Anne woke on Sunday morning feeling vaguely uneasy. She turned over to look at Harry stretched out beside her, and wondered whether she might have drunk a little too much the previous night. She did not think so, because she was always most careful in her social habits. But somehow her Saturday hadd not finished well. She can remember having been a little tight, and well pleased with the way the dinner party had gone; she can remember actually feeling quite randy, and choosing her cream silk Harvey Nicks nightdress, the one with a plunging neckline, to vamp Harry with an undulating swaying routine that would have done credit to a lapdancer. But the routine had flopped quite completely, for he was snoring before she joined him in bed. Perhaps he was under some kind of pressure. Perhaps he was closing on the final stages of a deal, perhaps a good deal. Perhaps he would now feel better. She decided this time to probe more discreetly.
Harry felt equally unsettled. Thrills possess a poor ability to survive sleep: memories may carry over from one day to another, but the mere fact that they have to be plucked from a previous time destroys some of their sheen, wiping a glow from them much as shadowing clouds erase sunshine from garden brightness.
He woke, and felt Anne encroaching under his duvet, and pretended to be sleeping, lying on his side trying to recapture the girl from the church hall in his mind. Anne moved against him, and he tried to picture the girl in her place. But fact was fact, and counterfeit sleep only deferred marital duty. So he yawned, pretending to surface, smiling a little artificially at the way she looked down at him, and lay still as she raised herself to crouch over him and lower herself onto him, because that was the congress she enjoyed best in the ability she gained to control him, and wondered how congress might be with a fairhaired girl, and knew in his thinking that he must find out.
Anne panted like an animal as she drove herself to completion, and then rested, smiling down at him. ‘We should do this more often.’
Harry looked up at her, deep into her hazel eyes, but she was not a fairhaired teenager, and there had been no magic in their encounter. He rolled away. The aftermath of passion must inevitably be exhaustion. But he felt as though nothing had happened, beyond a moment of exercise, of pleasing his wife in a passage of physical exertion. He lay still for a moment under his own duvet, considering what had happened, and decided to get up.
Anne might have hoped for more, but his going ended her expectations. She shrugged within herself. Men could sometimes be hard to understand: they made a great to-do about sex when denied, and then turn away when offered sex on a plate. But sex was not the be-all and end-all of existence: she had a day to plan. She frowned. Sunday morning was moving on, and the Harrimans would expect her at eleven o’clock service. She watched Harry drift off to shower and shave, and passed possible dress combinations in review. The sun was back again, after the previous day’s rain, and it promised to be a mild day. She decided to wear something smart, perhaps her pale beige silk suit with light brown stilettos, and of course a big hat. She would also take a clean silk handkerchief and a tenner for the church collection plate. It was a sum commensurate with her standing, though sometimes she wished that living at the Manor House conferred fewer social obligations. Village life could be tedious at times. She thought fondly of France. The villagers at Saint Adolphe-en-Provence, where the Chapmans owned their French home, never expected anything. The Chapmans helped out with the village kermesse, of course, and hosted a bal publique on the lawn in front of the house on the Quatorze Juillet, paying for the disco and the booze, with the mayor in his tricolor sash and best suit, and the cure looking rather jaundiced in the background. But the villagers there never took them for granted.
Tithing Saint Mary was different. The Harrimans expected Anne to attend church on Sundays – Harry always buried himself conveniently in his computer – the parish council counted on her for leadership, even the yobs from the council estate down beyond the station quietened as she passed. She sighed again. So many obligations, so much duty, so much work. She also feared that George Harriman might start sounding off about the Holy Land again at eleven. He had travelled with Hilary and a group of parishioners on a church-sponsored trip to Jerusalem for Easter, and returned virulently anti-Israeli, full of bile about Jews being beastly to Arabs. Anne cared nothing for international politics, and believed firmly in letting the world sort out its own problems. But she had to be protective of Levon, because he came down to the Manor House from time to time, and might well one day bump into the vicar, or his wife, or both. She loathed confrontations, and the Harrimans should know their place. But George was a self-righteous clergymen, one who always knew best. She sighed, and hoped Mrs. Bates was ready to serve breakfast. She definitely could not go to church without a decent cup of strong black coffee.
Sunday morning ticked past, as part of a slow, leisurely day. Harry settled down to read the Sunday Times in his study, with the door firmly closed, and Anne sighed again. Husbands were nothing if not recalcitrant animals.
Tithing parish church was not far from the Manor House, just a short walk down the drive and across the village common. Anne smiled at a couple of fellow parishioners waiting at the church door, and tried to look intelligent during George Harriman’s sermon. But he droned relentlessly on and on – something about the starving in Africa, or South America, or South-East Asia, and of course one of his regular sideswipes at Israel – and she had to think on how best she might hook Jack Ashwell, the Trade Secretary, for her next dinner party, if she was not to fall asleep. She tried to remember the name of a nice man met at a reception two weeks previously. He had been something significant at the Ministry, and the kind of person who might well respond to a little charm and a free lunch somewhere in the West End. Harry had little time for politics, but Anne knew very well how smoothly good food and wine could open doors, in a world where hospitality often paved a path to preferment.
The Chapmans ate a light lunch. Mrs. Bates had knocked up some of the swordfish and prawns left over from the previous evening into a tasty salad, and they split half a bottle of Vouvray cut with sparkling water, because Sunday afternoons were always dozy times, and Anne planned to spend some time in the Manor House garden. Harry went off to bury himself in his study with his computer and some Paisiello for background: he was fond of the Italian eighteenth century. But the girl from the church hall kept intruding into his thinking, and in the end he aborted his CD, sat for a moment thinking, and made a decision. He would go for a walk, strolling past the church hall perhaps, in the off-chance that the girl might be somewhere about.
He felt good. The week ahead was promising to shape up well. Dreamstone, his financial partnership with Levon Haris, had focussed on the Wide Horizons group, a mini-conglomerate coalescing industrial, ragtrade and retailing operations, with some nice juicy assets, and he knew all Wide Horizons’ weak spots.
Wide Horizons’ numbers were bad. Chairman Jack Underwood had bitten off more than he could chew, and begun floundering badly. Eating too fast frequently triggered indigestion, and Wide Horizons was now suffering a bad, bad attack, because Underwood had borrowed the group up to the hilt to fund a drive into advanced blue sky technology, and blue skies had all turned grey. Bright ideas were busy gulping down cash, but still needed time to come through, whilst Wide Horizons’ industrial operations were a mess. Only Elegance, the group’s High Street fashion chain bought to bolster group cash flow, possessed promise. But Elegance needed time to get its act together. Nasty rumours had begun chewing chunks out of the group’s share price. Harry had talked discreetly here and there, and mapped out a neat little bid strategy.
Union Funds held a major stake, and had begun to grow tetchy, even jittery. Harry had lunched with Tim Matthews, Union’s investment director, and they had reached an understanding. He would tie up any loose ends in the morning, pull all the documentation together by teatime, have a video meeting with Levon on Tuesday, and pounce on Wednesday or Thursday. Underwood would be stretched over a barrel, and all would be plain sailing, with a bonanza sale following victory. Harry could flog off any of the hi-tech that still seemed viable, auction the retailing, chop the engineering, convert Wide’s factories into supermarket sites, and rake in the cash, with a quarter of the profits for himself..
Harry smiled to himself as he powered down. He always enjoyed playing with numbers, and power, and influence; and numbers, and power, and influence always seemed to love him.
He left the Manor House by the front door, strolling down the gravelled drive towards the gate. Anne seemed to be busy in a flowerbed, and he waved. But he did not stop. He wanted to take this stroll strictly on his own.
Doreen was bored. She had already laid her plans for waiting at the station, near the gate end of the platform, where train passengers came out, and now needed something else to think about. She was sitting on a bench at the edge of the village green, with Susan at her side, watching Jason do competitive wheelies on a patch of gravel with a couple of other teenagers. The bench was far away enough from the road bounding the green for her to ignore cars that slowed hopefully from time to time. A lot of young men knew her by sight, and a lot of young men entertained hopes, but they would have to stop, and park, and come to her if they wanted to interest her. She was not a girl to go rushing off across the grass at the first toot of a car horn.
She watched Susan out of the corner of her eye. Susan was just the right kind of girl of girl for Jason: a bit on the flighty side, but with a good heart. She had tried pairing them off, but Susan signally failed to interest him. Perhaps it was time to have a word with her brother.
Suddenly she tensed. She could see a man coming out of the Manor House entrance and turning towards the church hall, and a second later knew it for Mr. Chapman. She felt her mouth dry out, and excitement mount in her. She could catch him now, it would be a perfect opportunity. But something, some kind of residual timidity, held her back, and the distant figure vanished round a corner, following the line of the Manor House wall, as she watched.
She got to her feet. She was hardly dressed to kill, in an old tee shirt and a pair of jeans that had seen many a better day, but it was a moment of opportunity. She took a step toward Jason, waving him to a halt.
‘Let me borrow your bike for a sec.’
Jason stared at her in surprise.
‘Please, I need it right now.’ She was already pushing her brother – for there are times when elder sisters can rightly claim precedence.
Jason got off reluctantly, and she was on the mountain bike in a trice, peddling along a gravel path leading to the road as though her very life depended on it.
Jason and his companions stared after her as though at a thing possessed.
‘What’s got into her?’
Susan shook her head, pretending bafflement. She had an idea, because of the direction Doreen had taken. But she was a girl to be trusted, and counted Doreen as her best friend.
Doreen caught up with Harry as he reached the church gate. He had noticed a couple of girls on the green, and been almost certain that one had been the girl from the church hall. But he was not a man to walk into a group of teenagers in a bid to chat one up. A man may have courage enough, but courage is not rashness.
‘Mr. Chapman.’ She was almost out of breath.
Harry stopped, and they stared at each other.
‘Do you want me?’ It was the only thing that Doreen could think of to say, and she realised, as she spoke, how stupid she sounded, as though she were seeking some kind of job.
Harry caught his breath. He was a grown man, but he could not muster the words he needed for a reply. He nodded, and then found them. ‘Yes, I want you.’
Doreen turned her brother’s mountain bike, so that she could stand next to him. She did not know this man, but she felt within herself that he could be an escape for her, and set her out on a new life, and that she must not fault an opportunity she knew might only come to her once in a lifetime. They stood together, in front of the church gate, and it seemed to them both as though they were frozen in time.
‘I’ll give you my mobile number.’
She watched as he wrote the number in a small notebook, and then took his hand and pressed it against herself, against the front of her tee-shirt, and felt his fingers enclosing her. It was a token, an evidence of what she was offering. For a moment she thought she should kiss him as well, kiss him properly, because men like being kissed. But she broke away. The village was too dangerous for both of them. ‘Call me when you want to meet me.’
She lifted her hand to run her fingers down the side of Harry’s face, and could feel power suffuse her as he stood staring at her. Then she was gone, peddling back towards her brother and Susan, but more leisurely now, and she was triumphant.
Harry watched her pedal away, and turned to walk back towards the Manor House, his mind in a whirl. He had the feeling that was starting on a new chapter in his life, and he venturing into the unknown.