Part Two Chapter IV

IVSamanthas dinner invitation to Kay had been motivated by a mixture of vengefulness and boredom. She saw it as retaliation against Miles, who was always busy with schemes in which he gave her no say but with which he expected her to co-operate she wanted to retard how he liked it when she put things without consulting him. Then she would be stealing a march on Maureen and Shirley, those nosy old crones, who were so fascinated by Gavins private affairs but k modernistic bordering to nothing virtu ally the relationship between him and his London girlfriend. Finally, it would afford her another opportunity to sharpen her claws on Gavin for being pusillanimous and indecisive about his have it off life she might scold about weddings in front of Kay or say how nice it was to see Gavin making a commitment at last.However, her plans for the discomposure of others gave Samantha less pleasure than she had hoped. When on Satur twenty-four hours morning she told Miles what she had done, he reacted with suspicious enthusiasm.Great, yeah, we havent had Gavin large for ages. And nice for you to get to know Kay.Why?Well, you always got on with Lisa, didnt you?Miles, I hated Lisa.Well, OK maybe youll like Kay betterShe glared at him, wondering where all this good humour was coming from. Lexie and Libby, home for the weekend and cooped up in the endure because of the rain, were ceremonial a music DVD in the sitting room a guitar-laden ballad blared through to the kitchen where their parents stood talking.Lis cristal, said Miles, brandishing his mobile, Aubrey wants to have a talk with me about the council. Ive just called Dad, and the Fawleys have invited us all to dinner tonight at Sweetlove No thanks, said Samantha, cutting him off. She was suddenly full of a fury she could just now explain, even to herself. She walked out of the room.They argued in low voices all over the house through the day, trying not to spoil their daughters weekend. Samantha refused to c hange her mind or to treat her reasons. Miles, afraid of getting angry at her, was alternately conciliatory and cold.How do you think its going to look if you dont come? he said at ten to eight that evening, standing in the doorway of the sitting room, ready to leave, wearing a suit and tie.Its nothing to do with me, Miles, Samantha said. Youre the one running for office.She liked watching him dither. She knew that he was terrified of being late, yet wondering whether he could still persuade her to go with him.You know theyll be expecting both(prenominal) of us.Really? Nobody move me an invitation.Oh, come off it, Sam, you know they meant they took it for granted More fool them, then. Ive told you, I dont fancy it. Youd better hurry. You dont want to keep Mummy and Daddy waiting.He left. She listened to the simple machine reversing out of the pull, then went into the kitchen, opened a feeding bottle of wine and brought it back into the sitting room with a glass. She kept pic turing Howard, Shirley and Miles all having dinner unneurotic at Sweetlove House. It would surely be the first orgasm Shirley had had in years.Her vox populis swerved irresistibly to what her accountant had said to her during the week. Profits were way down, whatever she had pretended to Howard. The accountant had in truth suggested closing the shop and concentrating on the online side of the business. This would be an admission of failure that Samantha was not prepared to make. For one thing, Shirley would love it if the shop closed she had been a gripe about it from the start. Im sorry, Sam, its not really my taste just a teeny bit over the top But Samantha loved her little red and faint shop in Yarvil loved getting away from Pagford every day, chatting to customers, gossiping with Carly, her assistant. Her world would be tiny without the shop she had nurtured for fourteen years it would contract, in short, to Pagford.(Pagford, crashing(a) Pagford. Samantha had never meant to live here. She and Miles had planned a year out before starting work, a round-the-world trip. They had their itinerary mapped out, their visas ready. Samantha had dreamed about walking barefoot and generate in hand on long w overheade Australian beaches. And then she had found out that she was pregnant.She had come down to visit him at Ambleside, a day after she had taken the pregnancy test, one week after their graduation. They were supposed to be leaving for Singapore in eight days time.Samantha had not wanted to place Miles in his parents house she was afraid that they would overhear. Shirley seemed to be behind every door Samantha opened in the bungalow.So she waited until they were sitting at a menacing recession table in the Black Canon. She meaned the rigid line of Miles jaw when she told him he seemed, in some indefinable way, to become older as the news hit him.He did not speak for several petrified seconds. Then he said, Right. Well get married.He told her that he had already bought her a ring, that he had been planning to propose someplace good, somewhere like the top of Ayers Rock. Sure enough, when they got back to the bungalow, he unearthed the little box from where he had already hidden it in his rucksack. It was a small solitaire diamond from a jewellers in Yarvil he had bought it with some of the money his grandmother had left him. Samantha had sat on the edge of Miles do and cried and cried. They had married three months later.) solo with her bottle of wine, Samantha turned on the television. It brought up the DVD Lexie and Libby had been watching a frozen image of four young men singing to her in annoyed T-shirts they looked barely out of their teens. She pressed play. After the boys finished their song, the DVD cut to an interview. Samantha slugged back her wine, watching the band joking with each other, then becoming yearning as they discussed how much they loved their fans. She thought that she would have known them as Americ ans even if the sound had been off. Their teeth were perfect.It grew late she paused the DVD, went upstairs and told the girls to leave the PlayStation and go to bed then she returned to the sitting room, where she was three-quarters of the way down the bottle of wine. She had not turned on the lamps. She pressed play and kept drinking. When the DVD finished, she put it back to the commencement and watched the bit she had missed.One of the boys appeared significantly more mature than the other three. He was broader across the shoulders biceps bulged beneath the short sleeves of his T-shirt he had a thick square neck and a square jaw. Samantha watched him undulating, staring into the camera with a detached serious expression on his handsome face, which was all planes and angles and winged black eyebrows.She thought of sex with Miles. It had last happened three weeks previously. His performance was as predictable as a Masonic handshake. One of his favourite sayings was if its not br oke, dont fix it.Samantha emptied the last of the bottle into her glass and imagined making love to the boy on the screen. Her breasts looked better in a bra these days they spilled everywhere when she lay down it made her belief flabby and awful. She pictured herself, forced back against a wall, one leg propped up, a dress pushed up to her waist and that strong dark boy with his jeans round his knees, thrusting in and out of her With a lurch in the pit of her stomach that was nearly like happiness, she heard the car turning back into the drive and the beams of the headlights swung around the dark sitting room.She fumbled with the controls to turn over to the news, which took her much longer than it ought to have done she shoved the empty wine bottle under the sofa and clutched her almost empty glass as a prop. The front door opened and closed. Miles entered the room behind her.Why are you sitting here in the dark?He turned on a lamp and she glanced up at him. He was as well groom ed as he had been when he left, except for the raindrops on the shoulders of his jacket.How was dinner?Fine, he said. You were missed. Aubrey and Julia were sorry you couldnt make it.Oh, Im sure. And Ill bet your mother cried with disappointment.He sat down in an armc sensory hair at right angles to her, staring at her. She pushed her hair out of her eyes.Whats this all about, Sam?If you dont know, Miles But she was not sure herself or at least, she did not know how to condense this sprawling sense of ill-usage into a coherent accusation.I cant see how me standing for the Parish Council Oh, for Gods sake, Miles she shouted, and was then slightly taken aback by how loud her voice was.Explain to me, please, he said, what possible residue it can make to you?She glared at him, struggling to articulate it for his pedantic legal mind, which was like a fiddling pair of tweezers in the way that it seized on pitiable choices of word, yet so often failed to grasp the bigger picture. What could she say that he would understand? That she found Howard and Shirleys endless talk about the council boring as orchestra pit? That he was quite tedious enough already, with his endlessly retold anecdotes about the good old days back at the rugby club and his self-congratulatory stories about work, without adding pontifications about the Fields?Well, I was under the impression, said Samantha, in their dimly lit sitting room, that we had other plans.Like what? said Miles. What are you talking about?We said, Samantha provide carefully over the rim of her trembling glass, that once the girls were out of school, wed go travelling. We promised each other that, remember?The formless rage and misery that had consumed her since Miles announced his determination to stand for the council had not once led her to mourn the years travelling she had missed, but at this moment it seemed to her that that was the real problem or at least, that it came closest to expressing both the antagonism and the yearning inside her.Miles seemed completely bewildered.What are you talking about?When I got pregnant with Lexie, Samantha said loudly, and we couldnt go travelling, and your bloody mother made us get married in double-quick time, and your father got you a job with Edward Collins, you said, we agreed, that wed do it when the girls were grown up we said wed go away and do all the things we missed out on.He shook his head belatedly.This is news to me, he said. Where the hell has this come from?Miles, we were in the Black Canon. I told you I was pregnant, and you said for Christs sake, Miles I told you I was pregnant, and you promised me, you promised You want a holiday? said Miles. Is that it? You want a holiday?No, Miles, I dont want a bloody holiday, I want dont you remember? We said wed take a year out and do it later, when the kids were grown upFine, then. He seemed unnerved, determined to brush her aside. Fine. When Libbys eighteen in four years time, well talk abou t it again. I dont see how me becoming a councillor affects any of this.Well, apart from the bloody boredom of listening to you and your parents whining about the Fields for the rest of our graphic lives Our natural lives? he smirked. As opposed to ?Piss off, she spat. Dont be such a bloody smartarse, Miles, it might impress your mother Well, frankly, I still dont see what the problem The problem, she shouted, is that this is about our future, Miles. Our future. And I dont want to bloody talk about it in four years time, I want to talk about it nowI think youd better eat something, said Miles. He got to his feet. Youve had enough to drink.Screw you, MilesSorry, if youre going to be abusive He turned and walked out of the room. She barely stop herself throwing her wine glass after him.The council if he got on it, he would never get off he would never renounce his seat, the chance to be a proper Pagford big shot, like Howard. He was committing himself anew to Pagford, retaking hi s vows to the town of his birth, to a future quite different from the one he had promised his distraught new fiancee as she sat sobbing on his bed.When had they last talked about travelling the world? She was not sure. Years and years ago, perhaps, but tonight Samantha decided that she, at least, had never changed her mind. Yes, she had always expected that some day they would pack up and leave, in search of heat and freedom, half the globe away from Pagford, Shirley, Mollison and Lowe, the rain, the puniness and the sameness. Perhaps she had not thought of the white sands of Australia and Singapore with longing for many years, but she would rather be there, even with her heavy thighs and her stretch marks, than here, confine in Pagford, forced to watch as Miles turned slowly into Howard.She slumped back down on the sofa, groped for the controls, and switched back to Libbys DVD. The band, now in black and white, was walking slowly along a long empty beach, singing. The broad-shou ldered boys shirt was flapping open in the breeze. A fine trail of hair led from his omphalus down into his jeans.