by J M Gregson
The chastened man gave his assurances and left. Geoffrey Tiler looked at his desk unseeingly for a long moment. He didn’t like himself much at times like this. But these things surely had to be done. Salesmen expected it, when a major contract was lost, even when there was no omission on their part. It was part of the efficient running of a successful business: you couldn’t appear slack. You had to keep people up to the mark.
And it would be the weekend in an hour or two. He would get away from this office and this factory and enjoy playing an entirely different role. No, that was wrong: he would be himself, rather than merely playing the role he played here. As near to himself as he would ever get nowadays, certainly. Sometimes he longed for those student days when everything had seemed black and white and simple. For the days when the opposition had been fascists or reactionaries and you were going to create a new and better world.
Laura brought him the letters to sign. He did that with a series of brisk flourishes, then looked up at her with a smile. ‘POETS day, Laura. Piss off early, tomorrow’s Saturday. Do people still use that expression?’
She was mildly shocked that he had voiced a word like that. It was common enough nowadays, but she’d never heard it from Mr Tiler before. ‘I think they do, yes, sir.’
‘Well, we should heed them, then. Get away by half past four, today. Even earlier, if you can. Clear your desk and bugger off.’
Another word she didn’t usually get from him. ‘Thank you, sir. That’s very kind of you and I shall do that.’ It was curious that when he made concessions, her own language seemed to become more formal than usual. ‘There’s just one thing, sir. I have a note in my diary. You asked me to remind you about Mrs Tiler’s birthday. It’s on Monday.’
Laura spoke tentatively. Her boss had been divorced for two years now, and you could never tell how people would react to former spouses. If they were feeling bitter, they might even revile you for raising the subject.
Geoffrey Tiler didn’t revile her. He smiled softly – even, she thought, a little regretfully, but that might have been just her sentimental streak. ‘Arrange for some flowers to be delivered to her, will you – just my name, no other message. Carnations, I think. She was always fond of carnations.’
‘I’ll do that, sir. I’ll arrange it now, before I go.’ Laura made a note she did not need and stood up. She knew his wife’s first name for the flowers. It was sad that neither of them had mentioned it here. ‘Thank you for letting me finish early today, sir. I’ll get the supermarket shopping out of the way today and have the weekend to myself.’
Geoffrey’s own working week was finished now. He made a note or two for the Monday and Tuesday and listened to the noises in the anteroom as Laura cleared her desk and prepared to leave. Only when she had gone did he lock his desk and move out to the big maroon BMW.
He was soon out of Wolverhampton and driving swiftly west. He tried to relax, not race along, so that he could enjoy the journey and the late-spring countryside. The chestnuts were at their best now, like vast candelabras with their upright white or red blossoms. They’d been scarcely in leaf when he’d passed along this road three weeks ago. How quickly nature moved at this time of the year. Changing the face of the earth almost as quickly as human life itself changed at times.
Once he was through Bridgnorth, the route became ever more rural. He liked that; it seemed to be marking the transition from his working life to the weekend and the real Geoffrey Tiler. He felt himself relaxing, but at the same time his veins throbbed with anticipation. He was fifty now, but he hadn’t felt like this since he was a young man. Was he being slightly ridiculous, or just realizing his potential? He preferred the latter verdict, even if it involved some self-deception. This was the best of himself, so why not go along with it?
He greeted the man who lifted the barrier for him at Twin Lakes cheerfully. He glanced up at the sign above his head which read ‘TWIN LAKES – REST ASSURED’ and thought happily that it was much more accurate than most advertising slogans.
The Ford Focus was already neatly parked near the home by the lake and his heart leapt at the sight of it. He forced himself to park carefully, then climbed out and turned quickly to the figure he knew would be waiting. He held out both hands, felt them taken firmly in the grasp of the tall, slim figure who stood smiling in the doorway of the unit. They held hands and looked at each other approvingly for a moment, then clasped each other in a long, unhurried embrace.
Geoffrey Tiler was quite breathless when he eventually stood back. He said, ‘It’s so good to see you, Michael!’
Elfrida Potts was much the more awkward of the two. Wayne Briggs seemed quite confident and perfectly at home here.
He became more confident each time they had sex. She’d had to show him the way at first, and he’d come like a steam engine inside her, before she was really ready for him. But Freda didn’t mind that. She enjoyed his excitement, rejoiced in the feeling that she could have this effect on a handsome young boy like Wayne. They’d done it three times in the few hours since they’d arrived at Twin Lakes, and he’d become more assertive and more skilful each time. You could do wonderful things with youth at your disposal, she thought. It was a long time since she had been this excited. Plainly Wayne was good for her.
And she was good for Wayne, wasn’t she? She was helping him to grow up, marking his transition from boy to man and helping him through it. He was lucky to have an experienced older woman to guide him through that.
Not that Freda was all that experienced. She’d tried to tell him that, to convey to him that she wasn’t some slapper who went for anything in trousers; that she’d had men before, but been choosy about them. She didn’t think he’d registered much of what she’d said; he’d been far too excited at the time.
‘You’re quite a woman, Freda.’ Wayne fingered the clasp at the top of her skirt, ran his hands down over her buttocks.
He was enjoying using her first name, enjoying the free exploration of her bottom even more. He’d be wanting her naked again soon, and it wasn’t long since she’d dressed. Freda wondered what he would say to his mates at school about this. Would he boast about doing it with the teacher who kept them all in such strict order? Would he tell them how he’d held her moaning and helpless in his arms? Would he quote the things she’d said to him in her passion? Would he tell them about the things she’d asked him to do to her and the pleasure they had brought?
This was madness. She had always known it was madness. If she’d wanted a toy boy, why hadn’t she got someone over eighteen, someone who wasn’t a pupil? Someone who wasn’t jailbait. She’d heard one of the men teachers use that phrase in the staff room, when he’d been talking about one of the young minxes in the sixth form who he said had a crush on him. He hadn’t been talking to her, of course. No one thought that staid Mrs Potts would get herself involved in anything like this.
And yet here she was, being rogered for fun in the mobile home she and Matthew had bought to get away from it all at the weekends. ‘Rest Assured’, it said at the entrance, and until now that had seemed appropriate. But there was going to be no rest for her this weekend, that was for sure. Wayne had whispered in her ear that he was going to fuck the fanny off her, and she had found his words enormously and unexpectedly exciting. Quiet Mrs Potts, thirty-five years old and the conscientious head of history, was being rogered rigid and enjoying it.
Wayne would get tired of her. She’d told herself that from the start, just as she’d told herself not to get involved. She couldn’t expect him not to move on: he was only sixteen. She was his rite of passage. In ten years, five years even, he’d be looking back and saying that she’d been just that. But where would she be in five years? In deep trouble, unless this boy kept his mouth shut. She made herself think of him as a boy, to remind herself of the dangers she was inviting by being here with him. But the danger was part of the attraction, just as his youth and inexperience were part of the attraction.
She said, ‘Do y
ou play golf, Wayne?’ She didn’t like the name, but she made herself use it. He couldn’t be just a sex object, if she kept using his name and showing her affection.
‘No. It’s a game for old men and ponces in daft trousers, innit?’
‘Some people think so. But the people who scoff don’t always know much about it. I could teach you, if you like. I’m not a good player, but I know the rudiments.’
‘Rudiments, eh?’ He grinned and savoured the word. ‘You’re good at being rude, anyway, Miss.’ He giggled and ran his hand round the inside of her skirt top, stroking the soft skin of her belly below her navel.
‘It’s not Miss! That’s for school, not here!’ She spoke with a feeling of panic, realizing that he would never recognize the need for caution as clearly as she did. ‘You’re my nephew here, remember? I’m your Aunt Freda.’
She’d settled on that because no one was going to believe she was his sister and she certainly wasn’t going to be his mother. Wayne giggled. ‘I like that. Aunty Freda. Take your skirt off and your drawers down and sit on my prick, Aunty Freda.’
‘Don’t be silly, Wayne! We can’t just make love all of the time, you know.’ But a small part of her said that they could; that what he had just suggested would be a new position and very exciting. She said firmly, ‘It’s a lovely evening outside. If you don’t want to try golf and you don’t want to sail on the lake, at least we should go for a walk. We’ll probably have the woods to ourselves.’
‘Want to do it outside under the leaves with the birds singing above us, do you, Freda? Well, I’m game if you are. Al fresco, they call it. Didn’t think I’d know that, did you? I’m not as thick as you think, you know.’
‘I know you’re not thick, Wayne. I always knew that. You’re a bright boy who isn’t making the most of himself. I want to help you to do that.’
‘And you are, Miss! Sorry, you are, Freda. I’ve never felt such a man. You can feel it, if you like.’
He reached for her hand, but she slipped away from him. ‘You’re a lecherous adolescent, that’s what you are! And we’re going for a walk. Then we’ll have something to eat. I’m not just a pretty face, you know. I can cook.’
‘It wasn’t your face I was planning to look at,’ said Wayne dreamily. He liked this. You could say things to a grown woman that you wouldn’t dare say to a girl of your own age. Say things and do things, and get gratitude rather than rejection. He let himself be pulled outside. He didn’t mind fresh air and a walk in the woods. And she was going to feed him. Feed him much better than he was fed at home, by the sound of it. She was a bit of all right, Miss Potts. Freda. They were the words Grandad had used about a pretty girl, in the week before he died.
Freda’s home wasn’t one of the ones by the lake. They were more expensive, and she and Matthew hadn’t been sure about how much they would use the place when they decided to give themselves a bolt-hole. That was what this was, thought Freda: a glorious bolt-hole where you could bring your illicit lover and hide away for the weekend. Sex affects judgement: it made Freda, who was normally rational and practical, unrealistically optimistic.
For the first time in many hours, she thought of Matthew and their life together. He was a good husband. More distant than she would have liked, but that might have been because they had to spend so much of their lives apart. It wasn’t his fault that he had to work on the oil rigs. And that work brought them plenty of money. It was Matthew’s money which had bought them this place and given her this opportunity with Wayne. As Freda Potts stood beside her bright blue Peugeot and waited for Wayne to emerge from the unit, she felt a surge of dark and depressing guilt. She really was a slut, despite her attempts to convince Wayne Briggs that she was something else.
Then the toilet flushed and he stood on the step above her, adjusting his jeans and looking round for the first time at this place she had brought him to. Freda gave him a shy smile and tried not to show the fear which had beset her as she had stepped out into the clear light and cool air of the late afternoon. He tried to take her hand, but she detached herself hastily and whispered, ‘Aunt and nephew, remember? They don’t hold hands!’
‘I’ll hold more than hands if you give me half a chance!’
He seemed to be determined on sexual innuendo. It was becoming a little tiresome. She didn’t want to be reminded all the time of what she did in the privacy of the bedroom, of how abandoned she had been with him. That had been a surprise to her as well as to him, and she hadn’t grown accustomed to it yet.
Freda hastened towards the woods and the cover they offered. She felt very exposed out here with Wayne, who was moving unhurriedly a pace behind her, chatting inconsequentially as he walked. She was relieved when they reached the path which wound among the trees, so that she could slow her pace and move beneath the canopy of bright green spring leaves. It was pleasant here, and almost deserted. The only person they met was an older blonde woman with a small and friendly dog called Rosie. This lady knew Freda and was prepared to chat, but Freda gave her a smile and a ‘Hello there!’ and passed quickly on. She didn’t want to introduce Wayne as her nephew; she was afraid he wouldn’t be convincing in the role.
‘It’s nice here,’ he said eventually. It was the first evidence that he was trying to please her, that he wasn’t completely dominated by his sexual triumphs. It wasn’t much, but it allowed her to feel that there was something more than sex between them, that he felt a little of the tenderness she felt for him. They watched the swans for a minute and he said, ‘There are five of the little ones.’
‘Cygnets,’ said Freda, and then wanted to bite her tongue for saying the innocent word. It was the teacher in her that wanted the correct term, she supposed. She identified various birds for him. She had her illustrated guide to British birds back in the unit, but she knew he’d laugh at her if she produced it for him.
They were on their way back there when they saw in the distance a grey-haired woman with a burly man she did not recognize. They were eighty yards away and Freda slowed automatically to make sure they did not meet them and have to speak. ‘That’s Debbie Keane,’ she said quietly to Wayne. ‘She knows everything that goes on here.’
He grinned. ‘She doesn’t know about us.’
‘No. Let’s keep it that way.’
Wayne Briggs didn’t reply. He seemed to be observing the camp gossip with interest, but when he spoke she realized that it was Debbie’s companion he had been studying. ‘I know that bloke. He lives near me. He’s a police sergeant. CID, I think.’
Freda was disturbed by that. She didn’t like the thought that there could be a CID sergeant here, walking around the site and talking to Debbie. Learning about her ‘nephew’ perhaps. She turned abruptly into one of the boathouses by the lake before they could see her.
Wayne was delighted by the move. He took it as an invitation for him to renew his sexual advances, in this strange, high place with wooden walls and the coils of rope beside the two battered rowing boats which were awaiting repair. It was in one of these that he took the Head of History, though he remembered to breathe ‘Freda’ into her ear as he clumsily removed her jeans. It was good in here, once he’d got her going and she was urging him on again. Even the strange smells of wood and oil and sawdust added to the strangeness and the wonder of it all. And staid Mrs Potts forgot her caution and cried out to him to fuck her, once he’d got her going. He was getting quite good at sex, he decided complacently. That surely was pretty good at sixteen.
Neither of them saw the small man in the trees as they cautiously resumed their walk. Wally Keane went back to his home and recorded the time and the date.
FIVE
Debbie Keane’s unit was surrounded by flowers. There was a fine crimson rhododendron in a large pot, standing high above the newly planted annuals which crowded the oblong plot beside the wooden steps leading up to a balcony and an open door.
‘You have a wonderful spot here,’ said Bert Hook. He was quite sincere. The plants compl
emented the elevated home, and the longer landscape of the lake and the distant trees behind it set the place off perfectly.
‘We think so,’ said Debbie. ‘This is our permanent home, really, so we enjoy making the very best we can of it. We have to move out for a month of each year, of course, but we understand that. And we’re always delighted to move back in here. It really feels like home to us now.’
‘You must know more about what goes on at Twin Lakes than anyone else around here. More than even the owners, I expect.’
‘Oh, I don’t know about that!’ said Debbie automatically. But she preened herself a little at the thought, settling into her armchair like a bird resuming its nest after an exhilarating fluttering of its plumage. ‘I suppose we do know the whole site pretty well by now. And I know most of the people who use it. They like to chat, and you get to know a little of their lives, over the years.’
I bet you do, thought Bert. Whether they like to chat or not, you find out about them and their families and their opinions. He knew Debbie Keane’s type pretty well by now. Sometimes they gathered information effortlessly; sometimes they worked much harder to do it and put people’s backs up. But the important fact about the Debbie Keanes of this world is that they can be very useful to the police. He took the plunge. ‘My name is Bert Hook, Mrs Keane. Detective Sergeant Hook, when I’m at work, rather than enjoying myself here.’
‘My word! I hope we haven’t done anything wrong! You’re not going to put the cuffs on us and take us in, are you?’ Debbie giggled and gripped the arms of her chair.
Bert smiled patiently. It was a little tiresome, but you had to accept that the words were meant as friendly. People didn’t realize how often he’d endured this or similar reactions, just as they didn’t realize how his tall chief John Lambert had been asked whether it was cold up there by short people who seemed to think the tired joke was original. ‘Nothing like that, Mrs Keane. I came here for pleasure and I’ve enjoyed my day on your delightful site. Something has come up, that’s all. Something I felt should be investigated, just to put Mrs Ramsbottom’s mind at rest. And Jason’s of course. He has a right to be disturbed by this, even though he’s a man!’ Hook gave her a big smile to show that this was a joke and that there was no need for her to be alarmed.
