I Remember You. Harriet Evans

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       CHAPTER ONE

      The old woman sat at her window, her usual position, and watched, waiting. It was noon in Langford, and if there was to be any activity on the high street (described as ‘one of the most beautiful streets in England’ by DK Eyewitness, ‘picturepostcard perfect’ in the Rough Guide, and ‘chintzy’ in the Lonely Planet), it would be at this time.

      There might be a couple of ladies walking to lunch at the tea shop. Or some weekenders emerging from Knick-Knacks, one of the many gift shops that sold Medici Society notelets, Cath Kidston cushions and ‘vintage’ mirrors. Or perhaps a group of American tourists, rarer at this time of year, distressingly loud, having visited the house where Jane Austen spent several months staying with an old friend. (The house, formerly known as 12 St Catherine’s Street, was now the Jane Austen Centre, a museum which contained a glove of the great author’s, a letter from her describing Langford as ‘neither incommodious nor invidious, yet I cannot like it‘, and a first edition of Emma, inscribed, ‘To Lord Mortmain, in respect of his great knowledge, this little offering.’ But since the author was anonymous until she died, it was generally agreed it wasn’t her, anyway.)

      Perhaps she might spot a bus trip taking people to Langford Regis, the famous Roman villa nearby (home to some of the best mosaics of Roman Britain, and a new heritage trail promising a fun day out for all the family.) Perhaps even a film crew—they were increasingly common in Langford these days. But whatever it was, Leonora Mortmain would have seen it before, in some form or another. For, as she was fond of telling her housekeeper Jean, she had seen most things in the town. And nothing surprised her any more.

      She watched them walk past with a weary disdain; the tourists, lured from London or Bath for the day, even on this cold January morning, clutching their guide books, reading aloud to each other. And there was her old adversary, Mick Hopkins, the publican at the Feathers. He was putting a sign out on the road—what did it say? Leonora couldn’t make out the bright chalk lettering, and her glasses were on the other side of the room, in the bureau. Something annoying, no doubt; some quiz night that would mean everyone became disgracefully inebriated and staggered out onto the street, calling names and making noise, waking her all too easily from a restless sleep. Leonora Mortmain sighed, and her long fingers briefly clutched her skirt. Sometimes she wondered, quite literally, what the world was coming to. The town she had known all her life was changing. And she didn’t like it.

      There was a picture in the town hall (renamed the Civic Centre in the eighties, now mercifully re-renamed). Leonora had a copy, too. It showed the Langford Parish Council on Easter Day 1904, outside St Mary’s Church, behind the high street. Men in morning suits, top hats and gloves, walking sticks, their sepia faces serious and respectable, their wives demurely on their arms, expressionless and slim in pintucked, ruffled Edwardian dresses. Everything correct, respectful. The church noticeboard in the background was freshly painted. Even the urchin playing in the street in the foreground, unseen by the subjects of the photograph—even he was clean and presentable! The previous day, Leonora had watched in amazement and horror as a mother—she presumed she was the mother—pushed her child along the high street in a buggy with one hand. The woman was fat, red-faced and sweating, holding a cigarette with the hand that steered the buggy and eating a pasty of some description in the other. She was dressed in pink jogging bottoms; the child was filthy. And she was shouting at it as she went. ‘Shut the **** up, Tiffany!’ she’d screamed as the child screamed back. And then later that same day, as evening came, a troupe of girls, no more than teenagers, walking along towards the bus stop, wearing jeans and trainers, and tops that displayed more than enough of their cleavages, smoking and drinking out of cans. One of them—no more than fourteen, Leonora estimated—stopped and kissed, in a most unseemly way, a youth of the same age, whose hands had roved over her body like—like oil in a pan. And under her clothes! Leonora had watched it all from the window.

      Extraordinary! Incredible! That the town had come to this, and Leonora increasingly had no remedy for it. O tempora, o mores, her father had been wont to say (although he disapproved of Cicero in many ways). Well, what Sir Charles Mortmain would have made of his beloved town now, she shuddered to think. She simply could not imagine. Leonora Mortmain shifted uneasily СКАЧАТЬ