Rosie Thomas 4-Book Collection

by Rosie Thomas

  Alison knew then, She’s got them.

  ‘You’ve listened very patiently to our proposals,’ Harriet said. ‘As I told you at the beginning, Birdwood is only an idea. It will never become any more than that without your support, your belief in it. I hope you will go home tonight and talk about it. But before you do go, you should know that there is an alternative scheme. Most of you already do know, because you will have seen the posters and listened to the local speculation. I can tell you a little more about it and the developer behind it.’ Harriet extended her hand to point at the photographs on the opposite wall. The big, square diamond shone in the light.

  Alison turned her head with everyone else. She didn’t know for sure, but she guessed that Harriet had despatched a professional photographer, a very clever one, to capture some unusual angles of Castoria Developments. In these pictures blank walls and thin fences seemed to press together, and windows that seemed too small to admit light eyed each other at awkward angles across narrow strips of churned-up earth. One picture showed identical houses, with mean porches like coffins and slits of windows, stretching away in a jumble as far as the lens could capture. There seemed to be hardly room for two people abreast to pass between them. It was a theatrical contrast with the pastoral idyll of Anthony Fell’s Birdwood proposal.

  Harriet looked at the photographs too.

  ‘High-density housing for young executive families,’ she announced cheerfully. ‘The maximum number of identical or near-identical units shoehorned into the site, for quick sale, and maximum return on investment, to identical or near-identical middle-management families, almost all of them incomers.’

  The photographer had been expensive, but he had done an excellent job. She had come a long way from the black and white parachute silk and the rickety polystyrene-block sunburst of her very first display at the Earl’s Court Toy Fair.

  ‘A typical Keith Bottrill development. His proposal for the Birdwood site, which goes before the planning sub-committee in a matter of days, will be substantially the same. Mr Bottrill is a property developer, and he is interested in profit. Some of you will be familiar with his reputation. Others will not.’

  As Harriet talked, Alison felt the hairs rise at the nape of her neck. She looked around the hall at the rapt audience, wondering how many of the men in suits were Bottrill’s spies. Harriet was probably being careful, probably none of the allegations she made were directly slanderous, almost certainly the majority of them were factually verifiable. Her journalist friend Charlie Thimbell must have helped her to dig the necessary dirt, Alison thought. But it was a startling performance. As an assessment of Bottrill’s methods and achievements, it was no less than savage.

  It occurred to Alison that even though she had never met Harriet’s venture capitalist, she had a sudden clear idea of what he must be like. The two of them would have been formidably well-matched. It was a pity that they had not been able to run on together. Observing her now, as she commanded the hall, Alison was convinced that the antagonising of Robin Landwith had been one of Harriet’s rare mistakes. Personally, as well as professionally.

  ‘And so I ask you’, Harriet was softly concluding, ‘to consider whether you would let this man build his version of a village in that green and pleasant land next to Everden?’ It was her only cheap theatrical flourish, and Alison recognised that it was well-judged.

  There was another silence and then it was broken by a huge outburst of applause.

  It was Anthony Fell who held up his hand at length. ‘If there are any particular questions we would be glad to answer them. Now, or individually after the meeting. And the model is here, for anyone who would like to examine it more closely.’

  His hand lingered, expressively, over the lanes and gardens and clumps of little, crusty artificial trees.

  A man stood up. Harriet recognised Ron, one of the darts players from the Wheatsheaf. He was embarrassed to find himself on his feet in front of so many people and he spoke quickly.

  ‘Question is, what are we supposed to do? Pictures and models and ideas are all very nice, and I don’t believe there’s a soul in Everden who wants that other lot to put up their expensive boxes over there, but those of us ordinary people in the village, not councillors or any of the rest of it …ʼ

  He had recovered himself enough to direct a sharp sideways glance across the hall, to where most of the parish council were sitting. Harriet could only half-guess at the subtle undercurrents of village politics, and hope that they would flow with her rather than against.

  ‘… it’s not in our hands, is it? We have to take what comes, whoever wins.’

  Harriet smiled warmly at him. ‘You can help us to win. That is, if you know you would prefer this to that.’

  The diamond on her right hand glittered briefly again as she pointed.

  ‘You can write to the Planning Department. Write to your MP. Join the Everden Association. Display and distribute Action for Everden publicity material. There are a dozen things you can do, if you are willing to help us.’

  It was the enthusiasm and the positive warmth in Harriet’s voice that affected them, Alison thought, rather than anything she said. The hall was buzzing again, a low hum of interest and determination rising from the rows of chairs. Ron sat down, looking pleased with himself. From her vantage point at the back, Alison could see the backs of nodding heads. Tomorrow the letters to the authorities would start dropping into the letterbox on the wall outside the village shop.

  More questions followed, to do with increased traffic and provision of services and whether buying priority would be given to local people. David and Anthony dealt with them smoothly. There was not a very high level of interest in the specifics, Alison noted. The meeting had grasped the outline of Harriet’s scheme and had been willingly beguiled by it.

  Then a woman who Alison didn’t know stood up. She was wearing a navy-blue vaguely marine-looking jumper and a striped shirt with the collar turned up. Alison guessed that she was an Everden outskirter, from one of the big houses outside the village with tennis courts in the secluded gardens and the tops of new conservatories just visible from the lane. Her husband would be a City commuter.

  ‘There is one obvious question that no one has asked.’ Her voice confirmed Alison’s guess. Harriet faced her pleasantly.

  ‘What account, if any, does either plan take of Birdwood House itself?’

  Harriet had expected the question and she had prepared herself for it. Perhaps the woman in the striped shirt had taken walks past Birdwood House, ventured up the drive as Harriet herself had done, maybe fantasised about selling the comfortable old rectory and restoring the half-ruin to its Victorian-Gothic glory, to the envy of the neighbourhood. Maybe she was a genuine conservationist, or was simply curious. Harriet swallowed. Ever since she had stepped inside the tiled hall with Alison and looked upwards in the torchlight into the ornate gallery, Birdwood House had been part of her dream. She was defensive of it, although it was no more hers to defend than it was the striped-shirt woman’s.

  ‘I can’t tell you what the Castoria plan is. They don’t send me any free information …’ there was a polite ripple of laughter, now ‘… and so I can only guess. But judging by their past performance, I imagine that if they were able to purchase the house and its land …’ Harriet didn’t look at the councillors. She held the questioner’s eyes instead ‘… they wouldn’t hesitate to demolish the building and squeeze as many new units as possible on to the site. That is only my guess, of course.’

  ‘And what about your own scheme?’

  Harriet could feel a small pulse ticking at her jaw, on the point where it had been broken. She resisted the impulse to rub it away.

  ‘The house would be saved. It would be fully restored, with the most sensitive care.’

  ‘As a private house?’

  ‘That was its original function. Mr Farrow built it as a home for his family, and it has been privately occupied ever since, except for the last fe
w years when it has been unfortunately empty.’

  ‘But the house was willed to Everden, for the use of the village, wasn’t it?’

  The woman’s husband, sitting beside her, was a plump man with glasses. He looked up at her now. Harriet couldn’t tell whether he wanted to encourage his wife or to signal her to sit down and let someone else ask the awkward questions.

  ‘That is true. But crumbling old houses are expensive to restore and then to maintain, as I’m sure you know. The original bequest didn’t provide for that. It’s an awkward dilemma. I don’t think I have the right to make any further comments.’

  Harriet did allow herself to glance sideways, now, deliberately.

  The woman persisted. ‘Do you intend to buy Birdwood House under the umbrella of your development scheme and restore it as a private house either for your own use or for re-sale for profit?’

  Harriet had made her offer to the parish council. It was a very generous cash offer. But when she made it she had also indicated, with the utmost delicacy and reticence, that any further progress of the Birdwood scheme was dependent on her acquisition of the freehold of the house and garden. She had left them to consider the proposal.

  And so Harriet smiled at the woman now. The smile was a masterpiece of friendly regret, Alison noted. Harriet said, ‘There is only one potential buyer for Birdwood House. If it is sold it will be restored with all the available loving care, and it will be occupied as it always has been, by a responsible owner. It will not be put up for sale again.’ The support of the meeting was still with Harriet. There were two or three low mumbles of encouragement and some impatient shifting of feet and chairs.

  ‘I don’t think I can tell you any more,’ Harriet said, with gentle finality.

  The woman sat down, but from his place beside her her husband surged to his feet. He pushed his spectacles back up the bridge of his nose and surveyed the hall. ‘We’ve listened to the pros of one development and the cons of another,’ he intoned. ‘My question is a very simple one. Not for the people who have given themselves the platform, but for those in the body of the hall, Everden residents and friends. Do we not live in Everden because we value its rural beauty? The Birdwood site is a beautiful piece of our countryside. Why must it be built on by anyone at all?’

  There was a rumble of voices.

  From across the room another man in a suit, who had listened to all the discussion with folded arms, now unfolded and shouted back, ‘I endorse that entirely. The village character of Everden must be preserved at all costs.’

  And as if some secret password had been spoken, the Everden outskirters sprinkled all through the hall suddenly revealed themselves. Voice after well-modulated voice rose to cry no to Bottrill, and no to Harriet too.

  Beside her, Harriet glimpsed Anthony Fell masking the lower half of his face with his hand and exhaling gustily behind it.

  The outskirters had bought into their rural idylls, into the big houses behind the close hedges, and they had come to defend their tranquil corners against whoever might try to squeeze in with them. They had taken the measure of Harriet’s proposal and now they would shoot it down.

  Too confident too soon, Alison thought. In front of her a man jumped up. She saw that it was Geoff, born in the house in Everden main street that he still lived in. He roared over the raised voices, ‘Our village? Whose bloody village, did you say? What do you do for the village except bugger off out of it at eight o’clock in the morning and bowl back in at eight at night? You don’t even buy a pound of sugar in the shop, to you? Don’t talk about the precious community, mate.’

  There was another barrage of shouting and the long-haired girl from the Wheatsheaf yelled over it, ‘We want houses. We want houses we can afford, not houses for people like you. We want this development, and we’ll get it. It’s what this dump needs, a shot in the arm.’

  More people sprang to their feet. The village hall became a sea of angry faces and waving arms. Alison felt the swelling tide of pent-up hostility between the incomers and the natives. The mood of the meeting swung from acceptance to combative in a matter of seconds, and Alison saw at once that the anger was not only rippling between the two factions but was also directed at Harriet, David and Anthony up on the platform. She looked to Harriet, to see what she would do.

  Harriet stood up, resting the knuckles of her clenched fists on the table in front of her. For a moment she stood in silence, watching the faces and listening. The sudden eruption of buried resentment was dismaying, but something in the rawness of it caught at her. The meeting up to this moment had gone too smoothly; there had been nothing in it for anyone to remember. Now everyone present would recall this, and each one would have an opinion. Harriet knew that it rested with her to capture those opinions.

  She lifted her head. ‘It’s a good question. Why build anything at all?’ Her voice was clear, and it carried. Faces turned to her, and the noise diminished.

  Tell them, Harriet exhorted herself. If she had learned anything from Meizu and Peacocks it was to fight her corner, and to try to turn disadvantage into advantage. In her head, for a brief second, she could hear the rolling and the clicking of the coloured balls. ‘Listen to me and I’ll tell you why,’ Harriet shouted.

  She didn’t try to convince the incomers that it would be socially beneficial for Everden to gain a whole sub-community of affordable houses in the traditional style. Instead, in the City language familiar to herself and the men in suits, she made it clear that if neither Castoria nor her own company gained the site, then another developer surely would. Birdwood had been defined, and in the end it would succumb to development.

  ‘The question can no longer be whether to develop, but which plan you would prefer to see.’

  There came a roar of support, but it didn’t drown the voice of the opposition.

  ‘Not so,’ shouted the man with glasses. ‘Development is not inevitable. Why don’t we ask Miss Bowlly, over there? Miss Bowlly doesn’t want it, does she?’

  The entire meeting turned and craned forward to look at her. Miss Bowlly scowled furiously in response. But then, still scowling, she levered herself to her feet and clumped forward in her perennial Wellington boots. She didn’t mount the two steps to the platform but positioned herself in front of it, a small, conical, brown figure.

  Harriet stared frozenly at the back of her fawn knitted bonnet. Now it would be made public that she had failed to buy the crucial tongue of land. Now Bottrill would hear that her only ammunition was ambitious talk, and pretty plans. The pulse in her jaw seemed to beat like a sledgehammer.

  Miss Bowlly jabbed a finger at the big photographs. ‘It might seem a one-sided show to some, looking at these things. You might think it’s an unfair representation of a man’s work, those of you who like to think, seeing clever photographs that bend it and shrink it like these here do.’

  Harriet didn’t dare to look to either side, at David or Anthony, nor at the striped-shirt woman or any of the rows of faces that peered at Miss Bowlly now, not at her. She fixed her eyes on the top of Alison’s head, away at the back of the hall, and waited for whatever it was that was coming.

  ‘Well, I can tell you something for nothing. I’ve met some of the young men who work for him.’ The finger jabbed again at the Bottrill pictures. ‘I didn’t like them. All nice while they wanted something, they were, and when they found out they weren’t going to get it they turned nasty. They weren’t afraid to threaten me, with what would happen if I didn’t be good and sell them my property. Noise, and big lorries, and workmen, and then no one would want to buy my place at all.’

  Miss Bowlly gave her meaty chuckle. Harriet sat quite still, unable to move.

  ‘I wouldn’t sell a pound of hedge blackberries to that lot.’ And she stabbed her finger again at the photographs.

  There was a splutter of laughter. Miss Bowlly didn’t smile. She turned to indicate Harriet sitting behind her. ‘Then this one came. It wasn’t an option she was after, wrapped
up in fancy language. She was prepared to put her money up, no strings, no promises to buy some day if it happened to suit her. She’s probably no better than the rest of them, but she made me a fair offer, and I’ve got a nose for these things. I’d say she’s honest, since you’re asking what I think.’

  Miss Bowlly searched for the incomer couple and fixed them with a glare of dislike. ‘And since you’ve chosen to single me and my opinions out for public discussion, I’ll tell you that I’ve listened to what’s been said tonight. I’ll say she’s right. There’ll be houses on that bit of land whether you and your posh friends like it or not.’

  There was a rattle of applause. Miss Bowlly marched down the hall towards the door and the clapping followed her. Harriet wanted to let her head drop forwards into her hands. But her hands were trembling, and she held her head upright.

  ‘Thank you, Miss Bowlly,’ she called after her.

  She couldn’t have orchestrated the moment any better if she had planned and rehearsed it. I didn’t deserve that, Harriet told herself, but I’m grateful for it.

  She thought of Simon then, in his house, and the game she had taken.

  She became aware of the pressure of David Howkins’ hand on her arm. People were leaving their chairs and flooding up on to the platform. Faces loomed over the model.

  ‘Are you all right?’ David asked her.

  ‘Yes. Yes, I’m all right. I … didn’t expect that from Miss Bowlly.’

  ‘You have admirers in every quarter,’ David drily remarked.

  There were more questions to answer. Anthony’s finger traced the outlines of the village again and again as the heads bent over it. Young couples came to Harriet, wanting to put their names down on the list for starter houses.

  ‘It’s too early,’ she told them. ‘There is no list. There’s no site, as yet. This is only the beginning.’ She made her gesture of drawing the bricks and mortar out of the air, trying to hold them together. ‘None of this can go any further if Mr Bottrill is given planning permission, if the county planning committee refuses to consider our rival submission.’