The Watchful Eye

by Priscilla Masters

  Claudine had gone out five minutes ago. From his hiding place against the rim of trees from which he could spy on the back of her house, he’d seen her reverse down the drive in the yellow Fiat. Every day she left the house at exactly the same time – three-fifteen on the dot, to fetch her little girl from school. Although she tended to shop on foot she always drove to the school, never walked – even when the weather was as good as it was today. Bright, breezy and slowly warming towards the summer. Her regular habits made his observations easier.

  He particularly liked fine weather because it was only on fine days that she pegged her washing out. Usually on Tuesdays but sometimes Wednesdays.

  His attention strolled back along the washing line.

  She’d bought new knickers – palest pink this time. In his mind he called it Shell Pink. Four pairs of French knickers with lace on the legs, and two bras to match. Padded bras, which she probably wore because her size was small. He’d read somewhere that French women always wore their underwear in matching sets and that had been why he had first ventured up here. To check. Purely to check out a fact. Nothing dirty. He looked around him furtively. Someone might see him, might misunderstand his intentions.

  His eyes scanned the back of the row of houses, out along the damp fields, still on towards the river. He was all right. The entire landscape around him was empty. No one was there.

  He smiled. It was lucky for him that these houses backed onto fields that were sliced in half diagonally by a quiet public footpath, giving him the perfect right to be here. He hooked his thumbs into his waistband. Anyone could walk on a public footpath. He sniggered softly to himself.

  He’d known Claudine was French the first time he’d served her at the supermarket. She had quite a strong accent. Her being French had intrigued him. And then she had started giving him little hints that she found him interesting. Every time she came into the supermarket where he worked, she always made sure he served her. He helped her pack her shopping into the bags and she always gave him a wonderful smile, said, ‘thank you,’ in a soft, flirtatious voice, enticing him, inviting him to love her.

  So he did. He was her devoted lover.

  The thought made him brave and the line of washing was a secret message, like waving semaphore. He had a sudden, dangerous thought. No one could challenge him while he was on the footpath. That was why they were called public footpaths. He was doing nothing wrong until he climbed the fence into the garden. And at one point the footpath was only two feet from the garden gate. Two feet, he thought, wasn’t very far at all.

  But it was risky. Some people were nosey – like that horrible old Mrs Rathbone and her stupid little yappy dog. She sometimes stood and watched him.

  He looked around again.

  She wasn’t here today. There really was no one. Absolutely no one.

  Even when he looked away he could see the fluttering out of the corner of his eyes.

  Oh, he groaned. If he could only touch those garments, stroke the lace, put his own skin against the point where… He groaned again in excitement.

  The next thing he knew he was walking across the lawn, ducking under the apple tree, moving towards that line of waving, dancing, teasing washing, stretching his hand out and carefully – almost reverently unpegging four pairs of knickers, one of the bras and, Oh Heaven, the suspender belt. It was as though it was a person in a dream who did this. Someone else. Not him.

  As he ran he whispered to himself, ‘Who in the world wears suspender belts in these days of tights and nasty little pop socks? I’m sure she doesn’t wear those nasty little things. Who exposes just an inch or two of thigh-flesh except to tease – you?

  ‘She must know how you feel. She has picked up on your secret message and understood it. And this is her message back to you. She knew the garments would please you and so put them here, on show, for you. It is as simple and obvious as that.’

  He liked the thought.

  He selected the right pieces, the Shell Pink knickers and bra and the black suspender belt, replacing the pegs neatly on the line, taking care that they were evenly spaced, just as she had put them, except that now they had no exciting scraps of material to anchor to the line because they were in his hands.

  The chill spring air hadn’t quite dried them; they were still slightly damp. He slipped the knickers, bra and suspender belt into his trouser pocket, taking pleasure in the cool feeling which spread against his leg. Then he stood, only for a moment, his eyes almost closed in sheer, erotic ecstasy.

  The next second he bolted back to the safety of the other side of the fence and the public footpath.

  He had dreamt of doing this for a long time, ever since he had been walking – quite innocently – along the public footpath that led from the back of the Holy Trinity Church to the row of cottages and watched her, pegs in her mouth, humming, straining to reach the clothes line, which was a little too high for her.

  He’d gone home that evening, lain on his bed, closed his eyes and imagined.

  But now he had actually done it and it was a hundred, no a thousand times better than anything he could have thought of.

  He swaggered up the footpath, back into Eccleston, his secrets in his pocket.

  3.25 p.m.

  Police Constable Brian Anderton sighed, pulled his shoes off and collapsed onto the sofa. He was knackered. These long shifts were a kill. Six-thirty in the morning until three in the afternoon upset his body clock. It was worse than doing nights. Too tired to lift his head, he raised his arm to glance at his watch. Almost three-thirty. Bethan would be home from school soon. In the meantime he could stretch out and take forty winks. With luck Claudine would stop off at the Co-op and he would have fifty winks. He gave a cavernous, hippopotamus-sized yawn and closed his eyes. Claudine would be picking her up around about now.

  He closed his eyes and for a few precious minutes he slept, his fingers curled around the yellow Bic cigarette lighter he always kept in his pocket as a talisman.

  He was slow surfacing to consciousness, struggling to swim through the screaming, burning demons of Hell that prevented him from absorbing the familiar sounds of the car door slamming, the high-pitched, excitable voice of his wonderful, adored and noisy seven-year-old daughter, footsteps tripping up the path, the rattle of a key in the door, a cold draught as it was thrown open and…

  ‘Daddy, Daddy.’ He sat up to the gleeful hug of Bethan, stroked her bouncing curls and kissed her cheek, smelling plasticine, oil paint and baby soap.

  Claudine was standing behind her. ‘Oh, Brian,’ she said disapprovingly. ‘I can smell those shoes the minute I walk in through the door.’

  ‘Sorry.’ He immediately felt guilty.

  ‘Daddy.’ His daughter wound her arms around his neck, ‘Mummy says I can make some pancakes for tea. With sugar and lemon. I hope you’re hungry,’ she said severely. ‘How many can you eat?’

  ‘A hundred,’ he said, tickling her tummy while she shrieked and wriggled and pulled away.

  He breathed in the scent of Johnson & Johnson shampoo on her hair and thought how very much he loved this beautiful child.

  He sat up. He loved her more than he could have thought possible. He loved her. He loved his family. His fingers fumbled in his pocket, seeking the reassurance. He frowned at the realisation of just how much he did love these two precious females in his life. He would die for them.

  If it was necessary.

  He clicked the lighter down without igniting it. Families needed protecting. Women needed protecting. His eyes followed Claudine until she disappeared into the kitchen, muttering something about it starting to rain. Brian was hoping she was going to make a cup of tea but no such luck. The scent of fresh washing wafted in from the adjacent room, Bethan trotted upstairs and Brian lay back for one more minute on the couch, thinking how much he still fancied his wife. Claudine was small and slim with faintly olive skin, dainty manners and the impeccable dress sense associated with Parisian women. Her hair, dark brown, w
as shaped around her face in a neat bob and her eyes, brown too, were wide and deceptively innocent. He looked up.

  She was standing in the doorway, frowning.

  ‘Brian,’ she said dubiously. He sat up, alerted. He recognised that look. ‘I’ve got a feeling.’ For some reason she was looking down at the sheaf of plastic pegs in her hand with as much revulsion as though they had been a handful of spiders.

  He felt the first frisson of apprehension, of discomfort. It was the beginning of something. He didn’t know what, but he sensed that his period in Elysium was coming to an end, however powerful he might be.

  His fingers clutched the lighter. ‘What is it?’

  ‘Brian,’ she said again, as though she was not absolutely certain of what she was saying. ‘I think someone’s stealing my knickers from the washing line.’ She gave a light, uncertain laugh.

  Six-foot four of him stood right up, crossed the room and put his arm around her. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I can’t be – I can’t be absolutely sure.’ But her eyes were blinking some other message.

  Claudine took great pride in her underwear. In fact she was fastidious about it. Brian had watched her rinse through expensive lingerie and peg it out in matching sets along the line, even standing back to admire the effect. It was simply not something she was likely to be mistaken about. If some was missing he would consider it an assault against his wife.

  He pulled her tighter to him, pressed his lips to the top of her hair in a guarding, almost paternalistic gesture. ‘Some woman’s probably jealous of them. Maybe stole them. They could have been blown off. There’s been quite a breeze today.’ His wife relaxed in his arms.

  He muttered his next thought so softly into her hair she hardly caught it. ‘I only hope it’s not some perv lurking around the place, because if it is it’ll go hard with him.’ He moved away from her and cupped her face between his hands. ‘It’s one of the reasons I was so desperate to come here, to Eccleston, because it seemed so clean – so wholesome. Old-fashioned, just the place to bring up our daughter. It probably was the wind,’ he said again. ‘It has been a bit breezy today.’

  ‘Not that breezy,’ she said, still frowning. ‘Besides…’

  She held her hand open to expose the plastic clothes pegs. ‘The pegs were returned to the line,’ she said. ‘In exactly the same places where I had put them. Only the garments were missing. That couldn’t have been the wind. I couldn’t help but notice they were missing. As if I was meant to. Brian,’ she appealed, ‘is it personal when people do that?’

  ‘What do you mean, personal?’

  ‘Is it anyone’s old washing or is it me? Is it because I am French?’ He could hear the heat rising in her voice.

  ‘No,’ he said. ‘Of course not.’ He laughed. ‘Don’t be paranoid, Claudine. It’s nothing to do with you being French. It’s just the pretty, tempting underwear. Someone saw it blowing on the line and stole it. You and I might find this bizarre, disgusting even, but it isn’t usually…’ His voice trailed away and his eyes swivelled downwards to look at her.

  French girls have a reputation for being free, flirty, more uninhibited than English girls. He recalled the come-hither flick of her eyelashes she had given him almost ten years ago. ‘You haven’t been leading anyone on, have you, Claudine?’

  The soft steel in his voice warned her. Over the years she had learnt to recognise Brian’s moods. She did not understand them and he was not a man to confide in his wife. He was the original strong, silent type. But occasionally that could make him scary – almost frightening. But since they had moved to this pretty market town in mid-Staffordshire he had mellowed – or she had thought he had.

  She had taken steps to encourage this. They now barely visited France because his French was poor and he thought that people were talking about him. His understanding of French manners led to even more embarrassment. Even now she flushed at the memory of him pulling her away from the social kiss of her sixteen-year-old cousin, Jacques Cabot.

  ‘No, Brian,’ she whispered. ‘I have not led anyone on.’

  He let her go and sat back on the sofa, staring at the fake flames of the gas fire.

  His mind had moved away. Jumping straight into the flames. Like Faust or Bolero or a Christian martyr.

  She had appealed for his help and finally he had given it.

  His fingers stole around the soft plastic of the cigarette lighter.

  She had had her underwear stolen too. That had been the first thing to happen.

  But however right his subsequent actions had been, awkward questions had been asked and it had been suggested he transfer to a quieter area of the country.

  And so he had come, eight years ago, to the pretty, Georgian coaching town of Eccleston, in Staffordshire.

  He had not regretted his decision. Here he felt a Fifties Mr Plod. In a year he had collared a couple of lager louts on a Saturday night, investigated a hit-and-run on the High Street, apprehended a motorist or two who had ignored the speed limit or drink and drive law, and investigated an accumulation of milk bottles on an old lady’s doorstep, which had turned out to be geriatric forgetfulness. (She had gone to visit her sister in Wiltshire and forgotten to tell her neighbours or cancel the milkman.) There had been two burglaries in two years and his wife and daughter were safe and content. He glanced across the room. Claudine was still standing where he had left her. She didn’t move a muscle. ‘Don’t put your underwear out again,’ he suggested.

  Claudine objected. ‘But I like the fresh scent of washing when it’s been blowing on the line,’ she said. ‘It seems cleaner, somehow.’

  ‘Just put your outer clothes on the line,’ he said quietly.

  ‘But—’

  ‘Don’t argue.’ The words were rapped out like bullets. ‘I don’t want some nut getting his hands on your—’

  ‘It’s some nut?’ She was alarmed now. ‘Please, Brian,’ she said. ‘Don’t. I don’t want to think of it like that.’

  ‘Use the tumble dryer or put them over the radiators – or something,’ he said deliberately, as though teaching a four-year-old.

  When he had finished surgery Daniel was tempted by the evening, golden with spring sunshine, and decided he would walk the short distance home. The surgery was halfway along the High Street, a converted pub. His own house was at the top of the road, near the end of the town. He only had to walk a few yards and he was home. That was one of the advantages of living in this compact place. Eccleston was a low crime area. He could leave his car quite safely in the surgery car park, protected by electric gates. He wouldn’t need a car tonight anyway. His regular features twisted briefly into a sour expression. He wasn’t going anywhere.

  ‘Good night.’ The practice nurse was leaving at the same time.

  ‘Good night, Marie.’

  She seemed to hesitate and he felt unaccountably awkward. Then she walked to her own car, unlocked it and climbed in.

  He stepped out into the High Street.

  But even on this brief journey two patients stopped him. This was the other side of living ‘over the shop’.

  ‘Hello, Doc.’ Elias Broughton coughed and wheezed into his doctor’s face. ‘Thought I might drop in and see you soon. I seem to be getting worse. Those inhalers you gave me don’t seem to be doing much.’

  Daniel drew back an inch. The man stank of cigarettes. ‘You do that,’ he said kindly. ‘You don’t need an appointment in the morning. Just come along. We’ll have a chat.’ He patted Elias’s back. He had some affection for this retired plumber. When he had first come here, ten years ago, and bought The Yellow House with Elaine, Elias Broughton had been a jobbing plumber, anxious to work for and befriend the new doctor. That had been before Holly had been born. Now Elias was retired and sick, suffering from emphysema because of the cigarettes which had constantly dribbled out of his mouth as he had worked. Daniel gave a wry smile. Elaine had made a great fuss about the cigarette smoke and about the damage to their lungs, the
smell around the house and, later, the damage to their unborn infant. She had been a great one for smells. Even now, Daniel could recall the wafts of Chanel or Dior or Estee Lauder that had clung to the air in a two-yard inclusion zone all around his wife.

  And in that variety there had been a clue. Most women have a favourite scent which lasts for a number of years – sometimes for their entire lives. We can almost conjure up a physical presence by evoking the perfume they wear. But his wife had been fickle from the first, choosing one to be her new favourite only to discard it a little way through the bottle and replacing it with something new.

  Just like her marriage. Elaine had been a woman of numerous relationships, her diary, when he had met her, a collection of discarded boyfriends. He’d often wondered why on earth she had married him, until one day – soon after she had stormed out, throwing back the complaint that he had not lived up to expectations and she was blowed if she was going to sacrifice her life for him – he had worked it out. Now he was the one to be discarded. Just like her previous boyfriends and her perfume. Which would have been fine had he not had a small daughter who had made the unstable marriage almost worthwhile.

  He’d almost made the safety of the The Yellow House when Mrs Rathbone accosted him, her Pekinese yapping at his heels. ‘Doctor,’ she said in a theatrical hiss.

  ‘Doctor.’ She drew up very close. Close enough to whisper in his ear with peppermint-scented breath. ‘I’ve got the piles again,’ she said mournfully.