by Amanda Craig
‘Such a nice young man,’ Naomi said, adding in a tone of offensive wonder, ‘and he looks very like you.’
Perhaps if his first marriage had not been so easy to get out of, he’d never have tried again. Other divorced men are full of belated advice which boils down to: never, never, ever marry.
‘I’m just the boring man who pays the bills, while she takes herself and the kids off on three foreign holidays a year,’ said one former colleague, now completely bald from, it is said, tearing his hair out. ‘The bottom line is that all women are mad. They hate us the moment they have a baby and they bitch about us for the rest of their lives. Even if you think there are tax advantages, don’t do it. A guy will always be better off not married than married, especially in Britain. Why else does every foreign wife want to live here? So she can get a shitload of alimony.’
‘I don’t have anything but the house.’
‘Then prepare for the Shed of Doom.’
The Shed of Doom is what all erring husbands dread. It is built at the bottom of the garden, supposedly as a study or a spare room, but its true purpose is to be the place where a man is banished, to stare at the house on which he pays the mortgage while his ex-wife enjoys the life he can no longer have.
‘You want my advice?’ said Mark Crawley, when they met for a drink. ‘I should have taken a knife and stuck it in my heart before divorcing. I’m no happier than I was before, I’ve lost all my money, and I never get to see my daughter unless I threaten my Ex with a court order.’
Quentin pushes this out of his mind. Tina is refreshing, and almost twenty years younger than him.
‘I always prefer married men. Especially if they’re older,’ she says.
Quentin can’t help but preen. ‘Really? Why is that?’
‘They don’t want emotional commitment.’
Why can’t more women be like this – free-spirited and filthy? His post-marital affairs have until now been laden with expectations. Cecilia, his final fling at the Rambler, yapped on about how much better his life would be with her if he left his wife and family; as if that was what he wanted. It was worse in Washington, where there had been no thrill of the chase, just perfectly groomed women circling any unattached male in the manner of raptors. Tina, however, is a sensualist. She believes that the French have got it right with the cinq à sept.
‘What’s the oldest man you’ve ever had?’
‘Seventy-one.’
He snorts with laughter.
‘Good God!’ Then he pauses, as the ramifications of this sink in. ‘Why?’
‘Why do you want to know?’
‘I’m just curious.’
Tina strokes his leg with her feet. She wears a silver ring shaped like a snake eating its tail on one toe. He finds it both disturbing and arousing.
‘He had a big cock, and he was rich.’
‘Which mattered most?’
‘What do you think?’
She knows he owns a house nearby, and her generation think that anyone with a house anywhere in London must be a millionaire – which, on paper, is true. The whole of Britain is obsessed by property, but none more so than Londoners, for bricks and mortar, no matter how poorly situated or inconveniently located, are the closest thing to magic. When he arrived in London in the mid-1980s, the life-changing tide of credit had been rushing through the market like the Gulf Stream, and it has gone on getting warmer and warmer until the whole city is bubbling and steaming with greed and desperation. Anyone with money from every corrupt country in the world wants to invest it in the one sure thing: not gold, but London property. Even the 1930s semis on the ring-roads are being restored rather than knocked down.
Yet Quentin loved London even when it was dingy, when ordinary people like teachers and nurses had been able to live in nice parts of the city for a modest sum. In fact, looking back, he loved it most of all then. To be a Londoner, Quentin thinks, is to be in a Britain that is more confident, more tolerant, more civilised, more enterprising and more beautiful than the rest of the country. Even when it drives him mad with its traffic jams and pollution, even when it’s overrun with tourists and oligarchs, even when he needs to get away for a holiday, he’s always happy here. It is, far more than any woman, the love of his life.
All cities have this in common: they are wonderful if you have either youth or money, but horrible if you have neither. Quentin’s poverty is now of the kind that dares not use a credit card. Like a stomach that is being forced, inch by painful inch, to shrink, he feels sick with something beyond hunger. Until now, he has never understood quite how much success has added a spring to his step.
‘God, I’d give anything to be back for good,’ he says.
‘Why don’t you just sell up?’
‘That’s the plan, but it takes time.’
When Tina goes to work (she designs lingerie, appropriately), Quentin walks to the West End. He needs to find somewhere to go before a book launch with enough canapés to make up a meal before he has to return on the last train … Incredible, to be back doing this kind of thing, as he had thirty years ago! Civilians believe that parties are about enjoying yourself, but they are work, and when fewer and fewer people have staff jobs, attending them is a question of survival. If you don’t turn up, people assume you are dead.
He stops off at the Slouch Club, where he hasn’t renewed his membership but can brazen his way in. There, he can nurse a cup of coffee indefinitely, and access the Internet for free.
Soho is still pleasingly sleazy, but even here the sterilising effect of money is creeping onwards. Will the whole city become one bland series of franchises? He goes through the revolving door of the club in an unusually pensive mood.
‘Hello, are you a member?’
Quentin gives his most saurian stare and says,
‘Ivo Sponge.’
Of course she hasn’t a clue what Ivo looks like, only that he’s on the membership list; and Ivo is probably far too busy and too grand now to come here. Quentin toys with the idea of having lunch on Ivo’s tab and charging it to his former protégé, but the idea is too risky. He remembers when, if a staff journalist didn’t claim at least £100 a week they were hauled up by the editor and told to get some expenses in, quick. No wonder newspapers have become so dull.
Quentin drops a lump of sugar into his Americano and opens the Chronicle’s website on his tablet. His Questing Vole identity has been guessed by those in the know, as all journalistic pseudonyms are, but it enables him to be as rude as he wants.
I have exchanged the reek of burning car exhausts for the smell of silage and sheep shit. I spend most days wrapped up in an old duvet, hiding from village bumpkins trying to persuade me to join them in the Methodist Chapel.
Quentin groans. So far, he has written about the hell of living in mud, the aggression of rustic beams, the monotony of food without multiculturalism and the disappointment of trying to grow his own vegetables only to see them eaten by slugs. He’s not making any of it up, and it isn’t half the story, because the real horror is living with Lottie. The bloggers loathe him.
Stupid townie … you think your poor, try living on so-called benefits … go back to where you came from, posh git … You’re idea of the countryside makes me sick … What a pointless waste of time. Why don’t you snobs write about the way real country people live? … More rubbish from Vole. Out here, we know what to do with rodents!
Who are these people?
He scrolls down the page, and comes across something unexpected.
Dear Mr. Vole,
You claim that Devon is a place where nothing ever happens apart from incest and morris dancing. Well, I wouldn’t be too sure about that. Ask yourself why your rent at Home Farm is so low. They still haven’t found his head. Sweet dreams!
Quentin feels a needle of ice slide down the back of his neck. Not only does somebody know who he is, and where he lives but …
Impossible! The rent is low because it’s winter, when tenants are like hen
s’ teeth, and the house has no central heating. Yet Lottie has mentioned how none of the village children have wanted to come back to play with his daughters. Natural shyness, surely; yet Quentin’s fingers are already tapping out the words Devon+murder+Shipcott into Google. Up pops a link to the Daily Telegraph:
HEADLESS BODY FOUND NEAR DEVON FARMHOUSE.
Oh, Christ, he thinks.
The body of a decapitated man was found near Shipcott, Devon, police revealed yesterday.
Detectives have confirmed that the victim was a man of around 40–50. A detailed search of the surrounding countryside is being carried out.
One of the men who found the corpse said, ‘A big black dog was standing over it, whining, but it ran off when we approached.
‘At first we thought it was an animal, but as we came closer we could see the body of a man. There was a gaping hole where the head had been hacked off.’
Detective Chief Inspector James Drew, who is leading the hunt, said, ‘We don’t know exactly how long the body has been there, but if anyone has seen someone acting suspiciously or has information relating to the victim or his killer or killers, we ask them to get in touch with the police.
‘There is no indication of who the victim was but we are working to identify him. We have people going through the undergrowth but it is a very large area.’
There is an aerial shot of the River Tamar with white arrows pointing to Trelorn, and a white building which looks ominously familiar.
There are comments underneath this, too, from the bloggers.
What a dreadful thing to discover in such a beautiful place … What is happening to this peaceful, civilised country? … I feel sick just thinking about what that poor man must have suffered … Is anybody looking out for the black dog? … Maybe it was the Hound of the Baskervilles.
Nothing about Home Farm, and yet when he clicks on the next link, from the Daily Mail, there it is, and beside it is a two-page spread featuring the face of a rock star so famous that even Quentin knows at once who he is.
GORE TORE IN HEADLESS BODY MYSTERY
A decapitated body has been found in a property belonging to the rock star Gore Tore.
Quentin can feel his jaw drop. Two thoughts collide in his head: his daughters are living in the scene of a murder, and his landlord is an international celebrity. Why has nobody told him? Do his parents know? Though he has never had any interest in rock stars, even Quentin has heard of Gore, not only as he has heard of Mick Jagger and David Bowie but because Tore was once a pupil at his old school, Knotshead. He had been given a scholarship in the early 1960s, and he is now one of the richest people in Britain.
A blizzard of pictures fills his screen. Tore, his ex-model wife Di and their two small sons smile up at him. They are, of course, far more important than the victim. Though creased and almost freeze-dried with age, the star is still handsome, his long dark locks abundant and his teeth … well, they have to be fake. Much of the first page is taken up with describing how Tore bought Shipcott Manor for £6 million four years ago. Formerly, it had belonged to Sir Gerald Fox, a notorious playboy who died bankrupt, leaving the house in ruins. Since when, Tore has been restoring the house, blah, blah and then the meat of the story:
The murdered man found in West Devon six weeks ago has been revealed as Mr. Oliver Randall. Randall, a piano teacher, lived alone at Home Farm. He was believed to have left the area at some time over the Christmas holiday. Police are following possible leads.
Quentin looks for other links, but it’s clear there have been no further discoveries since the discovery of the corpse and their own rental of Home Farm, nine months later.
What a creepy thing. Quentin shivers. At the very least, he hopes the maniac has not left the head on the premises. He saves his search, and clicks off the page. He mustn’t mention it to his daughters – or Lottie. His mind wanders morbidly over the property, wondering where the crime was committed. Could it be the back hall, where there is a darker patch in the carpet? Or on the cold spot in the bathroom? (But then, where is there any room without a cold spot?) Why had Randall been killed, and in such a gruesome way? He’s never liked the farmhouse, but now he feels positively revolted. If only he could make it the excuse for leaving! But he knows they can’t afford to.
So why had his mother recommended it? A case like this would have set the whole county buzzing. She must have known, or she thought he knew and didn’t care.
‘Would you like another drink, sir?’
The waitress stands over him. Quentin can hardly tear his eyes from the screen, but she is very pretty, so he says,
‘Whisky. Make that a double, actually.’ When it arrives, he tosses it down, gasps, and says, ‘Bring me another. No, wait, better not.’
He’s just remembered that he only has £5 to last him till the next day.
9
Up on Dartmoor
As soon as she gets home, Sally exhales. It’s as if she has been holding her breath all day long, and though there’s a lot of paperwork still to do, the worst part is over. Some days are like that, especially after visiting the Burt family in Trelorn. Joe is trying to cope with a six-month-old baby, two other kids, and he’s going mad with post-traumatic stress. But what else can they do? Maddy is never present when Sally calls, or if she is, she’s sleeping off her shift. Joe has to do everything. Effectively, he’s the mum.
‘I can’t push her around in a buggy, but our Ella loves doing that,’ he says. ‘Just as well.’
Joe had many months at Headley Court, learning to adapt, but now he’s invalided out he has no support from Social Services apart from what Sally can bring in. He’s stopped wearing his artificial legs, and yet he has been told he is fit for work and not entitled to disability benefits. Like all soldiers he refuses to complain, but it’s obvious he and his family are not in a good way.
‘I can manage,’ he says, shifting his wheelchair about this way and that. He still has a soldier’s short-cropped hair, a soldier’s square jaw and a soldier’s patience, but he sleeps downstairs where the children can’t hear a soldier’s bad dreams.
Devon has been producing soldiers for centuries, huge young men as big as bulls and as strong as oak that she sometimes comes across on training exercises on Dartmoor; and although you couldn’t think of a country more different from this one, with its dry dusty plains, the war in Afghanistan seemed to make sense at first, given the suicide bombs. Joe Burt had signed up at seventeen, done well and left for his second tour of duty in Helmand Province last year. He’d returned with both legs gone.
The Army itself has been cut off at the knees. Despite all the promises, despite all the fine speeches made by generals and politicians, men like Joe are forgotten. Sally doesn’t think it’s a coincidence that, by and large, soldiers come from the countryside where, if something goes wrong, they can be pushed out of sight, and out of mind. If Maddy hadn’t had a baby soon after he came back, he’d have had no support. She’s from over Yeovil way, and the Burts, unusually, have no immediate family nearby. You need family in the country; not for nothing do she and her two sisters live within five miles of each other. Friends are a wonderful thing, but when things go really wrong, only family will pick up the pieces.
Joe won’t tell her much, beyond the fact that the Land Rover hit a mine, and flipped over.
‘I thought, there’s my right leg gone. Then I looked and I thought, my left leg’s gone. Then someone got a tourniquet around them, and a line of morphine into me,’ he said, adding, ‘Bloody marvellous, morphine. Same as heroin, isn’t it? And there we are in Afghanistan, trying to stop them growing the stuff.’
‘Yes, well … it’s not safe,’ said Sally.
Joe’s face set.
‘I know. And I know how hard Maddy works trying to keep everything going for us. It’s just – she’d be better off if I were dead.’
Sally sighed.
‘Dr Viner will prescribe you antidepressants.’
The baby is suppose
d to be her real patient, not Joe. Men aren’t supposed to be frail or ill or depressed, even though they are far higher risks as suicides than women. The Burts have been together since they were fifteen, and despite what people say about young love and early marriage, theirs is strong and true.
‘Maddy says she married me for better or for worse, but nobody really knows what the worst means, do they?’
‘No, they don’t. But when bad stuff happens and someone stands by you, that’s real love.’
At Moor Farm she can get away from the world, for Dartmoor is to Devon what Devon is to the mainland. It’s a place apart, whose shadowy mounds and deep clefts look like the flanks of some great rough beast, a lion perhaps, especially in the low winter sun. The granite hills that hump themselves into the sky are crowned with boulders said to be the remnants of Stone Age forts, and the people who lived here must have been desperate indeed, for the rain that blows in from the Atlantic is dumped on these hills, so that in winter and spring and summer and autumn the roads can turn to rivers at any moment. It’s a place of beauty and terror, where the littleness of man is made manifest.
But it is also home to all kinds of wild creatures, and its rivers and woods, hills and fields are some of the last places in Britain where you can hear a cuckoo or see a wild pony. The Veritys own and look after some of the Dartmoor ponies that wander nearby: they are not wild, as many believe, and Peter has just finished the annual round-up of ponies from the commons. These days, feeding even one small horse is expensive in winter, and they are lucky to have had a good crop of silage.
Sally’s house is folded into a valley with a scrubby oak wood shielding its sides. Low and old, its warren of rooms is ‘the closest thing to living in a hobbit-hole’, as Peter once said, and it looks as if it has grown out of the surrounding landscape, especially now its thatch has grown thick with moss. Its bulgy walls are made of clay, straw, small stones and horsehair, mashed together into cob which badly needs a coat of paint. It has a huge stone fireplace and smells of woodsmoke because on all but the hottest days and nights of summer, there’s always a fire burning in the hearth. On the other side of the passage is another room, much bigger, which is used when they have visitors and is otherwise a place for the best china, family photographs, pot plants, and bits of furniture which the animals are not allowed near. Above it are two more bedrooms, for Moor Farm was built to house a family with children – only no children have come.
