Free The Mistress of Alderley by Robert Barnard Page A

the right man to lecture others on their duty to divorce.”
    â€œSheila is not silly. Or vapid.”
    â€œI didn’t say she was. I get quite another impression of Sheila, and quite a pleasant one.”
    â€œGood, because she is pleasant. I can say that because I married her, and I wouldn’t want you to think I’d made a daft choice.” Caroline was silent, so he added: “What are you thinking about?”
    â€œWondering if all your mistresses have been as understanding as I am about your wife.”
    â€œSome of them. Anyway, it’s the wife who’s supposed to be understanding about the mistresses.”
    â€œOr not, as the case may be.”
    â€œYou’re exceptional because you’re not only understanding about my wife but also about my mistresses.”
    â€œModerately,” said Caroline, snuggling up to him. “I can contemplate the idea of a long string, provided it’s in the past. I don’t think I’d be at all happy with competition in the present.”
    â€œI don’t know how you can even think about it. As far as I’m concerned, two women are more than enough to handle.”
    But next morning, when they had driven out to Llandaff for Communion, and when Marius’s voice was ringing out for “Glorious things of thee are spoken,” as if to prove that though he was cloth-eared he definitely wasn’t tone deaf, he stopped singing at the line “Fading is the worldling’s pleasure” and muttered to Caroline in his rich, experienced-it-all voice, “Oh no, it isn’t, Mr. John Newton, whoever you are: worldlings’ pleasures are doing very nicely, thank you very much. Not much sign of them fading today, thanks be to God!”
    *  *  *
    Alexander turned away from the rectory and made tracks back through Marsham and toward home. His talk with Gina had made him thoughtful. He decided after a bit that it had taught him a lot about how his mother was regarded in the village. If the rector and his wife were representative, it made him like the village a lot less. But were they? He thought they might be a special breed of person. In view of their advances to his mother about holding next year’s fete at Alderley, he could only conclude that they were a pair of holy hypocrites.
    And, really, their daughter, in spite of her devotion to swinging Leeds, was hardly any better. She had practically said that Caroline should be grateful she wasn’t ostracized. You could hardly get more Dark Ages than that, in Alexander’s view. He had tolerated a lot of his mother’s men-friends, and he was of her opinion that she shouldn’t get married again. If not quite a one-woman disaster area, she was definitely accident-prone.
    Coincidentally, he had no sooner come to that conclusion than he heard the sound of some kind of crash behind him. Turning, he saw the impressive sight of Meta Mortyn-Crosse sprawled on the tarmac clutching a bottle aloft, her familiar bicycle a foot or so away, its pedals still turning. As he ran to help her, she struggled to her feet and began dusting down her tweed skirt with her free hand.
    â€œBloody bike!” she swore. “You can’t get a good upright ladies’ bike anymore.”
    Meta was built like a forklift, swung her shoulders when she walked, and generally gave the impression she must have joined her country’s armed forces in the days when homosexuals went into the navy and lesbians into the army. In fact, she had never done anything much except live in Marsham Manor and later the Dower House. Local gossip suggested her sexual tastes were entirely mainstream, though she had had little chance of gratifying them as the men in her life had generally fled in the early days of the relationship. Now her unlovely face was very red, her cheeks and eyeballs popping out like footballs. She mounted her bike, still clutching her bottle. Alexander made a note