Honey-Dew

by Louise Doughty

  I did nothing.

  I washed my hair in the bath. Normally I blow-dry it but I let it drip as I got dressed, combed it through, let it drip some more. I made myself a mug of hot, sweet tea. Later, I made a sandwich and left it uneaten on the kitchen table. I went to the phone and dialled 1471 and a mechanical woman told me that she did not have the caller’s number. I sat on the settee for a time.

  I went outside to the garden but decided I didn’t want to sit out there. I came back inside. I found the sandwich on the kitchen table and tested it with a finger. The edges of the bread had become stiff and dry. I threw it away. I made another one, which I ate.

  I went and lay down on the settee. I did nothing.

  Sunday arrived. The phone rang once and I ignored it again. Then I thought it might be David, so I rang the Stag Hotel. They told me he had checked out on Saturday morning. He had gone back to London.

  After I had put the phone down, I became aware of a fat bluebottle zig-zagging lazily across the sitting room. I went outside, to the garden.

  For all of Sunday, I did nothing.

  I was first to arrive at the office on Monday morning. I sat at my desk, looking at how neat and tidy it was, noticing as if for the first time how well organised I am.

  Cheryl was late. When she arrived, she seemed tired. Doug was back home already. He had discharged himself over the weekend. She had been to see him that morning. I told her I would go round at lunchtime and she looked at me.

  ‘Just to see how he is,’ I said.

  The others came in gradually. Everyone was quiet. Doug’s absence was apparent in a way that it hadn’t been on Friday, as if the drama of his being rushed to hospital had somehow obscured the truth of his illness. The office felt empty.

  Cheryl and I discussed what to do with that week’s issue. I told her she should write up her background notes on the Cowpers. I said I would do the other stuff – the Village Correspondents, the letters page. She looked surprised that I was relinquishing the big story. We didn’t talk about my call from George Bloomfield, not with the others around, but the fact of it stood between us as real and as tangible as if someone had erected a bullet-proof screen between our desks.

  I worked on a story about the high number of badger deaths in Rutland. Rabbits get killed because they shoot recklessly across the road. Badgers die because they amble benignly in the verges.

  Halfway through it, my head began to feel hazy. I went to the Ladies and gagged over the toilet bowl. Then I went back to the badgers.

  As I left the office, around noon, I thought, maybe I should talk to Doug. He was so solid, and his solidity now seemed to imply a moral grasp of the world around him. What would he do? What would he have done?

  I walked to the far end of the quiet High Street and over the railway line to the part of town that some people refer to as ‘the wrong side of the level crossing’ – the side of town with the council estates and local comprehensive, the side of town where I grew up.

  Doug’s bungalow was only three streets from my parents’ house but I had never visited before.

  It was a long time before he answered the door. When he did, he looked at me as if he had no feelings either way about my turning up.

  He took the flowers I had bought and put them on the dining table in front of the window, then moved with great care to a nearby winged armchair, gesturing me to take the one opposite.

  His sitting room reeked of bachelorhood; the sad, middle-aged sort. On top of the television, there was a photograph of him and his late wife, an anniversary or some similar event. The silver frame was tarnished. Behind every eccentric, there is this backdrop, I thought; the woolly curtains that have never been washed, the gas fire. Scratch any bon viveur and you come up with a man who hasn’t weighed himself for years because the idea of standing his loose white flesh on a pair of scales makes him want to burst into tears.

  I offered to make us both a cup of tea but he clearly wasn’t interested. He sank slowly into his chair. Once he was in it, he looked as though he would never move, as if he was a giant mould which had grown there. He stared at me keenly, across the eight feet or so that separated us. I was perched on the edge of my chair like a butterfly.

  ‘So,’ he said, after a pause, ‘what’s happening? Cheryl said everything’s fine. I could tell just by looking at her. So come on then.’

  I was caught off guard by his directness. ‘Nothing. Nothing’s happened,’ I said. ‘I’ve had a call from George Bloomfield, over the weekend. He wants to meet me tomorrow.’ I paused. ‘He didn’t say what about.’

  He exhaled heavily. ‘Not wasting any time, are they?’ His voice was thick with bitterness. ‘I asked Cheryl if she’d spoken to them and she wouldn’t say.’

  ‘He’s really pleased with what we’ve done on the Cowper story,’ I said. ‘He thought we’d done a really good job.’

  ‘We did.’

  I was surprised by his belligerence. I think I had imagined he would be more generous – the show must go on, and all that. I think I thought he might even wish me well.

  ‘It’s up to you, isn’t it?’ I said, softly. ‘It’s up to you whether or not you feel well enough and want to carry on.’

  He stared at me. His eyes were grey and round. They had that rabbit-pinkness around the lids that everyone seems to acquire in late middle age. There was a moistness about Doug, I realised, which his illness had made obvious. I knew it should excite pity, but all I felt was disgust: and as I realised I was disgusted by him, I felt thrilled. This man had been my boss for eight years. I had worked for him since I left school; secretary, trainee reporter, assistant reporter . . . And now, in my mid-twenties, I was going to be offered an opportunity that had taken him another decade of hard, underpaid slog to achieve. In his day, promotion was a stony, laborious business – and here I was, leaping ahead.

  Eventually he said, still staring at me, ‘I knew you were an ambitious young lady.’ He spoke slowly, with great deliberation. His heavy face remained still. The eyes continued to stare. ‘That’s why I hired you in the first place . . .’ He stopped.

  We sat in silence for a long time. Eventually, I shifted my gaze and contented myself with looking over his shoulder, to where my inappropriate daffodils sat wrapped in blush-coloured paper on his dining table, bathed in milky, filtered light.

  I was turning the corner into the market square when I heard the sirens, a distant discordance of two or three. It took a moment or two for the sound of them to register – and in that moment, Cheryl came stomping from the office, bangles clinking. She slammed the door behind her. ‘Come on,’ she snapped, without greeting me. ‘We can take my car.’

  The police cars shot past as we were getting into her muddy Escort. Inside, it smelt of soil and cigarettes and dogs. She was talking as she started the engine. ‘I think a whole load of stuff is up there already,’ she said. ‘I heard all these vehicles going past and I thought, it’s busy for a Monday. There were vans. I saw the tail end of one as I stuck my head out the window.’

  We had to wait at the pedestrian lights while an elderly lady tottered across the road. She paused halfway to lift a hand in gratitude. Cheryl lifted a hand in return. The police cars were out of sight.

  ‘Where?’ I said. ‘Up where?’

  ‘Could be Rutland Water,’ she said, taking off in second gear and driving straight over the mini-roundabout, ‘but the divers finished there middle of last week. At a guess, I’d say Burley Woods.’

  We were pulling out of town before she asked me, ‘What did Doug have to say?’

  ‘He’s fine,’ I said carefully. I thought she might pursue it but she was staring up at the road ahead. The adrenalin of a story had gripped her. You’re no different from the rest of us, I thought briefly.

  As we came to the top of the hill, I saw two vans parked in the stony lay-by and four police cars ranged beside them. We pulled onto the verge. Inspector Collins was remonstrating with two officers who were standing by their
car. He gestured over to us and raised his hands.

  We hadn’t got more than a yard from Cheryl’s car when he came forward.

  ‘Cheryl, Alison, look I’ll phone you the minute we have anything. Just go back.’

  ‘You must be joking,’ Cheryl replied. ‘Your boys woke the whole town up, John.’

  He was already turning away, trotting back to where the gathering of officers was waiting. ‘Just stay by the car, will you?’ he shouted over his shoulder, flapping one hand at us and beckoning with the other to an officer in dark overalls who stood beside a van.

  The officer in overalls opened the back doors of the van and there was loud, rusty barking. Two more officers jumped down, each accompanied by a dark brown Alsatian. Both of them held the dogs on tight leads but the animals still strained this way and that, their large heads dipping anxiously, paws scrabbling the pebbles beneath them. The officers swayed as they turned the animals round and manoeuvred them towards the gate.

  Four other men were ripping the gate from its hinges. Inspector Collins was gesturing into the Spinney. The men set off in pairs. John Collins waited and gave directions to another officer, who was organising the remaining men, then he turned and, taking the men and dogs with him, started down the track.

  We were leaning against the car. ‘Damn,’ Cheryl said to me, sideways. ‘Peter was in the loo, otherwise I’d’ve brought him. We could have got some great pictures.’

  ‘Yes,’ I said.

  ‘The dogs,’ she added. ‘People love police dogs.’

  They were out of sight but we could still hear the barking. The men left behind were calling to each other. From their cars came the fierce fizz and crackle of their radios.

  The opening of the inquest was just in time for our deadline. We cleared the front page in preparation. The inquest on the parents had been opened and adjourned the week before. Seeing as the forensics left no room for doubt, the Coroner announced that he would combine evidence on all three deaths in one session. Amidst the habitual welter of bureaucracy, under the high, dark-beamed ceiling of Oakham Castle, the Cowper family were reunited.

  Most of the press had left by then. The crime reporters had all gone back to London once they had covered the discovery of Gemma’s body. It was no longer a big story for the nationals, just a collection of facts.

  Some stringers stayed around, just in case any interesting details emerged. David Poe was there. I saw him come in after the proceedings had begun, and perch on the end of one of the extra benches laid out at the back of the court. He didn’t look my way.

  By then we already knew that the police had searched the Spinney after receiving an anonymous phone call. I wondered if it could have been him. Had he seen me that day by Oakham Library, followed me perhaps? More likely it was Tim Gordon, suddenly discovering he had an imagination after all. Maybe he told somebody else, after he spoke to me. Maybe it was him trying to ring me that weekend. It’s possible that someone else stumbled upon the body, but I don’t think the police would have bothered with the dogs if they were looking for a corpse. I think they thought they might find her alive.

  The pathologist was a Dr Elliot from the Royal. The body showed signs of mild dehydration, he said. The eyes were slightly sunken, the skin dry and beginning to lose its elasticity. She was thin, which could indicate that she had not eaten for some days, although Gemma Cowper’s body weight was known to have been on the low side anyway. It all fitted in with her having been in the woods for some time before she committed suicide. There were knife marks on the lower arms which were consistent with having been self-inflicted, possibly in an attempt to reach an artery in the wrists. A kitchen knife was found in a plastic bag in the clearing, along with some school exercise books, an orange juice carton and an empty Weetabix packet. There was also a small transistor radio with run-down batteries, some books and a folded woman’s overcoat. All items were believed to have come from the Cowper family home.

  Dr Elliot was a short man with thinning hair and the air of someone who enjoyed his own competency. His voice was clipped. He spoke in whole sentences. It was impossible for him to pinpoint exactly how long she had been dead, although he would estimate something in the region of two, possibly three days. It took at least a day for a body left in the open to reach ambient temperature. There were, however, no signs of the onset of decomposition, such as mottling of the skin or prominent blood vessels.

  While he was speaking, there was a great silence in the court. We all had our heads down, making notes. Cheryl had come with me because her shorthand was better than mine and she could get everything down verbatim.

  It sounded as though Gemma had hanged herself on the Friday, late in the evening probably, while I was drinking vodka in David Poe’s hotel room. Perhaps it happened as he rested his hand on my thigh. Or maybe it was later that night, while Andrew and I were watching Gene Hackman on the telly. Maybe despair and madness took a final grip at the prospect of another night alone in a scurrying wood, another night when no one came.

  It’s possible it was even later, as dawn broke on the Saturday, as the greyness grew enough for her to climb the trunk of the fallen oak. That is when the metabolism is at its lowest ebb, when hopelessness can become overwhelming. It must have been cold at that hour. She must have shivered as she removed her trousers and tied the knot.

  It couldn’t possibly have been any later than that and maybe it was earlier. She had probably been dead for some time before I found her.

  A police inquiry was announced, to investigate why the woods were not searched earlier. ‘Eggy faces,’ John told me, off the record. He’s in the clear at least. It wasn’t his fault. If the fat super had listened to him, she would have been found alive at the beginning of the week.

  He asked me not to run a piece on the inquiry until the results were released. In return, he would make sure the Record was the first to get the details. Cheryl thought it was unethical. She thought we should do a big splash on the way the search for Gemma had been handled, but in my new capacity as Acting Editor, I overruled her.

  George Bloomfield was not exactly generous. He clearly thought I should be grateful for whatever I got. He didn’t give me a full Editor’s salary to start with – it wasn’t much more than what I was getting as Chief Reporter. But he did promise me a decent increment when the position was confirmed.

  In the weeks after the inquest, I worked in my garden. The evenings lengthened. I planned what I might do with the extra cash. I thought about building a terrace at the back, with a stone wall. It would take a lot of topsoil but I thought maybe I could fill in some of it with builder’s rubble. I was only going to turf or seed it. It didn’t matter how much rubbish was underneath.

  I decided to sort out the damp in the kitchen. I got a bloke in who suggested putting up some two-and-a-half-millimetre polystyrene and pasting it with mould inhibitor. Warm air wouldn’t condense on polystyrene, he said. If I painted it with mould inhibiting emulsion as well, it would look just like a normal kitchen. I would finally have walls which were white instead of a textured, glistening grey.

  I did some sums and realised the roof would have to wait. So would the wiring.

  The magnolia bloomed. It was late. It looked good, though. So did the white flowers on the plum tree. In my herb patch, I saw that the angelica had grown into a big green shrub while most of my other herbs had had it. How much angelica could I use?

  The apple tree was my biggest problem. I sprayed it with lime sulphur twice a week for the rest of the spring, worrying about the prospect of another warmish, dampish summer. Then there were the woolly aphis. I had a chat with Miss Crabbe one evening, across the fence, and she suggested tar oil.

  Miss Crabbe had earwigs in her dahlias. ‘Night feeders, earwigs,’ she said, nodding at her plants, and I had a sudden image of herds of the little beasts crawling out under the cover of darkness to munch their way through her borders.

  Miss Crabbe and I became quite chummy. She gave me some
slug poison, one part metaldehyde to three parts bran.

  Sitting in the garden one evening, I remembered how Andrew and I were once digging over a patch and he held up his trowel and said, ‘Look.’ On the end of it, there were two centipedes, one slightly larger than the other. He pointed to the small one with a soiled finger and said, ‘The lesser of two weevils.’

  We think of murder as this huge big thing, a thing too large for our ordinary minds to encompass. But I know now how mundane it is – how it can happen and mean almost nothing. Our bodies are so frail, our skin so thin. So much of life is so much tougher; wood, metal, rope. Our flesh is almost liquid, after all. It’s amazing we don’t melt in the sun.

  Insects are much more resourceful than we are. They have so many ways of surviving. Tortrix moths, for instance, feed on the foliage of roses. They fasten the leaves together with sticky cobwebs and you have to pick them off by hand. You can tell if it’s a tortrix moth by poking it with a finger and shouting at it. When they are disturbed, they wriggle backwards.

  She couldn’t possibly have been alive when I saw her. The flies.

  Epilogue

  Somehow, over the summer, I lost my enthusiasm for the renovations I had planned. I never did tar-oil my apple tree, or get the polystyrene up in my kitchen.

  I don’t know what happened. Perhaps it was that rain in June. I stayed indoors a lot. I stopped listening to the news on the radio. Then I stopped listening to the radio at all. I drove to work each day in silence.

  It has been one of the wettest, hottest summers ever – unpleasant for everybody, disastrous for the garden. Mildew flourishes in conditions like this.

  The attic office is mine now. Cheryl left the Record in July, to work for a Stamford rival. I have a new deputy, a young man from Uppingham called Robert. He used to run a community press there, printing parish leaflets and so on. He’s very thorough but he doesn’t strike me as the kind of person who could nose out a good story. That takes imagination, after all. You have to find the root of it.