Snake in the Grass

by Dominic Luke

  ‘Nonsense! It’s not as if you’ve got anything else to do. You don’t go out to work, do you? And your children are almost ready to fly the nest. You’re just the ticket, Gwen.’

  Gwen quailed. What exactly was the parish council? It sounded official, important: just the type of thing she steered clear of. What if people got the impression it had been her idea to put herself forward? They’d think she was getting above herself, a newcomer (anyone who hadn’t lived in the village half a century at least was a newcomer), a woman who’d been married twice (this was bound to be alluded to).

  Gwen said, ‘I’m not really very well known in the village.’ She fervently hoped this was true. She wanted nothing more than to be overlooked. ‘Nobody would vote for me.’ She clung to this certainty.

  ‘My dear woman, we don’t bother with elections! Oh no, no, no! Far too much fuss and palaver. We just co-opt you. It’s quite simple. I will pop round sometime soon and tell you what’s what. I can’t stop now. I’m parked on a double yellow, and I don’t think that new traffic warden is aware of quite who I am.’

  Lady Darkley swept on her way, leaving Gwen quaking and starting to panic. The problem was, once Lady Darkley had set her mind on something it took an upheaval the magnitude of a tsunami – or a medium-to-large-sized meteorite – to deflect her from her purpose.

  With a sinking feeling, Gwen scooped up the contents of her trolley and tipped them back into the freezers. What was the use of short cuts if all the precious time she saved was to be used up on Lady Darkley’s schemes? It was enough to make one wail and beat one’s breast – and with the Christmas epidemic in full spate, probably no one would have given her a second glance if she had.

  But she didn’t have the energy to wail, let alone beat her breast.

  It was all she could do to push her trolley around to the (time-consuming) fresh veg: everything was such an effort.

  Picking over the loose carrots, she let the Christmas chaos engulf her.

  SIX

  ‘I HATE BOXING Day.’

  Lydia was speaking to her microwave as it warmed up leftovers from yesterday’s dinner. She looked through the little window as the plate of food slowly revolved.

  ‘Boxing Day is even worse than Christmas Day. It’s so much more pointless.’

  The microwave hummed. A spoon in an empty mug rattled in sympathy.

  ‘I’m not the sort of person who feels sorry for herself.’ Lydia propped her head in her hands, resting her elbows on the work surface, contemplative. ‘I don’t mind being on my own. In fact, I prefer it— Sorry, what was that?’

  Her eyes narrowed, regarding the microwave with suspicion. Its hum seemed to have changed in tone, risen an octave. Or was it her imagination?

  ‘Of course it’s my imagination. You are not the type to answer back, are you?’ The microwave droned on, indifferent. Reassured, Lydia continued. ‘I don’t mind being on my own. It has its advantages. But once upon a time I had friends. I don’t mean a microwave (no offence) or even a dog. I mean proper, human friends. Where are they now? What happened?’

  She knew the answer. Nigel had happened, that was what. Nigel had skilfully pried her away from her friends, whom he disapproved of. He had isolated her.

  ‘But,’ she said to the microwave, ‘I do not want to think about Nigel. Nigel is persona non grata.’

  The microwave agreed, beeping forcefully. Lydia took out the plate using a tea towel, peeled off the cling film, set it on a tray where she had already arranged a knife and fork, a napkin, salt and pepper, and a jar of cranberry sauce. Carrying the tray through to the main room, she sat down on the sofa. There was a repeat of The Two Ronnies on TV to keep her company.

  She poked at her meal with the fork. The turkey was cardboard-dry, the roast potatoes soggy. She munched on them, looking round the room. In one corner, Prize’s basket sat empty, his blanket on top. The fact that the blanket was neatly folded seemed to indicate a dreadful finality.

  ‘Four candles. Handles for forks,’ Lydia murmured, listening to the TV but not watching it, her eyes glued instead to the basket. Poor Prize. He was missing his favourite. He had liked The Two Ronnies. The theme music had made him bark. But he would bark no more. He had expired in her own arms with barely a whimper. Remembering that moment, she saw in her mind’s eye the topsy-turvy-faced vet. The hypodermic needle he had been holding had grown in her imagination to vast proportions, big enough to blot out the world.

  Lydia shivered. What a way to go. What a horrid man that vet had been.

  ‘And to think I usually like bearded men,’ she said, cutting a slice of turkey, lifting it on her fork. She paused, looked at the desiccated meat with aversion, lowered it back to her plate. Scraping it off her fork with the knife, she speared a Brussels sprout instead, reflecting as she did so that Nigel might be persona non grata but there was no getting away from the fact that he was the one who had given her the dog, her consolation prize – and a constant reminder of all she had lost. Was that what Nigel had intended when he left?

  ‘If I had been thinking clearly,’ she said as she chewed the Brussels sprout, ‘I would have got rid of Prize at the outset.’

  But she had not been thinking clearly, reeling after Nigel’s bombshell. He had left her to move in with a girl called Polly or Molly: the name hardly mattered now but had seemed important at the time, which only went to show what a state she had been in.

  ‘Catatonic,’ she murmured, stirring with her knife the cranberry sauce in its jar.

  It had been Prize who finally roused her, licking her hand and whining, looking at her with those trusting eyes. He had been hungry.

  ‘Prize was an innocent party,’ she said, looking at the blade of her knife smeared with cranberry sauce. ‘He couldn’t help that he was being used.’

  She licked the knife speculatively, pulled a face, screwed the lid firmly on the jar of cranberry sauce. Why had she even bought it? Habit, presumably. Nigel had liked to—

  ‘But I am not going to think about Nigel.’ She sighed, eyeing her microwaved meal with distaste. ‘Why am I eating my dinner at eleven o’clock in the morning? This is ludicrous! It’s not as if I am desperate for something to do. There are lots of things to keep me busy. I could finish my portrait of Prize for a start.’

  She put the tray aside, stood up, turned off the TV (she’d lost the remote again: it was probably under that jumble on top of the cabinet). The half-finished portrait of Prize languished to one side of the sofa, leaning against the arm rest. There was a superficial resemblance to the deceased dog, but it was not really the Prize she had known. There was nothing of his mischief, his jealousy, his devotion. What she had produced, she decided, was comparable to those ghastly collectors’ plates advertised in the Sunday supplements: the ones with titles such as Faithful Friend and His Master’s Voice. The dog in her picture was a collectors’ plate dog. The real Prize eluded her.

  Her pictures were worthless. Inspiration was at a low ebb. Trying to paint in this mood would only demoralize her still further. But she couldn’t simply sit around moping. She had to do something.

  For a start, she could tackle the mess in here. Not just in this room, either: her whole cottage was becoming far too cluttered. She would change that right now.

  Taking her tray through to the kitchen, she scraped the remains of her unappetizing dinner into the bin then dumped the plate and cutlery into the sink where there was already a pile of dirty crockery. It was a disheartening sight. Nearby on the work surface was something rather more alluring: a bottle of gin. She could almost see it winking at her.

  No. She was not going down that path today. She would stand firm. Gin could wait. Her sights were set on the unnecessary clutter in her cottage. De-cluttering was the order of the day.

  Buoyed up by the strength of her resolve, she set to work. There was a big cardboard box mouldering away in the back porch. She dragged it through to the main room. This, she said, would be the disposal chute.

&
nbsp; ‘Everything must go,’ she muttered. She liked the idea. It sounded good. It could be her mantra. She chanted it. ‘Everything must go, everything must go!’

  She forged ahead, cutting a swathe through the cottage, casting all and sundry into the disposal chute: gaggles of spoons inherited from her mother (wooden, not silver); redundant tins of dog food (never again, no more pets); piles of plastic containers waiting for the day when they would come in useful, a day that never came; paperbacks with bent spines that dribbled sand from distant holiday beaches; chipped statuettes, threadbare cushions, a broken table lamp, all the detritus from the top of the cabinet (there was no remote under the mess: it must be down the back of the sofa). Reaching a pitch of ruthlessness (easier than expected, but then it was Boxing Day), Lydia seized Prize’s basket and the neatly folded blanket and balanced them on top of the crammed cardboard box.

  ‘Everything must go! This will be a fresh start, a blank canvas!’

  Staggering under the weight of the box, she kicked open the front door and wobbled across to the wheelie bin. She dumped the disposal chute next to the bin then took a step back, glowing with a sense of achievement. Now perhaps she could draw a line under—

  ‘Yoo-hoo! Lydia! Hello! Merry Christmas!’

  Startled, Lydia turned to look up her drive. There in the street, waving, was Gwen Collier. Her family was gathered round her as in a photo album snap: the tall, heavy-set, bearded husband; the stepson Richard (purveyor of vodka jellies, Lydia remembered with a spark of curiosity); the impish daughter; and, lurking in the background, shifty and sulky-faced, the boy Dean: her nemesis.

  ‘We’re just going for a quick drink before lunch,’ Gwen trilled.

  ‘It’s tradition.’ Lanky Richard raised an ironic eyebrow, mocking tradition.

  ‘It’ll only be the one,’ Gwen continued. ‘Why don’t you join us?’

  ‘Oh, no, I couldn’t possibly, I—’ Lydia’s instincts, as she stood there being gawped at by the family group, told her to run into the cottage and slam the door; and she felt she must steer clear of Dean at all costs. But then she glanced at the disposal chute and the sense of achievement stirred in her again, giving her courage. What about the fresh start, the blank canvas? And wasn’t it lily-livered to flinch from Dean, to run away? Their paths were bound to cross; she couldn’t avoid him for ever. This anxiety she felt – this incipient panic – needed to be nipped in the bud.

  On top of all this there was something else: a half-heard inflection in Gwen’s voice, a sort of false brightness. Was it imagination, or did Gwen look rather ragged round the edges? Was there more to her casual invitation – why don’t you join us? – than mere politeness: a sort of desperate hopefulness, in fact?

  I have never been very good, thought Lydia as she loitered by the wheelie bin, at all that female solidarity stuff. But one did, in a roundabout way, feel that one was in debt to Gwen: Dean was her son, after all. In addition – this happy thought came to her in a flash – there was the exhibition to consider. That albatross was still hanging round her neck. Now might be the perfect opportunity to scupper the idea once and for all.

  ‘Of course I’ll come – why not, it sounds like fun!’ Lydia managed a dazzling smile. ‘I’ll just get my coat.’

  The pub was packed. She was not the only one, Lydia surmised, searching for ways to escape the Boxing Day blues. The landlady – the Stasi – was having to work behind the bar for a change. Her strident, rather resentful tones rose above the hubbub. ‘No, you weren’t next, wait your turn … I’ve only got one pair of hands, in case you hadn’t noticed … must you take all my change, haven’t you got anything smaller than a twenty … no, no, you definitely said medium white, you’ll have to take it now, I’ve poured it….’ The new barmaid was conspicuous by her absence.

  There was one free table in the lounge bar, up a corner by the window. Richard nabbed some extra stools. As she squeezed into her place and slipped off her coat, Lydia kept a wary eye on Dean. He seemed more or less oblivious of her presence, but that might be an act. Some of the students at the college were cunning as well as precocious, went out of their way to get one over on you. Was Dean of this ilk? The problem was, she simply did not know. He wasn’t in any of the classes she taught. She had a vague idea that he was more science-oriented; but that didn’t help her in her present predicament.

  Drinks were being discussed. It was Basil’s round. What could he get her?

  ‘Gin and tonic, please,’ she said automatically before remembering her vow to avoid gin today. ‘Actually, I’ll—’

  It was too late. Basil had gone, elbowing his way through the crowd.

  They sat in a bubble of silence amidst the crush and the jabber, Lydia facing Gwen and Amanda across the table, Richard squashed between them, framed by cold grey daylight. It was Richard who broke the silence.

  ‘Well, this is cosy.’

  Facetious, thought Lydia, who did not like the way Richard was looking at her – the way he was grinning.

  Gwen stirred. ‘Oh, by the way, Lydia, I haven’t forgotten that I promised you my paintings. It’s just that with Christmas and so on….’

  ‘That’s quite all right. There’s no hurry.’ Lydia tried to be as offhand as possible. Would Gwen get the message?

  ‘I had hoped,’ said Gwen tentatively, ‘to paint something new, but … well….’

  ‘Dad disapproves,’ said Richard.

  ‘Oh?’ Lydia’s hackles rose, resenting Richard’s smirking expression and remembering that Nigel too had also disapproved of her painting. (You’ll never make anything of it, so why bother? Your stuff is old hat. It’s your Tracey Emins, your Damien Hirsts: that’s where the money lies these days.) Was Gwen squashed by Basil the way she had been squashed by Nigel? Did Gwen realize this, or would she too only see it in hindsight? Lydia was tempted to make her feelings known but reined herself in. It was none of her business. She didn’t know Gwen that well, knew Basil even less. In any case, it was best not to speak out of turn, best not to draw attention to herself, until she knew how the land lay vis-à-vis Dean.

  She glanced at Dean, who refused to meet her eye. His silence, his air of sullen embarrassment, gave her confidence – almost as if his attitude was a tacit acceptance of complicity. It allowed Lydia to shift the blame in her mind and assume a studied air of innocence.

  Emboldened, she looked round nonchalantly: a woman with nothing to hide. She took in the glowing fire, the dancing bear, the multitude of faces with expressions both replete and subtly dissatisfied: Christmas had failed to live up to expectations yet again. Muzak was dribbling from speakers bracketed to the walls. Snatches of conversation reached her. ‘… yet more points on my licence, an absolute joke, it’s not as if I was going all that fast, barely a hundred … oh, but don’t you use goose fat for your roast potatoes, I always use goose fat, I wouldn’t use anything else … marvellous sermon yesterday, don’t you think, old Dick Emery was on top form….’ And then the landlady’s fractious voice rose above all else: ‘Does it look like I’ve got time to change the barrel? There are two other real ales – why can’t you have one of them?’

  Basil reappeared, ferrying drinks. ‘That bloody woman,’ he muttered darkly, before going off to fetch the rest of the round.

  Dean and Amanda snatched up their colas and edged towards the pool room. Making way for them, Lydia – bolstered by her new-found innocence – tried to catch Dean’s eye, but he hung his head, cheeks glowing, and shuffled off as quick as he could. For some reason, Lydia felt vindicated. She sat back contentedly, pouring tonic into her gin.

  Basil eased himself into his chair. ‘The service in here is appalling. That woman hasn’t a clue.’

  ‘She’s doing her best, Basil,’ said Gwen.

  ‘Her best isn’t good enough. There aren’t enough staff on. It’s no way to run a business.’

  ‘Perhaps they didn’t expect to be this busy.’

  ‘They should have been prepared. A little market rese
arch goes a long way.’

  ‘I hardly think—’

  ‘I beg your pardon, Gwen, but what experience have you had in running a business?’

  ‘None, Basil.’ Meekly.

  ‘I rest my case.’ Basil, with an insufferable air of self-importance, applied himself to his pint.

  Lydia poked the slice of lemon in her drink with one finger, uneasy. It was like watching one of those wildlife programmes, she thought: the ones in which a big brutal lion pulls down a doe-eyed gazelle and proceeds to suffocate it. When this happened in the Serengeti there was nothing you could do about it; when it was happening right in front of you….

  ‘What’s this I hear about you forbidding Gwen to paint?’

  ‘Forbidding?’ Basil stuck his bottom lip out. ‘Nobody does any forbidding in our house.’

  ‘Then you’ve no objection if Gwen dashes off a few canvases? We are in desperate need of them for the exhibition.’ (Curses! Why bring up the exhibition? I am meant to be nipping it in the bud, not encouraging it to flourish. On the other hand, if it gets up Basil’s nose….)

  Basil groaned. ‘You’re not another of these would-be artists, are you?’

  ‘Lydia’s not a would-be anything, Basil,’ said Gwen. ‘She is an artist.’

  Richard piped up. ‘Dad’s worried about getting his meals on time. He’s a stickler for routine, is Dad.’

  Basil gave his son a withering look, but Lydia felt a stab of irritation, sensing that her attack on Basil had been undermined by Richard’s interruption. She turned her attention on this younger version of Basil – although, actually, he didn’t look much like his father at all. Lydia had long known – or guessed – what Basil was like, but Richard had been something of a mystery. Now a picture was emerging. Had he not ruined Dean’s party, stolen Dean’s girl? (Why am I feeling protective of Dean? This is preposterous.)

  What was the best way to wipe the smirk off Richard’s face? ‘It’s no laughing matter. Art is a serious business.’