by Ann Granger
Meredith turned from the window, switched out the fire, checked the front and back doors and went up to bed, falling effortlessly asleep in the wide double bed.
Across the road, the light went out in Miss Needham’s dormer windows, too.
In the Brissetts’ council house Mrs Brissett awoke and dug her spouse in the ribs. ‘Don’t you forget to go up in the loft and bring them decorations down for Miss Mitchell, Fred.’
Laura Danby lay awake and wondered whether, if there would be an extra guest at Christmas, she ought to order a larger turkey.
Alan Markby, several miles away in Bamford, rolled over in his own over-large double bed. He wondered whether, when he went to collect Meredith tomorrow and take her out as arranged, he would find she had changed, or she would think he had, and what on earth they would find to talk about. And how he would broach the invitation issued to her by Laura. And what she would say. He fell asleep, torn between all these worries and the simple glow of pleasure which arose from the thought that he was going to see her at all.
Two
Bamford on a Friday morning before Christmas was everything Mrs Brissett had warned it would be. Meredith counted herself lucky to catch a space in the car park behind the supermarket as some other shopper pulled out. A glance through the plate glass doors of the supermarket itself sent her heart plummeting to her boots. A solid struggling mass of shoppers pushing unwieldy trolleys stacked high with goods, dragging along wailing children, bad-tempered, hot and tired, milled about in a frenzy.
Meredith turned her back on it. She’d go there last, when she had done all her other errands. With luck, the press might have thinned out. She walked down to the open market itself. But here the crowd was almost as bad. Stalls brandished stacks of holly and decorations of the kind beloved of Mrs Brissett. Unwholesome pink and yellow candies were sold from trays. Cut-price toys in boxes and cellophane wrapping spilled out of cardboard boxes. Vegetables seemed to have reached a record price. Meredith bought two pounds of satsumas and retired defeated. But she couldn’t live on satsumas and the last of the bacon rashers until after Christmas. She pushed her way down the High Street, swinging her shopping bag against the legs of others and being clobbered in return. A young woman ran a pushchair into the back of her legs painfully and, when Meredith turned round, treated her to a furious glare which clearly said she had no business to be in the way. The High Street was bedecked with strings of coloured light bulbs and skeletal Christmas trees which would spring to life at dusk. Christmas carols blared tinnily from a loudspeaker system overhead and from every shop window, or so it seemed, the public was reminded that only four more shopping days remained until Christmas.
Meredith came to a halt by the florists and stared mistrustfully into the window. It was likely, more than likely, that Alan Markby might buy her some kind of Christmas present. He might even hand it over tonight when he called to take her out for a meal. It would be embarrassing to be given a gift if one hadn’t bought one in return. Buying aftershave or deodorant seemed much too intimate. A plant, however? He was a very keen gardener. Meredith pushed open the door and went in.
Inside resembled an untidy greenhouse. In anticipation of bumper Christmas sales, new stock had been crowded on to every available surface and spilled across the floor. The atmosphere was damp and suggested decay. There was a smell of wet peat compost and commercial plantfoods. A young woman in a pink overall emerged from the back, looking harassed.
‘I want a potted plant,’ Meredith explained. ‘Something which blooms at Christmas. Perhaps something a bit unusual?’ Her eye fell on a group of poinsettias. They seemed a bit obvious with their red leaves.
‘How much do you want to pay?’ asked the girl in practical tones.
‘I don’t know. How much are they?’
Some of them, it turned out, were very expensive. In fact, most of them were. She came out with a Christmas cactus.
As she forced her way back along the pavement, laden with shopping bag and plant wrapped in paper, Meredith suddenly realised she was being hailed.
‘Excuse me!’ called a voice determinedly. ‘Have you got a minute?’ A tall spindly youth in a grubby ex-army greatcoat, blue jeans and a woolly hat, pushed his way in front of her. He was unshaven, not particularly well washed and appeared severely undernourished, but the voice was educated. ‘Would you like to sign our petition?’ he demanded aggressively.
She saw now that he held a clipboard. ‘What’s it about?’ she asked with suspicion.
‘To ban hunting on council-owned land.’ He held out the clipboard impatiently as if she quibbled over a minor detail.
The crowd swirled round them and she found herself struggling to make sense of what he said. ‘Hunting what?’
‘Foxes. Or anything else. But foxes mostly. Because of the local hunt.’
‘I didn’t know they had one.’ Someone cannoned into her shoulder and she nearly dropped the cactus. ‘Look,’ she said. ‘I haven’t got a hand free and I don’t know what it’s about . . .’
‘The Bamford Hunt,’ he said truculently. ‘All you’ve got to do is sign here!’ He pushed the clipboard at her. It had a stub of pencil attached to it by a string and the paper list was grubby, most signatures illegible. ‘If we can keep them off council land it will make it nearly impossible for them. They’re wrong, bloodsports are wrong. It’s immoral. Everyone ought to be up in arms about it.’ He thrust his whiskery countenance impatiently at her. Clearly he felt time wasted explaining his cause was time lost gathering signatures.
‘I don’t know anything about the Bamford Hunt,’ Meredith said, suddenly finding him unattractive and pushy, his manner hectoring, and disliking both the way he assumed she would agree with him and the arrogance he displayed in failing to give any reason why she should do as he asked.
‘Here, take a pamphlet!’ He shoved one at her, ill-printed. ‘Sign the petition, every signature helps. It’s wrong. Fox-hunting is wrong.’
‘You may be right or not,’ she said crossly. ‘I’ve never thought about it. And I certainly don’t mean to sign anything before I have. So I won’t if you don’t mind. I’ll read your pamphlet,’ she added in a spirit of Christmas goodwill.
‘Don’t you care about wildlife?’ he demanded furiously. ‘Don’t you care how barbaric it is? Don’t you think animals matter? You ought to. You should. Everyone ought to sign!’ He fixed her with a glittering eye. In it judgement was writ large. Nothing now would have induced Meredith to sign his petition, whatever it had been for. She didn’t like him. It was as simple as that.
‘Yes, I like animals but I don’t like being told what to think before I’ve had a chance to make up my own mind!’ Meredith thrust her way unceremoniously past him.
He scowled at her and then lurched away to trap some other person with his clipboard and pamphlets. As luck would have it, a strapping young woman was coming towards them. She had a head of flowing auburn hair and carried herself in a self-possessed manner touching on the arrogant. She wore no makeup but had classic features, a straight nose, full lips and fine eyes. She wore a well-used wax jacket over tight breeches and riding top boots. In jargon she would have understood, she was a thoroughbred. Bloodstock with sire and dam in the Form Book.
‘He wouldn’t . . .’ thought Meredith dismayed at his temerity. ‘He couldn’t . . .’
But he did. The anti-bloodsports campaigner threw himself in the Amazon’s path, brandishing his clipboard. Meredith could not hear what was being said but she could more or less guess at it. The stable yard fraternity is seldom short of the picturesque word. The auburn-haired equestrienne delivered herself of a pithy speech, gave the young man, now scarlet beneath his whiskers, no chance to reply, put out a hand and thrust him physically aside with such force that he staggered back and bounced off the door of Woolworth’s behind him, and strode on.
‘I could have told you that would happen,’ said Meredith unsympathetically to him.
He gave her a dirty l
ook and then threw an even dirtier one after the young woman. ‘Toffy-nosed bitch!’ he said. Then added in a mumble as if to himself, ‘Just wait . . . just wait till you try it on Boxing Day. . ..’ He shambled off.
As for Meredith, she forgot about him once she had ventured at last into the supermarket. From now on, it was every man for himself. She began by saying ‘excuse me’ politely and trying to manoeuvre her trolley round people. But it quickly became apparent she was wasting her time. The trolley also had a mind of its own and a tendency to advance crablike, sideways. The sheer volume of goods offered for sale added to her sense of disorientation and frustration. She had, after all, just spent some years in a country where shortages were common and varieties of goods few. Diplomatic staff such as herself depended heavily on goods brought in specially by their embassies for their use or on block orders from firms which existed to supply the needs of expatriates. Now to see three or four brands of tinned meat and half a dozen of coffee, all stacked up in profusion, was bewildering. She found it vaguely shocking to hear mothers ask small children what they wanted and casually add the often quite arbitrary choice of the child to the pile of goods already in the trolley. Within five minutes, Meredith was not only as hot, bothered and bad-tempered as the rest, she was angry too at people who did not seem to appreciate what they had. She stood fuming in the check-out queue in a cloud of righteous indignation, fuelled by the discovery that she had forgotten the washing-up liquid.
‘Drat it!’ she said aloud.
‘Forgotten something?’ asked a male voice behind her.
She glanced round guiltily. The voice was that of a bespectacled man of indeterminate age and appearance wearing a parka coat and standing behind her in the queue. He held a wire basket with a modest stack of provisions. He smiled pleasantly at her. ‘I’ll hold your spot in the queue if you want to go back and get it.’
Meredith looked back at the heaving throng on the shop floor. ‘No, thanks. I don’t think I could face it. Thank you all the same.’ On impulse she added, ‘There’s so much to buy – they don’t realise how lucky they are!’
He smiled. ‘Some are. Some can’t afford it. To see a shop window full of goods when you haven’t the money to buy isn’t much fun.’
Meredith frowned, considering this. For some reason she felt she owed him a serious answer. He was only a man in a queue but something in his voice suggested that what she had said struck a chord in him. He cared about this.
‘People aren’t as poor now as they were years ago,’ she said. ‘I know some aren’t well off, but a hundred years ago they starved on the streets.’
‘Some still live on the streets. Not here in Bamford admittedly. But in big cities. . .. Been up to London recently?’
‘No, not yet,’ said Meredith gloomily, thinking of the FO desk which awaited her. ‘After Christmas I shall be travelling up every day.’
‘Take a look in shop doorways early in the mornings. Count the sleeping bags.’ The queue shuffled forward a little. ‘Perhaps they aren’t starving,’ the man went on, ‘but they feel failures.’ He pushed his spectacles up the bridge of his nose. They seemed to have a tendency to slide down it. ‘There’s so much, as you say, and everyone else seems to them to be doing well enough to enjoy it all. Fifty years ago it wasn’t a disgrace to be poor – it was a shared misfortune with thousands of others. Now the poor are made to feel ashamed, that it’s their own fault, some shortcoming which they have. Many of the youngsters feel resentful, that society is kicking them out. You can’t blame them.’
‘No, I suppose not,’ Meredith said slowly.
He gave an embarrassed smile. ‘I didn’t mean to lecture you. The subject is by way of a special interest of mine.’
‘That’s all right.’ She was moved to offer, ‘You’ve only a basket of a few items, you might as well go in front of me. I’ve got a trolley-full.’
‘Oh, that’s all right. I’m not in a hurry. You carry on.’
‘Next person please!’ requested the check-out girl snappily and Meredith was forced to move up and hastily unload her goods on to the conveyor belt.
Her shopping paid for, Meredith pushed the grumbling trolley out to her car. There were ominous dark clouds gathering overhead now and a chill wind. She packed everything away and returned her wire chariot to the ‘trolley park’ shivering in the air which struck so cold after the oppressive warmth of the supermarket. Meredith backed out slowly to avoid other shoppers making for their cars with their overladen squeaky trolleys and set off out of town.
She was surprised at how relieved she felt when she reached Pook’s Common. It felt like quite a haven of peace in comparison to Bamford. Rose Cottage did not have a garage, but it had a parking space formed by sacrificing most of the front garden. She got out and shivered in an icy blast which struck right through her anorak. The dark clouds had become more compact and although it was still only late morning, it was as dark as a gathering twilight. Meredith rubbed reddened fingers together and went round to the boot to unload her wares. As she did there was a screech of brakes and another car drew up outside the cottage opposite, causing her to glance up. The driver’s door slammed and to her surprise a figure she recognised got out.
It was the red-head she’d seen in town. She looked across the road, saw Meredith, smiled and came striding athletically towards her.
‘Hullo,’ she said. ‘I’m Harriet Needham. I live over there in Ivy Cottage.’
‘Meredith Mitchell,’ Meredith said, disentangling herself from a welter of plastic carrier bags.
‘Been into Bamford, have you?’ asked Miss Needham sympathetically. ‘Bloody awful, isn’t it?’
‘Pretty dreadful. I had to stock up for the holiday break.’
‘You’ve taken the cottage on from the Russells, haven’t you?’ Harriet tossed back her mane of red hair. ‘Come over and have a drink sometime.’
‘Thanks, that’s kind of you. I will.’
‘Why don’t you come over now and have coffee? It’s going to bucket down with rain later.’ Harriet squinted up at the dark sky with businesslike appraisal. ‘Mud!’ she muttered, Meredith realised not to her but in response to a thought triggered by the weather and important to the speaker.
‘Thanks, I will. I’ve to unload all this first of all.’
‘Sure, fine. I’ve got my lot to unpack as well. I’ll leave the front door open. Just come in when you’re ready and yell.’ Harriet strode back to her own side of the road.
Meredith went into the cottage, arms full of bags. A faint clatter from the kitchen indicated Mrs Brissett was just finishing up. There was a smell of wax polish in the air mixed with lavender from the downstairs cloakroom. The living room door stood ajar and Meredith, staggering past on her way to the kitchen, stopped abruptly, transfixed. ‘Oh, dear . . .’ she said faintly, unable for the moment to come up with any stronger remark although Miss Needham could probably have obliged. ‘Oh my goodness, whatever am I going to do about this?’
Mrs Brissett popped out of the kitchen door. ‘You leave them groceries, Miss Mitchell. I’ll put them all away.’
‘Thank you . . . and thank you for . . . for. . ..’ Meredith faltered.
‘Knew you’d like it!’ said Mrs Brissett.
Harriet’s door stood open as she had promised. An inviting smell of coffee wafted into Meredith’s nostrils. She called, ‘I’m here!’
‘In the kitchen!’
She followed Harriet’s voice. Ivy Cottage had originally had much the same ground plan as Rose Cottage. But someone had built on a large extension to the rear and this housed the kitchen, which as Meredith was to discover, was large, modern and furbished it seemed with every kind of modern gadget. The former kitchen had been made into a small dining room almost entirely filled with an early Victorian table and set of six chairs which were undeniably the real thing. There was a buffet across the top of which was ranged a set of blue and white plates of equally antique origin and in the middle of the table stood
a Georgian silver chafing dish. It looked as though Harriet liked to entertain.
This thought was reinforced by the sight of Harriet’s groceries, strewn across a worktop in the kitchen extension – French bread and a large packet of chicken breasts, two bottles of good wine and several unusual cheeses, plenty of fresh, out-of-season and expensive salads and all the trimmings of a dinner party. But for how many? wondered Meredith, remembering the departing car of the previous evening.
Harriet noticed her looking at the groceries and said cheerfully, ‘I took one of those cordon bleu cookery courses. Useful. I couldn’t boil an egg before.’
A little embarrassed because it looked as though she had been prying, Meredith murmured, ‘I’m not much of a cook.’
‘It’s fun, I like doing it. And there’s time enough here at Pook’s Common for things like cooking. You need time and not to be rushed.’
‘Yes, it’s certainly quiet enough here,’ Meredith observed a little ruefully. ‘Away from it all.’
‘That’s what I thought when I first came.’ Harriet set the cups and cream jug on a tray with brisk efficiency. ‘But funnily enough, it’s not. It’s surprising what’s around in Pook’s Common!’ She did not elaborate on this tantalising hint but picked up the tray. ‘We’ll go in the drawing room. More comfortable.’
Harriet’s drawing room, the equivalent of Rose Cottage’s humbler living room situated in the front of the building, was furnished with a mixture of modern comfortable easy chairs and several nice old pieces, a Victorian roll-top desk and a little Regency card table among them. Had they come together with the antiques in the dining room from a larger house, a family home? Meredith wondered. On a purely practical note, all this added up to quite a bit in value and Ivy Cottage did not appear to have any extra locks or catches at the windows.
