by Nick Thripp
‘I can’t believe it. She was so sweet, so understanding—’
‘Even though you slept with her, you didn’t know her. She was a manipulative bitch.’
I must have looked incredulous.
‘You don’t believe me?’ Her voice was harsh. ‘John rarely confided in me. She was his real confidante, and she pulled his strings.’
‘What, even his business decisions?’
‘Not exactly. She didn’t have a business brain, but when it came to people, he often consulted her and she told him what to do. She was ruthless, calculating.’
‘What about Smallwood? He sorted him out.’
Rachel sighed. ‘You’ve been listening to John’s version. She planned Smallwood’s demise, John merely followed instructions.’
I fell silent for a few moments. I couldn’t reconcile this portrayal of Mrs Beart with my own experiences. The traffic outside groaned slowly by.
‘I can’t believe it. She was such a lovely person.’
Rachel got up and walked across the room. When she came back she was holding Mrs Beart’s diary. ‘It’s all in here. And more. Her real problems started when she got religion again. Apparently, she’d been devoted as a little girl. Then the guilt and the bitterness set in. She hated John having female friends. If he did, then they had to be Catholic, and, of course, I wasn’t.’
I stared at the diary, aching to read what she’d said about us.
‘Could I look at that?’
She looked as though she might be considering the request for a moment. Then she shook her head.
‘No, I don’t think so.’
Almost involuntarily, I extended my hand.
‘Not a good idea. It’s just possible I might let you read it one day, though I think you’ll regret it. In the meantime, you and Mrs Beart stay in. The sex angle will definitely sell copies.’
‘Then I have nothing more to say.’ I stood up and walked slowly to the door. I grasped the tarnished brass handle to let myself out, not looking over my shoulder and half hoping Rachel might call me back. She didn’t. I got into my BMW before seeing the large sticky notice across my windscreen telling me my car had been clamped. I’d have to make my way by public transport to some remote location to pay an extortionate fine.
‘Shit, shit, shit, fucking shit,’ I shouted, hopping from one foot to the other.
‘Don’t say rude words. It’s not nice.’ I looked down to see the unblinking brown eyes of a little girl. She tossed her hair back before running off to join her mother who was nearby on the phone.
Chapter 36
Devine Towers, 2008
The Old Manor House stood in two acres of ground, about half of which was laid to gardens. Owned by the Throgmortons for over three hundred years, as the family fortunes declined so the house had fallen into disrepair and the garden became a wilderness inhabited by badgers and foxes. When Emily Throgmorton died at the age of ninety-seven leaving only second cousins as heirs, the property was sold to Charles Devine who’d made his fortune opening fashionable boutiques specialising in cashmere scarves, jumpers and bed socks. Charles set about restoring the house and called me in, on the recommendation of a neighbour, to re-design the garden. I drew up three very different options for him, which he took away to consider.
He greeted me warmly when we met again a fortnight later.
‘I love this one. It combines elegance with flair, and it’s so original. I’ve never seen anything like it before.’
I was delighted with his choice, which involved conjoining a Japanese garden and an English wild flower meadow. At the heart of the design, like an oasis in a flowery desert, was a traditional walled garden, which housed fifty-six different varieties of roses, some selected for appearance, others for fragrance. The plan would also necessitate bringing in twenty three-quarter grown British beeches and the same number of Japanese black pines.
I told him what it would cost, erring heavily on the generous side for contingencies, and expecting he would trim the budget as severely as I trim hydrangeas in the spring. He waved his hand, saying, ‘If you need more, let’s discuss it.’
I selected three sub-contractors, all specialists in different aspects of landscaping, and negotiated contracts with them. We then set about the task. I was filled with joy as I saw it taking shape in front of my eyes, and my pleasure was compounded by Charles’s obvious delight.
Charles was extremely well-connected, and very soon a reporter from English Stately Homes, dressed in a brown tweed suit and sturdy brogues, came to interview me. We met at the Jolly Throstle, where I was disconcerted by her rapidly fluttering eyelids until I realised she suffered from a tic. She slow-bowled benign questions at me while vigorously attacking the rare steak and salad in front of her. I answered each one fully, relishing the veal and ham pie she was paying for and the interest she was showing in my work. After lunch, I took her on a tour of the village so she could see the many other smaller designs I’d implemented.
‘Charming,’ she boomed repeatedly as I recounted the story behind each, and her photographer busied herself taking pictures.
Charles, breathless and trembling, showed me the article that appeared in the next quarter’s edition. In addition to the extensive coverage of the work in hand at Devine Towers, ample space had also been accorded to my work in the village. The headline read ‘Capability Brown Mark 2 redesigns Dittington’. I felt a glow of satisfaction as I recalled my father’s views on my potential. I realised that it was I who had been at fault over my choice of career. I should have stood up for myself and done what I wanted. In his own way, and by his own standards, his own code of professional respectability, my father may even have had my best interests at heart.
I remerged from my thoughts to find Charles was still talking.
‘What’s more, they’re going to follow up with another article when the job’s finished. My friends in Islington are distraught with envy. I’m sorry, I’m keeping your contact details a secret, otherwise they’d all be trying to lure you away.’
I shivered. If my fame spread too widely perhaps the many putative litigants who’d held off because of my penurious circumstances would decide it was worth suing me after all.
‘I’m very happy to keep a low profile, Charles. It’s the work I enjoy, not the fame.’
*
I was so absorbed with the task I didn’t give much thought to what was going on in the outside world. My laptop, succumbing to a virus, had ceased functioning and I hadn’t bothered to get it fixed. While I regretted my rift with Rachel, it was never enough to make me take the initiative and seek a rapprochement. However I looked at it, and whatever their relationship, I considered her treatment of Mrs Beart in her memoirs shabby, even vindictive, and I’d no intention of backing down.
At the end of the project, Charles threw a party and invited me. I hesitated before persuading myself it might lead to new work. The contract with Charles had been lucrative and my financial position had eased. A few more jobs like that and I might even be able to buy Old Bob’s cottage from his family.
Sipping my glass of champagne, I surveyed the guests now filling the cream and gold ballroom and spreading noisily through the French windows into the garden. Charles walked up to me, clapping me on the shoulder.
‘Ah, the star of the show! I’m delighted you could make it. Now you’ve finished here I can introduce you to my friends.’ I was led around the ballroom and my hand was pressed enthusiastically by a host of expensively dressed people, each parroting the same glowing comments.
I soaked up the compliments before Charles, consummate at working a room, deposited me with a small woman with a retroussé nose and hazel eyes, whose name I failed to catch.
‘What do you do?’ I asked, purely out of politeness.
‘I’m an accountant with Pears Montague,’ she replied, naming the firm which had t
aken over from AP as Beart Enterprise’s auditors. My stomach felt as though it had started crawling away from me. The last thing I wanted was to talk about the Beart Enterprises’ audit and my fears looked like being realised when she added, ‘I’ve been working on winding up Beart’s businesses. It’s been fascinating.’
She was joined by a tall man wearing an unfashionably droopy moustache and sporting a tuft of beard on his chin. After looking me up and down, he directed his gaze at the woman.
‘Beart, did you say? What a rogue. Incredible no one saw through him.’
‘Fancy his turning up in Brazil like that when everyone thought he was dead,’ the woman said.
I spilled some champagne down my only presentable shirt, and dabbed feebly at it with a paper tissue, leaving small scrunched white clumps on the dark blue cotton.
‘You mean Beart’s not dead?’ I mumbled. The man nodded.
‘Quite a stunt, faking his own death like that, and then trying to kill his woman.’
The conversation was moving too fast for me.
‘What do you mean? His ex-wife Rachel?’
‘No, not her. The other one,’ the man said.
‘Have you been living in a cave?’ the woman asked. ‘It was on TV, radio and all over the newspapers. Beart salted away a small fortune, leaving this woman Suzie to look after it until they met up in Paraguay. Then she did the dirty on him and met up with her lover in Brazil instead. Beart had just enough cash to hire a cut-price hit man. Unfortunately for him this buffoon got caught and pointed the finger at him. The British Government is trying to have Beart extradited. Could take years, if it happens at all. Meanwhile he’s languishing in a jail near Sao Paolo and this Suzie has made it to Paraguay with a Latino boyfriend.
‘What’s his name?’ In my confusion, I slurred my words, and had to repeat them.
‘Chico, I think, or something like that,’ the man said. ‘According to the paper, he’s another right shady character. It’s like the plot of a second-rate film.’
The woman looked at me.
‘And how long have you been a landscape gardener?’
‘All my life, though I sometimes had to do other less interesting jobs to tide me over between gardening assignments.’
‘What sort of jobs?’ the man asked.
‘Office jobs, that sort of thing.’
‘I really envy you,’ she said, ‘always being out in the open air and doing something really creative.’
‘Wouldn’t change it for the world.’ I lifted another glass of champagne from a passing tray, placing my old one on the mantle above the fireplace. ‘My father wanted me to be an accountant, but my heart was always in gardening.’
Chapter 37
The Remains of my Life, 2008-2009
Despite my promise to myself that I wouldn’t contact Rachel again, I found myself dialling her number later that evening.
A sleepy voice answered.
I looked at the clock on my wall and realised, in my inebriated condition, it was past one o’clock in the morning. Following the news about Beart and Suzie, the rest of the evening had slipped by in a welter of meaningless conversations with unmemorable people, made even more so by copious quantities of champagne.
‘Sorry Rachel, did I wake you up?’
‘Yes, you bloody well did. You sound drunk. Are you?’
I looked at my reflection in the mirror; a rumpled stranger with big dark circles under his bloodshot eyes stared manically back at me.
‘Maybe just a tiddly bit tiddly.’
‘What the hell are you phoning me about?’
‘Heard about John and Suzie tonight. About the murder attempt and his being in jail. Did you know about it?’
‘Is that really what you’ve phoned me up to tell me?’
I thought for a moment and understood how ridiculous I was being.
‘Sorry. I’ll call you tomorrow. Goodnight.’
Rachel put the receiver down without responding. I stood up and did a lively jig around the room, gyrating my arms vigorously. Beart had been stitched up good and proper by Suzie. Who would have thought the girl had the nous? I now knew what I’d always suspected; Suzie must have been two-timing me with Chico as well as, probably, lots of others. It didn’t matter. She’d always made it plain we weren’t an exclusive couple, if you could even describe us as a couple. Perhaps a better description would be ‘sometime lovers’. Exhausted, I collapsed fully clothed onto the sofa and dreamed that Beart was a pirate who attacked the ship I was sailing and made me walk the plank.
*
The crick in my neck prevented me from turning my head to the left, and my bloated tongue seemed to fill my mouth. Otherwise I felt surprisingly healthy despite the amount of champagne I’d consumed. I got up, had a quick shot of orange juice and prepared a bowl of instant porridge. I took the first mouthful without the slightest sensation of nausea and wondered whether I was still drunk, or whether the elation I’d experienced on hearing of Beart’s humiliation had protected me.
I texted a grovelling apology to Rachel and asked her to meet me. I wanted desperately to hear what she had to say. Had she suspected Suzie of double-dealing, or had she consigned her too firmly to the ‘too thick’ category? Rachel took her time replying, and by the time she did so a dull throb played around my temples. So much for the myth you can’t get a hangover when you drink top quality champagne.
The text was brief: ‘CU Wed 2pm. My flat. x’
*
The next couple of days dragged, although I was pleasantly surprised to be contacted by two of the guests from Charles’s party who said they were following up conversations of which I’d no recollection.
I awoke early on Wednesday feeling energetic and put in a brisk couple of hours’ work at The Parsonage, now owned by a hedge fund manager, before embarking on the four-hour journey to Solhurst.
Rachel opened the door. Her hair was swept back and she was wearing horn-rimmed glasses.
‘You look like a librarian,’ I said.
I lifted the glasses and peered at her.
‘Why, Miss Jones, without your spectacles—’
She snatched them back from me.
‘What do you want, you silly ass?’
‘It’s customary to invite all except Jehovah’s Witnesses, double glazing salesmen and vampires to cross the threshold before peppering them with questions,’ I replied.
She stepped aside and made a sweeping gesture with her right hand. I walked past her into the dingy sitting-room. It was unchanged from my last visit, except perhaps for the thick carpet of dead flies’ carcasses lying on the windowsill and the large pile of unopened brown envelopes, which looked like bills, by the door. I plonked myself in an armchair and, in the thin shaft of bright sunlight coming from the window, a cloud of small dust particles lifted around me.
I pointed to the piles of papers which surrounded me.
‘Even after all this time you’re still working hard on that villainous book? You’re a persistent little blighter.’
She nodded. ‘You haven’t come to pester me again about that horrid old flame of yours, have you? Because if you have, you might as well leave now.’
I shook my head slowly.
‘No, I know when I’m beaten. I wanted to talk to you about John and Suzie and what happened.’
Rachel’s face creased into a smile. ‘Marvellous, wasn’t it? He’s gone and landed himself in even more trouble, and she’s stuck in Paraguay with nobody but this Chico character and a handful of living-dead Nazis for company. I can’t think of a better outcome.’
‘Any luck finding a publisher for your book?’
She shook her head. ‘Only one chance left; I should hear soon.’
‘How come? You’ve got the inside story.’
‘Too slow. A couple of journalists made any missin
g details up and got their books out already. I keep reworking mine hoping I can generate some interest. Unfortunately, everybody seems to have moved on from John Beart, so the odious Josephine’s sexual exploits may have to remain secret.’
I sighed with relief. ‘It was only one indiscretion and a very long time ago.’
Rachel’s jaw tightened. ‘Well, actually, there’s more to it than that, though you probably don’t want to hear.’ Rachel could be cruel, and this was the expression she wore when she was doing it.
‘Try me,’ I said as confidently as I could.
Rachel’s mobile phone rang. She pulled it out of her handbag.
‘Oh yes. Thanks for calling.’ She walked into the corridor to continue the conversation, leaving her papers, and Mrs Beart’s diary on her desk. The temptation was overwhelming. I grasped its tattered spine and spun it open, leafing quickly through the pages until I came to her entry for that day.
‘Saturday, 18th.
Shopping, then lunch with C. RS came round in the afternoon with emerald ring. Said he was sorry, wouldn’t happen again. Let him MLTM. Then big row about where I’d been on Friday. Told him we were finished and wanted him to put the flat in my name. Refused. Told him had enough to have him put away for years and flung ring in bushes. Stormed off. Boy Gardener, J’s old school friend, appeared like a genie from between the floor boards, tongue hanging out like a big puppy. Angry with RS so let BG MLTM. Clumsy and clueless, but sweet. Funny. Suddenly said he had to go home for supper. Left buttoning himself as ran down road. Showered and met M and C for late night drink in the Albion, and went on to boring party in boring Dean.’
Feeling slightly sick, I flicked over onto the next page.
‘Sunday 19th.
Got up late. M and C came round and we went to the Albion. Came back for coffee. M suggested film, so we went to Abbotsford and saw Carrie. Piper Laurie brilliant as Margaret White. V Scary. Afterwards, had curry, probably cat. Felt queasy. M came back with me and brought a bottle of Tequila. Cured nausea and both fell asleep on the sofa.’
I read the entry several times. Its contents remained indelibly the same. She hadn’t thought about me at all. I flicked on a few pages and read, as a footnote to a litany of complaints about the weather, the post and the launderette, a brief reference to my letter.
