An Affair to Remember by Virginia Budd Read Free Book Online Page A

up. You know what the locals are like, they’d sell their own grandmother for a couple of pints of ale and a box of pins –”
    “In this case of course, their own grandfather,” Sam interrupts, unable to stop himself. “Anyway, stop whinging on about Karen and tell me what Selwyn Woodhead really does, apart from being a personality.”
    “Oh loads of things. He’s on telly all the time. Or he used to be, perhaps not quite so much now. He hosts team games, interviews people, writes books, that sort of thing.”
    “Books. What about?”
    Emmie looks at him in exasperation, puts down her mug of tea, “Oh I don’t know. Sex, I think, or maybe it’s ghosts. Could be both. I think he did a series on ghosts. Some years ago, I can’t remember –”
    “He writes books about sex? I don’t believe you’ve a bloody clue what he writes about. Face up to it, Em, you’ve never read a book in your life.”
    “Yes I have. And I’ll thank you not to use that sort of language to me. He does write about sex; how to enjoy it, make it interesting. Of course that wouldn’t interest you, though, would it?” He’d asked for that! Never mind.
    “So,” he says, keeping his end up, “we have an authority on sex come to live in our midst, and not only that, one who subsists on nuts and honey. I wonder what this Clarrie is like.” However, Emmie knows all about Clarrie too, and the subject of the latest addition to the neighbourhood’s wives is too exciting for her to lapse into sulky silence, as would normally be the case after such an exchange.
    “Clarrie Woodhead was a researcher at the BBC, and met Selwyn while they were doing a programme. He’s been married several times of course…” Wait till she tells Jack! He’d know about those books on sex, though come to think of it he didn’t need much instruction in that department, she thinks, smiling to herself. Sam, noticing the smile, looks at her with suspicion. What’s got into her now, he wonders, then realises he doesn’t actually care.
    “I think I’ll do a bit in the garden this afternoon, those beans are coming on nicely now,” he says, getting up from the table and carrying his mug over to the sink.
    Emmie yawns, stretches her arms above her head, “Well, I’m off to my bed for an hour or two, treating myself to a spot of shut-eye, so don’t expect me to be in the shop. Funny really, but I feel ever so tired, must be overdoing it…”
    Sam puts on his gardening shoes, and having collected a spade and hoe from the shed at the back of the house, carries them down to the vegetable plot at the bottom of their garden. Once there, instead of getting on with clearing the patch of couch grass as he’d intended, he throws down the tools on a newly dug patch of earth, opens the small wrought iron gate in the hedge that leads into the field beyond, and walks across it to the river. The river’s low at this time of year, even more so with the current heatwave: coloured stones glint through the slow moving water and the sun, warm on his back, makes islands of shimmering light. A heron, quietly fishing from a half-submerged log a few yards upstream, disturbed by Sam’s presence takes flight, looking strangely outlandish as he flaps away towards the clump of trees in the field beyond. Somewhere not far off a tractor drones. Suddenly, unprecedentedly, a spark of joy runs through him. This is his world, his domain. Once, long ago, it had been bigger, much bigger, but it’ll do for now, he thinks.
     

 
    Chapter 3
     
    Tensed up, peering through the spectacles she needs for driving, Beatrice in her Mini follows what she hopes is the right road out of the town of Belchester, Mr Woodhead’s thoughtful map on the passenger seat beside her. “Five miles beyond Belchester, my dear,” he’d told her, “turn right at the sign for Kimbleford. After that just follow the road. A mile or so on you’ll come to the village, proceed straight through it, over the river, up