Why Don’t You Come for Me (3 page)

These new premises were a good forty-five minutes’ drive from Easter Bridge, but as Marcus said, with phones and email what did that matter? It was undoubtedly far easier to recruit good staff to work in the little market town than it was to persuade them to drive out into the countryside, and besides which, the room they used as an office at The Hideaway was not large enough to allow for expansion.

When she and Marcus had originally agreed to take it in turns to stay at home, Jo assumed that during her periods as the parent ‘off-tour’, she would go into the office at Kirkby Lonsdale while Sean was at school, but though she had initially tried to establish this routine, she soon began to feel surplus to requirements. Sally and Janice ostensibly went out of their way to make her welcome, but on volunteering to check the drivers’ hours, she would be greeted by, ‘Oh, Melissa went through them yesterday.’ A suggestion that she might relieve them of inputting some invoices would be met with the smiling reassurance that Janice had them all completely up to date – and the statements too. When the telephones rang, she was always just too late picking them up. The business which she had coaxed gently into life, nurtured like a baby and helped totter to its feet, was all grown-up and doing very nicely without her. She consoled herself with the thought that she and Marcus had not begun M. H. Tours so that they could sit in an office, shuffling papers. She still went out regularly with the tours, and after all, that was the heart and soul of the enterprise.

Thus Jo had fallen out of the habit of going into the office, using her new-found leisure to catch up with long-postponed household jobs, initially luxuriating in the chance to watch a film or read a book during the day. Marcus certainly had no problem filling the days when it was his turn at home – not with satellite television beaming cricket and rugby from around the globe virtually twenty-four/seven. Which was not to say that he did not put time in on the business too. Somehow his visits to the office seemed to be more productive. Jo had seen the way Sally and Janice visibly brightened as he swept in, full of easy charm, always ready with an amusing anecdote about something which had happened on a tour. He didn’t need to justify himself with offers to help out – his mere presence had a positive impact on staff morale. He also managed to research and work out new itineraries, often in collaboration with Melissa, whose days at home seemed to coincide with his quite frequently, so that when Jo got home after a week with a coach load of Richard III enthusiasts, she would find Marcus brimming with their latest ideas. She tried to stifle any feelings of exclusion because she didn’t want to dampen his enthusiasm, and on the odd occasion when she had grumbled that at one time he would have talked through the new Daphne du Maurier tour with her rather than Melissa, Marcus simply could not see her problem. What difference did it make who came up with the ideas, or who worked on what particular aspects of the business? The three of them worked as a team now. It did not matter which particular permutation of staff was involved, so long as they got the job done well.

Jo attempted to compete with some suggestions of her own, but somehow her ideas were never so inspired or so workable as the schemes which Melissa and Marcus dreamed up in her absence – in spite of her having an abundance of thinking time. That wasn’t a good thing, either. For the past few years a large part of her survival mechanism had relied on not thinking too much, keeping busy, always having something immediate to think about, something to do. In the past few months there had been terrible stories in the news about young girls being kidnapped and kept prisoner for years, used as sex slaves, never seeing daylight. It could send you mad, dwelling on stories like that.

As an antidote to having too much time on her hands, she had recently taken up sketching. She had not done any ‘art’ since school, but it was one of those things she had always yearned to have a go at. She told herself that she might eventually buy some watercolours, then maybe enrol in a class, although the peripatetic nature of her work made any regular weekly commitment impractical. She was disinclined to sign up for any of the painting days which were always being advertised, in case everyone else turned out to be an experienced artist and she looked ridiculous. Instead she began to work alone, almost secretively. At first she arranged groups of objects in the house, rather as they had done in art class at school, but soon she was venturing beyond the house, trying to capture trees, buildings and the natural features of the landscape, then figures covertly observed from a distance as they ate their picnic lunches. All of these were infinitely more satisfying than a trio of oranges in a bowl. She knew she was improving, but was shy of showing her work to anyone – even Marcus, who teased her gently about her ‘secret sketches’ whenever he caught sight of the drawing book lying about. Going out to draw had become a regular routine. On days when the weather permitted, she packed her sketch pad and pencils into a rucksack, together with a flask of raspberry tea and her mat to sit on, before heading out in search of a subject.

After a whole week of being at home with Sean, she badly needed to escape the house. It was a cold day, but dry and bright – ideal weather so long as she wrapped up warmly. Her walking boots sounded loudly on the tarmac as she headed north away from the old stone bridge. The Hideaway stood at one extreme of the hamlet, a modern house set back from the road. A much older building stood a few yards further north on the opposite side of the lane. There had been no blacksmith at The Old Forge in living memory, but according to Sean, who had a penchant for the macabre, the house was haunted by the ghost of a drunkard who had burned to death after falling into the blacksmith’s fire. Sean said he got the story from someone at school, and although Jo regarded all this with considerable scepticism, she had always thought there was something creepy about the place, even before Sean related his dubious tale.

More recently The Old Forge had been home to Mr and Mrs Pearson, but the latter was long dead and old Mr Pearson had eventually gone into a nursing home, leaving the house unoccupied for almost a year. About a month before Christmas, news had reached them of Mr Pearson’s death, and in January a house-clearance firm had removed all contents save the greying curtains at the windows. Soon after that, a black and yellow ‘For Sale’ board had appeared, nailed to the rotting front gatepost. The property particulars described The Old Forge as ‘an investment opportunity’, although Marcus said ‘money pit’ might be a better term. Very little had been done to the place since the Pearsons moved in at the end of the 1960s, but in spite of the obvious drawbacks, there had been a good deal of initial interest. Glimpses of the estate agent’s silver BMW were a frequent event, and it was not long before a red ‘Sold’ sign was fixed to each side of the yellow and black board.

Jo glanced at The Old Forge as she passed. The place had been empty for more than a year, but she often felt as if there was still someone inside the house, watching. Even as she ridiculed the notion, she found herself reluctant to look up at the windows, lest she glimpse a pale face there in confirmation of her fears. Subconsciously she quickened pace, hurrying past much as Harry had done a couple of nights before.

The next building was an old farmhouse, now a holiday let and currently unoccupied. For practical purposes this was The Hideaway’s next-door neighbour, although it was too far away to have much impact on them unless occupied by exceptionally noisy visitors. They occasionally caught a whiff of barbecuing, if the wind was in the right direction, and once discovered a woman exploring their garden, her justification arising from the townie notion of a ‘right to roam’ anywhere she liked, once she got into the countryside.

Across the lane from the farmhouse was Honeysuckle Cottage, a seldom-occupied second home, and a few yards beyond Honeysuckle Cottage lay Throstles, home to Maisie and Fred Perry. (After more than half a century of jokes about cheap Wimbledon tickets, the unfortunate man’s smile was wearing a little thin.) The Perrys were a retired couple with a passion for gardening. When not fulfilling their duties at Holehird Gardens, where they were both enthusiastic members of the Lakeland Horticultural Society, they were tending their own plot with such assiduous devotion that in summer their bungalow was almost obscured by the fecundity of the garden. Marcus was convinced that the real motive for Maisie’s constant presence in the garden was the insight it gave her into other people’s business, privately theorizing that the principal attraction of Throstles for Maisie lay not so much in the generous size of its garden but its position on the bend, from whence the gateway to every other property in the lane was visible, affording Maisie a virtually uninterrupted view of all her neighbours’ comings and goings.

As Jo approached the Perrys’ gate, she caught sight of Maisie emptying some peelings into a compost bin near her kitchen door. There was no chance of escape because Maisie looked up at just the wrong moment, waved a hand in greeting then made purposefully for the gate. Maisie did not bother with any ‘how are you’ preliminaries – a sure sign that she had some news worth sharing.

‘Have you heard who’s bought The Old Forge?’ She scarcely waited long enough for Jo to shake her head before continuing: ‘Well, as you know, I had heard a rumour that it was going to a builder. There was some talk of planning permission and I said to George, “They’ll be putting in to knock it down and start again. We’ll have no peace if that goes ahead.” My friend up at Holehird has been driven mad this past year, what with the alterations her new neighbours are having done – noisy jack hammers and mud everywhere.’ Maisie paused to take a breath. ‘But apparently it isn’t a builder who got it in the end. Definitely a private buyer – a widow with a daughter – and she plans to live here all the time.’

‘I expect they’ll still need to have a lot of work done,’ said Jo. ‘It hasn’t had anything done to it for years. Is the daughter grown-up?’

‘No. Just a youngster of thirteen or fourteen, so I heard. That would be nice for your stepson, wouldn’t it – another young person? I saw Harry going up and down last week. What a shame he and his sister aren’t here all the time. It makes for a proper little community, having children around the place, the way things used to be in the old days.’

Jo didn’t want to get into a discussion about second homes and vanished communities. It was one of Maisie’s pet topics, although Jo was not entirely sure what kind of community Maisie imagined had ever existed at Easter Bridge. It had never been large enough to call itself a village. There had never been a school or a shop here – if anything, the small settlement had expanded in recent times thanks to an enterprising local farmer selling off building plots before the inception of stricter regulations imposed by the National Park Authority. Fortunately, Maisie showed no inclination to mount her soap box and Jo managed to escape after a brief exchange about the weather, crossing the opening where the track led up to High Gilpin, then heading steadily up the hill.

The next two buildings on Maisie’s side of the road were extremely incongruous in the context of a Cumbrian hamlet. The first of them, Ingledene, was a double-fronted Victorian house, complete with bay windows and streaky-bacon brickwork, which would not have looked out of place in a London suburb. It had been built to house a minister for the matching chapel next door, both structures dating back to the last decade of the nineteenth century, when the farmer at High Gilpin, having found religion in a big way, financed the erection of both buildings in the expectation of a New Jerusalem arising in the valley.

Folk history had it that the family from High Gilpin and their minister held services in splendid isolation, with even their immediate neighbours declining to join them in the new oak pews. After a short life as an active place of worship the chapel had enjoyed a chequered history, eventually becoming an art gallery, which was currently run by Brian and Shelley, who lived in bohemian disorder at Ingledene.

Jo got on well with Shelley, and quite often dropped into the gallery for a chat when she thought Brian was not around. Something about Brian had always unnerved her. He was a well-known local artist whose work commanded four-figure sums, a great bear of a man, known for his intensely held opinions and very short fuse. It was rumoured that he once took such violent exception to the views expressed by an art critic at a Royal Academy Summer Exhibition that he punched the man in the jaw and was prosecuted for common assault. Another reason for her eschewing the local art classes was that Brian sometimes taught them. Shelley was an artist too, but she was far less commercially successful – or volatile – than Brian.

The gallery was still in darkness as Jo passed. Shelley and Brian did not generally open for business until about eleven. There was not much passing trade – they relied on people who were serious about art, Shelley had once explained; people who came out of their way specially, because the gallery had a high reputation and only hung work which represented the very best of local artists.

Local artists … It suddenly occurred to Jo that it might be possible to build a tour around artists associated with Cumbria. She did not know much about famous local painters, apart from Ruskin and Collingwood, who featured in their existing literary tours, but maybe this was something she could talk to Shelley about – not Brian, who she thought sure to be contemptuous and dismissive of the whole idea.

A few yards beyond the gallery she reached the last dwelling in Easter Bridge, The Hollies, a barn conversion now the country retreat of Harry’s family. She knew that they had returned south on Saturday, and guessed that the place would probably sit empty for several weeks now. Maisie Perry was wont to cluck about this, but Jo tended to be more realistic: it was not merely house prices which put a house like The Hollies beyond the reach of a family on a modest income. There was no work nearby, no shops, no local school, no viable public transport – unless you counted the twice-daily school bus. Ordinary life in a place like this was too expensive for any family on a low income. Living out here required at the minimum a well-maintained car for every working adult in the household. Food shopping had to be carefully thought through and involved a round trip of almost twenty miles – with cheaper supermarkets all but double the distance. Television reception was only available to those who could afford a satellite dish. In Jo’s opinion, the so-called scourge of second homes and holiday cottages was often what prevented tiny hamlets like this from falling into the semi-dereliction of rural poverty.