Puffball. Fay Weldon

given you a proper lease,’ said Mabs. ‘You can’t trust that man an inch.’

      ‘Richard sees to all that,’ said Liffey and Mabs thought, good, she’s the fool she seems.

      Mabs was all kindness. She gave Liffey the names of doctors, dentist, thatcher, plumber and electrician.

      ‘You don’t want to let this place run down,’ she said. ‘It could be a real little love nest.’

      

      Liffey was happy. She had found a friend in Mabs. Mabs was real and warm and direct and without affectation. In the clear light of Mabs, her former friends, the coffee-drinking, trinket-buying, theatre-going young women of her London acquaintance, seemed like mouthing wraiths.

      

      A flurry of cloud had swept over from the direction of the Tor and left a sprinkling of thin snow, and then the wind had died as suddenly as it had sprung up, and now the day was bright and sparkling, and flung itself in through the window, so that she caught her breath at the beauty of it all. Somehow she and Richard would stay here. She knew it.

      

      Mabs stood in the middle of her kitchen as if she were a tree grown roots, and she, Liffey, was some slender plant swaying beneath her shelter, and they were all part of the same earth, same purpose.

      

      ‘Anything the matter?’ asked Mabs again, wondering if Liffey were half-daft as well.

      ‘Just thinking,’ said Liffey, but there were tears in her eyes. Some benign spirit had touched her as it flew. Mabs was uneasy: her own malignity increased. The moment passed.

      

      Mabs helped Liffey unpack and put straight, and half-envied and half-despised her for the unnecessary prodigality of everything she owned—from thick-bottomed saucepans to cashmere blankets. Money to burn, thought Mabs. Tucker would provide her with logs in winter and manure in summer: she’s the kind who never checks the price. A commission would come Mabs’ way from every tradesman she recommended. Liffey would be a useful source of income.

      

      ‘Roof needs re-doing,’ said Mabs. ‘The thatch is dried out: it becomes a real fire-risk, not to mention the insects! I’ve a cousin who’s a thatcher. He’s booked up for years but I’ll have a word with him. He owes me a favour.’

      ‘I’m not certain we’ll be able to stay,’ said Liffey sadly, and Mabs was alerted to danger. She saw Liffey as an ideal neighbour, controllable and malleable.

      ‘Why not?’ she asked.

      

      Public tears stood in Liffey’s eyes at last, as they had not done for years. She could not help herself. The strain of moving house, imposing her will, acknowledging difficulty, and conceiving deceit, was too much for her. Mabs put a solid arm round Liffey’s small shoulders, and asked what the matter was. It was more than she ever did for her children. Liffey explained the difficulty over the train timetable.

      ‘He’ll just have to stay up in London all week and come back home weekends. Lots of them round here do that,’ said Mabs.

      

      Liffey had not spent a single night apart from Richard since the day she married him, and was proud of her record. She said as much, and Mabs felt a stab of annoyance, but it did not show on her face, and Liffey continued to feel trusting. ‘Lots of wives would say that cramped their style,’ said Mabs.

      ‘Not me,’ said Liffey. ‘I’m not that sort of person at all. I’m a one-woman man. I mean to stay faithful to Richard all my life. Marriage is for better or worse, isn’t it.’

      ‘Oh yes,’ said Mabs, politely. ‘Let’s hope your Richard feels the same.’

      ‘Of course he does,’ said Liffey stoutly. ‘I know accidents can happen. People get drunk and don’t know what they’re doing. But he’d never be unfaithful; not properly unfaithful. And nor would I, ever, ever, ever.’

      

      Mabs spent a busy morning. She went up to her mother and begged a small jar of oil of mistletoe and a few drops of the special potion, the ingredients of which her mother would never disclose, and went home and baked some scones, and took them up to Liffey as a neighbourly gesture and when Tucker came home to his midday meal told him to get up to Liffey as soon as possible.

      ‘What for?’ asked Tucker.

      ‘You know what for,’ said Mabs. She was grim and excited all at once. Liffey was to be proved a slut, like any other. Tucker was to do it, and at Mabs’ behest, rather than on his own initiative, sometime later.

      ‘You know you don’t really want me to,’ said Tucker, alarmed, but excited too.

      ‘I don’t want her going back to London and leaving that cottage empty for Dick Hubbard to sell,’ said Mabs, searching for reasons. ‘And I want her side of the field for grazing, and I want her taken down a peg or two, so you get up there, Tucker.’

      ‘Supposing she makes trouble,’ said Tucker. ‘Supposing she’s difficult.’

      ‘She won’t be,’ said Mabs, ‘but if she is bring her down for a cup of coffee so we all get to know each other better.’

      ‘You won’t put anything in her coffee,’ said Tucker, suspiciously. ‘I’m a good enough man without, aren’t I?’ Mabs looked him up and down. He was small but he was wiry; the muscles stood out on his wrists: his mouth was sensuous and his nostrils flared.

      ‘You’re good enough without,’ she said. But in Mabs’ world men were managed, not relied upon, and were seldom told more than partial truths. And women were to be controlled, especially young women who might cause trouble, living on the borders of the land, and a channel made through them, the better to do it. Tucker, her implement, would make the channel.

      ‘I’ll go this evening,’ he said, delaying for no more reason than that he was busy hedging in the afternoon, and although he was annoyed, he stuck to it.

      

      Liffey ate Mabs’ scones for lunch. They were very heavy, and gave her indigestion.

      

      A little black cat wandered into the kitchen, during the afternoon. Liffey knew she was female. She rubbed her back against Liffey’s leg, and meowed, and looked subjugated, tender and grateful all at once. She rolled over on her back and yowled. She wanted a mate. Liffey had no doubt of it: she recognised something of herself in the cat, which was hardly more than a kitten and too young to safely have kittens of her own. Liffey gave her milk and tinned salmon. During the afternoon the cat sat in the garden and toms gathered in the bushes and set up their yearning yowls, and Liffey felt so involved and embarrassed that she went and lay down on her mattress on the floor, which was the only bed she had, and her own breath came in short, quick gasps, and she stretched her arms and knew she wanted something, someone, and assumed it was Richard, the only lover she had ever had, or ever—until that moment—hoped to have. Gradually the excitement, if that was what it was, died. The little cat came in; she seemed in pain. She complained, she rolled about, she seemed talkative and pleased with herself.

      

      Farmyards, thought Liffey. Surely human beings are more than farmyard animals? Don’t we have poetry, and paintings, and great civilisations and history? Or is it only men who have these things? Not women. She felt, for the first time in her life, at the mercy of her body.

      

      Richard, four hours late at the office, had to fit his morning’s work into the afternoon, remake appointments, and rearrange meetings. It became obvious that he would have to work late. His anger with Liffey was extreme: he felt no remorse for having hit her. Wherever he looked, whatever he remembered, he found justification for himself in her bad behaviour. Old injuries, old traumas, made themselves disturbingly felt. At fifteen, he had struck his father for upsetting his mother: he felt again the same sense of rage, churned up with love, and