Free A Village Affair by Joanna Trollope Page B

dachshunds, which she bred with dedication. ‘My girls’, she called her bitches. Within the first half-hour of her first Monday, Alice discovered that Mr Finch was misunderstood by his wife who yearned still for their boarding house in Kidderminster which had catered for actors at the Theatre Royal, and that Mr Macaulay had been called to the great dog basket in the sky ten years previously, much lamented by his widow and her girls.
    â€˜He was a wonderful man,’ Mrs Macaulay said to Alice, as they jolted out of the village, the tins jiggling on their barricaded shelves. ‘He could do anything he liked with animals. He inspired perfect trust.’
    At the frequent stops, Mr Finch came out of the driver’s cab and sat in the doorway of the van at the seat of change. Every time he appeared holding not only his cash box and ledger but also a battered notebook bound in imitation leather which he left nonchalantly on the edge of his little counter, with many a casually pregnant glance thrown in Alice’s direction.
    â€˜Take no notice,’ Mrs Macaulay hissed at Alice, passing her a stack of All-Bran boxes. ‘Those are his terrible jingles. Don’t give him the chance to mention them.’
    At every stop, the van filled rapidly with people, heaving each other up the steps into the interior like an eager crowd of hedgehogs. Alice was stared at.
    â€˜Who’s ’er?’ somebody said from close to the floor.
    â€˜Sh, you, Granny. That’s the new lady—’
    â€˜Who’s ’er?’
    â€˜Mrs Jordan,’ Mrs Macaulay said with great clarity. ‘She has just moved into the Major’s house at Pitcombe.’
    There was a sucking of teeth.
    â€˜She won’t like that. Miserable ’ouse, that is.’
    â€˜But I do like it—’
    â€˜It’s very good of Mrs Jordan to help us,’ Mrs Macaulay said, ‘because she has three little ones on her hands.’
    â€˜Where’s me spaghetti hoops, then?’
    â€˜Hang on, Gran, they’re coming,’ and then, turning confidentially to Alice, ‘she loves them. She don’t need her teeth in to eat them, see.’
    At the end of the third stop, Mr Finch laid his hand slowly on his book of poems and looked roguishly at Alice.
    â€˜Care for something to read before Barleston, Mrs Jordan?’
    Mrs Macaulay was ready for him.
    â€˜Sorry, Mr Finch, I’ve got the cereal section to explain to Mrs Jordan before we get there.’
    Mr Finch placed the book flat against his chest, holding it in both hands.
    â€˜Are you a reader, Mrs Jordan? I fancy you are.’
    â€˜Novels,’ Alice said hastily. ‘As much fiction as I can get. But you know, with the children—’
    Mrs Macaulay tapped her watch.
    â€˜Time, Mr Finch, time.’
    By the end of the second hour, Alice could gladly have lain down on the lineoleum floor of the van and wept with fatigue. Spring it might be, but the day felt raw and cold, and the depressing contents of the shelves, the tins of butter beans and the packet puddings, only compounded the bleakness. Alice had asked Mr Finch, in his shop the previous week, for an avocado pear, and Mr Finch had made it elaborately plain to her that left to himself his shop would be a profusion of avocado pears, but that the brutish character of his non-poetry reading clientele demanded nothing more outré than cabbages.
    â€˜I should be only too happy,’ Mr Finch said egregiously, hunting in his memory for scraps of Tennyson with which to flatter and impress this delightful newcomer, ‘to bring you anything you require on my visits to the wholesaler in Salisbury.’
    â€˜Thank you,’ Alice said, ‘but I’m in Salisbury most days on the school run. It’s just that I’d rather use your shop, I mean, I feel I ought—’ She stopped. She had no wish to sound patronizing. But Mr Finch had hardly heard