The Shortest Journey

by Hazel Holt

  ‘But she could have had a little flat,’ I persisted, ‘and Annie Fisher would have been perfectly happy to look after her...’

  ‘That woman!’ Mrs Dudley cut in sharply. ‘Thelma wouldn’t have stood for that. She told me several times that she was very worried that Annie Fisher was getting a hold over her mother.’

  ‘What sort of hold? She always seemed a perfectly respectable woman to me, and devoted to Mrs Rossiter.’

  ‘It was some sort of religious sect – I can’t remember what they were called. She joined them a little while ago. Thelma was very concerned that she might try to get Mrs Rossiter to make over a lot of money to them. You know what these people are like, they’re very persuasive. No, that wouldn’t have done at all. I mean, even when she was in West Lodge, I believe Annie Fisher was always in and out to see her.’

  ‘Yes, that’s true.’

  I wondered why I hadn’t heard about Annie’s religious conversion, but reflected that as I had always disliked the woman I’d tried to avoid her whenever possible, and Mrs Rossiter and I had other things to talk about.

  ‘So Thelma thought it was the lesser of the two evils that her mother should come here. I mean, it is dreadfully expensive – though, goodness knows, Mrs Rossiter could afford it. And Thelma very sensibly advised her mother to take shares in West Lodge, so naturally the fees were adjusted accordingly.’

  No wonder Mrs Wilmot had panicked. She had mislaid not only a patient but a shareholder as well!

  ‘It is no bad thing, really, that the fees should be so high. It does keep out a certain class of people.’

  The room was very hot, and suddenly I felt I couldn’t bear any more of Mrs Dudley. I gathered up my handbag and gloves and stood up.

  ‘It’s been lovely to see you and I’m delighted that you’re so much better, but I must be getting on. I must call in and see Mrs Jankiewicz while I’m here.’

  Mrs Dudley pursed her lips in disapproval. ‘I can’t say I approve of letting foreigners in.’

  ‘Oh, come now,’ I said sweetly. ‘Her cousin is a countess, you know, and the Polish aristocracy is more ancient than ours.’

  She looked at me suspiciously, as if uncertain of my seriousness. ‘That’s as may be – and, as I always say, it’s not who you are that’s important but what you are. She has a very aggressive manner, quite unpleasant.’

  I imagined that Mrs Jankiewicz had given Mrs Dudley one of her famous ‘put-downs’ and it had not been well received. There wasn’t room for two such dominant personalities under one roof and I had no doubt that, formidable as Mrs Dudley was, she had met her match at last.

  Bidding Mrs Dudley a brisk farewell I went off to hear Mrs Jankiewicz’s side of the encounter, looking forward eagerly to telling Rosemary all about it.

  Chapter Seven

  The following week my son Michael came home for the summer vacation with two suitcases of washing, a heavy cold and a copy of The Good Beer Guide with every pub within a radius of fifty miles of Taviscombe hopefully marked in red. This meant that a large proportion of my life for the next few days was spent in the kitchen making hot lemon and honey and mounds of chilli con carne (‘Feed a cold, Ma, and starve a fever’) to the relentless hum of the washing machine.

  ‘Is there any more news of Mrs Rossiter?’

  We were sitting out in the garden drinking home-made lemonade.

  ‘No, I’m afraid not. Things seem to have come to a standstill. There’s been no sign of her, dead or alive. There’s nothing more the police can do – or anyone else, for that matter. It’s just an extraordinary mystery. I can’t help worrying. Is she hurt or ill, or in some sort of difficult or dangerous situation?’

  ‘I hope she’s all right, she was a nice old bird. I liked her.’ Michael fished a lemon pip out of his glass and flicked it into the flower border. ‘She was very kind to me. Do you remember when I had measles? She came and read to me every day, for hours. I think we worked our way through the whole of the Jennings books!’

  ‘She loved children; it’s a thousand pities she has no grandchildren. I think the happiest time of her life was when Thelma was a very little girl.’

  ‘Before she could talk, you mean!’

  It really did seem as though Mrs Rossiter had vanished from the face of the earth. Michael reported that Thelma had telephoned one morning while I was out shopping to see if I had heard anything. I was quite glad to have missed her. After our last conversation I didn’t feel very inclined to talk to her.

  ‘Very tra-la, she was,’ Michael said. “Now do tell me how you’re getting on!” ’ he continued in a passable imitation of Thelma’s affected drawl. ‘ “And don’t you just love being in London after the dreary provinces? Such fun being where it’s all at! You must come and have dinner with us one evening and meet some really fascinating people!” Yuck.’

  ‘Don’t you want to be where it’s all at?’ I asked, laughing.

  ‘If it’s where Thelma Douglas is, then no thanks!’

  Tris and Tessa, excited by our laughter, rushed round in circles barking, until Michael got up and began to chase them round the garden. I gathered up the glasses and went back into the house. As I stood by the kitchen window, watching Michael throwing a ball for the dogs, I thought once again about Mrs Rossiter’s disappearance. A sudden thought struck me: Annie Fisher. Surely she must be very distressed, wrapped up as she was in Mrs Rossiter, yet I hadn’t heard a word from her. I would have expected her to be on the doorstep straight away, questioning me in that fierce way of hers. Mrs Wilmot hadn’t mentioned seeing her, either. Come to think of it, I couldn’t remember having seen her around in the town lately. In a small place like Taviscombe you run into most of the people you know pretty often, in the two main streets, the supermarket or the post office, but I hadn’t seen Annie since the time we had met in the library and that was before Mrs Rossiter disappeared.

  Michael came back in from the garden to find me scrabbling through the pages of the telephone directory.

  ‘Who are you looking for?’

  ‘Annie Fisher.’

  ‘You mean that person who used to be with Mrs Rossiter? Woman who looked like a frog?’

  ‘A frog?’ I looked up from the directory. ‘Yes, I think you’re right. Though perhaps we’re influenced by the name – Fisher, Jeremy Fisher, Beatrix Potter – still, perhaps that’s why I’ve never really liked her.’

  ‘But you like frogs, Ma.’

  ‘As frogs, not as people. Now you’ve interrupted me and I’ve lost my place. There seem to be an awful lot of Fishers.’ I finally found Annie’s number – I remembered that she was living in a council flat down in Meadow Gardens – and decided to ring her. I dialled the number and stood waiting while it rang out. Foss came in through the cat door and began weaving round my feet in a determined way that meant he wanted food.

  ‘In a minute, Foss,’ I said as the phone went on ringing. When I finally convinced myself that no one was going to answer, I put down the phone and went to open a tin.

  The next morning, after I’d finished my shopping, I needed to photocopy an article in a learned journal and to get to the one and only photocopier in Taviscombe I had to go past Meadow Gardens. On an impulse I turned down the road and began looking for number 9A, which was where Annie Fisher lived.

  It was, I found, the ground floor flat in a house that had been divided into two. I went up the garden path, noticing as I did so that the grass needed cutting and the flower beds were full of weeds. That certainly didn’t seem like Annie. When I got to the door I realised that the ground floor was empty. There were curtains certainly but, as I stepped off the path and peered in the windows, I saw that the rooms were bare of furniture. I opened the side gate and went through into the back garden. Here, too, the weeds were beginning to take over. Annie must have been gone for several weeks. I looked into a garden shed and saw nothing there but a couple of old bottles that had once held weed killer or fertiliser and a rusty watering can without a rose
. A voice behind me made me turn round quickly and in some confusion.

  ‘She’s been gone well over a month now.’

  The woman next door was in the garden pegging tea towels on to her rotary clothes drier. She regarded me with interest but not surprise.

  ‘Miss Fisher, that is, if you’re looking for her.’

  She was an elderly woman with tightly permed grey hair and a cheerful manner. I went over to the low fence that divided the gardens and said, ‘Yes, I don’t seem to have seen her around lately and I wondered how she was. But where is she? I’d no idea she was thinking of moving.’

  ‘Australia.’

  ‘Australia!’ I echoed stupidly, as if I’d never heard of the place.

  ‘Yes. Like I said, she’s been gone over a month now. The council haven’t let her flat yet. Well, it needs quite a bit doing to it, decorating and suchlike.’

  ‘But—’ I found it difficult to take in the fact that Annie wasn’t there.

  The woman regarded me with some concern.

  ‘Was she a friend, then? You look like you’ve had a bit of a shock.’

  ‘Yes, in a way. I’ve known her for years, since I was a child. It just seems so odd that she didn’t mention this when I saw her last.’

  The woman picked up the plastic bowl that had held her washing and said, ‘Do you fancy a cup of coffee? I was just going to make one. I’m Mrs Taylor, by the way. It’d be nice to have a bit of company. I miss having Annie around; she often used to have a cup with me about now.’

  ‘That would be kind,’ I replied. ‘My name is Sheila Malory. As I said, I’ve known Annie for ages and it was a bit of a shock to find she’s suddenly gone away!’

  I went round to the front and into Mrs Taylor’s flat. She ushered me into the small sitting room which was crammed with furniture and a multiplicity of framed photographs and ornaments.

  ‘Please do sit down,’ she said. ‘I’ll just go and put the kettle on.’

  I looked around at some of the photographs. In pride of place was a large framed studio portrait of a girl in cap and gown holding a rolled-up diploma. She had the same cheerful expression as Mrs Taylor and I assumed it was her daughter. Next to it was one of a man in a fireman’s uniform and next to him a young man in a striped shirt, holding a football.

  Mrs Taylor came back into the room with two cups of coffee and a plate of bourbon biscuits on a tray.

  ‘There we are, then.’ she said. ‘Do you take sugar?’

  I declined the sugar and accepted a biscuit. Mrs Taylor sat down opposite me.

  ‘Well, now, about Annie.’ she began. ‘You know she had this brother who lives in Australia? Adelaide, it is. I was always interested, you see, because my Janet and her husband Roy, they went out to Perth – that’s Western Australia. They’ve done very well. Janet’s a teacher and Roy, he works for a chemical firm. They’ve got a lovely home! I went out to visit them last year, just after Jack died.’ She indicated the photograph of the fireman. ‘But anything about Australia’s interesting, isn’t it, when you’ve got someone out there? I always watch the Australian serials on the telly. Well, it shows you what it’s like there, doesn’t it? Anyway, this brother of Annie’s – Sam he’s called, but you’d know that – he’s been out in Adelaide for years. He came over to pay Annie a visit, and before you could say knife he’d persuaded her to go back to Australia with him! Well,’ she lowered her voice, ‘from what I heard, his wife had left him and the daughter, too. So you can imagine, he saw Annie here all alone and thought she might just as well be looking after him!’

  From her tone I gathered that she hadn’t taken to Sam Fisher.

  ‘But how on earth did he persuade her?’ I asked. ‘She was so very settled over here. She was always in and out to see Mrs Rossiter – that’s the lady she used to work for. She’s in a nursing home now. I can’t imagine that Annie would ever have left her.’

  ‘Oh yes, Mrs Rossiter. Annie was always on about her – how it was in the old days in that big house with all the other servants, and how Mrs Rossiter relied on her for everything. But you see, her brother got Annie interested in this religious thing. I can never remember which they are; not the Jehovah’s Witnesses, the others, you know the ones I mean. Apparently they’ve got missions (I think that’s what they call them) all over the world, here and in Australia. Well, Sam Fisher’s one of them – one of the high-ups over there, according to Annie – and when he was here, the time before last, he got Annie to go to the meetings (they have them in Taunton) and she went on going after he went back to Australia. She went regularly, every week. Thursday afternoons she always used to take the bus into Taunton. Well, if it made her happy! It takes all sorts, doesn’t it?’

  ‘So that when Sam Fisher came over this time he persuaded her that she ought to go back with him...’

  ‘Said it was her Christian duty.’ The words rang some sort of bell but I couldn’t think what it was. Mrs Taylor continued, ‘Just wanted to make a convenience of her, if you ask me, but she was very taken up with this religious thing lately.’

  ‘Did she tell Mrs Rossiter that she was going?’

  ‘Oh yes, she and that brother of hers took the old lady out for the afternoon in a car he’d hired and told her then.’

  ‘Was she upset, do you know?’

  ‘Well, Annie didn’t say. She was so taken up with all she’d got to do before she went – going in such a rush like that. But he said she might as well go back with him; afraid she might change her mind, I shouldn’t wonder. Sold all her things, just like that! I don’t know how she could do it. I could never get rid of all my bits and pieces.’ She looked around the crowded room. ‘It was difficult getting it all in when I had to move in here, after Jack went, but I couldn’t part with my treasures. Annie, though, she didn’t seem to give a backward glance. She was a changed woman, you might say! It’s funny – you think you know someone quite well and then they go and do something you’d never imagine!’

  ‘It’s strange about Annie and Mrs Rossiter, though,’ I said.

  ‘Well, there was one funny thing. I didn’t pay much attention to it at the time, but now you come to mention it...’

  ‘What was that?’

  ‘Well, I was having a cup of tea with her one day, after she’d told me she was going to Australia, and her brother was there. He was always around, I never really got the chance to have a proper talk with her before she went. Anyway, she was saying something about the old days, when she was with Mrs Rossiter, and apparently her brother used to work there too...’

  ‘Yes, he used to be the gardener.’

  ‘That’s right. Well, she was saying how pleased Mrs Rossiter had been to see Sam and how interested she was in all this mission work he was doing in Australia and, instead of sitting there looking pleased with himself, like he usually did when she was going on about how marvellous he was, he shut her up. Just like that. “Mrs Taylor doesn’t want to hear about that,” he said. Well, he was quite right, I didn’t! But it was a bit odd, though. He gave her quite a look and changed the subject.’

  ‘How strange.’

  ‘To be honest with you, Mrs Malory, I didn’t take to him, not at all. There was something there that I didn’t like. I can’t put my finger on it, but you know how it is with some people…’

  ‘To be honest, I’ve never really liked him myself, but Annie seems very fond of him and I do hope she is happy out there in Australia. It’s a big step to take at her age.’

  ‘I can’t say I’d fancy living so far way, myself. It’s a beautiful country and when I went out there our Janet said to me, “Why don’t you stay on here, Mum?” I know they’d really like me to make my home with them, but I couldn’t live anywhere but England, could you?’

  ‘No, I don’t believe I could. Did Annie leave you an address in Adelaide?’

  ‘Yes. Just a minute, I’ll get it for you.’ She got up and rummaged through some papers in a drawer. ‘Here it is.’

  I copied the addr
ess in my diary and thanked Mrs Taylor for the coffee.

  ‘It was nice having a bit of company. You get lonely sometimes when your family has gone away. My boy Paul – that’s him in his football things – he’s in the Navy now. Married a very nice girl and they’ve got two lovely little boys, but they live down in Cornwall so I don’t get to see them very much. I can’t manage the journey on my own now. It’s a dreadful thing to get old, isn’t it? Still, we should count our blessings and make the most of what we’ve got. At my time of life every day’s a bonus, that’s what I always say!’

  Mrs Taylor was still in full flow as I waved goodbye and walked down the path to my car. I felt a pang of sadness for her, as I did for my Meals on Wheels regulars who, I always felt, had more need of a sympathetic listener than meat and two veg.

  My way back from Meadow Gardens lay through the hinterland of guest-houses and bed-and-breakfast places that led down to the sea. The larger, grander ones had names to match – like Balmoral, Deeside or Glendower and the smaller houses, now at the height of the season with No Vacancies signs proudly displayed, had names that were more romantic or fanciful – Lorna Doone Cottage, Simla, Verona or even Valhalla. I looked, as I always did, for one small house, relic of a more innocent age, whose gate bore the legend ‘Gaydaze’. The narrow roads were difficult to negotiate since cars belonging to the summer visitors were parked on either side, so I turned off and went along the promenade and round by West Lodge. As I did so I suddenly remembered why the words ‘Christian duty’ had rung a bell. It was the phrase Ivy had heard the unknown man using to Mrs Rossiter.

  As I unpacked my shopping I told Michael what I had found out in Meadow Gardens.

  ‘And Ivy – you must go and see her while you’re home this time, darling. It would mean so much to her – did say something about a mission or missionaries.’

  ‘So you think that the mysterious stranger might be Sam Fisher?’