by A. L. Barker
‘That business in Tunbridge Wells damn near caused a riot.’
‘That business, as you call it, was a miracle which you performed. And that,’ Felicia said bitterly, ‘about wraps up my uniformity. I mean, why should you, of all people, have the gift?’
‘There is no gift!’ Incensed, Soulsby snatched off his glasses. ‘The kid in Tunbridge Wells was acting blind. When I passed my hand before his face he blinked.’
‘Naturally. All at once he could see. You can’t imagine what that was like, coming in out of the dark, seeing for the first time his mother, his home, the world!’
‘He kicked the dog!’
‘He was scared, he didn’t know how a dog was going to look, he didn’t know how anything was going to look.’
‘Why do you do this?’ cried Soulsby. ‘Aren’t I enough for you?’
‘The first time it happened was on our honeymoon. Don’t you remember? I twisted my ankle, you took it in your hands and I felt healing flow through me.’
‘That wasn’t healing, that was sex.’
‘George,’ on a floodtide of memories, Felicia took his hand, ‘you were always enough for me. But you have this power and you owe it to the sick, people in pain, children, the aged – it’s given to so few, you don’t have to be a saint to have it, you must use it to lessen the world’s suffering—’
‘Christ!’
‘Like Him, yes.’
Eashing remembered his dream. He was a boy, arrow-swift, ephemeral and golden as the corn. His feet did not bend the corn-stalks, he was running on air, he had no past to covet and no future to fear. He gripped the arms of his chair, pulled himself to his feet and saw the ground rise to meet him.
*
‘The Bill’s here, Miss Gee,’ said Clapham, appearing at Mildred’s elbow as she was returning from her walk.
‘I beg your pardon?’
‘To talk to you. Detective Superintendent Plod of the local fuzz.’
‘You mean the police?’
‘Been parking on a yellow line, have you?’
‘I don’t drive – oh dear – what can he possibly want?’
‘Like me to ask?’
Her hand flew to her throat. ‘No—’
‘He’s waiting in the entry.’
The policeman was sitting with his hat between his knees, reading the hotel brochure. She feared he wasn’t going to stand up when she went in, but after a moment’s appraisal of her, he did, causing the basket chair to explode with a series of pistol shots.
His uniform – any uniform – mortified her. It stood for indignity and rejection. She said bravely, ‘What can I do for you, Inspector?’
‘Constable. You won’t mind answering a few questions?’
‘If I can.’
‘You’ve been to the village?’
‘Several times.’
‘To the shop called Grandma’s Tidy?’
‘Yes.’
‘When was the last occasion?’
‘Yesterday morning.’
‘Why did you leave your name on the counter?’
‘Because the shopkeeper wasn’t there. I went to fetch an item which he had priced for me. I left the money for it, with an explanatory note. I couldn’t wait, you see, because my bus was about to leave from the Square and they only run every hour—’
He held up her note. ‘Is this what you wrote?’
‘Oh dear – did I do wrong?’
‘You saw nothing unusual?’
‘Only that the shop was unattended—’
‘You were not aware that the shopkeeper was dead?’
‘Dead? Oh no – he couldn’t have been!’
‘While you were writing your note he was lying behind the counter.’ Horrified, she could only stare. ‘The till was old-fashioned, like everything else in the place. It had been forced open.’ He took out his notebook. ‘But you did not notice.’ She uttered a croak. Having trouble with his ballpoint he did not look up. ‘What about the hunting-knife?’
‘Knife?’ The enormity of what he was saying – inferring – began to dawn. ‘I saw no knife. I saw no one!’
‘The item you took, what was it?’
‘A brass fly – oh you don’t – you can’t think—’
‘You were seen leaving the shop in a hurry.’
‘I had nothing to do with this – this awful thing!’
‘Awful! Why do you say that?’
‘The man – that poor man – robbed and murdered!’
‘Murdered?’
‘The knife – you said there was a knife!’
‘Used to prise open the cash drawer.’ When he leaned towards her she felt it was the readying of a predator about to spring on his prey. She cried wildly, ‘You can’t think that I – I had to run for my bus – there would have been blood—’
‘Have I mentioned blood? Can you produce the item you took?’
‘I haven’t got it – I gave it as a present.’
‘Who did you give it to?’ He rephrased the question with a hint of jocularity, ‘To whom did you give it?’ and she saw the claws of the predator unsheathed.
‘A friend – someone staying here—’
‘A brass fly? Funny thing to give anyone.’
‘It was a paperweight.’
‘Ah.’ He nodded, with conviction. ‘Can you produce the friend? To corroborate your story.’
Mildred found that she was wringing her hands. ‘I would rather not involve him—’
‘His name, if you please.’
*
Piper, called away from his column, his communion disrupted, found himself being interrogated by a policeman about Mildred Gascoigne and the wretched paperweight. Would he confirm that she had given it to him? And for what reason?
‘Does there have to be a reason?’
‘An anniversary? A birthday, perhaps? In recognition of a favour?’
Piper said sharply, ‘It was a kind thought. May I know what this is about?’
‘Certainly sir. A local shopkeeper has been found dead on his premises, the till broken open and rifled. Miss Gascoigne, by her own telling, was one of the last – could have been the very last – person to see him alive. I am trying to establish the facts and clarify the situation.’
‘Oh Mr Piper!’ cried Mildred, ‘I am sorry, it’s all my fault. The shopkeeper wasn’t there when I went back to buy the paperweight – at least I couldn’t see him – and I was in a hurry to catch the bus. I left the money and a note saying I’d taken it – the paperweight, I mean – I knew what it cost because he had already told me – I didn’t know he was under the counter – dead …’
Mildred dissolved, literally Piper thought, into tears. They coursed down her cheeks: surprising how much liquid small ducts could secrete. He said, ‘Is this a murder enquiry?’
‘That,’ said the officer, writing in his notebook, ‘is a matter of opinion. A technicality. The deceased was known to have a chronic heart condition. Threatened by an assailant with a knife he might have died of fright. One thing is clear: somebody knew he was dead and took advantage of the fact to break into the till.’
‘Why would I do that?’ cried Mildred. ‘Why would I leave my name and address and money for the paperweight if I was going to rob the till?’
The policeman scratched his nose with his biro and suggested, ‘To divert suspicion?’
Detecting a ribald undertone, Piper said sternly, ‘As a professional psychologist, and student of human nature, I assure you this lady is incapable of such duplicity—’ and encountered Mildred’s drowning look of gratitude. ‘I suggest you give serious thought to some more likely suspects.’
‘Well, we’re not short of mischief around here.’ The policeman’s biro ran dry. Vexed, he snapped it in two.
‘What’s up?’ said Clapham, coming into the lobby as the policeman crunched away down the drive.
Whey-faced, Mildred stammered, ‘I – it’s nothing—’
‘A computer error,’ said Piper.
*
‘When do you want me to sit?’
‘Sit?’ Charlie, in the garden, was sketching Eashing, slumped in his chair.
‘For my portrait. I shan’t be here forever.’ Senga leaned over Charlie’s shoulder. ‘That’s not bad.’
‘I shan’t need sittings, the way I’m going to do yours.’ He was feeling none of the usual eagerness to get started on it: was conscious of something like technophobia. ‘Head and shoulders –’ head certainly, get through her carapace, resolve the maculae – ‘it has to be different, not just what Joe Soap sees. I want to take an inward look. There’s no such thing as whole truth; doing Nina’s portrait showed me that. The most I can hope is to reveal what no one else has seen.’
‘And if I don’t want it revealed?’
‘I’d like to do it as a strip cartoon. Be different, wouldn’t it?’ Her skin darkened: he was intrigued to see the freckles merge to produce an overall colour, just short of puce. ‘No offence: the cartoons I’m thinking of aren’t comic pictures, they’re preparatory drawings, working designs. I see your portrait as design.’
‘I’ll look like wallpaper. Why don’t you paint Piper?’
‘Why should I?’
‘To illustrate the biop I’m writing. I’ll need a good likeness. Look, why not come back with me, to London? We could stop on the road, make a night of it.’ Her stare, luminous as a cat’s, held him and he thought, I should paint her from a mouse’s eye view.
A car swept through the gate, spitting gravel. A woman got out, legs followed by a leisurely unwinding until she was revealed, one hand on the car roof, the other on her hip, sales-effective, like girls in car adverts.
‘Nina!’
She was wearing champagne colour, a dress of some clinging stuff which the breeze pinned on her like a second skin. Charlie told Senga, ‘This is private,’ and tried to move away from her.
‘She can stay.’ That was Nina imperious. ‘Obviously she has your interests at heart.’
‘I have to talk to you.’
‘I have a puncture, it’s why I’m here, so you can fix it, Charlie.’
‘You know I’ve never changed a wheel.’
‘Darling, it’s simple. I’d do it myself but I’m not dressed for the part. I’m on my way to give a talk to the Pennyworthal Conservationists.’
‘What about?’ said Senga.
‘Disappearances.’
‘Which ones?’
‘Threatened species.’ She turned to Charlie. ‘Suddenly the steering went puddingy, which suggested a puncture.’
‘If you’re worried I could drive you to Pennyworthal,’ offered Senga.
‘I’ll drive her,’ said Charlie.
‘Not in my car, darling.’ Senga tweaked his ear fondly. ‘Besides, I’d like to hear that talk. Hold on while I fetch my keys.’
They watched her go, Leda and the Swan rioting as she went. Nina said, ‘She hasn’t the legs for shorts.’
‘Let’s take your car and go before she comes back.’
Nina looked at her watch. ‘It’s too late now.’
‘I don’t believe you were going to Pennyworthal or wherever. You came to check on me.’
She closed her eyes as if she had reached the end of an interminable tether. ‘I’m a conclusively married woman. The days of wine and roses are over.’
Thinking he heard a note of nostalgia he hastened to turn it to advantage. ‘There’s nothing between her and me – how could you think there was?’
‘I’m not remotely concerned with your amourettes.’ She slid into the car.
‘Nina, wait!’
Sending a kiss off the palm of her hand, she drove away.
*
Eashing wrote to his solicitor: ‘I have found a girl. She was, you might say, under my nose – like the object of most searches – having been employed in this hotel until she was dismissed for breaking crockery. She is not well washed, but she is strong, and by nature vegetal, she will do nicely for the short while I shall remain here. Fellow guests are supportive, but I do not enjoy being wheeled about like a helpless infant, I prefer to retain a degree of control over my exits and entrances.’
‘I could shave you,’ Bettony had said. ‘I shave my grandad. He’s warty but I’ve never bled him. I’ll do you if you want.’
‘Thank you, no. I’m letting my beard grow.’
‘It makes you look old.’
‘I am old.’
‘Not as old as my grandad.’ It sounded like a shortcoming. She sat down beside him with a sigh which threatened to empty her body of breath.
‘What’s the matter?’
‘Nothing.’
‘Would you like to read the paper? There’s an article on the woman’s page about the moral refreshment to be derived from sweeping a room.’ Eashing smiled grimly.
She accepted the newspaper and he went back to his book. When he looked up again she was rolling the paper into a tube. She held it to her eye. ‘Nelson!’ Eashing couldn’t remember ever before seeing her laugh. The eye watching him from outside the tube glistened with fun, her mouth opened to reveal big crooked teeth.
‘Perhaps you’d prefer the magazine section.’ He retrieved his newspaper and was unrolling it. ‘Or a work of fiction?’
She shook her head.
‘Don’t you like to read?’
‘Can’t.’
‘You can’t read?’
‘Nor can’t my grandad.’ Manifestly, the pride in her voice derived from the old man, occasioned by him. He was her exemplar.
Eashing said carefully, ‘I’m sure he manages well enough without. But times have changed, it’s different for you. Without some basic literacy you will find yourself severely inhibited in the workaday world.’
She declared from under a beetling brow, ‘I can work!’
‘Of course. But books not only add to the quality of life, they define it,’ a point he would have liked to make, but could see she wasn’t taking it. He could hardly expect her to.
‘She is uneducated and taciturn,’ he wrote. ‘They are recommendations. I shall not be exposed to the tedious chatter of semi-literates.’
He forbore to mention the fact which had come to light by chance: she scorned literacy, but loved being read to How much she realised of Oliver Twist – Eashing’s holiday choice – he had no way of knowing, but she hung on the words and when Eashing closed the book and asked, ‘Did you like that?’ she had uttered again the prodigious sigh which seemed to squeeze the breath out of her. This time it was an exhalation of pleasure. Eashing, too, had enjoyed the reading; it was a shared experience (something he had little of nowadays), besides being edification of a mentality sadly in need.
His decision was not reached so much as imposed. Even if it made only limited sense, it would relieve him of the irksome business of interviewing females whose qualifications did not warrant their travelling expenses.
An escape clause was essential, and Bettony would, he thought (not unkindly) be willing to go back to her grandfather any time he wished to be rid of her – reimbursed, of course, in excess of whatever the Claphams had paid her.
When he asked would she consider acting as his ‘companion help’ – a quaint way of putting it, he couldn’t think of anything else as precise – she blinked, passed her tongue round her lips. The effort to comprehend was proving painful. ‘It need not involve you greatly, just to help me in and out of my chair, wheel me to the beach or along the lane, fetch anything I need from the shops, be generally handy.’ Eashing smiled. ‘Read Oliver Twist with me.’
That registered, she nodded vigorously, biting back the chuckle of a child invited to mischief, and dodged under the arm of Mrs Clapham who was bringing Eashing’s tea.
It was all the answer he was likely to get, and when Mrs Clapham demanded, ‘What’s she doing here?’ he said, ‘I have just engaged her as my companion help.’
In the ensuing confrontation, Mrs Clapham declared Bettony to be the Devil’s drab
, catspaw, jinx, witch and trouble-maker extraordinary. She vowed she had known not a moment’s rest while the girl was on the premises.
Eashing said mildly, ‘She has a simple mind, incompatible with life in this day and age. But there’s no harm in her.’
‘Simple she may be, pure she is not.’
‘This is an ad hoc arrangement which should not incommode you. We shall take walks and make such excursions as can be organised, and she will be available to do errands for me in the village.’
‘I swore I’d never have her under my roof again!’
‘I trust,’ Eashing said, still pleasant, ‘that as a guest – a paying guest – I may be permitted to provide the little extra assistance I need for myself?’
*
Elissa had asked Mrs Latimer’s son to take over the heavy work in the garden. Privately Owen was glad to be rid of the chore but deplored their dependence on Mrs Latimer. ‘I don’t like the woman, she’s a mischief-maker.’
‘She’s a conscientious cleaner, rare these days, and her stories do enliven our coffee breaks.’
‘You’ve developed a taste for gossip. I call that pretty radical.’
‘Why?’
‘You said you haven’t changed since coming here.’
‘You’re trying to change the subject. To get back to the one under discussion, old bones can’t sustain prolonged physical toil.’
‘My bones are still perfectly sound. I happened to set too fast a pace.’
‘I have no intention of standing by while you do yourself permanent damage and end in a wheelchair for our remaining years. Mrs Latimer is a countrywoman: she tells me that the first cut of such long grass should be by hand, but there’s a knack to be acquired in the use of a scythe, it’s not recommended for novices. Apparently the local doctor sliced through the calf of his leg while working on his allotment and had to bind it with rhubarb leaves to stop the bleeding.’
‘Rhubarb leaves are poisonous.’
‘Only when they’re boiled.’
*
At first sight he did not look like a wielder of scythes or any such archaic tool. He arrived on a motorbike with blaring exhausts, a sort of computer screen on the handlebars, and a fire-breathing dragon rampant on his T-shirt. He pushed up his crash helmet and lifted his goggles, revealing the cherry-lipped face of a teenager. ‘Latimer, Kevin, IFO – Identified Flying Object.’
