In the end, when it was clear he wasn’t going to be coming back, I went home early for my ham and baked potato. Janice was there again later. I couldn’t help her with her homework – physics – but she asked lots of questions about newspapers.
I still couldn’t believe that Caz was married to Will. That was such a sadistic trick by the organisers. I couldn’t believe that they would have agreed to that. I remembered the silly feeling I had occasionally when I was a bit jealous of their shared past, but they wouldn’t do this. Surely not.
But if I took it at face value, at least Caz was here too and prepared to be friendly. That was something. Not much, admittedly. But right now it was all I had.
Middleton Parva was a separate village. Amazing. I just thought of it as the bit by the ring road where the new B&Q and Tesco were. But we went out of town, past fields and off the main road and down a country lane to get to it. George’s driving was erratic to say the least.
‘Hey hang on. You nearly had us in the ditch there! You’re on the wrong side of the road!’
‘Sorry!’ yelled George. ‘Habit. Think I’m in Germany still.’
‘Germany?’
‘Yes. That’s where I learnt to drive, when I was doing my national service in the army. On tanks, so the van took some getting used to.’
‘You were in the army?’
Honestly, he didn’t look old enough.
‘How old are you, George?’
‘Twenty.’
‘Did you break any of the Fräuleins’ hearts?’
‘No,’ grinned George – and bless him, he blushed – ‘we didn’t do much of that sort of fraternising. Plenty of drinking though! Those Germans know how to drink.’
Somehow, we got to Middleton Parva. And as we did, so the sun came out, just as Marje’s postman had said it would. It was really pretty. There was a proper village green with trees, a couple of little shops, a very attractive church, which I’d never noticed before, probably because it’s hidden behind B&Q. This couldn’t be a film set, could it? This was something else. Something much bigger. But quite what, I didn’t want to think about just yet. Too scary. Much too scary. My skin went cold and clammy as I tried to think about it. No. Easier to get on with work.
While George went off to scout for pictures, I went to the post office and struck gold straightaway. The postmistress’s family had been running the place since the days when mail came with the stagecoach, so that was a nice easy story to write up. Then I found the vicar, and we did pretty pictures of the church and talked about its history and looked at a few interesting graves.
‘What now?’ asked George.
‘The lady from the post office said the pub was run by a cockney, a chap who came here as an evacuee during the war. He must have liked it to stay. No doubt he’ll have a tale to tell. Shall we?’
‘A pub will do me fine. We’ll get a drink while we’re there. But which one?’
There were two pubs on either side of the green. One, the Royal Oak, was low and squat and old-fashioned. It had small windows, and beams that made it look as though it had grown up out of the ground and would return to it given half a chance. The other, the Rising Sun, was a big flash newer sort of place with a car park. It had beams too, but you could tell they weren’t very old. There was a sign in the window. I went closer to read it.
‘No Gypsies! No Irish!’ it said.
I stepped back, shocked.
‘Can they really say that?’
‘Yes, of course. The fair’s been here recently, that’s what that’s all about. They don’t want gyppos upsetting their posh customers. Is this the pub we want?’
‘No, thank heavens. We want the Royal Oak.’
We went across the green and in through the tiny low door of the pub. It had no signs in its window. Inside there were flagged floors and a small log fire. Two old men, smoking pipes, were playing dominoes. They looked up when we went in, ‘Afternoon,’ they said, and went back to their game.
Since we’d walked in through the door, I’d been holding my breath. I was waiting for someone to shout at me, or say they couldn’t serve me, accuse me of being a tart. Instead, the cheerful young landlord was saying, ‘Right sir, and what can I get you?’
‘Pint of bitter for me please,’ said George.
‘And for the lady?’
I hesitated. I could hardly believe I was actually going to get a drink at last. But I didn’t know what to ask for, what to choose. Apart from the beer pumps, the stock on the shelves looked pretty limited. I could see gin and whisky and lots of bottles of Mackeson and Guinness. An advert on the wall showed flying toucans, watched by some RAF types. ‘Lovely day for a Guinness’ said the slogan. But perhaps not.
‘No vodka, I suppose?’ I laughed, as if I were making a joke.
‘No, this is Middleton not Moscow, miss.’
‘Sorry, I don’t know what to have.’
‘She’s American,’ said George in explanation.
‘Right darling. Why not have a shandy, a lot of ladies like that. Or a drop of local cider?’
‘Cider. That sounds fine. Yes please.’
He disappeared for a moment and came back with a large enamel jug. He placed a half-pint glass on the counter about a yard away and lifted the jug. Cider poured from it in a long arc and fell, perfectly on target, into the glass. It was neatly done.
I took a sip. ‘Cheers!’ I said and nearly choked. ‘God this is strong! What’s in it?’
‘Apples, mostly,’ said the landlord, ‘and a few dead rats of course.’
I trusted he was joking, but boy was that cider good. It hit the spot wonderfully. I remembered I’d left my Oxo tin at the office.
‘Any food on? Sandwiches?’
‘The missus can make you a sandwich if you like. Ham or cheese?’
We both chose ham and while the missus was making them, I told the landlord why we’d come. He was happy to talk, a good utterer, and he spoke in quotes. Easy peasy George did a nice picture of him leaning on the bar, and by the time the sandwiches came, we’d just about finished, leaving Ray, the landlord, to serve his other customers.
George and I took our sandwiches – and a second drink – over to a table by the tiny window. The sandwiches were brilliant. Proper thick bread with black crusts, masses of butter (Diet? What diet?) and chunks of delicious home-cooked ham. Real food. But now we were just sitting down and not actually working or talking about work, I noticed George looked a bit uneasy. It took a while to dawn on me that sitting in a bar alone with an older woman was clearly something he wasn’t used to.
‘It’s all right George, I won’t eat you.’
He smiled uneasily and moved a little further away from me.
‘Did you like the army, George?’
‘It was all right. Once you’d got basic training over. All that bloody, sorry Rose, all that drill and bullsh— all that stuff you had to do.’
‘Did you go straight from