by M C Beaton
‘Oh, would you?’ breathed Trixie. ‘Poor Paul is so helpless.’ She had a breathless sort of voice, marred by a faint Cockney whine.
Hamish glanced at Paul to see how he liked being described as helpless but the big man was smiling amiably.
Glad of something to take his mind off his troubles, Hamish worked steadily. He and Paul loaded in the furniture and the bric-a-brac and books while Trixie walked about the house showing them where to put things. ‘We’ll need more furniture,’ she said. ‘We’re both on the dole and we decided to turn this into a bed and breakfast.’
‘Aye, well, if you’re quick about it, you might get the tourists for July and August,’ said Hamish. ‘And if you want any secondhand stuff, there’s a good place over at Alness. It’s a bit of a drive …’
Trixie’s mouth drooped again. ‘We haven’t a penny left for furniture,’ she said. ‘I was hoping some of the locals might have some bits and pieces they don’t want.’
‘Maybe I’ve got something I can let you have,’ said Hamish. ‘When we’ve finished, come over to the station and I’ll make you something to eat.’
He regretted the invitation as soon as it was out of his mouth. Although by no means a vain man, he had a feeling Trixie was making a pass at him. She was emanating a sort of come-hither sexiness, occasionally bumping into him as if by accident, and giving him a slow smile.
He regretted his invitation even more when the couple arrived at the police station. While he was cooking in the kitchen, Trixie wandered off into the other rooms without asking permission and was soon back, her face a little flushed and her eyes wider than ever. ‘I notice you don’t use the fire,’ she said, ‘and there’s that old coal scuttle. We don’t have a coal scuttle.’ She smiled ruefully. ‘Couldn’t afford one.’
The coal scuttle had been given to Hamish by an aunt. It was an old eighteenth-century one with enamelled panels and he was very fond of it. Her eyes seemed to be swallowing him up and he was surprised at the effort it took to shake his head and say, ‘No, I use that the whole time in the winter. You cannae expect me to light fires in a heat wave.’
Trixie was now examining the contents of the kitchen shelves. She lifted down a pot of homemade jam and examined the label. ‘Strawberry! Just look, Paul. And homemade. I love homemade jam.’
‘Take it with you when you go,’ said Hamish. She threw her arms around him. ‘Isn’t he delightful?’ she said.
Hamish extricated himself and served the meal on the kitchen table.
He was beginning to dislike Trixie but he did not yet know why that dislike should be so intense. He turned his attention to Paul. The big man said they had decided to get out of the rat race and come north to the Highlands and maybe earn their living taking in paying guests. ‘There’s a lot to be done to the house,’ he said, ‘but it shouldn’t take too long to fix, and then I thought I might start a market garden. There’s a good bit of garden there.’
‘The trouble is,’ said Hamish, moving his long legs to one side to avoid Trixie’s, which had been pressing against his own, ‘that the summers haven’t been very good and people have been taking holidays abroad. Mind you, with all the jams at the airports, they were saying on the news that people are starting to holiday in Britain again so you might be lucky.’
‘We put advertisements already in the Glasgow Herald and The Scotsman, advertising accommodation for July and August,’ said Trixie.
Hamish thought that for a pair with little money it was odd that they had found enough to advertise. And it was nearly the end of June. They would need to work very hard to get the rooms ready in time.
When they stood up to go, Trixie said, ‘I don’t want to be a pest, but if you’ve any little thing in the way of furniture …? I mean, it’s all paid for by the government anyway.’
‘Only the desk and chair, filing cabinet, and phone in the office are supplied by the police force,’ said Hamish. ‘The living quarters are all furnished by me. I haven’t time to look at the rooms at the moment, but if I find anything, I’ll let you know.’
With a feeling of relief, he ushered them out. It was only when he was watching them make their way back to their own house that he realized with something of a shock that the weather had changed. The air felt damp and there was a thin veil of cloud covering the sun. He walked slowly round the front of the police station and stared down the loch.
Rain clouds were heading in from the sea on a damp wind. They were trailing long fingers over the water that had a black oily swell.
And then the midges came down, those Scottish mosquitoes, the plague of the Highlands. All during the long, dry spell, they had been mercifully absent. Now they descended in clouds, getting in his eyes and up his nose. He ran back into the kitchen, cursing, and shut the door.
The idyll was over. The weather had broken, Priscilla had returned with a man, and that couple had moved into Lochdubh, bringing with them an atmosphere of unease and trouble to come.
That evening, Dr Brodie settled down to a large dinner of steak and chips. He and his wife ate at the round kitchen table. He had long ago given up any hope of ever finding it clear. His plate was surrounded by books and magazines and tapes and unanswered letters. The fruit bowl in front of him contained paper clips, hairpins, two screwdrivers, a tube of glue, and a withered orange.
His wife was sitting opposite him, a book propped up against the wine bottle. Dr Brodie surveyed her with affection. She had a thin intelligent face and large grey eyes. Wispy fair hair as fine as a baby’s fell across her face and she put up a coal-smeared hand to brush it away. Dr Brodie was a contented man. He enjoyed his small practice in the village and although he sometimes wished his wife, Angela, were a better housekeeper, he had become accustomed to his messy, cluttered home. Angela’s two spaniels snored under the table and the cat promenaded on top.
‘The cat’s just walked across your plate,’ commented the doctor.
‘Oh, did it? Shoo!’ said Angela, absentmindedly, waving a hand and then turning another page of her book.
‘There are new people at the Willets’s place,’ said the doctor, pouring brown sauce over his steak and ketchup over his chips. He pulled away the wine bottle and poured himself a glass. Angela’s book fell over.
‘I said there are new people at the Willets’s place,’ repeated her husband.
His wife’s dreamy eyes focussed on him. ‘I suppose I had better go and welcome them tomorrow,’ she said. ‘I’ll bake them a cake.’
‘You’ll what? When could you ever bake a cake?’
Angela sighed. ‘I’m not a very good housekeeper, am I? But on this occasion, I am going to be good. I bought a packet of cake mix. I can simply follow the instructions.’
‘Suit yourself. Priscilla Halburton-Smythe called down at the surgery to pick up a prescription for her father. She drove straight off afterwards.’
‘And?’
‘Well, she’s been back over a week and she hasn’t called at the police station once.’
‘Poor Hamish. Why does he bother? He’s an attractive man.’
‘Priscilla’s a very beautiful girl.’
‘Yes, isn’t she,’ said Angela in a voice which held no trace of envy. ‘Maybe I’ll bake a cake for Hamish, too.’
‘The fire extinguisher’s above the stove, remember,’ cautioned her husband. ‘The time you tried to make jam, everything went up in flames.’
‘It won’t happen again,’ said Angela. ‘I must have been thinking about something else.’
She rose to her feet and opened the fridge door and took out two glass dishes of trifle which she had bought that day at the bakery. The trifle consisted of rubbery custard, thin red jam, and ersatz cream. The doctor ate it with enjoyment and washed it down with Chianti and then lit a cigarette.
He was in his fifties, a slim, dapper little man with a balding head, light blue eyes, a freckled face, and dressed in shabby tweeds that he wore winter and summer.
After dinner, the couple moved through to
the living room while the cat roamed over the kitchen table, sniffing at the dirty plates.
The fire had gone out. Angela never raked out the ashes until the fireplace became so full of them that the fire would not light. She knelt down in front of the hearth and began to shovel out piles of grey ash into a bucket.
‘Why bother?’ said the doctor. ‘Light the electric fire.’
‘Good idea,’ said Angela. She rose to her feet, leaving ash all over the hearth and plugged in the fire and switched it on. Despite the warm weather, their house was always cold. It was an old cottage with thick walls and stone floors. Angela then went back to the table, absent-mindedly patted the cat, picked up her book, returned to the living room, and began to read again.
The doctor had learned to live with his wife’s messy housekeeping. He would have been very surprised could he have known that Angela often felt she could not bear it any longer.
Often she thought of getting down to it and giving the place a thoroughly good clean, but a grey depression would settle on her. For relaxation she had once enjoyed reading women’s magazines but now she could not even bear to look at one, the glossy pictures of perfect kitchens and fresh net curtains making her feel desperately inadequate.
But on the following morning after she had served up her husband’s breakfast – fried black pudding, haggis, bacon, sausages, fried bread and two eggs – she felt a lifting of her heart. She had a Purpose. She would behave as a good wife should and bake a cake and take it over to the new neighbours.
When she settled down to read the instructions on the back of the packet of Joseph’s Ready Mix, she experienced a strong feeling of resentment. If it was indeed a ‘ready mix’ then why did she have to add eggs and milk and salt and all these fiddly things that should have been in the packet already?
She searched around for the cake tin and then remembered the dogs were using it as a drinking bowl. She threw out the water and put the dogs’ water in a soup bowl instead, wiped out the cake tin with a paper towel, greased it, and started to work.
That afternoon, she set out for the Willets’s place – no, Thomas’s place, she reminded herself – feeling very proud of herself. She held in front of her, like a crown on a cushion, a sponge cake filled with cream.
There seemed to be a lot of activity around the old Victorian villa. Archie Maclean, one of the local fishermen, was carrying in a small table, Mrs Wellington, the minister’s wife, was cleaning the windows, and Bert Hook, a crofter, was up on the roof, clearing out the gutters.
The front door was open, and Angela walked inside. A tall woman approached her. ‘My name’s Trixie Thomas,’ she said. ‘Oh, what a beautiful cake. We adore cake, but what with us being unemployed and living on government handouts, we’ve had to cut out luxuries like this.’
Angela introduced herself and felt a rush of pride when Trixie said, ‘In fact, we’re ready for a coffee break. We’ll have it now.’
She led the way into the kitchen. Her husband, Paul, was washing down the walls. ‘All the poor dear’s fit for,’ said Trixie in a rueful aside. She raised her voice, ‘Darling, here’s the doctor’s wife with a delicious cake. We’ll take a break and have some coffee. Sit down, Angela.’
Angela sat down at a table covered with a bright red-and-white checked gingham cloth. Bluebottles buzzed against the window. ‘You should get a spray,’ said Angela. ‘The flies are dreadful today.’
‘I think there’s been enough damage to the ozone layer already,’ said Trixie. ‘What I need are some old-fashioned fly papers.’
She was making coffee in what looked like a brand-new machine. ‘I grind my own beans,’ she said over her shoulder. Paul was already seated at the table, looking at the cake like a greedy child. ‘Now, just a small piece, mind,’ cautioned his wife. ‘You’re on a diet.’
Angela watched Trixie with admiration. Trixie was wearing a sort of white linen smock with large pockets over blue jeans and sneakers. Her sneakers were snow white without even a grass stain on them. Angela tugged miserably at her crumpled blouse, which had ridden up over the waistband of her baggy skirt, and felt messy and grubby.
‘Now, for the cake,’ said Trixie, bringing out a knife. Paul hunched over the table, waiting eagerly.
The knife sank into the cake. Trixie tried to lift out a slice. It was uncooked in the middle. A yellowy sludge oozed out.
‘Oh, dear,’ said Angela. ‘You can’t eat that. I don’t know how that could have happened. I followed the instructions on the packet so carefully.’
‘It’s all right,’ said Paul quickly. ‘I’ll eat it.’
‘No, you won’t,’ said Trixie, giving Angela a conspiratorial ‘men!’ sort of smile.
‘I’m hopeless,’ mourned Angela.
‘Don’t worry. I’ll show you how to make one. It’s just as easy to make a cake from scratch as it is with one of these packets. And it was a lovely thought.’ Trixie moved the cake out of her husband’s reach. He gave a sigh and lumbered to his feet and went back to work.
‘I can’t do anything right,’ said Angela. ‘I am utterly useless about the house. It’s like a rubbish bin.’
‘You’ve probably let it go too far,’ said Trixie with quick sympathy. ‘Why don’t you get someone in to clean?’
‘Oh, I couldn’t. You see, it’s so awful, I’d need to make a start on it myself before any cleaning woman could see what she was doing.’
‘I’ll help you,’ Trixie smiled at Angela. ‘I feel we are going to be friends.’
Angela coloured up and turned briefly away to hide the look of embarrassed gratification on her face. She had never fitted in very well with the women of the village. In fact, she had never talked to anyone before about how she felt about her dirty house. ‘I really couldn’t expect you to help me, Trixie,’ said Angela, feeling quite modern and bold because people in the village called each other by their surnames, Mr or Mrs This and That, until they had known each other for years.
‘I’ll strike a bargain with you,’ said Trixie. ‘I’ll nip back to your house with you and if you can let me have any old sticks of furniture you were thinking of throwing out, I’ll take that as payment.’
‘Lovely,’ said Angela with a comfortable feeling she had not experienced since a child of being taken in hand.
But as they walked to the doctor’s house, Angela began to wish she had not let Trixie come. She thought of the ash still spilling over the hearth on to the carpet and of all the sinister grease lurking in the kitchen.
Trixie strode in, rolling up her sleeves. She walked from room to room downstairs and then said briskly, ‘Now, the best thing to do is just get started and don’t think about anything else.’
And Trixie worked. Her hands flew here and here. She was amazingly competent. Grease disappeared, surfaces began to gleam, books flew back up on the shelves. It was all magic to Angela, who felt she was watching a sort of Mary Poppins at work. She blundered around after her new mentor, cheerfully doing everything she was instructed to do as if the house were Trixie’s and not her own.
‘Well, we’ve made a start,’ said Trixie at last.
‘A start!’ Angela was amazed. ‘It’s never been so clean. I just don’t know how to thank you.’
‘Perhaps you’ve got an old piece of furniture you don’t want?’
‘Of course.’ Angela looked about her helplessly. ‘There must be something somewhere.’
‘What about that old chair in the corner of your living room?’
‘You mean that thing?’ The chair was armless with a bead-and-needlework cover.
Angela hesitated only a moment. It had been her grandmother’s but no one ever sat on it and her gratitude for this new goddess of the household was immense. ‘Yes, I’ll get John to put it in the station wagon and run it over to you this evening.’
‘No need for that.’ Trixie lifted it in strong arms. ‘I’ll carry it.’
Despite Angela’s protests that it was too heavy for her, Trixie headed o
ff. Angela followed her to the garden gate. She wanted to say, ‘When will I see you again?’ and felt as shy as a lover. Dr Brodie was often away on calls and she spent much of her life alone. She had never worked since the day of her marriage to the young medical student, John Brodie, thirty years ago. They had been unable to have children. Angela’s parents were dead. She felt she had somehow only managed to muddle through the years of her marriage with books as her only consolation.
Trixie turned at the gate. ‘See you tomorrow,’ she said.
Angela grinned, her thin face youthful and happy.
‘See you tomorrow,’ she echoed.
Constable Hamish Macbeth was leaning on his garden gate as Trixie went past, carrying the chair.
‘Need any help?’ he called.
‘No, thanks,’ said Trixie, hurrying past.
Hamish looked at her retreating figure. Where had he seen that chair? His mind ranged over the interiors of the houses in Lochdubh. The doctor’s! That was it.
He ambled along the road to the doctor’s house and went around to the side, no one in the Highlands except the Thomas’s bothering to use the front door.
‘Come in, Hamish,’ called Angela, seeing the lanky figure of the red-haired policeman lurking in the doorway. ‘Like a cup of coffee?’
‘Yes, please.’ Hamish eased himself into the kitchen, and then blinked in surprise. He had never seen the Brodies’ kitchen look so clean. Angela bubbled over with enthusiasm as she told him of Trixie’s help.
‘Was that your chair she was carrying?’ asked Hamish.
‘Yes, the poor things have very little furniture. They want to start a bed-and-breakfast place. It was just a tatty old thing of my grandmother’s.’
Hamish thought quickly. Someone setting up a bed-and-breakfast establishment usually wanted old serviceable stuff. He wondered uneasily whether the chair was valuable. But he did not know anything about antiques.
Flies buzzed about the kitchen.
‘I should have kept the door shut,’ said Angela. ‘Wretched flies.’
‘You’ve got a spray there,’ pointed out Hamish.
