‘Sure? It’s a distance.’
Half a mile was considered a distance for this lot, thought Lee acidly. ‘I’m fine, really. I’ll take a walk. It’ll clear my head, help settle me down.’
The village of Petheram had changed little over the years. Not that he ever got back that often to notice – once a year, tops, if that. He worked out that it had been a year almost to the day since he’d last seen his parents. Nothing much changed in Petheram, ever. People came and went, but the village remained pretty much the same as it did a hundred years ago. George Lee knew this because he’d seen the photographs kept by one of those locals who act as self-appointed keepers of all things historical, Brendan Mollett, a Petheram-born man who had been using his retirement to amass a veritable archive on the history of the village and its surroundings. He’d been banging on about setting up a museum for ages, but nobody paid him any heed and said it would be a waste of time and money. But that didn’t stop him collecting recordings, notes, pictures, stories, local songs. Lee guessed Mollett had to fill in the gap between work and death some way. Then he immediately berated himself for his cynicism. That was Cameron Slade talking. That wasn’t him.
Petheram consisted of a single main street called Bristol Way, though it was as far from Bristol as could be imagined, and the road certainly didn’t lead anywhere near Bristol. The houses were typical rural cottages, built in huge blocks of hamstone to house the farm workers, often in horrendous conditions, according to Mollett, who revelled in the grim tales of damp and cold, of starvation and premature deaths and high infant mortality. Nowadays, on the rare occasion they came onto the market, they were highly-sought-after properties, usually by Londoners who often bought them as second homes or retired there and complained about mud on the road and noisy birds in the trees. They tended not to stay very long. Petheram was just a little too remote for many, just a little too insular. One guy he talked to said it was like trying to bed down in a clam without ever managing to get the shell open wide enough to squeeze inside. Told him there was something just a tad strange about the place for his liking, and moved back to Bermondsey within eight months.
The stone had an attractive honey-coloured hue, especially so when the sun sank low and its syrupy light bathed the old, ivy-clad walls, and many of the cottages still possessed their topping of thatch, giving it a chocolate-box appearance, even more so now that the roses were out in full bloom and the towering old sculptural trees heavy with verdant leaf.
It was quiet. Not a soul on the street. Yet this was Saturday afternoon. When he was a kid, George Lee remembered long summer weekends playing out on the car-empty street with gangs of childhood friends. Well, he called them friends. They never really returned the compliment as he remembered. There was none of that now. Since farming and its ancillary occupations – the sole source of work for the locals – had fallen into steep decline, with much of the land now sold off for development, there was nothing to keep the young here. For one thing they couldn’t afford to buy a house in Petheram even if they could find work, the pay being so poor and the houses attracting wealthy outsiders who were looking for idealised rural idylls, and pushed up their value till they were out of the reach of any but more wealthy outsiders. The only locals who owned properties in Petheram were those who inherited them from their parents before them. There were still a few of those, he thought. At least one day George Lee and his sister would one day inherit his parents’ house and that would fetch them a tidy sum.
One parent down, one to go, he thought.
It had become a ghost village. Beautiful, almost ethereal under the coppery evening light, but deserted, as if it had died long ago, its soul taken flight leaving behind its bones to dry and bleach in the sun.
He was almost displaying an emotional attachment and that wouldn’t do. He shrugged it off, passing his heavy suitcase from one hand to the other. He was beginning to wish he’d taken the offer of the lift from Phelps. The sun was far hotter than he realised, and he and exercise were more casual acquaintances than good friends. To make matters worse, his polished shoes were getting dusty. He hated it when his shoes got dirty.
He passed the small shop and post office, wondering how it managed to survive when so many had closed down. He swore the window display was the same as it was a year ago; a few buns and cakes for sale with a bluebottle buzzing around them; a few tins of peaches stacked up, their labels fading; A4 sheets taped to the window advertising the various activities to be had down at the village hall, from coffee mornings to a bring-and-buy sale. He wondered if old Mrs Cadogan still ran the place. She must be eighty if she’s a day, he thought, but I’ll bet she’s hanging on with her nails. She always used to say they’d have to carry her out in a box. Along with those stale buns and cakes and out-of-date tins of peaches, he thought. He used to steal sweets from the counter with his friends because she was as blind as a bat, and he always thought he’d gotten away with it till she told him on his eighteenth birthday, at a poorly-attended party at the village hall, that he owed her approximately thirty-two pounds and twelve pence for all the things he’d taken over the years.
He smiled, in spite of himself. He liked Mrs Cadogan, cantankerous old biddy that she was.
The village hall sat in a few acres of land on the edge of the village. The place had not changed one little bit, he thought. Still the same old shack with a tin roof that looked about to collapse. There’d been campaigns to restore it for years, but the money was never forthcoming. Beside this was a small tree-lined road that led to the local church, Saint Andrews, and the attendant vicarage, now sold off to pay for the church’s upkeep, the parish having to share a man-of-the-cloth with neighbouring parishes these days. George Lee had been christened in Saint Andrews. Thirty-eight years ago. 1975. Christ, when you thought about it, it was such a long time ago. Nearly four decades. Another time, another world even.
He was leaving the village behind, out in front of him a road leading out into open fields, and was surprised to see the old garden centre up and running for business. Tredwin’s, the new sign said at the white-painted iron gates.
He paused, set down his suitcase.
Tredwin’s. Had the Tredwins returned, too? After all this time?
It sure looked like it. He went through the gates, peeked inside the yard. It wasn’t unduly large, but it seemed to be well-stocked with plants and other gardening paraphernalia. The old building had been repaired and painted, so too the rows of greenhouses, and there were a couple of cars parked outside, so it looked like it was doing some business in spite of being so far off the beaten track.
The Tredwins, huh? He shook his head at the thought. He never expected to see a Tredwin back in Petheram. He wondered which one it was, exactly. He’d have to pay a visit after he got himself settled.
He took a narrow road that skirted the garden centre and cut through woodland, pausing every now and again to mop his shiny brow on his sleeve. The road became even more pinched, like a waist in a corset, passing two cottages set back from the road and almost swallowed by the shrubs and trees in which they sat. A mud-splashed Land Rover was parked close to the edge of a boundary wall. The gardens were unkempt, and the windows of both cottages were in dire need of repair, indicating these cottages at least still belonged to locals and had thus far escaped the clutches of wealthy outsiders.
The Lee home – and it had been so for at least six generations, he’d often been told – was little better looked after than its cousins two hundred yards or so further down the track. If anything it might be a little worse. That’s not the way to look after my inheritance, he thought. Its condition would knock thousands off the retail value when it came to selling it. The gate was almost hanging off its hinges, he noticed as he tried to lift it to close it. The path of stone slabs leading to the beaten old front door was uneven, many of them broken with weeds growing up between the cracks.
What a dump, he thought, pausing outside the door. Again he was beset with the feelin
gs of dread. That indescribable urge to turn and run. Why was that? The last time he had that feeling he was hit by a runaway car. No chance of that here, he thought. But he looked up to the roof and saw a number of dislodged roof tiles balanced on the edge and looking like they might topple from their precarious perch at any moment and fracture an unsuspecting skull down below.
Sure, so now you get premonitions? He laughed inwardly at himself, and for the second time that day attempted to shrug off the queer feelings.
The door opened before he could raise a hand to the knob.
‘You selfish little swine!’ a woman’s voice hissed, her pale face seeming to hover without a body in the dark beyond the door.
‘Hello, sis,’ he said. ‘Nice to see you, too.’
5
Poor Sylvia Tredwin
‘He’s been dead five days, George,’ said his sister, and if looks could kill he’d be lying dead on the step, speared by the twin poisonous barbs of her eyes.
‘He’s not exactly going to miss me, is he, Amelia?’ he returned indifferently.
She folded her arms in the way his older sister always used to. George Lee guessed he’d always be the runt of the family in her eyes. Always the naughty boy getting into mischief. She even used to spank him on behalf of his mother. She was about thirteen years older than him, but looked thirty, he thought spitefully, especially when she frowned in the bad-smell-way that she did. Her entire face crinkled up like the skin on one of his mum’s homemade rice puddings, cracking the foundation she pasted onto her naturally sallow skin.
‘Five days, George!’ she said. ‘Five days!’
‘I heard.’ He closed the door on the heat. Inside it was cool. It was always cool, he thought. Cool and musty smelling. Like someone had left damp washing out for a few days.
‘Where’s your respect? He was your father. The least you could do is come as soon as you heard.’
‘I came as soon as I could,’ he said putting his suitcase down and studying the white welt left behind on his fingers.
‘It took you five days? Christ, you only just got here in time to attend the bloody funeral. Mum’s in a real old state. You know how bad her nerves are.’
‘She’s always in a state,’ he said, almost under his breath.
‘That’s such a callous thing to say, George. She’s your mother and she’s just lost her husband. The least you could do as a son is give her your support when she needs it the most. You are a selfish swine, George.’
‘So you already said. I had commitments.’
‘What commitments? All you do is sit on that fat arse of yours and write crap. You don’t know what commitment is. Take a close look at your marriage as a shining example.’
His brows lowered and he glowered at her, but he bit his tongue. ‘My arse isn’t fat and I don’t write crap,’ he returned. ‘And my marriage is none of your bloody business.’ He pushed by her. ‘Where is she?’
‘In the living room,’ she said, shaking her head like an angry school teacher before an errant child. ‘And be nice to her, for once.’
He shot her an acid glance and trudged down the cramped hall to the living room. The curtains were drawn, the room caked in a semi-dusk. His mother’s small figure sat near the window in her favourite chair, silhouetted against the curtains. She didn’t register his entrance, her eyes staring at a photograph frame on a coffee table before her. It was their wedding photograph. George Lee recognised it at once; it used to stand on the mantelpiece over the fire. Black and white print. Ugly silver-plated frame that had been worn in places by its frequent polishes to the copper-coloured base metal beneath. They’d been married in 1960. Cassandra Cowper and Jeffery Lee – Cassie and Jeff. Amelia was born a year later. They had to wait another thirteen years before having a son. His dad had always wanted a boy, or so his mother used to say; but his father seemed to be perpetually disappointed with him, never quite coming up to the expectations of what a son should be. The man poured love liberally on his sister, on Amazing Amelia, but he had to stand constantly in her shadow trying to catch any dribble that she missed. George hated his sister.
There was a reason why so many of the victims in his books were women. Women, in his mind that looked a lot like his sister.
Careful, he told himself; you promised yourself you wouldn’t think like this. Not at this time. That’s Cameron Slade again, creeping to the surface. You promised you’d leave him behind in the flat. Try, in heaven’s name, for your mother’s sake.
‘Hi, Mum,’ he said dully, almost in a reverential whisper, as if the frame on the coffee table was some kind of holy relic and his mother’s slightly bowed attitude one of solemn prayer before it. He regarded her bandaged knee and the walking stick that was close by her, one of those grey NHS things, standing against the chair. Arthritis. Runs in the family. His own knees were already playing up.
‘George,’ she said, her voice a ghost of its former self. ‘You came.’
‘Of course I came,’ he said, immediately eaten up by guilt. Yes, he could have gotten here the same day his sister phoned him to tell him their father had died suddenly and unexpectedly. But he chose not to. Let him wait, he thought, the way I had to wait for him to bother with me. Which was hardly ever except to criticise me. ‘Your hair’s too long; your clothes don’t sit on you right; your face is dirty; your homework’s shocking; your attitude stinks; look at you – you’re an insult to manhood; don’t you swear at me, young man; there – any more of that from you and you’ll get another damn good thrashing!’
George Lee choked back a torrent of memories that built up behind his dam wall of resolve; he felt tiny cracks beginning to appear in it.
‘You were busy?’ she asked, the raising of her left brow a fraction filled with meaning.
He nodded. ‘Very busy,’ he lied. ‘I came as soon as I could.’ A screaming silence hung in the air. ‘Where is he?’ he asked tentatively.
‘At the undertakers. Do you want to see him?’
He shook his head. ‘No, not yet. I couldn’t…’
‘We could drive out…’
‘No, really, it’s fine,’ he said.
‘He looks so peaceful,’ she said, her voice even, almost matter-of-fact.
He moved to sit down opposite her, put his hands on his lap. Stared at the photograph frame between them. As in life he felt his father had always come between him and his mother. Far from wanting a boy, George Lee detected a huge amount of jealousy in his father’s behaviour towards his only son. He couldn’t get close to his mother because of it. And gradually his poison infected her and he managed to turn her against him, too. Hell, it was bad enough having to see the man in the photo, let alone seeing him dead in a coffin.
‘When’s the funeral?’
‘Wednesday.’
He nodded. ‘Is there anything I can do?’ he asked.
She regarded him with eyes that speared deep into his soul. He found he had to turn away. ‘You’ve done enough,’ she said.
‘What’s that supposed to mean?’
She shrugged. ‘I didn’t mean anything by it. I didn’t hear your car pull up,’ she added.
‘I had an accident on the way here. In the village. A young boy-racer called Steve rammed his bloody car into mine. My Uncle Gary’s going to be taking it to his garage. God knows how much damage it’s done. I can’t drive it in its current state, that’s for sure. So I’ve got to wait until I can get a hire car through the insurance. Till then I’m stuck here…’ He realised what he’d said and opened his mouth to extricate himself from it, but no words came out.
‘It seems you are, George,’ she said. ‘Never mind, your Uncle Gary will sort it out for you.’
Gary Cowper was her brother. She had two, the other being Robert Cowper, both of them running the local garage and hanging onto it well into retirement. The Cowpers were a big influence in Petheram. Every place has such a family, thought George Lee; a family that had its hands in anything and everything, sat on loc
al committees or influenced them, were the loudest and brashest at any village affair, and were the ones you didn’t talk openly about in a negative manner, or you’d feel in one way or another their own negative influence. The Cowper brothers took after their father for being headstrong, and in their younger days fought with anyone and everyone over anything or nothing. There was even talk that they were the first villagers to be busted by the police for being in possession of LSD back in 1968. They were a pair to be reckoned with till they grew older and got themselves trained up in their father’s garage. They took it over when the old man died. The sign over the garage office still read Cowper and Sons.
George liked his Uncle Gary. A blunt, grousey old man now, but he’d always had a soft spot for his sister’s boy. It was Gary Cowper that first tried to show George the inner workings of an engine, finally having to admit the lad simply didn’t have it in him. But George appreciated the attention all the same. Attention he rarely got from his own father. Many of the heroes in his books were based loosely on Gary Cowper. No-nonsense, gritty, good-with-their-hands salt-of-the-earth guys, who’d throw a punch at the same time they’d throw a party. His Uncle Gary was the only family member ever to have read one of his books and said it was good. That didn’t mean a great deal in reality, as Gary Cowper only ever read the sports page in the tabloids, but his uncle’s praise and unconditional acceptance meant a great deal to George.
‘Is my room ready?’ he asked.
She nodded. ‘It’s always ready for you, you know that. But you rarely come home to use it…’
Again that feeling of guilt creeping over him. ‘I’m busy, mum. You know how it is.’
‘Yes, I know how it is.’
He sighed, felt increasingly awkward. ‘I see that the garden centre has opened up again. It’s one of the Tredwins,’ he said, mainly to change the subject.
His mother’s jaw muscles worked away visibly as she stared at him. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘It’s Adam Tredwin who’s bought it. He’s been here five months or so now.’
FLINDER'S FIELD (a murder mystery and psychological thriller) Page 3
