PART TWO

The Pattern Changes

A great deal can change in the course of just two weeks. I had been feeling quietly pleased with the results of my little party; it seemed to me I had achieved most of the things I set out to achieve – and one or two that I hadn’t, into the bargain. Lady Macauley had been brought in contact with David Porteous after all - and the heavens hadn’t exactly fallen as a consequence! Not even for Belle, it appears. Though Bill warns me not to be complacent in that respect: he evidently still sees cause for concern, and his final words to me before departing last Thursday for a two-week lecture tour of Australia and New Zealand, were “Don’t over-water my tomatoes. Expect surprises from Frances - and keep an eye on Belle!”

I think I know what he meant. The reference to Frances is rather cryptic, of course; and one never knows precisely what he’s getting at when it comes to Belle. But even so, I take his points, and shall maintain a certain vigilance on his behalf where Belle is concerned. Rose tells me though, that so far from feeling threatened by the new association, Belle has begun to talk of the invigorating effect it’s already having upon her mother, who has taken to planning little teas, and lunches, and suppers in the gallery; all with the idea of having David Porteous and his daughters come to them, and quite as if she were fifty again, instead of eighty plus.

For Belle herself – well, the heavens haven't fallen for her either, apparently. She is glad of course, that the presence of Frances, as fiancee, will act as a curb upon her mother's wilder match-making flights; but she now sees that the association with Mr Porteous is probably not going to turn out to be quite the personal ordeal by fire that she had anticipated. I don’t know if Bill would find reassurance in this; but I think that on the whole I’d best say nothing to him about it for the present, when I email.

Then too, there’s Pamela, who has been gathered into the Macauley fold in the most unexpected, yet seemingly natural way. Rose tells me she is still basking in the pleasant afterglow of the encounter; that her conversations are embellished these days with little references to ‘Lady and Miss Macauley’, and that she scatters intimations wherever she goes that Roland is likely at any moment to be summoned to the Macauley house, for a meeting with Lady Macauley’s solicitor in the matter of her financial arrangements. This is the social high ground indeed, for Pamela; and I believe Rose when she says that she goes about the village these days with her head held high, and her shopping basket almost at the angle of jauntiness.

Rose told me all these things from the position of her favourite stool in my kitchen this morning. She arrived at ten o’clock, having come, she said, for a good, long mulling-over of events. There was much to talk about, didn’t I think? Especially since she had it on good authority that David Porteous had lately moved out of the manor house, and back into his own; and that so far as she had been able to gather, Frances had not gone with him. This was disturbing news to me, but I did my best not to seem startled by it. I merely asked Rose what her authority was, and was not greatly reassured when she told me it was the best there was - which was to say the evidence of her own eyes. Anyone going from the manor house to old Miss Porteous’s must pass her own, she pointed out; and she had lately seen David Porteous take that route on several occasions, carrying suitcases, and bags of books - and notably unaccompanied by Frances.

“Oh well, it could be anything of course.” I rather vaguely replied. “It’s only lately after all that Mr Jessop has finished re-furbishing his house – David might simply have been returning some of the things he no longer needed at the manor house ...”

As explanations went it fell very short, I knew; and Rose was quick to capitalise on its inherent flaws. “In the first place” she retorted; “one would have expected him to be moving things out of, not into his own house, if it was his intention to remain permanently at the manor house with Frances. And in the second - well, how do you account for the fact that he is evidently spending his nights, as well as his days, in his own house? I have seen him coming in and out repeatedly – and I can tell you that if he goes anywhere in the afternoons, it is to the Macauley house, and not to that which contains his erstwhile beloved!”

I was unable to account for any of these things, and I disliked intensely the idea that Rose was probably going about the district spreading rumours of this sort. Her facial expression is one of scarcely contained glee – I won’t go quite so far as to call it malice – when she relates such stories. There is nothing she likes better than a good, half-founded conspiracy theory – and though one’s every instinct is to discount them if one can, the unhappy truth is that Rose’s conspiracy theories, like those of the tabloid newspapers, generally turn out to contain a degree of truth.

She had a good deal more to tell me. I was conscious that she had begun to talk about the Porteous daughters, and the fact that Frances seemed to have developed an almost motherly fondness for them... But I found that I wasn’t listening to her any longer; I wanted her to leave, so that I might go at once to visit Frances, and discover the truth of the situation for myself. She did depart, finally; and I waited only long enough to see her disappear around the corner of the common, before making a quick check of my appearance, and hurrying off in the direction of the manor house; taking my way by the back lanes, lest I should encounter Rose again on the high street.

That there would be surprises for me there I fully anticipated; but what I hadn’t, couldn’t possibly have anticipated, was that it would be Mrs Meade who came out to wrestle with the pair of tall black gates to let me in. I was taken very much off guard by her re-appearance there, and hardly knew what to say to her, except to murmur that it was ‘very nice’ to see her back again. She gave me a look which said she would take that as she saw fit - which was with a heavy dollop of scepticism. And there was that about her demeanour, her very gait, as she led me across the courtyard and into the house, that told me more clearly than words could have done, that she believed herself to have been ill-used indeed; but that she was re-instated now, so that I, and all Miss Fanshawe’s other so-called friends, had better try to make the best of it we could.

Frances was sitting in the shaded conservatory before her easel, and the first thing I noticed about her was that she was dressed as she had used to be in the early days of our friendship, in paint-stained smock and crumpled trousers. She wore no make-up, and her hair was dishevelled; but the smile with which she greeted me was unstrained, and I took comfort - I can hardly say why – from the fact that on her feet were the old, familiar, curiously boat-like shoes.

“I can see from your face that Rose has been to see you, and that you must have heard my news” she very quietly said. “I had hoped to tell you myself, but more or less expected that Rose would have got in first. It’s perfectly true anyway – I have released David from his engagement, and he has returned to his own house for good. Please don’t try to say anything dear – there’s really nothing very much to say ....... It was Bill you know, who gave me courage to do it in the end. I had confided in him and he said “Do the thing that makes you comfortable”. And I knew that the only thing that would make me comfortable again would be to have my house, and my old life back.... So here I am, right down to the old shoes – I can’t tell you how the new ones pinched! And the wonderful thing is, that when once I’d stopped crying about it, I began to smile – and have hardly been able to stop smiling since!”

It may have been a bravura performance on Frances’s part, but somehow I didn’t think so. Nor did I seek to press her for any more about the separation than she seemed disposed, at this stage, to tell me. I spent another hour with her, during which time I learnt that one of the first acts of her freedom had been to send for Mrs Meade. Not as a gesture of defiance, as she put it; but more in the spirit in which she had taken to wearing her old shoes again - simply because they didn’t pinch!

I’m sure I shall hear more as the days and weeks go by; but for the moment it is enough to know that she has made the break, and will be able to live with it. I immediately sent a text to Bill saying “Frances has done it and is OK". To which he texted back "Excellent! Now have an eye for Belle."