of reach on the heavy oak mantel shelf above the yawning brick fireplace. Keeping company with the bronzes were some tarnished silver cups won in local darts tournaments. The thick brocade curtains at the diamond leaded windows were also originally from Petherton, cast-offs. Once a wine colour, they had fallen via time and sunlight to a grubby brown. Now too fragile to launder they were thick with dust, as Esther had found out to her chagrin. The meeting room, she felt, was a little part of the Petherton estate and she was cross that all in all it had been allowed to languish into sloppy disorder.
The landlord and his wife, Johnny and Margaret Westlake, were loosely related to Denny Vercoe and embraced the Vercoes’ lackadaisical way of life. Esther had complained about the tarnish and dust, but Johnny and Margaret, both commonplace and ebullient hosts, had laughingly told Esther to mind her own business.
‘You won’t be laughing when all the meetings I’m involved in are held in the new village hall in future and your drink takings are down,’ Esther muttered cuttingly.
She sat down at the ‘top table’, having previously asked Johnny to set out two other tables at right angles to it. The people of Nanviscoe had their lives to get on with and only a few of them were capable of being a pioneering leader – Greg Barnicoat came to mind but he was too nice, didn’t like offending anyone and that was a necessary part of true leadership. Esther quite enjoyed offending those she thought deserved it. Her prime target had been the late, barely missed Delia Newton. Jack Newton should be leadership material but his father’s incessant cruelty had leeched anything useful out of him. Jack, when he wasn’t tom-catting, set about making amends to the world for the brute Randall’s existence in it. Esther secretly liked Jack. She also liked Finn Templeton, currently recovering from severe dyspepsia, but she wasn’t one to admit to anyone she favoured. Jack was at last throwing off his morbid widower weeds, letting go of the lingering threads of his peculiar tragic young wife, credit to the presence in his life of the fully womanly Verity Barnicoat. Like Dorrie Resterick, Esther had met Lucinda Newton while making the usual respectful first visit. Esther had left appalled by the freakish perpetual child, who had allowed Esther to preside over the tea and cake, and she had been glad to get away and had never called back. In Esther’s opinion Lucinda was verging on being a dangerous being. Thank goodness she had killed herself and not someone else.
Esther had her large notebook ready to record the more important decisions. Hector Evans would jot down the minutes of the meeting. Soames, as a businessman, was treasurer and would take hall bookings. It would be handy for people to make them in the Stores. Esther always arrived early for meetings so she could get her thoughts together. On this afternoon’s agenda were the decisions about what the nearly completed hall should be called, when the official opening day should be held and who should do the honours of opening it, and what sort of occasion it should be.
She was surprised when the first committee member came in. ‘Good heavens! Honoria, this is a first for you. You’re twenty minutes early and you usually arrive when a meeting is nearly over. Is there a problem?’
‘Not in the least, I just happened to have got on early today. Thought I’d pop along early for a tête-à-tête. When I know when the hall is to be opened I shall plan to spend the winter in sunnier climes, my first time away since the war broke out. Not much choice really, with so many countries still suffering the ravages. I’m thinking of the Caribbean, somewhere not too native.’
Honoria sat down on the right of her sister at a separate table. She snapped open her beige handbag and slid out her cigarettes. A minute later she and Esther were smoking, sharing a cheap tin ashtray, having to stretch out their arms to reach it. ‘The thing is, will you be all right when I’m out of the country? It will be a few months. If you’d rather I didn’t go then I won’t. Of course, I can cut my stay short; you’d only have to make a call. Such a pity you can’t come with me. Why not let me get you a passport? The contacts I used to