Page 22 of New Beginnings At Pencarrow Bay
‘Oh, Marilyn all day long.’
‘Never say no to a quick swoon over Clark’s dashing moustache,’ Quentin mused. ‘But Lindy and I have made a sacred oath never to agree on anything, so I’ll plump for Monroe too, just to be ornery. “Nobody’s perfect,”’ he added, with a grin, quoting the final line of the film.
Paul looked at him askance. ‘Lindy’s such a lovely lady. Very supportive of village events, too.’
‘She is wonderful,’ Peggy agreed, but noticed Quentin raising his eyebrows, just a little. He didn’t comment.
‘Right,’ said Quentin, after they’d chatted for a while and he’d consumed another large chunk of ginger cake. ‘We should hit the road, my lovely. Please thank your dear ma for the delicious cake,’ he said to Paul, as he waved them off. ‘And put in a request for some of those killer lamb patties when the panels spring to life again.’
‘So have you fallen for our ageing rock star?’ Quentin enquired mischievously as soon as they were out of earshot. By Peggy’s reckoning, Paul couldn’t have been more than mid-forties.
She grinned, but was not to be diverted. ‘I noticed you didn’t agree when Paul said Lindy was lovely.’ She remembered Quentin’s touchiness with Lindy about the buggy, the first day Peggy met him. ‘Do you have some issue with her?’
Quentin, driving the buggy, said nothing for a while. Then he pulled into the hedge on the pavement just past the haunted house– gates shut today– and swivelled in his seat until he was facing her. His expression was hesitant, as if he was making up his mind as to how much to say. But he also seemed serious.
‘Look,’ he began, ‘it’s old news and I feel bad even thinking it. Lindy is a good person and, to be honest, I do like her, and really admire her.’ He let out a long sigh. ‘It’s just she did something a while ago and I’ve held on to it, stupidly perhaps, when I should have forgiven her. It was really nothing so terrible. But it was a difficult time and feelings were running high in the village.’
He stopped and Peggy waited while Quentin collected his thoughts. Eventually he began to speak again. ‘You know about Teresa being caught up in the post-office scandal, obviously.’ He shook his head at the memory. ‘You probably don’t know Teresa– she hardly shows her face these days– but she’s a wonderful person: honest as the day is long, diligent, dedicated. She loved her job. And when they came for her– actually searched her house, turned it upside down, if you please– she was, of course, utterly bewildered and devastated. They made her pay fifteen thousand pounds she didn’t have and didn’t owe, sacked her, threatened her with prison. It was, as you know, heinous, the whole thing.’
Like everyone else, it made Peggy feel sick to contemplate what those innocent people had gone through– werestillgoing through.
‘Anyway, the news had the village by the ears, of course. Three camps emerged. The first was the vast majority, those of us who didn’t believe Teresa capable of any such thing under any circumstances whatsoever. The second were the ones who didn’t really know what to think. You know the sort: feeble fence-sitters. The third camp was the people– some of them so-called “friends” of Teresa, who began to whisper the no-smoke-without-fire mantra.’ He took a few breaths, resumed the narrative. ‘Lindy was staunchly in Camp One, initially. We talked about it a lot together. But as time went by and Teresa wasn’t exonerated, she began to waver, say stuff about the facts looking damning, and maybe Teresa had taken her eye off the ball…We are talking about the Post Office,I remember Lindy saying.’ Quentin fidgeted in his chair and Peggy wondered if his back was paining him, sitting so long.
He straightened up, gave his shoulders a roll. ‘And the facts did look damning back then, Peggy, I’ll freely admit. Even Rory and I had the conversation. But I just couldn’t believe it of Teresa. I knew something must have gone horribly wrong somewhere.’ Quentin waited to continue as a couple of sweaty, earnest walkers in vests and baseball caps, calves like Nelson’s Column– walked past clutching water bottles. ‘Anyway, Lindy and I argued. Fiercely. It wasn’t pleasant. To be fair, she did come and apologize when the scandal broke. But… well, the whole thing left bad blood between us.’
‘Maybe she was just voicing what others didn’t dare to say,’ Peggy commented.
‘I’m sure she was. Anyway, the mood shifted around Teresa. Certain people– not Lindy, of course– said hurtful things to her, called her names in the street. I think at the time I unfairly conflated that cruel few with the position Lindy took. But she wasn’t in any way to blame.’ He raised an eyebrow in a look of resignation. She sensed it pained him to talk about it.
‘Maybe you should let it go now?’ she suggested.
Quentin smiled. ‘Maybe I should, my dear. Gordon was ill back then, too. Lots of chemo and catheters and suchlike. Lindy looked after him superbly. No stone left unturned in his care. I so admire her for that.’
‘Poor Lindy. She’s been through a lot,’ Peggy said, with real feeling, as much for what she was going through now as what she’d suffered in the past when her husband was ill.
Quentin must have heard something in her voice because he was eyeing her, a small frown on his craggy face. ‘You sound…’ He didn’t finish the sentence.
‘Shall we get going?’ Peggy said quickly. She had this sudden sense that Quentin, with his forensic brain, would somehow intuit what was going on in her head if she didn’t move.
‘I’m glad I told you,’ he said, as they went on down the hill. ‘These things have a habit of festering. Telling you today made me realize how petty I’ve been about Lindy.’
12
Peggy said goodbye to Quentin when they reached the old dairy where he lived with Rory, set back in a small road a couple of minutes from the sea but with a view of the bay– according to Quentin– from the garden deck and master bedroom. Then she wandered back through the village, pondering all that had been said that morning. She’d been intrigued by Quentin’s story about the falling-out with Lindy. It must have been a difficult time, as Quentin pointed out: Teresa, a person everyone loved, in the centre of village life, being accused of a crime. Peggy could appreciate how factions had developed and people had fought over it. Quentin’s passionate support of his friend was admirable. But she could also understand Lindy’s position of doubt. Peggy, too, had wondered, when she’d read about it at the time.
Needing stamps to send birthday cards to the twins– their thirty-fifth looming the following week– she stopped at the newsagent, the tiny sub-post office situated in the windowless space at the rear of the shop. She would see the boys at the party Max was throwing for them in his Mayfair gallery– which she was rather dreading. And she’d already organized presents: Dan had requested an online subscription to National Theatre Live, because he loved plays but hated sitting in a stuffy theatre to view them. Liam had asked for a voucher for one of his favouriteclothes shops. To Peggy, neither seemed like a real present– the sort that is a surprise to the recipient, that you take trouble to choose, then wrap in shiny paper with a big bow. A couple of clicks of her mouse and she was done– she didn’t have to scour the shops and decide what might suit. The cards felt like the only really personal part of her gifts.
Gary, who’d taken over the post office, radiated an intense sociability. Youngish, ginger-haired and enthusiastic, he made it his business to address all his regulars by name, remembering, too, the names of their dogs and children, even their old mum’s budgie in Leeds. Peggy thought it was almost as if he was trying to make up for the previously shocking behaviour of the corporation he worked for. But she couldn’t help responding to his obviously genuine warmth.
‘Good morning, Peggy. How goes it? Ted keeping well? I haven’t been up to the van for a while, but I saw him at the swim. Impressive.’
‘He’s fine, thank you,’ she replied, with a smile.
‘So what can I do you for?’
She asked for first-class stamps. The cards she would get from the gallery along the way where they had an array of original local artists’ cards she knew the boys would really appreciate.
Gary tore off a couple from a sheet he drew from the drawer beside him and handed them to her through the slot in the Plexiglass. ‘Umm,’ he said, ‘I’ve been updating thesituations vacantboard. Do you want me to keep your ad for tutoring in there?’
