He Made Me (Booker & Cash Book 2)

by Oliver Tidy

  My plans, the land and a healthy bank balance were all I had. But it was a start. That morning my architects had sent over their rough interpretations of my cruder drawings and arm-waving gestures from the site meeting and I had been waiting to shut up shop so that I could study them in peace.

  ***

  3

  I heard Jo thumping up the stairs with all the finesse of a house-trained Shetland a little after seven-fifteen. Light on her feet she wasn’t. Not unless work demanded it, of course. She knocked on the door that divided our living spaces and I shouted her in; it was open.

  ‘Smells good.’

  ‘Thank my uncle for that.’

  ‘Did he teach you how to cook?’

  ‘I meant my Uncle Ben,’ I said, wishing I’d just said I’d bought a cook-in-sauce and avoided reminding myself of a recently deceased and sorely missed close relative. ‘Wine or beer? It’s all in the fridge. Help yourself.’

  Jo did. She poured a tall glass of white wine from the five-litre box. ‘Why do you think they don’t sell lager in cardboard boxes?’ she said. ‘Save on all that recycling.’

  ‘It’d go flat.’

  ‘Someone could invent something for that.’

  ‘Maybe the lager companies have vested interests in the tin and glass recycling industries,’ I said. She looked like she was considering it.

  Jo said, ‘I had a call from Mrs Swaine while I was out.’

  I was plating up. Jo clattered our knives and forks onto the tabletop, sat down and helped herself to a poppadom. She crunched it noisily.

  I said, ‘Changed her mind?’

  Jo shook her head. ‘Wants you to come along.’ She knew that would make me stop what I was doing and look in her direction. She gave me a satisfied smile and took another slurp of wine and another crunch of the giant crisp.

  ‘Why?’

  ‘It’s about how she wants to pay me.’

  I set the steaming plates down on the table, got my own drink and said, ‘Any chance you can be a bit more explicit?’

  ‘Mrs Swaine can’t afford my daily rate in pounds and pence.’

  ‘So what? She wants to pay you by doing things to me? I can’t see that I’d have a problem with that if you don’t.’

  ‘She’s quite a looker, isn’t she?’

  ‘Your type too? Maybe we could share her. Maybe that’s what she’s got in mind.’

  Jo didn’t rise to my kidding. She raised an eyebrow and gave me her ‘grow up and get over it’ look. She said, ‘You boys must have your little fantasies, I suppose.’

  ‘For some of us that’s all we’ve got.’

  ‘What happened to… what’s her name? Donna? She seemed keen.’

  ‘Keen and mental and schizophrenic and possessive and a closet Catholic, would you believe?’

  Jo laughed at me. ‘Oh dear. Poor you. And there was me thinking that all those evenings behind the locked dividing door you two must have been at it like rabbits.’

  It was my turn to laugh. ‘Not a chance. She just liked to talk. And watch television. And eat.’

  ‘Sorry.’ She looked like she meant it.

  I shrugged it off and tucked in.

  I believed Jo hoped I would land myself a serious and decent woman sooner rather than later if only to ease her conscience. When we’d first met, Jo had been part of an investigation that, for a time, suspected me of complicity in the deaths of my relatives. She’d sensed my attraction to her and when that horrible episode of our shared existence was concluded she knew I’d be looking to build on our detective/innocent victim relationship. We were not to be. I had felt temporarily stupid and, more irritatingly, let down. But I only had myself to blame for that. She had given me no active encouragement, although she must have known about the growth of my feelings for her.

  ‘So, Mrs Swaine can’t afford you?’

  ‘Apparently not. Not in cash or credit, anyway. Actually, I think it’s got more to do with keeping her employment of the services of an investigator to herself and she can’t do that if she’s dipping into the household budget to pay for it.’

  I made a face. ‘I heard they’d fallen hard but I didn’t realise it was as bad as that. They used to own a lot. Where do I fit into her thinking?’

  ‘She wants to pay me in books.’

  And the penny dropped. Mrs Swaine associated me with the dead Bookers in more than locational terms. ‘She wants to pay you in books,’ I repeated.

  ‘That’s what she said. She also said that if you know anything about books you’ll be able to convince me that a few of her Reader’s Digest collected editions are going to be worth a few days of my time.’

  ‘A few yards of Reader’s Digest collected editions aren’t worth anything other than the time to read them or the warmth you’d get from burning them.’

  ‘OK. I might have made that bit up, but you get the idea.’

  I didn’t need to think much. ‘I’m in. I’d like to see what’s in her library. She must think she’s got something worth flogging. And I’ve always fancied having a look around Goldenhurst. What time?’

  ‘She said to go up between two and three. What meat is this?’

  I smiled. ‘You like it?’

  ‘It’s delicious. Even the sauce can’t hide that.’

  ‘It’s veal.’

  Jo put down her fork. And stared hard in my direction.

  I said, ‘What?’

  ‘You know how they farm veal?’

  I speared another lump, shovelled it in and shook my head.

  ‘You could have said.’

  ‘You could have asked.’

  ‘I just did.’

  ‘And I just told you.’

  We could have been married. She resumed picking at her rice.

  ‘You want to see the rough plans for out the back after?’

  She said she wasn’t doing anything else.

  ***

  4

  Gluttons aside, people generally don’t want cake until elevenses. They might want proper coffee before then. But then they’d probably want something to eat with it that wasn’t cake. There were at least two other cafes in the village doing bacon sandwiches from breakfast-time onwards and I had no intention of making Bookers competition for them.

  One of the promises I made myself when I opened my coffee shop was that I would not sink to the lowest common denominator of seaside village eateries. There would be no surrender: we would never sell chips. And we wouldn’t be doing English fry-ups or bits of griddled pig in bits of cheap white sliced bread. This wasn’t about the money for me. It was about living a dream. It was about being different. It was about creating something I could be proud of. I could think of a few ‘dragons’ who’d roll their eyes at that.

  Because people generally don’t want cake early we didn’t open early. Our winter opening times had quickly evolved to one shift – eleven to four. There was never going to be a great deal of local trade in at least two seasons of the year and so Romney Marsh was not where I was looking for my clientele, though each and every Marshen that came through the door was just as welcome as someone who’d travelled thirty miles or more. I was aiming more for the kind of place people would make part of their day out at the seaside, come rain or shine. And generally speaking people driving to Dymchurch for a trip out in the winter months didn’t arrive much before eleven and had all cleared off before four.

  My years of living in Dymchurch, and visiting, had taught me that a lot of people, particularly the elderly and retired, will think nothing of driving some miles at least once a month just to walk on the beach – or the sea wall if the tide is in – and to stare wistfully at the sea as the British are often wont to do – it’s in our DNA. And after some bracing, fresh, salt air they feel entitled to seek refreshment in the village. I wanted to appeal to that mentality. I wanted the treat, the ambience, the experience of having coffee and cake in Bookers to be something that people would travel for, plan for, look forward to and see as part of their j
aunt. I had a great belief that given time, patience and word of mouth Bookers could be that kind of place. It was a ‘build it and they will come’ philosophy. Maybe Phil Alden Robinson would one day be interested in making a film about me: Coffee Shop of Dreams.

  I was very pleased with the way my plans had been realised for the interior. The original, solid, locally-made oak bookcases and the matching counter had stayed. I’d had another oak bookcase made to line another long wall. It didn’t yet have the patina of the original it mimicked but give it thirty years and it would be close. I’d gone with high quality dark wooden flooring and dark leather seats in small groups with low matching tables. Full, we could comfortably seat thirty. We had potted plants, quiet music, sometimes, and the books, of course. The colours leaned towards neutral and the lighting soft and intimate. We had new windows, a new front door and a very tasteful green and white striped awning that stayed tightly furled through the winter months lest a Channel gale rip down Dymchurch high street and tear it from its fixings.

  A lot of books had had to go. I couldn’t have fitted coffee tables and chairs in otherwise. But a lot of books had been retained and they filled the shelves of the bookcases with one of the finest, most colourful, dazzling displays of modern first editions one is likely to see anywhere. My word on it. The complete collection of all the Booker Prize lists of winners and losers was the jewel in the crown here as it had been in my uncle and aunt’s time when the bookshop had been their life and livelihood.

  I’d had lockable close-fitting glass fronts fitted to both protect and secure all the books. It wasn’t that I didn’t trust people. Actually, it was. I was under no illusions that people might come because of the books. It stood to reason that if people liked the books and the books weren’t for sale but just on show one or two of them might view the act of helping themselves to something that caught their eye as something less than a crime. I understood this because I was a book thief myself. Or, as I preferred to refer to it, a book rescuer. If ever I saw a good condition title of a collectable edition in a genre that interested me on a pub bookshelf, for instance, it invariably went home with me under my jacket. I never lost sleep over ‘saving’ books from ignorant and uncaring owners. And I was equally sure that they were never missed.

  One of the great things about my new life was that I no longer had to get up at an ungodly hour. As a teacher for the previous ten years I’d been regularly rising to begin my daily ablutions at a little after six o’clock. Weekends I usually didn’t rise before eight – I’m not a great one for lying around in bed all morning unless I have the company to encourage me to do so. I was rarely getting up before eight in my new life and then I either went for my constitutional – a three-mile run along the sands to St Mary’s Bay and back – or just took it easy, mentally preparing for my day.

  I was usually the first into the shop downstairs and by the time the first of my employees arrived coffee was ready and I was reading a book or the paper or on the Internet on my laptop enjoying the exclusivity of a place that I felt entirely comfortable and at home in. It surprised me how quickly I had adapted to my new life.

  That Tuesday, I’d run, showered, breakfasted and spent most of my morning outside in the cold and blustery weather in wellington boots, a woolly hat and a thick coat with a tape measure comparing the plans for development with the space I had to work with. I was tremendously excited with the potential of the place. I was starting to feel that I might really have a future in this unusual corner of Kent.

  I made a call to the architect and we discussed details and I went back out to check and re-check. It came as a great surprise to me when Jo pitched up in the shop to tell me she was leaving in an hour. I persuaded her to have a coffee with me and then to come outside and compare something on the plan with what was there. She indulged me as she unwaveringly had since we’d become friends. Jo was good like that. She never begrudged me my new-found wealth and prospects when the bottom had fallen out of her world. She never acted like I owed her anything at all for saving my life twice. If anything she would sometimes exude a frustrating embarrassment at being behind on the rent agreement that she had insisted on drawing up.

  ***

  5

  We took Jo’s car, but only because it was blocking mine in and we weren’t going far. She was soon busy turning a pleasant ten minute potter on narrow winding roads through the flat Romney Marsh landscape into a terrifying rally time-trial when I said, ‘Will it matter very much if we’re late?’

  ‘We’re not going to be late. It was just an about time.’

  ‘So why are you driving like this?’

  ‘Like what?’

  ‘Like someone who’s late for something.’

  She huffed and eased off the accelerator. ‘You’re turning into an old woman, do you know that?’

  ‘Physiological considerations aside, I’d rather turn into an old woman than a blind corner and a tractor or a dyke. I’m too young to die. Plus, these days I’ve got things to live for. Find out anything about the Swaines?’

  ‘Quite a bit, actually. There’re a few websites that mention them. How old do you think she is?’

  ‘Thirty-eight?’

  ‘Forty-seven.’

  ‘Blimey. See what a life of ease can do for the ageing process?’

  ‘This is her second marriage. He’s five years her junior. They tied the knot two summers ago. She kept her family name.’

  ‘How romantic. What’s his?’

  ‘Tate.’

  ‘What does he do?’

  ‘As far as I can make out, nothing productive. Another one who lives off the blood, sweat and tears of the proletariat. He share deals.’

  ‘Is that a nice way to be speaking about your employer?’

  ‘He’s not my employer. She is. Potentially.’

  ‘What happened to the first husband?’

  ‘Dead. Old age. He was twenty years older than her.’

  We rounded a bend made blind by a hedgerow that even in its winter nakedness managed to obscure what lay in wait. The road was full of sheep. Jo braked comfortably to a stop and we sat while the shepherd cajoled and manoeuvred his flock through the open gate of an adjacent field. He touched his cap as the last shot past him. I noticed that he was using bright orange agricultural twine to secure his overcoat around his ample middle. The clichéd anachronism made me smile.

  Misinterpreting my enjoyment of the moment, Jo said, ‘If you say anything resembling I told you so I’ll make you walk the rest of the way.’

  ‘Then you wouldn’t have anyone to value the books she wants to trade.’

  ‘OK. You can walk home then. It’s going to rain.’

  I shut my mouth as we crossed the Royal Military Canal, that impossible undertaking of brute force and, to me, military stupidity. The canal was commissioned and built – or should that be dug? – in response to the threat of invasion by Napoleon. It was over twenty miles in length and ran along the base of the hills that surrounded Romney Marsh, from Seabrook just this side of Folkestone, through and past Rye in East Sussex. It was no more than twenty feet wide for most of it. I’d always had a hard time believing that twenty feet of fairly shallow fresh water was going to keep out a determined invading army under Napoleon that had just crossed over twenty miles of quite deep English Channel. Maybe the military strategists of the time knew something I didn’t, although if they were the ancestors of those cretins who ordered tens of thousands of patriotic men to walk blindly into German machine gun fire in the First World War I doubted it.

  Immediately we left the Marsh we climbed the steep narrow road hemmed in by bare trees atop high-sided verges that wound its way up towards Aldington. At the top, just as the road levelled out, stood Goldenhurst.

  Goldenhurst is an imposing property. I imagine that it always has been since the oldest parts of it were constructed somewhere around the sixteenth century. And the side that confronts visitors looks both ancient and striking – vertical darkened timb
ers divide up the white front elevation in traditional Tudor style, all under an uneven Kent peg-tiled roof with dormer windows made wonky with age and subsidence. Despite its age it looked in general good order, as did the gardens, considering the time of year and the high winds the area had suffered recently.

  Through the open gate we turned into a gravel drive bordered with rampant hardy evergreen shrubbery. Jo brought the car to a halt in front of the garage. As she rummaged for something in her handbag I stared at the building and the opening lines of Daphne du Maurier’s Rebecca sprung unbidden into my mind. Though there was little I could see to compare to the physical description of Manderley, I experienced a palpable and unsettling feeling of foreboding and unease – a haunting feeling that did something to the hairs on the back of my neck. I had driven past the place countless times but never before visited – never having had either cause or invitation. And yet, I experienced the strangest feeling that I had been here and that once inside the house I would know what to expect. Things would be familiar. The spell was broken by a curtain twitching at an upstairs window.

  Mrs Swaine opened the front door as we walked towards it. We said our hellos.

  ‘Glad you could come, Mr Booker.’

  ‘Glad to be invited, Mrs Swaine.’

  When we were in the warm with the door firmly shut, she supplied us with guest slippers, pointed to where we could hang our coats and then led us through. The house was nice – tastefully, sparingly and appropriately furnished. There was artwork on the walls. Some of it looked original. The place was warm and smelled clean. Somewhere a real fire was burning. I stopped at a strikingly-clunky impression of a Paul Nash Dymchurch sea wall painting. Whoever had done this seemed to my amateurish eye to have captured the spirit of Nash’s outlook.