Seven For a Secret

by Judy Astley

  Chapter Fourteen

  At least Kate hadn’t been devious enough to lie, that was something, Heather thought the next morning as she drove out of the village to take Delia shopping in Oxford for Edward’s funeral.

  ‘It was only Iain,’ Kate had explained, reluctantly and stroppily. ‘I heard this awful crash, like a bad car accident and I got worried.’

  ‘Why ever didn’t you ring Margot?’ Heather had asked over breakfast, wishing she didn’t sound like an amateur courtroom cross-examiner.

  There was an immediate huff of exasperation from Kate. ‘I did. But I forgot where she was and rang the rectory.’ It was all a very typical adolescent muddle. Kate, sleep-dishevelled and slopping around in her T-shirt-nightdress, was giving her mother the ‘what on earth did you expect, I’m only a teenager’ look across the toast crumbs on the kitchen table.

  Heather could hardly blame her, could hardly accuse her of being up to something, something she didn’t quite, herself, want to put into words. She could hear her own mother’s voice, echoing in her head from long ago, commenting on neighbours’ misfortunes. ‘The apple doesn’t fall far from the tree,’ had been one of her favourites, although when Heather had come back from running off with Iain, this had changed to mutterings about some unfortunate families being blighted with black sheep.

  ‘I don’t know why he wanted to go out the back way,’ Kate had answered to the question that hadn’t, actually, been asked. ‘Perhaps he didn’t want to scare you or something. Or intrude on your grief.’

  Kate was now being sarcastically bolshy, and Heather prudently decided not to pursue the subject, not to give any clue that what Iain was up to might actually matter in the slightest to her. Because it didn’t, of course it didn’t.

  ‘Do you think pine or oak, or do they do beech or maple?’ Delia was saying as they sped up the dual carriageway.

  ‘What? Oh for a coffin,’ Heather replied, dreamily imagining ranges of chic kitchen units. ‘I don’t know, does it matter?’

  ‘I want to do the right thing for him.’

  ‘They’re only going to burn it,’ Heather said unthinkingly. ‘And whatever you get it’s probably only chipboard with a bit of veneer.’ She didn’t want to be making this trip. Selfishly, she minded the sudden urgency of making disposal arrangements for Edward, when he himself had been relatively so leisurely about the dying process. She’d promised Nigel she’d call in and see him about a customer of his who wanted to pay someone rather a lot to tell him what to do about deep shade. She was desperate to be busy – avoidance therapy, she assumed, so that she wouldn’t have to think about either Tom or Iain.

  Delia sniffed and scrabbled in her bag for another of her lacy hankies. ‘You’ve turned into a hard woman, Heather. Your poor uncle is lying dead—’

  ‘Oh I’m sorry,’ Heather said, feeling guilty remorse. ‘It’s just that once you’re dead all the vultures come down and take their pick. I’m talking about the undertaking business, all wanting to sell you fancy brass-look plastic handles and pastel, frilled polyester linings. I just think it’s a tacky trade, that’s all.’

  ‘You’re lucky you haven’t had much contact with it,’ Delia said darkly, as if warning Heather of awful prospects to come. ‘I dread to think what you’ll do with me when it’s my turn. Shove me in a cardboard box and bury me under your compost heap, I shouldn’t wonder.’

  ‘Actually,’ Heather said, smiling, ‘I think that’s a wonderful idea. Ecologically sound – at least, I think it is.’ It depended what you died of, she supposed. Simple old-age heart-failure would be all right, perhaps, but who would want a cirrhosed liver or tumorous bowel lurking and leaking into the humus?

  Delia sat and sniffed, and thought about the shortness of life and the awful insensitivity of the young – they had no idea how tragically short even the longest life was. It seemed like only days ago when she’d been preparing dainty salmon and cucumber sandwiches (cut corner to corner, no crusts) for Edward and Harold’s visits. She’d had a powder-blue two-piece trimmed with navy binding that Edward had much admired; men appreciated women who went to a bit of trouble in those days. Even now, she would rather be shopping for a hat than for a coffin, and wondered if Heather would think her hypocritically frivolous if she managed to combine the two purchases.

  ‘We could pop into Debenhams for coffee or lunch if you like,’ Delia suggested as they parked in St Giles. ‘Or I could. You could just go home if you’d prefer. I can get a bus. Probably.’

  Heather made an effort and didn’t sigh in resignation – she was tempted to comment that there was a whiff of smouldering martyr. Nigel would have to wait. Old uncles didn’t die on a daily basis, and she was being irritably selfish entirely because of bloody Iain. It felt good blaming him, a small step back to a much more convenient, much more comfortable indifference towards him. Perhaps the worst was over, she thought, after all, he wouldn’t be around for much longer; he’d drift off back to London or Scotland, or wherever he was currently living, and stay out of her life and stop disturbing her for at least, she hoped, another twenty-five years.

  They bought a rather cheap pine coffin. Heather thought it was a lot of money for something that in just over a week would be set fire to, but Delia thought it was just as well that bodies didn’t go to the eternal flames with a price tag on the coffin handle, so that relatives and friends could comment on how stingy the purchaser had been. In the awful peach-walled silence of the undertaker’s office, where even breathing was muffled by heavy and depressing maroon velvet curtains, Heather asked about the difference between oak and pine.

  ‘About a hundred and fifty quid,’ the salesman, lacking a suitable amount of unctuousness, had replied.

  ‘He wouldn’t have wanted me to be wasteful,’ Delia whispered to Heather while the man went to get a brochure on ‘fittings’. ‘And he did say something about leaving his money to a children’s charity, the NSPCC I expect, so that’ll mean more for them won’t it?’

  ‘I’m sure it’ll be fine,’ Heather reassured her.

  Heather drove past Oxford gaol on the way to register Edward’s death, and parked behind a ribbon-swathed white Rolls-Royce that obviously awaited a bride and groom.

  ‘You’d think, wouldn’t you . . .’ Delia sniffed, as she and Heather got caught up on the steps with the wedding party, and an impatient photographer waved them, with their respectfully dark clothes and solemn faces, out of the way of the noisy, jubilant celebrants. Crossly, and with exaggerated fuss, Delia brushed confetti off her jacket sleeve and felt no need to finish her sentence. Heather, behind her mother’s disapproving back, smiled at the bride and silently wished the radiant couple a lot more luck than she had had with Iain, and perhaps just a little more than she’d had with Tom.

  Back in Friarsford, Simon got up late and swaggered into the kitchen, still feeling enormously pleased with himself. Not such a wimp, huh, he smiled to himself in the little shell-bordered mirror, where he saw reflected no habitually useless schoolboy but a fully initiated getaway driver. He wondered if he’d feel the same when he actually managed to have sex for the first time or if, once you’d had that feeling, whatever it was about, it was never quite the same again.

  ‘What’re you grinning at?’ Tamsin asked looking up from her bowl of Coco Pops.

  ‘My glorious self,’ he replied, twisting his head so he could see as much of his face in profile as possible.

  ‘You’re nuts,’ she replied placidly, then looked up again and eyed him with more speculation. ‘Simon?’

  ‘Hmm?’ He was now on his way to the coffee jar.

  ‘Simon,’ she said again, with a note of pre-persuasion in her voice. ‘We, that is, me and Suzy—’

  ‘Suzy and I.’

  ‘Suzy and I are going to play a game, and it means we’re going to sleep a night on the island, you know, just past Suzy’s garden. Anyway, we were wondering if you and a friend or someone would like to come with us.’ She filled her mouth with Coco Po
ps and chewed noisily.

  Simon pulled a face. He’d long since grown out of even remotely wanting to play games with his little sister. Even when he was little he’d only really done it because his mother had persuaded him he was being helpful, occupying Tamsin and keeping her quiet in between au pairs, and during their many afternoons of time off for ‘study’.

  ‘Tammy, why on earth would you think I’d want to play at wolf cubs in a tent with you and Suzy?’

  Tamsin wrinkled her nose, a sure sign that she was thinking carefully and choosing her words. At last she selected an expression of serious appeal and beamed her large brown eyes at him as he sat down opposite her with his coffee. ‘I know. I’m sorry to have to ask. It’s really, really boring, but Suzy’s mum won’t let her come unless she’s absolutely sure she’ll be safe. I mean, not all mothers are like ours, you know.’

  Simon thought about the enormous number of bottles that rattled off in the back of the car each week to the recycling bin (green section) behind Waitrose. ‘No, I don’t suppose they are,’ he agreed glumly.

  ‘So she’d let her come if you’re there. Do you see? And Suzy was so looking forward to it. You can bring a friend, maybe, er, let me think . . . Shane Gibson or someone. And we’ll have two tents.’ She was suddenly busy with her cereal again, not looking at him, waiting for him to think it through.

  Simon, with unconscious obedience, thought, slowly. And then he thought some more, rather faster, wondering if he’d been quite as clever as Darren had convinced him that he had. What did he actually have to show for the night’s terrifying activities? One lousy CD player and a heap of tapes, most of which he’d already bought, that was what. And ‘showing’ as such was hardly on the cards in the circumstances. Even if he’d got seventeen CD players and a selection of miniature TVs stashed under his bed, how was Kate ever to know just how daring he’d been? He needed to talk to Darren. And he needed to do something a bit more high profile and public to impress Kate. He was beginning to feel he’d been used. Darren must be crowing, he thought. He’d show him, all of them, and Kate.

  ‘OK Tam, but not just one friend. Perhaps we should have a bit of a party. What do you think? And what do you think about not mentioning it to anyone?’

  Tamsin’s eyes gleamed with delight. ‘Wow, wicked!’

  ‘Possibly very wicked, quite possibly,’ Simon agreed solemnly.

  With the intrusion into the village by the film crew being old news, the robbery provided the residents with something else to talk about, which pleased all those connected with the film very much and let them off the hook, at least for a while. Julia Merriman came across a small knot of people clustered outside the Spar while she was on her way home from dog-walking. The shattered window from Harbutt’s Hi-fi, two shops along, had all been cleared away, so there weren’t even shards of glass to wonder over and complain about, and several of the onlookers had slightly disgruntled expressions, as if the night’s crime should have left them with something more to do their on looking at. One or two of the younger women, refugees from London, were quite excited. Urban crime – high street robberies, muggings and joy-riding – was something that had been on the list of things to be Thankful to Have Got Away From when making that great move to the country. Now some of them were quietly acknowledging just how much they’d missed the vicarious drama of danger, the ever-present exhilarating nee-naw of police cars and ambulances speeding about and being urgent. More than one was secretly delighted. In the long-term plan for escaping back to the city, the fact that there was nowhere, not a single village, that could be guaranteed free of crime, could be a useful lever with a husband who still thought it was only rabbits that were stealing his summer bedding plants and that he could safely leave a camera in his unlocked car’s glove compartment.

  Julia had her own suspicions about the culprits, and she assumed most of the village would too. She slowed down and eyed the hardboard tacked across Harbutt’s window space. She didn’t quite like to stop and gossip, not once she heard Mrs Gibson loudly holding forth about how ram-raiders drove miles for a suitable hit, everyone knew that, it was hardly likely to be local boys now was it. Darren and Shane, of course, were nowhere to be seen.

  Delia was thrilled with her new pink-and-green hat. She kept it, still in its bag, on her lap in the front of the car as Heather drove them back to Friarsford. It had completely made her day, Heather could see, buying something so flowered, veiled and ribboned that could easily outdo in trimmings anything that Nigel’s mother, the flamboyant Clarissa, might happen to have shelved in her wardrobe. Delia sat like a rewarded child, thankful that the day of awfulness, of form-filling, coffin-buying, and body-disposal arrangement was over – at least till the actual funeral a week ahead.

  The closer they got to Friarsford, the more Heather started thinking about Iain again. His presence made her so very unsettled. She would be glad, she decided, when he left and things could get back to normal again – or as normal as they ever were. Though what was so ‘normal’ she asked her confused self, about sharing her life with a man who apparently liked, in his off-duty time, to indulge in recreational sex with his work colleagues? Perhaps once safely abroad, away from home-ground conformity, Tom underwent man-to-man sex in much the same way that others might casually pick out a suitable looking chap in a hotel bar for a game of squash. The presence of Iain was reminding Heather that there was more to sex than marital habit. It was pitiful, she thought, as she turned the car into her own driveway, how the slightest touch from an admittedly attractive man could have sent her into this silly state of sexual tension. She wondered how many other women trotted through life’s daily chores feeling like this. But then perhaps they didn’t need to – perhaps their husbands didn’t admire them for the fact that they resembled, bodily, people who only had curves when they demonstrated the emergency inflation of life-jackets. Not for the first time, it occurred to Heather that Tom might have made an effort and phoned; he owed her at least some reassurance that he hadn’t risked infecting and possibly killing her. Or perhaps Hughie had been right, after all: he and Tom were intending to fly off into the future together and set up a bijou home. They might choose, she thought, somewhere under a flight path where, during Tom’s imminent retirement, he could be reminded of his past career by the morning scent of kerosene wafting over the suburbs.

  Unusually early a few days later, Kate took a phone call that left her in an ecstatic flutter, whirling from room to room looking for the right shoes, the right hairbrush.

  ‘I’m going to be in it, right now, today!’ she shrieked to Heather as she dashed through the kitchen.

  ‘In what?’ Heather called after her. ‘Do you mean in the film?’

  ‘Yes! They’re doing a big drinks party scene and I can be a guest. The hero gets shot at and we all have to fall on the floor and look terrified.’

  ‘Whose idea was it about you being in it? Did Margot fix it?’

  ‘No, course not. She’d rather be with her dogs. No, Iain just rang and told me. You could come too, if you like, he said.’

  Heather made a face. ‘I’d probably be discarded by the director for being too old and wrinkly – I can’t face that much humiliation! You go and do it by yourself, I’m sure you’ll have a wonderful time. But be careful.’

  Kate, who had been halfway up the stairs, stopped and came back down a couple of steps. ‘What is there to be careful of?’ she asked.

  Heather wasn’t sure what of, but was sure she had to say it. Just in case. ‘Oh you know, anything really.’ She laughed lightly at her own lack of articulation. ‘Careful of the casting couch, I suppose.’

  ‘Oh Mum!’ Kate, laughing scornfully, took the stairs three at a time and disappeared into her room.

  When Kate arrived at the rectory, she was more nervous than she’d expected to be. She hovered by the doorway, watching everyone else rushing about as if they all had terribly important jobs and knew exactly what they should be doing. When Brian noticed her and
sent her to the right room, all the crowd of actors in it seemed to know each other. She was fascinated that they all ‘darlinged’ and air-kissed, just like people did on television when they were acting at being actors. She started to feel very grand, being ushered along to Make-up, a coach parked at the side of the house under the leafiest trees, presumably to try to cool the stifling effect of all the lightbulbs. The make-up girl, who looked so young Kate suspected she might be doing Work Experience, didn’t given her much attention, just briskly brushing her cheeks and eyelids with choking clouds of various powders and frowning at her in the mirror as if she felt it was beneath her considerable dignity to waste her time on ‘Support’ actors when there were stars to be cosseted. Wardrobe was even more disappointing. She joined a line of chain-smoking chatty women, loudly reminiscing about Four Weddings and was eventually handed, after the briefest up-and-down look at her body for size, a slinky black lycra dress with translucent sleeves – a better version of which she had lying scrunched up under her own bed. It was decided that her own shoes, her favourite black ones with a dolly bar, would ‘just about do’. ‘Give them a quick rub with your sleeve dear,’ she was ordered. All around her she could hear busy gossip that included phrases like ‘getting into character’, ‘God-awful per diems’ and ‘No smoked salmon, can you believe it?’ from the gaggle of professionals, but nobody spoke to her.

  Where’s Iain? she wondered, wishing a friendly face, especially his, would turn up so that she could be taken care of. She also wanted to show this over-confident, gabbling crew that she might not know them but she did know people who mattered. Just for once it was an enormous relief to see Simon. She caught sight of him, dressed as a waiter with his hair slicked back, and immediately burst into giggles. The dab-chick was all got up as a flunky, in a dinky white bow tie and trying to put on a face like Stephen Fry playing Jeeves. How, she wondered, could someone so scrupulously clean put up with having such thickly greased hair?