by Jodi Taylor
*
Russell made a real effort. We all did, and when he left the house the next morning, his hair was under control, his tie was straight, and his shirt was clean. I knew that by the time he arrived in London his hair would be flopping over his eyes again and his tie would be in his pocket but, as I said to him, at least he left the house looking beautiful.
He laughed, kissed me, kissed Joy, had a tea towel flapped at him by Mrs Crisp, and roared out of the yard.
The usual sudden silence fell and I was, once again, conscious of the absence of Russell Checkland.
Mrs Crisp began to clear the breakfast table and I took Joy into the garden to play. There wouldn’t be many more days like this, this year. There would be a big storm one night – the wind would whip the leaves from the trees and the rain would beat down the remaining flowers – and suddenly we’d be into autumn.
I sat on the bench by the pool, listening to the trickling water. Joy rolled on a blanket at my feet, alternately talking to her feet or trying to put everything within reach into her mouth. The sun was warm and everything was peaceful.
But not for long. I opened my eyes to find Mrs Crisp standing in front of me.
‘Mrs Balasana is here.’
I groaned. ‘Has she brought the bill for the damage to her garden?’
‘I don’t think so. I think this might be a social call.’
Oh my God – I’d issued the usual vague sort of invitation and obviously she’d decided to take me up on it.
‘Come along Jenny. Be polite.’
‘I don’t see why I should. Russell never is and he gets away with it every time.’
‘You’re not Russell.’
‘No,’ I said drearily. ‘I’m not, am I?’
‘Shall I show her into the sitting room?’ said Mrs Crisp.
‘Yes,’ said Thomas.
‘Why?’
‘Well, I haven’t met her yet. She sounds interesting.’
‘She’s not interesting. She’s bossy and she complains a lot and she never seems to get dirty and...’
‘And?’
‘And I don’t think she’s very happy.’
‘Mrs Checkland?’
‘Oh, sorry Mrs Crisp. I was miles away. No, don’t let’s ... make her too comfortable. Keep her in the kitchen. She’ll either scorn us or take ... pity on us, but either way, she won’t want to linger.’
Believe it or not, it was Russell who was responsible for breaking the ice with Mrs Balasana. And he wasn’t even here. In fact, I did wonder if she’d deliberately taken advantage of his absence. Anyway, whatever the reason, she was here and I had to deal with her.
Shooing away two or three opportunistic chickens, I edged my way in through the back door and we sat at the kitchen table. Mrs Crisp served tea and then, despite all my frantic gesturing, made herself scarce. I glared at her as she went.
I poured the tea – we did the sugar and milk thing – and then we sat in silence. I kept waiting for her to produce her bill – surely the reason for her being here –but she sat quietly at the table, sipping her tea. Mrs Crisp, who likes to observe the social niceties, had used the good cups, thank heavens. I really couldn’t picture Mrs Balasana drinking from Russell’s ‘This is what AWESOMENESS looks like’ mug. Mrs Crisp’s social obligations had not, however, extended to offering her cake. The biscuit tin sat between us. I know we hadn’t long had breakfast, but to break the silence and to give myself something to do, I whipped off the lid and offered it to her.
‘Please help yourself.’
The silence went on for far too long.
Thomas craned over her shoulder, uttered an enormous snort, said, ‘Jenny, I’m sorry, but you’re really on your own for this one,’ and disappeared to the far end of the kitchen.
‘Thomas?’
‘Only at Frogmorton...’
What was going on?
I’ve never visited a taxidermist, but now I know how someone would look if they were stuffed. Rigid and with those funny glassy eyes that never look real. I wondered if she was having some kind of fit.
‘Mrs Balasana, are you all ... right? Are you ill?’
I got to my feet, scraping my chair across the tiles.
Mrs Crisp stuck her head around the door. ‘Everything all right, Mrs Checkland?’
Thomas was still at the other end of the room, laughing his head off and being absolutely no use whatsoever.
‘I don’t know,’ I said. ‘Mrs Balasana...?’
Mrs Crisp bustled forwards, picked up the biscuit tin – presumably to remove it – glanced inside and herself went rigid.
Oh, great. Another one.
Silently, she handed me the biscuit tin. It was full of mealworms. Fat, wriggly, happy mealworms. Hundreds of them. Wriggly things don’t particularly bother me, but you don’t expect to find them in your biscuit tin on the kitchen table. I couldn’t even guess at the effect they’d had on Mrs Balasana at eleven o’clock in the morning.
‘Is there a good time to discover mealworms in your biscuit tin?’ enquired Thomas, thoroughly enjoying himself.
I slapped the lid back on again and shoved the tin under the table.
Mrs Crisp exploded. ‘Russell! That boy! I tell you now, Mrs Checkland, I...’ Words failed her. She drew a deep breath and began to scrabble in her apron.
‘What are you ... doing?’
‘My phone.’ She pulled it out. ‘I’m going to telephone him now and tell him...’
I took it from her. ‘Leave this to me.’ I found his number. Surprisingly, he picked up. ‘Maybe he thinks you’re Francesca,’ said a wicked voice from the other end of the kitchen. With whom I would be having words later on.
I didn’t give him a chance to speak. ‘Russell. It’s me.’ I thought of the seething mass of mealworms currently under the kitchen table and said chattily, ‘We’ve just offered Mrs Balasana a biscuit. I don’t think I need say any more. You should run. Run for your life. Mrs Crisp wants a word with you. Mrs Balasana wants a word with you. And when they’ve finished, I want far more than a word with you. So run. Run to the end of the world. And then keep going. And hope we never ever find you.’
I snapped the phone shut, feeling rather pleased with myself.
‘Well done,’ said Mrs Crisp.
I smirked. ‘You noticed?’
‘I did indeed,’ she said. ‘Not a stammer in sight.’
I looked down at the tin. Maybe we could market mealworms as the latest thing in speech aids.
A faint sound recalled us to our visitor.
‘Oh, Mrs Balasana, I’m so ... sorry. Please believe we had ... no idea...’
She had her hands over her face and was rocking backwards and forwards, which I thought was a little excessive. They were mealworms, not giant scorpions.
‘I know,’ said Thomas. ‘And it’s not as if they leaped from the tin to eat her eyes or crawl up her nose or anything.’
‘You,’ I said, ‘are not helping. Go and stand by the window again while I try to think of an unconvincing explanation.’
‘Jenny, I’m always telling you. You shouldn’t panic until you actually have something to panic about. Look.’
I did look. It was a miracle. She was laughing.
‘Well,’ said Mrs Crisp to me. ‘I’ll go to the foot of our stairs.’
‘And you can go with her,’ I said to Thomas, who was laughing himself.
No, Jenny, really, this is a blessing. She’s laughing. Who’d have thought? And all thanks to Russell.’
‘Do not tell him that.’
‘Wouldn’t dream of it.’
We settled down. Mrs Crisp poured herself a cup of tea. I sat back and tentatively smiled at our guest.
‘It’s nice to see you again, Mrs Balasana. Sorry about the ... biscuits. I think we might have some Hobnobs somewhere ...
She shook her head. ‘Not for me, thank you.’ She paused delicately. ‘May I enquire...?’
‘Russell,’ I said bitterly, and she no
dded her complete comprehension.
‘He’s breeding mealworms. They’re very good for chickens. I think, somehow, he’s got his biscuit tins muddled up.’
This was the polite explanation. It was all too likely that Russell wouldn’t have any problems at all with keeping mealworms in the pantry. I could hear him explaining that it was all food anyway and demanding to know what the problem was.
She sipped her tea. ‘I quite understand, Mrs Checkland. Now that I’ve made your husband’s acquaintance, believe me, you need say no more.’
‘Well, thank you for ... taking it so well.’
‘Actually, it was quite funny.’ She looked suddenly sad. ‘I’ve just realised I haven’t laughed for quite a long time.’
Mrs Crisp put down her cup. ‘I remember you,’ she said suddenly. ‘You were two years behind me at school. Annie ... Trott. You were Annie Trott. Well, presumably you still are,’ she said, hurriedly. ‘I mean ... You know what I mean.’
‘I thought I knew you. Elizabeth...’ she paused ‘... Morris. You were on the netball team.’
‘That’s right. Goal attack. Fancy you remembering that. We were runners-up in the County Cup.’
There was a silence. The words, ‘whatever happened to you?’ hung in the air.
I sat quietly, temporarily forgotten and quite happy to be so.
Mrs Crisp, master tactician after years of living with Russell, busied herself with pouring more tea, thus neatly tossing the conversational ball back to Mrs Balasana.
Thomas and I waited quietly, hardly daring to breathe.
‘After I left Rushford ... I got a job in an advertising agency. I worked my way up. To the top. And then I bought them out. I’d had to borrow heavily, of course, and I had to work every hour God sent to keep my head above water. But we survived. After a while, we flourished.’
She accepted her cup from Mrs Crisp. ‘I thought it was all I ever wanted. The status, the money, the lifestyle.’ She looked around our shabby kitchen in such a way as to imply that however disillusioned she might have become over her own lifestyle, she was never going to want to emulate ours. ‘It was a long time before I saw what was right under my nose.’
She stopped again and stared at the table.
‘What?’ said Thomas. ‘What was right under her nose?’
‘Shhh.’
Fortunately, Mrs Crisp asked, so I didn’t have to.
‘Gerald. My accountant. He was with me right from the beginning, you know. It was on his advice that I bought the agency. We worked side by side. There were long hours, weekends, no holidays, but we were determined to make the agency successful. And we were. Very successful.’
She laughed suddenly. ‘It took him two years to ask me out. And then another two years to propose. And do you know, as soon as the words left his mouth, I realised that was what I wanted to do. More than anything in the world, even more than running an advertising agency, I wanted to be Mrs Gerald Balasana.
‘He wasn’t handsome. He was shorter than me, and not fashionable. Not in any way. Nor glossy. No, he definitely wasn’t glossy. But he was such a dear man. It was always his dream to live in the country.
‘We had a quiet wedding – just us and a few friends – and then, almost immediately afterwards, he ... he had a stroke. Not a big one. He seemed to recover. But it was a wake-up call for both of us. I sold the agency. We planned to buy a cottage in the country and live ... well ... happily ever after. We spent hours online, looking at properties, trying to decide where to live. We got so much enjoyment from planning our new home, choosing furniture, even arguing over which plants to put in a garden we didn’t have yet. I always remember that winter. The wind and rain outside and the two of us warm and snug inside, planning our future together. Then we saw Pear Tree Cottage – not that it was called that then, of course – and it was just what we wanted. We put in an offer. I went to see the bank. And then, when I came back, clutching all the paperwork and babbling with excitement, he was dead. He’d had another stroke and I hadn’t been there. Bundle was sitting on his lap, crying and licking his face, but he was quite dead.’
‘Oh, my dear,’ said Mrs Crisp, her face soft with sympathy. ‘I’m so sorry. What a dreadful shock for you.’
‘Well, it was,’ she said, sitting up and squaring her shoulders. ‘But I’ve put all that behind me now. I went ahead and purchased the cottage anyway. I wanted to ... Well, I suppose I wanted to create the home we’d planned together. To make everything perfect for him. A perfect world in his memory. Sometimes I think he’s standing at my shoulder. And all the time I just keep thinking that if only I’d been in time, even by a few minutes – even if was only to say goodbye ... Anyway, here we are, Bundle and me.’
‘This is so sad,’ said Thomas. ‘She’s trying to create the perfect world she thought they would have. That explains a lot I suppose.’
There was a short silence and then, obviously in an effort to lighten the mood, Mrs Crisp got up, disappeared into the pantry and returned bearing a bottle and three glasses.
Mrs Balasana stared suspiciously and I don’t think either of us blamed her.
‘What’s that?’ I asked.
My special fruit cordial, said Mrs Crisp. I make a bottle or two every year. She poured a little into each glass. ‘Tell me what you think.’
We sipped cautiously. I don’t know what was in it, but it managed to be both fruity and fiery at the same time.
Mrs Crisp smacked her lips. ‘Better than last year, but not as good as the year before that. What do you think?’
‘Extremely pleasant,’ said Mrs Balasana.
‘Very nice,’ I said.
Mrs Crisp topped us up.
Mrs Balasana said, ‘Did that man ever contact you – the one who called at my house?’
I said, ‘No,’ belatedly realised I’d sounded too abrupt and added, ‘No, he didn’t.’
I looked at her, wondering how much say. The ... thing is, Mrs Balasana...’
‘Ananda...’
‘Ananda ... if he ... calls again, I wouldn’t answer the ... door, if I were you. Telephone here and Russell will ... come and...’ I was going to say ‘sort him out’, but amended that to the slightly less sinister, ‘deal with the situation’.
‘What situation?’ she said, all her old fears about living next door to a bunch of unstable lunatics rearing their heads again. ‘Is he dangerous?’
‘He’s my cousin,’ I said.
‘Not quite the reassurance you intended, Jenny,’ said Thomas from his end of the kitchen. ‘For all she knows your relatives are a bonkers as you are. How can you tell if this cat is dead or not?’
‘Does it smell?’
‘It certainly does.’
‘It’s not dead then.’
Mrs Balasana was still peering at me.
‘A family dispute,’ I said, possibly inspired by Mrs Crisp’s cordial.
‘Oh, well done, Jenny,’ said Thomas. ‘Both accurate and completely misleading at the same time.’
She nodded. Everyone knows about family disputes. Many people still bear the scars. ‘Should I be concerned?’
‘Oh no. I have Russell and Kevin and...’
‘I meant should I be concerned?’
Thomas coughed back a snort.
‘I shouldn’t think so,’ I said, knocking back the remainder of my drink. ‘You have ... Bundle after all.’
‘Yes, I do,’ she said. ‘I’m very lucky.’
‘Have some more cordial,’ said Mrs Crisp recklessly.
‘Thank you. It is quite delicious.’
‘That will be the fruit,’ said Mrs Crisp, who was never going to go to heaven.
‘It is nice, isn’t it?’ I said, holding out my own glass for a refill and ignoring the snort from the other end of the kitchen.
She stayed for another hour. There wasn’t a lot of cordial left when she got up to go. We walked her to the gate, which was just as well because, for some reason, we couldn’t seem to manage
the latch and it took all three of us to get the gate open. For some reason, Thomas found this quite funny.
All in all, though, quite a pleasant morning, and I like to think that when she left, incidentally looking quite cheerful, we liked each other a little better. Although Russell was still a subject best avoided.
Chapter Nine
On Thomas’s advice, I took myself upstairs for a bit of a lie-down. The fruit cordial had made me sleepy. Mid-way through the afternoon, however, another visitor turned up. Someone I hadn’t seen for a long time and, frankly, I’d never expected to see again.
I was standing at an upstairs window. The yard was empty apart from our chickens who were grouped around the back door, waiting for someone to open it for them and then, presumably, not notice half a dozen chickens streaming past on their way back to the family bathroom.
I didn’t realise who it was until she got out of the car. The last time I’d seen her, she’d been driving a top-end model, and this shabby, drab little economy hire car wasn’t her style at all.
She stood in the yard, looking about her. Not wanting to draw attention to myself, I stayed absolutely still, watching from behind the curtain. I don’t know why. I think I hoped that if no one went out to her she would get back into her car and drive away again.
‘Not likely,’ said Thomas. ‘I suspect she’s driven a long way to see you today. Is that a suitcase in the back of the car?’
‘Could be,’ I said.
‘And no sign of Uncle Richard.’
‘No.’
She still stood, staring around her, holding her handbag in front of her like a shield. Her face was slightly turned away from me and I couldn’t read her expression.
‘Shock, I expect,’ said Thomas. ‘She probably has no idea people live like this.’
‘So – not admiration and envy, then?’
‘Probably not,’ he said gravely. ‘But why don’t we go and find out?’
‘Or why don’t we stay quietly up here until she goes away?’
‘She’s driven a long way to see you today, Jenny. She’s not going to go away.’
I sighed. ‘No, she’s not, is she.’
‘Just a thought, Jenny, but do you think it’s possible she’s come to warn you about Christopher?’
