Sociological Observations

Episode 12: Sociological Observations

    Greg and me have given in to the extent of doing a survey to get some hard facts on what the locals own. Not to the extent of letting on that he isn’t a really a jobbing gardener, though. What they think is that he’s just helping me by taking round some of the survey papers, and given that Imelda’s come down for a couple of weekends and done some, not to say Harry, Gwennie and Cora Potter, anything Imelda was doing they hadda be in, too, I’d say no-one suspects him. And given that it’s early December in rural England there sure as Hell isn’t anything for him to do in the garden. Jack Powell’s a bit pissed off that I’m taking up Greg’s time with the work I'm actually employing him for instead of letting him spend every waking hour helping with the garage and the flat, but up his.

    Number 3, Lime Walk. Mrs Carmichael. No relation to Hoagy. “Mrs Haworth! So you're doing Lime Walk in person! Well, this is nice! Do come in!”

    I come in, asking her to call me Rosie, and accept her excuses for being invited to sit in the kitchen, as George is in the sitting-room. (Don’t ask, don’t ask, don’t ask: he’s totally harmless, he’s not doing anything messy or even private— Do not ask: just accept that the Mrs Carmichaels of the world are like that, will ya?) We agree it’s too early for a cup of tea but nevertheless we’ll have one and further agree that English Breakfast would hit the spot, not using the expression, and I reveal artlessly that John likes this brand of tea, too. A gentle chat about tea (or is it teas?—dunno) ensues and after it’s poured we finally get down to it. Minus George, and she doesn’t take one through to him, tough tit, huh? Goodness, we sociologists do ask the oddest things, but of course she doesn’t mind my knowing, since it’s me. It isn’t even the set of questions Greg originally wanted, that included the brand of toilet paper. Because for why? Because I knew we’d never get the posh ones to tell the truth about that, and we can get fairly good figures from what Murray and Belinda Stout sell, anyway. They’re only too pleased to have us analyse their figures, though mind you, they knew what the results’d be before we’d even drawn breath to ask them if we could.

    I explain it’s totally confidential, the papers are only numbered, no names, but she’s not listening, she’s telling me that their fridge is brand A (I can see that, actually), that the telly is brand B, in the range five to ten years old, they don’t watch it very much (Standard Upper-Middle Lie Number Three), and the suite cost—well, in the range (d). Good heavens! (peering): surely no-one pays that much for a suite? I admit that no-one in Bellingford does, in fact so far we haven’t had anyone above range (e), and she smirks. And she can’t imagine what we’re going to write about it, but the material is such-and-such and she bought it at such a nice shop, shall she tell me its name—yes, please—and really, there’s nothing so comfortable as a really nice linen, is there? And—very coy—may she ask what me and the Captain have? I explain for the five hundredth time about our little rosebuds on the cream, I think his sister said it’s chintz, and the suite (t’isn’t, I don’t say so) is Queen Anne style (sic), and I think it’s quite old, John’s had it for ages, and she’s very pleased. God knows why. Then she supposes I know that they’re away? –Dark nod in the general direction of Number 1, Lime Walk. I admit there was no answer and she says darkly: “Miss Teak.” Huh? Oh—goddit, goddit. Like in the Bacardi ads. “Again? Didn’t they only have a Caribbean holiday last—” Exactly! Terrifically pleased, and gives me all the goss.’ on Number 1…

    Albert Street. Victorian it ain’t. It’s perched up well above Lime Walk, Linden Walk (yes, I did know that in Blighty it’s the same tree, apparently whoever had the ear of whoever was in charge of official street names in obscure Hampshire villages at the time didn’t), and Linden Close, so-called, no cathedrals need apply. Number 10 actually occupies all the higher side of Albert Street, with a sweeping view of the valley, because the original owners knocked down the row of Victorian workers’ cottages in 1949 and built a huge, extravagantly modern glass and concrete thing which still shrieks “modern” even today, on, presumably, the loot from black-market profiteering during the War. Well, work it out: the Labour government had struck, the country was broke, and the upper clawsses were doing nothing but moan about taxes, death duties and the impossibility of getting domestic servants that would work all hours of the day and night for peanuts: where else would that sort of dough of come from?

    I haven’t actually met this householder, because they’re really well off and keep themselves to themselves, so it goes like this: “Good morning. Mrs Arvidson, is it? I’m Dr Haworth from London University; you may have received a copy of our sociological survey. I wonder if I could speak to you about it?”

    Gee, after that intro’ what can they say? Mrs Arvidson ain’t no match for L.R. Marshall, M.A., Ph.D. on the quest for statistically significant data, so we go in.

    “What a wonderful view!”

    “Er—yes, it is, isn’t it?”

    Yep, uh-huh, you can see Ma Carmichael putting her washing out in person instead of making Heather Carter do it because ya get a really good view of Number 1’s back patio from her drying green, and there’s always the possibility that they might have forgotten to draw the Venetians before they took off for warmer climes. And in Linden Walk there’s Mr Knight walking Benjie very s-l-o-w-l-y past the notorious Number 14 because there’s always the possibility that its owners might come out, all three of them, and it’ll be written on their foreheads that they really are…

    Mrs Arvidson, she’s one of those limp, thin, greyish women who always have cold hands, though the hair isn’t technically grey, it’s blonde, very tidy pageboy bob, then admits feebly that she doesn’t think they kept the questionnaire.

    That’s easy, I got one in my hand (no pause while I fumble about in my briefcase, don’t want them to have time to gather their wits), and it will only take a few minutes. I’d be so grateful, and we haven’t got very many households in their demographic group. A phrase, you understand, that I don’t often trot out in the environs of Bellingford. Or need to.

    She sees. (I.e., she thinks she sees.) And perhaps—making a limp effort—I could tell her a little about it, Dr—uh—

    “Dr Haworth, Rosie Haworth, I don’t know if you know my husband, John? Captain Haworth.” I explain what he’s doing at the moment, stressing the great-big-ship motif rather than the Persian Gulf motif, and she nods limp understanding and thinks they did once meet, actually. Doesn’t matter if they did or didn’t, I’ve got the point over, and it’s downhill all the way from here… I don’t score a cuppa but on the whole that’s just as well, the human bladder isn’t infinitely expandable.

    Yeah, well, so much for Ma Carmichael: bugger range (e), everything the Arvidsons own is in the top brackets, the sitting-room furniture alone would keep several large families in food and housing for five years. By the end of the first page it had dawned, and she was starting to look almost cheerful. Even more so when I admired the big black leather Named recliner, identified it correctly, and admitted that we didn’t have a category for it because we hadn’t expected anyone in Bellingford…

    “Getting some good results?”

    I jump ten feet, I was just quietly making a few extra notes behind this whacking great gnarled tree that the original owners of Number 10 and their architect were too aesthetic (they didn’t have the word environmental in 1949) to tear down with the rest of the place.

    “Oh, it’s you, Greg! It’s true about the Arvidsons.”

    “Yeah. So now will you take Jack’s word that her car’s a Lamborghini?”

    “Something like that,” I grunt, filling in these mysterious little coded boxes on the back of the survey paper.

    Greg peers. “No, you moron! They have Heather Carter every day, not six days a week!”

    “Sundays as well?” I croak.

    “Yeah, same as Saturdays: she comes in and gets the lunch. Only on Sundays it’s always—”

    “A roast, right.”

    “No! I said you should’ve let me do Albert Street! Cold cuts, and she calls it smorgasbord.”

    “I can just see that, actually,” I admit limply, crossing out one little box and moving my tick to the top little box. “–Pretty though you are, Greg, I don’t think she woulda let you over the front step. I hadda trot out John’s rank and job before she’d utter.”

    “Then you might at least have bothered to get the dinkum oil out of her,” he says sternly in my dialect. “Gimme that. Hm, hm, hm… No! Jesus, Rosie! They’re flaming C. of E., Anglicans to you, her brother’s a bishop, for God’s sake!”

    “But she’s got this ruddy great carved wooden crucifix in the sitting-room, I’m sure it was genuine Mediaeval,” I whinge.

    “Yeah. It’s an ornament,” he tells me sternly.—Cringe, is it? Didn’t know even Anglicans went that far.—“And they never shop at Stouts’. Never.” He completely obliterates my box and puts a tick in the box below it.

    “Greg, in sociology there ain’t no such thing as never.”

    “There is, the Arvidsons are It. Well, one look at the woman shoulda told you that Absolute’s her middle name. Ask Pauline if she’s ever been in Sloane Square Salon.”

    “But her hair’s perfect, Greg! She’s gotta get it done somewh—” Oh. She takes the Lamborghini up to London twice a week. Ulp.

    He then spots that I’ve marked her down as not offering me a cuppa. And is very pleased, he thought he wasn’t gonna be able to use that data, so far he hasn’t met anyone that didn't— I don’t mention his pretty looks again, because at the point where we sort out each collector’s bunch of questionnaires I’m hoping that it will become clear to one person in the universe besides me that in any social group, however small, the sex of the participants matters!

    “Pity, in a way. Now we’ll never know their brand.”

    “Not unless one of them turns out to be a great secret fan of The Captain’s Daughter, no. But it’ll only be Twining’s Earl Grey,” he says, leering.

    “Pig. Um, I told Ma Carmichael that John likes English Breakfast, too. I suppose that wasn’t— Not before, no! The data’s clean!”

    “She’ll be using it till the day she dies: what if we want to re-survey their tea drinking habits in five years’ time?”

    “I know. Sorry, Greg.” –And I was the one that warned him about social interaction with one's subjects skewing one’s results, yeah.

    Then he wants to know if I’ve been to the bog, yet.

    We had an argument over whether this might be worked into the write-up. “No. And even Mrs Arvidson woulda let me, no human being refuses that, Greg!”

    “I was only gonna say, ask Mrs Foster, at The Green House.”—Its name, its name, we’re in Planet Upwardly Mobile, for cripes’ sakes! And yes, it’s green, whaddareya?—“She’s okay.”

    “Have you been, there?”

    “Yeah, she does let jobbing gardeners take a—”

    “No, you cretin! If you’ve already got the data, it’s pointless! Where’s somewhere you haven’t been, besides the Arvidsons’?”

    He identifies Number 19, at the far end of Albert Street, so I trudge off to it, rather than start with Mrs Foster’s, which is nearer. Because she’s sure to offer me a cuppa, geddit?

    Number 19, according to our computer, belongs to a J.P. Dillon, isn’t that phone book data marvellous, well, that combined with the database program which I've now set up to display or print, as desired, in order of street name and number. Belinda Stout knows Mr Dillon vaguely, he often buys anchovies, ugh, shudder. Those of us who like anchovies jes’ lyin’ low and saying’ nuffin’, right.

    Cripes, he doesn't look like an anchovy eater—unless perhaps he slaves over making anchovy toast? A very dapper little person indeed, in a neat fawn cardy. Cashmere, or my name isn’t Lily Rose Haworth.

    “Good morning. Mr Dillon, is it? I’m Dr Haworth from London University; you may have received a copy of our sociological survey. I wonder if I could speak to you about it?”

    “Of course! I have it ready for you, Dr Haworth! Do please come in!”

    Blimey.

    We go into his sitting-room. Blimey. More dark oak farmhouse ware than even John’s got. Plus and your brass warming pans and strange things in the hearth and— “Is this the original fireplace?” I croak.

    Terrifically pleased, of course it is, the cottage dates from— Blah, blah. Numbly I admit that John’s terribly peeved because our original fireplace surround—we’re over in Miller’s Bay—was torn out. But of course! I must be Captain Haworth’s wife! Do remember him to him, they have met at the Yacht Club, his brother knows the Captain quite well—David Dillon, Sir David.—Ulp. And yacht club? What flaming yacht club? The wanker’s never even breathed—

    And—forgive him—but if I’m that Dr Haworth, then surely—? Coy pause, all twinkles, here we go, folks. I admit that my stage name is Lily Rose Rayne, though of course I am really a socio— Don’t even get to finish the word, he’s off and running, Adores the series, so well written, such excellent characterisation—but then of course one would expect that from Varley Knollys— Etcetera and so forth. I do eventually get to go to the bog, while he gets the tea and, since it’s nearly time for elevenses (’tisn’t), just a wee snack. Ooh, Pears’ soap, lovely! My bet woulda been that carnation stuff that Aunty Kate gave me last summer. White bog paper with tiny flowers, the softest kind, this’ll back up those stats from Murray and Belinda nicely. No bidet, but matching pastel bog, short bath, and gracefully contoured pedestal basin, all very modern. It’s all in one, self-evidently, but given the size of your average Albert Street seventeenth-century cottage this is neither surprising nor significant. So I’d better make bloody sure Greg doesn’t claim it is, he still hasn’t grasped the fact that statistics in themselves are meaningless. Meaningless, read my lips: M,E—Yeah.

    … Boy, that anchovy toast was salty, I’ll be ready for another cuppa before long. Mr and Mrs Kinnear from Number 17 are away, staying with his sister in New Zealand (and good luck to them, mate: New Zealand at Christmas? It may not rain, fifty-fifty chance, but it’ll be muggy as all get out). So I trudge on to Number 15. Williamson, G.H. & P.I.

    “Mrs Haworth! You’re doing it yourself! How lovely! Do come in!”

    Right, P.I. Williamson’s a Mrs Carmichael clone, down to not being capable of taking in what the letters Ph.D. at the bottom of a polite note on university letterhead actually indicate. Apologises for the kitchen, Gregory’s in the sitting-room, offers tea. I refuse, explaining I’ve just had one with Mr Dillon. He’s dismissed as a funny little body and it takes all sorts, doesn’t it? And she does hope he didn’t interrogate me about my acting? I admit he did ask and she waxes terribly sympathetic…

    Gregory collects Toby jugs while Mr Carmichael’s hobby wasn’t mentioned but apart from that they’re clones, all right. Coulda just photocopied Mrs C.’s questionnaire. I move on…

    Number 31, Lower Mill Lane. Greg’s refused utterly to do Perry Horton, up at the top of Upper Mill Lane, so I’m gonna do this side of the road, all the way up to his place.

    “Hullo, Mr Timms, how are you? I’ve come to collect the questionnaire Gwennie Potter left you.” –Clear but not shouting, he gets ratty if you shout.

    “That daft form? Thought it was only for them.”

    Yes, that has been the reaction of a large section of the native population. “No, for everybody. I've got another copy, I can help you fill it in if you like.”

    “I can’t stand forms.”

    Quite. “Well, could I just ask the questions and fill it in for you?”

    Sniff. “Maybe. Isn’t that illegal?”

    “Um, no, it’s not the official census, Mr Timms!”

    “No need to shout, I’m not deaf, ya know!”—Not much.—“Well, you better come in, Rosie, tell me what it’s all about.”

    Gee, better I? I nip in quick before he can change his mind.

    “Thought you were on the telly?” he says after I’ve laboriously explained. It’s bloody hard to explain that sort of thing when the other person is rather deaf and hasn’t had much education but isn’t in the least stupid. Only if you care about not patronising him at the same time, true.

    “Yeah, but I only did that to earn some extra dough and because my professor wanted me to write up what goes on behind the scenes in the telly shows.”

    He gets his pipe out very slowly. “And didja?”

    “Mm. It’s in the book. Um, Mr Timms, I’m awfully sorry, but pipes make me feel sick!” –Very red, this isn’t very professional.

    “Then ya didn’t ought to be a census lady,” he says calmly, putting it away again. “Dare say it won’t kill me to wait. Go on, ask your ruddy questions.”

    I have to ask the questions as they’re wrote, or it skews the results. Clear the throat. “Um, they’re mostly like, choices, you’ll have to choose like (a), (b), (c) or like that. Sometimes it goes up to (g).” –Is this skewing the results? Is he gonna reply to everything as (a), (b), (c), or (g)?

    “I know, I’ve filled in more ruddy census papers than what you’ve ’ad ’ot dinners! Get on with it, or we’ll be ’ere till Christmas.”

    Well put. “Okay: Number 1. Do you own a working television set?”

    “Everyone owns a ruddy telly these days, girl!”

    “Um, Mr Horton doesn’t.”

    “’Im! All right, that’s ’im and the rest. –Go on, put yes.”

    “Yes—right. And is it, (a)— ” I struggle through the brand names, carefully chosen by Greg, or such is his claim, to sort out the telly sheep from the telly goats.

    “’Ow the fuck should I know? Go and look, if you’re that interested!”

    Feebly I go and look. So much for bloody Greg, it’s a giant Brand A slash Make A.

    “Happy?” he asks sardonically.

    “Well, yeah, actually, ’cos Greg dreamed up this question and it’s gonna throw his results out!” I admit, grinning. And forgetting that old Mr Timms, along with the rest of the village, is supposed to believe that Greg’s a jobbing gardener.

    Mr Timms breaks down and sniggers, disclosing that his Alan, who’s on Dauntless, bought that abroad, and have I heard from the Captain, and how is he?

    “Yeah; he’s good, thanks, Mr Timms. I’ll tell him you asked. Um, Question 2.”

    “Thought that was two?”

    “Um, no, two parts to Question 1. Question 2. Do you— ”

    “Think they’ll be back for Christmas?”

    “Um, I’m not sure. I thuh-hi-hi—” Suddenly I’m bawling all over old Mr Timms’s cosy kitchen. He doesn’t even seem surprised, I eventually register groggily, blowing my nose on a hanky that, forget any clichés that mighta been in ya mind, is as pristine as any of John’s ever were.

    “Get this down ya.”

    Oh, cripes, it’s rum. “Um, Mr Timms, isn’t it a bit early for rum?”

    “Depends ’oo you’re gonna breathe on, after. Old Ma Stout, she won’t mind, but I dunno that Mrs Fairfax’d appreciate it.” –Very dry indeed: Mrs Fairfax is the owner of the very choice renovated Number 33.

    “I’ve gotta do her, Greg’s gonna do Mrs Stout’s side.” I sip cautiously. Strewth!

    “Ya want water in it?”

    “No, it’s good. Good but strong.”

    He produces a tin of biscuits. It’s a large tin, so as Alan Timms is a petty officer, they’re probably from Navy stores. Maybe the rum is, too. I take a shortbread biscuit. “Thanks, Mr Timms. Sorry I bawled.”

    “You knew ’e was a sailor when you took ’im on,” he says unemotionally, taking a shortbread biscuit and dipping it in his rum.

    I copy him. Yum! “Yeah, I did. Only somehow I didn’t expect him to be away for Baby Bunting’s first Christmas.”

    “No. Dare say ’e didn’t, either. ’Ow is the baby?”

    “Good. He’s much livelier and taking a lot more notice, these days.”

    “Yeah. They do. –If I remember rightly,” he says, scratching his chin, “the Captain missed most of young Matt’s first few months, too. Alan’s Tommy’s the same age: his wife was really pissed off with him. Tried to persuade ’im to leave the Navy. Musta nagged him for… dunno. ’Bout eight years, I s’pose, cos Tommy was eight when she upped and left ’im.”

    “Mm. It is hard when you have to actually cope with it. Though I have got Aunty Kate, she’s been a tower of strength.”

    “Yeah. Pity your mum’s so far away, eh? No, well, bloody Cynthia ’ad ’er mum, only all she ever did was egg ’er on to make ’im leave the Navy, the cow. ’Ope your aunty’s got more sense.”

    “Yes,” I say, smiling at him: “she’s got loads of sense! She’s keeping me on the straight and narrow!”

    “Glad to ’ear it. ’Cos some of us thought she might not be, see, when we saw that daft photo of you and that Scotch bloke in the paper.”

    Oh, God. “That was just stupid publicity for The Captain’s Daughter. Our producer jacked it up.”

    “That right?” he says, sucking his teeth. “Belinda Stout, she reckons that ’e ’asn’t been near that cottage of ’is in Medlars Lane for months.”

    Wince. “No. Um, well the weather’s been lousy.”

    “’Asn’t seemed to stop Jack Powell from working on the place.” Artful pause. “Nor that little girlfriend of ’is from coming down to keep an eye on the renovations.”

    “Mm. I don’t know what the situation is, there, frankly, Mr Timms.”

    “You and the rest of the village, then,” he notes drily.

    “Yeah. Can I ask you the next question?”

    “Question 2,” he notes. “Yeah, go on. Dunno what ya wanna know for. Only don’t ask me about the bedroom suite, me and Molly bought it when we was wed, and I’m danged if I can remember what it set us back. A packet, though. Bet you ain’t got an (a) or (b) for that, eh?”

    “No. Um, Question 2. Do you own a—”

    Etcetera. We’re both so exhausted by the end of it that we have to have another nip of rum. He calls it a nip, myself I’d categorise it as a hefty slug. Ooh!

    “Got yer ruddy paper?” he says tolerantly.

    “Yes. And thanks for the rum and the biscuits. I will tell John you were asking after him.”

    “Yeah, do that. Bring the baby next time,” he says, still unemotional.

    Really? All right, then, I will! I stagger off to Number 33 and Mrs Fairfax’s seething gentility in a numbed state, I don’t think it’s due to the rum. Mr Timms is eighty-five, not that much older than ruddy Father Sir Bernard, and in his time has buried three kids from polio, and then his Molly, pneumonia that they didn't realise was until too late, there was no doctor in the village (and there still isn’t a practising one, though there are several retired ones that can be called on at a pinch). More recently he’s seen the one remaining son, Alan, bust up with three wives, none of whom could hack being a sailor’s wife. He hasn’t seen his grandchildren for seventeen years, because Cynthia, the wife who actually condescended to bear Alan kids, the other two being far too la-de-da to do any such thing, moved herself and them to New Zealand and never bothered to keep in touch. When the third wife walked out on him Alan went on a terrific bender and got busted back to petty officer and so, although with his experience he ought to be C.P.O. by now, he isn’t. And while he was at sea she took the opportunity to clean out the joint bank account. So he’s more or less back to Square One and had to sell the nice little flat in Portsmouth because she demanded half of it. Nobody would claim Mr Timms has come through it all smiling but he’s certainly come through it with all his wits about him and the grim determination not to let the buggers grind him down. Good on him. Can’t imagine Father Sir Bernard coping with even half his troubles.

    At Upper Mill Lane the numbers change, like, you get to Number 67 on this side, and a gap where 68 fell down years back on the other, and then, just to thoroughly confuse you, it’s 39 as the road bends sharply and heads uphill. I’ve come this far, so I might as well keep going: there aren’t many houses left in Upper Mill Lane. I plod on…

    Number 35. Old Mrs Starkey. No intros, she plunges straight in with: “I suppose she give yer tea and fancy cakes.” –I.e. old Mrs Potts at Number 39, there being no 37.

    “Yes. They were nice.”

    “Bought?” I nod and she sniffs. “Thought so. You better come in.”

    We go in and Mrs Starkey, who’s a tall, gaunt character who in her time has been discerned to be a witch by at least three generations of Upper Bellingford children, produces her completed questionnaire. “What you wanna know all this stuff for?”

    Feebly I explain. Well, sort of. A paper for a journal. –Well, Greg wants us to write it up, and it may be publishable. And Prof.’ll be quite pleased to see something for months on the uni’s money living the life of Reilly, as certain colleagues have claimed, in the English countryside. Some of it was maternity leave but they’re the sort of colleagues that ignore that sort of thing.

    “No-one’s gonna be interested in that!”

    “Well, sociologists are. Well, the academic life’s like that, Mrs Starkey.”

    “Daft. You better ’ave a nip of sherry, it’ll take the taste of her tea away.”

    Ooh, better I? “Ta very much, Mrs Starkey.” We have a nip of sherry and she wants to know what she put on her form. Fortunately I saw that coming. “Well, I’m not sure which one it was.” I produce the bundle of papers. It can’t be the top one because she doesn’t use no green pen. And the bottom one doesn’t look like her writing. So she’s baffled.

    “You see, we don’t use names. It’s like the census, it’s confidential.”

    Sniff. But she sees. And I thank her for the sherry and refuse an offer of dinner, she means lunch, but the older generations of villagers usually call it dinner: in the first place I know she can’t afford to feed my great mouth, and in the second place if I stop now I’ll lose all inclination to finish the street. And I trudge on. Excelsior…

    Number 23 Upper Mill Lane. Old Mr Simons. Probably one other reason, besides Perry Horton’s sardonic tongue, why Greg didn’t want to do this stretch. “Clear orf. No ’awkers.”

    “Mr Simons, I’m not a hawker, I—”

    Slam!

    Oh, well, I tried. I will send him a letter, however: a proper letter through the post, with a stamp, he may feel inclined to respond if it looks official. I cross over, feeling his eyes boring into my back, to do the clump of cottages on the other side: if I’m doing Upper Mill Lane I might as well do them all, what’s left of them…

    Phew. The Carters’, at last: Number 8. Strictly speaking, the Jim Carters’, there’s a tribe of Carters. The youngest girl, Roseanne, opens the door. You’re right, after the Roseanne; you could probably chart the success, not to say arrival and disappearance, of most of what’s screened on TV over the past 40 years by the Christian names of Britain’s children. Earlier it was film stars, of course, though there’s still a bit of that around, too, there’s a Keanu down in Bottom Street, where there’s quite a clutch of young families.

    “Mum says ’ave you come for our form, and do ya wanna have yer dinner with us?”

    To the point. She’s eight, it’s quite a spread-out family: Georgia, one of the older girls, is of course the apprentice at Sloane Square salon, the hairdresser’s in the High Street. The giant sty doubtless explains why she isn’t at school.

    “Hi, Roseanne. That eye looks sore; you poor thing.”

    She remembers it and tells me it hurts like buggery.

    “Roseanne! Don’t you say that word, I’ll wash yer mouth out with soap!” from the hinterland. Gee, takes me back.

    “I bet it does,” I agree sympathetically. We’re both tacitly ignoring the interjection, natch. “I have come for the form, has your mum got it?”

    “Roseanne! Tell her to come in!”

    We go in…

    Aeons later I escape. Mrs Carter’s opinion of the survey is, of course, one with the vast majority, but she and her Jim filled everything in for me and if there’s anything more I want to know, I’m to ask any time. Plus and I get the interesting news that old Mrs Blaine from Number 16 can’t read, so if she gave me a filled in one, it’ll of been her what wrote it, and every blamed word on it’ll be a lie! I agree with feeling, as I know the her in question. Mrs Carter watches with interest as I then identify it unerringly and tear it up—naturally the papers are all coded and if they haven’t got the originals the one we rock up holding will have the code noted on it three seconds before we knock.

    “I get it, 01UML1626AUB. The 01’ll be the year, right? What’s the 26A for?”

    I wink. “Nothing. Disguise.”

    And she goes into a terrific spluttering fit, though gasping in the middle of it: “That explains that 32X on ours! Me and Jim were right puzzled by it!”

    Right. How many other citizens of Bellingford and Upper Bellingford have spotted the fact that we can identify their confidential information?

    And refusing lunch again, I’ll definitely chicken out on Perry Horton if I don’t go now, I plug on, accompanied by the parting injunction not to take no notice of a thing he says…

    “Come for your form, have you?” he says expressionlessly.

    “Hullo to you, too!” I gasp. It’s starting to drizzle: I dashed the last fifty yards.

    “Get your breath. Why have you come to the back door?”

    I get my breath and explain: “You’ve got a Yale lock on your front door.”

    “Very clear,” he returns, unphased.

    “Thought it would be, yeah. I have come for the questionnaire. I suppose it’s too much to hope you’ve filled it in?”

    “It’s somewhere about,” he says in a vague voice. “Come in, Rosie.”

    We go in. Muggeridge the tortoise is in residence, on the hideous tan and orange sofa with a lettuce leaf. I lift him and it off and put them on the floor. “Tortoises can’t fly,” I say on an acid note as Perry looks mildly surprised.

    “True.” He looks round vaguely. “I think I filled it in. Well, I certainly read it and decided on my answers…”

    It takes a while but by a process of brilliant deduction I find it: he’s used it as a bookmark. It isn’t filled in. We sit down…

    Gee, he’s even more absolute than Mrs Arvidson of Albert Street, surprise, surprise. If he hasn’t got a washing-machine, how in God’s name does he— Don’t ask. I don’t, but he volunteers: “Christine Carter sometimes comes up and removes a pile of dirty washing. I haven’t asked her to, she’s taken it upon herself. Can your questionnaire cope with that?”

    “No. We’ll probably class you as an anomaly and forget about you, you’re certainly not statistically significant.”

    “No; I usually manage to fall into the plus or minus five percent category,” he says, sounding super-vague.

    Yes, right: no flies on him. As if to prove it he then says: “How does your interesting code distinguish between, for example, Lime Walk and Linden Walk? I got as far as LIW and then gave up.”

    “What a lie. LMW and LNW, if ya must know. And we don’t have to remember it, it’s in the comp—” I stop, and just glare.

    “Would you like some lunch?” he offers politely.

    I would, if there is some and if it hasn’t been sitting around for days on end.

    “Made this morning,” he says quickly.

    “Yeah, hah, hah. Well, I would, then, ta very much. Hang on.”—He hangs on.—“It’s not parsnip soup, is it?”

    “John finds my parsnip soup deliciously delicate.”

    Wanker. “He’s a Pom, too. I’m not touching it with a bargepole.”

    “It’s not parsnip soup. It’s rabbit pie.”

    “Rabbit and?” He’s been known to eat crow, I kid you not.

    He rubs his chin. “Onion from old Roger Bellinger, he insisted on paying me in kind for some cuttings he wanted, frozen carrots from Murray and Belinda Stouts’ shop, paid for with actual cash money, they don’t let me run up a slate,”—he watches sardonically as I swallow, thinking of that whacking great share portfolio he’s got and the giant posh flat in London that’s let to a banker—“and some dried herbs from the garden. Oh, and a dollop of decent burgundy. We can have the rest with it, if you like: it’ll take the taste of Ma Starkey’s sherry away.”

    “Yeah,” I concede weakly. “Sounds good.”

    Of course the pie’s totally delish and the wine, real French with one of those very plain labels, is indescribably good, probably paid something like sixty quid for one bottle, he is like that, as if ya hadn’t guessed. We’ve finished our very generous helpings of pie and are sipping the rest of the wine when there’s a knock at the front door.

    He doesn’t move. “Didn’t you tell Greg you’d collect my form?”

    “Yes. And he wouldn’t come to the front, he knows you pretend not to hear callers.”

    “Touché,” he drawls.

    “Well, answer it, Perry!”

    He gets up, looking resigned.

    As he leaves the sitting-room door open I hear every syllable.

    “Hullo,” he says in a rocked voice. Crumbs, is it Mrs Anne—

    No. A very small but very clear voice replies: “Hullo, Perry. I’ve brought that play you said you’d like to read.”

    Bridget. My God! And when did he say he’d like to read some play? Not in my hearing, he didn’t. My God.

    “Oh. Thank you, Bridget. You’d better come in: Rosie’s here, we’re just finishing lunch.”

    And he shows her in. She’s very pink but not as flustered-looking as I’d imagined and this, folks, is not a Good Sign. He’s totally unmoved but then, that doesn’t mean a thing.

    “Hi, Bridget.”

    “Hullo, Rosie,” she says composedly.

    “Like some rabbit pie? There’s plenty left. And Rosie’s just examined it forensically to demonstrate it’s not toxic.” –Totally poker-faced.

    “No, thank you, I’ve had my lunch,” she says composedly

    “Well, sit down and have a glass of burgundy.” he urges.

    Huh! She hardly ever drinks and when she does it’s only wh—

    “Thanks; I’d like to,” she says composedly.

    Well, I’d say that’s It, folks, wouldn’t you? He pulls the hideous armchair up to the table and she sits in it and laps up the wine and lets him tell her, omigod, how to tell a good red…

    Turns out the play’s that modern thing she was in with Adam McIntyre in London, couple of years back. Black rehearsal clothes throughout, very drear, as if ya couldn’t of guessed. However, Perry’ll read anything. But I dunno that she’ll be very pleased with his review, he won’t mince words, however much he fancies her. And there’s no doubt he does fancy her: can’t take his eyes off her. She is looking very sweet, in a big grey mackintosh that she’s taken off to reveal a sweet little pale grey twinset with an old-fashioned brooch at the neck. After a bit he asks about it.

    “I found it in a junk shop in London,” she says, pinkening and smiling. “It is rather kitschy, I suppose. But I like it.”

    “May I see?” he asks, holding out a hand. Perry’s got beautiful hands, long and slender. Not too clean, true. She’s pinker than ever but she unpins it and puts it into the hand.

    Yeah, yeah, very sweet: tiny flowers, plastic or something, under a layer of clear plastic. Beg ya pardon. Cut paper. Under glass. Victorian. And personally I don’t care if the craft was inspired by the Venetian whatsits that were very popular at the time. Bridget, however, is very interested to learn this and admits she’s seen some lovely ones in the British Museum and a Named antique shop in Something Street. Somewhere posh, bet it had a W1 after it. “Only in the window, I didn’t go in and ask the price!” she reveals with a shudder and a laugh.

    “No, of course not!” he agrees, crinkling up his slightly slanted, very dark eyes at the corners. Boy, has that done it, the girl doesn’t know where to put herself. Maybe I should just withdraw tactfully? I’m not gonna, though. Added to which, the whole bit’s a piece of total hypocrisy on his part, he could buy a hundred of the things and never notice the difference!

    “Perry, if you admire these wanking glass whatsits so much, why the fuck don’t you buy one?”

    Bridget gives me an amazed and indignant look, how can I be so insensitive?

    “I’m not interested in owning things,” he says in that detached upper-clawss voice.

    “No, of course!” she agrees warmly.

    Look, if anyone else was agreeing warmly with him, Perry Horton’d give them one of his driest looks, and probably flatten them as well, if he could be bothered, but does he, with Bridget? Does he Hell as like.

    Eventually she lets him lend her a book and we go. I suppose it’s good that he isn’t inviting her warmly to stay on for a while and that she isn't proposing herself even more warmly. Not that Bridget is the sort of female that would. Only, before today I’d of said she wasn’t the sort of female that’d rock up to a bloke’s front floor that she hardly knows with a book that he’s forgotten all about he said he’d like to read and never meant it in the first place.

    We don’t say anything for a bit. Then she asks with a smile in her voice: “Why the briefcase, Rosie?”

    See, normally I’d have my laptop bag. It isn’t a real laptop bag, though used for the porpoise, it’s about the size of an overnight bag and features pink fake leather and pink, blue and brown fake tapestry and came from a Cunningham’s Warehouse in Adelaide when I was staying with Aunty Kate, for one twentieth of what the things cost in the posh shops. A real bargain: it’s sturdy as anything and every so often Raewyn and Sally give it good clean for me.

    “Goes with the uni-lecturer-type tailored tweed jacket and shiny brogues, well, they were shiny before I hit Upper Mill Lane. I’ve been collecting questionnaires up Lime Walk and Albert Street—round that way,” I explain clearly.

    “Help!” she says with a laugh. “I see!”

    “Yeah. Coming up to Perry’s after that was a real rest.”

    “Of course!” she agrees, very pink but smiling.

    “Bridget,” I say heavily—I have known her for some years, now, after all—“you’re an idiot.”

    After quite a while and a bit of chewing of the lip she admits: “I know. And I’m sorry I couldn’t seem to fall for any of the nice boys you found for me.”

    I did not! Well, I didn’t find them for her, I just thought, having found them, that she might— “No, well, so am I. But I suppose ya can’t force it. Would it do any good if I told ya that Perry’s a lost cause?”

    “No,” she admits, very pink.

    No. Thought not. “There is the possibility, though I admit today didn’t suggest it, that he may not let you get near him.”

    “He lets that Mrs Leaman get near him!” she retorts with vigour.

    “Yeah. Maybe he thinks she’s old enough to look after herself.”

    “So?” she says, sticking out her pointed chin. It’s not as determined as Katie’s, but I do know that under the quiet manner, Bridget has got just as much determination. More, really: it was her, after all, that went on the stage in spite of all their parents could say. Have you noticed that those very quiet, composed people are often the most determined ones? Yeah.

    “So, you’re half his age, Bridget.”

    “Look at the pot calling the kettle black,” she replies with the utmost composure, oh, God.

    “Do I need to say it? I’m quite a bit older than you, and John’s a very different type from Perry. Stable,” I stress grimly. “Responsible. Ya do know Perry just walked away from the Egyptian wife, do ya?”

    “What?” she croaks. “What Egyptian wife?”

    Shit! Forgot I hadn’t imparted that part of the Horton saga. “Um, sorry, Bridget. I didn’t mean to spring it on you out of the blue. I forgot you didn’t know about his marriage. Everybody round here knows. Um, well, he’s half Egyptian, his mum was from a very posh family.”

    “Yes, Mrs Granville Thinnes told us,” she says faintly.

    I bet. “Yeah. Um, well…” I explain about the arranged marriage and what was behind it and Perry finding out and the almighty row and the wife rushing off with the kid, plus and my bet that he must have said something pretty nasty to her to make her rush off; and the subsequent just walking away from the whole bit.

    “But isn’t he supporting the little girl?” she says in a low voice.

    “Like John and Matt? No, because she’s not his, if ya were wondering how far that upper-clawss, noblesse oblige manner of his might go.”

    “Mm…” After quite a while, we’re now in Lower Mill Lane, she says in a shaking voice: “Rosie, you’re not making all this up, are you?”

    “Eh? No!”

    I thinks she’s convinced by the note of genuine indignation. “I see. I don’t think he did anything very wrong,” she decides in a small voice. “His wife should have told him.”

    “Yeah, I agree. But she was sixteen when she married him. Can you imagine fronting up to Perry Horton at that age?”

    “Sixteen?”

    “Yep.”

    There’s more silence after this, hardly surprisingly. And at long last she says: “He should have made allowances for her.”

    “Yeah. But you see, that’s Perry all over. He doesn’t make allowances. He despises people whose standards are lower than his, geddit?”

    She’s got it. She bites her lip and nods.

    We’re at the head of Medlars Lane before I give in and say: “Bridget, your standards are quite as high as bloody Perry Horton’s, if that’s what’s worrying you. Higher, actually: I can’t see you walking off from that sort of mess without a backwards glance. And you’re a much, much nicer person. But that’s the main rub, in my view. You’re far too nice.”

    “Don’t be silly,” she says in a stifled voice, very pink once more.

    “I’m not being silly. The word ‘nice’ isn’t in his vocabulary. I don’t say he’d deliberately hurt you: he’s not a cruel person. But he’s used to not giving a damn about anyone but himself.“

    “A person can change,” she says obstinately.

    Oh, Christ!

    “No, they can’t,” I say, grabbing her arm fiercely. “They can’t, Bridget. Not fundamentally. For God’s sake think about it before you get mixed up in any way with Perry Horton!”

    She swallows. “I will think about it,” she says in a small voice.

    “Good. Is that Jack Powell’s truck under the quince tree?” It is, thank God, so I'll get him to run me home, boy am I shagged out. Don’t think it’s got all that much to do with trudging round Bellingford, either.

    Gee, the cottage is starting to look almost like a dwelling, Jack must of been working like stink, because he’s certainly been spending ages at our place working on the garage and its flat, though, true, it was a kitset, and he had two stout helpers (not Greg) to help him actually put it up, bit like barn-raising. The cottage’s roof’s fixed. And the damp-proof coursing’s done, I know that because he told us all about it.

    He tells me I’m overdoing it, and takes me into the kitchen where he sits me down and boils the jug. Meanwhile Bridget’s ringing Graham Howell on her mobile to book his taxi to take her in to Portsmouth, she’s going back to London on this evening’s train. So does this mean she came down for the day merely to nip up and see Perry Horton? I’m not asking, I don’t wanna know.

    “This floor looks good, Jack. Is this vinyl? It looks just like real tiles! Sandstone!”

    He’s terrifically pleased and we’re just settling down to a nice chat over the tea and bikkies when the back door opens and in comes Katie with a bag of groceries. Why didn’t she ring last night to say she was coming? I don’t ask, I don’t wanna know that, either.

    “The kitchen’s looking lovely, Katie.”

    She smiles proudly and points out all the features that Jack suggested, like, the big beam to hold her pots that he put in specially—Jack winks at me—and the lovely authentic old cupboard doors that hide the dishwasher and the fridge, look how he’s done the fridge, isn’t that clever? Euan wanted a free-standing “island” but there wouldn’t have been room for that, would there? No, nor a butcher’s block, puts in Jack, completely poker-face.

    I let her take me upstairs. The stairs are even narrower and more precipitous than Michael Manfred’s and the bedrooms are minute. Minute. True, the third one’s being turned into a bathroom, they will be able to wash. Gee, white Melamine cupboards, and it’s lined in blue, identical to the one in Greg’s flat. Fancy that. (Jack’s got these mates that let him have the stuff wholesale. Whether or not it fell off the back of a truck in the first instance.) It’s gonna have a shower unit, Jack’s gonna get her one of those ready-made ones, he knows a bloke— Right.

    There were two rooms and a passage downstairs but as the walls were completely rotten and Euan wanted the open-plan look—likes John’s cottage, yep—Jack ripped them out. Katie’s looking at the wreck that’s the floor. Sourly she reveals: “Euan reckons there should have been stone flags at the price he paid.”

    The price they paid, wasn’t it? “Yeah. Well, old Mr Carter from Upper Mill Lane reckons there were originally stone flags, this was back in old Miss Green’s father’s day, I think. But round about the time the roadhouse was built on the corner near Graham Howell’s service station—you know, that big cream clapboard house with the fake Italian cypresses: it belongs to that ghastly retired couple with the black poodles and the electric-blue Beamer—round about then, genuine stone flags were in great demand amongst the trendies, and he tore them up and sold them.”

    “That’d be right,” agrees Jack stolidly. “Don’t worry, Katie, I’ll fix this lot up so’s it’ll look like genuine old oak. Won’t cost you hardly a thing, either.” He glances at me. “You wanna get Euan’s okay, first?”

    “No,” she says tightly. “Go ahead, Jack.”

    Jack glances at me again. “He at Stratford?”

    “Yes, rehearsing a whole set of the history plays—Shakespeare.”

    “So, uh, is this the lot that includes Richard II?” I ask groggily.

    “Don’t ask me,” she says sourly.

    Oops.

    Jack glances at me again, it’s probably driving Katie mad, but he’s like that. “Any film on the horizon?”

    Sourly she replies: “Hollywood wants him to read for some frightful costume epic. As far as I can see, the reasoning is he wore costume when he did that Restoration play at the Mountjoy Midsummer Festival last summer, so he’d be ideal.”

    “Goddit. So he’s gone into his Hollywood persona, has he, Katie?” I ask sympathetically.

    “What’s that supposed to mean?” she snarls.

    Shit. “Uh—nothing. Only the Christmas I spent with him, um, Christmas before last, that woulda been, he did nothing but go to flashy night-clubs and get snapped by the paparazzi, it was when Derry Dawlish was making that wanking Old-Russia-in-Prague epic.”

    “Eh?” croaks Jack. “Prague’s not in Russia!”

    “No, that’s the point, Jack. Dawlish filmed it in Prague but it was supposed to be Russia.”

    “Daft,” he says cheerfully. “Well, want a lift home?”

    Thankfully I admit I do.

    “Before you start,” he warns as we drive down Medlars Lane with a loud toot of the horn for the benefit of Mrs Granville Thinnes’s twitching front curtains, “I haven’t laid eyes on the bloody shit since Kingdom Come!”

    “No,” I mutter, biting my up. That was pretty strong, for Jack, he doesn’t use much language in front of ladies. Only when Greg drops a hammer on his foot, like that.

    “Well, do you know what’s going on, Rosie?”

    “No. Well, I know they were all sweetness and light, um, woulda been that time they bought the fish, um, John had just gone—going on two months back. And it’s been downhill since. Maybe Euan expected the cottage to, um, miraculously metamorphose itself into something instantly liveable in? Or the relationship to, um, turn into something like mine and John’s or Velda’s and Duncan Cross’s on the strength of the cottage? Not consciously,” I explain as he looks at me incredulously, “but subconsciously.”

    “It takes ruddy hard work to turn a tumbledown dump into a decent house,” he says grimly. “Not to say, to turn a relationship into something solid.”

    “You hit the nail on the head there, Jack. And hard yacker,” I say in my vernacular, “isn’t something that Euan knows anything about. Well, he’ll sweat to get a rôle right, I admit that.”

    Jack snorts.

    “Gifted people often expect everything to fall into their laps, don’t they? Euan’s never even had to struggle to find parts: he started off in Scotland and was never out of work there, and when he came to London he had the same sort of luck. And of course he’s very attractive with it, he’s always been able to have any girl he wanted.”

    “Ya don’t say,” he says sourly. And we drive back to Miller’s Bay in silence. I don’t mention Bridget and Perry Horton, I haven’t ruddy well got the strength.

    “Did you get some good results?” asks Aunty Kate, automatically putting the jug on.

    “Dunno yet, Aunty Kate! But I collected up loads of filled-in questionnaires, yes. It remains to be seen if our questionnaire-designing techniques are as good as we fondly imagined.”

    “Are there actual techniques?” she asks dubiously.

    “And a half. I did tell Greg not to put this open-ended question, um, not to ask them what they think of the facilities available in Bellingford. Some of them have written ‘Not much,’ and some of them have written ‘What facilities?’ And some of them have written whole diatribes, on extra sheets of paper.”

    “Isn’t that good, dear?”

    “Not if you want to reduce it something you can put in the computer and correlate, no. Added to which, what facilities are they talking about? He didn’t specify, ya see.”

    “No-o… Well, the facilities!” she says brightly. “Like the shops, I suppose.”

    “Yeah. Only this one, it’s old Mr Parker from Harriet Burleigh Street, that really nice little cottage with the gorgeous pink rambling rose and the mermaid fountain, it’s got: ‘Footpaths need upgrading. No decent bus service. Rubbish men unreliable. Verges need upkeep. Driving in village over 30 mph should not be allowed.’ Well, he’s written ‘A,L,O,U,D’, but he does mean permitted, he’s not on about noisy drivers. Though some of them have complained like billyo about them, especially the old villagers in George Street and the retirees in Church Lane. –See? They’ve all used their own definition of facilities.”

    “I see! It’s harder than what you might think.”

    It sure is. Hard on the feet, too. And I gratefully accept a cuppa and then take on board the suggestion that I might like to put my feet up, she’ll be here, I don’t need to worry about Baby Bunting. Bless you, Aunty Kate. –No, I don’t mention Bridget and Perry Horton, I haven’t ruddy well got the strength!