Mating the Llama

by Oliver, Marina

Jeff carried the mugs over to the sink.

  'Thanks, Lucy. Look, if you're worried, give me a ring, whatever time of night. I'll leave my number with you.'

  *

  Chapter 5

  She locked and bolted the door, checked through the house carrying the sitting room poker to make sure no one had crept in while Doc and she had been with Miss Brown. She'd forgotten to lock the door as they ran out. Then she took the phone and Jeff's number upstairs and sat on the bed looking at them. She hadn't been worried until he suggested it. Maybe she should have asked Doc to check out the cottage, but he'd have been amused, and somehow she didn't think it a good idea to invite him into her bedroom. Not that she expected him to start tearing off her clothes. He'd given no indication that he found her anything but amusing, and even if he had been struck by amorous feelings towards her, Lucy didn't see him as an uncontrolled seducer. Perhaps she'd have started tearing off his clothes.

  Whatever, on her own again, she was scared silly.

  Living in a penthouse flat in Dockland had never been a problem, even when Karl was away at gigs. She'd never been afraid of being on her own. In London she drove everywhere or used taxis. They'd had a secure underground garage which could only be entered by people with the right sort of gizmos, a lift to the flat, and a twenty-four hour porter in the entrance hall to the block. The people in those flats were worth protecting, if only because of the huge service charge they paid.

  Moving to her cottage had not worried her either. She'd lived in the country as a young child, was used to the night sounds of owls and distant traffic, and hadn't given being alone a thought apart from being sensible and locking up at night. Now she felt incredibly vulnerable. She thought longingly of wrought iron screens on every downstairs window, like the ones people in London put on their windows. Or maybe solid internal shutters secured with heavy iron bars. But she hadn't liked those when they'd stayed at a fan's house in France. They shut out all the light, and she liked waking up to daylight and sunshine. She even liked waking to the sound of rain. Shutters would make her feel hemmed in, imprisoned. Best of all would be a big strong man in bed with her.

  Telling herself not to be a fool, she began to undress. She wanted a shower, but couldn't face the idea of shutting herself away in that little compartment. It would be all right when it was daylight, she told herself firmly, but she hurried through the minimum preparations and scuttled into bed. She put the poker on the night table, but decided to leave the reading lamp on. She'd read for a while, in any case, until she felt drowsy. Then she discovered the only book she had upstairs was one she'd finished. She had not enjoyed it anyway, but had struggled to read to the end because it was written by a neighbour at the flat. He had presented her with a copy as she was leaving, saying he knew she would appreciate it, and it would help her face up to her unhappy bereavement. He also added he'd expect to hear her opinion in the near future. She hadn't a clue what she could say to him, and kept putting off thinking about it.

  She was not particularly unhappy. Sad for the deaths of those young men, yes, but guiltily relieved to be free of Karl. The book had not helped. The prose was turgid, the characters uninteresting, and the plot non-existent. When Kate had dipped into it she'd asked how on earth such an author could earn enough to live in an expensive flat. Lucy happened to know he'd bought it with a big legacy from a banker father, and his wife earned zillions as a top advertising executive. The thought of starting it again was painful, but she somehow didn't feel like going downstairs to find something else. At the least it might send her to sleep.

  It didn't. It was dawn before she dropped off, and then came to, her heart pumping wildly, as the phone beside the bed shrilled in her ear.

  She picked it up and fumbled to find the right button, cursing the people who thought normal mortals could manipulate pinheads on their phones, and finally found the right one. It was Flick.

  'Oh, Lucy, did I wake you? I'm so sorry. It's after eleven.'

  She gurgled some sort of reply. She'd just seen the poker on her night table, and felt exceedingly foolish at her fears of the night before.

  'I rang to let you know Miss Brown wasn't badly injured, just bruises and concussion. She's conscious, but can't remember a thing, doesn't know why she was in the lane. I'm going in to see her in Oxford this afternoon. Do you want to come with me?'

  No, Lucy didn't, but it seemed unkind to say so. Besides, she was curious to know why Miss Brown had been there in the lane.

  'OK, what time?'

  *

  Miss Brown was in a small side room, and as the nurse showed them in she warned that the patient was not very coherent.

  'She's talking quite a lot, but her words are slurred, it's hard to understand except for the occasional one. Don't stay more than ten minutes, please. We don't want to tire her too much, and her niece has been in already. And we have the duvet you sent with her. Don't forget to collect it on your way out.'

  'The only time I spent in hospital,' Lucy said as the nurse went out and shut the door, and she recalled the miscarriage, 'I was far more exhausted by the constant taking of my pulse or temperature, and being woken up to drink tea I didn't want, or be asked if I'd moved my bowels, than I was with visitors.'

  She looked down at Miss Brown. She looked tinier than ever, pale and gaunt, swathed in a hospital nightie far too big for her, and propped up against a mountain of pillows.

  Flick sat down in one of the chairs and took her hand. 'I'm so glad to see you looking better. You gave us a fright last night.'

  Miss Brown opened her eyes, glanced at Flick, then looked across her to where Lucy sat in another chair further away.

  'No phone. Dark. Rosy,' she seemed to say, but as the nurse had said, her words were slurred and it was hard to know what she was saying.

  'It was dark in the lane. Were you coming to see Cas?'

  'Ashes. Off with his head,' she suddenly said, the words clear.

  'Whose head?' Flick asked.

  'What? Kishgate. Dark. No lights.'

  Flick frowned in concentration. 'You mean the car that knocked you over had no lights?' she asked, but Miss Brown closed her eyes and appeared to go to sleep.

  She said no more, and after a few minutes they tiptoed out of the room and told the nurse her patient was asleep.

  'I need a stiff drink,' Flick said and drove to a pretty riverside pub where Lucy grabbed a table on the lawn beside the river while Flick ordered whisky for herself and gin for Lucy.

  'What did you make of all that?' she asked after she'd drained her glass.

  'Not a lot. I wonder if she meant she had no phone so couldn't let Doc – Cas, know she was coming?'

  'Probably. She doesn't have a mobile, can't be doing with the pesky fiddly things, and who wants to be chatting on the phone all the time while they're walking along the street,' Flick said in a fair imitation of Miss Brown's normal crisp tones. 'If her land line isn't working that might explain it. We can check that.'

  Lucy didn't ask how. Like many country people, neighbours may have had a key, or the back door key would be hidden in some obvious place like under a doormat or inside a flower pot.

  'Is there a kissing gate anywhere?' she asked. 'That's what it sounded like.'

  'We don't have one, and I'm not sure where the nearest one is. Way the other side of the village, I think, where there's a right of way through some woods. There was a big fuss a few months ago because it had to be enlarged to accommodate wheelchairs. It's almost big enough to take a horse through. Cas won't have them, they make it too difficult to move the animals around, and if he gets more alpacas and llamas he'll need to expand their pasture into the fields where he keeps the cattle.'

  Pity, Lucy thought, for a delicious moment imagining herself and Doc meeting at a convenient kissing gate. Then she realised what she was doing, fantasising about a man she'd met only a few times, and told herself not to be a fool. Look where she'd got with Edward, and Doc was far more attractive, far less attainable.<
br />
  'What could she have meant by ashes?' she asked hurriedly, to take her mind off kissing gates. 'Was she afraid of a fire? But where? And why?'

  'I haven't a clue. If she thought there was a fire at the farm, why not go to a neighbour and call the fire brigade? It was plain stupid to try coming to tell us, if that's what she was doing.' She sighed and got to her feet. 'I'd love another drink, but I have to drive home. We didn't find out much, did we?'

  'Could rosy have meant Rosa?' Lucy asked half the way home. She'd been trying to make sense of Miss Brown's words.

  'Perhaps, but she doesn't approve of the llamas. It's not what we were used to in her day,' she mimicked. 'So why would she be thinking of them?'

  'And what on earth did she mean by off with his head?'

  'She'll be able to tell us more in a few days. Now, it's still early, you'll come to tea and visit Rosa in her own home.'

  *

  It wasn't as bad as Lucy had expected. Somehow Rosa's expression wasn't as haughty as she recalled it, and she ambled up to the fence and let Flick make a fuss of her, rather like a big dog. The alpacas were smaller, more her size, and she managed to pat a couple of them.

  The farm impressed her. She'd always thought of farmyards as messy, dirty places covered in cow pats, full of ancient machinery, wisps of hay blowing around, and scraggy chickens fluttering in and out of the pigstys. This couldn't have been more different. The house was built of golden stone, creepers covered the walls, and a yellow rose in full bloom clambered all over a porch facing the big yard. Each of the yard walls had tall archways and she could see another yard through the one facing the house, where there were stables. The yard was paved and swept clean. She could see a few hens behind a wire netting fence through another archway, opposite the one they'd driven through.

  A fat, cheerful woman of about fifty was standing by the door, talking to a man who, when he saw Flick, nodded a cheerful greeting as he turned away. The woman went back into the house, gesturing to them to follow her. Not Doc's wife, Lucy surmised, and stifled a grin. She was off men, she reminded herself. Apart, a small inner voice insisted, from Doc. However many times she tried to tell herself all men were unreliable, ego-driven brutes, she never managed to convince herself this description applied to Doc.

  'Mrs Thomas has been our housekeeper since Doc moved back here,' Flick said. 'Tommy, this is Lucy Latimer, she's bought Orchard Cottage.'

  Mrs Thomas smiled. She really was the picture-book farmer's wife, plump and homely, and when they went into the big kitchen Lucy began to feel she was in a fairy tale, it was so cosy and just as she'd always imagined farmhouse kitchens should be. A huge range occupied one wall, dressers held pots and pans and dishes and bowls, and there was an enormous deal table in the middle, big enough to seat a dozen people. She could smell meat roasting, and potatoes, already peeled, could be seen in a bowl of water on the work top, while a cabbage and some carrots were waiting to be prepared. A large pie, with scraps of pastry around it, was on another work top, and several trays of pastry-lined patty tins were sitting near the oven, obviously waiting to be baked.

  Flick filled the kettle – an electric one, she was pleased to see. They clearly used modern appliances too, and as she looked around she saw a modern cooker, a toaster and a food processor. The best of both worlds.

  Mrs Thomas fetched plates from the dresser and a tin which, when opened, revealed a scrumptious-looking chocolate cake. She cut huge slices and put them in front of the girls.

  'Would you like some scones too?'

  Lucy gulped. Her jeans, despite her involuntary fasting on the Saturday of Edward's non-visit, had felt tight this morning. She'd have to miss a few meals. How on earth did Flick, subjected to such food on a regular basis, stay slim?

  'Where's Cas?' Flick asked. 'He's normally the first here at teatime,' she explained. 'He can't resist Tommy's cakes.'

  'I don't blame him,' Lucy muttered, her mouth full of chocolate cake, and had to almost push Mrs Thomas away as she offered to cut her another slice. 'Thank you, it's delicious, but I – I have a casserole waiting for me at home.'

  It was an outright fib, but seemed the only way not to offend her. Well, she had a few of what might loosely be called casserole dishes in the deep freeze.

  'He's gone somewhere down west to see another of his blessed llamas,' she replied. 'Said he'd be away at least one night.'

  Flick laughed. 'Another prospective husband for Rosa?'

  'About time he sorted one out for her. Girls don't like to be kept waiting.'

  Lucy blinked, and looked at her, and surprised a wicked gleam in her eye. Mrs Thomas was her mother's generation, and somehow she never suspected her mother of naughty thoughts, let alone comments. Though come to think of it, they must have known what's what or their generation wouldn't be here. And hadn't she read some magazine articles saying one could enjoy sex right into one's eighties? If life expectancy kept on going up, this might soon become one's hundreds. There was hope for her yet.

  Soon afterwards she said she really had to go, and refused Flick's offer to drive her home. 'I need to get rid of a few calories. How do you manage to stay slim?'

  'Exercise, riding, and chasing Rosa. I forgot to tell you, she got out again last night, and with the accident no one discovered it till this morning. But she hadn't gone far. I think she was missing her morning feed, she was waiting outside her paddock when I came down at seven. The odd thing was the gate was shut.'

  *

  Lucy walked home slowly. Was the accident in any way connected to Rosa's excursion? A mad thought, but had Miss Brown for some reason let her out? Was that why she was mumbling about gates? She tried every way she could to make sense of the odd words. She tried pronouncing them differently to see whether they'd heard them wrongly, but nothing made sense apart from a slight connection between rosy and kissing gate. It could have been Rosa's gate, but where the kissing came in she couldn't tell.

  The visit to the farm seemed to have answered one question, though. There had been no sign of a wife. Unless, she thought suddenly, she'd gone with Doc to visit Rosa's prospective husband. Her raised spirits plunged again.

  Her thoughts swung in another direction as soon as she got home. Jeff Bryant was coming away from her front door, carrying a huge bouquet of red roses. Surely he hadn't developed a sudden passion for her, or, she hastily amended, her chocolate digestive crumbs? He was a nice enough man, but far too old for her, and anyway, she didn't fancy men with beards. Several of the band had experimented with designer stubble, side whiskers, full beards, and silly little tongues of hair on their chins which waggled every time they spoke.

  'I took these in for you,' he said, relieving her mind of one worry and replacing it with another. 'I thought you might be back by now, as I heard Felicity's car going up the lane. How was Miss Brown? Doc said you'd gone to visit her.'

  'Oh, thanks. I went to see Rosa and the alpacas, and stayed for tea,' she said, taking the roses from him. Roses. Was there any connection with Miss Brown? 'Miss Brown is talking, but she's not very lucid, and we couldn't make out what it was she was saying. Jeff, come in for a few minutes, if you have time. I'd like to tell you what she said and see if you can make anything of it.'

  Inside the kitchen she hastily dumped the roses in a bucket, and saw the attached message was from Edward. She'd read it properly later.

  'Come into the sitting room. It's too late for tea. What will you have? Whisky, or gin?'

  'A beer if you have it,' he said, and she fetched two cans from the fridge and, being more punctilious than usual, two glasses.

  She told him what Miss Brown had said, but he seemed as puzzled as they were. He did have one suggestion though.

  'One of the pubs in the village is called the King's Head. Might she have meant that? Could what you heard as kiss have been kings? The off with his head bit might have been some sort of word association.'

  'I can't imagine Miss Brown every enters a pub!'

  'O
h, no, though she does occasionally go in them to the restaurants when her sister comes to visit.'

  'Sister? I didn't know she had any relatives. Oh, now I remember, the nurse mentioned a niece. I suppose she'll have told the sister about the accident. Where does she live?'

  'Don't worry, she'll have been told. She lives somewhere in the Midlands, but her daughter, Miss Brown's niece, lives here. Doc said he'd let her know.'

  He left soon afterwards, and Lucy was free to read Edward's note. It was short, and left her fuming with annoyance.

  'Dearest Lucy,' he'd written. At least he'd used her real name. 'I need to clear up any misunderstanding, so I'll be down to see you on Wednesday afternoon. No need to reply. All my love, Edward.'

  *

  Chapter 6

  Today was Monday. Did she want to see Edward? Her first furious anger and disappointment at his failure to turn up had grown less, and she began to recall the good times. She'd met Edward again six months after Karl had been killed. Apparently his mother had heard from hers about Karl's death and suggested he looked her up. A few other men had asked her out before then, but most of them were young and too impressed with the reflected glory of Karl's music and dating his widow. They'd also thought she'd been left a very rich widow, when the reality was that the flat, unknown to her, had been heavily mortgaged a month before Karl died, there was little in the bank, and Karl had owed money everywhere. She didn't want anything of his, but the solicitor persuaded her to take what had been saved from the wreck. She was owed it, he insisted, because of what she'd had to put up with while Karl was alive. With the life insurance money there was enough to buy the cottage, and there would be royalties coming in for some time to come, to add to whatever she could earn hairdressing.

  Edward was ten years older than Lucy, six feet tall and elegantly slim, and remarkably good looking, in a distinguished sort of way, with silver wings in his thick, black hair. He had never heard of Karl before his mother told him about the accident, and didn't care for contemporary music. It had been a relief, for a while. Then, some time before that disastrous dinner, she'd begun to wonder if there was any point in continuing. She didn't think she loved him, or wanted to marry him, or even live with him. He'd begun to make what he called suggestions, but which to her sounded like criticisms. Blue, a colour she was fond of, didn't suit her as well as green. He was surprised she hadn't read a certain book, or seen a particular film. He'd given her a copy of the book and taken her, without first asking if she wanted to go, to see the film.