by Daisy Waugh
Bloody hell. Nobody wanted this little thug hanging around in the village. But it was a small village, and Charlie loved it too. He couldn’t help being curious. ‘Really? What do you know about Fiddleford?’
‘Nothing,’ Colin said automatically.
‘OK. Fine…Look. Perhaps you should take that nose to a doctor.’
‘My nan used to live in Fiddleford.’
‘How about the surgery, Colin?’ asked Charlie hopefully. ‘I could drop you there.’
‘If you’re comin’ from Lamsbury, right? She used to live in the place with the little, little door, two up from the old post office. On the left. D’you know? It’s got a tiny, tiny door. About—’ The boy, all sullenness, defiance and misery suddenly eradicated by the memory of the tiny door, was even moved to stand up to demonstrate. ‘So high,’ he said, indicating with his bloodstained hand an unfeasible two feet off the ground.
Charlie laughed. He knew the house Colin meant and the door was small but not that small. In fact until a couple of years ago, when Charlie first took over management of the estate, his family had owned it. Charlie sold it soon after the old woman died. He tried to remember her name and was ashamed when he realised he couldn’t. Anyway, it now belonged to a couple of weekenders from London, who were almost never there.
‘D’you know it?’ said Colin enthusiastically. ‘Will you drive me there?’
Charlie shook his head. He didn’t want the boy in Fiddleford. What would he possibly find to do there, except cause trouble? ‘There aren’t any doors that small in Fiddleford,’ he said unhelpfully. ‘Look—’ Again, he hesitated. ‘I’m sorry, Colin, I’ve got to go. So if I can’t drive you anywhere in Lamsbury. If I can’t drive you home…’ He smiled unhappily and started walking towards his car. ‘Don’t go smashing any more shop windows now, will you?’
Placidly, the boy sat down again, apparently unperturbed by Charlie’s unwillingness to pass the time with him, quite accustomed to this and any other form of rebuff. It occurred to Charlie that this was probably the first conversation the boy had had all day…Christ, all week…Oh dear God, probably since his grandmother had died…Charlie was beginning to hate himself for trying to walk away…‘I mean,’ he said suddenly, turning back, sounding very abrupt, ‘what’re you going to do next? Don’t just sit down! For Christ’s sake, Colin Fairwell, I’ve got enough on my plate. Please! Pull yourself together!’
Colin looked at him in astonishment. ‘You what? What’re you getting like that for? I only told you about the door. I don’t know why you can’t remember it. It’s right there. Right in the middle of the village.’
‘Well, of course I—’ But he was determined not to allow his good nature to get the better of him, as it almost always did. ‘Of course I remember the house,’ he snapped. ‘I’m just saying—’
Suddenly there came a cry from the opposite end of the car park: ‘There ’e is!’
They looked up to see a group of adolescent boys in school uniform standing about fifty yards away, all pointing at Colin. ‘Oi, you!’ they shouted, breaking into a run. ‘Colin Fairwell, you poof. Come ’ere! We got unfinished business with you!’
Charlie thought they hadn’t seen him. ‘Not to worry,’ he shouted. ‘I’ve got him! The – er – the police are on their way!’ The boys came to a rapid halt, looked at each other and quickly huddled into a muttering bunch. Charlie, somewhat surprised by his own effect, turned back towards Colin with a reassuring smile.
‘Oh, fuck,’ said Colin, looking terrified, staring wide-eyed over Charlie’s shoulder. ‘For fuck’s sake get out the way! They’re gonna—’ He pointed; Charlie looked up in time to see a lighted bottle flying through the air. ‘Duck, you idiot!’ shouted Colin. ‘It’s one o’ their petrol thingies…’
It hit the tarmac several yards in front of them. ‘Bloody hell!’ said Charlie.
‘Run!’ said Colin. ‘They’ll kill us! I’m not jokin’! They’ll fuckin’ kill us!’
A second bottle came hurtling over the car rooftops towards them. This time it landed so close the flames whipped over Colin’s trainers. ‘Get in my car,’ Charlie shouted. ‘Behind the van. The Land Rover. It’s unlocked.’
Colin didn’t wait to be asked twice, and by the time Charlie had made it to his own seat, the boys had the Land Rover surrounded. Charlie started the engine. He waited for the boys to clear out of the way, but when one of them produced a third – unlit – petrol bomb, he reversed anyway, sending them flying in all directions. And as he sped away they shouted at him, full of indignation: ‘Nutter! Crazy bastard! Fuckin’ roadhog! You shouldn’t be allowed on the road!’
Charlie and Colin drove for several minutes without saying a word, both of them too shaken to speak. Eventually Colin broke the silence. ‘I’m bloody glad you started driving when you did,’ he said quietly. ‘They would a’ had us, you know.’ He and Charlie smiled at each other and then slowly, as the horror and relief began to settle, they started laughing, and once they’d started they found they couldn’t stop.
Which is how Colin Fairwell first tipped up at Fiddleford. The second official visitor to the refuge, and one who would certainly never be able to pay his way.
Jo was on the telephone to Hello! magazine when Charlie and Colin arrived home, so she didn’t see them come in. The General, as usual, was working his way through the papers; it was something he did with more intensity than ever since the bombing of Afghanistan had started, much to Grey’s irritation. And Grey (on whom the bombing had wrought quite the opposite effect; he’d given up most newspapers in boredom and disgust, and had taken up cooking increasingly elaborate meals for everyone instead) had just put some bacon on. He had spent the morning feeling uncharacteristically restless, unable to get any decent conversation out of the General, and was hoping that the distant smell of a late breakfast might finally lure the fat new guest and her daughter out of their beds.
Whether it was the bacon or not, at the moment it was ready the fat new guest, her daughter, Charlie and Colin all walked into the kitchen at once.
‘Ah!’ Grey cried triumphantly. ‘So you’re alive are you, Messy Monroe? I was beginning to wonder if the bed had collapsed and you were lyin’ up there concussed, or somethin’…’
‘Ha ha,’ said Messy mildly. ‘You needn’t have worried. The bed and I both survived the night very well, thank you.’
‘I’m doin’ some eggs, darlin’,’ he said, turning back to the stove. ‘Ducks’ eggs. Very rich and quite disgustin’. Unless you eat ’em in tiny wee mouthfuls. With the bacon, o’ course. An’ a little bit of fried bread. How many do you want?’
‘Anyone seen Jo?’ said Charlie, glancing nervously around the room.
Chloe said, ‘Why’s that boy got blood on his face?’
But nobody paid any attention to either of them. Messy absently stroked the back of Chloe’s head, as she always did when her daughter was within stroking distance. She said, ‘No eggs for me, thank you, and just one for Chloe…I had no idea it was so late. We didn’t wake up, did we, Chloe? Either of us. Must be something to do with the West Country air.’
‘Has anyone seen Jo?’ Charlie said again.
‘Excuse me for bein’ rude,’ said Colin loudly – surprisingly loudly for someone so small, who hadn’t yet been introduced – ‘but can I ’ave some o’ those nice rich eggs?’
Which was when the adults finally noticed he was in the room.
‘Good God!’ said the General, looking up from his paper at last. ‘Charlie, did that pasty fellow come in with you?’
Poor little pasty Colin. Their first impressions could not have been less favourable. He looked terrible. The blood on his face had turned crusty and black against his dead white face. There were deep rings beneath his pale eyes and on the top left side of his head, his red hair had flopped apart to reveal a long bald strip of scalp with an angry-looking scar running across the middle of it.
‘’Course you can,’ said Charlie. ‘Grey? There�
�s enough for Colin, isn’t there? Everyone, this is Colin by the way. His grandmother used to live in Forge Cottage…’ But nobody heard the last bit, because he was already leaving the room.
‘One impression you’re probably not receiving from the cuttings, Alyson, is how attractive Messy actually is. Think – Catherine Zeta-Jones, if you like. Only a bit – larger. But she’s actually fabulous-looking. Better-looking than Catherine in a way because of course she’s got those amazing Elizabeth Taylor eyes…The point is, Alyson, you and I know how negative the media’s projection of the size-plus group is. And of course I can’t speak for you, but it’s certainly something I feel very uncomfortable about. For them. For the Size-Plus Group…Well exactly. It’s dreadful, isn’t it? And here is an opportunity to turn that around! To put someone size-plus but fabulous – with a lovely, darling little daughter…’
Though you could never have guessed it from her enthusiastic, professional tone, or from the smile she gave to Charlie when he first found her, hard at work in the back office, Jo, at that moment, was suffering from a major confidence crisis. Perhaps, she was thinking, she had misjudged Messy’s news value? Perhaps nobody would be interested in her? And if she had misjudged Messy’s news value, what was to stop her from misjudging the next person’s? And the next? Until Fiddleford was forced into bankruptcy. And the General would have to go and live in a home and she and Charlie and their family would have to— ‘Mm, yes Alyson – can I stop you there? Because I do, I agree with you one hundred per cent. But the fact is Messy’s hit a nerve, hasn’t she? Like it or not. I think – larger – people do carry around a lot of negative feelings. I think there is a lot of anger out there. Now what I’m saying to you, Alyson, is that here we have Messy Monroe and she’s a very acceptable face of that—anger, for want of a better word. Everybody knows who she is…Messy’s bringing a message of HOPE to all your size-plus readers…She’s telling people that you CAN be size-plus and, you know, write a book about it.’ But Alyson wasn’t biting. It was obvious Jo was wasting her time. Worse than that, she realised, she was teetering on the verge of sounding desperate. Quickly, coolly and with her customary good grace, she extricated herself from the conversation, hung up, looked across at Charlie and grimaced.
‘Shit,’ she said. ‘That pretty much leaves us with Too True! And they don’t pay much…Mind you, they’re very downmarket. They’ve probably got fat readers galore.’
‘That would be the size-double-plus group, would it?’ Charlie said, but he’d only been half listening. He had picked up a handful of invoices from the desk and was learning for the first time the full cost of Jo’s ludicrous new telephone system (which, as well as costing a fortune, required that each house member carry a personalised ‘telephone unit’ with them at all times). ‘Have we paid this bill?’ he said. ‘Because if not I think we should send the whole thing back. Dad refuses to use his and so does Grey, and I think I’ve lost mine…I had no idea it was so expensive.’
She leant across the desk, less simple than it used to be with the bump in front, and snatched the invoices away from him. ‘The system works,’ she said stubbornly. ‘We’ve just got to persuade the others to cooperate. In a house this size we’ve got to have some sort of procedure to stop calls going astray.’
Charlie laughed.
‘It’s not funny, Charlie. It’s perfectly possible…It just needs a bit of focus on everyone’s part.’
‘Right,’ he said amenably, suddenly realising how tired she looked and not wanting to make things any more difficult for her than he was already about to: ‘I’ve got two pieces of news; one’s good and one’s bad. Which do you want first?’
‘The bad.’
He told her the good news first. ‘You’ll be delighted to hear,’ he said, ‘that Fiddleford Manor is now officially registered with Lamsbury District Council as an Accredited Food Premises.’
‘Crikey,’ she chuckled, ‘what the Hell does that mean?’
Charlie shrugged. ‘I don’t think it means anything much. You have to fill in the form…But apparently they’re not allowed to refuse you.’
So that was the good news. The bad news, of course, was Colin.
Jo tried; she wanted to feel as generous as Charlie did. But she was tired and pregnant and terrified about their lack of cash. She was furious.
The thought of eating while Grey leant against the Aga and watched, and no doubt kept up a running commentary on the life expectancy of whatever chair she was sitting on, had done something highly unusual to Messy’s appetite. So unusual, in fact, that when she sat down without duck’s egg or bacon or anything more than a cup of black coffee Chloe stared at her in silent, fearful astonishment. She was much more startled by her mother’s lack of breakfast than by Colin’s tale of battery in Lamsbury that morning. She had never seen her mother refuse food before.
‘Come on, Chloe, eat up,’ Messy said tetchily, when eventually Colin paused for breath. ‘What are you looking like that for?’
‘Are you dying, Mummy?’ the little girl whispered.
Grey cackled happily. ‘Your mummy thinks she’s come to stay in a fat farm,’ he said.
‘A fat farm! Oh. Ha ha. I know what that is,’ jabbered Colin, spraying the table with blobs of fried egg. The excitement of having an audience polite enough not to thump him was making Colin very unwilling to shut up.
‘Hey!’ snapped Grey. ‘Eat that egg in bloody great gobfuls and you’ll never look at a duck’s egg again. Not without vomiting.’
‘But this ain’t a fat farm, though, is it?’ Colin said, adjusting his fork-load obligingly. ‘Can’t be. With you givin’ us eggs with all the cholesterol in. And then all the fat in the fryin’ that’s terrible fer your arteries. No, Messy. If you don’t mind my sayin’, this ain’t no fat farm. You come to completely the wrong place.’
‘Where d’you learn all that crap?’ said Grey.
‘It’s jus’ a borin’ ol’ house in fact. A big ’un. But jus’ a borin’ ol’ house anyway. It belongs to that fellow over there readin’ the newspaper. I know ’cos he’s been ’ere since I was visitin’ my nan. In fac’ proba’ly,’ he added, ‘proba’ly even longer…’
‘This place,’ interrupted Grey, ‘is not just a boring old house, Colin. If I can get a bloody word in edgeways. This place, you little sod, is about the only piece of Paradise you get when the rest o’ the world has told you to go to Hell.’
‘Oh,’ said Colin, looking blank. ‘So it’s not a fat farm then, is it?’
‘It’s not a fat farm, no. That was a joke. But it is – this beautiful place is more than just a house. It’s a hiding place. And a business. A commercial enterprise, if you know what that is. D’you know what that is?’
‘That’s right,’ said Colin mildly. His attention was beginning to wander.
‘And the point is if you can’t pay for the bit o’ peace you get comin’ here – and Colin, God knows how long you’ll be staying but don’t go tellin’ me you’ll be puttin’ much in the fuckin’ pot – you have to ask yourself how you’re gonna make yourself useful in other ways.’
‘What’s that then? Puttin’ what in the pots?’
‘You too, Chloe. Your mother may be coughin’ up a bit. Actually I don’t believe she is, but that’s another matter. You certainly aren’t. So you’ve got to think what you can do. D’ya understand, Chloe? The General there’s scourin’ the papers – an’ as you can see,’ he added irritably, ‘it’s a bloody full-time job…I’m doin’ the cookin’, OK? And bloody well, I might add, though nobody around here appreciates it. Messy Monroe’s addin’ a bit of glamour—’
‘Ha!’ said Messy, blushing ferociously once again. ‘That’s a funny one.’
Grey pretended not to notice. ‘The point is, Chloe – Colin, are you listenin’ to me?’ (They nodded politely.) ‘Whether you’re payin’ or no, it’s a haven. A little oasis. A bloody godsend. And you’re all responsible. We are all responsible for keepin’ it that way. For keepin’ the
bastards—’
‘Easy does it,’ said Messy. ‘She’s only four.’
‘—the bars—the ba—the fuckin’ baddies at bay.’
‘What baddies?’ said Chloe.
‘Robbers and things,’ said Messy evasively. ‘All sorts of baddies.’
‘Aye,’ said Grey. ‘And the reporters who were writin’ cheeky things abou’ you and your mother…Animal slaughterers, too. And other people. People carrying little black suitcases. Or brown ones—’
‘People wearin’ blazers with St George’s on ’em,’ added Colin enthusiastically.
‘Anyone, really,’ said Grey, ‘whose only purpose in comin’ all the way up that drive is to make trouble for any of us.’
‘Oh,’ said Chloe solemnly and fell silent to think about it. ‘So you think we should set some traps?’
‘Aye, we should,’ said Grey. ‘Excellent idea.’
‘And mines,’ said Colin.
‘Another excellent idea!’ said Grey.
‘I mean explosive mines.’
‘Absolutely,’ said Grey impassively. ‘But you have to know how to build ’em.’
Colin turned a shade paler – hardly possible, but he managed it. ‘Explosions aren’t funny, you know.’
‘Ah! And there’s me thinkin’ you were jokin’!’
‘But we could do somethin’,’ he added. ‘Maybe so they land in a whole load o’ cowpats. On their heads. Or somethin’…’
Chloe started giggling. Which made Colin giggle. The way she was looking at him actually made him feel like his chest would burst. Colin had never felt so respected in his life.
It was Messy who suggested that, rather than go outside, which was Colin and Chloe’s preferred option, they look up how to make booby traps on the internet. By the time Charlie and Jo had finished arguing and come to find them they were all in the library, jostling each other for space in front of Charlie’s computer, and Colin was giggling again, because Messy had put in ‘booby trap’, and a bra firm had come up.
‘Oh, I get it!’ Colin was saying. ‘D’you get it? Booby trap! It’s a booby trap! Chloe, d’you know what boobies are?’
