The Eunuch's Ward (The String Quartet)

by Smyth, Silver

  ‘Irksome disturbance on the home front,’ I texted Ela and Rosie. ‘Recalcitrant parents out of control. All foreign travel cancelled for the time being. Will keep you posted.’

  That closed the most attractive escape route and left the Bowens as the only option. My grandparents. From memory, that meant about 150 miles of driving. With London being what it was, it could take me all of three hours.

  Thank God for the SatNav.

  ‘Thanks for dropping me in it,’ replied Rosie.

  ‘You’ll love every minute of it,’ I returned immediately.

  Ela’s text arrived a few minutes later. ‘Praying for a friendly wind of change. Keep in touch.’

  Ridiculously, both messages brought tears to my eyes.

  A family of three, parents and their depressing looking teenage son came in through the front door. They headed directly for an out of sight table.

  In the space of about ten minutes only two people came in singly, looked around both inside and at the back, then left. There was no movement in the car park, but that meant nothing. Most diners were probably locals who walked here, others would have relied on taxis for the privilege of enjoying the house wine. I told myself to stop being so paranoid, that I wasn’t in the middle of a le Carré’s latest, nor was I the new star of Spooks. If my father wanted to know where I was all he had to do is ask. He didn’t need to spy on me. However, he may have sent the bodyguards after me. That would have been very much like him.

  I was still refusing to think about my alleged suitor. No, I had no idea why my father may have invented him, but the story was too preposterous to be true. But, if it was true, on the other hand, the man had to be mad or bad. Probably both.

  On the way out, I first turned left, then a quick right. I backed into the entrance to my school’s car park and waited. Nothing happened, no cars went by. It would have been upsetting if anyone did. Only those who had business with the school or happened to be badly lost would have driven this way.

  With my GPS on and tuned to the address of the Sanctuary, I set off in earnest.

  Chapter 13

  The signpost pointing to the right at the fork in the narrow lane said Sanctuary Kennels and Rescue Centre. I followed the left prong for the house.

  The large sprawling bungalow was in darkness. True, it was coming up to midnight, but it was a special kind of darkness that indicates abandonment. The no one at home kind of darkness. Nevertheless, I tried the doorbell and when that failed, for the second time that day I made a tour of the building, looking for an opening. No luck. From patio doors to the conservatory to the bathroom and kitchen, everything was firmly shut and bolted. There was no key hanging off the letterbox, under the doormat, over the door or under any of the flowerpots on the porch. I shook the locked letterbox itself and by doing so I disturbed a couple of moths but that was all.

  The narrow path leading off the garage – open but empty – was a shortcut to the Sanctuary. Someone had cut back the bramble and self-seeded bushes of elderberry, leaving only the tall grasses to flutter about in the breeze. The noise could be heard from afar, but they were peaceful, healthy noises of animals in the night. The Sanctuary was housed in several rows of old horse stables. At this time of the year, the top doors were left open. With the help of overhead lighting I could see several horses in some of the stalls, and an occasional cat here and there, taking the night air and considering its options.

  There was a low light left on in the office. I knocked but when there was no reply I slowly opened the door. Two young lads slept on a couple of folding beds arranged along the two walls not lined with filing cabinets or steel shelving. I coughed discretely but the sound couldn’t compete with some kind of twitter, or was that munching, that was coming from a baby alarm on the desk. I looked around. The glass fronted key cabinet on the wall contained nothing that would resemble a set of house keys. A look at the desk reminded me of that game where you have to memorise as many items as you can, then recite them back, losing a point for each one that you’ve missed. The only key there was a car or maybe a motorbike key. I opened two top drawers underneath. They both contained an Aladdin cave of unwanted objects, but no keys of any description. The deeper bottom drawer housed a cash box. I pulled it out, placed it on the top of the desk and opened it.

  ‘Who the fuck are you?’

  One of the boys had jumped up on his feet and was about to grab my arm. The other one had just lifted his head, rubbing his eyes and yawning.

  ‘I’m Nat, the granddaughter. Came to steal my monthly pocket money. You?’

  I wasn’t sure if he quite took in what I was saying, but he lost the urge to physically restrain me.

  ‘Are my grandparents not at home?’

  He shook his head. ‘Gone on a cruise. A Mediterranean cruise. Won’t be back for a couple a weeks. There isn’t any money in there.’

  ‘Shucks!’ I hoped I sounded suitably disappointed. ‘Have you got the keys for the bungalow? There could be something worth nicking there.’

  He walked back to the camp bed and lifted a denim jacket from a chair next to it.

  ‘Is that the rich bitch?’ asked the boy on the other bed.

  ‘Is that what my grandparents call me?’

  ‘No, it’s not,’ said the other, the one who was sleep-walking and sleep-talking at the same time. ‘That’s what he,’ he pointed to his prostrate mate, ‘calls any girl who isn’t on the dole and doesn’t wear shiny earrings the size of a child’s hula hoop.’

  ‘And who wouldn’t go to bed with me for love or money,’ the other one turned over and covered his head with a grey blanket.

  ‘There,’ said my saviour, ‘these are all the keys you’ll need. How long will you be staying?’

  I shrugged. ‘My boyfriend and I are hoping to get away from it all for just a few days. Why?’

  ‘Make sure to return the keys to me personally. The plants will need watering when you’re gone.’

  * * *

  Most teenagers have yet another feature in common. They can sleep anywhere and under any circumstances.

  I entered the house, realised that I’d left my luggage in the car, looked around, and woke up after 9 the following morning.

  Normally, I would have immediately reached for my phone to make sure that what little of the world I felt was mine still ticked on. Priorities change with circumstances. I dashed off to the bathroom as if my life depended on it. Half an hour later I emerged wrapped in and blue and white cotton chequered robe and my hair wrapped in a lemon coloured towel. My own clothes that I’d worn yesterday were already swirling in the washing machine. I wheeled my case in, left it in the middle of the sitting room and went on a walkabout to decide which room to choose for myself. The bungalow was quite a delightful exercise in haphazard expansion. From what I could remember of the story, when my grandparents first married all they could afford on their meagre joint income was a small, rundown bungalow with one bedroom and a box room. But, it was in the middle of nowhere, and came with a deep and wide, trout-rich brook, and plenty of non-arable land. Built at the right angle to the residential part of the property was an ancient stone barn. Little by little, as they put themselves through the veterinary college on a shoestring, they connected the barn and the house, then added two more walls to complete the square and create an orangery with solid foundations and a high slate roof. This large extension made room for three double bedrooms, each with its own bathroom at the former residential end, a garden room-cum-workshop took up the back corner of the former barn, and the rest of the space served as an open-plan kitchen, dining room and sitting room divided only by cordons of trained peach and apricot trees, grapevine and wisteria.

  I decided on the fourth bedroom, situated in the loft section of the converted barn. It was prettily decked out in shades of yellow with the wardrobe and bedstead painted cobalt blue that matched the padding on the widow seat and a few cushions. With the floor made of reclaimed shipboards, and salvaged large leaded win
dows on two walls, it was the brightest room in the house, with great views of the countryside.

  My bright red, shiny Ferrari looked vulgar and intrusive in this calm setting, so I unpacked quickly and pushed it where I was sure it would feel at home – under the bed. I pulled on my denim shorts and a lighter blue top, shook my still wet hair out of the towel and pulled it back in a loose knot, then devoted the next ten minutes to brushing my teeth and rinsing out my mouth. Only then I felt ravenous enough to face the cornflakes.

  There was no avoiding it any longer. I brought my mobile back to life.

  There were more than ten pictures of Ela, Rosie and the Brazilian contingent painting the town red in a nightclub. I smiled wickedly at the number of bodies clad in gray suits around them.

  ‘Wish you were here?’ asked Rosie below a photo showing her in an unhealthy clinch with a tattooed, seriously coiffured youth.

  ‘I bet you’re regretting it now,’ I answered viciously. A part of me was envious. My life was changing and that made me nervous.

  ‘Just let me know that you’re ok,’ my mother pleaded in her usual understated way.

  ‘I’m ok,’ I answered quickly. ‘About to join in a highly praiseworthy activity.’

  That was true enough. At nearly eleven I presented myself in Sanctuary’s office.

  ‘Ah, there you are,’ said a fluffy looking woman in a floral dress and wellies on her feet. ‘My grandsons told me about you.’ The badge pinned on her bosom said Glenda Brackett.

  ‘Mrs. Brackett,’ I produced my best ingénue smile. ‘I’m sorry I disturbed them. They were very helpful.’

  ‘Your grandmother entered a competition in a paper and won a two weeks cruise for herself and Harry. They only left last night. Didn’t you tell her that you wanted to visit?’

  ‘That would have spoiled the surprise.’ That was the excuse I’d been planning to give my grandparents. ‘I’m disappointed that I’ve missed them, but pleased that they’ll have such a good time. They deserve it.’

  Glenda Brackett didn’t seem inclined to pursue that line any longer. ‘What can I do for you?’

  ‘I was hoping that I could do something for you. For Sanctuary, I mean. I used to have a pony and a dog a few years ago, but that doesn’t make me an expert on animals. But, I’m quite strong, I could do fetching and carrying, any kind of manual work.’

  ‘How long will you be here for?’

  I had a feeling that Mrs. Brackett was looking for an excuse to turn me away. ‘My boyfriend and I were hoping to stay for four or five days, if he can get away at all.’ I was covering all possibilities. If Hugh agreed to follow me here, at least the village will already know about it. There would be no room for gossip. On the other hand if he preferred to stay away, it wouldn’t be a big deal.

  ‘What does your boyfriend do?’

  It wasn’t the question itself so much, it was the way she asked it that betrayed her. She expected to hear that his family owned the entire steel industry in the northern hemisphere, or that he was a celebrity of some kind. The latest Top 20 rapper or a football star.

  ‘He’s a pilot,’ I said.

  She looked up in surprise. ‘A pilot? In the RAF?’ there was just a trace of awe in her voice.

  I crossed my fingers behind my back and nodded, hoping that she wouldn’t ask about his rank. Just in case, I settled on the squadron leader. Someone in Star Wars was a squadron leader.

  ‘Go to the stables,’ she pointed to the path leading off to the right, ‘they’ll tell you what needs doing.’

  They did indeed. The three young people, two lads and a girl, were up to their necks in it. The ‘it’ was horse manure. It needed bagging for sale to market gardeners. They never asked who I was. They were only too happy to accept my suggestion to leave bagging to me and move on to more skilled duties of grooming and removing stones from hoofs. I would have liked to join in the chat but they talked about the school that they attended, someone’s second hand motorbike and the possibility that Gemma Platt was pregnant.

  ‘Not entirely planned?’ I asked. That was an old trick of my mother’s. Whenever she found herself thrown into a tight-knit circle, she’d said, she’d wait for a hint of scandal, an allusion to a juicy gossip and ask a leading question. It worked every time, apparently. People would fall all over themselves to tell her all about it, the ice would be broken and it was all plain sailing from then on.

  She was right.

  ‘You can say that again,’ said the boy with red hair. His name was Tod. ‘Rumour has it that it’s the history teacher...’

  ‘Priest?! Gerry Priest?!’ cried Amanda, the girl in dungarees very much like my own pair that was now drying on the porch of the bungalow. ‘I thought that he was gay.’

  ‘You think that anyone who doesn’t swear and call everyone ‘you guys’ must be gay. Take a break... sorry, I didn’t catch your name...’ The other lad was quite good looking.

  ‘Nat,’ I said and considered shaking hands but he’d already turned back to his task.

  ‘I’ll help you wheel it all out to the gift shop. The gardeners can easily help themselves from there.’

  I hadn’t caught his name either. ‘Thank you. We should rope the horses to the cart and let them pull the weight.’

  The trio laughed.

  ‘You’d think that, wouldn’t you? The poor horses must be bored stiff with all that good living,’ said Tod. ‘They’d probably welcome a bit of work. But, Mrs. Bowen would hang me by my balls if I did something as sensible as that.’

  Don’t know about the horses, but he couldn’t have described me better if he tried.

  Or so it felt at the time.

  Chapter 14

  My mobile chirped as we were unloading the last of the bags of manure.

  ‘Boyfriend?’ asked the handsome boy. By that time I’d managed to work out that his name was Matt.

  I nodded with far more hope than certainty.

  As it happened, it really was Hugh. Calling him my boyfriend was a liberty, but who knew?

  ‘Taking off in about twenty minutes. ETA to the flat, approximately two hours. Carrying goodies, will share. How about it? XXX’

  I replied with the Sanctuary’s post code.

  If I’d ever needed a prompt reply it was then. Only, it didn’t materialise. One hour later I was put on feeding duty, and there still was no reply.

  ‘What’s with the face?’ asked Matt. ‘The boyfriend not behaving?’

  ‘Something like that.’

  ‘I’ll be only too glad to deputise.’

  I smiled at him. ‘Can I take a rain cheque?’

  ‘You and any other city girl that I’ve ever met,’ he pulled a face.

  ‘I’m probably as unlike any other city girl that you’ve ever met as you can get.’

  Matt blushed. ‘Sorry. I didn’t mean anything...’

  ‘It’s all right, Matt. I know you didn’t. As you said, boyfriend troubles. I’m grumpy, that’s all.’

  According to my new friends, casual volunteers like them and me were always released by 4 pm, leaving the experienced seniors and the staff to get the Centre ready for the night. It was ten minutes past 4 already and Mrs. Brackett was jangling her keys as a reminder that we should work faster. I was dreading the prospect of returning to the bungalow waiting for a text or a call.

  So humiliating.

  I filled the last of the bays with pre-packed grain mix and slipped the smallest of the ponies a carrot that I’d nicked in the shop when I went to get myself a drink.

  ‘I’m done, Mrs. Brackett. It was...’

  I didn’t get to finish the sentence and to this day I have no idea what I was going to say. My mobile went off.

  ‘Can you meet me at the Upper Fold Airfield in half an hour or shall I call for a taxi? XXX’

  The airport postcode was added like an afterthought.

  I jumped up in the air like a field player who’d just scored the winning goal, then broke into a sprint.


  ‘Bye, you lot. Bye, Mrs. Brackett. See you,’ I shouted. I had no idea if anyone answered, nor did I care much. At the fence I stopped just long enough to type out the answer. ‘See you there in the longest half an hour of my life. XXX’

  There was a stile that promised to save me at least a couple of minutes of walking all the way to the gate. At the bungalow, I left my grandmother’s wellies on the porch and dashed off to the wet room upstairs. A five minute shower wasn’t anywhere near enough to remove all the grime that I’d collected during the day, but that was the most that I could spare. I didn’t even bother with hair conditioner, there wasn’t enough time to let it work. Still damp after a brief encounter with the towel, I threw the filthy clothes into the washing basket, pulled on the underwear, a fresh pair of shorts and a clean top. I still stank, but there was nothing that I could do about that.

  Once I fed the post code into my SatNav, I had five minutes to make the trip that according to the gadget required twenty.

  Two minutes less than twenty as it turned out. Not that I’d covered myself in glory along the way. I’d left a couple of cyclists and a horse rider with stories to tell to their nearest and dearest that evening.

  A suspicious looking character with much more hair on his chest than on the top of his head pointed me to the hangar.

  ‘You can drive in if you’re expected,’ he mumbled and walked off.

  There were three small aircraft in the hangar and a lot of people milling around them, but only one of the men waved and ran towards me. Hugh looked cool and fresh in his khaki shirt and under-the-knee shorts.

  ‘Stay where you are,’ I stretched out my arm to prevent him from coming within the sniffing distance. ‘I stink.’

  He laughed and pulled me to him in a good, big hug. ‘Hmmm... yes. Your cologne is a bit of an acquired taste. Come and see my baby.’ He pulled me towards a sleek, white craft with a lozenge shaped emblem on the side and the tail. HCJ. ‘Nat, meet my five-seater Cessna Mustang. My favourite for short trips and convivial company.’