A Village Dilemna (Turnham Malpas 09) (13 page)
Read A Village Dilemna (Turnham Malpas 09) Online
Authors: Rebecca Shaw
‘No.’ Sylvia intimated by the shrug of her shoulders that
she didn’t want to know anything at all about ‘that’ meeting.
‘So you agree with the Rector, then.’
‘I suppose I have to say yes to that.’
‘Of course, what else can you do when you work at the Rectory? You’ve got to be loyal.’
‘I’m old enough to have my own opinions. I’ve never discussed the matter with him.’
Mrs Charter-Plackett looked askance at her.
‘It’s true. I never have, nor with Dr Harris. I just believe it’s only fair to those poor unsettled remains for them to come home.’
‘They should be left in peace.’
‘Who says they’re at peace where they are?’
‘Well, they’re certainly not at peace now they’re being dug up. It’s disgusting and it’s irreverent.’
‘You’re not one of those idiots who thinks all our misfortunes are due to the dig. I would have thought you would have had more sense.’
‘Well, really!’
‘I mean it. More sense.’ She looked up at Jimbo’s clock above the door. ‘Must fly. Shopping to do and the twins will be home soon.’
The discussion was abandoned by Sylvia just as Mrs Charter-Plackett was warming to her subject and she felt cheated. She exclaimed ‘Well, really!’ again and marched through to the back to find Jimbo. ‘Some people are getting above their station.’
Jimbo looked up from his computer and said, ‘I could hear you from here. I do wish you wouldn’t be so antagonistic. “Above their station”, honestly, Mother, it’s
no longer the rich man in his castle and the poor man at the gate, or hadn’t you noticed?’
‘Of course I have, but speaking to me like that, saying I should have more sense.’
‘Well, perhaps you should have more sense. We both agreed the other night that our heads told us one thing and …’
‘Our hearts another. So I’m listening to my heart.’
‘Don’t, it’s causing too much trouble. Willie and Sylvia aren’t speaking, you know, all because of this …’
‘Still? I thought they’d patched it up.’
‘Vince and Greta Jones aren’t either. It’s causing an awful lot of trouble and you’re adding fuel to it. Please don’t.’
‘I will not have my son telling me what I can and cannot say. If I feel strongly about something then I shall speak my mind and I shan’t ask your permission.’
‘I was only appealing to your good sense, but obviously, as Sylvia found, you haven’t any.’ He turned back to his computer and, because of being thoroughly rattled by his mother’s intransigence, deleted some figures by mistake and swore.
‘Jimbo! That is disgusting! In front of your own mother. Really!’
‘You are exasperating, Mother, and if you anger me much more I shall say even worse. Don’t come to my Store if all you can do is upset the few customers I have left.’
‘I won’t, then. I shall condemn myself to travelling into Culworth for everything. I’m sure Jimmy will appreciate the business.’
‘You’ve forgotten he has the chickenpox.’
‘Thank God he’s not a bull mastiff,’ she muttered as she put the key in her door, only to find she hadn’t locked it in the first place. ‘I really will have to pull myself together. Casserole first, cup of tea afterwards.’ Then she saw Sykes’s wet footprints on her beautifully polished floor and the marks on the wall from his wet coat as he tried to rub himself dry, and knew he had to be dealt with first. This was not a good day at all. Those bones had a lot to answer for. Bryn was delighted by the episode in Deadman’s Dell only because it suited him for his groups, not for any other reason. Damn him. She’d have to sort him out because it was obvious no one else was going to.
‘Bryn! Behave yourself. You’ve seen me in this suit before. I’ve had it years.’
‘But you’ve never filled it quite like you’re doing tonight.’
‘Bryn! That’s cheek, that is. I don’t weigh one ounce more than I did the day we married.’
‘No! I hadn’t realised. You were magnificent that day, Georgie. Truly beautiful.’
Dicky went to stand beside Georgie. ‘She still is.’
‘I didn’t say she wasn’t. I
meant
she still is. I remember it like it was only yesterday.’
‘So do I.’ Georgie went quite weepy at her memories.
Dicky sensed he was losing the game. ‘Another whisky, Bryn?’
‘Thanks, Dicky, I will.’
He tossed it back with a practised lift of the elbow. ‘Tell you what, Georgie, my first group is up to twenty-five, a couple already booked are bringing two friends with them, I’ve had to close the list.’
This time Dicky took his glass from him without being asked and poured him another double. As he pushed it across the counter he gave Bryn a mean, challenging look. Man to man. Eyeball to eyeball. Bryn recognised the gauntlet Dicky was throwing down. ‘And another.’
Dicky solemnly handed him his third and then his fourth. ‘You’re running up quite a bill. We don’t have a slate here, you know. Remember, you wouldn’t have one when your name was over the door.’
‘That’s right, I wouldn’t. Here, barman.’ Bryn laid a twenty-pound note on the bar counter, taken from a thick wad. ‘Have one on me.’
‘No, thanks, not when I’m working.’
By mistake Bryn said, ‘The landlady won’t mind.’
If there was one thing guaranteed to anger Georgie it was calling her the landlady.
‘That’s enough, the pair of you. I won’t stand for it. Don’t serve him any more tonight. He’s had enough.’
‘No, Georgie, I haven’t had enough. ’Nother one, barman.’ He sent his empty glass skittering across the counter and Dicky only just managed to stop it crashing to
the floor. With a poker face he refilled the glass and handed it to Bryn. Seated now on a bar stool, Bryn accepted the glass and steadily downed the lot. The small area of his brain that from long practice could keep him in control no matter how much he drank swung into the arena. For that was what it had become: a gladiatorial confrontation, in public, for possession of the woman they both wanted. He downed his sixth and then his seventh glass, and Dicky, still poker-faced, poured him his eighth. The rest of the customers in the bar watched with breathless anticipation. Every eye was focused on Bryn and Dicky. The strange thing was that by the eighth glass neither of them was speaking. It had become a silent game of filling and emptying, filling and emptying. Georgie cringed with apprehension. He must have done some hard drinking in the past to withstand all this whisky. Someone’s inane high-pitched laugh shattered the silence and should have broken the spell they were all under, but it didn’t.
Suddenly Georgie banged her fist on the counter and said, ‘Dicky! Don’t serve him another glass. That’s an order.’
The ninth and then the tenth glass, and still Bryn wanted more.
Bryn pushed his glass across the counter towards Dicky and signalled with a crooked finger that he wanted yet another double.
Georgie shouted, ‘Don’t you dare serve him. Do you hear me?’
But Dicky ignored her. Dicky who’d always been so … well … so
obedient
to her smallest wish. Bryn tossed back his eleventh double.
The entire bar erupted in hysterical laughter. They held their sides, wiped their tears, nudged each other, rolled about, pointed helplessly and roared with laughter all over again. As for Dicky, he simply spread his hands wide, shrugged his shoulders and looked as innocent as a newborn baby. The staff waiting on in the dining room came through to see what was the matter; some diners left their meals to see the fun.
Georgie stormed round the counter and knelt beside Bryn. ‘Come on, Bryn, wake up. You’ve got to get home. Come on.’ She shook him by the shoulders, slapped his face twice, to no avail. ‘Dicky! Jug of water please.’
Without a word Dicky filled a large jug with water and handed it to her.
‘You ought to have had more sense. I told you to stop serving him. What were you thinking of?’ She threw the jug of water over his head and face, but to no effect.
Dicky said loudly, enjoying his audience, ‘Round one to Dicky Tutt.’ Everyone clapped their approval.
‘Good on yer, Dicky!’
‘Just what he deserved.’
Georgie snapped out, ‘Get me a towel.’
Dicky found a not particularly savoury one from the bottom of the towel cupboard and handed it to her.
She vigorously rubbed his head and face dry. ‘It’s no good, he’s completely out. He’s not going to get home in this state.’ She took hold of the front of his shirt and shook him briskly. ‘Bryn, wake up! Come on!’ But Bryn didn’t.
Dicky laughed. ‘Not much of a Romeo now, is he?’ He got a round of applause for his remark.
‘It’s nothing to the credit of either of you. You call yourselves grown men. Huh! More like two little boys. I’m disgusted with the pair of you. It’s all your fault, Dicky.’
Georgie’s indignation soon turned to laughter and when Georgie and Dicky looked at one another they laughed louder still. So did the spectators – there hadn’t been such an hilarious night in the Royal Oak for years.
‘Them whiskies looked more like triples to me,’ someone shouted.
Dicky gasped out, ‘The last two were!’ and everyone laughed louder than ever.
But they still had the problem of what to do with Bryn. ‘We’ll drag him into the back and he can sleep it off. I’ll ring Neville and let him know.’
Bryn’s planned night of romance had an ignominious ending. Dicky took one leg, Georgie the other, Alan caught hold of him under his armpits and between them they hauled him off stage into the back storeroom. Georgie found a blanket and covered him over. So Bryn spent the night squeezed between cartons of Tortilla crisps
and toilet roll twelve packs from the cash and carry and not between the sheets with Georgie.
When he woke next morning Dicky was standing over him reliving his last night’s triumph. ‘So, you’ve woken up at last.’
‘Oh! What are you doing here?’ Bryn clutched his head with both hands and moaned.
‘I work here, remember?’
Bryn opened his eyes and saw the word ‘Tortilla’ written only five inches from his eyes. His voice thick with sleep he asked, ‘Where am I?’
‘In the storeroom, sleeping it off.’
The events of the whole evening flooded back to him. ‘You little sod. It was you.’
Dicky shook his head. ‘No, it wasn’t me. You did the drinking. Not me.’
Bryn tried to sit up. ‘Ah! Get me a drink.’
‘Hair of the dog?’
Though he was in agony, Bryn was sharp enough to see through Dicky’s game plan. ‘No. Black coffee. That’s best.’
Georgie called out, ‘Send him upstairs for a cold shower.’
Bryn shuddered. Cold shower. What did she think he was? He was far too frail for a cold shower.
‘There’s still some of your clothes in the wardrobe, Bryn. Put fresh on.’
Dicky didn’t know this and he felt Georgie was disloyal to him, keeping Bryn’s clothes as though she expected him back any minute. He half kicked Bryn’s leg. ‘Get up, then.’
‘Says you.’ Dicky strutted out of the storeroom saying, ‘Shall I show you where the bathroom is? Oh, of course, you know.’ He grinned, considering he’d won another point. But at bottom he was bitterly angry. All he wanted was to get his and Georgie’s and Bel’s lives sorted out. They’d been in limbo far too long. He got through his routine with one ear cocked for Bryn. He heard him come down from the bathroom, caught a glimpse of him in an outfit he’d worn before he’d hopped it with Elektra, which did him no favours, listened for him talking to Georgie and then to his delight saw him cross the car park and go out into Church Lane. Good riddance to him. He’d thought she might give him breakfast but she hadn’t. He just wished he’d died last night from all that drink. Obviously that wasn’t the way to go.
He went to look for her. ‘Georgie! There you are.’ Dicky took her hand in his and said, ‘There’s something I need to know.’
‘Fire away.’
‘The divorce, is it going ahead?’
‘Of course it is. I want rid of him as soon as possible after last night. I can’t stand all this macho squaring up to each other. All this testosterone. Give me a kiss.’ They kissed joyfully. ‘Oh, Dicky, I do love you.’
‘And I love you. Just let’s get it all straightened out and then …’
‘I can’t wait. But listen to me, no more trying to finish him off with stupid tricks like last night. You mustn’t, you know, it might backfire.’
‘For the sake of the business I can’t pass up those lunches on a Thursday, but from now on that’s all it will be, him turning up from time to time with his punters. If he wants to put business our way then so what! All the better for us. That’s all it will be and I mean it.’
‘His clothes … get rid of them.’
Georgie had to laugh. ‘OK. The new Bryn looked ridiculous in them, didn’t he?’
Dicky hugged her tight. ‘That’s the problem, the
new
Bryn.’
‘You’ve no need to be jealous, love. There’s nothing there for him any more.’ Georgie knew he needed reassuring about her love for him and she said what he needed to hear, but somewhere deep down came that hankering again, nudging at her, worrying at her. She sighed.
He sensed her hankering, felt she was wanting to be loyal to him but finding it difficult; just that little bit of conviction missing. But then again when he said he wanted no more of Bryn and his sparring he too didn’t entirely mean it; well, almost but not quite. Just that little bit of conviction missing, the same as it was for Georgie. They’d been all right till Bryn turned up again, opening up old memories, looking more handsome then he’d ever done. Well, he for one wasn’t giving Georgie up without a fight. Like he’d said once to the Rector, she was
everything to him; on that matter he didn’t lack conviction, not one jot.
‘Coffee time?’
‘Yes, please.’
Bryn kept a low profile the morning after his humiliation in the bar. He’d been an idiot, a complete idiot taking up Dicky’s challenge. The only one to come smiling out of it had been Dicky himself. It simply wouldn’t do. He had to have the upper hand not only in Georgie’s eyes but in the eyes of the whole village. Damn and blast, he thought, as he showered yet again in the hope of restoring some semblance of equilibrium to his shattered body. He was getting too old for the kind of drinking he’d done last night. He carefully arranged the bath towel on the rail in Neville’s guest bathroom and walked into the bedroom. He looked at the clothes he’d just removed and thought, where on earth was I coming from to be wearing a shirt and trousers like that? I even thought I looked good in them. Huh! No wonder Georgie had gone off him, no wonder at all. He must have been an idiot. Bryn bundled them up ready for the bin and selected a matching set of shirt and trousers from his extensive wardrobe. Then he settled himself in a chair by the window and looked out on to Neville’s well-manicured garden, intending to take time reappraising his future.
He was right about doing this tourist business. Hour upon hour serving cruise guests on those damned liners had honed his skills to a fine point. He’d been out of his depth to begin with but by the end of the first year he’d found he could have them eating out of his hand. A combination of flattery and a good memory for faces and
what drinks the punters preferred had earned him more in tips than his wages and that was the way to go with his tourists. Barely three weeks and he’d be off to London to meet his first group. He rubbed his hands together in glee. From a file on the bedside table he took his list of Americans for the first group and sat lost in thought.