Slinky Jane

by Catherine Cookson

  Grimly the two old men sat looking each into his own particular patch of space, and when Rosie passed through the room, carrying the girl’s frock on her arm, they turned to look at her. But even Grandpop was deterred from comment, and not until he heard her enter what he termed ‘his room’ did he speak. Looking at his son, he commented sadly, ‘End of summat, somehow, here.’

  Chapter Nine

  The village street was deserted. There were no longer faces at the windows and doors, for who could have guessed that as a climax to that remarkable day Peter Puddleton would be going to the Mackenzies’ to do a deal about the garage?

  For the lack of spectators Peter was indeed grateful, for in spite of his high resolve it was requiring all his newfound courage to carry him to his neighbours’ front door. He was no longer afraid of confronting Mavis—she had virtually ceased to exist for him—and he certainly wasn’t afraid of either of the Mackenzie men, but his fear was that when it came to the final issue he would not be able to tolerate the thought of them having his garage and that this attitude might decide him to wait and see the estate agent. The two things against the latter were time and less money.

  He knocked once, a sharp rap, indicative of his feelings to get it over. And when the door opened and Mavis stood before him he could have laughed, had a laugh been left in him, so large was the amazement written all over her. After one gasp, and the usual struggle of her lips to meet, she gave a loud ‘Huh!’ and went to bang the door in his face for Mavis was no fool; whatever she might imagine was the business of his visit there was one thing certain in her mind now, it had nothing to do with her.

  With his foot firmly placed against the door, Peter said, ‘Hold your hand a minute, I want to see your father.’ His voice was loud and brittle and it penetrated the, house, and Mr Mackenzie, coming from the kitchen, said, ‘What is it? Who is it?’ Then the door was pulled out of Mavis’s hand. Mr Mackenzie stared at Peter. His astonishment was no less than his daughter’s, and for a moment he did nothing to hide it. Then, his voice almost a splutter, he said, ‘Well, well! Talk about surprises. This is one, and no doubt about it. Well, Peter lad, and what can I do for you, eh?’

  ‘I want a word with you.’

  ‘Oh, a word?’ Mr Mackenzie’s head moved slowly up and down. Then his attitude changing to his usual brisk, businesslike manner, he cried to his daughter, ‘Get out of the way, girl.’ And he pressed back his arm on her, pushing her against the wall as he said, ‘Come in. Come in. Well. Well now, come in here. Get by, girl, out of the way. Don’t stand there gaping.’

  ‘Davy!’ Mr Mackenzie was calling up the stairs. ‘Visitor here…Peter.’

  ‘Who?’

  It was as if Davy had been catapulted out of his room, for almost instantaneously he appeared at the top of the stairs, and in a second he was down them and had followed his father into the sitting room, where after staring at Peter, he exclaimed, as his father had done, ‘Well, well!’ then added, ‘Hallo again. Some water and blood passed under the bridge since we last met up, eh?’

  It took a deliberate effort for Peter to ignore this remark, and forcing his attention round to the father, he said, ‘You’ve got a saying, Mr Mackenzie—“No beating about the bush!” Well I’ll use it and come straight to the point. I’m willing to sell the garage and land for fifteen hundred cash, right on the nail. And I want everything settled within the next two or three days.’

  Davy’s lips had fallen slightly open, but his father’s were pressed tightly together, and he nodded while he stared at Peter. Then thrusting his hand within the rim of his trousers, he said, ‘Ah, well now, this has got to be talked about. Sit down, sit down. Yes—aye, there’s some talking to be done here.’

  Peter sat down, and Davy, regaining his breath, said, ‘What’s bitten you all of a sudden? Oh, I know’—he waved his hand airily—‘it’s your own business. But fifteen hundred! Eh, Dad?’

  Davy turned to his father, who said, ‘Aye, fifteen hundred—we can’t do that lad.’

  Almost before he’d had time to settle in his chair Peter was on his feet again. ‘That’s all I want to know. That’s the price and I’m not coming down, not a solitary penny, so you can save yourself the effort of bargaining.’

  ‘Now, now, lad.’ Mr Mackenzie laid a restraining hand on Peter’s arm. ‘Don’t let us get excited. Business is business and cannot be dealt with in a minute or so, nor yet a day or so. Not a thing like this, anyway.’

  ‘See here’—Peter looked from one to the other—‘you’ve been pestering me since Monday to sell. Now I’m going to sell, but on my own terms and in my own time. Do you want it or not?’

  Neither of them answered, but after a brief pause Mr Mackenzie, his face working and his hands hitching at his trousers, went towards his desk standing in the corner of the room and sat heavily down.

  ‘Give you thirteen hundred.’

  It was Davy speaking, and Peter, turning and looking at him steadily, said, ‘Funnel will give me my price if I wait a few days. And’—he nodded—‘he’s not the only one interested, let me tell you.’

  This last remark was merely a piece of wishful thinking, coupled with an effort to play these two at their own game, but Mr Mackenzie, knowing he was on a good thing, would not have been surprised had Peter named half-a-dozen men who were after it, so he pursed his lips and said to his son, ‘Leave this to me, lad. Well now’—he stood up—‘you’re driving a hard bargain, Peter, for you know, but for the road coming this way you’d be lucky to get a thousand.’

  Peter did not at this point remind them that their valuation of the garage had previously not exceeded eight hundred pounds.

  ‘Well now, where are we going to get this amount from pronto?’ Mr Mackenzie looked at his son. ‘We haven’t that much in raw cash, have we?’ And Davy, taking the cue from his father, said ‘No, that we haven’t.’

  ‘We could, with a lot of raking around, let you have half and the rest later on.’

  Mr Mackenzie was now fixing Peter with his small bright eyes, and Peter returned his look and said quietly, ‘I want it all together, Mr Mackenzie.’

  ‘Well now, you’re setting me a poser, Peter.’ Mr Mackenzie scrubbed roughly at his chin with the palm of his hand. ‘I’ll say you are. You appear set as I’ve never afore seen you. Changed you are. Looks to me as if you’ve got the makings of a businessman about you.’ He let out a chuckle on a long-drawn breath, which took some flavour from the compliment, then exclaimed loudly, ‘There then it’s a deal. Well I never!’ he slapped his thigh—‘and to think after the way…Oh, well now, as you’re here and that’s settled we’d better have a statement…pen to paper, eh? Just to make things right, temporary like.’

  As his father busied himself at the desk Davy moved into a position where he could look more fully at Peter, and he gazed at him, frankly bewildered as much at the evident change in him personally as at the reversing of his adamant attitude not to let them have the garage. Inwardly Davy was seething with excitement; the garage and land, as it stood, was worth twelve hundred, but to get it for fifteen hundred with its future prospects was an absolute snip. In a few years’ time with a bit of titivating they could ask five thousand and get it. His look was pitying. He knew why Peter was making this lightning decision…the sucker. Still, they continued to be born every day, even in this age. He would have liked to do a bit of leg-pulling and get him on the raw, but thought it wiser to wait—that piece of paper he was now signing had in itself no binding value. He watched Peter lay down the pen, and noted the greyness around his mouth that spoke of inward strain. He watched him reluctantly shake hands on the bargain. He was about to offer his own hand but again thought better of it, and he did not, with his father, accompany him to the door, but from the window he watched him move heavily into the street.

  The door had hardly closed before Mr Mackenzie was back in the room, and father and son regarded each other. Then their hands gripped and held.

  ‘At last!’ said
Mr Mackenzie. Then buttoning his waistcoat he added, ‘Get the car out.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘We’re going to see Tyson.’

  ‘At this time of night? He can’t do anything.’

  ‘Can’t he? He can. Talking takes time. I’ve put him onto a good thing recently and he’ll do this for me. Anyway, we can get everything settled but the writing. He’ll have that agreement all ready by Tuesday at the latest, because, between you and me, I’m as anxious to push things as Peter Puddleton, more if the truth were known for I’ll not feel we’ve got it till it’s signed and sealed.’ He slapped his son’s back and a beam spread over his face. Then his eyes narrowed and his head nodded as he counted his assets. ‘The contracting, shares in the mill, and that won’t end there either, and now the garage and the land for fifteen hundred! Give us a few years and it’ll be a gold mine. He’ll want to cut off the hand that signed that paper when he sees what we’ll do with his garage.’ He thumped Davy in the chest and added finally, ‘We’ll show ’em who’s running what when this village gets on the map.’

  Sunday morning came soft and calm. Nature had apparently forgotten her tantrums of the previous evening. That the swelling congregation was not due to the entrancing beauty and the allure of the morning, nor yet to an overpowering desire to hear him speak the word of God, the Revd Collins knew. As he looked down on his flock he knew that those faces he saw only at weddings, christenings, Christmas and Harvest Festivals were present not for the good of their souls but because after the service there would be the one opportunity of the day to gather and gossip, and moreover to do so without censure.

  He had heard an account of the fantastic happenings of last night at the inn, and although he had been chivvied for hours by his sister to alter his sermon and deliver a resounding rebuke on all who drank and had dealing with…loose women, he had steadfastly refused even to consider such a thing. For the vicar was fighting his own battle. He was profoundly disturbed because he could not rid himself of the memory of sunlit water, a grassy bank, two kind eyes, and a voice that could shut from his mind everything but itself.

  As he stood in the pulpit, the minister’s thoughts made him feel faint and weak, and it was all he could do to read his sermon, let alone deliver it with any semblance of feeling. So it was to be understood that he wasn’t the only one who sighed with relief when he stepped down from the pulpit.

  Moreover, the service ended, he was finding it unbearable to stand and smile and mutter polite nothings to the departing congregation. So picking Miss Tallow as the one who would likely comment the least on his abrupt departure, he left her after a flabby handshake and in the middle of her views on the weather of yesterday.

  The major, coming out onto the gravel path from the porch, turned his eyes to where the minister was hurrying away to the side door of the church. The major’s nose twitched, and he thought, ‘Queer fellow. Bit unsteady really. And what a sermon! Not even worth sleeping to…no humour. And look at yesterday. Ran like a rabbit because the girl teased him. Damn bad thing about that girl—Harry said she was ill, dying.’ He couldn’t believe she was as bad as that. A bit pale, but that was her type and the make-up she stuck on. Suited her though, and gave her that added something. But it made the women hate her. By God, yes! Look at last night. The house raised because he sat with her in the marquee and had a laugh, and young Peter there all the time. Florrie had a bee in her bonnet, too. And bringing up the old family scandal of Connie Fitzpatrick again. What had the girl to do with Connie? You’d think she had started a loose house dead centre of the village to hear Florrie go on. She was worse than her mother where the girl was concerned. Of course, Peter was at the bottom of it. She had always been a little too friendly in that quarter, and that would never do really. No, never. Well, that was settled, and a good thing too. Peter, by all accounts, had gone berserk last night because some fellow had tried to kiss the girl. Really! Really! But he wished he had been there. Of course, with her type that sort of thing was sure to happen. Dying? Nonsense! He wished he was younger, by God, he did! He’d give his household something really to worry over.

  The major straightened his shoulders, pulled down his coat, thrust his neck out of his tight, stiff collar, and exclaimed to himself, ‘Where the hell are they?’ He marched down the path that led into the cypress-sheltered graveyard, and there he saw both his wife and daughter the centre of a group of six or more women, and his mouth clamped tightly. They had got their teeth in. Well, in that case, he would leave them to do their tearing and also to find their own way back. With a certain amount of satisfaction he strolled down the path and into his car and drove away.

  Both Mrs Carrington-Barrett and Florrie, quite oblivious that their escort had departed, continued to listen to Mrs Booth. Mrs Carrington-Barrett’s mouth and eyes mimed her disgust, but Florrie’s face showed no emotion other than sullenness as Mrs Booth continued to pour out her venom. ‘Four of them larking round her, and she egging them on to kiss her. Talk about disgusting! I’ve never seen anything like it in all me born days. And the other man, like a vulture, standing there watching them. But as I said afore he hadn’t anything on Peter Puddleton! You never in all your born days…never. He was like a madman, and him who wouldn’t say boo to a goose. Soppy he was, I used to think sometimes…nothing in him…did what his mother told him. And then, out of the blue, he changes and all in a couple of days. I tell you she turns men crazy. Every man in the village she’s been after. Sex, she oozes it!’

  ‘Same as her they ducked.’

  ‘What d’you say, Gran?’ Amelia Fountain, who by her sufferings at the hands of the harlot, as she put it, felt entitled to be one of this particular group, even though she was rarely to be seen at church, now bent above Granny Andrews who was leaning on her daughter’s arm, and enquired again, ‘What, Gran? What were you saying?’

  The wrinkled flesh of Gran ran into patterns as she munched her jaws before repeating, ‘I said duckin’, that’s what she wants. Only way to cool blood like hers. Sent the other one scooting, it did. Cooled her capers.’ Gran spoke of ‘the other one’ as if the incident had happened last week.

  Mrs Carrington-Barrett laughed an amused laugh and exclaimed, ‘Now, now, Mrs Andrews. We must remember as the saying goes, that “them days are gone”. We have to use other methods in these times.’

  ‘What you say?’ Gran, detecting a note of censure in the major’s wife, suddenly became deaf and exclaimed again, ‘What you say?’ Whereupon her daughter repeated, in a much higher key, what Mrs Carrington-Barrett had said: ‘She says you can’t do that now—duck people. She says them days are gone, we’ve to use other methods.’

  All eyes were on Gran, and Gran looked from one to the other, bestowing on each a flash of her eyes before she brought out: ‘Aye, you might. Not so ’fective though, by half. Village’ll be turned into a land of Sodom and Gomorrah, you’ll see. Mark my words. I’ve seen the havoc her sort can play. No man’s safe, nor never will be. Well, I’ve had me say. Come on.’ She jerked at her daughter’s arm. ‘Can’t stand much longer. Had about enough now.’

  ‘Goodbye, Gran.’

  ‘Goodbye, Gran.’

  ‘So nice seeing you out, Gran. You must try to do this more often.’

  ‘Goodbye. Goodbye.’

  The varied farewells sent the old woman and her daughter down the drive and left standing, besides the Carrington-Barretts, Mrs Booth and Mrs Fountain, Mavis and Miss Collins who had both remained singularly quiet during the chatter of Mrs Booth and the old woman. But now Miss Collins spoke, and she brought all eyes round to her as she exclaimed, ‘I’ve never before wished that I wasn’t a Christian.’

  This remark was so potent in its meaning that the group with eyes slightly widened, waited, and Miss Collins’s next words caused each one of them to react by some movement—the scraping of a foot, the shifting of a bag, the lifting of a shoulder—as she said, ‘If she settles in this village no man will be safe—no man.’

>   There was a pause during which no-one made any comment, they just waited. And she went on, ‘I know it, I feel it. Slinky Jane. Never was anybody more aptly named, for she’ll slink under each man’s skin. There’ll be no peace, not as long as she stays. No woman will know where her man is…or perhaps she’ll know only too well.’

  ‘Who said she was settling here?’ Florrie’s voice was thin and vibrating, as if her words were strung on a taut wire.

  ‘Mavis.’ Miss Collins nodded to where Mavis stood. ‘She says he’s going to marry her.’

  ‘Marry her!’ The exclamations formed a chorus in which Florrie did not join, but she brought out, sharply, ‘Who told you that?’ She was confronting Mavis squarely as if the issue lay between their two selves, but Mavis, now the centre of interest, became evasive. ‘I don’t know who said it exactly, it was something I heard.’

  It was evident to the group that Mavis was holding something back. It was also evident to Mrs Carrington-Barrett that her daughter was giving herself away. She wished she would use more control and not bring herself down to the level of the villagers. For more reasons than one she herself would be only too glad if Peter Puddleton did marry the girl. At least, if she was married there’d be no further sporting in the woods—there was never smoke without fire.

  ‘Come, Mavis,’ she said. ‘You couldn’t have forgotten such an important thing as that.’

  ‘Oh, leave me alone. I tell you, I must have made a mistake.’

  ‘Really!’ Mrs Carrington-Barrett was definitely offended by Mavis’s tone, and she did nothing to hide it. ‘Really!’ she said again.

  Mavis, now red to the ears, struggled valiantly in her embarrassment to cover her teeth. If only her dad hadn’t gone on so, she would love to tell everything she knew, but it was more than she dare do to mention a word of the pending business transaction, for, with his eye on her and his finger thrust into her chest, her father had warned her before leaving the house what would happen should she let out anything about the garage affair.