Think Ingrid Bergman in the closing moments of George Cukor’s Gaslight. Evil Gregory, who has lately been persuading his wife Paula, played by Bergman, that she is mad, is – owing to an elaborate series of events – now tied to a chair. He begs Paula to find a knife and cut him free. She, newly empowered, indulges in a little low-grade mental torture of her own, taunting the man who was once her oppressor.
So it was at the deathbed of Evil Rob, as he lay in his cheerless, cell-like bedroom in a flat in Penny Hassett. Evil Rob’s sheer, venomous nastiness remained fully intact to the end, despite the rapid approach of the grim reaper. “You’re not a proper mother! You’re aloof, you’re weak, you’re always whining about something!” And yet Helen somehow resisted his peremptorily issued command to suffocate him with a pillow. I rather wish Helen had succumbed, first because it would have made for an interesting moment, aurally speaking, and second, because I rather like it when Ambridge is wreathed in gothic fog. As it was, Evil Rob died all on his own without any outside help. He will be missed, at least by me: his moustache-twirling, snarling wickedness always brightened up Borsetshire’s beige.
Is romance on the horizon for Alice? A very keen-seeming posh chap, who sounds exactly like Rory Stewart and was almost certainly wearing red trousers and a waxed jacket, turned up at the stables full of equine-welfare concerns. (As Alice so rightly said, “No one likes to hear their horse has been impaled on a fence.”) Will Alice seem less of a catch when she tells the possible suitor that she’s an alcoholic single mother? My hopes are not high. In the meantime, owing to Lee’s departure, the honorary role of Ambridge’s hottest man lies vacant. Contenders – aside from Chris Carter, obviously – include Jakob, who turned up at Ruairi’s 21st (not a fancy-dress party) wearing a gladiator outfit. He seemed to pull it off.
Oliver Sterling, owing to Adil’s mishandling of the renovation of Grey Gables, is running short of cash. His only recourse is to put 10 acres of Grange Farm’s land on the market, much to the despair of the Grundys, who foresee their livelihood being sold out from under them – putting one in mind of the fact that Neil Kinnock once opined that The Archers ought to be renamed The Grundys and Their Oppressors. Adil has found a cheap kitchen setup to buy from the bankrupt La Femme du Monde. One wonders whether the establishment had come off the worse in an internecine struggle with Borchester’s fine-dining restaurant, Les Soeurs Heureuses.
