Goodness, Grace and Me

by Julie Houston

  ‘Macbeth?’

  ‘Yes, you know – “Methinks the lady doth protesteth too much.”’

  ‘It’s Hamlet. And the actual quote is, “The lady doth protest too much, methinks”.’

  ‘And does she?’ I asked, ignoring the put-down. I was sure she was wrong anyway.

  ‘Does who do what?’

  ‘Oh stop trying to be clever Grace, and just tell me what you’re up to with Enrique.’ I was getting thoroughly confused. The rhubarb wine was obviously stronger than I had anticipated.

  There was a long pause. ‘What do you mean, “up to” exactly?’ she finally asked.

  ‘Alright, in plain English, are you anticipating a game of “hide the sausage” with the lovely Sebastian?’

  ‘Hide the sausage?’ In spite of herself Grace began to laugh. ‘Where do you come up with such drivel?’

  ‘Hey, don’t get all superior with me, Buster. I’m drinking my dad’s rhubarb wine, my daughter on her sixth birthday prefers the company of a squint-eyed dog to her mother, my son is down the garden up to no good with a pair of binoculars, and my husband is bankrupt and in the middle of an affair with your potential lover’s mother.’ And to my horror I began to cry.

  ‘Hat? Don’t! Don’t be so bloody silly. I’m sure Nick isn’t having an affair with Little Miss Goodness. And as for me and Enrique Iglesias, well both he and his sausage are fourteen years younger than me, so I don’t think there’s anything going on there.’

  Ah ha! Wistful, I thought, drunkenly. I can definitely hear wist in her voice.

  I sniffed and drank more of the wine. It was nice to think that my dad had lovingly grown what I was now drinking. Probably been peed on by all the local cats though. This thought made me giggle.

  ‘There,’ Grace exclaimed, laughing too. ‘Told you it was laughable.’

  ‘No, I’m not laughing at that. I’m thinking of the cat pee that must have gone into this wine.’

  ‘Cat pee?’

  ‘So why is it so laughable that my husband is having an affair with Little Miss Goodness?’ I demanded, bored of feline urine conversation. ‘Don’t you think he’s good enough for so gorgeous a woman?’

  ‘It’s ludicrous because he’s never looked at anyone but you. That’s why, you ridiculous person.’

  ‘Ha!’ I said, triumphantly. ‘Isn’t that what we said about your husband? And look what he was up to, all along.’

  ‘Harriet,’ Grace said patiently, ‘go and make yourself some coffee and sober up and then go and talk to Nick, right now.’

  ‘I would,’ I said, ‘but I think he’s laid out, very drunk in the sitting room. Besides which, I think I’m going to be sick.’

  And I was. Slamming the phone down, I hotfooted it to the downstairs loo where I was violently ill, retching several times in a way I hadn’t since I’d been pregnant with India.

  Oh my God. Pregnant? Pregnant! Rinsing my mouth with cold water, I racked my brains as to when I’d last had a period. When Grace had complimented me on the voluptuousness of my boobs in her clingy Max Mara dress on the evening of the Midhope Grammar reunion, I’d just assumed they were as a result of an impending period. And they probably were, I told myself firmly. I’d been sick because I’d eaten very little except potted-meat sandwiches, and drunk Dad’s ancient cat-pee wine.

  The very thought had me scurrying for the loo once more.

  Shaky, but feeling a good deal better, I made my way upstairs. A hot bath and an early night was what I needed. It seemed a very long time since this morning’s present opening session.

  The daisy-strewn wallpaper that I’d insisted, against all advice, we hang in our bathroom many moons ago had finally given up the will to live. Clouds of pernicious, shower-generated steam had drifted around our bathroom silently over the years, working their insidious way through even the most tenacious roll of wall-hanging, with ruinous results. I’d attempted to patch it up with the children’s Pritt sticks and even something from B & Q, but now, as I walked through the door, I was greeted by not one, but two, peeling pieces, arching their backs down the wall in a final dance of death. This was all I needed. Sod it! The drunk downstairs would have to do something about it.

  Kit had obviously been the perpetrator of the crime – his abandoned boxers and three-day-old socks testament to the fact that he’d used our bathroom for a too hot and too long shower. Gingerly picking up his different articles of underwear, I threw them into the already overflowing wash basket where they were soon joined by my own.

  My breasts, no longer encumbered by my greying M&S bra, stared back at me from the bathroom mirror. They looked huge, each one veined in a veritable motorway network of blue, resembling nothing more than the colossal Blue Stilton cheese which appeared every Christmas along with the assorted nuts and tangerines.

  In the days when we could afford Christmas, of course. As far as I knew we were up to our overdraft limit on our joint account. Things were just so expensive these days and teenaged boys in particular ate so much. It seemed I only just filled the fridge before it was empty once more and Kit was bemoaning the fact that there was nothing to eat. Focusing on the inescapable fact that Christmas was but a mere eight weeks or so away, and that I’d have to do a hell of a lot of carol singing just to buy a turkey, meant I didn’t have to acknowledge, for the moment anyway, that my breasts looked very, very pregnant.

  Did they have Christmas in the local Poor House, I mused? A vision of me holding India’s hand as we struggled through a snowstorm towards a Christmas soup kitchen, Liberty and Kit bringing up the rear with the few possessions we’d managed to hide from the bailiffs, sent two big tears rolling down my cheeks and onto my bosoms which, as I dared to look into the mirror for a second glance, seemed to be inflating and becoming more cheese-like by the minute. Self-pity really had a good grip now as I visualised Nick spending his Christmas frolicking in Italy with Amanda while I was forced to protect not only myself and my children but also Sylvia and Bertie from a revenge-seeking David Henderson. Well sod that for a game of soldiers. If Nick was off spending Christmas in Italy with his mistress, he could take his mother and her bloody geriatric dog as well. That would soon cramp his style.

  I wallowed in the bath and self-pity for a good half-hour before covering up the evidence of a possible pregnancy with a voluminous, winceyette nightie and, hugging India’s Rudolph the Reindeer hot-water bottle, gratefully sank into bed.

  I glanced at Granny Morgan’s alarm clock, which seemed to have been behaving itself of late. Blimey, nine o’clock already. I knew I should go down the garden and see what Kit and his mates were up to, but the soporific effects of the warm, scented bath together with any alcohol that had evaded being thrown up, meant my eyes were closed within minutes.

  A frantic hammering on the front door had me sitting up in bed, my heartbeat echoing the banging from downstairs. Disorientated, I jumped out of bed and, after dashing along the corridor in bare feet, hung over the banister to work out what was going on. The sonorous boom of the grandfather clock at the bottom of the stairs belted out the first of eleven bells, drowning Nick’s expletives as he struggled (drunkenly, I presumed) to fit the correct key in the lock in order to open the door and find out what was going on.

  ‘Mr Westmoreland?’ A woman’s voice, deep and authoritative reached my ears.

  ‘Yes?’

  ‘We have your son here. Kit is it?’

  ‘What do you mean, “You have him here?” He lives here. He’s been in the garden shed celebrating his birthday.’

  ‘The shed? Funny place to celebrate a child’s birthday isn’t it? At eleven o’clock at night?’

  Shit, what was going on? Nick didn’t sound to be any the wiser despite being one to one with this woman, whoever she was. Going back into the bedroom, I grabbed my dressing gown and ran down the stairs. Nick, dishevelled and bleary-eyed and looking not unlike the Big Issue hawkers who regularly patrolled their patches in Midhope Town Centre, was obviously finding it diff
icult to work out just what was going on.

  ‘Ah, Mrs Westmoreland, I presume?’ The woman turned her attention from Nick to myself. ‘Oh, Harriet? Well I didn’t know you lived out here.’

  Standing just inside our front door, wrapped up against the late October night’s chill in a huge purple parka-type coat, was Barbara Richmond, last seen only two nights previously partying at Midhope Grammar School reunion. What the hell was she doing here? I began to wonder if the rhubarb Dad had grown for his wine had somehow come in contact with those clever little magic mushroom things and I was actually hallucinating.

  Alarm bells began to ring as I recalled Sarah’s description of her from Friday evening. What was it she’d said Barbara did for a living? Wasn’t she head of some police department and was ‘always going round bashing down doors?’ Good job Nick had opened our front door in time then. The last thing we could afford right now was a new front door.

  I realised both Nick and this purple-parka-ed policewoman were looking at me – waiting for a reaction, I presumed.

  ‘What on earth is going on?’ I spoke as calmly as possible, fastening my dressing-gown cord tightly around my middle.

  ‘Would it be a good idea if we actually came in?’ Barbara asked.

  ‘We? How many of you are there?’ I looked towards the still open door, fully expecting the combined might of the Midhope Flying Squad ready to burst forth at any moment.

  ‘There’s just myself, and a couple of my men – and the boys, of course. I need to let my DCs get back down there, so could the boys perhaps go and watch some TV or something while the three of us have a chat?’ Without waiting for an answer Barbara went back into the garden where she could be heard issuing instructions. She reappeared within seconds, Kit and his five friends in tow.

  ‘What have you been up to?’ I hissed, as they stood, shamefaced, their earlier adolescent cockiness and high spirits seemingly evaporated into thin air.

  ‘Shall we go into the kitchen, Harriet?’ Barbara indicated the door on the right with a simple movement of her head.

  ‘Harriet, what is going on? How do you know this woman?’ Nick demanded, obviously still bewildered or drunk. Probably both if the alcohol fumes he’d just breathed into my ear were anything to go by.

  ‘It’s my good friend, Barbara Richmond, ex school-colleague and now butch basher down of doors,’ I hissed back as Barbara led Nick and me into the kitchen and the boys trooped down to the sitting room.

  ‘Right,’ Barbara said, folding her arms and making herself comfortable as she leaned against the fridge. She’s been watching too many cop shows, I thought idly, as Nick and I sat down obediently.

  ‘I assume you know what’s been going on down in your valley over the past few months?’

  ‘Going on?’ Nick asked, looking at me for help. ‘As in – what?’

  ‘As in the area around Butterfield woods?’

  ‘I think you’re going to have to help us out here, Barbara,’ I said. ‘We’ve no idea what you’re talking about.’

  Barbara shifted her position slightly – I bet it was bloody cold leaning against that fridge – and, pausing as dramatically as any reality show host about to announce a winner, exhaled deeply before announcing, triumphantly, ‘Dogging and Piking.’

  Chapter 15

  ‘Dogging and Piking?’ I looked helplessly from Barbara’s animated face to Nick’s bewildered one.

  ‘Dogging and Piking.’ Barbara repeated. ‘Down in your valley. And your son seems very much involved with it all.’

  ‘Well, I know Kit has always wanted a dog of his own – he says having Bertie in the house doesn’t count, being just an excuse for a dog – but piking? He’s never shown any interest in fishing before. Mind you, he’s suddenly become interested in watching herons so maybe he does want to be involved with nature a little more. Is fishing against the law then? Or is it that it’s late at night and I don’t suppose he has a fishing licence?’ I tailed off, realising that both Barbara and Nick were looking at me in what I could only describe as utter astonishment.

  ‘Harriet, get a grip.’ Nick shook my arm, not overly gently. ‘Dogging and Piking is a group sexual deviancy carried out in rural places.’

  ‘What do you mean, a group sexual deviancy?’ I was suddenly horrified. What had Kit and his mates been up to?

  Barbara sighed, raising her eyebrows at Nick before smiling at me. Very patronising, I thought.

  ‘Harriet, I’m amazed you hadn’t heard about this,’ she said, walking to the table and sitting on the chair opposite.

  ‘Maybe I’ve just got too many other things on my mind at the moment,’ I snapped, glaring at Nick.

  ‘Well, it has been hitting the headlines recently. “Dogging” is when couples drive to a rural place – in this case Butterfield woods and the fields around them – and take part in a sexual activity. If they want others to join in they leave the headlights of their cars on which is an invitation for them to either just watch or actually take part. ‘Piking’ is the actual watching of people involved in their particular activity.’ Barbara sniffed disdainfully. ‘Usually couples doing the dogging, while the dirty old men are in the bushes getting their rocks off.’

  ‘Really? How fascinating! And down in Butterfield woods, you say?’ I shook my head in astonishment. It never ceased to amaze me what people got up to in their spare time. Come to think of it, it never ceased to amaze me that people actually had any spare time.

  It suddenly hit me. ‘Has this been going on down in the woods for a while?’ I asked, remembering Ralph-next-door’s sudden appearance from the bushes with his binoculars round his neck.

  ‘Yes, quite a while. When a site becomes too well known, residents begin to complain and the police move in.’

  ‘Ralph certainly wasn’t doing much complaining the other night,’ I muttered and then immediately wished I hadn’t.

  ‘Ralph?’ Barbara’s eyes gleamed. ‘Mr Ralph …?’ and here she broke off while consulting the little notebook she whipped out from her purple parka-pocket.

  ‘Ralph?’ Nick asked. ‘What’s Ralph got to do with it?’

  I shrugged my shoulders, refusing to be drawn. I reckoned I had enough problems without having Ralph’s incarceration in the local nick on my conscience.

  ‘We have reason to believe that a Mr Ralph Ulysses has been joining in with the fun,’ Barbara said, sounding like something off CSI, squinting as she attempted to decipher her own notes.

  Oh shit. Ralph must have been caught in the bushes again, or even worse with his pants down, given his Christian name to the police and then panicked, coming up with the first name that entered his head for his surname.

  ‘Ulysses?’ Nick started laughing in great guffaws, unable to stop even when glared at by DI Richmond.

  ‘Ulysses?’ Nick repeated, when he was able to catch his breath. ‘Ulysses is Ralph’s cock.’

  Barbara looked mystified. ‘Mr Westmoreland, I’m really not interested in your neighbour’s name for his penis.’ She spat the word with contempt. Of course, she was apparently gay. Probably didn’t have a great deal of time for penises, named or otherwise. ‘Or why you should happen to have knowledge of it.’

  In turn I began to giggle, which set Nick off once more. There we sat, me in my winceyette nightie and Nick, looking like the recovering drunk that he was, giggling helplessly, tears rolling down our cheeks.

  ‘I don’t believe either of you are taking this very seriously,’ Barbara snapped. ‘Your son could be in a great deal of trouble. How come he was out on his own at eleven o’clock at night, a spectator of sexual deviancy, while you two seemed totally unaware of his whereabouts?’

  That sobered us both up somewhat. What dreadful parents we were. Both spark out after consuming too much alcohol, while a gang of sexual deviants was seducing our only son. How was I going to explain this to the other boys’ parents? They’d allowed their sons to come round, thinking they were partaking in an innocent potted-meat sandwich par
ty, with perhaps a game of Trivial Pursuit thrown in. And then look what happens. While the birthday boy’s drink-sodden parents sleep off their excesses, their vulnerable adolescents are abroad, out of control and in extreme moral, if not mortal, danger.

  ‘Where exactly was Kit when you found him, and what was he doing?’ Nick now asked.

  It was Barbara’s turn to look a little uncomfortable. ‘They were all in your garden.’

  ‘Our garden?’ Nick and I looked at each other.

  ‘Not down in the woods then?’ I asked. ‘Not actually taking part in any of this – what do you call it – Dogging?’

  ‘They had a pair of binoculars,’ she said defensively.

  ‘Yes, but how did you know they were in our garden?’ Nick asked. ‘We knew they were there because we’d actually given them permission to have a bit of a party in our new potting shed. Granted they were out longer than they should have been, but I don’t believe it’s a crime for fourteen year olds to be in a garden shed with pizza and a crate of coke when there’s no school in the morning because of half term?’

  ‘And a pair of binoculars,’ Barbara insisted. ‘What do you think they were up to with those?’

  ‘Well, why don’t we ask them?’ Nick asked, calmly. He’d obviously sobered up and was thinking rationally. ‘But before we do, can I just ask again how you knew they were there?’

  ‘Mr Westmoreland, there are occasions, like tonight, when we in the Crime Squad have to find a suitable vantage point to carry out our surveillance operations. We need to be near enough to log number plates. We can then make a very unwelcome visit to these people’s homes. It’s amazing how many wives are totally unaware of their husband’s new hobby of walking in natural beauty spots at ten o’clock at night.’

  ‘So our garden happened to be a natural vantage point? And let me guess, when you staked your claim to our garden – without asking our permission – the last thing you expected to find was a bunch of giggling, teenaged boys?’

  ‘We needed them out of the way. Their flashlights were very distracting.’