A Disturbing Influence Read Free Page A

lunch every day, entered my study and said: ‘Raymond, I think you should have a word with Lindy.’
    Lindy, I should have said, worked for us, coming in every morning to help Isobel clean the house and get the lunch. Since Isobel’s illness we had come to depend very heavily upon her.
    ‘What is it, Isobel?’
    ‘She’s been late every morning this week. She’s never done it before. I wonder if you would mind having a word with her. I really don’t feel up to speaking to her myself.’
    ‘Of course. I’ll see her tomorrow.’
    Isobel went and sat by the window. ‘Thank God the winter is nearly over,’ she said.
    ‘I hope we’ll have you out and about by the middle of May,’ I said.
    ‘So do I.’
    Isobel looked wan. Her illness had been obscure and dangerous, one of those slowly wasting diseases that doctors don’t like to talk about, since their tests fail to show anything actually wrong. Yet the patient grows sicker and sicker. In spite of specialists—who had been extremely expensive—we still didn’t know what was really the matter with her, though both of us feared, without ever saying so, that it might be cancer. But she had picked up a little, and we hoped that a warm summer might put her right again.
    ‘If you’re not better by July,’ I said, ‘I’ll send you off to your sisters. There’s no telling what a change of air might do.’
    ‘I don’t expect Farnham’s air is very different from this,’ she said. ‘I should love to go abroad again. To Switzerland, say, to see the flowers.’
    ‘You know we can’t afford that.’
    ‘Yes, I know. But there’s no harm in thinking about it, is there?’ She thought for a moment, then got up and said: ‘But perhaps there is. I thought it might be nice to go and post the letters, Raymond. Do you have any?’
    ‘You’re not supposed to go out yet.’
    ‘I know. But I hate being cooped up like this, day after day. It’s not very far.’
    ‘I’ll come with you.’
    We wrapped up well, for though it was fine, it was cold and crisp, nearly April, but with a threat of frost in the air. The post-box was only a few hundred yards away, but even that distance was an expedition for Isobel.
    On the way we met Evangeline Hobson, who stopped us to complain about the by-pass tearing up one of their fields. We expressed our sympathy, though we did not really feel it, delighted as we were at the prospect of living without the thunder and danger of lorries day and night. Then she said: ‘I don’t want to seem nosy, Raymond, but all these labourers do represent something of a threat, don’t you think?’
    ‘I don’t even know what you mean, Evangeline. Just because many of them seem to be Irish there is no danger of my parish turning Catholic.’
    She laughed. ‘I didn’t mean that. I was thinking, frankly, of the parish’s morals rather than of its denomination. The girls have never been so popular, it seems. What with all these men with nowhere to go in the evenings.’
    ‘I’m sure the local youths can handle that,’ I said.
    ‘Mrs Badham has been telling me that they’re furious. The labourers are getting too much attention.’
    ‘A change of faces can’t harm anyone,’ I said.
    ‘Mrs Badham seemed to think it was funny, I don’t know why.’
    ‘I agree with her,’ said Isobel. ‘It is quite funny. It should put all the boys on their mettle.’ Then she added: ‘I wish I could see a few new faces sometimes.’
    The two women discussed Isobel’s illness and convalescence. I wondered briefly whether Mrs Hobson might not have a point, but soon dismissed the idea. It wasn’t as though the labourers were an invading army, after all.
    When we got back to the vicarage Isobel felt tired and I helped her to bed.
    ‘It’s so silly,’ she said, when she was settled with a hot-water bottle. ‘Here I’ve been lying all this time, listening to the radio for months and months, and I can tell you exactly what’s being talked about in Mrs