Death in the Cotswolds

by Rebecca Tope

  Later, this snippet of information acquired a great deal more significance than it did at the time of telling. Leslie Giddins was married to a sweet girl and was a reliable member of the pagan group. The fact that he partnered Oliver Grover at bridge seemed unremarkable, as did his sporadic attendance. Presumably there were often better things to do. All my attention was concentrated on how to deal with Gaynor’s sudden pash for the unobtainable Oliver.

  ‘I just need a bit of help,’ she went on. ‘I mean, what should I do next?’

  ‘I’ll think about it,’ I said feebly. ‘But don’t get your hopes up. I suspect Oliver’s a confirmed bachelor by now.’ Yet again I retreated from the task of explaining something to my friend. It was as if she lacked some crucial mental function. Once or twice I had wondered if she might be mildly autistic, unable to grasp anything unusual or subtle, incapable of seeing things from another person’s viewpoint.

  Stella, another friend, had accused me of ‘rescuing’ Gaynor in order to boost my own status. She’d been drunk at the time, and I’d tried to laugh it off as the booze speaking. But I couldn’t forget it, and nearly every time I saw Gaynor I asked myself whether it was true. Eventually, I admitted it probably did explain why I stuck with her, despite there being so many drawbacks. Besides, she was a brilliant knitter.

  ‘There’s a car outside Greenhaven,’ she noted, looking out of my front window. I was in the kitchen, but I heard her clearly enough. I only had to tilt my head to see her as well.

  ‘Yes, Phil’s there. Didn’t I tell you he was coming?’

  She seemed tense all of a sudden. ‘No,’ she said. ‘Is he by himself?’

  ‘Actually, no. He’s with some bit of fluff.’ Even as I spoke, I felt a kick of shame in my gut.

  ‘What?’ She frowned. ‘You mean he’s got a girlfriend?’

  ‘So it would seem.’

  ‘Is the electric on again, then?’

  ‘Nope.’

  ‘They must be freezing. How long are they staying? What are they doing?’

  ‘They’ve come for the week, to sort out Helen’s things, before putting the house on the market. I expect their love’s keeping them warm. Plus the logs and the jumpers I’ve given them, of course.’

  ‘Jumpers? Which ones?’

  ‘She’s got that brown thing that Maddie did. I gave him the blue crew-neck.’

  ‘No! Not the slubby one?’

  ‘He might give it back when he goes. It’ll be all right. Just a quick shake in the fresh air, and nobody’ll know it’s been worn.’

  ‘Ari!’ she giggled. But her amusement didn’t last. A few seconds later she was sighing and drifting restlessly around my small room, glancing out of the window every few seconds.

  ‘What’s the matter?’ I asked her. Usually she sat tidily in one of my saggy chairs, her ankles crossed like a debutante. ‘Is it Oliver?’

  ‘Oh no,’ she said. ‘I suppose that’s just a bit of silliness. He wouldn’t be interested in me.’

  Nobody could have done differently. ‘Rubbish,’ I told her. And then I got stuck. I couldn’t for shame tell her she was interesting or beautiful or even particularly clever. She had failed all but one of her A-levels, for a start, and never managed to qualify for anything since. The truth was that she didn’t appeal to men, not only because of her mousy looks, but her self-effacing manner. She couldn’t look a person in the eye for long. Something always seemed to fail inside her in the middle of a promising conversation. As if she remembered her place, her inadequacies, and gave up all effort.

  ‘I have to pull myself together,’ she murmured. ‘I can’t go through life like this.’ I had to shake my head to convince myself I’d heard correctly. This was a sudden departure from the Gaynor I knew.

  ‘Like what?’ I said, coming out of the kitchen. ‘What do you mean?’ I confess that my first thought was that I might be about to lose my best knitter.

  ‘I need a focus,’ she said, using a word I never thought I’d hear coming from her lips. ‘Something outside of myself, with other people.’

  ‘But you’ve got the bridge club for that.’

  ‘That’s not much of a challenge any more,’ she said. ‘Although it’s going to the bridge club that made me see the possibilities.’

  I was lost. The beans were boiling fiercely and I retreated to the Rayburn to rescue them. Gaynor never talked about challenges or focus. Who, I wondered, had she been listening to? What on earth had come over her?

  We had our lunch, and she raved about how fabulous it all was, and how she’d have only had some bread and cheese if it hadn’t been for me.

  Before she left, having run out of conversation, I remembered the discoveries in Greenhaven’s attic. ‘Guess what,’ I said. ‘Somebody’s been making free with Helen’s house.’

  She blinked at me. ‘Pardon?’ Her voice came out thickly as if through a full mouth. But her mouth was empty – we’d finished lunch minutes ago.

  I pointed across the street. ‘We found a whole lot of stuff in the attic this morning. Somebody has really been making themselves at home up there – varnished the floor, kept all the cobwebs and dust cleared away – and stashed away a lot of Masonic stuff.’

  ‘Masonic? How do you mean?’ Her voice still sounded obstructed.

  ‘A ring, some sort of banner, lots of books. I can’t remember all of it. Everything’s got the usual emblems on them. I remember from when Phil was a Mason. He showed me some of the stuff then.’

  ‘He wasn’t supposed to do that, was he?’

  I shrugged. ‘He was never very good at sticking to their idiotic rules. He’d never have joined if Caroline’s father hadn’t insisted. He only did it to please her.’

  ‘Caroline?’ I became aware that Gaynor had done little but echo my words since I started the story.

  ‘You know. Phil’s wife. Ex-wife, I mean. She and I were great friends for a while. I’m sure I must have told you. She’s married again now, to that Xavier bloke who does garden design or whatever it is. Lives near Painswick.’

  ‘Johnson,’ she said. ‘Xavier Johnson.’

  ‘That’s right. I didn’t think you’d know him.’

  She shook her head and avoided my eye. ‘I’ve just seen his boards up, that’s all. It’s not a name you’d forget.’

  ‘I wonder if he’s on the square,’ I murmured. ‘Caroline would be pleased, if he is. She’s always loved the Masons, silly cow.’

  Gaynor coughed and went to the kitchen for some water. When she came back, she started talking again about buttons for the knitted coat, and then went home at about half past three.

  I tried not to think of the forlorn solitary evening that lay ahead of her. She lived in a flat in Stow, part of a large house that had been converted. When her parents died, I’d expected her to simply carry on in their house, but she’d explained that it was too big for her and she didn’t like living on two floors. When I queried this, she said she could always hear noises – from upstairs during the day, and from downstairs during the night. ‘I’m scared all the time,’ she admitted. ‘I just want a nice ground floor flat, with a little bit of garden. I think that would be perfect.’

  She found it effortlessly, two minutes from the centre of Stow with open fields at the back. She banked the rest of the money she’d made selling her parents’ house, vowing not to touch a penny of it unless she became desperate. ‘I can make enough to keep myself, while I have my strength,’ she said, sounding touchingly old-fashioned. The flat had one bedroom, a living room and a kitchen-diner. My little house was small enough, but I had twice the space that Gaynor did.

  As for myself, I had plenty to do to prepare for the meeting that evening. Living on meagre amounts of money made me odd in the eyes of the modern world, especially being of the generation who had not the least idea of how to survive. It also kept me busy. My garden was small but densely packed with produce. It needed constant vigilance, the seasons galloping ahead of me if I allowed my attention to waver.


  I put two bowls of flour and yeast to warm by the Rayburn, and went outside to spread mulch around the currant bushes. From the back, I had no view at all of Helen’s house, and managed to forget, for several minutes at a time, that Phil was in there. When he did force himself into my head, it was mainly to wonder what he would do about the amazing state of the attic.

  The mulch-spreading took all of twenty minutes, by which time my hands were cold. Nagging for my attention was the forthcoming Samhain season. Despite my emphatically prosaic approach to paganism (and most other things), this was a time of year I found exciting. I had learned such a lot during the Samhain ceremonies of previous years that I was now convinced that it really did have some very special features. The way it was usually expressed was to talk about the blurring of boundaries between two realms. The thinning of the walls, the porosity of the divide between here and there. Since Pullman’s book The Subtle Knife had been published, this idea was easier to grasp. The ‘curtain’ became more flimsy and we could glimpse other realities.

  It had happened to me when I hadn’t been expecting it: when I had seen a ghost. An apparently three-dimensional person who ran through a dense hedge as if it wasn’t there at all. I found it thrilling, conferring on me some kind of privilege that I felt no need to talk about. I nursed my warm secret, bringing it out every October to remind myself that there was something right and true about my pagan beliefs, regardless of the materialistic world around me.

  Samhain is the time of death and sex, where ordinary individuals glimpse something of the relation between these two. Human babies tend to be conceived at Beltane or Lammas – the spring and summer festivals where inhibitions are quelled by music and drink and the weather impels them to excess. But this is not the way animals operate. They resist the farmer’s knife, surviving the cull triumphant, copulating to express their survival. Die or procreate – the eternal option.

  This is all perfectly ordinary stuff. So obvious it ought not to need stating. But people have a tendency to create dramas and conflicts out of ordinary matters, and some of the antics committed in the name of paganism glory in the nastier side of our natures.

  It might be merely the power of suggestion, but when a person knows a curse has been put on him, he’s liable to react strongly. It will haunt him, making him swagger defiantly, while using whatever strategies he can to forget. And the person imposing the curse doesn’t escape, either. We fear those we hurt, and it becomes curiously difficult to look our victim in the face.

  I should know. I’ve been there and done that.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The weather was persistently grey, with a hint of drizzle in the air. Twilight came early, as it had the day before, and I could see the yellow glow of candlelight coming from the windows of Greenhaven, and no let-up in the smoke surging from the chimney. What were they doing in there, I wondered. No television or hi-fi. Possibly a battery radio, but I doubted it. They’d be cuddled together on Helen’s leather sofa, talking sweet nonsense, hour after hour, until drifting entwined to bed. They’d eat bread and cold ham, drink wine and finish with fruit and chocolates.

  I’d kneaded my dough, and left it to rise. Early in the morning, I would put it in to bake, ready for breakfast. Probably I’d take a loaf across the street. They’d be impressed.

  Then, half an hour before people were due to arrive for the moot, Phil came knocking on my door again. This time I recognised who it was from the rhythm of the raps.

  ‘Me again,’ he said when I opened the door.

  I kinked an eyebrow at him but said nothing.

  ‘I’ve been back up to the attic. We can’t just ignore it or leave those things there. I’ve got to decide what to do about it.’

  ‘Why tell me?’

  He took a step forward, barging into my living room without being invited. He was holding the cardboard box from the attic. ‘Listen,’ he said. ‘This is a very odd assortment. Nothing to suggest a Master or even a Past Master, except for this.’ He held up the blazing star medallion. ‘But it’s not quite right – see?’

  I didn’t even pretend to examine it. ‘Phil, I’m not that familiar with the intricacies of Masonic symbolism,’ I reminded him. ‘I’m surprised you remember so much detail.’

  He grimaced. ‘So am I,’ he said. ‘But seeing all this stuff takes me right back.’

  I could see he was hating the whole thing. He wouldn’t meet my eye, worried perhaps that I’d remind him of the drama that his resignation from the Lodge gave rise to.

  ‘Why not just throw it away?’ I asked. ‘What do you care about upsetting some deluded little hypocrite? Isn’t that what you called them?’ I gave him an innocent smile. ‘Good phrase, that. Very memorable.’

  He shuddered. ‘I’ve still got them under my skin, even now,’ he admitted. ‘Thea doesn’t understand it, of course. How could she?’

  ‘You’ve been trying to explain it to her?’

  ‘All afternoon,’ he said. ‘Told her the whole story.’

  ‘Heavens!’

  He smiled ruefully. ‘Heavens indeed. Sun, moon and seven stars, you might say.’

  ‘I don’t know who the Masters in the local Lodge have been in the past few years,’ I told him, reverting to his initial request. ‘I try to ignore them these days, though it isn’t easy. Once you become aware of them, you can’t escape. Even Oliver Grover’s into it now, according to his Gran. She thinks it’s a sign that he’s got a great career ahead of him.’

  ‘Who’s Oliver Grover?’

  ‘Local accountant.’

  Phil snorted. ‘No surprise there, then,’ he said. ‘But I must say they’ve cleaned their act up a lot since all that trouble in the late Eighties. To the point where they hardly seem to matter any more.’

  ‘Damned by indifference,’ I said. ‘Poor things, they must really hate that.’

  ‘I doubt if they’ve noticed,’ said Phil.

  I hadn’t asked him to sit down or have a drink. He did not seem to notice that I had my chairs arranged in a circle, that there were candles and bowls of water and bundles of herbs on the table in the middle of the room. I only had a few more minutes before I needed to get rid of him.

  ‘Why don’t you just chuck it all in the bin?’ I said, indicating the box.

  ‘I can’t,’ he said. ‘I know how much store they set by all these knick-knacks.’

  ‘Bibelots,’ I said, using a word I’d always loved.

  ‘Gewgaws,’ he contributed, playing along. For a policeman, his vocabulary wasn’t bad at all.

  But it couldn’t last. ‘Phil – I’ve got some people coming,’ I said. ‘Don’t leave that stuff here, whatever you do. Somebody’s sure to sniff it out. Let me have a think about it and I’ll come over in the morning and we can talk about it then.’

  He went willingly enough back to his girlfriend. On the way to the front door, I saw him pause at his car, open the tailgate and dump the box of Masonic trinkets inside. What did he plan to do with it, I wondered.

  It was bound to be an irritant to them, the mystery of the attic, when all they wanted was to be left in peace. They wanted time together, away from the unpleasantnesses of his work, or the strangeness of human behaviour.

  I didn’t blame them. It didn’t matter to me. I no longer yearned for Phil’s attentions. On balance, I wanted him to be happy. The woman seemed harmless, apart from her deplorable dog. I couldn’t stop them selling Greenhaven, much as I might like to. Not only would I lose a useful little retainer in my capacity as caretaker, but I might acquire undesirable neighbours who would be noisy and interfering and intrusive. But that was some time off yet, and I could always retreat to the garden behind my house if the people over the street offended me.

  My tasks occupied me as usual. The cat curled on his stool by the Rayburn, and I pottered about the room, making everything tidy and ready for the coming moot.

  Phil had gone and I forgot about him for a few hours.

  Six people came to
the moot. Four women and two men, plus me. The group included a couple – Kenneth and Pamela – who were planning a full-scale pagan wedding at Imbolc. We’d all argued for Beltane as far more fitting and traditional, but they insisted. They shared a birthday on February 3rd, and had a strong liking for the quiet optimism of Imbolc, rather than the uninhibited carryings-on of the May celebrations. In any case, it gave us all something unusual to look forward to, and their obvious affection warmed the atmosphere every time they entered a room.

  We began by sharing thoughts and insights concerning Samhain. Pamela started us off, in her light chatty voice, looking round at us in turn, face all bright and enthusiastic. ‘I don’t know where this came from,’ she said, ‘but I suddenly noticed that in French, sex and death sound the same. L’amour and la mort. Isn’t that amazing! It sparked off a brilliant meditation, where I wove the symbol of Cupid’s arrow with an arrow of death, and then I pondered the changes that both bring to us. The transformations. But I couldn’t bring them together—’ she looked at us again. ‘I can’t find a way to unite sex and death meaningfully.’

  I watched the others’ reactions to this, wanting to jump in with some clever summary, but finding my tongue paralysed. Surely I’d known about l’amour and la mort? Didn’t everybody? Try as I might, I couldn’t recall ever having been aware of it until that moment.

  ‘There’s “the little death”,’ Kenneth put in hesitantly. ‘You know – it’s what they say about orgasm.’

  A frisson ran round the circle. We were all wary of overt references to sexual matters, myself included. We would make jokes and indulge in innuendo sometimes, but despite the image of pagans as free spirits indulging in all sorts of hedonism, our particular group shied away from it most of the time. When it did intrude itself we were generally very solemn about it, searching for deeper meanings and links with nature. Pamela and Kenneth were careful not to flaunt the physical side of their relationship in public, which I thought was sweet of them. Besides, they were both in their late thirties and not at all inclined to giddiness. On top of that, Kenneth had some peculiar bone condition, which meant they broke easily. He habitually moved carefully, avoiding any risk of knocks or falls. I had never heard anyone make the obvious jokes about what it might be like to have sex with him, but I’m sure it was in all our minds.