That Man Simon Read online

  ‘Some other time, then. I shall be over here a good deal in the next few months.’ His grey eyes glinted derisively. ‘I expect we shall see a lot of each other.’

  ‘You’re going to build a house here for yourself?’

  ‘Yes, starting next month. I hope by late August to be living here. The village seems a pleasant little place, and now that they’ve improved the road into town it shouldn’t take long to get to my office and back.’

  Suddenly Jenny realized just how much difference it would make to have another house built close by.

  Standing some way out of the village, and flanked on one side by the churchyard and on the other by sloping water-meadows, the Rectory had always enjoyed complete privacy. But now they would be overlooked, their peaceful seclusion spoiled.

  ‘Where are you going to put the house?’ she asked him.

  ‘Down there on the open ground.’ He indicated a position which would mean that it would be directly in line with her bedroom window.

  ‘I see. Well, I’d better be going. Good-bye, Mr. Gilchrist.’

  ‘You don’t have to run away,’ he said, as she moved. ‘I don’t mind you coming in here while the place is running wild. If you don’t pick the flowers, I imagine children will.’

  ‘Thank you, but I wouldn’t dream of coming now that the ground is going to be used,’ she told him stiffly.

  ‘You know, Miss Shannon, I think it was a pity I came to your aid the other day.’ His face was expressionless, but she was almost sure he was laughing at her inwardly.

  ‘How do you mean?’ she asked guardedly.

  ‘I fancy I rather deflated your amour propre - not a very auspicious beginning to a neighbourly relationship.’

  ‘Not at all. I was grateful for your help.’

  ‘Hm ... I wonder? Women are usually sensitive about their driving prowess.’

  ‘I don’t see why they should be,’ she answered coolly. ‘I believe statistics show that women are generally safer drivers than men.’

  His mouth quirked at one corner. ‘Statistics can be made to prove almost anything. The trouble with women at the wheel is that they get rattled too easily.’

  ‘Probably because there’s always some lordly male driver honking them on from behind,’ Jenny countered crisply. ‘I must go now. Good-bye, Mr. Gilchrist.’

  A few minutes after she had returned to the house and put the primroses in water, the front door bell rang.

  The caller was Fenella Waring. She was wearing a scarlet dress with a white leather jacket slung over her shoulders.

  Her toy poodle, Pascal, was sitting at her feet on the end of a scarlet leash.

  ‘Hello, Jenny, may I come in for half an hour?’ she asked smilingly.

  ‘Yes, do. How are you? I heard you were back.’

  ‘Oh, so-so. Rather limp after a hectic winter. I’m taking a week or two off before my next engagement.’ She followed Jenny to the sitting-room.

  The two girls had attended the same school, but Fenella had left when Jenny was still in the fourth form. She was twenty-four, and was an actress. Her parents – her father was a bank manager in the town - spoke as if she were a second Sarah Bernhardt. But actually Fenella’s theatrical career had been confined to one or two small parts in provincial runs, some equally small parts on television and one three-minute appearance (as a harem girl) in a rather bad film.

  ‘There’s a gorgeous silver Jag parked down the road. I wonder who it belongs to?’ she said, letting Pascal off his leash, and arranging herself gracefully on the sofa.

  ‘To the man who’s bought our land,’ Jenny told her.

  Fenella lit a cigarette. ‘Have you met him? What’s he like?’

  ‘I don’t like him. You might. He’s quite good-looking, I suppose.’ Jenny changed the subject by asking Fenella how her mother was.

  Presently she made coffee, and the older girl chattered about her hectic life in London, and the fashionable restaurants and night-clubs where her many admirers wined and dined her.

  ‘What about you?’ she asked eventually, having talked about herself non-stop for nearly an hour. ‘I suppose you’re still at the kindergarten, and going about with James Langdon?’

  Jenny nodded. She knew Fenella thought her life was incredibly dull, but she had a suspicion that the other girl did not lead quite as gay a life as she made out. She was a paragon of glamour by Farthing Green standards; but London was full of lovely girls.

  ‘No ring yet, I see. When are you and James going to make it official?’ Fenella asked. ‘One assumes you will get married eventually?’

  ‘I don’t know. James hasn’t asked me,’ Jenny said evasively. Her relationship with James was not something she wanted to discuss.

  ‘Why on earth doesn’t he have something done about his face? People in the theatre are always having their noses bobbed or their bosoms lifted. I’m sure a good plastic surgeon could get rid of that scar of his.’

  ‘Skin-grafting takes time. James can’t spare any. People need him, especially his mother. You know how delicate she is. They were going to deal with the scar when he was in hospital after the accident. But just as his other injuries were mending his father died. James insisted on coming back to take over the practice.’

  ‘Don’t you mind his face being like that?’ Fenella asked curiously.

  Jenny’s lips compressed, and she shook her head.

  Fenella shrugged. ‘Oh, well, love is blind, so they say.

  And you have always hero-worshipped him, haven’t you?

  Very different from me. I like variety. Sooner or later I get bored with people.’ She took out her compact and began to scrutinize her make-up.

  Most of the older people in the village did not approve of Fenella. But although Jenny herself was not wholly in sympathy with her, there were moments when she could not help envying the older girl’s flamboyant looks and unfaltering self-confidence. She would never have been thrown into confusion by a man like Simon Gilchrist. If he had tried to unnerve Fenella, she would have given him a limpid stare with her large and deceptively soft dark eyes, and then purred an audacious riposte and left him standing.

  But, watching her as she retouched her lips, Jenny knew that she could never emulate Fenella’s sophistication. Slinky dresses and skilfully applied false eyelashes were not her style.

  When Mrs. Shannon came home, Fenella left. People like the Rector and his wife were among those who bored her.

  ‘I expect I do, too - but she likes showing off to me,’

  Jenny thought dryly. She was well aware that Fenella would not have come to see her if she had not been at a loose end.

  ‘That girl smokes far too heavily,’ Mrs. Shannon said disapprovingly, tipping lipstick-stained stubs into the waste basket. ‘She’s getting a very hard look about her. It will be a good thing when she gives up this acting nonsense. I’m sure she has no talent beyond her looks, and they won’t last for ever. It was a great pity the Warings allowed her to go to London. She would have been much better off married to that nice Barton boy whom she treated so badly.’

  ‘What if I had wanted to go to London? Would you have let me, Granny?’

  ‘You’re quite different from Fenella, dear.’

  Jenny grinned. ‘Don’t I know it!’

  ‘I didn’t mean in looks - though you certainly have no need to compare yourself unfavourably with her. You’re very like your mother, and she was a lovely creature,’ said Mrs. Shannon. ‘No, I meant in temperament. You have character, Jenny. Fenella has not. She thinks only of her looks and of having a good time with young men.’

  At this point the Rector returned, and Jenny told them about meeting Simon Gilchrist.

  ‘I don’t like him a bit,’ she said, frowning. ‘I wish we had never sold the land, Grandpa. It will be horrid having another house right on top of us, and being overlooked all the time.’

  ‘Aren’t you judging him rather hastily, my dear?’ her grandfather suggested, in his mild way. ‘Yo
u say you only spoke to him for a few minutes.’

  ‘You wait until you meet him,’ Jenny said obstinately.

  ‘I’m sure you won’t like him either. He’s not our sort of person at all.’

  Next morning, on the bus to town, Jenny sat next to Mrs.

  Crabbe, whose husband was the licensee of The Jolly Maltsters.

  ‘I hear you’ll soon be having neighbours, Miss Shannon,’

  she said, when they had paid their fares.

  Jenny nodded. ‘Yes, so I believe.’

  ‘Funny sort of house to put up right next to the Rectory.

  I’m surprised it’s allowed really.’

  ‘What do you mean, Mrs. Crabbe? How do you know what kind of house it will be?’

  ‘My nephew Ron works in the County Council planning department, you know. He and Gwen were over on Sunday, and he told us all about it. Well, he knew we’d be interested, naturally,’ the publican’s wife explained.

  ‘Ron thought the plans wouldn’t be passed,’ she went on, in a confidential tone. ‘But it seems this Mr. Gilchrist has pull. Ron says he’s won a lot of awards and made quite a name for himself. Modern stuff, you know. Personally I don’t care for all these futuristic ideas. There was a piece on the telly the other night and some of the pictures they showed were no better than a kid of four could do.

  Abstracts, the man said they were. Rubbish, if you want my opinion. Still, it’s all a matter of taste, I suppose. But I wouldn’t want them in my lounge.’

  ‘Yes, but the house, Mrs. Crabbe,’ Jenny prompted.

  ‘What did your nephew say about it?’

  ‘Well, it sounds most peculiar to me, dear - not like a proper house at all. And quite out of keeping with your place. I’m sure the Rector won’t approve. But perhaps I’m old-fashioned in some ways. I don’t like a flat roof, myself.’

  ‘So it’s going to be very modern?’ Jenny said, with mounting dismay.

  ‘Oh, the last word, so Ron says. Flat roof ... glass walls ...

  central heating. It will cost a pretty penny.’

  When Jenny reached home at five o’clock, she found that work on the building site had already begun. Twenty feet of hedge had been torn down and the gap was criss-crossed with the tracks of heavy lorries. Where, last spring, daffodils bloomed, great stacks of bricks had been unloaded.

  And where the grass had grown tall over the croquet lawn, there was now a gaping crater of tumbled soil.

  For some minutes Jenny stood watching the yellow excavator as it rumbled back and forth with loads of earth.

  And it filled her with anger and pain to think of the aconites and tiny wild violets which would never grow there again, and of the birds which would nest somewhere else, frightened away by the sudden noisy disturbance of their former peaceful sanctuary.

  By the time she reached the Rectory, she was almost in tears.

  ‘Oh, Granny, have you seen? It’s being ruined!’ she exclaimed in despair.

  ‘It is sad to see it change,’ Mrs. Shannon agreed, with a sigh. ‘I remember how lovely it used to look when your grandfather and I first came here. We had a gardener in those days, of course. Ben Culling ... such a nice old man.

  You wouldn’t remember him, Jenny. He used to roll the big lawn until it was as smooth as velvet. He took such pride in it.’

  ‘We should never have let it be sold,’ Jenny said bitterly.

  ‘It would have been better to let it go wild. Mrs. Crabbe told me this morning that the new house is going to be some frightful ultra-modern monstrosity. Grandpa will hate it. He was dreadfully upset when those new people took over the grocery shop and pulled out the old bow window and put in a huge plate glass one. He said it ruined the whole facade.’

  ‘Well, I suppose he was right, but it does give them room for a much better window display,’ Mrs. Shannon pointed out practically. ‘And I don’t think many people ever really studied the facade. Most of them probably never gave it a second glance. Times change, dear. We can’t stop progress.’

  ‘I don’t see anything progressive about having a hideous eyesore stuck right under our noses,’ Jenny said miserably.

  ‘I don’t care about progress. I want things to stay as they are.’

  ‘It may not be as bad as you think. We may quite like it when it’s finished,’ her grandmother suggested gently.

  But she understood Jenny’s passionate resistance to change. Anyone whose life had once been so cruelly disrupted was bound to resent further unsettlements.

  Jenny might not be consciously aware of it, but the disturbance now in progress across the fence probably called up memories of that terrible day twelve years ago, Mrs. Shannon thought with a pang.

  She herself had never quite got over the tragic loss of her son and his lovely young wife - both killed in a motor accident a week before Christmas. And Jenny’s whole world had been shattered. It was not surprising that she clung to all things familiar.

  On Thursday evening, after they had been to the cinema and were having supper at the Lanchow Restaurant, Jenny discussed the matter with James. ‘You have got a down on the poor bloke,’ he said teasingly, after listening to a vehement disapprobation of Simon Gilchrist.

  ‘It isn’t funny, James. You wouldn’t like it if it was happening next door to you,’ she countered indignantly.

  ‘No, I agree the place does look a mess. But it won’t be in a chaos for ever. It’s bound to be like a battlefield while they’re laying the drains and putting in the foundations.’

  ‘Thank you.’ Jenny smiled at the Chinese waiter who had just set a bowl of sharks fin soup in front of her. ‘Oh, well, it’s no use carping about it,’ she said gloomily. ‘But it’s going to ruin the spring for us, what with cement mixers rumbling and the workmen bawling out pop songs. There’s one youth who obviously thinks he’s the next best thing to the Beatles.’

  ‘Does he whistle at you? I wouldn’t blame him. I like that thing at the back,’ said James, referring to the stiff black Tom Jones bow which she had stitched to a comb and perched on the back of her head.

  Tonight she was wearing a new dress, a very plain princess style of matt tobacco-coloured crepe. It had taken her hours of patient work to cover the tiny buttons which fastened the long tight sleeves, but now she had the satisfaction of knowing that for the price of four yards of material she had a dress which looked like a model.

  ‘I wish I could take you to dances,’ James said suddenly.

  Although his limp was very slight and did not prevent him from wildfowling on the marshes on bitter winter mornings, and sometimes driving in motor club rallies, he seemed to feel it precluded him from dancing.

  ‘Oh, you know I’m not mad about dancing,’ Jenny said lightly. ‘Anyway, it will soon be swimming weather again.’

  On the way home, James fell silent. Jenny thought he was probably tired. He had spent most of the previous night attending a difficult foaling at Mallow Farm.

  The Rectory was in darkness when they reached it, as her grandparents were always in bed by half past ten.

  ‘Thank you, James. It was a delicious supper,’ Jenny said, as he helped her out of the car.

  He followed her to the porch and shone his torch on the latch while she unlocked the door with her key. Then as she switched on the hall light and turned to say good night, he caught her in his arms and kissed her.

  Although they had been going about together for nearly two years, he had never kissed her before. Nor had anyone else. Sometimes Jenny wondered if she was the only girl of her age who had never been kissed.

  But she was being kissed now and, after a few seconds of surprise, she found it a very pleasant sensation. James held her tight against him, and she could feel his heart pounding, but his lips were gentle. She closed her eyes, and slid her arms round his neck.

  When they drew apart, Jenny’s heart was thumping too.

  ‘Good night,’ James said huskily.

  And before she could catch her breath to answer, h
e was back in the car.

  Up in her bedroom, she switched on the lamp on the dressing-table and took off her dress and hung it in the wardrobe. Then she sat down in front of the looking glass, half expecting to find her reflection subtly altered. A slight frown wrinkled her forehead. She could not understand why, having at long last kissed her, James had then rushed off like that. Had he regretted his impulse? Should she not have responded so readily? Would he have preferred her to be a little coy?

  ‘But it isn’t as if it was our first date,’ she thought perplexedly. ‘We’ve known each other practically all our lives. Everyone else thinks we’ve been on kissing terms for ages. Most of them assume we’re unofficially engaged. I never go out with anyone else, and James has no other girl-friends.’

  Beside her trinket box, there was a photograph of her parents with Jenny, a fat goggle-eyed baby, lolling on her mother’s lap.

  Her grandmother always said she was like her mother.

  But it was not strictly true, unfortunately. Catherine Shannon’s eyes had been green. Jenny’s were a commonplace hazel. Catherine’s blonde hair had been curly. Jenny had inherited the colour, but not the soft natural curl. Her own hair was so fine and flyaway that even the lightest of perms made it frizz. She wore it in a thick straight bob, with a fringe brushed across her forehead.

  Although she had been only eight when their death had left her an orphan with no one but her grandparents to look after her, Jenny retained vivid memories of her parents’

  happiness together. Her grandmother had often told her the story of how they had met, fallen in love and married in the space of three whirlwind months. In her early teens, Jenny had confidently expected the same exciting romance to happen to her one day.

  Then, as she grew up, her life had formed a placid predictable pattern, with James the only man in it; and, gradually, she had ceased to daydream of a cataclysmic grand passion, and had come to accept that such things hardly ever happened, and then not to girls like herself.