Muriel Hipkin turned over in bed to look at her
floral china bedside clock. It said a quarter to eight - another fifteen
minutes before she needed to rise. It was Easter Sunday today, such
a special day in the Christian calendar, and this particular Easter
Sunday was extra special, for the new Rector would be taking his first
service. The Reverend Peter Alexander Harris MA (Oxon) was young and
full of vigour, so different from dear Mr Furbank. She'd always had
hopes of dear Mr Furbank, but now he'd died and so suddenly, too,
and it was too late. Too late for lots of things.
Her tiny bedroom caught the first shafts of sun each morning and she
lay revelling in its warmth. The neat floral curtains with their tiny
pattern matched the neat floral bedspread. The carpet was cream with
a tiny pattern on it, too. This was the first house she'd ever lived
in where the choice of colours and furniture had been her own, her
very own. Before, it had always been Mother's choice - nice, sensible
dark reds and browns, lifeless and 'practical'. That particular bondage
had been laid to rest four years ago. Muriel had been a willing slave
but it wasn't until her Mother passed over Jordan that she realised
how she had been bound hand and foot. Her money kept the house and
fed them, her money paid the bills for the special foods and the extra
warmth, but she'd made none of the decisions.
Released from her chains, she'd returned to the village of Turnham
Malpas where she had been born, and bought this 'starter home' - except
that for her, it would be the starter and the finisher. No moving
up to better things. This was it - till she needed constant care in
a home, heaven forbid. The house was tiny. It had one living room
out of which a square was taken to provide a minute kitchen. In the
back corner of the living room was a spiral staircase which led to
the small landing, hardly bigger than a doormat. Upstairs was one
bedroom, and one miniscule bathroom. Not even a space for the vacuum
cleaner, which had to live under the spiral stairs. Its compensation
was that it was built alongside the churchyard. Glebe Cottages, the
little row was called. No one else wanted Muriel's house, with its
view of the ancient graves and the lych gate and the church, but it
had a large garden which curved comfortably around the churchyard
wall. Muriel loved gardening, and hers was the pride of the village.
She'd won so many prizes at the annual Village Show the two years
she'd been entering, it was becoming embarrassing. Maybe this year
she wouldn't enter anything at all and give everyone else a chance.
Eight o' clock. As the church clock chimed the last stroke, Pericles
came tip-tapping up the stairs. His bright brown eyes sparkled with
delight as he flung himself on Muriel's bed. His snow-white fur contrasted
sharply with his bright black nose.
'Off the bed, Perry, you naughty dog! Get off.' He leapt down and
sprang about the bedroom, looking for slippers or shoes to race off
downstairs with. Muriel got up and chased him out. Looking through
her bedroom window, she could just see the back garden of the village
store. Eight o' clock on Sundays, James Charter-Plackett - new owner
of what was the village shop, but which now gave the appearance of
being a miniature Harrods Food Hall - stood naked on the side of his
brand-new pool and dived in, shallowly, for the pool was not really
deep enough but it was the only way he could force himself to take
his morning exercise.
Harriet Charter-Plackett, also naked, followed him in. Muriel could
just glimpse them as they stood side by side on the pool edge. She'd
once seen her father undressed when she was nursing him through his
last illness and had been somewhat surprised, but James, or 'Jimbo'
as he preferred to be called, was the first man she'd actually had
a chance to take a good look at. This cavorting naked in the garden
had caused a minor scandal when the couple first started doing it,
but the locals now accepted it as one of the idiosyncrasies of a townie.
Besides, they liked the revival of their village shop. Mrs Thornton's
fly-blown cakes and tired lettuces and the cigarette ash dusting everything
was no longer acceptable in 1990. After all, you had to move with
the times, hadn't you? It was time for a change.
Muriel glanced at her slim figure shrouded in its long cotton nightgown
- white, of course. In school photographs Mother had only to look
for the palest blob of a face to find it was Muriel. She was still
a pale blob. Pale skin, pale blue eyes, pale fair hair, and that was
going paler still now it had white streaks in it. In strong sun she
was almost obliterated. At boarding school (only a minor one - her
parents couldn't afford one of the better ones) she had been taught
to undress without the necessity of revealing any part of her anatomy.
It was unseemly to expose oneself, the Anglican nuns had declared.
Muriel often wondered how much their teaching had influenced her relationships
in later years. They'd taught her embarrassment and shyness and modesty
to such an extent that she had never been able to communicate properly
with the opposite sex - except for dear Mr Furbank, of course. Some
people might have sniggered that maybe he wasn't of the opposite sex,
anyway, and that was why she got on with him so well. She straightened
her shoulders; she must correct her habit of stooping.
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