In the end Sue revealed very little more than Lucy had already told me. And it seemed to me that she had introduced Nick’s name into the conversation simply for the pleasure of hearing it. So I was glad I’d made it plain that he’d been staying at Lucy’s suggestion, not mine. ‘You know he’s moved out for a while?’
She winced as if I’d slapped her face. ‘No?’
‘Oh, he’s kept his room on,’ I said as prosaically as I could. ‘But he’s got an urgent job in the South East and says he may just as well stay there until he’s finished. He didn’t actually say it aloud, but he implied that this place was hardly the Ritz and that he might as well have a bit of comfort while he could get it.’ I laughed; she didn’t. ‘Goodness knows why he ever moved down to a place like this in the back of beyond.’
‘His daughter,’ she said. ‘Apparently she always wanted to live in a cottage with roses round the door.’
Ah. The girl in the photographs I’d seen on his very first Monday morning.
‘Was she planning to move down here with him? Not a lot on offer for a young woman her age, is there?’
‘He just hoped she’d come and visit him. She lives with his wife. Ex-wife. They’ve got a son he never sees either. Phiz – some such name. And she’s Elly. The daughter. No idea of the wife’s name, have you?’
Most of this was news to me, of course, but I simply shook my head vaguely as if he’d confided in me all but that. Now, had he discussed those blackouts with Sue? I got on to safer ground. ‘But that doesn’t explain this as his choice of base. I told him to his face he was nuts to come so far off the beaten track.’
She looked wistful. ‘I think he wanted to become part of a community.’
‘He didn’t choose a very welcoming one, then, did he?’ Him and me both. ‘I suppose you had to go where you were sent.’
‘Where they thought I was needed.’ There was a hint of huff.
‘And where they could screw the most work out of you for the least pay.’ I pulled myself to my feet. Wonderful smells were coming from the oven, and I didn’t want the pie to burn. Gingerly I peered. No. Another five minutes was all it would need, however. ‘Any comeback about blessing the hunt? You know something,’ I added, ‘I’m beginning to understand why I’m off hunting. I’m beginning to empathise with the fox. Being drummed out of the village indeed.’
Sue changed the subject, but not entirely. ‘I can’t understand Mrs Greville. Suddenly she’s as nice as pie. She’s keen to take on some village girls as waitresses for some function she’s planning – asked who I could recommend.’
‘So you said Lindi and Lucy! Thanks a bunch!’
She looked at me blankly.
‘I’ve not seen Lindi since the Tregothnan business’ I explained. ‘And barmaids, even lazy inept ones like Lindi, don’t grow on trees round here. Though you’d have thought some of the young married women would be glad of the work.’
‘Not if it impugns their husbands’ ability to provide for them. Twenty-first century this may be elsewhere, Josie, but Hardy would recognise some of the folk round here. No, we’re too far west, aren’t we? That man who wrote that book about Exmoor.’
‘R D Blackmore,’ I supplied, catching a glimmer of surprise in her eyes. ‘Not part of my OU course, but I did a lot of reading when Tony was doing bird. Plenty of time, of course.’ It had kept us together, reading the same books: we’d think of each other while we were reading, and as a bonus we had something to talk about, not always easy with men doing stretches like his. OK, you had family news, but I saw as little of my in-laws as I decently could, and there was gossip about friends, but many of his were also doing time and were therefore pretty lean pickings. So there could have been horrible silences like at other tables in the visitors’ room. Instead, we’d talk about Scott or Dickens or George Eliot. It always struck me that with a decent education, Tony could have made as much money doing a legitimate job as being a villain. Well, no. But enough.
Since Sue obviously couldn’t think of anything to say, I got to my feet and summoned Lucy.
Her face was transformed into a series of O’s when she reached out her pie. As well it might. Between us, we’d done a very professional job. I was going to have to be very strict with myself and inhospitable towards Sue, who was plainly slavering.
I looked at my watch. ‘I’ll keep an eye on the place now. Before you go, is there any chance you could do a couple of extra hours tomorrow and on Sunday? I know it’s usually the day you cook the family lunch but –’
‘No reason why they shouldn’t have family supper instead,’ Lucy observed stoutly. ‘What time do you want me, Mrs Welford?’
‘Potato peeling starts as soon as morning service is over,’ I said, grinning at Sue, ‘for those who ring bells. You’ll be without Mr Thomas, remember.’
Lucy nodded. ‘Mrs Greville said as how she’d be along. But she’s as much use as a chocolate –’ she obviously didn’t want to use my usual crude analogy ‘– chocolate tea pot, with that back of hers.’
‘You’ll find that pie dish just fits into that round wicker basket hanging behind the back door. Slip a tea towel in it for insulation first: there. And here’s one to cover it.’
Lucy looked nonplussed.
Sue twigged. ‘Put your jacket hood up and you’ll look like little Red Riding Hood off to feed Grandma.’
‘But –’
‘You made it, Lucy. I can’t possibly eat any – not with my diet. All that butter! And it’d be nice for the family to see the whole masterpiece, not just a chunk of it. No, no argument. Pop along, now. Got your torch?’
She flourished the weighty specimen I’d pressed on her when she’d started work here.
I patted her on the shoulder. ‘No talking to strange men.’
She turned. ‘That’d mean most of the village, then!’ And she was gone.
‘And not a word of this beyond these walls,’ I said, my index finger an inch from Sue’s nose.
‘Do good by stealth,’ she agreed ‘It’s not a bad maxim. But it wouldn’t do you any harm in the village if your kindness were known.’
‘The mood they’re in they’d see it for what it may well be – bribery. Or they’d think the pie was full of eye of bat and toe of newt.’
‘Bribery?’
‘Keeping her sweet.’
‘Is it?’
It was hard to bluster when Sue turned her eyes full on you. ‘I never had a daughter. I wouldn’t have chosen one quite like Lucy. But it’s nice to have someone to teach the tricks of the trade to.’
‘You mean take her on in your kitchen?’ Did she sound pleased or reproachful?
‘One day I mean take her on as my manager. Got a wonderful head for figures, she has. And a good grasp of situations. If I want anyone in my kitchen at the moment it’s Tom. I suppose no gossip’s reached you?’
‘I’m afraid it has. Well, about Tom’s girl’s pregnancy. Sharon, isn’t that her name? Seems the father’s not Tom, but Sharon’s dear old dad.’
I reeled. ‘I knew he beat her up. I didn’t know – oh, my God. So where’s Sharon now?’
‘No one knows for sure. Half the village hope she’s having an abortion and that Tom’s standing by her; the other half say he’s well shot of her and he shouldn’t have got involved with a girl from such a harum-scarum family in the first place.’
‘And you?’
She fidgeted. ‘In an ideal world she’d keep the baby and Tom would still stand by her. But would you take that on? I’m not sure I would. All the genetic risks…’
‘Incest! You can’t imagine it, can you – a man doing that to his own daughter.’
‘Best if he stuck to sheep. Oh, yes: you must have heard the joke that begins, “Me Lud, the plaintiff was quietly grazing in a field…”’ She collapsed in heaving, choking sobs of laughter.
This was a side of Sue I’d never seen before. Maybe that half-bottle of lunchtime wine brought it out.
Whatever it was, she seemed scared by its intensity, and immediately gathered her things together as a preliminary to leaving. I didn’t argue: I hadn’t eaten and was suddenly tired. But her final words revived me.
‘I suppose I couldn’t ask a big favour? I know you’re not down to do the flowers tomorrow, but with the floods I can’t rely on the usual ladies –’
‘No problem. There shouldn’t be much to do anyway – we started afresh last week, didn’t we, so it’ll be mostly dead-heading and filling in gaps.’
She shook her head shyly but firmly. ‘I’ll bring in plenty of fresh ones. Josie – make it look a bit special if you can.’
‘The best I can. But Sue, God’ll forgive a few tired blooms.’
‘It’s not God I’m worried about. It’s the other ladies. And – well…’ She shifted like a schoolgirl about to meet the pop star of her dreams. ‘Well, the new dean’s going to drop in unannounced, you see.’
Was that the real reason for her visit tonight?
Grinning broadly, I said, ‘I love the concept of unannounced visits being known in advance!’
‘I know his secretary, you see, and –’
‘Sue, it’ll look as good as I can make it look. But for real expertise what about Mrs Coyne or –’
Her jaw jutted. ‘I want it to look like church flowers, not a huge bag of hundreds and thousands.’
‘Mrs Greville?’
‘It’s you I’ve asked, Josie. Get in there and sock it to them.’ So it wasn’t just the dean she was worrying about. She was trying to rehabilitate me. I wasn’t at all sure that pushing me forward would endear me to anyone, but at least her heart was in the right place. On impulse I hugged her.
She was rather too obviously taken aback. Her exit was almost an escape. Well, I didn’t rate Nick’s chances highly if that was how she regarded physical contact. Waving just in case she looked back, I stood in the open doorway for several minutes, breathing in the clean, newly washed air. And presenting a lovely target, Tony’s voice observed dryly in my right ear.
Saturday was a good day for passing trade, so my day started very early laying in supplies of fresh meat and vegetables. Shortly after eight, Sue and I arrived at the church simultaneously, me cheerful and bustling, her nervy and cautious, as if I’d made a pass at her last night, not just offered a sisterly gesture. She dropped the flowers and, gabbling something about a wedding at one of her other churches, bolted back to her filthy, condensation-filled car, that accident in the making. Nick’d better be back soon and have the guts to do something.
I’d always enjoyed my own company – a good job, in all the circumstances. So the empty building held no terrors, not when I’d shoved the latch down good and hard so I’d get plenty of warning of any visitors. And bullies though there were in the village, I’d bet that most of them would have an atavistic respect for the building that would prevent them doing any violence in it.
In the silence, the damp rising almost palpably from the old stone, I could identify with those nuns who did even the most humdrum task for the greater glory of God. AMGD, or something like that. I worked quickly, true, as my fingers turned blue, but all the more confidently for having no one looking over my shoulder. I couldn’t believe a few well-placed carnations and ferns would make up for any damage I might have done with my traveller’s tongue, but maybe it was a form of reparation, an act of contrition. And I was in a place that spoke of a millennium of forgiveness.
There were two altars, the main one and one in the tiny Lady Chapel, both jealously guarded provinces. I did them first, risking Mrs Coyne’s fury as I simply removed her displays and replaced them with very simple ones of my own, white freesias, carnations and gypsophila. The first time I’d been invited, I was just back from Madeira and had brought a huge pack of exotic flowers. In the gloom of the church, they’d simply looked like bad plastic ones. So now I knew better. I couldn’t claim Constance Spry skills, but maybe the bishop couldn’t either. Next to the embrasures and sills, which I filled with slimmed down versions of last week’s, augmented by Mrs Coyne’s collection. And finally I swept up, wishing that T S Eliot hadn’t been so smugly patronising about the scrubbers and sweepers of Canterbury Cathedral.
Accustomed to the dim light, I was almost blinded by the brilliant sunshine I found outside. Not a bad day for a walk today, provided I bore in mind that the ground would be waterlogged. And provided the lunchtime crowd dissipated while there was still enough light – every encroaching dusk reminded me that soon the clocks would go back, and my explorations would be sadly limited. Maybe I should wait till afternoon to collect my paper. And maybe I shouldn’t. Whenever I’d havered, Tony had always quoted an old Midlands maxim to me: ‘Faint heart never shagged a pig.’ Only the word wasn’t shagged. OK, from what Sue had said, antics with animals were more in the villagers’ line than mine, but I took his posthumous point. No, I wasn’t surprised he hadn’t communed with me back there in the church – that wasn’t his way at all. The more profane the place the better for old Tony.
The shop was seething with enough customers to bring a smile to Molly’s face, which even my presence didn’t dim. Seizing the moment, I gathered some of the items I’d had to forego the previous day, and was gratified to find my Guardian waiting for me as I approached the till. So what had yesterday been about? A warning? Or did I owe it to the good offices of Lucy and Sue, busily putting it about that I was a Good Thing, and not connected with that there Nasty Grockle, Nick Thomas? Or had Molly put the fear of God into everyone, lest they damage her business?
Lunchtime flew by, with no regulars but plenty of walkers and other weekenders: one by one they polished off the day’s specials, which would have to be replaced in time for the evening, just in case anyone turned up. So that was my afternoon gone. Unless I could risk a couple of short cuts, making individual portions of pie filling, ready to be topped with pastry should anyone ask for one. Lamb curry wouldn’t take long to prepare and would benefit from a nice long simmer; if no one came, it would taste even better a day or even two later. Yes…
All the same, it was nearer four than three by the time I’d loaded the dishwasher and washed the pans, and if I was going to push anything forward I’d better do it by car. There shouldn’t be any activity at the rendering plant at the weekend, surely, which meant I could case it in safety. I waited only to fax a couple of employment agencies about replacement bar staff before pulling on my outdoor gear.
It wasn’t much to look at, not from the hillside that provided the only vantage point, just a small complex of factory buildings with a couple of tall chimneys, sore thumbs in the otherwise lush countryside. You’d have thought such an ugly place ought to be in an industrial estate in the middle of the Black Country, until the wind blew, that is. Then it became all too clear why you couldn’t site it anywhere near centres of population. Local residents would soon twig that the place wasn’t making fine perfumes, for instance, and even the knowledge that so many animal by-products used by the beauty industry and even medicine had to be extracted in smelly dumps like this would hardly reconcile them to its presence.
Close too the stench was far worse, as you’d expect. But there were confident signs on its high, wire mesh gates, set twenty or so yards back from the lane on a tarmac apron, announcing it was Wetherall Industries, and plenty of hard-standing inside for lorries, with a couple of what looked like office buildings to the right. There were several huge cylindrical vats beyond these. There were also, more gruesomely, a set of skips from which protruded what looked horribly like animal limbs. Yes, even as I snapped away with my neat little camera, I acknowledged that I was operating on double standards, but then most of us do. I was happy to prepare chicken, lamb, beef, pork and any other recognisable animal that came my way, but to see the waste parts jumbled up in death like that turned my stomach. I told myself we’d all be vegetarians if we had to kill our own meat, but was soon cramming calorie laden mints into my own as fast as I could fish them out of the glove-box. So that was the sort of place Food Standards Agency officers like Nick had to deal with: far from sneering at him as a coward, I should be taking my hat off to him.
Putting the car quickly into gear, I had one last look. If it had been inspected, it must be all right, mustn’t it? And for the first time I was pleased to acknowledge that it really was none of my business if it wasn’t.
Or was it? As I pulled away, a tarpaulin-covered lorry bore down on me, trapping me. Two dogs the size of donkeys leapt from the cab as the driver scrambled down. I covered the camera with the OS map, plonking my index finger on what I hoped would be a local beauty spot.
Winding down the window only about three inches – I didn’t like the look of any of the party, four or two-legged – I smiled vacuously. ‘Took a wrong turning,’ I said to the man, who might well not have heard about the throaty growls of his colleagues.
He kicked the dogs aside and leaned both forearms on the top of my car, peering down at me.
‘Ah. And where might you be heading for?’
‘They says there’s a nice church in Treborough.’
‘Do they indeed? Well, you won’t find it here, will you?’ Halitosis and sweat. A far from heady mix. Thank God for the mints.
‘Quite. I took a wrong turn about five miles back, I reckon.’
‘Ah.’
He stood back far enough for me to embark on a three point turn, but so close that what with his feet and his lorry it seemed more like ninety-nine. The dogs provided more mobile hazards. At last I squeezed between the hedge and the side of his lorry, close enough for the matter oozing from the sides to drip on my paintwork. If I stopped to clean it off I’d either be eaten alive or be sick. Someone had told me that if the gap was wide enough you could get through it at sixty as easily as six miles an hour. I didn’t make sixty, but I didn’t hang about. I might have had the guts to stop and write down the lorry’s number – might – but somehow a flap of tarpaulin had managed to cover it. Pity there was nothing to cover mine.
Maybe I’d make the other special for tonight something wholesomely vegetarian.