A Village Affair

One morning Sarah ran out of eggs for the quiche she was making for Peter’s dinner and went to the little post office shop down the high street. She felt cheerful, like a housewife from some period drama, as she walked down the narrow street with a wicker basket on her arm; it had belonged to Rachel, but Peter had said she could use it. She hummed under her breath and tilted her head to a fragile blue sky. It was nearly April, and the slight breeze held the promise of spring.

As she stepped into the dark, narrow little shop, blinking in the gloom, the three customers and surly-looking man behind the counter all fell silent.

“Hello,” she said, smiling, and no one answered. She felt that prickly flush crawl over her once more, and she turned away, studying the labels on tins with far too much concentration. Still no one spoke.

She bought a half dozen eggs and a newspaper for Peter, and no one said anything; the silence in the little shop felt thick, heavy, and Sarah could feel her cheeks starting to heat, and worse, her eyes start to sting.

She didn’t need their friendliness, she told herself as she left the shop with a murmured thanks. When she’d moved here she hadn’t been looking for friends, just a home. And she had that, at least as much as she could.

She didn’t want to tell Peter about the unfriendliness but he heard about it anyway. One morning as they were having their tea in the conservatory he mentioned it, his voice light, but Sarah saw the furrows of concern marking his forehead.

“Mrs. Whittier across the street thinks you’re taking advantage of me. I assured her it was quite the opposite.”

Sarah decided to match his light tone. “And how am I supposed to be doing that?”

“I’m not sure. Maybe you’re pocketing the money I give you for shopping?” He raised his eyebrows, inviting her to share the joke. “I don’t know where all my delicious meals come from, then.”

“Magic. I must be a witch.” She smiled back, determined like him to see the funny side of things, even though it hurt her and she suspected it hurt him too. “The only reason you’re getting such delicious meals is so I can fatten you up and eat you.”

Peter chuckled and held out one rather scrawny arm. “Like Hansel and Gretel? I don’t think it’s working, Sarah.”

“Just give me time,” she assured him.

Peter lapsed into silence for a moment. “I haven’t really taken care of myself since Rachel died, I’m ashamed to say. It’s the most selfish form of grief, really, to let yourself go like that, especially when I think of the children. I didn’t do it deliberately, mind. I just forgot.”

“Well now I’m here to remind you,” Sarah answered in that brisk tone she knew he appreciated. No one could get maudlin then.

Her parents had been the same way, all about service and duty and doing one’s part. Sarah had learned to hide her emotions, to be brisk and efficient instead, as they were.

When they’d died she had felt as if all the certainties she’d managed to assemble in her impermanent life had scattered. She’d been only twenty-one, just graduated with a first in classics, and no idea what to do with herself. How to feel. Who to be. She had no friends beyond a few university acquaintances and a couple of boyfriends who had never become serious; everyone had gone off to various jobs and places and she’d ended up in Japan, feeling more adrift and alone than ever.

When her year of teaching had ended, a year of almost unbearable isolation and silent grief, she’d known what she wanted to do. She wanted to come back to her roots, to the first place she’d ever lived, and somehow find herself a home, or at least as much of one as she was able. She’d lived on the periphery of life for too long to think she could manage something for herself, but she thought she could manage being on the periphery of someone else’s life.

That person had turned out to be Peter Lanford.

Yet as she continued to bicycle to his cottage and make his tea and manage the garden, she felt just how much on the periphery she was. She could try to make herself indispensable to him, but in the end she was still just a housekeeper. She felt it in the silent glares of the other villagers; she heard it when Peter talked and laughed on the phone to one of his children in a way he never did with her.

With her he was kind, solicitous, concerned. She could not fault him. But she wasn’t, Sarah thought one day as she stared out at the garden misted in rain, important to him, not really. She wasn’t, she knew, important to anyone.