Drawing the Line

by Judith Cutler

  I looked from one to the other. It wouldn’t do my cause any good at all if Marcus thought his cousin was violating my maidenly modesty and dealt with him as he’d dealt with Oates. Tact and a lot of diplomacy were called for, so loudly I could almost hear Griff saying the words in my ears.

  ‘I’d best skip the coffee, Marcus, thanks all the same. It’s time I was getting back to Griff.’

  ‘Make sure you knock,’ Copeland suggested, slinging my jacket from the sofa where I’d left it. I caught it and slipped it on. ‘Don’t want to disturb the old goat.’

  I pulled myself up straight. There was that headmistress who always bollocked me when I’d really messed something up by starting, ‘I thought we’d agreed –’

  I tried it myself. ‘I thought we’d agreed not to insult my guardian when he’s not here to defend himself. That was a great evening, Marcus,’ I lied. ‘We should do it again sometime soon,’ I added in what I like to think is a sexy voice. ‘Very soon.’

  Copeland got the message all right. His coz and I had had a carnal relationship: that was the word, wasn’t it? Marcus preened himself.

  ‘Tasty bit of totty, is she?’ Copeland asked.

  ‘I think you should discuss that when I’ve gone,’ I said pertly, adding a bit of a flaunt for good measure. ‘Could you pass me my bag, please?’

  Copeland obliged. ‘Isn’t lover-boy going to walk you home?’

  ‘No need,’ I said, at exactly the same moment as Marcus announced he was. So I gave way gracefully. I was quite glad of a bit of company, although we only had a hundred yards to go. I wouldn’t have minded another snog, just in the abstract, as Griff might have said. Maybe we’d have had one if someone hadn’t quietly emerged from the shadows near our caravan. As snogging’s not a spectator sport, I squeezed Marcus’ hand – the good one – and, giving the twiddle-fingered wave that Griff favours, blew him a kiss. Just for good measure, I called a soft, ‘Goodnight,’ as I fished for my keys.

  I think he took a step towards me as if to say something. ‘Yes?’ I prompted.

  But the figure rushed past us and disappeared. Then Marcus disappeared too. It could have been in pursuit, but I rather think it was back to his caravan to avoid more cousinly scorn. Wonderful. OK, early night for Lina. I’d make Griff and me a cocoa – his bedroom light was on – and have an earlyish night. As early as it can be when it’s past midnight.

  Against all our rules, the caravan door was unlocked.

  I stepped inside. ‘Griff? Griff?’

  I mustn’t panic. Perhaps he’d been too drunk to lock up behind him.

  Even when he was legless, Griff was never too drunk to lock up.

  A groan. From his bedroom. No, not that sort of groan.

  It was only a step to the bedroom door. I was so afraid of what I might find I could hardly open it. But if he was groaning he must be alive. Speed might be important.

  He was lying on his stomach, face to one side. He groaned again. Was this just a too-much-booze-sore head groan? Or was he ill?

  ‘Griff? Griff?’ I shook his shoulder. The bones were horribly near the surface compared with Marcus’s.

  ‘Hello?’ But this shout came from the caravan door, which in my panic I’d forgotten to close, let alone lock.

  I turned quickly. A security guard? Yes, the guy Griff had so shamelessly wooed this morning.

  ‘What –?’

  He stepped inside. ‘Is the old guy all right?’

  For nearly twenty years I’d known never to give straight answers. ‘Why shouldn’t he be?’

  ‘Because someone’s socked him, that’s why. I’ve just been to get my first aid kit here.’ He waved a green plastic box.

  Thank goodness for expert help! I stood back to let him in.

  By now Griff had turned on his back; his snores rumbled round the whole caravan. Some nights we’d had in the caravan I’d had to get up (I slept on a sofa that pulled down out of the wall to make a narrow bed) to roll him over so I could get some sleep. Tonight he could snore all he wanted so long as he was all right.

  ‘Let’s get him into recovery position,’ the guard said. It seemed he didn’t need my help.

  ‘Where was he hit?’

  ‘Just as he’d got through the door, I’d say. Whoever it was scarpered when I came up.’

  ‘I mean, was it his head or his neck or what?’ I peered.

  He slapped a pad on the back of Griff’s neck and taped it in place. ‘There. That should be all right.’

  ‘If he’s had a bang on the head, shouldn’t I take him to casualty?’

  ‘I think you’ll find it’s A and E these days. I should let him sleep it off. See what he’s like in the morning.’

  A lot could go wrong between now and the morning. Maybe there was a chance of a second opinion. I took a deep breath. ‘What about the police?’

  ‘How many hours will it take them to get here? In any case, what’ll they say? I mean, smell his breath.’ He wafted away some whisky fumes. ‘They’ll say he came back pissed and fell and hit himself.’

  ‘But if you saw someone running away –’

  ‘Never saw anyone close enough to ID them. Look, I’d best be off. I’ve got the rest of my rounds to do.’

  ‘You’ve been great – and I don’t even know your name to thank you.’

  ‘Anyone would have done the same.’

  ‘No. Most people just walk away on the other side. Anyway, I know he’ll want to thank you himself – er –?’

  ‘Mal,’ he said. ‘I’ll leave him in your safe hands then, eh?’ He disappeared as quietly and quickly as he’d come.

  I turned the key in the lock and returned to Griff. He was sitting up, and as I went in swung his legs over the edge of the bed. He was fingering the pad on the back of his neck.

  ‘What the dickens is this?’ He worried the edges of the tape.

  ‘It’s sticking plaster. Over your bump.’ I sat beside him, smoothing it back into place.

  ‘What bump?’

  Concussion! That’s what made people forget things. Should I dial nine-nine-nine or load him into the van and take him to A and E – thanks, Mal – myself?

  He got to his feet, pushing gently past me. ‘When I have used the miniature ablutions, dear heart, you can explain about this so-called bump and why, when you’re clearly in your gladdest rags, you come to have such a wan little face. In the meantime, perhaps some cocoa might replace the roses in your cheeks?’

  Which was his way of getting me to the far end of the caravan from the loo. He always preferred his private moments to be as private as possible.

  While the doll’s house kettle boiled, I looked around the living area for signs of violence. There were none, not that I could see. Of course, having fixed furniture made my detecting more difficult. It would have taken more than the fall of a frail old man to wrench the bench seat from the wall, and the table that could have been tipped over in a scuffle was still folded neatly against the wall. My sleeping bag was still in its roll on the floor. No, it all looked exactly as when I’d left it.

  Griff had changed into his dressing gown and slippers when he shuffled along to join me. Actually, to call it a dressing gown didn’t do it justice, it was so fancy, with wonderful embroidery, gold and crimson silks on black satin. I’d tried to match the colours when I’d made him some slippers for his birthday. Yes, made: he’d got a pattern from a magazine from 1802 – it seemed that was one of the ways young ladies spent their time, when they weren’t knotting fringes or knitting purses – and we’d thought it would be fun to see if we could reproduce it. I’d threatened him with a smoking cap in the same design for Christmas.

  ‘Lina, my love, why are you boiling the kettle? And why is no milk bubbling gently on the hob? Dear me, fancy forgetting all your old Griff has taught you about cocoa making. You’d better let me –’

  ‘You should be sitting down looking after yourself,’ I retorted, switching off the kettle and reaching for the milk. ‘You’r
e sure I can’t microwave this?’

  He shook his head. Shook his head? Without wincing? ‘Late as it is, we mustn’t let our standards drop,’ he said gently. ‘A slow boil, with heat applied from underneath, not from somewhere inside. You’ll find the whisk in the drawer, remember.’

  I measured both cocoa and sugar to the last grain, and whisked vigorously. If he had been hit, Griff didn’t sound very concussed. Not if concussed meant confused, fuzzy-sighted and with a shocking headache, like my first boyfriend after getting a boot in the head playing football.

  I pulled down the little table, remembering to cover its Formica top with a Victorian linen cloth before placing Griff’s mug in front of him. Mug? Yes, for cocoa. But it was a Royal Worcester china mug. As was mine.

  Before I sat, I said, ‘Let me have a look at that bruise, Griff. Anything to stop you pithering with that tape!’

  He pulled away his fingers, looking like a guilty schoolboy.

  ‘Brace yourself! I’ll pull as quickly as I can.’

  ‘Be careful, dear one: I haven’t any hair to spare!’

  The tape came off faster than you could say leg-wax. There was no sign of a bruise, not to my inexperienced eye. I touched – very gently – the place it was supposed to be. No, it didn’t feel like a bruise, and Griff, the biggest baby in the world when it came to removing splinters or anything like that, didn’t pull as much of a face as when I’d tried to make our cocoa with water. A much harder prod didn’t have much more effect.

  Giving up, I popped the dressing in the under-sink bin and sat beside him. I got up again quickly – I’d forgotten the biscuit barrel.

  ‘What did you get up to this evening while I was on the razzle?’ I asked as I passed it to him.

  ‘A symposium, Lina. Another one for your mental vocabulary book. Did I ever tell you that when I was a lad at prep school they made us keep a vocabulary book, carefully indexed? Ah, so I did. Believe me, a mental one is much more sensible.’ He patted my hand.

  I didn’t tell him I had a little book just like that myself. Actually I needed it less these days. Words tended to stick longer in my brain, not slipping away as if responding to some arcane law. ‘A symposium?’ I repeated. ‘I thought that was to do with scientists or philosophers or something getting together to put the world right.’

  ‘Good girl! Exactly so. These days, that is. The original use, however, was the one I have just employed. A symposium was a drinking party. And it was to a drinking party I hied myself this evening.’

  ‘“Hied”?’

  ‘Another archaism. But one which should be resuscitated.’

  ‘Look, Griff, we didn’t bring the dictionary with us. Either you’ll have to use shorter words or you’ll have to interpret as you go. And it’s a bit late for an English lesson.’

  ‘I stand – or rather, sit – corrected. I was on the juice, my love.’

  ‘Do you remember who with?’

  ‘Darling, it’s one thing for an old man like me to ask his quasi-granddaughter about the company she keeps. It’s quite another for her to interrogate such a senior citizen as I.’

  ‘Senior you may be. Drunk you certainly were. And I found you in an unlocked caravan with someone sneaking away from the door.’

  The cocoa might have been straight caffeine he looked so alert.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘No idea. Like I said, I found you on the bed. Next thing I found this security guard standing here –’

  ‘Which guard and where?’

  ‘The one you were fluttering your lashes at this morning. And he was standing in the doorway, with a little first aid kit.’

  ‘Was he still wearing that gorgeous little bum-freezer jacket?’

  ‘Griff! This isn’t the time or place –’

  ‘Exactly what I was thinking, Lina, my dear. If he was in uniform and thus, one supposes, on duty this morning, before ten, it seems an extraordinarily long working day, quite violating all those helpful European Directives, if that is, he’s still in uniform, and thus on duty, at well after midnight. Unless my concussed brain means I can no longer tell the time?’

  ‘He wasn’t wearing his ID,’ I mused.

  ‘Really?’

  ‘I had to ask him his name. Mal.’

  ‘Mal. Mal.’ Griff seemed to give the name far more thought than it warranted.

  ‘He said he’d found you and had come to give you first aid. He found what he said was a bump on your head. Since you were out cold I didn’t argue.’

  ‘If I had indeed been out cold, perhaps I might have needed more than a sticking plaster. I might have needed medical attention best summoned by his radio or phone or whatever.’

  ‘I didn’t see him using either.’

  ‘Did he say how he came to find me?’

  ‘He said something about someone running past him – actually, someone ran past me, so that might have been true. He’d checked on the caravan door and – no, he didn’t say where he’d found you. He reckoned you’d been hit just as you went in. He didn’t say how you came to be on your bed. Do you know?’

  ‘The usual way.’ But he sounded uncertain. ‘I walked in and lay down. But I’ll swear I locked the door. Even though I might have been a touch befuddled.’

  ‘The door was definitely locked? You had to use your keys?’

  ‘Which I returned to my trousers pocket. Lina, be an angel –’

  I was already on my feet. There were no keys in his pocket, as I established in ten seconds, nor any anywhere else, as it took me ten minutes to establish. Except mine, of course, safe in my bag.

  ‘So how could he have got in if I had locked the door?’

  ‘Griff – finish your cocoa, have another biscuit and be honest: are you sure everything happened as you said? Did you manage to find your way all the way back here in the dark? Even though you were a touch befuddled?’

  I hated it when he hung his head. I’d rather he lied in his teeth than looked as if I’d caught him in a fib. He was so penitent he even swallowed down the disgusting skin he’d allowed to form over the cocoa.

  ‘You know, I rather think someone might have lent me his arm.’

  ‘And slipped the key into the lock?’

  ‘I rather fear so. And then pocketed the key and – oh, Lina, I’m a stupid old soak, and I promise to sign the pledge and everything so long as you’ll forgive me.’

  ‘Nothing to forgive, Griff. I’ll get a locksmith round first thing. So long as one of us stays put and bolts it when the other one goes out, we shall be all right.’

  ‘We should be anyway, dear heart. There’s nothing to steal in here after all, except Sanditon and Northanger Abbey, neither exactly irreplaceable.’

  I nodded. Any dealer would know you don’t keep anything of value in your caravan. Or in the van. And at a show like this, as at Detling, security would be very tight indeed.

  I’d like to say I lay awake for hours puzzling it all out. But, as usual, as soon as my head touched the pillow, even on a board of a bed like this, I fell straight asleep and didn’t wake till Griff brought me my morning tea. Except this time he didn’t quite bring it. His head was still so foul and his shakes so bad he spilt it all over me.

  Chapter Ten

  Although I organised a locksmith, who grumbled about the weekend call-out but not about his extra fee, it was Griff who had to stay in for him. I put my foot down. There was no way he was fit to handle anything breakable, as he eventually had the grace to admit. So I went on the stall on my own. There was a steady trickle of customers from the first, and though there seemed to be less money changing hands than yesterday, people were soon touting little carriers and strange shapes in bubble-wrap. No one had yet bought anything from us, but people were hovering. I reminded myself that likely customers wanted to see a calm, positive face, not a sulky one. And I could have done sulky for England. The very day I wanted to take off and hunt for my ancestors Griff had to have the shakes and the mother and father of a headache. Headach
e spelt h-a-n-g-o-v-e-r.

  Not wishing to scare off punters by looking – what was the word Griff used? – predatory, I sat down with a trade mag and tried to look cool and professional. It was difficult with damp hair. Griff had reminded me that once women had used tea to rinse their hair, but I knew it was chamomile, not English Breakfast, and I didn’t think milk and sugar were involved either.

  But someone was more than hovering. Someone was coming in to land.

  I didn’t pounce. Not when they were looking at eight hundred pounds’ worth of hideous Royal Worcester. Let them feast their eyes on the twirls of gilt before I smiled and suggested they pick it up and have a closer look.

  ‘Eight hundred and fifty pounds! You sold it for eight hundred and fifty pounds! I’d have been happy with six hundred. Hats off, gentlemen, a genius!’ Griff crowed. Aside, he added, ‘You may not recognise it as a quotation, dear heart, but that was how Schumann announced Brahms’s arrival on the musical scene. Or was it Chopin’s?’ He stroked his chin. Yes, he’d managed to shave.

  I smiled and nodded, even if I didn’t see how the comment applied to me. I breathed a sigh of relief: Griff was more or less his usual self again. He’d sauntered up at about one, looking as if he’d managed to iron his skin as well as his clothes. The suggestion I’d picked up from a magazine – teabags on the eyes – had worked. Or maybe I was so chuffed by my success I didn’t take off my rose-tinted specs.

  ‘Time to celebrate!’ he chortled, heading off again before I could stop him, the old bugger. It wasn’t that I minded being on my own – I’d quite enjoyed my morning, to be honest, practising charming the punters myself instead of watching Griff perform all the time – but I did need the loo. And I was very hungry.

  But I was soon busy again. More smiles, more banter, more sales: that was the way to do it. I felt quite smug. Until I realised the next face I’d switched the smile on for was Larry Copeland. It might better to leave it in place, so see if it would bring a matching expression to his face.

  It didn’t.