Fate Worse Than Death

by Sheila Radley

  ‘I’m making a casserole for supper,’ she replied patiently. It was an unwelcome job on such a hot day. She knew that her face must be shining, and she hoped that Marjorie would not comment on it. ‘I’m not sure when my nephew will be arriving, so I thought I’d make something now and heat it up this evening.’

  Con ate little and cooked less. During the last few years of her working life she had cared for her aged mother, and after the old lady was removed to a nursing-home Con had thankfully given up the practice of cookery. Her favourite meal was bread and honey, or a piece of cheese and an apple, eaten absent-mindedly while she read a book.

  Having got out of the way of cooking, she found it difficult to do so while anyone watched her. That was why she had decided against giving Martin a steak, because he would be sure to come into the kitchen to talk to her while she grilled it. She was becoming so forgetful, so easily confused … as she was now, under Marjorie’s disapproving eye.

  ‘A casserole, in this weather?’ her neighbour hooted. ‘No wonder you’re sweating – what an idiotic thing to do! Why on earth aren’t you giving your nephew a cold meal?’

  ‘Er …’ Con tried to remember whether she had seasoned the neck of lamb before browning it. At the moment she was frying chopped onion – and gosh it was so hot, standing over the cooker. If only Marjorie would go away instead of watching and criticizing …

  Despite her lined face and grey head, there was something almost coltish about Con Schultz. Her hair was cropped, her movements were nervous and awkward, her manner gauche. It was impossible to imagine her as a 1940s good-time girl, but not at all difficult to see what she must have been like in her last year at school. Her clothes – she always wore plain skirts and blouses – were a kind of uniform, and her favourite expletives came straight from the pre-war School Friend magazine.

  Marjorie, who never took silence for an answer, was still waiting to hear why she wasn’t giving Martin a cold meal. Con tried to remember why not, as she pushed sizzling onions about the pan and suffered in the heat. Eventually, dragging up some recollection of the long-departed Mr Schultz, she suggested that men preferred hot food.

  ‘Rubbish!’ declared Marjorie. ‘A complete fallacy. Men think they prefer hot food, but that’s because they haven’t been properly trained. Take Howard: when he was at work he always ate a hot lunch in the directors’dining room, out of habit. But now that he spends all day fishing he’s perfectly happy with the wholemeal bread sandwich I make him for lunch, and a vegetable salad in the evenings. It’s far more nutritious, and so much better for his bowels. He agrees that he feels healthier for it, and so would your nephew. You’ll be doing the boy a great disservice if you don’t take the opportunity to restructure his diet while he’s here.’

  Con sighed, and fried on, and said nothing. Marjorie might well be right about the importance of dietary fibre, but for herself Con was past caring; and she had never thought it her mission in life to reorganize anyone else’s. Besides, she knew that Marjorie was wrong about her husband. Her other neighbour, Beryl Websdell, had recently happened to mention that Howard Braithwaite bought himself a cooked lunch every day at the Flintknappers Arms.

  Con kept the knowledge to herself, of course. The Braithwaites’ domestic arrangements were no concern of hers. She might have felt sorry for Howard, knowing that he had to resort to subterfuge to provide himself with a square meal, if it weren’t for the fact that he was such a cross, impatient man.

  Village life carried with it, Con believed, an obligation to speak to one’s neighbours. Not to buttonhole them or bore them, but never to pass them by without a greeting and some observation about the weather, or an enquiry about the health of anyone known to be ill. But Howard Braithwaite preferred to ignore everyone unless he was spoken to directly, when he answered with a bark.

  Probably, mused Con, he’d found barking the best way of dealing with his wife. She ought to try it on Marjorie herself – except that it was now too late to bother; her neighbour’s tiresomeness didn’t matter any more, she’d soon be out of it, thank God …

  ‘Constance!’ The chains on either side of Marjorie’s cheeks swayed and clashed with irritation. ‘You’re burning those onions! Stir in the flour, quickly, and add some hot water – really, you are absolutely hopeless. Now, do try to concentrate for a moment because I can’t stay long, I’m going to Ashthorpe this afternoon to give a talk on nutrition to the Evergreen Club. What I want to know is whether you’ve finished preparing the schedules for the honey section at next month’s garden produce show? I know what you’re like. If I don’t keep an eye on you –’

  ‘Crikey!’ Con stood still, one hand holding a wooden spoon that immediately dripped gravy over the cooker, the other clapped guiltily to her mouth. ‘The produce show? But I thought we’d agreed –?’

  Marjorie’s chains quivered formidably. ‘You can’t have forgotten about it. You put it in your diary, I know you did, because I stood over you while you wrote it down.’

  ‘Yes … but I don’t always remember to look at my diary, you see.’ In fact Con had mislaid it. She seemed to spend most of her time, lately, searching for things she had mislaid and mislaying other things in the process. But she wasn’t going to tell Marjorie that. No sense in asking for a further scolding.

  ‘Do you mean you’ve done nothing at all to prepare for the show. Really, Constance, how can you be so irresponsible?’

  Con began to worry. Not about the produce show, although she would never willingly inconvenience her fellow bee-keepers, but about her memory. Mislaying things was a nuisance, but being unable to remember whether or not she had promised to do something was frightening. She felt that she was beginning to lose control of her own life.

  ‘But I’m sure I asked you to find someone else to take charge of the honey this year, Marjorie. After all, I’m leaving. I told you that, I know I did. I may well have gone by the middle of September, and I thought we’d agreed that you would find a replacement for me?’

  ‘Nonsense, we agreed no such thing. I told you at the time that it would be months before you move. You’ve been talking about it for long enough, but all you’ve done so far is to sell your bees.

  You haven’t put your own property on the market yet, or been to view any others. Have you?’

  ‘Er … no.’ Con took a deep breath to steady herself. ‘I’ve been waiting to discuss things with my nephew. I may go to look at properties with him. And if I find somewhere suitable, I could move from here almost immediately. I know it’s a frightful nuisance for you, Marjorie, but you really must find someone else to take my place.’

  Her neighbour consented, grumbling. ‘But it’s ridiculous to imagine that you’ll be able to leave at short notice, even if you find a suitable property with vacant possession. You’ll have to sell either this cottage or the one on the Horkey road first.’

  ‘No, I shan’t.’ Con had always been reluctant to reveal much about herself to anyone, but she was tired of being browbeaten. ‘If you’re wondering about finance, that’s no problem. I have capital available.’

  ‘Have you?’ Marjorie backed down, her tone a mixture of surprise and interest. ‘Lucky old thing,’ she went on, almost respectfully. Then she rallied. ‘Well, no wonder your nephew’s prepared to come and help you house-hunt! I suppose he expects to benefit from your will?’

  ‘You can suppose what you jolly well like,’ Con retorted, her thin face pink with heat and exasperation. ‘I’m very fond of Martin, and believe it or not he seems to be reasonably fond of me. Now if you’re busy, Marjorie, don’t let me keep you.’

  But her neighbour was listening to the sound of unmusical singing, a wobbly soprano coming closer as someone walked up the long garden path and round the side of the house towards the open back door.

  ‘Help!’ said Marjorie. ‘It’s that dreadful Beryl woman. She really does drive me mad. If she asks me again whether I’ve found my Saviour, I shall be very rude to her.’

  What
they could now both identify, shrilled out with joyous fervour and a persistent sing-along rhythm, was a gospel song that had been popularized by Cliff Richard. Beryl Websdell was an ardent Cliff Richard fan. She had once, on holiday years ago, seen and heard him live in concert at the Wellington Pier, Great Yarmouth, and had managed to get his autograph. His committedly Christian stance had helped to formulate her own belief, and she sang the chorus of his song – the only part of it she could remember – every day of her life.

  This is my song,

  My Saviour ‘s love to me-e:

  How great Thou art,

  How great Thou art!

  This is my song, my Saviour ‘s love to me-he,

  How-great-Thou-art, how great Thou art!

  This is my song –

  Still singing it, Beryl appeared in the doorway, homely but radiant. Her broad face and bare, fleshy arms were red and damp from working in the heat, but her eyes were as full of happiness as her voice.

  Religious enthusiasm was rare in Fodderstone. Any other woman who exhibited it – and expressed it so frequently, and so off-key – would have been shunned. But Beryl was valued as a very hard worker, and a lifeline for the old and disabled. The cleaning she did on Saturdays at the Flintknappers Arms was incidental to her local authority job as a home help. On the left side of her sleeveless nylon overall were embroidered the words Home Help Service; on the right she wore a large badge proclaiming Jesus my joy.

  ‘Hallo, Constance dear,’ she cried cheerily. ‘I’ve just given poor old Joey Wigg a good turn-out, and now I’m off to the post office for his pension and groceries, so I popped in to see if there’s anything you need while I’m there. Good morning, Marjorie,’ she added, beaming. ‘Lovely to see you.’

  Marjorie didn’t acknowledge the greeting. She was the kind of woman who made a point of addressing all the villagers by their first names while expecting to be called Mrs Braithwaite in return.

  She very much disliked being treated as Beryl Websdell’s sister in Christ, and she lingered only to satisfy her curiosity.

  ‘Have you heard from that daughter of yours yet?’ she demanded.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Beryl, without a waver in her confidence or a diminution of her smile. ‘Sandra will get in touch with us when she’s ready. But thank you for asking about her. God bless you, Marjorie.’

  ‘Bah!’ said Marjorie, stamping off to bully the pensioners of the Ashthorpe Evergreen Club into eating bran for the sake of their bowels.

  She was slightly mollified, on her way down Constance’s garden path, by having the front gate held open for her with proper deference by another of the villagers, the woodman, who had just arrived in his old pick-up truck. ‘Good morning, Christopher,’ she said graciously; but it took him so long to burst out with ‘Good morning, Mrs Braithwaite,’ in reply, that she couldn’t wait to hear what else he was trying to say to her.

  Con was more patient with Christopher Thorold, and consequently he found her easier to talk to. She listened to his offer of winter firewood at special summer prices, and told him that she wouldn’t be needing any because she would soon be leaving Fodderstone.

  ‘I’m wholly sorry to hear that,’ he said sincerely. ‘Pa will be sorry, an’all.’

  Christopher’s father had regularly trimmed Con’s garden hedge for her in her early years in Fodderstone Green. She enquired after his health.

  ‘Fairly, thank you,’ answered Christopher, a reply that Con, knowing her East Anglian comparatives, found satisfactory. ‘Nicely’ would have been preferable, ‘poorly’would have been worse, and ‘sadly’would have meant at death’s door.

  Beryl, who had been standing out of his sight, moved forward and greeted him affectionately. She would be only too glad, she reminded him, to come and give him and his father a good turn-out whenever they needed her.

  Taken aback by the unexpected encounter with her, Christopher began to blink. His boots trod up and down and he burst out, ‘’Tweren’t me, Beryl! ’Tweren’t me who threw your gnome in a ditch.’

  ‘Bless you, boy,’ she said warmly, ‘I never thought it was.’

  ‘They say so at the Knappers. They’ve found him damaged, and they say I did it. But’tweren’t me.’

  Beryl was visibly shaken. Her red cheeks lost some of their colour and her voice wavered. ‘’Course it wasn’t you, Chris dear,’ she said, trying to reassure him. ‘They were only teasing … Just ignore them. God bless you – and your Pa.’

  But she gave the blessing mechanically. The disappearance of her daughter and the disappearance of her gnome were inextricably linked in her mind. There was no logic, she knew, in thinking that because Willum had been damaged, Sandra had also been harmed; but for a few moments her faith in her Saviour’s loving care deserted her, and she felt as concerned as any other mother for the safety of her missing daughter.

  Chapter Nine

  She would give him one more chance to let her go. She would make one more attempt to persuade him to free her. It will save his pride, she told herself, thinking of the indignity he would suffer by having food thrown in his face; but in fact she was terrified by the prospect of having to put her plan into action. She knew that she was too shaky to aim straight, too weak at the knees to run far.

  She began to plead with him as soon as he brought her midday sandwich. ‘You must let me go,’ she said. ‘I can’t bear to be shut up in this heat. Can’t you see that you’re making me ill?’

  He said that she would feel better if she ate her food.

  ‘How can I eat, when you’re keeping me prisoner? It’s dreadful in here. You must let me go.’

  He said that he needed her. If he let her go he would lose her.

  ‘But you can’t keep me here indefinitely!’

  He said that he had too much need of her to let her go.

  ‘If you don’t, I shall die,’ she sobbed.

  He said that if only she would do as he asked, he would always take care of her.

  He put the sandwich on the table. Then he went, securely fastening the door behind him.

  Chapter Ten

  Martin Tait arrived at his aunt’s cottage on Fodderstone Green just in time for afternoon tea.

  ‘I’m so glad you could come,’ said Con. ‘Gosh, you’re looking awfully well.’

  He didn’t feel well, after the way Alison had treated him. Healthy, certainly; but baffled, frustrated, angry. However, he had no intention of revealing any of that to his aunt. He kissed her with affection, noticing that she was wearing the scent that she had once admitted to having liked when she was young, the Worth Je Reviens that he had, as usual, given her for Christmas.

  ‘I’m delighted to be here at last,’ he said. ‘And you’re looking well, too.’

  It wasn’t true. He was quite shocked by the change in her since his pre-Christmas visit. Con shared with him the characteristically sharp Tait profile, but her mouth was entirely her own. Dragged down at one corner by a muscular weakness, it had always given her what Martin remembered best about her, an engagingly lop-sided smile. But when her face was in repose her mouth gave her a melancholy appearance, and that was what predominated now. She looked as though she slept badly, and her hands were shaky. Instead of being the active, amusing woman he had always known, she seemed unfamiliar, depressed and elderly.

  The ritual of afternoon tea seemed to revive her a little. They sat on the back lawn in the shade of an apple tree, drinking Darjeeling tea and eating cucumber sandwiches. Presently Con enquired after her sister-in-law, Martin’s mother, a strong-minded widow who ran a secondhand bookshop in a village near Lavenham.

  ‘Indefatigable, as always.’ Martin sighed. ‘She’s into yoga now … I’m all for her keeping fit, but I do wish that at fifty she’d be a bit more dignified. Whenever I go to see her she’s wearing a leotard and contorting herself on the sitting-room carpet.’

  He had in fact been acutely embarrassed at the prospect of taking Alison to meet his mother. The way the leotard clu
ng to her lean body, tracing every fold of her pudenda, was he thought positively indecent. It would be so much easier and pleasanter to introduce Alison to Aunt Con – or, rather, it would have been. He fell silent, yearning angrily for the girl.

  ‘Scones and honey?’ offered Con. ‘Don’t worry, I didn’t make the scones. I bought them from the Horkey baker, so they’re guaranteed edible.’

  ‘But the honey’s most definitely yours,’ said Martin, helping himself. It was distinctively pale and scented, made by her bees from the nectar of the blossom of the lime trees that surrounded Fodderstone Green. ‘And I’m not sharing it with you,’ he added, swatting away a hovering wasp. He licked a smear of honey from his finger. ‘This is much too good to waste. How many pounds did you take this year, Aunt Con?’

  ‘None at all. Didn’t I mention it in a letter? I was sure I’d told you … I sold my hives in the spring.’

  He looked at her in surprise. ‘No, I’d no idea. You’ve always been so fond of your bees.’

  ‘Yes. But they’re an awful lot of work, you know. And when I had to have Emma put down in March, I somehow lost the heart for it.’

  Emma, a golden labrador, had been Con’s companion throughout her retirement. Even to Martin, an infrequent visitor, the cottage seemed empty without the dog; as soon as he entered he had missed the click of her nails on the floorboards. And now, at tea-time, he recalled the way she used to come and lean against his legs, gazing up at him soulfully in the hope that he would give her a lick of honey.

  ‘She was a beautiful creature,’ he said.

  Con nodded. ‘That was a very kind and understanding note you sent me at the time. Jolly nice of you, Martin. I did appreciate it.’

  ‘Well, I remember how I felt when my poor old beagle had to be put down, not long after Dad died. I wanted to have another dog, but I couldn’t because of being away at school. What about you, though – are you planning to buy a pup? A different breed, perhaps?’