by Heide Goody
“Happy endings?” said Jacob.
Strawb raised a hand to give an explanatory hand gesture. Margaret raised her own to stop him.
“I’m just saying there’s nothing wrong with enjoying ourselves a bit more,” said Strawb. “Not just sitting around doing a – what was it? – jigsaw marathon.”
“There will be no more jigsaw marathons,” said Jacob sniffily. “There are still four pieces missing after the last one.”
Margaret had seen the ‘missing’ posters Jacob had put up around the building. They had featured photographs of the missing pieces. The inherent implication was that Jacob had either photographed each jigsaw piece before the jigsaw marathon or had, post-marathon, sought out copies of the jigsaws and taken images. Neither option sounded plausible and yet, with Jacob, both were equally believable.
“Entertainment is indeed what we need,” said Margaret.
“Something enlivening,” said Strawb.
Jacob made a noise. “Oh, everyone gathering around the old Joanna for a bit of a sing song. A bit of Knees Up Mother Brown. ”
“I’m not a bleeding Cockney,” said Strawb. “How many times do I have to tell you?”
“A few more. You’re fooling no one.”
“Practically racist, that is.”
“I’ve booked some pre-Christmas entertainment,” Margaret interrupted.
It was enough to stop their squabbling. Her lieutenants bickered constantly, but only as asides to the proper business she laid before them.
“I know someone who knows someone who handled the bookings for Carnage Hall back in the sixties,” she continued.
“Now you’re talking,” grinned Strawb. “Bit of rock and roll. Who’ve you got? Billy Fury? I used to love him.”
“I believe he’s dead,” said Margaret.
“Who else was there? Adam Faith?”
“Also dead,” said Jacob.
“Bladdy hell. Lonnie Donegan. A bit of skiffle. Is he still touring?”
Margaret didn’t have the heart or will to tell him. “I am going to get someone. We’ll see. I’m sure we have enough funds in the kitty to splash out on a little Christmas concert here at Otterside.”
Jacob coughed and tapped at his notebook. The words Crazy Crazy Golf were written in Jacob’s angular block print and underlined. Twice.
“Crazy crazy golf?” she said.
“Crazy crazy golf,” said Jacob.
“Are we going ahead with that?”
Jacob looked at Strawb.
“Already bunged Ragnar a few notes,” said Strawb. “Coming on a treat.” He caught her look. “Who doesn’t love a bit of crazy golf, eh?”
“People who don’t like crazy golf,” said Jacob.
“We agreed it last time.”
“We said we’d think about it,” said Margaret. “Is it possible you’ve confused ‘think about it’ for approval?”
“I’d say it’s entirely possible,” said Jacob.
“Ah, but I was thinking that we as residents can save money in other ways.” He put a sheet on the table. “This is Polly Gilpin’s bill for services.”
“Yes?”
“Did you know we all have to buy into this health insurance thing that covers the nurses and visiting health people? I’ve been shopping around. We could get it for cheaper, especially if we sign up for these health tracker things.” He placed a brochure on the table next to the bill.
“The FitMeUp wearable activity tracker,” Jacob read.
“It’s a heart monitor?” said Margaret.
“It’s a thirty percent discount on health insurance premiums,” said Strawb.
“I see you’ve become quite pally with Polly of late.”
Strawb smiled shamelessly. “I have.”
“And?”
Strawb shrugged good naturedly. Margaret looked to Jacob. “And?”
“And what?” said Jacob.
“Is she a good fit? For Otterside?”
“I’m still assessing.”
“Thought we’d invite her on a little jolly,” said Strawb. “After hours. Sound her out.”
21
After dropping her dad back home and in between the other eclectic tasks which rounded out her day, Sam spent time watching escaped animal drills on YouTube. They were actually a thing. They were very much a thing. Particularly in Japan.
According to several of the videos, Japanese zoos needed to perform such drills as it was an earthquake-prone country, and lions, tigers and bears slipping out of damaged enclosures was a real concern. However, Sam suspected, some people just liked the opportunity of dressing up for the day in unrealistic animal outfits and running wild in zoos.
Either way, hiring folk to pretend to be animals or zookeepers in a massive game of ‘tig’ seemed the way to go. If there were animal costumes that needed making, then Delia was the obvious choice.
Night was falling. Sam would contact Delia another day. Then she’d just need actors to play animals and park staff, and equipment to aid in their recapture. Plus the small matter of a full-sized recreation of a prehistoric theme park at the bottom of the North Sea. Maybe she needed to recheck that budget.
She tidied the office as much as an office with one inhabitant needed tidying, said goodnight to Doug Junior, and went downstairs. The last act of departure each day was locking up and clocking out on the DefCon4 app. It constantly tracked her location, but she had to manually tell it she was done for the day after she left the office.
She turned out the lights, locked the door and clicked the button to go off shift. The app made an unhappy buzzing sound and refused to close.
There was an unfinished task.
Community payback hours not logged, declared the app.
Well, that was nonsense, she thought. She had filled in the timesheets for the offenders at Otterside and scanned them in at the office, as she always had. The offenders could then hand their sheets to their probation officers, or forward them through the court liaison system. Sam had done her bit, so maybe…
She stood on the cold pavement and tried to interrogate the unfinished task. The words, Individual offender file updates not completed, confirmed her suspicion.
“Well, that’s not my fault,” she told the app and tried to log out again. Again, the unhappy buzz.
She gritted her teeth. It looked like she would have to ring round the offenders in the morning and stay clocked on in the meantime.
22
Polly woke in the night and felt a moment of panic. The lines of the rooms about her, the geometry of darkness, were strange and alien. Then she recalled she was in her room at Otterside, her new home and she would have to get used to it. She lay there, blinking at the ceiling and wondering why she had awoken when the knock came at her door again.
She sat up and looked at her clock. Finding no answers there, she got up and went to the door. Strawb stood in the corridor, fully dressed, even with that silly hat on his head.
“What time do you call this?” she said.
He consulted his watch. “Midnight. The witching hour. You want to come and see?”
“See?” she said.
He jerked his head to indicate something outside. “Margaret and Jacob and I are having a sneak look.”
“But it’s midnight.”
“There’s no point sneaking around unless you do it at a suitable sneaking time. Now, get dressed before matron does her rounds and sends us back to bed.”
“Aren’t we allowed out of our rooms at night?”
“Of course we bladdy are, but it’s much more fun if we pretend we’re not.”
Bewildered but intrigued, Polly went back in and swapped her pyjama bottoms for trousers and pulled a thick fleece around her top. “You must be mad, Polly Gilpin,” she told herself. She met Strawb in the corridor again. “This all very Mallory Towers,” she said.
“What’s that?” said Strawb.
“Girls’ boarding school. Midnight feasts. Sneaking around after dark. Did
you not read any Enid Blyton as a child?”
“Never been in a girls’ boarding school. Must put it on my list.”
They went downstairs to where neatly-pressed Jacob and a tall, longed-face woman with ash blonde hair waited. The woman looked past Strawb at Polly.
“Polly’s here as an independent observer,” said Strawb.
The woman smiled thinly and nodded to Polly. “Margaret Gainsborough,” she said.
“The chair of the social committee,” said Polly, recognising her. “Observer of what?”
“The new crazy golf course,” said Strawb. He led the way out, into the night, skirting the dewy lawns and round to the outbuildings to the side of the main horseshoe. As he walked, Strawb gave them a personal insight into the specification he’d provided for the job. Skegness was not known for year-round good weather, so they would have an indoor crazy golf, with links to the outside part for when the weather was fine. Strawb spoke about the extensive use of papier-mâché for the interior models and weatherproof fibreglass weatherproof outside.
“Ragnar Odinson’s been cracking on with it,” said Strawb. “Late into the night.”
He opened the outbuilding door to the temporary workshop. Strawb passed Polly a torch and turned on his own.
“Feels spooky,” said Polly.
“Are you afraid?” said Margaret with a dry playfulness.
“No.”
“Course she ain’t,” said Strawb. “What’s there to be afraid of here?”
“Rusty nails. Tetanus,” said Jacob, giving the workshop a critical look.
The garage was empty, the workers gone, but there was much evidence of industry. Large shapes, cut from sheet metal, hung from wires suspended from the ceiling. They’d been sprayed with undercoat, presumably as the last task of the day, so the fumes would disperse by morning. Right now the solvent smell was very strong. Polly wrinkled her nose.
Jacob peered down at the music centre. “I would not have imagined Ragnar Odinson to be a fan of Herb Alpert.”
“Each to his own,” said Margaret simply.
“He seems to spend all of his time sitting around,” said Strawb. “I wonder if he gets that granddaughter of his to do the donkey work while he dreams up the next part.”
“A minor wouldn’t be covered by liability insurance if he does,” said Jacob.
“I don’t think she’s a minor,” said Strawb.
“It’s highly likely her presence merely energises Ragnar,” said Jacob.
“Energises?” asked Margaret.
“Yes. It is a recognised phenomenon. Perhaps simply the human urge to remain relevant to the up and coming generation. Whatever it is, many people perform more effectively and creatively when they co-exist with younger people.”
“I wonder what they plan for this,” said Polly having peeked under the corner of a protective sheet. “It’s a leaf blower, isn’t it? With some wood thing around it.”
They crowded round the puzzling construction.
“Be a surprise, I suppose,” said Strawb.
“I do not like surprises,” said Jacob.
“Lighten up, Jacob,” said Margaret.
“It’s a crazy golf course, not a space programme,” said Polly.
In this place of strange constructions and behaviour which, although not quite wrong, was definitely outré, Polly could not resist pressing the On button.
It set up with a loud noise that made her give an ‘Oh my!’ of surprise.
“What the bladdy hell are you doing?” shouted Strawb.
“I just…” She could hardly raise her voice over the racket. The protective sheet dropped down onto the floor as the leaf blower, its nozzle embedded in a hole in a large sheet of wood, rose up by several inches. The air had inflated a large, previously unseen bag beneath the wood.
“God in heaven, it’s a hovercraft!” shouted Jacob.
Margaret stepped onto the wooden platform, clearly with the intention of squishing it back into place. The hovercraft stayed inflated, starting to drift sideways across the garage. Strawb leapt forward to help, but the air bag was still mostly inflated. He reached for the leaf blower, in order to turn it off, but the whole thing tilted with their weight, skidding to a halt when it hit the wall on the other side. Strawb and Margaret staggered off. He scrambled for the controls of the leaf blower and turned it off.
“What on earth were you thinking, Miss Gilpin?” said Margaret, once everyone had ascertained they were uninjured.
“I’m sorry,” said Polly, who realised she was not sorry at all. Those seconds of silliness had been the most fun she’d had in weeks.
“I do not like surprises,” pouted Jacob. “And hovercrafts are dangerous.”
“Really?”
“Four people died in a hovercraft crash in Dover in eighty five.”
“Well, we’re nowhere near Dover so we should be perfectly fine,” said Margaret. She had the air of a headmistress about her, or perhaps a hospital doctor: imperious and judgemental. “It was probably wrong of us to come here. We should leave Ragnar to his own devices. We’ll have to tell him that one of the dementia patients got in here and did this.”
“We don’t have no patients,” said Strawb. “Dementia ones or otherwise.”
“He doesn’t know that,” she said.
23
Polly was reading in the south lounge. To an outside observer she might not have appeared to be reading, as she was reclined in the armchair, her arms folded on her book and her eyes closed. The outside observer might even have concluded that, with the surprisingly piercing winter sun shining down through the skylight, she had taken the opportunity for a nap, perhaps pretending to sun herself in warmer climes.
“I think she’s asleep,” she heard Strawb whisper.
“I’m not asleep,” she said. “I’m reading.”
“With your eyes shut?”
“I’m digesting the words.”
“Is Rosamund Pilcher particularly hard to digest?”
“Can’t consume it all in one sitting.”
“One might be led to believe you had something of a late night.”
There was a giggle.
Polly opened one eye and saw there was a woman next to Strawb. He had his arm lightly around the woman’s waist, and Polly surprised herself by feeling a small but definite touch of jealousy. Strawb, so easy to talk to, so very engaging, had shown more interest in her than any man had in … she couldn’t think how many years. To see him sharing any level of intimacy with another woman sparked feelings Polly had genuinely thought gone forever.
“This is Alison,” said Strawb.
The woman, wearing large glasses, and a heavy bob that made her round face look even rounder, gave Polly a smile and a finger-wiggling wave. “You settling in all right?”
“Like I’ve never had another home,” said Polly.
Strawb gestured for Alison to sit, putting himself in the armchair directly opposite Polly. There was something formal in the act, like this was a meeting or an intervention. He produced some papers. Polly recognised her itemised bill.
“I’ve been working on your problem,” said Strawb. “Your niece having a sneaky butcher’s at your bill.”
“I don’t want to cause a fuss,” said Polly.
“It’s a challenge,” said Strawb. “It’s like the wossname, the HMRC. A bit of cat and mouse. Here’s your bill. I showed it to Jacob cos he’s got a mind for such things. There’s stuff on here I don’t think you should be paying for. Health insurance and liability cover and such, but we’re gonna take a look at that together. But you, you don’t want your niece finding out you’ve been spending your time sinking glasses of gin instead of attending the yoga or whatever.”
“It’s not that much gin,” Polly said to Alison, embarrassed. “Just a normal amount.”
“I don’t drink, myself,” said Alison. “I do like the yoga, though. I love it.”
Polly thought yoga had clearly given Alison the figure of a Budd
ha, the Buddha in his later, jollier phase, but of course said nothing of the sort.
“Now, we want to make sure that those items Erin doesn’t approve of don’t appear on your bill,” said Strawb.
“Right,” said Polly.
“But every time you pay for something here, or book onto something, you have to give them your resident’s card like…” He gestured open-handed to Alison. “Give us your card, love.”
Alison produced her apartment key. There was a credit-card attached to the ring, with a hole punched in the corner. Polly had one just like it.
“You go to the bar,” said Strawb. “You go ‘a double gin and tonic please, Suzie’.”
“I never had a double,” Polly told Alison.
“She swipes, till goes bip, and there’s a double G and T on your files.”
“Never a double.”
“Point is, from card to till it goes straight on the bill.”
“Yes. I know,” said Polly. “Can you fix it?”
Strawb shrugged like a lazy swell in the tide. “I thought I could use my computer skills.”
“Do you have any?”
“I thought I did,” he said. “I thought what I’d do is go into Chesney’s office, open the Word file, and do one of them search and replace things. Swap gin for salad or something.”
“And?”
“There isn’t a Word file. It’s some clever accounting software I don’t understand. So I have a chat with Jacob. He starts talking about some hacker people he knows, or someone who knows someone. Started going on about the dark web and encrypted packets or something.” He rolled his eyes. “And then I thought, all we’re trying to do is make sure that your bill looks a little, um, health conscious.”
“Yes?”
“Make you appear to be a bit more like our Alison here.”
Alison smiled.
“Yes?” said Polly.
Strawb unthreaded Alison’s resident’s card from the key ring and offered it to Polly. “Swapsies?”
Polly stared, and then grinned. “You don’t mind?” she said to Alison.
“Happy to help,” said Alison. “That’s what we’re all about here at Otterside.”
