Blood in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  ‘It’s this damned mattress,’ he said. ‘It’s lethal.’

  Thea shook her head helplessly. ‘Just when everything was going so well,’ she murmured. ‘I feel as if we’re jinxed.’

  Phil gingerly tried to pull himself up towards the headboard, digging his elbows and heels into the thick mattress. He discovered that if he kept himself completely straight, some movement was possible. But the procedure was far from painless and he groaned as he inched himself up the bed. ‘I feel such a fool,’ he complained.

  ‘Yes,’ Thea agreed. ‘I expect you do.’

  ‘You’re not being very nice.’

  ‘I’m a terrible nurse, I admit. Illness always seems such a waste of time. If people were less kind to the sick, I expect there’d be a lot less pressure on the NHS.’

  ‘You’re mad,’ he moaned. ‘I’m in the hands of a madwoman.’

  ‘Well – what are we going to do?’ She was brisk almost to the point of aggression. ‘I think we’ll try and make it through the night, and if it’s still bad in the morning, we can get you to a doctor.’

  He stared at her wildly. ‘In a car? Down those stairs? I can’t possibly. I’m paralysed, I tell you.’

  ‘No, you’re not. You’ve pulled a muscle, or slipped a disc, and I can see it hurts. But the only other option is an ambulance, and that’s going too far. Imagine the drama if we called one now and all the locals saw the flashing blue light. They’d think there’d been a murder.’

  Phil managed a tight grimace in place of a smile. ‘And we don’t want that, do we?’ he said.

  Thea’s plan prevailed, and Phil endured a long tortured night in which he managed to doze from around two to four a.m., lying flat on his agonised back, and snoring loudly. At seven, Thea got up and went down to make two mugs of tea. On her return, she insisted he roll onto his side, and from there to a sitting position on the edge of the bed. ‘You’ll have to go to the bathroom,’ she ordered. ‘It’ll be a trial run.’

  He got himself vertical, with several cries of anguish, and shuffled pathetically to the lavatory. Then Thea forced him into some clothes, the effort of pulling trousers up almost too much for either of them. ‘Can’t I just wear a dressing gown?’ he pleaded, tears in his eyes. ‘This is killing me.’

  He could see that even Thea was losing her nerve. She chewed her lower lip, and repeated several times a belief that nothing too desperately serious could have happened. ‘You can’t have broken anything,’ she insisted. ‘How could you? It’s not as if you fell off a horse.’

  The next apparently insurmountable obstacle was the stairs. They were narrow, with a twist halfway down, and were made of stone. Thea had been especially taken with them on her first inspection of the house, realising that they formed the sturdy core of the whole building, and had not been modified or moved in three hundred years. She tried to distract Phil from his anguish by fantasising over all the human crises the stairway must have seen. ‘Women in labour, dead bodies taken out by the undertaker’s men, visiting boyfriends tiptoeing down in the early morning.’

  ‘Not to mention crippled policemen crawling down backwards,’ he puffed.

  And it was true that this had turned out to be the only possible mode of descent. One foot would be lowered gingerly to the next step, sharing the weight of the semi-prostrate body with his forearms, without any jarring or pressure to his back.

  ‘Try to see the funny side,’ Thea suggested incautiously. The snarl that met these words was more than a little alarming. Even Hepzie retreated from her concerned position at the foot of the stairs.

  Because Thea was obviously going to have to drive, Phil assumed that they would use her car. But then he noticed how small it was, how little legroom it could offer, and thought again. ‘We’ll have to take mine,’ he said. ‘I suppose you’ll be covered by the insurance.’

  ‘Who cares?’ she said. ‘Just let’s get you in.’

  The passenger seat was adjustable in all planes, and they eventually got him into a position that he could tolerate without constant groans and screams. It seemed to him that Thea’s driving was unbearably jerky as she mastered the unfamiliar clutch, and bumped them up the uneven drive to the road at the top. Pain tore at him like a mad dog, making him feel sick and tearful.

  They arrived, finally, at the hospital in Cirencester, where they were met by helpful paramedics and Phil was gently stretchered into a cubicle in a department that appeared to have nothing else to do that day. Nobody took his agony lightly, or made ominous comments about the impossibility of backs. He was probed and questioned and X-rayed, given analgesia and generally reassured. Thea hovered, waited, smiled and sighed. Phil began to look less drawn and terrified. By ten he was hungry and impatient for something more to happen.

  A little while later, a man in a clean white coat, holding a clipboard, materialised and made his diagnosis. ‘It’s what we used to call a slipped disc,’ he asserted.

  ‘What do we call it now?’ asked Thea.

  ‘Prolapsed or herniated disc,’ he responded with a tolerant smile.

  ‘What happens next?’ Phil enquired with unnatural meekness.

  ‘It will almost certainly get better on its own,’ the doctor said. ‘The pain will subside in a few days, and in three months or so, you’ll be back to normal.’ He nodded in a bobbing mechanical fashion, as if delighted with his own words.

  ‘Three months!’ Phil’s voice rose to a squeak. ‘Can I work during that time?’

  ‘Depends what you want to do. No lifting, straining or bending.’

  ‘Do I have to stay in bed?’

  ‘Absolutely not. Though you might want to stay reasonably still for the rest of this week. Find a comfortable position on a firm surface and let your body do the rest. Make the most of it, is my advice. With this lovely weather, you could be outdoors. Try an airbed in the garden.’ The smile widened. ‘Try to treat it as a well-deserved rest.’

  Phil sighed and rolled his eyes, catching Thea’s thoughtful glance. The implications of the situation were obviously starting to dawn on her.

  ‘Can he drive?’ she asked. ‘I mean when the worst of the pain has gone.’

  ‘Probably. Give it a go, and see how it feels. We advise people to be as active as they can after the first week or so. Walking, swimming – that sort of thing.’

  ‘And is there any treatment?’

  ‘You could try an osteopath, if you like.’ The tone was unenthusiastic. ‘That can sometimes reduce the pressure on the nerves, which helps. It doesn’t actually hasten the recovery process, though.’

  ‘Meanwhile I have to get him home again,’ Thea realised.

  ‘It’ll be better now he’s had the painkillers,’ the doctor assured her, and a few moments later was gone in a flick of the white coat.

  Phil and Thea looked at each other carefully. ‘Home,’ he said. ‘Where’s that then, I wonder?’

  ‘It’s up to you. I’ve got to stay and mind Miss Deacon’s house. You’re welcome to be there with me. Or you can go back to your flat and take your chances. Is your sister a good nurse? Because I warn you, I meant it when I said I wasn’t. I’ll probably shout at you.’

  ‘You can’t be worse than Linda,’ he said. ‘I’ll have to phone her,’ he realised. ‘And ask her to keep the dogs until I’m better.’

  Thea said nothing.

  ‘But that mattress will have to go. And I can’t face the stairs while I’m like this.’

  ‘There’ll have to be some rules,’ said Thea. ‘Number One – no complaining. Number Two – no self-pity.’

  ‘Aren’t they the same thing?’

  ‘Well spotted. All the other rules are on the same theme. Now, let’s go before those painkillers start to wear off.’

  She settled him on the sofa in Miss Deacon’s front room, and got to work creating a lavish lunch to compensate for the lack of breakfast, having found him his mobile with which to make his excuses at the station and inform his sister of her extended dog-minding
duties. She heard his tone from the kitchen, though not the words, and surmised that he was having difficulty convincing his colleagues that his injury was genuine. ‘Well,’ he was shouting as she carried a tray into the room, ‘you’ll just have to manage without me. There’s nothing I can do about it.’

  ‘Problems?’ she asked sweetly, when he’d finished.

  ‘Not really. Fielding calls from the Home Office seems to be the main preoccupation at the moment, with this terrorist scare. They don’t need me for that.’

  ‘Although, if they did, you could probably do it from here,’ she suggested rashly. ‘After all, you can still talk – and think. And read,’ she added. ‘You’re not completely useless.’

  ‘I have to be on the spot,’ he said sullenly. ‘How can I keep abreast of everything from here?’

  She put the tray on a low table, and leant over him, kissing his forehead. ‘Poor old Phil,’ she crooned. ‘It’s a horrible thing to happen. We’ll have to think of some games we can play. Or perhaps we could find you a wheelchair and I could push you around the village.’

  ‘Don’t you dare! I’m not going in a wheelchair for anybody.’

  ‘Why not? It would give you an insight into life as a disabled person.’

  ‘I had plenty of that last year when I broke my leg, remember. Hobbling around on a crutch for weeks was no fun. And this is even worse.’

  ‘Ah, ah!’ she admonished. ‘Remember the rules. We are going to make the best of this, Phil Hollis, if it kills us.’

  He rolled his eyes and reached for a sandwich.

  Chapter Three

  By late afternoon, Phil had eaten a hearty lunch, had a little sleep in the garden, and persuaded himself that there was something to be said for enforced idleness. Thea had walked Hepzie through the village and back, and was lying contentedly on the grass with a book. ‘This is the life,’ she sighed. Then she shook her head. ‘Though I can’t quite believe it. It reminds me of Frampton Mansell when Jocelyn stayed with me. It was sunny then, as well, and we lazed about in the garden, while everybody around us was killing each other.’

  ‘Not a whisper of any killing here,’ he assured her. ‘Unless you let that snake out and it terrifies somebody to death. You did say it wasn’t poisonous, didn’t you?’

  ‘I can’t remember what I said, but it’s quite harmless. I think it’s even quite affectionate in a reptilian sort of way.’ She sighed. ‘I do love snakes. Isn’t it funny how some people are so paranoid about them?’

  ‘Not at all funny when you consider that more people in India die of snakebite each year than any other cause.’

  She gave him a stern look. ‘Is that really true?’

  ‘Absolutely. It makes more sense to be scared of snakes than of spiders or bats or wasps, and all the other things that freak people out.’

  ‘I wonder whether dogs are frightened of them. Snakes, I mean. I haven’t shown Shasti to Hepzie yet.’

  ‘Shasti? Is that what you said?’

  She nodded cheerfully. ‘Nice, isn’t it?’

  Phil merely sighed, and went quiet for a few moments. Then he voiced his thoughts. ‘I hate to say this, my darling, but I can’t help thinking we’re going to be horribly bored by about Thursday at this rate. I mean – a day can be a dreadfully long time when you’re not doing anything.’

  ‘Not to worry,’ she breezed. ‘You’ll be walking by then. That doctor said you had to keep active once the pain subsided. We can go out and about and do some local history studies. Won’t that be fun?’

  ‘I remember it a bit differently. I remember him saying I should rest for a week or so.’

  ‘You will be resting – between short spells of gentle activity, like walking. He said it was good to walk, I know he did.’

  ‘You never ask me how I’m feeling,’ he noted.

  ‘Sorry. Do you think I should? I can tell, more or less, by looking at you. And I didn’t want to draw attention to it. I work on the theory that distraction is the best cure for almost any ailment.’

  ‘I’m not complaining,’ he said quickly. ‘It’s quite refreshing, in a way. But if I may, I’d like to just mention that it feels easier now. There hasn’t been any of that stabbing agony of this morning. And I haven’t had a pill since lunch.’

  ‘Good,’ she nodded. ‘You’ll be better in no time at this rate.’

  ‘I’ll have to sleep downstairs, though. Lucky there’s a loo on the ground floor, or I don’t know what I’d have done.’

  ‘Use a pot, I suppose,’ she said carelessly.

  Phil laughed; even when the tremors revived the pain in his back, he went on laughing. ‘Thea Osborne, I love you,’ he choked. ‘I love you, I love you.’

  ‘Good,’ she said again.

  Although the day had drifted by slowly, looking back on it, Phil felt it had been far from wasted. His declaration of love had marked a deepening of his union with Thea, despite her apparently unconcerned reaction. He tried to examine his feelings towards her, forcing his mind to the unfamiliar task. He concluded eventually that she made him a better person than he might otherwise be. Not only the veto on self-pity, but the very straightness of her. She had occasionally caught him out in small moral lapses associated with his work, and never let him escape reprimand. She reminded him of his mother, who had been equally uncompromising over ethical issues. ‘Either a thing is true or it isn’t,’ she had been wont to say. ‘It’s not something that can be bent or stretched.’

  His life experience as a police officer had demonstrated to him many times that his mother had been wrong about that, but Thea made him understand that he wished she hadn’t been. Thea taught him that cloudy morality was a cause for regret, and the best people were those who stepped across the grey swamps of laxity without getting their own feet dirty.

  Besides, she was lovely, and funny and clever and sweet. She was more than he deserved, but he was resolved to improve himself and earn her love. He smiled daftly to himself, as he watched her putting away the Scrabble board and taking their wine glasses into the kitchen. Only Thea, he thought, could have turned a day that began with such pain and panic into the one where he determined once and for all that this was the woman he wanted to devote the rest of his life to.

  But things felt somewhat different when she kissed him a solicitous goodnight and left him alone on the fold-out bed she had found in a corner of her bedroom. She had lugged it down to the front room and made it up with a sheet and a light summer duvet. Wistfully, he watched her disappear with her dog, wondering whether it had even crossed her mind to remain downstairs with him, perhaps on the sofa.

  * * *

  The house-sit was certainly not arduous. There was still a day to go before the snake needed its frozen mice, and the fish seemed content with a pinch of dry food and an occasional check on their water temperature. The horses had each other and seemed to be pleasingly self-sufficient. Remembering earlier commissions, where Thea had been employed effectively to guard the house against unwanted intrusions, he shuddered. Perhaps the slipped disc was a blessing, ensuring he stayed to watch over her until Miss Deacon’s brother arrived to take over. Despite there being every sign that this was to be the easiest, most relaxed of all her experiences as a house-sitter to date, he was still very glad to be there with her.

  They had learnt almost nothing about the village since arriving. Left to himself, Phil would not have seen this as anything to reproach himself for, but Thea had insisted that she wanted to find out as much as she could of the history of all the places she found herself in. Frampton Mansell and the Cotswold Canal; Blockley and the strange story of Joanna Southcott; Cold Aston and the Notgrove Barrow – they had all been of the most vital interest to Thea, despite the wide range of historical periods and the peculiar people who conceived passions for their little bits of local history. When the name ‘Temple Guiting’ had first been mentioned, Phil had paused to wonder just what it might have tucked away in its past that would ensnare his girlfriend’s at
tention. It had not crossed his mind until she mentioned it that the Knights Templar might be involved. And, if he had, he would not have been very pleased. The Templars had links with the Freemasons, and since the episode in Cold Aston, Phil Hollis had striven not to speak or think again about that particular organisation.

  His back felt tender and battered, as if he had been viciously kicked. Turning over was still frighteningly painful, in spite of the bedtime painkiller. He tried to force himself to relax, to simply let himself float away into sleep, where nothing would hurt any more and he would awake in the morning to a dramatic improvement. Instead he found himself listening to sounds outside – an owl close by, and the intrusive cry of a fox. Nasty things, foxes, he mused – the more so now they were so prevalent in towns, raiding dustbins and keeping whole streets awake. His Cirencester flat suffered badly from them and he had conceived a profound dislike for the whole species. He remembered Thea’s first ever house-sit, over a year ago, in Duntisbourne Abbots, and the cry she had heard in the night. That cry had, as it turned out, brought the two of them together. His leg had been in plaster at the time. Am I destined to hurt myself every year from here on? he wondered muzzily.

  First light began to dawn around four, and when Phil next opened his eyes, he could discern the beginnings of the day. The fish tanks were gluggling rhythmically on the other side of the room, but another sound had woken him. He could hear a voice, outside the open window, speaking at a normal level.

  ‘His car’s still here. That’s odd. She said he’d be away again by now.’

  ‘So?’

  ‘So, he can join in as well. Not a problem.’

  The first voice was the melted-chocolate-and-double-cream of Big Janey, unless he was much mistaken. And, although there was no suggestion of threat or subterfuge in the calm tones, he felt at an acute disadvantage. His back had stiffened during the brief sleep he’d managed, and he flinched at the prospect of having to stand up or walk. What’s more, his bladder was painfully full, which presented him with a new distraction.