The Case of the Dotty Dowager

by Cathy Ace

  As she breathed in a couple of lungsful of fresh country air, Annie Parker began to cough heartily. Dropping her luggage to politely cover her mouth, she heard an ominous crack come from inside the softer of the two bags. Still threatening to hack up a lung, she quickly realized that the bag had contained a new bottle of perfume, and her favorite sauce. She suspected it now contained a puddle of one or the other. Typical!

  Nattering to herself that there was nothing she could do about it at that moment, she caught sight of the Coach and Horses pub. Annie tutted with resignation as she realized that she was directly opposite the corner where she wanted to be, and she weighed up walking along the pavement around the outer edge of the square to reach her goal, or whether she should simply tramp across the large grassy common. There were no paths, and she didn’t want to soak her shoes as soon as she got off the bus, so she decided to stick to the asphalt, which was her preferred surface upon which to walk in any case.

  There wasn’t much traffic and, once the bus had chugged out of the village, it was very quiet. At least, Annie thought it was quiet because she lived in a flat that overlooked eight lanes of traffic. Gradually, as her ears acclimatized to their new surroundings, she heard birds singing, the odd lawn mower rattling around, the annoying tsst-thump-tsst-thump-tsst-thump of a rock anthem somewhere far in the distance, and one of those bells that jangles when a shop door opens. The bell was ringing behind her. She looked around and noticed an antiques shop that she’d wandered past, and she drifted back to peer inside.

  Sitting in the Georgian bow window was a small table flanked by two chairs. Exquisitely inlaid with marquetry in a variety of shades and types of woods, the pieces complemented each other in scale, style and age. Most of Annie’s knowledge of antiques came from twenty years of watching Antiques Roadshow on the BBC and guessing the prices with Eustelle on the phone. They’d always watched it that way, both in their own flats, each with a cup of tea in one hand, and a telephone in the other. They enjoyed it. But Annie knew what she liked, and she liked these pieces.

  ‘Caught your eye, did they?’

  Annie hadn’t noticed the man at all, then he was right beside her. She jumped, dropping one of her bags on the man’s foot.

  ‘I’m most terribly sorry,’ he said quickly. ‘Here, allow me.’ He picked up the bag from his injured appendage and handed it to a very surprised Annie.

  ‘Ta, doll,’ was all she could summon. Why’s he apologizing to me? she thought.

  ‘You’re most welcome,’ said the man. Annie noted that he looked as though he was wearing someone else’s teeth, plus his own; there seemed to be altogether too many of them in his mouth. They spilled out, forming an aggressive point. It made Annie think of horses, which she really didn’t care for, and she knew she was leaning away from the man.

  Wishing he would stop smiling at her, Annie introduced herself, by way of a distraction. ‘Annie Parker. Here for the weekend,’ she said, extending an arm as far as she could, and hoping he’d move away to shake her hand. Instead, he grasped it and moved even closer to her. He was almost as tall as Annie, and almost as skinny, but, whereas her locks were shorn close, this man had a wild mop of gray hair that sat on top of his head like a couple of frosted Shredded Wheats. Annie tried not to stare, but it was mesmerizing; it was quite obvious that his hairdo was kept in place with hairspray.

  ‘Tristan Thomas,’ he said with an immediately obvious Welsh accent, shaking Annie’s hand as though he were trying to start a car with a crank. ‘At your service,’ he added, alarming Annie even further. Then the penny dropped.

  ‘Your shop?’ she asked, jerking her head at the window.

  ‘Indeed it is,’ he effused. Annie smelled licorice on his breath, and noticed black spittle squelching in the corners of his mouth. She withdrew her hand as gently as she could, his grip sliding along her long fingers.

  ‘A pleasure,’ she lied.

  ‘Maybe you’d like to come and take a look at what else I have to offer?’ He grinned.

  Annie noted that the man’s accent was a good deal heavier that Carol’s, which, she supposed, had lessened as the years she lived in London increased. It hadn’t occurred to Annie that understanding what people were saying in the little Welsh village might be a challenge. She felt a bit uncertain of herself, but was utterly convinced about her opinion of this man.

  Everything in Annie recoiled from him; she couldn’t help herself. She resorted to an unusually sheepish grin as she replied, ‘Well, you see, I’ve only just got off the bus, and I’d like to dump me bags really, doll, so, if you don’t mind, I might come back later.’ She started to walk away, determined to shake off the man’s unwanted attention.

  Tristan Thomas followed, stretching a worryingly long arm toward her. ‘My card,’ he said, thrusting his hand toward her face.

  Annie stopped, put a bag on the ground, took the card, put it in her pocket, picked up her bag – all in about a second – then continued on her way, calling, ‘Ta, doll!’ over her shoulder. She walked as quickly as she could, and didn’t look back, though she could feel a pair of watery brown eyes boring into her back. She looked neither right nor left, but kept her head high and shoulders down, and congratulated herself that long legs meant she could cover a lot of ground very quickly.

  Arriving at the pub felt like reaching sanctuary. Annie strode inside, walked up to the bar and said to the barman, ‘G and T please, doll. And make it a double. Ta.’

  As she settled herself on a bar stool, her bags at her feet, the man behind the bar looked her up and down, then set about preparing her drink. Annie shoved a five-pound note in his direction, which he took, replacing it with a worryingly small amount of change. She drank deeply.

  ‘Up from London?’ asked the barman as she replaced her half-empty glass on the bar.

  Annie nodded, her hackles rising. ‘How can you tell? Not many of us lot around these parts?’

  The barman smiled. ‘Yeah, it is a bit milky hereabouts, but it’s not that. Accent, love. Recognized it right off. East End somewhere?’

  ‘Mile End, but me mum and dad moved us out to Plaistow. Now I live in Wandsworth.’

  ‘Posh,’ replied the man with a grin, pretending to polish a glass.

  ‘You?’ said Annie.

  ‘Bethnal Green,’ said the man smiling.

  ‘You must have been away a long time,’ remarked Annie. ‘You said that as though it’s spelled with a “th” not an “f”.’

  The man picked up a glass from behind the bar containing what looked like Scotch, and raised it toward Annie.

  The toast, and the gulp that followed, led Annie to order another drink and produce another note.

  ‘On the house,’ said the man. ‘John James, landlord,’ he added, ‘but they call me Jacko.’

  ‘Of course they do,’ replied Annie. ‘Annie Parker. They call me Annie.’

  ‘Not “Nosey”?’ quipped the landlord.

  ‘Not if they know what’s good for ’em,’ replied Annie, giving him a look that could freeze lava.

  ‘And what brings a nice cockney girl like you to Welsh Wales this weekend, I wonder,’ said Jacko, now leaning on the beer taps, there being no other customers waiting to be served.

  ‘I dunno,’ mused Annie, ‘I thought I’d just get away for a few days. You know, fill me lungs with some fresh air before it starts to rain for the whole winter. Just have a bit of a wander, really.’ She wanted to sound vague, but it seemed she’d gone too far.

  ‘Picked a bit of a funny place to wander. Not much in these parts, except the hall. Got off the bus, right?’

  Annie nodded. Maybe the kerfuffle she’d caused at the bus stop had drawn some unwanted attention after all. ‘Well, if you’re going to leave town you might as well leave it good and proper. I just want to sit and be. Maybe walk a bit, you know?’

  Jacko didn’t look convinced. ‘Where are you staying?’

  Annie was surprised. ‘Here. A friend of mine booked me in. A bit last
minute.’

  ‘Haven’t got no one booked in this weekend,’ replied Jacko. ‘At least, not that I know of. Hang on a mo …’ He walked to the end of the bar and poked his head around the corner. Annie noticed the bottom of a set of stairs up which he shouted, ‘Del? Delyth? You up there?’

  A distant female voice replied, ‘Yeah?’

  ‘Did you take a booking for this weekend?’

  ‘Yeah. Tonight and tomorrow. I told you last night.’

  ‘No, you didn’t.’

  The female voice drew closer and sounded more exasperated. ‘Yes, I did, Jacko. Told you after closing, I did. Standing right there, behind the bar, we was.’

  A woman of about fifty appeared at the foot of the stairs. Her clothes were bingo chic, her hair the color and texture of dried grass, and her complexion that of someone as familiar with alcohol as the cask in which Scotch has been aged.

  ‘My lady-wife, Delyth,’ said Jacko to Annie, by way of an introduction. The woman nodded. ‘Delyth, my lamb, this is Ms Annie Parker, who believes she’s staying here for the weekend.’

  Delyth James looked Annie over, registered some surprise, then seemed to lose interest in her immediately, and replied, ‘Yeah, she is.’ She turned as she said, ‘Room’s ready. Wanna come up?’

  Annie was relieved that at least she didn’t feel she needed a knife to cut this particular Welsh woman’s accent, looked longingly at her full glass on the bar, but felt she should follow her hostess.

  ‘No one’ll touch it,’ said the landlord, clearly noting Annie’s glance. ‘If you unpack later you can come straight back down and keep me company.’ He cast his eyes around the pub, where only two other patrons were huddled at two separate tables nursing half-pints. ‘I could do with it,’ he said with a shrug.

  ‘OK,’ said Annie, and she did just that. It wasn’t difficult to drag herself away from her rented room: miniscule, with uneven floorboards, luridly matching curtains and bedspread – refugees from a 1980s attempt at interior design – it wasn’t exactly a home away from home, so she was happy to return to the comparative cheeriness of the almost empty pub. Annie had never seen the appeal of beams upon which she could bump her head, or horse brasses that would require constant buffing, so the décor of the pub left much to be desired in her eyes, but she supposed it was what the tourists expected, and the locals had learned to ignore, so she understood why it looked the way it did.

  Settling onto her stool once again, she took her chance to begin to pump the landlord. ‘Get many tourists this time of year?’ she asked. She felt it was the sort of opening gambit any landlord might expect.

  Jacko drew close once again and said, ‘Not enough.’

  ‘A lot of locals, then?’

  ‘Not really.’ He nodded toward the almost empty pub.

  Annie wondered if Jacko wanted company with whom he could be silent, but decided to give it another go.

  ‘Got to be tough keeping going then, I’d have thought. What brought you all the way out here, from Bethnal Green?’

  ‘Her upstairs.’ He nodded. ‘She’s from just up the way near Hay-on-Wye, and her old man set us up with this place when we got married. Wanted to keep her close by. And if your father-in-law tells you he’s going to buy you a pub, well, what’s a man to say?’

  Annie nodded sagely. ‘Kids?’

  ‘A boy. Well, you know, young man now. Though young layabout would be a better way to describe him. I mean, I know Delyth’s old man gave us this place, but before that I had a trade. And we’ve worked hard at running this place too. Him? All the get up and go of a slug, that one. I’ve told him to get a trade, even helped him get an apprenticeship, but he didn’t stick to it. Too much like hard work for him. Told him and told him. But no, he’d rather hang about with his mates. At least they’re family, I suppose.’

  ‘Hereabouts?’

  ‘Nah, back home. Cousins, mainly.’

  A very old man, who Annie fancied smelled of linseed oil, ambled up to the bar, distracting Jacko for a few moments as he silently poured another half pint of mild ale, which the man sipped, then took back to his table.

  ‘Not the chattiest, is he? Nor the other one,’ said Annie quietly.

  Jacko smiled, looking tired. ‘Them two? In here every day, regular as you like, from about eleven thirty till about two. Each of them’ll have three halves of mild. They each sit at their own table staring into space. But will they ever talk to each other? No. Known each other all their lives, they have. Grew up here, had families here, worked the estate their whole lives. Then they sit there. Like that. You’d think they’d want to talk, you know, like about old times or summat. But nothing. I tried a few times to get them going, but they don’t want to do it.’

  Annie gave the matter some thought. She knew two men in their eighties just like these two who sat at separate tables in her local pub in Wandsworth. She’d never fathomed them, either.

  ‘Each to their own,’ she said.

  ‘True,’ replied Jacko, washing the used half pint glass.

  ‘What’s the estate you mentioned?’ asked Annie as innocently as she could.

  ‘The Chellingworth Estate. Just up the way there. Duke of Chellingworth lives at Chellingworth Hall. Owns pretty much everything hereabouts. Thought you might be here to visit the place. They let the likes of us in there these days, so long as we pay up for the privilege.’

  ‘Maybe I will,’ mused Annie. ‘But if they own everything around here, how come you own this pub?’ asked Annie. She was curious.

  Jacko smiled. ‘Something to do with the bloke who ran the pub when it was still owned by the Twyst family giving Charles the first a load of beer for his troops. So Charlie-Boy tells the then duke he has to give the pub to the bloke running it. Land, stock, building, the lot. And it’s stayed that way ever since. You know, in private hands, like. Doesn’t make a lot of sense to me, ’cos as far as I know Charles the first didn’t ever come by this way. Nearest he got was Shrewsbury, which was a lot farther away in those days, if you know what I mean.’

  Annie nodded. She wasn’t desperately interested in ancient history, so tried to get her enquiries back on course. ‘Nice people round here, are they?’

  Jacko looked thoughtful. ‘Usual mix. Some tossers, but mainly steady country types. Course, there’s them posh houses out past the ring road. One of the farmers sold off his land and they built some of them “executive estate” houses. Load of rich twits from all over. Call themselves Londoners, some of ’em do. But only one or two really are. Got some of the posh Welsh and the posh English there. Hideous places. You know – all fur coat and no knickers type of houses. See, I like the old places, me. Really old stuff. You?’

  ‘Marks and Sparks is fine by me,’ said Annie honestly.

  ‘Like her upstairs,’ said Jacko. ‘You women. If we have any more pillows on our bed there won’t be room for me. And changes them all the time, she does.’

  ‘Happy wife, happy life,’ said Annie, quoting something she’d seen on TV.

  ‘Happy flamin’ credit card company, more like,’ replied Jacko, sounding tired.

  ‘No lorries round here for stuff to fall off the back of then?’ winked Annie.

  Jacko stood upright and began to polish the beer taps. ‘Not so you’d notice,’ he replied. Annie spotted that his tone had become guarded.

  ‘Doin’ all right over there, David?’ he called to the customer who hadn’t moved yet. The man looked surprised to be addressed at all, and Annie detected a distraction on the part of Jacko.

  She looked at her glass and decided she’d have to sip more slowly. ‘So what did you do before the pub?’ she asked cheerily.

  Sensing he was on safer ground, Jacko replied just as brightly, ‘Sparks, me. You know, electrician. Good job. Worked me own hours, and I might have made a good go of it, but we were young, and we spent most of our time down the pub anyway, so we thought it would be fun to run one. Didn’t have any idea how hard it would be, but we worked at it, and
it did well. Well, it did back then, anyway. The no smoking thing’s done for us.’

  ‘I saw you’ve got some tables outside,’ said Annie. ‘I can smoke out there, can’t I?’

  Jacko nodded. ‘Yes. Not so bad in the summer, but the winter? This is Wales. Start smoking when they’re about ten around here, so now they all stock up at the supermarkets in Brecon, or Builth Wells, and drink and smoke at home. The young ones play those stupid game things, and the old ones sit around and moan about how the pub isn’t the place it once was. Of course, the tourists who want to eat here love it, but they’re only here a few months, then it gets pretty dismal. As you can see.’

  ‘Well, I’ll have another,’ said Annie, draining her glass, ‘but just a single this time, ta. And I insist upon paying.’

  Jacko prepared her drink. ‘I won’t say no. But you’re not going to sit here all day, are you? What about the peace and quiet of the countryside just outside my doors?’

  ‘Well, I was thinking I should eat something,’ said Annie, realizing the time. ‘Have you got a menu?’

  Jacko looked embarrassed. ‘I have, but it’s just her and me right now. We’re not one of those gastro pubs, and I’m not as good in the kitchen as Delyth. But she’s got a bit of a headache today, so if you want much more than a sandwich, you might be out of luck.’ He tried a winning grin as he passed a slightly slimy plastic-encased card to Annie, and she was wondering how she’d manage without something in her stomach to soak up the gin.

  ‘Put her down, Jacko, you don’t know where she’s been,’ boomed a cracked voice from behind Annie. Annie turned from the bar to see a silhouette approaching her from the open doorway.

  ‘Oh my Good Gawd! It’s you, innit?’ said the small, round shape.

  Annie peered, but couldn’t make out any features. ‘Sorry?’ she said.

  ‘You’re Eustelle’s girl. Eustelle Parker’s girl. Whatsyourname?’

  ‘Annie?’ said Annie hesitantly.

  ‘That’s right. Annie. That’s your name. Remember me? Well, I dare say you wouldn’t. Too young, I s’pose. Though maybe not. I’m Wayne’s mother, Olive. Olive Saxby. Remember? Mile End infants? Tower Hamlets juniors? In school with Wayne, you was. Remember?’