With One Lousy Free Packet of Seed (16 page)

‘The thing you’ve got to remember about Margaret,’ said Trent Carmichael to Michelle, as they watched her walk past their coffee-shop window, smiling privately to herself about something, ‘is that she is an absolute cow.’

Michelle nodded. She knew the type.

‘I mean it. Whatever you do,’ he warned her, showing his teeth, ‘don’t tell her anything personal.’

‘I won’t.’ Michelle thought about it. ‘You mean the rubberized gardening-glove fetish sort of thing?’

‘Exactly. She’d make something of it.’

‘I understand. She resembles that sinister patricidal girl in
S is for … Secateurs!
, then?’

‘Yes. In fact you might say she’s the very model.’

They continued to stare out of the window, until Michelle broke the silence.

‘She knows something about you, does she?’

‘Alas, yes.’

‘Pillow talk, was it?’

‘Sadly, you’re right.’

Michelle stiffened. She hated the thought of sharing Trent with another woman, especially a
cow
like Margaret.

‘Actually, my little dung beetle (if I may),’ Trent continued, ‘it does occur to me that you still haven’t told
me
anything personal, either, yet, except that you’ve got a mother you have to phone twice a day who loves my books almost to the point of obsession, and who can’t wait to meet me.’

He put a hand on her thigh. It thrilled her.

‘Haven’t I?’ she said, attempting an airy manner, but feeling her face redden.

‘No.’

‘Mm.’ He moved his hand. He was awfully good at this.

‘I’ve guessed a lot, though. I can’t help looking for clues, you know, being a crime writer. I think I’ve, you know, ratiocinated quite a lot about you.’

‘Such as?’

‘Well, you are clever, obviously. But you’re pale, you stay indoors a lot, and you don’t have a boyfriend, and you do your nails, but not very well.’ He smiled apologetically. She smiled back, allowed him to continue.

‘Now, your clothes are a bit old-fashioned, and you obviously don’t know how to communicate with people, and you have a devotional air and know about gardening, and you’ve got this big gap in your life going back, ooh, fifteen years.’

‘So?’

‘So I reckon you’re a lapsed nun.’

Michelle said nothing. She felt like laughing, but thought it would be rude.

‘I’m right, aren’t I?’ said Trent.

She took a long, thoughtful drink of coffee.

‘Well, put it this way,’ she said, at last. ‘You’re not exactly wrong.’

She looked out of the window and smiled to herself. Two days ago she’d been in the office, doing usual Tuesday things. A mere forty-eight hours later she was in a Devon teashop with a famous lover with sympathetic kinky ideas, a plate of free cream buns, and a mysterious past involving wimples. What did she usually do at 11 a.m. on a Thursday morning? Good heavens, she’d forgotten. She’d almost forgotten about Osborne, too; but not quite.

‘Trent, you know, I’m a twinge angry with you, my darling Green Thumb (if I may). You still haven’t told me what
happened yesterday, at your friend Angela’s. Did you find out what was wrong with this – who was it, um, I forget – this shed journalist? Storm in a teacup, was it? I don’t suppose he had a hatchet, did he? Just some silly mistake.’

‘Well, actually, no.’ Carmichael looked around, and moved his chair closer to hers. ‘If you can keep a secret,’ he virtually whispered. ‘Actually, he’s dead. The shed burned down with him – and the hatchet – inside it. Dreadful business.’

Michelle went white. Dead? Her lovely Osborne? Dead? Dead, in a shed?

‘Where is this place? I want to see it,’ she cried, getting up suddenly and knocking over a trolley of cakes.

Carmichael stared at her with surprise and admiration. This woman was a real dark horse.

‘It’s down the lane from the guesthouse,’ he said. ‘Past the Chimneypot Garden Centre. You can’t miss it, it’s got a burned-out shed in the garden.’

Angela had been mortified to find Osborne gone. Not only had he scarpered without saying goodbye, he had also taken the blankets, the cakes, the book and the rabbit. Jesus, men were such lousy scumbags. She slung an empty gin bottle into the rubbish, where it clanked against all the other bottles she’d emptied since yesterday. Vodka, Bailey’s, sangria, Tizer, Worcester sauce – it had been a very long night, and she had invented some deeply unusual cocktails. And now she was giddily propping herself up at the kitchen window, all the weight on her forearms, frowning against a swirling mental fog, and barking down the phone to Gordon (‘Ah, a
proto
-scumbag,’ she thought, viciously), who had innocently rung her, to ask to come round.

‘Jesus’ sakes, Gordon, sure she’s a
cow.’
Staggering, she
looked around for a stool to sit on, but there wasn’t one, so she just collapsed on the kitchen vinyl, pulling the phone down on top of her with a crash. ‘You still there? OK. No, I’m fine. But don’t sound so shocked about whatsername, yeah, Margaret. I’ve told you a million times she’s a cow. I wouldn’t trust her further than I can throw my own pancreas.’

Just next to her face on the floor she noticed a small drip of golden liquid (the last of the whisky, perhaps?) and realized that if she moved her body a couple of inches to the left, she could probably lick it.

She turned her attention to Gordon. ‘A cow is what she always was, Gordon baby. Barney left me because of her, I know it.’ Actually, she’d never thought of this before, but she was free-associating, and it sounded like sense. ‘Yeah, sure. I always knew it. Something they did together. Sometimes I’ve even wondered whether that
S is for … Secateurs!
was all about her and Barney and Trent. All that spooky burial stuff, you know.’

The proto-scumbag asked to come round. She said, ‘Sure’. He needed advice. He said he’d just discovered that the B&B was crawling with disaffected staff from
Come Into the Garden,
one of whom was the ex-boyfriend of Margaret.

‘Small world,’ said Angela bitterly, not very interested in
Come Into the Garden
any more. ‘Sure, come.’ She hung up the phone, and added glumly, ‘I’ve got nobody else here.’

She lay on her back. Scumbags, she thought. Manderley, what a joke. She made a decision and licked up the drip of whisky. It had some dirt in it, but it was OK. Then, with her arms folded across her chest and her eyes tightly closed, she surrendered herself to the familiar round-and-round out-of-body sensation she fondly called the helicopters, only this time it made her think of Wagner’s ‘Ride of the Valkyries’, she didn’t know why.

Tim and Gordon walked along together to Angela’s house.

‘She’s a
cow,’
muttered Tim.

‘You’re right,’ said Gordon.

‘I’m glad we burned it.’

‘Me too.’

Tim kicked a stone.

‘I still can’t believe you’re the bastard who’s closed down the mag.’

‘Sorry.’

‘I mean, it meant such a lot to me.’

‘I know.’

‘It was the thing I could count on, you know. A sort of shelter. I feel really exposed without it. I’m not sure I can survive in the outside world. I’m too weedy.’

‘But you can survive without Margaret?’

‘That’s true. She’s a cow.’

‘You’re right.’

‘I’m quite excited about meeting Angela Farmer. I’m a fan.’

‘Oh, she’s terrific, you’ll love her.’

It was only when they arrived at the gate that they heard a woman scream, from the vicinity of the burned-out shed. It was Michelle. She was standing in the ashes, holding a blackened hand (somebody else’s) up to her face and shrieking. But as they raced towards her, they realized she was shrieking with hysterical laughter, not fear. ‘It’s not a real one,’ she yelled to them, more loudly than was necessary, as they reached her, panting. She seemed exhilarated by relief. Tim was confused, he had never seen her so animated. ‘I’ve seen hundreds of these. Look, it’s just latex or something. My mother buys them in job lots. She’s obsessed with
S is for … Secateurs!
and the others; always trying to re-create great moments from it.’

They all looked at the hand.

‘So Makepeace isn’t dead, then?’ gasped Gordon.

‘Makepeace?’ said Tim and Michelle, with a single voice.

‘But what was a trick severed hand doing in Angela’s shed?’ asked Gordon, puzzled. ‘It wasn’t there before.’

Michelle shrugged. Now Trent Carmichael had appeared at the gate, as well as Gordon’s dad and, separately, Lillian. What the hell was Lillian doing here? ‘Hi, Lillian,’ said Tim, whom nothing surprised any more. ‘I thought it was you I saw. Everybody’s here, then. I even saw Osborne last night. Although, come to think of it, he didn’t look too happy in his role as the spoils of Britannia.’

But his voice faded on the air, and everyone looked at Michelle. Somehow it seemed like a moment of truth. The hand wanted to tell them something! As they all stood still in Angela’s garden, they surveyed the scene as though they had never seen it before (to be fair, some of them hadn’t), and tried to comprehend the full meaning of it all. Here, beside the shed, was the small area of recently dug earth where Makepeace had uncovered the hand. All around them, the autumnal garden held its breath, keeping its secrets, the very image of life suspended. Wordlessly they were gathering at the shed, to see the hand. It was a moment of deadly solemnity.

Angela, with her gumboots on the wrong feet, staggered across the lawn to join them.

‘I expect you’re wondering why I’ve asked you all here,’ she said, beaming. And then vomited copiously on Trent Carmichael’s shoes.

Although Osborne still could not imagine why the rabbit had been brought along, he was extremely glad of the company, especially now that Makepeace had gone off and left him shackled in a Lumberland Alpine Resteezy in a windy, deserted garden centre just two hundred yards from Dunquenchin. He stroked the rabbit and, in the absence of anything more suitable, fed it a cake wrapper and some wood shavings, which it appeared to enjoy thoroughly. Being locked in confined spaces was becoming second nature to him, he reflected. Were he ever to get out of Honiton alive, he would hereafter only accept house-sitting jobs which offered smallish airing cupboards, or coal bunkers, or larders, where he could sit in the dark with a pile of junk food wondering vaguely whether someone would come along at any minute and kill him.

Did Makepeace intend to kill him? Surely not. Just because he had assumed the
alter ego of
Loony Gordon, complete with négligé and flip-flops, didn’t mean he was bound by destiny to perpetrate violence. Just because he had furtively experimented with
Phototropism
for dangerously lengthy periods, and it had turned the balance of his mind so that he honestly no longer had any conception of his actual size – all this did not mean he must behave like King Kong, Gog, Magog and Godzilla rolled
into one. And just because he was all sooty and singed and his hair was still smouldering didn’t mean he must automatically assume all the other savage attributes of the Wild Man of Borneo.

Last week, for heaven’s sake, this small, long-haired intellectual contortionist had written a deliberately incomprehensible thousand-word review for
The Times Literary Supplement
on the subject of Norwegian poetry – quoting much of it in the original language, moreover, with its o’s crossed out, and everything. From such spectacular brainbox ostentation to a state of primal savagery it was surely impossible to plummet in a seven-day period, however eventful or surprising those seven days might somehow conspire to be.

Makepeace was certainly a little unbalanced, however. Even Osborne was obliged to concede it. ‘Seen
these
before, you tiny
minuscule
person?’ Makepeace had yelled at Osborne overexcitedly, chucking a fat file of papers at his recumbent friend, on their first reunion in Angela Farmer’s pitch-dark garage. ‘They come from – Dunquenchin!’ In the ghostly illumination shed by Osborne’s feeble torch beam, these papers were revealed to be more – possibly hundreds more – letters from G. Clarke to the author of ‘Me and My Shed’, half of them dwelling quite gratuitously on what a frightful and appalling writer he was, the others filled with drooling fantasy about rubbing green liquid lawn-feed into his skin, or binding his body in a length of half-inch garden hose before imaginatively employing his hardened willy in the greenhouse as a sort of improvised dibber.

As before, Osborne saw straight to the essence of these letters, and took the critical ones to heart.

‘Oh look, oh that’s not fair,’ he wailed, time after time, shuffling the papers for the worst bits and frowning at the smarts of unfair accusation. In the blackness of the garage, his little torch beam skidded madly around the walls and ceiling, as he
gesticulated his misery and hurt. ‘Oh, but my Val Doonican piece was one of my
best.
Oh. Oh, this is vicious, really. And I
did
mention the knitwear. I even mentioned bright elusive butterflies. These are very unfair, Makepeace. I hope you didn’t read them?’

Makepeace made no reply.

Osborne read some more. ‘Blah blah … garden hose … lily-white skin … blah blah … dibber … blah blah … hang on, what was that dibber bit? Good lord … blah blah … Ah! Listen to this, listen. “I sometimes wonder have you even really been to meet the famous celebrities whose sheds you write about, you make them so uninteresting.”’ Osborne turned off his torch and put his head in his hands. ‘God, that’s
so
depressing.’

He felt wretched – and not just because ‘famous celebrities’ was a tautology, either. How miserable to contemplate Michelle, ostensibly his friend and colleague, composing these poisonous epistles, doubtless at the same time as he was blithely tapping out his inoffensive weekly column in an adjoining room. It was like finding out not only that your mother never loved you, but that in your infancy she also instigated a detrimental whispering campaign (‘Smelly feet, pass it on’) amongst your family, schoolfriends, teachers and soft toys. For the first time since embarking on this disastrous adventure to the West Country, he seriously wanted to cry.

Meanwhile Makepeace, whose figure he could only faintly discern in the blackness, shuffled with impatience.

‘What about the others?’ Makepeace urged significantly, in a deep whisper. ‘The other letters.’

‘How do you mean?’ Blindly, Osborne felt around on the floor for more papers.

‘The threats, you know. The pitchfork, the dibber. Surely you know by now that
Gordon means every word he writes.’

Osborne frowned, confused. ‘No, it was our chief sub who
wrote these,’ he said, his heart so filled with sadness that it welled in his throat and almost choked him. ‘Sorry I didn’t tell you, but I only just worked it out myself. Can you believe it? She hates me that much.’

There was a menacing laugh from Makepeace, but Osborne was too unhappy to notice. ‘You know who I mean? Michelle, in the office. Is she jealous, do you think? Why couldn’t she tell me some other way?’

Instead of offering an opinion, however, Makepeace told him to shut up. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous,’ he hissed, in that now wearily familiar ding-ding warning-bell tone of his. ‘Gordon wrote these!’

‘No, really –’

‘
Gordon
.’

‘N –’ Belatedly Osborne caught the unmissable gist, and quickly reconsidered his position. ‘Oh yes, you’re right,’ he said, promptly.

‘Thanks.’

There was silence. Osborne reached for his torch, turned it on, and pretended to fiddle with it aimlessly, while trying to get a partial view of Makepeace. He whistled a tune, waved the torch, cuddled the rabbit and concentrated hard on being somewhere else. After all, what he saw of Makepeace in fractions and spectral glimpses – a gash of vermilion lipstick, for a start – did not encourage him to wish he were here.

‘Actually I was worried about you,’ he said conversationally. ‘People seemed to think you had been in the shed when it burned down.’

‘I was.’ Makepeace had moved closer. His voice was quite loud.

‘Yes, but, well – they also thought, ha ha, you were dead.’

‘Which I am, of course. In a manner of speaking.’

Recognizing the need to tread delicately at this juncture, Osborne said merely, ‘Oh?’

‘I just rose from the ashes, that’s all.’

‘Nice. Mm. I see.’

‘And now I’m G. Clarke of Honiton.’

‘Did you say –? Oh. Well, that’s great for you. Great. Congratulations.’

‘And I have a destiny.’

‘Smashing.’

‘Which is why I’m here with you.’

‘Oh. I mean, goody.’

There seemed little to say.

‘Where did you get the lipstick?’

‘At Dunquenchin, of course.’

‘Suits you.’

‘Thanks. Hey, you can call me Gordon, if you like.’

‘I’ll try.’

Osborne sighed. He wondered how long he could keep this up. Humouring Makepeace was not his greatest natural talent. And perhaps he shouldn’t try so hard, in any case. Because whatever he did, it was obviously simply a matter of time before the little bastard punched him on the nose.

‘I don’t suppose it struck you,’ ventured Makepeace at last, ‘how closely I resembled Gordon in the first place?’

‘You’re right,’ said Osborne. ‘Yes, I do see what you mean. Absolutely. Although I suppose what did slightly confuse me, why I didn’t think you were identical twins separated at birth,’ he said, choosing his words carefully, ‘was the extraordinary difference in height.’

‘Meaning?’

Osborne was glad, now, to be in the pitch dark. He let it out.

‘He’s a lot taller than you, that’s all. You know. Tall.’

At which point, from out of the blackness, Makepeace hit him so hard on the jaw that it knocked him unconscious. And that was that.

So now, next morning, Osborne was alone with the rabbit again, in this draughty shed in a deserted garden centre (winter opening: weekends only). Goodness knows how Makepeace had acquired the strength to shift him, but he’d done it somehow, possibly with the aid of the bike. Rubbing his sore, bruised face, Osborne thought of Angela and sighed. She was such a wonderful person, he was sorry he had let her down. Manderley, oh yes. Last night he dreamed he went to Manderley again. He hoped she hadn’t noticed his disappearance; he hoped (with just a smidgen of self-pity) that she would hereafter have a nice life without him. He sniffed. He wanted to be with her. But unfortunately he was tied up at the moment, at the mercy of a short-house know-all transvestite with colossal delusions and a surprisingly effective right hook.

Makepeace, of course, had crept back upstairs in Dunquenchin for a final blast of
Phototropism
before fulfilling his grisly destiny. Luckily all the residents were presently at Angela’s (at this precise moment, in fact, all were staring aghast at the noxious pile of sick that had suddenly appeared on Trent Carmichael’s footwear), so the B&B was empty. It was true, as Gordon’s dad had suggested, that someone had been tampering with the program. Makepeace, whose understanding of advanced computer science was naturally almost as comprehensive as his knowledge of the twenty-six different words for ‘under the weather’ in Norwegian, had tweaked the acceleration to its maximum after his very first session. None of that gradual, delicate, eyelid lily-pond nonsense for Makepeace. He was a small man in a hurry.

Nothing in Norwegian poetry had prepared him for
Phototropism.
It was a revelation, an epiphany. It caught him up, wrenched him, forced him to grow and reach. Unfortunately it is quite true that people, unlike plants, do not grow unless they are forced to, or unless someone takes an active interest on their behalf. Left to themselves, they stop. So it was arguable
that Makepeace deserved the privilege of Phototropism, since he was merely compensating for a lifetime as a loveless retard unchallenged by adversity. But alas, it also helped him identify with Gordon, with whom (as we have seen) he was increasingly infatuated. He plugged in, switched on and screeched outwards like the winds of hell until his body filled the universe.

At Angela’s, Michelle was studying the hand and getting impatient. Unlike Trent Carmichael, she was extremely good at deduction, and in fifteen minutes of urgent questioning had pieced together enough information to know that Osborne had disappeared; that Makepeace, previously feared dead, had probably abducted him; and that a mysterious nameless rabbit was also somehow crucially involved. Moreover, as an expert on
S is for … Secateurs!
(having discussed its plot with her mother on many macabre occasions), she had quickly deduced that this fake hand had been buried in the garden ten years ago by Trent and Barney (precisely in the manner of the two adult male conspirators in the book) in the misguided belief that it belonged to the corpse of Margaret’s father.

Since Trent seemed unable to grasp this point for himself, she took him aside and explained it to him.

‘You see, if it had been a real hand, it would have decomposed.’

‘I know that.’

‘And it’s not a real hand.’ She paused. ‘So it didn’t.’

‘All right, OK,’ he conceded miserably.

‘So why do I detect a twinge of reluctance to accept it?’ she said. She was slightly irritated. For someone who had just heard the happy news that he took no part in a terrible long-ago patricidal carve-up – or more precisely, that no
terrible long-ago patricidal carve-up had taken place at all – he seemed less than properly relieved.

‘It’s just that all these years –’ He broke off.

All these years what? thought Michelle, her heart suddenly jerking and flipping in her chest like a yo-yo doing loop-the-loop. All these years, you have depended on the idea that your soul was smeared with guilt? I do love you, she thought, her yo-yo melting behind her ribs. You are so wonderfully
twisted.

‘All these years what?’ she encouraged him gently.

Trent Carmichael screwed up his face as though about to spit. ‘It’s just that all these years that
cow
has been making a fool of me.’

Meanwhile, in the bathroom, Angela’s eyes, ears, nose and throat were reacquainting themselves with the cocktails and packet-snacks of the previous night, while Gordon stood manfully beside her with a towel and a bottle of water, humming it’s-all-right-I’m-not-looking tunes from Showboat and being careful not to mention undercooked eggs; and Lillian, who had been forced to realize that her cherished conspiracy theory against Osborne was precisely wrong in every respect, was making a private phone call from the hall. We will listen in on this conversation, but a word of warning is first required: under the strain of recent developments – not least the drama of Angela’s unexpected projectile vomiting – Lillian’s baby-talk had deepened so profoundly that it now scarcely qualified as language at all.