by Phil Hogan
The mess with poor Zoe taught me how much of a distraction she had been from the job in hand. My general wish, as ever, was to keep people happy and life rolling smoothly. A fairy godfather. A ministering angel. To this end, as I said, I keep my eyes open. In my meanderings through the homes of my fellow citizens, I’m more than happy to change a lightbulb or rewire a hazardous plug, or sort out a dangerous boiler. Way back, Mr Mower indulged my instincts for a holistic approach to estate agency, and paid for night classes in various aspects of building care, basic then intermediary. I was a passionate student. I am quite advanced now. I know how a house fits together, its wiring and plumbing, its bricks and joists and ventilation, its risk of structural collapse or infestation. People can be scatter-brained. There’s always some chump going off for the weekend and leaving half the windows open or a faulty cistern clocking up ruinous expense on a water meter.
But there are people, too, who need to be firmly dealt with. I keep a hammer behind my back, so to speak, for loudmouths and show-offs. I suffer them, as everyone does, on busy trains (I travel to London once a month), shouting into phones and spreading their important belongings over the seats; or in town, heaving their giant ostentatious cars on to the pavement rather than finding a place in one of our numerous reasonably priced car parks. They are the same people who allow the spreading branches of their trees to darken and shed leaves and fruit on their neighbour’s lawn; their raucous dinner parties go on into the night; they are a voluble presence on town committees and loudly spur on their poor children from sports-field touchlines or the front rows of school entertainments. We know them because they demand to be known.
Yes, what I describe is a composite villain, an identikit social grotesque. But how perfectly some people seem determined to fit its silhouette!
I knew Preece Gwyndyr from several years back. We had sold him and his wife a house in the leafy Pipers, a horseshoe of luxury new-builds, each with a landscaped quarter-acre, on the site of the old hospital. I saw the couple from time to time, alerted by the distinctive hectoring tone of Gwyndyr’s Welsh voice, then catching sight of his livid complexion through a crowd, perhaps at a school fundraising evening (local functions are excellent places to watch, hear and learn) or a summer fair. His wife, in a circle of listeners, would watch him speak with a fierce pride, her eyes blinking like a bird as she balanced a cup and saucer or clutched a glass of wine. Like most former clients, they didn’t know me. I was as invisible to them as the day I showed them round their house and persuaded them that our town was just the place for their growing family. (I wished I hadn’t, and indeed there have been newcomers whose tempting offers I failed to pass on to vendors on the grounds that a small town can only accommodate so many citizens of monstrous self-esteem.)
Late one wintry afternoon I saw – or at least caught sight of – Gwyndyr when I was out walking. It had been raining all day, and I had my head down, but I recognized his car – a silver behemoth with ski carriers on top and a dragon sticker in the rear window – and made out his profile as he swept past me on a country lane heading back into town. I didn’t quite see what happened, but a percussive clatter sounded in the air as he reached a stretch of road facing a cottage on its own. I saw that the rain had flooded the road on one side and on the left was a small car, parked hard against the grass verge. I assumed it belonged to whoever lived there. Clearly Gwyndyr had clipped the car, trying to take the narrow gap at speed. Now he had stopped in the middle of the road, his brake lights glowing in a moment of doubt, perhaps wondering if I – fifty yards away and closing in – could read his number plate in the drizzle and failing light. I hoped he’d do the right thing but suspected he would not, and, sure enough, in an instant he lurched off again until he was out of sight. No one came out of the cottage as I quickened my step to inspect the damage: the mirror casing was hanging in space, and there was broken glass on the puddled tarmac. The car was a cherry red and, though dulled with age and bearing the odd scar, looked well cared for.
I carried on home, where I wrote out a note giving Gwyndyr’s name and address, then drove back to the scene. It was dark now and a light was on in the cottage. I slipped the note – in a plastic bag to keep out the rain – under the car’s windscreen wiper, then went home. Early next morning, on the Sunday, I drove back and found a spot down the road with a view of the cottage. Some time after nine a woman emerged and locked the door behind her. She was probably in her sixties and neatly dressed. She saw the note first and then, with dismay, the smashed mirror. She read the note and looked up and down the lane. Then she folded the note with what I saw as an air of resolution, got into the car and set off. I ducked as she passed my own car, then followed her. It wasn’t difficult. She was a slow driver and there was little traffic in town. But instead of taking a left in the direction of the old hospital site, she turned right and up the hill, eventually pulling up behind a row of parked vehicles outside St Theobald’s. She was going to church. I might have guessed.
But in a way this made things easier. I drove home, put the kettle on and found out the times of St Theobald’s services. Then I walked across town to the Pipers. Finding a spot with a view of the Gwyndyrs’ front door wouldn’t be easy, but I knew there was a wooded area surrounding the development, and a pathway where people walked their dogs and which provided a scenic route past local shops and a primary school and cemetery back to the town centre. From here a narrow public right of way cut through the Pipers. It wouldn’t be a good idea to loiter, but if I timed it right I would be able to see the woman if and when she arrived. Last night’s rain had cleared. To kill time I walked slowly to the shops and bought a newspaper, which I pretended to leaf through as I dawdled back along the path.
I checked my watch. The parishioners would be out of church now. If she was coming at all, she would want to get it over with sooner rather than later. Maybe she needed to go into this encounter spiritually fortified. I waited at the top of the path with my head in the paper, as if halted in my steps by an engrossing football story. I didn’t have to wait long. Within minutes I saw the woman’s cherry-red car turn into the crescent but then pass out of sight. A car door slammed, and immediately I heard Gwyndyr’s barking voice. And now, as I made my way down the path between the fences of adjacent properties and out into the horseshoe, I could see that the woman’s car was blocking the exit to Gwyndyr’s drive, where his own massive vehicle stood with the engine running. I walked slowly down the side of the street facing the house. I could barely hear the woman’s voice, but I could see she was showing Gwyndyr the note and the damage to her wing mirror. I could tell by Gwyndyr’s tone (‘I can assure you, dear lady …’) that her protests would come to nothing. His wife emerged on the doorstep of the house wearing a housecoat and slippers and holding a Siamese cat (a second one peered from between her bare calves), and watched approvingly as her husband dismissed the woman’s claims and insisted she move her vehicle. The woman stood helpless for a moment, then got back into her car, switched on the engine and struggled to make a clean three-point turn while the couple looked on.
She passed me on the corner, her face pale with upset. My heart went out to her, this elderly woman of the parish. My imagination was already busy conjuring her widow’s habits and domicile – an inglenook fireplace with poker and coal scuttle; a tabby cat curled on the hearthrug; biscuits; a coronation toffee tin containing her savings; a black-and-white photograph of her husband on the sideboard, killed in the course of some noble service.
What could a mirror like that cost to replace? Just under forty pounds, as it turned out. The unit was available at a local stockist and it wasn’t difficult to find a young mechanic willing to come out and fit it for a generous hundred in cash after his Saturday morning shift at a local auto repair. You might ask how I knew that Mrs Wade would be absent that weekend at her daughter Rachel’s house in Ely (a good train ride away) – or for that matter how I came to know her name. Instead, picture her astonishment when she retur
ned and saw justice restored.
By then Gwyndyr was also finding his life unexpectedly rich in mystery, albeit in a less welcome way. I can only imagine how frustrating it must have been for a busy man such as himself to wake up on successive mornings to find his shirt buttons pinging off as quickly as he tried to fasten them – or, worse, as he was perhaps eating that second breakfast on the train or in the office. And his shoelaces – why, it was almost as though someone had cut them three-quarters of the way through with a scalpel (I always carry a scalpel). Gwyndyr had a fine collection of watches, which he kept in an old-fashioned rosewood display case on his dressing table. But where was his 1970s Rolex – his favourite? Where indeed! (In my mind’s eye I saw Gwyndyr turning the marital bedroom upside down in search of his precious watch, buttons flying off his shirt, giving his wife merry hell.) I had no idea of the watch’s value, but a dry-lipped pawnshop owner in Bethnal Green said he’d give me a hundred and fifty for it. ‘Excellent!’ I said, with a brightness that probably surprised him.
The following Wednesday, Mrs G arrived back from her weekly appointment with her hair stylist to find water dripping through their sitting room ceiling from a spurting joint in an upstairs radiator. She called the plumber. On the Friday, it happened again, this time a faulty connection on the compression tank. Oh, the drip, drip of steady mischief!
On Saturday, a delivery truck appeared with a new washing machine they hadn’t ordered, and in the evening two fuses blew, plunging the house into darkness during dinner with the Ericksons. On the Monday, a rowing machine arrived, followed on Wednesday by a suite of teak garden furniture. In a state of alarm, the Gwyndyrs cancelled the credit card that had seemingly, somehow, called up retail suppliers and ordered these goods, though that didn’t stop more arriving (did they forget they had other credit cards?): they were soon the bewildered recipients of an electric piano, a wedding dress, ornamental statuary, and a handsome leather dressage saddle from an equestrian superstore. The police could only scratch their heads. The morning post, meanwhile, brought daily confirmations of holidays booked in Mauritius, New Zealand and the Norfolk Broads, along with tickets for London musicals and a festival of traditional sports in the Highlands.
For weeks the Gwyndyrs lived in fear of the doorbell. After an Easter break visiting relatives in Wales, they arrived home to find the house full of miaowing cats, which had gained entry via the cat flap but hadn’t been able to get out again, not even to pee. Had Mrs G mistakenly switched the cat flap to ‘in-only’ before driving their own two Siameses, Pootle and Ming, to the kennels? In the absence of alternative evidence (all traces of inducement – fishy baits, free kitty dinners inside – had of course been removed), who could the Gwyndyrs blame but each other?
During their next absence, an out-of-town firm of landscape architects, paid in advance (in cash, their records would show, by a Mr P. Gwyndyr, who had personally come into their office with instructions and had even greeted their chainsaw-wielding operatives on arrival), removed a handsome yew hedge that bordered their property to the north. A few mornings later, Mrs Gwyndyr rushed out in her bathrobe to challenge a team of contractors from the travelling community who told her in the roughest of terms and most impenetrable of accents that they had been hired to rip up the couple’s semicircle of stone-paved driveway and resurface it with plain tarmac.
Unsurprisingly the Gwyndyrs were almost afraid to leave the house. In the autumn, Gwyndyr made the local paper when he was fined by magistrates after pleading not guilty to the theft of a tankful of diesel at a filling station. His explanation – that someone must have stolen his car, filled it up, and then returned it to his house – lacked credibility, and one assumes his solicitor wisely talked down the chances of a successful appeal. After all, where was the evidence? Forecourt CCTV cameras, as everyone knows, are positioned to monitor licence plates rather than drivers. There was no sign that anyone had broken into the car – and I had no doubt that the spare keys were still in the top right-hand drawer of the antique French tallboy in the hall where he and I had left them.
In the spring the Gwyndyrs put their house on the market. Zoe took the call, but of course I was more than happy to handle it myself. I sat on the sofa in their almost familiar sitting room – an invited guest now – with a clipboard folder on my knee. It was a beautiful day. A day for looking forward, I thought. Preece Gwyndyr stared right through me as I prattled on about the buoyancy of the market and how this lovely weather gave one itchy feet. His wife was nowhere to be seen.
‘Will you be staying in the area, Mr Gwyndyr?’ I asked.
He wouldn’t, he said, adding nothing.
IT’S EASY TO SAY, now, that I wish I’d drawn a line under 4 Boselle Avenue, but there are some things you cannot let go. Certainly there was something about the man with the small incontinent dog that continued to rankle. Perhaps I felt that my honour – the town’s honour – had not quite been satisfied. Or maybe I was still in the grip of excitement after the disappointment of the farcically unreliable Cooksons earlier that day. But in the great chain of things – and in view of what happened afterwards at 4 Boselle Avenue and other sites of disquiet around town – I shouldn’t understate the influence of Aunt Lillian, who has become forgotten in all this talk of property developers, wing mirrors and unwanted rowing machines.
The last time I’d seen her was some weeks before my twenty-first birthday (and a couple of months before Mr Mower shook my hand and gave me a box of cards printed with my name and the words ‘Sales Consultant’). She wrote to Mr Mower, enclosing my train fare and asking that I come to her house in Norfolk. I hadn’t been there since leaving school, though she had visited me at the office twice in that time, with Mr Mower present, beaming and pouring coffee and relating details of my progress.
The town hadn’t changed much, though it seemed smaller. She surprised me with a stiff embrace, and we sat in the garden, where she smoked one cigarette after another and looked across the lawn as we talked. The point of my visit seemed to be about my mother’s legacy, though I’d already been contacted by the solicitor and there was little to add. She said she was glad things were turning out well for me at Mower’s, and praised my mature outlook, which was clearly the result of independent living. From this, though, I sensed she wanted me to know that I was on my own now, that her duty in respect of my late parents was discharged. She didn’t actually say it was a relief, but neither had she invited me to stay over. There was an evening train, she said, that should get me back to Mrs Burton’s before eleven.
We went inside for tea and sandwiches. There was a small gateau from the bakery and she had put out napkins and silver cutlery. Over my teacup I glanced at the windows of the house across the street where the Damatos used to live, and I remembered the kitchen there with its cakes cooling on the wire rack. Aunt Lillian eyed me, and I said she looked well and complimented her on the new wallpaper. She went along with my new-learned charm but her wariness spoke sharply when I asked after cousin Isobel, of whom she said nothing more than that she had married an army officer and was living abroad. She wiped a smear of cream from the corner of her mouth, laid her fork on the plate and reached for her cigarettes. The fork sat gleaming in the soft light. I looked from it to Aunt Lillian. Inevitably it called to mind that dramatic finale at school, Marrineau roaring with shock, staggering backwards, my breakfast fork embedded in his cheek, blood dripping from the handle. It was a breathtaking sight. Yes, a pity it had to happen, of course. But what else could I do? What else must a boy so unexpectedly cornered do if not fight his corner?
I felt my aunt seeing into my thoughts. When I went upstairs to the bathroom, she followed and pretended to be busying herself on the landing. I admit I would have liked to have a look around. I had wondered what had become of my school chest. Was it still in the loft, filled with my treasures – the letters and cards sent to my schoolmates, my jaundiced scribblings, Mr Stamp’s rubber-band ball, the willow-pattern spoon? There was still an hour to
kill before the taxi arrived to take me back to the station (my aunt was taking no chances), but my mind, as ever, idled with thoughts of opportunity. Perhaps she would have a heart attack, or be called away to a local emergency. Or I could pretend to take a train, book in at a B&B and (somehow) steal back into the house the next day while she was at a meeting of her neighbourhood widows’ coven, or – what the hell – just beat her to death right now with the barometer at the bottom of the stairs, which once hung in an alcove of my mother and father’s front room before all this started. I did nothing of the kind, of course. The fact was I had bigger fish to fry now. If anything, I wanted my aunt to see that she was right – that I was my own man, and had shed what traces of juvenile madness she might think me still capable of.
And yet, of course, the past was all that remained between us. Back at the table, she steered the conversation to my mother. The day she died, my aunt said, they’d had to physically drag me out from under the Victorian day bed in Grandma Browne’s parlour. I wasn’t crying. Just mute and defiant. My aunt paused with a frown, as if inviting me to explain my behaviour all those years ago. But no; it seemed she wanted to clear up whatever ‘misunderstandings’ I might have.
