Perfectly Correct Read Free Page A

to know …’ she called. ‘When you will be moving on?’
    There was absolute silence from the inside of the van. It rocked slightly as if the old woman was about her private business with her fresh water and her brightly painted jug. The dog gazed at Louise.
    ‘When will you be moving on? Actually?’
    There was no answer. The dog settled back down and rested his chin on his silky front legs. Only his brown eyes and his mobile eyebrows followed Louise. Defeated, she went slowly back to the house. Out of habit she took her seat again before her word processor and looked at the blank screen. Beyond the screen, where there should have been the bobbing blossom of her apple orchard, the dented blue roof of the van loomed imperturbably solid.
    Louise found she could not work at all and closed down the word processor and went to the kitchen which faced coldly north, over the lane, and made herself a cup of coffee. She thought she would go into town early, see Toby, and have a drink with him at the Suffix University post-graduate bar before the meeting with Miriam. There was no point in trying to work any more. Her concentration was gone for the afternoon.
    Toby was in the bar, sitting at a table with half a dozen students. Louise felt the familiar tweak of desire when she looked around the crowded bar and was suddenly, once more, struck by the sight of him. She smiled and waved. Toby waved back but did not rise to greet her. Louise bought herself a drink and joined them. She knew all the students; one or two of them were writing MA theses under her supervision. They were laughing with Toby, there was a running joke about what sort of poetry a Conservative government would admire. Kipling was mentioned, and Wordsworth.
    ‘But only if they didn’t understand what he was saying.’
    ‘Oh, but if we assume they don’t understand we can give them anything. Shelley! Keats! Plath!’
    Toby glanced at Louise and smiled. ‘Did you expel your trespasser?’ he asked.
    The students, experts at interpreting when their time was up, moved discreetly to the far end of the table and exchanged gossip about external examiners.
    ‘No.’ Louise took a sip of wine and set herself to amuse him. ‘I strode down to the end of the garden to assert my rights and found myself delivering fresh water. I shall be taking in her laundry next.’
    ‘Her?’
    ‘It’s a woman. Eighty if she’s a day. Dressed for a gypsy ball and with a huge silent dog. I don’t know if she’s travelling alone. I haven’t seen anyone else. I was rather thrown by the whole thing. I came into town early and I’ve been working in the library. I can’t write at home. Every time I glance out of the window all I can see is this most enormous van!’
    Toby smiled. ‘How wonderfully surreal! Did she say when she was moving on?’
    ‘She said absolutely nothing. She asked me where my aunt was and I told her that she’d died. She asked me how the fence got broken and suggested that Mr Miles was drunk. She obviously knows her way around. Perhaps she’s a regular visitor and I’m on her route.’
    Toby rested his hand gently on hers as she held her glass. ‘As long as she’s no trouble, I suppose it doesn’t matter?’
    Louise let her hand rest passive under his touch even while she protested: ‘Yes; but I don’t want her there! I can’t see out of my study window, I can’t see out of the sitting-room window. When I look out of my bedroom window I look down on this enormous pantechnicon! What are her bathroom facilities? What if she starts burning my trees or my fence posts?’
    Toby nodded. ‘We’d better hope she moves on then,’ he said. ‘Or we’ll have to do something about it.’
    Louise was mollified at once by his use of the word ‘we’.
    ‘Are you coming back to dinner after the meeting?’
    ‘Miriam asked me. She said you were cooking.’
    Toby nodded. ‘I thought I’d do lentil soufflé.’
    ‘Lovely.’
    ‘You could stay overnight.