Free The Village Green Affair by Rebecca Shaw Page A

felt smoother and softer. She recollected Titus’s face, then roughly dismissed her sentimentality. She was being foolish all because she lacked warmth and comfort in her own life.
     
    These few days away had only served to emphasize her loneliness. Yes, she had her two boys and they were always willing to take her out for a drink or a meal when things got too bad - well, Hugh more than Guy - but relying on them for companionship was ludicrous. Somehow she’d have to shake up Neville and make their marriage work for both their sakes. A dead marriage was a prison sentence and she for one wasn’t going to tolerate that, not at forty-five.
     
     
According to the flier, the market would finish at one o’clock. Sure enough, the stallholders began clearing away as the church clock struck one. Each of them had taken more money than they had anticipated, considering it was the first time they’d opened in Turnham Malpas, and they congratulated each other in anticipation of even better days yet to come.
     
    But opponents of the whole idea waited to see the mess that would surely be left behind, anticipating concrete evidence that the market was a nuisance and not to be tolerated. But as the last of the trestle tables was loaded into the huge van, three useful-looking chaps appeared with an old truck well past its best, and began clearing the rubbish. Within half an hour the whole of the green was cleaned and tidied, including the pieces of paper that had blown onto the pond. The geese took charge of their green again and settled comfortably for an afternoon snooze beside their pond, having benefited greatly from being fed by the stallholders and the people buying from the stalls.
     
    Truth to tell, the opponents to the market were left with no ammunition for their campaign, but they gathered just the same in the Royal Oak that evening to discuss the matter.
     
    Willie returned from the bar carrying a tray loaded with drinks. They’d pulled two tables together and were seated round, anticipating a good natter comparing notes.
     
    Distributing the drinks, Willie got them wrong and Don finished up with Sylvia’s gin and orange. He loudly and agitatedly complained. ‘I’ve got a wrong ’un. This isn’t mine. This isn’t mine, I didn’t order this. Where’s mine?’
     
    ‘That’s all right,’ said Sylvia, ‘you’ve got mine and I’ve got yours. Here we are.’ She swapped their drinks and Don calmed down. Sylvia looked round the tables. ‘Where’s Jimbo? He said he’d be coming.’
     
    Grandmama Charter-Plackett, who had allied herself to their cause because of Jimbo, looked surprised. ‘He’s obviously forgotten. I’ll give him a buzz.’ So she dug in her bag for her mobile and they all eavesdropped on her one-sided conversation.
     
    ‘But you said—
     
    ‘So, you’re not against it now?’
     
    They all watched her eyebrows shoot up her forehead as she said, ‘You like the chap? How can you like him? I’m astounded ... I know nothing went wrong, I watched from the bedroom window . . . Well, of course I didn’t walk round to see . . . You what . . . walked round it with this damned Titus? You traitor! I assume you won’t be joining us, then?’
     
    They thought she might explode she was so angry. So angry she couldn’t speak. She threw her mobile into her bag and sat arms crossed, lips folded into a thin, straight line, breathing deeply.
     
    They all had to admit that nothing had gone wrong. They’d expected the stalls would be filled with rubbish, lots of shouting of wares - ‘apples ten for a pound’, ‘sausages, eight for a pound’, ‘early strawberries sweet as sweet, just right for his supper tonight with a splash of cream’ - piped music, cars parked everywhere to avoid paying in the field, and, in particular, rubbish everywhere after they’d left. None of their anxieties had materialized and the reason for the meeting soon melted away.
     
    ‘Look,’ said Grandmama