The Newcomer

by Fern Britton

  ‘How did he get this bed up here in the first place?’ panted Robert. Mike’s bed had a heavy wooden frame, which was currently stuck on the turn of the cottage stairs.

  ‘’Tis lovely bit of carpentry, though,’ Bob said.

  ‘Try turning it a little more on its end so that we can somehow slide it on the banisters.’ Robert was holding the full weight of the bed in his arms.

  ‘Righto.’ Bob gave it a push and a shove.

  ‘Ow. Not that fast.’ Robert’s head was now squashed between the bed and the wall.

  ‘Anything I can do, boys?’ Mamie appeared at the bottom of the stairs. ‘I could get under it and take the weight on my back?’

  ‘We are fine, thank you,’ Robert said through clenched lips.

  ‘Maybe if you went back upstairs and turned it onto the other end?’ she proffered.

  Robert’s head was beginning to throb with the squashing. ‘We are totally fine.’

  ‘As you please.’ Mamie left them to it.

  Mike’s handsome drawing room had already had its sofa moved to the chilly, unused dining room. Mamie had vacuumed the rolling dust balls that had accumulated beneath it and was now pushing his favourite armchair in a position near the window, close to his bookshelf and in front of the television.

  She stood up and inspected the space left for the bed.

  ‘Plenty of room,’ she said to herself, then spotted his small desk. ‘I wonder if that would sit nicely in the opposite corner?’

  His desk was a well-organised bureau, with four drawers and several cubby compartments. She noticed that one held his cheque book, one some writing paper with matching envelopes and another a bulldog clip gripping a bunch of receipts. On the flat writing area was his laptop, hardwired to a small printer on the floor beneath.

  ‘Now then,’ she said to the desk. ‘If I can just manage to push you to the other corner, without having to unplug things, we’ll be laughing. It’s not far.’

  She began to pull. The chubby legs, resistant at first, gradually gave way and shifted along six inches of carpet.

  ‘Good.’ She straightened herself up. ‘Now, if I can give you a shove from the other side …’ She stepped into the space she’d revealed. ‘OK. Come on, boy. You can do it.’ As she applied her strength the desk moved a few more inches and then would move no more. ‘What’s the matter with you?’ By her feet she could see the power cable to the printer was stretched taut. ‘Sod it,’ she said. ‘Right, let’s unplug you and see if there is another socket where I want you to be.’

  On her hands and knees, and at an awkward angle, she reached round to unplug the machine. As she did so she spotted a small sheaf of three envelopes that had somehow fallen behind the desk. Brushing away a couple of strings of dust-laden cobwebs, she reached for the envelopes, intending to put them back on the desk. Then she saw the address labels on the front of each one.

  ‘Oh, no,’ she said softly. ‘Please no.’

  She wriggled out of the tight space and sat on her heels reading each address.

  She felt sick.

  Neat black type.

  White notepaper and envelope.

  One to Robbie, one to Piran and one to Mamie herself.

  A wave of sickness lapped in her stomach.

  Not being able to face the one addressed to herself, she opened the one to Robbie first.

  CANCER? YOU ARE A LIAR

  Mamie gasped in horror. This couldn’t be Mike’s work.

  With trembling fingers she opened the one labelled with her name.

  DRUGGIE HIPPYCRIT

  She closed her eyes, feeling the room spin around her. How had Mike found out?

  She felt her skin flush and cold perspiration spring onto her top lip. How could Mike do this?

  Finally, she opened the envelope for Piran.

  A photograph fluttered out. An image of Robert and Helen; unmistakably kissing. On the back, a printed label spelling out the words:

  POOR PIRAN. YOUR TART AND THE VICAR’S HUSBAND. NICE.

  ‘Oh my God, my God.’ Mamie was struggling to think.

  ‘Mamie?’ Robert called from the hall. ‘We’ve got the bed downstairs. Are you ready for it to come in?’

  33

  Stuffing the letters into the pocket of her jeans, Mamie took hold of her emotions and replied, ‘Yes, all ready. Just replugging the printer.’

  Robert stuck his head around the door. ‘Any chance of a cuppa before we move the bed in here?’

  Mamie wanted to smack the smug smile from his face. How could he cheat on poor Angela – this would shatter her, tear apart the family. Oh God. She bit down on her lip; it would be wiser to keep her powder dry until she figured out what on earth was going on. On her hands and knees she hid her expression from him as she found a socket and pushed the printer plug into place.

  ‘There,’ she said, standing up and brushing the dust from her knees. ‘I think the bed will fit well here.’ She indicated the space in the middle of the room. ‘A good view through the window to the front garden and TV and books all reachable.’

  ‘Jolly good job you’ve done too,’ Robert beamed.

  Mamie looked straight into his lying eyes. ‘For a woman?’

  ‘Ha-ha.’ He laughed uneasily. She could see that he couldn’t judge whether she was joking or not.

  She smiled sweetly. ‘I’ll get the kettle on.’

  She walked past him and out into the hall where Gasping Bob was opening the front door to have a quiet smoke. Mike’s upturned bed was blocking the way to the kitchen.

  The thought of Mike and his nasty letters filled her with a fresh fury. Bob copped it.

  ‘If you want a bloody tea break, you’d better move this bloody bed so that I can get to the bloody kettle.’

  ‘Sorry, missus,’ said Bob. ‘I was told it would be OK there.’

  Robert, who had heard all this, appeared from the drawing room, smiling apologetically. ‘So sorry. Stupid of me.’

  ‘Yes. Very. Move it.’

  Waiting for the kettle to boil, Mamie stood at the sink staring out into the back garden. How could she have been so wrong? Mike the poison-pen-letter writer? Robert an adulterer? Helen a scheming bitch? How was she going to tell Angela? After all the things Mamie had said to her about how Robert adored her; what a good friend Helen was.

  Mamie had always prided herself on her ability to read people’s characters. Now she felt stupid.

  Stupid, silly and old.

  She looked down at her hands. They were cold and white as they clenched the rim of the china sink. Only yesterday she had imagined those hands caring for Mike. Plumping his pillows. Fetching his glasses. Stroking his face. The hands of a lover.

  Now she saw them as they were. Liver-spotted and arthritic. The hands of a fool.

  She needed to think. Allow this shock and revulsion to pass, and to plan her course of action.

  She made the tea and took it into the men, where the bed was now set up and in place.

  Robert held the door open for Mamie and the tray. ‘Lovely.’ He rubbed his hands together, overemphasising his gratitude. ‘Thanks, Mamie.’

  She said nothing as she handed over his mug. She knew she had put him on edge and was delighting in his confusion. The bastard.

  ‘Here you are, Bob,’ she said warmly. ‘Thank you so much for all your help. Robert would have been quite useless without you.’

  Always a man of few words, Bob said, ‘Ta.’

  The three of them stood in the sunlit room and sipped their hot tea silently.

  Gasping Bob appeared to have an asbestos tongue and finished his first. Putting it on the tray he took his leave. ‘Got a shed to put up this afternoon.’

  Robert pulled out his wallet and handed over a twenty-pound note. ‘Thanks for your help, mate.’

  Bob accepted it. ‘Very kind.’ Taking a well-thumbed red notebook out of the top pocket of his overalls, he folded the money carefully and put it under the rubber band that kept the book from fal
ling apart. ‘Thanks for the tea.’

  He set off, whistling as he went down the path.

  ‘Well,’ said Robert, checking his watch, ‘I’d better get going myself. The police are expecting me at two o’clock.’

  ‘Ah, yes,’ said Mamie. ‘I forgot to tell you. They called earlier and cancelled. Some sort of panic on and they can’t see you today. They said they’d ring you when things calmed down. In a few days.’

  Robert was puzzled. ‘Really? They rang here?’

  ‘No, no,’ Mamie said easily. ‘While you were upstairs sorting the bed out, I had to nip home to get my rubber gloves. Good job, too. Angela was out with the dogs. Faith was in her room. The phone was ringing and I took the message.’

  ‘Oh. I see.’ He rubbed the back of his neck. ‘In that case, I’ll go and do the shopping for Mike’s homecoming. Do you have a list?’

  ‘Yes.’ Mamie went back to the kitchen and retrieved the list she had been adding to all morning. ‘Here you are.’

  He looked at it. ‘There’s quite a lot here.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said pleasantly.

  ‘I think I’ll go and have some lunch at home before I go. Angela should be back by now.’

  ‘I’ll be over in a while. I just need to finish off a few bits,’ she said. ‘Ask Angela to hang onto Danvers and Davey until I have fully spring-cleaned their part of the kitchen.’

  ‘OK,’ he said nervously. ‘Erm, has anything happened?’

  ‘Happened?’

  ‘You seem a bit … upset?’ he tried.

  ‘What makes you think that?’

  Her smile, he noticed, did not reach her eyes.He tried again. ‘I wondered if, well, if I had done something to upset you?’

  ‘Have you?’ she parried.

  ‘I hope not.’

  ‘So do I.’

  She watched until he had shut the gate and was heading towards the vicarage, then she picked up the phone and dialled.

  ‘Hello,’ she said as it was answered, ‘I would like to cancel an appointment made for two o’clock this afternoon by Mr Robert Whitehorn, to meet with one of your officers. He does apologise but he has been delayed by circumstances beyond his control.’

  For the next hour, as she polished and vacuumed, she was thinking. She had to stop Robert from going to the police or else Mike would be arrested. She wanted to talk to Mike first. So many questions; all of them starting with, why?

  Then she had to tackle Robert and Helen’s affair situation. Should she have it out with them face to face? Or, if she told Piran, he could drop the bombshell perhaps? That way she could keep out of it. No, that was not her style. Protect the innocent. Expose the guilty. That was her strategy. But then why did she want to protect Mike? And how was Angela going to cope?

  She pulled off her rubber gloves and looked around at the now sparkling cottage. She knew what she had to do.

  She pulled her mobile from her handbag and rang Angela.

  ‘Hi, darling.’

  ‘I was just about to ring you,’ Angela said. ‘You missed lunch. Robert has just got back with all the shopping. I could bring it over now with the dogs?’

  ‘That would be helpful. Would you mind putting everything in the fridge and larder over here while I nip home and get cleaned up? I want to go and visit Mike.’

  Mamie had never been afraid of confrontation. It was one of the reasons she had never married. She adored the company of men and was always pleased, if surprised, that she could attract them so easily. But she had learnt as a young woman that men were, very definitely, the weaker sex. They needed to be coaxed and praised, adored and unchallenged, which eventually made them less attractive to her.

  When it was over, it was over, and she was always the first to leave.

  With Mike, she had almost believed differently. A man confident in his single life. Charming, polite, unpushy, intelligent. Someone who had lived a life of danger and deprivation in the army, yet had quietly accepted the failure of his marriage as his own without sinking into self-pity.

  If you had asked her yesterday if maybe he was ‘The One’, she might have answered, ‘Possibly.’

  But twenty-four hours is a long time in the spirit level of love.

  She was nervous as she drove to the hospital.

  He was sitting in a wheelchair in the day room, playing bridge with three other male patients, all exhibiting a variety of broken limbs.

  He saw her immediately. ‘Ah! What a wonderful surprise!’ he said delightedly. He introduced her to his card-playing chums, then excused himself to them by saying, ‘Do you mind if we take a break in the game, chaps? I’d like to take my friend for a cup of afternoon tea.’

  They all approved.

  ‘Of course, old man.’

  ‘Understood, dear boy.’

  ‘I need to stretch my legs anyway.’

  Mike reversed his chair with dexterity and pointed it in the direction of the lift.

  ‘There’s a decent little restaurant on the ground floor, I’m told,’ he said. ‘Rather good lemon drizzle.’

  Mamie followed, her knees weak with subdued rage.

  In the lift he babbled away cheerfully, showing her his new plaster cast and demonstrating his wheelchair skills. ‘Spins on a sixpence,’ he laughed, turning a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree circle. ‘Marvellous, eh?’

  In the restaurant he wheeled himself to the counter where two helpful volunteerswere waiting in their RVS uniforms.

  ‘Hello, Mr Bates,’ the older woman said. ‘How are you doing?’

  ‘Better than yesterday,’ he grinned.

  ‘You look it!’

  He turned to Mamie. ‘Mrs Johnson and her colleague here came with a trolley to the ward. Very good tea and sandwiches. They told me they do a cream tea so I thought, when you come to visit, I shall treat you. And here we are.’

  ‘How very nice,’ Mamie managed.

  ‘We’ll bring it over to your table,’ said Mrs Johnson. ‘There’s a good one over by the window. Lovely breeze coming in and you can smell the roses.’

  ‘Shall I be mother?’ Mike smiled, as the teapot arrived.

  ‘Thank you.’ Mamie pushed her cup and saucer towards him.

  Tea poured, he lifted his cup. ‘To you, my dear.’

  She looked at him carefully, searching in hope for a sign that would tell her he was innocent.

  ‘To you,’ she said.

  ‘So,’ he sipped his tea. ‘What news from the Rialto?’

  ‘I remember asking Queenie that,’ she answered with a faint smile. She wished so much she could turn the clock back. Never bought the blasted cannabis. Never tempted dear, innocent Queenie into this scandal. ‘She thought I meant the cinema in Plymouth.’

  ‘Marvellous woman, Queenie.’

  ‘Yes.’

  The younger of the RVS women arrived with a brimming cake stand of cucumber finger sandwiches, Genoa slices, and scones with little dishes filled with clotted cream and jam.

  ‘Here you are, Mr Bates.’

  ‘You spoil me. Thank you.’

  ‘My pleasure. I like to spoil the patients. Good food, good health, is what my husband always says.’

  ‘He’s a lucky man,’ grinned Mike.

  Mamie watched the woman go.

  ‘Have a sandwich?’ Mike asked.

  ‘Thank you.’

  ‘How are the dogs?’

  ‘They are fine. Angela has been looking after them. Mr Worthington has enjoyed having his friends to play with.’

  ‘I miss them,’ he said, biting into a sandwich. ‘Oh, these are very good.’

  ‘Yes,’ she began, ‘after seeing you yesterday, I decided that I would move into your cottage,’ he looked up in happy surprise as she went on, ‘to look after you.’

  ‘But I said I would get in an agency person—’

  ‘Yes. I think that would be better. You need someone living in. To take the dogs out. Take care of you. So we – that is, Robert and Bob – took the liberty of bringing yo
ur bed down into the drawing room. The downstairs cloakroom will double as your bathroom. I have made up the bed in your guest room for … for the agency nurse, and Angela and I have stocked the fridge and the larder with basic provisions.’

  He reached a hand out to hers. ‘That is so kind.’

  She moved her hand back to her half-eaten sandwich sitting on her plate. ‘I hope you don’t mind?’

  ‘Not at all.’ He was looking at her with utter tenderness. ‘My dear, no one, since my wife left me, has meant as much to me as you have.’

  She pushed the remains of her sandwich around her plate and looked out at the garden rather than him.

  He was worried. ‘May I ask why you changed your mind? Is it because of me? Would it have been too, I don’t know what the word is, too personal, perhaps? To be under the same roof?’

  Mamie took a deep breath and said, ‘No. Nothing like that.’

  Confused, he asked, ‘Then why?’

  ‘Mike, when I was moving your desk to make room for your bed, I came across something.’

  ‘Oh, yes? Dead spider? Mouse? Wouldn’t surprise me.’

  ‘No.’ She felt for her bag and pulled out the three envelopes. ‘I found these.’

  His warm and kindly smile died on his lips and his skin became almost grey. ‘I … oh, my dear.’

  Mamie sat still and waited for his shock to pass.

  Eventually he lifted his head and wiped his eyes with a handkerchief from his pocket. ‘You’ve read them?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What must you be thinking?’

  ‘What made you do it?’

  He was finding it hard to speak. ‘You think it was me?’

  ‘Why else were they hidden in your house?’

  He looked around the café. ‘Can we find somewhere quieter to talk?’

  The hovering RVS women were very understanding.

  ‘Oh dear,’ bustled in Mrs Johnson. ‘Appetite is the last thing to come back after trauma. Never mind. He’ll feel better tomorrow. Done too much today, I expect. We see it all the time, don’t we, Louise? Especially with the men patients. Bye, Mr Bates. Take care of yourself and have a lie-down.’

  Mamie pushed Mike out onto a small patch of grass outside the hospital entrance, overlooking the ambulance bay. Under a spreading tree there was a single bench, thankfully unoccupied. She parked Mike to one side of the bench and sat next to him.