It was a hopeful and expansive time then, in the village as well as in the nation at large. Longmead seemed poised on the brink of growth, there was talk of a light industrial estate being built, a garage and a filling-station, new houses and shops.
The notion that Henry should apply for the Longmead headship soon insinuated itself into the air between himself and Rachel and at very much the same time another idea also found its way into the atmosphere – that they should marry.
The headship wasn’t precisely what Henry had in mind. ‘But it will do very well as a stepping-stone,’ Rachel pointed out and he was inclined to agree. He was also aware that an energetic and competent spouse, well bred and well heeled, would be no drawback on the road to higher things. He applied for the headship and became engaged to Rachel in the same month.
At the time of his marriage Rachel’s parents were old and frail and Rachel informed Henry in a tone of authority that they couldn’t be expected to live much longer. She was their only child. ‘Parkwood will come to me,’ she assured him. So also would the antique furniture, the pictures and objets d’art, together with the substantial investments on which her parents lived. After the old couple had dutifully passed on Henry would in due course be able to apply for a better headship elsewhere; the house was readily saleable and would fetch an excellent price.
But things hadn’t worked out quite like that—
Henry’s thoughts were suddenly interrupted as Rachel glanced up from her embroidery and said, ‘By the way, I’ve got a very good com dolly for you, I was given it this afternoon. It will go admirably in your little craft exhibition.’ She had spent the afternoon with an arthritic village woman who had to be driven into Cannonbridge twice a week for treatment. The woman had been clearing out a cupboard and had come across an elaborate dolly she’d made some years ago, before the disease attacked her fingers; she knew Mrs Lloyd was interested in such things.
Rachel passed the dolly across to Henry without glancing at him; she scarcely ever looked at him directly. He wondered sometimes if she had any real notion of what he looked like, if she had ever seen him properly and fully, even at their first meeting in the hospital corridor.
He took the dolly and looked at it, turning it over to study it. Beautiful, intricate workmanship; ancient, mysterious pattern.
‘Do thank her for me,’ he said. ‘The children will be most interested.’ All his exchanges with Rachel were touched on Henry’s part with formality and courtesy. No expression altered the set of his features as he spoke to her. He had learned over the last few years to keep his face calm and still at all times and as a result it was unusually free from lines without looking in any way youthful.
He crossed the room and put the dolly where he would remember to take it to school next morning. He paused by the window and glanced out at the soft blue sky, ‘I think I might do an hour or two in the garden,’ he said as he had said on a great many other fine evenings.
Rachel made no reply, absorbed again in the music and in her stitching; she was embroidering a set of kneelers for the church. She took great care over the work, knowing it would stand as a measure of her skill for years to come. Henry wondered if he had actually spoken, she gave no sign of having heard. He experienced again the curious unpleasant feeling that had begun to afflict him of late, that inside the precincts of Parkwood he no longer existed, that if he were to pause to look in the hall mirror he wouldn’t be able to see his face. A thought that terrified him sometimes when he woke in the night was that he might soon begin to find he was ceasing to exist in other places as well, and might end up before long not existing anywhere at all.
He left the room and Rachel scarcely noticed that he’d gone.
He went up the graceful curving staircase to his bedroom across the wide landing from his wife’s room. He changed into an old pair of trousers and a superannuated shirt and went downstairs again and out through a side door into the garden.
The air was warm and dry. A few feet from the door a great bed of cream and pink spiræas flaunted its full splendour but he gave it only a passing glance. He went over to the toolshed and selected a billhook, then he walked with his head lowered down to the far end of the garden, overgrown and midgy, full of birdsong and humming green shadows.
He began to lay about him with ferocity, slashing at the grassy tussocks and the long arms of brambles, laying low the great strong flowering weeds, putting paid to the offending growths for the time being, if not unfortunately finishing them off for ever.
The evening air was still warm and caressing when Janet Marshall came out of the back door of her cottage and walked up to Mayfield Farm for her goat’s milk. She bought the milk as she needed it, usually three or four times a week.
Facing her as she walked up the field was the end wall of the turkey sheds which had been constructed some years ago from existing farm buildings. The sheds formed three sides of a rectangle, the open side facing across the field to the back of the school. She could hear the clatter from inside the sheds and as she drew nearer, the raucous cries of the birds.
Ken Bryant, her next-door neighbour from Mayfield Cottages, came out of the rear of the main farm buildings some little distance ahead on the right and walked down the field towards her, on his way home.
He glanced over and saw Miss Marshall with her lithe, slender figure, her beautifully shaped head covered in close curls. How neat and trim she looked in her casual outfit of jeans and check shirt. He closed his eyes for a moment in a brief shudder at the thought of his wife in a similar rig.
He raised a hand and called out to Miss Marshall. She halted and stood waiting till he came up to her. ‘I wanted to have a word with you about Jill,’ he said. His dark eyes showed open admiration.
‘Yes?’ She gave him back a courteous, neutral glance. A strong growth of black hair showed at the open neck of his shirt. He gave off a powerfully masculine farm odour – by no means disagreeable – that no amount of baths or changes of linen could ever totally remove.
Ken was ambitious for his children and he was currently anxious about his daughter’s maths. ‘She’ll be going to the Cannonbridge Comprehensive in September, as you know,’ he said, ‘and I’m afraid her maths are going to let her down. I shouldn’t like her to get off to a bad start.’ He’d be grateful if Miss Marshall would agree to coach Jill in the holidays. ‘You’ll be here for some part of the time, I’m sure,’ he added. ‘Of course I’ll pay whatever’s right and I’d see she wasn’t a nuisance to you.’
‘Jill’s not in my class,’ Janet pointed out.
‘I know that but I don’t like to ask Mr Lloyd, he’s got a lot on his plate. And Parkwood’s a good mile and a half away, it wouldn’t be anywhere near as handy for Jill. I’m sure Mr Lloyd wouldn’t mind you coaching her.’ He saw her hesitate. ‘Think about it,’ he urged. ‘You’ve no need to give me an answer right away, I’ll mention it to you again later.’ He went off down to his cottage, whistling.
As Janet passed the open front of the turkey sheds the young resident farmworker, Neil Fleming, came out of one of the sheds. He’d already changed out of his white overalls and was shrugging on a drill jacket.
‘Hello there!’ He gave her a friendly smile. He’d given her the eye, bowled over by her looks, when she first came to Longmead back in the spring, not many months after his own arrival at Mayfield, but it had taken him very little time to realize she wasn’t interested.
He walked with her towards the dairy on his way to the farmhouse. ‘I’ve got quite fond of goat’s milk myself since I’ve been here,’ he told her with a grin. ‘I’d never drunk it before,