Cross My Heart and Hope to Die (12 page)

Someone else who didn't understand that was Mrs Hanbury. Her husband was a retired army officer, and they were both tall and thin with very superior voices. They'd moved into the village a few years ago and taken charge of everything from the Parish Council to the Women's Institute. They loved organizing things, and to be fair, which is difficult, they did a good job. But that didn't mean we had to like them.

The Hanburys had bought a tumbledown old house in the centre of the village to renovate in advance of their retirement. It was a big timber-framed building with a roof of mouldering thatch and cracked plaster walls, and over the years it had been divided into two or three rented dwellings. When the Hanburys bought it, it was empty except for old Fred Wainwright who lived in one end.

Fred was over eighty at the time, and though the Hanburys told him he would be provided with one of the bungalows the council were building for old people over at Horkey, he didn't want to move out. There wasn't a bungalow immediately available anyway, but the Hanburys couldn't wait. They sent in the builders, and Fred was so upset by the dust and disruption and noise that in the end he was glad to be given a place in the council old people's home, the great red-brick building on the turnpike that used to be the workhouse. A neighbour said that after the man from the Welfare had told him he was going away, Fred sat for two days and nights with his coats and shirts bundled and tied, and by the time the ambulance came to fetch him he thought he was ploughing with horses again, and sat calling to his team across the kitchen table.

The Hanburys certainly did a good job on the old house. By the time they'd finished spending money the place was unrecognizable, gutted and plumbed, with new thatch and plaster, new dormer windows, and carriage lamps outside the front door. According to a signboard it was now called The Glebe, but the Hanburys always referred to it as ‘the cottage'. You can always tell townspeople from country people because they insist on talking about their cottages. Houses, we call them.

Mrs Hanbury did most of her shopping in Breckham Market, but every now and again she'd call in at Gran Thacker's to give us the benefit of her patronage.

‘Oh, Vincent, good morning to you. I want a dozen fresh eggs, please. No no no, not
prepacked
eggs! I mean genuine fresh ones, free range. You don't have them? Really, how absurd it is to live in the country and to be offered eggs from battery hens … No, thank you!'

Then she spotted me, as I passed her loaded with a case of dog food, and smiled at me benevolently.

‘Ah – Janet, isn't it? The Colonel tells me you're hoping to go to university! Now which one, I wonder?'

I was going to say London, but Dad chipped in eagerly, trying to show me off, to tell her that I'd just taken Oxford entrance.

Mrs Hanbury had very thin painted eyebrows and they rose up to join the wrinkles on her forehead. ‘
Oxford
? My goodness, how very ambitious. But of course things are so very different these days, aren't they? What I want, Vincent, is just an ounce of whole almonds. I want them for the top of a cake, so they must be unbroken. Well, could you pick out the unbroken ones for me, please? I am a nuisance, aren't I? Thank you so much. And
well done
, Janet.'

Mrs Hanbury was someone else I'd have liked to throw out of the shop. It wouldn't have done the takings any harm, either.

Our least favourite customer of all was Mrs Farrow. She'd married a Byland man, but you could tell from her voice that she'd been brought up in a town a long way from Suffolk. She was big and noisy and pushy, and she hadn't any time for village respectability.

She didn't mind what she said to anybody, in fact she enjoyed causing disruption and embarrassment.

‘Well, Ginger, what are you giving away today?'

She always started off like that. There wasn't a polite reply, so Dad just said, ‘Good morning Mrs Farrow.' Then she hustled him along, changing her mind and complaining about quality and price as though he were personally responsible.

‘What? A tanner each for them miserable little oranges? Never, I could grow'em bigger meself. You keep 'em. I'll have a tablet of Lifebuoy soap. The biggest.
How
much? Not bloody likely, I'll take the small. They'll have to make it last. I'm not paying that for flaming soap. And a double Andrex toilet roll. Blush pink, eh, Ginger? Hey, that reminds me –'

Mrs Farrow cackled and shoved an elbow into the ribs of the person standing next to her. It happened to be Mrs Cantrip, one of our nice elderly customers, a regular chapel-goer who was obviously shocked by Mrs Farrow's language. She stood with a splotch of red on each thin cheek, holding her limp shopping-bag in front of her with both hands, and at Mrs Farrow's nudge she started and drew in her hands and her lips, retreating as far as she could without actually moving her feet.

‘Well,' went on Mrs Farrow, enjoying herself, oblivious of poor Mrs Cantrip's embarrassment, ‘I was in the top shop last week and I meant to ask for a double Andrex. I dunno what my lot do with it, anybody'd think I fed'em rhubarb every day, the rate they use up paper. Well, anyway –' she looked round the shop, gathering her audience – ‘do you know what I said? I said, “Morning Mr Timpson, I'll have a double Durex.” Double Durex! You should have seen his face! He must've thought I was going to have a good time … Laugh, I nearly cried!'

I didn't see what was so funny, and I'm not sure that Mrs Cantrip did either, but she closed her eyes tight and made herself even more thinly concave. Mrs Keysoe, one of Dad's contemporaries, spluttered with amusement and then pretended she hadn't. Susan Freeman, who used to be at the village school with me, shook with laughter behind her hand. Old Mrs Dillon, resting on the shop chair, nodded and smiled but she's deaf anyway, she always nods and smiles.

Dad, trying to add up Mrs Farrow's bill, kept his head well down. But she wasn't going to let him get away with that so she leaned across the counter to prod his arm.

‘How about that, then, Ginger? Good job I didn't ask you, I bet you don't stock Durex! No call for it, eh?' She choked with laughter again, and had to wipe her eyes.

Then I saw that Dad was blushing. His skin was so fair that he blushed very easily. He looked reprovingly at Mrs Farrow and nodded in my direction, but I knew how to be a diplomatic shop assistant. I grinned enough to show Mrs Farrow that I appreciated her joke, but not so much that I might offend Mrs Cantrip.

‘Ah, you needn't worry about young Janet,' Mrs Farrow chortled. ‘Look at her, she knows what it's all about!'

‘Fetch us some tins of custard powder, Janet,' said Dad urgently.

‘Oh, go on with you,' Mrs Farrow said to him with scorn. ‘You've got a shelf full of custard powder, you old woman.' But I was already half-way out of the door. Poor Dad had to stay put behind the counter but I could always find a job to do in the store shed.

Shortly before my finishing time at twelve, the telephone rang in Gran's office. She treated the telephone casually and never minded using it, but she always assumed that it was deaf.

‘Sounds like an order,' said Dad, and presently Gran called him in.

‘Old Miss Massingham,' he reported when he returned with a short list. ‘We haven't seen her all week, seems she's not well. Do you mind getting these things up for her and taking them on your way home?'

It was an odd sort of order for a week's groceries, but Miss Massingham was a bit of an oddity herself. Not that I really knew her except by sight, but she was one of the village characters. I packed her order in a cardboard box: 400 cigarettes, half a pound of cheese, a packet of water biscuits, three small tins of soup, six boxes of matches and twelve large tins of cat food. People always said she lived on cat food and I began to think it must be true.

When I went to Gran's office to collect my wages it was still a few minutes to twelve.

‘You're off already, Miss?'

I pointed out that I was going to take Miss Massingham's order.

‘I don't pay you to ride about the village,' retorted Gran, but she gave me my eight bob. ‘And mind your manners with Miss Massingham,' she added, ‘don't forget she's a lady. Only don't leave the goods unless she pays you, or we'll never get the money out of her.'

Miss Massingham lived about a mile outside the village, in the opposite direction to Longmire End, up a quiet road that passed the fields where Byland Hall had once stood. That was where Gran Bowden had worked when she was young, when the Massinghams had been important people in the county. But the family had all died off except Miss Massingham, and the Hall had been burned down in the Second World War when Ziggy Crackjaw and his Polish army mates were billeted there, so the old lady lived alone in what had once been their gamekeeper's house.

It had rained during the morning, and I cycled gingerly along the tree-lined road, the box of groceries balanced on my handle-bars, trying not to skid on wet leaves. I hadn't been in that direction for years. The gamekeeper's house, when I came to it, was smaller than I'd remembered, but even so it was bigger than ours and the Crackjaws' together. It stood by the roadside, overshadowed by trees, and it looked gloomy and damp. I'd imagined it was genuine Tudor, with its mossy tiles and half-timbering, but now I could see that the timbers were too regular, and the initials H.P.M. and the date 1879 were picked out boldly in coloured plaster above the front door.

No one in our village, except probably the newcomers, uses front doors, but I wondered whether Miss Massingham might on account of being a lady. But her front door, like ours, had plastic fertilizer bags propped against the sill with bricks to keep out the driving rain, so I decided that even a lady might prefer not to use it. I propped my bike against the garden hedge, pushed open the gate with my elbow, and carried the box along a muddy path, past various outbuildings, to the back door. There was an old sack lying in front of it as an outdoor doormat, just as we had at home, and when my knock was answered with a creaky ‘Come in' I was careful to make use of the sack first.

‘Good morning, I've brought your groceries.'

It was a superfluous remark, since I was standing there clutching them, but I had to say something. Miss Massingham usually did her shopping mid-week and I hadn't seen her for some time, so I was shocked by the change in her appearance.

She never looked like a lady. I remembered her as a large vigorous woman, grey hair flying, dressed any old how, riding through the village on an ancient bike with a basket on the front for her shopping. She always called a cheerful greeting when she passed anyone in the street, and often she could be heard whistling.

But now a change had come over her. She seemed to have shrunk in height as well as in width. Her hair was limp, her cheeks sagged. She wore a long dressing-gown, mangy with age, and she looked old and ill.

All I got by way of acknowledgement was a fit of coughing. Miss Massingham had a cigarette stuck in one corner of her mouth and the smoke obviously caused her extreme discomfort. She stood in the centre of the room, peering at me through the haze and breathing harshly.

‘From Mrs Thacker's,' I added. Miss Massingham grunted, and cleared a space among the unwashed crockery on the table so that I could put the box down. Her kitchen was larger and more comfortable than ours, with a small fire and a wooden armchair in front of it, but otherwise it was almost as antiquated as ours and every bit as untidy.

She began to unpack the box. An assortment of cats immediately materialized from various sleeping quarters about the room and began to purl round the skirts of her dressing-gown, tails up. Miss Massingham got busy with the tin-opener. I didn't like to ask for the money for the groceries, but I didn't dare leave without it. I tried a polite cough, but it was overpowered by her own. She forked several separate dollops of cat food on to a big baking-tin, put in on the floor and watched the chomping cats affectionately. Their tails gradually subsided as they concentrated their energies on the food, and she turned to raise an eyebrow at me through the cigarette smoke.

‘You're waiting for the money, I suppose?'

‘Oh no,' I said, ‘it doesn't matter. But I'll take it if you want me to.'

Miss Massingham fetched a wallet from a drawer. ‘How much?'

I offered her the bill.

‘Good Lord. Nearly six quid for a few tins of cat food!'

‘There's almost five pounds'worth of cigarettes,' I pointed out defensively. She barked with sudden amusement, started coughing again and thumped her chest. I tried not to look disapproving.

‘I can see you take the view that I shouldn't smoke,' she said, throwing her cigarette butt into the fire. ‘Well, I take the view that I shouldn't have a cough.' She gave me some banknotes. Dad had provided me with some loose cash and I carefully counted out the change and wrote, ‘Paid with thanks, J. Thacker,' at the foot of the bill.

‘Thank you for bringing the things, anyway,' she said. ‘The doc won't let me out for a bit.' Wheezing, she pulled a packet of cigarettes and a box of matches from the pocket of her dressing-gown, lit a fresh one and shifted it to one side of her mouth. ‘Who are you, by the way?'

‘I'm Mrs Thacker's grand-daughter, Janet.'

Miss Massingham looked at me doubtfully, and then her face relaxed in recognition. ‘
Now
I've got you! Of course, Betty Bowden's daughter. Well, well.' She put her hands on my shoulders and turned me towards the light from the window. It was uncomfortable, standing so close to her cigarette, but I didn't like to break away.

‘Haven't had a good look at you since you were a nipper,' she said. ‘Yes, I can see the resemblance to your mother.'

I don't know whether I looked agonized but I certainly felt it. Mum must weigh all of twelve stone. Miss Massingham dropped her hands but didn't move away, looking at me and reminiscing.