by M C Beaton
The front door was open, and Angela walked inside. A tall woman approached her. ‘My name’s Trixie Thomas,’ she said. ‘Oh, what a beautiful cake. We adore cake, but what with us being unemployed and living on government handouts, we’ve had to cut out luxuries like this.’
Angela introduced herself and felt a rush of pride when Trixie said, ‘In fact, we’re ready for a coffee break. We’ll have it now.’
She led the way into the kitchen. Her husband, Paul, was washing down the walls. ‘All the poor dear’s fit for,’ said Trixie in a rueful aside. She raised her voice, ‘Darling, here’s the doctor’s wife with a delicious cake. We’ll take a break and have some coffee. Sit down, Angela.’
Angela sat down at a table covered with a bright red-and-white checked gingham cloth. Bluebottles buzzed against the window. ‘You should get a spray,’ said Angela. ‘The flies are dreadful today.’
‘I think there’s been enough damage to the ozone layer already,’ said Trixie. ‘What I need are some old-fashioned fly papers.’
She was making coffee in what looked like a brand-new machine. ‘I grind my own beans,’ she said over her shoulder. Paul was already seated at the table, looking at the cake like a greedy child. ‘Now, just a small piece, mind,’ cautioned his wife. ‘You’re on a diet.’
Angela watched Trixie with admiration. Trixie was wearing a sort of white linen smock with large pockets over blue jeans and sneakers. Her sneakers were snow white without even a grass stain on them. Angela tugged miserably at her crumpled blouse, which had ridden up over the waistband of her baggy skirt, and felt messy and grubby.
‘Now, for the cake,’ said Trixie, bringing out a knife. Paul hunched over the table, waiting eagerly.
The knife sank into the cake. Trixie tried to lift out a slice. It was uncooked in the middle. A yellowy sludge oozed out.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Angela. ‘You can’t eat that. I don’t know how that could have happened. I followed the instructions on the packet so carefully.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Paul quickly. ‘I’ll eat it.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Trixie, giving Angela a conspiratorial ‘men!’ sort of smile.
‘I’m hopeless,’ mourned Angela.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll show you how to make one. It’s just as easy to make a cake from scratch as it is with one of these packets. And it was a lovely thought.’ Trixie moved the cake out of her husband’s reach. He gave a sigh and lumbered to his feet and went back to work.
‘I can’t do anything right,’ said Angela. ‘I am utterly useless about the house. It’s like a rubbish bin.’
‘You’ve probably let it go too far,’ said Trixie with quick sympathy. ‘Why don’t you get someone in to clean?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t. You see, it’s so awful, I’d need to make a start on it myself before any cleaning woman could see what she was doing.’
‘I’ll help you,’ Trixie smiled at Angela. ‘I feel we are going to be friends.’
Angela coloured up and turned briefly away to hide the look of embarrassed gratification on her face. She had never fitted in very well with the women of the village. In fact, she had never talked to anyone before about how she felt about her dirty house. ‘I really couldn’t expect you to help me, Trixie,’ said Angela, feeling quite modern and bold because people in the village called each other by their surnames, Mr or Mrs This and That, until they had known each other for years.
‘I’ll strike a bargain with you,’ said Trixie. ‘I’ll nip back to your house with you and if you can let me have any old sticks of furniture you were thinking of throwing out, I’ll take that as payment.’
‘Lovely,’ said Angela with a comfortable feeling she had not experienced since a child of being taken in hand.
But as they walked to the doctor’s house, Angela began to wish she had not let Trixie come. She thought of the ash still spilling over the hearth on to the carpet and of all the sinister grease lurking in the kitchen.
Trixie strode in, rolling up her sleeves. She walked from room to room downstairs and then said briskly, ‘Now, the best thing to do is just get started and don’t think about anything else.’
And Trixie worked. Her hands flew here and here. She was amazingly competent. Grease disappeared, surfaces began to gleam, books flew back up on the shelves. It was all magic to Angela, who felt she was watching a sort of Mary Poppins at work. She blundered around after her new mentor, cheerfully doing everything she was instructed to do as if the house were Trixie’s and not her own.
‘Well, we’ve made a start,’ said Trixie at last.
‘A start!’ Angela was amazed. ‘It’s never been so clean. I just don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Perhaps you’ve got an old piece of furniture you don’t want?’
‘Of course.’ Angela looked about her helplessly. ‘There must be something somewhere.’
‘What about that old chair in the corner of your living room?’
‘You mean that thing?’ The chair was armless with a bead-and-needlework cover.
Angela hesitated only a moment. It had been her grandmother’s but no one ever sat on it and her gratitude for this new goddess of the household was immense. ‘Yes, I’ll get John to put it in the station wagon and run it over to you this evening.’
‘No need for that.’ Trixie lifted it in strong arms. ‘I’ll carry it.’
Despite Angela’s protests that it was too heavy for her, Trixie headed off. Angela followed her to the garden gate. She wanted to say, ‘When will I see you again?’ and felt as shy as a lover. Dr Brodie was often away on calls and she spent much of her life alone. She had never worked since the day of her marriage to the young medical student, John Brodie, thirty years ago. They had been unable to have children. Angela’s parents were dead. She felt she had somehow only managed to muddle through the years of her marriage with books as her only consolation.
Trixie turned at the gate. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.
Angela grinned, her thin face youthful and happy.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she echoed.
Constable Hamish Macbeth was leaning on his garden gate as Trixie went past, carrying the chair.
‘Need any help?’ he called.
‘No, thanks,’ said Trixie, hurrying past.
Hamish looked at her retreating figure. Where had he seen that chair? His mind ranged over the interiors of the houses in Lochdubh. The doctor’s! That was it.
He ambled along the road to the doctor’s house and went around to the side, no one in the Highlands except the Thomas’s bothering to use the front door.
‘Come in, Hamish,’ called Angela, seeing the lanky figure of the red-haired policeman lurking in the doorway. ‘Like a cup of coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’ Hamish eased himself into the kitchen, and then blinked in surprise. He had never seen the Brodies’ kitchen look so clean. Angela bubbled over with enthusiasm as she told him of Trixie’s help.
‘Was that your chair she was carrying?’ asked Hamish.
‘Yes, the poor things have very little furniture. They want to start a bed-and-breakfast place. It was just a tatty old thing of my grandmother’s.’
Hamish thought quickly. Someone setting up a bed-and-breakfast establishment usually wanted old serviceable stuff. He wondered uneasily whether the chair was valuable. But he did not know anything about antiques.
Flies buzzed about the kitchen.
‘I should have kept the door shut,’ said Angela. ‘Wretched flies.’
‘You’ve got a spray there,’ pointed out Hamish.
‘These sprays make holes in the ozone layer,’ said Angela.
‘I suppose so. But it’s hard to think of the environment when you haff the kitchen full of the beasties,’ said Hamish whose Highland voice became more sibilant when he was upset, and somehow he felt that that remark about the ozone layer originally came from Trixie. And yet Trixie was right, so why should he feel so resentful?
Afte
r some gossip, Hamish got up and left. A thin drizzle was falling. The sky was weeping over the loch, but the air was warm and clammy.
And then he saw a Volvo parked at the side of the police station and Priscilla just getting out of it. He broke into a run.
Chapter Two
O Love! has she done this to thee?
What shall, alas! become of me?
– John Lyly
He slowed his pace as he neared the police station and tried to appear casual although his mouth was dry and his heart was thumping against his ribs.
Then just before he reached her, his pride came to his rescue. He, Hamish Macbeth, was not going to run after a woman with such abysmal taste that she could become starryeyed over a man who looked like an ape.
‘Evening, Priscilla,’ he said.
‘Open the kitchen door quickly,’ said Priscilla. ‘I’m being eaten alive. Why do the midges leave you alone?’
‘I’m covered in repellent,’ said Hamish. ‘The door’s unlocked anyway. No need to wait for me. What brings you?’
Priscilla sat down at the kitchen table and pushed back the hood of her anorak. ‘Father thought I ought to call on the newcomers,’ she said.
Of course, thought Hamish bleakly, and while you’re playing lady of the manor, drop in on the local bobby at the same time.
‘What did you think of them?’ he asked, putting on the kettle.
‘They seem very pleasant. She’s got quite a forceful personality. Dr Brodie’s wife was helping her get things arranged. Mrs Brodie’s delighted to find a friend at last, of course.’
‘Why of course?’ Hamish measured tea leaves into the teapot with a careful hand.
‘Mrs Brodie’s a lonely woman. She should have been one of those vague academics, writing her thesis and taking yet another degree or doctorate. Lots of brains and no self-confidence and very little commonsense. Trixie Thomas has taken her over with a firm hand. She’s going to perm her hair for her tomorrow.’
‘She shouldn’t have a perm,’ said Hamish. ‘That baby hair of hers suits her.’
‘Oh, well, she’s happy and perms grow out,’ said Priscilla.
Hamish handed her a cup of tea, poured one for himself, and sat down opposite her at the table.
‘And what do you make of the husband, Paul?’ he asked.
‘Nice man. Bit of a helpless child. Seems Trixie’s got a hard job managing him and all the arrangements for the bed and breakfast.’
‘Or that’s the way she plays it,’ said Hamish. ‘Has she asked you for any furniture?’
‘As a matter of fact she did. But I told her she’d need to see my father. I don’t own any of it.’
‘I hear you’ve been back for over a week.’
Priscilla looked at Hamish’s hazel eyes, which were calm and appraising.
‘I meant to get down and see you sooner,’ she said defensively, ‘but time seemed to fly past. I’ve got these friends up with me. They’re leaving tomorrow.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Oh, just friends. Sarah James and her sister, Janet, David Baxter and John Burlington.’
‘I saw them,’ said Hamish casually. ‘I was driving past. Who’s the hairy fellow?’
‘You mean the good-looking one with the tanned face? That’s John.’
‘What does he do?’
‘He’s a very successful stockbroker.’
‘Looks a bit old for a yuppie.’
‘Hamish, I wouldn’t have thought you would be the type to sneer at yuppies. He’s not exactly young, he’s thirty.’
‘Nearly as old as me,’ said Hamish drily.
‘Anyway, he’s very hard-working and ambitious. He’s bought this brill farmhouse in Gloucester for weekends and he’s going to take me down to see it when I get back in September. I’m studying computers. My course starts up again in the autumn.’
‘And you’re in love with him,’ said Hamish flatly.
Priscilla coloured up. ‘I don’t know. I think so.’
All in that moment, Hamish could have struck her. If she had said ‘Yes’, then that would have been the end of hope and he could learn to be comfortable. But Hamish knew people in love were never in any doubt about it and he cursed her in his heart for the hope she had so unwittingly held out.
He had no claim on her. As far as Priscilla was concerned, they were friends, nothing more.
Priscilla changed the subject. ‘After that business in Cnothan, I thought you would have got a promotion.’
‘I told you, I don’t want a promotion. I’ve very comfortable here.’
‘Hamish, there seems something very . . . well . . . immature about a man who doesn’t want to get on.’
‘You’re hardly a dynamo of ambition yourself, Miss Halburton-Smythe, or are you just an old-fashioned girl who wants to realize her ambition by marrying an ambitious man?’
‘This tea’s foul,’ said Priscilla. ‘And you’re foul. You’re usually so friendly and pleasant.’
‘Priscilla, you haff jist called me an immature layabout and you expect me to be pleasant.’
‘So I did.’ She put a hand on his jersey sleeve. ‘I’m sorry, Hamish. Let’s start again. I have just arrived, you have just poured me a cup of something made out of sawdust, and we are talking about the Thomases.’
Hamish grinned at her in sudden relief. He prized their usual easygoing friendship and did not want to lose it.
Priscilla smiled back and then sighed. Hamish was tall and gangly and lanky and unambitious. But when he smiled and his hazel eyes crinkled up in his thin face, he seemed part of an older, cleaner world that John Burlington knew nothing about and could never belong to.
‘Yes, the Thomases,’ she said. ‘She’s very good at getting one to do things for her. I think half the village has been up at the house already, getting them food and fixing things for them.’
‘Where are they from?’
‘Edgware, North London.’
‘Plenty of jobs in London,’ said Hamish. ‘Not like the north. Wonder why he’s on the dole?’
‘Maybe he wasn’t. Maybe he threw up his job to come here and went on the dole after he arrived. You’re very curious about them.’
‘I have an uneasy feeling they are going to cause trouble,’ said Hamish slowly.
There was a knock at the kitchen door and Hamish went to open it. John Burlington stood there. ‘Is Priscilla here?’ he asked. ‘I saw her car.’
‘I’m here,’ called Priscilla, getting to her feet. She introduced the two men. John Burlington’s handsome face broke into an engaging smile. ‘You’ve been away for ages, Cilla,’ he said. ‘The others are outside.’
Priscilla and John left. Hamish wandered through to the office and idly picked up some forms and put them down again. Cilla! What a name. He could hear them laughing outside. He could hear John Burlington saying, ‘You’ll never guess what our Cilla was doing. Drinking tea with the local copper. Darling, you’re too marvellous!’ He must have brought the others with him.
Hamish sat down at the desk. He felt he did not really know Priscilla Halburton-Smythe very well. He himself could not have tolerated such company for very long, but then, perhaps jealousy was clouding his judgement.
Dr Brodie sniffed the air suspiciously when he came home that night. Everything seemed to smell of furniture polish and disinfectant. Angela must be worn out with cleaning. Still, he had always wanted a clean house. He sat down at the table.
Angela lifted two boil-in-the-bag curries out of a pan and then the packets of rice. She cut open the bags and tipped the contents on to two plates.
‘Where’s Raffles?’ asked the doctor, ladling mango chutney on to his rice.
‘I shut him out in the garden. He will climb on to the table during meals and cats are full of germs.’
‘I think over the years we’ve become immune to Raffles’s germs,’ said the doctor, pouring a glass of something that was simply emblazoned claret without the name of any vintage to s
ully its label. ‘Why the sudden fear of pollution by Raffles?’
‘Trixie Thomas says cats are a menace. Besides, I’m sick of the hairs everywhere.’
‘Poor old Raffles,’ said the doctor, but his wife had retreated into a book.
He finished his curry. ‘Anything for dessert?’ he asked. ‘The trouble with these instant meals is that they don’t fill you up.’
Angela rose from the table. ‘I made a butterscotch pudding,’ she said. ‘Trixie showed me how.’
She put a plate in front of her husband. He took a mouthful and his eyebrows raised in surprise. ‘This is delicious,’ he said. ‘Absolutely delicious. You clever girl.’
‘I couldn’t have done it without Trixie.’
‘Well, God bless Trixie,’ said the doctor, looking around the shining kitchen with pleasure.
He was to regret those words bitterly in the weeks to come.
The summer crawled into July. The days seemed long and irritable. Intermittent drizzle and warm wet winds brought the flies and midges in droves. Trixie had made a sign that hung outside the house – The Laurels, Bed & Breakfast. She already had guests, a broken-down looking woman from Glasgow with a brood of noisy, unhealthy children and a thin, quiet man who drifted about the village like a ghost.
Hamish had given the Thomases a wide berth, but one day he saw Paul working in the garden. There was no sign of Trixie so he ambled over.
The big man leaned on his spade when he saw Hamish and said, ‘I’m trying to make a vegetable garden. It’s hard work. This ground hasn’t been turned over for years.’
‘Where’s Mrs Thomas?’ asked Hamish.
‘Oh, off somewhere. Inverness, I think.’
‘That’s verra hard work,’ said Hamish sympathetically. ‘Archie Maclean’s got a rotary cultivator, you know, one of those things that just churn up the earth. If he’s not out fishing, I suppose he would lend it to you. Would you like to walk along to his house and we’ll ask him?’
‘That would be great.’ Paul threw down the spade and wiped his hands on his trousers and came out of the garden to join Hamish.
‘You must find Lochdubh a bit of a change from London,’ said Hamish, taking out a stick of midge repellent and wiping his face with it.
