by Winona Kent
“Rankin?” Nick inquired.
“Yes, it was Hank Marvin’s name before he changed it. Brian Rankin.”
Charlie remembered why she’d asked Nick to meet her.
“I’m still having problems with my family tree program,” she said. “Can you fix it?”
As well as being a whiz at quantum physics, Nick was also Charlie’s computer guru.
“I think it must have some kind of virus,” she said. “It won’t save anything properly. And it keeps linking up all the wrong people.”
“I’ll download a new release,” Nick said. “I’ll pop in after dinner and do a clean install. And I’ll check for viruses. That should solve it.”
“I thank you. Our ancestors thank you.”
Nick got to his feet, slowly, using his cane for leverage.
Charlie picked a dead leaf off the new geranium plant, and leaned her head against Jeff’s grave marker as Nick limped away.
“There you are, love,” she said, wistfully. “Sprites and tachyons. That’s all that’s needed to turn back the hands of time.”
Chapter 2
At the end of the afternoon, after work, Charlie rode her bike towards the old wooden bench at the top end of the Village Green. There was old Emmy Cooper, in her usual spot beside the stone bird bath, feeding the pigeons crumbs from a brown paper bag.
“Hello,” she said, leaning her bike against the back of the bench. “Pigeons all right today?”
“That one’s got the mange,” Emmy said, pointing to a rather threadbare individual pecking at a bit of crust.
Charlie joined her on the long wooden seat.
“Toast from your breakfast?” she asked, conversationally.
Emmy lived alone in Poorhouse Lane, renting a tiny flat in one of the listed buildings the Ferryman Brothers owned. She was 89 years old and her memory was not what it once had been.
“Yesterday’s,” Emmy said. “It was boiled eggs this morning.”
Because she deliberately kept to herself, it was really only Charlie who ever bothered to stop and say hello, to sit with her for a few minutes, ask how things were and whether or not she was eating properly.
“And you remembered to switch off the stove, didn’t you?”
Emmy stopped to think.
“Yes. Because I was tidying my cupboards and I put Kenneth’s picture on the counter. I remember switching it off.”
Emmy had loved a flier who was shot down in World War Two, and had never, because of this, married. She did not, as far as anyone knew, have any living relatives anywhere in all of the United Kingdom.
Charlie took the change purse out of her bag, and gave it to Emmy.
“Mr. McDonald said you left this in the lettuce.”
“Dear me,” Emmy replied. “What will it be next?”
Last week it was her keys on the counter in the fish shop. Emmy muddled the hours of the day, and the days of the week. And forgot to wash. And change her clothes.
“I’ve been in touch with the parish council again,” Charlie said, carefully. She needed to tiptoe up to this conversation.
But Emmy knew what was coming.
“Not interested. I can manage on my own. Thank you.”
“You can’t, though. Not really.”
Only Charlie could say that to her without having her head bitten off. Emmy had no money, and she’d had an increase in her rent which she obviously couldn’t afford. She was going to be evicted by the Ferryman Brothers. She knew what Charlie was telling her was true. The Parish Council desperately needed to be involved.
“I’ve written down a telephone number, and a name. She’s lovely, this lady. Josie Griggs. So helpful.”
“Griggs,” Emmy sniffed. “Gypsy name. Wouldn’t trust her.”
Charlie studied the plaque on the stand beneath the birdbath, memorializing Mrs. Tamworth, an early women’s rights campaigner. At the age of 35 she’d donned a pair of her husband’s knickerbockers and turned cartwheels on the green, observed by all of her children and most of the villagers.
Even Mrs. Tamworth wouldn’t have had the patience required to deal with Emmy Cooper.
Back to the drawing board. She’d find another counselor who didn’t have a last name Emmy would consider suspicious.
It was, she thought, as she cycled on to the middle of the grassy triangle, where some members of the Committee to Save the Village Green and Poorhouse Lane were unfurling a large banner, almost ironic. At the beginning of the 19th century, the Village Poorhouse had looked after its inhabitants. There had been a matron to ensure everyone had proper clothing and regular meals. And the children had been apprenticed to local tradespeople, so that later in life, they would be able to earn a decent and honest living.
Until 1834, anyway, when the Poor Law changed and the poorhouses became workhouses and poverty was seen as a dishonorable state, requiring corrective servitude.
Ron and Reg Ferryman, Charlie thought, would have made excellent workhouse guardians.
She stopped her bike at the large banner, which was now unfurled and fastened to the low stone wall that ran the length of the west side of the green, facing the road.
SAVE STONEFORD VILLAGE GREEN AND POORHOUSE LANE FROM UNSCRUPULOUS DEVELOPERS, it proclaimed, in large red hand-painted letters.
The issue was not the Georgian houses that lined the tiny cobbled lane, eight on one side, six on the other, all constructed in the 1790’s, all Grade II listed. They were untouchable. The issue was Poorhouse Lane itself, a mere eight feet wide and 100 feet long, and the only way in to the vacant plot of land slated for development. It was the Ferryman brothers’ intention to turn the road into a truck route—a decision which would mean eight heavy vehicles an hour for at least four years.
That was the other thing that occupied a great deal of Charlie’s time, when she wasn’t at work. And in a way, it was all connected; because, interestingly, she’d recently discovered that the Village Green, together with that vacant plot of land, might once have been owned by her family.
In a dusty box in the Parish Council Office, she’d discovered a letter. It had been written by a woman named Catherine Collins to Sarah Elizabeth Foster in 1823, and Sarah’s ownership, and subsequent loss, of both plots of land was mentioned. But there were no further details and there was no singular piece of paper that actually proved it. The document which would have confirmed the chain of ownership—a deed to the properties—had apparently gone up in smoke at about the same time that Sarah Elizabeth Foster had taken Louis Augustus Duran’s hand in marriage.
For centuries it was believed that both the green and the vacant land at the end of Poorhouse Lane were under the protection of the village. That was until Ron Ferryman had come up with his grand designs for seaview flats and luxury houses.
Never mind fetes, carnivals and May Days, dog walkings and informal footie matches. Ron knew someone at the Land Registry Office, and had done his research. The horrible truth was out. In spite of there being no piece of paper to confirm it, the Village Green and the empty field had reverted to ownership, in 1825, by one Lemuel Ferryman. He was proprietor of The Dog’s Watch Inn and ancestor of Ron and Reg, who now comprised Ferryman Bros. (Property) Ltd. And the Ferryman Bros. were in no mood for historical conservation. They were planning a prosperous retirement somewhere warm, preferably in a country where English was understood, but was not necessarily the language of everyday life.
Charlie wheeled her bike across to the Village Oak, where Mike Tidman, an almost-retired arborist from Southampton, was on his knees on the ground beneath the spreading branches, collecting samples of earth from between and under the tree’s gnarled and massive roots.
“It’s definitely a poison,” he said, acknowledging Charlie’s presence. “Some kind of liquid suspension, poured directly into the soil here. Likely over a period of time, to counteract the tree’s ability to produce a new set of leaves as the old ones died. I suspect it was probably a herbicide designed to kill trees, and it was pr
obably applied in a much higher dosage than would be required to do the job.”
“That’s deplorable,” Charlie said. “Can you save it?”
Mike pocketed the little plastic bags that held his collected samples.
“I’ll do my best,” he promised. “It’s criminal, what’s been done to this lovely old thing. And if it’s what I suspect it is, we’re going to have a fight on our hands. Whoever’s responsible ought to be hanged. Preferably from one of the higher branches.”
He stood up.
“Sorry. I’m letting my emotions get the better of me. I’m too sentimental, especially about trees.”
“We all are,” Charlie replied. “Especially this one.”
She glared at Ron Ferryman, with his Savile Row suit and his London haircut, standing at the eastern edge of the green, texting into his mobile.
“And you’re right. The person responsible for this ought to be charged with vandalism. At the very least.”
Charlie unlocked the front door of her cottage, and wheeled her bike inside.
Normally, she’d have left it in the garden, propped against the wall. But the sky was smudging over with ink-bottomed clouds, and Natalie at the museum had mentioned thundery showers along the coast. And so, it was best brought indoors, to preserve its rather ancient parts from the possibility of further rust.
Parking her bike at its rainy-day post beside an old dairy can that had been converted into an umbrella stand, Charlie pulled off her helmet. She kicked off her shoes, then collected the letters that had been dropped in through the mail slot halfway up the door.
The latest leaflet from the local wildlife charity, imploring her to Save the Hedgehogs by growing shrubbery borders in her garden and minutes from the most recent meeting of the Committee to Save the Village Green and Poorhouse Lane. The monthly newsletter from Jeff’s guitar club.
Charlie threw them all on the stove, an ancient cast-iron AGA that her mother had bought at an auction when Charlie was two. After Jeff had died, she’d given up cooking—real cooking, anyway, with gas rings and pots and pans. If anything had to be heated, there was a microwave on the table under the window, and a small convection oven beside it for baking or broiling or browning. The abandoned AGA was piled high with books, papers, old magazines, even older newspapers, and a stack of Jeff’s favorite CD’s that were perpetually in the process of being converted to mp3 and then put somewhere else.
She went through to the sitting room.
Embedded in the back wall was a huge open fireplace, where she could easily imagine her forebears sitting on chilly winter evenings, faces lit by the crackling flames, rain-damped shawls and stockings draped over chair backs to dry. It was a grand but necessary cousin to the much smaller fireplace in the kitchen, which had long ago been converted into the alcove where the AGA lived.
In the sitting room, too, was an old second-hand upright piano. Jeff had bought it for Charlie not long after they’d married. She’d played it often when Jeff was alive, but since his death, it had slowly reverted to the same fate as the AGA, an unused appliance littered with CD’s, random sheet music, bits of notepaper scribbled with song titles and singers’ names.
Facing the big open fireplace was a venerable wooden desk that had always been there. Its drawers squeaked in protest when they were opened, and stubbornly stuck fast when she tried to shut them again. But it was solidly constructed, and it was immense. One did not merely sit at this desk, one occupied it.
Antique though it was, the desk was entirely up-to-date when it came to technology. There was Charlie’s laptop. And things attached to it which charged her mobile and an iPod. There was a hub that routed a Wi-Fi signal, a printer, a scanner and a wireless mouse.
And there was a timepiece. It was clever—it looked like one of the melting clocks in Salvador Dali’s famous painting The Persistence of Memory. Charlie’d bought it on a whim from an online shop. She wasn’t a particular fan of Dali. Her imagination had been captured more by the whimsical idea that time was something that could bend and drip, instead of being fixed to rigid hands and perfunctory tick-tocks.
Charlie didn’t bother to change out of her Regency frock. It was actually quite comfortable, with no confining waistbands and a low-cut neckline that was pleasant in the heat of a summer’s afternoon. She plugged her mobile into its recharger, set it to play music and switched on her laptop.
Its default page was Stoneford Village Online, which had the Village Oak as its welcoming photo. It was a glorious picture, taken two summers earlier, when the tree was in full leaf, branches still spreading and healthy.
Charlie was shocked at the difference between then, and now. What was happening now was devastating.
Anger was something she rarely felt. She’d wanted to be angry five years earlier, when Jeff was speeding home with Nick after a get together of pals to celebrate a pending nuptial. On the other side of the road, an irresponsible git who’d been drinking all night had lost control of his Porsche. He’d slithered over a patch of wet leaves and smashed headlong into Jeff’s old Nissan, killing him and seriously injuring Nick.
She’d wanted to be angry then. But nothing had come, defying all of the rules of grief, completely skipping over Step Three of the agreed-upon stages. Completely skipping over all of the steps, really, except shock, and loneliness.
And then, after about two years, Charlie discovered she’d reached Step Seven, and that she’d ended up in a kind of mute acceptance, as if all of her emotions had been put on hold. She would not be sad. She would not be happy. She would not love. Or hate. She would not be anything, except what her job at the museum required her to be. And it was an incomplete Step Seven, because the rest of it was supposed to include an element of hope.
And there was no hope.
But now, there seemed to be an emotion. A strange kind of sense, struggling to beat its way out into the open. Something she’d not experienced since she was a child, hurling herself to the floor over a perceived personal injustice, kicking her legs in the air and shrieking at the top of her little lungs.
It was anger. No, it was rage.
Pure, unadulterated, focused, rage.
Charlie stood up.
Her rage was directed squarely at the Ferryman Brothers, for daring to impose their selfish wills on her, and on the other villagers of Stoneford. For daring to evict an elderly woman whose family had lived in the village for as long as anyone could remember.
She stormed through the kitchen, her anger rising.
For threatening to wreck a small road and make life dangerously miserable for all of its inhabitants.
For daring to destroy the enduring symbol of Stoneford’s history, the Village Oak.
Charlie slammed the kitchen door of her cottage, and with her head down, fists balled, walked purposefully down her cobbled lane. She crossed the main road and cut through the Village Green, then turned towards the row of establishments on the eastern side of the grassy triangle.
There were two solicitors’ offices, the office of the Stoneford Village Post, a hairdresser’s, Oldbutter and Ballcock Funeral Directors. And the little place that had once been Patrick’s Coffee Shop, but which had since been taken over by Ron Ferryman as his planning office.
It was past six and the office was shut. But Charlie knew the layout of Patrick’s well, having spent a summer when she was at school behind the counter, dishing out doughnuts and slices of cake, frothy coffees and hybrid teas.
She knew that there was a back door to Patrick’s and that there had once been a spare key to that back door hidden under a flowerpot. It was still there now, eight months and one superficial renovation later.
And it still fit into the lock, which Ron Ferryman had evidently never thought to have changed.
The rage was still burning as she let herself inside. She saw the desk upon which Ron Ferryman’s laptop sat. She saw the rolled up plans, his telephone, his nameplate. A certificate, presented to Ron by the Parish Council, for a d
onation that had helped fund activities at the Stoneford Youth Club. A photo, in a heavily embellished silver frame, of Ron and Reg, turning over a symbolic shovelful of sod at what had become a garish pink block of flats along the coastal road. And his nameplate.
That picture was the first to go, flung to the slate tile floor and smashed into pieces.
There.
Serves you right, you bastards.
Charlie fought back sobs as she seized the cardboard tubes and slammed them into the edge of the desk, over and over, fracturing their protective shells and tearing to bits the paper blueprints inside.
Her ragged tears would not be contained. And neither would her anger, exploding into a maelstrom of indignant fury.
She picked up the laptop and hurled it to the floor. Not once. Not twice. Six times in total, until its lid was bent and its screen was shattered and its keyboard was in three pieces, keys scattered everywhere like a boxer’s teeth.
“And this,” she cried, giving the screen an extra few smashes with what was left of the silver picture frame, “is for Emmy Cooper, you greedy pig.”
Charlie was kneeling on the floor, in full mid-smash, when Ron Ferryman unlocked the front door and let himself into the office.
Charlie froze.
If she had been thinking rationally, she would not have stood up at that precise moment and exited through the back door, giving Ron Ferryman a perfectly good view of her retreating back.
If she had been thinking rationally, she’d have crawled away, quickly and quietly, before Ron Ferryman had a chance to switch on the lights and discover his laptop and picture in pieces on the floor.
But Charlie was not thinking rationally. She was driven by fear and the overwhelming need to flee. And she was determined to put enough distance between herself and Ron Ferryman that he wouldn’t be able to follow her, or even determine which way she’d gone, once she’d disappeared into the early evening.
