Read A Village Affair for Free Online

confronted her everywhere, too high, too narrow. She began to long for Martin’s Monday call, regular as clockwork, telling her when he was coming down to take her out. His arrivals, invariably punctual, became events of real excitement. Every time she found him standing on the tiled doorstep in Lynford Road, in a tweed jacket she had last seen him wear in the drawing room at Dummeridge and the brogues she could still hear striking the stone flags of the kitchen passage, her feeling of being rescued grew greater and more glamorous.
    In the first week of December he arrived to take her out to supper in Marlow. He was wearing a suit and Alice, convinced he would say something to her, put on the black dress she had made from a length of jersey from the market, piled her hair high on her head and added some enormous copper earrings a friend at art school had made for an Egyptian exhibition. The restaurant in Marlow had pink napkins and red-shaded lights. Martin made a face.
    â€˜Sorry,’ he said to Alice.
    She wasn’t entirely sure why he was apologizing; it looked to her just as she would expect a restaurant to look. In any case, she was far too full of anticipation to care if the panelling was phoney or Mantovani was being played whisperingly over the loudspeaker system. Martin ordered everything competently, told her about his week – she hardly listened to him – and then said he had something to tell her and something to ask her. She forced herself to look at him quite, quite straight.
    â€˜Tell first,’ she said.
    â€˜My mother has two commissions for you. Two friends of hers have seen the paintings you have done of Dummeridge, and they want you to paint in their houses. Ma said she has asked a hundred and fifty for you. Each.’
    â€˜Each!’ Alice said, and went scarlet.
    â€˜Well?’ He was smiling hugely.
    Alice clutched herself.
    â€˜It’s – it’s wonderful . So’s she. Heavens. Real money—’
    There was a sudden small hard lump in her throat. She supposed it to be amazement and delight.
    â€˜I rang her last night. She really wanted to tell you herself at Christmas, but I made her let me. That’s the other thing. The thing I wanted to ask you.’
    Alice couldn’t look straight this time; she didn’t seem able to look anywhere. She looked down instead into her melon and parma ham and Martin said to her bent head, ‘Would you come for Christmas? To Dummeridge?’
    There was a pause. Oh, Martin thought, you cool, cool customer, don’t keep me dangling, don’t, don’t. Say yes, say yes, say . . .
    â€˜Love to,’ Alice said. Her voice was warm but not in the least eager. It betrayed nothing of what she was feeling, nothing of the sudden fury that had seized her, a fury against Martin. Ask me, she had screamed at him silently, ask me, ask me. And he had said, come for Christmas.
    â€˜That’s great,’ he said. ‘They’ll all be thrilled, I know it. What about—’
    â€˜My parents?’
    â€˜Yes—’
    â€˜I’ve spent twenty Christmases with them,’ Alice said with a fierceness for which Lynford Road could not be blamed, ‘and I think I deserve one off. Granny’s coming, anyway.’
    They arrived at Dummeridge on Christmas Eve to a house garlanded in green, with pyramids of polished apples and candles and the smoky scent of burning wood.
    â€˜So lovely!’ Cecily said. ‘To have a woman to do it all for.’
    From the moment she and Martin got to Dummeridge, Alice was the star of Christmas. She could feel the atmosphere lifting as she entered rooms and knew that everything was being done for her, with an eye on her. She had a fire in her bedroom, and a Christmas stocking of scarlet felt, and wherever she went the eyes of the household were upon her and the hearts of the household were hers. Even Anthony, she noticed, was striving to please.