by Heide Goody
“Me again!” Janine was back. Polly wondered if she had some cocktail left in the thermos and lifted her glass, but she was carrying a wicker hamper with a strap. “Now, we’ve got the picnic we’ll have later on in the stable block, but you’re probably peckish now, eh?”
“Peckish?”
“Bacon sandwich? Or maybe just a mini-pack of Jaffa Cakes if you’re vegetarian?”
“I’ve just had breakfast.”
“But it wouldn’t be a coach trip without a snack on the bus.”
“We’ll be there in a few minutes, won’t we?”
The coach had neared the town centre and turned inland. It couldn’t be more than five miles.
“No worries, love,” said Janine. “Here’s your raffle ticket for later on. Hang onto it, cos we’ve got some surprises. Oh, and a miniature of brandy to slip in your bag. You never know when you might need a little top-up, eh?”
Polly stared at the woman’s back as she worked her way down the coach. She was certain that, apart from Strawb, these people were not on the social committee, but clearly they were some sort of self-appointed group of funsters. She could see into one of the other bags they’d piled up on a spare seat: it was filled with Christmas crackers and packaged snacks.
Polly put the brandy into her handbag. She didn’t need to resort to the alcohol just yet.
From the Candlebroke roundabout they turned down the long, tree-lined driveway which led to the house proper. There was something to be said for being on a coach, as it gave you a much more elevated view of things. She could see cows grazing. Did they have deer here? She couldn’t recall. In a landscape that was either drained fenland or heavily farmed hillsides, Candlebroke Hall was one of the few places in the area where mature trees could be found. It looked very much as if deer ought to be grazing beneath the leafy fronds. She caught a glimpse of a red truck between the trees. It looked rather heavy to be groundkeepers; surely it would leave tyre marks in the grass?
The coach rounded the bend and arrived outside the gate.
Candlebroke Hall was a huge square house of red brick, white stone and tall windows. But for the manicured lawns and sprawling estate it could have passed for an austere boarding school, or a Georgian prison. Such things really didn’t matter; it was old and therefore quaint. So therefore desirable for the folks of Otterside’s Christmas outing.
“I always judge the quality of a stately home by its tea room,” said Bernard, who was polishing off his second bacon sandwich. “An army marches on its stomach.”
“Here we are,” Margaret announced needlessly over the PA. “We’ll get you signed in as soon as possible. Craft fayre is in the tea room. Picnic in the stables at midday.”
The driver stood up. “And if I could ask you to take your rubbish with you, ladies and—”
He was drowned out by boos and laughter. There were even items thrown. He hunkered down in his seat to be out of the way.
The group jostled rowdily off the coach.
“I’m all for fun, but that was a bit hard on the old driver there,” Polly said as they walked towards the house.
Jacob snorted. “James Huntley? The coach company have a nerve assigning him to us. Should have fired him years ago.”
Polly looked back. The driver was half-crouched on the coach steps, picking up wrappers and discarded brandy miniatures that had been kicked down the aisle. He saw her looking and there was a bitter scowl on his face.
“Why? What’s wrong with him?” Polly asked, but Jacob had gone.
37
Sam entered Back to Life. Delia was behind the counter, a pin between her lips as she rooted through a box of cotton reels. She mumbled something through her tight lips.
“You might want to try that again,” said Sam.
Delia put the pin down on the counter. “I’m glad you’re here. I’ve made some proof of concept pieces for the costumes. I need you to assess them and tell me which ones are going to work the best.”
“Excellent. I also needed to run some dates by you,” said Sam. “I’m planning to run this drill next weekend. Does that give you enough time?”
Delia didn’t look entirely horrified, but definitely thirty to forty percent horrified. “Next weekend?”
“Yes. Next weekend.”
“The one after this weekend?”
“The one that starts tomorrow? Yes. Next weekend. Eight days’ time. Is that going to be a problem?”
“No, but it might inform some of the choices we make – unless you can rustle up an extra pair of hands for me. Any news on Drumstick?”
Sam pulled a doubtful expression. “Following leads.”
“Is that special police talk for no?”
“I had a suspect. Working on the mostly stupid theory it was someone at Otterside who objected to being woken by a turkey in the morning.”
“Is it that big guy I sometimes see leaning out of his window to smoke a fag?”
“Could be,” Sam shrugged. “Kind of fits. From up there, he’d see how to open the gate from the other side. He’d also know there was a plank in the garden he could use as a murder weapon.”
“But?”
“But he has an alibi for the night of the murder. He never left the building.”
Delia’s nod was one of gratitude that Sam was at least making an effort. “Come through and have a look at what I’ve got so far.”
Sam followed Delia into her workshop. It had undergone a transformation since her last visit. Gone were the Capitalist Whore dolls and all of the Christmas gold-sprayed paraphernalia. In fact, Sam had spied some of it in the shop, labelled as Christmas shabby chic, presumably to explain the unfinished paint jobs. What had taken its place was a sewing workshop. Delia’s sewing machine and overlocker took centre stage, while the mannequin sported tiger-striped lycra. Other part-made costumes hung on hangers. Delia led Sam over to a table.
“Right, let’s talk heads,” she said.
“I can see the bodies are well in-hand,” said Sam, waving a hand at the various animal onesies hanging up.
“Yeah, those are straightforward, but the heads are what I need guidance on. Let me walk you through the various options.”
Delia started at the left of the table and struck a pose like a magician’s assistant. “So, my first thought was to go full Lion King. An oversized head with a magnificent ruff strikes a really effective note. It says ‘Fear me, for I am king of the jungle and although I walk among you, I am to be respected’.”
Sam picked up the headpiece in question as Delia was talking. “Fine. Let’s overlook the fact this is clearly a caribou, which is not really the king of any jungle.”
“Go on,” said Delia. “Would it help if you wore it for a moment?”
Sam slipped it onto her head. “Um, yeah. I have a couple of observations.” Her voice was muffled inside the dense and weighty head. “Firstly, I can see why you gave it a magnificent ruff.”
“You can?” Delia asked.
“Would it, by any chance, be to counterbalance the monstrous weight of the antlers? This thing weighs a ton, yet it still feels top-heavy. As if it’s going to fall and break my neck on the way down.”
“That might have been part of it,” said Delia, a little defensively. “Although I like it as a design choice as well.”
“Secondly, I can’t actually see through the eye holes. This headpiece would be ideally suited to someone with no neck. I’m taking it off.”
“Any other thoughts?” asked Delia, helping Sam to steady the enormous head on the table.
“Well yes. It’s smiling,” said Sam, looking at the face from the outside again. “Why is it smiling? I’m not even sure a real caribou would be capable of an expression like that.”
“Ah, that is something we should definitely discuss,” said Delia, her face animated with sudden passion. “I’ve been thinking about this. So, what if a child sees your animal drill?”
“What? There will be no children there.”
; “But if there were. What we don’t want is to traumatise them. If the heads are all smiling, then the kids will think they are amusements or something.”
“That is absurd,” she said. “Completely absurd.”
“Can you give me one good reason why the animals should not be smiling?”
“A total lack of muscles which enable them to smile?”
“Now you’re just being pedantic,” said Delia. “Okay, if we think this head is too much, let’s take a look at the next one.” She moved down the table. “I had a brainwave that you might need to protect your actors from some rough and tumble.”
Sam looked at her. “Rough and tumble?”
“If the zookeepers are shooting at them, trying to take them down. You know, will they need to dive and do roly-polys and so on?”
“That’s not my intention,” said Sam. “There will be rules, so the animal actors know how to behave if they get shot, for example. There will be no roly-polys.”
Delia looked a little crestfallen. “Well, in case you wanted to build in a bit of live action, I created a test head based on a helmet.”
“Interesting idea,” said Sam, picking up the next headpiece. “Is this a mammoth?”
“Yes it is! Looks good, doesn’t it?”
Sam placed it cautiously over her head. “At least this one lets me see daylight. It’s not so heavy, either. In spite of the trunk and the tusks.”
“Ah yes. I made those from fibre glass. See how it adheres to the helmet via the central nose piece?”
“Yes. It presents a bit of a problem for properly seeing where I’m going, if I’m honest.” The large strips of fibreglass supporting the mammoth’s tusks and trunk formed an inverted ‘Y’ shape on the front of the helmet. If she wasn’t afraid of goring onlookers with the outlandish tusks, Sam felt she might be equipped to play American football.
“All good feedback,” said Delia. “I aim to please with my creations, so let’s look at a different style of head, shall we?”
Sam moved to the last head on the table. This one looked much more wearable. She popped it over her head. It was stretchy, like a ski mask, and the eye holes were big enough to allow for a decent view. “Much better,” she said. “I’m a sabre-toothed tiger, right?”
“Hah! Well, right now you’re just a tiger,” said Delia. “Let’s make you sabre-toothed, shall we?” She handed Sam a packet. It was a pair of Dracula fangs.
“Oh, I don’t know,” said Sam. Delia gave her a stern look, so she put the teeth into her mouth and posed. “Rar!” she said.
Delia took a picture with her phone. “I’m making this the picture which shows when you call me. You make a very good sabre-toothed tiger.”
Sam looked at the picture. She looked like an idiotically-smiling cartoon facsimile of a sabre-toothed tiger, but recognisable, all the same. “Yep, well this is definitely the style of head we should use.”
“So,” said Delia, “just to check what you’re approving.” She counted off on her fingers. “It’s no to papier-mâché, no to fibre glass, no to big heads with ruffs, no to helmets (and roly polys), no to tusks and trunks, but a big yes to smiling animals, right?”
Sam gave a world-weary nod, slightly suspicious that she’d played right into Delia’s hands. “And they can all be ready for next weekend?”
“Possibly. I think I need to build some frames or something to bulk out the bodies of the larger animals. Maybe something in a rigid plastic or light metal. Do you know who the actors are?”
“Not yet. I’m going to ask Cat at the café by the office. She’s part of the local theatre scene. Um – you know you said things might go smoothly if I could rustle up an extra pair of hands for you?”
“Yes?”
“And you maybe need some metal-working doing.”
“Only light stuff.”
“Have you ever considered Hilde Odinson?”
“One of the Odinson clan?”
“You’ve met her.”
“When she was doing community service on the beach.”
“But she’s got a good heart. And she swears she didn’t know the telegraph poles belonged to anyone.”
“How did one young woman manage to carry off some telegraph poles?”
“She probably roped a daft cousin or something into it. It’s surprising what those Odinsons can achieve when they work as a team.”
38
Hermod and Gunnolf, with scant consideration for the actual tracks and paths laid out across Candlebroke Hall’s grounds, had parked in the shadow of a huge sweeping oak tree. Hilde insisted on checking it actually was an oak before letting them at it with chainsaws, axes and ropes. It wasn’t easy to be sure, given the time of year: none of the deciduous trees had any of their leaves left. On the ground beneath there was a good covering of leaf litter, and she could make out oak leaves and a few acorn fragments.
“This is an oak,” she confirmed.
“Course it is,” said Ragnar airily. “I could have told tha that.”
“Sure,” she said.
“Now, lass, tha needs to piss off for a bit.”
“What?”
“We need to perform the sacred ritual. Man stuff.”
There were groans from the other Odinson men. “We’re not doing any bloody dancing,” said Ogendus.
“Tha’ll do what I bloody tell thee!” Ragnar shouted back. “Tha’ll not be putting axe to that tree without the proper blessings and permission from Odin himself!”
“Whatever,” said Hilde and stalked off up the grassy slope. She was sceptical about some of her granddad’s long-standing ‘traditions’. She was fairly certain a good many of them were of his own invention.
She’d once come across a manuscript he’d been working on. It was a laboriously handwritten book. Each chapter was headed with a square neon-coloured post-it note, with a ballpen doodle relating to the chapter’s content on it. They were really quite charming, like modern-day illuminated letters. The book was entitled Son of Odin: Live your life the Viking Way and was part memoir, part practical guide, with many instructions about how to weave Ragnar’s particular flavour of Viking lore into modern life. He covered everything from making mead with supermarket ingredients (which was fine, as long as the correct runes were inscribed onto the bottles afterwards with a Sharpie), to the organisation and etiquette of family gatherings. There was some bee wisdom, clearly cribbed from Uncle Bjorn’s ramblings, which was as wild and eccentric as Ragnar’s. Hilde had been tempted to apply edits to some of the practical chapters, to more accurately describe how things were done (pretend the men do all of the work while the women do everything behind the scenes), but she had gently closed the manuscript and never mentioned to Ragnar that she had seen it.
Hilde found a low stone bench by a hedge, close enough that she could keep an eye on the men; far enough away that she didn’t actually have to see the embarrassing ritual up close.
“Can I go with her?” she heard Sigurd ask.
“No, tha bloody can’t!” yelled Ragnar.
* * *
Polly was enjoying the grounds, alone with her thoughts and a brandy miniature. The miniature was still closed, her hand wrapped around it in her coat pocket, but she felt its warming powers, in potentia as it were. There were some beautifully laid out formal gardens – the herbaceous borders were pleasant even at the onset of winter – but she wanted to see the slightly wilder parts of the estate and walked out past a long pond towards the great trees further away from the house.
She headed over to where she’d seen the truck earlier. She glimpsed the red bodywork through the trees, a hundred yards away. She slowed as she neared; she could hear chanting.
“We offer mead for the gift of the tree. All hail and dance in its company!”
“Tha’s never gunna mek us dance?”
“Tha bloody well will dance.”
“But not in the nud this time, eh?”
“If poem says tha’s dancing in the nud, tha will!”<
br />
“Aye, but … but tha wrote the blummin’ poem! Why would tha do that?”
“Odin likes a rhyme, dun’t he?”
There were loud protests. “But Odin dun’t need us to take our clobber off this time, does he?”
“Always! Always in the nud! Come on now!”
Polly crept forward, keen to see what was going on, yet nervous about what on earth she had stumbled into. She saw six men, all in various stages of undress, lumbering clumsily around a tree, beards and willies swinging. It was a grand old oak tree, fat and gnarly with spreading boughs. The oldest man had a bottle which he sloshed onto the tree’s trunk at intervals. Polly had never tasted mead and wondered what it was like. They finished the mead, which seemed to signal the end of the dance. One of the men stamped off, muttering “Thank fuck” and, apart from the oldest (who clearly enjoyed a winter breeze around his nethers) hurried to get their clothes back on.
Polly edged further forward, stepping on a twig, which gave a sharp crack. She looked up, anxious the men should not spot her. At the same moment as her twig snapped, a chainsaw roared into life, followed shortly afterwards by another.
Two of the youngest, very much alike, swung their chainsaws excitedly. Polly (who enjoyed a bit of unexpected nudity, in moderation) was very glad to see they were dressed once more. Nakedness and power tools didn’t mix well. Nakedness, power tools and mead even less so.
* * *
Now that the embarrassing spectacle of her family dancing in the nude was over, Hilde could see Hermod and Gunnolf starting to take chunks out of the oak’s trunk. She wondered how much Ragnar really knew about felling a tree. He was hollering instructions, but he had the look of someone who was winging it.
Hilde spotted a grey-haired Saxon woman watching their activities from a distance. It probably wasn’t a concern, but Hilde would watch to see what she did.
Hermod and Gunnolf were both cutting wedges out of the tree with their chainsaws. There was a rhythm to their work, as Ragnar made sure they both took turns. What he probably hadn’t intended was that it should turn competitive. Hilde could clearly see the look on Hermod’s face as Gunnolf freed a large chunk from his side. When his turn came, Hermod leaned in and carved the chainsaw down, biting off an enormous slab of trunk. If they both carried on like this, the tree would start to look like a pencil balancing on its tip.
