by Debbie Young
“Not exactly suspicious,” I began, and explained about the pranks on our float, wondering what he would make of them. I’d realised that although he was physically frail, his mind was razor sharp.
“Everyone’s in high spirits on Show Day, so there’s bound to be a little mischief. And it was mischief, not malice, even though not in the best of taste.”
I supposed he was right. “But why did no-one seem upset about Linda’s death?”
Another reproachful look. “My dear, if you had seen her family leaving the showground, you wouldn’t have said that. Even her estranged husband was distraught, though they parted months ago. He’s been living in town for months, only returning for high days and holidays. Still working on their divorce settlement, apparently, so I suppose that’s at least one blessing to come of it – no more haggling over access to the children. Dear me. I was raised in an age before divorce, you know.”
After a moment’s silent thought, he pressed his hands down on the table to help him stand up, and rose to head for the door. “Now, I’ll leave you in peace, but don’t forget to water Carol’s beautiful flowers before the sun gets too high in the sky. And you keep that imagination of yours in check, my girl.”
I spent the rest of the day pottering quietly about the house, rehydrating and regaining my appetite. Towards mid-afternoon I noticed I was also spending a lot of time sneezing. Some of Carol’s arrangements contained flowers that had an irritating fragrance. Natural scents – or a sign of poison? I immediately banished the rest of them to the garden, just in case.
Hooking a floral ball either side of the front door, where I remembered Auntie May used to hang baskets of geraniums each summer, I thought of Linda lying cold, and shivered.
I’d just come in from suspending the other garlands from low branches of the apple tree in the back garden when there was a hammering at my front door. This time, it really was hammering, not Carol’s gentle tapping amplified by my hangover.
Gosh, I’m popular today, I thought, feeling more cheerful by now and hoping it might be Hector’s turn to visit. Then I spotted Rex’s distinctive slicked back hairstyle through the small glass window in the door.
He leapt forward as I opened it. “What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he snapped, startling me.
I stepped back. “I’m not doing anything. Why?”
He pointed at the floral balls hanging either side of me.
“What are you doing with these?”
I explained that I’d bought them at the Show auction as a job lot. I hadn’t realised till I got them home that they were from the Players’ float; I’d thought they were part of the floral entries section.
“You can’t have them. They’re Carol’s. She made them for me. Do you have all six? I’ve come to take them back to her.”
I shrugged. I was damned if I was going to be neighbourly and invite him in when he was being so rude, whether or not he was prospective director of my drama script.
“Carol doesn’t want them. At least, she never asked me for them when she dropped by this morning. In fact, she positively thanked me for buying them in aid of the Show funds. She was flattered that I’d paid so much for them.”
“She should have asked me first. I commissioned her to make them for me, as part of my queens’ costumes.”
“Did you pay her for them?” I congratulated myself on my quick thinking.
“No, not exactly, but the transaction was understood.”
“Not by Carol. She put them in the auction when she was clearing away your show float. Which you failed to do, by all accounts, leaving the hard work to Carol and Ian.”
He clapped a hand to his forehead in sudden horror.
“My God, she didn’t auction off the dresses too, did she?”
I sighed. “No, of course not. She’s not stupid. She knows the dresses are needed for your autumn production. I saw her putting them back in the drama cupboard at the Village Hall. Some of them, anyway. I assume they carried poor Linda off in hers to the hospital. But it’s not as if the flowers would last till autumn, is it?”
“Still, I demand to have my flowers back. All six of the arrangements.”
My head had started pounding again, making me lose my cool. “Why, do you want one for each of your girlfriends? Or are you giving all six to Dido?”
Out of the corner of my eye, I noticed a movement to my left. Joshua was peering out of his front window, looking slightly anxious on my behalf. With an effort, he raised his sash window and called out.
“Pipe down, there, will you, and let a man have his Sunday afternoon nap in peace?”
Rex swivelled round to address Joshua. “I’ve only come to ask for what’s rightfully mine. I don’t know why you have to interfere, you silly old fool.”
Rex clearly saved all his charm for his women.
“Oh for goodness’ sake, man, pull yourself together! What’s got into you? Someone stolen your magic wand?” Joshua chuckled, completely unaffected by Rex’s bluster. “White rabbit escaped from your hat?”
Rex scowled. “My flowers. I’ve come for the Players’ flowers.”
He pointed to the posies swinging gently in the growing breeze.
“I think you’ll find in law they belong to Sophie now, given that she paid for them in public view, and that their maker is happy with the transaction. If Carol wants to change her mind and ask for them back, that’s down to her.”
“We’ll soon see about that!” snapped Rex. He turned and marched off down the path and back up the High Street.
I climbed over the low dry stone wall that separated Auntie May’s front path from Joshua’s to speak to him in confidence.
“Thanks for coming to my rescue. I can’t believe how nasty that man can be. And to think I’ve offered to write him a free play. Talk about ingratitude!”
“No wonder he and Linda got on so well,” replied Joshua. “Two peas in a pod when it comes to temper.”
“Really? He’s the only person I’ve come across so far who hadn’t fallen out with her. I’m surprised he wasn’t more upset when they found she was dead.”
“Oh, it’s common knowledge there’s been something going on between those two. And also between him and most of the other queens at some point. Probably didn’t want to give the game away to Linda’s husband, in case it affected the divorce settlement.”
“Good Lord, I hadn’t thought of that. How can he be so petty at a time like this, and even think about demanding his pesky flowers back? I’m wishing I’d never bought them now! Still, just in case he gets any ideas about pinching them at dead of night, I’m moving these round the back now, where I can keep an eye on them.”
“And I’m going back to sleep,” said Joshua. “Good afternoon to you, my dear.”
With that he closed the window, and I went out to further festoon the apple tree. It was starting to look as if I was celebrating some ancient Druid rite. Then I settled down on the garden bench with a cup of iced tea and The Bookseller to try to regain my equilibrium, drifting in and out of sleep accompanied by nightmares of outsized birds and bees chasing me through a giant jungle of cottage garden flowers.
26 Occupational Therapy
Back indoors alone, I found myself feeling in limbo, wishing the days away until the post-mortem results might come through. I decided I needed some occupational therapy to stop me going mad.
“What would Auntie May have done?” I asked myself. The answer came back loud and clear: she would write.
And not a moment too soon. Having joined the Wendlebury Writers, I would be asked to show them something that I’d written before long. The passage I’d rattled off for the Village Show competition wouldn’t count, because entries were judged and displayed anonymously. Only the winners’ names were revealed, and I was glad that I hadn’t been publicly humiliated by how bad my piece was. I had carefully avoided that section of the tent, knowing how embarrassed I’d be to see my paltry words on display, even without my name att
ached to them.
I needed to create some credentials as a writer, and fast. This wasn’t going to be easy, because in truth, as I’d hinted to Hector, I had never published anything beyond the odd adolescent poem in the school magazine. All I had to show for endless hours of pencil-chewing frustration was a collection of notepads in which I’d scrawled various fragments. My only reader had been Damian, who had poured scorn on them.
Yet I was nothing if not ambitious, sketching out plots for nail-biting thrillers, hysterical comic novels and tear-inducing chick lit that I hoped would eventually make me rich and famous. None of them were ever finished, either my enthusiasm or my confidence failing after a chapter or two. Even so, I’d lugged round a battered attaché case of manuscripts of dreadful short-stories and half-finished novels from one flat to the next, as I job-hopped around Europe. Used to travelling light, I had allowed myself the one luxury of hanging on to my old scribbles as my My one self-indulgence.
Now I hauled the attaché case out from the cupboard under the stairs and hoisted it onto the sitting-room sofa. I turned the rusting wheels of the combination lock to my passcode and flung open the lid. Rooting among the half-filled notebooks, bought in the different countries I’d lived in while working abroad, I tried hard to find a piece of writing that I could pass off as a reasonable work in progress at the next Writers’ meeting. I planned to get there early so the other members would find me scribbling away, looking as if I was used to spending my spare time writing in tearooms and bars, like J K Rowling and Ernest Hemingway. There were at least a couple of French exercise books in there that I might pass off as Parisian.
I don’t know whether it was the vibes from Auntie May’s cottage or my more mature outlook on life now that I’d become a householder instead of an itinerant, but I could find nothing that I would gladly share. Slapping the lid of the case shut, as if punishing it for defying my ambitions, and turning my back on it, I found myself drifting over to Auntie May’s writing desk, hoping to absorb some of her talent by osmosis. Perching on her ancient bentwood chair, I pulled down the flap of her bureau. I reached out to touch the neat rows of stationery stowed in the little pigeonholes, waiting for May to write letters, articles and books that she now never would. It was the closest I’d get to being able to hold her papery old hand again.
Swinging my feet disconsolately under the desk, I banged them on the drawer beneath the flap. That reminded me I hadn’t yet looked in the drawer. I wondered what I might find there. My imagination sprang into overdrive. Gold bullion? Emeralds? Blood diamonds gifted to her by a mysterious stranger on her last journey through Africa?
I tugged at the twin brass handles. The drawer was so stiff it rattled the brass stamp box on the top of the bureau. Bracing my foot against the wall between the spindly bent legs of the desk, I finally managed to wrench out the drawer. All that had been jamming it shut were great wads of letters, tied up in four distinct bundles. Decades of constant travelling had made Auntie May a frighteningly efficient packer.
Carefully, so as not to rip the paper, I pulled out the bundles and laid them on top of the flap.
The first set consisted of letters from my parents, written on pale blue Basildon Bond. These informed her of their latest news and were written every month or two, with extras following receipt of Christmas and birthday presents. They were tied together with a bit of silver string that might have originated on a festive box of violet creams, my parents’ usual gift to May. I recognised my mother’s dutiful approach to letter writing. Each time, she filled a regulation two sheets of paper on both sides, because one sheet would look like she didn’t care. She’d run out of news by the end of the second.
The next bundle was, to my surprise, some tissue-thin carbon copies of the handwritten letters Auntie May had sent to me, one from every foreign trip she’d taken since I’d stopped visiting her in the summer. They were looped around with Post Office rubber bands, red faded to pink and starting to perish. Wise old Auntie May, she knew I’d lack the foresight to hang on to her letters. Or was it the entrepreneur in her that made her think they’d have potential value as a book? Perhaps it was from her that I’d inherited my head for business.
The third, tied up in pink ric-rac braid, was, to my embarrassment but also my delight, a raggedy package of mismatched stationery, much of it picture postcards from European cities. My own unmistakable hand came in an assortment of felt-tip, cheap biro, and even the occasional blunt pencil. On the one hand I dreaded reading them, fearing how awful and crass they might be, with patronising accounts of tourist traps that I hadn’t the gumption to realise would be of little interest to such a seasoned traveller as May. But I was glad to see I’d always ended them with love and kisses, and was enormously grateful that she’d kept them. Though they’d be a much less likely candidate for a book than her letters, they at least provided a tangible souvenir of the last four years that I’d been frittering away, as if I had all the time in the world.
I wondered for a moment who the fourth package of letters could be from. She had no living relatives other than my parents and me, and had never married. Those letters looked very old. Perhaps they were from her parents or siblings. They’d all died before I was born, so I was intrigued.
The writing was old-fashioned in style, but the hand strong and firm, in the copperplate script taught as standard when May was a child. I stroked the paper, crisp with age and as brown as onion skin, and ran my forefinger gently along the red velvet ribbon holding them neatly together. A few threads came adrift, worn away by time. Afraid of untying the neat bow, in case it fell to bits entirely, I gently eased it down to the end of the bundle and slipped it off, still tied.
I peeled the first letter from the top of the pile and opened the single sheet flat. The steady, looping handwriting suggested a generous and open nature.
When I saw it began “My darling May”, I glanced at the signature before reading any more. “Ever your loving Joshua” was followed with an extravagant row of kisses.
Open mouthed, I laid it down on the desk. This was not a friendly note between neighbours, one asking the other to feed the cat during their holiday, nor a missive between arch-enemies. I almost folded it up and stashed it back where I’d found it, not wishing to intrude on their secret relationship. Then I reconsidered.
Auntie May had left so many things ready in the knowledge that I’d come to live in her house eventually. Surely if she’d not wanted me to read these, she wouldn’t have left them for me to find. I decided it would not count as prying if I read on. And the letters might contain vital evidence of Joshua’s true character, giving clues as to whether he might have taken May’s and Linda’s lives, as well as his wife Edith’s, and have designs on mine.
27 Three Letters
I sat back in my chair and took a deep breath. This is what I read.
My darling May
I am so sorry that you decided to accept your publisher’s offer of a contract to travel to Egypt to research and write that wretched book for them. When I say wretched, I don’t mean the book will be wretched, because I know that in your meticulous, careful and thoughtful way, you will make a fine job of it. So fine, I fear, that they will offer you another contract, and another and another, taking you ever further away from where you belong – here with me in the village where we have both grown up.
I would not for a moment try to stop you from fulfilling your ambition. That is why I did not give you this letter before you went, or tell you of my feelings, but sent it on to your publisher’s office in Cairo. By then, I am sure, you will be so taken up with your new surroundings and your new challenges that you may not care to read it, or even think of me, but there again I did not want you to depart thinking that I had let you go without a word because I no longer cared.
I of all people know what a fine mind and talent you have, and I cannot hope to offer you as glamorous or exciting a life if you stay here – nothing but the opportunity to look after my parents, now tha
t yours have so sadly passed away. I know how much you suffered, almost as much as they did, during their final illnesses, and you have surely earned your chance for excitement abroad now.
Just know, my darling, that I shall still be here while you are abroad, and I will wait for you until you return, whenever that may be. Though of course I cannot wish for the departure of my own parents, I still cannot help but hope that one day, I shall be free to care only for you.
Please do not feel sorry for me, May, but send me a postcard now and again, will you, if you ever think of me on your travels?
When you return, whenever you return, just tap on my door, and I will give you the best welcome that your heart could desire.
Ever yours,
Your loving Joshua
So much for the feud. There was never any animosity, nor argument, nor clash. Quite the opposite, on his side at least.
I dared myself to pick the next letter off the pile. Auntie May, a meticulous record-keeper, had kept them neatly in chronological order.
My darling May,
I was so happy to receive your postcard from Cairo. Riding on a camel indeed! I hope it was in the company of someone who took good care of you, and that you avoid any hazards to your health.
Another six months, eh? I daresay it will go in no time for you, with your exotic travels and adventures. There must be so much to write up each night when you’re not researching your book. You will sleep easily under the clear starry skies of the desert, so unlike the cloudy grey ones over the village now. All this rain is unhelpful to my mother’s chest and my father’s arthritis, and it becomes increasingly difficult to leave them each morning to go to work, or in the evening. I get no further than The Bluebird these days, but the new young lady behind the bar knows of my plight and feels sorry for me, slipping me extra pickled onions with my ploughman’s of a lunchtime or secreting a penny bar of Cadbury’s in my pocket as I take my leave. One must take one’s comforts where one can, May! But I should not give you ideas.
