I made it my business to be at the village shop immediately after nine, the time I knew Sue Clayton would be there to buy her paper. In my mature student days, I’d taken up some offer that meant that if I bought a regular Guardian I got it at discount and I’d stuck with it ever since. It was one of two put aside for regular customers; the other was for Sue. So we had something in common, including, this morning, a shared interest in dead cats. But I wouldn’t point that out straight away.
Nick had bowed himself out almost immediately last night, furiously refusing to discuss the matter of his chained corpse, though I thought his anger was directed at himself for having mentioned it, not at me. I hadn’t argued, partly because he really didn’t look at all well and mostly because I really couldn’t understand why I’d invited him up in the first place. He certainly wasn’t the sort of man I’d have checked out from a personal ad. Mind you, he was better than some I’d actually agreed to meet. A couple you’d have expected to see beaming out at you from the Sex Offenders’ Register. Others were still labouring under the illusion that a gay man needed a woman to be respectable, and I wasn’t going to be any man’s ‘beard’. Or the other woman, of course. For all an erring man claimed his wife didn’t understand him, I always had a strong suspicion she understood him only too well. No, my Holy Grail was a nicely set-up man who could offer all that Tony had offered. Actually, rather more. Being married to someone doing a great long stretch forty miles from home isn’t my ideal of conjugal satisfaction. While he was banged up, I’d had plenty of offers, don’t doubt it, but I’d never fancied anyone enough to want to divorce Tony – always assuming his family and friends would have let me. Oh, they didn’t seem to mind the odd fling, so long as I was totally discreet, and word never seemed to get back to Tony. Except once, when – more in sorrow than in anger, he assured me – he told me he’d have my lover’s balls cut off and shoved down his throat if I didn’t give him up.
Sue was fingering a couple of overripe bananas in the special offer basket Jem and Molly Hawk used to dispose of outdated fruit and vegetables. They might have made a good banana cake, but otherwise they’d have been inedible even disguised in a dish of muesli. Still, there was no accounting for taste, especially if you’re on the lowest of incomes. I wouldn’t have touched the young onions she bought, either. Young? Suffering from senile dementia, more like.
I waited till we were both outside the shop, busy with brollies and hoods, to say, ‘I heard that you’d seen Mrs Greville and refused to attend the next meet to bless the hounds. I tell you, Sue, that was downright brave of you.’
She snapped her fingers. ‘I don’t give that much for the Grevilles of this world. It isn’t as if they’ve ever worked for all those acres of hers. And I’ll bet all their titled ancestors were descended from some yob who picked up his estates as blood money when he’d slaughtered a few innocent Anglo-Saxons to please William the Bastard.’ All good Guardian-reading stuff. From Sue, however, it sounded more personal than theoretical. I opened my mouth to ask why.
But Sue was tracing a line in the mud, just like a naughty toddler. ‘On the other hand, it won’t have done me a lot of good with the Powers That Be. Especially my hunting and shooting bishop.’
‘Moral stands are exactly what a curate should be making,’ I beamed. ‘And the Powers That Be should be pleased with you. Especially at the Highest Level. Bother bishops,’ I added more loudly, as the rain bombarded our brollies. ‘They’re no more than middle management!’
‘It’s those in middle management that hand out jobs,’ she reminded me.
‘Heavens, Sue, you’ve been vicar here in all but name ever since Mr Ellis had his stroke. Surely they won’t deny you the promotion.’
‘It’s wheels within wheels,’ she said, as gloomy as the weather.
‘I thought they were supposed to grind very small.’
‘That’s the mills of God. At least, thanks to you I have another bell ringer. Mr Thomas. It’d have been better if you’d come along too.’
So the ground had been more fertile than I’d realised. I awarded myself a Brownie point – and, had she not suddenly carped, one to Sue. But I hated being put on the defensive. ‘I couldn’t leave Lindi on her own. And I’m more use behind the bar than Lucy Gay, who’s not allowed to sell booze for another eighteen months yet. In any case, she’s one of your stalwarts, isn’t she?’
‘Apparently. I’m always over in Duncombe Parva the night they practise. I suppose it does mean she comes to church.’
Why did she sound so grudging? I said as quietly as I could against the gusting wind, which made the umbrellas more of a liability than an asset, ‘It’s amazing she finds time. But bell ringing’s the one night in the week she regards as her own. She runs that home, you know. Well, her father’s about as much use as a chocolate lavatory. Five of those children to feed and clean and wash for. Five lots of homework to check plus her own to do. A couple of evenings working for me. And she still seems to be doing well at school.’
Sue’s lips tightened. ‘But she doesn’t bring the others to Sunday school. And she refuses to be confirmed.’
‘In her situation I’d have my doubts about a benevolent divinity.’ I’d rather put my trust in a benevolent if bullying employer. Yes, the one who let her study in the kitchen if it was a quiet night and made sure she always had plenty of odds and ends to eke out her food budget. But I’d sworn her to secrecy about that – threatened to cut off supplies if so much as a whisper got out.
‘All the same.’
I’m afraid I have a very short fuse. Even that silly bit of intransigence lit it. And as usual, my mouth got into gear before my brain did. ‘I hear you’ve added undertaking to your other clerical duties.’
She flushed, and – to her credit – tried to laugh. Mistake. It meant I knew she had something to hide.
‘Though I don’t suppose cats qualify for consecrated ground. Clever of you to carry a spade in the car just in case.’
But this time I’d gone too far, and she greeted with apparent delight and no doubt real relief the church organist, the only man I know who can make ‘Away in a Manger’ sound like a military march. I left them to it.
So she must have taken Nick back to the parsonage to bury the cat. Weirder and weirder. But I’d never asked about her antipathy to the Grevilles. My job for another day.
Whatever the weather, I went for an afternoon walk. Bother the idea that every pub in the land should be open all day and half the night too. The White Hart was firmly shut between two-thirty and seven, and, unless there was a party, seemed to close down naturally between ten and ten-thirty. It’d be different when the restaurant opened. Even then, I’d always gone on the principle that if people found it hard to get into a restaurant, the more cachet it got. I was even toying with the idea of set sittings, but given you virtually need an Ordnance Survey map to find the place, I supposed a bit of flexibility was more sensible.
Today I struck out up the footpath alongside the stream that in summer makes the village so attractive to tourists. Shoals of them, dropping bits of ice cream cone as they looked for trout, would hang over the deep V-shaped recesses presumably built in the parapet to allow yokels to cower out of the way when the lord of the manor and his cronies came whizzing along in their curricles and chaises. Or, if you want to be less controversial, when the haywain trundled past. Actually I suspect it was something to do with controlling water flow, something about which I knew zilch.
There had been talk of pulling down the old bridge and replacing it with one wide enough for Euro-monster lorries, but in a rare burst of energy, Sue Clayton’s vicar, Rupert Ellis, had managed to get it listed as a grade two historical building, with a star banged on it for good measure. And somehow the idea for an extra bridge had quietly died.
The footpath was steep, strewn with large stones. When it was dry, it was like climbing a flight of overlarge steps. In this weather, there seemed to be almost as much water coursing down it as in the stream-bed itself. Even with gaitered boots and waterproof trousers, I didn’t feel very dry. Poor Tony: what would he have thought to see his relict – I got that word from some of the memorial tablets in the village church – dressed up like an apology for a deep-sea fisherman? He wouldn’t have been able to conceive of the pleasure I got from my walks. Nor of the reason I started in the first place. I’d read somewhere that simply walking half an hour every day reduced your weight by half a stone a year, even if you didn’t do anything else. Walking half an hour seemed a mammoth task when I started – and I’m not referring to my weight, though I shudder to think that once I filled the clothes I’d kept as a dire reminder. Oh, I got rid of most of them – you could probably have housed a couple of asylum seeker families in one of my tops. Except you mustn’t joke about such things down here. They assured me solemnly when they saw my choice of reading that everything, from BSE to the Iraq War, was the fault of ‘they danged bogus asylum seekers’. Since I’d never seen a non-white face down here, I wondered whence they’d drawn their conclusions. Anyway, all but a couple of my circus tent dresses had gone, and I only kept those because I liked the material and planned to turn them into proper garments when I’d finished losing weight.
Meanwhile, I actually liked walking, now it didn’t chafe my thighs and now my lungs had got used to the idea of expanding. So I was furious to find a coil of barbed wire across a public right of way. OK, since no one else ever seemed to use it, my private right of way. Nice, new, shiny barbed wire. Why the hell had anyone done that? It was against every right to roam law in the country.
Meanwhile, should I take the path to the left, which meant crossing a bridge I wouldn’t have fancied even when the water was low, or to the right, which would take me towards the campsite of which Nick was the solitary inhabitant? Consulting my map – oh, yes, I did the thing properly, a large scale OS map folded into a protective cover, even a pair of field glasses to help me spot birds or landmarks – I grasped my walking stick firmly and set off towards the camp. And then I turned back. I was waterproof, pretty well thornproof. No one was going to stop me going down that path.
But it wasn’t just barbed wire. I realised as soon as I tried disentangling it that there was razor wire in there too. My gloves weren’t up to tackling that. But if I could lay my hands on some leather gauntlets and some wire cutters, I’d be back.
The snug filled up slowly with the regulars, but there were a couple of gaps where two of the bell ringers usually sat. There was no doubt they’d started their practice, nor much as to where the expression ‘dropping a clanger’ came from. Nick, no doubt.
‘Well, we all have to start sometime,’ I told Lindi, covering her ears ostentatiously. ‘Remember those early pints you pulled? Now, make sure you’re ready for the rush after practice.’
‘I wouldn’t have thought three was a rush. After all, Lucy can’t drink.’
However did people cope with teenage daughters? ‘I believe they’ve got a new person on the team. And Mr Tregothnan always comes in just as they do. Now, I’m telling you, Lindi – you keep him at arm’s length. Flirting’s one thing, touching up’s quite another. And if he thinks he can get away with it with you, what about poor Lucy?’ Wrong. There was no love lost between them, as Lindi’s exaggerated shrug and pout reminded me. Damnation. And she’d have picked up my description of Nick Thomas as ‘a new person on the team’. Why hadn’t I simply named him? Nothing like a bit of reticence to stir up gossip, was there?
First in was Ron Snow, rubbing his hands with what looked like a mixture of cold and glee. ‘Be able to do Bob Minimus soon,’ he crowed, before he even savoured his pint of cider. ‘That new lad don’t look much, but he’ll manage, you mark my words,’ he added, looking round as if someone was prepared to challenge him. He got in half of bitter for his crony, Wally Hall.
Aidan Carr, managing to look dapper despite his layers of thick sweater, sashayed in for his G and T. He always camped it up in public, knowing, I suspect, how many fingernails he got under by doing so. He lived with his long-term partner Carl, a younger man who insisted on stripping to the waist to chop wood. Women who hadn’t twigged the nature of their relationship lusted after him; those who had complained such a hunk was wasted.
‘Such a vile drink,’ he murmured as I poured for him. ‘I’d adore a decent pint, Josie darling, but think of my image. Now, when are you going to grace our humble board with your fair presence?’
I bobbed a curtsey. ‘Whenever you ask me, Sir, she said.’ An evening à trois with them was an invitation to be cherished. While – with a huge flourish designed to set every old codger’s teeth on edge – he unzipped his handbag, I glanced round. No sign of Nick, or of young Lucy.
No. Surely not. I’d got him down as a decent man, for all he was an ex-cop. If he started messing round with the young, Tony’s threats to my young lover would pale into insignificance beside my actions.
‘Sue said she’d got an extra recruit for you – Mr Thomas, who’s staying on Bulcombe’s campsite. Didn’t he turn up?’
‘Indeed he did. And provided a moment of drama.’ Aidan leaned forward confidentially.
‘He never broke a bell!’
He shook his head, his face serious. ‘I was afraid he was having some sort of attack. One minute he was chatting away, if not easily then with due social enthusiasm, the next he was ashen white and literally speechless. I was quite concerned. And what poor Lucy must have thought, goodness knows.’
‘Lucy?’ I asked sharply.
Aidan raised an eyebrow. ‘That poor child has borne more than her share of burdens, Josie, but having a strange man look at you as if he’d seen a ghost can’t have been pleasant. However, he pulled himself together and joined in –’
‘We heard!’
‘– and has promised to come next week, work permitting. Have you any idea what his line of business might be?’
‘Some sort of civil servant, he said.’
‘Totally respectable, then. Which is fortunate, since he insisted on walking Lucy home. He said he wouldn’t let his own daughter walk around after dark on her own.’
‘You think that was a good idea?’
‘Lucy seemed to think so. She was asking for some information for one of her school projects. But you can ask him yourself – here he is!’
Ron Snow was on his feet faster than I’d ever seen him move. ‘Well, young Nick, it’s time for your scrumpy. Tradition, isn’t it, missus, that we wet a new ringer’s head. Come on, pull him a pint. And then it’s down in one, isn’t it, boys?’
I did as I was told. After all, it was his fuss to make, not mine. Then I had an idea. ‘We’ve got this all wrong. It should be a yard of ale.’
He might get drunk, but at least ale might be kinder to that ulcer of his. Imagine, tipping a pint of pure acid on to an open sore. His throat worked as he swallowed saliva. Or it might have been one of those clever tablets of his. With a wonderful impression of nonchalance, he reached for the vile liquid and downed it in one.
He acknowledged the cheers and stamps of the little group of regulars, and looked as if to join them. But they returned to their allotted chairs, any gap seamlessly closed. Was it their rudeness or his ulcer that turned him ashen white? He waved a perfunctory hand in farewell, and, whatever his hopes or intentions might have been, turned and left the bar.