The women of Witchwood carried bundles of arum lilies into the church. Armfuls of them. Large, white trumpet-headed blooms, which were already beginning to rot. The centuries-old stone walls of St Oswald’s could generally be relied upon to keep the outside out. But not today. Today, with the congregation swelling by the minute, transporting the freakish heat within the darkened pleats of their clothes, it bordered on unbearable.
Dora Muller, in her mid-fifties with hair as black as it was when she was seventeen, was seated near the front, a great-niece squashed either side of her ampleness. With her money-slot mouth pursed for the occasion, her Delft Blue irises missed nothing and no one. Who were they all? She blinked in disbelief: Derek Hooper had been bedbound for years. These weren’t villagers; the inhabitants of this Gloucestershire parish barely amounted to a handful … her thoughts as she sieved through faces, dabbing perspiration from her disproportionately tiny nose with an embroidered handkerchief. She saw Cecilia Mortmain, the vicar’s attractive and considerably younger wife, tucked out of harm’s way at the back. A surprise to see her – diagnosed with multiple sclerosis some years ago, and more recently confined to a wheelchair, she wasn’t seen around the village all that often any more.
Dora’s great-nieces, fidgety in their finery – well, the finest of what they brought with them; no one had envisaged their need to attend a funeral here – swivelled on the pew for news of what was going on behind them. They were greeted by row upon row of impeccably turned-out women in extravagant hats, who fanned their own corpse-like foreheads with the Order of Service. Catching their eye, Tilly Petley – co-owner with her husband, Frank, of Witchwood’s only shop – bestowed a generous wink. Shy under her unexpected interest, the sisters turned to the front again, but not before they noticed Cecilia Mortmain.
‘Who’s that pretty lady?’ Thirteen-year-old Caroline: surly, complex, her hen-brown hair scooped back in its Alice band.
‘Shhh .’ Dora pressed a finger to her lips.
Luckily the barn-like church interior held greater interest. Caroline extended a hand to touch the smudged gold Cotswold stone. But ashamed of her bitten nails, she jerked her fingers back and burrowed them in the pocket of her dress to twirl the little flat vanes on a silver teaspoon that, fashioned into a windmill, was just one of the things she’d pinched from her great-aunt’s holiday cottage.
‘That’s Mrs Hooper playing, isn’t it?’ she asked Dora’s glistening top lip as the organ wheezed its way through ‘I Heard a Voice From Heaven’. Poor Dora. Sweltering inside her big, black corduroy smock, smelling of mothballs.
‘Well,’ Dora began, and the sisters, trapped within their humble box pew, felt a story coming on. ‘Lillian was a pupil of the great Herbert Howells, you know, and she said she summoned her husband, Derek, by tinkling the ivories. So now, I suppose –’ Dora wrinkled her powdered nose against the stench of pollen, fearful of sneezing ‘– she’s tinkling them to send him on his way.’
Mrs Hooper was like the Pied Piper of Witchwood and had been summoning the village children with her piano playing for years. Caroline and Joanna were no exception: breezing past Pludd Cottage on their first afternoon, they were instantly captivated. With her back to the congregation, Lillian Hooper, refined and upright, rotated her gaze to the Reverend Timothy Mortmain as if in anticipation of some celestial deliverance. Her hair, the sisters decided early on, was the same colour and as shiny as the new copper boiler their landlord had recently fitted in their Camden flat.
‘That’s nice.’ It was Joanna who answered Dora, her fingers travelling an imaginary keyboard on her plump thighs in the way Mrs Hooper was teaching her. She kept time by swinging her nine-year-old feet in their Daz-white socks that wouldn’t even reach the pedals in her mind. Unlike the effortless grace of Mrs Hooper who, bathed in a halo of light, easily manipulated the organ’s complicated pedals in her pretty shoes.
‘It is romantic, isn’t it?’ Dora flapped her handkerchief in front of her face. ‘But then, what would I know of such things?’ She tipped her head to the eaves and pressed her varnished nails to a brooch belonging to her late mother, which was fastened at her neck.
Joanna and Caroline tilted forward over the mass of their great-aunt and exchanged an eye roll, before dropping into a soulful silence designed to convince their guardian of their good intentions.
Dora dipped her head. ‘You’re such darling girls,’ she cooed, and abandoned her brooch to clasp their little hands in each of hers. ‘You wait –’ she jiggled them up and down ‘– us three, we’re going to have the best time ever.’
Joanna, smiling up at the double chin that belied her daintily featured great-aunt, listened to the promise as the congregation rose to its feet to greet the pallbearers, swaying and sweating under the weight of Derek Hooper’s conker-shiny coffin as it made its slow procession up the aisle.
The Boar’s Head wasn’t the best place to host a wake. Poky and smoke-filled, the main bar, dubbed saloon by its regulars, was shabby and sad. But Derek Hooper, in the days he was still able to hobble over here, had loved it, and Liz and Ian Fry, joint licensees for the past two years, were doing their utmost to accommodate the mourners dribbling along the cathedral-like nave of horse chestnuts into the pub.
Fizzing with enthusiasm, Liz Fry’s bottle-blonde head bobbed in and out of the kitchen at the side of the bar, encouraging people into the pleasant beer garden. She was right – with tables and benches set under trees spilling in from the woods, there were plenty of shady places to sit.
‘We’re still in the process of refurbishing,’ Caroline heard Liz explain to Dora, who wouldn’t ordinarily be seen dead in a pub. ‘We’ve big plans for the place.’
Dora and her nieces did as they were told and helped themselves from the buffet. Holding paper plates with deltas of green serviette, they made their selection from the mini pizzas and chicken drumsticks sprinkled with parsley, and carried their choices outside into the prickling heat. They found a spot under a broad parasol where, beyond the various trunks of trees, the wide bake of yellow wheat fields shimmered under a relentless sun. Dora, her dress stretched taut across her fat knees, pecked at a portion of coronation chicken, her head darting like the sparrows in Mrs Hooper’s garden, reluctant to miss a thing.
The prawn cocktail vol-au-vent tasted stale. Taking a bite and deciding she didn’t like it, Caroline got up to hide it under a yellow ashtray advertising Double Diamond on a nearby table.
‘I saw you.’
A voice close to her ear. She twisted to receive it.
Wow . Cool, laid-back, nicer-looking than any of the sixth-form boys at school in his Levi 501s and Guns N’ Roses T-shirt. I love him, she decided in an instant, blushing pink as a heart.
‘Who are you then?’ the boy quizzed while she stared, troubled by the image of herself – the long, pale face, the high slope of forehead – reflected in the curved mirror-lenses of his sunglasses.
‘I-I’m C-C-Caroline … Carrie.’ She eventually tipped her name out of her mouth.
‘Carrie . Yeah – like it, sweet. ’ He shook out his dishevelled light brown hair that was curling beyond his collar. ‘Seen you about, ain’t I?’
‘Have you?’ Boys didn’t usually notice Caroline, not boys like this one, anyway, unless it was to bully and taunt.
‘Yeah, playing in the woods and that.’ His accent dispatched him back to the Surrey town of Weybridge where he’d been born. ‘On your hols then, are ya?’
‘S-sort of,’ she stammered, worrying the velvet trim at her neckline. ‘Our mum … she’s not very well, so me and Jo … we’re staying at Pillowell Cottage with our great-aunt for the summer.’
‘I know her. I do her garden. Right barrel-load of fun, ain’t she?’
It was difficult for Caroline to know if this was a question or statement. She shifted uneasily from one sock and sandaled foot to the other.
‘Don’t suppose you fancy earnin’ a bit of pocket money while you’re here?’ he asked. ‘Course, I’ll have to square it with me stepmum first, but this time o’ year, reckon we could do with an extra pair of hands.’
‘Doing what?’ Caroline squinted into the green sting of chlorophyll trembling through the trees.
‘You’re too young to pull pints.’ A burst of laughter; not mocking, but not flattering either. ‘So, collecting glasses, washing up, that kinda thing.’
‘De-an … De-an … ’ someone yelled.
‘That’s me.’ He whipped his head to the call. ‘Wanna come with me now? Could ask Liz what she thinks about you working here, then.’
‘Now ? Y-you want me to come now? Y-yeah, all right.’ Caroline gawped at Dean’s long-legged leanness, the muscled bronze of his suntanned arms, his invitation taking a moment to filter through.
Joanna, a plate of gala pie and quartered sandwiches in her lap, watched her sister and the older boy disappear through a rainbow-coloured fly screen at the rear of the pub. Keen to follow, to find out what her sister was up to, she was about to abandon her lunch and go after them when she spotted Frank Petley standing close by. Joanna froze under his gaze. Familiar with him from her visits with Caroline to Witchwood’s only shop, she didn’t like Mr Petley’s creepy-eyed stare or the smile that always seemed to loiter at the edge of his mouth. Girdled by hollyhocks bent under the weight of the weather, he was so still, so quiet, Joanna hadn’t realised he was there. Frightened by his presence, she changed her mind about following her sister and was about to alert Dora to him, when a squeal from her great-aunt stopped her in her tracks.
‘Oh, Gordon. There you are! I’ve been looking for you.’ Dora, forgetting the solemnity of the occasion, inadvertently made Joanna forget Caroline and the boy.
A man in his late twenties sashayed towards them. Reedily tall like the bulrushes growing down by the clear stretch of water the sisters had learnt to call Drake’s Pike, he had a puff of blue-black hair and was clean-shaven inside a dark Armani suit. Joanna watched him swap his gold-tipped cocktail cigarette into his sherry-holding hand and plant a kiss on Dora’s cheek, exhaling smoke into her wedge of hair.
‘How fine you look.’ Dora, insouciant to the disapproval of mourners slinking like black cats into the beer garden, called loudly, over-the-top, ‘Girls, girls ! Come and meet Gordon.’ And with further squeals of delight she grabbed Joanna’s arms and offered her up to him. ‘Where’s your sister gone?’ she queried, but not with any zeal; Gordon Hooper held far greater interest. ‘My, you look wonderful. Wonderful . Italy certainly agrees with you.’ Dora continued to flirt. ‘This is Joanna. Imogen’s youngest.’
‘So, you’re Joanna, are you?’ Gordon spoke slowly. ‘Goodness me, how frighteningly like your mother you are.’
‘Like my mother?’ Joanna beamed up at him. He had a kind face and she liked how his eyes were as pale as the liquid in his glass.
‘Oh, yes,’ he said, and sipped his Tio Pepe. ‘Your mother and me … well, we were great friends once. Not that I’ve seen her for, oh … ’ He hesitated. ‘At least a decade.’
Gordon’s interest was then stolen by a little girl around Joanna’s age in an acid-yellow dress who glided with considerable proficiency across the parched ground on roller skates. Turning from Dora and Joanna, he abandoned his cigarette and sherry to greet her.
‘Ellie!’ he cried, throwing his arms in the air. ‘How tall you’re growing.’ And he dived to gather the child in a ball of giggles. ‘I won’t be able to call you my little babe in the woods for much longer, will I?’
Home from the Continent, where he crafted violins for a living, Gordon Hooper had chosen to keep a low profile during his father’s funeral and rejected the vicar’s suggestion to read a eulogy. But swirling Ellie Fry around on her wheels, making her brown pigtails swing, her cheeks bloom cherry-pink, he obviously had no qualms about drawing attention to himself now. As lithe and strong as a trapeze artist, Gordon hoisted the child on to his shoulders and, spurred on by Ellie’s shrieks of delight, the two of them played as if no one was watching.
To hide her embarrassment at Gordon’s flagrant snub, Dora drained her second gin and tonic to the sinister accompaniment of tinkling ice cubes, and left behind a smear of lipstick: a stamp of protest against the glass. Others by now had tuned into the strange spectacle. Inching in from the shadows, they formed a ring around this loose-limbed man and pretty child. Dora watched too, frowning heavily as Ellie’s skater dress lifted up for everyone to see the playground scuffs on her dimpled knees, the nasty set of bruises on the insides of her thighs.
The pub’s landlord, Ian Fry, was also watching. Keeping guard from a dish of dappled shade, he gripped a tray of empties in his yellow smoker’s fingers and focused hard on Ellie and Gordon Hooper – a man, it was clear from his expression, he neither trusted nor liked. Ian’s bald, suntanned scalp gleamed like polished pine as he stepped forward into the high, bright sunshine. Joanna saw the muscles ripple in his bullish neck and the trace of a smile quivering on his lips. A smile she wasn’t equipped to read.
‘Is no one going to stop him?’ Dora, tipsy from one too many. ‘Love him as I do, this isn’t appropriate – today of all days,’ she voiced to no one in particular.
But it was Ellie herself who brought the shenanigans to a close, screaming and laughing, tugging at Gordon’s dark mop of hair, threatening to be sick.