Perfect Love Read online

  ELIZABETH BUCHAN

  PERFECT LOVE

  ‘Love seems the swiftest but it is the slowest of all growths. No man or woman really knows what perfect love is until they have been married for a quarter of a century.’

  Mark Twain

  Contents

  Prologue

  Spring

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  High Summer

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Autumn

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Also by Elizabeth Buchan

  Prologue

  Outside, a winter wind blew down from the ridge but, to all appearances, the frost of recession had only touched the fringes of the village of Dainton for the money spent on the Christmas flowers in the church had been generous. Euphorbia, lilies, and imported narcissi do not come cheaply. Making a rough computation of the cost, Prue Valour was puzzled. Perhaps a newcomer, buying their way into the village, had funded them?

  Kate Eliot, Prue’s friend and confidante, and a woman fond of a challenge, providing there was every chance she could master it, had taken the trouble to decorate the Christmas tree with real candles - not, of course, to be lit because of the insurance veto. A shame, she thought, because the candles looked beautiful. Nevertheless, swaying a little on the tree, the white wax gorgeous against the green pine, they cocked a snook at regulations just by being there.

  Content, certainly better-looking and more serene at forty-one than she had ever been at twenty-one, and just about organized (turkey stuffed, extra fruit salad made, emergency presents wrapped and stacked in the cupboard) Prue joined in the singing of the last carol. If God turned away from England in disgust, there was still a chance he might drop in, briefly, to Dainton’s parish church to cast an eye over his faithful: struggling, well-meaning, frayed and nibbled at the edges by existence, imperfect and, as Prue realized, in her case becoming a little set in her ways and deaf to new voices?

  Unlike Joan of Arc who had listened to her voices all too well as Prue had discovered during her researches into the life of the saint. Apparently, Joan had been in her father’s garden in Domrémy when she first heard the voices towards noon on a summer’s day. After that, they visited her at various times, often when bells were ringing - the bell for vespers, compline, or the lovely clear tone of the evening angelus.

  As Prue now knew at that period the bells were important. They introduced order into lives that had none. They told the time, they spread news, issued warnings and because France lay split open — so many segments of a fallen peach over which the French, Burgundians and English fought — many warnings were needed.

  The bells suggested routine and peace and, when despair set in at the obvious lack of either, they hinted at God’s purpose and of God’s goodness.

  Into the broken silence, the backwash of displaced air that shuddered over the fields and village torn and ravaged by war, came the voices of St Michael and St Catherine and changed Joan’s life forever.

  Oh, yes, thought Prue into whose consciousness was creeping the knowledge that her own life had remained much the same during the past twenty years, it was right that the voices spoke when they did - and for Joan to listen to their message.

  Spring

  Chapter One

  ‘It’s in the stories,' Jane insisted on the school run. ‘Everyone hates the wicked stepmother, and the wicked stepmother schemes to get rid of the beautiful stepdaughter. Think of Snow White.’

  ‘I don’t go “Mirror, mirror on the wall”,’ Prue protested, only half amused.

  ‘You don’t have to, Mum.’

  ‘Thank you,’ said Prue with dignity. Beauty had never been her problem - and now that she was forty-something and understood from experience that more elements lay below the surface than on it, she realized that beauty could be a problem for those who had it. Not that she considered it to apply in any way to herself for, in Prue’s view but not necessarily in the opinion of those who loved her, she did not possess beauty. Whereas Violet did, in bucketfuls.

  Violet was safely in New York with her new husband and baby and well out of Prue’s way. Or, she had been until that morning in January.

  ‘When did you say they’re coming?’ asked Prue, pouring milk into her saucer for the cat. Bella placed an elegant, bangled paw on Prue’s knee, leapt into her lap and was surprised when Prue clutched her hard against her midriff.

  ‘I wish you wouldn’t do that. It’s so unhygienic,’ replied Max, her husband, watching the milk spray the tablecloth. It was not the first time he had protested. Nor would it be the last. ‘February. Because of the recession the bank is cutting staffing levels on its overseas operations. Anyway, they want Jamie back home to head up the London bit of the European arm.’ He pushed the airmail letter over to Prue.

  Prue picked it up with reluctance and Max, aware of what was going through her mind, said, ‘It’s only till they can buy a house in London. Jamie can commute and Violet will be looking for a job.’

  ‘Lucky Jamie.’ Prue gave the letter a brief glance and then ignored it. Meanwhile, Max creased The Times into a raging sea.

  ‘You don’t object too much, do you, Prue?’

  She leant over the table, nipped the paper out of his grasp and folded it into order. ‘I object to you doing that.’

  ‘Do you mind?’

  She considered his question, the sleepy look in place that meant she was thinking hard. Was sharing a kitchen with her stepdaughter a good thing because it would give her moral fibre a bracing workout, or a bad thing because the inevitable clash would cancel any Brownie points thus gained?

  Fairness, she reflected, was a fatal weakness. ‘They can look after themselves.’

  Bella’s purr broke the uneasy silence which fell. Oh, Max, thought Prue, you look so pleased at the prospect of your daughter coming home. How can I possibly deny you?

  Max checked the time and got to his feet, wincing at the twinge that occasionally attacked his right hip. ‘Time to go.’ He retrieved The Times, which he had no intention of yielding up. Prue swallowed half a cup of coffee so strong it made her tongue go dry, but that was how she liked it. One day she intended to renounce caffeine, being reminded daily by the inside of her cafetière what her stomach lining must resemble — but not yet. She squinted at Max. He looked irritable and impatient, two things which until recently had been alien to his nature, brought on, she suspected, by panic. For Max was sixty and he did not like the idea of retirement.

  Tick, tock.

  These days he maintained - a little too frequently - that he was still in his prime. Still capable of good things. Oh, yes, his listeners agreed, but then they were not likely to disagree for Max’s large, fit-looking body gave the impression of strength and a well-oiled mind, both of which were true.

  Prue did not relish the idea of his retirement either, but there was nothing to be done. Sometimes, she caught Max looking at her as if to say: It�
��s unfair that you’re twenty years younger. Other times, she sensed that he almost disliked her for it. I can’t help it, she wanted to cry out. I would take on your years if I could. It also occurred to her that it was not her business to shoulder Max’s advance into old age. It was his.

  Meanwhile, it was Prue’s business to help negotiate this tricky period. She pushed a reluctant cat on to the floor.

  ‘You’ve got the big meeting today, haven’t you? I won’t expect you home until late.’ She paused to insert the first plank in the bolstering-Max programme. ‘I don’t know what the firm would do without you.’

  Max tapped his right hand on the table and the little white scar on his index finger - Helen’s wound - attracted Prue’s gaze as it had done a hundred thousand times during their marriage. ‘I’ve made noises that I would like to take over the working party into setting up the European structure.’ Max’s large and profitable law firm in the City was in the process of developing links with like-minded firms in France, Germany and Spain, the idea being that clients would get the best advice on all fronts. ‘I would like to get it,’ said Max, whose fluency in French, German and Spanish certainly put him in the running, ‘so spare a thought.’

  ‘I will, darling. I will.’ She fingered her coffee-cup. ‘They would be foolish to ignore you, I think.’

  ‘Thanks,’ he responded, a touch drily. He adjusted the silk handkerchief in his lapel pocket, his only sartorial indulgence, and flashed her one of his disconcerting smiles, which told her that he was not going to let his feelings get the better of him. ‘Good try, darling. Butter the old boy up. I might just bring a decent bottle back for supper on the strength of it.’

  Palm up, he stretched out a hand across the table and curled his fingers in invitation. Prue tapped the edge of the table with hers and her mouth twitched.

  ‘Darling Prue . . .’ said Max. ‘Don’t be mean. Give me a kiss.’

  She laughed, leant forward and traced a circle on the expose palm. He caught her hand.

  ‘My lovely Prue,’ he said.

  ‘I love you really,’ she said.

  That’s fortunate,’ said her husband. ‘You’ve got me for life.’

  Prue removed her hand, looked down at her lap and endeavoured to brush the cat hairs from her skirt.

  The car nosed into Winchester station only just in time. Max wrenched open the passenger door which demonstrated his annoyance at Prue for insisting on changing her skirt at the last minute. It had made them late and the road from the village had been full of feeble drivers unwilling to go above 40 m.p.h.

  ‘Nobody looks at your bottom half if you’re behind the counter,’ Max had pointed out, not unreasonably, which exasperated Prue - unfairly she knew. All the same, there was a diminution of the goodwill of breakfast.

  She swerved to avoid a squashed hedgehog, which had made the mistake of imagining the station was a safe place. ‘I’m sorry I made you late,’ she said.

  ‘So I should think.’ Max dropped his large, squarish hand on to her thigh for a second and she covered it with hers.

  Although Prue’s life was oriented around her husband’s, the minute he was out of her sight she forgot him. She often puzzled over the conundrum. Was it a normal stage in a twenty-year-old marriage? She supposed it was. After all, she did not notice her wedding ring from one week to the next, despite its tendency to make her finger swell. It was there, much as her nose was (which she disliked), or her legs (marginally better) or the rather startling mole, positioned above her right eyebrow.

  Once upon a time, as all good stories go, there would not have been a day not dedicated to the idea of Max. Every breath she took, every meal she ate, every stamp she licked (Prue had been a secretary when they met) had revolved around the idea of him. And why not? He was older, wiser and infinitely sadder, and, thus, irresistible to a nineteen-year-old, a young nineteen-year-old..

  Perhaps a too-young nineteen-year-old?

  What she got with Max was love that showed no sign of running out, fishing rods, a pair of guns to which he was devoted, gentleness in all their dealings, a village life and a degree of comfort.

  Prue drove through the city and concluded that too much reflection on what constituted normal was not a good idea.

  With a lot of extra exhaust and gear changes, she manoeuvred the car into her secret parking place behind the market square. The morning was still sharp and wherever Prue looked as she made her way to the bookshop she was accosted by ‘For Sale’ signs.

  Whatever else she had expected, she had learnt quickly that bookshops are not peaceful places. Certainly not Forsight’s. It was busy, which was good, but it was also haphazardly organized, which made for extra fuss at crucial moments. Any ideas Prue had entertained for browsing, paid, through Fict., Class, and Fict., Pop., or even Hist., Med., vanished by the end of the first week. Since then, she had tried for two years to impose order, but order had proved to be almost impossible.

  Books were delivered daily, others were piled up waiting to be returned, publicity material buckled in corners and gangways, and Gerald, the owner, had a knack of sabotaging Prue’s ideas for display with his own. Still, most days the shop was full, and not only with browsers who had no intention of buying.

  Prue was used to smoothing paths through problems yet, if challenged, she would stick on one thing. To her surprise, she was not prepared to yield up her job. Accepting as she was with her domestic life, Prue’s three mornings a week at Forsight’s were like three draughts of pure air.

  ‘What do you think?’ Gerald held up a paperback with an explicit cover.

  She directed her sleepy look at it. ‘It will sell.’

  ‘Winchester doesn’t like sex. Hadn’t you noticed? But stack it on the table, will you, Prue, after you’ve served the customer by the till who wants a book on hats.’

  Sometimes, Gerald sounded remarkably like Max. Prue threw her scarf into her basket, twitched at her blouse and refrained from asking if he had had a bad night.

  By half-past one, three people had placed orders for a book on Coping with Bankruptcy.

  ‘You should stock some,’ Prue informed Gerald, much struck by this neglected window in the market, as she put on her coat.

  ‘Can they pay for it, dear?’

  Next door to Forsight’s was a bakery which sold ‘Artisan Breads’ and piped a smell of cooking yeast into the retail area. Prue bought a sausage roll and an almond croissant to which she allotted four out of ten and ate them as she walked to the public library. It gave her satisfaction — still — to flout one of her mother’s rules: never eat in the street.

  She grinned to herself. It is the small things, breaking the same rules, sleep positions, a way of brushing the hair, that gave continuity through the years. The eternalness of habit, and Prue, now accustomed to the library and its best positions, made for ‘her’ niche and was forced to restrain a frown when she saw it was occupied. She retreated to a position by the door, arranged her books and began to write.

  ‘It was in my thirteenth year when God sent a voice to guide me . . .’

  This was Jeanne la Pucelle, fille de Dieu, as those mysterious voices addressed her, describing the moment when her life, the hardworking, simple life of a daughter of a well-to-do peasant, was stopped in its tracks. ‘Say what you will’, Prue wrote in her notes and stopped. Say that Joan was born with the compulsive exhibitionism of many of our public figures, which drove her to invent something, anything, which would stamp her life in bas-relief on the often dark and frightening medieval chronicle of life and death. That she was schizophrenic, that she was a transvestite driven to extremes by the limits of the age in which she lived. Say anything you like: but as Joan stood and listened in the garden carpeted with lilies-of-the-valley and wild strawberries, there was no doubt that a heroic poetry, a meaning, a clash of arms and a terrible beauty flowed into her life.

  Prue had never regarded herself as impulsive and rarely got a bee in her bonnet. So, the burning desire to
write a biography of this woman and saint, Joan of Arc, took her, and anyone to whom she confided it, by surprise.

  Do it, Max urged, when Prue faltered out the idea to him. Do it.

  The ambitious part of Prue which she kept hidden, folded into the dark areas of her mind (of which she was secretly afraid) had listened and that was why she was to be found in the public library on every spare afternoon.

  Prue’s biography was intended to be the unacademic, ordinary woman’s view of the medieval equivalent. Where the idea to write about Joan of Arc had arrived from was mysterious. Even now, Prue maintained a level of extreme surprise at her daring, for nothing in her life had trained her for a project like this. Having thought it over endlessly, she could only conclude was that she was responding to the colour, the boldness, the surrender - the drama of St Joan - and, perhaps, this was an unconscious expression of her need to make changes in her own life?

  The results so far were headings, ‘Life’, ‘Death’, ‘Battles’, in a red-and-black notebook imported from China, and notes made on A4 paper which she kept meaning to transcribe under the headings, once she had got through the stack of reading she had set herself. This was composed of biography, to guide her as to what she should be doing, history, for its background information on labyrinthine politics,' gold-encrusted artefacts, and the collection of John the Bolds, the Fearless, the Bads, and degenerate Valois that had littered medieval France.

  The library smelt of polish and, less fortunately, of sweat, which was not surprising for the central heating had been turned up to furnace level, and the faces at the tables were varnished with an unnatural sheen, Prue’s included. She sensed the stain that crept up her neck when she was hot and bothered, spreading like red ink above her blouse. Somebody should tell the council. She should tell the council.

  Shopping. St Joan. Ironing. Jane. Bank managers. Max. Councils. This was a life indeed.

  She checked her watch. It was time to pick up Jane from the excellent but staggeringly expensive school where she was a weekly boarder. She stacked her books together and got up.