A Leap of Faith

by Trisha Ashley

  He sat back complacently, awaiting our admiration.

  ‘Take us there,’ I said.

  Chapter 17

  Doggone

  ‘It’s quite a scramble down,’ Gil warned.

  ‘That’s fine, we were only just saying that we longed for a good scramble, weren’t we, Mu?’

  Since she’d already spent an hour or more promenading down a windswept beach, followed by the long, steep climb back up, her agreement was resigned rather than enthusiastic.

  Gil was certainly right about the scramble: we were soon following in his wake down a vertiginous sheep track to a lonely cove, on the far side of the headland to the putative jumping-off site.

  Gil chatted all the way down, without seeming to need any reply, which was fortunate, since Mu and I were both fully occupied in clinging to the cliff face.

  Did I realize, he enquired, that I was named after a famous Greek poetess who died falling off a cliff? I’d better be careful not to follow suit, heh, heh!

  Mu and I made eyes-crossed, tongue-out gargoyle faces at each other behind his oblivious back. And he was certainly spry, for he went down there like a mountain goat, confessing sheepishly over his shoulder that he was a twitcher, which I’d previously thought to be some strange religious sect like Holy Rolling, but which turned out only to mean that he spotted rare birds like other men spot trains, and pursued the sightings all over the place.

  We arrived somewhat dishevelled and out of breath at the cliff base, glad to feel the sand beneath our feet.

  The sun was shining, the sea was going ‘shush! shush!’ and the gulls were kicking up a hell of a racket. Gil was still maundering on.

  ‘On this very spot last year I saw a very rare visitor indeed. A—’

  ‘What are those gulls over there making such a racket about?’ Mu broke in without ceremony. ‘By the rocks?’

  She began picking her way delicately through the snares of seaweed to where a small humped shape, beset by flying scavengers, was being gently nudged by the sea’s advancing lip.

  I followed, despite Gil’s plaintive bleat of, ‘Better let me go first, ladies – it may be something unpleasant!’

  Ignoring him, we shooed off the gulls and stared sadly down at what had once been a gross, smelly, beloved old dog; a dog who had never known a moment’s fear in his life – I hoped. I hoped it had been that way right to the end.

  ‘It’s – oh, it’s only a dog,’ Gil said, sounding relieved, though looking a bit white behind the navy-lark beard. ‘Come away – it’s a bit grisly, but the gulls will clean it up. It’s Nature’s way, you know—’

  He broke off and exclaimed with horror, ‘What on earth are you doing?’

  With reverent revulsion I was unbuckling the pulpy remains of a gay tartan collar from around the old, sodden throat that would never now whinge for another chocolate biscuit.

  ‘There’s no way anyone could tell how he died now,’ observed Mu. ‘Something other than the gulls has been at him – there’s not really much left at all. Maybe there are piranhas off the Gower?’

  ‘I suppose you mean to return the collar to the owner,’ twittered Gil, ‘which is a kind thought, perhaps, but then again, it might upset—’

  ‘It’s Spike,’ I interrupted. ‘I’d know that collar anywhere. Miranda’s Spike.’

  Gil blanched even further and his mouth caught a few passing sandflies. ‘But that can’t possibly be Spike! We’re miles away from Bedd – what on earth would he be doing here?’

  To do him credit he looked genuinely shocked and upset when I showed him the name disc on the collar. ‘Poor Miranda! I suppose the senile old thing just wandered away and tumbled over the cliffs . . . but I never dreamed he could get this far.’

  ‘Spike was incapable of wandering much further than the back garden, and unless he’d learned to drive a car or fly since I last saw him, he certainly didn’t get here under his own steam,’ I snapped, and Gil recoiled a little, looking hurt.

  ‘Perhaps boys larking about? A visitor who took a fancy to him?’

  ‘Perhaps anything,’ I said shortly. ‘But what shall we do with the remains? There’s not much left, and the tide’s about to take it away again.’

  ‘Do? You can’t mean . . .?’ Gil gibbered.

  ‘It wouldn’t stand being moved up the beach, Sappho,’ Mu pointed out, ‘certainly not back up that cliff path. Besides, there doesn’t seem much point. Miranda shouldn’t see him like this. Gil was right – let Nature take its course. Its second course, from the look of it, if not its third. The tide’s about to turn – let’s send old Spike out with it like a Viking.’

  So we did, with the help of a largish piece of wooden pallet, some tinder-dry flotsam, and Gil’s lighter, though I didn’t think Spike himself would burn, since he was too wet.

  Gil seemed reluctant to take the lighter back from my hand afterwards, and also disgusted by our wading about floating a smelly dead dog off the rocks in our bare flippers, but I can assure you now that whatever diseases of the feet dead dogs give you, we didn’t catch it.

  Escorted by a mourning phalanx of thwarted gulls the sad carcass was borne away on a plume of smoke, while Mu, shading her eyes, intoned the immortal words: ‘I am going out and I may be some time.’

  ‘And will the clock strike half past three, and Gourmet Dinner for my tea?’ I contributed.

  ‘Farewell, beloved old companion,’ contributed Gil more prosaically, but it was a nice thought.

  Gil continued to distance himself from us, even after we’d bathed our legs in a nice clean rock pool. Having seemed oblivious previously to anything other than boobs and birds, he suddenly seemed to notice Mu’s appearance: the fingernails, the Gothic Vampire draperies and the big black boots (when she put them back on), and for the rest of the Annual Outing of Dog Launchers treated her as if she were in the final throes of something very, very unmentionable and catching, that even Authorship wasn’t enough to redeem her from.

  Fortunately I had a plastic bag in my pocket for collecting shells, which I stuffed the collar into. ‘I’d be grateful, Gil, if you keep our find to yourself until I’ve broken the news to Miranda.’

  This was not a task I relished, for while it might be a relief to her to know for certain that Spike was dead and there had been no visible signs of violence, the truth of how he died and got to Rhossili might prove even more upsetting.

  Still, she was an adult with the right to the facts, unadorned by my interpretations. When she got her hands on the person who flung poor old Spike off the cliff, dead or alive, I’d like to be there.

  Gil, strangely eager now to leave us, made off in the direction of home. I think any faint erotic attraction I might have held for him had forever been overlaid with defunct Spike.

  ‘Do you know what I’m going to do now?’ I asked Mu as we wearily hauled ourselves back up on to the cliff path.

  ‘Go straight home and have a hot bath, with lots of scented stuff in it?’ she said hopefully.

  I shook my head, though the thought had its attractions.

  Duty first.

  ‘Have a look at the raincoat Gil found on the cliff top?’ she hazarded.

  ‘Got it in one.’

  ‘Two,’ she corrected.

  We tried the nearest (tiny) police station and discovered the mac in a box marked ‘Lost Property’. In the absence of a body, interest had obviously waned.

  It was a man’s medium-sized beige trenchcoat – but I know women who wear those – and fairly new, with nothing in the pockets, and no helpful name tag.

  The officer had lost interest and was wrinkling his nose over the strange odour that had invaded his office, and his brow over a crossword puzzle.

  ‘In a pig’s eye?’ he muttered.

  Mu and I spread the mac open. Inside was a coating of chocolate-brown dog hair and a warm, familiar, fusty old-dog smell.

  The coat turned into a shroud before our very eyes.

  ‘Four letters . . .’ mused th
e officer.

  ‘Stye,’ I choked, blinking rapidly.

  ‘Oh, thank you, madam. Stye it is.’ He wrote it in and then looked up. ‘Now, does either of you ladies recognize the raincoat?’

  ‘I’m afraid we’ve never seen it before,’ I said with perfect truth, and handed it back.

  Chapter 18

  Bolted

  For some reason when we got home, the cat didn’t want anything to do with us, but retired into the conservatory looking disgusted.

  I bagged a quick first shower, though you can’t wash the smell of dead dog out of your head, then left Mu to soak in the bath while I went round to break the bad news to Miranda.

  From past experience, I’ve found that the best way is to give it to them straight without trying to wrap things up, so that’s what I did, telling her everything we’d done, but without drawing any conclusions.

  Then I tactfully went to make a drink while she cried over the once-bright tartan collar.

  When she’d got over the first shock I explained that we hadn’t been able to bring his body home and had instead given him a Viking funeral, which she approved of. Then I described to her exactly where we’d found Spike and how we’d gone to look at the raincoat at the police station.

  ‘B-but he could never have got d-down there on his own, could he?’ she said, puzzled. ‘How d-did he – who could have . . .? And the raincoat – you think someone wrapped him in it?’

  Her eyes brimmed over again. ‘I’ve b-been getting all these phone calls since I put Spike’s poster up . . . and I suppose I’ll go on getting them for weeks!’

  ‘We’ll take them down again for you – all the ones we can find. Weren’t there a hundred?’

  ‘Yes, and I put them everywhere.’ She’d sunk down into her chair and clearly wasn’t going to be up to much for a while. ‘B-but I can’t remember where!’

  The phone rang and I answered it: it was someone else reporting seeing a dog like Spike. There were three more calls until I took the phone off the hook. Miranda had fetched two boxes of chocolate flakes out of the kitchen by then, the mini ones for cake decorating, and was tearing the cellophane off with her teeth.

  ‘I’m going to get Mu and go on a poster hunt now,’ I told her, not without an inward sigh for poor, neglected, interestingly new-minted Raarg. ‘Leave the phone off the hook for a couple of hours. And tonight we’ll go to the pub to drown our sorrows.’

  Suddenly conscious of my unfortunate turn of phrase I added quickly, ‘Be ready at eight, and we’ll call for you on the way.’

  ‘I-I d-don’t want to go out to the pub or anywhere else. I couldn’t possibly—’ The words came out accompanied by a shower of chocolate shards, since she was now cramming flakes in by the handful. ‘And Chris d-doesn’t think the pub is very salubrious.’

  ‘Bugger Chris. Not only is it salubrious to the point of being staid, it’s a damn sight better than sitting here alone. Anyway, Spike deserves a wake and you can tell us all about his happy times, which is what a wake’s for.’

  Poor Mu and I got to know the ins and outs of the Gower extremely well that afternoon.

  I drove, and she poster-spotted, leaping out to tear each one down. It didn’t do the nail paint much good, but it was her own fault: if she’d mastered the art of turning right, she could have driven.

  The cat had elected to come with us and, short of a bloody battle, declined to be removed. But despite my misgivings she behaved impeccably, perched bolt upright on the back seat like a dowager.

  ‘Eighty-eight,’ Mu said wearily as we reached the outskirts of Swansea on one of our wider sweeps. ‘I’m knackered and I need food.’

  We settled for iced Italian coffee and cake at the Marina, where we could park and leave the cat to guard the car, with all the windows cranked open an inch – though there aren’t many antique Volvo thieves about.

  On the way out of Swansea again we stopped to purchase an expensive but tasteful cat collar and other items Mu assured me I would need, despite my resistance.

  Then she chose a cat flap, even though I told her I wasn’t having chunks taken out of my beautiful Portuguese door.

  ‘It can go in the conservatory door, then,’ she said.

  ‘The conservatory is about to be demolished.’

  ‘Then you could have a lovely new one, instead.’

  ‘We could buy a lovely big new basket, so you can take her home again with you,’ I suggested, but she just smiled and said she was sure I was joking, but if I really didn’t take to the cat she would always have her back (though I suspect by then we’d need one of those travelling cages circuses have).

  The cat seemed quite taken by the collar, which had cunning little elastic inserts, so it didn’t get hung up on things, and a bell. I have no wish to receive small dead offerings of inoffensive birds and mice, however well meant.

  It all cost me a fortune, but we found a Spike poster pinned up in the shop as a bonus.

  Eighty-nine.

  By returning homewards with all the frilled convolutions of an intestine we managed to clock up ninety-two, which seemed to me to be a near miracle. It was a testament to Miranda’s love that she’d had the stamina to put them all up in the first place.

  We were shattered by our traumatic day, and somewhat surprised to find Simon pottering around the courtyard awaiting our return.

  ‘You didn’t order a Second Coming, did you?’ I said to Mu.

  ‘Not yet – I won’t find out whether the first one worked until Sunday.’

  ‘Then you’re going to have to take him away and explain the facts of life and times of the month and stuff to him.’

  But it transpired that he was only on his way up the Valleys to a friend’s party and, having learned from Ambler that Mu was here, thought he’d drop by, in case he was needed.

  Mu provisionally booked him for a fortnight hence, we plied him with food and drink, and then he went off to his party without a care in the world.

  Ah, youth . . .

  I was sitting at the green-metallic-flecked Formica table (which I’m ashamed to say I’d fallen in love with by then and intended to keep), when Mu came back from seeing him off.

  I’d fed the cat gourmet chunks in a new china bowl and she’d retired replete to the top of the radiator, where she lay in an improbably furry oblong parcel like a cheap rolled rya rug.

  ‘Sphinx!’ I exclaimed, as Mu wearily sank on to a chair and held a cup out for tea. ‘That’s what I’ll call her.’

  Mu began to spread her nail-repairing kit out around the tea things. ‘Well, it’s not bad. I’ll Sphinx about it, and let you know.’

  I groaned.

  By the time we went to collect Miranda we were both stiffening up from all the cliff scrambling – Throbbing Thigh Syndrome. I’m not as fit as I was before I came here; I’ll have to do more hills.

  To my surprise Miranda was ready to go out, though very quiet and with reddened eyelids, but also with the resolute expression of a woman who has been doing some hard thinking and come up with unpalatable answers. She isn’t stupid even if she’s spent all her married life being told she is, and once she’d thought about the combination of ‘Geronimo!’ and men’s raincoats she was bound to draw the same conclusions we had.

  The Spoon and Lizard had once been a small pub, but had expanded in a reasonably picturesque way to meet the demands of hungry tourists. It was busy even this early in the year, but we found a corner and ordered hearty food, for there’s a time and a place for cholesterol, calories and alcohol, and this was it.

  Miranda grew up in Bedd, but strangely enough I seemed to be acquainted with a lot more people than she, though perhaps eating at the pub a lot had introduced me to a wider circle.

  After a bit I spotted Lili installed in one of the little mock horse-box affairs around the far side of the room. She saw us at the same time and smiled and waved, but then made ‘keep away’ signals. The man she’d boxed in there was a darker shape in the shadows beyond, but
there was a gleam of pale hair: the potter.

  Well, ‘potter and clay endure’, as Browning once said, and she was safe from interruption from us tonight.

  She must have had to leave him to his own devices at some point, though, for later, while we were drinking Irish coffee, she came across and sat down with us, looking disconsolate.

  ‘Bolted, the bastard!’ she said. ‘You know, I’m starting to lose faith in myself. I’ve never had to admit defeat yet but – tell me truthfully all of you, have I lost my charms?’

  ‘No, they all seem to be still there,’ I said. ‘Perhaps you’re just not his type?’

  ‘I’m exactly his type – small, slim, ravishing and dark, like his ex.’

  ‘Then maybe he doesn’t want to be reminded of his ex?’

  ‘Let’s have another Irish coffee,’ Mu suggested brightly. ‘Will you join us, Lili? And just look who’s—’

  ‘Miranda, there you are!’ Chris’s voice broke in, stiff with anger.

  Chapter 19

  Icing Over

  If Chris was expecting the usual crumbly fondant Miranda he was in for a shock, for she snapped back in rock-hard royal icing mode, ‘D-didn’t you see my note?’

  What with everything else, I’d totally forgotten that he was supposed to be coming back this weekend, but evidently she hadn’t.

  He looked gobsmacked. ‘Yes – yes I did, but I expect you to be there when I get home, not carousing in the pub!’

  ‘And in such bad company,’ chimed in Mu helpfully. ‘I didn’t think anyone used that sort of line any more, Chris.’

  Apart from a disgusted look, he ignored her, but clearly he was becoming conscious of the stares of the curious for he plastered an unconvincing smile on his face and moderated his voice. ‘Is it too much to ask that when I bring a friend down for the weekend, you’re there to greet him? What will he think?’