Honey-Dew

by Louise Doughty

  I glanced over at Andrew, surprised at his question, the lightness of it. I said something like ‘It was God’s will. He wanted the baby to be with him.’

  Andrew looked at me. He never went to church.

  He rose from the settee and went and sat against the wall, drawing up his knees and wrapping his arms round them. How old would he have been? Twelve, thirteen?

  I thought he was crying, so I went over to him and put a hand on his arm, but when he lifted his face, it was dry. He looked at me with dull misery.

  ‘I thought I could rely on you,’ he said. ‘You’re the only one left.’

  He never asked me again.

  I sometimes wondered about asking my mother, on Sunday mornings as we walked over to All Saints. She always strode at such a fierce pace. We walked more slowly on the way back but talking then would have seemed frivolous, somehow. I was growing almost as tall as her, tall enough to borrow her old coats. She always wore a headscarf. She had a whole collection, fine ones made of slippery silks with tangled leafy patterns.

  Around the age of twelve I discovered nail varnish and stopped going to church. There was a month or so of rows, then she gave up. Andrew’s disappearance put the lid on it, really, her disappointment in her children, our wicked, wicked ways.

  By the time he left home, I was already planning my own escape. I knew exactly what I wanted to replace the stained glass. I wanted a garden. I didn’t much care what the garden was attached to as long as it was out of town, near fields. I wanted silence. I wanted to be away from the sight of my large mother on her hands and knees, at prayer, scrubbing floors – away from my small father shrunk into an armchair watching whatever channel the television had been left tuned to because he couldn’t be bothered to get up and change it. They must have been the last people in the country to get a remote control.

  I wanted a short drive after work, through open countryside, to a place where I could sit alone.

  I don’t visit them much now. Living a few miles up the road is a good excuse for not visiting them. My proximity proves that I don’t need to get away from them, so I don’t feel obliged to turn up every Sunday clutching a pot plant. Neither of them can drive, so there isn’t any danger they would ever visit me. Mum has never learnt, and Dad lost his licence years ago after one too many pints of County.

  Because I can drop in any time, I hardly ever do. This seems to suit them as well as it suits me. Never once, on Andrew’s occasional visits to me, has he ever called in on Mum or Dad. I know better than to suggest it.

  I suppose that irritation with your parents can reach such a pitch that you feel obliged to put a bit of geographical distance between you and them. I had one schoolfriend who claimed she was emigrating to New Zealand because she couldn’t stand the way her father said, ‘So, d’you like grapefruit, then?’ every time she ate one. But is it possible for irritation to reach such an extreme pitch that it becomes hatred? Can a minor emotion multiplied to the nth degree become a major one? I have always thought of such extremity as so other that it would never apply to me – but perhaps that says something about the difference between Andrew and me.

  I asked him, once, why he left home so young and he said, ‘I couldn’t have stayed as long as you did. I’d have killed them. I’m not like you.’

  I am not sure where Andrew lives now and I don’t think he’s that sure either. He is loosely based in London, which means he keeps a bag of clothes and his tool kit at a friend’s house. Sometimes I ring and the friend says, ‘He’s been in India for two months. I think he went for carvings.’ A month or so later, Andrew turns up on my doorstep with a little weeping god in his pocket and says, ‘Paul said you’d rung.’ He will have come back to England with a whole rucksack full of weeping gods which he will have sold at Greenwich market to make back some of his air fare. In between, he does a bit of carpentry or painting and decorating. Every now and then, he does a few drugs. He went through a heroin phase a few years back. When I told him off about it he said, ‘Oh relax, for God’s sake. I smoke it.’

  Sometimes, I see Andrew with other people’s eyes. He is shorter than me, with a twisted wire of muscle that leads up one arm, across the shoulders, and down the other. He keeps his hair so short it isn’t hair. He wears an earring in one ear and has fat hands. There is a bullishness about him, particularly when he feels insecure.

  I am not surprised that whoever spotted him lurking around Nether Bowston informed the police.

  Nether Bowston, like most of the villages, has a variety of local nicknames. Bottom Bowston, The Bottom, Nether Bagwash. At school, there was a Geography teacher who was a big fan of Lou Reed and The Velvet Underground. He would talk about the band during lessons and one day one of the boys said, ‘Mr Taylor, can you stop going on about those Vampire Underpants.’ We all giggled, and the teacher never mentioned them again. If you mis-name something, you are stating your superiority, especially if it cannot mis-name you back. You are making things, or people, into something they are not, changing them in the eyes of the world.

  It is the same with twinning, I suppose. The village of Whitwell is twinned with Paris – they have the official sign as you enter – and this is as much a joke against Paris as against Whitwell. Many Rutland villages are twinned with each other, if only in name; Great and Little Casterton; Whissendine in the north-west corner of the county and Essendine in the east; North and South Luffenham.

  Nether Bowston once had an Upper Bowston a mile or so away, but that is now no more than two derelict cottages not far from where I live. It was in one of these cottages that I found my brother.

  Andrew had camped out in the cottages before. He turned up one Friday night just after I had left to spend the weekend with Joey and Linda, my friends in Birmingham. I only found out about it six months later, on his following visit. He doesn’t normally stick around if he can’t find me. I offered him a key to my place once, but he said, ‘I’ll only lose it.’

  It was lunchtime. I didn’t have much time to spare. I had left the office pretending that I had to re-visit the Cowper house for my copy and Doug was not pleased. We were only a day away from our deadline.

  Andrew was lying behind one of the cottages, in the sun. He was leaning back against a large woven bag that he had bought in Guatemala, multicoloured hieroglyphs against a black background. Next to him, on the scrubby grass, were his tobacco tin, his matches, a bottle of Evian water and a battered paperback of a novel by some Russian I had never heard of. His eyes were closed.

  ‘You’ve grown your hair,’ I said. I wouldn’t have called his curls black myself, more earthy brown.

  He opened his eyes, then closed them again. ‘I wasn’t expecting you until this evening,’ he said. ‘I’ve only just got here.’

  I took off my coat and dropped it beside him, then sat down. ‘I thought I’d better come and find you before the police did,’ I said. ‘They’re all over the place. I’m surprised you haven’t been picked up. Roll me a fag.’

  He levered himself upright, using both elbows, took a swig from his water bottle then passed it over to me. He rubbed his face with one hand and fiddled in his pockets for his Rizlas.

  ‘I don’t have much time,’ I said. ‘I’m supposed to be at the office.’

  He didn’t reply. Andrew has always despised my need to hurry, and I have always despised the way he despises it. It is easy to be cool when you don’t have a mortgage – that’s why Andrew has never got one. It wouldn’t go well with his street cred.

  ‘Why the police?’ he asked as he licked the paper. ‘What have I done this time?’

  ‘God,’ I said, ‘don’t you ever read any papers?’

  ‘Nope. Specially not that community-service rag you work for.’

  I took the cigarette from him impatiently and picked up the box of matches lying beside the tobacco tin. ‘You’ve got to go and eliminate yourself from inquiries,’ I said in low, dramatic tones, then lit the cigarette.

  ‘Inquiries into
what?’ He was rolling another fag but he stopped and lay back on his bag, closing his eyes.

  ‘Andrew, this isn’t funny. There’s been a murder.’

  Even Andrew sat up at that one. ‘Where?’

  ‘Just round the corner from here. Some people called Cowper. Two of them. The daughter’s missing. It was only a week ago.’

  ‘Bloody hell, Alison,’ he said roughly, protectively, and I felt a sudden rush of affection for him.

  ‘Somebody saw you around here,’ I said, then coughed. A small shred of tobacco had got caught in my throat as I inhaled.

  ‘I came by. It was a Sunday but you weren’t in. So I went to Nottingham to see a girl. She’s Swedish. We met in Germany.’

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t be out here all week.’ I got to my feet. ‘We’d better ring the police. You can do it from my place. I hope this Swedish bird is going to give you an alibi.’

  ‘No probs. She’s solid.’

  I got to my feet and brushed dead grass off my leggings. ‘You’ve got to come now. I’m in enough trouble already. Are you driving a car these days? There was another sighting of a man in a car.’

  He gave me a lingering, despairing look. Andrew was no more likely to buy a car than he was to get a job as an estate agent and settle down in Kettering.

  ‘Well,’ I said, turning to go, ‘you’d better start trying to remember the details of the drivers who gave you lifts to Nottingham.’

  We walked back to the cottage and I left him there, extracting a promise that he would ring Inspector Collins immediately, then take a look at my bathroom shelves, which were wobbly.

  It was only as I was driving back to Oakham that I realised what Andrew’s appearance on the scene of our murder meant. The photofit would be withdrawn. We were going to have to redesign page three.

  Cheryl wasn’t in our office, so I went up the stairs to Doug’s, from where I could hear conspiratorial voices.

  Doug was sitting behind his desk with his feet up on a pile of boxes. There was a heap of page proofs in front of him – his jam jar full of worn pencils sat on top of it. In the corner was the staff Christmas tree, a plastic one which could be collapsed and leant against a wall. It lived in Doug’s office all year round, until it was time to take it down to Reception.

  Doug was leaning back in his chair and his head was tipped backwards, exposing his fleshy neck. Cheryl was standing behind him and massaging his temples, just below the hairline of fine white fluff which feathered his speckled scalp. Cheryl was not thin herself. Gold bangles tinkled gently on her plump wrists with the rounded motion of her fingers. She looked up as I came in.

  ‘Our editor has decided he’s having a bad day,’ she said gently.

  ‘Oh dear,’ I said, standing in the doorway. ‘I’m about to make it worse.’

  Doug opened his eyes and sat up quickly, lowering his legs. Cheryl folded her arms and sighed in soft despair.

  ‘What?’ Doug asked.

  I leaned against his doorpost. ‘The photofit is about to be eliminated. We’re going to have to drop it. Andrew was in Nether Bowston last weekend. It was him.’

  Doug groaned, leaning forward and putting the heels of both hands against his eyes, rubbing at them. Then he sat up and beamed.

  I looked at Cheryl.

  ‘He’s cracking up,’ she said.

  ‘Take a look at the nationals,’ Doug said cheerfully. ‘They must have got it last night. They all ran with it today.’

  A heap of papers was sitting crossways on a chair by his door. I bent and picked them up.

  ‘Take them downstairs,’ Cheryl said to me, placing both hands on Doug’s shoulders and levering him back into his chair. ‘I’ll be down in ten minutes.’

  Doug said, ‘We can’t do this now.’

  As I made my way down the stairs, Cheryl was replying. ‘Shut up, you old fool.’

  It was a slow week for news and the tabloids were still going big on the Cowpers’ case, most running with the death-in-rural-idyll angle. They had all used the photofit, and I thought how much it would amuse Andrew that he had made it into every national newspaper while I still worked for the Record. I scanned the coverage for David Poe’s by-line but couldn’t see anything accredited to him or the Press Agency. One paper had run a picture of our village green, a tiny triangle of grass with a stone war memorial and a set of ancient wooden stocks. They had persuaded Mr Walters from Rye Street to stand next to the memorial and look up at it sadly. The caption said, ‘Village in shock’.

  Sarah from advertising was leaving some proofs on Cheryl’s desk. ‘You might as well give those to me,’ I said.

  She came over and stood next to me, looking down at what I was reading. Several of the papers had run a photo of Gemma in a school blazer, looking much younger than seventeen, I thought. Her hair was long and parted on one side, held back by two plastic clips, as if her brown locks were a stage curtain only partially lifted from the quiet drama of her face. Her eyebrows were heavy, but her other features small. It was an unformed face, I thought.

  ‘They were in here while you were out, some of that lot,’ Sarah said, nodding at the papers, ‘trying to be all chummy – you know how they are.’

  ‘Do you think she did it?’ I said, gazing at Gemma’s photo.

  ‘Looks like it, doesn’t it?’ Sarah said quietly. ‘I should think she’s long gone by now.’

  It was dark by the time I got home. I was tired but we had worked hard and done the bulk of the next day’s work. It was probably going to be an easier deadline day than most, ironically. Doug was weighing in, sleeves rolled up, and his enthusiasm was catching. The adrenalin of recent events had affected us all.

  I half expected that Andrew would have hopped it, leaving the key on the kitchen table and the cottage unlocked – he’d done it before – but a light was on as I parked my car on the verge.

  Andrew had his feet up on my saggy two-seater sofa and was forking his way through a Pot Noodle. I keep a small supply for emergencies. His gaze was fastened upon my television, which blared an American soap. ‘This is brilliant,’ he said as I came in, without looking up. I wasn’t sure whether he meant the soap or the noodles. Andrew spends so much of his life being organic that when he comes to my place he likes to gorge himself on as much consumerism as he can lay his hands on.

  ‘How were the police?’ I asked above the television. ‘Can you turn that down?’

  He put down the Pot Noodle and picked up the remote. ‘The old biddy from next door was complaining.’

  ‘It’s not a very thick wall. So how was it?’

  ‘It took bloody hours,’ he muttered, finally wrenching his gaze away from the television. ‘They asked me to stick around.’

  ‘What do you expect?’ I asked, turning. ‘It is a murder inquiry.’

  He followed me into the kitchen.

  ‘Those shelves in the bathroom are desperate. I suppose you put them up yourself. Your loo’s leaking again and I tightened the screws on all your kitchen cupboard doors. But do you want the really bad news?’

  I took the kettle to the sink. ‘No.’

  ‘Your roof. The timbers are worse. I think you’re going to have to sue your surveyors.’

  I stopped and looked at him. ‘You’re joking.’

  ‘This cottage is a disaster,’ he added, unhelpfully. ‘I can’t believe you bought a place without consulting me.’

  We have been through this one before. ‘You were in Pakistan, I believe.’

  ‘Mind your foot!’ he said suddenly.

  I had just turned from the sink. I stopped, kettle in hand, and looked down.

  There was a tiny corpse at my feet.

  It was a mouse, splayed out on its back as neatly as if on a dissecting slab. Its limbs were spread and its stomach ripped open. A miniature mess of purple and pink intestine had tumbled onto my lino.

  ‘Oh, for God’s sake,’ I said, putting down the kettle. ‘Did you leave the doors open this afternoon?’

&n
bsp; ‘Your walls are damp, that’s why you get so much mildew. You should leave the doors open as much as you can. It’s a present, you know. Cats leave them as presents for humans; they think you’ll be pleased.’

  I was not pleased. ‘You might have cleared it up,’ I snapped, reaching under the sink for a dustpan.

  Andrew clearly thought his next remark very funny. ‘I thought I should wait until you came home and drew a chalk line round it.’

  Twenty minutes later, Andrew remembered the note. It was in his pocket. It had been delivered an hour after the police had left. It was on lined paper torn from an exercise book and folded into a very small square. It had been pushed through the letterbox even though the door was open. There had been no knock.

  Dear Alison

  Can you come and see me somtime as soon as you can. We are not on the phone anymore, but you can remember our place its by the electricity pilons.

  Tim

  I went to see Tim Gordon the following day, although I couldn’t get there until we had put the paper to bed.

  It was early evening and the birds in the trees were going bananas, tweeting like old ladies queuing for their pensions. Now that it was too late, the sun had come out. The evening was cold and golden.

  It must have been over fifteen years since I had last visited him. I used to cycle up from Oakham on a Sunday afternoon, to play in his father’s junk yard. Technically speaking, I suppose he was my first boyfriend. It wasn’t remotely physical but there was a certain intensity to our friendship based, perhaps, on a shared unhappiness with the rest of our lives. It coincided with my religious phase. I knew he was beneath me, but being kind to him reinforced my belief in myself, as if I would have to be pure of heart and mind to be nice to a boy like him when there was so little in it for me.

  His family lived in a row of council houses on the far side of the village, on the way to the industrial estate. Most villages in Rutland have that sort of housing tucked discreetly out of sight; modern semis made of a dun-coloured brick which is supposed to blend with the local stone but usually ends up looking just muddy. It is in those houses that the countryside’s true inheritors live, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the farm workers and servants who worked on the big estates. None of them would dream of living in a period cottage like mine.