cue, the first clap of thunder crashed and then rumbled lengthily through the heavy air.
“ There you are,” he said accusingly, rather as if Imogen had been avoiding him, which she might have been, she had to admit.
“Gosh, so I am,” she exclaimed, looking down at herself and pretending to be amazed. “I thought to myself, ‘You know what?
I haven’t seen myself for ages. I wonder where I’ve got to.’?”
“Does your friend always behave like that?” he said, cutting across her witterings and jerking a thumb over his shoulder.
“That is, assuming you’re prepared to admit she is a friend of yours?”
Imogen followed his indication.
Sally—her feet bare and her skirt tucked into her knickers—was whooping with excitement as she whacked the rounders ball into
orbit and then launched herself toward the first base with half the children pounding after the ball and the other half screaming
their support.
“Actually, no,” said Imogen, meeting his gaze, which had nothing of the melting warmth she had seen in his eyes before. “Most of the time she’s really quite grown-up. However, as a well-balanced person, and as a mother, she is occasionally capable of letting her hair down to play with children on their own terms—unlike you, apparently.”
“Apparently so,” he echoed. Still, he barred her way, staring intently at her.
“Is there something the matter?” she said at last, noticing a tiny quiver in her voice and hoping he hadn’t.
“Yes,” he replied.
There was another silence.
“Is it because I’m a rubbish kisser?” she blurted.
He made a sound that might have been a laugh. “No,” he said.
Imogen saw his eyes drop to her mouth, and her stomach flipped with longing. They were so close, nearly touching on the narrow
bridge, she imagined she could feel the heat from his body. “Well, what is it, then?” she persisted, flushing under his gaze.
“Nothing for you to worry about,” he replied, wrenching his eyes from her face at last. “I...” he hesitated, clearly deciding
how much to tell her. “I’ll sort it,” he concluded, moving out of her way so she could pass.
She noticed, confused, that he pressed himself against the handrail of the bridge so there was no chance of their touching.
She thought she felt his eyes boring into her back, but when she looked back, a few seconds later, he had gone.
Watching the game, Imogen felt a heavy drop of rain plop onto her bare arm. Another splashed on her cheek and then a brilliant flash of lightning rent the purple-black clouds apart. The crash of thunder that followed hard behind coincided exactly with a sudden and violent deluge that sent the remaining stall-holders scuttling to the house.