by Rebecca Tope
It was so different from her expectation that she closed her eyes for better concentration. Soft, and with a taste she could never remember experiencing before, it was as if her whole body had been waiting for this moment for years. Quickly she took a larger piece, impatient to repeat the miracle. ‘Fabulous,’ she sighed, when her mouth was empty. ‘I’ve never tasted anything like it.’
‘Full of goodness,’ Kate nodded carelessly. ‘Most likely your body’s been starved of the vitamins and minerals it needs. Liver’s the best source of iron, for a start. Plus all sorts of other things.’
It was easy to believe. The two remaining slices on her plate seemed far less than she wanted and needed, and she had to force herself not to gobble it down. ‘People forget how to cook it, these days. Keep it simple – that’s the thing.’ Kate was plainly gratified by Thea’s response, but equally plainly she did not intend to spend the whole meal discussing food production.
‘We’ve been talking about you,’ she said frankly.
‘Oh?’ Thea took a gulp of the wine, aware that it was something rather good.
‘Funny way to live, we thought – moving around from one house to another, never really coming to know anybody. Getting into things you don’t understand. Made us curious, to be honest.’
The old man, sitting opposite Thea, met her eye and gave her a friendly wink. It made her feel very young and naive and rather vulnerable. These people were so firmly settled, rooted, with their self-sufficiency and long memories. They were normal, in a way that Thea suspected she could never be. They knew a few people very well, watched the same things on telly as everyone else, visited the sick and kept a clean and tidy house. And they recognised a troubled soul when they saw it.
‘Oh, well…it suits me very nicely,’ she said, resisting the sense of being attacked.
‘Have you no family, then? No home of your own? Just that dog?’
‘My husband died,’ said Thea, slightly too loudly.
‘Shame,’ said Granfer Jack with his mouth full. Thea wondered whether he was reproaching his daughter for the interrogation as much as he was sympathising with her loss.
‘I see,’ said Kate, giving every indication that she really did. She saw how it might be – the empty house with the painful associations; the need for distraction and to feel useful. The serial escapes from her own life and concerns. Thea could see it all in the woman’s eyes, and she remembered how she had dashed straight from her own father’s funeral to a house-sitting commission in Lower Slaughter.
‘And I meet new people, make new friends,’ she added, increasingly on the defensive.
‘You never knew George Jewell, though, did you?’ Kate continued, in the same light chatty tone. ‘You only found his dead body, poor bloke.’
‘I followed a set of footprints that appeared out of nowhere. I was scared, and I wanted to find out who had made them.’
‘I saw you, as it happens.’
‘Pardon?’
‘From the barn roof. When you found me up there, it wasn’t the first time. I was trying to clear the snow off, that Friday morning, and I saw you go down into that hollow and then come stumbling out again. It was obvious you’d found something.’
‘You knew he was there?’ Thea’s blood was pounding in her head. Was Kate about to confess to murder, and then silence her for ever?
‘No, of course I didn’t. Not till I went over for a look.’
‘You moved the body into the woods?’
‘I did not. If poor old George wanted to die peacefully in the snow, what business was it of mine? Or yours?’
‘Your cattle trampled all around, hiding the tracks.’
‘So what if they did?’
‘You drove over there on your tractor, saw the body and just left it where it was? That’s very hard to believe.’
‘I did no such thing. None of my business,’ repeated Kate. ‘We keep ourselves to ourselves around here. Besides, you’d done whatever you had to do – I knew there’d be officials on their way. Took a time coming, though. Best part of two hours.’
‘In which time, somebody moved the body into the woods. Were you watching then as well? Did you actually see him?’
Kate shook her head. ‘I saw no more than my cows milling around, after you’d gone back to the house. Wasn’t sure it was anything more than a touch of needless panic on your part. Wondered why there was no helicopter or ambulance or the like. Made no sense to me till I heard later.’
‘Who told you?’
‘That Bulgarian girl. At your house. Filled me in nicely, she did.’
‘I don’t believe you,’ said Thea flatly. ‘You must have seen who moved him.’
Kate flared up. ‘You think I’ve got time to stand about watching what goes on in a field when I’ve got a hundred jobs to do every morning? Don’t be daft.’
‘It was your field. You must have tipped somebody off, if you didn’t move him yourself. How else would anybody know he was there?’ The tangled story was winding itself in muddled loops around her mind.
‘All I did was get on with the work and leave it to you. I didn’t want the police down here, did I? If I’d have gone to see what was up, and found a dead man, I’d have felt obliged to bring him here on the link box. Then they’d have come down to us, after him, and started all kinds of searches, like as not.’
‘They wouldn’t. What a stupid idea. Besides… what have you got to hide?’
Kate sneered, ‘Shows what you know about farming. One dead sheep is enough to fetch a fine of hundreds of quid. Medicine book, movement book, ear tags, tax returns, farm assurance – it just goes on and on. You can’t move for red tape these days. There’s always something wrong. They only pay those officials if they find a mistake. It’s like something out of Kafka.’
‘But none of that is the police,’ Thea bleated weakly. ‘My daughter’s a police officer. So is my brother-in-law.’
Kate shrugged, implying say no more.
The delicious meal was spoilt, leaving Thea confused and sad. Somehow it felt like her fault, as if by her very character she had failed or transgressed. She was the wrong person in the wrong place. A wave of loneliness surged through her, perversely strengthened by the realisation that she had been invited to the farm not through pure altruism but because Kate and her father wanted to make her aware of their opinion of her.
But the old man had said scarcely anything. He had winked at her, and hinted at sympathy. She looked to him now for succour.
‘Kafka’s right,’ he said. ‘I read those books in my twenties, and made sure Kate read them, too, when she was old enough. Better than 1984 or Brave New World for telling you what you’re up against.’
Twenty minutes earlier, Thea would have been delighted by this display of erudition in people she had been inclined to dismiss as peasants. Now it began to feel as if she’d blundered into something out of Kafka herself, or possibly Pinter.
‘Why are you so angry with me?’ she found the courage to ask, after a silence in which Kate cleared away the plates, and brought in a large apple crumble.
‘You didn’t know George,’ came the oblique reply. ‘Couldn’t find a nicer man anywhere.’
‘He could have told you all about Kafka,’ added Granfer Jack, with a grunt that might have been born of rage or sadness or both. ‘Out to get him, they were, from the first day he moved here.’
‘And you let him live in your cottage,’ Thea belatedly remembered.
‘Least we could do,’ said the old man. ‘And much good did it bring him.’ He shook his head, and this time there was no mistaking the sadness.
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE
He took her back to the barn afterwards, the ice thicker underfoot, and his supporting arm even more necessary. She had demurred, conscious that he had been ill and would have to wrap himself up before venturing out. ‘There’s a moon,’ she reminded him. ‘I can see the way very well.’
‘Best make sure you’re safe,’ he insisted.
‘After all, there’s a murderer about, so they say.’
At the door, he gave her a fatherly pat, and said, ‘You mustn’t mind Kate too much. She speaks as she finds, always did. Don’t give her any more thought.’
The kindness was almost worse than the sniping had been. ‘Thanks,’ she choked. ‘I’ll try.’ Then she hurried into the barn, where her faithful spaniel would greet her with uncomplicated love, that carried no hint of the character defects she was suddenly all too aware of.
It was still only quarter past nine. The empty house seemed to pulse all around her, too big for one woman, too far from any sociable human sounds. She turned on the television, desperate for distraction, but the programmes all seemed to be either crime thrillers, fatuous competitions or gardening. None did anything to divert her from the increasingly dark mood of self-dislike.
Because it was all true. Kate had seen through her mask to the mess that lay beneath. She had somehow discovered that she, Thea Osborne, was a useless mother, a selfish bitchy lover, a nosy interfering house-sitter. She was fit only for the company of animals, and was clearly destined to pass her days alone and unloved.
She remembered how rotten she had been to Phil Hollis when he hurt his back – an injury that had to some extent been her fault in the first place. She had barely even tried to show him sympathy, until it was too late. The two weeks she had spent in his flat, nursing him back to something like normality, had been grudging and impatient, at least some of the time. The truth was that Phil was too good for her – a decent, honest police detective, uncorrupted by his work, and ready to offer her companionship and security for the rest of their lives. Serves her right, then, that he had found a replacement that would do him a great deal more good, from the sound of it. His apparent dishonesty about what he wanted was easily explained: he hadn’t wanted it with her. Once a more suitable woman appeared, who could blame him for changing his mind?
The few other men she had encountered since finishing with Phil had all been treated with suspicion and criticism. She had turned into an untrusting shrew at some point since Carl had died, and failed to notice.
For half an hour she mortified herself with such thoughts. It sent her back to the dark days following Carl’s death, but this time it was almost worse. This time she had to absorb the notion that other people didn’t really like her as much as she’d thought they did. A notion that she found terrifying. Was she really to live another forty years like this? Was there really no partner out there, just waiting for the inevitable encounter?
And then, gradually, her psyche fought back. It reminded her that she had actually been a pretty good mother, a sincerely loving and attentive wife, and an averagely caring sister. She had been nice to people all her life, with a single shameful exception in the case of Phil Hollis. And when it came to that sort of relationship, with all the implications and hidden agendas, projections and unwise expectations – then most of the rules went missing.
She went to bed at the usual early hour, weary from a day full of high emotion and frustrating mysteries.
So much for Thursday being her favourite day.
Friday dawned late with another heavy covering of thick grey cloud that literally touched the tops of the hills to the west. Hepzie woke her with an unusual whining. ‘What’s the matter?’ demanded Thea groggily. ‘What time is it?’
The dog gave no reply, but the clock informed her that it was eight-forty – nearly an hour later than normal. ‘Yikes!’ she yelped, throwing back the duvet. Yikes? queried Hepzie, with a sceptical stare from her big black eyes. The long hair on the top of her head was tousled, her ears in serious need of a brushing. Cocker spaniels could easily look raffish, and Thea laughed. ‘Who’s a daft dog, then?’ she murmured fondly.
Not me, said the dog silently, and led the way out of the bedroom.
Outside there was little trace of the deep snow of a week before, but Thea could still not evade memories of those fatal footprints and all the questions they had raised in so many minds. Why had George come this way, to begin with? He could have reached the same hollow field corner more directly from his own house. Had he been deliberately heading for Lucy’s Barn? Had he wanted to see Lucy herself, forgetting or not knowing that she was away? Had he intended to reach Kate’s farm, but veered off the track into the donkey paddock, losing himself because of the disorientating snow? Was he intent on suicide from the beginning, seeking a place in which to die?
Everyone said kind things about George. Decent, friendly, inoffensive. But there had to be a story to account for his impoverished state. Was it a breakdown, drug addiction, financial catastrophe? The first was the most likely, given the final outcome. Some people assumed that to commit suicide was by definition a sign of mental collapse. Thea herself was not so sure. She had glimpsed that starkly rational decision for herself, once or twice, after Carl had died. And Gladwin had seemed to be saying the same thing, when speaking of her sister. Was there anybody out there who knew the reasons behind George’s action? Had they explained it to the police already, leaving Thea out in the cold of ignorance?
If she’d still been with Phil, she thought yet again, she would know some of the answers to these questions. She might even be of some use, instead of simply annoying everybody by her confused interference.
The ground underfoot was still frozen, but the air temperature was a lot higher than the previous evening. There would soon be a return to the familiar mild muddy winters of recent years. Granfer Jack had surely been wrong about the snow coming back – clinging to the weather patterns of the 1940s, forgetting that things were very different now.
The donkey was not in his shed, and at first she couldn’t see him. Then she glimpsed his head, down at the bottom of the paddock, by the large gate into Kate’s fatal field. His ears were pricked forward, and when she went down to see if he was all right, he clearly wanted to leave his own homestead and go next door. He seemed to think Thea would open the gate for him and let him through. ‘No such luck,’ she told him. ‘And I can promise you the grass is quite a lot less green on that side, after those Herefords have been at it.’
He stayed where he was as she walked back to the barn, his gaze fixed steadfastly on the nirvana over the gate.
Jimmy was much as usual, walking stiffly into the garden, sniffing indifferently at one or two clumps of dry stalks left over from summer flowers. Hepzie trotted round him, plumy tail held high, goodwill coming off her like a halo.
The baby rabbits had scattered much of their cosy bedding as they grew and moved more each day. They wriggled and jerked as Thea watched them, the collective size of the six of them easily four times what it had been two weeks earlier. She gave them some generous handfuls of wood shavings to replace the dispersed mother-fur.
The cat had been outside when Thea first left the house, sitting on top of a wall, tail flicking. There was something other-worldly about that creature, Thea decided. ‘Spirit’ was the perfect name for it. She had already determined to keep her distance from the volatile beast.
The obvious well-being of all the livestock brought her a wry sense of satisfaction. ‘At least I’m OK with animals,’ she muttered. ‘Even if I’ve been making a mess with people lately.’
There was more shopping to do, and Northleach beckoned. The chances of meeting anybody she knew seemed remote, even if she walked there with the spaniel. The groceries might weigh heavy by the time she got back, but the need for air and exercise convinced her, and she set off soon after eleven.
Walking generally served to keep her mind reasonably blank, especially with the dog to distract her. There were greasy puddles of melted snow still along the sides of the road, and the same poor visibility there had been for much of her stay. It all added up to a need to tread carefully, and this perhaps triggered the thoughts that pressed upon her. The mystery surrounding George and Bunny’s deaths was no better defined than it had been five days ago. Instead of repeating the few known facts, she tried to construct theo
ries from her impressions of the two people gleaned from things others had said about them. It was a habit she had acquired early in her career as a house-sitter, where there was seldom much evidence to support her assumptions about the people she met. When something happened that required an explanation, she would often begin from a vague ‘What if…’ and see where that led.
Now her question was: What if Janina had fallen for George – who sounded a nice man, and was another lonely individual in this small unsociable place, like her? What if he had rebuffed her, as he had perhaps rebuffed Tony, leaving her resentful and obstructive of George’s friendship with the little boys? Would this have driven him to deeper depression and suicide? And where did Bunny come in? Could she have tried to argue George’s case and enraged Janina to the point of murder?
It ran for a few minutes before she dropped it. There was a lack of conviction at the heart of it – the emotions didn’t work. And she was unsatisfied with a scenario that did not include Simon in some way.
Everybody liked George and nobody liked Bunny – that was the single summarising thought that she was left with. It got her nowhere constructive, merely opening the way for more anguished worries on behalf of Nicky and Benjamin, floundering in a limbo of conflicting adults who showed little sign of knowing how to deal with them.
Northleach was as charming as ever. There were very few cars parked in the square, and only one man in the bakery when she went in. Hepzie waited irritably outside, unable to understand the reasons for her exclusion. Thea shared her feelings, and pulled sympathetic faces at her dog, through the glass. ‘You the lady at Lucy’s Barn?’ asked the woman behind the counter, clearly recognising her from her visit on Tuesday. ‘I heard you had a cocker with a long tail.’ The aberration never ceased to elicit remarks, both positive and negative, although Thea had noticed a growing number of similarly unmutilated spaniels in recent months.
