by Sam Short
“Ready for what?” said Willow.
“There’s a gentleman coming from the Range Rover dealership to pick me up. I’m collecting our new car. You two can take my old car and call it your own. I’ll miss it, but Boris has ordered a private registration plate for the new ride, and he said the sound system is thumping. I’m rather looking forward to driving it. Boris said it will give me social mobility. I can finally say goodbye to the working-class, and hello to the lower middle-class.”
“You’ve never worked a day in your life though, Granny,” said Willow. “You can’t really call yourself working-class.”
I often wondered why Willow couldn’t keep her mouth in the same position I kept mine when Granny made an outlandish claim — firmly closed.
Granny took a deep breath, and the sound I heard was either an animal crashing through the trees surrounding the cottage, or Granny’s knuckles cracking behind her back. The look of pain on her face suggested the latter.
“Never worked?” she murmured, her voice taking on the same tone she used for the Jehovah’s Witnesses who insisted on knocking her door on a Sunday, even after one of them had almost had a finger severed in a slammed door as he handed Granny a leaflet.
Granny’s voice rose in volume, and Willow closed her mouth. She always got there eventually. “Never worked!” lambasted Granny. “When you’ve pushed two fledgling humans from the space between your legs, young lady, and brought them up to be well adjusted adults — while being unpaid and under appreciated… then, and only then, can you tell me I’ve never worked! Curses of the goddess be upon you!”
Willow’s eyes glinted, and her mouth opened tentatively. I shook my head, but it was too late. “Well adjusted?” she said. “Have you had another two children you’re not telling us about, or do you actually mean Mum and Uncle Brian?”
Granny did well to control herself. Or more likely, it was the fact that a large black saloon car turned into her driveway and parked at the bottom of the garden path which caused the sparks at her fingertips to fizzle out and die.
“My ride’s here!” she said, making her way down the path. “You had a lucky escape, Willow. The keys to my car are on the kitchen table, make sure you lock the cottage when you leave and put the keys under the stone chicken.”
The stone chicken stood to the right of the cottage doorway, and Granny insisted she’d bought it from a garden centre, although there was speculation that it was the chicken that Granny had insisted had been taken by a fox. The stone egg which protruded from the rear of the chicken, and the look of astonishment on its face, told a different story.
“You can’t wear an apron to go and pick up a luxury car,” said Willow.
Granny hurried down the path as the driver of the car opened the passenger door for her. “Like I said, I’m still working class. I’ll take my apron off when I’m lower middle-class.”
Chapter Six
Some people might think that’s it’s preposterous to have a goat in the back seat of a small yellow Renault hatchback, and I was, without doubt, one of those people. It was more than preposterous — it was complete lunacy, and the car smelt like a petting zoo. There was hardly room in the rear of the tiny French car to seat two adults, and Boris was doing a good job of making the car seem even smaller than it actually was.
The tartan rug beneath him was managing to keep the seat fairly free of goat hair, but his rear hooves were leaving scuff marks on the plastic door trims. The window he was looking out of was smeared with tongue shaped swipes of saliva, and he bristled when I asked him to stop licking the glass.
“Penelope, you and Willow have only owned this car for fifteen minutes, and if it wasn’t for me being generous enough to buy a new car, you wouldn’t own it at all,” he said, tasting the glass again. “There’s a small part of the goat’s brain that continues to control some of my impulses, and unfortunately for you and your window, this is one of those moments. Please give me my dignity and don’t mention the subject again. Anyway, when Gladys brings our new Range Rover home you won’t need to transport me anywhere again. I’ll be riding in style in the future, not in this embarrassingly old yellow tinpot contraption.”
The car was old, but it held memories that made me smile. Granny had bought it when Willow and I were young enough to believe her when she’d told us that it was a top of the range sports car — the same model that Prince Charles drove when he wasn’t being ferried around by his chauffeur. It had a special place in my heart, and the sound the small engine made when it struggled to climb a hill reminded me of my boat. I knew that it wasn’t the best looking car on the road, and I’d agree with Boris that it was slightly embarrassing, but Granny had given it to me and Willow, and it was our first car. It felt special. Anyway, I didn’t think it was too pernickety of me not to want goat drool on my car window.
Willow laughed. “If you can control your impulse to eat Granny’s grass, and make her push that heavy lawnmower around, you can control your impulses to lick a window, Boris.”
Boris snorted. “Grass tastes vile,” he said. “If she wants an animal to eat her grass she can find herself another goat — one with no pride in itself. Anyway, Gladys needs the exercise. You have to keep moving when you get to a certain age or the rot begins to set in.”
I laughed. “I dare you to say that to Granny’s face,” I said, reversing the car into a space in the Poacher’s Pocket Hotel carpark, “but please let me watch.”
“I have far more sense than that,” said Boris, climbing out of the car. “I may be inclined to lick windows, but my faculties are just fine.”
Granny had cursed people for far less than an insult about her age, and I very much doubted that she’d hold back from cursing Boris, even though he did seem to have an uncanny ability to bring out the best side in her. I’d not seen Granny treat anyone with the respect she gave Boris since my grandad had died. Boris had far more sense than to incur a curse from Granny, though — especially while she had witch dementia.
Willow led the way through the beer garden towards the path that led to the boat, and I rolled my eyes as several men stopped what they were doing and watched her progress. Her figure was what you’d call “full” and I looked down at my own body, wondering if a spell could enlarge my boobs. Willow and I shared the same black hair as my mother, and you could even say our noses were moulded from the same cast, but from the neck down, all similarities ended.
Willow’s bottom rolled in her tight shorts, and I was sure mine wobbled, or at least bounced beneath my summer dress. The flip-flops my sister wore on her feet caused her to walk in a way that enhanced her legs, and my burgundy Doctor Marten boots just made my feet feel heavy. Maybe a shopping trip was in order. An online shopping trip, I promised myself as I recalled the last time I’d agreed to accompany my sister on a shopping spree. The thought of queuing for a changing cubicle with armfuls of clothes which weren’t going to fit, was almost as appealing as admitting to anybody that I was quite looking forward to going out for a meal with Barney. Not that there was anything wrong with Barney, but I’d kept my life free of romantic complications for years, and the thought of the squeals and questions which would come my way from Willow and Susie if I so much as hinted that I liked Barney, made me blush.
Boris trotted ahead of me, ignoring the comments from drunk adults, and allowing children to pat and prod him. I reminded myself that beneath the coarse white hair and curled horns was a cultured man whose life had been turned upside down by Granny’s dementia. I almost shed a tear of pity as Boris attempted a bleat to please a young girl who tickled him behind his ear and told him he was beautiful.
As with most things concerning Boris, the precious moment soon passed, and I almost choked on my tongue as Boris spat on the shoes of a woman who called him a mangy old animal as he brushed past her bare legs.
The woman shrieked and kicked out at Boris, and a group of men laughed as she tumbled backwards off the bench she was sitting on and sprawled on the grass,
legs akimbo, and covered with the contents of her glass.
Willow placated the angry woman and helped her to her feet, taking money from her pocket to pay for the spilt drink. I ushered the angry Boris through the gate at the bottom of the garden and down the pathway which took us through the trees and down to my boat. “You are not a mangy old animal,” I assured him. “You didn’t have to spit on her shoes though, Boris. They looked very expensive.”
“I did not spit,” said Boris, as Willow caught up with us. “Llamas, football players, and drunk hobos spit, Penelope. I accidentally spilled a build up of fluids in my mouth. There’s a huge difference! I won’t be labeled uncouth by anybody, especially a witch who lives on a boat!”
“Chill out, Boris!” snapped Willow. “What on earth’s got into you? I just had to pay five-pounds-fifty to buy that woman a fresh glass of Pimms. Five-pounds-fifty! No wonder Tony and Michelle drive a Mercedes!”
Tony and Michelle owned the hotel and the boat mooring I rented, and they’d already asked me to keep Mabel under control when she’d stolen a piece of chicken from one of the customers. I didn’t think they’d take kindly to Boris spitting at their patrons. “You need to control yourself, Boris,” I said.
Boris led the way across the grass as we emerged from the trees. “I’m sorry,” he said. “Gladys has been rationing my brandy. She thinks I drink too much. It’s making me feel a little on edge. The smell of the drinks in the beer garden got my dander up. I shall be fine within a minute or two, when you two girls give me a glass of—”
Boris’s demand was interrupted by a woman’s scream which made my blood run cold. There’s more than one type of scream. There’s the type of scream a person afraid of spiders makes when they walk into a cobweb, and there’s the type of scream that chills the human soul. The scream which resonated across the canal, and made us all stop in our tracks, was the latter. The sky above the fields on the opposite bank of the canal grew dark with crows for the second time that day, and an invisible finger traced a cold line down my spine.
“Help me!” begged the desperate voice. “Somebody’s killed him!”
The towpath on the side on the canal I lived on was long overgrown and forgotten, but with Boris leading the way, we tore a path through the briars and shoulder height grass, and scrambled up the crumbling embankment onto the stone bridge which carried the road to Bentbridge across the canal.
Boris pushed through a hedge, and Willow and I climbed over a gate into the field above which the cawing crows circled as the woman continued to scream.
“Over there!” said Boris, already running.
The wheat was still only knee high, and a scarecrow rose from the crops in the centre of the field. At the base of its pole was the hunched shape of the woman, her screams doing a far better job than any scarecrow ever could of preventing the crows in the sky from landing.
“He’s dead!” the woman shouted as we neared her. “Someone’s killed my Gerald!”
Boris came to a stuttering halt next to her, and turned away from the sight that transformed the field from a quintessential English landscape, into a blood splattered scene of gore.
Gerald Timkins lay dead in the shadow of the scarecrow, and a ragged hole the size of a teacup saucer lay bare the contents of his abdomen. Blood seeped into the soil around his body, and vivid splashes of crimson coated the broken stalks of golden wheat which cradled him. Gerald’s shotgun lay abandoned a few feet away from his body, and snapped stems of corn indicated trampled pathways through the crops in more than one direction.
Boris made a strangled cough, and Willow placed a hand on the shaking shoulder of Gerald’s wife. “What happened?” she managed, her face white and her hand trembling.
I dialled the police and pressed the phone tight to my ear as Mrs Timkins sobbed her reply. “I don’t know,” she gasped. “Who would do this to him? He was so happy — he’d just bought some new electronic crow scarers and he only came here to take that old thing down,” she said, pointing at the straw stuffed scarecrow that gazed indifferently at the macabre scene below it. “He said it was attracting the crows and not scaring them away. I got worried when he didn’t come home for lunch and didn’t answer his phone. I found him like this — my beautiful husband. Why would anyone want to kill my Gerald? I don’t understand.”
I stepped away from the murder scene as I reported the crime to the police, and pocketed my phone when I’d ended the call. “The police are on their way,” I said. “I’m so sorry, Mrs Timkins.”
Her body shook as she collapsed next to her husband, and her harrowing wails of anguish scared even the most determined of crows from the sky above us.
With the police on the scene, and statements taken from Willow and I, we made our way back to my boat, promising Barney that we were okay. The police had taken note of the time we’d seen Gerald with his shotgun near the canal, and according to Gerald’s wife, we were the last people to have seen him alive — apart from his murderer of course.
We hadn’t needed to remind Boris not to speak in the company of the police — he was unusually lost for words, and if a goat’s face could be described as shocked — Boris looked downright anguished. He’d not uttered a single syllable on the slow walk back to the boat, and I was glad when Granny telephoned me, demanding to speak to the upset goat.
Boris spoke into my phone, which I’d placed on the dinette table next to the bottle of brandy and coffee cups. “Gladys?” he said. “Something terrible has happened.”
“You’re telling me!” said Granny, her voice edged with anger. “I’ve never been so embarrassed in my whole life!”
Boris sighed. “There’s been a murder, Gladys. An awful, awful murder.”
Granny hardly paused. “I can beat that! Your credit card expired yesterday, Boris. I can’t pay off the remaining balance for the Range Rover. You’d better sort this out. I want that car. It’s beautiful… you should see it… black, shiny, and with leather seats which smell like a fatted calf. It’s perfect, and I want it!”
Boris licked at his bowl of brandy. “Didn’t you hear me?” he said. “There’s been a murder. Gerald Timkins is dead. Shot. With his own gun, and with only a tatty old scarecrow present to witness his violent demise.”
Granny’s voice took on a no-nonsense edge. “I heard you loud and clear, but did you hear me? Your credit card has expired. There’s nothing I can do for a dead man, but I’m standing here in a car showroom which smells like posh candles and fifty-pound notes, looking at a car which I can’t pay for. What are you going to do about it?”
Boris snorted and rolled his eyes. “I’ll phone my bank and have a new card delivered. It will be sent to my own home though. You’ll have to go and collect it for me.”
Granny sighed, and said something under her breath. “Make it so, Boris. You telephone the bank right away when I end this call. Oh, and I am sorry about Gerald. He was a good farmer, not like Farmer Bill, who likes to throw around unfounded accusations of sexual assault. I think it’s to do with what they farm, to be frank. It’s a far more peaceful farmer who grows plants, than one who raises livestock to be slaughtered or milked. I shall visit Mrs Timkins at the earliest opportunity and offer her my condolences.”
The sexual assault accusations from Farmer Bill stemmed back to an incident in the Coffee Pot Café. Granny had been adamant she’d been reaching into Farmer Bill’s crotch area to retrieve an item of dropped food. Framer Bill said differently, and had embarrassed Granny in front of the other diners. Grammy had never lived down the humiliation.
Granny ended the call with a final reminder that we should still be at my mother’s for the meal at seven o’clock, whether a murder had occurred or not, and Boris did as he had promised, telephoning his bank under the guise of Charleston and arranging for a new card to be express delivered the next day.
Susie arrived at the boat at six o’clock and took over guardianship of Boris, and Willow and I got showered, changed, and left the two of them to d
rink brandy and elderberry wine as they watched Robot Wars on the television which Willow had insisted I installed when she’d moved aboard.
A tight ball of tension grew in my stomach as Willow and I headed to mum’s cottage. Already that day I’d seen a fat man losing the plot over celery, a candlelit vigil involving a goat, a policeman under the influence of a magic spell, and a dead body.
I took a deep breath and relaxed a little. We were on our way to a civilised family meal, and I very much doubted anything else could go wrong on that day.
That would have just been unfair.
Chapter Seven
We arrived at Hazelwood cottage with fifteen minutes to spare. Granny had arrived before us, in a taxi, and she took Willow and I aside when we arrived, making us promise we’d take her to Charleston’s house the next day to pick up the new credit card.
It was nice to be back at the cottage I’d grown up in, and Willow and I took a short walk around the private woodland which surrounded Mum’s home, shaking the gory memories of Gerald Timkins’s dead body from our minds before we sat down for a family meal.
It seemed odd to be crowded around a table with my family as a woman on the other side of Wickford mourned the murder of her husband, but Granny had put things in perspective as she’d helped Mum lay the big table. “Life goes on,” she’d said, “and we’d all do well to celebrate the living as well as the dead. You never know when a tragedy will strike, so cherish those around you while you still can.”
Barney had managed to arrive by seven o’clock as Granny had instructed, and had refused to give Willow any information when she’d asked him about Gerald’s murder. “Not tonight, Willow” he said, with an apologetic smile. “The detectives are investigating, but it’s early days yet. I’d like to forget about what I saw in that field today and enjoy this meal.”
