Perfectly Correct Read online

  There were two pubs: the Holly Bush, which was used by people from the council houses and boasted a successful darts team, and the Olde House at Home, Wistley, which had been opened in 1973 and boasted many darkened beams – some of them even made from real wood – faded prints, a good menu of bar food, and three different types of beer. Andrew Miles, a connoisseur of public houses, had been thrown out of the Olde House at Home, Wistley, on Christmas Eve, 1989, for caressing the landlord’s wife’s bottom, and remained permanently banned.

  Louise, who was planning to make a chicken casserole for herself and Miriam which could go in the Rayburn now and need no attention until they were ready to eat, bought chicken pieces at the butcher’s, and onions, potatoes, red peppers and tomatoes at the greengrocer’s. On her way back to her car she was stopped by Captain Frome of Wistley Manor.

  As an unobservant newcomer to the village, Louise had no idea that Wistley Manor was, in reality, a new house, with a snob name. She always felt herself to be in the presence of a genuine squire of the manor when Captain Frome spoke to her. She had attended a sherry party at his house, shortly after moving in to the cottage, and had felt herself simultaneously insulted and flattered by his weighty paternalist flirting. She believed that he was born and bred in Wistley Manor and heir to a long tradition of rural squires. She felt he was the sort of man who would know what gamekeepers did during the day. She had no idea that he knew even less about the countryside than she did.

  ‘See you’ve got that old rogue parked on your patch!’ Captain Frome said, lifting his hat to her, and then taking the carrier bags easily out of her hands.

  ‘There’s no need,’ Louise protested. ‘I can manage perfectly well.’

  He smiled. Louise’s objections were to him the usual flutterings of a damned pretty woman. ‘Don’t know why you encourage her!’

  ‘I don’t encourage her!’ Louise said, stung. She fumbled in her handbag for her car keys. ‘She just arrived without permission. I’m trying to move her on.’

  ‘Outrageous really.’ He waited by the car door while Louise opened it. ‘And once you get one coming, they’ll all be here. Gypsies, tinkers, hippies. We can’t afford it in a little place like this. All sorts of difficulties it causes.’

  ‘She moves on in June,’ Louise offered, taking the bags from him and stowing them on the passenger seat.

  ‘Nearly a fortnight! I’m surprised you don’t have her moved on. She’ll be burning your fence for firewood and chopping down your trees next.’

  ‘Her van needs repairing, Mr Miles is doing it for her. Then she’s moving on. I can’t really get rid of her before then.’

  ‘Police’d move her on PDQ. Pretty damn quick,’ he translated.

  ‘I don’t think I want to call the police in,’ Louise said firmly. ‘She’s just an old lady.’

  He gave a short sceptical laugh. ‘I hope you feel the same when all her family arrive! Half a dozen vans all in your orchard. One old lady is no problem. A small camp is something different.’

  ‘A camp?’

  ‘She’s probably a scout for the whole family.’ He raised his hat to her. ‘I could mention it at the Parish Council meeting, they could find a proper site for her.’

  Louise was still reeling at the thought of a small camp in her orchard. ‘Yes,’ she said vaguely. ‘If you think it would help. But she did say she was moving on.’

  ‘Give an inch, they take a yard, these people,’ he said. ‘Good day.’

  Miriam arrived as Louise was clearing up the kitchen.

  ‘I’m glad to be here,’ she announced. ‘It’s been a B of a week.’

  Louise poured her a glass of wine from the open bottle. ‘Why so bad?’

  Miriam shrugged. ‘Oh, I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Perhaps I’m getting too old for it. Or perhaps it really is getting worse. When I started working at the centre I genuinely believed we could make a difference. But all I do is sustain the problem. For every woman I can get rehoused there are six I have to send back to their husbands to get beaten again. There’s less and less money available and more and more people needing help, and I can’t get the staff. I used to have more volunteers from the university than I could handle. But I went up and gave a talk the other day and a girl asked me what she would get out of it? I ask you! What she would get out of working in a women’s refuge!’

  ‘What did you say?’

  ‘I flannelled on about sharing your privileges, and a sense of duty to the community, and she looked at me as if I was speaking Chinese. Then I said it would look good on her CV for a future employer and her eyes lit up at last. That’s all she was interested in.’

  ‘So will you take her?’

  Miriam made a face. ‘Fat chance. She won’t volunteer until she’s done her finals so that she gets the entry on her CV but doesn’t have to waste her precious time. She asked me how much I earn and when I told her she made a little face and said she didn’t think she could manage on that and that she couldn’t consider community work as a career.’

  ‘Surely it’s always been tough,’ Louise said. ‘From the very start.’

  ‘Yes. But at the start in the ’80s there was a genuine feeling that poverty and abuse of women could be solved. Since then, post-Thatcher, there’s a sense that poverty and cruelty is natural. There’s nothing anyone can do about it. The job for police or for social workers is to make sure that it doesn’t spill into the posh areas. It’s happening everywhere. The charities working with the homeless have to stop people sleeping in boxes where rich people might fall over them. My job is about containing violence in people’s homes, not curing it. I get enough money to rehouse women who might be murdered. The ones that get knocked about have to go back.’ Miriam sighed. ‘Anyway.’ She changed the subject. ‘I saw the van. You still have your old lady?’

  ‘She’s due to leave, as soon as Mr Miles fixes the gear box,’ Louise said. ‘I’m actually becoming accustomed to her being there. I had a bad dream in the night and I woke up and saw her light at the bottom of the orchard and it was comforting.’

  ‘What facilities does she have?’

  Louise shrugged. ‘How should I know? I’ve never been in. I give her a jug of fresh water now and then.’

  Miriam looked rather severe. ‘You mean, there’s an old woman living in a broken-down van in your orchard and you haven’t even checked if she has the facilities to cook and clean? What about her toilet? What about washing?’

  ‘I don’t want to know about her toilet,’ Louise said, irritated. ‘I expect she is managing how she has always managed. She appears to be a seasonal event around here. My aunt apparently knew her and let her stay. Now I’ve inherited her along with the cottage. At least Mr Miles says she can stay on his fields. Next year I’ll make sure I have the fence up by May, and that gate bolted.’

  ‘But what if she were to be ill? Or have a fall?’

  ‘She doesn’t look like the sort of old lady who has falls,’ Louise said unkindly. ‘She looks like the sort of old lady who would have to be pushed.’

  ‘Oh really, Louise!’

  Louise scowled. ‘I can’t be responsible for her, Miriam. I really can’t.’

  ‘Well, someone ought to be,’ Miriam said. ‘Would you mind if I went and had a word with her? There are permanent sites in the county, I checked before I came out. I brought a leaflet with a map, just in case she didn’t know.’

  Louise hesitated, wondering whether the old lady would speak of Toby. She shrugged. It would be Toby’s own fault for getting so intimate with her. ‘If you must. I was just about to serve supper.’

  ‘I’ll only be a sec,’ Miriam promised and slipped out of the kitchen door.

  The sun was low on the horizon, casting a pale yellow light across the garden and greenish shadows. Small bats circled and dipped in the air, moving almost too fast to be seen. The night-scented flowers made the garden sweet and dreamy. Miriam walked slowly across the grass where the daisies had already closed their pink