(1990) Sweet Heart (8 page)

A man hurrying, stumbling, very agitated, holding a fishing rod with a bag slung over his shoulder. He was wearing an old tweed suit with leather patches on the sleeves and gum boots. There was a strip of sticking plaster above his right eye, and a solitary trickle of sweat ran down his face like a tear. He was about sixty, tall and quite distinguished, but his state of anxiety was making him seem older. Ben’s snarl grew louder. She grabbed his collar.

‘I wonder if you’d mind terribly nipping down and telling Viola I’ll be a bit late,’ the man said without any introduction, ‘I’ve lost my damned watch somewhere and I must go back and look for it.’

‘Viola?’ Charley said blankly.

The man blinked furiously. ‘My wife!’ he said. ‘Mrs Letters.’

She wondered if he was a bit gaga.

‘I must find my watch before someone pinches it. It has sentimental value, you know.’

‘I’m sorry,’ Charley said. ‘We’ve only just moved in.’ Ben jerked her forwards.

‘Rose Cottage, up the lane! I’d be very grateful. Just tell her I’ll be a bit late.’ He raised a finger in acknowledgement, then turned and hurried back up the path.

Charley continued holding Ben. He was still snarling and his hackles were up, his eyes flickering with colour.

‘What is it, boy? What’s the matter?’ She pulled him and he followed reluctantly. She waited until the man was well out of sight before she dared release him.

Rose Cottage. She had seen the name on the board at the entrance to the lane. It must be the stone cottage. Ben ran on ahead sniffing everything happily, his growls forgotten.

She came out of the shade and the sunlight struck her face, dazzling her. Ben cocked his leg on a bush. The potholed ground was dry and dusty and the hedges buzzed with insects. A swarm of midges hovered around her head and there was a strong smell of cows, an acrid smell of bindweed and the sweeter smell of mown grass.

The roof of the cottage came into view through the trees and a dog was yapping. A car door slammed, then a woman’s voice boomed like a foghorn.

‘Peregrine! Quiet —!’

Charley rounded the corner. The ancient Morris Minor estate was parked in the driveway of the cottage behind the picket fence and beside it was an old woman who had a cardboard groceries box under one arm and was holding the leash of a tiny Yorkshire terrier with the other.

Ben leapt forward playfully but the terrier replied with another volley of yaps. Charley grabbed Ben’s collar and made him sit.

‘Are you Mrs Letters?’ she shouted above the terrier’s yapping.

‘Yes,’ the woman shouted back. She was a no-nonsense country type in stout brown shoes, tweed skirt and rib-stitched pullover. Short and plump, she had a ruddy, booze-veined blancmange of a face and straight, grey hair which was parted and brushed in a distinctly masculine style.

‘We’ve moved into the Mill. I’m Charley Witney.’

‘Ah, knew you were coming sometime this week.’ She glared at the dog and bellowed in a voice that could have stopped a battleship, ‘Peregrine!’ The dog was silent and she looked back at Charley. ‘Viola Letters. Can’t shake your hand, I’m afraid.’

‘I have a message from your husband.’

The woman’s expression became distinctly hostile and Charley felt daunted. She pointed towards the valley. ‘I just met him and he asked me to tell you that he’s lost his watch and he’s going to be a bit late.’

‘My husband?’

‘In a tweed suit, with fishing tackle? Have I come to the right house?’

‘Said he’d lost his watch?’

‘Yes — I —’ Charley hesitated. The woman was more than hostile; she was ferocious. ‘He seemed rather confused. I think he may have hurt himself. He had a strip of elastoplast on his head.’

The terrier launched into another spate of yapping and the woman turned abruptly and walked into the house, dragging the dog so its feet skidded over the paving slabs. She closed the front door behind her with a slam.

The gardener turned up in the afternoon, small and chirpy with a hare lip, and tugged the peak of his cap respectfully.

‘I’m Gideon,’ he said with an adenoidal twang, ‘like in the Bible.’

Charley smiled at him. ‘You’ve done a good job with the hedge.’

‘I wanted it to be nice for when you arrived,’ he said, obviously pleased with the compliment. ‘The old lady, she never wanted nothing done.’

‘Why not?’

‘I dunno; never saw her, ’cept rarely. She left me the money for cuttin’ the hedge and the grass out the back door.’

‘Didn’t she ever go out?’

‘Nope. Had everything delivered.’

‘Why did she do that?’

‘She were what you call a recluse. Mind, I’m not sorry. I know I’m not Robert Redford, but she really didn’t look that great.’ He glanced at the house. ‘Is there’s any jobs in the garden you want doing?’

There were plenty.

They walked around together, and agreed on a plot between the hen run and the paddock fence for the kitchen garden. The soil was moist and sandy, he told her, pretty well everything would grow. They could buy
spring cabbage and broccoli plants, and he had some leeks to spare. They would be eating their own vegetables before the winter was over, he said.

She bluffed her way through a discussion about hens, helped by a book she had read called
Poultry Keeping Today
which she’d borrowed from Wandsworth library. Gideon knew where to buy good layers, but the run needed fixing first to make it fox-proof and he’d get on with it right away. He charged three pounds an hour and she paid him for the work he had done on the hedge. Eight hours, which sounded about right.

She tried to get him to tell her more about Nancy Delvine, but he did not seem to want to talk about her. He’d only seen the woman twice in ten years, and that was enough. Why, he would not say.

The first call Charley received, after the engineer had tested the equipment and gone, was from Laura.

The engineer had been right about the Aga. It had heated up and the smoke had gone. The musty smells of the kitchen faded a bit and the dominant one now was from the cartons of the Chinese takeway in the rubbish sack. She had spent the last three hours opening crates, unpacking and moving furniture around. It would have to be moved again for the decorators and the carpets, but at least it was beginning to look vaguely like home.

‘The flowers are wonderful,’ Charley said, caressing the petals of a pink orchid.

‘Got your green wellies out yet?’

‘It’s too hot.’

‘You’re lucky you’re not in London. It’s sweltering. No one’s buying any winter clothes. How did the move go?’

‘Fine. Great. You must come to Tom’s birthday a fortnight on Saturday. We’re going to have a barbecue, if it’s warm enough.’

‘Any dishy bachelors around?’

‘Actually there’s a rather nice chap down the lane.’

‘Really?’

‘I have a feeling he’s single. If he is, I’ll invite him.’

‘Tom’s going to be thirty-eight, isn’t he?’

‘And not very happy about it. Someone told him middle age starts at forty.’

‘He doesn’t look middle-aged.’

Hammering echoed around the house. ‘Laura,’ Charley began. ‘Do you know when Flavia Montessore is going to be back in England?’

‘In the autumn sometime.’ Laura sounded surprised. ‘Why?’

Charley toyed with the green tag hanging from the phone. ‘I — I just wondered, that’s all.’ There was a clatter outside the window and the rungs of an aluminium ladder appeared. ‘You know I said I was in a car?’

‘Bonking. Yes.’

‘I was chewing a bit of gum. I took it out of my mouth and stuck it under the dash —’

A pair of legs climbed past the window.

‘I found …’ Her voice trailed off, and she left foolish.

‘Found what? Charley, what did you find?’

The ladder was shaking. ‘The autumn. Do you mean October? Next month?’

‘She usually calls me. I’ll let you know.’

Rude, Charley thought, suddenly. Mrs Letters. Rose Cottage. Very rude to slam a door.

‘If you want to see someone sooner I know a very good man called Ernest Gibbon. He does private sessions.’

She’d gone out of her way to give Mrs Letters the message, and she’d turned her back and slammed the door. Rude. Except it hadn’t felt rude at the time, just odd. The woman had seemed upset. Upset by something more than a husband being late.

‘I can give you his number,’ Laura said. ‘He’s in south London.’

‘Is he as good?’

‘He’s brilliant. Give him a try.’

‘I might,’ she said distractedly, and wrote the number down on the back of an envelope.

Tom arrived home in the evening and changed into a T-shirt and jeans. He thought three pounds an hour was fine for the gardener, but he would look after the lawn himself. Part of the fun of moving to the country was to work in the garden, he said.

He went in the barn and managed to get the huge old mower started, then sat on the seat and drove it with a terrible racket across the gravel and up the bank. It farted oily black smoke and the engine kept cutting then racing, jerking him about like a circus clown. Finally there was a loud bang and the engine stopped and would not start again. Tom climbed off doubled up with laughter and she felt, almost for the first time, that everything was going to work out.

‘Let’s find a pub,’ Tom said. ‘I fancy a beer and a steak.’

‘The chap up the lane said the George and Dragon was the best for food.’ She brushed hairs back from his forehead, and the evening sun danced deep in his slate blue eyes. He didn’t look thirty-eight and she didn’t feel thirty-six; she felt twenty-six, or maybe sixteen, when she’d first seen those eyes, gazed up at them from the sticky carpet where she’d fallen sloshed in the pub and seen them grinning down at her. ‘Hallo, Joe Cool,’ she’d said to the stranger, and then passed out on his shiny Chelsea boots.

The George and Dragon was an old coaching inn and the glass panel in the door displayed its credentials: ‘Relais Routiers’, ‘Egon Ronay’, ‘Good Pub Guide,’
‘Good Beer Guide’. The thin licensing strip across the lintel proclaimed the proprietor to be Victor L. Lubbin.

A roar of laughter froze as they went in. A bunch of labourers around a table glanced up then one said something and the laughter resumed. A solitary fruit machine stood against a wall. It winked its lights, flashed its signs, changed its colours and repeated a scale of musical notes every few seconds, its sole audience an old English sheepdog which lay on the floor eyeing it sleepily like a bored impresario at an audition.

The room had a low ceiling, yellowed from age and smoke, and massive timber beams. Ancient farm implements had been hung on the walls along with a dartboard. There were old-fashioned beer pumps and an unlit inglenook. Beside the dartboard were notices advertising a jumble sale, a steam traction rally, Morris Dancing — ‘Morfydd’s Maidens’.

A knot of three people stood at the far end of the bar. One Charley recognised, the tall frame of Hugh Boxer, their neighbour, raising a stubby pipe as a greeting. ‘Hi!’ he said.

He was wearing a crumpled checked shirt, a knitted tie and had an amiable smile on his bearded face, though there was the strong, authoritative presence she had felt before. The grease smears had gone and his hair had been tidied a bit.

Charley introduced Tom, and Hugh Boxer ordered them drinks and introduced them to the couple he was with. They were called Julian and Zoe Garfield-Hampsen, and lived in the red-brick house with the Grecian columns around the pool at the end of the lane. Yuppie Towers. Julian Garfield-Hampsen was tall, with a booming voice and a ruddy drinker’s face. He wore a striped Jermyn Street shirt with corded cufflinks and smoothed his hand through his fair hair each time he
spoke. He was probably about the same age as Tom, but he looked ten years older.

‘How super to have another young couple in the lane!’ Zoe said. She had a small, reedy voice and spoke slowly and precisely, which made her sound like a schoolgirl in an elocution lesson. She was the woman Charley had seen walking out of the stables in her bikini and Wellington boots. ‘Julian and I have always simply
adored
Elmwood Mill,’ she added.

‘We love it,’ Charley said.

‘It’s super! The only thing that put us off buying it is it sits so low down and doesn’t get much sun in the winter.’

‘Spritzer.’ Hugh Boxer handed Charley her glass. ‘And a pint of Vic’s best sludge.’

‘Cheers.’ Tom held his dark bitter up to the light, studied it for a moment, drank some and nodded approvingly at the landlord.

The landlord, a stocky, dour man with thinning black hair, made no response for a moment. He turned to take a tumbler from the small aluminium sink, then said, in a dry Midlands accent, ‘Cricketing man, are you?’

‘I used to play a bit,’ Tom said surprised.

The landlord wiped the tumbler with a cloth. ‘Sunday week,’ he said. ‘Ten o’clock, Elmwood Green. We’ve a charity match against Rodmell and we’re two short.’

‘I’m a bit rusty. I haven’t played for a few years.’

‘Bat or bowl?’

‘I used to be a bit of a batsman, I suppose.’

‘Put you down for opening bat?’

‘Well I wouldn’t — er —’ But the landlord had already started to write his name on a list. ‘Witney? With an
H
or without?’

‘Without,’ Tom said, ‘I haven’t got any pads or kit.’

‘You get roped into everything down here,’ Hugh said. ‘They’ll have you on every committee going within a month.’

‘Viola Letters is doing the tea,’ the landlord continued. ‘I expect she’ll be in touch with you, Mrs Witney.’

‘Oh, right,’ Charley said, taken aback but smiling.

‘Do you do food at night?’ Tom dug his fingers hungrily into a large bowl of peanuts on the bar.

‘Restaurant’s through there.’ The landlord pointed. ‘Last orders for food at nine forty-five.’

Tom shovelled more peanuts into his mouth. They had half an hour.

‘Julian played last year, but he’s hurt his shoulder,’ Zoe said. ‘How many children do you have?’ she asked Charley.

‘None, so far.’ Charley’s face always reddened at the question. ‘We — we hope to start a family here.’

‘Super!’ The expression on Zoe’s face said,
At your age?