The Heart of the Country Read Free Page B

the dregs and dust of creation and save what’s possible and render it back to the Almighty, not to hang about carelessly, adding to the mud, the trouble and confusion. We are meant to be salvagers, not wreckers.
    Natalie had sinned badly that morning, taking her children to school (private, of course), driving too close to Sonia, an unsupported mother, who, with Edwina (4), Bess (5) and Teresa (6) filed along the busy road in the rain, as close in to the prickly hedge as they could, for fear of sudden death on their way to a school (not private, of course) which all three children hated, but which the law obliged them to attend. Natalie simply didn’t see them: she didn’t even notice they were there.
    Alice, Natalie’s little girl, noticed. Alice said, ‘It’s raining. Why don’t we give them a lift?’
    Ben said: ‘You’re so stupid, Alice. We don’t give lifts to people like that.’
    But Natalie just said, peering through a misty windscreen, which neither wipers nor demister at full blast would clear: ‘Do be quiet, children,’ without actually hearing a word they were saying. In her defence it was a nasty morning for driving, but that is not the kind of excuse the Prime Mover likes to hear. He, after all, sends the rain. He worked in his mysterious way, and Sonia helped. She looked after the retreating five-door Volvo Estate. (Of course it was a Volvo. What else?) Jax the Alsatian, the Harris’ dog, looked back at Sonia and grinned. Even the dogs of the rich live better than do the new poor. The dogs ride; the poor walk, or go by bus. There are very few buses anymore in the countryside. The rich don’t take them. That means buses don’t, on the whole, make profits. So they have to be subsidized. But who’s going to subsidize them? The rich, who don’t need them or use them? Ho, ho!
    ‘God rot her,’ said Sonia aloud. ‘Rich bitch!’ Sonia had been born a nice round pleasant thing. Her life and times had turned her sour, so now she could deliver a curse or two, effectively. God heard. God sent his punishment on Natalie. Or was it the Devil? He forgave her other sins, but got her for this one. Natalie committed the sin of carelessly splashing Sonia. Sonia cursed her. Misfortune fell on Natalie. Cause and effect? Surely not. Let’s just say coincidence, and remind ourselves that the trouble at Harrix and in the Harris household long predated this particular event. Except of course God may send his punishments retrospectively. We may all of us be being punished now for sins we are about to commit. Time may not be as linear as we suppose.
    ‘What have I done?’ asked Natalie, pretty white sinful hand, used to exploring Arthur’s chest hairs, to her mouth. She addressed the universe as much as Hilary.
    Well, as I say, the wages of sin! There’s no telling. The day Natalie Harris splashed Sonia with mud was the day Harry Harris left for work in the morning and did not return home, ever. Some sins are obviously worse than others.

The Pleasures of Adultery
    Pleasure I said, pleasure I meant. Adulterate means to spoil, to pollute. It also contains the sense of dilution by poison. It’s dropping a spot of cochineal into the white icing sugar and water mix and watching the colour spread – great streaks of vile red circling out with the first stir from that single central drop, gradually easing and diluting as you work into bland universal pink. So what (to change the metaphor, while keeping it domestic) if it’s like a blind tumbling right off its roller when you tug, bringing down with it in a cloud of dust every concept of honour, dignity, integrity, fidelity or trust you ever had! So what if you can’t raise the blind, and have to stay in the dark for ever! It’s worth it. That’s what I think.
    Rot you, I said to Natalie. Rich bitch! Rot you. I, Sonia, cursed her. And her world fell down, clatter, clatter, clatter. Good!
    There, I have blown my cover. The ‘I’ who speaks to you is Sonia. In