Abbot's Halt

4

Abbot’s Halt

    Ted Prosser leaned heavily on the counter of the Abbot’s Halt Superette, eating a jelly-baby snake that he hadn’t paid for. “Who was that in the Toyota earlier? Trippers?”

    “No! And get off the check-out!” snapped Miriam Green, the proprietor.

    It wasn’t, it was the old counter of the old village shop, that had been modernized back around the Seventies. Well, made self-serve and painted a hideous shade of glowing orange with the free-standing shelves bright blue, both colours long since vanished under layers of second and third thoughts. With the additional expense of one of those round mirrors that were supposed to stop the likes of Bobby and Ted Prosser from nicking stuff down the back. All in all it must have cost the then proprietor, one Mr Lincoln, no relation to the famous American one as far as was known, a packet, none of which he had ever recuperated as such, though naturally all his prices had regularly gone up over the years. But the point was, the village and surrounding tiny district, regardless of what the village shop called itself and how it arranged its goods, only needed X number of items, not X plus one. However, Mr Lincoln had done all right and long since retired to Leamington Spa, God knew why there, with his ill-gotten gains. Miriam had optimistically given it yet another paint job and installed a brand-new automated cash register—just as well, because, as the village had soon discovered, she couldn’t do mental arithmetic—but, as the village had known would be the case, she had never been able to afford a modern video camera to spy on the likes of Brad White, Sean Biggs, and little Harry Jackson nicking stuff down the back. It was this new cash register which apparently entitled her to call the counter the check-out.

    “Counter,” corrected Ted laconically, chewing.

    “Check-out,” replied Miriam evilly, “and stop stealing those snakes!”

    “Taste like jelly babies,” he noted thoughtfully, chewing.

    Glaring, Miriam grabbed the small cardboard box containing these offerings and shoved it under the counter. Ted looked thoughtfully at the Mars Bars.

    “If you dare to lay a finger on them, I’ll—”

    “Do what? Call the cops?” he drawled.

    Miriam glared. The village of Abbot’s Halt did not have a police station. It did have a police house, but it was now a trendy renovated cottage with a real cottage garden, the property of a Miss Waller, a lady commercial artist from London who only ever used it for dirty weekends with a never-ending succession of boyfriends, also from the Big Smoke. There was a police presence, of sorts, in the next and much larger village, Chipping Ditter, but only because it was completely full of trendies and renovators, two not necessarily distinct groups, and they’d kicked up such a stink that the cops had had to do something about it. An attended police van every Tuesday afternoon—the crime rate had never been observedly higher in Chipping Ditter on Tuesday afternoons, but nevertheless—and regular patrols. Sort of regular. Depending how long they’d spent stuffing their faces on junk food over to Dittersford, which had an excellent pizza parlour and a not-bad Indian takeaway. The drive from Ditterminster, which was where they were based, took twenty minutes, or rather more if you weren’t a cop and were keeping to the speed limit and watching out for potholes, so response time was not what you might call speedy.

    “Anyway, wasn’t it trippers?” said Ted pacifically.

    Miriam burst into speech. “That man and lady again” was the gist of it, but she gave him more than the gist. Lovely hotel like the Boddiford Hall Park Royal, one of those really smart business suits, bringing trade to the village, it had given her quite a start but it must just have been a trick of the light, betting she had her hair done in London, and jobs for the locals were all in there. Served him right for asking, really.

    “Who does Chipping Abbas belong to now, anyway?” she asked.

    Ted blinked. He and Miriam were the same generation: now both in their forties. Miriam’s family had moved away from Abbot’s Halt when she was ten, desperately seeking work, of which it had seemed, back in the still-just-swinging early Seventies, that there might actually be some in England’s green and pleasant land. Well, more likely amongst the dark satanic mills of London, where her dad had actually been able to go off the dole for a bit. “Col Tarlington, last I heard.”

    “No, he’s dead. It was in the local paper—don’t you read it?”

    “No. Well, I don’t suppose that’ll make any difference, he hadn’t been near the place for years.”

    “No: I haven’t even heard his name mentioned. Remember his green car?”

    “Green Lotus Élan,” said Ted, grinning. “Hard to forget. Got it for his twenty-first: must’ve been before his grandfather got completely fed up with him. Think he was living in Florida, wasn’t he? Married a rich American widow at least twenty years older than him.” He shrugged. “The sort that always falls on their feet.”

    Miriam frowned. “Next thing this rich American lady’ll grab Chipping Abbas and we won’t get a lovely hotel after all!”

    Ted swallowed a sigh. “Not if there’s an entail, she won’t, it’ll go to the next male heir.”

    “There aren’t any, are there? I mean, if the wife’s seventy-odd?”

    “Second wife. Not that he had a son by the first, either.” She just looked blank so he added: “Don’t tell me no-one’s told you he married Marilyn Perkins!”

    “Married her?” she gasped. “One of our Perkinses?”

    “Yeah. Nine days’ wonder, it was. It’d’ve been back in, um, 1973? –When was Watergate, again?” he asked himself. “Um—dunno. Anyway, it was round about then, because Mum and Dad were watching something about Nixon on the telly when Laura rushed in with the news that Col was engaged to Marilyn and Dad shouted at the pair of them to shut up, he was watching it.”

    “I see,” said Miriam on a weak note. The Mr Prosser she remembered had never been interested in anything but train-spotting over to Ditterminster, but maybe he had followed the news.

    “I remember sitting behind Marilyn Perkins on the school bus,” said Ted with a deep sigh. “There were five of those girls—remember? All long since left the village, of course. Think the three oldest ones went to Canada. Marilyn and Dee-Dee both had these long yellow curls—thick. Marilyn wore hers in a big fat plait back in those days…”

    Miriam could also remember Marilyn Perkins. “Yes. So Col Tarlington actually married her?”

    “Yeah. By that time she was wearing the hair in a sort of huge cloud with a rolled-up silk scarf round her forehead: Red Indian style, y’know?”

    Miriam looked dry. “If you say so.”

    “Mm. Love beads, all the gear—flares. Had one of those huge goat-skin coats, too: the fur inside, embroidered on the outside,” he said reminiscently. “Afghan, were they?”

    “Don’t ask me! And wouldn’t it be sheepskin, not goat?” said Miriam in spite of herself.

    “Don’t think so. Silky fur, sort of curled…” said Ted dreamily.

    Miriam took a deep breath and began tidying the display of tempting Mars Bars and other delights that according to received wisdom might be last-minute impulse buys by grocery shoppers but actually in Abbot’s Halt were much more likely to be carefully-considered-since-the-last-lot-of-pocket-money buys by the younger section of the population.

    Ted came to. “Anyway, Col Tarlington married Marilyn, though no-one’s been able to explain exactly why.”

    “Old Man Perkins’s fist?” suggested Miriam.

    “It was hard enough,” he conceded. “No, he never gave a toss what those girls got up to. Think it must’ve been true love, after all. She was pretty enough, God knows…”

    “Look, if you’re only gonna stand there mooning over the long-ago—”

    “Eh? No! I’m getting round to making a point. They had a baby, I remember that, though I wasn’t home all that much by then.”

    Miriam nodded: Ted had been a scholarship boy: very, very bright. He’d done brilliantly at Ditterminster School and gone on to university and a successful career in engineering. Why on earth he was now back in Abbot’s Halt was a mystery that even the most avid village Miss Marples, and there were a fair few of them, had been unable to solve. Well, a busted marriage, they did know that much. But as for why he was now working as an odd-job man… Had he been sick, perhaps? Had a scare thrown into him and opted for a life without stress? He didn’t look it, in fact he looked horribly fit and was known to walk for miles every morning, rain or shine, but perhaps that was it. Well, you couldn’t blame him for not wanting everyone to know his business. True, there’d been busybodies where the Greens had lived in London, too, but coming back to the village had been pretty much of a shock to Miriam’s system. Not that her life wasn’t an open book, but that didn’t necessarily mean she wanted that lot reading it!

    “What did old Mr Tarlington think of it, Ted? Was he wild?”

    “Think he was wild about the marriage, yes, though I can’t say I took much notice. He was definitely wild when she produced a girl instead of a son and heir, though, I can tell you that for certain-sure, because Mum was working up at Chipping Abbas by that time.”

    “So Chipping Abbas’ll come to the daughter!” concluded Miriam triumphantly.

    “What? No! It’ll go to the next male heir!”

    “I got that!” she said crossly. “But there aren’t any, so the daughter—”

    “Doubt it, Miriam. There aren’t any direct male heirs, no. But our Tarlingtons haven’t been here forever. –It only feels like it,” he murmured, rubbing his straight nose, that was very like both Col Tarlington’s nose and old Mr T.’s nose. Miriam didn’t get it, she just looked expectant. “Well, I dunno where they came from, I’ve never been interested enough to find out, but I do know that they’ve only been at Chipping Abbas for about two hundred years. There’s a portrait of the first one at the house,” he elaborated. “Aden Tarlington.”—Miriam looked blank.—“Over the mantelpiece in the main drawing-room. Very dark. High neckcloth. –No, all right.”

    “So it won’t come to the daughter,” she said sadly.

    “Uh—well, we don’t know for certain-sure it won’t, Miriam.”

    “I bet it won’t! Fred Perkins’s granddaughter?” she said with feeling. “No-one from Abbot’s Halt has ever had anything, and don’t tell me this is the 21st century, thanks!”

    All right, he wouldn’t. “No. But cheer up, maybe the heir will let it to these hotel people.” He should have left it at this but unfortunately he added with a shrug: “And they’ll turn it into something like that dump over to Chipping Ditter. Add a golf course, there’s certainly room for it: it’d do a roaring trade.”

    Miriam thought the Boddiford Hall Park Royal was lovely. It had a beautiful Solarium that did lovely teas. She occasionally went there on her early-closing day, it was a real treat. “It’s not a dump! And I thought you played golf?” There was certainly a bag of golf clubs in his cottage: June Biggs, who lived next-door to him, had informed the whole village of that.

    Ted shrugged again. “Used to. ’Tis reasonable exercise, if you don’t ride round the course on an electrified cart. But I can do without the crap that goes with it, not to say the types that play it and believe the crap.”

    Miriam had seen Tiger Woods on TV, he was lovely! She looked at him doubtfully. “What crap?”

    “Hugely overpriced gear, both to wear and to play with: crap, in other words. Once they’ve fixed the roof, turned the front hall into a sickeningly pastel entrance lobby and filled the bedrooms with fake four-posters I should say Chipping Abbas’ll do really well as a gathering-place for the types that believe buying overpriced crap is going to improve their golf game.”

    “What do you mean, fake four-posters?” replied Miriam feebly.

    Ted wrinkled that straight nose. “Pine, slathered in successive layers of mahogany-tinted stain and polyurethane. –Not made in the sixteenth century by the loving hands of artisans, Miriam.”

    “There’s no need to take that tone with me! I don’t buy fake four-posters! And what on earth makes you imagine they’ll have them at Chipping Abbas?”

    “Only the fact that Boddiford Hall’s full of them,” he drawled, taking a Mars Bar.

    After a moment Miriam said weakly: “Have you stayed there?”

    “Yeah. For a conference. In another life,” said Ted on a sour note, biting into the Mars Bar.

    “Those are very fattening, and you can pay me for it! All right, Mr Know-It-All, so you’ve stayed there. But how could you tell?”

    Ted raised his eyebrows. “Apart from the fact that mahogany-stained, polyurethaned pine bears no resemblance whatsoever to sixteenth-century oak?” He looked at Miriam’s red and scowling face. “Um, sorry. Well, actually, I got down on my hands and knees and peered under the thing. It was pine, all right.”

    “Trust you,” said Miriam feebly. She held out her hand for the dough.

    Grinning, Ted put the crumpled Mars Bar wrapper into it and strolled out, munching.

    Miriam leaned on her counter, sighing. “That’s my living, you twit,” she said under her breath. “Oh, well.”

    “The family’s come!” gasped the middle-aged June Biggs, some weeks after this incident.

    Ted eyed her drily. “Yours, mine, or old Tibbs’s, June?’

    The elderly Mr Tibbs lived opposite their cottages and as Ted very well knew had no family left, so June snapped: “Very funny!”

    “Well, whose?”

    “The Tarlingtons! Up to Chipping Abbas!” She paused. “Um, well, I dunno if they’re Tarlingtons no more, with Col Tarlington dead—but they’re the family!” she beamed.

    She was probably right, her gossip was usually right. Or completely wrong, of course. Take the rumours about the trendified cottage in Old Mill Lane: she’d almost had him believing that Harry Adamson was married to that blonde tart that had come down with him last summer. There was a different tart entirely with him this year but June hadn’t tried to convince anyone he was married to her, the village had given her enough stick over the last effort.

    “Have you seen them?” he ventured.

    She had, see, because she’d been in the Superette when they stopped off to buy a few things. Yeah? In that case they probably weren’t Tarlingtons, none of them had ever patronised the village shop even though it was a good word for what they would’ve done if—

    “I see, so there were a few of them?” he prompted, as she had paused in expectation of being prompted.

    Beaming, June burst into renewed speech. It was so circumstantial as to be almost convincing. Though as far as he could tell none of these summer visitors had said the house was theirs, they’d merely said they were staying there for the summer.

    “Mind you, that Miriam, she reckons they aren’t Tarlingtons and that man, he’s from a big hotel chain that wants to turn it into a posh hotel like the one over to Chipping Ditter, only I said to ’er, Are you blind? ’E’s the spitting image of that great big picture of the first Mr Tarlington up at the ’ouse!”

    Ted blinked, and touched his nose dubiously.

    “That’s right, Ted, love, ’e’s got it, too,” said June Biggs comfortably. “’Is brother ’asn’t, though. Washed-out looking feller, ’e is. Two cute little girls, though—and I tell yer what, they were dressed sensible, for a change!”

    June was in her sixties, so this might mean anything—but apparently the two little girls, about eight and nine, were in tee-shirts and jeans. That was sensible, all right. But a change from what? mused Ted, while June burbled on…

    “Eh?” he croaked.

    “Yes: one married sister and ’er husband. The two teenage boys were theirs.”

    “Let me get this straight, June,” said Ted, his eyes twinkling. “The new occupant of Chipping Abbas is a single gent, pretty flush in the pocket, and in want of a wife—”

    “I never said that! ’E ain’t got no lady with ’im, that’s all.”

    “Exactly; and he’s here with his married sister and brother-in-law? Was there a single sister?”

    “Eh? No, I said! A brother!”

    Ted collapsed in paroxysms. “He’ll do!”

    June glared. “It’s not funny!”

    Ted blew his nose and said feebly: “Sorry, June.”

    She sniffed. “That misplaced sense of ’umour of yours’ll get you into real trouble one day, Ted Prosser!”

    It already had. Well, got him divorced, at any rate. “Yeah. Well, let’s hope if they need help in the house they take on someone local and pay her London rates.”

    June sniffed. “Chance’d be a fine thing! They might want someone to do the lawns, though, Ted.” She fixed him with a bulging blue eye.

    “I haven’t got a combine harvester,” said Ted on a note of finality. In spite of this note this wasn’t the end of it, by any means, and June came in, made them both a cuppa, found the last of his biscuits and, sitting down cosily in the kitchen with him, proceeded to rehash the lot…

    “I have seen a Black girl with them before,” admitted Miriam.

    “Uh-huh,” agreed Ted, taking a packet of Smarties. “Ever thought of stocking decent cheese?”

    “Is this a joke?” she replied angrily, flushing.

    “No,” he said in surprise. “Why?”

    Miriam relaxed. “Sorry, Ted. That Harry Adamson, he asked for Brie cheese the other day. Evidently that poncy so-called Dry Goods Emporium over to Chipping Ditter has it. And, um, what was that other foreign one?” she asked herself.

    “Stilton?” said Ted faintly.

    “Um, no-o… Some foreign name. Well, never mind!” she said cheerfully. “I said to him, there’s no call for it here, but he went on and on, he didn’t seem to grasp that the wholesalers don’t stock fancy foreign cheese, I’d have to get it in specially, and that’d mean a whole new supplier and anyone that thinks that’s a bed of roses has never been in business for themselves, I can tell you! And then, the weeks that Mr Fancy-Pants Adamson wasn’t honouring the village with ’is presence—”

    “And his floozies,” he interrupted, grinning.

    “Right,” said Miriam evilly, “them as well, it’d go to waste!”

    It wouldn’t go to waste, because he’d buy it, and he had a fair idea that Mrs Everton’d buy it, and he knew Mr Whyte would, he’d seen him buying it in Chipping Ditter, and Ms Kent, if she wasn’t in the South of France— Forget it. Tolerantly he let Miriam tell him about the Black girl who’d come to stay in the old Perkins cottage in Old Mill Lane.

    “Quite a light brown. Beautiful features,” she said with a little sigh. “Not European features, at all, but very elegant.”

    “Bit like that model, then? Think she’s an American,” he said hazily. “Naomi something?”

    “No!” she scoffed. “Joanna’s more like… I know! ’Member that telly series with the fat man? He owned a restaurant!” she prompted, astounded that Ted hadn’t immediately twigged.

    “N—Oh! Yeah, I do, actually. It was a detective series, Miriam,” he said kindly.

    “I don’t think it was, was it?” said Miriam in surprise. “There was a Black lady in it. More like her.”

    Yeah, she’d been a policewoman. Ted didn’t say so, he merely nodded.

    “Paler, though: she was quite dark. But the same sort of look: rather a long neck and a really, really elegant profile.”

    “Uh-huh. Bit your Nefertite type, then?” said Ted, munching Smarties.

    “No!” she said crossly. “Not sharp features at all, you haven’t got the point, Ted!”

    All right, he hadn’t got the point. He paid for his milk, sliced wholemeal bread and the Smarties, and after Miriam had admitted she didn’t know if Joanna was staying for good or just for the holidays, but she was sure to be at the social, mooched off back to his cottage. He didn’t roll his eyes madly, but it was a real effort. Possibly, like Luther, he should nail his points to the church door, so that the whole village would grasp that One, he didn’t want a young lovely, be she Black, white or sky-blue-pink, that might be as much as twenty and thus young enough to be his daughter—well, yeah, he did, he wasn’t unnatural, but not on the basis they were envisaging; Two, he didn’t want another dose of matrimony at all; Three, he’d like to be left alone (while porcine forms circled in the ether—yeah); and Four, he did NOT want to go to the fucking village social!

    There was the slight impediment that Abbot’s Halt no longer had a church. The Church of England had long since abandoned it, leaving the locals to their natural ungodliness, and after what was left of its short and stumpy bell tower had fallen down, very many of its bits and pieces had meandered off. At one point a trendy architect who’d done a lot of restoration work over at Chipping Ditter had come over and considered turning it into something, but either the heap of grey stones hadn’t appealed or he got a look at the rest of Abbot’s Halt and realized that he’d never be able to find a buyer.

    No, well, possibly he could nail his points to the door of the so-called community hall instead? It was just about big enough to merit the name, but Abbot’s Halt did not have a community. It had two sets of inhabitants, the locals and the in-comers, and they didn’t mix. The hall was used by a combined sort of scouts-guides-brownies-cubs meeting once a week, there being all of ten members, some of whom sometimes turned up, by the branch of the W.I. started up by Mrs Everton when she first settled here, by the crafts group started up by Mrs Everton when she first settled here, and very intermittently by the elderly Mr Whyte for his film evenings. So long as it wasn’t pouring with rain and freezing cold he generally got quite a good turn-out for those, even though the films were very grainy and usually black and white: there was certainly nothing else to do in Abbot’s Halt of an evening except watch telly; there wasn’t even a pub. Last summer Harry Adamson had suggested one of those huge TV screens and a DVD player but unfortunately hadn’t offered to pay for them, so they hadn’t got them.

    The impediment to nailing anything to the door of the community hall was that it was as of this moment occupied by Ma Everton and her helpers, putting up bunting for the social. Wincing, Ted gave it a very, very wide berth. The thing was, if he didn’t go to the fucking thing he’d never hear the last of it. Of course, if he did go and danced with anybody of the opposite sex between the ages of sixteen and sixty he’d never hear the last of that, either. Hell.

    Hill was in a very bad mood. He was trying to hide this from his relatives, largely for the sake of Harriet’s boys and Allan’s two little girls, but he wasn’t succeeding all that well, in fact Harriet had already demanded what the matter was and told him to buck up. Allan hadn’t, he wasn’t like that, but he had asked if anything was wrong, to which Hill had graciously replied: “Don’t be a birk!”

    There was more than one reason for his mood. The first was the fact that he couldn’t sell bloody Chipping Abbas outright. The second was the arrival, after they’d been at Chipping Abbas two days, of their cousin on Ma’s side, Cynthia Moreton. Well, she was née Moreton: she’d been through two husbands since then. The last bust-up had been exceedingly acrimonious, the more so as Cynthia had been caught in flagrante. Possibly she had, as she had loudly claimed, been driven to it by Him, but whatever the facts of the case, the result was that he had got custody of the sole offspring, a thin, pale little boy who was a bed-wetter. Hardly surprising: having Cynthia for a mother would be enough to turn anyone into a nervous wreck. Paul was reputed to be doing much better since the break-up of the parental home and this summer was at his paternal grandparents’, fishing. Well, old Jack Brereton spent all his time fishing, so it was to be presumed the kid was doing it with him. There was one child from Cynthia’s first marriage: Clorinda. She was a scrawny, contumacious object of about thirteen who had called herself Nancy from the minute she was old enough to read the battered copy of Swallows and Amazons in the Tarlingtons’ old day nursery (tactfully renamed “the family room” by Hill’s ma when it became apparent that Cynthia’s daughter was going to be dumped on them for her hols rather often). Nancy was with her mother on this trip, though “with” was possibly not the word, and it was very fortunate that both J.B. and Joe, now fourteen and thirteen, had known her all their lives and were used to her. Allan’s little Fliss and Allie, who were only ten and eight, were simply in awe of her, so that was all right.

    Hill and Cynthia had never particularly liked each other but this, alas, hadn’t stopped either of them. Their affaire as such was long since over but this sort of minor factor never had stopped Cynthia. Lately Hill had begun to feel quite strongly that it was a deterrent in his case, however, and when Cynthia turned up uninvited at Chipping Abbas he felt it very strongly. In fact he asked himself dazedly how he could ever have wanted to do the bitch. He was tempted to send her packing, but there was little Nancy to consider. Not that Cynthia had ever given any indication of wanting her daughter’s company, but if he sent the mother off with a flea in her ear she’d undoubtedly take the kid, too, for spite, the more so if she realized that Nancy was thrilled to be here. Nevertheless he might have tried to do something about it, but Cynthia announced that she was about to take off for Corfu with James and Moira Duff-Ross and “darling Bobby Cunninghame.” Bobby was in his late fifties, had already run through four wives and, if admittedly rich as Croesus, was also about as mean as Scrooge. Hill knew the last three wives and all of them complained bitterly that they’d never got a red razzoo out of him, but if Cynthia thought she could snare him, good luck to her!

    “It’s only a hop, Hill,” said Harriet for the Nth time.

    “I don’t care if it’s a hop, a social, or a full-scale ball, I don’t want to go!” he snapped.

    “People will expect it,” said Harriet firmly. “Every time I go to the village shop someone tells me how pleased they are to have Tarlingtons back in the house again.”

    “Balls. The locals without exception loathed the family.”

    “Who told you that?” she snapped, reddening.

    “That chap that’s been scything the fields,” he said with a shrug. “Ted Something.”

    “The lawns,” she corrected, glaring. “Why do you have to be so—so obstinate about it all? We could have come by ourselves, if you didn’t want to!”

    Hill bit his lip. “I did want to. Um, well, didn’t expect bloody Cynthia to turn up, actually.”

    “Who did?” agreed Harriet with feeling. “The woman in the shop said that Ted Prosser—that’s his name—is a disillusioned man. I don’t think you can take his word as gospel.”

    There seemed to be about as much justification for doing so as for taking the shopkeeper’s word, but Hill sighed and said: “No, all right.”

    “And, um, feelings will be hurt if you don’t go,” said his sister in rather a small voice.

    “Harriet, this isn’t the nineteenth century, for God’s sake,” said Hill with a sigh.

    “I think it just about is, round here!” replied Harriet with a nervous giggle.

    He grimaced. “Yeah. Run down, isn’t it? Seen the remains of the church yet?”

    She nodded hard.

    “Mm. Um, I sort of have the feeling that we won’t be supporting any local cause if we do turn up, you know: we’ll only be supporting that woman that looks like a small, frightening parrot; but so be it.”

    Harriet giggled again. “Mrs Everton? A parakeet, I think! She is rather terrifying, yes!”

    “Very well, a terrifying parakeet,” said Hill with a reluctant grin. “I suppose it won’t kill me. But for the Lord’s sake don’t expect me to ask the parakeet to dance!”

    At this his sister gave an outright laugh. “I don’t think you’ll have to, Hilly! It’s ninety to one she’ll ask you!”

    The terrifying parakeet was glowing in purple and gold, she was frightfully, frightfully gracious to Hill and his party, only calling him “Sir Hilliard” in every other breath, and while admitting it was only a little hop for the locals—Hill avoided his sister’s eye—knew he’d love to meet one or two of the nicer people. Forthwith introducing him to a thin, gushing, befrilled Mrs Rushforth and a stout and desperate-looking Mr Rushforth who asked him he if played golf and then fell silent, to a plump, gushing, befrilled Mrs Whyte and a gaunt, desperate-looking Mr Whyte who asked him if he knew anything about 34 millimetre and on Hill’s assuming this must be ordnance, jerked out: “No! Film! Sorry!” and then fell silent, to the latter’s sister, Miss Whyte, a gaunt, gushing and desperately eager spinster who assured him it was so thrilling to see “the family” back in the old house, Sir Hilliard, and would he be restoring the topiary lawn? and to a ripe-looking, befrilled Mrs Heather, who blatantly gave him the eye and urged him to call her “Lambie”, all her friends did, and her poor, dear Charlie had said it suited her. After this it was almost a relief to accept Mrs Everton’s invitation to “show them the way” on the floor. Almost.

    … “There are more people here than I thought there might be,” said Harriet, collapsing onto her chair after a strenuous possible two-step with a stout man who’d admitted to being a retired butcher, name of Bob, but hadn’t revealed his surname.

    “Just as well, since some of ’em,” noted her husband, looking hard at the scowling Hill at the opposite side of their party’s small table, “aren’t dancing.”

    “Be fair, Will: he danced with that fat woman and she trod on his toe.” Harriet seized her glass and drank thirstily. “Ugh!”

    “Sorry; I refilled it with the so-called punch. It’s mainly orange dye, I think.”

    “Orange dye and so-called vodka that’s never been near a potato,” said Hill acidly.

    “All the more fun!” replied Will cheerfully. “For God’s sake, old man, buck up!”

    “Now tell me I’ll hurt people’s feelings,” he replied sourly.

    “Dunno that you will,” replied his brother-in-law drily. “Who’d want to dance with that scowl?”

    “Parakeets apart!” said Harriet with a loud giggle.

    “Um, yes,” replied Will on an uncertain note. His own glass also held the orange fluid; he picked it up and sniffed it cautiously.

    “Seventy percent so-called vodka,” drawled Hill.

    “Um—yeah, think it might be, actually,” he said sheepishly.

    “Disgusting,” said Cynthia acidly.

    “Well, alcoholic,” replied Will mildly.

    She gave him a look of dislike. “Who in God’s name was that man with the frightful gold medallion round his neck, Harriet?”

    “Bob,” replied Harriet succinctly. “A retired butcher. It’s real gold, he’s made his pile.”

    “Honestly! Why did we come?”

    “Noblesse oblige, according to her,” drawled Hill.

    “That isn’t nice, Hill,” warned his sister, going very red.

    “Then it’s in tune with the damned do,” he said acidly. “You realize Allan’s dancing with the only woman in the room who’s even passably good-looking?”

    There was a short silence. Allan was dancing with every appearance of eagerness, in fact had just danced the two-step and was now embarking on a cha-cha, with a very beautiful young Black girl. Well, more café au lait, strictly speaking, reflected Will, eyeing his relatives by marriage cautiously.

    After a moment Harriet said on a cross note: “That’s a gross exaggeration, Hill!”

    “Yeah,” agreed Will quickly. “Wouldn’t call it dancing at all, meself. Supposed to be a cha-cha, is it? Looks more like a cha-help-cha from where I’m sitting!”

    Nobody smiled and Cynthia in fact attempted to wither him with a look.

    “And there are several good-looking girls here, Hill, I don’t know what’s the matter with you!” said his sister on a desperate note. “Look, the girl in blue dancing with the blond young man—and the little dark girl that was with them, they’re both very pretty!”

    Hill looked at Harry Adamson’s blue-clad girlfriend and shrugged. “Dim bimbos.”

    “Drop it, Hill,” said his brother-in-law in a low voice.

    “Oh, pooh!” said Cynthia loudly. “He’s right, they’re a collection of badly dressed nobodies and village idiots! That little tart in the blue’s got fingernails like something off Rodeo Drive!”

    “Plastic,” said Harriet uneasily. “That girl’s only a kid; leave her alone, Cynthia.”

    “They’re all kids,” said Hill on a grim note. “Including Allan’s one.”

    Harriet licked her lips uneasily. “It’s just a dance, Hill.”

    “Thought you claimed it was only a hop?” Hill looked grimly at the expression on Allan’s face as he danced with the beautiful Black girl.

    Cynthia had followed his gaze. “I must say,” she said with a muffled snigger, “it’s just as well poor darling Uncle Jolly didn’t live to see the day! I haven’t seen Allan look at a woman like that since the days of the unlamented Iras!”

    “Shut up, Cynthia,” said Harriet grimly. “We don’t talk about her.”

    “Well, you wouldn’t, dear,” she cooed. “But look at him!”

    They were all looking by now in any case. “Shut up, Cynthia,” said Will grimly. “It’s nothing but a damned local hop. And at least the poor old fellow’s enjoying himself, for once!”

    “Have it your own way,” she said with a shrug. “But if it was my brother I’d nip it in the bud: do you want a second disaster? –Hill, darling, for God’s sake go and see if there’s anything drinkable at that apology for a bar!”

    Hill looked sour but replied: “Your wish is my command,” and sauntered off to the bar.

    In his wake there was silence. Cynthia looked unconcerned, Will looked grim, and Harriet looked very, very annoyed.

    Finally Cynthia said lightly: “Darlings, you must admit it was a disaster.”

    “We do admit it, and that’s why we don’t talk about it!” replied Harriet angrily.

    “Yeah; shut up,” advised Will. “Don’t say anything if you can’t say something pleasant. And if you imagine having a go at poor old Allan’s any way to get his brother on side, you’ve got another imagine or five thousand coming!”

    Cynthia raised her already unnaturally curved eyebrows. “Do you imagine he wants Allan to get mixed up on any sort of basis with a Black girl half his age from God knows what sort of background?”

    Before Will could speak a very angry voice snapped: “No! Because I bet he’s a flaming Pommy snob like the rest of you! And you can stop worrying, because when I tell Joanna what you said she won’t want to be mixed up with Sir Allan Tarlington or his flaming brother, so put that in your pipe and smoke it!”

    And their party goggled at a very flushed, well-rounded young woman in a smartly-cut black dinner dress topped by floods of shiny, curly brown hair.

    Finally Will said very weakly indeed: “I’m awfully sorry; we wouldn’t have said anything if we’d thought you could hear us.”

    She snorted. “You might not’ve! I bet she would’ve, though!”

    Rallying slightly, Will agreed: “Well, yeah, she’s like that, and we can only apologise for her. Um, ’tisn’t Sir Allan, actually, you’ve got them confused, it’s—”

    “I don’t wanna know!” she snapped. “You can all get choked!” And with that she walked off, very flushed, still.

    After quite some time Harriet managed to say: “I must say, that serves you right, Cynthia.”

    Cynthia merely shrugged.

    “She wasn’t bad-looking, either,” ventured Will. “Lovely hair.”

    “What?” said his wife dazedly. “Look, drop it, Will!”

    “I wasn’t— Um, well, she was right: we were all carrying on like a pack of Pommy snobs.”

    “Australian,” said Cynthia with immense distaste. She got up. “What the Hell’s happened to those drinks?”

    They watched in relief as she headed off to the bar.

    “Why in God’s name did she come?” muttered Will.

    Acidly his wife replied: “She came to get her hooks into Hill, are you blind?”

    “Oh. No,” he said dully.

    Silence fell at their table. Will eventually noticed that the cha-cha had ended and something else had started up and Cynthia had managed to drag Hill onto the floor for it, and that Allan was still dancing with the lovely Black girl, but he didn’t remark on any of these points.

    “Anyway,” said Harriet loudly and defiantly, “it’d probably do him good!”

    Will leapt ten feet where he sat. “What?” he croaked. “Who?”

    “Allan. A fling with that lovely Black girl.”

    Well, yeah, she wasn’t wrong, but— “Yeah,” he said limply, ignoring his boggling mind. “You’re right, love. It would.”

    Harriet beamed at him. “Shall we dance this one, Will?”

    Groggily Will staggered to his feet and allowed her to drag him into whatever-it-was. Possibly another two-step. He did one, anyway.

    Hill had several drinks and saw to it that Cynthia had several, waited until she embarked on a long, bitter account of James Quayle-Sturt’s inadequacies as a husband—she often did when she had a couple of stiff belts inside her; his or Peter Brereton’s—and escaped without having to dance with the cow again. He went and lurked in a quiet corner behind a clump of potted palms, nursing the remains of a whisky. Not that he was feeling abstemious, but if he went near the bar someone would be sure to corner him. The terrifying parakeet, probably. Or the fat man who was an ex-butcher and owned a restored 18th-century cottage and a Beamer, and didn’t think much of the golf course at the Boddiford Hall Park Royal. Or the thin man who owned a restored 17th-century cottage and was terrifically keen on roses and seemed to think he should know all about them, possibly on the score of the late rose garden at Chipping Abbas, though this hadn’t been particularly clear. Or the gaunt spinster who wanted him to restore Chipping Abbas’s topiary lawn. Or the ghastly, gushing Mrs “Lambie” Heather. She’d already nabbed him for one dance: a waltz, one of the most embarrassing experiences of his adult life. She had welded her over-generous person to his. God knew what the scent was, but she was soaked in it. It and every other sort of unguent or spray on the market, his dazed senses had gradually realized as she whirled him on the floor, the improbably black, improbably riotous curls rioting virtually up his nose. Needless to say every one of these personalities, and all the others to whom Mrs Everton had eagerly introduced him, were in-comers. Hill would quite have liked to meet some actual villagers. Assuming there were some present.

    The potted palms sheltered a side door which, in view of the warm night, the press of bodies and tea urns in the hall and the inadequate supply of windows, was open, and Hill was just meditating a tactical withdrawal— Too late.

    “There you are!” said his brother with a laugh. “What are you doing, lurking over here?”

    “Lurking. You met Lambie Heather yet?” he replied with a shudder.

    Allan laughed again. “She’s not so bad!”

    “She’s frightful,” said Hill coldly. “It may be the 21st century, but does that justify her trying to give me a knee-trembler in the middle of the bloody floor?”

    “Oh, rats! Thought you liked to dance close?”

    “Close! There was less than a millimetre between every inch of her front and every inch of mine!”

    “Never heard you object to that before,” said his brother drily. “And I have only known you all my life.”

    “Well, I’m objecting now! Added to which she must be fifty-five if she’s a day!”

    “I have known you not to object to that, either,” said his brother very drily indeed.

    “That was once!” he snapped.

    “Eh? More like three times a day for an entire two weeks!” said Allan with a laugh.

    “One occasion,” said Hill evilly.

    “Oh, was that what it was?” returned Allan in mild surprise, his shoulders shaking.

    “Oh, shut up. You’ve been hogging the only passable-looking woman in the room, anyway.”

    Allan looked over at Joanna Broadbent chatting nicely to the loquacious female from the village shop with a smile in his eyes. “Mm. Isn’t she lovely?” he murmured.

    Hill’s mouth tightened. “Who is she?”

    “Mm? Her name’s Joanna,” he said in a dreamy voice. “Joanna Broadbent.”

    “I dare say. Who is she, Allan?”

    “Mm? Well, I don’t know! Here on holiday. Um—actually I think she works with your lot. Starting a job over at Boddiford Hall after the hols.”

    “Doing what?” said Hill through his teeth. “Waitressing?”

    Allan stared at him. “No. Assistant under-manager, I think she said. But even if she was waitressing she’d still be an attractive girl with a lovely personality! What’s wrong with you?”

    “Nothing,” he said tiredly.

    “Then for goodness’ sake, make a bit of an effort to dance! There are some perfectly nice girls here. Have you met Joanna’s friend? Didn’t catch her name. Pleasant young woman: plumpish, beautiful long brown hair—very much your type, old chap!”

    Hill shrugged. “No. And I don’t know what gave you the idea that fat waitresses are my type.”

    Alan sighed. “Don’t be like that. –Hang on, there’s Mrs E., I’ll ask her to introduce you to someone!”

    Before Hill could stop him he’d darted out from behind their palms and grabbed the parakeet. She was only too thrilled to find him a partner. Glumly Hill went off to his fate…

    Hattie came inside slowly, scowling. It had given her quite a start, for a moment, overhearing Sir Allan—or not Sir, was he? Whatever, Allan Tarlington and the other man, who must be his brother. Just at first she’d been sure the other man was Hill, from that silly war-gaming course. But she was just being stupid: it wasn’t the first time she’d thought she’d heard his voice, by any means: it was just the upper-class English accent. And obviously he couldn’t be Allan Tarlington’s brother: his name was Hill! After a moment what they were actually saying, rather than the voice, had caught her attention and she had taken a deep and angry breath. The stuck-up Poms at the table had been bad enough, but the brother was even worse! So what if Joanna worked for her living? As for asking who she was, in that beastly superior upper-class voice—! Hattie had had a dance with Allan and had thought he seemed very nice and very unassuming, and what he said about Joanna certainly reinforced this feeling—so it was a great pity that he had to have such a horrible family! Presumably the brother with the snooty voice must be the one that had got Chipping Abbas, if it wasn’t Allan that was the Sir. He sounded absolutely beastly, and completely up himself. Going on like that about poor old Lambie Heather, who was really the kindest-natured, friendliest thing! She was very taken with Gordon, Joanna’s little brother, and had had him over several times to her terrifically over-furnished, heavily restored cottage to watch her giant telly and stuff himself on cakes and Coke. Added to which, she might come on as very bright and, um, sociable, but Hattie and Joanna knew that in fact the poor woman was lonely: the other in-comers like Mrs Everton looked down their noses at her. But that man was worse than they were! And if it came down to sexual morals, his were much, much worse than poor, flirtatious Lambie Heather’s could ever be! Stuck-up, supercilious creep! Hattie went back into the hall, scowling.

    “Is anything wrong?” asked Joanna, looking at her in some surprise.

    “Um—no,” she said with an effort.

    “You’re not feeling the heat, are you, Hattie??”

    “It’s not hot,” said the Sydney-sider. “I just felt like a breath of fresh air.”

    “Oh, good. –Mrs Everton was looking for you!” she hissed with a giggle. “Guess what?”

    “She wants me to dance with Ted Prosser again,” said Hattie heavily.

    “No! I mean, of course she does! Not nearly as much as Mrs Biggs does, though!” replied Joanna with a loud giggle.

    “Ssh!”

    “She wants you to dance with the heir to Chipping Abbas!” she hissed.

    “Well, she can choke on it,” she said grimly.

    “Why?” croaked Joanna.

    Hattie took a deep breath. “Never mind. Let’s just say that they’re a load of Pommy snobs, Joanna.”

    “I thought Allan seemed very nice,” she offered feebly.

    “Yeah. Not him. The rest of them!”

    Joanna swallowed. “I suppose they are rather posh. Um, Allan introduced me to his sister and brother-in-law, earlier: they seem okay.”

    Hattie glanced across the crowded room in the direction of the Tarlingtons’ table. “Which one was the sister?”

    Joanna peered. “The one in the pink dress. Brown hair.”

    “Oh. Well, I’m glad it’s not the other one, anyway!”

    Joanna smiled uneasily. “Mm. I think that’s a model she’s wearing. Cynthia, her name is.”

    “It would be!”

    “Mm. Lagerfeld. I saw it in a Vogue.”

    Hattie eyed her drily. “Right. This year’s or last year’s?”

    “Um, well, last, actually,” said Joanna faintly

    “I knew it! This years’d be too good for Abbot’s Halt!” she cried.

    “I was thinking that.” Their eyes met. Simultaneously they collapsed in gales of laughter.

    “Well, my dears! You’re enjoying yourselves, I see!” cooed a sickeningly gracious voice.

    “Yes, it’s a lovely dance, Mrs Everton,” said Joanna quickly, since Hattie was merely standing there with her mouth slightly open.

    “I’m so glad!” she cooed. “Now, I don’t think you’ve met Sir Hilliard Tarlington?”

    “Hullo, Hattie,” said Hill hoarsely, very flushed. “What on earth are you doing here?”

    “Oh, my goodness, so you know each other!” she fluted. “Isn’t that nice! –Yes, off you go, Joanna, my dear!” she urged as the grinning Harry Adamson came up and asked Joanna if she felt like hopping this one with him. “Now, do take pity on Sir Hilliard, Hattie, won’t you?” she said coyly. “Our local girls are feeling a lee-tle shy of him, I think!”

    “Yes, let’s dance, Hattie,” said Hill quickly.

    “I can’t do it,” said Hattie numbly.

    “But of course you can, my dear!” she cried. “It’s only a two-step!”

    “Come on,” said Hill, trying to give her a meaning look that would say “And let’s get out of the terrifying parakeet’s orbit.”

    Mrs Everton was nodding and beaming, and without losing her temper drastically in front of the woman and telling him what she thought of him there seemed to be nothing else for it. Numbly Hattie stumbled onto the floor with him.

    “We’ll just shuffle!” he said with a laugh in his voice.

    “I told you I can’t do it,” she said grimly, wishing these blasted old-time dances didn’t entail the party of the other part holding your hand and putting his other hand on your waist.

    “Mm,” said Hill, pulling her more firmly against him. “What in God’s name are you doing here?”

    “Nothing,” said Hattie grimly, trying to see if Mrs Everton was watching them. Blast! She was.

    “Well, not a two-step, at all events!” he conceded with a smothered chuckle. “It’s so good to see you again, Hattie!’

    Hattie pulled back from him. “I thought your name was Hill,” she said grimly.

    “What?” he said numbly. “Oh! It is, I’m always called Hill. Short for Hilliard. The Sir nonsense is very recent—ignore it. Only people like our gracious hostess take any notice of it.”

    “I’m bloody sure that isn’t true, in England!” replied Hattie with feeling.

    “Of course it is! In this day and age? It’s a meaningless anachronism, presumably retained for the enjoyment of the terrifying parakeet and her ilk—certainly serves no other purpose.”

    Hattie swallowed. “We thought she looked a bit like a budgie,” she admitted. “When the males get really old they sometimes get, um, chests like that.”

    Hill choked. “Yeah!” he gasped. “Well, ‘terrifying parakeet’ is the Tarlington contribution; Harriet used both words of her and I put ’em together!”

    “Yes. I thought your name was Hill,” repeated Hattie lamely.

    “You said. –Oh, Lor’: you thought it was my surname? But it was first names all round on those daft war-gaming courses!”

    “I just thought it was typical!” she said on a desperate note. “Calling us all by our first names, and making us call you Hill!”

    Jesus. No wonder she hadn’t come over as his greatest fan, if that was the very first impression she’d had of him! “I—I suppose I’ve used the nickname for so long that it just didn’t strike me it could have been taken the wrong way,” he said lamely.

    “No.”

    They shuffled in silence for a few moments.

    “Um, if it was recent,” said Hattie in a very small voice, “did—did someone die? Your father?”

    “Yes, Pa,” said Hill with a sigh.

    “I’m very sorry,” she said, still in that small voice, not looking up at him.

    Hill squeezed her hand. “Mm. So’m I.”

    “So, um, are you going to live at Chipping Abbas?”

    “Can’t afford to,” he said lightly. “Might turn the dump into a hotel. I do that anyway, these days. Working for YDI. They run several big hotel chains.”

    “I know; Joanna works for them,” said Hattie very grimly indeed.

    “She’s a friend of yours, is she?” he asked nicely.

    “Why pretend you’re interested? She isn’t anybody!”

    “What?” he said blankly.

    That hadn’t come out right: Hattie scowled. “To people who ask who a person is, she isn’t anybody!”

    “But I— Oh,” he said, swallowing.

    “Yes, and while we’re on the subject,” said Hattie furiously, “Lambie Heather’s the kindest person in the whole village: she’s been really, really kind to Gordon—he isn’t anybody, either, he’s only Joanna’s little brother—and you should bloody well talk, after all those skinny ladies and that one that was fifty-five, and all she wanted was a dance with a ruddy Sir!”

    “Where were you hiding?” said Hill glumly. “Behind those bloody potted palms?”

    “No. Outside. Mrs Biggs kept trying to make me dance with Ted Prosser.”

    “The chap with the scythe,” said Hill numbly.

    “You would think of him that way! He happens to be a qualified engineer, but even if he wasn’t he’d still be worth fifty of your lot, and their flaming Lagerfeld model frocks!”

    Hill was momentarily reduced to silence. Finally he managed to croak: “I meant nothing by it, I only know him as the man who’s terrifyingly competent with a scythe and that I’ve been praying my nephews and nieces won’t try to emulate, we’d quite like ’em to grow up with the usual complement of legs. And if the model frocks bit was a hit at my cousin Cynthia, I can only say that however low your opinion of her may be, it couldn’t possibly do her justice.”

    It took Hattie a moment to work that one out. “If that’s what you think of her, why did you ask her to stay?”

    “I didn’t,” he sighed. “She invited herself. She’s the sort of person that does. Listen, Hattie,” he said, swallowing, “didn’t you get my letter?”

    “What?”

    “I wrote you a letter. That bloody woman from that place you were working swore she’d see you got it. Um, well, I enclosed it with a coffee-pot,” he said lamely.

    “Was that from you?” replied Hattie in amazement.

    “Yes!” he said crossly.

    “There was a coffee-pot and two Mars Bars,” she said dazedly.

    “Mm. The Mars Bars were a joke. Sorry.”

    “But I’m positive there was no letter, Hill,” she said, looking up into his face.

    Hill’s heart jolted in his chest. “Wasn’t there? No,” he said, smiling foolishly. “Eh? I mean, of course there was! Two pages of—of woffle. Look, okay, you don’t need to spare my feelings,” he said glumly. “You never replied, ’nuff said.”

    “There wasn’t any letter,” said Hattie flatly.

    “But—“

    “Personnel just attached a note saying it had been left behind at the course and they were forwarding it. Maybe the letter fell off.”

    “It couldn’t have fallen off, it was in the parcel, wrapped round the Mars Bars!” said Hill rather loudly.

    “No, it wasn’t.”

    “By God, the bloody woman sabotaged it!” he gasped.

    “Was this one of the skinny lady execs?”

    “Yes,” he said, very flushed. “The bitch! And there was me, thinking she was a pleasant, obliging woman!”

    “I dare say she was,” replied Hattie calmly. “Most of them’ll do anything when they’re on the hunt for a mate. Half the time they deceive themselves into believing it’s justified or they’re not really doing it, too.” She took in his expression. “The thing is, she probably had some nutty idea I was a rival or something, if you’d actually bothered to write me a letter. Didn’t you realize they were all seething with jealousy whenever you looked at one of the others? That’s partly why they all competed so keenly in that stupid compassing and paint guns stuff.”

    “Nuh—”

    “I wouldn’t blame them,” she advised kindly: “it’s biological imperatives.”

    Hill took a deep breath. “I’ve spent the last six years believing— Shit!”

    “Is it six?” she said vaguely.

    “Yes, by Christ, it bloody well is!”

    Hattie said nothing. Hill endeavoured to steer her towards the door shielded by the potted palms but there was such a press of bodies that he made little progress. “Um, anyway,” he said very lamely indeed, as the implications of the six years began to penetrate his spinning brain, “what have you been doing with yourself, Hattie?”

    “Nothing, really. I lost my job. Um, not that job I was doing when I went on the course, another one, but it was just like it. But Granddad left the house in London to me, so I had the rent from the other flats, so I was okay. And the cottage, too, but we didn’t come down all that much. Only when the house burned down I decided I might as well.”

    “Yes,” he said hoarsely. “We?”

    “Eh?”

    “You said ‘we’ didn’t come down all that much,” said Hill hoarsely.

    “Me and Amanda—Joanna’s Mum—and her family, and the girls from upstairs, and Julian and Bruce from the basement. And Kit, when she was there. And our friends from down the road.”

    “Oh,” said Hill limply. He took a deep breath and got it out. “So—so you’re not married, Hattie?”

    “No,” said Hattie simply.

    “Look,” he said hoarsely, “we can’t talk here: for God’s sake come outside!” He released her waist, and, grasping her hand fiercely, forced his way through the throng and outside.

    “Phew!” he said with a laugh.

    “I dunno what you think you’re doing, but six years haven’t turned me into a skinny lady exec,” warned Hattie grimly, as he was still holding her hand painfully tight.

    “No!” said Hill with a crazy laugh. “Thank God for that!” He pulled her to him.

    “Let me go,” said Hattie grimly.

    “Look, I realize you never got my letter, but I swear I apologised abjectly in it for being the world’s greatest tit!”

    “I don’t care what you said! And stop squeezing me!” she shouted.

    Swallowing, Hill stopped squeezing her. “Hattie, can’t we make a fresh start? Wipe the slate clean?”

    “Leopards don’t change their spots, and I don’t care if you’re a stupid Sir or not, but if you imagine I want anything to do with a Pommy snob that looks down his nose at nice Lambie Heather and thinks Joanna isn’t good enough for his brother—and don’t tell me it isn’t partly because she’s Black as well as the not being anybody shit—well, I DON’T!” shouted Hattie.

    “Hattie,” said Hill on a desperate note, now thoroughly off-balance, “I swear I haven’t done a skinny lady exec for at least two months!”

    “Well, there you ARE!” shouted Hattie, rushing back indoors.

    “Oh, shit,” said Hill lamely, standing there in the dark outside the Abbot’s Halt community hall like the world’s greatest tit.

Next chapter:

https://theprojectmanager-anovel.blogspot.com/2022/04/hatties-story.html